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Friends to the End

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Close

by George Wolf

Belgium’s Close is one of two current Oscar nominees for Best International Film (along with Ireland’s The Quiet Girl) to draw its emotional power from the sensational debut performance of a teenager.

Director and co-writer Lukas Dhont met young Eden Dambrine on a train ride, ultimately offering him an audition after watching his facial expressions from a few seats away.

Dhont’s instincts were spot on. Dambrine proves a natural at communicating complex emotions with understated effort, propelling the film’s tender and sweetly heartbreaking take on friendship and innocence lost.

Thirteen year-olds Léo (Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele) are best friends with a wonderfully expressive and joyous bond. But their first year in a different school brings whispers from new peers, leading to a disruption in the boys’ relationship. Slowly, Léo begins reaching out to Rémi’s mother Sophie (Émilie Dequenne), in hopes of reconciling his mix of feelings.

There is no shortage of films reflecting on the years when two young friends begin to explore different paths. Dhont reinforces that theme with subtle details, such as when the boys choose different routes on a bike ride home. But Dhont is also interested in how the path to adulthood has changed, and how today’s young people must often grapple with emotional questions that should never be asked of them.

And as heartbreaking as the film can be, it’s careful to retain a sense of tenderness. From bathing Léo in a field of golden flowers, to the patience with which Sophie waits for Léo to include her in what he’s feeling, Dhont’s second feature displays an assured command of tone. Sad but never maudlin, telling an intimate story with universal resonance, Close becomes a small miracle of healing.

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Hey, Soul Sister

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Emily

by Hope Madden

Wuthering Heights was always a conundrum of Gothic literature. It is mean, its tragedies ugly, its heroes selfish and boorish. It’s a dark and misanthropic piece of fiction often mistaken as romance.

Lucky for all of us, Frances O’Connor appreciates the twisted nastiness of the novel and suggests a vividly unusual inner life for its author in her feature debut, Emily.

Emma Mackey stars with an understated but authentic weirdness as the misfit Brontë sister. Emily doesn’t seem suited for teaching, or for much of anything. The stories she tells are childish and they embarrass her sisters, and she won’t let anyone read what she’s writing. She seems to disappoint everyone around her except her brother, Branwell (Fionn Whitehead).

In O’Connor’s loose biopic, Emily finds the space to explore once her sisters are gone off to teach and she is alone with Branwell. The filmmaker slyly inserts memorable scenes from Brontë’s novel as moments, here more innocent, between brother and sister. These moments work on many levels, but mainly because writers draw from their own lives.

The dynamic complicates and Emily’s transformation deepens as an unexpected, almost involuntary suiter comes into the picture. Untethered by the judgments of her sisters, Emily is free to determine her own course and the journey is intoxicating to witness. Mackey glows as her character slowly, finally comes into her own, giving us a dimensional, tender and delicately genius young woman you yearn to know better.

Whitehead charms in a slightly underwritten but nonetheless poignant role. Oliver Jackson-Cohen – so different than the unrelenting narcissist of The Invisible Man – delivers the greatest arc of any character as assistant parson William. His performance is never showy, but moments of vulnerability give the film its heartbeat and heartbreak.

O’Connor breathes life with all its chaos, misery and joy into the Brontës’ 19th century. Emily feels less like the vision of a newcomer than the product of a passionate kindred spirit.

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In the Trenches

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The First Fallen

by Rachel Willis

Writer/director Rodrigo de Oliveira shapes a not-so-subtle soldier metaphor for the first victims of the AIDS crisis in his film, The First Fallen.

The film follows biologist Suzano (Johnny Massaro), and his band of friends and family as he navigates the frontlines of a war waged within his body.

The first half of the film is less engaging than the more personal second half. Though we meet several characters over the course of the first hour or so, no one really has much depth – that comes later. Suzano has been away in Paris but has returned to his sister Muriel (Clara Choveaux) and her son Muriel (Alex Bonin) to reconnect. His friend Rose (a transcendent Renata Carvalho) has not only been turned away from the hospital where she seeks care, but they have misgendered her – the indignities of which lend the film its most powerful scene.  

Most of the first act is concentrated around boisterous NYE celebrations, ringing in the year 1983. Rose performs for the celebrants at a gay club; Maura and Muriel attend a party. Suzano spends his evening alone.

There is a downheartedness that follows both Suzano and Rose, but it isn’t until the end of the first half that we get confirmation of what causes their sorrow.  

A sarcoma on Suzano’s neck is our first hint that several of these characters have fallen victim to the devastating AIDS epidemic. De Oliveira doesn’t spend time catching up those who might not know the history of AIDS and its startling explosion onto the scene in the early 80s, particularly in the gay community. At the time of the film’s events, the medical world didn’t even know the cause of AIDS (HIV would be identified in May of 1983), let alone how to treat it.

Seeking to document how the disease ravages his body, Suzano isolates himself, along with Rose and another afflicted man, Humberto (Victor Camilo). This is where the film excels. We’re privy to an experience not many have witnessed, particularly at a time when fear of the unknown isolated those who suffered most. How Rose, Humberto, and Suzano deal with their illness is at times touching and other times heartbreaking. The film’s home video approach lends authenticity to the experience.

The soldier metaphor is apt. For the first victims of the AIDS epidemic, many became numbers, dehumanized to understand what plagued them. De Oliveria wants us to remember those who fell.

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Dance, Dance, Dance til You’re Dead

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Calvaire (The Ordeal)

by Hope Madden

One of the most criminally underseen horror treasures of the 2000s has been restored and re-released, and you really should take advantage.

A paranoid fantasy about the link between progress and emasculation, Calvaire sees a timid singer stuck in the wilds of Belgium after his van breaks down.

Writer/director Fabrice Du Welz’s script scares up the darkest imaginable humor. If David Lynch had directed Deliverance in French, the concoction might have resembled Calvaire. As sweet, shy singer Marc (a pitch-perfect Laurent Lucas) awaits aid, he begins to recognize the hell he’s stumbled into. Unfortunately for Marc, salvation’s even worse.

The whole film boasts an uneasy, “What next?” quality. It also provides a European image of a terror that’s plagued American filmmakers for generations: the more we embrace progress, the further we get from that primal hunter/gatherer who knew how to survive.

Du Welz animates more ably than most our collective revulsion over the idea that we’ve evolved into something incapable of unaided survival –the weaker species, so to speak. Certainly, John Boorman’s Deliverance (the Uncle Daddy of all backwoods survival pics) understood the fear of emasculation that fuels this particular dread, but Du Welz picks that scab more effectively than any filmmaker since.

His film is a profoundly uncomfortable, deeply disturbing, unsettlingly humorous freakshow that must be seen to be believed.

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Fly Me to the Moon

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Linoleum

by Hope Madden

If you haven’t gotten to know filmmaker Colin West, it’s high time you correct that. The writer/director follows up last year’s surreal Christmas haunting Double Walker with a beautiful look at living a fantastic life.

The effortlessly affable Jim Gaffigan plays Cameron, an astronomer in suburban Dayton, Ohio hitting a very rocky path in his middle age. The kiddie show about science that he hosts is failing. Maybe his marriage is, too. New neighbors, a mysterious woman, and increasingly bizarre events have got him wondering. What does it all mean?

West writes a meticulous script that folds in on itself in fascinating ways, keeping you guessing and engaged.

Gaffigan is a far more nuanced actor than you might realize. While his dual roles appear at first to provide comedic opportunities, both Gaffigan and West have more up their sleeves than that.

Gaffigan’s performances and West’s approach are primarily earnest, and it’s that simple grounding that allows the absurd flourishes in the film to take flight without cynicism or irony. The supporting cast, including a wonderful Katelyn Nacon, and Rhea Seehorn, Amy Hargreaves, Tony Shalhoub and Gabriel Rush, surrounds Gaffigan’s turn with sincere, often tender but simultaneously comical performances.

West and cinematographer Ed Wu give the environment a nostalgic, lovely, tactile quality that allows it to feel lost in time. All of these elements — the performances, nostalgia, absurd moments and kitchy aesthetic — blend with the story being told in ways that become clear and powerful by Act 3.

Linoleum’s conclusion is a savvy surprise, one that capitalizes on the investment the audience is sure to make in Cam, his family and his happiness. Thanks not only to those performances but to West’s masterful storytelling, a movie that feels like a light-hearted jaunt becomes an emotional powerhouse that leaves you reeling.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Ant-Man 3, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Oscar Nominated Shorts, Sharper and More

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Oscar Nominated Short Films, Sharper, Huesera: The Bone Woman, Orchestrator of Storms, Cat Daddies, Project Wolf Hunting, The Other Fellow, Boy from Nowhere

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You Know Their Name

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The Other Fellow

by Daniel Baldwin

In 1953, while writing Casino Royale, Ian Fleming decided to name his hero after an ornithologist who had written a book on Caribbean birds that he enjoyed. That name was Bond. James Bond. You know his name and you know his number, but what about all of the other folks out there who share the same name?

Our names are a part of our identity. Some of us like our names; others don’t. So too it goes for the other souls around the globe who are named James Bond. Matthew Bauer’s documentary The Other Fellow is their story. From an annoyed lawyer to a self-made raconteur to someone fleeing a real-life villain to another accused of murder, these people carry both the pleasure and the pain of being compared to the world’s most famous spy every time they introduce themselves.

Much like the Bond films, this documentary is a globe-trotting affair filled with beauty, grief, suspense, and yes, even product placement. In most hands, this could have been a cheap piece of cinematic fluff meant to grift some money off of Bond fans, but the filmmakers have managed to craft something far more meaningful here. Whether or not you sympathize with the varying trials and tribulations of its different subjects, The Other Fellow is a compelling and human look into identity – be it chosen or not – and how it affects a person as they go through life.

Why would someone intentionally change their name to James Bond? Well, as it turns out, there can be some very good reasons for that. Similarly, there are scenarios in which carrying that name could ruin your entire life because of the baggage it carries. Being Bond comes with a cost, be it a grand one or just the occasional annoying one in the form of bad jokes from strangers. For better or worse, such is the way of things when one shares a name with a celebrity (be they real or fictional), which is something yours truly knows a tiny bit about.

The Other Fellow is an intriguing and insightful look at how our names can shape our personality, our growth, our day-to-day lives, and ultimately our future. It’s an 80-minute dive into identity that, much like its subjects, just happens to evoke a certain 00 agent. It might not leave you shaken and stirred, but it’s worth a look.

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Nothing Left to Lose

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Boy from Nowhere

by Rachel Willis

Writer/director S.J. Finlay brings to life the reality facing people living on the island of Mindanao (Philippines) with his feature film, Boy from Nowhere. His focus, in particular, is trained on a young boy named Gary (Gary Jumawan).

Tall and lanky, Gary’s age is never mentioned, but it is clear he is young – likely somewhere between 12 and 15.

Gary’s life revolves around playing basketball with area boys, as well as learning how to fish. He spends his time in the water, learning to observe the environment around him. Though it speaks of a peaceful existence for a young boy, Gary’s world is shattered by the brutality that is often the experience for people in Mindanao.

An island rich in resources, there are several factions vying for control. The island comprises several tribes, and the film’s brief introductory text states that many people have found their livelihoods and cultures threatened by both the government of the Philippines, as well as outside interests. To combat the upheaval to their way of life, rebel factions rely on child soldiers to bolster their numbers.

Finlay’s style is naturalistic. Casting several non-actors in the primary roles serves to underscore the film’s realism. Some are more natural on camera than others, but there is a documentarian feel as Finlay watches Gary navigate the world, often without the presence of adults.

The short run-time hinders the film. When Gary is faced with several choices, we’re not allowed to contemplate them with him, nor are we given much action to help us understand the choices he makes. Instead, Finlay relies heavily on exposition and dialogue to clarify what’s at stake. This choice negates the slice-of-life portrait the filmmaker is trying to paint.

The film best succeeds in its focus on the moral and ethical dilemmas facing the people of Mindanao. While using children to fight a war is unethical, Boy from Nowhere emphasizes the desperation facing people with nothing left to lose. When the entire culture is threatened, isn’t it the duty of the children to fight? Though Finlay’s opinion on this matter is never in doubt, he treats those who resort to such choices with sympathy.

Finlay juxtaposes the images of child soldiers against a breathtaking landscape. The cinematography highlights what people are fighting to protect. One can only hope this way of life might be saved.

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Honey of a No

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Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey

by Hope Madden

Leaving the screening of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, I overheard another viewer say, “So many questions.” I, too, have a lot of questions. Why do Pooh and Piglet have man hands? Where do they get their clothes? When did they learn to drive? What am I doing at this movie?

No, that last one’s not real. There was no question I was going to see this movie. Like most people, I grew up with Winnie the Pooh and all his friends in the 100 Acre Wood. I loved the illustrations in A.A. Milne’s books. I loved the Disney cartoons. That live-action kids’ show, though, with people in suits – that freaked me out. That was just wrong, and it was the kind of wrong I was hoping for with the film.

Nope.

Though the sound mix is often muddy, the film does boast some technical qualities: production values, set design, lighting – writer/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield gathered a competent crew. The problem is the writing. There’s about enough script for a 30-minute film, and even that would not have been very good.

First, Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) returns to his old stomping ground to introduce his beloved to his oldest, dearest friends, only to find that Pooh and the gang have not exactly thrived in his absence.

Meanwhile, Maria (Maria Taylor) follows her therapist’s suggestion to take a break, unplug and relax with her girlfriends. She and her besties head to the same stretch of forest for a quiet weekend of grisly, man-bear related slaughter.

The acting throughout is awful, but it’s hard to slight the actors themselves when each of their scenes is stretched to 4 minutes longer than it should be and they have to just find a way to take up the time. This leads to a lot of inaction when action would be reasonable, and an awful lot of repeated, “Why are you doing this?”

Plus, there’s a gun that appears and disappears scene to scene, and a laugh-out-loud car sequence. But any intentional humor is woefully absent.

Whatever the film’s many – almost countless – flaws, Frake-Waterfield deserves tremendous credit for seeing an opportunity and seizing it. Milne’s catalog fell into the public domain last year, a fact Frake-Waterfield met with an idea. What if Pooh and the gang went feral?  

And the world was in. I know I was.

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Domesticated Animals

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Huesera: The Bone Woman

by Hope Madden

As Huesera: The Bone Woman opens, women climb the 640 steps leading to the world’s largest statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, located in Ocuilan, Mexico. Valeria (Natalia Solián) and her mother are among the pilgrims, their goal: a blessing leading to Valeria’s fruitful womb.

As writer/director Michelle Garza Cervera’s camera pulls back and back and back, suddenly the 108’ virgin looms like a serene-faced golden Godzilla above a woman who no longer looks so certain about her prayer.

It’s a confident opening to the entirely assured feature debut from Cervera. Her maternal nightmare is bright and decisive, pulling in common genre tropes only long enough to grant entrance to the territory of a central metaphor before casting them aside for something sinister, honest and honestly terrifying.

While it toes certain familiar ground – the gaslighting of Rosemary’s Baby, for instance – what sets Huesera apart from other maternal horror is its deliberate untidiness. Cervera refuses to embrace the good mother/bad mother dichotomy and disregards the common cinematic journey of convincing a woman that all she really wants is to be a mom. 

There’s complexity and subtlety in the various relationships as well, elevating the material above standard horror fare. Valeria has real, joyous chemistry with husband Raúl (Alfonso Dosal). And if he’s weak in the face of his mother’s wishes, Valeria is hardly standing up to her own mother or sister. The ways in which we all dodge family conflict feed into the writing, helping ground the larger metaphor in reality.

Solián’s performance weaves effortlessly and authentically from one family dynamic to the next, each presenting only opportunities to submit, to accept or to be ostracized and rejected. Huesera’s metaphor is brave and timely. Brave not only because of its LGBTQ themes but because of its motherhood themes. It’s a melancholy and necessary look at what you give up, what you kill.