Aniara

Swedish science-fiction movies is not exactly a populous genre so it is interesting to get to see a space film made by people from this part of the world.  As you would expect, there are fewer explosions and lightworks and it is pretty heavy on existential philosophy but not overly dialoguey which is a plus.

The Aniara is a massive spaceship, like several cruise liners out together that is transporting people from Earth, which seems to be largely uninhabitable thanks to climate change, to a new home on Mars.  Except that an accident after leaving the Earth means that they are fated to probably never get there.  The film consists therefore of the story of life on board this spaceship as they try to adapt to this new reality which the captain at first avoids admitting.  We know about it because the main character MR (Emelie Garbers)

is a staff member; she runs a space where people can relax in and through some combination of holograms and hacking into their brains, they can recreate in sleep memories of nature on Earth which calms them in their predicament. 

 The trouble is that Mima, itself, the machine/space is not immune to the huge demand on her and also ends up burning out.  MR shares a cabin with a cynical astronomer who knows exactly what is going on and is played with gusto by Anneli Martini.  

She eventually starts a relationship with one of the officers in charge of navigation, Isagel (Bianca Cruzeiro) and they start raising a child together.  Food as we know it runs out, replaced by algae, cults form, people commit suicide and the vessel silently sails on in space with only one encounter in 24 years with another “body”.  It’s fairly bleak stuff.

The positive side of the movie is the way different people react and how the film reflects a little bit what life is like on our planet and how we have not been prepared for the responsibility of making meaning of our lives in the universe and how to best handle this.

Considering the budget is probably not enormous, the directors create a convincing atmosphere. What let the film down a bit was the petering out of the story especially in the last third.  The film is actually based on a poem and maybe the last part follows this and a certain narrative coherence but, on the other hand, the entertainment value diminishes. Secondly, the lack of absolutely any help or contact with Earth or any other spaceship seems rather unlikely in this day and age of multiple satellites and space junk.

And given such a good premise, maybe a little bit more of the frictions among the staff could have added something.

A novel and creative work that does well but fails to completely capture your interest.

3 stars plus

The Cemetery of Splendour

If you like A Hidden Life, here’s another film for you from the slow film archive.  Thailand’s most famous art house director Apichatpong Weerasekathul (known as Joe), winner of Cannes in 2010 with Uncle Boonmee …and his past lives produces another hypnotizingly languid tropical musing on the dead, life and dreams.

  This offering from 2015 and funded by dozens of countries takes place in Northern Thailand in a small city near Laos.  

A makeshift hospital has been erected to cater for a bunch of local soldiers who have succumbed to narcolepsy and are asleep most of the time. Some say it is vengeance from the gods as they were digging up the earth near an old divine tomb.

Doctors try to use a light technique with fluorescent tubes to help them sleep better.  Sometimes they wake up and can visit with family or go to the local park or market.  

Then they fall asleep again.  Most of this we see through the eyes of Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas)

a middle-aged woman with one leg shorter than the other meaning she gets around on crutches.  She has come to see a friend working in the clinic and ends up staying to befriend one of the soldiers, Itt (Banlop Lomnoi) who she treats as a son.  

Jenjira’s American husband pops up now and again but mostly we spend time with the former two and a youngish woman, Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram) who is a medium and who is used by the families to speak to the sleeping men.  

As time passes Keng is able to get into Itt’s mind and she shares this experience with Jenjira on more than one occasion.  Apart from that we have the appearance of two women who seem to be travelling salespeople but also the immortal goddesses from a local temple.

Joe surprises us at every turn because not only does he explore this world of the dead among us but he throws in scenes of everyday life that completely change the mood. (a man defecating in a field, a sleeping soldier’s erection). Joe has also alluded to a political metaphor related to Thailand in the movie, the sleeping armed forces, the corrupt and disrespectful actions towards the past, etc, which locals would pick up more easily than us.  

On top of all this there are some interesting uses of colour and time and space as he films the movements of locals in a park.

No. shortage of meaning therefore and plenty of wisdom from a country caught between old and new.  I wasn’t bored at all by this and applaud the director’s vision, even though his popularity in mainstream movie houses may be elusive.  

A human and fantasy film in one.

4 stars

Víctor et Célia

Pierre Jolivet is an experienced actor and director whose previous film was a reasonably moving piece about firefighters in the Midi.  This time we are in Lyon.  Victor and Ben are hairdressers planning to go independent and open their own salon where an old hardware store currently stands.

Then Ben has a fatal accident and Victor and his accountant

try to maintain the project afloat by convincing a one-time lover of Victor’s, Célia to be the new partner.  Convincing her and then all the obstacles from dealing with the bank, planning approval, objections from the neighbours and other red tape ensue.  

Will they be able to open at last or will the weight of the hurdles torpedo the project?  Underlying the whole story is the potential reigniting of the love between them.

It’s basically a comedy with a close look at the trials of small business owners in modern-day France.  

There is a varied cast of support characters, some more stereotypic than others and Arthur Dupont and especially Alice Belaidi

are engaging as the leads.

That said, there is little real meat in the film, it is a pleasant 90 minutes, nothing more.

2 stars plus 

A Hidden Life

Terrence Malick is a director that is both loved and hated.  His style of film making blends gorgeous photography of natural scenes,

much movement of the camera with often whispered voice overs, little direct dialogue and non-linear narrative.  He has a particular interest in the psychological effects of limit situations or moments that affect one’s life.  As his career develops his films are getting longer.  Recently, I have found some of his movies like his last, Knight of Cups, pretty indigestible but happily he returns to form with this new film that in my opinion blends a story that is perfect for his style of work with some excellent acting and technical prowess. 

A Hidden Life is about Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian farmer, who during WW2 refused to swear allegiance to Hitler. At first, as a conscientious objector, he is largely left alone apart from some initial military training.  As the war continued, Franz is drafted and upon refusing to fight or do hospital service he is imprisoned in Berlin and later sentenced to death, leaving behind a wife and three young daughters on the farm.

  Franz’s convictions that the war is wrong grow stronger and he is disappointed that the church doesn’t support him and is indeed weak and complacent towards the Nazis. 

 He and his family are also shunned by most of the locals who either don’t think about it or are threatened by the idea of someone not supporting what they have been told is a national cause.  Fani, his wife, has to learn how to handle this and bring up the children alone.  At first she makes an attempt to persuade Franz to moderate his stance but then she stands by him and it is other people like priests and lawyers that try to convince him to toe the line, even a judge, played by Bruno Ganz in one of his last films. 

I felt enveloped by the movie, in the simple rural society they lived in, trying to make sense of international events beyond their scope.  Malick’s style fits very well with the crisis of conscience Franz goes through and the way Fani has to adapt.  Malick punctuates his story with beautiful and often very relevant scenes of nature or daily life that are the perfect backdrop to the story even though many would say lengthen the movie unnecessarily.  For me, they helped me become transported to that time.

And yet, the themes are universal.  We have often had the issue of conscientious objectors and they are usually treated harshly by society even though in hindsight they may be proved right.  Pope Benedict beatified Franz in 2004 many years after his death.

August Diehl and Valerie Pachner

are excellent in the lead roles as are many of the support cast. Joerg Widmer is Malick’s new cameraman and handles the colours, movement and distinct lens work very well and James Newton Howard creates a haunting soundtrack around some classical pieces.  

So, yes, it is very long but the film is a well thought out and constructed opus to an ordinary man with an almost hidden life. It gives us plenty to ponder on the issue of authority and the rights we have even when the authority is doing something terrible like Hitler did.

5 stars

One Lane Bridge (series)

This New Zealand 6-parter is fairly reminiscent of Trapped, the Icelandic product that I have recently enjoyed.  Set near beautiful mountainous Queenstown it involves family feuds, the potential sale of farmland to Chinese, loads of smalltown secrets such as affairs both gay and straight.  Nothing is quite what it appears.  

There is even the idea that the bridge in question is cursed and we had a similar idea in Trapped.  The main policeman is also an out of towner and perhaps the major difference is that the local chief may not be as squeaky clean as the Icelanders.  So, we get a slow reveal of key information until we find out whodunnit, ie. kills Grub, the youngish farmer and main heir to the family farm. 

 Ariki (Dominic Ona-Ariki) plays the incoming cop and he has a gift, matariki or the ability to see things and throughout the series he gets visions and sees symbols which both help him solve cases and confuse him. Ona-Ariki is suitable enough as a slightly slow lead cop. Much more interesting are the older lead characters.  

Joel Tobeck is a disconcerting Steve, the local cop with his wheelchair bound wife

Lois (Alison Bruce, excellent) becoming an increasingly relevant part of the story.  Hats off to Peter McCauley as Jack, the family head, losing his to dementia and Aidee Walker as the drunken Kate and Sara Wiseman as the sort of black sheep sister-in-law, Jackie (daughter of Jack) show their acting class.

  A number of other familiar faces appear in key roles.  In general, the script worked but I felt it could have been deeper and less reliant on repeating the same information many times, though thankfully not everything was spelt out at the end, possibly in the hope of another series. 

 Gorgeous photography of course.

3 stars

La Quietud

Pablo Trapero’s latest is a change in milieu for him.  Rather than the lower classes and workers, this is set in a gorgeous sprawling ranch outside Buenos Aires.  The film is largely seen through the eyes of one of the daughters of the family that own the ranch, the Montemayors.  

The starting point for the story is the stroke suffered by the patriarch, and retired lawyer Augusto.  He lies in a coma and this brings back his elder daughter from France, Eugenia.

  We soon discover that she and Mia (Martina Gusman), the other daughter and main point of view of the film have a symbiotic relationship, have shared lovers, jerk off together and miss each other terribly.  As things with Dad get worse, Eugenia’s husband Vincent also returns and it transpires he was Mia’s classmate and on and off lover. 

 Add in a handsome local lawyer, married to someone else but also part of the bed-hopping and were it not for the fact that there is no humour to be found you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a bedroom farce.

Moodwise it is much more like a Chekhov play in the first part, a sort of generalized listlessness in a beautiful country dacha, which of course is a money spinner by itself.  

Midway through as Augusto reaches his end, the melodrama erupts and family secrets emerge, some dating back to the dictatorship which could affect the title of the property itself. 

 Graciela Borges as the mother Esmeralda is excellent as the difficult and perhaps repentant keeper of many secrets. Berenice Bejo as Eugenia, Edgar Ramirez as her husband and Joaquin Furriel add their actorial strengths to this dramatic feast.

OK, the story holds together if somewhat exuberantly in the sexual antics and given the history of Argentina much is credible.  It is beautifully filmed and there are a couple of superb scenes.

However, by the end I failed to feel much for the movie.  I guess it is because the characters were not especially likeable. Martina Gusman is always watchable and interesting but I definitely wanted to say, let these privileged people do what they want, I don’t really care what happens for them. So, a smooth and polished movie but only satisfying in part.

3 stars plus plus

La Vie Scolaire (School Life)

Highly satisfying school drama set in Saint Denis, an area of Paris with a high percentage of migrants. 

 Their children feel alienated by the system and the teachers struggle to not only control their classes but make any impact.

  This film follows the stories of a new deputy principal Samia Zibra (excellent Zita Hanrob)

and a pupil, Yanis (Liam Perron, also fine).

  Zibra has moved to this area because of a secret, her boyfriend is in jail nearby but she proves to be an able asset.  Her handling of students, parents and even her wayward bunch of preceptors or monitors is noteworthy.

  She makes a special connection with Yanis who she perceives as bright but without hope.  He has his father in prison and his mother struggling to keep the family together, a scenario common in many families.

Despite the hardships, much of the film is amusing as we learn of the quirks of students and teachers and the film smoothly threads together a series of anecdotes over the school year to accompany the main storyline.

Very good direction (Grand Corps Malade and Mehdi Idir) and editing.

There is a sense of the movie being a great team working together, aided by the closing credits which are a series of school photographs of both cast and crew.  Would be happy to see this again.

4 stars plus 

Rebecca

If you are going to remake a film or a song, common sense would suggest that you aim to better the original or at least give it a different twist, especially if the first version is a classic like Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film.  

This modern update by Ben Wheatley, set still in the late 30’s I suspect, is sadly bereft of much interest.  What was the point was a question that kept coming to mind.  Rebecca is the tale of a romance between a lady’s maid/assistant and a rich widower, owner of a stately home called Manderley in the south of England.  After meeting and romancing on the Cote d’Azur, Mr and Mrs De Winter return to Manderley to find that this home, apart from being grossly overstaffed in a Downton Abbey way is also a sort of shrine to the former Mrs De Winter, Rebecca.  

According to the chief curator of her memory, Mrs Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas, efficient and suitably enigmatic),

Rebecca was a larger than life character who lived life as she wanted.  As the new lady of the house gets increasingly spooked and thwarted by the likes of Mrs Danvers, we start to learn that perhaps Rebecca had secrets that influenced her behaviour. 

The first half is more or less acceptable building up the story but part 2 is an uneven sequence of events, some of which are not so clear.  Hammer looks out of place and doesn’t have a very sympathetic part – wealthy absentee landowner of few emotions – while Lily James doesn’t altogether convince me between her bouts of being pathetic and suddenly able to see what others can’t. 

 Quite good music by Clint Mansell but too many gaps left elsewhere to suggest that this was much more of an exercise to redo something that was fine as it was.

2 stars

Jesus

There is a vein in modern Chilean cinema focusing on the dark side of society, the losers and poorer people who sometimes become involve in events that are too big for them.  Jesus is another of these depicting the somewhat nihilistic life of an 18 year-old Santiago boy.

  He is supposed to be finishing high school but spends his days performing in an imitation K-Pop band, hanging out in the park for drugs and sex or moping at home.  

His father travels for work so he is not contained there, given that his mother is dead.  

The first half of the movie passes in this aimless way and I was really wondering, so what?  But then one night, Jesus and his gang, in a very drunk state beat up a kid in the park mercilessly to the extent that the boy is hospitalized.  More or less on the run, the gang starts to split up with the tension and Jesus confesses all to his father who then has to work out what to do.  We have already seen that their relationship is not a good one.  Although the film could have been edited somewhat the second half is much richer and tenser than the first and lifts the movie considerably.  As director Fernando Guzzoni said, it contains all the big topics: death, love, betrayal ….

And it is set in today’s Santiago with the suggestion that there are more Jesuses sloating about.  He is not a bad kid, just very much adrift and unable to assume adult responsibilities.  Nicolas Duran and Alejandro Goic as son and father do a good job and the photography by Barbara Alvarez creates plenty of atmosphere.

3 stars

Tehran (series 1)

This is a surprising series from Israel in that it takes place in Tehran, the capital of Iran, a country which is their sworn enemy and apart from being a spy thriller involving Mossad spies helping to prepare for an air attack on Iran from within the country

it is also a look at how at a human level the people of both countries are not so different and do not deserve to be so polarized.

Tamar (Niv Sultan)

is a computer hacker who manages to enter Iran through a contrived incident with a plane needing to make an emergency stop in Tehran.  Once inside she sets about her work but things go wrong and soon the Iranian secret police are on her tail. 

 She seeks refuge first with a relative, Tamar having been born in Iran and then with a commune of young people some of whom are also involved in dissidence.  Here she finally meets Milad alias Sickboy (Shervin Alenabi) who is a fellow hacker.

  Meanwhile her bosses track her and guide her from Israel including the fellow Iranian Kadosh (Liraz Charhi).  On the Iranian side, Faraz (Shaun Toub) 

 is busy putting the pieces together to capture Tamar but finds that his superior is not as supportive as he could be and Faraz himself has worries with a wife in Paris undergoing brain surgery.

This image released by Apple TV+ shows Shaun Toub as Faraz Kamali in a scene from “Tehran.” (Apple TV+ via AP)

  He is also after Masoud (Navid Negahban), a key piece in the Israeli team who acts as a travel agent in Tehran.

The series has a tight script with plenty of surprises and keeps the tension mounting.  There are the usual number of close encounters, and of things not being what they seem to be and at times both sides also seem to be very clumsy in their operations. 

 We also get a sense of how modern technology allows both countries to be able to watch over so much in society and track their agents or those of the enemy.  Well-acted with meticulously recreated scenes of Tehran or what could pass for it, Tehran proved an exciting watch and a stepping stone to a one-day reconciliation of these two countries who prior to the Islamic Revolution were not so antagonistic. 

4 stars plus