White Noise (2023)

Direction: Noah Baumbach
Country: USA 

In White Noise, Oscar-winning writer-director Noah Baumbach (Frances Ha, 2012; Marriage Story, 2019) probes a different style, attempting to charm with adventure, crime thriller, and family comedy. The outcome of his first-ever adaptation is too theoretical and uneven to subsist. With Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name in mind, and showcasing an excellent pair of actors like Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, Baumbach couldn’t quite handle the odd material. The course of events is perhaps excessively elaborated and the dramatic stakes feel rather low.  

The story, set in the 1980s, focuses on the Gladneys and how they react to a hazardous cloud of deadly chemicals, the fear of death (who thought of Woody Allen?), and the physical and psychological effects of an experimental drug not listed in the pharmacies. Jack (Driver) is a Nazism expert and professor who enjoys knotty chatting with his Elvis-devotee fellow, Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle); Babette (Gerwig), who normally reveals and confides, is visibly depressed as she goes through a difficult phase marked by insecurity and obscurity.

With its derivative style and witless plot-twists, the film aspires to be grandiose, comprehensive, and clever but falls flat. Baumbach quickly loses control of his film and often struggles to keep the story afloat, leaving us on the sidelines. White Noise is a disjointed and deliberately delirious monument, whose ambition is overburdened with messed-up ideas and genres, and whose required excitement becomes a tricky thing to pull off. In the end, this offbeat journey has no discernible point, and the only thing one can enjoy is the actors’ qualified performances.

The Swimmers (2022)

Direction: Sally El-Hosaini
Country: UK / Syria / other

Sally El-Hosaini’s The Swimmers is an effective dramatization of the true story of two teenage Syrian sisters - Yusra and Sarah Mardini - who fled their country to the Greek island of Lesbos in awful circumstances. Once in Germany, their final destination, Yusra (Nathalie Issa) resumes her swimming practice and joins the Refugee Olympic Team in Rio de Janeiro, while Sarah (Manal Issa) opts to aid other refugees who had to go through the same hazardous journey across the Aegean Sea. 

There are moments of sadness, panicking, excitement, and joy to be felt; at the same time, the film brings out the exploitation exerted by the greedy human smugglers, as well as the multiple dangers the migrants are exposed to in route. Although never boring or pointless, the film deals with its own adversities, sometimes numbed by a few sloppy transitions and the need of extracting emotion from every scene. Maybe for that reason, the film may feel a little extended and gradually less intense as the clock keeps running. 

Having said that, The Swimmers could have been a sentimental film, but it's not, because El-Hosaini bothered to assemble a canny combination of elements that resulted more fruitful than was expected. Taking advantage of a neat production and strong performances, she puts the focus on the refugees’ problem and gives it extra seasoning with a personal conquest in sports.

Glass Onion (2022)

Direction: Rian Johnson
Country: USA

Referencing a song of The Beatles, Glass Onion is the anticipated sequel to the well-received mystery film Knives Out (2019). The latter, without being brilliant, happens to be better than what it is offered now by the writer-director Rian Johnson, whose directorial peak occurred in 2012 with the ingenious Looper. 

Daniel Craig reprises his role as the low-key detective Benoit Blanc, who travels to the private Greek island of tech billionaire Miles Born (Edward Norton) to unravel a silly mystery involving five of his colorful, wealthy friends. 

Slackened by a low flow of energy, the film is reduced to a series of diffused circumstances that just want to prove how eccentric these characters are. It's not hard to find your way around, but the film offers no clever touches and there’s nothing really new. Occasionally, the dialogues proliferate across the general monotony with moderate invigoration, especially when hitting celebrities, but this drawn-out crime episode lacks the investigative depth required to surpass superficiality. 

Linearly plotted, Glass Onion is stunningly unfunny and desperately wacky; a barely coherent mess moved by a silly game with no thrills and no real mystery. The resolution of the puzzle is simply vomited without a gradual crescendo, making this second Knives Out installment a flat response to what was demanded by the fans of the original.

Alcarrás (2022)

Direction: Carla Simón
Country: Spain 

Alcarrás is an aptly mounted and realistic drama that, even without echoing long after its ending, deals passively with a family of peach farmers confronted with modern day’s changes under the veil of progression. Facing eviction from the land they’ve been cultivating for ages and losing their game to big companies and economic interests, the Solés have their livelihood threatened in the small rural village of Alcarrás in Catalonia. 

In order to make her sophomore feature more genuine, director Carla Simón chose to work with non-professional actors, inhabitants of this region of Spain who speak a very specific Catalan dialect. The relatively extensive ensemble cast in this film mirrors her own family, and it is by measuring the impact on family that she finds the heart of her film. She aims right but without surprise. There's a touch of contrivance to the set-up, but the performances strike some balance between heartfelt and hand-wringing. We have seen this before and done better, and yet, the intention is sincere if not too soulful or demonstrative. 

The personality of each adult comes to fore, while the children, always getting in the middle of things and living in their own world, create more friction during an extremely difficult situation. The actors end up being the true catalyzers of the story. 

Faithful to a naturalistic approach, Simón engages in repetitive scenarios to give substance to the sad reality of an incomprehensible precariousness.

Aftersun (2022)

Direction: Charlotte Wells
Country: UK / USA 

From the first sequence of Aftersun, the remarkable directorial debut by Charlotte Wells, when the 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) asks her dad, Calum (Paul Mescal), if his current life matches the one he dreamed of when he was her age, one can tell that something is wrong. Father and daughter spend some good time together in a resort in Turkey. It’s clear that Calum, who is in his 30s, will soon leave home and his family. Having a strong bond with Sophie, who shares a deep understanding of his volatile emotional states, he does everything to make their summer vacation perfect. But every little annoyance seems to affect him more than it should, and his mood darkens as the days go by.

There’s a languishing warmth here but also something so sad and melancholy that we feel it deep inside our chests. Watching this is like having a constant lump in your throat; memories that break your heart; a nearly consummate rendering of an affectionate remembrance. It’s a genuinely moving and mature film where the precision of feelings and the subtlety of the states of mind are precious. After acknowledging the success of the Scottish director, both in form and content, I felt the urge to revisit her film and extract more from the remarkable simplicity and delicacy with which is made. Everything here suggests an autobiographical story, but personal or not, the result is so complete and with a contemporary bent that the names of Joanna Hogg and Mia Hansen-Love crossed my mind.

Aftersun is a ripe, sensitive and slightly mysterious drama film served by great actors and crystallized by a rigorous staging and a deeper sense of observation. Evolving slowly but with enchantment, the film will reward patient viewers with its magnificent unfolding and nostalgic conclusion. Crediting Barry Jenkins, the director of Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, as one of its producers, and boasting a stunning soundtrack, Aftersun is simply memorable at all fronts. The purity of look makes it a 2022 highlight.

Holy Spider (2022)

Direction: Ali Abbasi
Country: Iran

Holy Spider, Ali Abbasi’s third feature film, didn’t have the desired impact in me because of its narrative process. The director, who teamed up with Afshin Kamran Bahrami in the script, based himself in the real serial murder case that led Saeed Hanaei, an ultra-religious bricklayer and ex-war vet, to kill 16 women between 2000 and 2001 in the holy Iranian city of Mashhad. Abbasi, who marveled many cinephiles in 2018 with Border, deliberately deviated from the facts in an attempt to give misogyny a broader sense. He shot the film in Jordan.

The relatively unknown Iranian-French actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi plays the journalist who would be key in the capture of Saeed, impersonated without brilliancy by Mehdi Bajestani. Even when resisting thrills, this rote serial-killer thriller work minimally, but Holy Spider is too programmatic and a bit academic in its effort to denounce Iran’s religious fanaticism and discrimination against women. Methodically paced, the film keeps you squirming in your seat, but then the characters feel a bit superficial and the homicidal rampage seldom surprising. 

Nadim Carlsen’s artfully unsoiled cinematography adds an air of suffocating rectitude in a sick machismo manifesto that, alternating strong and fragile sections, piles up crime scenarios with intermittent tension. The coldness of the director’s gaze ends up freezing our blood. This is aggravated by the fact that we know upfront who the killer is. The semi-fictional account could have benefited from darker atmospheres, while the legacy of blood and murder left by the proud killer is somewhat turned lighter by the end. Holy Spider doesn’t add up to a fully realized thriller.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Direction: Martin McDonagh
Country: Ireland / UK / USA 

This funny, incisive blend of absurd dark comedy and period drama is sometimes uncomfortable to watch and somewhat cruel at the core. The Banshees of Inisherin was written and directed by Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, 2017), who elaborated a severe reflection on the human condition with depressing sadness and existential despair. On this account, he probed low-angle shots inspired by John Ford and Sergio Leone’s westerns.

 The story takes place on the fictional island of Inisherin, a mix of the West coast Irish islands of Inishmore and Achill, where the film was shot with local support. Lifelong friends, Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), find themselves at an impasse when the latter decides to end their friendship in a precipitous way. Padraic doesn’t accept his decision and invariably attempts a reconnection. His insistence, however, impels his resolute former friend to take radical measures.

The escalation of violence goes hand in hand with the slow passing of time in this peculiar remote island pelted with boredom and pride. Each shot, magnified by the beauty of sumptuous virgin landscapes and natural settings, makes tempting to say that the film is a case of style over substance. Yet, a lot of essence is found in this stylish depiction of frustration, abandonment, and loneliness, while pertinently questioning our humanity. 

Gleeson and Farrell, the same duo that starred in In Bruges (2008), shine in their extraordinary offbeat roles, heavily contributing to a beer-sipper of an entertainment that comes in the form of a borderline experience. Insensitively dark, peculiarly humorous and wildly depressing, The Banshees of Inisherin touches the puerile, the hilarious and the creepy.