Val (2021)

Direction: Leo Scott, Ting Poo
Country: USA

This documentary, co-directed by Leo Scott and Ting Poo, about the career successes and health struggles of American actor Val Kilmer, uses precious footage captured by the actor himself throughout the years, from family gatherings in his childhood (with the help of his two brothers) to auditions to the present time. 800 hours of footage were narrowed down to only 108 minutes, a fact that turned to be the best feat of the film.

Kilmer, who started being noticed in the mid-80s (primarily with Top Gun, 1986) and attained a career peak in the early 90s with his personification of Jim Morrisson in Martin Scorsese’s The Doors, (1991), fought an aggressive throat cancer that left him nearly speechless. Now, he uses a voice box to express himself but his son Jack narrates the film in his behalf. 

As passionate about its subject as the actor was about acting, the film tells Kilmer’s story intimately, with compassion, without never going into unnecessary sentimentality. Yet, this self-portrait of the star is not as powerful as I had imagined, even losing its track a bit by the time that Kilmer’s film Cinema Twain (2019) is mentioned. It’s an OK watching, not a fascinating one.

Servants (2021)

Direction: Ivan Ostrochovsky
Country: Slovakia / Czech Republic / other

Servants is a sharp, atmospheric arthouse thriller whose noir tone straddles between the classic Robert Bresson (Diary of a Country Priest, 1951; Au Hasard Balthazar, 1966; Mouchette, 1967) and the contemporary Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida, 2014; Cold War, 2018). Shot in 4:3 format and exhibiting a dazzling visual austerity for each impeccable black-and-white frame, Servants can be suffocating at times in its denounce of the church involvement with the Czech Communist regime in the early 1980s during the Cold War.

Slovak director Ivan Ostrochovsky (Goat, 2015) co-wrote the scrip with regular collaborator Marek Lescák and Ida’s co-writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, with the purpose of depicting on screen a few real events that mirror the bleak, oppressive atmosphere lived by the clergy at the time. Staged with virtuosity, the tale focuses on theology students Juraj (Samuel Skyva) and Michal (Samuel Polakovic), and their moral dilemmas when it comes to serve the Communist regime with information instead of focusing on their true vocation.

The quiet, toxic battle that takes place in the shadows between the religious doctrine and the political ideology is a chilling, enraging exposition of years of abuse, and the film has absolutely no qualms about saying that leaders of Theology University were conniving with politics to save their school from closure. Ostrochovsky puts on display the ways found by some students and priests to resist.

Servants could have been tighter in its final stage, but it’s still a rigorous, peculiar journey of faith that entangles in a slow, sure-handed fashion. Here, the enemy is not the devil or ‘witches’ or anything supernatural, but rather a human-made political system that operates in silence.

Never Gonna Snow Again (2021)

Direction: Malgorzata Szumowska / Michal Englert
Country: Poland

Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska (Body, 2015; Mug, 2018) teams up with her cinematographer ex-husband, Michal Englert, in the direction, aiming to leave some magic in the air with Never Gonna Snow Again, a lightly layered drama with enchanting tones and an ambivalent playfulness.

The story follows Zhenia (Alec Utgoff), a Ukrainian masseur born in the now ghost-town Pripyat, nearby Chernobyl, who moves to a wealthy Polish neighborhood and builds a sort of cult following through the gift of touching the peoples’ souls and healing them. Experiencing faint memories of his childhood, the popular Zhenia proves to be a hard worker who can make his female clients jealous, even if he has no time for intimate relationships.

Shot with taste, the film benefits from a hypnotic camera work and balanced image compositions, allowing you to enjoy these characters even more. The low-key Utgoff conveys the requisite curiosity and charm that Zhenia requires, spicing up the psychological phenomenon that he carries with him without touching any dark mysticism. On the contrary, everything is subtle and sensitively ironic, shaping up into a provocative satire that is punctuated with controlled surreal hysteria and some offbeat wit.

The idea for the film came from a real Ukrainian masseur but the filmmakers are more interested in dissecting the vulnerabilities of the Polish bourgeoisie than really scrutinize which type of superpowers Zhenia was gifted with. Sometimes giving the sensation that is going to dry out, the plot never flounders and maintains its steady pulse. To tell the truth, I was never truly hypnotized but never lost the interest either.

Apples (2021)

Direction: Christos Nikou
Country: Greece

Apples, the intriguing feature debut by the up-and-coming Greek director Christos Nikou, who worked as an assistant director for Yorgos Lanthimos in Dogtooth (2009) and Richard Linklater in Before Midnight (2013), flows with offbeat quirkiness and deadpan humor, doling out more in terms of emotion than I was expecting at an early stage. 

The film’s nature and pace won’t rocket you to the edge of your seat but offers something deeper than just a mere laconic examination of memory. Posing interesting questions about identity, relationships and loss, the film takes some deciphering, but attentive viewers will take tiny bits of dialogue as hints for the puzzle until the final twist is tossed at us, giving a proper meaning to the story.

The mood and style are primarily reminiscent of Lanthimos’ The Lobster but there’s some of Wes Anderson’s melancholy humor and Quentin Dupieux's absurdity thrown in the mix. Yet, Nikou finds his own beat, making it less dystopian and ‘self-sabotaged’ by the inscrutable central character, Aris (Aris Servetalis). The latter lost his memory due to - imagine! - a worldwide pandemic, giving the impression of being totally out of sync of his true feelings. This avid apple-eater gladly joins the governmental New Identity Program, which serves to give him a ‘new life’ - new experiences, new memories. He eventually forges an atypical relationship packed with peculiar episodes with an amnesiac woman, Anna (Sofia Georgovasili). 

Although narratively opaque for most of the time, which makes us constantly aware of not seeing the whole picture, Apples is a very clever film. Bizarre indeed, but ultimately so simple at its core.

Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (2021)

Direction: Lili Horvath
Country: Hungary

In Lili Horvát’s uncommonly moody romantic drama, reality and fantasy intertwine in the mind of a woman in love.

The director’s sophomore feature follows Marta Vizy (Natasa Stork), a highly qualified neurosurgeon in her early forties who leaves the US, where she lives for nearly two decades, to return to her hometown Budapest. The reason for this professional downgrade is Janos Drexler (Viktor Bodó), a man she met in a conference in New Jersey, who she thinks is the right one for her. They didn’t exchange phone numbers but decided to meet one month after in the Pest end of the Budapest’s Liberty Bridge. Janos didn’t only show up to the rendezvous but also claims he never met her before when confronted with the situation.

This romantic move turned frustration develops with a few episodes - her appointments with a psychologist that puts everything she reveals in question, a short flirt with a fourth-year medical student, and her curiosity in knowing more about Janos’ life.

The film, decorously shot in 35mm, flows with a languid propulsion permeated by melancholy, only sporadically surprising in a plot that lacks that expected ingenious spin that would give the best sequence to what had been previously created. It gets lost somehow in its ambiguity and that affects the whole.

The film, once an extraordinary idea, becomes out of shape at the moment that Horvát tries to give it one. The reversion of the roles of Marta and Janos brings an emotional hollow that transforms these Preparations in an unaffecting put-on.

Gaia (2021)

Direction: Jaco Bouwer
Country: South Africa

Executed with above-average imagery, Gaia, a trippy eco thriller directed by South African Jaco Bouwer, tells the nightmarish experience of a park ranger, Gabi (Monique Rockman), while conducting a routine operation in a secluded forest. Injured, she accidentally bumps into two reclusive survivalists - father (Carel Nel) and son (Alex Van Dyk) - who show to have a bizarre relationship with the forest. 

The woods feel alive with wilderness-spawned creatures and a phantasmagoric energy all its own. Fungus attacks and folklore elements are not rare, but the dreamlike sequences are excessive and repetitive. With that said, the film is solidly inventive in what it gets right.

The acting is good enough and Bouwer directs competently, availed by Pierre-Henri Wicomb’s effective sound design and Jorrie van der Walt’s beautiful cinematography. It seems intentional from the filmmaker to keep things vague rather than providing too many details. Thus, the plot by Tertius Kapp feels fresh until it takes us to familiar places.

Even limited in budget, Gaia is a surprising poke in the eye of our horror-movie expectations.

Volcano (2019)

Direction: Roman Bondarchuk
Country: Ukraine

The first fiction feature from Ukrainian Roman Bondarchuk started as a documentary. Volcano got its roots from the real life of the director’s girlfriend’s uncle, a former head of a fish farm who lost everything and now lives tormented by the future.

In this surreal comedy drama, Bondarchuk cooperated with Alla Tyutyunnik and co-producer Dar’ya Averchenko in the script, mounting a tale where fiction and reality touch with sufficiently eventful episodes and oddities to keep us absorbed.

While working with an OSCE mission in a forgotten steppe region next to the Crimean border in South Ukraine, Lukas (Serhiy Stepansky) gets lost, also losing track of his colleagues. He’s picked up by a local young woman, Marushka (Khrystyna Deylyk), who takes him to her father, Vova (Viktor Zhdanov), a jobless man with some strange ideas for business.

The anarchy of the place is alarming, and Lukas ends up being robbed, arrested, beaten up, abandoned in a hole to die, and involved in spectacular fights with a gang of a neighbor village. He also sees a mirage of dead people in the sun, and experiences friendship and true love. Is he crazy enough to stay? 

Never overheated, the film plays like a nightmarish fairy tale that is by turns austere and affecting. While the absurd humor generates crushing awkwardness, the convincing environments promulgate a sad authenticity. And this mix functions correctly, regardless the so-so finale.

Zola (2021)

Direction: Janicza Bravo
Country: USA

Co-writer and director Janicza Bravo (Lemon, 2017) based herself on the 2015 tweets by Aziah "Zola" King and a related Rolling Stone article by David Kushner to set up her sophomore feature, Zola, starring Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas Braun and Colman Domingo.

The story follows the title character (Paige) going on a bizarre two-day road trip from Detroit to Tampa, Florida, after being invited by cunning stripper and sex worker Stefani (Keough) to dance for quick cash in clubs. They are joined on the road by Stefani’s slow-witted boyfriend (Braun) as well as her sly pimp (Domingo).

More pathetic than serious, the film tends to minimize the grimness of the situation with mindless episodes and an I-don’t-care attitude' that remove all the possible thrills within the incidences and also the curiosity we could show in the story. I left not caring what the future held for a single one of these characters because it’s all too complacently vulgar. 

The idea of Zola may be appealing at its core, but Bravo was unable to present it in a satisfying manner. She certainly aims for satirical laughs here, but wears pretension on her sleeve, and the film just doesn’t deliver.

Flurries of Afrobeat try to infuse some energy but what we get here is a negatively intoxicating vibe that forced me to get absent really fast.

Jungle Cruise (2021)

Direction: Jaume Collet-Serra
Country: USA

Based on Disney’s riverboat amusing ride, Jaume Collet-Serra’s Jungle Cruise is a tiresome effects-soaked extravaganza with shallow characters and uninterrupted ostentatious sequences. The plot, written by regular associates Glenn Ficarra/John Requa (I Love You Phillip Morris, 2009; Focus, 2015) together with Michael Green (Logan, 2017; Blade Runner 2049, 2017), contains plenty of incidents that never materialize quite right on the screen.

It all starts when a courageous and charming British researcher, Dr. Lili Houghton (Emily Blunt), decides to cross the aggressive Brazilian Amazon rainforest by boat in search for the mythical Tree of Life on account of its healing powers. Her secret is that she can’t swim, an extra motive to hire the experienced boat skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson), who is far more secretive than her but knows the jungle as the palm of his hand. Whereas she can be described as a female version of Indiana Jones, he resembles a raucous Popeye with no need for spinach.

Fancily decorated, the film also evokes Pirates of the Caribbean, Goonies and Aguirre (just a little due to the presence of the Spanish conquistador), but ends in a cluttered mess devoid of magic, where every attempted thrill becomes ineffective. With the director botching the scenes with suffocatingly busy scenarios, I had two hours of little fun. It feels that he and the screenwriters were so obsessed with the visuals that they simply forgot the human emotions. This adventure has no soul.

Khibula (2018)

Direction: George Ovashvili
Country: Georgia

The contemplative, poetic ways of Georgian helmer George Ovashvili remain intact in his third feature, Khibula, a political drama film inspired by the last days of the first democratically elected president of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Despite of this fact, the director rejected the term biopic since the name of the president in the film, played by Iranian actor Hossein Mahjoub (The Colors of Paradise, 1999), is deliberately unspecified to give the film a broader dimension.

We observe the painful rural journey of a demotivated, self-proclaimed president who returned to his devastated country after being overthrown by an authoritarian regime. Escorted by a few faithful supporters, he refuses to leave Georgia again, but is forced to hide from the enemy, visiting several houses while gradually losing hope in his cause. 

The sadness of his reality contrasts with the immense beauty of the images, impeccably captured by Italian cinematographer Enrico Lucidi (Baaria, 2009) in his first collaboration with the Georgian director. Visibly tormented with the decaying state of things, the president seems incapable of changing his fate. His death, whether by assassination or suicide, remains in mystery. 

Shot in 35mm, Khibula is not as strong as Ovashvili’s previous films - The Other Bank (2009) and Corn Island (2014) - whose backdrops were the 1992-1993 War in Abkhazia. However, this desolate tale of a political leader in steep decline can’t be ignored.

Limbo (2021)

Direction: Ben Sharrock
Country: UK

Limbo is a beautiful comedy drama. Bitter and tender by turns, it tells the story of Syrian refugee and oud player Omar Youssef (Amir El-Masry), who gets indefinitely stranded on a remote island in Scotland, patiently waiting for his application for asylum to be approved. Meanwhile, and because he is not allowed to work, he deals with anxiety and guilt not just for having borrowed money from his parents but also for having left Syria without saying goodbye to his brother, Nabil (Kais Nashif), who chose to fight. 

Unmotivated to play his instrument, Omar enters in a fragile emotional state that, on the one hand, is aggravated by the xenophobic observations of some locals, and, on the other, is attenuated by his Afghan friend, Farhad (Vikash Bhai), one of the few who remain optimistic and encouraging.

British writer/director Ben Sharrock borrows some humorous traits from Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki (immediately detectable in the first scene), who is the European summit in the thorny issue of immigration (Le Havre, 2011; The Other Side of Hope, 2017). Still, he infuses his own vision by giving a refreshing take on the topic and molding the film to become poignant but unsentimental, with an urgent humanist side.

As an affecting and intimate declaration of faith in human values, the picture works its way quietly and steadily into our emotions. Every line and frame have something of interest and it’s nearly impossible not to care for these characters as we witness their pain, compassion and hope. Limbo is difficult to forget.

In the Earth (2021)

Direction: Ben Wheatley
Country: UK

Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth uses cheap tricks for mood, never achieving acceptable levels of satisfaction. The narrative develops with chunky episodes and mechanical dialogues, following a cooked-to-formula script that tries to play edgy with contemporary anxieties and an impure-nature setting.

The story pairs up Martin Lowery (Joel Fry), a scientist impassionately committed to making crops more efficient, and Alma (Ellora Torchia), an affable park ranger, as they venture into the woods when a deadly virus keeps ravaging the world. In the course of this journey they bump into a deceiving stranger, Zack (Reece Shearsmith), as well as Martin’s fellow colleague, Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires).

There’s not enough skill in the plotting and execution of a criminally boring fiction that comes packed with hallucinogenic pretentiousness. While exposing glaring plot holes, the film drowns in waves of imbecility, rendering everything frigid with a tacky approach.

The only thing this murky film can do is to trigger an epileptic attack via the unpleasant images that try to bring it to a climax. The woods can actually be scary, but not here. Wheatley’s new trance is not recommended, confirming the bad shape of the British director after the unsuccessful remake of Hitchcock’s Rebecca in 2020.

My Little Sister (2021)

Direction: Stéphanie Chuat, Véronique Reymond
Country: Switzerland

A Nina Hoss in top form (one of Christian Petzold’s muses - Phoenix, 2014; Barbara, 2012) spearheads a capable cast invested to make this intensely sincere family drama work. My Little Sister deals with the subject of illness and death in all its hardness.

The sophomore fictional feature from the long-standing pair of directors, Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond, chronicles a difficult period in the life of twin siblings Lisa (Hoss), a former playwright turned educator, and Sven (Lars Eidinger), a passionate theater actor with terminal cancer, who reunite after the latter has been subjected to an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant. Their inextinguishable bond and the pain shared for not being able to do what they most like in life, will give them motives to fight the adversities with courage and perseverance, even if what they aspire seems impossible to be achieved.

The handheld camera attempts to reproduce the anxiety in Lisa, who’s having a hard time trying to convince her husband, Martin (Jens Albinus), to return to Berlin, especially after he has been offered a new 5-year work contract in Switzerland, where he runs an English school. Also, her neurotic, sloppy and ego-centered mother (Marthe Keller) is not much of a help, intensifying the moments of friction. 

Bathed in strong emotional currents, the story develops in a sober, believable way, showing a family in crisis but focusing its gaze on a dissatisfied, innerly fractured woman who desperately seeks some balance when in the eminent presence of loss.  

Bristling with different kinds of vulnerability, My Little Sister is grim, earnest and emotionally turbulent, inflicting that real-life pressure we look for in this kind of drama.

State Funeral (2021)

Direction: Sergey Loznitsa
Country: Lithuania / Netherlands

Assembled with previously unseen footage, propaganda taken from radio broadcasts and dramatic classical requiems (Chopin and Mendelssohn included), Sergey Loznitsa’s State Funeral is a long, mournful dirge focused on the days that preceded the funeral of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in March 1953.

The images, toggling between color and black-and-white, capture the vast hordes of mourners across the USSR, elucidating about the cult of personality enjoyed by an authoritarian leader who was responsible for the torture and death of millions of people. 

The deceiving machine behind Stalin and his regime praises him as the greatest genius of humanity with glorious deeds toward peace and ethnic integration. These misleading strategies are still employed by Russia today, brainwashing people and keeping them under rigid control. A weird feeling arises when you see a whole nation and its army crying for a mass murderer.

The Ukrainian director, whose penchant for desolation and violence was seen in powerful dramas like My Joy (2010) and In the Fog (2012), feels at home with the material, reconstructing the scenarios with the help of regular collaborator and editor Danielius Kokanauskis, who shortened 40 hours of footage to 135 minutes.

Packed with the faces of consternation and tears of despair, State Funeral is both remarkable and tedious.

The Duke (2021)

Direction: Roger Michell
Country: UK

Adopting the same amiable and accessible tones that characterize his films, the South African-born British director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, 1999; Venus, 2006; Le Week-end, 2013) dramatizes the remarkable real-life theft of Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery by a 60-year-old taxi driver turned activist. Stealing a piece of art may seem profane to some, but when all the operation means well, you'll go down laughing and supporting the lad who had the idea. 

Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent in his second partnership with Michell) was the man who did it in 1961; not to get rich but to call attention for the huge sums of money spent in art while the people, especially the elderly, were in need of basic care and comfort. If Kempton had the support of his younger son Jackie (Fionn Whitehead) for this, he was fiercely rebuked by his wife, Dorothy (Helen Mirren), whose embarrassment was visible.

The indefatigable Kempton packs the film with a howl of funny moments, both at home and at court, offering a diverting and ingratiating 95-minute session at the movies. It's a gentle, light-fingered heist movie that actually doesn’t feel like a heist. There’s nothing mind-blowing in the serene storytelling, but as enjoyable as the film can be, what's not to like about observing the Buntons’ dynamics? 

Even if the cinematography tends to infuse warm light in every scene and the direction is sometimes too bubbly to feel real, the performances are genuinely natural and sympathetic to make us bound up with the characters. There is a tenderness about this hero and his noble intentions that is profoundly touching. The ending is delicious, and even James Bond seems to have acknowledged this story.

Cliff Walkers (2021)

Direction: Zhang Yimou
Country: China

The experienced Chinese director Zhang Yimou is known for the rigorous detail and emotional richness of his luxuriant period films. His latest work, an espionage thriller set in the snowy, Japanese-controlled state of Manchukuo in the 1930s, promises a lot but ends up in a dissatisfying entanglement. This is his first attempt in the historical spy thriller genre.

Four Chinese communist party agents return to the state, after receiving intense training in Russia. They plan to carry out a secret operation known as ‘Utrennya’, whose purpose is to expose the nefarious atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese Unit 731 against humanity. The mission, already demanding, becomes all the more complex when a comrade, on the verge of being executed, decides to reveal important information to the Japanese. 

The problem with the film, which is told in seven chapters, is the convoluted plot and its lack of narrative cohesion. Yimou and Quan Yongxian wrote it from a story by the latter, but the questionable loyalties, arcane codes and secret agendas never get us close to the characters. Moreover, the plodding storytelling together with an ineffective use of the score (by Jo Yeong-wook), and the extreme contrast between violent and emotional scenes don’t facilitate our engagement in the story. What stands out is the cinematography of Xiaoding Zhao, who had previously worked with the director in Shadow (2018), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and Coming Home (2014), among other titles.

Action and intrigue, which should be the go-thing in Cliff Walkers, are in clear deficit, and the film, duller than exciting, got me bored.

Pig (2021)

Direction: Michael Sarnoski
Country: USA

Debutant writer/director Michael Sarnoski’s drama-thriller, Pig, resuscitates Nicolas Cage and builds a consistently intriguing character that we strive to know more about. 

Cage is Robin Feld, a reclusive, depressed truffle hunter who leaves the Oregon woodland, where he lives for 15 years, to go after his stolen truffle-finding pig in the city of Portland, his hometown. Once there, he seeks the help of his truffle buyer, Amir (Alex Wolff), who later realizes he was a known and respected personality in the city. Rob has his own ways, but they are weird ways. He learns that both he and his antagonist made distinct choices in life after painful losses.

Cleverly paced and emotionally affecting, Pig surprises in many ways. This is certainly not the typical revenge thriller that most folks expect, but it takes you through a dirty road where unpredictability and discomfort are constantly present. It then leads to redemption and emotional liberation, aspects that Cage conjures up extraordinarily well in his performance.

Some thrillers earn the epithet of ‘edge of your seat’ experiences, but with Pig it’s more like you are waiting patiently for Rob to resolve what needs to be fixed. Successful debut by Sarnoski. 

Red Moon Tide (2021)

Direction: Lois Patiño
Country: Spain

The penetrating mystery at the core of this foreboding tale of loss, grief and abandonment, together with the film’s striking visuals and immersive narration, distinguishes Red Moon Tide as a remarkable debut feature from Spanish filmmaker and cinematographer Lois Patiño. Both the symbolism and the dichotomy between realism and surrealism bolster these tides of despair, which slowly emerge as a unique, uncanny neo-noir experience. 

The few elderly inhabitants of a small fishing village located in Costa da Morte, Galicia, lament the recent disappearance of Rubio (Rubio de Camelle), an experienced sailor who had rescued many bodies from the sea, so their families could say goodbye and have peace. Now, it was his turn to be swallowed by the sea - that monster that always comes with the moon tide. 

Rubio’s mother prays to the witches and three of them arrive from unknown places in an attempt to localize the man’s body. Every sad villager has a different theory about the case, which are presented as thoughts - some of them claim it was the furious sea that has been taking their lives little by little, some other point a peculiarly shaped rock that could have wrecked the man's boat, while other blame the poisonous dam that keeps spreading rust and corrosion all over. 

Whether captured by the slow movements of the camera or spotted in still frames that stress the village’s inertia, the ghosts appear in a simplistic form (like in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story) and pose with an aesthetic appeal. It’s all lugubrious, esoteric and bemusedly enchanting, with major contributions of sound designer Juan Carlos Blancas and the cinematographic art of Patiño. 

Very ambitious in its purpose and structure, Red Moon Tide rests in an infinite limbo of mourning. Unlike most of the films we see, the uncontrollable sea and sinister moon are the enemies that engulf everyone in a deep and disturbing melancholy.

Slalom (2021)

Direction: Charlène Favier
Country: France

Slalom, the slow-burning coming-of-age film that marks the directorial debut from Charlène Favier, is a very personal manifesto and a wake-up call on the topic of sexual abuse in sports. Painted with deep feeling and a superior sensitivity, the film brilliantly exposes the traumatic experience and psychological damage suffered by Lyz Lopez (Noée Abita), a 15-year-old skiing prodigy who falls in the hands of the transgressive and authoritarian Fred (Jérémie Renier), an ex-champion turned coach.

Lyz is very serious about skiing, and her goal is no less than reaching the top. She is fiercely encouraged - mostly never in a proper way - by her trainer, whom she thinks of with a mix of admiration and trepidation. His psychological and physical abuses create an emotional state of confusion and consternation that is transported to the screen with a chilling impact.

Although fictional, the film carries a semi-autobiographical weight up to a point, since Favier disclosed she was a victim of sexual violence in sports in her youth. The absence of parents has also played an important role in the story. 

Possessing a tight control over the camera and catching glimpses of details with astute intelligence, the filmmaker succeeds in laying bare the complexities of this ruinous teen-adult relationship. Abita, a revelation who rises to the challenge of letting us feel what the character is going through, and Renier, a confirmation whose presence has been foremost in the work of the Dardenne Brothers along the years, deliver crackerjack performances.

Slalom is convincingly raw and quietly creepy.

The Sparks Brothers (2021)

Direction: Edgar Wright
Country: UK / USA

This music documentary directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, 2004; Hot Fuzz, 2007; Baby Driver, 2017) about the odd, cartoonish and enigmatic group Sparks - composed of inseparable brothers Ron and Russell Mael - becomes overlong and unexciting as we are informed about the duo’s changes in style throughout the years (from proto-punk and glam-rock to danceable synth-pop and experimental dance-rock) and collaborations not only in music (Giorgio Moroder, The Go-Go’s Jane Wiedlin) but also in the movies (they wrote the script and compose the music for Leos Carax's musical Annette, and almost worked with Jacques Tati). The bizarre and kitsch glamour in their looks is also topic.

Employing too many interviewees in its lopsided structure - including music personalities such as Beck, Flea, Vince Clark, Thurston Moore, John Taylor and Nick Rhodes, as well as fans of the band - Wright affects the flow of the film, which stutters with repetition and monotonous episodes.

As the self-indulgence imposes, the film offers less and less. It’s difficult to imagine much of an audience for The Sparks Brothers; at least, some other than the cult-like admirers that idolize them.