Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Direction: Halina Reijn
Country: USA 

Directing from a screenplay by Sarah DeLappe, Dutch actress turned director Halina Reijn (Instinct, 2019) fabricates a repetitive, dodgy and sloppy horror farce bogged by unoriginal ideas. At an early stage, and despite the familiarity of the scenes, I gave it the benefit of the doubt. But as the story proceeds, I found myself scratching my head with boredom and impatience, with the film constantly struggling to impose an acceptable rhythm as well as failing to scare and surprise. 

The story recycles the models of other films, describing the sinister outcome of a drugs-and-alcohol-infused party held in a secluded house. In the sequence of a wink murder-style game played the young adult friends, real deaths start to occur. With a tropical storm enhancing the bad vibes, the film turns into a whodunit psychological fraud with a rancid conclusion. 

We are always a little off and the emotion suggested is totally fake as all the actors lack charisma. The banality of the dialogues and the unnatural hysteria is what really scared me, while its malfunctioning mechanics failed to cause anything other than a severe headache. Reduced to its miserable insignificance, Bodies Bodies Bodies is instantly forgotten.

The Other Tom (2022)

Direction: Rodrigo Plá, Laura Santullo
Country: Mexico

Husband and wife Rodrigo Plá and Laura Santullo have been working together since 2007 with successful results - he as a director; she as a screenwriter and occasionally producer - making the Uruguayan cinema more appealing. Titles such as The Zone (2007), The Delay (2012) and A Monster With a Thousand Heads (2015) put on display what they are capable of. Their latest drama, The Other Tom, marks the first time they share directorial duties.

The story brings into view the difficulties of Elena (Julia Chavez), a hardworking single mother who depends on the social services to eke out a living. Her life wouldn’t be so tumultuous if her nine-year-old son, Tom (Israel Rodriguez), didn’t have ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Syndrome). The kid, besides being sidelined at school, is treated with inadequate medication with dangerous side effects. What he wishes the most is to see his father (Rigo Zamarron) again, who keeps promising him a visit for three years. 

The Other Tom disappoints when it comes to pacing and sins for its length, but we must recognize in Plá and Santullo a fierce desire to battle the system and its injustices. Faithful to a naturalistic approach, the pair combines the inclusion of the sordid cruelty of reality and a certain candidness found in the mother-son relationship without taking much advantage of that. Their register is cadenced and lukewarm, and there’s almost no climax. 

Halfway through, the film spirals into a decrescendo of plot arcs that make it repetitive. Incapable of claiming an original identity, this is, nonetheless, a finely crafted picture where family values and the courage to revert an erroneous decision are present.

Vengeance (2022)

Direction: B.J. Novak
Country: USA 

B.J. Novak wrote, directed and starred in Vengeance, his first directorial feature. He is Ben, a New York writer and podcaster who has one of those real Texan experiences when practically forced to travel south in order to attend the funeral of a young woman with whom he had a one-night stand. With the help of her pro-gun family, he decides to dig more into the possible causes of her death, primarily identified as a drug overdose. This way, he turns the film into a crime investigation with a journalistic perspective and an Altman-esque American contemporaneity that gradually shapes as a self-discovery journey. 

The film seduces through provocative observations, in one of those rare cases where the characters and their lines are more absorbing than the images. Not that the visuals are bad, but the incisive social commentary about America (gun control, conspiracy theories, work ethics, law enforcement inefficacy, criminal negligence, and more) is what makes Vengeance a satisfying standout. It could have been another banal mystery film, but the cleverly written lines make it more than that. Only the acid conclusion wasn’t enough. Anyway, it was delicious fun watching Novak and Ashton Kutcher scratching under the varnish of American society with a sly tone, during their nearly philosophical discussions. 

With something pertinent to say, Vengeance normally breathes pocket-sized suspense into a story that also benefits from a good sense of pacing and unusual characters. Attentive viewers will definitely extract something from this neo-noir experience.

Bullet Train (2022)

Direction: David Leitch
Country: USA 

Based on the novel Maria Beetle by Japanese writer Kôtarô Isaka, Bullet Train marks the eighth collaboration between director David Leitch and actor Brad Pitt, who first worked together in Fight Club (1999). The story follows five assassins on mission on a high-speed train from Tokyo to Kyoto. Their goals, despite varied, are interrelated.

Imbued with cartoonish spirit, this indigestible fast-food-type of action-comedy tries to strike the eye with acrobatic moves but quickly sinks deep into labyrinthine involvements and the mistaken idea that ‘the more the stupidity, the more you laugh’. Leitch nods to Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, without equaling them, in an inconsistently unfunny exercise that shows emptiness of mind. The stunts, inspired by the slapstick comedy of Jackie Chan, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, are mostly dull, and the unattractive scenario is filled with thin characters, including a risible appearance by Sandra Bullock in the final minutes. 

Ineffectively blending different cultures to make a concoction of Japanese yakuza and manga styles, Mexican fury à-la Robert Rodriguez, an American stroke of nonsensical serendipity, and British Trainspotting-like tantrum, the film fails to drum up any kind of interest. I ended up asking myself what was more vexing in this film: the allusions to popular culture, the crass hypocrisy of an overworked plot, or the phony action sequences.

What Josiah Saw (2022)

Direction: Vincent Grashaw
Country: USA

Supported by actors always close to their characters, What Josiah Saw casts some obscurity in the first instance, gradually clearing the blurriness as we move into the revelatory and extremely disturbing third chapter. Director Vincent Grashaw conducts this Southern gothic procession with strong dramatic power and ominous tones, giving the best sequence to a tragic story written by Robert Alan Dilts. It’s a nightmarish journey of no return to hell, where the human center still holds for quite some time. Yet, the hope once insinuated soon goes up in flames.

The film reveals the paths of three shattered siblings - Thomas (Scott Haze), Eli (Nick Stahl) and Mary (Kelli Garner) - immediately before they reunite in the remote farmhouse where they grew up. Robert Patrick (the T-1000 of Terminator 2: Judgment Day), who plays their alcoholic father, Josiah, is remarkably good, and the eerie score by Robert Pycior empowers the desired slow-burning tension throughout. Here, family values are plowed under by greedy oil corporations but also by dark secrets, madness, and enduring suffering.

Tackling a few topics in need of renewal, Grashaw deserves to be saluted for handling a challenging structure with a firm hand while progressively escalating the tension. There’s absolutely nothing charming or pleasant in this bleak slow-burner, and what remains is both shocking and creepy-crawly enough to make us remember it.

Adieu Godard (2022)

Direction: Amartya Bhattacharyya
Country: India

Have you ever heard about Jean-Luc Godard movies being banned from a little village in India? Probably not, but this comedy written, directed and edited by Amartya Bhattacharyya fictionalizes that possibility with nearly cartoonish characters, cultural satire, and life-lesson intentions.

The plot follows Ananda (Choudhury Bikash Das), an old inhabitant from a small Indian village who has a reputation as a pervert. In truth, he is addicted to pornography, but that embarrassment changes on the day he gets to watch Godard’s masterpiece Breathless, which was given to him by mistake. From that moment on, he becomes so obsessed with the iconic French filmmaker that he proposes to organize a foreign film festival in an attempt to change the cultural torpor of the village. His friends are divided, whereas his studious daughter, Shilpa (Sudharsri Madhusmita), gets happy with the idea.

Armed with pragmatism in the execution (with the exception of the miscalculated fragments presented in color) and a compelling black-and-white cinematography, Adieu Godard lures at specific points but never hooks. The humor only works when the focus is on the confront between the festival organizers and the outraged villagers. 

By planning to cover too many topics, the director makes his mockery inevitably episodic, scattered, and sometimes too histrionic to fully captivate. It’s like if he had got lost in the smoke of his inspiration’s auteurism, incapable of propelling the story beyond the minimum basics.

Prey (2022)

Direction: Dan Trachtenberg
Country: USA 

10 Cloverfield Lane’s director, Dan Trachtenberg, proposes a prequel to the first four installments of The Predator franchise. Although he doesn’t properly innovate in Prey, he also doesn’t complicate, embracing narrative straightforwardness and modernizing through spectacular imagery and effects. 

The conventional yet functional screenplay by Patrick Aison takes us to the 18th-century Great Plains, describing the feminist conquest by Naru (Amber Midthunder), a relentless and brave young Comanche warrior who wants to prove to her family and tribe that, like her acknowledged brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers), she’s ready for big hunts. She tracks down no lion but a horrific alien predator (Dane DiLiegro) armed with technically advanced weaponry. 

This sci-fi horror action flick is exactly what you think it’s going to be, nothing more, and certainly nothing less. It doesn’t aim high, but from a rhythmic point of view the film never stops; it’s brisk in the moves and the director, showing off a luster for filming handsome, explores the possibilities of his story with technical accuracy. 

Flawed as it is, with a minimal narrative and a charismatic heroine, Prey is a suitable entertainment for a Sunday afternoon, doing simpler but better than those previous spinoffs and turgid sequels such as Predator 2 (1990), Predators (2010), and The Predator (2018).

Earwig (2022)

Direction: Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Country: UK / France / Belgium

This haunting, imminently methodic exercise directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic is replete with pathos and stoic silences. A thread of disquietness infiltrates every pore of our skin while watching a taciturn, solitary middle-aged caretaker (Paul Hilton in an outstanding performance) employed to house-sitting a 10-year-old girl (Romane Hemelaers) in need of special dental care. 

The French director of Bosnian descent rubbed elbows with Geoff Cox (High Life, 2018) in the script, adapting Brian Catling’s beautifully written novel with dreamlike realism. Following the 2015 horror thriller film Evolution, this was the second time they worked together. 

From the very first minutes, we are captive to the bizarre enchantment of a psychological drama, whose style goes hand in hand with some deliberate narrative cloudiness. Occasionally erratic, it's still rewarding, with the abstruse tones and noir tinges evoking the worlds of Kafka, Murnau, Von Trier, and Borges. 

The early moments, slow but never discouraging, force one to search for more than what the eyes are seeing. It takes 24 minutes for the first line to be said, and then the ambiguity gradually dissipates until a final scene that, being so sad and ferocious, made me realize this wasn’t a passive viewing experience. 

Portending great things for the director, Earwig is somber and quiet, a canvas exquisitely painted with the talents of cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg (The Death of Louis XIV, 2016; Still Life, 2016), and with something undeniably effective about its creepiest moments.

Nope (2022)

Direction: Jordan Peele
Country: USA

Nope is Jordan Peele’s worst show; a completely missed shot by the director of Get Out (2017) and Us (2019). Limited in scope and visually unattractive, the film is presented with a messy structure and anticlimactic developments. On top of that, the contrasting performances by the leads, Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer (he is hyper passive; she is annoyingly electric), are both debilitated and forgettable. 

They pair of actors play siblings - OJ and Emerald - whose remote horse ranch at Agua Dulce, California, becomes a UFO hotspot with intriguing daily activity. To discover more about it, the siblings enlist tech expert Angel Torres (Brandon Perea) and renowned cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) as allies in their attempt to capture the occurrences. Yet, the threatening flying saucer, nicknamed Jean Jacket, abducts showman and former child actor Jupe (Steven Yeun) as well as his audience and animals.

The film, besides being emotionally handicapped by its ridiculous ambition to get near Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, feels interminable. Its tempting science-fiction concepts are overwhelmed by an apathetic atmosphere, plot inconsistencies, and sequences of pretentious gibberish and empty silences. Thus, the meek mysteries are meager for real enthusiasts of sci-fi, while the script is too cautious for the ones who look for a consistent, good story.

Peele expects us to react to disturbing energetic fields and intermittent power outages that never cause uneasiness. More audacity was expected from him. Do I recommend it? The answer is in the title.

Resurrection (2022)

Direction: Andrew Semans
Country: USA 

The tension accumulated in Resurrection, Andrew Semans’ sophomore feature, doesn’t take you anywhere but a dead end where you are left with lots of unanswered questions. This psychological thriller tries to disturb with the wrong elements, and the film’s examination of traumatic maternity, physical and psychological abuse, and madness falls short.

Rebecca Hall doesn’t have a single bad scene in it, and yet the deliriously tedious story meanders towards an exaggerated conclusion that is almost drastically fun in a portentous sort of way. She is Margaret, a successful forty-something businesswoman and suffocating single mother who’s been living a peaceful, stable life for 22 years in Albany, New York. Before that, in her late teens, she was heavily brainwashed, intimidated and harmed by a much older boyfriend, David Moore (Tim Roth). When she first spots him in town, an uncontrollable fear, followed by a severe panic attack, takes hold of her. He came to demand a few more “kindnesses” from her, which are nothing but insane requests supposed to ease her pain from a guilty past. 

A better script might have helped, but without it, this one shapes up as another manipulative nonsense that rarely dares to be smart. The characters don’t convince and the film ultimately frustrates by not knowing its own limitations. In the face of these predicaments, I’m actually upset about how little the movie even tried to escape inveterate clumsiness.

Broker (2022)

Direction: Hirokazu Koreeda
Country: South Korea

Following a first international production in 2019 with the charming French drama The Truth, the highly celebrated Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda (Nobody Knows, 2004; Shoplifters, 2018) decided to shoot his next film in South Korea. Broker mixes conscious drama and light comedy, starring the acclaimed Song Kang-ho (Memories of Murder, 2003; Parasite, 2019), the unsung Gang Dong-won (Peninsula, 2020), and the popular singer/songwriter Lee Ji-eun.

The themes of family, abandonment, and adoption suit Koreeda once again, but this time around, the narrative is pelted with problems that range from a sleep-inducing tone to an often unexciting course of events. The plot, pointing out the controversial baby boxes where mothers can drop their infants to be adopted, ends up in a life-changing road trip that unites a dissatisfied young mother (Ji-eun) with the two men - laundromat owner Sang-hyeon (Kang-ho) and formerly rejected child Dong-soo (Dong-won) - that illegally plan to make a good sum with the selling of her child. 

Never heart-wrenching, Broker is mounted with simplicity but not enough wit and grit to make our day. The detective side of the story is clumsy; it simply doesn’t work, no matter how many turns the plot can give. On the emotional side, the film only impressed me once, in a strong scene on the Ferris wheel that felt like a short rebirth of Koreeda’s best dramatic qualities. There are some innocent moments of humor that don’t save the film from its graceless staging. 

Despite glimpses of a hard-earned affection, Koreeda’s road movie is a soulless exercise that sinks the cast in a dry land of forced, melodramatic resolutions. This is particularly obvious for Kang-ho, whose acting capabilities deserve more credibility than what is showed in this flat performance.

Girl Picture (2022)

Direction: Alli Haapasalo
Country: Finland

Directing from an estimable script by Ilona Ahti and Daniela Hakulinen, Finnish director Alli Haapasalo (his feature debut Love & Fury was a screen adaptation of Anja Snellman's novel Autumn Prince) tells the story of three young women in search of love, acceptance, and the knowledge of pleasure. The result is interesting, if not really exciting; realistic but with a shallow depth of field.

Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) and Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen) are best friends seeking new experiences and a more active life beyond the smoothie kiosk where they work. The former starts a queer relationship with Emma (Linnea Leino), a dedicated ice skater with practically no social life; the latter, troubled by the early insecurities and discomforts related to sex, tries several boys with more disappointment than excitement.

Although it was Milonoff who got the award for outstanding performance in an international narrative feature at the L.A. Outfest, the debutant Kauhanen was the most compelling of the three actors, playing her role with a charming awkwardness and a certain candor. 

One can easily connect with the young women’s personal conflicts thanks to the sensitivity of the acting and a concern for realism in the direction. Even pedestrian in places and smeared with a jumble soundtrack, Girl Picture is an observant coming-of-age picture with real substance.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022)

Direction: Anthony Fabian
Country: UK / France / Hungary

This third adaptation of the 1958 classic novel by Paul Gallico, originally titled Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, ensures an over-the-top fun that other versions couldn’t manage to get. The plot, set in the 1950s, hinges on the scintillating performance by Lesley Manville (Another Year, 2010; Phantom Thread, 2017), who plays the eternally optimistic and good-hearted Ada Harris, a widowed residential housekeeper from London who falls head over heels for a haute couture Dior dress. This capricious circumstance takes her to Paris, where she meets Christian Dior in person, and befriends some of his employees. 

Here you have a gloriously enchanting old-fashioned tale retaken to the screen with polished and colorful new tones, balancing happy and sad moments with virtue. The story, depicted with a sweet retro flavor, takes unexpected poignant overtones along the way, but Manville simpers with affection, making every impossible dream come true with benevolence and soul. 

Isabelle Huppert is great as the snob Dior director, Claudine Colbert, and other on-target supporting roles by Lambert Wilson, Alba Baptista, and Lucas Bravo help to get the film out of the ordinary. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is both funny and full-bodied, pleasurable and bouncing. It’s the type of cozy, uplifting film that can easily brighten someone’s day.

Lost Illusions (2022)

Direction: Xavier Giannoli
Country: France

Lost Illusions is a resolute, playful, and contemporary adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s three-part classic of the same. The material is not a walk in the park, but director Xavier Giannoli, who wrote the screenplay with Jacques Fieschi, nails it with cleverness rather than brilliance.

The story revolves around the rise and fall of Lucien de Rubempré (Benjamin Voisin), a self-confident young poet from Angoulême turned journalist of the moment in Paris with the influence of his friend Ettiene Lousteau (Vincent Lacoste), a crooked art critic paid to write lies in an influential local newspaper. Inhabiting a phony world populated by fragile puppets, Lucien makes amends with his former lover, the sincere patroness of the arts Louise de Bargeton (Cécile de France); contends with the latter’s noxious cousin, the Marquise D’Espard (Jeanne Balibar); opposes and then befriends the seductive writer Raoul Nathan (Xavier Dolan); meets Dauriat (Gérard Depardieu), a peculiar publisher who doesn’t know how to read nor write; and embraces the actress Coralie (Salomé Dewaels), who is about to make her first big appearance on stage with a play by Racine. 

Tonally unalterable, the film’s happenings always seem far from a true climax while trying to play as a modern fresco. It’s a tragedy of hypocrisy and ambition that gets somewhat clumsy when it tries to build bridges with the present. Yet, its literary schemes, vain aristocratic pose, and an assortment of comportments that oppose liberals and royalists sometimes provide us with a good laugh.

Anchoring his period drama with a killer cast, Giannoli expresses his desire to mix lyrical and satirical spark, but he draws the film out and comes nowhere near Balzac’s serial novel. A word of praise for Belgian cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne, whose refined taste for visuals is remarkable.

Man of God (2022)

Direction: Yelena Popovic
Country: Greece 

Man of God chronicles the life of Saint Nectarios of Aegina from 1889, when he was serving as a bishop in Cairo, until his death from prostate cancer on the Greek island of Aegina in 1920. He lived all his life piously, only being posthumously declared a saint by the Greek Orthodox Church in 1961. Popular among the faithful and persecuted by jealous colleagues and superiors, this holy man was convicted without a trial, unjustly exiled, and later accused of immorality while running a convent of nuns. 

Spiritual inspiration and benevolence in opposition to conspiracy mar the biopic with an irresistible premise, but, unfortunately, the sophomore Serbian writer-director Yelena Popovic was unable to match the beauty of it on the screen, failing in every aspect. Man of God suffers from slowdowns, uneven transitions in time, unnatural scenes spoken in Greek-accented English, and some naivety in the proceedings. Even providing us with an opportunity to know more about this remarkable Greek Orthodox saint, Popovic struggled all the way with blandness and never found the key to rehabilitate the clerical figure in question. There was obviously much more to this man. 

Aris Servetalis, who plays Nectarios, has been delivering terrific performances in his still short career - Alps (2011), The Waiter (2018), Apples (2020) - but this particular role didn't allow him to shine. Mickey Rourke, curiously listed second in the film’s acting credits, has a brief four-minute appearance as a paralyzed man. While the film's goal is to pay homage to Saint Nectarios, it never goes beyond stilted representation. The narrative plummets with its conventional tone, and then the whole film with its stiff formality.

The Medium (2022)

Direction: Banjong Pisanthanakun
Country: Thailand 

All filmed in documentary mode with plenty of folkloric practices and shamanic tradition, this possession-themed horror Thai film got me really hooked until halfway. Then, it started revolving around images that kept repeating before reaching an excessively strained denouement that fails to convince. 

The film, co-written by director Banjong Pisanthanakun and first-time producer Na Hong-Jin (The Chaser, 2008; The Wailing, 2016), is segmented into three parts: the first one, exotic and truly enigmatic, captivates without resorting to cynicism or post-modernistic tactics; the second, more classic and longer, stirs up confrontations and revelations; and finally, the extremist third part whose staged panache is overdone with multiple gory effects and paranormal night vision. This decrescendo is perceived from the minute everything starts to speed up.

Taking place in a small Thai village, the story, describing an ancient family blessing turned grievous curse, is captured by a film crew while working on a documentary about Nim (Sawanee Utoomma), a shamanic priestess in distress about the disturbing behavior of her niece, Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech). 

Bringing a fair share of lingering images and scares, the director also makes it too long and stuffy, in a typical case where less would be better. Nonetheless, the acting is pretty decent and the sound design by Chatchai Pongprapaphan plays effectively throughout.

The Restless (2021)

Direction: Joachim Lafosse
Country: Belgium / France / Luxembourg

The subject of this intimate drama co-written and directed by Joachim Lafosse is bipolar disorder and the possible damage it can do to a relationship. As a result of this terrible illness, Damien (Damien Bonnard), a gifted painter, undergoes agitated manic episodes that don’t let him sleep for days in a row, as well as long periods of depression that hamper him from leaving his bed. There are moments when he loses the notion of what’s acceptable, and others when his tired body gives up.

His wife Leila (Leïla Bekhti) takes care of him patiently, but things have been getting out of control lately. Exhausted to the bone, she no longer manages to be a mother, his wife, and nurse at the same time. The romance between them is in jeopardy due to Damien’s indiscipline. Trust doesn’t abound, and Leila’s reluctance to giving him another chance is perfectly understandable. It’s serious the impasse they reached.

Lafosse, who has a knack for rigorous marital dramas (Our Children, 2012; After Love, 2016), keeps his sober sense of direction, channeling different kinds of energy with a steady hand and the help of the lead actors. Still, a few scenes marred by repetition should have been staged with even rawer appeal. 

Not reaching extraordinary levels but eluding sentimentality thanks to the director's taste for realism and the accuracy of the performers, the film observes clinically and documents appropriately the particularities and difficulties of bipolar patients. This was Bonnard show all the way; he didn’t squander the opportunity to showcase his performing talents.

The Forgiven (2022)

Direction: John Michael McDonagh
Country: UK

This adaptation of Lawrence Osborne’s book of the same name by director John Michael McDonagh isn’t exactly flat at its core, but it never comes together, resulting in an almost entirely predictable misfire. Bolstered with the solid acting of Ralph Fiennes (The Constant Gardener, 2005; Spider, 2002) and Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty, 2012; The Eyes of Tammy Faye, 2021), The Forgiven says too little as it attempts to formulate a direct critique of the cynical, hedonistic, and affluent Western dominance of African countries and the subjugation of their people. McDonagh, who impressed crowds with bold films such as The Guard (2011) and Calvary (2014), ran out of gas here as he sticks to a tightly wound narrative that, promising to surprise, lingers forever. He clearly looks for depth and maturity but ends up grabbing some dust in the air.

A terrible accident while driving through the Moroccan desert has profound repercussions on the lives of the Henningers, a wealthy British couple. He is David (Fiennes), a contemptuous alcoholic doctor whose words are constantly loaded with sarcasm; she is Jo (Chastain), a dissatisfied writer of children’s books who is open to new romantic adventures. While David agrees to be taken by the grieving Moroccan father (Ismael Kanater) whose son he ran over, Jo instantly forgets him, especially when Tom (Christopher Abbott), a gallant financial analyst from New York, is around. 

Superiority, mercy, compassion, and atonement are dutifully stitched into a diagrammatic patchwork that captures better the gut-ache of a broken 12-year marriage than anything else. A restrained, tepid tone is maintained throughout a drama film that should have added a little extra bite.

My Donkey, My Lover and I (2022)

Direction: Caroline Vignal
Country: France

This more-annoying-than-seductive French rom-com by writer-director Caroline Vignal (Girlfriends, 2000) follows Antoinette Lapouge (Laure Calamy), an impulsive, cheeky schoolteacher who follows her married lover (Benjamin Lavernhe) to the Cévennes, a South-Central region in France with vast, often uncultivated landscapes where he’s enjoying a trekking holidays in family. Once there, she realizes that no one understands her better than the overprotective donkey that makes her company.

Vignal, who took inspiration from Robert Louis Stevenson's 1879 book Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, was already bewitched by the scenery of this national park, where she had spent a week in 2010 with her family. Working from her light, thin and transparent script, the director totally relies on the freewheeling performance of Calamy, who, hanging on the wire between ecstasy and fragility, gives the film an air of sweet fantasy. She comes up against the limits of the script, though. 

Colorful but with no major throbs, this uninspired walk in nature seems content with a few vaguely droll sketches that can get excessively wearisome. The scenes with Antionette and Patrick, the donkey, are oft-repeated and unimaginative, playing again and again until our patience wears thin. But most of all, the biggest problem with the film is not being funny enough. 

A Balance (2022)

Direction: Yujiro Harumoto
Country: Japan

The protracted drama A Balance, the sophomore feature by Japanese helmer Yujiro Harumoto (Going the Distance, 2016), is generally more wobbly than balanced, and not just regarding the handheld camera. Although the film ultimately achieves its function of exposing sexual abuse at school and make the Japanese society alert, its documentary-like representation fails to stir emotions consistently. Unfortunately, Harumoto doesn't touch our hearts as much as he thinks he does, creating a cinematic object that is problematic in various aspects. This story about sexual crimes, cover ups, and lies is not devoid of interest, but following a decent buildup, falls apart in subsequent scenes bathed in inertia, with nothing fresh or exciting about them.

At the center, we have documentarian Yuko (Kumi Takiuchi), who, through her camera lens, seeks the truth about a presumable case of sexual harassment at school that ended in double suicide. She’s impartial and righteous, exposing the truth and the impact that the case had on the victims’ families. But when facing a similar case that implicates her own father (Masahiro Umeda), who runs the cram school where she teaches, her moral consciousness becomes blurred and her behavior questionable. It’s not a dichotomy between fiction and reality that one finds here. It’s more about truth and falsity. 

The performances hit the right notes and both the scenario and the moral dilemma are credible, and yet they lost the battle with 152 minutes of slow pacing and silences that cause a certain boredom. The whole filming technique is also documentary-style but the path that leads to the ending is not as strong as it should be. A Balance seems more like a product of an appalling naivety.