Thursday, May 31, 2018

Screen Log 15: In the Fade; Wonderstruck; Novitiate; Atlanta Season 1; A Fantastic Woman

"In the Fade."

There's a scene in IN THE FADE that stood out for me because of the perfect way it embodied the quiet and rage coursing through the entire film. In the courtroom, a medical examiner began discussing in precise, scientific detail the method that led to the earlier deaths of Diane Kruger's husband and son. For the most part, the camera remained on Kruger's face, and we're left with no choice but to listen along with her, and share her grief--and now her agony--unembellished for all to see. Kruger's extraordinary in this scene, and in the rest of the movie; she won the Cannes Actress award for this film, but never made it past France as far as recognition was concerned. And that, I suppose, is key to understanding this film (though Bilge Ebiri makes a case for another way in his review for the Village Voice). What began as a harrowing emotional unraveling of one woman in the aftermath of tragedy became a slow-burn, terrifically acted procedural, and finally, an unexpected hunt--the prey now turned predator, though you could smell the uncertainty off her from a mile away. I'm not very sure I loved the ending, but I'm also not sure there's another ending that could elevate Kruger's character more. This wasn't just a search for closure; this was taking the story, the world, to another plane, beyond simple discussions of morality.

From the maker of the terrific "Far From Heaven" and "I'm Not There" and "Carol" comes WONDERSTRUCK, a movie so unabashedly sentimental, you can almost pinch it. The film has its merits, chief of all its actresses--the terrific Millicent Simmonds (last seen in "A Quiet Place") and Julianne Moore, both of them in silent parts. But the disease of this film starts early on, when Michelle Williams, as the other young protagonist's mother, remarks, "You live in a museum," and then that protagonist eventually ends up living in--where else?--the American Museum of Natural History. It's hard keeping up with the narrative, mostly because it's so, so jarring, the two timelines not quite jiving so much as elbowing each other. It's all style and little substance, honestly, if we're talking substance of Haynes' caliber. So yes, this is a sore disappointment from a filmmaker I've come to admire.

Maggie Betts' Sundance breakthrough NOVITIATE is grandly entertaining, in the sense that priests and nuns placed in non-stereotypical situations (think "We Have a Pope" or "Sister Act") are allowed to break free from their stern, sanctified shells and therefore imbued with human frailty and, oftentimes, comedy. Melissa Leo being a snarky, bitchin' Mother Superior, rolling her eyes with confessions she finds irrelevant, is a ball to watch. She sells the character so much--the attitude and the crisis that befalls her later on--that she should have been the main character. But then I don't really know what to make of the ending, which makes it out like these girls just wanted to be nuns because it would supposedly make them a cut above the rest of us mere mortals as far as heaven is concerned, which for me is just some cultish, close-minded bull. Maybe that's the point--that there are still people out there cloistered enough in their minds to believe that they are actually spiritually more superior than others by virtue of clothing and daily routine alone. Ugh.

I have not much to say about the first season of ATLANTA other than it is perfect. Sometimes you just crave for an intelligent, conscientiously made 10-episode comedy, and sometimes a show comes along and delivers just that.

One of the things I hate seeing most onscreen is the dramatic pause done wrong, or overdone. In the case of Sebastián Lelio's A FANTASTIC WOMAN, it's the latter. I'm a fan of Lelio's "Gloria," and this new film gives us another compelling (but less compelling, if this makes sense) heroine. A transwoman, in this case, in a time and place and culture where transwomen are viewed as chimera. No shit, one of the characters calls the heroine just that. Still, lots of times I found myself wondering about the backstory. That would have been a more interesting, if not way more compelling, story. How did this homewrecking transwoman meet her adulterous lover, and how did the transphobic ex-wife initially react? There's also a kidnapping that's more silly than scary. And the pauses. So distracting. There's a lot to dissect here, a story burgeoning beneath the one being told, past the motherhood statements occasionally tossed around in the actual film.

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