The Promised Land (2024)

Direction: Nikolaj Arcel
Country: Denmark / Germany / Sweden

Mads Mikkelsen stars in The Promised Land, the best possible send-off for the actor as a low-key but tenacious protagonist. In this historical period drama set in 1755 Denmark, he portrays Captain Ludvig Kahlen, a tenacious former officer seeking permission from the Danish court to establish a colony on Jutland, a barren moorland. However, he faces opposition from the sadistic Fredrik de Schinkel (played by Simon Bennebjerg), who lays claim to the land.

The film, based on 2020 book The Captain and Ann Barbara by Ida Jessen, counts on the strong supporting roles of Amanda Collin as a brave housekeeper and Kahlen’s lover, and Melina Hagberg as an orphan girl traveling with a group of Romani gypsies. What the director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair, 2012) has in spades is the ability to find lyricism amid squalor. Certainly, the film is grim in many ways, but the true story is made irrefutably cinematic in its lavish, painterly visual detail.

Still, there are self-indulgences and an occasional excess of sentimental expression, especially in its latter third, leading to an awkward ending. The truth is: it didn’t move me in the end, but it’s guaranteed to give you the chills, reminding you of the ruthless deeds of those driven by greed and power. Laced with the emotional heft of the epic classics, the film is sure to satisfy movie-going audiences looking for tension-filled historical dramas.

Jeanne du Barry (2023)

Direction: Maiwenn
Country: USA 

Jeanne du Barry, a historical fresco directed, starred, and co-produced by Maiwenn (Polisse, 2011; Mon Roi, 2015), struggles to generate excitement. She shoots the over-the-top costumes and the exuberant Palace of Versailles with a sharp eye, however, the film is totally forgettable. 

The narrative follows Jeanne Vaubernier (Maiwenn), a modest woman with aspirations of social ascent, as she becomes the mistress and favorite of King Louis XV (Johnny Depp). The scandalous romance might have shocked Versailles, but here fails to break free from the constraints of a tightly constricted period drama, resulting in a muddled storytelling experience. Sadly, the potential for vast dramatic possibilities is stifled by a squared and monotonous narrative. 

With predictable plot contours, even the envy and gossip, expected in the French courts, are played too safe. Maiwenn manages to transform the manners and behaviors of the time into effective humor, but the film suffers from a disinterested, passionless performance by Depp, which contributes to the film's plodding pace. This way, the audiences are deprived from the engagement needed to appreciate its historical context.
The various parts of Jeanne du Barry are too uneven to form a decent whole, while the elegiac finale brings even more tedium. 

Before, Now & Then (2023)

Direction: Kamila Andini
Country: Indonesia 

The political and emotional observations in Before, Now & Then, in addition to a perfect staging and the floating sense of time of the story, prompt us to consider Kamila Andini a promising contemporary filmmaker. In her debut feature, the 37-year-old Indonesian director and co-writer delivers a sensitive portrait of a woman who, despite living comfortably, suddenly realizes she has not found her place yet. This is set in West Java in the late 1960’s, at the time of Indonesia’s political transition to the New Order of General Suharto.

The feelings are more demonstrated than told, and the film, closed in itself and enveloped in a dreamy aura at an early stage, gradually blossoms into clarity and resolution. The plot centers on Nana (Happy Salma) who, having lost sight of her first husband for 15 years due to political reasons, remarries with a wealthy older man (Arswendy Bening Swara) who cheats on her. Bored with domestic life and with no one to confide her unspoken worries, feelings and unresolved matters, she turns to the last person one could ever imagine: Ino (Laura Basuki), a local market butcher and her husband’s mistress. 

Being very cinematic - with excellent cinematography, image composition, production design, and musical score - and smartly structured, the film relies on a storytelling that envelops without stinging or shocking. Even the worst of the betrayals seems natural here, such is the grace of its proceedings. It’s a gentle hymn to friendship and a powerful feminist statement whose politeness and dreamlike intensity allude to Wong Kar-wai’s unforgettable cinema.

Despite an unnecessary coda that contributes nil to the outcome, Before, Now & Then is a lingeringly rich and unsentimental period drama that expresses more with looks and gestures than with words.

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.