Close (2023)

Direction: Lukas Dhont
Country: Belgium / France / Netherlands

Lukas Dhont’s sophomore feature, Close, is an unheralded gem of a motion picture, and one of the most authentic depictions of teenage tragedy in memory. If the 31-year-old Belgian director, a specialized artisan in filming adolescence and the quest for identity, had made a name for himself with Girl (2018), he now takes a huge leap forward with a deeply moving drama about two inseparable 13-year-old friends, whose special connection is suddenly disrupted in the face of the quick judgment shown by their schoolmates. Tragedy leads to guilt, whose corrosiveness is deterrent to a normal life. 

It’s impossible not to be taken in by this devastating and powerful film marked by standout nuanced performances from the two young leads, Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele. One simply finds perfection in their acting debuts.

Finely framed and tightly constructed, the film deals with emotions that swell significantly in non-flashy ways. Every occasion is clearly expressed, including the beautiful scenes between mothers and sons. I found the payoff considerably higher here than in the majority of movies about the same topic. One thing is certain: after watching Close, you won't forget its protagonists such is the intimacy and pain associated with their interactions. 

While working on the thoughtful screenplay, Dhont drew inspiration from the book Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection by psychology professor Niobe Way. His formidable film was the recipient of Cannes Grand Prix and lingers in my head since I’ve watched it.

The Starling Girl (2023)

Direction: Laura Parmet
Country: USA 

The Starling Girl focuses on the negative impact of fanatic religious communities on young women's lives who are still searching for an identity. The drama, written and directed by debutant Laura Parmet, stars Australian-born actress Eliza Scanlen (Babyteeth, 2019), who, strong in her role, oscillates between uncontrollable desire and intense guilt.

In an ultra-conservative Christian small-town in Kentucky, the 17-year old Jem Starling (Scanlen) slowly  awakes to sexuality and love when the local pastor’s elder son, Owen Taylor (Lewis Pullman), 28, returns from Puerto Rico. But Owen, a youth pastor himself, is married, and it’s his tedious brother, Ben (Austin Abrams), who asks her family permission to court her (a community tradition), with a clear intention to marry her in the future.

Although the film seems more likable than incisive or original, the patchy romance at the center is not stale. There’s also family problems, oodles of hypocrisy and public humiliation, while the slowness of the staging is commensurate with the labor of a story that overwhelms. But, in the end, does the film reach the depth expected? Just about. Disregarding the flat, unsatisfying ending, there are a few disturbing and dramatic moments of quiet power.

The themes, emphasizing the clash between feelings and values, will resonate with free spirited individuals as much as it will upset fanatical religious devotees.

Pamfir (2023)

Direction: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
Country: Ukraine 

Pamfir, the feature debut by Ukrainian writer-director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, flirts with the aggressiveness of Guy Ritchie’s early films and the bleakness of Sergei Loznitsa’s tales of hopelessness. The film, rudimentary but not excessively violent, follows Leonid a.k.a. Pamfir (Oleksandr Yatsentyuk), a former smuggler who returns to his tiny rural village in West Ukraine - located on the border with Romania - after several months working in Poland. Although happy to stay with his family - wife Olena (Solomiya Kyrylova) and son Nazar (Stanislav Potiak) - the monolithic Leonid falls into the same traps of the past to mend his son’s imprudent actions. 

Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk paints a dark and desperate portrait of a crumbling Ukraine marked by crime lords, the loss of values, traditional folklore (Malanka holiday), and the generalized corruption of public authorities. With a heavy atmosphere, Greek stoicism, and unmerited misfortune, this is an aesthetically strong picture lit by the magnificent work of director of photography, Nikita Kuzmenko. 

Pamfir finds limited options to deal with unexpected predicaments in a contemporary tragedy that is pretty decent but harsh. In his debut, and due to the script’s nature, Yatsentyuk conveys more action than emotion. His professionalism is never in question though.

Last Night of Amore (2023)

Direction: Andrea Di Stefano
Country: Italy

Embracing gritty neo-noir flavors, Last Night of Amore is the latest film by Italian writer-director Andrea Di Stefano, whose previous works include Escobar: Paradise Lost (2014) and The Informer (2019).

This is the story of Milan police lieutenant Franco Amore (played with charisma by Pierfrancesco Favino), known not only for his adamantine honesty but also for never having shot a gun over the course of his 35-year career. On the eve of his retirement, his life is turned upside down after an on-the-side security job goes wrong. Unexpectedly, it’s his super ambitious wife, Viviana (Linda Caridi), who pulls him out of a deep, dark hole. 

Shot in 35mm, this cop thriller mounted with a mix of plausible and beyond-belief scenarios, has its narrative set against the backdrop of a heated, disturbing Milan where the Italian and Chinese mafias cooperate with cynicism. Di Stefano knows his way around the genre and provides the adequate classic structure and the desperate, nocturnal atmosphere to make it noir. Even so, stalling moments found in the loopy middle part of the film weaken a tale that is only lifted up again by an amusing epilogue. Moreover, the Chinese characters are depicted as caricatures of themselves and never really look scary or even serious. 

Not even close to mind-blowing, Last Night of Amore still comes shrouded in an acceptable aura of obscurity that triggers curiosity.

Full Time (2023)

Direction: Eric Gravel
Country: France

French writer-director Eric Gravel (Crash Test Aglaé, 2017) deserves all the praise he gets for Full Time, an excellent sophomore feature and sharp social observation of extraordinary impact. Strong in its commitment, the film also owes a lot to Laure Calamy (Only the Animals, 2019; My Donkey, My Lover & I, 2020), whose exceptional performance clarifies the reality of Julie, a single mother who struggles to raise her two children in the countryside while working in a demanding five-star Parisian hotel. 

The days start very early for Julie, who risks everything to change her life. While managing her limited time to go to a job interview at a distinguished market research company, she meets with considerable difficulties: a general strike, a complaining nanny, an inflexible supervisor, and an irresponsible ex-husband that leaves her financially tied up. Trapped in a hectic lifestyle, it’s the people and the city itself that don’t let her breathe. But as a strong and determined fighter, she admirably pushes back against adversity. And that’s the richness of a film that many people will be able to relate to. 

Gravel’s realism finds the right pacing, and the taut script, although precise and controlled, is implemented with dynamic camera movements and an efficient editing that help extract tension from the real-world scenes. Designed to provoke anxiety, Full Time is more gripping than most of the recent thrillers I’ve seen lately. And how could one not admire a woman who, constantly on the edge, refuses to collapse and keeps fighting for a better tomorrow?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Direction: James Mangold
Country: USA

In the fifth installment of the widely popular Indiana Jones franchise, our eponymous adventurer (Harrison Ford) is retired, solitary and aging. However, he makes a final effort to adapt to a jumbled new world where even his young goddaughter, Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), becomes an art smuggler addicted to cash. She operates with the backing of a smart kid, Teddy (Ethann Isidore), who can even pilot a plane without ever being inside one. The three join forces to prevent an old Nazi rival, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), from stealing an invaluable relic. 

At 154 minutes, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny lacks a dramatic arc matching its length, being flat in the ideas and mechanical in the moves. Just like has been happening with the majority of Marvel spin-offs, there’s an attempt to overcome artistic laziness with technical prowess, which makes numerous action scenes feel insipid. Thus, we get that strange impression that Steven Spielberg - the director of all previous installments and just a producer here - would make this film more adventurous and entertaining than James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, 2007; Logan, 2017; Ford v Ferrari, 2019). 

Hence, there are only hints of the old good salad but lots of mediocre dressing on this plate. The uninspired plotting comes with banal dialogue, while the action scenes, despite fast-paced, are pretty unimaginative regardless if they occur on land, air or water. Unless you have a thing for Ford, you're better off discarding this fun-free episode that typifies today’s obtuse contemporary movie culture.

Afire (2023)

Direction: Christian Petzold
Country: Germany

Celebrated German filmmaker Christian Petzold (Phoenix, 2014; Transit, 2018; Undine, 2020) wrote Afire, a bleak and cerebral drama piece made of small but estimable details, as an intriguing character study. Inspired by Eric Rohmer’s summer tales and Anton Chekhov’s 1896 short story The House with the Mezzanine, the director manages to get our attention as his fictional story unfolds with raw and uncensored power.

Leon (Thomas Schubert), a young published author, and Felix (Langston Uibel), a photographer and art school applicant, decide to spend a working holiday in the latter’s family house in a remote area by the Baltic Sea. Once they get there, they realize the house is already occupied by Nadja (Paula Beer working here with the director for the third time in a row), who is very sweet, untidy and sometimes noisy. She doesn’t say much about herself. Whereas the selfish and uptight Leon is too frustrated and obsessed with writing his second novel to have fun with the others, the outgoing Felix and the luminous Nadja never miss an opportunity to socialize and enjoy the sea. There’s a massive forest fire nearby that suddenly poses a threat; yet everyone seems deeply immersed in their own thing to notice. 

Petzold controls the staging with a firm hand, developing intriguing character dynamics. But do the narrative parts build into something valuable as a whole? The conclusion, associating accomplished writing with something that has to be experienced, isn’t so convincing. Ultimately, in the impossibility of feel any sympathy for the sulky protagonist, we have the raw fragility of humans and the legitimacy of neat performances to cling to. At the very least, it’s interesting to see how strangers react under certain circumstances and how convivial atmospheres can get acerbic when someone in the group contaminates them. 

Petzold’s Afire is an erratic endeavor that can be considered minor within a filmography of so many accomplishments. Although imperfect, it deserves a favorable mention.

Stars at Noon (2023)

Direction: Claire Denis
Country: France / Panama / other

French director Claire Denis, who gave us unique moments of cinema with Beau Travail (1999), White Material (2009) and High Life (2018), based herself on the 1986 novel The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson for this new drama/thriller of the same name. In it, a young American journalist, Trish (Margaret Qualley), is stranded in Nicaragua with no money and no passport. To survive, she resorts to a police subtenant (Nick Romano) and the vice-minister of tourism (Stephan Proaño), to whom she offers sexual favors in exchange for money. With important elections approaching, they promise to help her leave the country but with no practical effect. That’s when she meets Daniel (Joe Alwyn), an English businessman working for an oil company. This man could be her last chance or her ruin. 

Stretched to two hours and a half, this monomaniacal film is sporadically intriguing, yet its overweening cynicism leaves a curdled aftertaste. There’s lack of detail in the political and corporational considerations and the romance is too indolent to convince. The actors, who are not to blame, sink into the swamp of good intentions because the film sort of trivializes what would be a terrible reality. 

By generating some cheesy and sticky do-or-die tension, Denis makes it hard for us to take this story seriously. The thrills are not strong enough to push us to the edge of our seat. The one-dimensional characterization and a dead-earnest execution soon put an unusual spin on a story where nearly every beam that strives to hold it together collapses. But perhaps the biggest problem of all is that there's nothing here we haven't seen before.

Past Lives (2023)

Direction: Celine Song
Country: USA 

First-time feature director Celine Song captures an amazing story about two people who share an uncontrollably strong connection over the course of their lives. Past Lives has an autobiographical touch and offers a memorable cinematic experience well worth having. How many love stories can say they've spanned decades and crossed borders? The overall feeling here is almost ethereal and memory-like but also achingly earthly, which makes this drama alluring and emotionally rich. The director, who goes off the beaten path to film the very deep essence of a platonic relationship, nourishes this tone of disillusion and unfulfillment that coats the entire film. It’s all for an intended purpose. 

The story follows inseparable childhood friends Na Young and Hae Sung, who, at the age 12, lose track of each other when Na Young emigrates with her artist parents to Canada. 12 years later, they reconnect again through Facebook - she lives in New York, works as a playwright, and changed her name to Nora (Great Lee); he remained in Seoul all those years but plans to learn Mandarin in China. Despite acting like lovers, they lose contact once again due to distance and career commitments. Another 12 years have passed and they finally meet when Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who works a regular job, visits New York. She’s now married to Arthur (John Magaro), an American writer. How will they react to this confused state of affairs? 

Past Lives is keenly observed, expertly mounted, and marvelously acted. The build-up gains slow momentum but once it finds its rhythm, the film takes off to positively devastating places that will make your heart grow three sizes while watching it. Distilling its charm with delicacy and introspection, this is a work of refreshing maturity. The director treads through heartfelt territory with authenticity and a no-holds-barred understanding of the complexities of the situation.

Asteroid City (2023)

Direction: Wes Anderson
Country: USA 

Directed by Wes Anderson, Asteroid City blends romance, sci-fi, western, and comedy in an offbeat manner, but stumbles on a few metaphysical questions - death, human existence, the extraterrestrial - that leave us adrift. The bits and pieces of this uninspired chamber film are choppily assembled, with clumsy dialogue serving as a makeshift bridge for passionless scenes fabricated with an enforced mood and drowsy vibes. Here, everything is artificial, including the scenario. 

Anderson and his regular collaborator, the screenwriter Roman Copolla, worked together for the fifth time, drawing inspiration from films by Robert Altman, John Sturges and Paul Newman. The year is 1955. Days after the death of his wife, the confident photojournalist Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) begins a romance with the unenthusiastic actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson). He doesn’t get along with his father-in-law, Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks), and is proud of his shy little genius son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), a Junior Stargazer winner. All these and other characters, along with all their moves, are products of the mind of Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), a renowned playwright.

With a convoluted scrip, fatuous characters, and obtuse comedic tones trailing off into alien-invasion nonsense, no dream cast could succeed in turning this fabrication into a hip and funny cinematic experience. Both its surface and essence are phony but, worse than that, is the movie’s inability to offer any insight about anything. Asteroid City is equal parts tackiness and boredom. As a result, I urge you to avoid being quarantined by this desert of ideas.

Chevalier (2023)

Direction: Stephen Williams
Country: UK

Acted and directed with poised energy, Chevalier is a biopic that chronicles the rise to fame and fall into oblivion of Guadeloupe-born mulatto Joseph Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a brilliant violinist, conductor, composer, and swordsman who once embarrassed Mozart on stage, defeated all his fencing opponents, and fell in love with an unhappily married marquise (Samara Weaving) with a singing talent.

More often than not, this watchable drama film is expository of the racial discrimination lived in 18th-century France ruled by Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton) and marked by an arrogant aristocracy. The film exposes Bologne’s gifts, which made him chevalier of Saint-George, but also his constant struggles and personal ambition to conduct the Paris Opera, the highest musical position in France. 

Steeped in rich colored costumes and passionate emotions, the film - directed by Stephen Williams from a screenplay by Stefani Robinson - achieves a delicate osmosis between commercial film and auteur cinema. It’s a mature exploration of a big theme, hampered only by its simplified, conventional storytelling. Although this account deserves to be told - the past keeps looking at the present, in tatters - you can see where it goes from miles away. Yet, the actors never curtsies to caricature, and the film is worth seeing just for knowledge of its character and his moment in history. Pianist Kris Bowers, who also scored Green Book (2018) and King Richard (2021), penned the music.

Padre Pio (2023)

Direction: Abel Ferrara
Country: Italy / Germany

Padre Pio, a German-Italian production directed by the peculiar Abel Ferrara (Bad Lieutenant, 1992; The Funeral, 1996; Tommaso, 2019), is a joyless, graceless faith-related drama that straddles between esoteric turmoil and political activism. Over the course of this biopic, the focus scatters into many directions, the handheld camera makes you dizzy, and the excitement is limited. 

Despite obstacles, the darkness of the era (the story is set at the end of World War I) is well portrayed and Shia LaBeouf ’s performance is positive. The most striking parts of the movie are those in which Pio, who had arrived at a Capuchin monastery in the poor city of San Giovanni Rotondo, opens up with his God. Suffering tremendously with what he sees (greed and slavery are devouring the town) and with what he hears (some confessions are nauseatingly perverse), he is often attacked by the devil himself. Still, he refuses to abandon hope.

The fearless Ferrara tries to tackle this fascinating character but loses traction in a film that, asking the right questions, never finds dramatically persuasive answers. There’s not enough zest to the storytelling, which rather moves bluntly between demonic horror and somber spectacle. Choppy, unpolished and undeveloped, Padre Pio will certainly divide audiences.

You Hurt My Feelings (2023)

Direction: Nicole Holofcener
Country: USA 

Writer, director and producer Nicole Holofcener (Please Give, 2010; Enough Said, 2013) has a penchant for exploring adult relationships with a certain kind of humor that, most of the time, feels modest. You Hurt My Feelings, intended as a tuneful satire about an upper-middle class Manhattan couple, mixes smart observation with a less effective execution.

At the center we have Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus ) and Don (Tobias Menzies), who have been happily married for years. She’s a writer and literature professor desperately striving to put her long-awaited sophomore novel out; he’s a psychotherapist who definitely needs a break as he keeps mixing his patients’ life details. Their 23-year-old son, Elliott (Owen Teague ), manages a weed store and wants to be a writer. And then we have Beth’s ever-supportive sister, Sarah (Michaela Watkins), her struggling actor husband Mark (Arian Moayed), and her finicky mother, Georgia (Jeannie Berlin). The world seems to collapse when Beth incidentally eavesdrops on Don disclosing he doesn’t like her new book. 

The story - in the attempt to differentiate lying from encouragement - is plausible, but by adopting a cozy ambience for every situation, Holofcener makes us always feel comfortable. Hence, the dramatic stakes are at the minimum, not to mention that everything gets fixed in a blink of an eye, and with a lightness that doesn’t convince. It’s a shrewd plot with some sharp dialogue, which, nevertheless, lacks edginess and a satisfying resolution. 

You Hurt My Feelings is an insufferably cute rom-com but I have absolutely no qualms in saying that it misses out on something. Although the director and her cast bring some funny situations to keep the story going, the film leans more on the average side.

Monica (2023)

Direction: Andrea Pallaoro
Country: USA 

Andrea Pallaoro’s third feature tells the complex emotional story of a transgender woman (Trace Lysette) who, after 20 years away, returns to her Midwestern hometown to care for her dying mother (Patricia Clarkson). Despite the premise, this is not a story about falling apart, but all the compromises that hold things together. 

By sharing a couple of honestly touching moments between mother and daughter and adopting an understated tone, the film is never sentimental. However, a few weaknesses thwarted its ambitions. There’s this repeated lethargy mixed with an overstated tenderness in the last third that becomes tiresome. The anxiety to show forgiveness and acceptation erases any rough edge within the family, making it pulpous and somewhat unfulfilling, giving the circumstances of the title character’s traumatic past.

The unsmiling Lysette is self-assured while Clarkson is a marvel. They help paint this family canvas with subtleties as their silences speak more than a thousand words. All the same, Pallaoro, who co-wrote with regular collaborator Orlando Tirado (Hannah, 2017; Medeas, 2013), does little to develop the narrative setup beyond the basic and obvious. The sensation that passes is that of superfluous prolongation. I felt that for every sublime moment the movie has to offer, there's a cinematic dead zone of indulgence that wipes it away. As a consequence, our interest wobbles in a story that promises more than delivers.

Scarlet (2023)

Direction: Pietro Marcello
Country: France / Italy / other

Following the critical acclaim of Martin Eden (2019), Italian director Pietro Marcello, who moved to Paris in 2020, has a hard time giving a meaningful expression to Scarlet, failing authenticity. His newest film is a gorgeously photographed but inept screen adaptation of the 1923 novel Scarlet Sails, one of the most known by Russian author Alexander Grin. 

In the aftermath of the First World War, Raphaël (Raphaël Thiéry), returns to his small rural village on the Picardy coast, to learn that his beloved wife died suddenly, leaving him a little girl called Juliette. Madame Adeline (Noémie Lvovsky), the farm owner who raised the girl, accepts him as a handyman. The years go by, not without difficulties. One day, Juliette (Juliette Jouan is a revelation) finds love, when an adventurous pilot (Louis Garrel) descends from the sky. 

Scarlet doesn't melt, but it drifts. Oscillating between historical realism and moony tale, the film still arouses some early curiosity that, unfortunately, doesn’t last long. Numerous plot holes and gray areas make it hard for us to get attached to the characters. Lacking nerve, this inefficiently executed story never reaches the required emotional power to work as a whole. 

The film’s musical parts are inconsequential and, for their brevity, ludicrously whimsical; the pedestrian romance is without passion; the sixth sense and witchcraft suggestions feel like jokes; and the archival footage - with colorized and sepia frames - creates a completely redundant, even distracting tonal mishmash. The cinematography by Marco Graziaplena is your best bet, but it’s on the bottom that this film sins.

Plan 75 (2023)

Direction: Chie Hayakawa
Country: Japan

Named after a controversial if imaginary bill passed by the Japanese government, Plan 75 opens with a suicide, which, according to the suicider is a brave act, for the country and toward a brighter future. This pathos-filled drama is about aging, loneliness, exclusion, and death. The film’s depressing tones are ceaseless and the rhythm often crumbles within its schematic structure. 

Co-wrote by Jason Gray and debutant director Chie Hayakawa, the story follows three individuals whose paths cross at some point due to this particular program. We have Michi Kakutani (Chieko Baisho), a lonely widow who is forced to retire at the age of 78 with no means of survival; Hiromu Okabe (Hayato Isomura), a young Plan 75 salesman who unexpectedly connects with an estranged uncle; and Maria (Stefanie Arianne), a Filipino nurse desperate to collect funds for the expensive surgery of her little daughter. 

Japan has the fastest aging population in the world and the idea of not disturbing anyone is especially strong among the Japanese elderly. Working from there, Hayakawa mounts achingly poignant situations, though not particularly memorable as they tend to miserabilism. A quiet intensity and elegiac melancholy pervades the scenarios of a chamber film whose feelings and textures didn’t always resonate with the expected emotional weight. Most likely, the audience will remain at a distance, both physical and emotional, but the inner journeys are made vivid by purely filmic means. 

One can find discreet compassion without condescension; and that’s positive. However, some of the parts are more engrossing than the whole.

Hypnotic (2023)

Direction: Robert Rodriguez
Country: USA

Director Robert Rodriguez made a name for himself in the ‘90s with rowdy, bloody movies such as El Mariachi (1992), Desperado (1995), and From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). His new release, Hypnotic, flagrantly misses the grip and frisson required for a solid thriller. 

A sixth sense plays a key factor in a story that doesn’t hold up; the chemistry between Ben Affleck and Alice Braga is bland; and Rodriguez directs with a heavy hand. Thus, the film never quite gels into a cohesive cinematic experience, and is, far too often, simply boring and too inconsistent to entertain.

Affleck is David Rourke, a tough police detective whose daughter was abducted in a park. Through therapy, he spent considerable time dealing with trauma and guilt, and was finally considered apt to return to duty. While investigating a series of mind-bending robberies, he finds out that the criminals behind them are strangely connected with the kidnapping of his daughter and a shady governmental program. Still, the mission to find her would be impossible without the help of psychic Diana Cruz (Braga). 

Aggressively formulaic, the film is stitched with clichés and implausibilities. Maybe if in the hands of David Cronenberg or Christopher Nolan, this story - co-written with Max Borenstein (Godzilla, 2014; Worth, 2020) - would have a different appeal. Hypnotic is as misleading as everything you see on the screen. I couldn’t help feeling bluffed in the end, sadly realizing how empty this experience was.

Master Gardener (2023)

Direction: Paul Schrader
Country: USA

In recent years, American filmmaker Paul Schrader has been dedicated to portraying lonely men paying for sins of the past, who are ironically presented with a chance of forgiveness and redemption. It happened with the nearly masterpiece First Reformed (2017) and the just tolerable The Card Counter (2021). Fitting seamlessly into this group, Master Gardener is the weakest of the three as it goes from a promisingly obscure opening to a decrease of solutions that turn it uninteresting and clumsy.

Joel Edgerton is Narvel Roth, an accomplished gardener with a violent past of racial hate and crime. He was "rescued" by and works for the wealthy Mrs. Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver), with whom he maintains a casual affair. When the latter asks him to take her estranged, mixed-blood 20-year-old grandniece, Maya (Quintessa Swindell), as an apprentice, Narvel’s peaceful life changes drastically. Their age gap is not an obstacle for them to falling in love, and that comes with a price. 

Despite the authentic rotgut flavor, the film has a one-take feel about it, being buried in a clunky framework that, not dancing with originality, rarely cracked me up. The frustrating Master Gardener brings a message of inclusivity and redemption but forgets the thrills, never going far beyond the basic set-up. To add fuel to the fire, the acting couldn’t be more stiff and the gardening descriptions, with all their obvious allegories, more tedious. The silly conclusion only confirms the miswriting of Schrader, whom we definitely prefer cynical and bolder. Better luck next time!

Showing Up (2023)

Direction: Kelly Reichardt
Country: USA 

American independent filmmaker Kelly Reichardt is one of the most consistent storytellers of our times. In her eighth feature, Showing Up, the director of First Cow (2019) captures the artistic community of Portland and trivializes it in a positive way. For this comedy-drama film, she teams up again with one of her favorite actors, Michelle Williams. It’s their fourth collaboration after Wendy and Lucy (2008), Meek’s Cutoff (2010) and Certain Women (2016).

Williams is Lizzy, an uptight artist in socks and crocs who is not confident enough about her work. She has no hot water for a while and is forced to take care of a damaged pigeon brought by her best friend, neighbor and landlady, Jo (Hong Chau), who is also an artist. One can feel some tense rivalry between the two but also closeness and affection. Aside this aspect, and on the eve of an important exhibition, Lizzy has to deal with her dysfunctional family - a mother (Maryann Plunkett) in denial, an excessively convivial father (Judd Hirsch) who seems not to care about a thing, and an isolated brother (John Magaro) with mental problems. 

I must admit that, due to its drowsy tone and lazy pace, the film may feel apathetic and unresponsive at times, almost as if it has no direction. One needs to give it time to develop and compose. With each step, the story gains depth, the characters get a clearer shape, and topics start to work appropriately together. The notion that artists are people with common problems gives the film a human dimension, and there's a wise exploration of the intricacies between artistic creation and the ordinary, everyday life. 

Reichardt is subtle but incisive in her analysis. Showing Up is an observant, critical, gently lilting, and hyper-realistic account that uniquely captures the inner world of an introverted and peculiar artist.

Amanda (2023)

Direction: Carolina Cavalli
Country: Italy 

The surefooted direction by debutant Carolina Cavalli in Amanda - an off-kilter comedy with wealthy, borderline teenagers at the center - couldn’t have had a more adequate performance by Benedetta Porcaroli, a name to look for in the future.

Carrying large amounts of irony and sarcasm, the film follows the whimsical 24-year-old title character (Porcaroli), whose permissive mother (Monica Nappo), the wealthy owner of a pharmaceutical chain, allows her to slack 24/7. Amanda lives disgusted and obsessed with not having friends. Struggling with ennui and desperately craving connections, she gets to the point of inviting her mother’s maid to join her at almost-empty rave parties.

Her miserable existence gains purpose when she realizes that a once-close childhood friend, Rebecca (Galatéa Bellugi), is more lonely and depressive than she is, and never leaves her room. With an unyielding tenacity, Amanda’s new mission is to drag her up from the bottom she hit a long time ago. 

Vapid at times, and with a deft camerawork refusing to cope with the story's confined temperament, the film is full of artifice to the point of absurdity. But that may just be the point of Cavalli, who keeps the humor, the drama and, let's face it, the goofy undertones that make this portrait of Italian bourgeoisie more derisive. Amanda is never less than provocative as its foolish characters challenge one another in strange modes.