The Stopover

Movies to See Right Now

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Jason Isaacs and Steve Buscemi in THE DEATH OF STALIN

The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) closes on Tuesday. Here’s my festival preview.

OUT NOW

This week’s top picks:

  • The wonderfully dark, dark comedy The Death of Stalin.
  • Another dark comedy, this one about two teen girl sociopaths, Thoroughbreds.
  • Outside In: Now on Netflix, this fine Lynn Shelton drama about a man returning to his community after 20 years in prison is an acting showcase for Kaitlin Dever (Justified), Jay Duplass (Transparent) and, especially, Edie Falco. Falco’s performance is stunning.
  • I liked Al Pacino’s portrayal of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno as his storied career was killed by scandal in HBO’s Paterno.

ON VIDEO

This week’s video pick salutes the San Francisco International Film Festival, now underway. From last year’s SFFILMFestival, the topical French drama The Stopover explores the after-effects of combat in contemporary warfare. We also get a female lens on the acceptance of women in combat roles and on sexual assault in the military from the co-writer and co-directors, the sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin. The Stopover is available to stream on iTunes.

ON TV

This week, Turner Classic Movies brings us a couple of curiosities. First, on April 14, is arguable the first on-screen CSI in Mystery Street (1950). In an era where police detective work seemed to be mostly sweating out confessions under bright lights, the investigator in Mystery Street uses the methods of forensic science. And he’s played by Ricardo Montalban, no less. The Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller will supply the intro and outro on this week’s Noir Alley.

And on April 15, TCM will air the sci-fi classic Solaris (1972), the masterpiece of Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. A psychologist, with that common Russian name of Kris Kelvin, is sent to check out a space mission orbiting the oceanic planet Solaris. He finds things ominously awry, with a suicide and suspiciously furtive behavior by the surviving crew. Then he is face-to-face with his own dead wife from Earth; and after he dispatches her into space, she reappears on the spacecraft. Things are seriously messed up.

Much of Solaris’ two hours and 47 minutes – watching this movie is  a commitment – is trippy shots of the ocean planet, with waves breaking across its colored surface. Solaris is not so much an enjoyable art movie as it is a fascinating one. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and is firmly placed in the sci-fi canon. Solaris is a must see for sci-fi fans [Note: This is NOT the inferior 2002 Steven Soderbergh remake.]

SOLARIS
SOLARIS

SFFILMFestival Stream of the Week: THE STOPOVER – PTSD takes more than an umbrella drink…

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Ariane Labed and Soko in THE STOPOVER photo courtesy of SFFILM
Ariane Labed and Soko in THE STOPOVER
photo courtesy of SFFILM

This week’s video pick salutes the  San Francisco International Film Festival, now underway.  From last year’s SFFILMFestival, the topical French drama The Stopover explores the after-effects of combat in contemporary warfare. We also get a female lens on the acceptance of women in combat roles and on sexual assault in the military from the co-writer and co-directors, the sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin.

The Stopover’s title refers to a French combat unit’s three-day stay in a luxurious Cypriot seaside resort. The unit, heading back to France after a tour in Afghanistan, is supposed to decompress at the resort. They are required to engage in group therapy, enhanced by virtual reality goggles. As with any group of gung-ho and mostly macho twenty-somethings, talk therapy is not their thing. But they sure need decompression, because their service included a terrifying engagement in which they lost three comrades.

This combat unit includes women, and The Stopover focuses on Aurore (Ariane Labed) and Marine (Soko). The strong and purposeful Aurore has physically recovered from an emotionally (and literally) scarring experience in Afghanistan. The more impulsive Marine, on the other hand, is not a deep thinker, but has a serious chip on her shoulder.

Everyone in the unit wound very, very tightly. Some are fighting to keep psychotic outbursts from bubbling over. Plopping these guys amidst tourists and locals in such an absurdly and artificially tranquil setting creates a powder keg. From start to finish in The Stopover, we’re waiting for any and every character to snap or erupt.

Ariane Labed in THE STOPOVER photo courtesy of SFFILM
Ariane Labed in THE STOPOVER
photo courtesy of SFFILM

Labed is excellent as Ariane, who feels need to suppress her PTSD, to mask it with rowdy fun and, finally, to confront it. Labed won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for a completely different kind of movie in 2010, the absurdly goofy Attenberg, which I also watched at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

I just can’t take my eyes of Soko, who is a French pop music star. Here, as Marine, she has a feral fierceness. Soko is also a force of nature in the excellent period drama Augustine. She brings a simmering intensity to the screen, in contrast to her offbeat, ironic pop music.
The rest of the cast is excellent, too, particularly Karim Leklou as a sergeant with an unresolved issue or two.

The Stopover is available to stream on iTunes.  It’s an engrossing and powerful film.

SFFILM: THE STOPOVER

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Ariane Labed and Soko in THE STOPOVER photo courtesy of SFFILM
Ariane Labed and Soko in THE STOPOVER
photo courtesy of SFFILM

The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) presents the topical French drama The Stopover, which explores the after-effects of combat in contemporary warfare.  We also get a female lens on the acceptance of women in combat roles and on sexual assault in the military from the co-writer and co-directors, the sisters Delphine and Muriel Coulin.

The Stopover’s title refers to a French combat unit’s three-day stay in a luxurious Cypriot seaside resort.  The unit, heading back to France after a tour in Afghanistan, is supposed to decompress at the resort.  They are required to engage in group therapy, enhanced by virtual reality goggles.  As with any group of gung-ho and mostly macho twenty-somethings, talk therapy is not their thing.  But they sure need decompression, because their service included a terrifying engagement in which they lost three comrades.

This combat unit includes women, and The Stopover focuses on Aurore (Ariane Labed and Marine (Soko).  The strong and purposeful Aurore has physically recovered from an emotionally (and literally) scarring experience in Afghanistan.  The more impulsive Marine, on the other hand, is not a deep thinker, but has a serious chip on her shoulder.

Everyone in the unit wound very, very tightly. Some are fighting to keep psychotic outbursts from bubbling over.  Plopping these guys amidst tourists and locals in such an absurdly and artificially tranquil setting creates a powder keg.  From start to finish in The Stopover, we’re waiting for any and every character to snap or erupt.

Ariane Labed in THE STOPOVER photo courtesy of SFFILM
Ariane Labed in THE STOPOVER
photo courtesy of SFFILM

Labed is excellent as Ariane feels need to suppress her PTSD, to mask it with rowdy fun and, finally, to confront it.  Labed won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for a completely different kind of movie in 2010, the absurdly goofy Attenberg, which I also watched at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

I just can’t take my eyes of Soko, who is a French pop music star. Here, as Marine, she has a feral fierceness. Soko is also a force of nature in the excellent period drama Augustine. She stars in another movie out this year that I’m looking forward to seeing, The Dancer.  She brings a simmering intensity to the screen, in contrast to her offbeat, ironic pop music.
The rest of the cast is excellent, too, particularly Karim Leklou as a sergeant with an unresolved issue or two.

The Stopover plays the SFFILMFestival tonight and again this weekend.  It’s also programmed in Film Society of Lincoln Center’s sometimes traveling Rendez-vous with French Cinema series.  It’s an engrossing and powerful film.