Eileen G'Sell
My Old Ass, Good One, How to Have Sex, Essex Girls, Suncoast
This is a film that defies tidy moral categorization, the type of film that warrants revisitation and contemplation years later—not only to assess its potential oversights but also the ways in which our grasp of representation, and its inherent complexities, must keep on evolving.
Poor Things is strangely, even shockingly, hopeful, despite being the most overtly political film yet from Lanthimos. It is also arguably his first feminist film, though I suspect many will argue about its efficacy as such.
This 168-minute opus from documentarian Claire Simon exposes the mystery and marvels of what it physiologically and emotionally means to be human in a body that inevitably blooms and wilts.
Zlotowski exploits the staples of the rom-com genre only to temper them. In the third act, she leaves us as jarred and devastated as Rachel herself, betrayed not only by Ali but by the narratives that women are groomed to believe.
Lynn is a female character that we rarely see: however beautiful, she is uncharismatic, taciturn, and professionally unambitious. In Stonewalling, her decision to sell her eggs on the black market (for the equivalent of 2800 U.S. dollars) leads to the discovery that she is one-month pregnant.
By the time our maestro is duly disgraced, some may be moved to righteous applause while others are moved to pity. Many might not know how to feel. But the ambivalence feels purposeful.
I wanted to show footage that felt brand new, that required a real watching and seeing and thinking and evaluating of what is in front of you. If you are gonna make a film about 1968, it better be something reevaluative.
Hold Me Tight, directed by Mathieu Amalric and starring Vicky Krieps, is a wildly original exploration of maternal ambivalence, joy, and mourning.
Tonally uneven and a bit didactic in its dialogue, Crimes is nevertheless a film that both takes itself as a serious piece of art and lampoons the appetite for novel spectacle that subsumes so much of contemporary visual culture.
There is a quality to the gaze that is always political. It is not that children have a more poetic look on life, but that it is vital for them to look, it is vital for them to gaze. It is about getting information, because they are dependent and a lot is not said within families that have a strong hierarchy.