Clocking it at well over five hours in length, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hour isn’t so much a character study as it is an entire character course. Following four women in their late thirties as they attempt to deal with their individual relationship troubles, the film is filled with relatable struggles and honest, emotional performances, but ultimately becomes a victim of its own ambitions.

Having been best friends for many years, Jun (Rira Kawamura), Akari (Sachie Tanaka), Sakurako (Hazuki Kikuchi), and Fumi (Maiko Mihara) have formed a nearly unbreakable bond together. They meet up frequently to gossip about their lives and air their grievances about their currently living situations. Having all been married at one point, their ideas about a woman’s place in a marriage differ. After Jun reveals a shocking secret about her own marriage, her friends have mixed reactions, adding a strain to their friendship.

Above all, Happy Hour is a movie about infidelity and how it affects not only those in the relationship but their acquaintances as well. Knowing that your friend is committing adultery is a tough spot to be in because it leaves a choice between loyalty to a friend and a commitment to doing what’s right. Adding to the complexity is the discovery that the infidelity involves a mutual friend, which is a major issue explored in Happy Hour. The results aren’t over-the-top or cinematic in any way. Instead, they’re deeply rooted in reality. All of the events feel as though they could happen tomorrow, which has its pros and cons as a filmmaking technique. It certainly adds to the realistic tone of the film, but it prevents the movie from being particularly exciting. Happy Hour certainly isn’t boring, but it lacks a frenetic energy.

The defining aspect of the film is the almost unheard of running time, which wouldn’t feel nearly as gratuitous if many scenes didn’t come across as unnecessary filler. As human as it is, there are a significant amount of scenes that could be trimmed down—if not eliminated completely—without the film losing any effect. One early sequence finds the protagonists attending a pseudo-spiritual workshop where they participate in borderline cult-like team-building exercises. After ten minutes, the point is made—the women’s personal problems mirror the teacher’s lessons in a Boy Meets World kind of way, albeit much more mature and existential—but the scene continues on for much longer. Hamaguchi seems determined to beat certain ideas into viewers’ brains, despite establishing them successfully in the first attempt. In a way, it seems as though he isn’t completely confident in his ability to express certain ideas, even though his ideas are quite strong.

The four leads deliver naturalistic performances that make their already empathetic characters all the more believable. Engaging in numerous, lengthy conversations about both nothing and everything, it’s almost impossible not to see aspects of your own friends in the women. They’re complex, generally likable, and extremely relatable. They discuss mundane aspects of everyday life with the same enthusiasm as more existential concepts involving their uncertain futures. Thankfully, these conversations are generally entertaining, considering the film is almost brutally dialogue-heavy. It’s not just a film with a lot of talking—it borders on being a film about talking.

At times, Happy Hour is a strenuous watch and a pretty tough sell, given the over five-hour commitment needed to experience it in full. However, if you do commit to viewing the film, the payoff is there. The characters are fully developed and fascinating, and their story arcs are engrossing in ways that few are. It lacks many of the qualifying themes to call it an “epic,” as there are no colossal set pieces or big action sequences—or action of any kind, really—but there is a strangely “big” feel to the film. It’s a heavy drama, thick with human emotion, that could benefit from being just a bit more brisk. Perhaps in the future, Hamaguchi will consider creating a similarly engaging feature that is much shorter in length.

Almost as long as there has been teen angst, there have been films about teen angst. From Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause  to Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, and including many in between and since, the teen angst film has been a moviemaking staple for six decades, offering insight into what teens go through during each film’s point in time. In most cases only the details change, as higher level themes of disaffection, identity crisis, and peer pressure have been common teen problems for generations. But those details are important, and can drive just how good a film is.

Kill Me Please is set in an affluent section of present-day Rio de Janeiro, where a clique of bored teenage girls finds titillation in a series of murders—murders that happen to be of other teenage girls. Facts are at a minimum but that doesn’t stop the rumor mill from grinding out plenty to quench their morbid fascination. As the body count rises, 15-year-old Bia’s (Valentina Herszage) obsession with the crimes and their victims grows too. Teens are still teens, though, and there is plenty else for them to cope with as they go about their daily high school lives.

The opening scene of Kill Me Please is terrific, showcasing the harrowing demise of a teenage girl whose only crime was walking home alone at night. Panic leads to pursuit, which leads to the girl’s final, fearful gaze into the camera and her piercing, dying screams. Neither the killer nor the girl’s blood is ever shown. The sequence is all atmosphere and adrenaline, recalling the openings of slasher flicks from the 1980s, and it’s an opening that will grab viewers from frame one.

With the opening gambit established, the film settles in, introduces its players—Bia, her girlfriends, her slacker brother João (Bernardo Marinho), her boyfriend Pedro (Vitor Mayer), a few other students—and delves into the daily drama of the young, rich, and beautiful, with diversions into the darker side of life with every new victim.

There are several films that come to mind when considering Kill Me Please. Its horror strains invoke thoughts of Brian de Palma’s Carrie; its beautiful and privileged teens having their lives jolted by death, and how reactions to death vary from teen to teen, harkens to Michael Lehmann’s Heathers; and João Atala’s lush and colorful cinematography calls to mind Benoît Debie’s lens work in Spring Breakers. Unfortunately, this film is nowhere near the level of any of those.

The problems begin early on, when the film doesn’t know when to stop settling in and eventually becomes stuck in a rut. Writer/director da Silveira parts ways with the slasher film motif (and all its promise) to handle things like character development and plot, of which there is very little. The teens’ lives include the expected, like sexual awakening, competitiveness in the athletic arena (handball), petty jealousy, passive/aggressive body shaming, religion, and rival cliques. These are all part of creating, wrestling with, and solving teen angst. The problem is how lifeless the characters are. Kids meant to be regarded as soulful or introspective instead come across as apathetic bores. Even Bia’s growing obsession with the murders never takes on any kind of intensity; it’s only an increased interest.

Because the director never returns to the intensity of his opening sequence, subsequent victims are shown after their demise, not during, or they’re simply talked about (save for a montage of their faces late in the film, only proving the dead were just as beautiful as the living). Some might consider this to be a less is more approach, but that sense is never conveyed. The murders are cold, distant events that lose all gravitas because they are talking points about murders, not the actual murders. The fact that there are adult characters in the film is an interesting and gutsy choice, but it strains credulity as the body count grows since no police ever show up.

Kill Me Please is a gorgeous-looking film that ultimately falls victim to its own narcissism, relying on its aesthetic so heavily that the function of its story is mostly an afterthought. After squandering an excellent beginning, it never recovers to offer a satisfying finished product.

Kill Me Please screens as part of New Directors/New Films in New York City. To learn more about the festival or buy tickets, visit www.newdirectors.org.

I love a good ghost story, so when I read the synopsis of first-time writer/director Zhang Hanyi’s Life After Life—a description that included the spirit of a deceased mother possessing her son—I was all in. While I didn’t quite get what I bargained for, what I got wasn’t bad. It’s a ghost story for sure, but one unlike anything I’ve seen before.

Mingchung (Zhang Minjun) and his son Leilei (Zhang Li) are walking through the forest gathering fallen sticks to use as kindling in the fireplace that warms their home. After a brief spat between the two, Leilei sees a hare race by and gives chase. He’s gone for several minutes and when he returns, he is Leilei only in body; his spirit has been replaced by that of his late mother, Xiuying. Using her own voice, Xiuying asks her widowed husband to return to their previous home, dig up the tree she planted in the front yard (a gift from her father), and replant it somewhere safe from the industrialization that is growing and will eventually lay waste to that old land. Mingchung dutifully obliges, at first attempting to recruit help but eventually doing it himself, with Leilei/Xiuying’s help.

The setting, which Hanyi and cinematographer Chang Mang magnificently capture in wide static shots with sharp details and an achingly muted palate, reflects a barebones Chinese countryside forever skirting the edges of industrial sprawl. The land is mostly dead, but the sense is that the death is not some hibernation demanded by the wintery season; instead, it’s the earth’s terminal state of complete surrender to the assault it is under.

The film’s characters are not much different. Repressed by dreadful socioeconomic conditions, Mingchung and those whom he attempts to recruit to relocate the tree are distant, unemotional, and devoid of personality or excitability. If no one is phased by the notion that Xiuying has returned in the form of her own son’s possessed body, then it comes as no surprise that no one is phased at the site of a man suffocating a goat. That’s a level of repression that borders on abused. It might also explain why Mingchung can’t get the help he wants since nobody cares.

And yet buried deep within these doldrums are sparks of hope. Xiuying, at least in spirit, is back with her husband, and she gets the opportunity to see her parents one last time. This offers hope for an afterlife and a way back for those so inclined. And at one point, Xiuying alerts Mingchung that his deceased parents have since been reincarnated—one as a dog and one as a bird. It’s absurd to the point of being funny, although the constant hum of misery stifles any laughter.

Then there is, of course, the love story. It isn’t overt or sappy, nor is it traditional, but it’s there in the form of Mingchung taking on this massive task rather than not rejoicing in his late wife’s temporary return. He didn’t have much of a life, but the life he had was put on old to make her happy one last time. He seals the deal with a devastating monologue late in the film, where the reason for her demise is revealed and his regret surrounding the circumstances and the aftermath come to light. It’s never elaborated on, but their meet-cute must have been something special.

Life After Life, with its foreign arthouse sensibilities, its glacial pace, and its chasms of silence between sparse lines of dialogue, is a film that dares you to dislike it. And yet I didn’t. In fact, I found it quite hypnotic. I also found it rather sentimental, given the task at hand for its protagonist and who’s responsible for sending them on their journey. It isn’t a perfect film, and it won’t be for everyone, but it’s certainly worth a shot.

Life After Life screens as part of New Directors/New Films in New York City. To learn more about the festival or buy tickets, visit www.newdirectors.org.

It’s only taken 35 years for Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu to reunite on screen, but anyone expecting fireworks between the two French acting titans will come away befuddled by Valley of Love. What begins as a two-hander dealing with the grief of two parents in Death Valley gradually transforms into something more surreal and mysterious, a sort of Lynchian turn that tends to happen with films utilizing desert locations. It’s a switch that fascinates more than it satisfies, turning the questions surrounding loss into literal (and increasingly bizarre) mysteries. Writer/director Guillaume Nicloux’s attempts to make his film into something more spiritual by the end don’t pay off too well, but Huppert and Depardieu’s strong performances help soften the blow.

The tragedy kicking the story into gear is the suicide of Michael, the only son of actors Isabelle (Huppert) and Gerard (Depardieu). The two of them have been divorced for years, and their relationship with Michael sounds strained; Isabelle last saw him over seven years ago, and Gerard, while having a stronger bond with Michael, admits he didn’t have much of a presence in his son’s life. At some point before or after Michael’s suicide (Nicloux keeps the distinction unclear, the first sign that something metaphysical might be going on), both parents receive a letter from him urging them to meet in Death Valley several months after his death. He lays out a series of locations across the desert for them to travel to, promising them that, if they follow his instructions, they will get to see him again.

Beyond the letters, Valley of Love leaves Michael undefined as a character, a choice that makes sense given the film unfolds through the perspective of his absent parents. The decision to follow their deceased son’s instructions is both a way to confront their loss together and an attempt at making up for their poor parenting. The majority of the film plays out through conversations between Isabelle and Gerard about their own lives, reflecting on the past and pondering about their uncertain future (Isabelle is in the process of divorcing her current husband, and Gerard’s health has been failing). This is where the presence of Huppert and Depardieu elevates Nicloux’s screenplay to something more meaningful. Huppert does an expectedly great job, weaving through different emotional states while keeping Isabelle grounded as a character, but the real surprise here is Depardieu. It’s a different role for Depardieu considering his output in recent years, and it’s a welcome change, giving him the opportunity to play a more nuanced role alongside Huppert.

But Nicloux has other ideas in mind than just letting his two leads’ chemistry carry the film. Eventually, the supernatural elements take a larger role in the story, like when Isabelle claims that Michael grabbed her ankle while she was alone in her hotel room. The film’s shift from drama to surreal mystery creates some striking moments (like Gerard having a strange encounter with a woman at his hotel), but it comes at the expense of reducing the story down to a conflict between faith and skepticism. That conflict weakens the film, making it go from an involving exploration of two characters processing the loss of their son to covering a broader (and, therefore, less interesting) topic. Aside from Huppert and Depardieu’s committed turns, the only thing stopping Valley of Love from collapsing in on itself is Nicloux’s earnest approach, making some of the more bald-faced moments—especially the closing scene—avoid becoming too mawkish or absurd. The difficulty in finding an overall purpose for Nicloux’s venture into the metaphysical makes Valley of Love feel like tagging along on a road trip that goes nowhere, but with company like Huppert and Depardieu, it’s hard to find much reason to complain.

Before my grandmother passed away, she taught my wife how to make homemade pierogi from scratch. There were no cookbooks nor smartphone apps to be found in the kitchen that day. All that filled the room were the intoxicating smells of our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, a pile of ingredients that dwindled as the day grew long, and two people standing side-by-side, one passing tradition along to the other in a culinary masterclass of ethnic cuisine. I was reminded of that day while watching Sweet Bean, the latest film from writer/director Naomi Kawase.

“Making bean paste is all about heart, sonny.” So says 76-year-old Tokue (Kirin Kiki) as she all but begs for a part-time job from baker Sentaro (Masatoshi Nagase). Despite her enthusiasm and her willingness to take less pay than he is offering, Sentaro is reluctant to employ Tokue because of her age, the frailty that accompanies it, and her gnarled hands. He isn’t dismissive, but he certainly isn’t open-minded. The next morning, Tokue returns with a container of her own homemade An (sweet red bean paste), along with a little trash talk about how Sentaro’s An isn’t very good. She argues that the paste he uses doesn’t taste good, and that the delicious pancakes he makes for his dorayakis are betrayed by such poorly mass-produced filling.

It isn’t until after he tries Tokue’s paste that Sentaro finds religion in the recipe. He hires Tokue, and in the process gets much more than a loyal and hardworking employee (and lines of new customers who have heard about this otherworldly confection). On his journey with the septuagenarian, one he shares with Wakana (Kyara Uchida), a teenage girl who frequents his shop, the baker learns much more than Tokue’s secret recipe.

While there is considerable depth to Sweet Bean, no other consideration can be given to the film without first addressing its culinary aspect. It’s marvelous. Some cooking scenes are brief but impactful, like several where Sentaro makes batter from scratch, pours the golden gooey goodness on the skillet, and flips the palm-sized pancakes at just the right golden-brown moment. Other scenes are a little more special, particularly the dazzling 10-minute sequence where Tokue and Sentaro work side-by-side so the elder can show the baker just how that paste is made. It’s all so dazzling in its meticulousness. Kawase’s observations on cooking are quite intimate, with many close-ups that give the viewer a sense of the food’s texture, combined with Shigeki Akiyama’s rich cinematography that strikes the perfect balance of soft and warm to create something of a visual tasting menu.

Deeper, though, the cooking sequences before the introduction of Tokue offer more than just gastric titillation. Nagase, who is excellent as Sentaro, uses the baker’s solo cooking scenes to convey a sense of heaviness in his soul. Cooking is driven by all five senses, making it a very passionate form of art. But through the listless repetition of his daily routine, Sentaro postures himself as one who has lost that passion years ago, with no desire to find it again. Even when a small group of giggling and chatty schoolgirls show up for their daily treat, he is unmoved by them. This is the result of something from his past that continues to haunt his present and affect his future, a secret that’s revealed later on in the film.

Also revealed later in the film is the part of Tokue’s life that at one time may have haunted her, but is now something that she has learned to live with and live through. Her approach to cooking has its roots in nature. She speaks of things like listening to the stories that the beans tell as she goes through her cooking ritual. One can’t help but wonder, at least at first, if these are simply the musings of a woman who has lived alone for too long. But the character is one keenly in tune with nature, particularly the cycle of the cherry blossoms, and who is mostly intoxicated by that connection, creating a giddiness that belies her age. Kiki, who is delightful in this role, presents Tokue as both the crazy aunt and caring grandmother everyone loves in equal measure yet for entirely different reasons.

Wakana is a little less developed as a character, thus a little more enigmatic, but no less important. Like Sentaro and Tokue, she is somewhat alone. She lives with her mother, but her mother seems more concerned about having spilled her beer than worrying about what the spill might have ruined. This less specific character sketch, coupled with the fact Wakana plays a critical role late in the film, suggests the girl is a step or two removed from being nothing more than a character of convenience. But her daily patronage of Sentaro’s shop, and how he treats her compared to the giggling schoolgirls who also come in every day, suggest Wakana has a certain gravitas that will eventually reveal itself. It does, but mostly in the sense that she will become the next generation needed to take up this art of cuisine and use what she has learned from those before her. She shares a brief but memorable moment over tempura with Sentaro, where the two of them meet by chance at a local restaurant one evening (before Tokue’s hiring) and decide to dine together. Sentaro speaks to Wakana like an adult, confiding in her something that surely took guts for him to admit, let alone share.

The film’s ending is predictable (and early), and that ending veers towards mawkish, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t satisfying.

Based on a novel by Durian Sukegawa, Sweet Bean (known also as An and Sweet Red Bean Paste) is a delicate, enchanting, layered Japanese drama about so much more than food. It’s about isolation, regret, and the sense of helplessness that comes with losing control of your own destiny. These three people are forever bonded as both equals and (unrelated) generations of a greater spiritual family. With excellent performances and a fine directing touch, Sweet Bean is a film worth finding and savoring.

Kaili Blues, which has made a quiet name for itself on the festival circuit, has described by fans and critics as dreamlike, and it truly is, in so many senses. For some, this dream is an incoherent poet, stumbling through the last few drops of whiskey in a flask. For others, it is an otherworldly calling, a dizzying sense of realisation—or what some might even call enlightenment. The line between the two is probably a fine one.

Set in the rural province of Guizhou, China, even the film’s foggy, mystical location exudes a surreal quality, as though we are floating from scene to scene, character to character. This experience is only heightened by director Gan Bi’s use of long, uncut takes, which frequently disorient our sense of time. Gan Bi himself explains his preference of long takes by describing them as “liberating” and “close to poetry.” Somewhere between the art of poetry and the motif of time is where Kaili Blues lies, driven not by a narrative but by a feeling. As much as we cannot tell where the film is going, we cannot tell if it is going anywhere at all, or if it even needs to be.

However, Kaili Blues is intermittently concerned with a more tangible journey, depicting the travels of Chen (Chen Yongzhong) from his hometown of Kaili to Zhenyuan in order to find his nephew Weiwei. Chen’s brother—Weiwei’s father—is the unreliable Crazy Face (Xie Lixun), whose character is best represented by the knowledge that he may have sold his son. On his journey, Chen stops through the town of Dangmai, where space, time and reason all become unfathomable, and the film relies solely on our emotional connection to each character as they transiently pass into and beyond the lens. It’s a bold move, but one that forces the audience to question our understanding of reality as the discernable opposite of fantasy, interweaving the two until their distinction is not only obscured, but rendered unimportant.

One of the most interesting ways Bi achieves this is through the inclusion of actual poetry, both his own and that from the Diamond Sutra, a text of ancient Buddhist teachings. Read by the protagonist as a voiceover during several shots, the poems center our experience of the film, allowing and encouraging us to speculate on various moments whilst ensuring we never stray too far into the ethereal. Indeed, these sharp, contextual poems feel somewhat necessary, as though without them we would be adrift in a sea of memories with no sense of direction.

This exploration of time and memory is also wonderfully portrayed through music—both in the film’s traditionally inspired soundtrack and within the story itself. Chen’s search for a group of men who play the Lusheng, a traditional Miao instrument, leads instead to a group of young men about to play a pop concert. It is a clear but unobnoxious signifier of the inevitable modernisation of rural China, demonstrating both visually and aurally the meeting point of two generations. Yet Bi’s construction of this encounter is critical of neither the modern nor the traditional, preferring to hang, motionless, in a chasm of time where both can exist harmoniously. This lack of any linear motion through time is almost entirely what the town of Dangmai seems to represent; it is a place where memories can happen tomorrow, and passing trains can turn clocks backwards.

Kaili Blues has thoroughly impressed many as a directorial debut, and it’s perhaps the promise of more to come from Gan Bi that truly grips our interest. One technical feat in the film has been rightly praised—a single shot that lasts over 40 minutes long, and must have required an incredible amount of choreography in order to seamlessly flow through so many scenes. It cycles through a wide variety of characters, each of whom plays a small but significant role in our gradual understanding of the film, if that ever happens. But just like a dream, understanding what has happened is a far less meaningful goal than embracing the experience: in this case, one of a delicate, pastoral trance.

Kaili Blues screens as part of New Directors/New Films in New York City. To learn more about the festival or buy tickets, visit www.newdirectors.org.

There’s a part of being the victim of infidelity that isn’t often discussed: the suspicion of infidelity. Unlike the flare of rage that comes with the surprise of catching a cheat, suspicion envelops the mind slowly like quicksand, pulling an already fragile psyche deeper and deeper into the abyss until there’s nothing left but suspicion itself. Innocuous happenings become something more, something ominous, but they never quite manifest into damning evidence. All they do is fuel more suspicion, because if that last thing was almost proof, the next thing surely will be proof. Suspicion creates a lot of smoke, but usually without ever producing the gun. In Asghar Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday, the suspicion of infidelity wreaks havoc on the psyche of a woman in Tehran.

Rouhi (Taraneh Alidoosti) is a beautiful young bride-to-be whose wedding won’t pay for itself, so she takes a temp role as a cleaning woman for a family of three. On her first day on the job, Rouhi finds herself dealing with more than messy rooms and dirty windows. The husband and wife who have hired her—Morteza (Hamid Farokhnezhad) and Mozhde (Hediyeh Tehrani)—appear to be on the last legs of their marriage as they ferociously argue in front of their new hire about how Morteza broke his promise to have a serious talk with Mozhde about their future so he could go to work on his day off. Mozhde sees this not only as a slight but as a sign that her husband is having an affair. Mozhde recruits Rouhi to spy on Morteza, but even that grows into something more than she signed up for.

Other than the glow from the soon-to-be-wed Rouhi, the first thing that becomes a constant presence in Fireworks Wednesday is the perpetual hum of chaos. The film takes place on Persian New Year when fireworks go off in the streets all day and night (seemingly by everyone in town). The constant bursts of noise sound like a military skirmish, creating a low-level hum of aural unease. This sets the film’s tone, acting as a celebration and a backbeat for the unfolding drama.

The highlight of the film is Farhadi’s construct of, and Tehrani’s portrayal of, Mozhde. The chaos in the streets outside and in the apartment inside are nothing compared to the chaos in Mozhde’s psyche. She starts out as angry, a woman defending her marriage and not feeling the same level of commitment from her husband to save it. But that anger is ultimately powered by suspicion, and when her husband is at work, that suspicion tears her down as it builds itself up. Every number on caller ID, every conversation overheard through the apartment’s ventilation system, every other randomly discovered factoid that doesn’t feel quite right becomes more smoke without a gun. Like a person with a terminal illness begging for a mercy-killing, Mozhde simply wants relief from her pain. Without saying it, she knows that relief will only come with discovering the worst because there’s no way of disproving her suspicion. In an effort to expedite that relief, she enlists Rouhi’s help.

Poor Rouhi. The young girl only knows love and happiness with her man, not whatever it is Morteza and Mozhde have. But over the course of only one day, Rouhi shifts from bystander to witness to full-on participant in a very messy domestic game, and in the process learns about the frailty of marriage, the criticality of communication, the trickery of deceit, and the importance of honesty. It’s a wedding gift no one intended to give her, and one she shouldn’t try to return.

Put it all together and the director of A Separation and The Past has done it again, crafting an excellent exercise in weathering sustained chaos. There are early moments when the film doesn’t have the steam it should, but once it gets going it plays almost like a psychological thriller, although one stripped of that genre’s tropes. Tension mounts, characters evolve, and secrets are revealed. Yet even with all that, and with the ominous sense of discovery forever looming overhead, nothing is ever overwrought or overplayed. Fireworks Wednesday was first released in Iran in 2006. After a decade-long wait, the film is finally receiving a release in the US.

Five years after nabbing the Palme d’Or for his 2010 feature, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul, has crafted perhaps his most intimate work in over a decade. Instead of enchanting his audience with surrealist imagery, Joe chooses to mystify us by employing tools as transparent as implication and conversation. But he remains a master of controlling the frame, of capturing the unadulterated sounds of nature’s pumping heart, and he deliberately pulls us into a trance, into a world that exists aesthetically between sleep and dreams, but textually between history and the present moment. Bucolic environments throughout the film are observed in their most silent states, yet the sounds that remain despite the emptiness are amplified. Joe navigates spaces that initially appear slight, but focuses on them so intimately that they become wondrous.

Like fellow East Asian filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang, Joe constructs his takes and their geometry with obsessive deliberation. What sets the two filmmakers apart, at least in terms of what’s visually obvious, is that Joe shoots the majority of his films outdoors, while Tsai’s meditative tone poems are generally consigned to dark interiors. Nature has a constant presence in Cemetery of Splendour. The environments feel sentient, and when the human characters walk through or interact with them, the visible gestures carry the weight of dialogue even though no words are actually spoken. The goal of many filmmakers is to find material worth observing; Joe believes all material is worth observing, and he proves it.

Cemetery of Splendour is set in its director’s hometown of Khon Kaen and stars his frequent collaborator Jenjira Pongpas, whose character, apparently mirroring her director, returns to her childhood home as an adult. She seeks out the school she attended growing up only to find it’s now a makeshift hospital designed to treat a company of soldiers suffering from a mysterious sleeping sickness. The location’s design is immaculate, conflating cloistered objects from its distant past with therapeutic technology that wouldn’t look awry in a modern science fiction film. Enamored by the events taking place in her prior schoolhouse, Jenjira begins tending to a young soldier named Itt (Banlop Lomnoi, co-star of Joe’s Tropical Malady). Itt occasionally breaks through into the waking world, but unless speaking through a telepathic woman named Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), he remains trapped in an unyielding slumber.

As the story progresses, we learn that the schoolyard turned hospital was built on a cemetery of kings, and that the restless spirits of these kings feed on the energy of these soldiers, ensnaring them in their own subconscious. Jenjira and the other characters occupying the present slowly begin to comprehend what exactly is going on, and as they do, history’s voice only grows louder. A pair of goddess statues take human form and begin to converse with Jenjira, telling her stories as though she were their contemporary. Viewing the film through western eyes, I can only assume the enigma of its mythology is exacerbated by cultural removal. But even taking this into account, I hesitate to wonder whether the extent of its message has failed to transcend that regional barrier. What Joe has to say seems like something people from all cultures could identify with.

The material in Cemetery of Splendour, while initially alien, is unpacked with grace and explicability. As ancient spirits contact those currently occupying physical bodies, a revelation about the confluence of souls begins to present itself. The high levels of cultural specificity the material appears to impose gets decimated by the universality of the ideology it harbors. Even referring to Joe’s philosophy as ideological seems reductive. He is merely enthralled by the relationships between conscious minds. It doesn’t matter that a hospital has been erected atop a cemetery, just like it doesn’t matter whether clouds look over a river or an ocean sits above the sky. All that matters is that these bodies and the minds that make them unique are in constant dialogue. Forgotten kings can chat with and advise millennial nurses and soldiers, because why wouldn’t they? Every tree, river, animal, and being that ever was and ever will be must rely on one another with the utmost compassion. Otherwise, how could we even bear to live?

There’s a difference between “simple” and “simplistic” storytelling, and The Nightingale is a film that walks a fine line between the two terms. Director Philippe Muyl relies on an unfussy narrative, familiar character dynamics and placid visuals to make the sentiment of his tale resonate. The film is old-fashioned and contains a fair amount of charm, but it takes no risks (neither in the film’s aesthetic or its plot complications). Themes of reconciliation, youthful optimism and multigenerational bridge-building mosey on through, their potency limited by a lack of conflict and a penchant for easy answers.

Set in modern day China, The Nightingale finds a family suffering from disconnection. A married couple (portrayed by Xiaoran Li and Hao Qin) and their young daughter, Ren Xing (Xin Yi Yang), are living in a cold, sterile apartment in the city. The parents are preoccupied with their busy professions and the girl seems to be more endeared to the bright screen of her iPad than anything else. When a pair of important business trips send each of the parents away, the mother has no choice but to leave her daughter with her grandfather (Baotian Li). He lives a quiet life on the other side of town and has his own voyage in the works. The destination is his childhood village—a place nestled far away, deep in the Chinese countryside. A wealth of memories, both joyous and sad, await him there and whether the temperamental Ren Xing likes it or not (spoiler alert: she doesn’t), she’s coming along for the ride.

The bulk of the film follows the travels and interactions of this girl and her doting grandfather. Right away, it’s shown that he won’t get through to her easily. Ren Xing huffs about, making up complaints, willfully disobeying her grandfather and spurning any of his attempts to pick her brain. She’s clearly very independent, but her antics are unreasonable at times. Of course, the early friction transparently sets the relationship up for a tender reversal, as the more time the two spend in the countryside and amongst the smiling villagers, the more they bond and the better they understand each other. At the center of this is the titular nightingale that the grandfather carries around in a cage. Its meaning is gradually revealed and the bird eventually comes to be the film’s unifying emotional symbol.

From these descriptions, one might envision a gently affecting tale with low stakes and the potential for a hugely poignant takeaway. It is indeed gentle and the stakes are definitely low, but the execution is bland and conventional. The look of The Nightingale isn’t quite televisual, but the lighting and camerawork are so disappointingly unexpressive and flat. Even the sections in the countryside are—with all the gorgeous landscapes that are at the director’s disposal—generically “pretty” in the way the spaces are captured. Muyl is after a relaxed pace and ponderous tone here, but the imagery fails to provoke any thought.

As far as subtext goes, there’s plenty, but the motifs and messages are obvious. All throughout The Nightingale, there’s a running theme of dichotomies, the most prominent one being the unceasing movement and chaos of the city and the serene wisdom of the country. There’s something to be said about the divide between these two realms, but the film doesn’t do the topic justice, approaching it with a lack of nuance. The sprawling metropolis is repeatedly established with what appears to be slight variations of the same shot of sped-up traffic. By the third or fourth instance of this, we get idea. Meanwhile, the countryside is presented as a picture of paradise—accented by the perpetual laugh of children and shimmering, imperfect vistas.

This is where that “simplistic” sensibility comes in. The story is very straightforward and for a while, the absence of big, game-changing events is kind of nice. Baotian Li contributes a lot with his sweetly sympathetic performance and the sauntering nature of the tale is pleasant enough. But at some point, I began to hunger for something a little more substantial. Every little obstacle that comes up for the characters is very quickly dismissed or assuaged, and each beat of the characters’ individual developments falls into place, unearned. The countryside works like a magical sedative on Ren Xing’s sour mood and technological enslavement, and a previously strained relationship between the grandfather and the girl’s dad is quickly mended.

I’m assuming that The Nightingale’s target audience is children and easy-to-please families, as more cynical or discerning viewers may feel patronized by the easy sentiment and cookie-cutter storytelling. At the same time, there’s an oddly undercooked divorce subplot in the film that doesn’t fit the otherwise buoyant tone and feels out-of-place each time it’s brought up. Maybe this part is meant for adults seeking greater dramatic weight, but it isn’t thought out well enough to properly satisfy those needs, so I’m not sure what to make of it.

With all this negativity, it needs to be reinforced that The Nightingale is entirely harmless entertainment with, at the very least, a good heart and a nice message. It may be a fine choice for a casual afternoon viewing, but you probably won’t remember it the next day.

The French have a special knack for telling naturalistic, intimate stories. The nation’s treasured André Téchiné has been due for a strong film, since his post-2000 output (with the exception of Witness) has been leaving too much to be desired. To fill this void and remind everyone why some hail him as the greatest post-New Wave director, Téchiné focuses on the youthful crossroads of desire in Being 17 in order to capture the complexity of a relationship between two boys. From mutual animosity to forced friendship to the awakening of something neither expect, Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein) and Tom (Corentin Fila) evolve through an expertly paced 2 hours on screen in ways that should leave audiences celebrating the spirited farrago of youth.

The lively beautiful rush of the opening credits create a comforting ease that’s usually attributed to someone who’s got a world of experience to work with. “Here is a director who knows what he’s doing, put your trust in him and enjoy this emotional ride,” they seem to say as the scenic country setting whizzes by over glorious music. The vibrancy of the opening foreshadows the tone that will go on to pervade over the entire film and the tense push-and-pull dynamic between Damien and Tom. They’re schoolmates, a couple of high-school loners who get picked last for basketball practice, and who—for no discernible reason—become enemies.

Tom lives in the mountains with his adoptive mother Christine (Mama Prassinos) and father Jacques (Jean Fornerod), and is in a constant state of detached ambivalence with the world around him, feeling assuaged only when swimming naked in the lake or tending to the farm animals. Damien lives with his mother, Marianne (Sandrine Kiberlain), the country doctor with a heart of gold, while his father Nathan (Alexis Loret) is on active tour duty as a helicopter pilot. Damien practices defensive techniques with neighbor Paulo (Jean Corso), an old-school vet and friend of his dad’s, and loves to cook meals for his mom. When Marianne gets called in to see a sick Christine, she takes a liking to the quiet and polite Tom, who pays her with a chicken in the film’s first organic laugh-out-loud moment.

When it’s discovered that Christine is pregnant with another child, a surprise considering the many miscarriages she had to endure before adopting Tom, Marianne suggests that Tom stay with her and Damien after school, in order to get his grades back up and not lose three hours commuting from the farm. Reluctantly the two boys agree to this arrangement, but tensions escalate until they decide to fight it out once and for all on a mountaintop. When the rain interrupts them mid-fight, however, they seek refuge in a cave and share a sneaky joint in silence. That’s when something shifts in the atmosphere.

Téchiné, and co-writer Celine Sciamma (the writer/director of the excellent Girlhood) have a gracefully raw cinéma vérité approach to their subject, creating a sense of effortless familiarity and attachment with the two leads. It reminded me of Blue Is The Warmest Color in many ways, but most of all in its agenda-free approach to the theme of homosexuality; without putting it in your face (in contrast to, for example, how it’s done on the small screen in American shows like Sense8). There’s no preaching and no politics here; just organic evolution of confused teenage feelings, and super strong character-building, blossoming into something fundamentally universal. Klein is the more experienced of the two young actors in the lead, and while he is undoubtedly strong, the revelation is Fila, who makes his screen debut with subtle ferociousness and irresistible charismatic presence. Of the adults, Kiberlain gets to the do most and she is wonderful as the lonely, warm-hearted, motherly Marianne.

The story’s build-up and progression in the first two thirds of Being 17, laced with intelligent and spontaneous humor, is rock-solid. It’s when we get into the third trimester that faith gets lost, thanks to some see-through conventional plot engineering and a roundabout focus on Marianne. The closing moments as well break the naturalistic spell with an overloaded dose of sugary optimism, in stark contrast to the rest of the film’s prudence. But even with its noticeable rough edges, Téchiné’s film breathes with a poetic temperance; a beautifully structured, finely acted ballad on teenage angst and passion.

Last year saw the release of Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, a film about The Boston Globe’s investigation of the systematic cover-up of pedophilic priests by the Catholic Church. It’s a challenging watch given the subject matter, and McCarthy finds a balance in his film that never sugar-coats or cheapens the crimes it profiles for dramatic points. But Spotlight is not nearly as challenging as The Club, a drama that looks at child abuse by the Catholic clergy from the perspective of the accused.

The latest offering from Chilean director Pablo Larraín focuses specifically on four accused priests living out a Church-mandated exile in a quiet Chilean beach town, run by a former nun with baggage of her own. Although sequestered and living within rules that prohibit most contact with outsiders, the Fallen Five make the most of their circumstance by training a greyhound to become a champion racer. Going into the film, viewers know, at least at a high level, the heinousness of the subject matter (the priests’ past actions are eventually revealed in greater detail), and yet Larraín manipulates right out of the gate. The setting is a beautifully cozy hamlet and its denizens are as non-predatory as they can get. They are four charming old men living out their golden years breeding a race dog on the beaches of Chile, all the while being mothered by a charming older woman and living in relative harmony in a delightful yellow house. It’s serene.

Then BANG—Larraín reminds you of the seriousness of the situation with a scene so uncomfortable (and seemingly endless in the most unsettling of ways), followed by a moment so shocking yet so utterly genuine, that I audibly gasped.

The situation upends the four priests’ lives when The Vatican intervenes in the form of Father Garcia (Marcelo Alonso), whose goal is to investigate the incident, investigate the people living in the house, and ultimately shut the place down. As circumstances unfold, however, Father Garcia’s task might not be as easy as he thinks.

Larraín’s film takes on a procedural tone, creating an interesting (and compelling) dynamic. It sets up a good guy/bad guy construct with the clergy as the bad guys and Garcia as good. But the bad guys here are otherwise so likable, and Garcia, with his interrogations, stricter living conditions, and goal of shutting down the house, is just off-putting enough to be unlikable. Eventually, the rooting interests become blurred, and then Larraín’s skills truly shine as he slowly builds two very specific cases.

The first is the case against the Fallen Five. Despite their dark collective past, they continue to make questionable choices in the lives they lead after living in service to the Lord. There are hints of this poor behavior early on. They lie to the police about the event that kicks the story off, but the lies are told to protect themselves; they snoop through Garcia’s personal things, but they do it to understand his intentions so they can better shield their interests. They also drink and smoke and gamble, and while these things aren’t illegal, they too fit into a certain pattern of behavior: sin. Minor, at least at first, but sin nonetheless. The viewer might miss it though because Larraín, like a magician, distracts with the obvious transgressions—including the child abuse—and when no one is looking, he carefully layers these other, smaller things into the characters’ routine actions. They might be subtle, they might be acts committed for self-preservation, but they are still acts of varying degrees of wrong. It’s on this foundation of the flawed nature of humanity that Larraín makes a more difficult case, one that’s less pro-Church and more anti-anti-Church.

Because these five people have engaged in a lifetime of recidivist behavior and, as the film progresses, the sinful acts they commit increase in both selfishness and severity, the Fallen Five show that they have learned nothing while in exile. Larraín makes it clear that the problem is with the person, not the Collar, nor the Habit, nor the higher institution they once served and represented. The presence of Garcia reinforces this case, who represents the good amidst this sin. Not only is he tenacious in his investigation of the quintet, he tries early to break them of their more pedestrian transgressions. It appears as punishment but it’s actually an effort to redeem. By the film’s end—an end that highlights his monumental compassion—Garcia’s actions, and in particular the goodness of them, stand in stark contrast to those from the collective he has been sent to investigate. It isn’t about his Collar, it’s about his Christianity.

But have no illusions: this film is no mea culpa on behalf of the Catholic Church. And while it takes place in exile on the beaches of Chile, that doesn’t make the core subject matter any different than that of the story told by Spotlight in the parishes around Beantown. Despite that similarity and the familiar procedural strains, what Larraín does with The Club is more daring and direct than McCarthy’s film. It’s also more thought-provoking, as it goes beyond the expected (and warranted) knee-jerk reaction to the crimes committed, adding a facet to the subject that is worthy of consideration and onscreen treatment.

It almost feels like a religious experience, watching a movie that’s as beautifully alien and removed from convention as Embrace of the Serpent. Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra‘s Amazon-set drama is an indignant lament on the devastating, festering effects of colonialism, but it’s more experiential and less studious than that sounds. The black-and-white river imagery is supple, hypnotic and frightening, in that startling way that most unfamiliar things are, at first, frightening. The scariest thing, though, is how vividly Guerra shows us—via two white men’s parallel river quests, separated by 40 years—the extent of the destruction pale-skinned conquerors wreaked on the indigenous cultures of the region. Even scarier: the realization that the eradication of our indigenous people, in our America, makes Guerra’s dark fable hit uncomfortably close to home.

Like the narrative (which is based on a pair of white explorer’s real-life journals), the production’s heroes are dual, with cinematographer David Gallego having as much influence on the film’s success as Guerra. With locations as lush as the ones we glide and trudge through on the winding South American riverways, it seems best, for a story this restrained and contemplative, for us to simply, respectfully bear witness to the indescribably beautiful surroundings. There’s no need to breathe life into what’s already teeming with overly stylized presentation, and thankfully, Gallego’s got taste. The choice to go monochrome supports the thrust of the story; what would have been about color and vibrancy is now all about light, darkness and shadow.

At the center of the first story is Theodor Koch-Grunberg (Jan Bijvoet), a German explorer in search of a rare, sacred flower called the “yakuna.” Theo’s fallen ill on his expedition, tended to by his local guide, Manduca (Miguel Dionisio Ramos). As they land their boat onto the riverbank, they’re met by Karamakate (Nilbio Torres), a shaman who doesn’t take kindly to white men, whose violent conquest has rendered him a companionless river dweller, the last of his tribe. Locals like Manduca, who cooperate with the whites and have adopted many of their Western customs are, to him, just as disgusting. Reluctantly, Karamakate agrees to be their guide (only he knows how to reach the yakuna), enticed by Theo’s promise to help him find the last remaining survivors of his tribe, who the German claims he’s seen with his own eyes.

On their journey, the cultural divide is slowly bridged: Karamakate keeps Theo’s illness at bay with herbal medicine; Theo shares some of the worldly belongings he’s hauling around in his clunky luggage box. (Meanwhile, Manduca straddles the cultural line.) Their bond is shaken to the core when they come across a grove of drained rubber trees and indigenous workers mutilated and enslaved by the invaders. Tensions are heightened again when they happen upon a Catholic mission where a mad Spanish priest rules over orphaned indigenous children, forcing them to abandon their old customs as he abuses them on a whim in a multitude of sickening ways. This portion of the film is almost unbearably awful to watch. It speaks to Guerra’s integrity, though, that he shows no measure of restraint in depicting something so horrible as cultural extermination. Again, the true horror is how easily linked the priest’s child abuse is to issues of our time (Spotlight comes to mind).

Theo has a mental breakdown when his compass is stolen by one of the locals, fearing the technological trinket will sully the purity of the tribes traditions. Karamakate takes the fit as a sign of ignorant condescension, and they’re back to square one. Our link to the second story, set in the 1940s, is Karamakate, the older version of whom is played by Antonio Bolivar. We flash over to this second journey intermittently, which sees the shaman in a sorry state of soullessness, numbed to nothing by the continuing white-man takeover. He meets a new, American explorer, Evans (Brionne Davis), who, like Theo, is trekking towards the yakuna wonder-plant. The tone’s much more pensive and dirge-like in this less-eventful second story, which is mostly about the sorrow that’s built up in Karamakate following decades of watching his home ravaged by Western “progress.”

As grim and yucky as this all sounds, the movie isn’t without a few moments of mirth. Evans blowing Karamakate’s goddamn mind with a phonograph under a starry night sky is heart-meltingly cute, and when young Karamakate and Theo exchange the occasional glance of recognition and acceptance at each other, it gives the story just the right amount of hopefulness it needs to avoid being completely depressing. What’ll be most challenging about the film for many is its pace, which is relatively lax and often stretches moments and shots longer than normal. Some would call this meandering; I’d call it glamorously introspective (I have no qualms about staring at Gallego’s images for an extra beat or two—or three). Guerra’s made a magical film in that it feels strangely organic and of the earth. The mechanisms we’re used to recognizing and latching on to—performances, camera moves, editing, sound design—flow together so naturally in Guerra and his team’s hands that Embrace of the Serpent feels of the earth, not of 35mm celluloid.

After making films about social recluses (Curling), ex-convicts (Vic + Flo Saw a Bear) and venturing into documentaries on animals (Bestiaire) and factory workers (Joy of Man’s Desiring), French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté sets his sights on the upper class in Boris Without Béatrice. Its story, about a successful businessman confronting his own privilege after a surreal encounter, will undoubtedly rub people the wrong way given its sympathetic view towards an unsympathetic protagonist, but fans of Côté’s precise, arresting style will find plenty to enjoy, even if it’s in strictly formal terms.

James Hyndman plays Boris Malinovsky, a middle-aged man as arrogant as he is successful. Early scenes establish Boris’ rich lifestyle and hubris, like when he gets furious at the cashier of a high-class clothing store for asking him too many questions or crashes a town hall to lambast the mayor for not prioritizing an unpaved road near his house. But Boris’ obnoxious sense of pride and short temper might be influenced by added stress at home; his wife Béatrice (Simone-Élise Girard), a minister for the Canadian government, has come down with a severe depression that’s left her mute and bedridden. Boris, unable to deal with his wife’s ailment, hires Klara (Isolda Dychauk) to take care of her while he continues an affair with co-worker Helga (Dounia Sichov). It’s a typical case of someone using their wealth to fill the holes in their life with something else, rather than putting the work in to try and gain back what’s lost.

For a character so stuck in his own self-inflated world, it will take a lot to shake Boris from his foundation. Enter Denis Lavant as an unknown stranger, who leaves a message in Boris’ mailbox urging him to meet late at night in a nearby quarry. Their meeting, which feels like Côté’s version of the Cowboy scene in Mulholland Drive, has Lavant (who electrifies the film just by showing up in a kurta) explaining to Boris that he’s the cause for Béatrice’s condition, and in order to cure her, he needs to change his life. The encounter throws Boris into a crisis that makes him re-evaluate his life while diving further into his selfish comforts when he starts an affair with Klara.

While Boris Without Béatrice may be Côté’s first time dealing with affluent characters, he’s far from the first filmmaker to explore the problems people can afford to have, and the thematic familiarity can make certain stretches feel a bit stale. But one of Côté’s strengths has always been his ability to build an enclosed yet well-realized universe within each of his films, so it comes as no surprise that his style fits nicely when operating within the bubble of someone’s privileged existence.

Teaming up with cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné, Côté extends the functional qualities of the narrative to the film’s visuals. Just as every action in the film leads to a direct reaction involving some other aspect of the story— Béatrice’s health improves or worsens depending on how Boris acts—Côté uses environments to make a direct commentary on each character’s current state, whether it’s obscuring Béatrice behind reflective surfaces or using the vertical lines throughout Boris’ sleek estate to make him appear separated from others within the same scene. Côté’s efficiency when it comes to establishing information through visuals is most effective when using flashbacks to show Boris reflecting on happier times with his wife. Shooting these (brief) moments in warm tones on what looks like 8mm film, the organic and textured look of the footage establishes that, despite his bad behavior, Boris’ love for Béatrice is real.

For any shortcomings Boris Without Béatrice might have storywise, Côté’s direction and his ensemble pick up the slack. It may lack the same unpredictability that made Vic + Flo Saw a Bear so strong, but Côté has firmly established himself as one of Canada’s strongest and most consistent directors working today.

Dreams and reality collide, or rather blandly coexist, in Petr Oukropec’s In Your Dreams!, a coming-of-age tale that combines a teenage girl’s burgeoning emotions with parkour, the form of acrobatic urban exploration that became a passing fad in the early 2000s. Beginning at an off-season ski resort high up in a range of mountains, 16-year-old Laura (Barbora Štikarová) practices back flips while her father (Ivan Martinka) gets ready for the two of them to go out climbing. A tense climbing sequence establishes Laura as a teen whose craving for independence can make her reckless, as she climbs too fast and winds up slipping (lucky for her, the safety harness she complained about moments earlier saves her from falling to her death). This opening, while brief, makes a big impression thanks to director of photography’s Tomáš Sysel gorgeous visuals, using the film’s Cinemascope ratio to capture the jaw-dropping vistas provided by the high-altitude location.

The promise of a film filled with such eye-watering imagery soon dissipates as the movie has a literal and figurative comedown, with Laura abruptly cutting her trip short so she can go back to be with her mother (Klára Melišková) in Prague. Laura’s interests lie more with climbing buildings than mountains, and upon arriving back at her mother’s apartment she goes out with her friend Kaja (Veronika Pouchová) to audition for a spot on a parkour team. Kaja realizes that Laura’s desire to join the all-boys group might have more to do with her crush on Luky (Toman Rychtera), the cocky leader of the team, and after trying out Laura catches his attention, along with the group’s videographer Alex (Jáchym Novotný).

The emotional rush of potentially getting the boy of her dreams starts overwhelming Laura to the point where, when she’s taking the elevator down from her apartment, she falls into a dream world where she finds herself on a beach with Luka by her side. Oukropec’s structuring of his film between Laura’s dreams and the real world feels strange at first, especially when there’s no apparent reason for why she goes into fainting spells whenever she steps into an elevator (after the first incident, a doctor examines Laura but concludes it’s just the boundless mystery of female hormones). And it’s not that Oukropec needs to provide a logical, reality-based reason for his trips into the surreal; he just needs to make the transitions convincing within the realm of his own film, and on that front he comes up short. Compared to the opening minutes, Laura’s dreams look bland in comparison, filtered through drab greys and taking place in the same dull location that implies her own lack of imagination more than anything. It’s a problem that makes Oukropec’s intention of In Your Dreams! as a character-based piece fall flat, with every glimpse into Laura’s head too uninteresting to make anything register.

And once Laura’s dreams and reality begin influencing each other, it’s apparent that the film really has nowhere to go aside from watching its protagonist get over her crush through dreaming. Other aspects of Laura’s life, like a potential romance with Alex or the increasing presence of her mother’s new boyfriend in the apartment, get discarded altogether in the final act, leaving them unresolved or flat-out ignored. There’s also a brief episode where Laura questions whether or not her dreams are more than fantasy, since Luky vanishes after she dreams of him getting locked away, but Oukropec barely commits to Laura’s distressed state. At one point she starts imagining a dog from her dreams following her around in real life, and the development is treated so inconsequentially it just feels like a strange quirk rather than a sign of her further disconnect from reality. Even worse is the way Oukropec decides to wrap things up, letting the contrived climax play out entirely in Laura’s dream world that results in a near-incomprehensible plot resolution. The lazy execution of the film’s more imaginative side keeps Oukropec’s film tethered to its own uninteresting and poorly developed reality, with only Štikarová’s strong performance forming some sort of ground to stand on among the half-baked ideas. Aside from its visuals and some neat parkour stunt work, In Your Dreams! has about as much staying power as the majority of our own dreams.

Pensive and intellectual to the core, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things to Come is a remarkably intriguing follow-up to her previous film Eden, mostly in how natural it feels even with subjects that seem (on the surface, at least) like they couldn’t be farther apart. For those who’ve never seen the director’s 2014 EDM tale, it follows a young man (a semi-biographical extension of her real-life brother) as he grows up in the early ’90s Parisian dance music scene. Things to Come centers on a woman, decades older than Eden’s protagonist, who teaches high-school philosophy in Paris and lives with her two children and husband of 25 years. At a certain point, it becomes clear that the City of Love isn’t the only thing binding the director’s latest films. Hansen-Løve is fascinated by the idea of human growth, and her creative way of expressing is growing itself.

Things to Come is a gentle wind; it flows so effortlessly, you can almost feel the warmth of its silky texture on your skin. This is generated by the way Hansen-Løve and her DP Denis Lenoir wield the camera around with a spontaneous, fluid spirit, but much of it is also attributable to a marvelous doyenne of the acting world, who carries the entire weight of the film on her shoulders as effortlessly as ever. Isabelle Huppert has an uncanny knack of conveying a remarkably large range of emotions: turning down-to-earth into larger-than-life with one pout, one sideway glance, or an ever-so-slight intonation in a spoken word. She embodies Nathalie, the philosophy professor who is suddenly faced with a concept she’d long forgotten about. In her own words: “total freedom.” Her husband, Heinz (Andre Marcon), has left her for another woman, and she has retouched base with former student Fabien (Roman Kolinka), whose combination of youth and intellect make him especially interesting for Nathalie. In some other film, perhaps, their relationship would be replete with perverse suggestions; under Hansen-Løve’s wing, their bond is strictly platonic and cerebral.

As the film follows Nathalie and her various evolutions—adapting to a new school regime that takes a modern marketing ax to her dear philosophy, dealing with a demented mother (Edith Scob), etc.—questions are mulled over in the refined, graceful way one images an oenophile tasting vintage wine. Is there a practical place for philosophy in today’s world? What does a woman over 40, whose kids are all grown up and whose memories are now tainted by her husband’s decision, have to hold on to? Is burying yourself in intellectual thoughts and readings enough to be happy? Hansen-Løve bears her old soul through the way she deals with these questions, with just the right balance of humor and melancholy. There’s just enough style to keep it at an arms-length from being a slice-of-life picture in the cinema verité sense, but the story, the characters, and the ideas on display keep the film firmly rooted to the ground and in reality.

Women’s stories, female directors, roles for women over 45—these debates are very much at the forefront of today’s film conversations. Things to Come is a serendipitous celebration of all three. Mia Hansen-Løve, still in her 30s, shows immense sensibility and maturity in tackling insular subject matter that would have most studio heads bolting for the door. In Isabelle Huppert, she has found the perfect collaborator—an actress of incredible depth and range, who makes every frame that much more fascinating to behold. Now, when I think about Eden and Things to Come as companion pieces, it’s hard to imagine another director who handles the subject of “moving on” with the kind of delicate deftness and assuredness that Mia Hansen-Løve demonstrates.

Fort Buchanan will screen in the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s series ‘Friends With Benefits: An Anthology of Four New American Filmmakers.’  To find out more about the series visit the ‘Friends With Benefits’ website.

While I’ve never served in the military (and thus have never been deployed), my family’s history has loads of this experience. While I often think about the grandparents and uncles and in-laws who have served, I rarely consider that while they were gone, they were forced to leave people behind—people who had to tackle childrearing as de facto single parents, as well as managing their own loneliness. In Fort Buchanan, writer/director Benjamin Crotty focuses on a group of military spouses and how they cope with childrearing and loneliness. However, the first-time filmmaker does so in the most peculiar of ways.

When his husband is deployed to Djibouti, Roger Sherwood (Andy Gillet) finds himself left alone to raise their 18-year-old adopted daughter Roxy (Iliana Zabeth). The two live on-base at Fort Buchanan, where they befriend a collection of other military wives whose husbands have also been deployed. As time passes, Roger finds himself increasingly distraught by loneliness, frustrated by his own weakness, and vexed by his blossoming daughter’s growing rebelliousness. That Roxy has become the object of desire of the lonely wives who are helping to raise her escapes Roger entirely, and efforts to address the emotional distance that comes with the geographic separation between Roger and his husband only make matters worse.

There’s something quite hypnotic about Fort Buchanan, a lean 65-minute feature that’s an expansion of Crotty’s 13-minute short film Fort Buchanan: Hiver. The film’s titular military base setting is quite perfect for the story, allowing for spouses to be believably absent while creating a space where Roger’s pangs of loneliness can coexist with the raging libido of a collective of horny housewives. That said, it’s really a base in name only; nothing about the setting says “military base” apart from the sign out front, and the setting feels more like a secluded resort deep in the Pocono woods, complete with something of a strapping and handsome farmhand/groundskeeper. It’s at this base/resort where the denizens spend their days lounging about without worry, discussing, among other things, the nicknames they have for their private parts.

This conversation actually happens, and it’s an emblem of the open sexuality that flows throughout the film. These wives, apart from their husbands for an unknown length of time, are allowed to go on “playdates” while their husbands are away. Once they clearly define their meaning of the word for Roger (he hears “playdate” and thinks back to when Roxy was a little girl), the playdates are revealed to be (mostly) of the sapphic variety. It’s here where a subplot begins about a friendly competition among the women to see who can bed the nubile, barely-legal Roxy first. This openness of sexuality, combined with cinematographer Michaël Capron’s lush 16mm lens and Ragnar Árni Ágústsson’s era-reminiscent score, gives this slice of the film’s narrative a very ’70s European cinema feel, invoking memories of films about sexual awakening like Just Jaekin’s Emmanuelle (1974).

All of this goes on right in front of Roger, whose physical and emotional detachment from his husband, coupled with his frustration at Roxy’s age-appropriate defiance, makes him mostly oblivious to it. In the film’s second act, Roger is determined to make some kind of connection with his husband, Frank (David Baiot), so he travels, unannounced, to Djibouti. Everyone else (Roxy and the wives) goes with him, as if on a vacation away from their vacation. They lounge in the heat of the African Republic’s climes (lending again to the idea that the military aspect of the film is for narrative convenience only) while Roger changes his appearance in an effort to mend his fractured marriage. While there, Roxy makes a heterosexual connection.

Not to be limited to tales of heartache and carnal pleasures, Crotty infuses a humor in Fort Buchanan that is something akin to slapstick. Moments of physical comedy occur when least expected, at times happening in the background while a more serious moment happens in the foreground. These tonal shifts might not do their specific scenes any particular favors, but they are genuinely funny, and make considering the film as a greater whole a slightly different exercise.

The third act falters with the introduction of a new character who appears to have been added so Crotty can take the film down a darker path. I like the idea in general, and the ending fits with the film’s subtle theme of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but with only a 65-minute runtime, the character would have been better served being introduced and developed earlier. Still, the third act is a stunner on its own.

Fort Buchanan is a terrific first feature and with it, Crotty proves he is fearless in the face of defying conventional filmmaking. The film, while not perfect, is in that sweet spot of being both enjoyable on its own and an indicator of the kind of talent Crotty has. Given time to hone his skills and focus his creative efforts, Benjamin Crotty could be around for a long time.

The saying goes that time heals all wounds, but in A Good Wife time also uncovers new ones. For middle-aged housewife Milena (writer/director Mirjana Karanovic, making her first feature), life is going well. Her eldest daughter is a successful artist, her two younger children are doing great in school, and her husband Vlada (Boris Isakovic) makes sure she lives a comfy life. When Milena cleans around the house one day, she discovers a VHS tape containing footage of her husband committing war crimes during his days as a soldier. A disturbed Milena puts the tape back, telling no one of what she saw, but word starts getting around that the authorities might have already started investigating Vlada, and the threat of his arrest throws Milena’s happy life into turmoil. At the same time, a check-up at the doctor’s leads to the discovery of a large lump in one of her breasts, and despite Milena’s attempts to avoid getting it checked further, it’s clear that her life is about to go through some major changes.

Karanovic, an accomplished Serbian actress who’s been working for over three decades, shows she has plenty of talent behind the camera as well, directing in a subdued manner that places characters and themes at the forefront. The same can’t necessarily be said about her screenplay, which leans on some heavy-handed metaphors and familiar ideas that can’t help but feel stale. Karanovic makes the link between Milena’s tumor and her willful ignorance of the past impossible to miss, and even with the unique angle of the Yugoslav Wars, watching Milena’s growing awareness of her own domestication as more of a self-imposed prison sentence isn’t especially exciting. But the screenplay’s staleness only ends up being a slight bother, as Karanovic’s direction and captivating performance keep things from falling into tedium. A Good Wife has its flaws, but as a directorial debut, it shows enough promise to hope that it won’t be the only time Karanovic takes a seat in the director’s chair.

My earliest recollection of watching a road movie dates back to my youth when a local TV station aired the series of Bob Hope/Bing Crosby/Dorothy Lamour Road to… comedy pictures. Since then, I’ve amassed a lot of cinematic road miles with everything from It Happened One Night to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and from Thelma & Louise to Nebraska. The latest offering of what is most definitely a road movie is set not in 20th century America, but rather 19th century Romania. It’s unlike any road movie I’ve seen before but in the most positive of ways.

Radu Jude’s Aferim!, set in Wallachia (Romania) in 1835, tells the tale of Costandin (Teodor Corban), a law enforcement official who, with his son Ionita (Mihai Comanoiu), embarks on a manhunt. The man they are hunting is Carfin (Toma Cuzin), a gypsy who was caught having an affair with the wife of Iordache (Alexandru Dabija), a boyar (high-ranking aristocrat) now fixed on revenge. Costandin and Ionita trek on horseback across various terrains, searching from village to village to find their man.

If that sounds like a Golden Age Hollywood western, believe me when I say it feels like one, too. This is just one of the great joys of Aferim!—how Jude, who co-wrote the screenplay with Florin Lazarescu, structures the film in a way that harkens back to a film like Howard Hawks’ great western Red River. In that film, John Wayne and Montgomery Clift play a father/(adopted) son leading a cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail, but it isn’t getting from Point A to Point B that’s important; it’s what happens during the drive that is key. The same approach is taken here. The pursuit of Carfin is little more than an excuse to allow circumstances to unfold with and between the father/son duo during the trip. In both cases, the journey is more important than the destination.

More homage paid to the American western—or rather, more specifically, paid to director John Ford, a master of the genre—is Jude’s use of B&W film and his compilation of stunning long shots of the Romanian countryside. Helping Jude achieve his vision is cinematographer Marius Panduru, who dulls the contrast between the darks and lights to achieve something more visually fitting to humanity’s geo-centric bleakness of the time period.

Aferim! does not hesitate to depict the cruel history of slavery, racism, misogyny, and lawless corruption that existed in that region and at that time. The abuse of gypsy slaves, both verbal and physical, ranges from unsettling to harrowing (particularly in one instance of justice meted vigilante-style). Women are, by law, inferior to men, and the attitude towards other ethnicities, especially in one chunk of dialogue spewed by a clergyman (!), is shocking. Given the abundance of gypsy slaves in that part of the world during that era, the reminders of how cruel a people they were is constant. Being juxtaposed against such a beautifully lensed backdrop makes it that much more unforgettable.

Jude adds one additional dimension to his film that doesn’t soften the blow of dealing with Romania’s dark history head-on, but it sure does provide the occasional respite: humor. And not just any humor, but bawdy, raucous humor that uses foul language so liberally it’s like the script was seasoned by a salt shaker full of hand grenades. The frankness of language is initially disarming given the visual aesthetic, the need for subtitles, and the blunt delivery, but it quickly becomes a natural part of the film’s dialogue, mostly delivered by Costandin as if he were a character created by Judd Apatow.

As for Costandin, he’s a bullish, boorish old man whose verbal arsenal is never short on hilarious stories, couplets, quotes, or homespun wisdom, all of which he imparts on his son. (My favorite line: “Even a fallen tree rests.” Whatever that means.) Teodor Corban, who is in nearly every scene and has more than the most dialogue of any player, performs marvelously in this role. He’s a natural, delivering his lines with great bombast but never to the point of caricature.

Rounding out this excellent production are Dana Paparuz’s costumes and Trei Parale’s Romanian folk-infused score. Both add a high degree of authenticity to the film that helps transport the viewer to that point in time.

The triple-threat of imagery, history, and comedy, salted with language and made even better by a terrific lead performance, all combine to make Aferim! a road picture like no other. This is my first Radu Jude film, and it’s one that has me eager to find his previous two.

When discussing Romanian cinema, or more specifically the “New Wave” of minimalist, arthouse-friendly titles from this century (a wave that really isn’t that new anymore, given it’s over a decade old now), the word “slow” inevitably comes up in some form or another. With an emphasis on realism and letting scenes unfold through long, (usually) static takes, the apparent mundanity of what’s on screen ends up giving way to something thought-provoking and thematically rich. Whether it’s taking place in the country’s tumultuous past or its present day, the relatable and banal actions of characters provide a platform to explore personal, political and social ideas that delve well beyond the surface. These films are only “slow” in that their pacing isn’t what’s usually expected; “deliberate” would be a more accurate, and less reductive, description.

So it comes as no surprise that Radu Muntean’s One Floor Below is a very deliberately paced film, to the point where it might fly over some people’s heads. It starts with an innocuous act of eavesdropping: Business owner Patrascu (Teodor Corban) comes back home after taking his dog for a walk when he overhears an intense argument in the apartment below his. He listens in as Laura (Maria Popistasu) argues with Vali (Iulian Postelnicu), another tenant in the apartment. There’s a sound of a struggle and a scream from Laura before everything goes silent, and before Patrascu knows it Vali opens the door, catching him listening in. It’s an awkward moment for Patrascu, one he tries to forget about later that day until he sees police cars outside his building when he comes home from work.

Laura was found dead in her apartment with the police suspecting foul play, and while some directors might create a mystery over whether or not Vali did it, Muntean has different plans. The big question revolves around Patrascu instead, as he doesn’t divulge what he heard to police when they question him about Laura’s death. Without any hint of character motivation, Patrascu is more or less a blank slate for viewers to pin their assumptions and theories on. The only thing that’s obvious is his avoidance of anything related to Laura’s murder, shutting down the topic whenever his wife or son bring it up. But the hassle of trying to stay a silent witness gets worse for Patrascu once Vali starts involving himself in his life more and more, befriending family members and eventually asking Patrascu to help him out with a business matter.

It’s an enticing set-up, except Muntean seems intent on making his film a sort of inert thriller, focusing his time on things like Patrascu’s job as a bureaucratic navigator of sorts, helping people get their car registrations with little to no hassle. That’s what One Floor Below might look like at first blush, but it would be a mistake to interpret Muntean’s vast room for interpretation and reflection as nothing more than empty space. It’s a film that unfolds through gaps, to the point where its editing is so elliptical it’s easy to question basic facts: it’s never explicitly stated that Laura was murdered, and even then Muntean doesn’t make it clear that Vali killed her. Muntean’s omissions are blanks for viewers to fill in as they see fit, not holes in the story.

With so many films happy to withhold facts or delve into ambiguities, it’s easy to apply that same mode of interpretation on Muntean’s narrative, but with One Floor Below it might be a case of digging a little too deep. When Patrascu bumps into Laura’s sister in the apartment, trying to open her dead sibling’s overstuffed mailbox, it’s followed by Patrascu lambasting a friend for calling Laura a slut. Does Patrascu feel guilty about his silence after seeing Laura’s distraught sister, or is he just annoyed at the topic not going away? The real ambiguities of One Floor Below lie in its characters, not its story, which serves as a set-up for Muntean’s exploration of the reactions and fallout from Laura’s death. Patrascu, as a man who runs his own complicated business, finds himself inserted into a situation he has no grasp on, and in his attempts to maintain control he only finds it slipping out of his hands at a faster rate.

Teodor Corban’s performance is a low-key powerhouse in many ways, finding a perfect balance between a specificity that gives him an intimidating presence and an ability to hold back from revealing too much about what’s going on inside his head. Muntean pulls off a similar balancing act himself in his film’s construction, filming most of his scenes in lengthy, unbroken takes emphasizing the underlying tension between Patrascu and Vali. These scenes, especially when Vali starts showing up in Patrascu’s apartment to lend a hand, linger on the lulls in conversations, watching Patrascu try to get a handle on how to navigate himself out of a mess he inadvertently made himself a part of. Muntean has enough confidence in his premise and direction to simply present the situation, let viewers pick apart what’s raging underneath the surface and make their own conclusions about character motivations and psychology rather than what’s fact or fiction. And by creating the opportunity to navigate the murkier landscape of character rather than narrative, Muntean provides a more active and rewarding experience than One Floor Below’s conventional-sounding story implies.

If Jean-Luc Goddard directed a feature-length episode of The Twilight Zone, it would probably resemble The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun. That description will likely leave you either intrigued or completely turned off, and this film itself is just as polarizing.

Director Joann Sfar’s neo-noir thriller finds Dany (Freya Mavor), a young secretary, taking her boss Michel’s fancy American sports car out on a joyride. Her drive leads her to a secluded seaside town where everyone she comes across seems to know her, despite the fact that she has no recollection of having met any of them. As Dany begins to consider the existence of a possible impostor, she discovers a dead body in the trunk of the car, and things only get more chaotic from there.

From the start, The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun is extremely stylish. Perhaps so stylish that it lacks substance in areas where it’s absolutely vital. The frequent use of split screens adds significant entertainment value to some of the more mundane sequences, but after a while the sharp editing loses its luster, and the lack of meat on the screenplay’s bones becomes more noticeable. It’s not that the plot isn’t interesting—on paper, it certainly is—but there’s so much downtime that the film feels quite lackadaisical. There are numerous moments when what is happening in the story is a bit difficult to understand, and in those times, the sharp stylistic nature doesn’t make the muddled storytelling any easier to follow.

Most of the sexual elements feel forced and awkward, which is unusual considering that the film is decidedly French in every other way. Mavor is an objectively beautiful young woman, and Dany has a certain aura about her that is alluring. But there’s a severe lack of romantic chemistry between her and the potential love interests. Aside from that, performances are generally solid, if not a bit bizarre, with Mavor bringing a mischievous charm to every scene. Nymphomaniac’s Stacy Martin appears in a brief, but effective role as Michel’s wife, Anita, and the interactions between her and Dany are strangely evocative. It’s interesting to watch the relationship between two women who are connected through a man with whom they have drastically different relations. Unfortunately that aspect, along with many other subplots in the film, remain relatively unexplored in the end. It’s as if Sfar is trying to keep things ambiguous on every single level, which eventually grows tiresome. Some mystery is great, but too much mystery is simply frustrating.

The remote nature of the locations gives the film a peculiar aesthetic that makes the inevitable plot revelations all the more impactful. Warm, hazy cinematography from Manuel Dacosse sets the stage for a lighthearted love story, and the subversion that comes shortly after is welcomed.

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun is a thoroughly disappointing film because there are moments when its weird, suspenseful charm really begins to shine. But those moments never stick around long enough to have a lasting effect. On a technical scale, there is a lot to appreciate about the film, but its screenplay is too much of a jumbled mess to look past. Under some of the excess cinematic fat, there’s a quality film to be found. But where it stands, there’s not enough bite behind the film’s admittedly compelling bark.

The rhythm of the third and final chapter in Miguel Gomes‘ Arabian Nights shifts gears to the point of bewildering (as opposed to enchanting) those who are already done digesting The Desolate One. The Enchanted One is difficult (I’d even go as far as to say impossible) to fully appreciate as a standalone piece, considerably moreso than the two previous volumes. Its parts are divided up in the most irregular of ways. It begins with a prologue, before morphing almost entirely into something like a documentary about bird-trappers in Portugal. Stylistically, Gomes opts for the written word over Scheherazade’s (Crista Alfaiate) voice-over, asking his audience to literally read (a lot), or get lost. Then, suddenly, a Chinese girl (Jing Jing Guo) narrates her life-changing experience as a foreigner in Portugal, while images of people protesting fill the screen. The method in the meandering and meditative madness of Volume 3 is a mystery solved long ago, leaving the final chapter of Gomes’ masterwork somewhat disarmed of direct excitement.

While it’s considerably tougher to engage with the action here, in the bigger picture The Enchanted One is still a vital piece. For one thing, it feels important to spend a bit of intimate time with Alfaiate’s Scheherazade, even if that time ends up being somewhat disappointing. Her doubts over the effects her stories are having on the king, her sense of imprisonment, and her yearning to experience all the wonders of life outside the castle’s walls; all of these bring her character down to earth and, magically, enhance every story she told in The Restless One and The Desolate One. Once she starts roaming Baghdad’s archipelago, some of her encounters are decadent to an off-putting degree, but all it takes is one conversation with her father, the Grand-Vizier (Américo Silva), and we’re immersed again. Perhaps it’s because he reminds her of the importance of stories, and where they come from.

Scheherazade returns to her king, and begins the story about the songs of chaffinches. While it certainly looks labored, the choice of going with title passages over narration to tell this story must’ve really been no choice at all. As beautiful as Alfaiate’s voice is, it would only serve to disrupt the birds’ stirring songs and the bird-trappers’ silence in attending to their beloved passion. For The Enchanted One is at its most entrancing when it follows Chico Chapas (yep, Simao ‘Without Bowels’ from Volume 2) and other bird-trappers in Portugal—unemployed men, lonely men, men hardened by the harshness of life—in their efforts to find, nurture, and teach new songs to the little feathered crooners.

For the first time in Gomes’ Arabian Nights, Scheherazade breaks from a story and concludes it at a later point. In between, we get a brief, wholly captivating, rendition of Ling’s experience in Portugal. Her voice-over narration (in Mandarin)—as she recounts her experience with falling in love and living with a Countess, told over images of Portuguese demonstrations—is beautiful stuff. The fact that it’s so brief, and that Scheherazade returns to the chaffinches right after it, marries the incantations of the human voice with the musical chirps of the birds in a deeply profound way.

As fitting of an ending to Arabian Nights as it is—with a wondrous cover of Klatuu’s ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ to send us off—The Enchanted One is considerably less powerful than the previous two chapters in this unforgettable saga. It would be an interesting experiment to see if its effects would be any different in a single sitting of all three volumes. Viewed as a single entity, though, it’s the least accessible piece of work Miguel Gomes—occupant of interplanetary craft—that he has ever done. In this way, it also feels like the most personal section of Arabian Nights; an impression that’s supported by a final, heartfelt, message from the director himself. As strong a case The Restless One and The Desolate One make as stand-alone films, The Enchanted One embraces all three into one inseparable whole. A whole suffused with a singular poetic imagination, confirming—as all great pieces of film art do—the powerful storytelling medium in cinema.

Originally published on October 2nd, 2015 as part of our coverage for the New York Film Festival.

We plunge into the second volume of Miguel Gomes‘ Arabian Nights without the introductory support of prologues. Only the familiar yellow titles remind us that what we’re about to see is not an adaptation, but an inspiration. Told through fictionalized accounts of actual events that occurred in Portugal between 2013 and 2014, events which left many citizens even more impoverished than before. As soon as The Desolate One ended, only a few fully formed thoughts rose out of the rubble left of my mind. Namely, I silently thanked the director for dividing Arabian Nights into three volumes, for it would be highly detrimental to the overall experience if the audience were tasked with watching all six hours in one sitting.

Partitioned into individual stories—some with multiple narrative tangents of their own—the cinematic wealth of information in Arabian Nights is best digested in fragmented doses. The Desolate One, with its three vastly varied reflections of soul-squeezing desolation, might turn out to be the most emblematic of this richness. A point which—unless I find Volume 3 to be some otherworldly masterpiece—no doubt played a part in selecting this particular volume as Portugal’s Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film. For even the most emotionally barren tale here, about a reclusive villager of ill-repute on the run from local authorities, is draped in pensive mystery and fried in sun-dried humor. Simao (Chico Chapas) is a son of a bitch, and part of a population of people who are rarely represented on screen. Throughout his story, Gomes constantly pits our perceptions of him and his actions (often bizarre but harmless) with legendary rumors of evil and violence about him, including the reason why the authorities are hounding him. It’s a story of evil full of curiosities, imbued in the kind of lonesomeness found under the surface of so many Westerns.

The second story, with a Judge (Luísa Cruz, pulling off the most memorable performance in Arabian Nights so far) presiding over a case that gets ridiculously out of hand is, in all respects, an intense masterpiece of imagination. Arabian Nights hits the peak of its seductive powers in ‘The Tears of the Judge’ from the increasingly bizarre buildup of crimes and passive-aggressive blame-avoidance and Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s purplish tinctures cinematography which adds to the phantasmagoria in the air. This chapter is the epicenter of the entire piece. The Portuguese court system gets a fantastical make-over in this story; a smorgasbord of cultures, traditions, time periods, and social classes. It’s bonkers magic realism with an endless lifespan, peppered with mercurial humor, and momentous beyond words.

The third and final tale in The Desolate One immediately recalls Gomes’ beautiful Tabu, thanks to the familiar faces of Isabel Muñoz Cardoso and Teresa Madruga. Centered around a block of apartments, ‘The Owners of Dixie’ is in the lonely spirit of Simao’s story, yet it borrows heavily from the imaginative streak from in the previous chapter. A woman finds a mysterious dog which uncannily resembles her old one, and gives it to her friends in an effort to add some joy into their depressing lives. The dog goes from owner to owner, and is the adorable witness to a perceptible sense of nostalgia and dilapidated human spirit, held delicately together by that strange little thing called love.

My mind turned to rubble by the end because it completely succumbed to the film’s undeniable charms. The Desolate One continues where The Restless One left off, building a bridge from literature to cinema. And in more ways than one, this chapter of Scheherazade’s storytelling edges closer to the cinematic end of that bridge. As an art form that envelops all others unto itself. It’s similar to a piece of classical music; here’s the midsection that’s more abstract, more contemplative, and slower in sinking in, but only because it’s slightly more profound in execution and style than what came before. With its mesmeric mixture of genres and moods, a superb screenplay and inspirational camera work and composition (naked Brazilian ladies sunbathing on the rooftop, in one jaw-dropping shot), The Desolate One may just be the most haunting movement of Gomes’ glorious, deeply melancholic, symphony. The Enchanted One is the next and final volume, but it’s already clear that we’re in the midst of the director’s magnum opus.

Originally published on October 1st, 2015 as part of our coverage for the New York Film Festival.

It takes 20 or so minutes before we see the vibrantly playful title of the first chapter in Miguel Gomes‘ latest project, all bedecked in gold; Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One. Before it; a prologue interweaves three narrative threads in a hypnotically potent way, gluing the intended audience to the screen. First-person accounts of Portugal’s declining shipbuilding industry, a wasp epidemic, and a film director (Gomes himself) who is plagued by the apparent stupidity of his own idea for his next film. That is, a metaphorical linkage of the infamous “One Thousand And One Nights” fairytale structure to his interpretation of Portugal’s economic crisis. This meta-documentary approach with the prologue is odd and endearing, but it resonates, above all else, because of its raw honesty.

A single shot stands a cut above the rest from this introduction. A wonderfully long wide shot of a large group of people seeing off a ship from Viana’s seaport, as the voice(s)-over swing between shipyard employees and a self-made wasp exterminator. It’s pregnant with a kind of romanticized melancholia that has become one of Gomes’ signature traits, and augurs—before we’re even introduced to Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate)—how the director might just pull off his “stupid” idea in remarkable fashion. Indeed, from the moment we delve into the first story about ‘The Men With Hard-Ons,’ to the emotional precipice we’re left with by the end of ‘The Swim of the Magnificent,’ Gomes proves The Restless One is everything under the sun, but never, ever, stupid.

Scheherazade’s unique way of avoiding imminent death at the hands of her mad king husband has attracted Gomes to use her method in order to create a work of surreal, humorous, and vigorously compelling cinematic art. For those unaware of the Arabian Nights premise, a quick brief: the beautiful Scheherazade takes it upon herself to stop her Persian king’s violent ways, a man with a reputation for murdering his wives after taking their virginity. Each night, right before he’s about to sentence her to death, his new wife starts telling him a story, only to stop it halfway. The king, unable to bear the thought of not knowing how the story ends, spares her life for another day so that she may finish recounting it the next night. This surrender to the power of storytelling courses through Gomes’ entire filmography, so it’s easy to see why he’s so attracted to Scheherazade’s method.

Getting into too much detail about the first three stories in The Relentless One would be the equivalent of spoiling the twist in a Shyamalan movie, so I’m not doing it. Suffice it to say that, through finespun camera work, unostentatious cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s DP), and Gomes’ screenplay (written with Telmo Churro and Mariana Ricardo), the allegories of Portugal’s unemployment crisis and her government’s negotiations with the European troika are generated with an insoluble type of electric charge. Though not an actor’s showcase by any means, Adriano Luz (who plays the “haggard romantic” Luis in the third story) and Dinarte Branco (who delivers the greatest monologue of the entire chapter as Lopes in the first story) are vital to The Restless One‘s emotional undercurrent. One that’s in constant flux between love for a country and rage at the state it’s in.

Through all the Luis Buñuel-esque hijinks and splashes of sheer brilliance, moments stick out. An intensely languid tracking shot of a man describing his experience as someone “unemployed by circumstance”. A preadolescent love triangle composed in a humorously exaggerated version of Generation Y SMS language. A man remembering the time he got his finger stuck in Biology class—a memory orchestrated by the most effective shot transition in the whole film. Moments of joy, devastation, despair, love, acceptance, and washed-up whales that explosively birth mermaids. You don’t need to see all three volumes to understand that Arabian Nights sees Miguel Gomes at his most ambitious, exposing his artistic soul in the most honest way he knows how. The realism of the film’s prologue is contrasted with the surrealism of everything that comes after it, but both share Gomes’ impulse to lure the viewer in through the power of story, intimate and epic alike.

The second story, ‘The Cockerel And The Fire,’ is decidedly weaker than the others, or at least the first half of it is, which impacts the glorious momentum of The Relentless One. Anticipation for the second volume, The Desolate One, is no less palpable for it. Even more significantly, the emotions evoked by watching how low fantasy embraces socioeconomics in one of the year’s boldest cinematic events, remain none the wiser.

Originally published on September 30th, 2015.

Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth has the rare power to force recollections of the past as well as anticipations of the future, all the while keeping its viewer completely grounded in the present, grounded in its stunning and symphonic display of human emotion. Indeed, Sorrentino pulls the rug out from under his audience on several occasions throughout the duration of the film’s runtime, dragging them down into the depths of dejection only to raise them back up, just as quickly, into the heights of pure laughter and joy. Watching this film is like being trapped in a game of pinball, only Sorrentino is the game player and his audience is the ball that he’s whacking in every which direction without the slightest bit of hesitation. It’s clear, however, that he’s doing this out of love; if anything, Youth is undoubtedly the director’s most tender and heartfelt film yet. And also his most accessible to date.

Part of this accessibility can be attributed to Sorrentino’s decision, as primarily an Italian-language director, to direct the film in English (a feat which he attempted once prior with his overlooked 2011 output, This Must Be the Place). This immediately increases the number of people that will be interested in seeing it worldwide. Nonetheless, the chief reason why mainstream audiences will be drawn to this film is because of the big-name stars attached to the cast, including Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano and Jane Fonda in an unforgettable cameo performance.

Much like a few of the other films in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Youth is relatively light on plot and focuses more on conversations between characters, uprooted emotions and recounted memories than a concrete narrative. With that being said, the general storyline follows our protagonist, retired composer Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine), during his stay at a spa resort in the Alps with his daughter, Lena (Rachel Weisz), as well as his longtime best friend, illustrious film director Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel).

While the cast does a wonderful job realizing their characters, the true star of the film is cinematographer Luca Bigazzi, who has worked on several of Sorrentino’s previous projects including the Academy Award winning, The Great Beauty. As he did with his previous work, Bigazzi seems to channel an aesthetic similar to that of Emmanuel Lubezki’s collaborations with the legendary director, Terrence Malick. Both Bigazzi and Lubezki place great emphasis on the visual composition of each scene, capturing an immense degree of detail through the movement of their ever-gliding cameras.

One particularly memorable example of Bigazzi’s skill can be found early in the film. During a dream sequence, Ballinger walks down a platform surrounded by a rising body of water as it slowly begins to engulf him. There are very few cinematographers that can place us smack-dab in the center of the world they’re shooting like Bigazzi and Lubezki, which is why I continue to enjoy their masterful work.

If there’s one area in which Youth falters a bit, it’s making the 118-minute runtime feel long. Youth would’ve benefited from removing a few unnecessary scenes from its later acts. Instead, the audience may find themselves completely enthralled by its beauty one minute, and then checking their wristwatches the next. Nevertheless, some excessive minutes doesn’t take away from the fact Youth is an enjoyable film with a varied soundtrack, gorgeous locations, spectacular visuals and a deeply philosophical screenplay.

Originally published on June 3rd, 2015 as part of our Cannes Film Festival coverage.

Disheveled, substance-addled, and violent, former detective Akikazu Fujishima (Koji Yakusho) stumbles through life in a nebulous haze. His existence is quickly characterized as bumbling and hopeless, but his perpetual floundering is given a vague sense of direction when his ex-wife informs him that their daughter, Kanako (Nana Kamatsu), has disappeared. At first, Akikazu can barely remember her face, but as he unmasks the underworld Kanako appears to inhabit, the will to continue his search stems not from a motivation to find and reunite with her, but to punish her for her wrongdoings, even if that means killing her himself. Sinking deeper and deeper into an abyss of corruption, murder, and sexual deviancy, Akikazu begins to embody the odious patriarchal values of a prior generation. He bloodthirstily yearns to chastise his daughter, perhaps not necessarily in response to her actions, but because of a subconscious self-hatred that has manifested within him after years of neglecting her.

On a surface level, this story sounds glaringly familiar: a broken man embarks on an arduous quest with vengeance in his heart. It’s reminiscent of other, more prominent titles in the so-called “Asia Extreme” genre piloted by acclaimed filmmakers such as Takashi Miike (Audition, 13 Assassins) and Park Chan-Wook, who caused the genre to explode overseas with his popular Oldboy in 2003. This new feature by Japanese provocateur Nakashima Tetsuya (Confessions, Kamikaze Girls) is not only chalk-full of nods to Chan-Wook’s seminal film about an emotionally crippled man assembling the scattered pieces of his past, but also references classic titles such as The Searchers in its Fordian regard to reckless patriarchal rage. While Kanako certainly possesses storyline elements that parallel those at work in Confessions, Tetsuya has abandoned his formalist mise en scène for something more painterly and spontaneous. He goes as far as integrating snippets of anime, clips stylized like J-POP videos, and an opening credits sequence rife with comic book action bubbles into his scattershot visual melting pot.

Where Tetsuya occasionally falters is when he pays too much or too little attention to any given element in his seething ocean of cinematic text. One subplot involves a bullied boy (Hiroya Shimizu) in Kanako’s grade who is credited only as “I,” and serves, more or less, as narrator. The development of his infatuation with Kanako undercuts the impact of the predominant themes related through Akikazu’s presence in the narrative. Reveals along the way help illustrate Kanako’s disturbed mental state, but the victimized narrator is never imbued with much more of a purpose than to aid in manufacturing these developments. Additionally, Tetsuya forgets to punctuate his inclusion of a prowling gang of corrupt cops. They tail Akikazu not prompted by duty, but by an acerbic desire to sneer at his continued failures and injuries. Akikazu, with a persistence that often registers as mythic, is frequently shot, stabbed, and beaten throughout the film. One policeman, the hyena-like Detective Asai (Satoshi Tsumabuki), seems particularly amused by our discombobulated protagonist’s pain. As the film heads into its third act, the assumption can be made that Tetsuya is engineering this subplot in an attempt to make a statement about either Japan’s police force or Akikazu’s demons, but the cackling Asai and his robotic enforcers fade out before making an impression that bears much symbolic weight.

Even throughout sequences where his shortcomings are blatant, Tetsuya maintains a kinetic energy paralleled only by the likes of Sion Sono (who evoked a similarly raucous atmosphere in this year’s street gang musical Tokyo Tribe) and the aforementioned genre film zen master, Takashi Miike. The plot unfolds nightmarishly, fragments of horror unveiling themselves as Akikazu grapples with irremediable patriarchal madness. Koji Yakusho, the veteran actor responsible for bringing Akikazu to life, deserves credit for supplying the story with its anchor. He deftly personifies an antihero who consistently demands our attention and endorsement despite his predisposition to be an unforgivably vile human being. The full realization of Akikazu’s character as the central vantage point allows Tetsuya to indulge in a hyper-frenetic sort of mania without disorienting the audience and causing them to abandon their interest in what he has to offer. The World of Kanako, in spite of its focal faults, is a bracingly spontaneous and grippingly horrific descent into the emotional depravity that has the potential to emerge when family ceases to cohere.

Body kicks off with one of the strangest, most darkly comedic opening sequences in recent memory. A visibly deceased man, hanging by a noose from a tree, is cut down by crime scene investigators. As they discuss details of the apparent suicide, the man stands up and quietly begins to walk away. Thus begins Malgorzata Szumowska’s bizarre tale of grief and mental illness, which maintains the same level of absurdity throughout.

The tale of a middle-aged attorney (Janusz Gajos), his anorexic daughter (Justyna Suwala), and their grieving psychiatrist (Maja Ostaszewska), Body is an unusually crafted piece of cinema. Its humor is so dry that it’s almost nonexistent, but it often feels like the more intense, serious moments are played for laughs. It’s never completely apparent what Szumowska is going for. The psychiatrist’s unconventional relationship with her massive dog provides some hilarious insight into the woman’s life, and the interactions between the attorney and his daughter are uncomfortable to say the least. Body borders on surrealism at times, as the characters are almost too strange to exist in reality.

It’s not a particularly enjoyable film, but it’s certainly not a boring one. In the same year that saw the release of the late Marcin Wrona’s Demon, Body is yet another example of the daring cinema that’s currently coming out of Poland. It’s not for everyone, but it’s an interesting piece of art regardless.

Featuring shades of murder mystery and conspiracy film, Danish crime thriller The Keeper of Lost Causes follows a detective struggling to find his place in the world after being reassigned. Given strict orders to merely read through cold case files, Detective Carl Mørck (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and his new assistant, Assad (Fares Fares), quickly become obsessed with solving the disappearance of politician Merete Lynggaard (Sonja Richter). The search for answers leads the duo down the path of the average mystery/procedural, where they run into a typical cast of characters.

In spite of its traditional, somewhat generic plot, The Keeper of Lost Causes keeps things entertaining thanks to a few subversions that help maintain an element of surprise. A brain-damaged witness provides a unique aspect, and the manner in which Carl and Assad go about interrogating the young man is oddly suspenseful. Unfortunately, The Keeper of Lost Causes lacks the element that makes the greatest detective stories so engaging—we never really come to know Carl and Assad. Only the basic nature of their characters is revealed (Carl is more of a hothead while Assad is a bit more meticulous), instead of providing development or a backstory. Performances from the two leads are good enough—certainly passable—but since the film simply doesn’t give the actors the opportunity to showcase their skills, the characters are forced to take a back seat to their investigation itself. With a running time of just over ninety minutes, there’s no reason why more character development couldn’t have been included, and it likely would’ve made the film feel more complete. But The Keeper of Lost Causes is entertaining enough to get a recommendation for fans of this brand of cinema.

Writer/director Deniz Gamze Ergüven has explained that her film Mustang—which was filmed in Turkey, spoken in Turkish, and labeled a French film because of the country of origin of its director—doesn’t have any alternate foreign language title. Apparently “mustang” is mostly a universal term. In Ergüven’s film, the word couldn’t have been more aptly chosen. If a mustang is an unbroken and unbridled creature, the five young women featured in this film embody exactly that. What starts as a dreamy and playful look at rambunctious and headstrong girls in their youthful prime melds subtly and meaningfully into a powerful view into the barbarously different female experience for women in different parts of our world.

In a small Turkish coastal town, five sisters start their summer break from school by exerting their tenacity and free will, splashing through the beach as they walk home and playing games of chicken with teenaged boys from their school. The youngest of them, Lale (Gunes Sensoy), exhibits the most spunk, determined to match her elder sisters—Nur (Doga Zeynep Doguslu), Ece (Elit Iscan), Selma (Tugba Sunguroglu), and Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan)—in confidence and self-expression. When they arrive home from their last school day, their grandmother (Nihal Koldas) awaits ready to lash out at the girls for their improper behavior, word of which has traveled through the small town amongst local gossips. The girls react strongly, protecting one another from beatings and rushing to tell-off the righteous woman who ratted on them.

Their total dismissal of their grandmother’s reaction is energetically humorous and does well to quickly showcase the tight-knit nature of these five sisters. But this seemingly harmless incident kickstarts a reactionary response from their family—both their grandma and uncle look after the girls who were orphaned years before. It begins tediously enough with the girls being restricted from leaving the house and forced to partake in traditional lessons from their grandmother and other local women. The girls learn to cook and sew and are forced to start wearing modest long brown dresses. They make do, running around the house in bras and underwear, playing games with one another and sneaking out down their drain pipe. The girls are annoyed with the new regime of no computers or phones, but continue to speak their minds and exert their individuality, expressing themselves in rebellions both big and small.

A trip to town one day makes their grandmother’s intentions a bit clearer to the girls. She asks them to walk through the town center displaying the girls to the families and men also there. Clearly the lessons and increased restrictions are measures meant to make the girls more marriable. The two eldest girls are the first to undergo the traditional arrangements, a brief meeting with the family of an eligible boy and a quick betrothal. Sonay manages to bully her grandmother into arranging a marriage with a boy she has already been sneaking around with and fallen for, but her sister is forced to accept the arrangements made for her.

The push from adolescence to adulthood in the film is less coming of age than innocence taken, but Ergüven—who co-wrote the script with Alice Winocour—doesn’t allow the film to wander too far into tragic victimization, instead providing one of the most tenacious films on female empowerment to come out in recent years. As the girls are ripped apart, their connected strength waning, it’s Lale, the youngest, who refuses to accept the fate laid out for her by her elders. And just like that, Mustang moves from being a disturbing cultural insight to an adrenaline pumping getaway.

Despite its rural setting and the rather alien practices performed in the film, Mustang is distinctly contemporary and salient. The judgment on these girls’ feminity and the perceived threat of their sexuality and the urgency to curb it is so incredibly universal. But even more relatable (to a degree) as their oppression is, what is most piercing about Ergüven’s film is the obvious and fierce response of these siblings. Oppression occurs everywhere, but outrage and advocacy do as well. This fight belongs to many in the world, from rural Turkey to New York City, and the film is the best kind of sticking agent, uniting anyone who feels the injustice.

The young actresses of Mustang are critical to its flawlessness, right down to their identically long flowing—and distinctly unbridled-horse-esque—hair. Their chemistry is altogether magical and almost documentary feeling in its sincerity. Ergüven’s light touch allows the film’s inexperienced stars to shine. The film’s pacing is perfect, with quiet moments accenting the isolation of the girls’ house or the many ways in which they bond with one another in their imprisonment. Warren Ellis’s off-kilter score fits the mood, never letting it get too sappy or alternately too rambunctious.

Mustang is France’s entry into this year’s Academy Awards and for sheer surefootedness from its first time director alone, it is sure to be the sort of film that gets attention. And rightly so. In highlighting both the unfortunate extreme of female persecution and also the most extreme courage and perseverance in the face of such inequality, and by making its hero a very young and determined girl, Mustang manages to shed light on the wrongs of today while instilling hope in the tenacity of the future.

Everything about this film is brave, but more significant is the way it imbues bravery on those who watch.

In The Sinking of Sozopol, a middle-aged man returns to his childhood home with ten full bottles of vodka and a determination to empty each one. In his younger years, the formerly vibrant coastal town was the site of many poignant events, the bad seemingly outnumbering the good. Upon revisiting, the man’s emotional pilgrimage of sorts yields a plethora of tenderly recalled memories and the image of an ancient hamlet that is now cold and empty.

A torrential rain falls without pause, the waves hungrily lapping at the rocks as the waters rise; a collection of dogs without masters mournfully skulk about, their eyes on the sea and the depressed man who might be causing this steady engulfment. Before half the bottles are gone, familiar faces begin to arrive in Sozopol, all of them sent by a mysterious woman, and all of them curious about just what their friend expects to happen when the last drop of vodka is gone.

Director Kostadin Bonev tells this somber tale through an alternating structure of flashbacks and modern day conversations that unexpectedly dip into the metaphysical on occasion. Quasi-dreams and a couple of surreal moments are sprinkled throughout, and the use of editing to intermingle past and present furthers the somewhat playful approach.

But ultimately this is a largely straight-faced portrait of conflicted self-destruction, and the capacity that friendship and community have to help quell the inevitable storms of a troubled mind. It’s slightly monotonous in places and not as stirring in its thematic impetus as the premise promises, but the thoughtful script and frequently beautiful compositions pull it through.

English-Jordanian filmmaker Naji Abu Nowar crafts an assured and sharply focused debut feature in Theeb, a clear-cut yet culturally rich tale of survival centered around a young boy from the Ottoman province of Hijaz during World War I. The modest coming of age story has garnered vague comparisons to Lawrence of Arabia, with which it shares not only a time and place but exact filming locations. Nowar smartly inverts Lean’s Western perspective, presenting a distinctly fresh take on familiar territory that proves a simple narrative can become more layered when it transpires from a point of view that seldom receives screen time.

The titular young boy (Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat), whose name we eventually discover means “Wolf” in Arabic, is not thrust into an adventure by chance, but instead willingly follows his brother Hussein (Hussein Salameh Al-Sweilhiyeen) away from their campsite. Hussein has been tasked with aiding another man in guiding a stubborn Englishman (Jack Fox) to his desired destination. The Englishman is quickly angered when Theeb, on several occasions, attempts to examine his various trinkets and possessions. This action and reaction not only characterizes Theeb as a curious youth, but also uses the Englishman as a symbol for a dryly funny jab at the avarice inherent to colonialism, which one can glean Nowar is neither fond of, nor interested in exploring any further. The film seems decidedly more invested in the cultural identity of its region than any potential commentary on a single cultural presence in particular.

That being said, Nowar also maintains an exceptionally narrow and deliberate focus on Theeb. The young boy is prominent in every scene, the narrative never ceasing to unwind from his unique perspective. When gunshots echo over towering hills of sand in the distance, they register not as an intimate or familiar danger, but an emblem of fear, the gravity of which we are just beginning to fully comprehend. It is remarkable how many situations throughout Theeb’s brisk 100-minute run time feel as though we are witnessing them through a boy’s eyes. Very few first-time filmmakers have such a keen ability to interpret their story precisely how it would be perceived by their central character. Perhaps what is most impressive about Nowar’s work here is his ability to frame and divulge information through these deceptively simple gestures.

One could label the film as minimalist without worrying about any receptive indignation. Nothing in Nowar’s picture is ambiguous or difficult, and the storytelling is always lean and direct. Moment by moment, our interest is captured through restrained tension. If Nowar needs to convey that bandits are hunting Theeb, he points the camera at the frightened boy in hiding as opposed to the bloodthirsty bandits, building a form of suspense that is rare in American cinema, one that eats away at audiences slowly, exploiting their fear of the unknown. This approach also enhances our intimacy with Theeb and stays true to the film’s conceit of being seen entirely through his eyes.

Perhaps the only drawback to Nowar’s approach is that it results in a film that registers as relatively slight. After all, the story is admittedly straightforward and its direction is tight, uncompromising in its commitment to depicting a world of warring men through the mindset of a wide-eyed youth. Theeb relies on the care with which its sequences are composed instead of the weight of its comprehensive text. Scenes of tension are smoothly and compellingly integrated into the narrative, which earnestly follows Theeb’s struggle not only to survive but to exercise control over his own story. Nowar stands out as a unique voice with a rooted interest in offering glimpses of culture that feel unburdened by an agenda.

There’s something about basements that is inherently ominous, mysterious, and—in a way—dangerous. Generally a section of a person’s home that is off-limits to those who do not live there, basements are used to house almost anything, especially anything considered taboo. Director Ulrich Seidl’s documentary In the Basement ventures into these private quarters to discover that sometimes our imagination is stranger than reality.

A pre-credits still-shot finds a man meticulously watching his pet python stalk its prey inside of a large tank. Seidl holds the shot for an uncomfortable amount of time, given that it is completely obvious what’s about to happen. As soon as the reptilian beast strikes, the title card appears, preparing viewers for a creepy journey into the underbelly of the average person’s home. Maintaining the structure of still shots of middle-aged to elderly folks sitting in their basements—sometimes in complete silence, sometimes blabbering about their interests—Seidl stays constant, which sadly ends up being the biggest downfall of the film. The unflinching stillness of the onscreen imagery becomes increasingly dull as In the Basement progresses, especially during the scenes that are bereft of dialogue. Entire sequences pass without anything particularly entertaining, informative, or otherwise worth watching occurring, and the results are downright boring. Seidl always seems on the verge of redeeming himself by showcasing another quirky character with a peculiar basement, but the moments between lack the craziness the film’s opening sequence promised.

Unfortunately, what Seidl seems to discover through his journey is that the things most people keep in their basements are mundane, uninteresting, and not especially effective subjects for a documentary. Perhaps there are people in the world who find things like shooting ranges, workout equipment, and mounted animals to be completely shocking, but these subjects are too vanilla to hold the attention of the average filmgoer. Thankfully, there are a few outliers in the film whose basements truly are unsettling. Most notably is an elderly woman who keeps realistic dolls in boxes and coddles them as if they were her own, live children. Her behavior is sincere which makes the entire sequence truly unnerving. It’s like something out of a horror film but makes a long monologue about a man’s hunting trophies seem all the more dull in comparison. Perhaps it is Seidl’s intention to provide a strong contrast from person to person, but it doesn’t work in upping the film’s overall entertainment value. It’s unclear what the filmmaker is trying to say here—if anything at all. There’s no substantial resolution; merely evidence that different people have different things in their basement.

After a long scene listening to an elderly man discuss his love of playing music—and even suffering through some of his brass instrumentals—the camera follows him deeper into his basement, where he proudly displays a collection of frightening memorabilia. It’s a stunning reveal that comes out of nowhere and leaves a lasting impression as a result. These are the kinds of moments that make In the Basement worth watching, and it’s a shame that there aren’t more of them during the film’s 85-minute running time.

One of the final moments of In the Basement shows a man who could feasibly pass as George “The Animal” Steele’s doppelgänger being subjected to some form of genital torture by a dominatrix. It’s an unpleasant scene that goes on for far too long. That really sums up the film as a whole. Some of the discoveries are truly bizarre, and undeniably captivating at first glance, but after hanging onto them for minutes at a time, the attraction is simply lost. In the Basement is filled with fascinating characters, but it never comes together cohesively, and in the end, would’ve probably worked better as a series of documentary shorts than a feature film.

I know what it’s like to be laid off; it’s happened to me twice. Finding myself out of work not only forced me to face financial uncertainty, I had the added worry of wondering what the future would hold for my family. It can be harrowing. Such is the fate that faces the small family in Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas’ Hard Labor. But rather than buckle down, the couple instead doubles down, with unexpected results.

Helena (Helena Albergaria) is about to take a big step in her life; she’s ready to rent a storefront and open her own market. When she gets home from closing the deal, she finds her husband Otávio (Marat Descartes) home early from his office job. He isn’t just home early, though—he’s home for good, having been let go by his company. This doesn’t dissuade him from supporting his wife’s endeavor, however. With his help (in between humiliating job interviews), and with their new live-in maid Paula (Naloana Lima) caring for their young daughter, Helena works hard to get her business launched. Like any other small-business owner, she faces challenges that include things like inventory worries, small repairs, and staff management; unlike any other small-business owner, she finds herself facing another challenge—one more supernatural in nature—making the harrowing a little more horrifying.

Hard Labor presents itself as having a blend of drama and horror. While the latter might be a cause for concern for the characters in the film, it certainly isn’t for the viewer. That the film has elements of horror is true only on the most technical of levels. Imagine having the ingredients for an omelet and putting those ingredients on the counter next to the stove, but not making an actual omelet. This is the horror portion of the film; items are present but never properly presented. There is never a sense of foreboding, no moments of anticipation, never a worry something bad will happen when least expected. There are ingredients—a vicious dog, mysterious scratches on a wall, unexplained broken glass, etc.—but they aren’t made into anything worth consuming. The horror is secondary, rendering it as nothing more than a dull distraction.

The film’s primary tale is, at least on the surface, a study of the effect of financial disparity within two unique socioeconomic circles, with Helena as the common ground. One circle is Helena’s house. In one day, roles reverse. Suddenly Helena, despite being a small business owner whose business has yet to open, becomes the breadwinner. This puts something of a strain on her marriage, although the film never takes the bait of relying on gimmicky tropes that trade on traditionally held gender-driven responsibilities. That’s not to say, though, that Otávio isn’t at least a little wounded. He is, but it isn’t played for melodrama.

Also in Helena’s house is Paula. Her employment status is considered “unregistered,” which is about the U.S. equivalent of working under the table. That might play okay for some workers here in the States, but in Brazil, being a registered employee is as much the goal as being employed is. (There’s even a line late in the film that equates being registered with existing as a person.) So, in Helena’s house is the troubled white collar of Otávio, the troubled blue collar (no collar?) of Paula, and the hard-working gray collar of the self-employed matriarch.

The other circle Helena exists in is her business. All the collars there are the same, but there is a clear hierarchy as well as a clear economic divide (as evidenced by an event that should not be spoiled). There’s even a reminder of society’s greater economic concern, as represented by a brief exchange between Helena and a customer when that customer complains about the price of a given item.

These differences—both between and within Helena’s circles—are all exercises in posturing for the deeper story of entitlement Hard Labor tries to tell. There are actions taken by every character, from Helena to the store clerk, that suggest each character thinks of themselves as being entitled to something. The most obvious example is Helena continuing with her business launch (with Otávio’s support) despite the absence of any other steady household income, but other smaller examples fill the story too. And because everyone operates at different economic levels (in both circles), that “something” that everyone thinks they’re entitled to exists on different levels as well.

It’s all very weighty, and while it takes place in another part of the world, the themes are such that they can resonate with any North American of employment age. It’s a shame it’s all presented in the dullest of terms. Like the horror portions of the film, the dramatic portions (read: the rest of the film) are not only devoid of melodrama, they’re devoid of any drama whatsoever, and presented mostly without emotion. It’s Brazilian neorealism at its least interesting, and watching it is akin to watching complete strangers trudge on with the tedium of their lives.

This makes the dullness of the horror aspects that much more frustrating, because at least a few good scares would have injected some energy into the film. With so much to say but lacking an interesting voice with which to say it, Hard Labor is more than just the film’s title; it’s also the film’s viewing experience.

Hard Labor will stream on Fandor and come out in select theaters on Friday, October 30.

In a dystopian Tokyo, 23 “tribes” (read: gangs) rule different sections of the city. These tribes range from the GiraGira Girls, a group of women including a whip-cracking dominatrix, to the Musashino Saru, a gang all about promoting peace and love. But it’s the Bukuro Wu-Ronz running everything, and their leader Big Buppa (Takeuchi Riki) is not to be messed with. Mera, one of Bukuro Wu-Ronz’s top members, starts a feud with Musashino Saru heads Tera (Ryuta Sato) and Kai (Young Dais), and the battle soon spins out of control, involving every other tribe in an epic battle to become the most powerful in the city. And did I mention it’s a hip-hop musical? Welcome to the insane world of Sion Sono and Tokyo Tribe.

But that’s not all! There’s also the presence of Sunmi (Nana Seino), a mysterious girl dragged into the gang conflict with some serious fighting skills. In fact, a lot of the cast can fight really well. This also happens to be a highly kinetic action film, with numerous fight scenes placed in between the rap songs sung by the massive cast. Sometani Shota provides help for viewers as the film’s MC, walking around scenes rapping exposition about different tribes and their feuds with other gangs. Just don’t bother actually trying to understand what the hell is going on, though. Tokyo Tribe is so dense and convoluted there are already 50 other things occurring the minute after a scene ends.

The density and hyperactivity of Sono’s style prove his film’s biggest strength and weakness. Sono, working with what looks like his biggest budget to date, packs as much as he possibly can into each frame. His shots are more ambitious, letting things play out in long, elaborate single takes, the camera moving all over the place. The set design is on a whole other level compared to Sono’s previous films as well, with so many elaborately designed locations for each tribe. And Sono never takes a moment to breathe, whipping back and forth between places, stuffing each one with as many extras and activity as possible, all while putting the camera right in the middle of it. It’s exhilarating, but at the same time incredibly exhausting

Trying to watch Tokyo Tribe for its story, nothing more than a standard gangster epic with a message about community, won’t maximize the amount of shock and joy Sono throws around on-screen. It’s the quirks and little moments that work best. Like Big Buppa’s son having a room where people act as his furniture. Or a massive karate fighter wishing someone a happy birthday as they punch them 50 feet in the air (one of the fighter’s only lines: “Take me! To! A sauna!”). Or an army tank driving around Tokyo blowing shit up. Tokyo Tribe is full of these kinds of insane, world-building moments, most of them hilariously original and bonkers beyond belief.

And even though Sono’s restlessness can get tiring at times, it doesn’t take away from the utter brilliance of Tokyo Tribe. No one injects more insanity and ideas into their films on a moment-by-moment basis the way Sono does. It was hard to imagine how Sono could outdo his previous film Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, but with Tokyo Tribe he’s outdone himself completely, and by successfully taking on musicals he feels unstoppable. With a propulsive, catchy score, Tokyo Tribe doesn’t have to try to be energetic. It breathes vivaciousness. Tokyo Tribe will leave viewers dazed, assaulted, and mortified, but by the end they’ll be begging for more.

A version of this review was originally published as part of our coverage of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

Winner of last year’s Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders might come as a bit of a surprise to some viewers. While Cannes has a reputation of profiling the big, brash and bold of arthouse’s finest—last year’s top prize went to a 3+ hour Chekov-inspired drama, after all—The Wonders goes in the opposite direction of its competitors. It’s a quiet, enchanting coming-of-age tale about a unique family in the Italian countryside, one that drives itself almost entirely by what’s hidden underneath the surface. It’s an approach that doesn’t necessarily work all the time, but it certainly establishes Rohrwacher as a rising talent.

The family at the center of Rohrwacher’s film appears to be run by 12 year old Gelsomina (Maria Alexandra Lungu), who helps run the family business of beekeeping and honey-making with her dad, Wolfgang (Sam Louwyk). She also looks after her three sisters, Marinella, Caterina and Luna, when her mother, Angelica (Alba Rohrwacher, Alice’s sister), can’t, and also relies on the help of family friend Coco (Sabine Timoteo). Rohrwacher keeps exposition to an absolute minimum, but her script drops several hints of the family living a purposely isolated existence (at one point, Coco implies they lived in some sort of commune in the past). And as Gelsomina starts growing into a young woman, her desire for independence and exploration clash with her family’s self-contained lifestyle, creating a slow, underlying tension.

That tension gets amplified through two developments which make up most of The Wonders’ plot. The first comes in the form of the arrival of a TV production around the area. Gelsomina continually eyes the show’s host (Monica Bellucci, rocking a ridiculous white-haired wig) with curiosity and amazement, and when she learns that the show is offering a cash prize to the “most traditional family” in the area, she jumps at the chance to put her family on the show. Wolfgang wants no part in Gelsomina’s plan, but the growing animosity between them suggests it has to do with everything but the program. The other addition of stress to the family comes when new farming regulations threaten to put an end to the farm’s honey business. In order to get cheap labour to help bring the farm up to standard, Wolfgang signs up for a service that lets him hire young delinquents. But once the quiet, handsome 14 year old Martin (Luis Huilca Logrono) shows up to work, Angelica freaks out, wondering if he will be a bad influence on the girls.

It’s to Rohrwacher’s credit that she manages to introduce these elements without succumbing to the temptation of melodrama. That winds up being Rohrwacher’s biggest strength, as her well-observed, warm eye for her characters infuse the film with a naturalism that feels truly special. It takes a lot of skill to portray this family’s quirks, like Wolfgang’s penchant for sleeping in a bed outdoors, without it falling into caricature. It’s because Rohrwacher never shows an ounce of judgment towards her characters, or the way they choose to live their lives. Almost every moment feels real and unrehearsed because the characters’ specific qualities work inward rather than outward. They combine to form a distinct, yet completely believable portrait of one family, instead of being used as an easy joke to compare their strange behaviour to people’s idea of a “normal” family unit. It’s a breath of fresh air that radiates throughout every frame.

That’s why The Wonders’ first half, primarily focusing on establishing Gelsomina and her family’s routines, works wonderfully. The plotline involving the TV show, one of the film’s biggest faults, suffers from having too much time dedicated to it. Once Gelsomina gets interesting in auditioning for the program, it’s apparent that they’ll end up on the program somehow, making the build-up a bit of a drag to get through. But right when it looks like Rohrwacher might have overstayed her welcome, her film takes a surprising turn for the enigmatic. It’s a bold move, and yet it blends seamlessly within the world Rohrwacher creates. That successful change-up summarizes what makes The Wonders a film that can, at times, turn into something magical. In this low-key tale of a close-knit family, Rohrwacher makes it feel like anything can happen.

Originally published on March 27th, 2015. The Wonders opens in select theaters on October 30.

Master craftsman Hou Hsiao-Hsien, whose last film was over seven years ago (Flight of the Red Balloon), returns to the world cinema stage with The Assassin. It’s a grand return, one that has left many cinephiles breathless, stunned, and slightly paralyzed in its wake. For the magic he managed to conjure on screen, Hou received the Best Director award at Cannes. It’s his first dabble in the wuxia genre (traditional martial art), an integral part of Chinese culture and art history, and thanks to his perfectionist dedication to the language of cinema, history will no doubt look back on his contribution as one that’s strengthened this tradition. The immediate predecessors that come to mind, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers, have all been expertly cut down and defeated by the new champion of 21st century wuxia. You might have to go all the way back to the 70s, and the films of King Hu, to find a matching opponent.

Of course, I write the martial arts analogies with a cheeky smile. Hou Hsiou-Hisen’s new picture is no way competing with Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou’s films. It’s just that The Assassin is building uncharacteristic castles in a familiar sandbox, and the result is a film simultaneously beholden to a long-standing tradition and levitating in its own league. We use ‘slice of life’ to describe films in contemporary settings, dealing with contemporary problems and usually shot in that shaky cinéma vérité style, but Hou transports us to 8th century China so completely that he manages to achieve something altogether remarkable. A slice of Tang Dynasty life, shot in the equivalent of an 8th century imperial shake: the methodical to-and-fro.

With the mise-en-scène so ornately defined, and the camera swaying as if it’s a talisman suspended on an invisible string, Ping Bin Lee’s cinematography acts as sprinkled faerie dust that completes the spell. The result is total submission and immersion into the world of The Assassin. ‘Pure cinema’ is a term often overused, but here we have a film that redefines purity on screen from one everlasting moment to the next, and because of the overwhelming magnificence of image, majesty of light, and meditation of pace, the plot of the film is tough to follow on the first go-around. Made all the tougher because of Hou’s (and the four(!) other writers credited with the story) unconventional use of expository dialogue, unannounced introductions of characters and events, and lack of concern with explanation. If one imagines The Assassin as an opera, where the flow of images overwhelm the watcher just as singers’ voices do the listener, then consider the following couple of paragraphs a libretto.

The setting is 8th century China, during the decline of the Tang Dynasty, where the province of Weibo has distanced itself as the strongest threat to the Imperial Court. Tian Ji’an (Chang Chen) is the current lord of Weibo, and cousin to our assassin, Yinniang (Shu Qi). Their shared history began when Yinniang’s mother, an imperial princess, married Ji’iang’s father, in order to seal Weibo’s promise of not attacking the Court. The two children grew close and were even betrothed to one another, but when a Ming lord wanted to forge an alliance with Weibo under the condition that it be enforced by marriage, the Princess had to break her promise to Yinniang, and Tian Ji’ian was married to Lady Tian (Zhou Yun). Rebellious to the point of putting her own life in danger, Yinniang was sent away to live under the tutelage of a Master nun (Sheu Fang-Yi). The nun taught Yinniang the ways of the sword over the years, but after failing to kill a target because he was in the presence of his son, she puts the young woman’s heart to the test. Yinniang must return to Weibo, after so many years have passed, and kill Tian Ji’an.

Most of that is history, told in stoical monologues by Yinniang’s aunt, her mother’s twin sister (Mei Yong), or by Tian Ji’ian to his concubine Huji (Hsin-Ying Hsieh). The plot becomes purposefully mystified by three narrative threads that are mostly woven between frames. The first is about one of Ji’ian’s generals, Tian Xing (Lei Zhen-Yu), who arouses panic in the Weibo council and must be escorted off the premises by the Lord Provost, Ji’an’s and Yinniang’s uncle (Ni Da-Hong). The second concerns a report given to Lady Tian about Huji’s faked period blood, which in turn introduces a mysterious sorcerer (Jacques Picoux). And the third is the involvement of a nameless mirror-polisher (Satoshi Tsumabuki), who ends up playing a key role in Tian Xing’s escort. Oh, how can I forget the nameless, masked assassin who gets in Yinniang’s way?

The narrative is as cloudy as the sky that presides like a silent judge over all of these activities. Steeped in Chinese mysticism and tradition, what maneuvers emotions in The Assassin are jades, mojo’s, tales of songbirds, and unspoken acts of mercy and kindness. Dialogue isn’t used as exposition for the action we are about to see or have seen, but exposition of events long since transpired. The very first thing we see in the film is a couple of donkeys, grazing and foreshadowing the kind of attention Hou will pay nature over the next two hours. One particularly jaw-dropping take sees Yinniang meeting her Master on a mountaintop, where the movement of the clouds is as important to the scene as the blocking, dialogue, performance, and cinematography. This all-encompassing and punctilious observation is no doubt going to mystify those audience members who are so accustomed to watching a plot-driven movie. And yet, those who pay careful attention know The Assassin‘s main plot is comprehensible, albeit one fully grasped on repeat viewings.

That’s not meant to be a slight to anyone who left The Assassin slightly confused the first time out. It’s meant as a compliment to Hou and his team – from production and costume designer Wen Ying-Huang to editor Chih-Chia Huang, cinematographer Lee and all the actors (most notably Shu Qi, who embodies Yinniang so seamlessly) – for transporting us back into the past so expertly. Every piece of fabric, every lantern, and every leaf in this film feels like it belongs with purpose, carrying within it its own rich history. Hou’s takes are long, and his camera movements are never rushed, but life’s current flows through the frames of The Assassin–-in the way her uncle looks at Yinniang, behind the curtains of Huji’s quarters, in Lady Tuan’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smile…—suffusing the picture with a mythical potency that feels remarkably present. The volatile nature of the narrative is thus a reflection of life as the ancient philosopher Lao Tzu meant it: “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” By abiding to this philosophy so wholeheartedly, and crafting his world so meticulously, Hou has attained the rarity of a perfect film.

Much like the heist at the centre of the film, Victoria is a bit of a risky, high-wire act in and of itself. The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, where its audacious gimmick earned the film’s cinematographer an award: the entire 140-minute film plays out in one take, with no cuts or digital trickery involved. This inevitably lumps Victoria into a group of recent films that utilize digital filmmaking to push duration and shot length to new extremes (one of the first examples of this, and probably the most notable one, was Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark). But once again, like with Birdman and this year’s The Tribe, the praise lavished upon director Sebastian Schipper is less about the quality of his film than the quantity of work put into it. As a piece of stunt directing, Victoria is easy to admire; as a film it’s an overlong drag, with its one take gimmick serving as a distraction from its inept story.

Opening on the titular character (Laia Costa) partying it up in a nightclub, she eventually leaves to go open up the café she works at. On her way, she bumps into Sonne (Frederick Lau) and his three friends, who drunkenly ask her to hang out with them after failing to steal a car in front of her. She (inexplicably) accepts their offer, and as they walk through the streets of Berlin, she tells Frederick about herself: She’s an immigrant from Spain, having just arrived in the city several weeks ago without any friends. For some reason, Schipper and co-writers Olivia Neergaard-Holm & Eike Frederik Schulz think that being an immigrant in a new city means losing one’s ability to think; after watching Sonne steal from a corner store, and then learning his hot-tempered friend Boxer (Franz Rogowski) just got out of jail, Victoria happily follows them to hang out on a rooftop for drinks. By this point, logic has all but vanished, and Victoria’s actions are more like transparent moves by the filmmakers to sustain a narrative than realistic bad choices of an actual human being.

The only excuse given for Victoria’s dismissal of the figurative danger signs flashing over these four men is her attraction to Sonne, which gets little development before Schipper drops it to get the real story going. After one of Sonne’s friends passes out from drinking too much, he asks Victoria to help drive him and his friends to some sort of meetup. She (once again, inexplicably) agrees to drive and winds up aiding in a bank robbery when a crime lord orders Boxer to steal a bunch of money to pay off his debts. And so these four idiots drive off, hoping to score some cash from their barely thought out scheme. Will their robbery turn out unsuccessful? Follow up: Does a bear shit in the woods?

There’s no denying that Victoria is one dumb movie, but its stupidity is far more tolerable than the likes of Birdman or The Tribe, which use their penchant for long takes to give themselves the appearance of being serious art. Victoria doesn’t really aspire to be anything more than a self-contained genre piece, and that makes its silliness both easy to swallow and easy to make fun of at the same time. Yes, these characters are so incompetent it’s easy to think they were home schooled by their own pets, but this makes it perversely enjoyable to watch their plans (rightfully) fall apart.

But maybe it’s a little unfair to pick apart the screenplay since little effort went into it (due to the nature of the production, dialogue had to be largely improvised—making the screenplay only a few pages). There should be a special mention for cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, since he pulls off a superhuman feat (indeed, in the end credits his name gets acknowledged before anyone else’s). It’s easy to marvel at what he pulled off, but it also goes to show why the one-take gimmick is difficult to sustain. By unfolding in real time, the ability for elliptical editing goes away, meaning that a large chunk of Victoria is made up of interludes, with characters traveling from point A to point B. All the time spent walking to another location, or waiting around in one area for the next story beat to come along, exposes the weak structure and mechanics of the whole operation. Nils Frahm’s score provides some nice music during these “down” moments, but it’s hard to shake the feeling of being stuck in some sort of cinematic waiting room.

Still, as always, the technical fortitude on display from pulling off a successful feature-length take makes Victoria not without merit. And Laia Costa does a great job too, fighting off her poor characterization with a charisma that helps when she goes into full-on survival mode post-heist. Her presence certainly helps when Victoria seemingly doesn’t know what to do with itself. There’s something funny about the single take—a choice usually meant to make it easier to immerse oneself into a film—as it actually shows off the artifice of this film. Which isn’t surprising given how thinly drawn out Victoria feels. There’s little else appealing here aside from this singular gimmick, and once people stop being impressed by that, it’s not likely to stay memorable. One-take wonder indeed.

Originally published as part of our coverage for the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

When it comes to Jafar Panahi, every new film of his is an event, and with every review of one of his latest works comes an explanation for why his new film(s) are so necessary. In 2010, Panahi was imprisoned and charged with several ridiculous crimes for publicly supporting Iran’s Green Movement. He was sentenced to six years in prison and received a 20-year ban on filmmaking, and since then Panahi has made three films: This is Not a Film, Closed Curtain and now Jafar Panahi’s Taxi. The first two films dealt with seclusion and fear; This is Not a Film took place largely in Panahi’s apartment (he was on house arrest), and Closed Curtain took place at a vacation home where he had to cover up the windows so no one could see him filming. But now, with Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, he’s doing his boldest move yet by going out into the streets of Tehran. It’s a surprisingly playful turn for Panahi, although it never distracts or dampens from the reality of his situation.

The set-up is simple, probably out of necessity. Panahi plays a taxi driver going around Tehran encountering a variety of people, all of whom address some sort of political and/or moral issue through whatever conversation or experience they have in the cab. Panahi uses stationary cameras in the taxi to capture all the action, mainly relying on a dashboard camera which he frequently pivots to whatever needs to be seen. The opening scene has him picking up a man and woman separately, with the man confusing the camera for a security system. He says thieves should be hanged in Iran, and that triggers off a debate with the woman over the death penalty and punishment. It’s a captivating discussion with a funny punchline; the man turns out to be a thief himself, but specifies that he only steals from people who deserve it, like people who steal from the poor.

But before there’s time to unpack the debate, Panahi starts piling on self-reflexive elements (fans of Panahi should come to expect this). His next passenger, a man who sells bootlegged films around town, immediately recognizes Panahi for who he is, and then claims the man and woman in the opening were actors (his evidence being that one of them repeated a line used in an earlier film by Panahi). There’s no distinction between reality and fiction in the film because Panahi doesn’t provide any explanations. It could be possible that some of his passengers are real, while others might be fake. It doesn’t really matter since every exchange feels natural, even when it goes broad (like when two old, superstitious women treat a trip to a fountain as a life or death situation).

One of Panahi’s greatest skills as a filmmaker is how he can weave such dense and thematically strong material into a film that can feel light on its feet. The questions of crime and punishment brought up at the beginning echoes throughout, like when a man didn’t report people who stole from him because he knew they were poor and acting out of desperation. It’s easy to interpret these conversations as pointed criticisms of Iran’s different institutions, but sometimes it’s easier to take them as just highly entertaining and funny scenes. Case in point: Panahi’s niece after he picks her up from school, who explains her school assignment where she has to make a film that follows Iran’s censorship rules. Her sassy, no bullshit attitude when it comes to talking with her uncle makes her immediately likable, and one of the film’s true highlights. Panahi must have realized the best way to go after his country’s censorship laws was to let a young child take them down for him.

And even though Jafar Panahi’s Taxi has plenty to enjoy and laugh at, it’s in the later sections of the film that Panahi reminds viewers of the risks he’s taking. He may be able to freely drive around the city, but the unsettling final scene puts the emphasis back on how dangerous Panahi’s harmless act of moviemaking is within his country (there are also no credits for the cast or crew aside from Panahi in order to keep them safe). Yet Jafar Panahi’s Taxi is an optimistic film in some ways. Much like the two films before it, it’s a sign of how even the biggest restrictions can’t pin down creativity. And if this is how creative Panahi can get when held prisoner, we can only imagine what he’ll be capable of once he gets his freedom. Hopefully that freedom will come sooner rather than later.

The whimsy nature of Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind) meets the adolescent exploration of the coming-of-age genre in Microbe & Gasoline. Following two young friends that build a house on wheels in order to take a road trip across France, Gondry surprisingly downplays the potentially fantastical elements of this premise. Sure, the filmmaker indulges in a backward dream sequence and a homemade house on wheels, but even the execution of those components is decidedly restrained in comparison to Gondry’s previous effort, his arts and craftsterpiece Mood Indigo. His latest film is an enchanting, youthful romp with a truly laissez-faire attitude towards growing up.

Daniel (Ange Dargent in his feature debut), nicknamed “Microbe” by his classmates for his diminutive size (though he points out he’s not the shortest kid in school), is a social outcast frustrated by being overlooked or mistaken for a girl. He avoids the other boys in school, preferring to sketch portraits of a girl he speaks to but won’t pursue. Daniel finds kinship with the arrival of Théo (Théophile Baquet), a new boy whose souped-up bicycle and engine-repair hobby earns him the name “Gasoline” (as well as snide comments about his diesel smell). When the pair grows tired of their school and their moms, Microbe & Gasoline hatch a plan to build a portable shelter to transport themselves around the countryside for the summer. Should it be a car? Should it have a shack? Why not both?

Microbe & Gasoline is less concerned with the consequences of the boys’ actions than it is with their routes to self-discovery. As the young teens leave behind their families, the film does as well. The policemen whom Daniel and Théo worry will disapprove of their unlicensed vehicle instead want a selfie with their jalopy RV. They undertake this journey with only minor complications. Rather than condescend to its protagonists, the story embodies the boys’ budding desire for independence and treats each moment with the level of significance it has to the film’s characters. Gondry demonstrates real affection for his naively inquisitive pair, and their funny, genuine but juvenile heart-to-hearts.

Despite its eccentricities, Microbe & Gasoline can’t help but feel overly familiar at times. Like too many of these unconfident adolescent stories, Daniel’s insecurities are largely alleviated by a slight makeover and a pep talk about a girl. His mopiness isn’t as engaging as Théo’s defiant goofiness. Among somewhat recent young male-skewing escapist semi-fantasy, 2013’s The Kings of Summer more effectively conveys the annoyance of being caught between childhood and maturity. What allows both of these movies to succeed is the specificity in the characterization of its leads. In Microbe & Gasoline, Daniel and Théo are distinct, charming young men that behave like actual teenagers.

Gondry’s work can feel devoid of cynicism. The only cynical characters in his latest movie are the stifling adults who aim to get in Daniel and Théo’s way. This might be too precious for some audiences, but their exuberant adventure is often fun enough to merit the idealism. The very French Microbe & Gasoline entertainingly captures the adolescent yearning for independence from an adult regimented world.

Leave it to the Danes to take what looks like a big ole quirk-fest and turn it into something much more disturbing. At the start, Anders Thomas Jensen’s film has all the makings for a light, quirky comedy about brotherhood. Brothers Gabriel (David Dencik) and Elias (Mads Mikkelsen) have a strained relationship but have to reunite once their father dies. Upon his death, the two watch a video left to them where their father reveals they were adopted and only half-brothers, sharing the same father but not the same mother (both mothers died during childbirth). With only the name of their biological father to go by, Gabriel eventually finds out that he lives on a tiny island with a population of just over 40 people. Gabriel and Elias head off and discover a series of dark, twisted and morbidly funny revelations about their family’s past.

The film’s introduction to its two main characters, with Gabriel missing his father’s death due to a gag reflex and Elias taking a break during a date to jerk off in a public washroom, implies that Men & Chicken will play out as a bland and juvenile comedy of eccentricities. Thankfully Jensen doesn’t go down a predictable route, instead changing the film’s location to the secluded island and making things get a lot weirder with the introduction of three other half-brothers (Nicolas Bro, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Soren Malling) that have basically been raised as animals. Quirks and peculiarities soon give way to slapstick hijinks once the five siblings begin operating on the same abnormal wavelength, and Jensen introduces more sadistic pieces of information until, by the end, Men & Chicken is like a Cronenberg film crossed with your average Sundance family drama. Jensen and his game cast (especially Mikkelsen, who’s hard to recognize at points) make it work too, and turn Men & Chicken into a film that’s just as strange as it is entertaining.

An early scene in Homesick finds the protagonist, Charlotte (Ine Wilmann), at her best friend’s wedding reception. After a series of relatively mundane conversations and wedding activities, the DJ drops the beat and many of the guests begin to let loose, and the dance floor erupts into chaos. It’s quite metaphorical of what’s to come, as Homesick is a slow-burning character study that eventually reaches an intense boiling point, but not until director Anne Sewitsky meticulously constructs some of the most uncomfortable circumstances imaginable.

Charlotte, a dance instructor who seems to be sleepwalking through her twenties, yearns for the traditional family she always dreamed of having. When Henrik (Simon J. Berger), the half-brother Charlotte had never met, unexpectedly arrives to Charlotte’s dance studio, she’s given the chance to have the familial bond she always wanted. As the two siblings get to know each other, their feelings quickly transition from friendly to sexual, and Charlotte and Henrik are forced to come to somewhat disturbing terms about their relationship.

Intelligently, Sewitsky never outright judges the characters for their incestuous tendencies. Incest is such a wildly taboo subject that the safe route would easily have been to demonize the siblings, but Sewitsky takes an almost documentarian-like stance on the matter. Strangely enough, Charlotte ends up becoming quite a sympathetic character. All she wants in life is to feel the love of her biological family; she just goes about attaining it in an unconventional way.

Wilmann is nothing short of brilliant in the lead role, and it’s hard to believe that Homesick is her first film acting experience. Naturalistic performances across the board result in some deeply flawed characters who are easy to cheer for and all too relatable at times. Thankfully, there are no caricatures or one-dimensional characters found in the film. Charlotte has plenty of issues, sure, but she’s also a contributing member of society who cracks jokes, runs her own business, and seems to love working with children. These admirable character traits make it even more impactful when her true intentions with Henrik are revealed, and we discover that the young woman has quite a few issues.

Given that the stakes aren’t particularly high—nor is there an actual physical antagonist in the film—Homesick is surprisingly suspenseful at times. It’s a different kind of sexual thriller, the tension lies in the unknown—in the future of Charlotte and Henrik’s disturbing relationship. As they grow closer, Charlotte realizes that Henrik isn’t the kind-hearted family man she expected. Instead, he’s an occasionally abusive hot head with selfish tendencies. Still, Sewistky avoids slipping into overdramatic Lifetime movie territory by keeping the story grounded and honest.

Beautiful, effective editing from Christoffer Heie helps the film keep a steady, methodical pace. Heie and Sewistky deserve major kudos for making the brilliant, albeit dangerous, decision to frequently use jarring transitions. Thankfully, almost all of these cuts make up for their lack of fluidity with a sincere, emotional outcome. There’s a certain bravery on display in the quick transitions from lighthearted scenes of Charlotte teaching young children dance routines to sweaty, grimy sequences of her having sex.

Homesick is a very different kind of story, and is sure to polarize viewers who may feel uncomfortable with its incestuous subject matter. But those who approach it with an open mind are sure to be able to appreciate the immense technical skill that is put on display from start to finish. Homesick is a wonderful, audacious film that challenges its audience, and serves as a brilliant debut for its lead actress and director.

It’s been over a decade since Lucile Hadzihalilovic baffled people in the best way with her incredible and underseen debut, Innocence, but now she’s back to show off her incredibly singular style with Evolution. From the opening, Hadzihalilovic (aided by cinematographer Manu Dacosse) wastes no time showing how much her unique vision has been desperately missed. A series of underwater shots around the coral reef of the film’s isolated location (shot on the Canary Islands, it looks like another planet altogether) are a feast for the senses, and the sensuous visuals continue throughout. But unlike Innocence, where Hadzihalilovic followed young girls in a similarly enigmatic and potentially sinister location, Evolution switches the focus to young boys and brings the darkness to the forefront.

On the edge of the island, where the small village of white houses stands out next to the black sand on the beach, 10-year-old Nicolas (Max Brebant) discovers the dead body of a boy around his age at the bottom of the ocean. He tells his mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier) about it, but she dismisses him; and the next day Nicolas goes back to find the body no longer there. Even before the cover-up, Hadzihalilovic makes it clear that something seriously abnormal is going on. The only people on the island are other boys, and each of them has a “mother.” The mothers all dress in the same bland, brown dress; pull their hair back; and feed their children what looks like bowls of boiled gunk scraped up at the bottom of the sea. Nicolas, unlike the other boys around him, is growing increasingly aware that his situation might not be a safe one.

And that’s all before Nicolas and his friends are shipped off to a medical facility on the island, where nurses start conducting experiments on the boys. Going into the undefined horrors in store for Nicolas and his friends would ruin the surprises Hadzihalilovic has in store, which evoke names like Lynch and Cronenberg. But comparing Hadzihalilovic to other filmmakers feels somewhat unnecessary and more like a need to find something tangible when trying to describe her work. Hadzihalilovic simply doesn’t make films like anyone else, and if her narrative falters—largely because narrative takes a back seat for her—it’s made up for by a command of mood and atmosphere that’s unparalleled. This is Evolution’s greatest strength.

With Innocence, Hadzihalilovic played things extremely close to the chest, and with her follow-up she loosens her grip just a little. That doesn’t mean it won’t be hard to figure out what exactly is going on throughout Evolution, but it will certainly be easier to guess than her debut (also worth mentioning again since it’s remarkable: this is only her second feature). There are times where the film’s small hints of information lead to some of its most unforgettable images, like when Nicolas discovers what exactly the mothers do at night when they walk out to the beach. Other times, like when Nicolas befriends hospital nurse Stella (Roxane Duran), the film comes perilously close to introducing exposition and breaking its own spell. Thankfully it doesn’t get to that point, but there are times where Hadzihalilovic seems lost at sea when it comes to figuring out how to leave out vital breadcrumbs to her audience.

But as I said, the benefit of Evolution is that plot doesn’t really matter. This is a film about nailing down a tone that walks the line between dream and nightmare, teetering on either side throughout. And in that respect, Evolution succeeds. It’s by far one of, if not the best looking film of the year, with images that look like paintings come to life. The constant presence and role of water in the film (tied directly in with the protective, maternal relationships between the women and children on the island) make it easy to get submerged in the otherworldly sights and sounds. Whether it’s for good or bad reasons, Evolution is a film that will linger in the mind long after seeing it. I just hope it won’t be as long of a wait before Hadzihalilovic works again.

Now on his 17^th feature, Hong Sang-soo has created yet another story about film directors, the women they pine over, and lots of soju. Hong’s films tend to play out in a similar fashion, to the point where it wouldn’t be unreasonable to claim he’s been remaking the same film for most of his career. But it would be unfair to dismiss Hong’s work as one-note, due to his tendency of experimenting with form. Stories can repeat themselves, the laws of time and space break in two, and stories can reflect and refract within themselves. This playing with form can suddenly turn what appears to be a flighty effort into something more substantial; it makes Hong’s common themes of love and regret more resonant as a result. Right Now, Wrong Then sees Hong continuing to do what he knows best, although the results are lacking compared to some of his more recent fare.

Those familiar with Hong’s work shouldn’t be surprised by the plot. Director Ham Chunsu (Jung Jae-young) comes to the city of Suwon to present one of his films at a local festival, but he arrives a day early due to a miscommunication. With nothing to do, he wanders the city, eventually bumping into Yoon Heejung (Kim Min-hee), a young woman Chunsu quickly falls for. Chunsu quickly sweet talks Heejung into joining him for a coffee, and the two wind up spending the entire day together. Chunsu comes across as a bit of an egotistical person (it doesn’t help that almost everyone in the film heaps praise on him and his work), and after drinking too much as a sushi bar, he starts being a lot more explicit to Heejung about his feelings for her. Things eventually go sour, though, once Heejung takes Chunsu to her friend’s, and they expose Chunsu’s womanizing ways. Heejung, devasted to learn that her new friend is actually married, abruptly leaves, and Chunsu winds up flipping out the next day at his screening’s Q&A.

At that point, Right Now, Wrong Then literally resets itself. Now with a proper title card (the film’s first half opened with the title Right Then, Wrong Now), the day starts over, and Chunsu’s meet up with Heejung plays out with a few slight differences that increase exponentially as the day goes on. By making the second half of the film a slight variation on the first, the focus on the film changes significantly; with the general frame and story already known, attention goes to the smaller details to find changes between each part. By contextualizing every interaction, camera movement, and line of dialogue down to a micro level, Hong emphasizes the importance of how these seemingly small elements can shape the way people behave and interact. Pay enough attention to Right Then, Wrong Now and Right Now, Wrong Then, and there will be small rewards, whether it’s events or statements that can suddenly change the meaning of an action or line portrayed before.

But does Hong’s film really work at what it’s going for? In this case, not really. Unlike the three-part narrative of In Another Country, the Groundhog Day-esque repetition of The Day He Arrives, or the jumbled narrative of Hill of Freedom, the repeated halves simply don’t have much to delve into, and with the film’s two-hour runtime, things drag significantly once Hong’s point establishes itself. Hong’s low-key humour and dry comedy also feel sorely missed here (or, perhaps, it was too subdued for me to find it effective), with a lot of the film amounting to watching characters have rather dull conversations. It’s all disappointingly stale for Hong, especially after his highly entertaining Hill of Freedom last year. By now, Hong has shown that his variations on the same story can lead to some truly funny and thought-provoking material; Right Now, Wrong Then feels more like a slight misstep than anything else for Hong. There’s no sign that he’s lost his touch, but in this case, his experiment is less successful than his previous ones.

There are missteps, and then there’s stepping off a cliff, and that distinction couldn’t be clearer while watching Journey to the Shore. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest film starts out as a sort of middle ground between his earlier genre films (Kairo, Cure) and the weighty drama he mastered in Tokyo Sonata before turning into a turgid mess. Over two hours in length, Journey to the Shore is, quite literally, all about the journey, which in this case feels like the slowest funeral march imaginable. It’s a film whose terrible qualities sting more than anything, since Kurosawa’s best days seem to be behind him. To say that he missed the mark with this film would be incorrect, because it would imply he was aiming at something to begin with.

At the very least, Kurosawa starts things off with a promising premise (he, along with co-writer Takashi Ujita, adapted the screenplay from a novel by Kazumi Yumoto): Piano teacher Mizuki (Eri Fukatsu) comes home to her apartment to find her husband Yusuke (Tadanobu Asano) literally appearing out of thin air while she does the dishes. Yusuke drowned in the ocean three years earlier, and despite his body never being found, there’s no plot twist or rational explanation here: Yusuke is 100% dead, his body devoured by crabs soon after he died. For some reason, his spirit has returned, looking and acting like any other human being, and he offers Mizuki the chance to go on a journey with him across the country. She accepts, and the film switches gears into an episodic narrative as they travel from one place to another, meeting people (including other normal-looking ghosts) that Yusuke has come to know in the years since his death.

This is where, despite my negativity towards the film (which comes from a place of disappointment more than anything), Journey to the Shore excels. There’s something bewildering and fascinating about the way Kurosawa creates a new mythology around death that fundamentally goes against all logic. Some dead people move on to the afterlife while others stay behind, living ordinary lives while fully aware of the fact that they’re a ghost. Mizuki and Yusuke’s first stop takes them to a village where they stay with Mr. Shimakage (Masao Komatsu), a newspaper distributor who used to employ Yusuke. He turns out to be a ghost too and eventually reveals a deep regret over mistreating his wife, presumed to be dead or long gone by now. The segment delves into themes of regret that come with the loss of a loved one, and Kurosawa ends his protagonists’ visit on an image that quickly changes from eerie to moving.

That scene doesn’t come close to matching what comes next, as the couple’s next stop finds them working at a small restaurant by the sea. There’s a self-contained sequence where Mizuki talks to the restaurant’s co-owner about a piano she keeps upstairs, and what follows is remarkable in the way Kurosawa’s framing, theatricality, and use of music coalesce into an emotionally charged moment that simultaneously evokes the pain of loss and the opportunity to move on from it. It’s a sequence that is, by far, the best thing Kurosawa has achieved in a long time, and a clear sign of the potential masterwork the film could have been.

But that’s only the first hour or so of Journey to the Shore, and for the next half, Kurosawa slowly dismantles everything he deftly establishes through the first two episodes. After a blowup between Mizuki and Yusuke reveals that things weren’t always perfect between the two, the film appears to reset itself, even going for the possibility of an “it was all a dream” explanation. There’s a brief detour, and then Yusuke magically reappears, whisking his wife off to a farm owned by yet another ghost. At this point, everything stalls, and the recurring link between guilt and mourning dissipate in favour of an attempt to add some sort of logic to the way death works in the film’s universe. It’s a classic case of ruining the mystery, and it’s absolutely unnecessary. The same goes for a subplot introduced about a couple going through a similar situation, except by the time this story resolves itself, it’s difficult to understand what exactly Kurosawa’s purpose might be. Or maybe it’s just that watching everything slowly fade into indiscernible white noise makes it impossible to care enough to try and figure it out.

And that’s why Journey to the Shore can feel so infuriating in how much it squanders the foundation it built. On a meta level, as a fan of Kurosawa, it’s easy to feel like the characters in this film at times— unable to accept that his ability to make genuinely great films has pretty much died. Watching Journey to the Shore is similar to watching an EKG machine show a few beeps before flatlining. I don’t want to say goodbye to Kurosawa, but like Mizuki, perhaps it’s time to finally let go.

Following its debut as the Un Certain Regard opener at Cannes last year, Party Girl went on to win the Camera D’Or and Best Ensemble awards at the festival. Written and directed by Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger, and Samuel Theis, the film is inspired by the real-life mother of one of the young French filmmakers. You wouldn’t know by just watching the film, but read any press notes or review and they mention the lead actress portraying the mother is the real-life person the story is based on. It’s impressive considering the incredible performance she gives, but it also explains how deeply personal Party Girl is to these filmmakers. Unfortunately, committing to this true story seems to be more crucial for the filmmakers than it is for those watching it.

60-year-old Angélique (Angélique Litzenburger) likes to party. In fact, she does it for a living. As a cabaret hostess, her duties include flirting with men to entice them into buying expensive champagne, often dancing provocatively and drinking with her clients. Angélique has served many clients in the past, but her only regular client at the moment, Michel (Joseph Bour), recently stopped showing up at the dimly lit and noisy cabaret. She tracks him only to learn his absence is due to the overpriced champagne and his recent revelation that lap dances only provide temporary fulfillment. He wants something more; a meaningful relationship, one that doesn’t require him to purchase booze or buy time with a woman like she’s an object.

To Angélique’s surprise, Michel abruptly asks for her hand in marriage. She thinks it’s a joke at first. After all, in her line of work it’s common for guys to propose in the moment. But she realizes the offer is real, and suddenly she must decide between the chaotic party life she’s always known, or a settled-down relationship offering stability though little excitement.

There’s a point in everyone’s life when they realize they’ve matured beyond behavior that was once acceptable. For most this comes instinctively. But forAngélique, who has spent most of her life working as a cabaret girl, letting go of that lifestyle is no simple task. Angélique finds it’s nearly impossible to escape from her usual way of life; her instincts long for socializing, a part of her that may never change.

But she’s willing to give married life a shot. This decision leads to an awkward encounter with a marriage advisor when the two are asked how they met. Both of them are understandably embarrassed that they met at a cabaret, yet the film doesn’t focus on this humility for more than a fleeting moment. Which is part of the larger disappointment of Party Girl. While the filmmakers don’t attempt to manipulate emotions by savoring moments like these, they gloss over their comedic and dramatic potential, undermining their significance. Therefore, emotional weight is only suggested and never truly felt. Getting a chance to reform is a big step for Angélique, but Party Girl‘s nonchalant procedure implies that we better not get our hopes up. The film foreshadows the inevitability of her fate long before we have time to sympathize with her or her situation.

Considering it’s the filmmaker’s own mother playing an altered version of herself it’s no wonder the narrative feels personal. The problem is that it’s so personal the story excludes outsiders from joining this party. With such matter-of-fact presentation, it doesn’t come as much surprise to find that Angélique has another secret in her life that she does her best to avoid. Angélique doesn’t want to change, and frankly, viewers won’t be invested enough to feel any different.

Jack is a striking biopic that forays into the enigma of controversial criminal Jack Wunterberg whose case of the early ’90s went largely unresolved. In fact, sophomore director Elisabeth Scharang (In Another Lifetime) is so flexible and supplementary in her approach to telling the ghastly tale, that it feels like a mockery of the incident, or perhaps even a merciless exploitation of Jack. However, this is an effective approach, as the psychographic pieces are powerful and go the distance of novelty.

Jack is a killer. He is first convicted of murder in 1974 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. This initial murder is the launching point. From then on, the narrative coils between a few brash scenes in prison, many sexual encounters with women upon release, and triumphant times of success with the intellectual elite in Vienna. Jack becomes a writer, his typewriter is his saviour and words are his freedom. “Time is running… but my time stands still,” Jack narrates as he sits engulfed in the writing of his novel. Despite the public knowing of Jack’s earlier crime, they are clearly able to look beyond it and take the man as an artist devoid of circumstance. The revolving point for Jack’s story comes when prostitutes begin to go missing again in Vienna. Is Jack still a killer? “Once a murderer, always a murderer?” Jack asks his fellows in his feverish tone and his sunken cheekbones expressing a callous look.

Johannes Krish (Revanche) plays Jack with as much virtuosity as you’d expect from a psychopathic character. Although he is never labelled as a psychopath, Scharang is careful to raise more questions than she answers about the man. Bold colours, costumes, Austrian pop music (Naked Lunch mix the soundtrack), devilish performances, and candid material seek to match this film with the likes of other psycho-thrillers, such as the work of Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, Drive, Only God Forgives) and even the deftly affecting films of Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful). The linchpin with all these films is in the distressing performances. And here, Krish is so volatile that we can never second-guess his actions and where the plot will lead him.

As gripping and haunting as sequences of the film may be, it isn’t without a fair share of laughs, most of which place the audience right along the mischief of Jack’s own rotten behaviour. His charm for the truth and poetry in all things can become attractive, which would explain his relentless womanizing qualities. An elderly architect falls deeply for Jack. He is boundless in expressing his desire for her and making her feel wanted, but he quickly becomes reproachable, as games turn sour with a severe disposition of rage. Jack’s feelings have been bottled since childhood—no surprise there—but he is adamant to find success by following his own path in life. In fact, Jack is so obstinate that he will become noted that he does indeed claim that title, hence the success of his writing. It is slightly ironic, but persistence often meets great reward.

This character study seems like familiar territory, Jake Gyllenhaal’s recent performance in Nightcrawler comes to mind. But Jack is a biopic that doesn’t just wish to track a narrative of one insane man, it’s far more interested with bigger questions and in actually hiding the facts (an interesting dichotomy considering much of the film was developed on factual evidence). There’s very little exposition in the film and things end up piecing together as it goes. There’s a beautiful Terrence Malick quality of well-poised shots of nature and wilderness, which makes a stirring mix with the precariously sadistic tone of the film. Human beings all warrant their shades of grey, and Scharang isn’t afraid to question the status quo.

For a story that feels directly inspired from the director’s personal life, Mia Madre feels surprisingly bland. Nanni Moretti’s latest film focuses on Margherita (Margherita Buy), a director working on the troubled production of her latest film. Her on-set troubles come in the form of Barry Huggins (John Turturro), an American actor with a bloated ego; off set, Margherita and her brother (Nanni Moretti) have to deal with their mother’s (Giulia Lazzarini) failing health. Both children know that, with their mother, getting better isn’t an option; it’s only a matter of when she’ll pass on, and the impending death soon takes its toll on Margherita’s health and well-being.

Moretti faced a similar issue several years ago; his mother passed away while he was working on his 2011 film We Have a Pope, so it feels a bit strange watching Mia Madre unfold in such a bland and detached manner. Moretti throws in one clue after another about Margherita’s psychological condition, and his weaving in of dreams and fantasy sequences (all shot in the same way, making it hard to discern what’s real and fake at certain moments) does a fine job of establishing his protagonist’s fraught mental state. But none of it really coalesces into anything definitive about Margherita. It all feels fragmented, making certain sequences—like one where Margherita purposely smashes her mom’s car after catching her driving—feel baffling or out of place. Moretti makes it impossible to find anything about Margherita worth latching on to, and as a result, the central drama over her mother’s passing falls flat.

At least Mia Madre benefits from its cast. Moretti and Lazzarini feel somewhat wasted (Margherita’s mother barely registers as a character, which also contributes to why there’s almost no emotion in the film), but Buy and Turturro keep the film from being entirely forgettable. The shoddy script makes Buy’s characterization weak, but she does a terrific job expressing the strain of keeping herself together professionally while her personal life goes to hell (in other words, her behaviour may not be relatable but her emotions are). And Turturro turns out to be the lifeblood of Mia Madre, making Barry a frequently funny and bombastic presence who’s seemingly dedicated to pushing Margherita even closer to the edge. But the talent of these two performances might only be magnified here when compared to the very miniscule drama going on elsewhere in the film. The only thing Moretti achieves with Mia Madre is something that was most likely unintended: he managed to make a film about the death of a parent that inspired nothing but complete indifference.

Living in front of cameras that never stop rolling and existing in the presence of an often vicious social media congregation, Caitlyn Jenner, who for four decades had best been known as US Olympic hero Bruce Jenner, announced she was transgender. It’s a new thing for most people, this transgenderism, but Jenner has brought it to the forefront of the world’s mind. And while there are a lot of questions the world might have about those identifying as transgender, the one that keeps coming to my mind is this: how much pain have transgenders suffered while spending lifetimes pretending to be something they are not?

Director Alexandra-Therese Keining’s drama, Girls Lost, looks at the genesis of that kind of pain when a teen wonders if she is actually a boy trapped in a girl’s body.

Kim, Momo, and Bella (respectively Tuva Jagell, Louise Nyvall, and Wilma Holmén) are the closest of friends and they need to be. Outcasts at school, the teen trio are physically and verbally bullied on a regular basis—at times brutally so—by classmates who are enraged only by the hateful notion the girls might be lesbians. Nothing more. Their teachers allow the bullying to happen.

One day, while seeking solace in the greenhouse in Bella’s back yard, the girls find a mysterious-looking seed among the usual horticultural fare. They plant it, and by morning a flower is fully grown. Burning with curiosity (but understandably a little scared), the girls drink nectar from the flower. Soon after, they magically transform into boys, albeit temporarily, giving them a chance to experience life the way the opposite sex experiences it, both inside and out. This opportunity, however, brings with it consequences the girls might not be ready for.

Girls Lost is one of those films where to explain a little more wouldn’t make much sense. At a high level, this film deals with themes including love, friendship, bullying, sexual identity, absentee parents, and even addiction. A lot happens in 106 minutes, and while all the goings-on are worthy of inclusion in a story like this, to attempt to tackle them en masse prevents sufficient exploration of themes beyond their labels. This everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach also demands shortcuts to be taken.

Some of those shortcuts undermine the development of characters. While the gaggle of mean teens can remain at surface level, a pair of main characters is woefully two-dimensional and ought not be. Their actions, then, ring a little hollow because they seem to be doing things for the sake of having something to do. Therein lies another short-cut problem: most of the conflict in this film is not conflict at all, but rather a series of obstacles meant to impede the progress of a character or give them something to solve to get to the next point. There is never a sense that a deeper solution is being explored.

The struggle with sexual identity, and during during puberty no less (the most difficult time in an adolescent’s life), is the main theme here. But it’s hampered by the very construct that makes the film so unique. One of the girls wonders aloud (in painfully overt dialogue) if she is a boy. When the magic flower turns her into a boy, her struggle is over; she knows she should be a boy. Because the “Who am I?” question is answered so early, when she reverts back to being a girl her pursuits are no longer about finding herself—they become about getting more nectar (there’s the addiction part) to become a boy again, so she can pursue a love interest while she is in male form.

Keining then doubles-down, creating a love triangle among the girl, her romantic interest, and a third (established) character. Because the girl frequently changes gender via the magic nectar, the love triangle twists the gender-bend. It’s all so mad, really, and what once tried to be a film about deep things quickly devolves in the third act to become another pouty, “Why don’t you love me?” teen melodrama. Although one with a set-up I’ve never seen before.

But there’s some positives to Girls Lost too. The trio of actresses are terrific, especially Tuva Jagell as Kim. And the boys who play the girls as boys—Emrik Öhlander as Kim, Alexander Gustavsson (as Momo) and Vilgot Ostwald Vesterlund (as Bella)—do well to capture the wonder one might experience in such a unique situation. The film also has some fine lighter moments, especially when the girls look at themselves in the mirror after transforming.

Speaking of that transformation, the VFX used to show it onscreen are top-notch. It would have been easy for Keining to use clever blocking and heavy editing to make the point, but instead she shows the girls transforming. It helps immensely that the boys bear great resemblances to the girls (a fine bit of casting), but the transformation is subtle to the point of requiring a double-take.

To pivot off that, Keining is incredibly strong with her overall visual presentation (aided by gorgeous lensing from Ragna Jorming). There isn’t a scene nor setting Keining can’t handle. This includes several hours of day and night, as well as some sublime underwater shots. The director also knows when camera movement is most effective. Her handling of the film’s tenderest moments—mostly involving the trio of girls early in the picture—is deeply moving.

Girls Lost is an incredibly ambitious undertaking, and if anything can be said about Keining, who adapted the screenplay from a popular Swedish YA novel, it’s that she is undaunted in the face of both delicate and intricate material. It might not always work, but her combination of strengths and her bold attempt at storytelling make this film—and Keining’s future—is well worth the time to pay attention to.

Five years after being banned from filmmaking for 20 years, Jafar Panahi returns with his third film since his sentencing with Jafar Panahi’s Taxi. With his first post-sentencing film This is Not a Film taking place within the confines of his apartment, and his follow-up Closed Curtain taking place in a vacation home, Taxi sees Panahi making his most audacious protest yet by heading out into the streets of Tehran. Panahi plays a taxi driver, and to get around “directing” he lets the film play out through small cameras mounted in the car on the dashboard and back seat. Over the course of a day, Panahi picks up a variety of eccentric passengers who double as conduits to bring up issues of morality, religion, crime, censorship, and a whole host of other important issues. For those familiar with Panahi’s films none of this should come as a surprise; for those who aren’t as familiar, Taxi should act as a terrific entry point for people new to Panahi’s incredible acts of defiance.

Right from the opening, where two passengers argue over what the punishment for thieves should be (he says the death penalty, she says not the death penalty), it’s easy to get hooked in by Panahi’s ability to approach such an important theme through a conversation that flows so naturally. But it turns out that’s just a warm-up, because Panahi brings in more characters and stories that keep Taxi going at a fast, entertaining pace: a man selling bootleg videos who recognizes Panahi for who he really is, two superstitious old women trying to stay alive, and a motorcycle accident that winds up dealing with women’s rights are just a few situations Panahi finds himself in. But the best part of the film has to be Panahi’s niece (Note: due to the film being made illegally, no one in the film gets credited except for Panahi), whose no-nonsense attitude and attempts to make a short film that fits the government’s guidelines for an acceptable film (for example: films must not contain “sordid realism”) make her easily walk away with the entire film. Beyond just being yet another astounding act of protest from Panahi, and an example of how creative one can be when restricted, Taxi is just a fun, thought-provoking movie from the beginning to its (unsettling) end.

On paper, Marcin Wrona’s Demon should be a cliché-ridden tale of a demonic possession and the effect it has on a young couple’s relationship. After all, that’s the template for a handful of genre films that are released every single year. But Wrona’s latest is not your typical possession story—it’s something entirely different.

Piotr (Italy Tiran) arrives in a small town in rural Poland to marry his fiancé, Żaneta (Agnieszka Zulewska), on her family’s homestead. Shortly before the wedding, the groom-to-be discovers skeletal remains in the family’s backyard. Despite initially brushing off the macabre discovery, Piotr begins to suspect something sinister is afoot when he sees flashes of a dead woman lurking around the wedding. As Piotr begins acting erratically, the guests believe at first to be epileptic attacks, but then are quickly diagnosed as the acts of a man possessed by a Jewish demon known as the dybbuk. As tensions grow, the wedding party attempts to save the groom from certain death while simultaneously preventing the entire ceremony from erupting into chaos.

Despite its inherently dark and supernatural elements, make no mistake about it; Demon is not a horror movie. To be perfectly honest, it’s a stretch to even label it as a psychological thriller. It’s a movie that is almost impossible to put it into a specific box because of its seemingly endless layers. For much of the film, Demon plays out like a traditional drama and then swiftly transitions into a pseudo-comedic tale of a seemingly cursed wedding. Even the dybbuk—the film’s sole villain—isn’t imposing and has the appearance of a lovely, albeit dead, young woman. Still, there are some legitimate horror aspects throughout, including a very on-the-nose homage to The Shining. But Demon is as much in line with My Big Fat Greek Wedding as it is with Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece.

There’s a distinct sense of humor on display, but the screenplay (which is co-written by Wrona and Pawel Maslona) doesn’t feature many setups or punch lines. Instead, the levity arrives through the guests’ confused, frustrated, and indifferent reactions to the absurdity that occurs once Piotr begins to see the dybbuk. The film’s most significant comedic relief comes in the form of a priest who desperately wants to leave the wedding, but constantly runs into roadblocks that prevent him from leaving the reception. Without a driver’s license, the priest is eventually forced to catch a ride home with an atheist doctor who has had one too many celebratory drinks. The entire sequence should feel completely out of place in a film like Demon, but it somehow manages to work.

Utilizing naturalistic performances, the acting is good across the board. As Piotr begins to crack under the pressure of the dybbuk’s presence, Tiran expresses paranoia through eerie physicality. While his reactions are chaotic and exhausting, they’re never over-the-top or silly. The real meat of the film comes from the family’s conflicting reactions to Piotr’s illness or possession, and the dramatic scenes of heated debate on the issue are finely acted and engaging.

Sadly, Demon doesn’t really go anywhere, and the end of the film leaves you asking if the destination was truly worth the strenuous journey. Given its subject matter and the atmospheric, haunting, and mildly creepy first act, it’s frustrating that there aren’t any significant scares or notable payoffs. Demon is unlikely to do for awkward Polish weddings what Jaws did for the ocean, but it’s the first truly unique take on the all-too-crowded possession sub-genre to come along in some time, and there’s something to be said for that.

Brotherly bonds get quite the test in The Ardennes, a surprisingly tense and entertaining spin on a familiar tale from first-time director Robin Pront. Opening with a robbery gone wrong, Dave (Jeroen Perceval, who also co-wrote the film with Pront) leaves his brother Kenneth (Kevin Janssens) behind, taking off with Kenneth’s girlfriend Sylvie (Veerle Baetens). Kenneth refuses to rat on his brother and girlfriend, so he gets the maximum punishment. Cut to four years later, and Dave picks up Kenneth from prison after he serves his term. Kenneth is excited to get back into the swing of things, but Dave has been withholding two bombshells from him: Dave and Sylvie became a couple while Kenneth was in prison, and now they’re expecting a child. And since Kenneth is a huge mass of masculine fury with a short fuse, they’re concerned about how he’ll take the news.

The question of whether or not Kenneth will find out about his brother and Sylvie is the sort of old, clichéd material that feels worn out by now, and when Pront & Perceval’s script leans on this The Ardennes can start feeling awfully generic. But the screenplay makes up for its narrative shortcomings by having a strong and rich thematic core, with Dave and Sylvie trying to climb their way out from below the poverty line to live a standard life (“I just want to be dull,” Sylvie says at one point). Kenneth’s release from prison puts a wrench into their plans, and his menacing presence in their lives serves as a reminder of their selfish decision four years earlier, threatening to drag them back down to the place they’ve tried so hard to escape from.

Pront and director of photography Robrecht Heyvaert give the film a slick, grimy look that heightens the dramatic stakes, highlighting the poor living conditions and little opportunities for escape. Perceval and Janssens work great together as the two battling brothers, but Baetens—who people might recognize from her excellent turn in The Broken Circle Breakdown—is fantastic as Sylvie. An unexpected turn in the film’s final act that moves things to rural Belgium brings a touch of the eccentric and surreal that might prove divisive, but it all leads to a highly intense and brutal climax that’ll make sure people won’t forget about The Ardennes after they see it. The finale’s nihilism might turn some viewers off, but it sure as hell leaves a mark, and that counts for something.