A Feb 10 theatrical release, Apple TV the next week heist and dysfunctional family thriller which also stars Brianna Middleton and Justice Smith.
It’s from A24, which suggests “thought provoking” and a certain quality, but limited box office appeal which is why Apple gets it in a hurry.
“Saint Omer” is a dry, patience-testing parable about cultures clashing, cultural disconnection, motherhood and the eating fear of infanticide many mothers harbor — “The Medea Complex.”
That, by the way, would have been a much more informative, dramatic and poetic title than the drab name of the city where a dramatically-flat French murder trial takes place, that of a Senegalese immigrant accused of leaving her baby to drown in the surf.
But “more informative, dramatic and poetic” would have been too easy for French-born (of Senegalese parents) filmmaker Alice Diop, known for documentaries (“We,””La mort de Danton”) about refugees and African immigrants in France, and an acclaimed French TV series about the various forms of violence against women in French life.
Diop gives us clues of what her debut feature film is about grudgingly, masks her messaging with endless and dully-shot and performed scenes of the trial, and surrenders any illusion of “entertainment” pretty much entirely in this movie which touches on racism, superstition, the French system of justice and Every Mother’s Nightmare.
Plainly, others got more out of it than I did, as this is France’s contender for the Best International Feature in this year’s Academy Awards. But when you introduce an accomplished, striking and barely-sketched-in college professor and promptly drop her into a trial she’s observing 15 minutes into your movie, and don’t let us escape that courtroom’s real-time tedium for 25 solid minutes, you’re not just testing your audience. You’re abusing it.
The script doesn’t reveal exactly what it is about this nationally notorious trial that makes college professor and novelist Rama (Kayije Kagame) want to witness her fellow countrywoman’s questioning. Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda) had a baby with her much older, white lover (Xavier Maly). Isolated from her partner, her family and her own culture in a strange land where she hoped to study law, fixated on a “curse” put on her when she left Senegal, she left the baby girl on the beach at Berck-sur-Mer at low tide. Fishermen found it.
Rama, who is teaching Marguerite Duras using images of French women who slept with Nazis having their heads shaved as punishment and “shaming” after World War II when we meet her, is also in an interracial relationship. She is, it turns out, pregnant. And despite being a beautiful accomplished novelist in a multicultural democracy, she starts to feel some of the same pressures Laurence claims as Rama listens, with growing concern, to Laurence’s lengthy questioning from a judge and the lawyers in court.
Oh, she’s here because she thinks this trial could serve as fodder for her next book, “Medea Castaway.” Diop drops this key piece of information FAR later than she should have, in a phone chat with Rama’s publisher, who isn’t keen on that title.
That would be a handy fact to have at hand when this first-time feature director is burying us under emotion-free testimony about Laurence’s early life, her relationships, emotions and insistence that “sorcery” had a hand in this murder.
“I don’t think I’m the responsible person in this case,” she flatly declares under questioning in a courtroom which provides subtle drama and no histrionics, and eats up the vast majority of “Saint Omer’s” two-hours-plus running time.
The meat of the movie is the way white, Gallic French society, via its courts, treats The Other. Judges and lawyers lightly debate just how seriously “cultural” differences have to be taken into account for this murderous act, with one lawyer glibly comparing it to “African female genital mutilation” and a judge suggesting “FGM,” at least, has perceived “benefits.” “Infanticide does not.”
Perhaps I’m misreading what spins out, in French with English subtitles, in those courtroom scenes. What I hear and understand is a steady drip-drip-drip drowning of Laurence’s various “reasons,” “excuses” and lies about her academic career, her background and supposed superstition, which comes off as her attempt at a “get out of jail free” card for this unspeakable crime.
Because none of the (mostly) female (all) white people questioning her have a clue about any of that. And French tolerance and sensitivities notwithstanding, they like the viewer judge this “curse” business as nonsense or a lie.
Rama, taking the “motherhood” and “stranger in a strange land” revelations too hard, weeps at some of what she’s absorbing, fretting over her own situation, privileged though it may be. And every Senegalese and white person she speaks to or overhears can’t stop herself or himself from noting how “articulate” Laurence is, how smooth and educated her command of French comes off in court.
Racist? Oh yes.
But perhaps one has to be a mother and have struggled with the psychology of pregnancy to better appreciate the “Medea” business in this script, which is underplayed to the point where one must ask other critics the blunt question, “Are we reviewing the movie, or the director’s statement about what she was trying to accomplish?”
While there are things to be explored and pondered in drab “Saint Omer,” Diop’s organization of her message and lack of prioritization of simple courtesy-to-the-viewer information we need in order to follow the story and answer that fundamental question, “What the hell is this thing about?” leaves a lot to be desired.
Rating: Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and brief strong language
Cast: Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Salimata Kamate, Xavier Maly and Thomas de Pourquery
Credits: Directed by Alice Diop, scripted by Alice Diop and Amrita David. A Neon release.
Running time: 2:02
I had to return to Daniel Day Lewis‘ Oscar acceptance speech from the spring of 1990 — God Bless Youtube — to make sure I was remembering it right, that he saluted the Academy for “providing me with the makings of one helluva weekend in Dublin” followed by a tribute to the young actor who played the even-younger Christy Brown in the early scenes of “My Left Foot.”
That Day Lewis, the oft-nominated, three-time Oscar winner who is basically the Brando, DeNiro and Streep of his generation of actors, could transform himself into the memoirist, poet, painter and novelist Christy Brown — born with cerebral palsy — seems like a given today. He’s simply the very best at what he did before he retired and gave the rest of the Screen Actor’s Guild a chance.
But watching the film anew, I was stunned at how good young Hugh O’Conor, a mere boy of 13 charged with managing the same transformation as Day Lewis, was and is in the film. He’d played a troubled epileptic child whom a young priest (Liam Neeson) takes an encouraging interest in for 1985’s “Lamb.” So he had to be the most qualified actor in Dublin for those early scenes. Still, he’s astonishing in a physically demanding role, managing the spasms, the “I have no mouth and I must scream” despair of an unspeaking, unable-to-write child whom everybody in 1930s and early ’40s Dublin assumed was “an idiot,” thanks to his birth defect.
Day Lewis is amazing in the film. Hugh O’Conor breaks your heart.
What drew me back to this Oscar-winner was this awards’ season, and the presence of yet another performance that might get dismissed, as some wags are wont to do, as a “stunt.”
Think of Ray Milland’s convincing drunk in “The Lost Weekend,” Joanne Woodward’s multiple personality disorder turn in “The Three Faces of Eve,” Jon Voight’s paraplegic performance in “Coming Home” or Dustin Hoffman’s autistic savant “Rain Man” and you see evidence of actors in the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences recognizing excellence, degree of difficulty and showmanship in a performance.
Day Lewis edged out fellow nominee Tom Cruise’s best shot at an Oscar for his paralyzed Vietnam vet turned anti-war protester in “Born on the Fourth of July” back in 1990.
So Brendan Fraser, putting on pounds, donning a fat suit and and assuming the role of “The Whale” is part of a long Hollywood tradition, with an Oscar nomination instantly part of the conversation.
But what Day Lewis and the other examples cited above managed to do, something Fraser pulled off as well, I think, is transcending the “disabled struggle” story trope to create a fully-formed, emotionally-flawed and complicated character.
With Christy Brown having passed just a few years before this film, based on his memoir, and some of the people involved in his life still around, “My Left Foot” still paints a complex and sometimes unflattering portrait of a man whose every day was an epic struggle, and who did not suffer this misery in silence.
We see a Brown who self-medicates and is an abusive drunk, a needy and demanding man who did not suffer anyone — fools, the well-to-do, fellow artists or the women who came into his life — easily or gladly.
Whatever “weekend” Day Lewis experienced in the pubs of Dublin, it’s hard to imagine having much fun with a brilliant, cutting and never-quite-self-pitying Brown, should you find him your drinking mate for the evening.
The movie tracks Brown from childhood, recreating that “Eureka” moment when his large, distracted and working poor family realized that his one controllable foot and its dexterous toes could write (seen above), and into adolescence and his celebrated adulthood as a man or art and letters.
Brenda Fricker collected an Oscar playing Brown’s sainted mother. Ray McAnally is his loving but dismissive-at-first hard-drinking Da’ and Fiona Shaw deftly plays a composite character, a doctor who recognizes Christy’s “poet’s soul” and the artist trapped in that barely-functioning body, and becomes Brown’s first serious romantic interest.
If anything, “My Left Foot” went a little light on the miseries of Brown’s 49 years on Earth, which is to be expected.
But Daniel Day Lewis, Hugh O’Conor and director Jim Sheridan made damned sure that whatever Hollywood thought, whatever “rewarding a stunt performance ” rationale might enter in filmdom’s collective mind about this bit of work, their combined efforts would be never less than a wholly realized human being.
This Christy would have good days and bad days, show off his love, devotion and charm, and his prickly side when he was in his cups.
It’s a performance and a film that I have to say still holds up. That makes “My Left Foot” well worth tracking down this Oscar season, and any Oscar season where you hear a whiff of “stunt” blowback against a demanding, wholly-committed performance like this one and every single other one I’ve mentioned in this appreciation, including Brendan Fraser’s.
Rating: R, violence, nudity, alcohol abuse, profanity
Cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Ray McAnally, Fiona Shaw, Adrian Dunbar, Cyril Cusack and Hugh O’Conor.
Credits: Directed by Jim Sheridan, scripted by Shane Connaughton and Jim Sheridan, based on the memoir by Christy Brown. A Miramax release on Amazon, Tubi, PosiTV, etc.
Running time: 1:43
The grey-haired woman whose daughter disappeared is as startled to run into the third prosecutor/investigator assigned to her daughter’s case while out hunting for her child herself.
What’s he doing here?
“Fixing other people’s mistakes,” he buck-passes. And her?
“Doing other peoples JOBS.”
The best Netflix movie with “Noise” in the title is Natalia Beristáin’s film about Mexico’s “desaparecida,” another Latin American country — like Argentina and Chile under military junta rule — that is seeing tens of thousands of its young people disappear.
Beristáin, a feminist filmmaker known for “The Eternal Feminine” and directing several episodes of TV’s “Mosquito Coast” adaptation, takes us inside the end game cost of a country not just losing its drug war, but one that has all but capitulated to the cartels on the other side.
A solitary mother (Julieta Egurrola), an artist who works in textiles, begs, rages and hires outside help when the indifferent, corrupt and cowardly police refuse to help her locate her missing 20something daughter.
Her estranged husband (Arturo Beristáin) and agent is just as upset, but putting on a brave face that is little comfort. At least her first visit to a support group gives her some relief, the realization that she is not alone, an outlet to tell her story.
Some 90,000 Mexicans — young people, women mostly, and journalists, perhaps even a cop or two who isn’t on the take — have vanished in the country’s war on the people who feed America’s appetite for illegal drugs.
“Noise,” like the Argentine classics “The Official Story” and “The Disappeared,” will follow Julia as she retains a lawyer/researcher (Teresa Ruiz) to carry out her own search. They visit morgues, wary, lazy and cover-up prone local police. And they join scores of other mothers who have learned to carry out their own “killing fields” searches for evidence of mass graves and something that might identify their missing loved ones.
“We had to teach ourselves how to do such missions,” a veteran of this particular hunt confesses.How long has she been searching? “Nine years.”
The “Mexican Femicide” graffiti covers the cities, and Julia even meets the youngest and the angriest, girls and young women taking to the streets in ever-growing, ever-rowdier protests.
None of which matter to the “Men With Guns,” criminals and the uniformed state-payroll goons who are more interested in silencing “trouble-makers” than stopping a nationwide crime wave and giving these families some peace.
As a movie, “Noise” is a slow starter. The picture comes to a complete halt for the necessary but overlong opening act “support group” scene, and has pacing problems into the nerve-wracking, infuriating and disheartening third act.
But it quietly takes hold of the viewer with patience, a gripping story that has plenty to say to audiences all over the world, especially those with under-policed police, accepted corruption at the highest levels, where a “War on Women” is a political policy, even if it’s never been declared.
Rating: TV-MA, violence, smoking, profanity
Cast: Julieta Egurrola, Teresa Ruiz, Adrian Vazquez and Arturo Beristáin
Credits: Directed by Natalia Beristáin, scripted by Natalia Beristáin and Diego Enrique Osorno. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:45
What the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations are to the Acting Oscars, a good indicator of what the Oscar nomination field will look like, the Producers Guild Awards are to Best Picture, Best Documentary and Best Animated Film.
Looks like “Glass Onion” and other titles ignored by SAG, get added on here.
“She Said” is apparently not Oscar worthy, nor is “Women Talking” or “The Woman King,” or “Till” but the super popular junk “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” are.
Producers are big on movies that draw a crowd. The exceptions, this year, are “Tar” and “The Fabelmans,” which by the way, wouldn’t make any sentient person’s Top Five Steven Spielberg movies.
Mutter.
“Tar” and “Whale” made the cut, and the slightly more popular “Banshees of Inisherin” is included, but several fine films missed that cut.
“Babylon” was depending on an awards season and Oscar bounce it almost certainly will not get.
Happy to see “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” made the Best Animated Feature contenders list, and the box office underwhelmer “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” crashed that party.
Below the page break, find the full list of feature film, documentary and TV and streaming nominees.
Continue readingDave Franco directed, and he and Brie co-wrote this oddball rom-dramedy.
Coming soon, Feb. 10. Looks cute.
Here’s a slice of vampire-vamping Spanish Manchego that may be a little late to the whole “Vampire movies are silly” parade. But give the cast and crew of “Hollyblood” props for taking their best shots, which land almost often enough to make this quick and sometimes funny farce worth recommending.
Javi, played by Óscar Casas, is the prototypical “new kid in school” who crushes on Sara (Isa Montalbán), so much so that he stalks her online where her obsession with vampires finds an outlet. Javi catfishes her as “Lidia,” “just to get to know her.” Sure.
His Dad (Jordi Sánchez) misunderstands his boy’s shyness and online alter ego enough to think “You play for the other team,” in Spanish or dubbed into English. He’s a Eugene Levy in “American Pie” dad — over-sharing, over-compensating but tolerant, if not exactly tactful.
“Next year, we’ll sign on a float for the gay pride parade!”
At school, the possessive bully Manu (Mateo Medina) is determined to scare Javi off “my girl” with threats. Sara’s bestie, wheelchair-bound Carmen (Lara Boedo) is something of a badass, out to “protect” her friend from Manu and any other guy who might “hurt” her.
When Javi stalks Sara to the premiere of the new “Hollyblood” movie, an amusing and over-the-top shirtless “Twilight” knockoff , and then “saves” her from scaffolding about to fall on her, she is convinced HE is a vampire. Perhaps now she’ll remember his name, something she gets wrong every time they strike up a conversation.
As Sara was expecting to meet another online catfisher, the legendary teen vampire Azrael (Piero Mendez), Mr. Chalamet-Cheekbones, you can see how she’d confuse Javi for a real bloodsucker.
There’s nothing for it but for Javi to don contacts and lots of RPatts makeup and make the illusion real for her. Wonder how long it’ll take Carmen or supposedly-smart and hip yet still-gullible-enough-to believe in vampires Sara to find him out?
Meanwhile, oafish Diego (Carlos Suárez), their classmate with a youtube channel where he can pose as an aspiring vampire hunter, one whose mother keeps misplacing his holly stakes sharpener — “Remember, if I’m murdered, it’ll be my MOM’s fault!” — is on the case, looking for the “real” Azrael, willing to test his stakes out on Javi.
It’s all a lark, and large stretches of this goof of a movie play, even if not everything is all that funny. The father-son shtick is cute but dated, the Diego stumbling towards the truth segments are a bit of a laugh.
The script’s set-ups and punchlines and too much of the problem solving — how Javi “sells” this illusion — feels like clumsy afterthoughts.
But several characters harbor “secrets” that are funny revelations. Diego’s way of clearing out the theater at the Madrid premiere of “Hollyblood” is clever. And everybody on board keeps with the spirit of the thing, taking it no more seriously than is absolutely necessary.
Brief, brisk comedies like this are often filmed at a sprint, and if you’re lucky, that shows up on screen. One way that reveals itself here is a hilariously obvious mid-chest crescent moon tattoo our “gullible” but worldly Sara has, and then doesn’t have. It disappears for one scene, and comes back between her cleavage the next, over and over, one of the funniest continuity errors I’ve seen in years.
“Hollyblood” doesn’t hold a lot that’s novel or new for adults, but it’s Netflix edgy enough for the teen audience, a demographic Netflix spends a lot of money on entertaining.
Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex and sexual orientation jokes, mild profanity
Cast: Óscar Casas, Isa Montalbán, Jordi Sánchez, Carlos Suárez, Lara Boedo, Piero Mendez, Mateo Medina and Amparo Fernández.
Credits: Directed by Jesús Font, scripted José Pérez Quintero. A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:29
A Feb 10 Netflix Valentine’s Day rom-com about “old friends” swapping coasts and apartments and maybe finding love…with someone. Each other? Taking bets on that.
Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher and a rom-com about finding love in your…40s?
Rhea Seehorn, Tony Shalhoub and Michael Ian Black also star in this odd, dreamy comedy.
Feb. 24 this one comes to theaters.
This paranoid thriller with a supernatural twist has a shot at showing us WWI on a budget.
Feb. 24, we find out if it works. As if there wasn’t enough to be terrified of in the trenches.
Movie Nation 