Susannah Gruder
Throughout, in the manner of The Beaches of Agnès (2008), Varda looks back at her work, attempting to connect the dots both for herself, and for her audience. Knowing she can no longer be with us, the ever benevolent Varda has left us with the next best thing.
In attempting to say something meaningful about race and politics in the city’s biggest borough, Norton has fallen into the same pattern as many real-life real-estate developers and city planners, getting rid of what made the source material so compelling in the first place, and adding his own personally convenient plotlines in the process.
By doing away with narrative tricks or genre bending, Desplechin puts the focus on the performances, which provide a multifaceted and devastating study of urban desperation.
Like Rod Serling, director Aaron Shimberg is eager to expose our own biases, and here he thrills at luring us into a vertiginous series of alternate dimensions, seeking to unravel our ideas about the nature of beauty captured on camera.
She’s as much the vixen as she was in her early roles, but here she lets down her emotional guard. In this, their first collaboration, Denis and Binoche explore the reality of what it means for an older woman, and an older actress, to be so consistently, unapologetically open.
Diane asks what it means to build your life around other people, and what happens when those people begin to slowly disappear.