Tag Archives: #femaledirectors

The Beguiled

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Release: Friday, June 30, 2017

[Theater]

Written by: Sofia Coppola

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

The Beguiled is an unsettling, moody drama set against the American Civil War that finds a wounded Union soldier being taken in and nursed back to health by the inhabitants of a secret all-girls school in Virginia. These women, who have lived a pious but sheltered life, find themselves irrevocably changed by the intrusion of the outside world upon their guarded stoop. Beware: the sexual tension can be killer.

It’s not often you see a film set during this period told from the point of view of women. History is never short of a few omissions, and here is a fictional yarn that seems to inhabit such a space. It tells a story not necessarily about the Civil War, per se, but one heavily influenced by it — a mirroring of war’s disruptive and destructive nature. The Beguiled is a movie chiefly about sexual repression, but if with that description you think you’ve got it figured out, think again. This is a much broader critique of society, for when our most basic needs are not met how desperate we become, how quickly we seem to forget our humanity. The Beguiled tends to prove how thin a veil civility really can be.

Colin Farrell inherits the part famously played by Clint Eastwood in an against-type role as Corporal John McBurney, a fighter for the Union cause who suffers a leg injury and, somewhat ignobly, abandons the war. (Cowardice is certainly not a trait you see Eastwood embracing all too often, though it’s even harder to picture him playing the part of an Irish immigrant.) When a young girl, Amy (Oona Laurence), is out one day picking mushrooms, she comes across the bloodied man and bravely decides to help him hobble back to the school. There, the stern Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) assesses his condition and determines they have no choice but to tend to the wounded, but also that no other pleasantries shall be extended the stranger.

As he convalesces, McBurney begins having a strange effect on some of the girls — particularly the ones who are, in theory anyway, coming-of-age. The strictures of their daily existence have clearly stunted emotional growth. Natural instincts are bound like hands behind one’s back. The mere physical presence of the soldier, whose intentions are purposefully left unclear, introduces a palpable tension which the narrative relies increasingly upon as the film develops. The Beguiled doesn’t offer much in the way of visceral drama; the battles raging all around are so tangential they don’t even appear in frame. Inside this house a different kind of war is quietly being waged. And not for nothing, the injury the soldier has sustained serves as a pretty effective reminder of what he has left behind.

There is a caveat to unlocking the film’s dark secrets. To get to the good stuff, you have to endure an excruciatingly slow opening half hour. I sat through the entirety of The Bling Ring, but struggled not to walk out early here. Such is the meditative nature of the film. The deliberate pace and sparse action — even dialogue — remains a necessary evil if you are to appreciate the gravity of the simple act of betrayal that occurs later on.

Fortunately the impressive cast assembled makes even these drier, less eventful scenes more watchable. Coppola attracts a range of talent and ages to fulfill the roles of this tight-knit community still hanging on, tooth and nail, to their way of life while the unpredictable violence continues to rage on all around, shaping the world into something too ugly and dangerous for any of them to be a part of. But at what cost has this sheltering from perceived harm come?

Kirsten Dunst, a Coppola favorite (Marie Antoinette; The Virgin Suicides) once again delivers in a complex role as schoolteacher Edwina Morrow. Her character demonstrates stability, an unyielding devotion to the education of the young girls. But then she also has eyes for the newcomer. Dunst is a real stand-out in a pivotal role, whose conviction in the character is really only matched by Kidman’s impressive solemnity and Elle Fanning’s precariously hormonal state. The trio are given ample support from two young up-and-comers in Angourie Rice (the precocious young detective from The Nice Guys) and the aforementioned Laurence (Billy Hope’s voice of reason in Southpaw), who crucially contribute innocence and naivety to an increasingly hostile and unstable environment.

The Beguiled may be defined more by its cast than by anything it offers in the way of escapism. Drowned out by the indefatigable wave of superhero films that has been en vogue for close to a decade now, it’s something of an unconventional mid-summer release. You won’t have much competition for seats in the theater, that’s for sure. But don’t be like me. Don’t be so quick to judge the film by its tedious opening, by the preciousness of its appearance. This is a grim affair, whose wildly unpredictable shift in mood will linger long after credits roll. It’s arguably the darkest film Sofia Coppola has made thus far. That counts for a lot in my book.

Recommendation: Darkly and disturbingly seductive. The Southern gothic drama The Beguiled pairs a great cast with a director with an avant-garde style that is, notably, suppressed here in favor of allowing the performances to rise to the top. It’s not the film everyone’s going to this July, but it offers a lot to recommend for fans of Coppola, the cast and period dramas with a unique perspective. 

Rated: R

Running Time: 93 mins.

Quoted: “We can show ’em some real Southern hospitality . . . “

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited. 

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com 

Wonder Woman

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Release: Friday, June 2, 2017

[Theater]

Written by: Allan Heinberg

Directed by: Patty Jenkins

Not even the comfort of Marvel Studios’ most luxurious pampering package can compare to the thrill of experiencing the struggling DC “extended universe” dropping an instant classic. Wonder Woman may be an event film but it’s also one of the most exciting new releases of the year and quite possibly the most compelling and emotionally resonant superhero film we’ve been delivered since The Dark Knight.

In the fifteen installments that the MCU has cranked out over the better part of a decade, not once has a standalone superheroine story made its way into the fold. Scarlett Johansson is one of the most recognizable names on the planet and yet the Black Widow project page on IMDb remains at the time of this writing a blank canvas. Perhaps it would be a stretch to give a full-length treatment to the likes of Scarlet Witch, but then no one expected Ant-Man to work. Besides, that time has come and gone anyway. And remaking Elektra is such an afterthought it seems not to exist.

Patty Jenkins, notable for directing a radically transformed Charlize Theron in 2003’s Monster — a film about a prostitute turned serial killer — becomes the first woman to be handed the reigns of a studio-produced superhero film, only the second ever to handle a budget of $100 million. In the process she’s become something of a savior for DC, delivering an immensely entertaining package that succeeds in its aspirations to become something more than spectacle. The real beauty of Wonder Woman is that Jenkins has as much of an interest in female empowerment as she does in providing an earnest exploration of our fallibilities as human beings, regardless of gender.

Wonder Woman is a surprisingly moving and heady origins story that tells of a beautiful and fiercely powerful Amazon warrior named Diana and of her loss of innocence. The Israeli beauty Gal Gadot fulfills the iconic role made famous in 1975 by Lynda Carter, sculpting not out of clay but rather an obvious and deep belief in the character’s sense of morality a performance that stands tall amongst the genre’s finest. Her saga is constructed in a flashback, triggered when Diana, working in the present day as a curator for the Louvre’s Department of Antiquities, receives a photographic plate from Wayne Enterprises which causes her to reflect upon her past.

The trip down memory lane takes us all the way back to the secluded isle of Themyscira, a paradise deliberately obscured from our world and home to the Amazons, a tribe of female warriors created by the gods of Mount Olympus and sworn to protect humanity against the wrath of Ares, god of war. The opening sequence pulls us into a heaven on earth resembling an ancient Greco-Roman utopia, one populated entirely by women. It is here where we first meet a young and wide-eyed Diana (Lilly Aspel) who is hungry to start her training to become among the elite fighters of her tribe. But her mother, the intensely protective Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), won’t allow her daughter to throw herself headlong into a world which she can’t possibly understand, much less control.

Naturally, Diana begins training in secret with her Aunt Antiope (Robin Wright) — widely regarded as the fiercest amongst all the Amazons. Refreshingly, the consequences of Diana’s disobedience don’t render her a prisoner in her own bedroom or with a silly slap on the wrist. They’re far more devastating. As a mother trying to do what’s best for her child Nielsen’s understated performance slowly slips into a pained resignation to what’s inevitable, eschewing the histrionics typically associated with parents reading their children the riot act. She’s well aware that experience is the best teacher; that perhaps the only way to learn that idealism is not a weapon is through trial by fire.

Diana’s journey of self-discovery takes us down the gauntlet of human cruelty and suffering as the environment flips from the ethereal to the brutally real. After American pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crash-lands on the beach of Themyscira, bringing with him a fleet of pursuing German soldiers, Diana learns of a Great War engulfing the planet and that man’s suffering has reached a crescendo. Her altruism won’t allow her to sit idly by while innocent lives are lost, and so she decides to accompany the first and only male she has ever met to the “hideous” shores of England.

Along the way, Diana’s fish-out-of-water presence on the streets of London inspires a litany of keen yet broadly comical observations about human relationships, social norms and gender dynamics. Whereas the umpteenth male-centric origins story might flounder in its down moments, Wonder Woman is buoyed by an unusual perspective that keeps even its more pedestrian scenes interesting. Try, for example, taking an Amazon princess clothes shopping on Oxford Street. Or taking her out for ice cream. Or explaining to her why human beings are compelled to partner up. Meanwhile Gadot plays off her character’s immunity to such trivialities with deft precision. She emotes intensely when the scene calls for it, but what defines her performance more is a haunting sense of detachment and a loneliness that suggests immortality might be overrated.

The larger dramatic rhythms of Wonder Woman remain beholden to the Marvel blueprint, particularly with the gradual build-up of each battle sequence, but that’s not to say there aren’t surprises in store along the way. As per tradition, the central hero becomes surrounded with others who become personally invested in the good fight. The film commits to giving these fringe players both purpose and personality. There are bad guys as pawns, cluttering the path to legitimate evil that must be stopped at all costs. While the legitimate evil is still not something we can fear entirely naturally — believe it or not it’s harder to identify with the ideology of a raging god than, say, that of a German chemist — those pawns offer up some of the film’s most barbaric acts. Danny Huston’s insane General Ludendorff and Elena Anaya’s Dr. Maru (a.k.a. Doctor Poison) slightly overcook their parts, but they’re more compelling than the average, disposable baddie DC has offered so far.

The specifics of how it all plays out is where a review must end and the movie must take over, but suffice it to say the embattled heroine at the center of it all is more than enough to make up for any narrative shortcomings or predictability. Gal Gadot puts her best foot forward, rendering a performance that should go down in the history books as bold, brave, righteous. Wonder Woman is an epic tale fueled by female strength on both sides of the camera, two tidal forces both complementing and inspiring one another. It is, in short, a marvel to experience.

Recommendation: Sensational action sequences (the rising from the trenches in No Man’s Land is, quite frankly, a scene that no movie this year is going to be able to match) combine with heartfelt and inspired performances from the leading cast, with Chris Pine giving great support to his on-screen, equally “average-looking” co-star. Wonder Woman is not simply a DC film done right, it’s a superhero film executed to near perfection. Easily one of the best and most surprising movies of 2017. Guardians of the Galaxy, eat your freaking heart out! 

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 141 mins.

Quoted: “You have been my greatest love. Today you are my greatest sorrow. Be careful, Diana. They do not deserve you.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com 

Divines

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divines-movie-poster

Release: Friday, November 18, 2016 (Netflix)

[Netflix]

Written by: Uda Benyamina; Romain Compingt; Malik Rumeau 

Directed by: Uda Benyamina 

Divines provides a bleak but brilliant look into the lives of two teens in the Parisian banlieue. It follows Dounia and her best friend Maimouna as they seek out ways of making quick money so they can one day break free of their oppressive environs, an urban sprawl so neglected it almost looks post-apocalyptic. Small-time hustlers turn big-time drug pushers in this searing indictment of the socioeconomic climate of modern France, where the rich get richer “because the poor aren’t daring enough.”

Powerful female performances dominate but the French-Moroccan Uda Benyamina in her feature debut stops just short of making a film explicitly about female empowerment, and in so doing she creates a film that’s a little more open to interpretation. The narrative is more concerned with economics and how simply the lack of money so often coerces good people into making poor decisions. It just so happens to feature two impressionable young women going to extreme measures to realize a dream. Along the way Benyamina also examines the prominence of religion in poor communities. It is no accident the film opens with a sermon.

Dounia (Oulaya Amamra, the director’s sister) comes from a broken family, her mother an exotic dancer who sleeps around and is more often drunk than sober. There’s no real father figure as such, aside from a cross-dresser who hangs around for casual sex and to feign giving emotional support to the quietly angry teen. Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena) comes from a more well-to-do family, her father a prayer leader at a mosque. The film’s major themes — poverty and religious devotion — become increasingly apparent through the perspectives and conversations had between the two girls. They are first seen peddling whatever items they have been able to thieve from a shopping mall on the streets to whomever will give them cash. When Dounia discovers a potential fast-track to success she starts cozying up to a drug dealer named Rebecca (Jisca Kalvanda).

Divines is hardly the first film to filter the political and economic turmoil of Western Europe through the experiences of young and naïve characters — in this case, young women from a Parisian ghetto. It will not be the last. That doesn’t mean Divines is a predictable or insignificant affair. Quite the contrary, actually. The story revitalizes tropes and breathes new life into expected character arcs, patiently building toward one of the most punishing endings you are likely to see. Julien Poppard’s cinematography, a heady combination of gritty realism and ethereal experimentation, forces viewers to acknowledge Paris as something other than just the City of Lights. This is a city of darkness. It’s worth noting the juxtaposition of these slums against iconic landmarks like the Arc de Triomphe. Poppard often frames the city in a contradictory manner, imprisoning the characters within a crumbling square betwixt decaying buildings while tossing in plenty of romantic stimuli to assure viewers are where the street signs say they are.

While the edifices certainly could use some attention, Dounia in particular is desperate for it. Or at least some sort of positive influence. As the narrative expands she is shown a door to an altogether different life with a dancer named Djigui (Kévin Mischel) whom she has been spying on from the rafters of the theater she and Maimouna frequently break into. (Initially I was put off by their ability to sneak in so easily but then I realized the set-up was quite intentional, that perhaps the motif is microcosmic of Benyamina’s frustrations over the French government’s failure to protect and look after all its citizens, as any good government should.) Djigui seems an odd sort, if only to the girls who don’t envision men as dancers. His commitment to his craft is what could lead him to better things. Dounia becomes fascinated by his devotion.

Divines is at its most heartbreaking when it offers the wayward teens a choice. As is the case in reality, they are forced to make decisions over the course of an hour and forty-five minutes that no teenager should have to make. The economics that have outlined her past as well as determine her future make Dounia an utterly tragic character (the less said about Maimouna’s fate, the better). Yet she’s far from an entirely empathetic person. She carries a lot of anger inside of her, and she often makes the wrong choice when it is plain to see there is a better one. She is seen in the film’s opening in temple with her best friend. By the end she couldn’t seem further from salvation. That contrast is not only heartbreaking but wholly convincing. It is the world we live in.

divines-2

Recommendation: Richly textured, occasionally symbolic and often breathtaking cinematography and some artistic but not distracting stylistic choices — some portions of the film are created such that we are “receiving” Snapchat videos — make Divines a physical beauty to watch. The story is dark and saddening and a conclusion that’s nothing short of devastating makes this a noteworthy film for the politically minded and the socially conscious. And fans of unorthodox directors need to add this to their shortlist. Good for Uda Benyamina for getting this film made. 

Rated: NR

Running Time: 105 mins.

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.variety.com