The Beach Bum (2019)

Directed by Harmony Korine

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“He may be a jerk, but he’s a great man.”

Korine became known on the movie industry for writing the screenplay for the critically acclaimed Kids (1995), being only 19 years old at the time. Made his directorial debut with Gummo (1997), Korine started to implement his vision for cinema. Unlike traditional American cinema (that depends heavily on the power of narrative), he prefers an approach not so plot based. The film flows freely along the small events that occur, without a sense of a strict plotline that must be respected. In a way his vision of cinema is closer to a European one, in line of a Godard or a Cassavetes (in terms of artistic inspiration, as in quality he is a few steps below still).

It is not in any sense a figure praised by everybody. His films create a divide both among critics and overall public. For instance, in his previous film Spring Breakers (2012) he tried to make a social commentary of naiveté and the new” American dream” the younger generations, using Florida as background. The result had some interesting notes but is one of those films that tries way hard to be more profound than it really is. And that is usually the reason that leaves people often disappointed with his work.

In Beach Bum Korine returns once again to Florida but using a different approach. Florida still maintains the very saturated colours that were used in Spring Breakers, along with some great cinematography. It carefully translates the warmness and tropical aspect of the place with some gorgeous backgrounds. The difference lies on the overall tone of the film. Florida is depicted usually in film as this tropical paradise, but the reality is usually grimmer than that. The Florida Project (Sean S. Baker,2017) did a great job portraying the lives of lower classes in a cheap motel, showing a rather dark side to the stifling blissfulness.

There are no taboos in Korine’s films, either it be sexual, drug use or violence and Beach Bum continues to follow that line. As the protagonist we have Moondog (Matthew McConaughey), this hardcore stoner that lives this extremely hedonistic life without rules. McConaughey plays with great ease a role that its not that new to him (as for instance Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993) ). As the film progresses, we learn that he used to be a great writer but now lives of his multimillionaire wife Minnie’s (Isla Fisher) bank account. It´s a non-conventional and open relationship, noted by the multiple affair that they both have, something that don’t seem to bother them that much. It’s only the event of their daughter Heather´s (Stefania LaVie Owen) wedding that brings them together once again. The absurdity of the wedding brings along some great comedic scenes as well some interesting caracters such as Lingerie (Snoop Dogg). Despite having an obvious affair with his wife, Moondog is still very fond of him. The film then takes an tragic turn that leaves Moondog completely broke and homeless. The only way of getting the money back if he writes a new book, something that he is avoiding for a long time.

These two events come without notice a shape the flow of the film. Throughout his ramblings he encounters some eccentric characters like Flicker (Zac Efron), an sociopath pyromaniac with an spiritual side, or Captain Wack (Martin Lawrence), with his fixation with dolphins. Everywhere he goes positivity follows him. There are no dirty places or bad people, everything is glowing in Beach Bum. His life seems completely chaotic and without any shape of planning. He is a free spirit, loved by everybody, and always with an unshakable positivity. It’s almost discomfortable his level of happiness, almost childlike and completely unaware of his surroundings. But it always works out well for him in the end, even when all could go wrong. The cathartic ending shows his views about money were purely utilitarian. He needed the money to continue his lifestyle, not for shows of grandeur and opulence. It can be seen as a critic to the money culture that rules over us and distracts us from the most important things in life.

Overall its an interesting experience that tries to convey a more positive outlook to the problems of the world. On a more profound level Moondog is a troubled soul showed by his alcoholism, drug abuse or his womanizer ways. Despite that he still has an inspiring way of guiding himself towards happiness as his main goal to life. It´s not a life changing film or his message is new by any chance but in the end, it makes up for a different and thought-provoking film experience.

6 out of 10

Divorce Italian Style (1961)

(original title: Divorzio all’italiana)

Directed by Pietro Germi

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“Have you really got another headache?”

This week we’re heading out to Italy with this film by Sicilian director Pietro Germi. His early work is characterized by a neorealist tone in the likes of Rosselini or Vittorio De Sica (in films such as Il ferroviere (1956). In the sixties his line of work shifted towards the satirical comedy in the likes of Dino Risi or Mario Monicelli. This Italian style of comedy, the so-called commedia all’italiana (comedy Italian style) is characterized by a profound sense of social criticism beside the curtain of apparent lightness of laughter. The film ended up giving Germi the Oscar for Best Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen at the 35th Academy Awards in 1962 and as well the Best Comedy award at the Cannes festival.

In Divorce Italian Style (1961), Germi plays a masterful take on the Sicilian machismo, only possible through an acute sense of comedy. Baron Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni) is a disgraced nobleman married to Rosalia (Daniela Rocca). He has grown out of love with her and wants desperately to dissolve the marriage. The problem resides in the fact that at the time divorce was prohibited by law, leaving him “trapped” with Rosalia for the rest of his life. The illegality of divorce had its deep roots on the influence that the Catholic Church still had on life in Italy, especially the south. Fefè, as his wife affectionately calls him, draws a devious plan in order to get rid of Rosalia. By bringing her close to affection to another man, making him the cuckold, he could then kill then both, invoking that crime of passion and get away with murder. After this, he could finally make his move on to Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), his 16 years old cousin who he was infatuated with.

“Angela, what an unexpected pleasure”

The comic aspect of the film starts with the contrasts between the physical appearance of the couple. The baron is a cool figure, with a cigarette on the corner of his mouth, dark shades and a stylish moustache. A bon vivant and in a way a figure out of his time. But that is only a cover, shown by the preoccupations with his body (in a funny scene at the mirror where Mastroianni reflects about his belly size), and the way he presents himself at home, with the hair unkempt and rumpled clothes. In a way Mastroianni is creating a satire of the perfect and charming Italian lover, which includes himself in the lot (like in Fellini´s La Dolce Vita (1960). Despite all his flaws, Fefè is still convinced that he´s on top of his game and deserves a better looking and younger wife.

His wife Rosalia is characterized physically by the excessive body hair, especially in her face, with the subtle moustache and unibrow. Fefè is clearly repulsed by her and her constant shows of love make him rather disconformable. To add up, Rosalia has this very high-pitched voice and extravagant poses. The audience, despite knowing that is wrong, almost ends up in a devious way to agree with him. Germi makes the viewer enter in a conflict with themselves and therefore make him in Mastroianni´s shoes. If we analyse deeper though, Rosalia is a naïve kind of person, completely unaware of his husband unhappiness with the relationship.

Through the film we see him fantasizing about how he would kill his wife. Either by stabbing her in the back and throwing her into a soap caldron; or later in the beach by imagining her being swallowed up in quicksand. He finally finds Carmelo (Leopoldo Trieste), a World War II veteran who was deeply in love with Rosalia. The designing of plan was now completed, and when the two finally met again and fell in love, Fefè was now the cuckold. The shame was not only onto him but the entire family, ending a part of it being the reason for his father´s death or the actions against Rosalia and Carmelo.

Baron Ferdinando “Fefè” Cefalù and his wife Rosalia

The end shatters completely with the double standard of the male chauvinism. Now with a clear path to chase and marry the young Angela, she ends up behaving a lot like him. The irony displaced in the final scenes maybe tries to show that the problem is more a societal one than only the mischievous character of the baron. This is not an excuse for the husband´s actions, which are evidentially reprovable. But in the end, it feels like is easier to kill the partner than to lawfully divorce him. In addiction to this, the reaction of his family and the deep sense of shame all around the village display the problems that a post war and now democratic Italy had with machismo and the authority of the old institutions.

Burning (2019)

(original title: Beoning)

Directed by Chang-dong Lee

“You burn down other people’s greenhouses?”

Burning is a 2018 film that unfortunately was only released in Portugal (where we are based) precisely a year after its premiere on the Cannes Film Festival. To worsen things, only a limited number of smaller cinemas decided to screen it. A sad resolution to a challenging and interesting film, a clear difference from the lack of creativity that plagued the commercial circuit in the last month.

Director Chang-dong Lee maintains the caustic and dramatic style that characterized most of his films. Lee tries on his works to access the darkness in the human nature, putting his characters in situations way beyond their comfort zone. Either by turbulent political scenarios like in his directing debut Green Fish (1997), or in Peppermint Candy (2000), a haunting tale of a man’s downward spiral to suicide; or finally and maybe his most well received film Oasis (2002), dealing with father and daughter relations amidst a debilitating disease. This last one ended up receiving the Best Director’s award and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Leading Actress on the well-respected Venice Film Festival.

This time Lee brings to the screen an adaptation of a small story by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami (“Barn Burning”, 1982). The film takes place on current day South Korea, having as the lead character Jongsu (Ah-in Yoo). A recent graduate of literary studies he finds it hard to get a job in his field of studies. A well-read young man, quotes William Faulkner as his favorite writer, mostly because of how relatable his writing is to him. During a walk in Seul he suddenly meets a childhood friend named Haemi (Jong-seo Jun). They both are from a countryside village outside of Seul. Haemi is now a grown woman and like most in Korea has done plastic surgery, making her almost unrecognizable to Jongsu. They have a dinner and afterward she invites him to her house, where they end up having sex. There Jongsu acknowledges her decision to go to Africa and accepts feeding her cat while she is gone. While she is away, he decides to take care of his family farm where he spent his childhood, dreaming of Haemi’s return.

This surely one of those films that the less we know coming to the cinema the better, because the second half sure takes an unexpected turn from the romantic drama vibe that characterized the first part (which ironically kind of renders this review a bad tool for the ones who haven’t watched it ). When Haemi returns from Africa, we are introduced to a new friend that she made named Ben (Steven Yeun). A very rich individual, he “steals” Haemi from Jongsu, but despite that she still invites him to hang around them both, acting like an awkward third wheel. Besides that, there’s a delicate class critique around Ben. Jongsu compares him to Gatsby from the famous Fritzgerald’s novel, wondering what his occupation is to grant him this luxurious lifestyle.

“Misterious people who are young and rich but you dont know what they do”

Haemi is this happy and naïve like figure, and doesn’t care for such things as Jongsu does, who from the start feels there is something off with Ben. One day her and Ben appear uninvited in Jongsu’s family farm. In a moment alone Ben confesses his love with burning greenhouses, leaving a sense of imminent danger in the air. Despite that, Haemi is totally clueless to this and Ben’s love for arson. In one beautiful scene (after Ben’s revelation) during dusk, with the North Korean montains in the background, Haemi dances half naked to the sound of Miles Davis soundtrack of Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows (1958). The cinematography by Kyung-pyo Hong is gorgeous and adds a lot to giving a sense of dreamlike state, leaving the viewer more and more uncertain about what is happening.

The haunting Haemi dancing scene

Jongsu is a calm and introverted individual. Throughout the film we get clues about his past and childhood, especially the ones dealing with his mother. He is a lone wolf kind of person and starts to obsess with Haemi. There is a patent and ever-growing rage inside him against Ben, who despite always seeming uninterested in Haemi’s actions, she always tries to please him. This jealousy ends up hurting Jonsu’s relationship with her and leaving him with a lot of guilty caused by his behavior. But when he tries to amend things with her, she’s not there to talk to him. There’s a deep tension in this film but it is always invisible. The answers don’t seem to appear, but the rage grows stronger by the minute. In the end we can’t help but to feel if Jongsu’s obsession with Haemi and attempt to control her actions was part of the motivation for such a rageful and traumatic closure. As if he felt not only rage against Ben but also with himself.

8 out of 10

Ruben Brandt, Collector (2019)

Directed by Milorad Krstic

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“Art is the key to the troubles of the mind”

This week, for the first time on Camera Coverage, we’ll be taking a look at an animated feature. Coming from Hungary, Ruben Brandt, Collector is the first feature film of Milorad Krstic. A fairly unknown figure with only short movie credit (My Baby Left Me (1995) ), Krstic makes up a strong impression at the age of 66 years old. Regardless of its country of origin, the film is dubbed originally in English.

At the centre we have as the main character Ruben Brandt (voiced by Ivan Kamaras), a world-famous psychologist haunted by these weird and absurd dreams all connected with famous art pieces. The story advances between real life and dream sequences where famous paintings try to harm and kill Ruben. It is an extremely bizarre but captivating scenario to see; for instance, Velázquez’s Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress (1659) trying to bite off his arm in a speeding train; or even a pistol duel against Andy Warhol’s Double Elvis (1963). These wonderful usages of famous art pieces from the western world redefine their meanings beautifully and with great taste.

The duel with Elvis

Ruben Brandt is himself an art lover. His methods for helping his patients all connect with art, as he is a true believer of self-artistic expression to exorcise one’s ghosts of the past. Asking for help dealing with her problem with kleptomania is Mimi (Gabriella Hamori), an art robber escaping from detective Mike Kowalski (Csaba “Kor” Márton). She and the other patients in Brandt’s luxurious clinic discover his problems related to his dreams and agree they all must help him. The problems that made them enter the clinic are all related to crime and stealing so teaming up to rob to steal Manet’s Olympia (1863) is not that big of a deal. When they show this painting stolen from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to Brandt, his nightmares with the woman portrayed suddenly disappeared. He then joins the group to steal the rest of the paintings that still haunted his dreams. The gang raids numerous museums all around the world like the Louvre, MoMa, the Uffizi Gallery or the Art Institute of Chicago, ending up getting the attention of both authorities and gang members alike.The above-mentioned detective Kowalski tries to catch Mimi and the rest of the group before other criminals get to them, attracted by the huge bounty on their heads.

The storyline ends up emulating the classic Hollywood spy and cop movies genre, being a somewhat disappointing experience especially in the last third of the film. This is a film that is to be appreciated more by the originality of the embedded details rather than the narrative itself. There are plenty of heist films clichés, and the personality of the characters is not that deep or original, maybe except for the protagonist. Regarding the plot, points go certainly to the importance given to art and its relation to the well being of an individual. The connection between psychology and art is an interesting and refreshing one, especially in a world dominated by scientific thought.

Velazquez’s Infanta Margarida attack

Aesthetically this film leaves the viewer in awe by the gorgeous detail to both the characters and the world around them. People are portrayed as these cubistic with surrealistic undertones like a Picasso met Dali kind of style. Some have three eyes, others two heads, and, in a brilliant play with perspectives, there is a character that is bidimensional like a sheet of paper. It is an astonishing world completely filled with subtle references to all kinds of art, that goes from Soviet propaganda to American Realism painting. Besides that, a brilliant homage is also given to cinema, portrayed in the home collection of detective Kowalski. Filled with film memorabilia from Weneger’s Der Student von Prag (1913) poster to the small detail of ice cubes in the shape of Alfred Hitchcock, there´s a lot for any movie buff to enjoy in these small quirks.

Overall it was a pleasant surprise, and an animation like any other I’ve ever watched. The focus on the holistic aspect of art in the human mind is definably a positive aspect. In the end Ruben Brandt, Collector gives both an approachable introduction to art history and something that art enthusiasts can take also.

6 out of 10

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

(original title: El espíritu de la colmena)

Directed by Victor Erice

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“Why did he kill her?

Children in film are often used as a powerful tool to portray an array of heavy and dark sentiments through the eyes of naivety and without preconceptions. If we take, for instance, the experience of war, this innocence shattering event makes up for a potent art statement. For example, in a film like Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985) the sheer expressions of horror in the face of the young Florya, during the Nazi’s invasion of the Soviet Union makes up for an image far more lasting than if it was an adult. There is something about the loss of innocence combined with a sense of escapism in a child’s mind to deal with that shocking reality. But it doesn’t need to be as eerie and explicit like that to make a deep impression. In a film like Children of Heaven (Majid Majidi, 1997) the journey for a poor child to get a new pair of shoes for his sister makes up for a simple but not less beautiful and warm experience.

The Spirit of the Beehive is not in anyway as a traumatic experience as the Klimov film mentioned above. The plot takes during the early years of Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in Spain. It is interesting to point out that this film was released during the last years of this dictatorship, marking perhaps, by the themes portrayed in the film, a pending weakness in the regime. The main characters are two young sisters, Ana (Ana Torrent) and Isabel (Isabel Telleria). Their father has a myriad of occupations that go from bookkeeper to beekeeper and poet. Taking place in a small Castillian village in the Spanish Meseta, cinema is a motive for great excitement in this quiet town. The projector is set on an old barn and all the inhabitants, including the small girls watch a dubbed version of James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). The impact is immense on the younger one Ana, who leaves the cinema traumatized by the famous drowning scene. Obsessed with the monster, she looks for any sign of the monster close to home. The search ends up leading her to an isolated old shed on a large and desolate piece of flat land. Inside there’s a wounded republican soldier, trying to escape death at the hands of the Francoist forces. The small girl, naïve to all the political struggles, steals food from home to feed the desperate soldier. The Republican partisan is found and shot by the Nationalists which leads to the suspicion that Ana’s father was the one helping him. The pressure for the daughter ends up being too much and she escapes next to a lake, making a clear parallel with the Frankenstein plot.

The impact of the film reflected in her eyes

Portraying a Republican this way, like a wounded horse waiting for its demise, is an obvious example of a critique against the then fascist Spanish regime. In the seventies, dictatorships in Europe suffered an enormous amount of pressure by the rest of the western powers that already lived in democracy. Regimes like the Spanish (and as well the Portuguese one) grew more and more isolated. That could explain why films like this one or Viridiana (Buñuel, 1961, a ferocious critique of the catholic church, usual theme in Buñuel) passed the censors, despite the bad image they made of the regime. With general Franco’s death in 1975, Spain would finally make its transition to a democratic regime. Despite this obvious message, this film is much more than a political statement. It deals with the pureness of a child’s imagination, and how the make believes sometimes juxtaposes the sense of what is real. The innocence of Ana makes her completely unaware of the possible troubles she may be getting into by helping the soldier. Ana Torrent (that would end up working also with Carlos Saura in Cría Cuervos (1976)) makes up for an extremely sincere and sweet innocent child, in one of the more perfect roles played by a child that young. Merit has to be given to Erice for being able to blossom such a talent in a little child.

The vastness of the Spanish “Meseta”

On top of the terrific performances, the cinematography is clearly an astonishing feat. The stellar work of Luis Cuadrado (who ironically was losing eyesight during the shoot) is found in creating this sense of emptiness both inside the buildings and in the vast Spanish flat lands. The house where the children live feels old and uninhabited and the small village is surrounded by immense of dry fields to lose sight on. The emptiness feels like a colossal canvas for a young child’s imagination. Together with the somewhat eerie but at the same time comforting soundtrack by Spanish composer Luis de Pablo, The Spirit of the Beehive is a cinematographic experience like any other.

High Life (2019)

Directed by Claire Denis

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“It’s just a new religion for you.”

The presence of female directors in the worldwide film industry unfortunately is still somewhat lacking. For instance, over the last decade only 4% of the top 1,200 studio films were directed by women. Despite the odds, Claire Denis has throughout her career established herself as one of the most important French directors of the last decades. Her directing highlights go from Chocolat (1988), a film about France’s post-colonial issues; or Beau Travail (1999), dealing with the memories of war from French Foreign Legion soldiers. In this last one is especially interesting that themes like hypermasculinity and repressed homosexual feelings are explored by a female director, giving it a fresh new look on war films.

Claire takes now a shot at the science-fiction genre with High Life. The film tries to add new perspectives to what it means to be human when you are enclosed in a small spaceship far away from earth. It is not an easy task since the theme is well documented already, for instance in film classics like 2001, A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) or Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972). However, High Life is quite a different experience and references new ideas and problematics.

The great use of red lighting

The plot functions around a group of inmates whose life sentence is to collect an unknown form of energy somewhere near a black hole. The intricacies deepen as we are introduced to the different individuals that compose the unlikely team. Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche) is a doctor obsessed with collecting sperm samples from the male crew members and then artificially inseminate the female ones. Failing to do so constantly she decides to double the sedative dosage and, through rape, collect the sperm from Monte (Robert Pattinson), the star of the film. The sexual tension is raised even higher with the introduction of this masturbatory machine that all of the crew, but Monte, use regularly. In a somewhat full of sexual tension and at the same time somewhat eerie scene (with a vibe that reminded me the killings in Under the Skin (2013) ) we see Binoche ride this contraption called “The Fuckbox”. In a complete trance-like state, this machine with a dildo end is set in a dark room with bondage straps hanging up from the ceiling. Making a companion to the heavy sexual tone is also the violence between the team. In a way it’s like the film tries to associate the presence of one with the other. It may start as a sexual violence situation like rape and end up in murder. These are a group of people that have lost a sense of purpose in life due to the uncertainty of their future and the claustrophobic aspect of living in a small ship in deep space.

Inside “The Fuckbox”

The film begins with Monte living with a small child, alone in the spaceship. We later get to know that that child is the only success of Dr. Dibs and her mischievous tries to create newborns. Despite being an unwanted child, in a way it truly saves Monte from the same fate as his crew. Denis tries to show, especially between Monte and his little girl, some positive aspects about Humanity. In the final scenes we get to experience the wholesome relationship between the two until the ambiguous ending.

Its an interesting concept but not without its flaws. Starting with the cinematography, its somewhat lackluster, especially if we are talking about a revered director like Denis. The exterior space shots feel cheap and not very interesting either artistically or realistic, either way. Inside the spaceship it does get that much better. With points taken by the brilliant use of red light, there isn’t much there that blows you away. Maybe Denis was going for an homage to the spaceships of the 70’s because sure feels like we’re in one. The cast works well, especially Pattinson, but the dialogues feel sometimes forced and don’t add much to the plot.

It’s a peculiar film that will not appeal to the major movie goer for sure. It explores the most raw and vicious aspects about our sexuality and capacity to engage in violence. Nonetheless it’s not a missed shot by any means. Under its flaws there is a sense of novelty remarkable in this stage of her career, a director now 72 years old.

5 out of 10

The Fire Within (1963)

(original title: Le Feu Follett)

Directed by Louis Malle

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“One day I realised I’d spent my life waiting. For women. Money. Action. So I drank myself stupid.”

Louis Malle is a French director that started his career amidst the Nouvelle Vague movement. Despite not being a full front figure like Jean Luc Godard, Alain Resnais or the recently late Agnes Varda, he has a personal style and sensibility that make him, in my opinion, an underrated director in the French scene. His first full feature is Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1958), a noir masterpiece, displaying a suffocating and almost despairing feel with the brilliance of his night Paris shots. This in alliance with a stellar original soundtrack by the jazz great Miles Davis make for an almost perfect debut as a director. Throughout his career he would tackle difficult and polemic themes like Nazi collaboration (Lacombe Lucien (1974) ) or incestuous relationships (Le souffle au cœur (1971) ). His own World War II experience would serve as the theme for Au revoir les enfants (1987), a powerful film about a catholic school that hides Jewish children from Nazi persecution.

With Le Feu Follett, Malle focuses once again in very sensitive topics, like depression, addiction and especially on suicide. The story follows Alain Leroy (Maurice Ronet), a 30-year-old writer with alcoholic problems as he leaves the rehabilitation clinic in Paris. This service was played by his ex-wife, who now lives away from him in New York. To verify the success of the treatment, she sends one of Alain’s old female acquaintances Lydia (Léna Skerla) to check up on him. His doctor (Jean-Paul Moulinot) assures him that he is completely cured, and all is good now. Despite all the positive feedback from the outside Alain cannot help but feel disenchanted with the prospects of his future. Though the film we see him visit some old friends and catching up with their current lives in the present. For instance, as his comrade Dubourg (Bernard Noël) now dedicates his life to Egyptology and marriage, Eva (Jeanne Moreau) wastes her time with drug users. In another scene we see Alain dine with Solange (Alexandra Stewart) and her wealthy and reactionary friends. There is a feeling of resentment by Alain against his friends as if they are no longer the same as they were in their youth. As if in some way, their juvenile ideals were betrayed and transformed exactly on what was promised to fight against.

“It’s not feelings of anxiety, it’s a single feeling of constant anxiety”

Despite the constant presence of friends and acquaintances, Alain feels more alone than ever. Deep inside he feels truly displaced in this world and questions the bourgeois life that his friends live. In his small room questions the meaning of his existence and if he should just end it. The addiction leaves him with constant questioning of his abilities as a writer and even his notions of manhood, mainly because of the power and dependence that his ex-wife still has on him.

Maurice Ronet, who worked with Malle before in Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1958) does an astonishing job in this film. With a profound sense of calmness, he wanders through Paris narrating his thoughts in an eloquent manner. Malle use of handheld cameras give a more personal and closer feel as we feel as if we walk along with Alain. Along with the minimalistic notes of piano composed by Erik Satie there is a bittersweet tone to the relation between the viewer and the protagonist. In his head he made up his mind and he is tired of waiting for something that gives meaning to his life. Despite that, what may feel as a self-imposed fatalism is something very hard to understand to those not experienced with depression or addition problems. Alain seems like the kind of men that has nothing against him. With a good figure, intelligent and well-dressed what does he needs more? He has lots of friends and women that want to spend the night with him but regardless of that he is extremely unhappy with his life.

Malle, born into a wealthy industrialist family surely took a lot of his own thoughts and experiences into this work. Inspired by the writter Pierre Drieu la Rochelle (who ended up committing suicide) and his novel Will O’ the Wisp (1931), Malle gives an honest and well needed take on both mental issues and the problematics of contemporary society. Alain is in short, a profoundly alone person mainly because people lack the understanding of his real problems. Depression works not only on sadness and poor mood but especially the lack or misplacement of feelings. The true sadness of the film lies on not the decisions made by Alain but how poorly the others could view his problems. Maybe it was shame or pure hopelessness, but Alain seemed to others like a functional human being. If the viewer did not have access to his thoughts would them also view him as a man in the brink of suicide?

Diamantino (2019)

Directed by Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt

“They call me the Michael Angelo of the pitch”

Diamantino marks the debut of Gabriel Abrantes (with the partnership of Daniel Schmidt) into the world of full featured films. Abrantes has a long list of short films in his bag, such as A Brief History of Princess X (2016) or A History of Mutual Respect (2010). In his films he tries to ally a philosophical and critical stance to thematic such as history, gender and sexuality politics and the power of Art. With this long feature, Abrantes and Schmidt try to ally all these themes with an absurdist and at the same time comedic approach to serious and problematic contemporary problems. Almost a year after its Cannes debut, it finally showed up on Portuguese cinemas.

The plot follows Diamantino Matamouros (Carloto Cotta), the biggest football star in the world, who resembles an uncanny similarity to Cristiano Ronaldo. Either by the physical appearance or his narration of the events with a Madeira island accent (subtitled even to Portuguese audiences, although he is speaking Portuguese, something that may only be appreciated by the native speakers of the language) the resemblance is something that clearly pops on the viewer. Despite that, it’s not a direct reference and the character serves mainly as a caricature for nowadays biggest stars. He is a revered figured, almost like a god, astonishingly rich and with a personality ingrained with vanity and at the same time a tremendous ignorance for the events of the world. The very first scene, where we see him play in a sold-out stadium in the World Cup alongside with giant puppies in a pink cloudy haze, marks the surrealistic tone of the film. This scenario created in his head is the mechanism necessary to make him excel in what does best. Diamantino’s vanity and obsession with image and performance is not critiqued but instead he is presented as a deeply naïve and almost childish character. With the unexpected appearance of a refugee boat near his yacht, he completely loses all his ability to enter in that mental state represented by the pink haze and loses all his football skills. He goes from hero to zero, in a statement of the vapid celebratory status that rules our society, where one mistake is enough to fall from grace.

The surreal place that Diamantino goes when he plays

Shocked by the migrant reality, he decides to adopt a Mozambican refugee boy, who is actually a female agent in disguise to discover possible financial frauds. Placed in an alternative timeline, Portugal is a neofascist country. One of the best aspects is the placement of small but very perspicuous clues that evoke the country’s forty-year dictatorship. It compares the creation of a glorious past with its big symbols with the new symbols created by today’s society in order to give a sense of national identity. The plot derives then into an almost espionage type of film. The despotic government convinces our lead character into a cloning process to make an entire football team full of skilful players like him in order to regain the glory lost in the World Cup final. This potentially deadly procedure would end up giving him breasts, something that deeply embarrasses him. The laughs of the audience to this scene maybe are a refection the director wants to make in relation to transphobia but unfortunately fails short to give any deep impact on the viewer.

The film’s first half results in an interesting critique of nowadays culture and politics. The long dictatorship (from 1926 to 1974) marked generations with a propaganda machine that created myths to justify a sense of identity. Despite a few decades passed since 1974, the mindset of the contemporary Portuguese people in some ways still rely in those myths of grandeur in a way of self-identity. Diamantino’s sisters (Anabela Moreira/ Margarida Moreira) also make an interesting point with their greed for their brothers’ money. With their sly personality, they are willing to sacrifice his own brother if needed. Alongside the positive points made before, Cotta’s performance is also a big highlight in the film, creating a deeply interesting character.

Diamantino and his “adoptive son”

The problem with the film relies essentially on pace. Past the first half of the film the repetition of the more poignant (or funny) aspects start to wear off and lose some of the charm. In a way, it reminds me of Capitão Falcão (2015) a Portuguese film that deals with similar political themes with also a comedic approach. The premises are smart and offer new ideas that deserve his praise, especially in dealing with ghosts of the past in a more cheerful that can help more easily engrain the audience in a political reflation without a more acute sense of guilt. The problem is that it is unable to deliver a more powerful second half without recycling most of the content used before. Worst than that, it finishes with a disappointing and cliché ending. Maybe Diamantino would be better if it was a short film, as it would be a more cohesive and well-rounded experience, instead of the constant repetition of tropes.

5 out of 10

Utvandrarna (1971) / Nybyggarna (1972)

(eng:The Emigrants / The New Land)

Directed by Jan Troell

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The construction of the modern United States was a long and laborious process that encompassed many hardships by the countless ethnic groups that help created. Millions of people from all around the world embarked on ships to the American continent with the hope for a better life, incited by the “American Dream” that would bring freedom and economic prosperity, something lacking in their place of origin. Unfortunately, the country was built with more than free labour, with slavery and other racist cruelties being imposed to certain ethnic groups.

“Many slaves have better dwellings, food, clothing and working conditions than most peasants in Europe”

In these films, the focus is given to a Swedish family in the mid-nineteenth-century. Sweden is represented far from the image of prosperity that we relate with today’s Nordic countries. It is primarily an agricultural economy, with an engrained protestant ethos. It’s a difficult life, with years of bad crops creating harsh conditions of life, allied with religious persecutions. The film takes focus on the couple made up of Karl Oskar (Max von Sydow) and Kristina (Liv Ullmann), inhabitants of Smalanda, a small farming town. Despite the economic difficulties their family grows, ending up with four offspring. The idea of emigrating to America is conveyed to Karl Oskar by his brother Robert (Eddie Axberg). Kristina refuses fearing for the safety of her children during a arduous transatlantic voyage. The death of their oldest daughter to overeating unfermented grain finally convinces the wife to abandon her hometown and embark on a perilous trip to United States. After selling everything they have, the trip begins, with some family friends and religious exiles.

One moment that is one of the biggest highlights of the film is without a doubt the farewell to their hometown. The director Jan Troell does a stellar job focusing the faces of the ones leaving that impoverish and grey land. The looks to the ones that stay, whether be family or old friends, are a sight that knows that is almost certain that they will not return to this place. It is a bittersweet feeling that almost makes the viewer a passenger in that old wagon that will take them to the boat. It’s without a doubt a very powerful scene that truly shows the experience of leaving one’s home country and all the contrast of feelings with that situation.

.The ones that stay behind

The boat trip that follows shows, in a unique kind of manner the horrendous way that travelling the Atlantic Ocean was for the lower economical classes. Unlike today, the trip lasted for weeks, in an overcrowded boat, with very few preoccupations with hygiene, food or the comfort of its passengers. This kind of conditions are perfect for the transmission of diseases, and even the death of some of the passengers. It’s a claustrophobic feeling inside the large ship, leaving the viewer almost as anxious for the end of the trip as the travellers.

This kind of hardships and the detail for realism depicted in the films certainly makes the viewer feel a certain compassion with the characters. These moments portrayed are not gratuitous displays of poverty and the horrors of it just to shock the viewer or to take cheap lessons of humbleness from it. They are a part of history that sometimes is either forgotten or romanced by the newer generations. The United States of America were formed by emigrants that went to great lengths to give themselves and their descendants opportunities of life impossible in their countries of origin. It is certainly ironic that some of the people that descended from these impoverish and in need migrants now display fearmongering views against ones in similar situations.

Clocking more than seven hours of time length, both the films show a crude and genuine view during this period. They are sometimes slow movies and that take time to develop. Sydow and Ullman have truly a remarkable and honest performances, marked by a deep complicity with each other, and are accompanied by a cast of interesting and sometimes quirky secondary characters.

Film poster for Nybyggarna (1972)

As a follow up for Utvandrarna we have Nybyggarna (1972) by the same director, where we can follow the journey of the Karl Oskar’s family as they settle in a terrain In Minnesota. Here we are introduced to new problematics that challenge the idea of the so called “American Dream”. The richness of the new land is not enough for his brother Robert so he decides to go West, chasing the California Gold Rush. The war against the Sioux, a Native-American tribe (in the Dakota War of 1862) leaves his family in peril, with some perishing to indigenous warriors. On top of that, his wife has several problems with miscarriages and ends up getting dangerously ill. Like mentioned above it was a very difficult life in Sweden, but the change to America doesn’t seem to make it that much better. It’s a dangerous and lawless land and it would take years to create a stable State and a better growing economy. For ones interested in the knowing how the United States came to be, both the films are unavoidable because they create without a doubt a mental picture of the time that cannot be comprehended only by reading history books. It gives a voice to these people that made the ultimate sacrifice for a better future for them despite terrible adversities.

The Sisters Brothers (2019)

Directed by Jacques Audiard

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“I had to help him. He is my brother.”

The western genre has been a staple of the American cinema since its early beginnings in the turn of the twentieth century. It helped to create a romanticised image of USA’s growth as a powerful nation, from the lawless open deserts filled with bandits, to the fights against the native Americans. Sometimes problematic by today’s standards of justice and ethics (mainly because of unjust representations of non-whites) the western were a very successful category mainly until the end of the sixties when the Vietnam war and the civil rights movements shifted the attention to other more pending issues at hand.

The Sisters Brothers is the last main western release in line with the many that came out in the last years. This western revival has a different paradigm to what it was the purpose of old-time ones. It focuses on unusual themes for the genre (like the African-American struggle in Django Unchained (2012) or portrays the characters in a rather much more crude and realistic tone compared to the idealistic and clean aspect of the old westerns (for instance The Revenant (2015) or True Grit (2010)). The film we´re focusing on today takes a similar stand and pretends to use some of the western typical tropes to depict a deeper story than it appears on the first hand. As the two main protagonists we have Eli Sisters (John C. Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix). The two brothers and outlaws serve as hired guns of a mysterious wealthy man known only as the Commodore and accept a contract to kill a a man named Hermann Warm (Riz Ahmed), a chemist rumoured to have found a formula that makes the gold glow underwater. The film is set during the gold rush in the western part of the United States. It takes into thoughtful consideration the creation of a truthful atmosphere, displaying a effervescent growth of towns made up by people fascinated by this “easy” way to get rich. Another character named John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal), also an employ of this Commodore, tries to find the same man as the Sisters. He is the first to encounter Warm, who after some initial struggle convinces him to join him in a partnership. Warm is an idealist kind of man, dreaming that the money raised with his invention could make way for an commune in Texas, where every man was equal and without social classes. The film takes place in 1851, three years after Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto was published and it sure had made a deep impression on Warm. Despite this hopefulness in his mind, his invention, as we can see in the end of the film, is of terrible physical harm to humans. Almost as if there is somewhere a metaphor associating creation of wealth and the suffering of millions of low-class citizens.

“You never thought about stopping?”

The focus of the film is primarily the relationship between the two brothers. Eli acts as the more responsible of the two, almost as a father figure to Charlie, always trying to protect him. Charlie, on the other hand, is a drunkard, with a somewhat nihilistic posture to life. In a scene we see the two discussion a future without being hired killers, with Charlie being deeply against any possible career change. Despite all the harsh times and difficulties, we can experience an honest brotherly love between the two. They only have each other and shared a severe childhood, mainly because of a drunk and violent father figure, something that can explain most of Charlie’s attitude towards alcohol and violence.

Director Jacques Audiard (responsible for films such as Un prophète (2009) or De rouille et d’os (2012)), makes its first English speaking feature with The Sisters Brothers. Like Sergio Leone and all the “Spaghetti western” genre, not being an American truly brings a fresh new approach to such a classic and almost a creator of an American identity. Despite being a violent film, with the protagonists being cold hard killers without remorse, the viewer cannot help but to empathize with them. The “Wild West” was truly a rough time to life and that is well represented in the film. In a scene we see a spider entering Eli’s mouth, making him very sick in the following day, in one of the most gruesome moments in the film. Everything surrounding the brothers seems to want to eliminate them, from other outlaws to Mother Nature itself. Despite all the euphoric feeling towards a growing economy, there is a deep loneliness in the men, completely tired of this extremely competitive world. The ending of the film truly reflects that, not obsessing, like old time westerns, in a sense of true justice, but in internal peace and fulfilment.

The Sister Brothers is a good film, with superb performances and a great care for the film’s ambience. It is not a perfect film, mainly because some of the sudden changes, from slapstick comedy to the more dramatic moments feel somewhat odd. It may also feel to more impatient viewers as if nothing much is going on many if the scenes. Despite that, is an different approach to the genre and definitely not to be missed.

7 out of 10