The notion of a seasonal or vacation romance has always seemed a little odd to me—I know it happens, but looking for it seems weird. In movie terms, however, the notion probably only really gained popularity as a result of A Summer Place, the 1959 big-screen soap opera that was a smash with a demographic Hollywood had only just discovered. It was, after all, practically made for teenagers: Yes, the nominal leads were Dorothy McGuire and Richard Egan, both bona fide grownups in the vicinity of “pushing 40,” but their characters found sparks rekindling decades after an original adolescent passion. In any case, all eyes were on their teenage children and their big mutual crush, roles that made stars (however briefly) of Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee. Nobody ever called it great art, but probably no film quite so successfully sold the combination of sun, surf, sand, and snogging again… at least until The Blue Lagoon. Plus there was that “Theme From ‘A Summer Place,‘’” a muzak-y instrumental smash by the Percy Faith Orchestra which still defines an era’s notion of upscale amour, via quite possibly the squarest sounds ever recorded.
But here we are nearly 70 years later. Whatever they’re doing on Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel at present, movies elsewhere generally see fit to portray romance in “dark” terms, whether comedically neurotic or just plain scary. (It somehow seems perfect that last year’s hit drama about an abusive relationship, It Ends With Us, has turned into a never-ending war of offscreen accusations between its stars.) This Friday brings the release of two acclaimed new works in those veins. The scary one is Michael Shanks’ Together, which has Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a young couple who experience a little too much togetherness after falling prey to a mysterious, supernatural phenomenon. A buzz magnet at Sundance and SXSW, it unfortunately was not available for preview by this column’s deadline.
The neurotically funny one is another writer-director’s debut feature, Sophie Brooks’ Oh, Hi!, which just played the SF Jewish Film Festival. The premise is, initially, simplicity itself: Young New Yorkers Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman), who’ve been dating for a few months, drive upstate for a first shared weekend getaway. The rental house turns out to be lovely, the scenery likewise, and the mutual chemistry is smokin’. Exploring, they discover the home’s owners have a closetful of fetish gear. In a spirit of tipsy and titillated adventure, they decide to experiment—so one party gets cuffed to the bed, then another.
The resulting sex is “amazing.” But in its immediate post-coital glow, a seemingly innocuous question is asked, and an unexpectedly deflating answer is given. It turns out these two have very different views of the relationship they’re in…in fact one person doesn’t consider it a “relationship” at all, in the traditional, exclusively-seeing-each-other, coupled sense. And unfortunately that person happens to have their extremities cuffed to the bed.
The standoff that ensues could easily have turned into a one-joke movie, but Brooks (whose screenplay is based on an idea hatched with star Gordon) keeps taking unpredictable narrative left turns. Eventually others become involved in what might become a case of criminal captivity, notably Arrested Development’s David Cross as a crusty country neighbor, plus Geraldine Viswanathan and John Reynolds as friends of Iris’ who parachute in to offer advice on an escalating emergency. The story eventually entertains thoughts of murder, prison, even witchcraft. But it’s all frequently hilarious, and at the same time reasonably credible in terms of character psychology—with more emotional depth earned by the close than you’d expect from this farcical conceit. Oh, Hi! opens Fri/25 at SF’s Metreon, Berkeley’s Elmwood, and other theaters throughout the Bay Area.
Other movies arriving this weekend (several going direct to streaming services) likewise find relationships between women and men to be thorny, sometimes downright perilous. Actually, love is the one relatively uncomplicated thing in Michael Winterbottom’s Shoshana, which opens at the Smith Rafael Film Center in Marin this Friday. In Tel Aviv at the end of the 1930s, when the nation soon to become Israel was under temporary foreign governance as British Mandatory Palestine, a Jewish journalist (Starshenbaum) and English police officer (Douglas Wilkin) fall for one another. Which would be fine if her family weren’t Zionists with ties to Jewish militants willing to wrest regional control via terroristic acts—making them actively sought by the Brits, including a much more coldblooded police agent played by Harry Melling. It’s a sweeping period drama, partly fact-based, that is old-fashioned in the good sense: More interested in intrigue than action (though there’s both), immaculately produced and cast.
Another flashback is Luis Bunuel’s El, made in 1953 during his Mexican period. Released in the US as This Strange Passion, it is a tale of obsessive love that turns into something like hate. Wealthy Francisco (Arturo de Cordova) falls at first sight for the demure Gloria (Delia Garces), successfully wooing her away from a fiancee who is also his friend (Luis Beristain), despite initial resistance. But after they marry, Francisco begins showing signs of irrational suspicion and jealousy. No interaction with another man is so innocent that he can’t assume the worst of his blameless wife. Eventually his paranoias take a mad, violent turn. Bunuel thought the film flawed by its hasty production, but it is still a striking portrait of mental illness in its most misogynist form—and is bracketed by two grotesque church-set sequences that hint at the director’s surreal and subversive bents in their later, full flower. El will be shown in a new 4K restoration at BAMPFA in Berkeley next Wed/30. (More info here.)
Arthouse streaming platforms are releasing an assortment of compelling recent fiction features from differently conflicted female perspectives. Kurdwin Ayub’s Moon aka Mond is about Sarah (Florentina Holzinger), an Austrian marital artist who’s aging out of the competitive realm. With no particular plans for her future, she accepts a lucrative offer to serve as physical trainer for three young sisters, the daughters of a Jordanian oligarch. They live in a lavish gated compound in the middle of the desert—a sort of posh prison, albeit not for the family’s men, who are free to come and go as they please. Like many pro athletes, Sarah is so self-absorbed it takes her a while to register just how contrastingly straitjacketed her seemingly bratty, pampered pupils are, and how desperately they may look to her for help.
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Another disturbing, ambiguous tale is Saule Bliuvaite’s Toxic aka Akiplesa, set in a bleak Lithuanian town where the only hope of getting ahead seems to be “getting out.” Ergo several local girls are enrolled in a modeling school that promises high-flying international careers. Of course it’s probably just a scam, and possibly one with ties to sex trafficking. But any hope is better than none, and our 13-year-old heroines are too naive to be wary. Taking this path especially seriously is Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaite), who goes as far as ingesting a parasite to lose weight she can hardly spare. Looking more like a classic model, despite a birth-defect limp, is her bullying object-turned-best friend Marija (Vesta Matulyte). As with Moon, this episodic narrative doesn’t arrive at a conclusive denouement, but it is an arresting snapshot of an unfamiliar milieu. Both films are available on streaming platform MUBI as of Fri/25.
Meanwhile on a similarly-angled platform, Film Movement Plus, another pair of imports offer additional singular dramatic perspectives. In Robert Budina’s Albanian Waterdrop, hard-driving Aida (Gresa Pallaska) treats her family and town like she does her multinational development projects: With a determined, steely aspirational authority. But her ability to control every situation is thrown when teenage son Mark (Iancu Paulo) gets arrested for raping a classmate. At first she and husband Elvis (Adem Karaga) believe his pleas of innocence. But it turns out his fibs are easily disproven, and there is damning physical evidence. An indictment of pervasive corruption, this accomplished drama finds our privileged, less-than-sympathetic heroine unexpectedly becoming the figure most disillusioned by what pseudo-“justice” is allowed to pass. It begins streaming on Fri/25.
Already available on the same platform is Nicola Spasic’s Serbian Kristina, a “docu-fiction” whose titular personality plays herself—a transgender woman who collects antiques, lives alone with a cat, and pays the bills via sex work, entertaining clients in her own Belgrade home. A composed, elegant figure disinclined towards emotional display or sharing much personal history, Kristina Milosavljevic seems self-contained, disinterested in intimacy outside the professional plane. But that has the potential to change once she keeps running into Marko (Marko Radisic), an ingratiating stranger whose accidental paths-crossing appearances are so mysterious, she wonders whether he’s a figment of her imagination. Like her abode of artfully collected furniture and decor, Kristina itself is something of an objet d’art, low on narrative impetus but high on painterly compositions and other aesthetic values. It’s an interesting addition to the rapidly expanding catalog of transgender screen representation, not least because it takes its protagonist’s identity so much for granted—there isn’t even discussion of her transition, or life before it.
