Hard Truths (c) Bleecker Street
Film: Hard Truths
In Cinemas
There is a brilliant scene in Mike Leigh’s 1996 breakthrough film Secrets & Lies in which a white working-class woman named Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) agrees to meet with the daughter she gave up at birth, but when an upper-class black woman played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, shows up. Cynthia thinks it’s a joke or a clerical mistake. But as she amiably explains the impossibility of it all, a darkness comes over her face as it dawns on her how she could be this woman’s mother, and she starts to cry hysterically with her newfound daughter helpless to console her. In Leigh’s latest film, Hard Truths, a similar scene is playing out on Mother’s Day, but this time it’s Jean-Baptiste as the mother Patsy, who, up to this point an angry, impossible, paranoid, misanthropic pill, is informed that her socially awkward son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) has done something unexpected, and she starts to laugh (the first time in the movie) until it turns into an almost primal roar of grief and sorrow. It is an amazing moment of maternal symmetry and is the most memorable moment of hard truths and pain in both films, almost 30 years apart. Jean-Baptiste is a revelation as Patsy, who is one of the most unlikeable persons ever put to screen, even if, as she explains to anyone who hadn’t already tuned her out, she has a (unnamed) medical condition as a way to gain sympathy, something she is unwilling to reciprocate to anyone who crosses her path. The only person who understands, tolerates and throws it back in her face is Patsy’s younger sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), who is as positive and fun as Patsy is negative and perpetually scowling. Their relationship is the heart of the film, and even as we await every bile-filled rant from Patsy, Leigh shows in the Mother’s Day scene that there is real pain beneath it all. Yes, it might be a chore to some to spend ninety minutes with such a character, but in Jean-Baptiste’s hands with a much-needed assist from Austin, Hard Truths is a cathartic and painful look at how just living life can really be a daunting task.
Conclave (c) Focus Features
Film: Conclave
In Cinemas
Director Edward Berger has followed up his successful remake of All Quiet on the Western Front with an 180-degree turn for his follow-up, Conclave, a war film on a smaller scale but with just as wide a consequence on world politics: the naming of a new pope. A papal conclave is called when the current pope, a rather liberal-leaning one, dies. Cardinals from around the world arrive with four candidates to the vacant throne emerging, from a liberal American (Stanley Tucci), a wheeler-and-dealer Canadian (John Lithgow), a popular (but homophobic) Nigerian (Lucian Msamati), who would be the first black pope, and a right-winged Italian (Sergio Castellitto), who wants to pull Catholicism back to its origins, including reinstituting Latin and wiping away any progressive gains. Overseeing all this is Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) as part of his role as the Dean of the College of Cardinals, but Lawrence is having a crisis of his own: not of faith but of the church itself. What makes Conclave so fun is that right before the cardinals are sequestered, issues are brought up about the night the Pope died, ongoing investigations of some of the candidates and most mysteriously, a Mexican priest (Carlos Diehz) claiming the Pope made him a cardinal to oversee a mission in Afghanistan. It's up to Cardinal Lawrence Benoit Blanc to do some digging with limited resources, with only the barest of resources and a lot of behind-the-scenes politicking and scandalous rumors, some of which involving Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), who may be an amateur Miss Marple of her own. This is all enjoyable stuff, with twists and turns that keep the viewers on their toes. Conclave does drag towards the back half, but once a major revelation is exposed, it finds its footing again, and it turns out the film’s criticism of the church’s hypocrisy is deeper than it would originally seem.
Emilia Pérez (c) Netflix
Film: Emilia Pérez
Streaming on Netflix
I find myself in a unique position of defending Emilia Pérez, the sort of indie film I usually admire more than enjoy. Even after it won the Best Actress award at Cannes, honoring all four women in the film, there has been a lot of online discourse saying the movie is tone-deaf towards Mexicans and transgendered people. I can’t say I disagree, but considering the movie is a musical melodrama, I didn’t think nuances about representation is top of mind for writer and director Jacques Audiard, who has always tackled salacious topics in films like Rust and Bones and A Prophet. While I also question the point of the film, I admire the audacity in which each new element of the plot is revealed, and thought, “Wow, he actually went there.” I don’t want to ruin too much of the surprise of Emilia Pérez except that the title character is a trans woman (played with fierceness by trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón) in Mexico, who abandoned her life in the crime cartel, including a wife (Selena Gomez, stretching her dramatic chops) and children, to live life freely with a fresh new start. She achieved all this with the help of a frustrated lawyer, Rita (a fantastic Zoe Saldaña), who is tempted by Emilia’s offer of wealth in order to make her criminal past disappear. But familial ties are strong and Emilia, after years of starting anew and maybe finding love with a local woman (Adriana Paz), wants to restart a relationship with her children, which then starts her backsliding into her old life. This is all done like a plot of a daily telenovela (the film is mostly in Spanish), except that Audiard makes it into a musical, which seems both unnecessary and wonderful. The Spanish songs, written by Clément Ducol and Camille, do not sound catchy to non-Spanish speakers’ ears, although they have such an energy to them that they keep the plot interesting, even as it devolves into soap opera territory. There are some unfortunate moments, mostly around a song about gender reassignment surgery, and Audiard (a cis straight male) uses Emilia’s transness more for its uniqueness rather than a deep dive into her mindset. But, I don’t go into any gangster films looking for subtlety of characters. Each of the actresses bring a complexity to their roles that are not on the page, and their group win at Cannes was certainly deserved. Emilia Pérez is a melodramatic film which only wants to entertain without much of an overall social message, and on that level, I think it succeeds.
Nickel Boys (c) Amazon MGM Studios
Film: Nickel Boys
In Cinemas on December 13
Novelist Colson Whitehead won his second Pulitzer in Fiction for 2020’s The Nickel Boys, which I heard was a novel that was well-written, but brutal. Now that I have seen director RaMell Ross’ film adaptation (dropping the The from the title for some reason), I can finally concur. Whitehead’s story is based on the real-life Dozier School for Boys, a reform school in Tallahassee, Florida, here named Nickel Academy. The film follows Elwood (Ethan Herisse), a young, dutiful black kid in 1962, who is inspired by Dr. Martin Luthur King as he is raised by his grandmother (a noble Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), but fate finds Elwood at a crime scene in which he had no involvement beyond being at the wrong place at the wrong time. He is sent to Nickel Academy, which is segregated, and the black boys are treated horribly, tortured by the white staff, including Harper (Hamish Linklater), who is particularly sadistic to those who step out of line. Elwood eventually finds a friend with fellow Nickel boy Turner (Brandon Wilson), who seems to know how to survive the cruelty of their situation, including making deals with a white employee Harper (Fred Hechinger, who is having quite a film year). Nickel Boys, like other movies depicting the Jim Crow era of the South, is relentless in its barbarity, but Ross adds a unique element in which the camera is always from the perspective of one of the two boys, so it is always through their eyes that we see the cruelty being wrought on them. Jomo Fray’s cinematography is inventive and unique: we only get to see the kid’s face when he passes a mirror. Some people found this technique distancing as actors have to talk to the camera instead of an actor. Sometimes it’s a little awkward, but sometimes it pays off, especially in scenes with Ellis-Taylor, who beams empathy and heartbreak, as she stares into the camera, standing in for her grandson. The movie also jumps ahead to an adult Elwood to see how he has tried to put the past behind him but still wants to expose the corruption of Nickel Academy. There is a twist towards the end that I didn’t fully comprehend because of this first-person camera trick, as well as Ross’s tendency to flash poetic images into scenes randomly, which points more to his documentary filmmaker background. There’s also a relentless torture porn element that might alienate some viewers. I wanted to like this film more than I did. Maybe a straightforward presentation would have been more powerful. But, knowing this is based on a real place filled me with anger, sadness and hopelessness.
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