Movies

RADIO DREAMS: stranger in a strange and funny land

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RADIO DREAMS
RADIO DREAMS

The droll dark comedy Radio Dreams explores the ambivalence of the immigrant experience through the portrait of a flamboyant misfit, a man who rides the roller coaster of megalomania and despair.  That misfit is Hamid Royani (Mohsen Namjoo), the director of programming at an Iranian radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Hamid, an author in Iran, is a man of great certainty, with an unwavering sense of intellectual superiority  He assumes that everyone should – and will – buy in to his idiosyncratic taste.  This results in extremely random radio programming, and Hamid tries to sabotage everything that he finds vulgar (which is everything that might bring more listeners and revenue to the station.)

With his wild mane and indulgent programming, we first think that Hamid is simply batty.  But immigrants to the US generally forge new identities, and we come to understand that Hamid has not, perhaps will not, forge that new identity.   His despair is real but it’s hard to empathize with – he might be a legitimate literary figure in Iran, but he’s probably a pompous ass over there, too.

The highlight of Radio Dreams is Hamid’s reaction when he is surprised that Miss Iran USA, whom he has dismissed as a bimbo, might have literary chops that rivaling his.

Hamid has concocted a plan to have Afghanistan’s first rock band visit with the members of Metallica on air, and that’s the movie’s MacGuffin.  As we wait to see if Metallica will really show up, the foibles of the radio station crew dot Radio Dreams with moments of absurdity.  There are the cheesy commercials about unwanted body hair, Hamid’s obsession with hand sanitizer, a radio jungle played live on keyboards EVERY time, a new employee orientation that focuses on international time zones, along with a station intern compelled to take wrestling lessons.

Writer-director Babak Jalali is an adept storyteller.  As the movie opens, we are wondering, why do these guys have musical instruments? Why are they talking about Metallica? What’s with the ON AIR sign? Much of the movie unfolds before Hamid Royani emerges as the centerpiece character.

Hamid is played by the well-known Iranian singer-songwriter Mohsen Namjoo, “Iran’s Bob Dylan”.  This is only Namjoo’s second feature film as an actor.  He’s a compelling figure, and this is a very fine performance.

Except for Namjoo, the cast is made up of Bay Area actors.  Masters of the implacable and the stone face, all of the actors do deadpan really, really well.

As befits the mix of reality and absurdism, here’s a podcast by the characters in Radio Dreams.  I saw Radio Dreams at the Camera Cinema Club, and Babak Jalali took Q&A after the screening by phone from Belgium.

Radio Dreams is the second feature for Jalali, an Iranian-born filmmaker living and working in Europe.  He shot Radio Dreams with a small crew over only 24 days in San Francisco.   About 60% of the dialogue was scripted and 40% improvised.  The band in the movie, Kabul Dreams, really is Afghanistan’s first rock band, they did get to meet Metallica in real life and the PARS-FM were filmed at a real Iranian radio station in the Bay Area.

Babak Jalali is a promising filmmaker and Radio Dreams is a movie that we haven’t seen before.

NORMAN: THE MODERATE RISE AND TRAGIC FALL OF A NEW YORK FIXER: big deals are not for little men

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NORMAN: THE MODERATE RISE AND TRAGIC FALL OF A NEW YORK FIXER
Lior Ashkenazi and Richard Gere in NORMAN: THE MODERATE RISE AND TRAGIC FALL OF A NEW YORK FIXER

In Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer,  writer-director Joseph Cedar and his star Richard Gere combine to create the unforgettable character of Norman Oppenheimer, a Jewish Willy Loman who finally gets his chance to sits with the Movers and Shakers.  Norman’s gig is to find two real businessmen that he does not know, pretending to each to be the confidante of the other, and introduce them, hoping that they make a deal (a deal that he neither engineers or invests in), hoping that he can get a percentage as a finder’s fee.

Norman has not so much a ready smile as a compulsive one. Unencumbered by any sense of boundaries or propriety, he literally stalks the rich and influential like paparazzi stalk celebrities.  He feigns familiarity and drops names (“a high official, I can’t say his name”).  All he time, he tries, usually successfully, to stifle the odor of desperation.

I’ve spent over thirty years in politics, and in my business, it is said that there are Who Ya Know consultants and there are What Ya Know consultants. The most effective consultants combine both. If you’re only at the table to peddle the influence of Who Ya Know, you might be a little shady.  That’s Norman.

I know the world of powerful and important people, a world that hustlers try to crash, and I’ve known people like Norman.  And I know the Whack-A-Mole pressure of shepherding home a complex, multi-faceted deal. Norman’s character, while extreme, rings true.

Norman is everybody’s acquaintance but has no actual reputation of his own.  No one knows where he lives or what deals he has structured before.  He is so mysterious that we find ourselves even asking, is he homeless?

This may be Richard Gere’s best movie performance.  Gere perfectly distills Norman’s obnoxious ambition to play with the high rollers and then his stress and bewilderment once he’s gotten to the high stakes table.  The critic Christy Lemire writes, “You may not be able to root for him, but you can’t help but feel for him.”

Norman ingratiates himself to an Israeli politician (Lior Ashkenazi) and hits pay dirt when the politician unexpectedly becomes prime minister.  Norman says, “for once, I have bet on the right horse”, and indeed Norman did spot a uniquely optimistic quality that other observers failed to recognize and appreciate.  For the first time, Norman is relevant and at the exhilarating  center of power.

Lior Ashkenazi is brilliant as the politician, a man who is able to recognize his own specific gifts.  He is ebullient, and it’s easy to see how people can be attracted to his charisma and infectious confidence.  His vulnerability is an appetite for fine things and a neediness for the flattery and attention that a poser like Norman can offer.  Ashkenazi played a totally contrasting, much more nerdy, character in Cedar’s 2011 inventive and mostly successful character-driven dramedy Footnote.

Norman is juggling multiple balls in air, and he must make all of his deals pay off because they are all interlinked.  It’s kind of like making an exotic bet at the racetrack like an exacta, a superfecta or a pick 6.  If one part unravels, the whole thing will come crashing down.  Norman has always been able to get by on bullshit, but now he’s has gotten his wish – to play at the highest level, where, at some point you’ve got to deliver.  Here’s where “the tragic fall” comes in.

The stellar performances of Gere and Ashkenazi are but two highlights of Norman’s superb casting:  Michael Sheen, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Harris Yulin, Steve Buscemi.   Josh Charles plays a magnate who can sniff out a bullshit artist and can dismiss one with blistering efficiency.  The always excellent Isaach De Bankolé (Night on Earth) is memorable in a tiny part.  Hank Azaria  sparkles as a character who confounds Norman with a taste of his own medicine.   And we get to hear the glorious singing voice of Cantor Azi Schwartz.

As they say, if you can’t run with the big dogs, stay on the porch.  Big deals are not for little men.

Note: Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer weighs in at #16 on my list of Longest Movie Titles.

THEIR FINEST: the appealing side of propaganda

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Gemma Arterton in THEIR FINEST
Gemma Arterton in THEIR FINEST

Rosie the Riveter meets Nora Ephron in Their Finest, where Gemma Arterton plays a wannabe secretary summoned to write the female dialogue in a British propaganda movie aimed at easing America into WW II.  Of course, she discovers that she has a gift for screenwriting and a passion for it.  As in Mad Men, there are plenty of snickers at the assumed sexism the of the era. The driven lead writer (Sam Clafton) is a contrast to her nogoodnik common law husband (Jack Huston).

Originally, the plot of the movie-within-the movie is set to be a more or less true (okay – less true) account of the Dunkirk seaborne rescue, but a hook for American audiences is required.  So the filmmakers slap on a superfluous character to be played by a bonafide war hero (Jake Lacy):  he’s a real hero, he’s American, he’s stunningly handsome with a gleaming smile, but he’s absolutely talentless.

One of the sound reasons to watch any movie, and this especially applies to Their Finest, is Bill Nighy.  Here, he plays a vain actor sliding down the down slope of his career.  Nighy, as always, is able to summon both hilarity and poignancy, from his character’s foibles and vulnerability.

I’ve always liked Gemma Arterton, and she’s good here, too.  Arterton is an underappreciated actress, with winning roles in Gemma Bovary, Tamara Drewe and as the Bond Girl in Quantum of Solace.

Their Finest contains elements of the romance, comedy, historical and Girl Power genres.  The romantic element might have worked had not Sam Clafton delivered such a one-note performance.  Jack of some aspects and master of none, Their Finest is a harmless and appealing diversion.

FREE FIRE: a witty and fun shoot ’em up

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Brie larson in FREE FIRE
Brie Larson in FREE FIRE

The clever and fun action thriller Free Fire begins when Oscar-winning actress Brie Larson introduces both sides of an illegal gun transaction.    It’s 1978, and the hoods, played by Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy and a bunch of less recognizable faces, meetup in a long-abandoned factory.  The deal, of course, goes bad, and they start shooting at each other.  They are all pinned down, and all the action occurs in a confined space.  Pretty quickly, everyone is wounded, and has to crawl, hobble, limp and hop around trying to take out the others.

The factory is a dark and gritty setting, and it’s not going to turn out well, but it’s too light-hearted to call this a neo-noir.  These are boys (and a girl) playing with guns, and everybody is having a lot of fun.  Indeed, Free Fall has the all-in-good-fun tone of The Dirty Dozen and reminds us of a Quentin Tarantino film with much crisper dialogue and less gore.  Two of characters come to especially gruesome ends, but this is not a splatter-a-thon.  And here’s a cinematic First – a tickle attack in the midst of a gunfight.

In another Taratinoesque touch, classic rock, especially Creedence Clearwater Revival, is put to great use on the soundtrack.  But the insertion of a John Denver album into a cassette tape player is a hilarious high point.

Larson leads a set of appealing performances.  Armie Hammer is especially memorable as a particularly suave and smug gun merchant (and wears the same stylish beard sported by The Movie Gourmet in 1978).

Written by director Ben Wheatley and his writing partner Amy Jump, Free Fire is pure Wheatley.  Jump adapted his successful 2016 sci-fi High-Rise from  the J.G. Ballard novel

Leaving the theater, The Wife asked me “Why did I enjoy that movie so much?”, and I replied “Because it didn’t try to be more than it was.”  It tries to be a very witty shoot ’em up, and, as such, it’s very entertaining.

Armie Hammer in FREE FIRE
Armie Hammer in FREE FIRE

THE LOST CITY OF Z: the historical adventure epic revived

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Charlie Hunnam in THE LOST CITY OF Z photo courtesy of SFFILM
Charlie Hunnam in THE LOST CITY OF Z
photo courtesy of SFFILM

In auteur James Gray’s sweeping turn of the 20th Century epic The Lost City of Z, a stiff-upper-lip type British military officer becomes the first European to probe into the deepest heart of unmapped Amazonia. Finding his way through the lush jungles, braving encounters with sometimes cannibalistic indigenous warriors, he becomes obsessed with finding the lost city of an ancient civilization. I know this sounds like Indiana Jones, but it’s based on the real life of Percy Fawcett as chronicled in the recent book Lost City of Z by David Grann.

The Lost City of Z opens tomorrow in Bay Area theaters. I saw The Lost City of Z at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) at a screening with director James Gray. I’ll be sharing some snippets from Gray’s Q & A on Sunday.

The Lost City of Z begins with an Edwardian stag hunt through the verdant Irish countryside, complete with horses spilling riders. This scene is gorgeous, but its point is to introduce the young British military officer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) as a man of unusual resourcefulness, talent and, above all, drive. Despite his abilities, he has been chaffing at the unattractive assignments that have precluded his career advancement. In the snobby Edwardian military, he has been in disfavor because his dissolute father had stained the family name. One of Fawcett’s commanders says, “He’s been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors”.

That yearning to earn the recognition that he believes he merits – and to attain the accomplishments of a Great Man – is the core of this character-driven movie. Fawcett resists yet another assignment away from the career-making action, a mapping expedition designed to have a minor diplomatic payoff. But it takes him on a spectacular Amazon exploration that brings him celebrity – and backing for more high-profile expeditions. Fawcett was surfing the zeitgeist in the age of his contemporaries Roald Amundsen (South Pole), Robert Peary (North Pole) and Howard Carter (King Tut).

In that first expedition, Fawcett becomes convinced that he can find the magnificent city of a lost civilization deep in the Amazon, a city he calls Z (which is pronounced as the British “Zed”). The Lost City of Z takes us through two more Amazonian expeditions, sandwiched around Fawcett’s WW I service in the hellish Battle of the Somme.
That final expedition ends mysteriously – and not well.

No one knows for sure what happened to Fawcett. In The Lost City of Z, Gray leads us toward the most likely conclusion, the one embraced by Grann’s book. If you’re interested in the decades of speculation about Fawcett’s fate, there’s a good outline on Percy Fawcett’s Wikipedia page.

Fawcett comes with his own Victorian upper class prejudices, but he has the capacity to set those aside for a post-Darwin open-mindedness. Gray made it a point that the indigenous peoples in the movie are independent of Fawcett; Gray shows them living their lives in a world that Fawcett has found, not just advancing the plot points in Fawcett’s quest. Four real tribes – and their cultures – are shown in the film.

As Percy Fawcett, with his oft-manic obsession and fame-seeking that color his scientific curiosity and his old-fashioned Dudley Do-Right values, Charlie Hunnam gives a tremendous, perhaps carer breakthrough, performance. He’s been a promising actor in Sons of Anarchy and the overlooked thriller Deadfall) (and such a good actor that I never dreamed that he’s really British).  Hunnam will next star as the title character in the King Arthur movie franchise.

Robert Pattinson is unexpectedly perfect as Fawcett’s travel buddy Henry Costin. With his Twilight dreaminess hidden behind a Smith Brothers beard, Pattinson projects a lean manliness. It’s probably his best performance.

Sienna Miller shines as Fawcett’s proto-feminist wife Nina. I first noticed Miller (and Daniel Craig) in the underrated neo-noir thriller 2004 Layer Cake. Now Miller is still only 35 years old and has delivered other fine recent performances in Foxcatcher, American Sniper and (in an especially delicious role) High-Rise.

Director James Gray (The Yard, Two Lovers, The Immigrant) is a favorite of cinephiles and of other filmmakers, but regular audiences don’t turn out for his movies. That may change with The Lost City of Z, a remarkably beautiful film that Gray shot, bucking the trend to digital, in 35 mm. The jungle scenes were filmed in a national park in Columbia. The cinemeatographer is the Oscar-nominated Darius Khondji. Khondji shot The Immigrant for Gray and has been the DP of choice for David Fincher (Se7en) Alan Parker (Evita), Michael Haneke (Amour), and Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris). Along with the stag hunt and the voyages up and down the jungle rivers, there is also a breathtakingly beautiful ballroom scene and a gaspingly surreal nighttime discovery of a rubber plantation’s opera house deep in the jungle.

There have been other Lost Expedition movies, most famously Werner Herzog’s Aquirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. The Lost City of Z shares an obsession, a quest and a mysterious tragic end with those films, but it stands apart with its exploration of the motivation of a real life character and the authenticity of Gray’s depiction of the indigenous people.

Movie studios used to make an entire genre of very fun movies from Gunga Din and The Four Feathers through Lawrence of Arabia and Zulu that featured white Europeans getting their thrills in exotic third world playgrounds. We often cringe at the racist premises and the treatment of “the natives” those movies today. Since the 1960s, the best examples of the genre, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, have had an ironic tinge. With The Lost City of Z, James Gray loses both the racism and the irony, and brings us brings a straight-ahead exploration tale.

The Lost City of Z revives the genre of the historical adventure epic, with all the spectacle of a swashbuckler, while braiding in modern sensitivities and a psychological portrait. This is a beautiful and thoughtful film.

[And here are some completely random tidbits. There’s a cameo by Spaghetti Western star Franco Nero. The closing credits recognize the “animal weath coordinator” and the “data wrangler”.]

THE PROMISE: predictable and somnolent

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Oscar Isaac in THE PROMISE
Oscar Isaac in THE PROMISE

In a predictable trudge through the Armenian Genocide, The Promise delivers nothing that we haven’t seen before. Oscar Isaac plays an impoverished Armenian from the Anatolian outback who dreams of becoming a doctor. To afford medical school in Constantinople, he uses the dowry available after his betrothal to a sweet and prominently-schnozzed local girl. For his studies, he moves alone to the big city, where he meets a cosmopolitan Armenian beauty (Charlotte Le Bon), who has been living in Paris with her boyfriend, an iconoclastic American journalist (Christian Bale). Just as sparks fly between Isaac and Le Bon, World War I erupts and the Turks persecute and then massacre Armenians, causing the two to flee separately for their lives. Isaac’s medical student finds himself hiding in his home village, married to his fiance. Le Bon’s sophisticate is on the run with Bale’s journalist as he covers the developments. Will the Armenian lovers meet again in Eastern Turkey, and will he stay true to his marital vows?

The talents of Isaac and Bale are wasted in this movie. Isaac’s character is so top-to-bottom decent and so buffeted by developments that are not his fault, there just isn’t much texture to portray. Similarly, Bale’s reporter, while purportedly an international man of mystery, is just a Jeff Bridgesey teddy bear of a guy at his core.

The Promise is not as bad as the epically bad epic The Ottoman Lieutenant, and has much higher superior production values and a moderately better screenplay. Both movies share the beginning of World War I and the Armenian Genocide, along with an American protestant mission in southeastern Turkey. As in The Ottoman Lieutenant, there’s an unintentional audience laugh – when Isaac’s mother intones “I told them you were dead”.

Keep walking.

SONG TO SONG: empty eye candy

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SONG TO SONG
Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender and Ryan Gosling in SONG TO SONG

After sitting through what seemed like three hours of the 129-minute movie Song to Song, I have identified why I am done with auteur Terence Malick – Malick has essentially become a visual-only filmmaker.   But I think of cinema as a storytelling medium, and Malick, with all his eye candy, just can’t make me care about his story.

Ryan Gosling plays an Austin songwriter who is befriended and exploited by a twisted and extremely rich music kingpin (Michael Fassbender).  Rooney Mara’s character (purportedly another songwriter) falls for them both, and also jumps in bed with Bond Girl Bérénice Malohe’s mystery woman.  Natalie Portman plays a waitress who tragically marries Fassbender’s monstrous mogul.  An out-of-towner (Cate Blanchett) breezes in to have a fling with Gosling’s songwriter. Besides Mara and Portman, Fassbender also works his way through a series of groupies and call girls (including the most pockmarked hooker in Texas).

The movie is filled with the goofy, playful things that people do when they are flirting and seducing and in the early flush of love.  We also see (TMI?) that Malick is personally fascinated by a slow, teasing prelude to lovemaking, as ritualized as are the early stages of a bullfight, during which women wrap themselves in the curtains and get their stomachs caressed.  I like watching these usually compelling actors, but I just don’t care about these characters.    Unfortunately for her performance, Mara never seems the least bit musical or artistically inclined.

The only genuine moments in Song to Song come in scenes with the main characters’ concerned parents and two scenes with the starkly and heartbreakingly authentic singer-songwriter Pattie Smith.

There is, however,  a lot of visual interest to be found in Texas and Mexico, and Malick makes the most of it:  riverfront mansions, high-rise penthouses, beaches, cantinas, Hill Country vistas and backstage at the ACL festival.  As usual, Malick is aided by the collaboration of the master cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.  No contemporary cinematographer can match Lubezki’s stunning body of work.  His work with Malick includes the wondrous The New Land.  And the three-time Oscar winner Lubezki also shot Alejandro Iñárritu’s Babel, Birdman and The Revenant and Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men and Gravity.  Lubezki’s work here is remarkable, but I find myself infuriated at wastefulness of a Malick setup that results in 2 seconds in the film, however visually glorious.

There are also what have become unfortunate Malick signatures.  Choral music by Handel always signals pretentiousness.  And Song to Song contains a completely random montage of horror scenes from silent movies – it had me waiting for the reappearance of the dinosaurs from The Tree of Life.

And here’s a scene that I found paternalistic and offensive – I guarantee you that, if you get wasted and raucous in a Mexican cantina, the Mexicans will not embrace you as those really cool gringos that they have been waiting these many years to roughhouse with.

Did not like Song to Song.

SFFILM: YOURSELF AND YOURS

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YOURSELF AND YOURS
YOURSELF AND YOURS
photo courtesy of SFFILM

The absurdism of Luis Buñuel meets the social awkwardness of Seinfeld in Hong Sang-soo’s Koran comedy Yourself and Yours. I just saw Yourself and Yours (Dangsinjasingwa dangsinui geot) at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival).  In an Only-At-SFFILM moment, I (a Hong Sang-soo newbie) was surrounded in the audience by devoted Hong Sang-soo fans.

In Yourself and Yours, Minjung (Lee You-young) dumps her boyfriend (Kim Joo-hyuck) after he objects to her heavy drinking (“I’ve stopped drinking – now I only stop after five rounds”). Then another man thinks that he meets Minjung, but she claims that she is Minjung’s identical twin. We’re not so sure about that. And then she meets ANOTHER man, and her identity remains in question. Her original boyfriend is comically bereft, and he’s on the lookout for her, too.

One character says “You men are all pathetic”, and Minjung proves that point at every opportunity. In a deliberate homage to Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire, Lee You-young plays the role of Minjung and her multiple doppelgängers (unless they are all really Minjung herself).  There are plenty of LOL moments as Yourself and Yours winds its way full circle to a satisfyingly sly finale.

SFFILM: A DATE FOR MAD MARY

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Seána Kerslake (right) in A DATE FOR MAD MARY photo courtesy of SFFILM
Charleigh Bailey and Seána Kerslake in A DATE FOR MAD MARY
photo courtesy of SFFILM

The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) features the Irish dramedy A Date for Mad Mary.  Mary (Seána Kerslake) has just been released from incarceration and faces this challenge: she’s going to be the Maid of Honor at her childhood BFF’s wedding, and she needs a date for the nuptials. This apparently isn’t the first time that Mary’s been locked up for brawling because she quickly resorts to pounding other humans. This is a character flaw which is getting in the way of her, among other normal pursuits, finding a feller.

With this set-up, the audience is expecting a broad Dating-Gone-Wrong comedy, and there is a bit of that, but A Date for Mad Mary drills down to explore the character of Mary, somehow still frozen in her teenage pose. Mary has a major chip on her shoulder and escalates every human contact into an outburst of hostility. She just hasn’t matured into a woman who can navigate any social situation. The annoyingly controlling bride-to-be Char (Charleigh Bailey) has grown out of the teen Tough Girl pose, and has moved on the having a life with a job and a fiance. Mary, on the other hand, can’t keep a job or a guy or anything that will make her satisfied, self-proud or happy. Eventually, Mary meets a new friend Jess (Tara Lee) and wall-bangs her way down the corridor of self-discovery.

xxx and Seána Kerslake in A DATE FOR MAD MARY photo courtesy of SFFILM
Tara Lee and Seána Kerslake in A DATE FOR MAD MARY
photo courtesy of SFFILM

Seána Kerslake’s excellent performance is central to the success of the film, playing a character who is confused by her own lack of happiness. Unforgettably, Kerslake’s Mary kisses another character and is overwhelmed by an unexpected, giddy thrill – it’s a special moment. A Date for Mad Mary is the fifth feature since 2012 for up-and-comer Kerslake, who is also starring in an Irish television series.

A Date for Mad Mary is the first feature for director and co-writer Darren Thornton. A Date for Mad Mary will be screened again this weekend at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

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.