Ema (In Greek: Έμα)
Pablo Larraín's neon-caked tale of a tattered family is ambitious if uneven eye candy that's bound to get audiences talking.
In one of the more fitting opening shots in a while, Ema opens with a traffic light on fire. Behind it stands the title character (Mariana Di Girolamo) with a flamethrower slung over her shoulder and, despite what might sound glib on paper, it’s an apt metaphor for what’s to come. No stopping, no slowing down. If it’s going to go, it’s going to go. Pablo Larraín has dealt with political upheaval and reconstructing at the ruins of one’s personal life before, and now he’s doing all of it at once.
In fact, it feels as if parts of his eighth film are to be remembered by viewers as a hallucination. There is, after all, no way some of this stuff actually happened like this, right? The dancing and domestic drama, sure. The spousal sparring, definitely. But the orgies and scorched earth? How about the day-glo visuals that would make for one hell of a rewatch during a fever? It isn’t all “there” throughout. Yet, it manages to present, annihilate, and reconstruct a multitude of fantasies, be they social or political, sexual or familial.
After that prologue comes something tangible in comparison. Ema’s husband and leader of her dance company, Gastón (Gael García Bernal), has accidentally set their house on fire. The most pressing collateral damage comes through their adopted son, Polo (Cristián Suárez). He isn’t the most amiable kid, to say the least, and now they’ve got to return him to the agency he came from. Alas, Ema nor Gastón will take full responsibility for his behavior. On second thought, maybe that stoplight was a little more approachable after all. Continue Reading →
Kunstneren og tyven (In Greek: Η ζωγράφος και ο κλέφτης)
A few years ago, Czech painter Barbora Kysilkova had two paintings on display in Oslo. It was something of a break for the artist, whose lifelong curiosity of death and nature didn’t quite fit the descriptor of “gothic.” It was a little too clean for that, but it was hers and it made her a few dollars. Then it was stolen. The question of who didn’t last long as Karl-Bertil Nordland was caught on the security footage, and while the drug-addled robber couldn’t remember much of the robbery, it didn’t really matter to the painter. Continue Reading →
Summertime (In Greek: Διακοπές στη Βενετία)
Sandwiched between a rough start and too tidy of an ending, Carlos López Estrada's latest finds love in its large ensemble.
“The sewage water smelt like butterscotch,” a young woman (Mila Cuda) muses. The contradictions are inert, the delivery self-serious, the writing okay but sold as something much more. Elsewhere, Tyris (Tyris Winter) berates a waitress for a restaurant’s prices. They go on a rant and submit a scathing Yelp review before pretending to choke for the sake of a free meal. Their behavior reproachable and their words petty, the movie still seems to side with them. And at this point, it would seem that we’re off to the races with Summertime.
Well, not quite. Carlos López Estrada’s follow-up to Blindspotting is, to say the least, the type of movie that makes a surprising about-face after 20 minutes or so. Set over the course of one July day, it takes a neorealist base and warps it into the body of a musical, following an ensemble piece of 25. But it isn’t music: with each character comes a spoken word poem, a fade between the inner and the outer. It’s incredibly uneven at points and obnoxious at its worst, but when it finds its stride, it’s that kind of livelihood that’s too infectious to deny.
In some ways, that makes its missteps all the more bizarre. Estrada, who shares a story by credit with Vero Kompalic, approaches most characters with a similar empathy. All of the performers write their respective poems, but Estrada approaches most characters with a similar empathy. Its uniformity is its greatest weakness. It helps, then, when Summertime unravels its connections and its characterizations, allowing them to breathe in tandem with the environments. Continue Reading →
Star Trek: Picard
Patrick Stewart returns to his iconic role in a new Star Trek series in desperate need of a shakedown cruise.
It’s pleasing enough to see Patrick Stewart once again gazing at the stars. He calls his dog “Number One”, and orders earl grey tea, and shares a moment with some familiar faces. This older Picard is a bit more subdued than the confident captain who once strolled the decks of the Enterprise. But every once in awhile, the captain awakens once more, and Stewart delivers a line or look or an expression that briefly rekindles the fire that fueled The Next Generation.
It’s pleasing enough to see Star Trek finally advancing the timeline beyond Nemesis. This first real measure of in-universe progress since then deals with the Romulan detente hinted at in the 2002 release and the destruction of Romulus depicted in the 2009 reboot. The series contends with the more expansive use of artificial life hinted at in Data’s adventures and the aftermath of so many Borg encounters.
It’s even pleasing enough to see another series advancing Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future, upholding his spirit by channeling current issues and events. The Federation we see in Star Trek: Picard< is not the same institution whose principles the show’s title character once so vigilantly upheld, but rather, one struggling with its place in a changing universe. Continue Reading →