Suddenly

Directed by Johan Brisinger
Written by Johan Brisinger and Mikael Bengtsson

****
Complicated relationships are explored in this beautifully paced drama, in which a father and his oldest son must cope with the sudden loss of half their family.

We are briefly introduced to the family of four before the car crash which claims the lives of the mother and youngest son.  The accident is not dwelled on, but serves as a buffer between the bustling normality of that morning and the severe contrast we discover nearly a year later.

Seventeen year old Jonas has been left scarred and limping, and exists in shadowy isolation, unable to talk to his father – or anyone else.  Lars is physically healthy, but cannot cope with his grief and refuses to speak about the missing members of the family.

After a transparent suicide attempt, the two journey to their family’s summer house on an island off the Swedish coast.  Slowly beginning to interact with members of the community, Lars and Jonas make separate, sometimes shocking, attempts to heal and become a functioning unit once more.

So far, so melodramatic – but Suddenly (Underbara Älskade) easily avoids the trap of sentimentality.  The film has a poetic feel, and the stunning Swedish scenery and quality acting lift it above the ordinary.  Michael Nyqvist, a veteran of Swedish cinema, delivers a note perfect performance, managing to make us care for Lars even at his self-destructive worst.  The expressive Anastasios Soulis, a young actor of Finnish and Greek heritage (reportedly fluent in Swedish, Finnish, Greek and English!) is an absolute gem as Jonas, who talks tough but can’t hide the hurt in his eyes.

Honest and highly watchable, the film remained in the top ten at the Swedish Box Office for fifteen weeks, and received people’s choice awards at several European film festivals – with good reason.

This review was originally written for an online magazine, and is republished with permission.

The Visitor

Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy

****

Walter Vale is a middle aged college professor, a greying, invisible nobody who delivers lectures in a monotone and utterly neglects his students.  Although he’s living an aimless, solitary life and appears to have given up on just about everything, there’s still a little fight left in him: he’s stubbornly, hopelessly trying to learn the piano.

Trapped into travelling to New York to attend a conference, Walter (Richard Jenkins, in a standout performance) reluctantly returns to his long vacant New York apartment, where a dramatic encounter with a young immigrant couple gradually changes his entire outlook on life.

As Walter’s unlikely friendship with talented musician Tarek progresses, even the young man’s initially disapproving girlfriend Zainab begins to open up.  With their help Walter is able to take an interest in life again – but his newfound fulfilment is tested in unexpected ways when Tarek is abrubtly arrested as an illegal immigrant, and his worried mother and girlfriend are unable to visit him.

The strength of The Visitor is its focus on the characters.  By making it a story about individuals rather than a statement about US immigration services, we’re engrossed in people’s reactions to the situation.  Writer/director Tom McCarthy hopes it will humanise the problem for US audiences, since “we’re not just talking about issues… we’re talking about human beings.”

An absorbing tale of cultural collisions, music, love, and second chances, The Visitor is by turns thoughtful, wistful, funny, awkward, and romantic.  It’s an indictment on anyone who goes through their day without thinking about others, and it’s a must see for anyone in search of a film capable of provoking and entertaining at the same time.

This review was originally written for an online magazine, and is republished with permission.

Jinx Sister

Written and directed by Athina Tsoulis

**** 1/2

Laura knows she’s jinxed.  She’s always surrounded by trouble, and people who get close to her have habit of dying.  Ten years ago she fled to America, but her glamorous new life hasn’t turned out to be the release she expected.

Rapidly unravelling and realising the only place left to run is back home, she’s soon facing her demons in the multicultural suburban blur of south Auckland.

Laura’s journey ties all the characters together, so the film stands on Sara Wiseman’s sympathetic portrayal of her.  Wiseman imbues Laura with a sense of fragility, creating a creating a character you can’t help feeling for, even as she lashes out against her friends and family.

This is that rare film in which all the characters feel like real people, rather than cardboard cut-out supporting acts.  Rachel Nash turns in a standout performance as Mairie, Laura’s long neglected sister, as does Jarod Rawiri, as Sam, ex-con with a heart of gold.  Writer/director Athina Tsoulis describes the cast as “a dream team” and the results are certainly up there on screen.

Although Jinx Sister is at times a sad story, a deft comical touch and dashes of optimism keep it from being tragic.  Tsoulis called time on dark cinema, saying: “Films where the protagonist descends into hell have lost their appeal, and I wanted an ending that… was one of hope.”

It’s a local film with a huge heart, and earned the home-grown label in the truest sense – made with virtually no budget and relying on the generosity of the small cast and crew, the filmmakers discovered their “renegade” shoot ultimately freed them in many ways.

A true blue kiwi film, JinxSister is filled with local humour and accents, and there are plenty of laughs along the way as we recognise just how well we’ve been captured on camera.  It’s an emotional ride, but it’s a very satisfying one.

This review was originally written for an online magazine, and is republished with permission.

4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days

Written and directed by Cristian Mungiu

****

How far would you go for your friends?  The question’s almost a cliché now, but 4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) brings new meaning to devoted.

Set in 1987, in the “Golden Age” of Ceauşescu’s communist Romania, the film spans a momentous day in the lives of two female students in Bucharest.  Meek young Gabriela is in trouble, and she’s booked an abortion, but the illegal procedure incurs heavy punishment if you’re caught.

Looking for help, she confides in her roommate Otilia, who takes pity on her desperate friend and throws herself into preparations.  In the course of the day, Otilia overcomes unforeseen obstacles, and slowly realises feckless Gabriela has mismanaged everything.  If the shadowy Dr Bebe will help at all, it’s going to be up to Otilia.

Harrowing but gripping, the film offers a look at the late 1980s in the poorest of the eastern bloc countries.  Painstaking care was taken to frame out modern development and film only buildings and props authentic to the period.  The result is a close up on the grey and cheerless landscapes of life behind the Iron Curtain.

Purposefully shot in an almost documentary style, director Cristian Mungiu says he tried to “focus on capturing emotion and truth.”  For this reason the film does not actually enter the abortion debate, but looks instead at the extreme lengths women would go to in order to secure a risky, outlawed and in many cases downright unsafe operation on the black market.

It’s not a film for the faint hearted.  There are disturbing scenes, and the drama plays out relentlessly, creating layers of tension with little release.  Yet it is a beautifully crafted film – perhaps one of the best of the year.  Stunning performances, especially from Anamaria Marinca as Otilia, engage us in the characters’ lives, and the familiar way we follow them around makes us almost complicit in their turmoil.

4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days is rumoured to be the first instalment in a planned trilogy from the same director, all about Romanian life under communism.  While this first part is hardly one I’d want to watch again, it’s going to remain high on my list of great films, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for any follow ups.

This review was originally written for an online magazine, and is republished with permission.

Rain of the Children (2008)

Written and directed by Vincent Ward

*****

There are several adjectives impossible to avoid when attempting to describe Vincent Ward’s latest film.  Compelling is one, gripping another.  Perhaps most apt is haunting – this is an utterly absorbing, unforgettable and entirely New Zealand story of love, loss and survival across a tumultuous time in our history.

At the centre of the film is Puhi, a bent old woman of the Tuhoe iwi, who welcomed the then twenty one year old Ward into her remote home back in 1978.  Over the course of two years, he filmed her daily life for his award winning documentary on traditional Maori life, In Spring One Plants Alone.

Puhi died soon after he finished the documentary, but Ward never forgot the charismatic woman who called him her mokopuna mā (white grandchild.)  Sparked by his recollections of Puhi and thirty years worth of unanswered questions about her life, middle-aged Ward goes back to her home in the Uruwera ranges, aiming to uncover her story.

Blending footage from his original film, new interviews, fact finding missions and highly dramatic re-enactments in what he describes as “part folk tale, part ballad, part mystery story,” Ward creates a cinematically beautiful and at times dreamlike patchwork of fact, fiction, stories handed down and the opinions of those who remember Puhi - “the special one.”

Ward’s detective work is captivating, each answer begging another question about this singular woman.  Who was Puhi?  Why did she cling so strongly to her mentally ill adult son?  And why did she believe she was cursed?

The filmmaker behind Vigil, Map of the Human Heart and What Dreams May Come is no stranger to very human, emotional stories – but this is really something different, touted as “Vincent Ward’s most personal feature to date.”  In a tribute to Puhi and his treasured memories of her, Ward appears on camera and narrates the film, a touch which cements Rain of the Children as something very special from an already unique filmmaker.

Heartbreakingly sad, yet by turns enchanting, funny and endearing, this is a slice of a very different kind of life, leaving the audience with the conviction that there is nothing so extraordinary as the life lived by an ordinary woman.

This review was originally written for an online magazine, and is republished with permission.

The Counterfeiters

Written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky

****

An intriguing and dramatic thriller, this year’s winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar is an Austrian/German co production with an all-star cast, telling a true story from the darkest time of their shared heritage.

Loveable rogue, consummate artist, crook and counterfeiter Saloman “Sally” Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) is picked up by police in the dizzying whirl of thirties Berlin.  The Nazis have come to power and dark times are ahead.  Being Jewish, he is soon in the concentration camp system, marshalling his many talents to ensure his survival.

With an assortment of other skilled artists and craftsmen, Sally is transferred to a secure block in Sachsenhausen, outside Berlin.  The top secret Operation Bernhard is in full swing: isolated from the prisoners tortured just outside their walls, the group are treated well – as long as they are working hard, counterfeiting banknotes on an unimaginably large scale.

Quickly becoming a respected figure among his fellow inmates, Sally looks out for number one, his tough guy stance and chiselled face giving him a Bogart-like presence.  As a saboteur operates among them and the pressure mounts to produce the notes or lose their lives, Sally finds himself at the centre of a powerful battle of wills.  He is forced to weigh up the moral dilemmas of their work, walking the line between giving the Nazis what they want and taking action to prevent his captors gaining even one triumph.

It’s difficult subject matter, but The Counterfeiters succeeds brilliantly, by spotlighting the various ways the men in “the golden cage” try to reconcile their favoured treatment with the dire situation of fellow prisoners, the threat of death hanging over them with the shots being fired outside.

Don’t let subtitles scare you away from this one.  Fast paced and engaging, the film draws no conclusions, but will absorb you til the very end.

This review was originally written for an online magazine, and is republished with permission.

Married Life

Directed by Ira Sachs

Screenplay by Ira Sachs & Oren Moverman

****

A drama examining love and what it’s like to be married… it seems, well – serious, hardly promising an entertaining time at the movies.  But this one shouldn’t be written off.  Director Ira Sachs has cleverly combined serious thoughts on long term relationships with humorous situations, and set them in the late forties, against a backdrop of understated glamour.

The key to the film’s success is the over the top nature of the story.  Sachs, who also co-wrote the screenplay, says people always smile at the one line synopsis, and he’s right: the film follows middle-aged Harry, head over heels for his much younger mistress, as he plots his wife’s murder in order to spare her the pain of their marriage breaking up!

By rights we should dislike him, but Harry Allan (Chris Cooper) is the wistful hero of the piece.  He’s a gentle middle-aged man dreaming of a great romantic love, which he imagines he has found with the beautiful Kay (Rachel McAdams.)  Although he believes true happiness lies with Kay, genuine regard for the feelings of his down to earth wife of many years, Pat (Patricia Clarkson) stops him just short of leaving her.

Caught between the two women and not wanting to hurt anyone, Harry breaks the news to his fun loving best friend, Richard (Pierce Brosnan) and urges him to get to know Kay.  Curious about her hold on Harry, and attracted to her himself, bachelor Richard needs little encouragement.  As the characters combine, we learn the secrets they’re all keeping, so when Harry comes up with his plan to “save” Pat, complications definitely ensue.

From the first bar of the jaunty opening credits, the film settles into the period.  The impeccable forties costumes, sets and props are especially notable because they could easily have become distracting showpieces, but instead draw us in and form such a fully realised world behind the actions of the characters that it seems an absolutely modern story.

Richard as narrator of the film sets the tone with a playful voice-over, not allowing us to dip too far into the heavier philosophies the story throws up.  While it’s definitely a drama, the comic touches make the film laugh out loud funny in spots.  All the characters are well realised, so there’s no predictable outcome – you may find yourself switching sides as you discover more about the characters, rather like real life relationships. 

Yes, Married Life is a grown-up movie, but the theme of the film is the human longing to love and be loved, and the crazy things we sometimes do to make it happen – and what is more movie-worthy than that?

This review was originally written for an online magazine, and is republished with permission.