Tag Archives: International film

2024

Fernanda Torres in Brazil’s Oscars Entry “I’m Still Here” Celebrates Motherhood

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Many of the best moms in the movies tend to carry a tune (Mamma Mia!, The Sound of Music), pack a punch or a wallop (The Terminator, Aliens) or be played by Sally Field. Joining this hallowed pantheon is Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva, the matriarch who keeps a brave face despite her dissident husband’s forced disappearance during the military dictatorship regime of 1970 Brazil in the Walter Salles film I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) (B+). The film does a masterful job setting up the idyllic seaside metropolitan life of its real-life family, with ominous foreshadowing of imminent dangers. Torres is towering as the woman who finds her agency and strength especially when the walls of her world come crashing. Her character’s dignity makes for one of the awards season’s best performances. Selton Mello deftly portrays the loving husband and father and former politician whose actions appear furtive to the ruling class. Salles mixes panoramic shots, home movie style camera storytelling and chilly claustrophobic interiors as the family gets systematically expelled from their Eden of Rio. Beyond the central couple, it’s a bit harder for viewers to get to know all of the family’s joyous offspring, played by multiple actors over the decades, but everyone is roundly committed to the narrative. The cautionary tale of censorship and watch lists and jailing one’s enemy and stoking the embers of resistance are all resonant in this gripping story. But it’s Torres as the mama chameleon commanding the screen who emerges as the film’s VIP.

2024

“Flow” is a “Cat”-ivating Animated Spectacular

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The Latvian movie Flow (A) aka Straume) is an animated antidote and companion piece to Mad Max: Fury Road featuring assorted characters with survival on the mind careening on caravans toward a shared destiny. The characters in this human- and dialogue-free family adventure are all animals on a journey escaping an overpowering flood, and Gints Zilbalodis — director, co-writer, co-producer and co-musician — commandeers a master-class menagerie about navigating a world in crisis and the power of found family. The film follows a solitary animal named Cat who must find refuge and collaborate with other species on a boat after the deluge devastates their forest home. As the animals sail, often by boat, through mystical, overflowed landscapes, they overcome dangers while adapting to a transformed ecosystem. The beauty, scope and expression in this indie represent some of the most lovely animated work to ever reach the screen. The central feline is an utterly engaging protagonist, with each curious glance, curled nap, arched back, meow, yawn, hiss, leap or lurch amazingly authentic. Despite cats not loving water, this one becomes an avid fisherman to feed friends. The lavish world-building and thoughtfulness in rendering the ragtag ruffians including the resilient black cat, an organized ring-tailed lemur, a majestic secretarybird, a curious capybara and a spunky yellow Labrador demonstrate bountiful talent. Zilbalodis and team have crafted forces of nature including rushing torrents of water and flourishes of beauty including nature and man-made environments such as submerged cities with exquisite attention to detail. The filmmakers blend techniques of traditional cinema and open-world video games to create an immersive and dreamlike story. This gorgeous allegory takes viewers to a literal and metaphorical higher ground for greater empathy with lessons to impart for all ages. With a very quick running time of 85 minutes, be sure to stay for the brief post-credit sequence.

2024

Iran-Set “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” Interrogates Power and Protest

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Political conflict within a family sets the stage for rage as an Iranian wife and her two modern daughters rebel against the husband and father promoted to a role as prosecutor for the government and whose gun is missing from within their home. It’s a crackerjack premise surrounding a charged object and a movie stylishly made and well acted, interspersing fictional narrative with real 2022-2023 cellphone footage of horrors against dissidents in Tehran’s revolutionary streets. In fact, writer/director Mohammed Rasoulof’s engaging Persian language family parable The Seed of the Sacred Fig (B+) is a work born of such urgency, it was created in secrecy and smuggled out of Iran to be released in Germany and around the world. The very existence of the film is a stunning work of protest; and at a near-three hour run time, it has a resonant and lived-in quality with a slow-simmering first act setting the stage for a shape-shifting battle as the conflict evolves. Rasoulof wisely shows how the teenage girls (especially the vocal Mahsa Rostami but also the expressionate Setareh Maleki) first become distrustful of government via the testimony of friends and evidence on social media just as the paranoid father (stoic Missagh Zareh in a rather thankless role) finds himself increasingly ensconced as an apologist for a brutal regime. Soheila Golestani is superb as the mom trying desperately and deliberately to maintain Intrafamilial peace in this tinderbox of a domestic drama. The talky opening reel is punctuated by a sequence of profound power as a young woman’s face uncovered by hijab undergoes cursory healing from a spray of bullets fired upon her in the name of religion. Soon dialogue boils to more conventional action underscoring the blistering broadside against the Iranian regime with varying levels of authenticity. It’s a searing portrait of straining relationships as society destabilizes against the backdrop of unrest, an effective glimpse at courage against oppressive rule and overall an insightful film worth finding.

2024

“Emilia Pérez” is Audacious Art for Adventurous Moviegoers

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French filmmakers prove more artfully attuned to both the transgender experience and crime in the Mexican milieu than the product of billions of dollars of American political ad spending in a bold and brilliant subtitled melodrama paced, plotted and performed with the zest and scope of an opera. On the surface, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez (A-) qualifies as a musical with piquant original songs contributed by Camille, a rousing original score by Clement Ducol and tight, cagey choreography by Damien Jalet, but the tone poem aesthetic echoes a fascinating central character study and crime adventure. The plot centers on a Mexican lawyer (a never better Zoe Saldana), who helps a vicious crime lord fake his own death and transition to life as the female title character (a fascinating Karla Sofia Gascon). A delightfully unhinged Selena Gomez portrays the widow who, several years later, believes Emilia is aunt rather than father to her two children. Meanwhile Perez embarks on a crusade to shed light on the disappearing victims of the country’s cartels. Audiard’s audacious work as writer/director, backed by Paul Guilhaume’s stunning cinematography and Juliette Welfling’s deft editing, creatively chronicles the journey of the story’s trio of remarkable women. Saldana and Gascon in particular are riveting and empathetic in authentic pursuit of their lives’ calling, and Gomez sneaks up in the final reel with some genuine scene-stealing too. Anthony Vaccarello of fashion house Yves Saint Laurent designed costumes for the film, impeccable in all manners of craft. This import is distributed by Netflix, but be advised it is best enjoyed without distraction on the epic canvas of a big screen.

2022

Bloated “Bardo” Doesn’t Do Alejandro Iñárritu Any Favors

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Now on Netflix.

Flickers of self-reflection and self-loathing dot the terrain of Alejandro Iñárritu’s Mexico-set semi-autobiographical seriocomedy Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (C-) as it leisurely meanders through its bloated running time. There are many ambitious ideas and a few lovely and dreamlike visual flourishes, but this film rarely transcends its bursts of inspiration. Daniel Giménez Cacho is a stand-in for the director, who is often quite passive in his own morality tale. Just as this tepid protagonist is caught between the worlds of his Mexican homeland and the Hollywood/America where he has immigrated, the film alternates between meta realism and smug fantasies. It’s all quite self-indulgent and mostly hangs like a punishing squawking albatross. The film feels a little bored with its own gimmickry and may have the same effect on audiences.

2021, Rent It Tonight

Almodovar’s “Parallel Mothers” is Another Stunner with Perfect Penélope Cruz

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Now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Primary colors, twisty storylines and strong female characters abound in the directorial DNA as two moms embark on two very different and connected experiences against a searing political backdrop. The love child of a telenovela type story and Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s distinct sensibilities at the helm of Parallel Mothers (B+) makes for an engrossing and complex tale about exhuming the past, living in the moment and facing the future. Penélope Cruz is resplendent as the complicated protagonist, with a strong supporting turn by Milena Smit. Exquisite production design, a melodramatic score and a meditative framing device make this one of the director’s most accessible films, some parts sensational and others solemn. His themes about the trauma women carry across generations is prescient, but the puzzle of relationships along the way make it an engrossing journey. 

2021

Dramatic “Drive My Car” Ponders Life and Loss

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Now in theatres and HBO Max.

If the DeLorean is known for time travel and the Aston Martin a harbinger of glamorous espionage, this film’s cherry red Saab is now known as a vessel of truth. Ponderous, profound and poetic, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s drama Drive My Car (B) follows a stoic actor/director played by Hidetoshi Nishijima who grapples with grief in his personal life while directing an unconventional production of the play Uncle Vanya. He begins to surrender control when a young woman (Tōko Miura) is assigned to be his chauffeur, in one of those great Once-style relationships. This Japanese film achieves some additional gravitas due to the austere and revealing landscape of its Hiroshima setting, and its meta glimpse at emotional catharsis means the filmmaker can Chekhov all the boxes of the modern-day art house movie. It’s a delicate balance and a tad glum in parts and honestly sometimes a touch obvious in its musings about the nature of acting and the power of art to heal wounds. But it’s often a fascinating fugue on a variety of themes about loss, as characters alternately try to stick to the text and be moved by it. It’s also a gorgeously filmed travelogue into treacherous human territories with lots of slow-burn discoveries. In addition to the strong lead performances, Masai Okada is also entrancing as a troubled member of the troupe. Ultimately this is an emotionally rewarding road trip into the human condition likely to please cinephiles and completely confound others.