Matthew Eng
Hamaguchi leaves room for a viewer to meet his characters in media res during situations augmented by his keen eye for detail, his unidealized world-building, and his understanding that even the most ordinary life is a vessel of passion and pain worthy of cinematic treatment.
What does it mean to create not just in the shadow but in the very kingdom of a towering genius, one who has left a permanent mark on so many who make movies? And what if this mark is less a blessing than a curse, something like a psychic stain that stifles the creative impulse rather than nurtures it?
The crime remains so notorious in the town that, at one point, a longtime neighbor who resides by the now-shuttered family grocery refuses to discuss it with the director or even appear on camera.
Neither Koleśnik nor von Horn seek to demean Sylwia or her passion; they depict Sylwia as achieving something like serenity when working out and pushing herself beyond her threshold of pain, respecting her work by recognizing it, first and foremost, as work, as a form of labor that requires discipline and diligence.
It isn’t a stretch of the imagination to imagine my grandmother’s threat coming from the mouth of any one of Almodóvar’s fierce materfamilias, whose protectiveness is all but instinctual, their brashness an armor against a world inclined to disrespect and devalue them.
The distracting, uniform beauty of the ensemble lends Assayas’s film an almost classical glamour that threatens to redirect our focus away from narrative events and the infrequent feint at political insight.
Would our attention even be drawn, much less held, by Anne were an actor of Binoche’s stature not inhabiting her? Of course not, and Binoche appears to know that. Perhaps this is why, as the film progresses, Binoche seems to actually be leveraging the magnetism of her celebrity to vouch for the character.
The crowning achievement of this drama is the game and invigorating performance of Regina Williams, from her flinty exasperation to her no-guff candor to her sly, self-protective sarcasm. Hers is a performance suffused with compassion yet devoid of cheap and easy sentiment.
Bujalski has utilized this business as a rich backdrop for one of the most unusual films of the year: a day-in-the-life character portrait of a working woman of color that is frequently hilarious yet firmly rooted in her undeniable melancholia.
Charlie is seeking both shelter and solace, but also a simple yet elusive thing: connection. This aligns him with all of the protagonists that writer-director Haigh has brought to the screen in a career that feels increasingly major with each new project.
The manic pace at which Desplechin sifts and slides through tones can be overwhelming, even alienating, but his insistence on wandering down paths most filmmakers would not dare explore, much less envision, provides a heart-searching pleasure for those willing to follow.
"I really identified with these cowboys on horses who were searching for something and making decisions about whether they wanted to be a part of society or not. At some point, I realized, maybe when I was a little bit older, how oppressively male this genre was."
Audiences usually put themselves in the shoes of the good characters. They never put themselves in the shoes of the person who has done something wrong. And there is no challenge when you put yourselves in the shoes of the good people.