Everything is Free

Indie film by one Brian Jordan Alvarez who stars in the film, wrote it, directed it and composed the music.  Quite a prolific young man too.  This slim (in content rather than time) effort is supposedly set in Colombia but never leaves California.  Ivan (Alvarez) is a gay part American-part Colombian artist living in the latter country.  

His best friend Christian (Peter Vack) comes to stay along with Cole (Morgan Krantz), his brother.  Both are supposedly straight but Ivan senses some come-on vibes from Cole and responds to that.  Cole blows hot and cold. “I’m straight but I want you to fuck me” logic!  

Christian gets to find out and turns violently homophobe and the two brothers leave.  Ivan finds it hard to pull himself together after that despite having other relationships and later he has an opportunity to meet up with Cole again and discover the truth.  

Amongst these rather unconvincing comings and goings are the entrances and exits of different friends: Eli, a gay feminine doctor, Stephanie, an irritating American tourist, some women the brothers were screwing and some men Ivan meets on the beach.  

Even the art dealer Ivan works with is a Yankee pretending to be Colombian and the only Spanish occurs when he beds an Argentine.  All of the bit players give him some advice or something to reflect on.  Character development and rationale for acts are not in much evidence here and apart from trying to show the life of a gay man who isn’t very fulfilled in love we really don’t get much idea of what the point was.  Persevere could be one message but what for when it was pretty obvious Cole was unlikely to commit.  Ivan says several times “I fell in love with a straight man” and suffered but what the spectators should take from this is unclear.  Just like the gratuitous sex and nudity. Mostly, it seems like an ego vehicle for the ubiquitous Alvarez who is not even a very good actor.

1 star plus

Operación Tríunfo 2023 (series)

Having dedicated a few hours to this over the last couple of months I thought it was worth a review.

This reality show is from Spain and is a cross between Big Brother and The Voice.  In it, 16 young singers live for three months in the ‘academy’ where they receive intense training not only in music but also languages, personal care and life as well as being treated to visits from past winners, contestants and other stars. Antonio Banderas was one such guest this time. Each week there is a gala in which the participants perform and the weakest/least popular is voted off by the public. The final gala consists of the last 6 standing who are then ranked by public vote. 

The programme used to run on open television but is now on Amazon Prime and while the audience is lower, the amount of activity on social media and on the streaming service is actually high.

Not surprising.  I’m not a fan of these types of reality which are often time-fillers but this one has masses of content and reduces the gossip element to a minimum.  I have seldom seen such a serious educational basis to a programme of this type and watching coaching sessions and feedback, you end up learning a lot about music and singing.  Enhorabuena! 

As I didn’t watch the galas, I have no comments about the judges but as regards the coaches, I am impressed by their professionalism and human qualities.  

Noemí Galera has been the director for several versions and is a solid mother-hen to the group.  Manu Guix is a very competent musical director and provides a good complement to Noe.  We also have the very able vocal coach Mamen Márquez, choreographer Vicky Gómez and as from this year Abril Zamora who teaches aspects of interpretation and is a great addition to the team.

After the 2020 season with the tremendous talent of the winner Nia and some other really creative talents, my first reactions to this year’s bunch was not so enthusiastic. They seemed a little young and underbaked. But as the series went on, their raw talent blended with the training ended up producing a good batch indeed. The final 6 were all worthy of being there, even though one or two like Cris, Bea and Alvaro who fell by the wayside earlier have the talent to be very successful in the future.

Naiara, the winner this year was clearly the best (another good thing about the public vote for this show is that the public vote for talent rather than any other reason – in some countries the back stories or the looks of the contender have more weight).

Paul Thin, runner-up has masses of talent but not really my style while 18 year-old Ruslana

and Juanjo also have huge voices. 

 Uruguayan Lucas made tremendous progress during the show with a great work ethic and Martin, protagonist of a relatively discreet love affair with Juanjo during the programme, will surely work in musicals.

Staging, lighting and sound are all strong points,

All told it is a very satisfying venture and so much more as a chance to hear old hits and discover new music. 

4 stars plus

Anatomy of a Fall

2023 Cannes winner from France which is a sort of psychological dissection of a marriage conducted in a courtroom after the sudden death of the husband Samuel. The death is caused by the fall in the title from the upstairs window in a house in the French Alps.  Did he fall, jump or was pushed?

Sandra, his wife becomes the main suspect as his 11 year-old son Daniel, being visually impaired was out walking his dog at the time. At first, she does not believe that she could be indicted for his death but soon the legal system kicks in and she finds herself in court being defended by her friend and lawyer Vincent (Swann Arlaud).  

The prosecutor sets out to cast enough doubt on the suicide theory and to establish that Sandra had motives to murder Samuel. 

 In an impressively whirlwind performance, Antoine Reinartz makes the prosecutor one of the most memorable legal bullies in recent times as he trawls through the couple’s marriage and even her books to bring the rather aloof Sandra down.  Sandra doesn’t help with her insistence on speaking English and her suspicion of the French system.  Samuel is French and this is his world.  She is German and they met and lived in Britain.  Therefore Sandra struggles to fit into this world and in fact chooses not to, making her less appealing to the public.

Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) has to sit through all this in court and is forced to reassess who his mother is in the light of all the dirty laundry emerging.  His is a subtle and emotional performance.

Centre of everything is Sandra Huller who composes a complex character whose particular temperament and lifestyle make her someone that is not always easy to decipher or to fit into a box.  With subtle facial movements and even changes of skin colour she manages to convey so much.  Someone who seems to be practical honest and frank and yet also unlikeable.  We want to side with her and feel her humanity but at the same time there is something vaguely off-putting and dangerous about her. A first-class performance.

Arlaud as the defendant’s counsel is very solid as is Snoop, the dog who plays a key role in some later scenes. (He got a Palme d’Or in Cannes for best cat or dog!)

The screenplay by director Justine Triet and Arthur Harari is top notch as well and displays the unique French legal system in action, often seemingly cruel to foreign eyes.  Their depiction of a strained and failing marital relationship is also relatable and terribly sad.

A rich somewhat daring film that keeps pressing on into places we normally keep secret.

4 stars plus

The Garden of Evening Mists

A film that seems like a throwback to earlier times not only in the subject matter but also in cinematography.  This Malaysian/British co-production revisits the time of the Japanese occupation and the return of the Brits to control in the land.  

The main character Yun Lin (Angelica Lee) is held in a concentration camp together with her sister.  When the Japanese begin their retreat she is able to escape but her sister is killed when the Japanese bomb the mine they have herded most of the prisoners into.  To honour her sister she decides to create a Japanese garden that her sister imagined in her mind.

She visits a Japanese man, Aritomo (Hiroshi Abe) who is working on a tea plantation owned by British but he is unwilling to accept her commission.  Aritomo was a gardener at the imperial palace in Tokyo but for some reason lost his job and came to Malaysia a few years before.  What he does suggest is that she work in his team and she will learn all that she needs to create the garden herself.  

As she gets to know the strict and distant Japanese man better stories of the camp emerge and the torture she endured.  Aritomo suggests she learn another subject apart from gardening and among those offered are origami and tattooing.  He ends up covering her scars with a gorgeous Japanese style tattoo which contains hidden information.  

There is a third timeframe here.  Many years later (1980’s – 90’s) Yun Lin (now Sylvia Chang) returns as a judge seeking to be appointed to the federal court.  

Rumours abound regarding her relationship with Aritomo and she returns to the plantation where Max (Julian Sands) is now in charge.  Aritomo’s affairs have been left as is for decades and Yun Lin goes through his material to see if she can uncover any more evidence of his reason for being in Malaya.  This allows Max and her to chat and reveal more of the story to the audience.  In inscrutable Oriental style some mysteries are solved, others not so.

The film moves along at a languid pace best suited for the garden scenes.  There are some brief shocking scenes in the camp and a lot of Yun Lin gazing at Aritomo.  His teaching delivered in drip feed style has some wisdom but I wanted the end to come more quickly.   It is not a bad film by Tom Lin from Taiwan but it lacks spark and originality.  British period dramas usually have meaning hidden in the silences but this is not so much the case here.  The acting is also rather wooden in parts.  Kartik Vijay does a decent job behind the camera.  While it is good to see a film from Malaysia and to revisit the Cameron Highlands which I have seen, this film doesn’t do it for me.

2 stars plus 

Shortcomings

Maybe not an auspicious title, this film is based on a comic by screenwriter Adrian Tomine, and revolves around 3 characters of Asian descent.  The film starts in San Franscisco and moves to New York.  

Ben Tanaka (Justin H Min) is an unfulfilled filmmaker running a failing art cinema in the suburbs.  His long-term girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) is getting more into Asian film and is angling to get an internship in NY.  

Alicia (Sherry Cola) is Ben’s friend, busy chasing women and keeping her lesbian status a secret from her parents.  Ben is obsessed with white women and when Miko heads off to NY he acts on his desires since he and Miko are taking a break.

Later Alicia falls in love with a part-Asian part-British woman living in NY, the cinema closes and Ben heads off to NY to discover that Miko has a new boyfriend and the relationship is over.  Not so much of a plot.  The thing is that Ben is actually quite obnoxious and opinionated most of the time so how anyone sticks with him is amazing.  

His best skill is putting his foot in it. This makes it hard to enjoy a film with such an unsympathetic central character.  He’s not evil or bad, just astonishingly unaware of others.  With Miko being rather one-dimensional the film is saved by Sherry Cola’s portrayal of Alicia with doses of sharp humour, practicality and rebellion mixed in together.  Thank god for her presence.

Maybe the film portrays a certain generation but I found it unconvincing on the Asian experience front – they could have been any race, unconvincing on the film maker front – the modern version of having the narrator be a writer by trade.  

Sort of lazy.  Randall Park and the actors do well enough but the film lacks a fire and a story to really hook us.

2 stars

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

I saw the previous in this series from Marvel and was intrigued to know how they overcame the loss of Chadwick Boseman, the star of that film.  At the beginning of this his character T’Challa is dying and his mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett) assumes the queenship of this nation.

Quickly, we receive a lot of information about the precious metal vibranium that Wakanda has and the attempts of the US and France among other states to acquire it.  But the threat in this film comes from the Talokan, a kingdom led by Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía) which is peopled by superhumans who can live both on land and underwater and are descendants of the Mayans.  

They want an alliance with Wakanda against the above world countries but then look to destroy Wakanda before later returning to accept the alliance.

Ramonda is the main character early on but her later demise leaves Shuri (Letitia Wright), T’Challa’s sister basically in charge and she has to up her game from being a scientist to becoming a military leader.  As in the first film, there are many obstacles to overcome and notably in this film most of this is the task of women.  Joining Ramonda and Shuri are Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o),

Danai Gurira, one of the Dora Milaje or government guardswomen and Dominique Thorn as teen scientist Riri.

We get a number of interesting angles here.  The role of women in battle, basically doing what men do, the question of grief – Shuri spends most of the movie in a state of mourning for brother but life must go on and the theme of revenge.  Just how far can you go to seek revenge for you and your people.

The film also has to work around the big hole in the middle – the absence of the black panther – who welded his people together.

The story has a few excesses and continuity inconsistencies that should be ignored to best enjoy it.  The script can be wooden but the performances are strong enough to compensate.  The set action pieces (fights and car chases) are solid without being anything new.

The combination of action movie and thinking tribal women’s film works well enough without ever seeming to be a leader in its genre and perhaps the film is somewhat overlong.  Not a bad job by Ryan Coogler but the loss of a charismatic star and the demands of the pandemic make this a little less than entirely satisfying.

3 stars plus

Stambul Garden

Also known as Blurred Lines.  A German film by Ilker Çatak, of Turkish origin, this is a small movie anticipating the director’s more famous recent film, The Teachers’ Lounge.

Basically a coming-of-age story it involves Janik, a typically looking blond German boy with educated and liberal parents (indulging his drinking and drug taking) and Samu, German with Turkish blood, whose mother is problematic, needy and often addicted.  The two boys are finishing school and working out their future. Janik imagines going to university and has a girlfriend while Samu dreams of Turkey and finding his roots/father.  Janik worships Samu in a way and while some reviewers have suggested a homosexual undercurrent I’m not so sure.  They are clearly very close friends and share a cottage much of the time away from their families.

The first half shows us their life in Germany, parties, the cottage and the “Stambul” garden, and especially the difficult character of Samu’s mum Irene (Katharina Behrens) who can turn up at any time and be an embarrassment.  One of her actions nearly causes the boys to end their friendship.

The second half shifts to Istanbul which is authentically painted. The boys live in a cheap hotel and Samu is keen to get work befriending some of the con boys who spend their days on the street hustling in different ways.

Janik is less keen on this and the friendship starts to strain, especially when Samu gets seriously sick from substance abuse and when the boys buy a cheap campervan that ends up being a pup.  

They are forced to confront each other and decide what each one wants.

It’s a decent enough small film.  Acting by Emil von Schoenfels as Janik is particularly convincing as he grows up fast.  Mekyas Mulugeta as Samu is almost as strong and is believable in a role that is less generous with information.

Don’t expect marvels or anything very new but Istanbul is very well depicted and the story is dealt with honestly and with a certain freshness.

2 stars plus

American Fiction

Nice to get a serious, intelligent and at times very funny film musing on the state of things today.  Monk (Jeffrey Wright) is a writer who writes serious novels from a black perspective often with historical connections.  He also lectures at university and is obliged to take leave when a woke student objects to the word ‘nigger’ on the board even though it is the title of a literary text. Monk challenges her and the university authorities want him out.  

He goes to a book festival and sees Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), author of a new blockbuster written in the vernacular of a semi-literate girl from the ghetto.  He is somewhat taken aback that this type of literature which panders to the worse stereotypes of black people is what is selling and worse still what is gaining critical acclaim.  

So, he sets about writing a book in the same style, gives himself a pen name – Stagg R Leigh and gets his agent to send it to some publishers.  They swoop on it and Monk cannot believe that his spoof with all its literary deficiencies is going to be a best-seller and have a film made of it.  He can’t do interviews live so he creates this fugitive persona who risks returning to jail in order to explain his elusiveness.

The climax to this part of the film is when the book ends up on the shortlist for an award that Monk is part of the jury for.  Of course, he can’t reveal he wrote it and tries hard to point out its flaws but the majority white jury proves his point – that you give people what they want to read and that’s what you also give prizes to.

All of this literary drama takes place as Monk reconnects with his estranged family.  

His mother (Leslie Uggams) is developing Alzheimers, his capable sister Lisa dies suddenly (great cameo from Tracee Ellis Ross), his brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) is exiting a divorce and coming out as gay at the same time and the family once rich have money problems.  

Monk is obliged to update his relationships with family members. He also picks up a girlfriend along the way, Coraline (Erika Alexander) but that is not smooth sailing either.  Lots to think about in terms of how we relate here.

Wright has an excellent role to sink his teeth into and does very well indeed and the screenplay by director Cord Jefferson (from Percival Everett’s book) is top-rate, making excellent observations and posing many questions about our cultural standards and priorities.  Laura Karpinan gives us a suitable soundtrack.

4 stars plus     

8 Años/8 Years

The problem with first features by new directors is that you never know what you’ll get.  Juniper, reviewed recently was a very decent effort as was The Kitchen though neither are classics.  

8 Años is from Spain by newcomer Jd Alcáraz and is set on the Canarian island of La Palma.  Which is the real star of the movie by the way.  José (Miguel Diosdado) and David (Carlos Mestanza) (first names of the director) are a gay couple returning to the island after 8 years when they first met to celebrate the anniversary and decide if they are carrying on.  

They come with 2 friends a lesbian couple (Maria Maroto and Natalia Rodriguez) deciding if to have a baby.

What follows is a strange blend of events which include the protagonists having sex in a historic museum then running naked down the street, various parties or concerts, one of which is at a trans bar in the middle of nowhere,

a meet up with local wheeler dealer Tito Raúl (Sergio Momo) who probably has sex with both men and José’s adventure in a rocky fishing village where he meets a kind of guru, Airam (Eloi Catalan) who takes him to a ritual in a forest as a result of which he follows what he thinks is David into the woods and is about to have sex with him but David may be Airam and along comes a wild dog that needs to be killed.  Suddenly we are in a hospital and José is waking up after having a major panic attack!  Subsequent events include David’s yellow convertible stolen by gay slum dwelling mafiosos.  Finally, the two agree to separate.

All of this is a tremendous mix of flashbacks, dreams and drug induced hallucinations.  I kept trying to follow the time/reality sequences by looking at what shirts they were wearing.  Is it 8 years ago?, Now? In José’s head?  It gets too clever and confusing even if I had a sense that there was some value in there.

Acting is fair but the script at times seems trite and the whole trans cabaret scene and gay talk seemed to be included for no real reason.  Yes, the film is a trip, but not one I would repeat.

1 star plus

Per Lucio

Documentary on Italian popular singer and composer Lucio Dalla.  

He emerged via jazz groups in the late 1960’s and soon became a singer for the people, telling stories of daily life, of workers and their rights, of farmers and even topics like Mille Miglia, a song about a famous Italian motor race.  Later on he composed Caruso, an operatic number honouring the famous tenor.

Pietro Marcello, director of Martin Eden, weaves in old footage of the time with concerts and occasional interviews with the singer who dies of a heart attack in 2012.

The main thread is maintained via interviews with his former manager Tobia and an old friend Stefano, who end up reminiscing over a table in a café. 

What was interesting was learning about this troubadour I had little knowledge of and how he spoke to Italians about their time in the way that Serrat, Sabina and others have done.

I didn’t find the low-key reminiscences very effective as a film and once again the film seemed to peter out without really getting to grips with deeper topics – his politics, his undisclosed gay partner with whom he was for decades and most of all Caruso, which doesn’t even get a play in the documentary.  Perhaps there are copyright issues but it is an iconic song.

2 stars