Barbarian

Georgina Campbell ventures into the darkness in Barbarian

Zach Cregger's Barbarian is a good meat and potatoes B horror film in which the director eschews CGI for a solid script and effective camera positioning. Tess (Georgina Campbell) and Keith (Bill Skarsgard) are two strangers who discover they have rented the same Airbnb in an extremely rundown section of Detroit. The first act is dedicated to picturing a growing bond between the two before an extensive basement dungeon is discovered and carnage ensues. 

In the third act, landlord, AJ (Justin Long), is introduced. He is a Hollywood actor brought low by rape accusations who is in town to sell off his assets. Both here and in the awkward mix of chemistry and fear between Tess and Keith, Cregger touches upon the present psychosexual unease and tumult of the US which is mirrored, darky, by the more unconscious horror that resides in the basement. AJ is soon plunged into the maelstrom of the labyrinthine basement  where he discovers the monster's backstory,

That back story hearkens back to the Reagan area in a candy colored Detroit before white flight and blight had occurred. I don't really buy the political allegory Cregger has implanted into the body of his film, but the flick is skillfully done and the themes are adult ones and not the nothing muffins foisted upon us by such recent films as Elvis, The Menu, and Don't Worry Darling. The film's monster wears a rubbery suit and we never shake the feeling that we are seeing an exploitation shot for cheap in Bulgaria. However, Cregger, whose background is largely in comedy, has crafted a fine film that captures an essential aspect of horror: that what most frightens us are not the monsters we see, but the phantoms we imagine while in the dark.

Sadie Mckee

                                     
Clarence Brown's Sadie McKee has the reputation of being a lesser Joan Crawford vehicle from 1934. Certainly the trades of the day didn't herald it as anything special with Motion Picture Daily comparing it unfavorably to Crawford's previous hit, Dancing Lady. Perhaps because my expectations were so low, I found it to be a better than average romantic melodrama with a stellar cast: including Gene Raymond, Franchot Tone, Edward Arnold, Esther Ralston, Jean Dixon, Leo Carroll (no G. yet), and Akim Tamiroff. 

I grew up with the latter day image of Crawford as a Gorgon, but have grown to appreciate her as an actress in viewing her pre-World War 2 work during my dotage. Her work in Sadie McKee is superb, full of the spite she became known for, but also palpable romantic longing. As he did for Garbo, director Brown flatters his leading lady with gorgeous close-ups whether la Crawford is gazing with adoration or malice at her co-stars. Cast as the servant daughter of a millionaire's cook, Crawford's humble background is designed to build sympathy for her with an audience wallowing in the depths of the Great Depression. A hungry Crawford in an automat early in the film has only enough money for coffee. She looks longingly at a piece of half-finished lemon meringue pie which a patron uses to stamp out his cigarette; a moment echoed by Jessie Royce Landis snuffing out a fag in her eggs in To Catch a Thief. Brown and Crawford milk the moment for all it is worth in a film bubbling with more class resentment than the usual MGM fare.

Brown has less success with the allegedly comic moments. A scene where Crawford and Carroll attempt to lead a sozzled Arnold up a long staircase is especially misjudged. As Crawford's youthful love, Gene Raymond is a bit callow. Yet, a scene of Raymond plucking his ukulele and warbling "All I Do is Dream of You" (most famously used in Singing in the Rain, but introduced here) to Crawford successfully evokes the innocence of first love. The film has a number of musical sequences, all memorable. I particularly enjoyed the appearance of now forgotten duo, Coco and Candy. 

Crawford had just divorced Douglas Fairbanks Jr. prior to filming. She hit it off with Tone and the two were wed in 1935. For much of the film, Sadie Mckee resents the rich attorney Tone is playing for his snobbery. Much of Crawford's behavior, such as marrying the uber rich Arnold, is motivated out of spite for the lawyer. Yet, though Crawford is throwing daggers with her eyes at Tone for much of the film. the attraction between the two is as undeniable onscreen as it was in real life. 

Biff's Favorite Pop Albums of 2022

Buck 65

1)       Buck 65                                                           King of Drums  

2)       Wet Leg                                                           Wet Leg

3)      The Paranoid Style                            For Executive Meeting

4)      Big Thief                                       Dragon New Warm Mountain  

5)      Miranda Lambert                                             Palomino  

6)      Ibibio Sound Machine                                     Electricity

7)      Willie Nelson                                               A Beautiful Time  

8)      Danger Mouse & Black Thought                   Cheat Codes   

9)      Montparnasse Musique                                  Archeology  

10)    The Mountain Goats                                       Bleed Out

I also enjoyed new releases by Ashley McBryde, Kendrick Lamar, Horsegirl, The Beths, Gogol Bordello,Taylor Swift, Corb Lund, Superorganism, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Drive-By Truckers, Pusha T, Harry Styles, Jack White (Fear of the Dawn), Breland, MIA, Craig Finn, Wiki, Tove Lo, Superchunk, Vince Staples, Nduduzo Makhathini, Bonnie Raitt, Mary Halvorson, Shygirl, Stro Elliott, Elvis Costello, and Amyll and the Sniffers.                 

 

A Short Film About Love

Olaf Lubaszenko in A Short Film About Love

Part of his Dekalog, Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love , from 1988, flips Rear Window on its lid, portraying the backlash resulting from a young man's voyeurism. Tomek ( Olaf Lubaszenko) watches swinging single Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska) from afar by telescope. Magda's libertinism is joyless and she is more intrigued than repulsed when the young man begins stalking her. Orphaned Tomek is a budding sociopath, poorly integrated with his adoptive family. 

Tables are turned when Magda humiliates Tomek sexually (while being spied on by his adoptive mother) and Tomek attempts suicide. Kieslowski masterfully builds up to the confrontation between his two antagonists, but fails in his portrayal of Magda's psychological make-up, As in A Short Film About Killing, Kieslowski is adept at portraying the mind of a warped male lost in the anomie of urban Poland. With his female lead, Kieslowski loses his bearings. 

Magda at her lowest is pictured weeping over spilled milk, a too obvious signifier of onanistic waste. Magda seems neither perverse enough to toy with Tomek, nor compassionate enough to be able to eventually identify with his suffering. Magda is an underdrawn character that prevents this film from ranking with Kieslowski's best. Still second rate Kieslowski is better than most and the Criterion restoration on disc provided the best looking Kieslowski print I've seen. 

Decision to Leave

Tang Wei and Park Hae il

Park Chan-Wook's Decision to Leave is a masterpiece of Hitchcockian suspense. A police detective falls for suspect in a homicide, then, history repeats itself. The detective imperils his marriage and his career, but is drawn to his suspect like a moth. 

Park's film presents the central split in people's lives between the attendant demands of objective reality and a self under the sway of unconscious impulses. Park pivots out of the usual police procedural tropes (mismatched partners, gruesome photos pinned to cork) to enter the exasperated mind of a man undone by passion. Once he meets the suspect, the detective can't keep his mind on the task at hand, even (or especially) when making love to his wife. 

One of the few films inspired by Vertigo worthy of  its legacy, Decision to Leave is as much a rebuke to the patriarchy as Hitchcock's film or The Handmaiden. Contrasted with a line-up of stupid cops, misogynistic thugs, and wife beaters, the detective, warts and all, can't help but come off sympathetically. Park Hae-il as the detective and Tang Wei as his nemesis and love are exemplary. The director also wangles superior performances out of his supporting cast, especially Kim Shin-Young and Seo Hyun Woo. 

 

Three on a Match

Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, and Ann Dvorak fire it up

Mervyn Leroy's Three on a Match, from 1932, is a herky jerky affair that offers snatches of delight, but is too slight and wobbly to be a film I would recommend to the average viewer. Film buffs will want to check it out for the cast alone: Ann Dvorak, Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, Warren William, Edward Arnold, Lyle Talbot, Humphrey Bogart, and Ann Shirley, then known as Dawn O'Day.

The film begins as a romantic melodrama, but morphs into a crime melodrama two thirds of the way through, drawing its inspiration from the major crime story of 1932; the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. The picture, which covers thirteen years in a scant sixty minutes, is padded with montage sequences detailing the events, fads, music, and fashion of different years. LeRoy's direction is inoffensive and brisk, only gaining some traction and emotional impact during the picture's final reel.

A prologue pictures the three female leads as schoolgirls: Dvorak as the pretty and popular one, Davis the brainy one, and Blondell as the bad girl. After a stint in reform school, Blondell becomes a chorus girl. Davis becomes a stenographer and Dvorak marries rich stiff, Warren William. William is perfectly cast as a boring attorney who Dvorak abandons for no-goodnik, Lyle Talbot. Dvorak has her three year old son in tow who she neglects while partying hard with Talbot. Blondell, alert to the squalid conditions the child is in, reunites him with William and, in one of cinema's shortest courtships, marries William.

Davis, since she apparently has nothing to do, becomes their live-in nanny. Davis hated her role, LeRoy, and the film. It is easy to sympathize because her talents are not on display here. Blondell fares better, serving as the film's reformed sinner and arbiter of morality. Dvorak's performance gets more interesting the more dissolute she becomes. Her portrayal of drug withdrawal and its accompanying self-revulsion is quite edgy for the era. Best of all is Bogart with a hard as nails performance as, for the first of many times before he became a star, an unrepentant thug.

 

A bizarre chunk of product from the early Warner days, Three on a Match has some amusing bits amidst its Hollywood hallucinations, but also plenty of WTF moments. I won't soon forget, though I wish I could, the close-up of Edward Arnold plucking his nostril hairs out with tweezers.

                                                 

Joan Blondell, Pre-Code!

Hail Cesar!

Channing Tatum in Hail Caesar!

Joel and Ethan Cohen's Hail Caesar! is lightweight and somewhat forgettable, but its affectionate tone towards the film genres of yesteryear won this cinephile over. Leading man George Clooney is kidnapped by a cabal of communists leaving studio fixer Josh Brolin scrambling to pay off the perps and solve a myriad of other problems. The plot is one of the Cohen brothers slightest shaggy dog stories, but the performers display charm and chutzpah. 

Part of the appeal of this film to buffs is its warm recreation of Hollywood in the early fifties: the films themselves, the backlot intrigue, and the scandals that the tabloids have documented since Wallace Reid got hooked on morphine. Hail Caesar! alludes to gossip about such stars as Clark Gable and Esther Williams in a way that tips its hand to the cognoscenti without seeming cruel. Gary Cooper's progress from Western star to white tie and tails romantic lead is mirrored in the Alden Ehrenreich subplot and the young Mr. Ehrenreich handles his part with aplomb. 

At times, Hail Caesar! threatens to turn into a wax works for the classic movie fan who can decode the references: Veronica Osorio (who I hope to see more of) is Lupe Velez and Ralph Fiennes is probably George Cukor, etc. As in many films in the Cohens' oeuvre, there are extraneous bits that should have been trimmed. Clooney, as he has previously in the Cohens' films, is allowed to mug for too long. Frances McDormand's cameo should have been edited, but I suppose you gotta keep the missus happy. However, there is so much brio in the performances of the aforementioned Ehrenreich, Scarlett Johansson, and, especially, Channing Tatum that I was generally entranced. The Cohens are overly generous in allowing performers leeway, but it has satisfying results when such veterans as Heather Goldenhersh, Max Baker, and Clancy Brown get a chance to shine. The Cohens are often derided as smart-aleck satirists with next to nothing to say, but Hail Caesar! is suffused with affection for its characters.

Structural deficiencies keep Hail Caesar! from reaching the heights of their best films: Miller's Crossing, Fargo, and A Serious Man. Brolin's  spiritual struggles and family life barely make an impression alongside the tinsel town follies. His character functions as an entre in the various subplots, but he doesn't register like Marge or the Dude do. Still, a second tier Coen brothers movie is, by my auteurist standards, better than most. (9/14/16)

Quick Takes, March 2023

Natasa Stork in Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time

Lili Horvat's Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is a clear eyed portrait of romantic obsession. A Hungarian born neurosurgeon, Marta, practicing in New Jersey becomes enamoured with a male colleague visiting from her motherland. They plan a rendezvous on a bridge in Budapest, but the guy is a no show. Not to be dissuaded, Marta moves to Budapest and stalks her intended. This 2020 film uses the streets and corridors of Budapest to create an architecture of longing in a labyrinthine search powered by a passion beyond reason. Highly recommended.

Mark Mylod's The Menu has an interesting premise, but I found it ultimately unsatisfying. The script is clever and gives the film's players some tasty dialogue to chew on; which Ralph Fiennes and Nicholas Hoult take particular advantage of. However, the direction is anonymous and technically deficient, emphasizing the scenario's implausibility rather than its black comedy.

Jonas Akerlund's Spun, from 2003, is a grotesque comedy about methamphetamine addicts. Akerlund seems intent on rubbing his audience's faces into his grungy mise-en-scene, but the film's tone is all over the place. Animation sequences that seek to evoke the rush of a drug high come off as silly, as if the film was trying to gain a midnight movie cult following amongst stoners. Jason Schwartzman is miscast as a meth head, but Brittany Murphy, Mickey Rourke, and John Leguizamo have their moments.

Allan Ungar's Bandit is an affable chronicle of the career of Canadian bank robber Gilbert Galvan Jr. who pulled over fifty heists during the 80s and 90s. Josh Duhamel plays the miscreant who is continually donning wacky disguises while committing his crimes. The film apes Goodfellas and Catch Me If You Can, but aims for a cuter, more comic tone than those films; which is its main problem. Duhamel is pleasant throughout, but the film is too airbrushed and ingratiating for a crime drama. Nothing is at stake and there is precious little dramatic conflict or genuine humor.With Mel Gibson and Elisha Cuthbert.

Sarah Polley's Women Talking is a film I admired more than enjoyed. At times, the didactic nature of the script made me feel I was listening to feminist talking points rather than dialogue. However, the cast is first rate, lessening the impression that the characters are merely mouthpieces for Polley's ruminations. The film triumphs on a visual level, creating a particular world, and worldview, with an invigorating specificity. The film is talky, but I was never bored. 

Veit Helmer's The Bra is a dialogue free, though not silent, charmer from the German director. Miki Monojlovioc stars as a train driver in Georgia who accidently snags a blue bra while on a run. He endeavors to find its owner, seeking, like the prince in Cinderella, the woman who is a perfect fit. This Chaplinesque feature is a well modulated and structured film that skirts, but generally avoids sentimentality and easy laffs. Featuring Denis Lavant and Paz Vega, the film is currently streaming on Amazon and is heartily recommended.

Stolen Holiday

Kay Francis and Ian Hunter in Stolen Holiday

Michael Curtiz's Stolen Holiday, from 1937, is a romantic melodrama of only occasional charm. Kay Francis stars as an aspiring model named Nicole Picot who is recruited by a Russian emigre flim-flam man named Stefan Orloff. Orloff is played by Claude Raines in the first of ten Curtiz films that featured Raines. Orloff pulls off a scam with Nicole's assistance and, in gratitude, sets her up as a Parisian couturier while he engages in various Ponzi schemes. 

One of these, a bond swindle based in Switzerland brings about Orloff's downfall. In the meantime, Orloff and Picot are a steady item, but their relationship lacks that certain spark of passion. This Nicole finds with Anthony Wayne, a British diplomat played with his usual stiffness by Ian Hunter. Curtiz gets a looser performance from Hunter than most, but Hunter lacks the necessary playfulness when called upon to crack eggs and yodel. Curtiz makes Hunter look as dashing as possible while Raines, a much more charismatic performer, is, as usual, the proverbial toad. Notice how Curtiz does not bother to obscure the height difference between Raines and Francis. He literally cuts Raines down to size so he can diminish his romantic allure.

Orloff tricks Picot into a marriage of convenience, but this does not save him from the long arm of the law. The forced marriage seems like a weak contrivance by screenwriter Casey Robinson to pad the picture into feature length. Orloff makes a show of nobility before going to his doom by releasing Picot from her marital obligations and true love emerges triumphant. 

Francis had been the lead female star at Warner Brothers for five years since leaving Paramount, but Stolen Holiday was one in a line of commercial dud pictures that led to her being labeled "box office poison" in 1938. This and a contract dispute with the Warner's brass led to her losing her leading lady status. Still, Stolen Holiday's Paris setting and fashion milieu show off Francis as the studio's then leading clothes horse. There are two fashion shows, a romantic ball where Hunter is introduced, a dance on a ship cruising Lake Geneva, and the aforementioned wedding. All show off Francis in a stunning array of Orry-Kelly gowns. The actress changes outfits every scene and the designer smartly attires her in a number of backless creations that show off her most alluring feature.

The glamor moments are fun, especially when Cutiz sends a swooping crane through the ball sequence, but neither Robinson nor Curtiz can enliven the scenes of Raines and his cohorts planning financial malfeasance. Raines' minions lack personality unlike Francis' Girl Friday, played by Alison Skipworth, a British born character actress who is good fun here as she was in such disparate films from the 1930s as The Devil is a Woman, Becky Sharp, Tillie and Gus, Alice in Wonderland, etc. Fans of Kay Francis will lap it up, but Stolen Holiday is routine stuff.

Stolen Holiday's plot was inspired by the Stavisky affair. A much better picture about this French scandal is Alain Resnais' Stavisky from 1974, a rare crowd pleaser from the French master which stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Charles Boyer.

Starred Up

Jack O'Connell and Ben Mendelsohn in Starred Up

David Mackenzie's Starred Up is a bracing British prison movie from 2013. Jack O'Connell stars as a teenaged violent offender who has proved so incorrigible that he has been moved to an adult facility, i.e. "starred up". He meets up with his long lost Dad in stir and, happily for the audience, the father is played by the always interesting Ben Mendelsohn. A caring therapist tries to help our lad get better by cajoling him into joining a group session where he can vent, but our lad has too much fury in him and is soon running afoul of the powers that be inside the prison.

Mackenzie's visual strategy is similar to the one he employed in Hell or High Water. Most dialogue is played in front of a stationary camera, with judicious use of close-ups. When one of the main characters roams the jail's corridors looking for trouble, the camera dollies behind, as if hurtling with the characters towards their doom. Visually, the bleakness of prison life is conveyed. We and the characters are trapped behind doors, screens, bars, and the like with very little color in the cinematographic palette of the film.

What saves the film from a one dimensional tone is the richness of the characterizations. All of the prisoners in the therapy groups emerge as three dimensional men, each carrying anger and sadness at their lot. Starred Up doesn't reinvent the wheel of the prison picture, but it is compelling entertainment and shows why Mackenzie soon drew the attention of Hollywood. 

Le Bonheur

                       
Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur  (happiness or "the Good Hour"), from 1965, is a skillful and accomplished fim that I don't like much. A harbinger of second wave feminism, this tale of a love triangle starts with a close-up of a flower and proceeds in to revel in floral imagery for its scant 80 minutes. Yet, this is a too obvious feint on Varda's part for a film that is a critique of capitalist bourgeoise domesticity. The wife in the menage ends up like poor Ophelia, while the other woman steps in easily to take her place in the family group.

There are two main visual approaches to the material in the film. Like Godard from the same era, Varda uses a mod, pop art mise en scene that critiques and comments upon the thin melodrama. Billboards, movie posters, photos, pinups and all manner of signage are utilized within the frame. This was Varda's first feature in color and it is fun to see her cut loose. Even the fade outs fade not to black, but to bright colors. 

The other main visual influence and approach is the naturalism of French plein air painting and cinema. Varda tips her hand, again a little too obviously, by including a lengthy clip from Jean Renoir's Dejeuner sur l'herbe on a television during an early scene. The film is full of charmingly naturalistic French vignettes: picnics and other forms of alfresco dining, dances at outdoor cafes, trips to the farmer's market, camping. All the more beautiful to heighten the melodrama and the film's ironic denouement. At least that how it must have looked on the drawing board.

The main problem with the film is that the film's three leads have no felt presence. Varda is so jazzed by her color schemes and fancy editing effects, that the leads come off as models in a fashion shoot; especially in the erotic scenes, which lack juice and believability. I enjoyed the film more than Manny Farber did, he dismissed it as "an extended ad for Kodak", but think its latter day status as a feminist classic is a case more of wish fulfillment than rigorous critical estimation. Varda was made of sterner stuff, as she was to show in her subsequent films, especially her 1985 masterpiece, Vagabond. 

Kuhle Wampe

 

Hertha Thiele looking natty with a tie on in Kuhle Wampe

Slatan Dudow's Kuhle Wampe, from 1932, is an interesting mix of social realism and agitprop. The film opens in a Berlin reeling from the reverberations of the stock market crash of 1929. A series of newspaper headlines chronicle the economic collapse followed by tracking shots of workers futilely pedaling in search of jobs. Anni, the protagonist played by Madchen in Uniform's Hertha Thiele, is the only member of her family earning a salary. Despair and shame drives her brother to suicide via defenestration. Anni's family is subsequently evicted from their apartment.

With the help of Anni's mechanic boyfriend, Fritz (Ernst Busch), the family settles in a tent city on the outskirts of town. The disused summer camp is named Kuhle Wampe (or "Empty Stomach"). Dudow chastely evokes the romance of Anni and Fritz with shots of rustling bushes and fluttering trees. Anni finds that she is pregnant and Fritz agrees to an engagement, but is not really committed to settling down. Complications ensue, but once Fritz has his consciousness raised at a Communist youth sporting meet, where the attendees discuss Hegel between events, the lovers are reconciled.

Dudow was Bulgarian born, but had begun working in the Leftist theater shortly after emigrating to Germany in 1919. He soon met and collaborated with Bertolt Brecht, Kuhle Wampe's screenwriter. Not surprisingly, the script relies too much on Marxist maxims, particularly in the last reel which climaxes with a musical celebration of worker solidarity. 

Dudow's deft touch with character vignettes often ameliorates Brecht's more strident moments. Dudow's players are all too recognisably human even when embodying Brecht's stereotyping of the vulgar bourgeoisie; especially during a sodden engagement party and a debate about global capitalism that almost sinks the finale. Hanns Eisler's score also adds some needed lyricism. I loved the duet between harmonium and saw in the Berlin section and a later singalong to "Just a Gigolo". 

After Hitler seized total power in the next year, Kuhle Wampe was banned and, then, little seen until a recent reconstruction. Its makers all fled Germany, but were reunited in the GDR after the Second World War. The film stands as an intermittently entertaining example of German Communist ferment before it was subsumed by the Third Reich. The Communist rally in Kuhle Wampe seems, to this political centrist and believer in the Horseshoe theory, a B level foreshadowing of the fascist idolatry of Triumph of the Will. 

Death Ride to Osaka

Jennifer Jason Leigh takes aim in Death Ride to Osaka

Jonathan Kaplan's Death Ride to Osaka is a television exploitation film, from 1983, with unexpected moments of ambiguity and feeling. Jennifer Jason Leigh expertly plays Carol, an aspiring singer slinging hash on Hollywood Boulevard. Fresh off the bus from Omaha, the naive Carol accepts an offer to sing at a club in Tokyo. The club turns out to be run by the yakuza and the entertainers are expected to turn tricks on the side.

It is a bit odd to see a white slavery film from this juncture in history, but Kaplan never condescends to his material. The gangsters are portrayed in shades of gray except the always busy Mako who portrays an unrepentant thug. Where Kaplan really excels is the scenes between Leigh and the older bar girls, particularly Ann Jillian who tries to mentor Leigh's character. Jillian's performance is remarkable, the best from her I've yet seen, and the film never recovers after Jillian's character takes the titular trip to Osaka.

The lead male romantic interest is forgettable and Leigh (as she showed in Georgia) is not a strong vocalist, but Death Ride to Osaka is a cut above most TV movies of the era. Kaplan guided Jodie Foster to an Oscar for The Accused, but was never really able break out of working in television or exploitation films. He deserves more than a footnote for such notable efforts as Over the Edge, Heart Like a Wheel, and Unlawful Entry. 

The Handmaiden

                
My favorite film in quite some time is Park Chan Wook's devious The Handmaiden, a movie, which even at two and a half hours, flew along for me. While most certainly deliriously violent and sexual, sometimes at the same moment, this marks his most romantic and mature work; easily his best film since Oldboy.

Based on Sarah Waters' novel Fingersmith, this film captures Park's affinity for fetishism and feminism, climaxing in a loving sharing of Ben Wa balls. The premise centers around a con: a poor orphan is hired as a handmaiden with the help of a swindler who wants to woo a wealthy heiress in remote 1930s Korea. After winning the heiress's hand, the rake will then move to Japan and deposit the heiress in an asylum, helped along by some gaslighting by the handmaiden. Love, happily, conquers all as the heiress falls for the handmaiden and vice versa.

The film is in three parts, with a shift in point of view in part two that renders what we have learned heretofore obsolete. The heiress, also an orphan, wants to escape her uncle who uses her and his collection of erotica for sinister purposes. The historical background is that of Japanese imperialism and it subjugation of Korea. The introduction of Korean self-abnegation as a theme seems a bit tacked on, but does provide a good backdrop for our two orphans in a historical storm.

The acting is superb, particularly Kim Min-hee who won the Best Actress Silver Bear in Berlin. Cinematography, costumes, and set design are all gorgeous and inform and shape The Handmaiden's themes. Park wants to bash the patriarchy and illuminate its cruelty and sexual servitude. The very frocks and fripperies that adorn the heiress are the chains of her colonial, economic and sexual slavery. It is only when the lovers are free, especially of their own submissive and dominant roles, that they can discard their fineries and give each other pleasure and love.

Almost any film by a male filmmaker that has explicit scenes of sapphic lovemaking is going to be accused of utilizing the tyranny of the male gaze. Park does seem to want to have his feminist cake and eat it, too, particularly when he uses a vagina cam at one point. However, I feel that Park has used a loving and not patronizing gaze on his heroines who are juxtaposed with males inhabiting a theater of cruelty. A masterpiece, The Handmaiden will reward multiple viewings. (2/14/17)

Spin Me Round

Alison Brie in Spin Me Round

Jeff Baena's Spin Me Round is a promising, yet ultimately unsatisfying dark comedy. The screenplay by Mr. Baena and the film's lead, Alison Brie, critiques the romantic comedy format, but the film's blows against the patriarchy are not incisive enough and there are few laugh out load moments. Since his feature debut Life After Beth, still his best film, Baena has directed five films that have featured strong ensemble casts and undistinguished direction. The pacing, both in individual scenes and over the films as a whole,  is always too slow and the director often indulges his supporting players to diminishing effect, Like most of his films, Spin Me Round is pleasant, but wan. 

Brie plays the manager of an Olive Garden type restaurant in Bakersfield who wins a company contest to visit Italy. There, the founder of the company (Alessandro Nivola)  sweeps her off her feet, but, as the audience knows way before Ms. Brie's character, he is ultimately trying to groom her as a playmate for one of his sumptuous orgies. This is yet another fish out of water comedy, but I think Barb and Star Visit Vista Del Mar covers the same ground with more style and pizzazz. It is mostly convivial to see the antics of Baena's burgeoning stock company (Aubrey Plaza, Molly Shannon, Fred Armisen check in), but Spin Me Round is, at best, merely pleasant. 

The Tale of King Crab

Gabriele Silli and friend in The Tale of King Crab

Matteo Zoppis and Alessio Rigo de Righi's The Tale of King Crab is one of the best films released in America in 2022 and one of the best feature debuts of this century. Set in the 19th century, the film mixes the passions of a melodrama with a contemplative strain. A prologue in which Italian elders argue over the details of the legend frames the flick as a fabulist's reverie. Luciano, the protagonist, is a feckless doctor's son who is besotten both by alcohol and the fair Emma. Emma's father is seeking a more aristocratic match for his daughter and is soon plotting Luciano's demise.

The first half of the film features a tragic denouement and Luciano's exile. The second half of the film commences five years later with Luciano wandering the barren archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, described in a title as "the asshole of the world". Luciano becomes embroiled, with a band of brigands, in a search for gold buried after the wreck of a Spanish galleon. Relations between individuals are barbed and querulous, as in the film's first half, and blood is again spilled. Luciano is left with the realization that gold is not the true treasure, but nature's fecundity. 

This is a period picture with grit. Fingernails are filthy and feet mud caked. Yet, the film also boasts magnificent landscapes and exactly chosen compositions. The camera is usually static, but the directorial duo milks their camera set-ups for all they are worth. When Emma's father spies her and her lover blissfully lolling in the basin of a waterfall, the shots emphasize the lofty remove of the pater from the romantic duo. This not only stresses the father's stern judgement about the union, but also his elder remove from romantic passion. 

In interior shots, available lighting is stressed, with, often, only a single source of light: reminiscent of Caravaggio. They punctuate a realistic narrative with moments of operatic intensity. The rhythmic minimalistic score by Vittorio Giampetro is interspersed with traditional songs (and one aria) arranged by the composer and performed by the cast. The songs offer a wistful counterpoint to the melodramatic torments of the narrative. The film contains so many riches that it overflowed my critical cup. Viewers with access to the Kanopy streaming service, free with most library cards, are strongly urged to give it a gander. 

Bardo

I enjoyed Alejandro G. Inarritu's Bardo a bit more than the critical consensus. It is certainly a pretentiously bloated and easily struck target for brickbats. The film's themes are overdetermined and over explained. It is certainly too Jungian for its own good. The premise is derivative of Fellini's 8 1/2: that of a successful filmmaker coming to middle-aged terms with his life and success. Hollywood has contributed variations on the theme: Alex in Wonderland, This is 40, and That's Life to name a few. As in Fellini's film, the lead actor, Daniel Gimenez Cacho, is a stand-in for the director himself. The film is a shaggy dog story with Cacho playing the shaggy dog.

The narrative is non-linear. The director's memories, dreams, and reflections give a us a surrealistic portrait of his mind; one impaired by a stroke. The film opens with the shot of the director's shadow as he alternately walks and flies through a desert. Inarritu is inviting his audience to take a leap of faith before viewing his dreamscape. Numerous surreal tracking shots and long shots of Olympian remove emphasize the departure from realism, we are on a fantastic journey through the labyrinth of the auteur's mind. Darius Khondji's cinematography gives us many magical moments,

Now whether one wants to indulge the director's whims is a matter of personal taste, but I found the film bracing in its attempt to take chances. I particularly enjoyed the film's evocation of Mexico's phantasmagoric culture in its television and dance sequences. The repetition of tropes from Inarritu's previous movies, such as the mountain of bodies underneath Cortes recalling the mount of buffalo skulls in The Revenant, however, seems stale. All in all, a mixed bag, but Inarritu's technical skills are very much in evidence. Streaming on Netflix.