Saint Omer, first
France entered this tough-minded, heartbreaking drama about race, class, and motherhood in the Oscar race last year, and I’m still perplexed as to why it wasn’t recognized. As she grounds her narrative on the true incident of a young Senegalese lady in France accused of leaving her infant on a beach to die, Alice Diop makes effective use of her experience producing documentaries. Diop makes up Rama, a pregnant novelist who travels to Saint Omer to see the trial, feeding into her own uncertainties and anxieties. Guslagie Malanda portrays Laurence, the mother who is on trial, with an unusual level of serenity and resignation. Even though her face is expressionless, Rama played by Kayije Kagame lets you see her heart running and intellect racing as she observes. Diop based her language on court records, but the results go far beyond dry facts on a page to create a captivating movie with two profound and vibrant women on screen. (CJ)
2. Close
A delicate yet deeply moving coming-of-age drama from Lucas Dhont, which is so realistic you could think it’s a fly-on-the-wall documentary, follows his critically acclaimed debut, Girl. Two 13-year-old boys who have a close friendship in rural Belgium serve as the film’s heroes, Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav de Waele). Peer pressure, however, strains their bond to breaking point when they enroll in a new school. Dhont, who has superhuman sensitivity to the suffering of adolescence, is aware that it doesn’t require overt bullying to make young people feel as though they are being attacked in an excruciating way. Casual inquiries from the boys’ peers are enough to permanently alter them. (NB)
Chapter 4 of John Wick 3.
The year’s best mainstream, commercial movie thus far is the latest installment of the artistic, action-packed franchise starring Keanu Reeves as the assassin we support. In an effort to avoid getting killed while traveling through Paris, Berlin, and Osaka with a multi-million dollar bounty on his head, Wick embraces his inner James Bond. The action in this installment, which features plenty of martial arts, weapons, and swords, is bigger and splashier than in the previous Wick films, but director Chad Stahelski still manages to make it just as aesthetically spectacular and fascinating. Reeves’ endearing demeanor aids in establishing our connection to a figure who has long since lost track of the bodies he has dispatched. As Wick’s sophisticated coworker Winston, Ian McShane is always a treat, and the movie gives us one last chance to see Lance Reddick, who just passed away, in his role as the concierge Charon. (CJ)
4. Wow Spider
Based on a true incident, Ali Abbasi’s gory Holy Spider tells the tale of a married builder named Mehdi Bajestani who murdered 16 sex workers in Mashhad, a sacred city in Iran, in 2000 and 2001. It initially seems to be an eerie companion piece to Silence of the Lambs and other big-screen serial-killer thrillers, starring Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who won the best actress prize at Cannes, as the relentless journalist investigating the atrocities. The intriguing turn is that some locals and politicians view the murderer as a local hero on a quest for morality. Holy Spider is an investigation of societal misogyny that lies beneath the basic thrills, and it seems even more pertinent in the light of the Mahsa Amini protests. (NB)
5. The Terrible Ones
This incisive, serious yet light-handed fiction about kids and teenagers in a run-down neighborhood in northern France shows how weird non-professional actors may sometimes appear on TV. Real students are chosen to portray fictionalized versions of their own tales on screen in the meta-drama’s central plot device. The Worst Ones, whose sarcastic title alludes to the poor reputation of the children who are cast, was created using exactly that method by directors Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret, who were also former casting directors. The four actors—two kids, two teenagers—are all engaging and have natural screen presence as they interact with and make fun of the harsh, middle-aged man who is their director. The Worst Ones, winner of the top award in the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes last year, has an unpretentious comfort while developing into a profound examination of the exploitation and voyeurism of filming actual life. (CJ)
6. EO
One of the performers in a Polish circus that is shut down, a donkey, is transported to live in an equestrian facility. He does not, however, linger for very long. Instead, our long-eared hero trudges throughout Europe through a succession of various episodes in various genres, as if he were a guest star in a number of different movies. The sorrow at man’s inhumanity to man (and man’s inhumanity to donkey) and their astonishingly psychedelic camerawork, editing, and soundtrack are what tie his picaresque experiences, which were influenced by Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, together. Despite being 84 years old, EO’s director Jerzy Skolimowski is as enthusiastic and committed than ever. This year, there won’t be another movie quite like it in terms of flamboyant bizarreness, sweetness, love, and mischief. (NB)
7. Return to Seoul
The plot of Davy Chou’s modest film appears to be very simple. A Korean woman in her mid-20s named Freddie was adopted as an infant and brought up in France. She now travels to Seoul and hesitantly searches for her real parents. But as it continues on, the narrative fast-forwards by two and then five years, showing how Freddie’s sense of identity changes in surprising and utterly compelling ways. Is she French or Korean? Does she appear like a stylish businesswoman or a grunge student? Does she wish to find her mother or not? Chou has a new and brisk style, while Park Ji-Min is colorful and unpredictable as Freddie. He places the story in commonplace locations with a polished appearance and cozy atmosphere, such as workplaces, restaurants, and winding streets. The film’s thrilling identity-swirling excitement is better captured in the original English title: I’ll Never Be All the People. (CJ)
8. Infinity Pool
Infinity Pool, the most recent entrant in the developing “rich people have a bad time on an island” subgenre, shimmers with reflections of Triangle of Sadness, Menu, and Glass Onion, yet it is murkier and more toxic than any of them. A failing author who travels with his affluent wife to a posh beach resort is played by Alexander Skarsgrd. When he learns too late that the nation has a policy of instant execution for specific offences, his holiday from hell only gets bloodier and more bizarrely jaw-dropping from that point on. It’s true that both the character and the movie lose their way, but this whirlwind of extreme cinema shows that Brandon Cronenberg, the writer-director, is talented enough in his own right that we should probably stop comparing him to his father, David Cronenberg, and that his co-star, Mia Goth, one of the most extraordinary actresses of her generation (who is just as impressive in Pearl), is also. (NB)
