Though I haven’t loved all their films, Norwegian director Joachim Trier and his writing collaborator Eskil Vogt remains among the hopes of the medium—an accomplished team whose work is intelligent, involving, thematically ambitious but very human in scale. Their latest Sentimental Value won the Grand Prix at Cannes, and it again largely revolves around Renate Reinsve, the star of their last effort The Worst Person in the World.
She plays Nora, a successful Oslo theater and TV actress despite occasionally paralyzing stage fright; younger sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) leads a more settled life with a husband and grade-school son. When their long-divorced therapist mother passes away, a surprise guest at the wake is semi-estranged father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard), who pretty much abandoned any parental role when he left the marriage long ago. A filmmaker of some past acclaim, he’s now 70, and hasn’t completed anything in fifteen years. A reunion that’s already rattling for Nora is made more so when he reveals he has a new project in mind—written for and hopefully starring her. She rather angrily declines…then finds herself even more upset when a chance meeting gifts dad with the huge windfall of a sought-after American movie star (Elle Fanning) who’d gladly take the role herself.
Trier and Vogt think in novelistic terms, their complicated yet never over-schematic narratives always serving to reveal character. Every major figure here—including the Hollywood import—feels fully realized, the writing so good we neither need or want the showoff acting moments another director might view as such a story’s raison d’etre.
While refusing to bluntly spell out its ideas, Value (which opened in theaters last weekend) astutely illustrates truths about depression, heredity’s role in mental health, different approaches to the artistic life, and filmmaking itself. It is the rare movie reflecting upon that latter subject which is not, well, sentimental—it doesn’t indulge in self-congratulatory neurosis or celebration, instead credibly depicting how some demanding creative path might be personally rewarding even as they make relationships near-impossible. It carries its heavy load of multigenerational hangups with surprising lightness, holding us in a grip that feels loose, making 133 minutes and a considerable arc race by.
Two other films that screened too late for coverage last week also dwell in very different ways on life in the entertainment world. Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man, a Stephen King story previously adapted (much more loosely) as a 1987 Schwarzenegger vehicle, has Glen Powell as a dystopian-future prole whose last hope becomes competing on a lethal, rigged reality-TV “survival” competition show. This director continues to let down the expectations set by his hilarious first features Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz—what he was then remains so much more valuable than the mildly quirky mainstream Hollywood blockbuster-meister he keeps trying to be.
Ads crying “See It Large and Loud” peg the main appeal here: Man is big, noisy and busy. But for all its stunts and expense, it reveals Wright doesn’t have a natural flair for staging action. And while the antifascist political jabs made are on-point, they’re also done in broad strokes that ultimately sink beneath the general mechanics of a generic mall flick. So generic it plays the rote sentimentality of “It’s about family!!” (Powell sacrifices all for a wife and sick child) utterly straight within the most cynical context imaginable. The insincerity is… er, large and loud.
As it is in Jay Kelly, an ostensible dart aimed at Hollywood’s inflated self-regard that instead wades neck-deep into mawkish self-congratulation. That is not what you’d expect from the hitherto reliably tart pen of Noam Baumbach, whose films have often been cynical, but also located some depth in characters who themselves are cynical, often in a wounded, defensive way. Co-writing this time with English actress Emily Mortimer (who plays a supporting role), however, he’s created a bloated feel-good movie whose “heartfelt” posture feels wholly contrived.
George Clooney plays the titular giant movie star who experiences an identity crisis after a chance encounter with an embittered ex-friend (Billy Crudup). Blowing off a work commitment, he impulsively runs off to Europe, chasing a newly adult daughter he fears he hasn’t bothered bonding enough with, while heading towards an Italian film festival tribute he’d previously declined to accept. Adam Sandler and Laura Dern lead an entourage of handlers who get dragged along, simultaneously humoring and resenting his irrational and selfish, if usually well-intentioned, whims.
The setup might recall Preston Sturges’ masterpiece Sullivan’s Travels. But that sharp-witted, big-hearted enterprise provides a cruel standard of comparison: Director Baumbach can’t sell earnest emotions he clearly doesn’t believe in, and his large, starry cast seems wasted in roles that never develop relatable dimensionality. While I’ve seen worse movies this year, few have seemed quite so fundamentally fraudulent. Jay Kelly (which goes to Netflix on Dec. 5) wants us to celebrate the “magic” of the medium and its characters’ redemptions, but those things come off as phony and imitative—approximations of real feeling. It’s a plastic bouquet.
It’s A Small World: ‘Rebuilding,’ ‘Peter Hujar’s Day,’ ‘Put Your Soul…’
In contrast to the expansive scales of the films above, three movies opening in local theaters this Fri/21 aim for the microcosmic rather than macrocosmic. In Max Walker-Silverman’s Rebuilding, arriving at the Metreon, Josh O’Connor plays a close-mouthed cowboy (named Dusty, yet) who loses his ranch to a “high severity burn” that will make the land useless for years to come. Rudderless, he moves into a FEMA community of RV-dwelling fellow refugees from misfortune, and tries to improve relations with the grade-school daughter (Lily LaTorre) he’s hitherto left his ex-wife (Meghann Fahy) to raise pretty much alone.
Like the writer-director’s prior feature, A Love Song (which we reviewed here), this is a quiet drama with good performances and a fine feel for the stark rural landscapes of southern Colorado. But the air of hard-scrabble authenticity once again borders on overkill—a tad more psychologically deepening backstory wouldn’t have killed the spare vibe.
Peter Hujar was an exceptional photographer who—like his close ally in NYC’s underground arts scene, painter-writer David Wojnarowicz—was more widely appreciated after dying from AIDS in 1987. (SF’s Fraenkel Gallery just closed another exhibit of his work.) Thirteen years earlier his friend Linda Rosenkrantz had the idea of interviewing various NYC acquaintances for a book that would compile disparate first-person accounts of a “day in the life of an artist.” The book never materialized, but the Hujar transcript eventually did, providing text for Peter Hujar’s Day. This latest film by Ira Sachs (Keep the Lights On, Love Is Strange) is opening at the Roxie.
Ben Whishaw plays a chain-smoking Hujar, who spends hours relating the rather pedestrian events of his prior day to Rebecca Hall’s Rosenkrantz in her apartment. Numerous well-known names are dropped (Ginberg, Sontag, Burroughs, Ed Sanders, Hibiscus, Fran Leibowitz etc.), but few truly interesting things are said—the level of verbal detail is more like a laundry list than a path towards insight. The performers are fine, and I’m a big fan of both Sachs and Hujar—yet this project feels like minutiae that’s overstretched even at 76 slim minutes.
On the other hand, intimacy is a necessity as well as a virtue in another Roxie arrival, Put Your Soul On Your Hand And Walk. Sepideh Farsi’s documentary is essentially a record of her Facetime communications with Fatima Hassouna. Though a generation apart, the two women are in mutually relatable circumstances: One is a veteran filmmaker in forced exile from her native Iran for political reasons, the other an aspiring photojournalist documenting the Israeli military campaign, which now keeps her and her family virtual prisoners in a Gaza City rapidly getting reduced to rubble.
Hassouna is remarkably upbeat to a point, excited at having a long-distance friend offer some connection to the outside world amidst the isolation imposed by near-constant bombing. But as the situation goes from bad to worse, we see her deteriorate—disoriented from hunger, shrugging “I miss everything, I miss my life.” If you suspect this story is going to end tragically, you would be correct. Its larger context filled in by occasional glimpses of global TV news reportage, Soul offers a look at civilian life during wartime that is as up-close and personal as it gets.
Streaming Extravaganza: ‘Anniversary,’ ‘Lesbian Space Princess,’ ‘Sauna,’ ‘The Disinvited’
Four worthwhile movies that reach streaming platforms this week either bypassed theaters or likely flew under your radar. Polish director Jan Komasa’s Anniversary actually did play theaters (and may even still linger in a few), but some of its participants complained that the distributor “buried” the release for fear of political controversy. That would be credible enough, given that Lori Rosene-Gambino’s screenplay offers a methodical “what if” scenario spanning several years, as the US becomes a fascist state.
Diane Lane plays a university professor and high-profile liberal voice horrified when her son’s fiancee (Phoebe Dynevor) turns out to be a former student who’d even then advanced anti-democratic principles. The young couple become leaders in a reactionary movement that gradually sweeps the nation—a ruling power increasingly intolerant of opponents like Lane, husband Kyle Chandler, and their three daughters (Zoey Deutsch, Mckenna Grace, Madeline Brewer).
It’s an ambitious and, needless to say, highly relevant allegory. But its effectiveness is somewhat compromised by limits of budget and time—this story really should sprawl over a miniseries’ length, allowing for larger physical scale as well as better development of characters who sometimes feel vague or one-dimensional. Nonetheless, this provocative update of It Can’t Happen Here should be seen. It’s available on Digital as of Fri/21.
Two highlights from this summer’s Frameline program both arrive on streaming formats Nov. 18: Australians Emma Hough Hobbs & Leela Varghese’s very funny, Futurama-like animated sci-fi spoof Lesbian Space Princess, and Mathias Boe’s poignant Danish drama Sauna, about a romance between a newly out young gay man and an in-transition trans man. We wrote a bit more about both in our festival preview here.
Devin Lawrence’s The Disinvited, released to digital the same day, is a very promising debut feature located somewhere noir, horror, romcom and Tarantino-esque snark. Carl (Sam Daly) is the kind of guy who makes a great first impression…gradually followed by awareness that something is disturbingly “off.” His more insufferable side drove away very cool girlfriend Monica (Dani Reynolds), a relationship we see commence and unravel in flashbacks. Having realized how badly he blew it, Carl makes the unwise decision of driving to attend a wedding between former mutual friends where absolutely no one—Monica least of all—wants him. He arrives already rattled due to a series of disturbing incidents en route. Or is it just that Carl is paranoid, and his perceptions (our own primary POV) aren’t to be trusted?
The answer to that question isn’t terribly surprising, but getting there is a hoot—Lawrence and his collaborators stylishly juggle elements of suspense, disorientation and barbed humor. It’s a clever movie that nonetheless falls a wee short, ending perhaps too-abruptly with a sense that the director and Matthew Mourgides’ script needed another twist or two (or perhaps just more breathing space in its compressed narrative) to feel fully realized. Still, The Disinvited is a smart, resourceful enterprise that introduces some talents definitely worth watching in the future.
