Sui Li and Baoqing Li in BANR. Courtesy of ShangJia Picture Film Culture.
The star in Banr is writer/director/editor Erica Xia-Hou’s innovative storytelling – in her first feature film. An elderly husband (Sui Li) is struggling to hold on to his wife (Baoqing Li) as she sinks into Alzheimer’s, with the support of their adult daughter (Xia-Hou herself). That main story is told in a cinéma vérité documentary style, but that’s just what the husband and daughter see in their lucidity. Those segments are interwoven with fragments of the wife’s memory and her delusions and dreams. In depicting the most ordinary daily activities, Xia-Hou keeps us continually off-guard by shifting the points of view between the clear-eyed and the muddled.
With the exception of herself, Xia-Hou used all non-professional actors. Like Sean Baker at his best, she’s directed exemplary performances from her leads, both first-timers. As the wife, Baoqing Li becomes ever more confused, but is radiant when a cherished memory pops up.
Baoqing Li in BANR. Courtesy of ShangJia Picture Film Culture.
As the husband, Sui Li throws all his deep-seated love and his stubbornness into fighting his wife’s memory loss, and then in caregiving. We know, and his daughter wisely advises him, that his efforts are unsustainable, but he obstinately muddles on, until the progression of her condition gives him no other choice. His performance is fully committed and heartbreaking.
This may be Erica Xia-Hou’s directorial debut, but she has a substantial body of work as an actress, screenwriter, editor and art director in the Chinese film industry, after studying dance, broadcasting and acting at three Chinese universities. She co-wrote and acted in the Jackie Chan sci-fi action film Bleeding Steel. She will co-star with Tony Leung and Olga Kurylenko in the upcoming action thriller Fox Hunt, which she also co-wrote and edited.
What’s with the film’s title? Banr is companion in Mandarin, and many older Chinese couples affectionately refer to each other as Lao Banr, meaning old companion.
Banr is an immersive film, filled with humanity, and an important directorial debut. I screened Banr for its world premiere at Slamdance, where it was one of my Must See picks.
Photo caption: Giacomo Gex in Richard Melkonian’s UNIVERSE 25. Courtesy of Slamdance.
The thoughtful, ever-surprising and mysterious Universe25 embeds a fable of self-discovery in a dystopian sci-fi framework. Mott the Angel (Giacomo Gex) is sent to Earth, essentially on a cleanup mission, by a Creator (Andre Flynn) who is ready to pull the plug on our world. Mott dutifully searches urban Britain for the planet’s sole remaining saint until he happens upon an unlikely Everyman, the hardscrabble Romanian immigrant Andrei (Dan Socio). As Mott careens from Britain to Romania, he questions just what/who he aspires to be.
The gritty, noirish contemporary world is juxtaposed with Biblical references and imagery.
Photo caption: Giacomo Gex in Richard Melkonian’s UNIVERSE 25. Courtesy of Slamdance.
Hilariously, the story is revealed when the scroll that Mott writes for the Creator ends up in the lost mail bin, where it is read by a bitter postal clerk.
In a singular and impressive feature debut, writer-director Richard Melkonian has imagined a look at humanity from an space alien’s point of view. It’s an imaginative and witty blend of themes and genres.
Slamdance is all about discovering new filmmakers and unveiling their work. The 146 films in this year’s program hail from 20 countries and were selected from 9,381 submissions. Slamdance alumni include: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Memento,Dunkirk), Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room), Lynn Shelton (Outside In,Sword of Truth), Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine), Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Brick), Benny & Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems) and the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War).
Here are my recommendations from Slamdance:
Universe25: This thoughtful, ever-surprising and mysterious film embeds a fable of self-discovery in a dystopian sci-fi framework. Mott the Angel (Giacomo Gex) is sent to Earth, essentially on a cleanup mission, by a Creator who is ready to pull the plug on our world. In a singular and impressive feature debut, writer-director Richard Melkonian has imagined a look at humanity from an space alien’s point of view. As he careens from Britain to Romania, Mott questions just what/who he aspires to be. Hilariously, the story is revealed when the scroll that Mott writes for the Creator ends up in the lost mail bin, where it is read by a bitter postal clerk. World premiere.
Banr: The star here is writer/director/editor Erica Xia-Hou’s innovative storytelling – in her first feature film. An elderly husband, is struggling to hold on to his wife as she sinks into Alzheimer’s, with the support of their adult daughter (Xia-Hou herself). That main story is told in a cinéma vérité documentary style, but that’s just what the husband and daughter see in their lucidity. Those segments are interwoven with fragments of the wife’s memory and her delusions and dreams. In depicting the most ordinary daily activities, Xia-Hou keeps us continually off-guard by shifting the points of view between the clear-eyed and the muddled. Banr is an immersive film, filled with humanity. World premiere.
FOUL EVIL DEEDS: This deadpan anthology depicts a range of aberrant human behavior, most of it darkly funny. The deeds themselves arise from a variety of root causes: inner rage, social clumsiness, youthful stupidity, an uncommon sexual need, entitlement – and one from deep-seated evil. It’s a wry, clever and very cynical movie that veers to the misanthropic. Richard Hunter’s debut feature is consciously an art film; Hunter says he is influenced by the work of Ulrich Seidl, Michael Haneke and Roy Andersson, and it shows. It’s a slow burn, and the audience wonders, why is that guy checking out the remote wooded wetland? Alexander Perkins is excellent as a man grinding his teeth through workaday drudgery as a consequence of anger management issues that he can’t shake, and there’s an unexpectedly riveting performance by Oengus MacNamara in a minor role. The segment about a neighbor’s cat could have been written by Larry David about George Costanza. I think that FOUL EVIL DEEDS is likely to secure US arthouse distribution. North American premiere.
Twin Fences: Director Yana Osman starts us out with a droll, absurdist doc on a ridiculously obscure subject, then hits us with a pivotal family tragedy, and finishes, with her own grandfather, in a sweet and heartbreaking ending. Only then, do we realize that we’ve just watched a clear-eyed comment on contemporary Russia. Audiences who hang with this first feature by Osman will be rewarded. Osman is an idiosyncratic, and I think, pretty brilliant filmmaker. North American premiere.
Memories of Love Returned: On a 2002 trip to his native Uganda, actor Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (Treme, The Chi, The Lincoln Lawyer) happened upon a rural studio portrait photographer named Kibaate. Over a span of decades, Kibaate had documented everyday people over decades in thousands of portrait, many of them stunningly evocative. Mwine helped Kibaate preserve his body of work, and after Kibaate’s death 20 years later, organized a public showcase of Kibaate’s collection. The revelation of the unknown Kibaate as an artistic genius, is a compelling enough story, but the exhibition prompts a complicated and sometimes awkward exploration of Kibaate’s siring a prodigious number of children with a bevy of surviving mothers. The filmmaker’s own health and family story takes Memories of Love Returned seamlessly into another direction, topped off by Kibaate’s documentation of Ugandan LGBTQ culture. The second documentary feature directed by Mwine, Memories of Love Returned has been piling up awards from film festivals.
FISHMONGER (short): I rarely write about short films, but this is such a very funny gross-out horror comedy, that I can’t resist. The story is about a pudgy Irish fishmonger who must mate with a sea monster to save the soul of his dying mother. Lots of bursting lesions and vomited objects. Beautifully photographed in Gothic horror black and white.
Remember, you can watch ALL of them at home through March 7 for only fifty bucks.
Baoqing Li and Sui Li in BANR. Courtesy of ShangJia Picture Film Culture.
Photo caption: Ariana Grande in WICKED. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
This week, on The Movie Gourmet – I’ve been deep into Slamdance, including Discovering new filmmakers at SLAMDANCE. More Slamdance coverage is coming on Monday, when I start rolling out full reviews of individual films and highlighting the ones available to stream at home on the Slamdance Channel.
I finally got around to watching one of this year’s nominees for the Best Picture Oscar, Wicked. I had put this off because I’m not a fan of musicals, and, sure as shootin’, The Wife had to keep prodding me awake. I do always enjoy and admire Cynthia Erivo, and she’s excellent in Wicked. What surprised me was how brilliant Ariana Grande’s performance was, not just in singing and dancing, but in demonstrating absolutely perfect comic timing. Because I live under a pop culture rock, I wasn’t familiar with Grande, who I have since come to appreciate as a smart and hilarious mimic. Anyway, I don’t generally enjoy musicals, and that’s still true, no matter how good the stars are. (And Emilia Perez isn’t on my top ten list, either.)
Love Lies Bleeding: obsessions and impulses collide. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
I Saw the TV Glow: brimming with originality. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
ON TV
THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK
On February 24, Turner Classic Movies airs one of the greatest political movies of all time – The Times of Harvey Milk, the documentary Oscar winner from 1984. It’s the real story behind the 2008 Sean Penn narrative Milk – and with the original witnesses. If you pay attention, The Times of Harvey Milk can teach you everything from how to win a local campaign to how to build a societal movement. One of the best political movies ever. And watch for the dog poop scene!
Photo caption: Trey Holland and Romina D’Ugo in Woody Bess’ PORTAL TO HELL. Courtesy of Portal to Hell LLC
It’s time for the 31st Slamdance Film Festival, which is all about discovering new filmmakers and unveiling their work. After 30 years in Utah, this is the first Slamdance in Los Angeles. It’s a hybrid festival with live events (February 20-26) and online via the Slamdance Channel (February 24-March 7). Three LA venues will host the screenings – The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood, Directors Guild of America and Quixote Studios.
All Slamdance feature films selected in the competition categories have traditionally bee directorial debuts without U.S. distribution, with budgets of less than $1 million. The 146 films in this year’s program hail from 20 countries and were selected from 9,381 submissions.
Slamdance was founded in 1995 by filmmakers reacting to the gatekeeper role and growing marketplace focus of a nearby Utah film festival with a similar name. Whenever I cover a film festival, I’m on the lookout for first films and world premieres – and here’s a festival essentially entirely made up of first films and world premieres.
Slamdance alumni include: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Memento,Dunkirk), Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room), Lynn Shelton (Outside In,Sword of Truth), Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine), Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Brick), Benny & Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems) and the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War).
Photo caption: Giacomo Gex in Richard Melkonian’s UNIVERSE 25. Courtesy of Slamdance.
MUST SEE
Here are four narrative features, two documentaries and a short from the 2025 Slamdance program that you shouldn’t miss. Each features at least one original and fresh element:
Universe25: This thoughtful, ever-surprising and mysterious film embeds a fable of self-discovery in a dystopian sci-fi framework. Mott the Angel (Giacomo Gex) is sent to Earth, essentially on a cleanup mission, by a Creator who is ready to pull the plug on our world. In a singular and impressive feature debut, writer-director Richard Melkonian has imagined a look at humanity from an space alien’s point of view. As he careens from Britain to Romania, Mott questions just what/who he aspires to be. Hilariously, the story is revealed when the scroll that Mott writes for the Creator ends up in the lost mail bin, where it is read by a bitter postal clerk. World premiere.
Portal to Hell: In this witty, dark comedy, a hangdog bill collector named Dunn (get it?) discovers a portal to hell, replete with hellfire and brimstone, in his local laundromat, and he strikes a bargain with its proprietor. Dunn is too nice for his wretched job, but just what is he capable of? And how about the insipid pop band who sings your least favorite earworm – who wouldn’t want to consign THEM to hell? Portal to Hell considers the question, what is a good person? but never too seriously. This is an imaginative, comic triumph for writer/director/cinematographer Woody Bess. Trey Holland and Romina D’Ugo are excellent as the leads, and Portal to Hell benefits from very rich supporting performances from lauded actors Keith David and Richard Kind. Portal to Hell could be the most sure-fire crowd-pleaser at this year’s Slamdance. World premiere.
Banr: The star here is writer/director/editor Erica Xia-Hou’s innovative storytelling – in her first feature film. An elderly husband, is struggling to hold on to his wife as she sinks into Alzheimer’s, with the support of their adult daughter (Xia-Hou herself). That main story is told in a cinéma vérité documentary style, but that’s just what the husband and daughter see in their lucidity. Those segments are interwoven with fragments of the wife’s memory and her delusions and dreams. In depicting the most ordinary daily activities, Xia-Hou keeps us continually off-guard by shifting the points of view between the clear-eyed and the muddled. Banr is an immersive film, filled with humanity. World premiere.
FOUL EVIL DEEDS: This deadpan anthology depicts a range of aberrant human behavior, most of it darkly funny. The deeds themselves arise from a variety of root causes: inner rage, social clumsiness, youthful stupidity, an uncommon sexual need, entitlement – and one from deep-seated evil. It’s a wry, clever and very cynical movie that veers to the misanthropic. Richard Hunter’s debut feature is consciously an art film; Hunter says he is influenced by the work of Ulrich Seidl, Michael Haneke and Roy Andersson, and it shows. It’s a slow burn, and the audience wonders, why is that guy checking out the remote wooded wetland? Alexander Perkins is excellent as a man grinding his teeth through workaday drudgery as a consequence of anger management issues that he can’t shake, and there’s an unexpectedly riveting performance by Oengus MacNamara in a minor role. The segment about a neighbor’s cat could have been written by Larry David about George Costanza. I think that FOUL EVIL DEEDS is likely to secure US arthouse distribution. North American premiere.
Twin Fences: Director Yana Osman starts us out with a droll, absurdist doc on a ridiculously obscure subject, then hits us with a pivotal family tragedy, and finishes, with her own grandfather, in a sweet and heartbreaking ending. Only then, do we realize that we’ve just watched a clear-eyed comment on contemporary Russia. Audiences who hang with this first feature by Osman will be rewarded. Osman is an idiosyncratic, and I think, pretty brilliant filmmaker. North American premiere.
Memories of Love Returned: On a 2002 trip to his native Uganda, actor Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine (Treme, The Chi, The Lincoln Lawyer) happened upon a rural studio portrait photographer named Kibaate. Over a span of decades, Kibaate had documented everyday people over decades in thousands of portrait, many of them stunningly evocative. Mwine helped Kibaate preserve his body of work, and after Kibaate’s death 20 years later, organized a public showcase of Kibaate’s collection. The revelation of the unknown Kibaate as an artistic genius, is a compelling enough story, but the exhibition prompts a complicated and sometimes awkward exploration of Kibaate’s siring a prodigious number of children with a bevy of surviving mothers. The filmmaker’s own health and family story takes Memories of Love Returned seamlessly into another direction, topped off by Kibaate’s documentation of Ugandan LGBTQ culture. The second documentary feature directed by Mwine, Memories of Love Returned has been piling up awards from film festivals.
FISHMONGER (short): I rarely write about short films, but this is such a very funny gross-out horror comedy, that I can’t resist. The story is about a pudgy Irish fishmonger who must mate with a sea monster to save the soul of his dying mother. Lots of bursting lesions and vomited objects. Beautifully photographed in Gothic horror black and white.
I’ll start rolling out full reviews of some Slamdance films on February 24th. Remember, even if you don’t get to the fest in LA, you can sample these films on the Slamdance Channel from February 24 thru March 7.
Filmmaker Yana Osman (right) in TWIN FENCES. Courtesy of Slamdance.
Photo caption: Adrien Brody in THE BRUTALIST. Courtesy of A24.
This week, The Movie Gourmet took the week off from movie theaters. After two weeks of movies about self-euthanasia (The Room Next Door), shameful deathbed confessions (Oh, Canada) , psychotic rage (Hard Truths) and a traumatized genius (The Brutalist), I just couldn’t face one about a woman who loses her husband to political evil (I’m Still Here). I like dark films, but even The Movie Gourmet has his limits. In the mean time, I’m deep into screening films for the upcoming Slamdance and Cinequest film festivals.
Tony Roberts (right) with Woody Allen in ANNIE HALL.
Tony Roberts had a gift or playing characters with relaxed confidence, perfect foils for Woody Allen’s trademark nervous anxiety. Roberts’ pairing with Allen began with Play, It Again, Sam, and carried through Annie Hall, Stardust Memories, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy and Hannah and her Sisters. Roberts worked plenty without Allen (Serpico, The Taking of Pelham One Twi Three and Dirty Dancing), mostly on the Broadway stage, where he was nominated for multiple Tony awards.
CURRENT MOVIES
Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
Love Lies Bleeding: obsessions and impulses collide. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
I Saw the TV Glow: brimming with originality. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
ON TV
MON ONCLE
On February 17, Turner Classic Movies is presenting Mon Oncle, Jacques Tati’s masterful fish-out-of-water satire of contemporary consumerism and modernist culture. In its deadpan way, I think it may be the most deeply funny movie of all time. If you have strong feelings (either way) for Mid-century Modern style, be patient and settle in. There’s very little dialogue and lots of sly observational physical humor. Tati’s use of ambient noise/sounds in the very spare soundtrack is pure genius. Mon Oncle is among my fifty or so Greatest Movies of All Time.
Photo caption: Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michelle Austin in HARD TRUTHS. Courtesy of Bleecker Street Media.
This week on The Movie Gourmet – my Noir City Wrap-up and new reviews of some of the year’s most acclaimed films: Two were created by already iconic filmmakers: Like Leigh’s Hard Truths and Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, The third is The Brutalist, the work of an emerging director, Brady Corbet, whom I guess has done emerged.
Note: I have finalized my list of Best Movies of 2024. BTW, none of them are as good as last year’s top three – Oppenheimer, Anatomy of a Fall or Past Lives.
CURRENT MOVIES
Anora: human spirit vs the oligarchs. In theaters and Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
Love Lies Bleeding: obsessions and impulses collide. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
I Saw the TV Glow: brimming with originality. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
ON TV
Patty McCormack and Nancy Kelly in THE BAD SEED.
Turner Classic Movies is into its 31 Day of Oscars, showing only Oscar winners and nominees. That means it’s harder for me to recommend overlooked films to you, because fewer Oscar winners are overlooked, although some have been unjustly forgotten. So, this week I have the February 11 TCM airing of The Bad Seed (1956). Very bad things are happening – the chill comes from the revelation that the murderous fiend is a child with blonde pigtails. It’s gotta be tough to be cute and creepy at the same time, but child star Patty McCormack pulled it off. McCormack went on to161 screen credits, including iconic TV shows from Route 66 and Death Valley Days to Murder, She Wrote and The Sopranos. Patty is the queen of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, having worked with everyone from Karl Malden and Angela Lansbury to Ron Howard, Michael Douglas, Philip Seymour Hoffman and of course, Kevin Bacon himself. McCormack was Oscar-nominated for this performance as an 11-year-old.
Photo caption: Adrien Brody in THE BRUTALIST. Courtesy of A24.
The Brutalist opens with László (Adrien Brody) arriving in New York Harbor as a refugee. Emma Lazarus could have been thinking of László when she wrote her immortal poem; having survived Buchenwald, he is tired, poor, huddled, homeless and tempest-tossed.
He makes his way to Philadelphia, where his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), has gone native, Americanizing his name, marrying a Catholic New Englander, and opening a small furniture store that he intends to build into a bigger enterprise. László, who was a architect of accomplishment and renown in prewar Hungary, has no such aspirations. László is grateful merely to be alive and away from war- and Holocaust-ravaged Europe and is content with even the least comfortable accommodations and the most menial employment. He does yearn for reunification with his wife Erzsébet and niece Zsófia, from whom he was separated years before in the Holocaust; they are alive, but in Soviet-controlled territory, and getting them to America will be difficult and complicated.
Just when László gets a taste of a promising situation, things don’t work out with Attila, and László finds himself homeless again. But then fortune smiles upon him – to an incredible, unpredictable and life-changing degree. Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), a local zillionaire, learns of László’s international reputation and commissions a monumental vanity project – one that will bring fame and wealth to László. The only downside is that Van Buren is extremely capricious, and László owes all of his new found comfort to him. Van Buren giveth, and Van Buren can taketh away.
Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce in THE BRUTALIST. Courtesy of A24.
It is an asymmetrical relationship. László is all about expressing himself through his architecture. Van Buren is a collector, and, like any of his collectible objects, Van Buren enjoys László as an amusement and as a marker of prestige. Van Buren’s dominance manifests in countless micro-aggressions, and, finally, in the most degrading way.
László rides this roller coaster alone until Erzsébet arrives with Zsófia. László can be prickly and his confidence is always teetering, but Erzsébet is smooth and comfortable in her skin. Erzsébet is stronger than László, and many times as resilient. She has been able to survive a Nazi death camp, escape from behind the Iron Curtain and make her way to the New World, all while protecting her vulnerable niece. Although physically wrecked by her ordeal, she is eager to resume her career as a writer and her role as László’s coach and cheerleader. Erzsébet intends to make her own destiny, and refuses to be buffeted by the whims of fortune.
No matter how highly valued is his talent, László gets the message that he is too foreign, too Jewish, and, ultimately, is unwanted by America. While that weighs on him, his experience with Van Buren becomes soul-crushing. How much is too much for the human spirit to endure? Can Erzsébet help László find peace and dignity?
Feliity Jones in THE BRUTALIST. Courtesy of A24.
The Brutalist is a sweeping story, told in three hours thirty-five minutes (with an intermission), and every second brims with artistic ambition. Director and co-writer Brady Corbet has acted in movies by Gregg Araki, Michael Haneke, Lars Von Trier, Ruben Ostland and Olivier Assayas, and he is aspiring for his own individualistic masterpiece. Corbet makes every shot visually impactful, and the score juxtaposes period pop standards with throbbing, droning musical cues, and even begins with an overture. Corbet risked making The Brutalist pretentious and self-important, but it never is. Almost everything Corbet throws at the screen works to tell the story and to enhance our experience.
The one thing that doesn’t work is the epilogue, set in 1980, when an adult Zsófia (Ariane Labed) gives a speech at an architectural conference that honors László with a retrospective. Zsófia explicitly connects the dots between László’s artistic themes with the horrors of experience. After such a momentous and vivid story, told with so much artistry and innovation, the epilogue is both unnecessary and a buzz kill. It reminded me of the finale of another great movie, Psycho, in which Simon Oakland plays a psychiatric expert who explains to us that, indeed, Norman Bates was suffering from a recognized mental disorder. But, if you swing for the fences, you are allowed the occasional foul ball.
Adrien Brody in THE BRUTALIST. Courtesy of A24.
The acting is exceptional, especially the three leads, who are each justifiably Oscar-nominated. Adrien Brody brilliantly takes us through László’s remarkably up-and-down journey, with its very high highs and very low lows. (BTW Nikki Glaser’s best joke at the Golden Globes was “Adrien Brody – two-time Holocaust survivor.“)
Similarly, the battle between Van Buren and László (or the one between the good Van Buren and the bad Van Buren) wouldn’t be enough without Erzsébet being so appealing and such a badass. Felicity Jones captures her grace and ferocity.
Much of the film relies on Guy Pearce’ Van Buren, whose appetites, prejudices, emotional needs and entitlement drives the plot, as they buffet poor László. If Van Buren isn’t complicated and unpredictable, there’s no story here. I find Pearce to remarkably resemble classic film star Brian Donlevy here.
The wonderful Ivory Coast-born, French actor Isaach de Bankole is as good as always as László’s American friend Gordon. Gordon often represents the moral center of the story, solidly grounded while László flutters about. Joe Alwyn is appropriately malignant as Van Buren’s rangy snake of a son, Harry Lee, to whom Harrison has not passed on any of his better qualities.
The Brutalist is an epic in several senses of that descriptor, and one of the Best Movies of 2024.
Photo caption: Marianne Jean-Baptiste in HARD TRUTHS. Courtesy of Bleecker Street Media.
Hard Truths is the searing (but sometimes funny) portrait of a woman who lives without ever experiencing a moment of contentment. Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) overreacts to every situation, usually with rage, but sometimes with terror. In a state of perpetual grievance, even when she needs to manufacture one, every encounter is toxic.
Pansy is offended even by the ribbon that a neighbor puts on her baby, and by the affrontery of a retail clerk whose job it is to ask her is needs any assistance. Pansy’s husband Curtley (David Webber) and son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) tiptoe around their own house, bracing for Pansy’s next explosion. The 22-year-okd Moses either slacks in his room or wanders randomly around the city.
In contrast, Pansy’s sister Chantelle (Michelle Austin) enjoys her life and other people; the mood in her more modest apartment is relaxed and playful, and her daughters (Ani Nelson and Sophia Brown) are spirited achievers.
So, why is Pansy so unhappy? Curtley is an inoffensive man with a plumbing company, and he provides well for Pansy. She doesn’t have to work, and the family lives in a leafy neighborhood, in a comfortable house. She says that she is tired and lonely, and claims to have migraine headaches, but we don’t see any of those. I’m not a mental health professional (although I’m married to a licensed therapist), but Pansy is suffering from something more than a sour outlook on life; we see anxiety, depression and paranoia. We learn that she may be damaged from adult burdens prematurely forced on her in childhood by her mother, but she’s going to need some chemicals before she can sit long enough for talk therapy. Unfortunately, she lashes out at family members and doctors who could help, pushing them away. Poor Curtley is mystified and utterly unequipped to see any solution.
Hard Truths is a film by Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Another Year), who collaborates with hs actors so an usual degree, so Pansy is Leigh and Jean-Baptiste’s joint creation. 28 years ago, Jean-Baptiste played a wholly different character in Leigh’s masterpiece Secrets & Lies, a story in which Brenda Blethyn played the hot mess.
Jean-Baptiste’s singular performance is a tour de force. Everyone in the cast is excellent, and I especially admired David Webber’s for playing a decent man trapped in a hellish situation that he doesn’t understand, with no good choices.
Many of Pansy’s explosions are so absurdly ungrounded as to be funny, but the bottom line is that we’re watching the most unpleasant person imaginable for 97 minutes. Overall, I was saddened by the realization that 1) Pansy can’t help herself and that 2) there is no foreseeable path for relieving her disorder. Still, I’m glad I saw Hard Truths because of Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s sui generis performance.
Photo caption: Richard Gere in OH, CANADA, Courtesy of Kino Lorber.
In Oh, Canada, Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) is a prominent documentarian who is dying, and one of his most successful former students (Michael Imperioli) is honoring him with a biodoc. When he is seated before an Errol Morris Interrotron, Fife demands that his wife Emma (Uma Thurman) take the position behind the camera so he can speak directly to her, and then takes over the filming with an unrestrained, blurted life story. It’s really a confession, and Leo has a lot to confess.
As Leo tells his life story, the young Leo is portrayed (mostly) by Jacob Elordi (Priscilla, Saltburn). Sometimes the older Gere shows up as the young Leo instead of Elordi, which reflects the muddling of Leo’s memory at this final stage of his life.
Besides his achievements as a filmmaker, Leo Fife has been revered as a principled American draft resister who fled to Canada to protest the Vietnam War. Leo reveals that his re-invention in Canada was anything but principled (and that Oh, Canada is a very ironic title). In fact, Leo’s adult life has been that of a weak and selfish man, a man who always takes the easy way, even if that means betrayal or thievery. It would be the life of a sociopath, except that sociopaths don’t feel guilt and the need to confess.
Oh, Canada is a Paul Schrader film. Schrader wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull., adapted The Last Temptation of Christ, wrote and directed American Gigolo and Affliction. All very good. All very dark.
Oh, Canada follows Schrader’s late-career, self-described ‘Man In A Room’ trilogy, following First Reformed and The Card Counter and Master Gardener I would name it the “Man with a Code Seeks Redemption” trilogy. Likewise, Oh, Canada is about a man’s assessment of his life, but it’s not as good as the previous three, perhaps because Leo Fife never lived by a code, and it’s too late for redemption.
Oh, Canada is a searing portrait of a man confessing his sins, but too late to help anyone else, including those he has hurt. He might feel cleansed on his deathbed, but, so what?
In a nice touch, Fife’s protege shows himself to b just as vile as his mentor and visits one final indecency on Leo.
Gere and Thurman are solid. The Wife thought Jacob Elordi was appropriately smarmy, but I didn’t detect any hint of the self-loathing that the young Fife must have felt. Penelope Mitchell sparkles in a small role as an ambitious production assistant.
There’s one brilliant performance in Oh, Canada – that of Zach Shaffer as Leo’s long-abandoned adult son. Shaffer keeps his character contained in a highly charged situation, registering his emotional reaction only with his eyes. It’s a highly nuanced portrayal of a shattering experience.
I was constantly absorbed by Oh, Canada, as I learned who Leo Fife really was, but left the theater feeling indifferent.
