Portrait of a Lady On Fire - low budget cosplay

Greetings, commies!

Those of you who have the misfortune of knowing me personally, will attest that I like ridiculing and trashing things that many people find appealing. It's my guilty pleasure to go against the grain. This is why today I am posting a review for the art house Euro flick Portrait of a Lady on Fire. This movie got rave reviews, but I personally find so many things wrong with it.

Synopsis:

Marianne is hired to paint the wedding portrait of Héloïse. As the women orbit each other, intimacy and attraction grow as they share Héloïse's first moments of freedom.

My thoughts:

The manager of Party City wants the costumes back. Seriously, you'd expect better quality from community theater. And what's with Marianne's mahogany highlights and Heloise's dark roots. This is not a period piece. This is pretentious cosplay. You have two sociology professors dressed in pseudo-period costumes, acting out love scenes in what looks like a warehouse with a conference room attached to it. My favorite part was the apparent lack of social boundaries. The privileged heiress and the hired painter enjoy some girl bonding while hand-holding the mentally deficient servant through an herb-induced abortion. They take her to a shady den and then try to cheer her up with some art therapy. The highlight of the movie was the rapping session around the bonfire. The dialogue ... don't get me started. The predictable whining about "not having a choice". Oh, buttercup ... Not to me misogynistic, but this is what happens when female directors make movies about "female" issues. 

Song for a Raggy Boy - a distressingly illustrative true story

Greetings, commies

Regardless of where you stand in terms of religious beliefs and your views on institutionalized spirituality, you will find Song for a Raggy Boy deeply disturbing and moving. 

Synopsis

Against the wishes of the Bishop, Father Damian (Alan Devlin), the principal of St. Jude's Reformatory School, appoints William Franklin (Aidan Quinn) the only lay teacher among a staff of Catholic Brothers.

My thoughts

There is a reason why the Catholic church has taken such a fall in Ireland. There are many accounts and movies about the Magdalene laundries that depict the plight of the vulnerable young women in Ireland. This movie shows the plight of young men. It's not that all Catholic priests are rapists and monsters, but the Catholic church due to its vastness and power, had attracted some rather vicious characters over the centuries. I don't believe that these men had ever sought God. They had always viewed the church as an opportunity to indulge their lust and greed for power. It's not like they started off as idealistic novices and then became corrupt. No, they went in fully aware of the opportunities for indulgence. In terms of the narrative style, what makes the movie chilling is the fact that scenes of abuse and violence are interspersed with scenes of childish joy. You see kids running around the city in the snow on Christmas eve, laughing and playing. That makes the subsequent scenes all the more horrifying.

Bye Bye Blackbird - a glimpse into early 20th century circus

Greetings, commies!

What makes this film unique is the juxtaposition of decorated acting veterans like Derek Jakobi and performers who are dancers/acrobats but not really actors (and it shows). This is what happens when you place a really great Actor with a capital A next to those for whom acting is a peripheral discipline, like Izabella Miko. I was intrigued by the setting of Bye Bye Blackbird - early 20th century England ... circus .. industrial workers. 

Synopsis:

A period drama set in the early years of the twentieth century. Josef, a former construction worker who delighted in dancing on girders high above the city, who now sweeps up at the circus. Once the big top's owner spots the young roustabout defying gravity on the trapeze, however, he endeavors to pair Josef with his aerialist daughter Alice in a perilous sky-high pas de deux. Offers a romantic view of big top life, with a moth-eaten angel in his feathered, tattered costume.

My thoughts:

I had such high hopes for this film. It could have been a visual masterpiece. A wistful Bohemian setting in early 1900s - what's not to love? A makeshift family consisting of social misfits. An ethereal aerial performer. A day laborer who becomes an acrobat. A manipulative patriarch/ringmaster who has a way of bending his fiercely loyal performers to his will. The burgeoning love triangle. If you have a romantic/Bohemian bone, the concept should hit every major nerve. And this is where the bliss ends. The bud never opens. What could have been a great storyline quickly devolves into absurdity. The producer must have run out of money and found a quick way to wrap the story up.

White Lies: the many colors of savagery

Greetings, commies!

Racial relations seem to be a hot topic.  The lot of the Maori people in New Zealand is not frequently explored in literature and film. At least it's not on the radar for American audiences who deal with conflicts of their own. I really hope you take the time to watch this great historical film White Lies.

Synopsis:

White Lies is a story about the nature of identity: those who deny it and those who strive to protect it. Paraiti (Whirimako Black) is a medicine woman. She is the healer and midwife of her rural, tribal people - she believes in life, but new laws prohibit unlicensed healers. On a rare trip to the city, she is approached by Maraea (Rachel House), the servant of a wealthy woman, Rebecca (Antonia Prebble), who seeks her knowledge and assistance to hide a secret that could destroy Rebecca's position in European settler society. If the secret is uncovered, a life may be lost, but hiding it may also have fatal consequences. Paraiti, Maraea and Rebecca thus become players in a head on clash of beliefs, deception and ultimate salvation.

My thoughts: 

I hope you have the patience and restraint to sit through this movie. Resist the temptation to draw conclusions and make judgments on the characters as they appear in the first 20 minutes of the film. I have a pretty strong stomach, and I will say that I was very tempted to abandon the film. The reason for it was fear of the film turning into a tear-jerker that demonizes the collective Westerner. I am glad I did not walk away. One of the most intriguing moments about this movie is that the main Bad Guy - the infamous white colonial man - never makes a stage entrance. After the opening scene with the soldiers you never really see the "patriarchal tyrant". Mr. Vickers, whose rage Rebecca dreads, never shows his face. That makes the viewer wonder if he was truly as horrible as the Rebecca's servant portrayed him. I thought it was wise on behalf of the director to keep him behind the curtain. A little bit of mystery and ambiguity only add to the overall air of dread. Mr. Vickers almost becomes a boogeyman. I also applaud the writer for highlighting that tyranny, in this case male and western, is not possible without compliance and participation from women. In this particular situation, a working class Maori woman, serves as the guardian of that toxic regime. She internalizes her sense of social and racial inferiority and somehow turns it into weapon. 

Vivarium: open-ended psychological horror

Greetings, commies!

If you are in a mood for a psychological sci-fi horror flick, consider Vivarium. Imagine if David Lynch and Rod Serling co-authored a plot. Jesse Eisenberg is the king of beta-males, and the role of a subdued suburban newlywed fits him perfectly. The quest for domestic bliss leads Gemma and Tom into a circle of hell. 

Synopsis

A young couple looking for the perfect home find themselves trapped in a mysterious labyrinth-like neighborhood of identical houses.

My thoughts

I see many viewers complaining about the 'lack of resolution'. This is a subtle, thought-provoking psychological horror piece, not a superhero flick where the good guys cross the T's and dot the I's in the end. This movie is comparable to David Lynch's works. Anyone with imagination and ability to think abstractly will find plenty to analyze and contemplate after watching it. Those who complain that the movie leaves too many unanswered questions - God forbid - should get themselves some buttery popcorn and watch the next Marvel blockbuster.

Berberian Sound Studio - a study in atmosphere development

Greetings, commies!

If you are up for a moody, artsy psychological pseudo-horror flick without jump scares or teen scream queens in tank tops, consider Berberian Sound Studio.

This movie does a great job of setting intriguing atmosphere, but ... there is no real plot. Or maybe the plot is so subtle, you don't notice it. It's not really a film in its own right but rather a study in light and sound. There is a lot of implicit horror - tell, don't show. It's what you don't see that is more terrifying than what you see. Despite the many Giallo references, the film has a strong Lynch-esque tone. The protagonist, stuck in a claustrophobic sound studio, begins doubting his own sanity. I wonder if the lack of resolution was due to the director's fatigue / lack of funds and imagination, or if it was intended. If you are a film student, you should watch this movie not for the plot but for various tone-setting techniques. 

Ao, the Last Neanderthal - an inter-species adventure romance

Greetings, commies!

Ao, the Last Neanderthal is a one of a kind speculative anthropological film set 30,000 BC in prehistoric Europe. When his clan, including his wife and baby girl Néa, are massacred, Ao, a desperate Neanderthal, decides to leave the North country where he has been living for the South where he was born. His aim is to join his twin brother, from whom he was separated when he was nine. On his long and adventurous way home, he meets Aki, a Homo sapiens woman.

My thoughts

The movie is based on an actual novel that I hope to read some day. Hopefully it will be translated into English. Given how little is known about the psychology/physiology of Neanderthals, this is a highly, highly speculative piece of historical ... no, more like prehistorical fiction. The author of the novel takes certain genetic and anthropological differences pairing a Neanderthal male with a Cro Magnon female. It's yet to be determined if those alliances took place and if they led to viable progeny. I think the split between the actual articulated speech and the internal speech worked well. You have characters, both Neanderthal and Cro Magnon, spout incoherent beastly sounds at each other, but then you hear their internal voices that bridge the genetic and cognitive differences between the species. Despite the overt violence, the spirit of the film is strangely life-affirming, almost naively so, if you don't look beyond the first layer of the happy ending. It's a happy ending - but an ending nevertheless, for a whole chapter of human evolution.