Category archives: Visual Arts
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1 year ago
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Courtesy of Kino Lorber
An intriguing new film from Chase Joynt, Framing Agnes is a docudrama hybrid that delves into a notorious 1960s gender health study at UCLA. Using reenactments, the film fleshes out several of the study's transgender subjects, including the titular pseudonymous Agnes, who became renowned for "tricking" UCLA in to obtain gender-affirming surgery at a time when such procedures were only done abroad and trans Americans were little seen or understood.
At the beginning of the film, we see news footage of trans pioneer Christine Jorgensen, then one of the most famous women in the world. At the time (1950s) her blond, glamorous image (representing the apex of American femininity) was one of the few public representations — and for many, the only one — of a transgender woman. Joynt then introduces us to six subjects of the UCLA study portrayed by trans actors including Angelica Ross (Pose), Jen Richards (Mrs. Fletcher), and Zackary Drucker (Transparent), as they reenact actual interviews with sociologist Harold Garfinkel (played by Joynt himself), taken directly from unearthed transcripts. They are a cross-section of America, including the blonde, glamorous Agnes (Drucker); church-going African-American Georgia (Ross), and midwestern, working-class Denny (Silas Howard); all of them sharp, thoughtful, and crystal clear about themselves and their place in society at the time. Filmed in black and white, these scenes are fraught with tamped down emotion as [...]
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1 year ago
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Image courtesy of "You Resemble Me"
Boasting an impressive list of producers––including Spike Lee, Riz Ahmed, Alma Har’el, and Spike Jonze––Dina Amer’s gripping and deeply affecting directorial debut You Resemble Me dramatizes the sad and embattled life of Hasna Ait Boulahcen, a young woman who was falsely depicted as Europe’s first female suicide bomber after the 2015 Paris bombings. The first part of the film portrays Hasna and her younger sister Mariam (played with realistic lack of inhibition by real-life sisters Lorenza and Ilonna Grimaudo) as they navigate life in in the suburbs of Paris. Moroccan immigrants, they live in a multi-racial housing complex with their overwhelmed, abusive mother and two other siblings. Despite life’s challenges and the neighborhood’s roughness, the closely bonded Hasna and Mariam manage to have fun playing and running through the streets. With its naturalistic action, dialogue and characters, the film is instantly compelling. Amer presents her story in a straightforward yet often poetic way; it's easy to get drawn into the lives of these scrappy sisters.
Dina Amer (photo: Kevin Scanlon)
During an impromptu birthday celebration for Mariam, their mother attempts to collect her daughter's gifts to sell for cash. Hasna rebels, running away with Mariam in tow. They take the train into the city, where they sleep in a park in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and snatch food from street vendors. Eventually the girls are apprehended (not for[...]
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2 years ago
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Courtesy of FilmRise
A tough yet poignant film, Gaysorn Thavat’s The Justice of Bunny King is the story of a New Zealand mother who battles the country’s social services bureaucracy to regain custody of her children. Bunny (Essie Davis), a funny, resourceful woman who refuses to be beaten down by the system, is the film’s motor—charming and scheming her way through various obstacles, all to fulfill her promise to celebrate her young daughter’s upcoming birthday.
We first see Bunny energetically cleaning windshields in a parking lot for cash with a posse of fellow squeegee operators. Gradually, we learn of her difficult situation, beginning with a visit to a social services office, where she is reminded that in order to get her children out of foster care—or to spend time with them at all—she needs to have a home. Unfortunately, she’s currently living with her sister’s family during a severe housing shortage.
Things get worse when Bunny witnesses a disturbing scene involving her teenaged niece Tonyah (Thomasin McKenzie) and the former is subsequently kicked out of her brother-in-law’s house. As Bunny faces and is defeated by one hurdle after another, with Tonyah as accomplice, she becomes even more determined, and the film spirals into a suspenseful race against time as the stakes get ever higher. Thanks to Sophie Henderson's script, and Thavat’s pacing and tone, we’re never quite sure what will happen next, while Davis’s terrific performance guarantees that we stay [...]
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2 years ago
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Courtesy of Obscured Pictures
It's probably safe to say that Jono McLeod’s documentary My Old School isn’t quite like anything we’ve seen before, both in subject and format. This inventive and charmingly told tale about a renowned Scottish hoax is probably not familiar to most Americans, all the better for us to watch it unfold and deliver its surprises. Using current interviews, old footage and news reports, and many animated sequences, McLeod puts together a fascinating portrait of Brandon Lee (not the late actor), his former classmate at the posh Bearsden Academy in Glasgow. Though Lee agreed to be interviewed, he declined to appear on camera, resulting in one of the film’s most interesting elements: venerable Scots actor Alan Cumming “stars” as Lee, expertly lip-synching his story. (All of the other film’s characters appear as themselves, as animated versions of themselves, or both.)
The tale begins in 1993, when Lee enters fifth form at Bearsden Academy, located in one of Glasgow's fancier neighborhoods. Tall and somewhat odd-looking, he stands out from his 16-year-old classmates in several ways, including his deep voice , unplaceable accent, and formal clothes.
Courtesy of Obscured Pictures
His fellow classmates soon find out that Lee had previously lived in Canada with his late opera-singer mother, toured with her extensively, and had been privately tutored, which explained his accent and advanced age. His ”mask-like” appearance was due to plastic surgery[...]
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2 years ago
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Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber
Olga, a timely film directed and co-written by Elie Grappe, uses the 2014 Euro-Maidan Revolution in Ukraine as the setting for a coming-of-age story about a teenage gymnast who is torn between countries and allegiances. Written in 2016 and completed in early 2021, the film predates the recent Russian invasion, effectively shedding light on events that led up to the current war. Mainly, though, it is a tension-filled portrait of the title gymnast (portrayed with sensitivity by Anastasia Budyashkina, former member of the Ukraine national reserve team), who at age 15 relocates from Kiiv to Switzerland to train for the European Championship with the Swiss national team.
The move is is not easy for Olga, whose late father was Swiss, but it is for her own safety. In an early scene, she and her mother, Ilona (Tanya Mikhina)—a journalist who is investigating the corrupt administration of then President Viktor Yanukovych—are targets of pro-government violence. Despite concern for her mother and ambivalence about leaving home, Olga moves to the pristine alpine countryside to live with her grandfather and other paternal relatives.
In order to compete with the Swiss team, Olga must become a citizen; since Ukraine doesn’t permit joint citizenship, she is forced to choose between the only home she's known and the opportunity to pursue her Olympic dreams. This is another tough decision, complicated by the wide culture and language gap between Olga and[...]
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2 years ago
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Courtesy of Kino Lorber
Ahed’s Knee, the latest feature from Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, is a visually inventive, emotionally engaging work about an artist’s rage against censorship and a citizen’s frustration over his country’s direction. Told over the course of one day, the film depicts Y (a moodily charismatic Avshalom Pollak), a filmmaker who travels to a remote desert village to promote one of his films. The title refers to Ahed Tamimi, a real-life Palestinian activist who was detained by Israeli authorities after slapping a soldier. The controversial Tamimi is the subject of a video project Y has begun casting; we see some audition clips, including one actor’s rendition of “Welcome to the Jungle.” (Music plays a huge part in Lapid’s film.) Throughout, the camera moves restlessly, swooping, circling and swinging side to side, sometimes mirroring a character’s point of view, sometimes just creating a state of frenetic energy.
The host of the screening in the Arava is an employee from the Ministry of Culture (Nur Fibak), an attractive, flirtatious young woman who is a huge fan of Y's work. They become friendly and she casually mentions a form he must sign in order to get paid for the appearance. The form, which limits the topics he can discuss, becomes a symbol of everything Y detests about his country.
Courtesy of Kino Lorber
Though the story is about Y’s despair over what he believes is the crumbling state of Israel, Lapid’s film is a tour de fo[...]
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2 years ago
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Courtesy of Cohen Media Group
Gagarine, a fresh and poignant feature debut by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh (co-written with Benjamin Charbit), is about the beauty and strength of community, embodied here by the residents of the Cité Gagarine housing project on the outskirts of Paris.
Filmed just prior to the demolition of Gagarine in 2019 and with the participation of its residents, the movie follows one young tenant, Youri (Alséni Bathily, making his screen debut) – named for the complex’s namesake, Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin – as he fights to preserve his home and community. The filmmakers combine stark realism with dreamy fantasy to portray the world of Gagarine and the imagination of Youri, a serious, science-minded teen who dreams of being an astronaut. His apartment is full of hi-tech devices fashioned from scavenged materials, including a tricked-out telescope through which he scans the heavens.
Courtesy of Cohen Media Group
Along with his intrepid, enterprising friends Houssam (Jamil McCraven) and fellow gearhead Diana (the luminous Lyna Khoudri), Youri rummages for electrical parts to fix the building’s wiring prior to an inspection. He hopes to forestall Gagarine's imminent destruction and the relocation of residents, who come from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds. A valued member of the community, Youri creates a special canopy through which his neighbors come together to watch a solar eclipse; it's a particularly lovely scene underscor[...]
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3 years ago
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Aliocha Merker/Zodiac Pictures Ltd.
Written and directed by Bettina Oberli, My Wonderful Wanda is a largely entertaining film about a wealthy Swiss family and its patriarch’s Polish caretaker. Although it starts off like a typical satire of class/culture divide, complete with victim and victimizers, the film soon becomes something else — a more complicated push and pull of family dynamics among two families. Though it may get overly complicated in the last half, My Wonderful Wanda’s twists and turns, as well as its strong performances, keep it watchable and emotionally engaging.
The film opens with Wanda (a sad-eyed Agnieszka Grochowska) arriving back in Switzerland after some time away from the prominent Wegmeister-Gloor family, whose patriarch, Josef (André Jung), is recuperating from a stroke. She is clearly a welcome presence in their spacious, lakeside house, judging from the reception she receives from son Gregi (Jacob Matschenz), matriarch Elsa (the elegant Marthe Keller), and especially Josef himself, who is delighted and relieved to see her. Though clearly an employee (who sleeps in a bare basement room), Wanda is no pushover, as we see her haggle successfully with Elsa over pay for taking on extra work in the kitchen. Still, all seems pretty typical until Josef calls out for her in the middle of the night. After he hands her cash, they proceed to have sex in a practiced, mechanical (at least for her) fashion that suggests this is far from the first time. As t[...]
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3 years ago
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Busca Vida Filmes
Êxtase (Ecstasy), a beautiful, unsettling pseudo-documentary from Brazilian filmmaker Moara Passoni, is the semi-autobiographical story of a young woman with anorexia, set in the tumultuous political climate of 1990s Brazil. Eating disorders are often a young person’s extreme method of exerting control over her life, and young protagonist Clara is no exception. She traces the origins of her sensitive psyche to a photo of her activist mother standing up to police during a protest, her pregnant body flooded with adrenaline. As Clara notes when her mother is elected to Congress at a time when politicians were often physically attacked, “As long as I kept an eye on my mom, nothing would happen to her.” The wary girl finds not only control, but ecstasy through starvation.
The film’s narrative is just part of the experience of Êxtase, an inventive, impressionistic work that casts its strange spell using photo stills, old news footage, beautifully framed reenactments, and sound designer Cécile Chagnaud's dramatic, disquieting soundtrack. The latter, which includes Ismael Pinkler's original score and a collaboration by David Lynch and Lykke Li, is full of classical music snippets, animal sounds, strange mechanical noises and a lot of whispering. Scenes are narrated by Clara as both child and adolescent.
Busca Vida Filmes
She describes her family's move to the country’s federal capital, Brasilia, its sleek, modern architecture adding to her culture shock[...]
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3 years ago
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Kino Lorber
Test Pattern, the debut feature from filmmaker Shatara Michelle Ford, is a tense, intense film that grabs one’s attention from the start and doesn’t let go for its entire 82-minute duration. That's quite a feat during these distracting times. I honestly can’t remember the last time I watched a film at home and did not pause it at some point for a snack or some other mental or physical interruption, but I was too caught up in Test Pattern to stop it. A well-crafted, nicely paced movie that weaves in a variety of current themes—racial and sexual dynamics, flawed healthcare, #MeToo—yet is never obvious or predictable, the film is impressive on many levels.
From the introductory scene—what looks and feels like a non-consensual sexual encounter—a creeping unease sets in. (This will undoubtedly be more severe for anyone who's experienced such an encounter.) We then watch the development of a relationship between the film’s black protagonist, Renesha (a wonderful Brittany S. Hall) and Evan (Will Brill, also excellent), a white tattoo artist who seems completely smitten with her. Despite her corporate background and his looser lifestyle, they clearly click and he seems to be a supportive boyfriend, cooking breakfast and encouraging her on the morning of the first day at a new job. Their conversations, especially as they get to know each other, have a raw, unpolished realness.
Kino Lorber
After work, Renesha’s friend Amber (Gail Bean) talks her into going out [...]
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3 years ago
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Photo: Radu Ciorniciuc
Acasă, My Home, Radu Ciorniciuc’s debut feature documentary, is an incredibly intimate look at a family living (literally) on the fringes of Romanian society. Maybe his background as an investigative reporter enabled Ciorniciuc to become so deeply embedded in the daily lives of the Enache family -- father Gică, mother Niculina and their nine children – who inhabit, and eventually leave, an abandoned water reservoir outside Bucharest. The resulting film is a sometimes troubling, always fascinating, portrait of a close, impoverished family forced to become part of a civilization they rejected two decades ago, for better and for worse.
From the start, the camera is right in the midst of the Enache kids, several of whom are paddling on a lake as older son Vali catches fish bare-handed. They’re a lively, rough-and-tumble bunch who may be acting out a little for the camera, but generally seem pretty happy. We’re then introduced to their shack-like home and compound, where pigeons, dogs, kittens, chickens and pigs roam around and eat together in peaceful, if messy, co-existence.
Photo: Mircea Topoleanu
The first sign of trouble comes with a call to Gică’s cell phone (the only electronic device in sight) from someone giving him a heads-up about the imminent arrival of Social Services. The kids immediately run into the wilderness to hide, clearly something they’ve done before, as Niculina threatens to kill the authorities in various colorful ways i[...]
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3 years ago
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Oscilloscope Laboratories
It’s a common belief that people look for fantasy entertainment during stressful, depressing times, but Matthew Rankin’s deeply surreal film The Twentieth Century would probably be satisfying to watch at any time. Well, satisfying to anyone who can appreciate an absurd, hilarious, heavily stylized “bio-pic” based on the century-year-old diaries of a Canadian prime minister.
As most Americans probably don’t know, William Lyon McKenzie King served as Canada’s PM for three non-consecutive terms in the 1920s and 30s, and is known for being a solid, if dull, statesman. For his audacious debut feature, Rankin created a film very loosely based on King’s private journal musings. Many critics have compared the result to the dark, fantastical work of fellow Winnipeg native Guy Maddin and to Monty Python, which makes sense. I'd add that The Twentieth Century is a little like a visually stunning episode of Drunk History, if the narrators dropped acid instead of drinking alcohol and Wes Anderson (also on acid) were the cinematographer. It’s full of references to historical Canadian figures and events, which invite multiple visits to Wikipedia. Or not, if viewers just want to let the film wash over them in hallucinatory waves. It obvious to anyone, though, that Rankin repeatedly pokes at Canadian traits and identity throughout the film, often its funniest bits.
Oscilloscope Laboratories
The action begins in Toronto in 1899, as young candidate King (D[...]
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