Juliet, Naked

Watched this on a plane.  Not ideal and it did seem a fairly silly film in many ways. Written by Nick Hornby of “About a Boy” fame and directed by others, it tells the story of a washed-up American musician (Ethan Hawke channeling Kris Kristoffersson), father of various children by different women and only concerned with one as he nurses his composers block, and a 40 year-old librarian from a seaside town in Britain who has little to look forward to in life and a boyfriend obsessed with said musician, Tucker Crowe.  Add in a lesbian sister who always has the right piece of advice and some cute and knowing kids and you get the picture. It is all quite attractively filmed and Rose Byrne is appealing in the lead, but it mostly fails to ring true and there are quite a number of holes in the plot.  Strictly for lovers of Brit rom-coms.

♦+

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Somewhat odd, somewhat effective thriller from Netflix. A bodyguard is given an unusual job of protecting the daughter of a phosphate mogul who has just died and left the company to his offspring (Sophie Nelisse) rather than to his ambitious second wife (Indhira Varma). But the girl is quickly under threat and it is hard to know whether it is the wicked step mum or someone else behind the kidnap and death threats. What makes this film work is Noomi Rapace in the lead role as a hard bitten bodyguard, forced to be very resourceful in this challenge.  Shot partly in Morocco, the country is perhaps the second star. Nelisse does what she can as a spilt heiress trying to get up to speed on counter-terrorist skills.  Interesting as a female orientated thriller.

♦♦

 

Cold War

Pawel Pawlikowski’s follow-up to Ida is another classy piece of film-making, again in black and white and again with many of the post-war Polish issues to the fore. Supposedly based on his parents story, the film starts with a team recruiting folk singers and dancers for a new spectacle designed to honour Poland’s agricultural toots in the new communist era (1949). A pianist (Tomasz Kot) who definitely looks a swarthy artistic type is assisted by a dance mistress (the always impressive Agata Kulesza) and a driver and Communist Party man (Borys Szyc).  Among the girls in the troup that they contract is Zusanna or Zula, a headstrong blonde who quickly falls in love with the pianist.  They plan to defect together when on a concert tour to Berlin but she chickens out and the rest of the movie is about their meetings, often at great cost and effort, in Paris, where he is based, in Split and back in Poland. Zula says she will always be with him but as much as she criticizes him for lack of commitment, she too is to blame. A very special relationship indeed. Both leads are fine, especially Joanna Kulig as Zula.  The photography by Lukasz Zal is sublime and there is some very good editing and some beautiful shots.  And the musical elements of faolk and jazz work well.  What is perhaps the lesser feature is the lack of a punchier script, the film seems to be a succession of meetings some of which are more impacting than others and this detracts from this film in comparison to Ida.

Otherwise a very very polished work from this director

♦♦♦♦+

 

Maine

Indie movie about a Spanish woman trying to find herself by walking the Appalachian trail up to Maine.  Despite the talent of Laia Costa, who is getting rather too familiar with somewhat neurotic wacky roles, I found this film by Matthew Brown pretty unconvincing overall.  This is not to deny that the emotions expressed, the confusion on display and the tensions between two hikers are not very real.  It’s just that it all seems rather contrived here with a whole heap of visual and trail-based metaphors.  Costa needs a better director and more balance from the rest of the cast though Thomas Mann does what he can with a rather underwritten role.  By the end of the film, we can ask whether we have really gained something from watching this and I’m not sure we have. Inevitable comparisons with Reece Witherspoon’s Pacific trail movie which was on another level entirely.

♦+

Capernaum

I struggled with this film. Its very good and very important but it is also quite bleak and I had to stop after every ten minutes and have a break. Which is exactly what people in the position of the characters can’t do. This is their life 24/7.
Capernaum is a Lebanese film and a giant step forward by director Nadine Labaki who ramps up the reality and the social commentaries here. Zain, is 11 or 12 and lives in a squalid downtown slum in Beirut. His father is a wastrel, drinking, sleeping and siring children he cant look after. His mother, (Kawsar Al Haddad) struggles to put food on the table and Zain does odd jobs in the neighbourhood and tries to keep the family together. When his father wants to sell his 11 year old sister to pay a debt, Zain hits the roof at the cynicism of his father and the passivity of his mother. He tries to run away with his sister but in the end she is sold into marriage and he ends up running away to a poor area near the coast and a tawdry fun fair. He is taken in by an Ethiopian woman who has overstayed her work visa and is doing odd jobs to try to pay for a new fake ID card. Rahil has a young son Yonas and Zain will look after the boy while she is at work. Well, she gets picked up by the authorities, Zain has to try to survive with the boy and no one knows what is going on. This is when we see just how so many people live such precarious lives today, battling to survive with a threadbare social fabric, abandonment by the state and precious little help or sympathy from those around. Labaki brings together all these strands clearly and coherently in this story, adding in domestic violence, drug and human trafficking, malnutrition, poverty, lack of education, you name it. As the camera zooms above the shanties of Beirut, miles of sheet iron roofs precariously weighted down by tyres we get to see just how many people live in urban squalor today, deprived of human rights and struggling to get by, not helped by the sharks that take advantage of them and are not controlled by the authorities. This is a clear picture of why so many people risk their lives to escape to Europe or the US. The church seems irrelevant in the film though people are seen praying to Mecca and only in the last few scenes, in a prison and in the court do we see a beleagured social welfare system and, one suspects, NGOs trying to give practical help. I’m not sure that a Christian singalong group visiting the prison does much to raise morale.
This film should be studied both in the first world to understand the reasons for migration but more importantly by those in power in Lebanon and other countries to show just how ineffective and corrupt these governments are. Will it change much? Sadly, I doubt it.

Zain Al Rafeea is excellent in the lead role and is well supported by the rest of the cast, mother ….. is also convincing. Labaki cast amateur actors from this world to make the film more authentic and indeed she has created the Capernaum (Chaos) of the title. Good photography and music, in short a sad film which Lebanon can be proud of cinematically.

♦♦♦♦++

Summer 1993

Slow moving gentle and poignant film by new director Carla Simon.  Shot in Catalan it is basically autobiographical. Frida is a 6 year old whose mother dies of an Aids-related cause.  Her father is already dead so she is whisked off from the city to live with her uncle and aunt in the countryside near the French border.  It seems idyllic.  A rambling house, forests and land to explore, a welcoming and loving couple, Esteve (David Verdaguer) and Marga (Bruna Cusi), both excellent and their 3 year-old daughter Ana (Paula Robles) who can be a playmate.  But Frida is damaged and confused and this summer is her process of grieving and trying to fit in to her new world.  She gets regular visits from her grandparents and other family members from her old world and at one time she wants to go back with them but Esteve is now her guardian.  Laia Artigas is another example of a child performer giving a natural and convincing performance and through her eyes we understand her sense of loss and lack of orientation.  Simon directs her and Robles very well and the parents are real and understanding in moments which could be very frustrating for them.

As this is more a film of episodes of childhood, games, waiting, silence, exploration, good and good times.  There is little in the way of plot and at times it is more mood than action but overall if you can get into that mood this is a beautiful and honest movie.

♦♦♦♦