Poor Things (2023)

Direction: Yorgos Lanthimos
Country: USA

Greek-born filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is able to keep audiences in giddy laughter or shocking horror. Known for his unique storytelling in films like Dogtooth (2009), The Lobster (2015), and The Favourite (2018), he presents his latest black comedy, Poor Things. Adapted from Alasdair Gray's 1992 novel, the film is written by Tony McNamara and features a stellar cast, including Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, and Ramy Youssef.

The film follows the story of Bella (Stone), a candid young Victorian woman brought back to life by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Godwin Baxter (Dafoe). With newfound free will, Bella embarks on a journey of self-discovery, choosing to explore life with its pleasures and challenges. Her unconventional choices, including running away with lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo), will teach her many things, ultimately sending her back to an unimaginable past of darkness.

Gorgeously rendered, the film offers a smart and eccentric exploration of society and the human experience. An ambitious idea framed with visual distinction and spirited performances, where vertiginous philosophical foundations merge with a strong determination in self-learning and sexual liberation. This sinister tale is hilarious in spots, persistently full of life (despite dealing with death), and provocative as the hip filmmaker likes to shape his off-kilter comedies. 

With its moody soundscape by Jerkin Fendrix and superb cinematography by Robbie Ryan, Poor Things is the standout unconventional comedy of the year. Lanthimos continues to surprise audiences with his daring imagination, offering a fresh and intoxicating cinematic experience.

Inside (2023)

Direction: Vasilis Katsoupis
Country: USA

Slightly intriguing yet not particularly mind-blowing, Inside is a part artsy, part survival psychological thriller written by Ben Hopkins (The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz, 2000; The Market, 2008), directed by Vasilis Katsoupis (in his directorial debut), and almost exclusively starred by Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse, 2019; Tommaso, 2019). He plays a notorious art thief whose life becomes threatened when he gets trapped in a luxurious Manhattan penthouse.

Before we see this coordinated heist getting wrong, Nemo (Dafoe), the narrator-thief tells that, above anything else, art is for keeps. He also confesses he likes a challenge, but probably not one like he was about to describe. In search of valuable works by the expressionist Egon Schiele, this art maniac will have to fight for his life when locked in a fancy apartment with barely no food, no water, no cooking gas, and no landline phone service. If this was not enough, a broken thermostat gets him freezing cold and sweltering hot by turns. The discomfort goes even further as the fridge automatically plays that annoying “Macarena” song whenever its door remains open for more than a minute.

Inside is like Cube (1997) without the inventiveness of sci-fi. It’s too ponderous and controlled to provide any thrills, and the lack of rhythm makes any possible isolation-driven tension dissipate. 

A minimalistic piano score attempts to potentiate the solitude of a man on the verge of losing his mental sanity. There’s also this surreal side - introduced via eerie dreams - that doesn’t take us anywhere tangible. I found this unfinished nightmare to be more pretentious than gripping, yet kudos to Dafoe for the dedicated performance.

Siberia (2020)

Direction: Abel Ferrara
Country: Italy / Germany / other

Populated by recollections, disturbing dreams, inner fears, symbology, conjuration and eroticism, Siberia, the second film of Abel Ferrara starring Willem Dafoe in 2020, fascinates with some scattered opaque scenes but ultimately disappoints. 

Dafoe is Clint, a man looking for his lost soul in a remote Siberian place where he used to go fishing with his late father. The film is brusquely edited, displaying a few bizarre scenes that are intertwined with ghostly appearances and inexplicable interactions, suggesting relationships that the movie only hints at. With the backdrop continually changing from the snowy desolation to the desert to the woods, the film throws in a great number of elements without revealing things clearly. It hides instead, merging visual bafflement and philosophical inquiry. Hence, it wouldn't really surprise me if some viewers found the results tactless, since Ferrara loses momentum in tacking countless details that become inconsequent and abominably tireless with the time.

Unlike the engrossing Tommaso, Ferrara’s previous work, Siberia is a dysfunctional film whose sweeping ambition falls short of consistent narrative moments and, according to that, is forced to deal with its monumental incapacity to create a cohesive whole. An artistic sabotage, I dare to say.

Tommaso (2020)

Direction: Abel Ferrara
Country: Italy / USA / other

In Tommaso, cult director Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant; King of New York; Pasolini) puts forward a confessional semi-autobiographical work where his real wife and daughter - Cristina Chiriac and Anna Ferrara, respectively - star alongside his first-choice actor, Willem Dafoe (their fifth collaboration). The latter gives a powerful central performance as the title character, an American filmmaker living in Rome.

As a recovered alcoholic and drug addict, Tommaso doesn’t miss a rehab session, also spending time giving acting classes and practicing yoga, whose breathing techniques pacify his busy mind. However, he’s going through a tough phase with his autonomous wife Nikki (Chiriac). The communication between them is lacking and Tommaso is gradually pushed into a vortex of madness and anger.

With surrealistic injections that take the form of erotic, sinister or fatalistic episodes in accordance with the main character’s state of mind, this gritty drama also mixes the earthly and the esoteric, revealing a philosophical ambiguity that keeps us seeking for answers and unbroken lines to follow. Ferrara shots with substance and quirkiness and provides a very human experience.

Husband and wife have their secrets, but love can’t be bought. Reality or illusion, we sense a tragedy coming across with very cinematic sensibility. That’s the nature of Ferrara’s world; a world where pleasure and pain can’t stay apart from each other.

All things considered, this is all about feelings, and both Dafoe and Ferrara denote enough inspiration to prevent this idiosyncratic statement to sink into oblivion.

At Eternity's Gate (2018)

Direction: Julian Schnabel
Country: USA / UK / other

Julian Schnabel’s proclivity for biographical dramas about renowned artists - Basquiat (1996) renders the street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat; Before The Night Falls (2000), the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas; and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), the French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby - is not so surprising if you think he is a painter himself, one who marked the Neo-expressionism artistic movement in the late 70s and 80s. However, his directorial effort have not always produce favorable outcomes, which is now the case of At Eternity’s Gate, a personal depiction of Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh during his last years in Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise, France, where he died at the age 37.

Even with Willem Dafoe deeply committed to his performance, the film doesn’t deliver the goods properly as it misses a consistent dramatization of the tormented artist. Less dragging scenes in nature together with a more expeditious storytelling that could facilitate emotions, would have been worked in its interest.

Van Gogh’s vulnerability feels exasperating while his dialogue with fellow painter Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac), an incompatible soul both in temperament and artistic style, was always monotonously oversimplified in tone and content.

While the piano score is fatiguing, the cinematography of the French Benoit Delhomme guarantees a beautiful light at every shot, occasional blurring the frames to give them the aspect of an impressionistic canvas.

Even when addressing the painter’s mental illness, obsession, and anxiety, Schnabel struggled to do away with certain apathy. The film then succumbs to its own torpid developments and the indifference only abandoned me during a brief conversation between the painter and a priest (Mads Mikkelsen), a scene with a sharper dialogue and aggrandized by close-ups. At Eternity's Gate is a superfluous biopic and a tedious experience slightly elevated by Dafoe’s acting efforts.