Month: March 2021

And Then We Danced

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Irakli and Merab in the dance studio

The very trad meets meets the very not in And Then We Danced, a pungently flavoured drama about a wild love affair between two men who dance with the Georgian national troupe. Black Swan and Flashdance are the two most obvious points of reference, as punishing regimes take thir physical toll and rivalries for the top slot combine with a push to innovate against the dead hand of tradition, the entire raison d’etre of a troupe like the one that Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani) dances in. He’s perhaps not the best, the most naturally gifted dancer in the troupe, but he’s prepared to do whatever is necessary to make the grade and get into … Read more

Favolacce (Bad Tales)

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Dennis meets Vilma

Grim and matter of fact, Favolacce follows up the D’Innocenzo brothers’ Boys Cry, a grim and matter of fact mafia drama with a tale, a bad tale (it’s also released as Bad Tales) of kids cusping on teenagerdom living in intolerable family situations. Asshole dads, toxic family relationship and cowed kids make for a film that’s tough going and yet oddly through-the-fingers watchable. Perhaps because, like frogs being gradually brought up to a simmer, we are introduced to the awfulness by stealth. To start with it looks like we’re in the world of Raymond Carver. There’s even what looks like a reference to that Carver story Why Don’t You Dance, the one about … Read more

Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint

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Two large Klint canvases

Three great abstract artists died in 1944, this revelatory German documentary from 2019 tells us. Two of them haunt the gift shops of the world’s museums of modern art: Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky. The third deserves to be in there with them, according to Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint (Jenseits des Sichtbaren – Hilma af Klint) – which goes on to make an even bigger claim. That this obscure artist working in relative isolation in Sweden was not just one of the greats but the very first abstract artist, and so one of the major figures in 20th century painting. Piet and Wassily need to budge up. When MoMA’s Inventing Abstraction … Read more

Dear Comrades!

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A dead striker and a soldier

Dear Comrades! is a film about actual events that took place in the USSR in 1962, when the Soviet authorities reacted to a strike at the Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive Plant by opening fire on the demonstrators. The subsequent cover-up of the massacre was so thorough that details about what had happened only started to emerge when the USSR started falling apart. Director Andrey Konchalovsky puts a personal dramatic rather than semi-documentary spin on events by opening his film up in a bedroom, where attractive middle-aged local party functionary Lyuda (Julia Vysotskaya) is pouring herself back into her clothes and discussing politics with her boss. Sharing intimacies before she heads out, it’s immediately obvious … Read more

I’m No Longer Here

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Juan Daniel Garcia Treviño as Ulises

There’s a hint of early Jim Jarmusch in I’m No Longer Here (Ya no estoy aqui originally), a spicy Mexican drama with an offbeat attitude and a strong sense of place. Early Jarmusch often featured distinctive characters floating around in a world outside their control. Stuff happens, but very little of it is at their instigation. They react to events rather than act upon them. So it is with Ulises (Juan Daniel Garcia Treviño), a creature of the barrio in Monterrey, a big fish in a small pond, a member of a loose cadet wing of a gang – everyone’s in one – who is marked out by his remarkable hairstyle, as if … Read more

Amanda

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David and Amanda

Amanda uses the Islamist terror attacks in Paris in 2015 as a springboard for a quiet drama about loss. Since the focus is resolutely on the human rather than the political, it might be a bit too quiet for some, but co-writer/director Mikhaël Hers appears to be deliberately trying to make this a case of less heat more light. Hers takes time building up his characters. Amanda (Isaure Multrier) is the shy, sweet daughter of bright, kind teacher and lone mother Sandrine (Ophélia Kolb). Sandrine’s brother, David, is a young man working two jobs and always running a bit late. Busy busy. Too busy, in fact, to take his responsibilities as an uncle … Read more

Genus Pan

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Sitting around a camp fire

Genus Pan is a short film, by the standards of Lav Diaz, the Filipino film-maker whose output includes 2008’s Melancholia (7 hours 30 minutes) and 2011’s Century of Birthing (6 hours). The film that made his name on the festival circuit, 2013’s Norte, the End of History, clocks in at a mere 4 hours 10 minutes – I remember watching it on two separate DVDs. So those of a relatively short attention span but in love with the concept of “slow cinema” (a term Diaz doesn’t like) will be cock a hoop over Genus Pan, a paltry 2 hours 30 minutes. It’s a simple story, about three poor men who have made a … Read more

The White Tiger

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Balram, Pinky and Ashok

Director Ramin Bahrani’s adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker-winning novel The White Tiger looks at first like it’s going to be one of those “trickster” stories about a low-born person cutting a swathe through life using their natural-born smarts. When we meet him, Balram is clearly a man who has done well out of life. The White Tiger will play out in flashback, but for now Balram’s nice suit and fussy facial hair tell us all we need to know about his success in the world. How he got there is what the film is about. From poor beginnings in a dirt-poor village, where he appeared to be condemned to a life of … Read more

Flora and Ulysses

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Ulysses and Flora

Flora and Ulysses is a bright Disney family movie with a “turn that frown upside down” message, lively performances, funny bits that are funny, a cute kid in the lead, fantastic supporting turns. If it sounds like there’s a “but” coming, not a bit of it. The film provides its own corrective in the shape of Flora herself. “I’m a cynic,” says the ten-year-old (played by Matilda Lawler) who’s wise beyond her years and actually not cynical at all. She’s hurt – because her father (Parks and Recreation’s Ben Schwartz) has left the family home and her mother Phyllis (Alyson Hannigan) is struggling to write her latest romantic novel. Struggling because husband George, … Read more

I Care a Lot

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Peter Dinlage and Rosamund Pike

You used to see plenty of films like I Care a Lot in 1990s. In the slipstream of Quentin Tarantino’s first burst of success there was a glut of movies with a “who’s zooming who” plot playing out in an “only in the movies” universe of smart talk, skull-cracking violence, hot women, cool men, gunplay and cars. Joe Carnahan – one of the best of the bunch of writer/directors working the territory – summed it up well in the title of his 1998 debut, Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane. There was a real sense of writers and directors having a lot of fun. Sometimes more than the audience. I Care a Lot’s writer/director … Read more