Dakota Johnson

CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH: decent people and their foibles, navigating life

by
Photo caption: Cooper Raiff and Dakota Johnson in CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH. Courtesy of AppleTV.

The engaging and satisfying Cha Cha Real Smooth, an adult-coming-of-age romantic dramedy, is surprisingly textured. The charming but feckless Andrew (Cooper Riff) has emerged from a fun college experience that has not prepared him for the grown up world. His high-achieving college girlfriend has correctly assessed that he has no plan for life after college and, hence, doesn’t have a future. Andrew’s only alternative is moving back with his mom (Leslie Mann), Stepdad Greg (Brad Garret) and his little brother (Evan Assante) and taking a humiliating job at the mall.

Andrew stumbles into a new gig that leverages his one true skill – he becomes a bar/bat mitzvah party starter, the guy who can get everyone (including 13-year-olds and their parents) on to the dance floor. On the job he meets the autistic girl Lola (Vanessa Burghard) and her young mom Domino (Dakota Johnson). (She’s not a stripper although Domino is a stripper name if there ever was one).

Andrew and Domino bond over Andrew’s compassionate treatment of Lola. The 32-year-old Domino, however, is a damaged soul, having married very young, only to have been left immediately by Lola’s dad to raise an autistic kid on her own. Domino now has a high-achieving fiance (Raul Castillo), who travels a lot.

This premise is ripe for for a conventional rom com or a sex comedy or a bawdy, low-brow teen comedy. However, Cha Cha Real Smooth departs from the predictable and heads into unexpected directions driven by its characters. Every character struggles with something – Andrew’s mom is bipolar, Stepdad Greg is wooden and tonedeaf, the little brother is awkwardly stumbling into adolescence, and Andrew, of course is immature and aimless. Even the girl who was All That at Andrew’s high school is also drifting and wondering if she “peaked in high school”.

But, with the exception of a couple middle school bullies and their enabling dad, everybody in Cha Cha Real Smooth is a decent person. In this era of Snark, here are good people, with their foibles and eccentricities just trying to navigate life.

This refreshing aspect of Cha Cha Real Smooth comes from the characters written by Cooper Raiff, who also directed and, of course, stars as Andrew. This is Raiff’s second feature as a writer-director (following Shithouse), and, at age 25, he has proved that he is a promising talent. Especially as a writer.

Dakota Johnson’s performance is one of her best. Her Domino is so invested in her daughter that the rest of her life is chaotic; she’s well-schooled in hard knocks, leaving her much wiser than Andrew, but fearful of accepting good developments in her life.

The rest of the cast is very good, too. Leslie Mann continues to be a comedic treasure.

Cha Cha Real Smooth is streaming on AppleTV.

THE LOST DAUGHTER: maddening mothering

by
Photo caption: Olivia Colman in THE LOST DAUGHTER. Courtesy of Netflix.

The Lost Daughter is a dark thinkpiece about the impact of maternal obligation to a talented and ambitious woman. We meet Leda (Olivia Colman), a middle-aged comparative literature professor as she arrives for a vacation at a Greek beach. Leda is comfortable traveling alone, and decidedly not sociable.

Leda’s tranquility is harshly disrupted when a large, rambunctious family spills onto the beach from a nearby rental villa, shepherded by their force of nature alpha female Callie (Dagmara Dominczyk). This crowd is a course, vulgar and shady family of Greek-Americans from Queens. Leda is resentful, but she is also intrigued by Nina (Dakota Johnson), a young mother who is unhappily exhausted by parenting her little girl.

When Callie makes neighborly chitchat, Leda pointedly says to Nina, “Kids are a crushing responsibility“. When Leda takes an action that is inexplicable and troubling, we start wondering, “what is going on with her?”. Thereby launches a slow burn exploration of how custodial parents, trapped by their responsibility to always be “on the job” without respite or support, can become drained, depressed, even maddened.

We see flashbacks of a young Leda (Jessie Buckley), a promising scholar on the verge of emerging as a major thought leader, getting whipsawed by her two young daughters, who are adorable yet relentlessly needy.

The young Leda meets a backpacker, who gives her an insight into obligation: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”. Then, young Leda makes a decision that has major ramifications for her career, her family and which still molds the person who is on the Greek beach today.

The Lost Daughter does not take a Hallmark card, children are such a joy view of motherhood. Parenting is complicated, and it challenges different people differently.

The actress Maggie Gyllenhaal directed (this is her debut) and adapted the screenplay from the novel by Elena Ferrante.

Olivia Colman in THE LOST DAUGHTER. Courtesy of Netflix.

Olivia Colman is brilliant as Leda – so contained and self-confident yet utterly unpredictable. You just gotta keep watching this seemingly staid woman and see how she is going to surprise us next. Colman has earned a best actress Oscar nomination for this performance..

Olivia Colman is now 48, but I didn’t appreciate her until the 2013-17 series Broadchurch. Since 2018, she’s compiled an astonishing body of work – winning the Best Actress Oscar for The Favourite, being Oscar-nominated for The Father, and wining the best actress Emmy for playing Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown.

Jessie Buckley in THE LOST DAUGHTER. Courtesy of Netflix.

Jessie Buckley, one of my favorites since her debut in the psychological thriller Beast, has earned a best supporting actress nomination.

Ed Harris and Peter Sarsgaard (Gyllenhaal’s real-life hubbie) are excellent in minor supporting roles.

The Lost Daughter is a thinker with two superb performances, but it may be too dark and unsettling for many audiences. The Lost Daughter is streaming on Netflix.

A BIGGER SPLASH: another exercise in sensuality

by

Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton in A BIGGER SPLASH
Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton in A BIGGER SPLASH

Harry Hawkes (Ralph Fiennes) is the kind of guy who gives a bad name to joie de vivre.  The ultimate disrupter, his gift is to seize all the attention, change any social situation into a party and take everyone else out of their comfort zones.  In A Bigger Splash, he inflicts himself on his former rock star lover Marianne (Tilda Swinton), who is trying to enjoy a quiet romantic respite with her current lover Paul (Matthias Shoenaerts) on the secluded Italian island of Pantelleria. Enter Harry, exit solitude.

With only five minutes notice, Harry shows up, expecting to become a houseguest in Marianne and Paul’s  borrowed villa.  To make matters worse, Harry brings along his newly discovered daughter (Dakota Johnson), a highly sexual nymphet with eyes for Paul.  And, and the first day, he invites two of his other friends to join them.  Harry repeatedly tears off his clothes, starts everyone dancing (one of his dances is right up there in cinema history with the one in Napoleon Dynamite) and even turns a village cafe into an overflowing karaoke after-party.  Because Marianne is recuperating from vocal cord surgery, she can’t talk, which makes Harry’s social intrusions even more unbearable.

Harry’s antics are very entertaining, and we watch with apprehension for the other shoe to drop – when are the others going to explode in reaction?   Harry is also trying to insinuate himself back into Marianne’s bed, an intention apparent to the hunky/dreamy Paul, for whom still waters run deep.

This is Guadagnino’s first English language movie.  He had a recent US art house hit with I Am Love, (also starring Swinton).  I Am Love was notorious for its food porn, and there are tantalizing scenes in A Bigger Splash, too, with homemade fresh ricotta and a spectacular outdoor restaurant set amid hillside ruins.

Guadagnino’s greatest gift may be the sensuality of his films.  Whether it’s food, a place or a social situation, he makes the audience feel like we’re experiencing it right along with the character.  In A Bigger Splash, we start out as tourists in a hideout for the super rich, and then Guadagnino takes to us through a raucous comedy of manners to, finally, a suspense thriller.