Tag Archives: Anna Diop

New In Theaters

The Cost of Doing Business

Leave a comment

The Man in My Basement

by George Wolf

You see Willem Dafoe is starring in a film called The Man in My Basement, and you suspect things could get freaky – in ways both hilarious and perverse. But if you’re at all familiar with Walter Mosley’s source novel, you know this basement business will deal in the bonds of history, the questions of philosophy and the responsibility of heritage.

The basement belongs to Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins), an African American man in Sag Harbor whose life is slowly unraveling. With his parents deceased, Charles lives alone in his ancestral home, surrounded by artifacts he only values for possible sale.

Unemployed, Charles spends his days drinking, gambling and aimlessly drifting through life. With no motivation or prospects, Charles has little hope of saving the house from foreclosure, until Anniston Bennet (Dafoe) shows up on his door with an unusual offer.

If Bennet can rent the basement of the house, he’ll pay Charles one thousand dollars a day for 65 days. And he’ll pay in cash. What luck.

But of course, once Bennet moves in, Charles begins to discover the strings attached to the offer, and director Nadia Latif – adapting the screenplay with Mosley – zeroes in on the psychological battle downstairs.

Hawkins is impressive, with an understated approach that lends valuable authenticity to Charles’s gradual awakening. Through conversations with Bennet, and his growing friendship with a local curator (Anna Diop), Charles begins to the see the world – and his place in it – in an important new light.

Bennet’s unusual charm seems effortless for Dafoe. Is he angel or devil? Teacher or student? Prisoner or warden? From the minute Bennet’s offer is accepted, you know there will be consequences, and Dafoe has little problem upping the ante with a persuasive intensity.

Latif’s defiant final shot lands more securely than the attempts to paint the film as more of a danger-filled thriller than it really is. Charles’s nightmares seem more tailored to beefing up the trailer than the narrative, ultimately adding to a frustrating superficiality that dulls the edges of otherwise compelling themes.

The meaningful weight is found in the back and forth between Charles and Bennet. Hawkins and Dafoe flesh out both similarities and differences, and how each man is changed from the encounter. It is in these moments that the film finds its voice, and you end up wanting to push aside the overt symbolism, hoping to find a little more boundary pushing.

New In Theaters

Help

Leave a comment

Nanny

by Hope Madden

Senegalese transplant Aisha (a transfixing Anna Diop) cares for a little girl whose mother works too much and whose father is often away. Aisha’s care is tinged with her own deep well of sadness and guilt at handing the care of her own son Lamine over to a friend back in Senegal. But this job will allow her to finally pay for the flight to bring Lamine to NYC, and just in time for his birthday.

Writer/director Nikyatu Jusu’s feature debut employs fantastical elements, but her Nanny is never an outright horror film. Aisha’s visions, though thoroughly spooky and potentially dangerous, speak to the fear, powerlessness and profound sadness facing a woman forever making impossible choices, regardless of the country.

Jusu gives these folklore-rooted images purpose as Aisha awakens to the real nightmare that the American Dream so often becomes. As self-pitying employer Amy (Michelle Monaghan) works long hours to compete in a man’s world, she shorts Aisya’s pay while taking advantage of her time. Reuniting with Lamine feels less and less likely. Helplessness, hopelessness and anger grow.

Jusu’s lighthanded with true horror, a choice that benefits the film because its honesty is horror enough. Diop conveys more with a glance or a sigh than any scaly monster or hairy spider could ever display. Her command of this character’s melancholy and rage is extraordinary.

The addition of Leslie Uggams as Aisha’s love interest Malik’s (Singua Walls) grandmother introduces exposition and explanations that feel slightly forced, particularly compared to the nuance defining the rest of the film. But it’s a slight fault in an otherwise beautiful, devastating movie.

Like Jenna Cato Bass’s Good Madam, Nanny identifies the uneasy social structure that guarantees inequity, and all the accompanying horror it produces. Jusu’s tale sidesteps the true genre punch, though, which may leave some viewers unsatisfied. But, even for its diabolical sirens and eight-legged tricksters, it’s Nanny’s naked honesty that makes it so scary.