Location, location, location. Geographic and/or cultural specificity is key to several new releases this week, from the forests of the Eastern Himalayas to the ‘burbs of Long Island. For better or worse, we are largely defined by where we “came from,” and no amount of travel or other personal evolution can fully erase that foundational stamp.
A wary in-law or sullen teen aside, nobody wants to erase it in Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, the latest from writer-director Tyler Taormina (Ham on Rye, Happer’s Comet). Co-written with Eric Berger, it’s a considerable leap from his prior features, a sprawling, near-chaotic, yet mysteriously in-control ensemble piece. A battalion of relatives descend upon Grandma Balsano’s Long Island abode for the traditional dinner, gift-giving, and other festivities—though it may be the last time, as she is aging past the ability to maintain or be safely left in the big house alone. While her adult children angrily whisper-argue over selling the place and putting her in institutional care, younger generations do their thing(s): Playing video games, giving parents the stink-eye, sneaking off to purloin alcohol and make out in cars.
This family mosaic takes place at no particular point in time—the music is schlock pop of the early 1960s, the household tchotchkes even older. The technology seems more end-of-the-20th-c. than today. But then for all the glimpses of sharply delineated character types, this is more an encapsulation than a dissection, a ode to a collective vibe and way of life that, like grandma, is aging out… albeit very, very slowly.
Some of the myriad fragmentary subplots don’t quite work, including an absurdist one involving local cops played by Michael Cera and Gregg Turkington. Yet much as it seems to simply drift in terms of narrative and tone, without any obvious “structure,” Taormina’s film has a spontaneous, unpredictable air of semi-hidden purpose. It somehow holds together elements variably naturalistic, cartoonish, surreal and poetical, much assisted by the heightened Yuletide atmospherics of Carson Lund’s cinematography and Paris Peterson’s production design.
The obvious comparison here is Robert Altman. (Though somewhat distractingly, there are junior Scorseses and Spielbergs in the cast.) However, this Christmas turns his kind of crowded, semi-improvised seriocomedy into something more magical-realist, to an effect that is unpinnable, imperfect, yet bracingly original. It opens in theaters this Fri/8, though Bay Area venues were TBA at presstime.
A less enjoyable homecoming is experienced by Louie (Scott Michael Foster) in Kate Cobb’s Okie. A parent’s death has forced him reluctantly back to his heartland town of origin, which he hasn’t visited for years—an absence, and return, very much noticed by those he left behind. Principal among them are erstwhile BFF Travis (Kevin Bigley, who wrote the script), now a musclebound beardo butcher, and ex-girlfriend Lainey (director Cobb).
They prolong what had been intended as a very brief stay, though perhaps less out of nostalgic affection than an urge for payback. Nor are they the only folks hereabout who regard “Lucky Louie” as something of a traitor: He escaped to city life and a degree of fame won by writing thinly veiled fictions about them, painting his roots as a morass of redneck stupidity and meanness. His high-flown evasions when cornered on the matter tell you he’s guilty as charged—he exploited kith and kin, granting them no forum to defend themselves.
This small but astute drama recalls the 1971 Australian classic Wake in Fright aka Outback, whose own city-slicker protagonist undergoes a drunken, hair-raising trial by fire when he waltzes into a remote township on vacation. Like that film, this one posits itself as a bit more of a thriller than the unsettling character study it really is. Both heroes have their hypocrisies exposed and pretensions humbled, though for a while we expect something far worse to happen. Though Okie can verge on the condescendingly simplistic itself, it has the strong atmosphere and concentrated punch of a good short story. Gravitas Ventures releases it to On Demand platforms Fri/8.
Contrastingly content staying in her town of birth is 23-year-old Elsa, played with appealing relatability by newcomer Megan Northam (from very good recent Passengers of the Night) in writer-director Jeremy Clapin’s French-Belgian Meanwhile on Earth. She still lives happily enough in her parents’ home, and has a good rapport with patients at the senior home where she works under a rather stern manager who happens to be her mother.
Perhaps the reason she’s OK with just drifting along at present is also the glaring flaw in this existence: Adored older brother Franck, an astronaut, is literally missing in space, his precise whereabouts and/or fate unknown for the last three years. Then one day Elsa is mysteriously granted long-distance communication with him by aliens who seem to be holding him captive—and who hold her captive in a sense, too, controlling her actions until she finds five human hosts for them to occupy.
We have no idea if these entities are benevolent or malevolent, let alone what they ultimately want. Those dangling questions render Meanwhile’s second half less satisfying, as does its ambiguous non-ending, and the shift to a horror-adjacent structure in which she needs to find “victims” for her captors. That’s too bad, because the film’s first half is really striking, blending animation, an assertive live-action visual style, fresh naturalism, one alarming scene of violence, and a convincingly low-key approach to fantastical ideas. The end result disappoints, even if taken as simply a sci-fi metaphor for grief and loss. Yet it confirms Clapin, whose debut feature I Lost My Body was also very intriguing, as a significant emerging talent. The film opens in limited theaters Fri/8, including SF’s AMC Kabuki 8.
There is an otherworldly quality to the very terrestrial documentary Nocturnes, which opens the same day at the Roxie Theater. Its principal figures are ecologist Mansi and her local assistant Bicki, who are tasked (sometimes accompanied by a full team, occasionally by an elder scientist) with setting up illuminated screens at night in the Eastern Himalayas to attract, photograph and study moths.
This is “elephant country,” even if we don’t see any pachyderms till these 83 minutes are almost over. But we do see an extraordinary variety of the short-lived winged creatures sought after, in all shapes, sizes, colors and markings. Moths have survived five major extinction events. They predate flowering plants and dinosaurs, with over 150,000 individual species surviving to this day. But will they survive climate change, particularly as many specimens glimpsed here seem limited to habitats defined by (among other things) temperature?
Most of that hard intel comes at the end. Before it, there’s little explanation, just observation of scientists at work, and the natural world that is their focus. But what a world: Not only are the moths themselves fascinating (particularly when seen on the crowded canvases of those lit-up screens), the heavily wooded hills are stunning to behold in Satya Desai’s cinematography, often atmospherically drenched in fog, mist and rain. The Delhi-based filmmaking duo of Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan have crafted a gorgeous visual poem you sink into like a warm bath—even if the people onscreen frequently complain of cold.
Across the River and Into the Trees may sound like a similar arcadian exercise. But it takes place in historic city Venice, and is based on Ernest Hemingway’s eponymous 1950 novel—the next-to-last published during his lifetime (followed by The Old Man and the Sea), and the first to get critically panned. Nonetheless, when he took his own life at age 61 a decade later, Hemingway was still widely considered the great American fiction writer…an argument very few people make now.
It’s not just that shifting social mores have rendered much of his perspective dated; the self-importance of his supposedly simple (or “lean, hard, athletic”) style, which is often anything but, amplifies a kind of blowhard romanticized machismo that has become hard to take. I was born the year he died, yet never warmed to the guy. When an uncle advised me to “Write like Hemingway” at a formative age, I already thought “Are you freaking kidding me?”
Which in theory should have nothing to do with with the merits of Across, which English playwright Peter Flannery adapted and Spain’s Paula Ortiz directed. (She’s made another two features since—this one has sat around a while.) Liev Schreiber plays gruff, brusque US Army Colonel Richard Cantwell, who in 1945 has now served in two world wars. Though the actor is revealed to be in jaw-dropping physical condition in an early shirtless scene, this hero is meant to be terminally ill,with a faulty heart he does no favors by smoking and drinking copiously. Given that apparent death-wish, he wants a last fling, which turns out to be duck hunting in the city of canals’ surrounding waters. But he also gets the other kind, as a young local aristocrat (Matilda De Angelis as Renata) about one-third his age somehow finds him irresistible.
Cantwell has already been married and divorced three times, which may explain his lack of reciprocal enthusiasm. But it doesn’t explain the lack of chemistry between performers, despite the reliable Schreiber’s solidity as a he-man of another era. He carries the film with the desired weary dignity. But Hemingway’s bruised sentimentality doesn’t translate so well, given lines like “I have death sewn into the lining of my clothes, son,” which our rugged veteran-martyr growls at Josh Hutcherson as his exasperated yet awed junior minder-driver.
Of course the river Cantwell ultimately crosses is the Styx, and this well-produced but creaky drama feels as ponderous with old-school Symbolic Meaning as something that might’ve been made 70 years ago with Spencer Tracy and Pier Angeli. It wouldn’t have been good then, either, but its aspirations would have reflected popular taste. Now, this prolonged death-throes aria for a wounded warrior only underlines how some “great” literature comes with an expiration date. Through no fault of its interpreters, this dreary material has long since expired. Across the River… was released to On Demand platforms last week.
We should also mention in passing that this Thurs/7 BAMPFA is opening a retrospective of work by artist-in-residence Jia Zhangke, running through the month’s end. But only in passing, because many of the twelve programs—including all of those featuring the veteran Chinese writer-director in person for live discussions—are already sold out.
He’s considered one of the leading lights of the “Sixth Generation” cinematic talent wave, having won international acclaim for such features over the last quarter century as Still Life, Unknown Pleasures, A Touch of Sin, Ash Is Purest White and Mountains May Depart. They often deal with problems of youth in an era of accelerating economic globalization but much slower sociopolitical change. For full info, go here.
