This contemporary Polish film from director Kinga Debska is about as subtle as a blunt axe but is not bereft of its good points. The story of three different women who are alcoholics, we get a fair few clichés of the genre and perhaps less real analysis of how the addiction came about which would have been good. Mostly, we view the downward spiral of the three women and the difficulty of accepting help. Magda is young and from a family with alcoholism
and her drinking leads to rape. Maria Debska
does well in a challenging role though not all the ramifications of her situation are satisfactorily explored. We never know if she gets HIV or not so why put it in the script? Dorota is a successful lawyer
who seems to become too arrogant, she claims it is because of her husband’s unfaithfulness but she is no saint either.
I found the great Agata Kulesza a bit over the top in this role. She is a very able actress but this part was over written. Teresa, a top surgeon, recently feted by her peers is also losing it, 60, divorced, frumpy and alone,
she is intensely critical of others such as her daughter
and is starting to lose it. Dorota Kolak convinces more here. There are some touching moments in all this and the hopelessness of those powerless to help.
But there are also loose ends like the police who see the acts of the drunk and do precious little.
Inconsistent but watchable and a commentary on a social problem in Poland today.
♦♦+
of politicos who are making good money in enormous deals left right and centre. A very topical subject given Odebrecht in South America and of course corruption scandals in Spain itself. The “hero” Manuel Lopez-Vidal (excellent performance by Antonio de la Torre)
is on the verge of a plum position beyond his region of Spain when a leaked conversation threatens not only his promotion but to blow open the whole party as a bed of corruption. As his colleagues
start to protecy themselves and seek to use him as the fall guy, Manuel decides to fight back and bring down the whole lot as a whistle blower.
He is of course tailed and threatened in his attempt to do so and the last half hour is one exciting scene after another
ending in a gripping television interview which is a huge battle of wits, egos and political nous between the programme host Amaia (Barbara Lennie)
and Manuel.
and some people without a knowledge of Spanish/Latin politics may miss things but the film reflects a reality in many countries and is very relevant to myriad political situations in the world today.
who dies in a mysterious car crash. Isabelle Huppert plays the lead and is somewhat underused but still manages to get a few moody looks in. Her big dilemma was life in the danger zone versus a quiet domestic life. Hubby is Gabriel Byrne, ex-actor
and now teacher who has brought up the two boys largely single-handed. We see him trying to handle life even three years after her death with a retrospective exhibition coming up and the admission by a colleague that he had an affair with Huppert. Eldest son, who had a close relationship with his mother
has never really got over the possibility that this death was suicide and as a new father is at a loss. Jesse Eisenberg is very much himself in this role.
Devin Druid plays the younger son Conrad who is right on the edge.
Locked in his room, spending hours online or writing slightly weird adolescent ravings, he lusts after a girl in his class who is a cheerleader in the local team, totally out of his range as the local nerd. His relationship with his father is zero
and little better with his brother
and he doesn’t know about his mother. And so, very slowly with beautiful photography and music Trier explores the three men and their handling of this grief that has never really had a chance to come out. We get some good scenes
and some authentic emotions in a very North American Anglo-Saxon style but there is quite a lot of work to do to get there.
has an altercation with a man, the Hippie (Diego Cremonesi)
in a restaurant. The latter appears to be crazy and later attacks the lawyer and his wife (Andrea Frigerio) before turning the gun on himself. At first, the couple try to help him but in the end the body is left in the desert, the sand and dust play their part and small-town life continues with its petty activities.
People are disappearing but no one thinks any more than how to take over the house or its property and there are strange homages to visiting US cowboys. In a society that has repressed so much, the strains are clearly there in some and in others, the cover ups are the new norm. Eventually, Sinclair (Alfredo Castro), a Chilean police investigator with media fame, arrives in town to find out what happened to the Hippie and things become uncomfortable for our lawyer.
It shows a society ill at ease and hypocritical, much importance being placed on outer appearances.
A magic show in which a trick goes somewhat wrong speaks of the country’s desire to find magic solutions to deeper problems.
and has no time for his daughter. Life steps in and gives him a stroke which leaves him with serious speech deficiencies mixing up syllables of words.
A long treatment for this impatient man follows and it is Jeanne (Leila Behkti)
who has this unenviable job. Little by little, after getting lost,
letting people down and finally accepting that he is not yet better leads him to become humbler and to walk to Santiago de Compostela. He also retrieves his relationship with his daughter
and his dog. The final result, however real it may be comes off as less than satisfying and there is a sort of feelgood forcedness to both the main story and the subplots involving Jeanne’s birth mother and her relationship.
Luchini displays his excellent craft in mixing up his speech but apart from that and nice scenes of summery Paris, there is little more to put down in your black book.
who inhabit the queer ballroom space
called Kiki in New York. In the course of 84 minutes we get to know several of the most prominent members
and their life stories, some are transitioning gender, others are cross dressers
and some are simply supportive of this group of people, most of whom have suffered rejection in society and in some cases in their own family. It is a bit of a meandering work,
which could probably have been both more impactful on the struggle of these people and more celebratory at their voguing
and ballroom performances but at least we get to see something of this world.
Sara Jordeña directs.
cum thriller in which a young girl is kidnapped as the latest step in a history of resentment among winemakers in a country village. The film starts with panache and the wedding
of her sister which is the reason why Laura (Penelope Cruz) has come back home with her two kids from Argentina.
This return, without husband Alejandro (Ricardo Darin) who has stayed behind out of work, is also a meeting up again with Paco (Javier Bardem) who is running the vineyard, who was an ex-boyfriend and to whom she sold her share in the property. Although he is married,
sparks still appear between them and he plays a major part in the search for Laura’s daughter when she is taken. This search opens up old wounds and reveals the fact that the perpetrators are in fact known to everyone
, as well as facts like who is the real father of the girl.
But at the same time as we reach the end, I began to wonder if it was all it had been cracked up to be. Sometimes it seems too obvious, too cliched and all a bit of an exercise in telling a story about family secrets.
Farhadi tells it pretty well and the actors are fine but at the end of the day the lack of authenticity kept nagging at me.
at a country house outside Buenos Aires) and all hell ends up breaking loose as secrets come out with the ending being a sort of tacit truce and the couples going back home, maybe a little wiser, maybe resolved to patch things up
or maybe determined that this is the end.
plays one of the wives and has perhaps the meatiest part, Juan Minujin,
her husband and Martin Slipak
have a good sparring in a hot air balloon, Pilar Gamboa
does well as the mother of triplets denying the options she has and Carla Peterson and Fernan Miras
fit as the slightly older, richer and trendier hosts who have their own emptiness to fill. A solid production
that satisfies rather than inspires.
So, she takes herself off to Santiago in the hope of curing her blues and her frigidity. There she finds things are not always what she expects. Cesar (Pedro Campos)
is not always as willing to bed her as she wants, Francesca (Geraldine Neary, fun) is plainly a bit crazy
and there is an interesting backstory with her father Nacho (Patricio Contreras).
But most of all the film belongs to Antonella Costa
who portrays Martina as a complete, contradictory but lovable character. This and a deft direction by Che Sandoval who adds in little scenes and humorous touches
makes the film watchable and a good example of its wacky romance genre.
the first half is about how Marguerite, being a member of the Resistance, makes friends with a Gestapo informer (Benoit Magimel),
in the hope of finding out where her husband has been taken. We later learn he was shipped off to the camps in Germany. In the second half, the Nazis are in retreat and we see Marguerite waiting for the return of her husband
and the agony of seeing so many others return but not him.
Certainly, the second half drags and though this is clearly intentional it makes the film less impactful than it could have been. Melanie Thierry
is convincing enough in the lead though she doesn’t have so much to work with and Shulamit Adar as Mrs Katz,
a lodger she has in the same situation adds in the second part. Photography is good though some say the careful setting is rather sanitised.
Some beautiful images remain like the last but overall the film ends up being emptier than it should have been.
passionfilm 