The Swimmer

Adam Kalderon gives us a relatively short and creative film about a swimmer who wishes to be selected for the Olympics and is at a training camp in Israel with four other candidates.  The film is an LGBT coming-of-age story.  

At the beginning Erez (Omer Perelman Striks) is focused only on his life dream to get to the Games but in this sort of boot camp feelings are stirred by one of his team mates Nevo (Asaf Jonas).  

The two hang out together and although we are never sure of Nevo’s orientation he allows Erez to shave his body and joins him in some other homoerotic acts.  Kalderon also shows male nudes horsing about to accustom the viewer to this type of scene, all done with a lightness of touch.

The film is basically about Erez realizing his desires and struggling to balance these with the strict ‘no friends’ discipline of the camp.  Coach Dima (Igal Reznik) is an interesting character, similar to Erez in trying to suppress feelings with discipline – an Israeli theme – and Paloma (Nadia Kucher) an ex-gymnast who runs the camp brings a sympathetic touch.  Interestingly the assistant coach Aviv (Yael Kalman) has body issues and is to some extent bullied, a story that could have been developed.

Kalderon is operating on a low budget so uses good photography (Ofer Inov) and some technicolour effects which bring out a sort of Barbie-like gayness in the movie.  Music by The Penelopes is very 90’s technodisco and adds to the mood.  

What could have been a simple but clear film is raised somewhat by a hilarious and unexpected conclusion. Perelman Striks stands out in the lead role.

3 stars

The Woman King

This much-lauded film is to a degree a throwback to the old classic cinema of Ben Hur, Gladiator, Braveheart and other movies which involved spectacular battles and olden times.  The difference here is that we are in Dahomey in the 1820’s, a country at the centre of the slave trade in that era and at war with local tribes and other kingdoms. And more importantly, the protagonists are a fighting force of women loyal to the young King Ghezo of Dahomey (John Boyega).

Our story revolves around two women, Nawi (Tbuso Mbedu) a young girl deposited in the army by her adoptive farmer upset that she refused the marriage he had arranged with an older man and Nanisca (Viola Davis) the General leading the army, a former rape victim turned staunch defender of the freedom of her people, especially women.  

The plot for the film is loosely based on the history of the Agojie, these Amazonian warriors and involves the battle against Oba Ade, the enemy leader who wants to overthrow the king and preserve the slave trade.  

On the edge of all this are Portuguese slave traders played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Jordan Bolger as Malik with whom Nawi gets involved. Nawi, at first a rebel, learns to fight in the Agojie and become one of their most valuable fighters with a closer connection to Nanisca than she realizes.

For those who like combat scenes and an old-style storyline you will feel very much at home.  And the fights are among the best features of the movie.  

Viola Davis is once again magnificent as Nanisca and inexplicably missed another Oscar nomination.  Her fighter’s physique and demeanour and expressive eyes are a million miles away from Ma Rainey.  Mbedu does well in support and Lashana Lynch and Sheila Atim are other fighters who stand out.  

I can’t say though that the movie absolutely wowed me.  The script is somewhat wooden and the characters not as well drawn as they could have been.  Photography is good but not great and pacing lapses at times.  Nonetheless the achievement by director Gina Prince-Bythewood is a major one showing that these historical action films can be by women (the crew is massively female) about women.

4 stars

Red White and Royal Blue

More fluff, more fantasy.  Based on a best-selling airport novel, this romcom fantasises a romance between the second son of the King of England and the son of the American President.  

At first, they hate each other when meeting at official events and then after a series of mishaps end up admitting their mutual attraction.

Henry, the Prince keeps backing away in the belief that the romance cannot happen and Alex, the American goes full throttle in the belief that “we can”.  

All terribly clichéd stuff based on what we know about the Royal family and the American political system, (Alex helps his mother out in her campaign and is a sort of analyst/campaigner). 

The film gallops along at a merry pace, has a few genuine laughs and has a pretty upbeat ending but there is absolutely nothing very creative or high-class about it.  

Enjoyable fantasy nonetheless and good to get a gay romance onto the big screens like this so that even in royal quarters it becomes acceptable and particularly in the US of today.

Taylor Zakhar-Perez does the heavy lifting as Alex.  He is charming and charismatic, quite the opposite of the overly reserved Henry (Nicholas Galitzine).

Uma Thurman has an unconvincing Texan accent as the President but otherwise looks the part while hubby is played by Clifton Collins Jnr last seen as a down and out jockey.  Rachel Hilson from Love Victor moves up a step in the same vein.  There are some amusing bit part players but nothing to get too worked up about.  Matthew Lopez directs.

3 stars

Thirteen Lives

Ron Howard has great experience at this kind of movie and made Apollo 13 a couple of decades ago.  Here, he takes on the story of the 13 boys trapped in a cave in Thailand in 2018 and the extraordinary international efforts to bring them out.

  The caves now filled with water involved hours of swimming virtually blind through narrow passages to get to the boys who were sheltering in a chamber.  Outside thousands of volunteers helped in such tasks as diverting rainwater from sinkholes in the mountain which would just flood the caves further, sending this water into paddy fields that were lost (the government later compensated farmers).

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Challenges Howard had included the fact that the story already had two filmings – one Thai and one a documentary, the lack of star quality of the protagonists, and the need to do justice to the story for the survivors’ sake and that of the Thai Navy SEALS lost in the rescue.  

Moreover, the story is well-known so there is hardly any suspense.  Howard left out Elon Musk’s petty interventions, insisting on sending a mini-submarine that would have been totally useless and then insulting an expert volunteer who pointed this out.

Mostly, he focuses on showing us the rescue and the challenges involved. In the early stages we see John Lovanthen (Colin Farrell) and Rick Stanton (Viggo Mortensen)

as amateur cave divers who find the boys and then try to come up with ways of saving them.  The Thai government has a mixed reaction: their Navy SEALS are not experienced in cave diving and there were the usual political machinations behind.  

John and Rick call in Harry Harris (Joel Edgerton) an Australian anesthetist who plans to sedate the boys to bring them out since most can’t swim and would panic in the caves. Some of this was not made public until afterwards and is one of the things we learn here.

The film is long but moves along smoothly and gives us a good idea of the caves, the difficulties of the mission and the monsoon season in full force.  

Photography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom is one of the strongest features.  Acting is discreet with few “big” moments but Mortensen is also a pleasure to watch.  A solid respectful film.

4 stars

Emily in Paris (Series 3)

This month I’ve watched two fantasy series.  This and Elite.  Seems that these unlikely scenarios are what the public want.

The crew behind Emily basically give us more of the same as the first two series.  Product placement takes first place – especially Paris and a few bits of France: Provence and Champagne this time.

The stories revolve around love triangles and on/off romances.  Camille and Gabriel’s third is a Greek woman performance artist.  Mindy has street artist Benoit and her former schoolmate from Switzerland – Nicolás (Paul Forman), spoilt son of a ruthless businessman.

Emily is still holding a candle for Gabriel while officially dating her London squeeze Alfie and even Sylvie is torn between a prickly Danish photographer and her ex-but still legal husband.  There are several business themes running through the series.  

Sylvie forms her own agency and takes the staff with her but ending up losing clients to a big French company that even buys the Pierre Cadault label. Loyalty and dirty tricks are part of the contradictory forces but the most interesting element is the increased focus on Emily as a selfish headline hogger who barges in on everyone else’s pitches and projects and makes them a better success.  

Apart from being unrealistic I would have liked to see more of her facing her shadow.  Her relationship with Mindy and Mindy’s growth as a talented singer are other positive points and it is always great to watch Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu as Sylvie who is the solid central pillar of the show.

Apart from the repetitious romantic plots the negative side of the ledger is the fashion, definitely a mess compared to seasons 1 and 2 and the overly superficial way problems arise and are magically resolved in each episode – many times things that require work and money just get fixed like Samantha’s nose wrinkle in Bewitched.

American romcom froth losing its taste.

2 stars

The Laureate

The interesting feature of this film is that it is about the writer Robert Graves, war poet and later biographer (T E Lawrence) and historical writer specializing in Roman emperors such as Claudius. Graves was a contemporary of T S Eliot, a friend of Siegfried Sassoon among others and after some harrowing WW1 experiences in the trenches, he ended up living the 20’s in Britain with its blow out times influenced by the swingers and flappers of the US.

At the beginning of the film Graves (Tom Hughes) is married to liberal artist Nancy Nicholson (Laura Haddock) and has a daughter.  They live in the country in a house called “World’s End”.  But Graves’s inspiration has dried up and bills are mounting.  

When little-known American writer Laura Riding (Dianna Agron) writes asking to visit, Nancy lets her stay in the hope of stimulating Robert’s creativity.  It works and Riding becomes a sort of lover of both of them before enticing Graves with her to London to work together on a literary project.  

This leads very quickly to a rather debauched lifestyle and the feeling among Graves’s friends that the American has led him astray.  Add a female German secretary and a novice Irish poet Geoffrey Phibbs (Fra Fee) into the mix and there is soon a real complex of relationships.  Nancy takes her daughter out of it to live on a barge but the Irishman is soon trying to woo her.  Things come to a head when Phibbs seeks to opt out too and the by now clearly mad Riding rather dramatically throws herself from a window.  There is not much more but Graves went on to become a very successful writer.

William Nuñez, an American, directs and pens this film.  Frankly, it is not that well made and I felt much more could have been squeezed out of an interesting period in the writer’s life.  The characters are somewhat flat, the script very predictable, the pacing slow until it picks up in the last quarter.  Of the actors, the only one to convince me was Haddock as Nancy. 

 Yes, set design and costumes are apt for the period and there are one or two scenes which move but the overall effect is that of a sub-par costume drama.

2 stars

Alcarràs

This second film by Carla Simón has been a big festival winner and much revered in Spain. Strangely it seems more like a documentary capturing the life of a family in Catalunya who have been harvesting peaches for decades. The “conflict” is the announcement by the owner of the land where the peach trees grow that he intends to cut down the tress and use the land for solar panels, thus depriving the Sole family of their livelihood.  The film follows the summer leading to the last harvest and the beginning of the transformation of the land into a solar panel farm.  

At the beginning the film meanders along and we have to piece together what is going on.  Grandad Rogelio (Josep Abad) is now old but remembers a promise by the grandfather Pinyol that his family would have a permanent right to farm the land.  

Grandson Pinyol has other ideas. Apart from that there are also complaints from the fruit growers that they are not getting fairly paid.  Nonetheless, for the bulk of the family, losing this work and place would be the end of a long family tradition and Rogelio’s son Quimet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet) is determined to fight to the end. Not all his family agree but teenage son Roger (Albert Bosch) stands by his father despite not always agreeing.  Wife Dolors (Anna Otin) stoically soldiers on while youngest daughter Iris (Ainet Jounou) just wants to play with her cousins throughout the long summer.  

Another daughter, teenage Mariona (Xenia Roset) is concerned about the future and conflicted between the farm and rehearsing with her friends in a dance troupe.

As the situation moves inexorably on, we get to see the family in their daily activities: picking fruit, shooting pest rabbits, barbecuing snails at an idyllic alfresco lunch, larking in the pool, singing folk songs, having drinking competitions and protesting in the local town square. 

What we are seeing is local life and possibly its disappearance as these small landholders are swallowed up by progress.  Apart from the family, they give work to immigrant workers and all this is quickly vanishing.

Carla Simón does a tremendous job directing a non-professional cast, chosen from locals of the area of Alcarràs and she and Arnau Vilaró write a sympathetic and natural screenplay.  

Some of the actors, notably those playing Quimet and Roger manage scenes that would challenge experienced professionals.  Daniela Cajias’s photography transports us there with interesting angles to allow the farm to get under our skin.

But does this all add up to a top film above and beyond its contribution as a historical and social document?  I’m not totally convinced.  There are some slack moments and the absence of many scenes of confrontation flatten the tone somewhat.  It took me a while to get through for that reason.

3 stars two ++

Pearl

A pleasant surprise from Ti West and Mia Goth giving us a horror story that starts off with vibes from the Wizard of Oz and ends up much more sinisterly.  

Set in 1918, we meet Pearl (Mia Goth) living on a farm in the middle of the US under the thumb of her strict German mother (Tandi Wright, effective) and her wheelchair-bound and severely ill father.  

Her husband Howard is serving in Europe and in a nod to now, we see that there is a pandemic – of Spanish flu.  Pearl dreams of escaping this life and becoming a dancer on Broadway or in Hollywood as she sees in the movies.  

She befriends the local cinema projectionist (David Corenswet) which leads to a fling and then starts fighting more fiercely with her mother which unchains a series of tragic and horrific events.

This is a polished film framed in the style of old Hollywood films and featuring a fascinating central character who seems naïve, gullible and calculating at the same time.

Goth is excellent in the role and has won a slew of awards.  She has a brilliant monologue near the end and handles the contradictions and ambiguity very well.  She is helped by the script she co-wrote with West.  

There are plenty of key moments, bad taste and surprises even though the whole story is perhaps a relatively old one.  You get your blood and gore but also a fair amount of style and creativity.

4 stars

Elite (Series – Season 4)

These shallow school-based soapie series are not really my thing but Elite gets plenty of press so I dropped into series 4 from 2021.  Reviews suggest that the first three series were better and that the show has been going down since then.  Set in an elite secondary school called Las Encinas on the outskirts of Madrid, the school resembles a cross between a convention centre and a wellness retreat complete with its own chic restaurant where some of the “students” work. There is precious little schoolwork done – in these 8 episodes we see one exam and one pathetic excuse of a debate but of course that’s not the point.  I’m told it resembles Riverdale, The OC and Gossip Girl and it has some of the genes of Dallas and Dynasty from the 70’s.  

Yes, it’s all about relationships, burning ambition and betrayal with heaps of naked bodies and soft porn scenes (completely gratuitous) but hey that’s what the punters want.  (And actors playing 17 year old who seem tio be anything from 20 ton 33 in age). So, watching the rich and dubiously entitled have their wicked way means suspending belief for the most part and trying to see if there is any real merit to the show or benefit from watching it.

This series features a new family – the Blancos with father Benjamin (Diego Martin) as the new headmaster, a weak but dictatorial figure, his twins Ariadna (Carla Diaz), seemingly very together but a right bitch, and Patrick (Manu Rios), a beautiful and empty gay whore type and the younger sister Mencia (Martina Cariddi) whose name reminds one of Dementia.  

She is quickly juggling high-class prostitution duties with a lesbian relationship with Rebe Parrilla (Claudia Salas), a fairly smart and sound student whose mother is a drug dealer and ex-associate of Mencia’s squeeze.  

Patrick drives slap bang into the middle of the gay relationship of the show’s favourite couple Omar (Omar Ayuso) and Ander (Arón Piper).  Other long-term characters are fighting over Ari, namely Guzmán (Miguel Bernadeau) and Samuel (Itzan Escamilla).

Finally, a new minor European price comes to the school together with his history of rape.  

He is Philippe (Pol Granch) who much to the chagrin of his mother falls for the school cleaner!  But Cayetana (Georgina Amorós) is no ordinary cleaner.  She is an aspiring haute-couture fashion designer and very pretty as well.

Into all this silly mess is threaded a murder but we get very few clues until late into the series and it all unravels quickly in the last episode. Many critics claim the series has no storyline which is a bit unfair but scripting and plot are generally very lazy.  Every secret is always overheard by someone in just the right place.

I felt the women characters acted better than the men, photography and set design are very nice but apart from Omar and Ander, it’s hard to gather any great sympathy for anyone. In its favour, the episodes move along quickly, together with some product placement like singer Ambar Lucid and it is easy to binge watch.  

Manu Rios has moved onto shoot with Almodovar so expect this to a springboard for better things for some of the cast.

Otherwise, I’ll be giving this a miss.

2 stars

LOLA

Indie British low budget debut for Andrew Legge.  Plenty of raves by the critics because

it purports to tell the story of two sisters in 1941 whose discovery of a television-like apparatus that allows them to see the future can change history.  At first, they use it to access music and fashion of the future.  They bring the Kinks “You Really Got Me” back to their time and turn it into a wartime hit.  They also can get advance information on German bombing raids which allows them to warn locals to seek safety.  This attracts the attention of the military who plant an officer with them, Sebastian (Rory Fleck Byrne) who falls in love with the younger sister Martha (Stefanie Martini).  This triggers some incidents which lead to the misuse of Lola (the apparatus) and a very negative future ensues leading to Britain losing the war to Germany and older sister Thomasina (Emma Appleton) being coopted by the new pre-Nazi government.

It’s an ambitious story and requires certain suspension of disbelief in parts.  I wasn’t that convinced by the story but it has its intrigue.  Nor did the characterization or acting greatly appeal.

Where this film does score is with the ingenious blend of old newsreels and sepia-filmed footage to give the impression that everything did take place in 1941 and what we are seeing belongs to an old film from those days.  For managing to bring that all off I give it a better score than perhaps the actual story, direction or acting deserved.

3 stars