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Zalava (2021)
Poetry, Tragedy, and Cultural Demons
There was a time when saying "Iranian cinema" meant Abbas Kiarostami's films and the countless movies with children as protagonists. I, at least, was left with that impression and that is why it was totally unexpected to find this drama about exorcism, set in the village of Zalava in the Iranian region of Kurdistan, where gypsies migrated in the 19th century, learned the customs of the region and brought with them fears that manifested themselves as demons.
The film takes place in 1978. A young sergeant is dismissed from his post in the Zalava gendarmerie, when a possessed girl (by a demon or an ancestral fear...) dies accidentally. His father was unable to do what the "exorcist protocol" required, that is, shoot her in the leg, because the sergeant confiscated the rifles with which the inhabitants were also hunting illegally. On the verge of leaving the station, the sergeant decides to stay in Zalava to solve the new case of a demon in the town.
«Zalava» is too subtle and elegant for the public that loves stuff like «The Substance.» The script and direction skillfully move between fright and culture, suspense and ethnography, and social drama and romantic melodrama, always keeping us attentive to the evolution of the characters and to the way in which the perception of the phenomena changes from one to another, until reaching the level of tragedy. The predominating point of view is the logic approach of the sergeant, a man raised in an orphanage, who was called Six Fingers. In love with the beautiful village doctor, he tells her how, after being rejected because of the superstition of what having a sixth finger meant, he learned to respect its space, to take care of it, until it disappeared alone and, from then on, he assumed everything in life from that perspective. He is a rationalist rather than a skeptic, and analyzes the facts coldly. This character is contrasted by the exorcist (Rahimi Sam), a serious man confident in his profession, who does not doubt his ability to control demons, while the doctor stays in the middle, open to all manifestations.
A day after seeing it, "Zalava" is still a film that intrigues me, that awakens curiosity and reflection on themes such as faith and the unwavering adherence to the irrational. In addition, it is visually beautiful and an admirable first film. My only complaint is the abundance of dialogue in the final confrontation, but then I think that it may be a cultural trait, related to a certain gypsy verbosity, in a well-managed framework between professional actors and natural actors. The film won the Grand Prix of the International Association of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) at the Venice Film Festival, and the awards for Best First Film, Screenplay and Supporting Actor (Pourya Rahimi Sam) at the Fajr Film Festival. Highly recommended.
The Substance (2024)
Too many colored substances
This film won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival, but the distinction does not guarantee that you will see a good film. Logically, it is very appropriate that a satire on fame in the audiovisual industry receives such an important award at a festival that was once an absolute guarantee of good cinema. Not anymore. It is true that it reflects on the obsession of certain people with fame and exposure in traditional and new media, their terror of aging and the terrifying transformations of their bodies. However, the satire extends for 144 minutes, which make all its weaknesses obvious.
The fact that the director-screenwriter is Parisian, or that the production is British-French does not change the Hollywood formula at all, with its special effects and artificial blood (in this case, in spurts and gushes), an exacerbated cult of butts of all genres, and rubber monsters that add to this accumulation of never-ending excesses.
However, I would not tell you not to watch it. You will end up laughing at all the indulgence and alienation, but you will have to put up with endless scenes of mutilations, beatings, and bloody explosions. In past body horror tales, in the hands of David Cronenberg, this story would have lasted 80 minutes. What I regret most is that the filmmakers threw away what did have an attractive central idea (which owes a lot to Wilde's «The Picture of Dorian Gray»): a plan to create a clone by injecting "the substance", of which success will depend on respecting the rules of the game and giving fair care to the human matrix when he/she is in a comatose state, while the other half fully enjoys what life (and the television industry) has to offer, thanks to its beauty and youth.
As the aging diva in charge of a morning show doing calisthenics and other jumps, Demi Moore creates an admirable self-parody, based on her strong but aging face and body, unfortunately for her and the TV mogul (Dennis Quaid in a grotesque performance, in a role conceived for the late Ray Liotta). Suddenly, the diva receives information about the substance from a nurse and the idea of acquiring it grows in the woman. The curious thing about the script is that there is no explanation of the liquid, its added value, or its origin... In exchange for what? At what cost? There is no mad scientist to explain anything, as in the good old days, only a scathing and oppressive voice.
I do not think I will spoil the movie for you if I tell you that everything goes wrong, very wrong, so wrong that one starts laughing and there is no turning back. It was calculated that we would end up laughing, but director Coralie Fargeat falls into her own trap and does not know when to stop this story loaded with fluids of all colors, organs, and multiple endings. And believe me, 144 minutes is a lot of screen time and too much of your free time.
Le Deuxième Acte (2024)
Another Dupieux to watch
Brilliant Quentin Dupieux makes fun of cinema (his own métier) as he did before with theatre in the excellent «Yannick». And he is lucky enough to have a superb cast to give life to five actors who are working in a film, who constantly move from fiction to reality again and again, and who create a quite faithful image of all the vices (above all) and virtues of the people who make films. For them and the audience it is a hilarious and frenetic comedy, in which the story they are filming intersect with the lives of the actors, seen in a three-level game: the role they play in the film, their life as actors within the film, and as professional actors in real life.
In short, a man (Louis Garrel) asks his best friend (Raphäel Quenard) for help in seducing a woman (Léa Seydoux) who is stalking him and for whom he has absolutely no feelings. To do so, the man brings his friend to the meeting he has with the woman at Le Deuxième Acte restaurant, without knowing that she has brought her father (Vincent Lindon) to introduce him as her future partner. The quartet is joined by the restaurant waiter, played by an extra (Manuel Guillot), who suffers a panic attack and cannot properly pour wine into their glasses without his hand stopping shaking. Between these situations and the reality of the actors inside and outside the film, the events flow. Lindon receives a call to act with Paul Thomas Anderson, the actor who plays the extra has similar self-esteem problems as his character, actors turn out to be the reverse of what they pretend to be. And so it naturally flows this irreverent comedy from one of the classic iconoclast filmmakers of world cinema. A very enjoyable film.
Allégorie citadine (2024)
Art, Philosophy, and Beauty
«Allégorie citadine» is a short film by the great Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher, shot in France, in which she makes a film interpretation of the show «Chiroptera» by co-director JR, choreographer Damien Jalet and musician Thomas Bangalter, based on Plato's allegory of the cave, a dialogue included in his work «The Republic». Giving an original, unique and beautiful image to a reflection on what would happen if one of many men chained in a cave, who believe that shadows are reality, could go out and see "reality" outside, is not an easy task. However, Rohrwacher and JR create a fantastic story and at the same time propose an unique way of perceiving the real world.
A dancer rushes with her little son to auditions for a show inspired by Plato's allegory. When she arrives she meets the general assistant, who is hysterical because all the candidates came in tutus for a show with a totally contemporary and urban feel. The dancer has arrived very late, she begs, and the director (filmmaker Leos Carax) decides to give her a break and whispers the secret of the allegory to the kid (Naïm El Kaldaoui): what happened to the prisoner that left the cave. When rehearsals begin, the boy does exactly what the escaped prisoner did and begins an audiovisual poem in the streets illustrating this allegory of education versus ignorance. Do not miss it, the film only lasts 21 minutes and it is a rewarding experience.
Aku wa sonzai shinai (2023)
Still Waters Run Deep
The Japanese drama «Evil Does Not Exist" is about a father and his daughter who experience life in communion with nature, together with other residents of a community near Tokyo. They lead a peaceful and beautiful life, eat good healthy food, drink water from springs and do not live apart from the dynamics of the country. So much so that the antagonists arrive from Tokyo, two envoys from a neoliberal company, which wants to create a "glamping" site (that is, glamorous camping). Have you even been to a distant beach where there is no surveillance, where a big group of people arrived for swimming, eating, boozing, and taking sun baths, and when they leave you see what was left on the sand (not to mention underwater)? Well, something like is what the community fears will happen to their space and turn it into a mess. The businessmen do not care that the septic tank they will build will contaminate the groundwater... And the story evolves towards an ending that I still do not conclude if it is tragic or a living illustration of the fusion of humanity with virgin nature. Excellent film, with Hitoshi Omika, a natural actor who even wore his own clothes in his scenes as the protagonist. Grand Jury Prize and other trophies at the Venice Film Festival.
Echo (2022)
Very good film
I do not identify with screenplays or stage plays made with formulas and AI recipes. I respect them and, if they result in good cultural consumption products, I enjoy them. But I avoid them whenever I can. I prefer looser and open stories and structures that resist formulaic interpretations and academic approaches: those products that draw on various sources. When someone goes to see a play that I have written or directed, they find the confluence of cabaret theatre, street theatre, Brecht, Greek tragedy, pamphlets, melodrama and other influences that I cannot even identify.
That is how I felt when I watched the first feature film by German director Mareika Wegener, released in 2022, with no awards from anywhere (according to IMDb) and forgotten, but it is a fascinating, haunting, and beautiful first work, in which policewoman Saskia Harder (played by Soviet actress Valery Tscheplanowa) accepts a position in the town of Friedland during her recovery, after surviving a bomb blast in Afghanistan, where she was training local female fighters.
Officer Harder must identify the remains of a mummified young girl, whose hands are missing. What follows is a happy encounter between a police investigation plot, Friedland legends about a forest and a moor, echoes of the Second World War in the form of an unexploded bomb dropped by the Allies which has to be detonated in the moat surrounding the castle of the local landowner, who treasures a macaw called Munchkin and beautiful works of art, both his own and that of his little daughter Beate, who disappeared in the forest when she was 11, never to be seen again; the intervention of the teenage brother of another missing girl, to put an end to the daily drama he experiences with his parents and who seems to be guided by a mysterious loose stallion; and Greek mythology, through the introduction, from the prologue in Afghanistan, of the nymph Echo, one of the Oreads who was condemned by the goddess Hera (Zeus' sister and wife) to repeat everything she hears (the reason why is a long gossip, like all those tales of Olympus), who whenever she is going to manifest herself she does so amidst a cloud of fuchsia smoke, which --to round out the package-- reminded me of Lovecraft and his story "The Color of Outer Space."
One of the things I liked most about «Echo» was its ending, which made me burst out laughing when the debuting director mocked all our expectations with an "unspeakable bucket of water." I am a fan of these outbursts of madness and genius and that is why I give it 10/10.
El rey del barrio (1950)
King Tin Tan At His Best
Tin Tan was the real king of Mexican comedy, a performer loved by most of Latin American audiences: he sang and danced, and was a very funny, irreverent and sexy pothead, ready to party. In this movie he is the leader of an inept band of thieves, a sort of Robin Hood who helps people in a poor neighborhood in México City. He does everything to steal, even pretending to teach rich Vitola how to sing opera. His love interest is lovely Silvia Pinal, before her Buñuelian films; his brother Ramón Valdés, Marcelo, Borolas and Tun Tun, all provide laughs, while Tongolele adds a bit of exotic dancing.
Discreet (2017)
An Excellent American Film
When you watch a movie that makes you shudder, gives you goosebumps, or makes you want to never watch another frame, there is no logical reason to say it is a bad film. And even less so when it is an excellent film as Travis Mathews's «Discreet.» There were even moments when I felt like I was watching a horror movie, but no, it was a realistic and devastating drama.
"Discreet" takes place during the years of Donald Trump's "narcissistic dictatorship." It tells the story of Alex (Mars), an aimless man who records videos on American highways and roads to send them to a Japanese woman (Okatsuka), host of a space for emotional well-being and mental health on social networks. Alex intends to reach Oregon and meet her, but on his journey, he stops at the house of his mother Joy (Cunningham), a drug addict in rehabilitation who reveals to him a secret she kept for decades: the man who abused him when he was a child is not dead, as he was led to believe.
The events that occur during the following 69 minutes (after some sordid events that precede them, related to that child abuse and, at the same time, alien to it) constitute Alex's revenge, set in the universe of a marginalized social sector far from the "American dream" and its followers, but as prone to crime as the privileged people of the socioeconomic, political and military structures.
I think that, as in the case of «Saló or the 120 days of Sodom» in 1975, the public was not prepared for "Discreet" in 2017, and the film sank into anonymity... at least I never heard of it. Apparently, American audiences are not yet convinced, as they give it a low rating. To me, that is an eloquent fact that speaks to the power of the film. Whatever they say, I highly recommend it, with the warning that some may find it offensive.
The Ordinaries (2022)
Excellent Metaphor of Our Societies
Why do I prefer to frugally dose mainstream American films every time I watch or program movies? Because in international cinemas I find more variety, less formulaic and repetitive stories, and more original motion pictures, with less arrogance, violence and sex (of all kinds), and more concern for humanity and its well-being.
I have added to my recently watched list of very good movies the German comedy drama «The Ordinaries» by Sophie Linnenbaum, where all people are part of an elitist cinematic universe, divided into Outtakes, Extras, and Leads, all under the control of a repressive and exclusivist Institute. The Outtakes (referring to the shots discarded or not used in the editing of a film) are in black and white, they are pursued by "law enforcement agents" and rejected by the Extras and Leads. Extras are those who are always embellishing the shots, like players on a football team, soldiers in a troop, waiters, customers, firemen, policemen, nurses. The Leads dominate this universe through a despotic, racist and oppressive rule, and hold all management positions.
In the plot, Paula, a teenage Extra studying to be a Lead, is looking for her father. Her mother, who is also an Extra, assures her that her father was a Lead and a martyr of the Great Massacre, an event that is later defined as a revolutionary uprising of the Outtakes. Her best friend is Hannah, the mulatto daughter of a family specialized in musicals who, at the slightest provocation, begins to sing songs as bland as those in most musical comedies. With Hannah's help, Paula enters the Archive of this universe and discovers that there is no trace of her father, not a single piece of film, not a single flashback, which should not be the case because her father was "a Lead and a fallen hero during the Massacre, who protects her and her mother, hidden between one take and the next shot."
Paula begins a search and asks Hilde, the maid of the musical family, to help her. The maid is, in fact, a Casting Mistake, a mature man who was given the role of a maid and goes around most of the film dressed as a woman in a subversive attitude against the Institute. Simon, a young and sweet Outtake with whom Paula becomes friends, offers to help in the search.
The film (and its humorous or highly revealing film references) may not be fully understood by an audience unfamiliar with film jargon, but it is still a very moving film without that information, as Paula's search for her father, the roots of fear and love, is a very human story about emotions and the pursuit of happiness, identity, and freedom. Check it out if it crosses your path. It is a remarkable motion picture.
Samson & Delilah (2009)
Great First Film
I knew about Warwick Thornton when I saw his mystical drama «The New Kid» (2023), one of the best films I have seen this year. Curiosity led me to his first film «Samson & Delilah» and I was surprised by his maturity approaching this work, in which, from that moment on, his direction, dramaturgy and cinematography stood out. He released it in 2009 and today it remains current and powerful, as is not the case with so many bad films that have priority in movie theaters.
Thornton is a descendant of the Kaititya Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory of Australia, and prefers to live in his native Alice Springs, where he finds his inspiration. This is the story of the meeting of teenagers Samson (addicted to drugs and perhaps mute) and Delilah (who is only loved by her grandmother, and no one calls her by her name) in a community near Alice Springs, where poverty, violence and death push them towards the city. In Alice Springs, their youth and ingenuity lack defenses to face the evil that is about to exterminate them, in a chain of Dantesque events rooted in reality: kidnapping, rape, beating, car accident. No fantasy, no "hero's journeys" or little princes to save the day.
I think the key factor of this product is the selection of Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson in the leading roles, two natural actors, who had no interest in pursuing a career in films. These unseen faces, put in the foreground before an audience addicted to pretty, white faces, are powerful and beautiful. Rowan and Gibson embody Samson's fragility and Delilah's energy.
Thornton always show the complex life of the Australian aborigines and denounces the abuse they experience daily. Here, for example, he has Delilah's grandmother paint large canvases that a middleman brings to town and pays her $200 a time. When Delilah arrives in town, she discovers that a painting of her grandmother's is valued at $22,000.
Co-written with Beck Cole (his wife at the time), Thornton, who photographs his films, makes turn aridity and deprivation into elements of artistic expression, in this magnificent work that won the Camera d'Or for Best First Film at the Cannes Film Festival and 22 other awards given by critics, festivals and film events around the world.
Dans la forêt (2016)
A very good drama
Where was this film hidden that it took me 8 years to see it? Director Gilles Marchand has made three feature films, three shorts and a TV series, and is basically a screenwriter, author of around thirty titles. Thanks to his gift to turn ideas into screenplays, Marchand creates a story that, on the surface, is the rushed and forced initiation rite of two French children who spend a holiday with their father, but it is above all a bona fide paranormal horror drama. As the elements of the genre are cleverly distributed throughout the story in a very intelligent way, it takes a while to realize that what makes us follow the film to the end is the mystery of a disfigured man who haunts the child protagonist throughout the story.
Jérémie Elkaïm plays a Frenchman close to turning 40 who works in Sweden and invites his sons Tom (Dorp) and Benjamin (Voorde) to visit him. Once there, he takes them into the forest and the children realize that they have been practically kidnapped by their father (or is he really their father? As Benjamin suggests) and that he is determined to introduce little Tom to the world of paranormal matters. Tom is 10 years old and does not understand why his father is interested in him exercising his gift for extrasensory perception and, on top of that, showing him that they are very similar in that sense. However, the father's mission is more complicated than what if appears to be. The rest of the plot focuses on the rebellion of Benjamin, the pre-adolescent son, and reaches levels of accelerated tension.
Four factors are outstanding in this drama: Marchand's assured direction, the convoluted script he wrote with his collaborator Dominik Moll, the performances of all three protagonists (highlighting the impeccable work of little Timothé vom Dorp) and the majestic photography of the great Jeanne Lapoirie, who captures all the splendor of the forests and lakes of Sweden. The four elements combine to make a very good film that has been forgotten, perhaps because it lacks blood and shocks.
The New Boy (2023)
Magic Realism at Its Best
When I finished watching "The New Boy" I could not write a single line. And perhaps after two days I still cannot give you a fair and forceful description of what it was, instead of interpreting it, because it is a very clear film, which does not need explanations, although it is a very complex tale at the same time. How do you sit down and write two anodyne lines about an audiovisual work that makes you reflect on racism, colonialism, catechesis, religious fanaticism, cultural dispossession, child exploitation, magical realism and as many other readings as you can make out of it? How can you do it in the minimal spaces that "new media" give to analysis, study, and reflection on the audiovisual arts, usually devalued as "entertainment"?
Maybe it is better for me to describe what I found fascinating about «The New Boy». It is a work by Warwick Thornton, an aboriginal director, screenwriter and photographer from Australia, with a multi-awarded filmography. He was born in Alice Springs, the birth place of Topsy Smith (1875-1960), an Arabana woman who founded The Bungalow, a home for Aboriginal orphan children. The film is not a biopic about Miss Smith (although it pays her a small tribute, naming a little girl Topsy), but Thornton's original script is about an orphanage in the middle of the Australian countryside, run by a nun (amazing Cate Blanchett, who was also one of the producers of the film), where some unusual events occur.
There is something dark in Sister Eileen's "CV", that she does not reveal to any confessor. It is never very clear why (for reasons never told) she hides the death of the priest who ran the orphanage. Together with a mixed-race nun (Deborah Mailman), whom the motherless children call Sister Mum, and foreman George (Wayne Blair), she raises the children, who are also free labor for the olive and wheat fields, and olive oil production on the farm. In exchange for her paying tribute to the treasury in such difficult times (World War II), the survival of the orphanage is guaranteed.
However, the center of the story is the new boy (Aswan Reid). Nobody knows his name nor has he been baptized, so he is called New Boy. He is a small aborigine with an extraordinary connection with the cosmos, with earthly life in all its manifestations. He introduces an element of fantasy and a miraculous component into the film, both welcome, which serve as contrast to the process of catechization and cultural dispossession.
The tale builds up at the pace of country life itself (so be warned if you expect a film with a lot of action, although there are surprises), without major turning points, until almost an hour after the beginning in which New Boy is captured and forcibly taken to the orphanage to incorporate him into the workforce, in the days when many men had gone to the war front. Halfway through the film something comes that causes shock, rapture and disorder. It is a black crucified Christ that resonates in the psyche of New Boy and will produce cracking effects in Sister Eileen's "little family" and even in the script itself, which confuses us with hallucinations until everything fits together like a puzzle and the filmmaker's intention is very clear.
For such a complex film, categorizing it (as I have read) as a "coming of age" movie is a trivialization that simplifies the complexity of the drama. But do not put high expectations on it, based on my enthusiasm. Everybody watches a different film. But I am positively certain that this is an amazing philosophical and spiritual trip rarely seen on the screens of America (the continent) and merits your consideration. Watch it preferably when you are not tired or sleepy.)
Pororoca (2017)
Beware of the Pororoca Effect
When a large wave forms in the Amazon and other rivers in Brazil, the great roar that echoes for kilometers towards the mouth of the sea is called "pororoca". When it meets the ocean current, a wave is formed, also called "pororoca", which runs in reverse, upstream and causes both devastating and beneficial effects, without missing the sporting one, when surfers travel on their boards over the pororoca, reaching set records for staying on the same wave, beyond 30 minutes.
A similar effect of the overwhelming run of the pororoca is what an unexpected event produces in the lives of a Bucharest couple, when husband Tudor takes his little children Ilie and Maria to the park, while wife Cristina stays home. And then Maria disappears... The devastating effect of the clash between the love current of the small Romanian family and the evil current of the kidnapper (he or she) reaches even brute violence and death, the couple's disintegration and, consequently, what remains of the family unit.
Let us not imagine a sweetened melodrama like «Kramer vs. Kramer», but rather a detailed and meticulous journey through the psyches of Tudor and Cristina, which the director and screenwriter Constantin Popescu chose to describe during long, tense and feverish 154 minutes. Tudor's obsession and Cristina's madness grow simultaneously and distance them in a very dramatic way. I think you have to be bold to narrate events of such intensity, without the need for quick cuts or ellipses, so that we feel what the protagonists are going through.
The film highlights Popescu's precise and confident direction and Liviu Mãrghidan's agile photography. Like accomplices, both filmmakers describe the disappearance of Maria and the commotion it causes in the park in a 15-minute sequence shot. And without a doubt the performances of Bogdan Dumitrache (Tudor) and Iulia Lumânare (Cristina) are of great acuity and perception. A highly recommended motion picture, not to be missed.
Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant (2023)
Very Good Film
Although the title of this film was extremely attractive to me, I let the days go by without seeing it, but a dear friend read the comment and, since it was being shown in a cinema in Paris, she saw it and wrote to me enthusiastically. When it was my turn (the night before surgery on my left eye, in case I went blind!), I could not help but agree with her that it is a very good genre film.
In truth, vampire films in every corner of the cinema world is a tired and annoying mess - more than bloody - that has contributed little to this horror subgenre in recent years. Among the most original works of the late 20th century, the sociopolitical metaphor well-hidden and seasoned in the works of Cuban animator Juan Padrón stood out, with «¡Vampiros in La Habana!» and his «Filminutes», and some films made in Canada.
Although it is not common to see Canadian cinema in Panamá, we were able to see three French-speaking films thanks to Cable TV: two endearing comedies called «Blood and Donuts» (1995) and «Karmina» (1996) and, already in this millennium, the drama that mixes racism and cannibalism among high-class vampires, «La peau blanche» (2014). And now we have «Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant», director Ariane Louis-Seize's debut film, which has a gentleness and tenderness that the other films mentioned do not possess.
On the surface it is a comedy, but in all honesty, among the laughter, there is a reflection on love, death, solidarity, otherness, loneliness and survival in the world of young people. In the plot, a teenage vampire named Sasha fails to develop fangs because she does not want to kill any human being and, since she does not consume blood, she is starving. Then a boy crosses her path. Paul is a young man who is a victim of bullying, the only son of a single nurse, and he wants to die in a very natural way, as a final option. When they meet at a reunion of a self-help group for suicides, Sasha and Paul design a plan that satisfies the needs of both and an affection is born that the two scriptwriters (Christine Doyon and the director) do not make obvious, perhaps to avoid the easy trap that romance stories can become if they are not fully handled or justified.
The film, also apparently, has a happy ending, but no... Just remember the pathetic lines from Herzog's «Nosferatu - Phantom der Nacht», in which Dracula meditates on the vampire nature, on the prolonged solitary existence with no other purpose than satisfy his addiction to blood.
With a magnificent cast (which includes Sasha's family and Paul's mother), and the good directorial hand of Ariane Louis-Seize in her opera prima, the film is very emotional, fun and enjoyable. It may or may not pass "the test of time", but in 2024 it well deserves a 10/10.
Dogman (2023)
Excellent tragicomic fantasy
«Dogman» is the best film I have seen by French director-screenwriter Luc Besson, reminiscent of his previous works «Nikita» (1990) and «Léon» (1992).
Besson made an auspicious debut with the science-fiction drama «Le dernier combat» (1983), whose main merit was its absence of dialogue. And from there, he has had a career of more falls than peaks, with titles such as «Subway», «Le grand bleu», «The Fifth Element», «The Lady» and the adventures of Arthur, the minimoys or Adéle Blanc-Sec.
However, years make us wise and this time Besson has written a tragicomic fantasy that combines all his merits and limitations, but to which you must be very cynical and blind to deny the maximum score. Anyone can cry, laugh, and be moved by the incidents of «Dogman», but at the center of everything is a stunning performance by Caleb Landry Jones, who in my (cynical) eyes has become an acting monster, without the mannerisms of the "method", following the performance for which he won the Best Actor award for «Nitram» in the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
«Dogman» tells the story of Doug, an aquarian, millennial boy abused by his father, who sends him to live in a cage with dozens of dogs, and makes him disabled for life, when he shoots him, and the bullet ricochets and lodges nears his spine. Cared for and liberated by the dogs, Doug grows up and has an incredible journey, despite his physical limitation: in an orphanage he meets an actress who introduces him to the world of theater through Shakespeare, he graduates in Biology, but when the municipality closes the kennel where he works, the only job Doug gets is in a drag show, in which he impersonates Edith Piaf, Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe.
Doug lives with dozens of dogs and assigns them to the homes of lonely folks or people who need protection, but at the same time he uses them to steal from the rich (and balance the distribution of wealth, as he confesses) and leads a violent life that culminates in tragedy. All of this is seen through his eyes when he is caught and relates his life to psychiatrist Evelyn (very good work too by Jojo T. Gibbs), a woman who is also a key character in the story, with her own her drama.
«Dogman» contains reflections on appearance versus reality, popular philosophy, the love of dogs, the hoarding of wealth, and resilience, which will probably have greater exposure as a cult film. In truth, the film, the direction, screenplay, and performances have been ignored at festivals and annual awarding of prizes, but if you come across it, do not miss it.
Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (1958)
Inspired tale of warriors
This was the first Japanese movie in CinemaScope, I saw it in a cinema in the 1980s and love it. It is also my favorite Kurosawa film, second only to "Ikiru". I even place "The Hidden Fortress" above "Seven Samurai". But somehow its significance has been reduced: many persons only think of "Fortress" as an influence on "Star Wars", when it is one of Kurosawa's most inspired movies. If it were for that post-pop reference, I can add a connection to "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" if only for the moment when Sinbad and Parisa escape from Sokura's hideaway, jumping above an abyss using a vine, as Luke and the Princess do in one scene of the first film. In any case, this is a fine Kurosawa film.
Capharnaüm (2018)
Nadine Labaki's third film
I acquired a copy of "Capharnaüm" many months ago in a beautiful Spanish edition on DVD, but, for unknown reasons, I did not watch it, even knowing that its creator, Lebanese director and actress Nadine Labaki makes films about interesting topics. I like her two previous features, «Caramel» and «And Now Where Are we Going?»
In her third film, Labaki tells from a brave point of view, without fear of showing exacerbated emotions, the very dramatic story of Zain, a 12-year-old (?) boy, arrested and deprived of liberty, who ends up taking his parents to court for bringing him into the world. Little Zain doesn't even know his age because his parents never bothered to register him, they didn't educate him and used him as a slave.
«Capharnaüm» is more audacious than the previous Labaki films, by daring to describe a real situation (that of children victims of integral abuse) with an unlikely dramaturgical formula. She describes a violent and dehumanized situation, in a non-dramatic way to audiences inclined to melodramas in the soap opera style.
That is to say: what the film describes is real and plausible, but the dialogues and attitudes of the characters are more akin to the perspective of highbrow literature and discourse, than to the way "the people" usually express, especially Zain, who in court exposes his case with an elegant speech that an illiterate kid would never give.
Perhaps that is why the best character of all are an Ethiopian woman called Rahil, with limited knowledge of Arabic, and her son Yonas, the baby who has no lines. He only has to be himself, and turns into a beautiful and endearing character. All this said «Capharnaüm» deserves two hours of your free time. See it.
Sayyedat al-Bahr (2019)
Maidens of the Sea
Despite dramaturgical gaps that, in the final third of Shahad Ameen's opera prima, make the final scenes that lead us to its open conclusion somewhat incomprehensible, «Maidens of the Sea» is a work of extraordinary beauty and imponderable effect on the spectator who is willing to contemplate cultural manifestations alien to Western cosmogony.
«Maidens of the Sea» tells how on an island in the Arabian Sea each family must sacrifice a daughter to the mermaids in order to break the drought and preserve life. But it is enough that the tradition breaks with the case of the pre-adolescent Hayat (Hajjar), to call into question the conventions that violate the right to life. With her case, a vicious immolation circuit is revealed, and the right of a woman to govern her body and find her essence is strengthened, regardless of social designs.
I suppose that to fully appreciate the story, we would have to learn more of Muslim societies, but if we could not investigate them, it would be enough to open up to cultures other than the one we know, without measuring them according to ours. Thus, we could appreciate Ameen's film as the exposure of a situation in which women bear the brunt. This is enough for me, even if it does not tell me what happened when Hayat and the adolescent fishermen plunged into the sea and tragedy stroke.
Fortunately, the film's short duration compensates for its observational aesthetic, which provokes an impatient reaction with its long shots and contemplative tempo. In my case, the film reminded me of the relativity of the impressions of time and space, by recalling Jorge Sanjinés' film "The Clandestine Nation", which, seems eternal to mestizo eyes, but not to the gaze of the Aymara community.
A worthy film, which took many years to come to fruition, it reveals a new filmmaker worth following.
Joyland (2022)
No joy in the land
Originally censored in Pakistan, «Joyland» is a moving drama about the status of women in a Muslim society that allows them a few freedoms that they do not have in similar places where extreme sexist laws created by men are credited to Allah. It was banned because of the transgender character of Biba who has a lot of screen time and, according to the Ministry of Information and Communication argued, violates Pakistani standards of "decency and morality". However, the moralists focused their eyes on the flashiest aspects of the movie, and ignored its more dramatic content, which subtly emphasizes the condition of the women in the film.
«Joyland» tells the story of a family unit, dominated by the patriarchal figure of the grandfather. Together with him live his two sons, their wives, and children. Saleem, the older, is employed and Nucchi is a housewife, while young Haider (Junejo) is unemployed, and his wife Mumtaz (Farooq) has a job. Following an imposition by the patriarch, Mumtaz is forced to resign, and Haider gets a job at a lubricious theater with variety shows for men, as part of the dance troupe of transgender Biba (Khan), who stages musical numbers that emphasize female eroticism.
Haider is not a prototype of a Pakistani macho, but a vulnerable and sensitive man, who ends up involved with Biba, although the film never defines the limits of their intimacy. At the same time, Haider neglects his relationship with Mumtaz, who is not only pregnant, but is now reacting to other men she finds attractive. The drama that follows is the heart of the story, where the figure of Mumtaz is key.
The edition sometimes makes use of dramatic sensationalism, by contrasting Biba's showbiz life with Mumtaz's domestic routine, such as Haider's intimate moments with one or the other, or the cut from a lively wedding of a secondary transgender character, to the two wives hanging clothes on the roof of the building where they live. However, in a global sense, «Joyland» is a film that shows lives with few choices or alternatives in a sector of the world that, like many others, is subject to religious fundamentalism.
Aleksandr Nevskiy (1938)
Uncle Iosif Wants You!
"Aleksandr Nevski" is as much propaganda as "How the West Was Won" or "Top Gun". And that is a big compliment to both American films. Never as low, pedestrian or vociferous as some propaganda films are... this reminder of how the Russian people had defeated the Teutons, was a useful piece of Soviet political advertisement during World War II. It has little holes during the long battle sequence that make it drag a bit, but otherwise "Aleksandr Nevski" is a sumptuous, magnificent (propaganda, as many felt impelled to tag it) film, with an robust performance by Nikolai Cherkasov in the title role and a classic score by Sergei Prokofiev.
Zombi Child (2019)
ZombiFrench
The zombie film has come a long way and has returned to the beginning: from the movies about slaves who worked in cane fields, it went through all kinds of cannibal gore and splatter, to finally go back to its origins, such as "Atlantique", a return to social issues, telling the story of modern young slaves in Africa. This other attempt remained halfway. For a good while, I thought, "This may be the one that would set the record straight". I also found it interesting, for its respectful description of a (fascistoid) school of privileged girls in Paris, and of the girls themselves, as pleasant, intelligent and normal beings. A few scenes, such as the insubstantial class about the French revolution, were distracting from the main subject. But the "main subject", which seemed to be the encounter of two cultures in the 21st century, based on the story of a real zombie (that of the Haitian Clairvius Narcisse, who claimed while being alive that he had been a victim of zombification), seen through the eyes of Narcisse's granddaughter, a girl who survived the 2010 earthquake in Haiti... that is not, in fact, the "main subject." The "main subject" is about a girl who is desperate to meet up with her lover Pablo to make love until she is dry, but the girl disguises her tickle with cheesy declarations of love as in the worst romance novel, which we have to listen to every time Narcisse's story advances a little, because it is she who will take us to the "scène de rigueur" of cheap supernatural horror, which, as in "The Serpent and the Rainbow", almost erases all good intentions, a collapse rounded off with a song by Rogers & Hammerstein. Anyway ... that's a shame, but maybe it is asking too much from Bertrand Bonello...
P. S. In the case of Craven's "The Serpent and the Rainbow", we knew the horror fest would happen in any moment, so although it weakens the movie a bit, it was a typical horror movie "a la Craven", and a very good one.
Zimna wojna (2018)
Beautiful, intelligent, poetic film
Wonderful motion picture... when I began watching it, I felt grateful of seeing something different, and thought a couple of times "Europeans have many fascinating stories to tell, beyond the Roman empire, Napoleon, Queen Victoria or the Holocaust", as public officers travel across Poland, recollecting popular songs and creating a sing and dance program of Polish folk music.
But then it turned into a delirious love story, a tragic one indeed, with many twists and locations, moving the story in blocks of drama in several European cities, always in a passionate tone. The politics of Cold War are always present, the story being told against the pressures of the ideological battle, the somber spaces of control, the dark characters.
A beautiful, intelligent, poetic film, indeed.
You Won't Be Alone (2022)
A Masterpiece
In honor of simplicity, the film «You Won't Be Alone» is a "cinéma fantastique" drama of the horror genre. However, due to the components of the story, the images, and its details, it seems like something that I would call ethnographic terror. There is even something symphonic about it, bordering on poetry.
It follows an unhappy girl through vicissitudes in search of her true self and the ways in which her nature manifests, until the unavoidable final confrontation in her survival journey: her other option is death.
Nevena has been born in a Macedonian community. One fateful morning an entity known as the Wolf-Eateress (later identified as Old Maid Maria), a victim of a centuries-old crime in that place, appears next to Nevena's cradle. Willing to drink the baby's blood in revenge, she gives in to the pleas of the little girl's mother and makes a deal to let her live and have her for herself until she turns 16. She leaves, but not before ripping out Nevena's tongue and leaving her speechless.
At the agreed age, the Wolf-Eateress punctually appears, takes Nevena with her, marks her with a sign of sorcery and, when the teenager rebels against her abuse, they go their separate ways and so starts Nevena's own journey towards a freedom that evades her and that will possibly never come: along the way she will transform into several beings, while the Wolf-Eateress constantly shows up to thwart Nevena's attempts to live a normal existence.
Shot in Serbia and spoken in Macedonian, the film defies generic labels and combines Costumbrismo, horror and eroticism, plus allusions to possible local legends. The drama feeds on commonplaces of witchcraft tales, but at the same time it breaks them and creates its own legend. Zero goat, zero inverted pentagram, and other clichés. The Wolf-Eateress is a being capable of training in black magic with graphic and violent resources; maybe she wants to learn to be a mother, maybe she wants contact with a person or any emotion besides hate, but she does not know those feelings. In her quest for revenge, the Wolf-Eateress finds such contact in Nevena, but she herself pushes the young woman to become her decisive opposite. Or in the wildest dramatic sense, nobody not even herself knows what her final purpose is.
«You Won't Be Alone» is the first feature by Macedonian-born director Goran Stolevski, who emigrated at 12 to Australia, where he lives. The film moves to the rhythm of the seasons, with subtlety and tranquility. In fact, in an interview Stolevski confided that he did not find a Macedonian legend to serve as a reference, but he was strongly attracted to the fate of the cyclical agrarian societies that he visited and in the one where he filmed in Serbia, settlements on the verge of extinction, with populations under 65 years of age. According to Stolevski, terror is not a theme that identifies him. His interest is the drama of human relations, and this tendency is evident in «You Won't Be Alone», in which what most defines the work is the evolution of Nevena and her interactions with her nemesis, nature and the peasants.
In short, a great film. Weird, repellent, but intelligent and visually beautiful. Recommended.
Yesterday's Enemy (1959)
Second Movie in Val Guest's War Diptych
Val Guest was one of the most prominent directors to work for Hammer Films, only surpassed by Terence Fisher, although his visionary and most outstanding work, «The Day the Earth Caught Fire», was made outside that production company.
It was Guest who, with his international hit «The Quatermass Xperiment» (1955), pointed Hammer on the profitable path of "cinéma fantastique". However, apart from this film and its sequel «Quatermass 2», Guest did not return to horror, not even when he made «The Abominable Snowman», a good drama that he kept on a more philosophical and mystical plane, away from frights.
Before finding a more viable breakthrough to mainstream cinema with «Expresso Bongo» (1959), produced by his own company, Guest made for Hammer psychological dramas, thrillers and the the war diptych consisting of «The Camp on Blood Island» (1958) and «Yesterday's Enemy» (1959), a kind of war claim made to Japan through cinema.
The first was a box office success that consolidated the distribution of Hammer products through the American company Columbia Pictures; which addressed, 13 years after the end of World War II, the mistreatment received by British prisoners of war in a Japanese prison, located in the fictional Blood Island, part of the former British colony in Malaysia. By then Columbia was preparing the release of a movie with a similar theme, «The Bridge on the River Kwai» by David Lean, which garnered attention and awards, but this did not prevent the Hammer production from being a hit, despite devastating criticism. The movie was bolstered by the best-selling novelization of the script by John Manchip White and Guest.
For «Yesterday's Enemy», the production hired Korean-American actor Philip Ahn for the role of the Japanese officer; and sent the casting people to Chinese restaurants, where they managed to recruit waiters who didn't even speak English. Released the following year, it was not a resounding success like its predecessor, but today it is considered the more powerful war drama. Actor Stanley Baker would say it was one of the best films of his career, alongside classics he starred in, such as Cy Endfield's «Zulu» and Joseph Losey's «Accident.»
Based on a television script released a year earlier, «Yesterday's Enemy» tells the story of a platoon crossing the jungle in Burma, in an attempt to escape from Japanese troops. Baker is the officer who stops at nothing to achieve the goal of bringing alive the military under his command to headquarters: obstacles are the order of the day.
Peter R. Newman's script has a theatrical structure and was, in fact, later turned into a three-act play. Some dialogue scenes are long and, nevertheless, effective, thanks to the fact that they are directly inspired by what Newman saw, heard and lived in Burma as a soldier, and for being Guest's right hand when directing the "mise-en-caméra".
These two small, low-budget and effective films, in addition to the remarkable films that I knew and mentioned at the beginning of these notes, have increased the esteem that I already had for Val Guest's work.
Where the Boys Are (1960)
Changing Times
This movie is no masterpiece, but it certainly belongs to a breakthrough moment in American film. Starting a new decade (that eventually would be called "the swinging Sixties") Henry Levin's cult movie follows the concerns with love, sex, and marriage among the young American women, seen a year before in "A Summer Place" or "Gidget" (both released in 1959).
"Where the Boys Are" opens with a classroom controversy about sex, between a young female student (Dolores Hart) and her old lady professor (Amy Douglass). As the story progresses, two girls (Hart and Paula Prentiss) opt for courtship and perhaps marriage, the traditional route expected of them, which Prentiss never questions but reaffirms it. A third young woman (Yvette Mimieux) has a sexual adventure and is "punished" for it, while a short girl of Italian descent, who sings and provides comic relief (Connie Francis), takes a more open and liberal path, in the company of the weird musician who courts her.
The cards were laid on the table - the representation of sex and its different options needed a change in American film. Comedies and dramas would follow one after another, around the same thing: the liberation of bodies and minds, in both Los Angeles movies and independent films made away from the big industry, more daring, breaking the repressive regulations of the Hays Code.
It is interesting to note the personal and professional paths that the four actresses followed: Hart became a nun; and Francis was pushed as the star of a handful of insipid musicals, which she resisted, conscious of her ethnic roots and social origin in a poor section of New York. Despite the sensuality of her role, Mimieux only became a pretty prop in many dramas and comedies, without redemption. Only Paula Prentiss (who had been forced to marry by MGM, so her boyfriend actor Richard Benjamin could joined her in promotional travels) was willing to break the mold and executed a striptease that was cut in the final edition of "What's New Pussycat". I guess the pressure was strong, for she had a nervous breakdown that kept her out of movies for five years.
So that's where the girls were.