Set in a quaint village in Malta in the 1980s, “Carmen,” a new film starring Natascha McElhone as a middle-aged woman who finds a new path in life through romance, is part coming-of-age, part travelogue.
McElhone is Carmen, a fifty-year-old woman, loosely based on director Valarie Buhagiar’s own aunt Rita. In her village in Malta, tradition has it that when a man enters the priesthood, his sister comes along as caretaker of the church. Beginning at age sixteen Carmen lives a life of service, thirty-four years of toil, until her brother unexpectedly drops dead.
Free of her obligation to the church, Carmen embraces life. She gets her hair done for the first time, offers very practical and playful advice to the villagers through the confessional, and finds romance with Paulo (Steven Love), a younger man who runs a pawnshop.
As Carmen discovers new ways to move forward with joy, we learn about the path that brought her to this stage of her life.
“Carmen” is an empathetic and optimistic movie about a second chance at living life to the fullest. McElhone brings a spirit of generosity and warmth to the character’s journey. Carmen’s life is blossoming, but her awakening isn’t easy and McElhone acknowledges her character’s struggle. Everything is new, and while Carmen is on the brink of becoming overwhelmed, this skillful performance also shows us how eager she is to embrace life’s opportunities.
The simple story is enhanced by the lead performance, and cinematographer Diego Guijarro’s gorgeous photography. This small Mediterranean island nation appears locked in time, a modern town rooted in the past, surrounded by travel brochure-ready scenery. It’s pure eye candy and serves as a perfect backdrop to this story of tradition and rebirth.
“Carmen” aims to make you feel better on the way out of the theatre than you did on the way in. It’s an admirable goal, and even if the movie doesn’t reinvent the feel-good-movie wheel, it accomplishes what it sets out to do.
“Ali & Ava,” a lovely and warm character piece starring Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook and now playing in theatres, is a study of opposites, of happiness and struggle, of love and loneliness.
Living in the West Yorkshire, England city of Bradford, Ali (Akhtar) is a music-obsessed Pakistani-British man, with a taste for punk rock and hip hop who manages several properties. He lives with his wife Runa (Ellora Torchia), but it is a marriage in name only. They’re separated but are staying “together” to appease their traditional families.
Ava (Rushbrook) is a recently widowed teacher’s assistant, mother to four kids, including the hot-headed Callum (Shaun Thomas), and grandmother to five. Her taste in music runs to country music and folk.
The thing that brings them together is Sofia (Ariana Bodorova), a young girl who lives in one of Ali’s apartments and goes to Ava’s school. She is new to the country and is having trouble fitting in. One day, after school, during a rainstorm, the kindly Ali offers Sofia a lift home. Ava comes along for the ride and sparks fly as he joshes her about her taste in music.
Over time their natural rapport gives way to romance, despite the disapproval of Callum, who still reveres his late, abusive father. Ali and Ava’s differences melt away as their romance blooms. Ali even admits respect for Bob Dylan’s folk song “Mama, You Been on My Mind.”
British writer-director Clio Barnard brings an almost documentary style intimacy to “Ali & Ava.”
This isn’t a rom com with finely appointed homes, exotic locations and snappily tailored clothes. It’s a social realist look at two people and their opposites-attract love story. Barnard’s camera is a fly on the wall, observing the highs and lows of Ali and Ava’s courtship without judgment. It’s an emotionally raw treatment, that allows the story’s empathy and warmth to shine. Never saccharine, it’s a British kitchen sink drama, without the disillusionment.
“Ali & Ava” is a slow burn romance. There are no huge moments or grand gestures, just a series of personal obstacles to be overcome in service of their relationship. The authentic chemistry shared by Akhtar and Rushbrook illuminates their character’s vulnerabilities and strengths, but, most importantly, their joy.
It’s rare to see a “Part II” on an arthouse flick title, but here we are. “The Souvenir Part II,” starring the mother and daughter duo of Tilda Swinton and Honor Swinton Byrne, and now playing in theatres, picks up where 2019’s “The Souvenir’s” coming of age story left off.
In that movie, film student Julie (Byrne) falls into a life-changing relationship with an older, arrogant man named Anthony. His death from a heroin overdose sends her reeling.
The new film sees Julie attempt to process Anthony’s death by making a graduation movie as a “memorial” for her late partner. As the project moves forward, it’s apparent Julie, who didn’t know Anthony was a heroin addict, is struggling to make sense of his loss. From the beginning her idea is met with bewilderment by her professors who don’t like the script and her producing partner (Jaygann Ayeh) who grows frustrated with her choice in actors.
“The Souvenir Part II” is a quiet, meticulous film about how artists mine personal experience to create art, to find a voice. Swinton Byrne’s Julie develop into a filmmaker, an artist and person who creates her own path. It is a lovely, delicate-but-steely, natural performance that digs deep into Julie’s maturity, personal and professional. It’s a pleasure to see Swinton and Swinton Byrne interact as mother and daughter in the film. There’s an authenticity to those scenes that feels like a warm hug.
“The Souvenir Part II” is based, in part, on director Joanna Hogg’s experience, and drips with complex ideas and emotions. As Julie heals herself, the film hauntingly has one eye on her past while the other looks to her future.
The filmmaking is more about mood than straightforward storytelling. It’s as if Hogg had a question from Julie’s film school classmate Patrick (Richard Ayoade) ringing in her head as she made the film. “Did you avoid the temptation to be obvious?” he asks. She did, and the movie is better and more challenging for it.
“Bruised,” a new MMA drama directed by and starring Halle Berry, and now streaming on Netflix, punches through the usual sports cliches and training montages to tell a redemption story of a woman whose rage dominated her life.
Berry is Jackie Justice, a disgraced UFC mixed martial arts star who left the sport in disgrace when she vaulted out of the cage during a match. Four years later her hair trigger temper gets her fired from a job as a nanny and booze helps her cope with abusive boyfriend/manager Desi (Adan Canto). It was his push to take on bigger fights that sent her over the brink at the height of her fame, and now he wants her back in the ring, making money.
“I don’t want to fight,” she says, “I’m happy.” Trouble is, she doesn’t appear to be happy.
When she is spotted by fight league promoter Immaculate (Shamier Anderson), who promises to set her up with top flight trainer Buddhakan (Sheila Atim), her career looks to be back on track until the 6-year-old son (Danny Boyd, Jr.) she abandoned years ago suddenly comes back into her life.
“Bruised” is a slickly produced sports flick that takes us into a little explored world, women’s MMA. Berry doesn’t shy away from the brutal nature of the fight game, both in and out of the ring. It paints a vivid portrait of the physical and mental toll paid by Jackie as she seeks personal and professional redemption, but often veers into melodrama. Plots lines crisscross as we follow Jackie’s relationships with her mother (Adriane Lenox), her trainer, Desi and Manny. Each thread clutters the plot with storylines that are not only predictable, but also take away from the movie’s main thrust, how Jackie’s life has been shaped by trauma and rage.
When “Bruised” focusses on the fighting, it succeeds. It is interesting to see that world from a female point of view and about a woman older than might be expected in the punishing sport. Even Jackie’s trainer calls her “Betty White.”
But as Jackie’s road to redemption meanders through a laundry list of misery, the two-hour, 15-minute movie becomes weighed down by the sheer volume of story.
“Blue Bayou,” a new immigration drama starring Justin Chon and Alicia Vikander, tells a fictional, but all-too-true, story that is sincere but heavy-handed.
Written, directed and starring Chon, the story takes place in the Louisiana bayou. Chon plays the Korean-born Antonio LeBlanc, adopted by an American family when he was three. Now married to Kathy (Vikander) he’s raising step-daughter Jessie (Sydney Kowalske) with another child on the way.
A loping Cajun twang disguises the anxiety he feels with a new baby coming but not enough money coming in. His two felonies make it tough to find extra work, and his job as a tattoo artist does not cover the bills. Still, the family is happy, even if Jessie is concerned Antonio, the self-proclaimed “fun” parent, won’t spend time with her when the new baby arrives.
A little spat between Kathy and Antonio in a grocery escalates when Ace, a cop and her ex-husband, and his violent partner (Emory Cohen) get involved. Antonio is arrested. When Kathy attempts to pay his bail, she’s told, matter-of-factly, “He’s not here anymore. ICE took him.”
Seems his adoptive parents didn’t follow the proper procedures to make him a citizen, and now, after thirty years in America he may have to return to a country he doesn’t remember.
“I understand your frustration,” says the lawyer (Vondie Curtis-Hall) the couple hire but can’t afford. “Depart voluntarily,” he continues, “and have a chance to get back in. You can fight, but if you lose, you can never come back.”
“I’m not leaving my family,” Antonio replies.
“Blue Bayou” has much going for it. Chon has a poetic eye for visuals and frames the hot button story nicely. There are enough details about the family to make us care about them and Antonio’s backstory adds some mystery to the proceedings. The chemistry between the core group—Antonio, Kathy and Jessie—feels genuine—Kowalske is a real find—and, as the immigration situation spins out of control, we’re along for the ride. But as the story gets heavier, so does the story-telling. Like leaden.
Chon’s characters are so compelling and much of the tale so heartfelt, that it’s a disappointment when the movie turns to melodrama in its final third. Nuance goes out the window and the quiet naturalism of the first half disappears. Add to that a villain in the form of Cohen’s bad cop character who seems to have wandered in from a British pantomime and you’re left with a case of the let-downs.
“Blue Bayou” details a very important, and for many people, very personal story, but falls victim to ham-fisted storytelling.
It’s difficult to know how to classify “The Violent Heart,” a new movie on VOD starring Emmy nominee Jovan Adepo and Grace Van Patten. It’s part “Romeo & Juliet,” part thriller and mostly melodrama. Director Kerem Sanga juggles the movie’s tonal shifts to create a movie about the aftershocks of trauma.
Set in the American heartland, the story centers around twenty-four-year-old Daniel (Jovan Adepo), a small-town mechanic struggling to move forward with his life after the murder of his sister, which he witnessed, and a stint in jail for accidentally blinding a schoolmate. When 18-year-old high school student Cassie (Grace Van Patten) drops off her dad’s (Lukas Haas) car to the autobody shop, sparks fly and romance blossoms.
Despite her parent’s disapproval the young couple bring out the best in one another, sharing secrets as Cassie encourages Daniel to follow his dream of joining the Marines. Both are looking to the future but soon learn tragic lessons on how the past has a nasty way of sneaking up from behind.
“The Violent Heart” never really gets the pulse racing, but is made compelling by the chemistry between the two charismatic leads, Adepo and Van Patten.
Adepo exposes Daniel’s deep wounds, psychological trauma that manifests itself in angry outbursts. “You start to not even notice it,” he says of his deeply rooted ire. “You just kind of become an angry person.” Still, he’s a work in progress, with his eyes locked on a better future. It’s an impressive, internal performance.
Van Patten is more external, a naïve young woman whose confidence is shaken by secrets and echoes from the past.
Together they are compelling, overcoming obstacles as a couple. But when “The Violent Heart” makes a hard U-Turn from star-crossed lovers into a detective story it loses itself in the plot’s twists and turns.
The supporting cast, including Mary J. Blige as Daniel’s mother and Haas as Cassie’s dad, do what they can with underwritten roles, but they’re mostly there to provide the puzzle pieces that complete the backstory of the leads.
In the end “The Violent Heart” succumbs to melodrama, but before the climax sucks the life out of the story, it is an interesting look at legacy and how the weight of the past can slowly crush a person’s spirit.
Sally Potter’s “Roads Not Taken” is a bleak film given life by a resolute performance from Elle Fanning as Molly, a young woman caring for her father, a writer with early onset dementia.
Javier Bardem is Leo, a man who lives in a rundown apartment in Brooklyn. When we meet him, he’s lying in bed, unable to answer calls from his concerned daughter. Molly arrives to find him comatose but alive. Relieved, she spends the day navigating her father’s schedule of doctor’s visits and clothes shopping, made all the more difficult by his worsening condition and the insensitive reaction of almost everyone they come in contact with, including ex-wife Rita (Laura Linney). “He just pretends to not remember things,” she says, “to make me feel guilty.”
Breaking up the day-to-day are flashbacks—or are they hallucinations?—from Leo’s past life. “Where have you been all day dad,” Molly asks as his mind reels backwards through time to a romance with Dolores (Salma Hayek) in rural Mexico and sojourn in Greece where he meets a beautiful young woman who reminds him of his daughter.
As a portrait of a fragmented mind, apparently based loosely on Potter’s experience with her younger, musician brother Nic, “The Roads Not Taken” succeeds because of the performances. The story telling is ragged, jarring as it jumps through time without providing enough connective tissue to hold together.
Fanning, as a person who realizes she must grieve for her father before he is gone, drips compassion. It’s heartfelt work that gives the movie a pulse. “No matter how far away you go,” she says. “No matter what they says, “you are always you.” Bardem, essentially playing three characters, is effective, allowing just enough of Leo’s personality to shine through to make us understand who he once was.
“The Roads Not Taken” is not an easy movie to watch. It brims with empathy for Leo but allows the story’s grief and regret overpower its message of steadfast love.
In “Castle in the Ground,” a new opioid drama now on VOD, the more Ana (Imogen Poots) says, “Everything is going to be OK,” the more it becomes apparent that it’s not.
Set in Sudbury, Ontario, circa 2012, the film stars Alex Wolff as Henry, a young man nursing his mother (Neve Campbell) through the final stages of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Across the hall is neighbor Ana, a young woman struggling to pull herself out of the pit of addiction. When Henry’s mother dies Ana and the grieving son are drawn together, but this isn’t a mother and son sickness of the week story or a Bukowskian tale of rough romance. It’s a co-dependency thriller set against a backdrop of Ana’s plan to rip off her dealer Polo Boy (Keir Gilchrist). Henry is drawn into the scheme and a life of opioid addiction.
“Castle in the Ground” is a carefully crafted character study of a naïve—or willfully ignorant— man and a Machiavellian addict. Wolff, who impressed in Ari Aster’s “Heredity,” holds the screen during director Joey Klein’s long, unhurried scenes. He brings the hurt of a heartbroken guy, now looking for a connection, even if it isn’t in his best interest. But it is Poots who impresses. Her take on Ana is vividly painted as she plays a cat-and-mouse game with Henry in order to get what she wants. As the situations spirals her chirpy, “everything is going to be OK” assurances, become more ominous.
This is a depressing film, unburdened by light at the end of the tunnel. Dark, visually and thematically, it’s a movie about internal conflict, pain, depression and indulgence that spares none of its characters. Everyone, no matter how sympathetic, are complicit in the lead up to the film’s fiery climax.
“Castle in the Ground” is an up-close-and-personal look at a very large issue. It offers no solutions or searing insight as to how the opioid problem spun so far out of control. Instead, it is simply a well-made and well-acted look at life in a time of personal crisis.
In Sophocles’ Greek tragedy “Antigone” the title character is sentenced to be buried alive for not following the laws of the gods. A new, twenty-first century retelling of the story from director Sophie Deraspe recontextualizes the story to comment on the plight of Algerian immigrants in modern day Montreal. In this retelling it’s the legal system that threatens to bury the title character.
Antigone Hipponome (Nahema Ricci), along with brothers Étéocle (Hakim Brahimi) and Polynice (Rawad El-Zein), sister Ismene (Nour Belkhiria) and grandmother Meni (Rachida Oussaada) fled Alegeria after the death of her parents. Settling in Montreal the displaced family creates a new life, ripe with opportunity with Antigone the glue that holds the family together. A straight-a student and hard worker, she puts her own future at risk when Étéocle is gunned down by police as they arrest repeat offender Polynice on drug charges. Not wanting to lose both brothers— Polynice may be subject to extradition if convicted—Antigone concocts a wild plan that places her in jeopardy.
Canada’s entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, “Antigone” is a raw, electrifying study of race, poverty and indifference in the judicial system. Exploring the ancient author’s themes of sacrifice for family, exile, state power, it puts a timely and human face on the hot button topic of how society treats immigrants.
Ricci holds the center of the film, sporting a close-cropped Jean Seberg hairdo that conjures up images of Joan of Arc. Like Joan, Antigone becomes a symbol, a woman who defies the law for something greater. Ricci brings considerable conviction to the role, especially as the legal system’s failures leave her with a growing sense of betrayal.
From its opening images of the title character as a deer-in-the-headlights to its impactful, devastating final shot, “Antigone” is an emotional journey that puts a very human face on the kind of story that plays out in real life almost every day.
