[Visions du Réel '24] The question: What is Europe? It remains constantly throughout this journey that tries to find the links between the mythological reality of the princess who was kidnapped by Zeus and the current reality of a territory that, despite its efforts, does not find the necessary balance to maintain peace. The title refers to a phrase from a musician who is part of the Pontanima Choir of Sarajevo, an interreligious group in which Muslims, Christians, Serbs and Croats sing together: "After the war it was impossible for some to sing each other's songs". But this hope for peaceful coexistence seems easier to find in the representations of the past and nature itself, such as the remains of the Minoan civilization in Greece, among which no weapons or border traces have been found, a peaceful culture such as the one reflected in paintings discovered in a cave in Lofoten (Norway). Archaeologist Ingrid Sommerseth explains that these are drawings that do not show men hunting, but only figures dancing. This memory frozen in representations of the past shows that man has managed to coexist peacefully, and that only through knowledge of history can answers be found to the questions of current civilization. The film thus manifests itself as an exciting journey that sustains a constant search for that home that persists in being separated by borders.
[Visions du Réel '24] A look at the astonishing nature of the French High Alps through the lonely journey made by Felix, a young shepherd who leads a flock through rugged landscapes on foot for 200 kilometers through the Ubaye valley, pressed for time to be able to reach their destination within the deadline but also due to the continuous attacks of wolves that can kill more than twenty sheep some nights. It is a silent and contemplative film that increases the presence of humans in the second half in which the protagonist takes care of the family flock in the French Prealps. The disturbing presence of the wolves is shown in night shots in which we see their shadows lurking, a presence that not only threatens the flock but also the very survival of a traditional work that has already been transformed by urban traces. Edited with special delicacy by Agathe Hervieu and Tania Goldenberg, who let the images breathe in long takes filmed by the director himself, the film introduces us to a life that has a timeless character, a solitary choice that is nevertheless surrounded by a poetry that It is not only drawn from the books of poems by Fernando Pessoa that Felix reads but also from the living and changing nature itself that surrounds the shepherds.
[Visions du Réel '24] An exciting documentary about the underground environment of the so-called baloeiros, groups of young people who dedicate themselves to making large balloons and releasing them into the sky in cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. But it is an activity prohibited by the Brazilian authorities, arguing that they can cause forest fires and are polluting, so it has become a clandestine work, surrounded by secrecy. Although it is never made clear what kind of relationship they may have with crime or how they get the money to manufacture hot air balloons, the film reflects with outstanding force the way in which this artistic passion becomes the only way to isolate oneself from the environment. social of the favelas in Brazil. The meetings to "hunt balloons", when one has been detected launched days before or from another city that is about to fall, are tense, and the sense of community that these groups share is transmitted with closeness. While the drawings of Rocky Balboa or Luciano Pavarotti rise towards the sky, the clandestine work becomes a spectacle that reflects a singular art form, ephemeral but charged with a social and community feeling that is shared by all.
The film takes as its structure a relationship of addresses and events, narrated in a monotone tone by the actress Melanie Hyams, but contrasting the story of the past with the images of the present in the streets of Amsterdam, provoking a questioning look that questions the need not to forget. Most of the images were recorded during the coronavirus pandemic, which gives it a unique perspective. One of the announcements from local authorities heard on the radio establishes a curfew, remembering that the last time an exceptional measure like that was ordered was during World War II. The decision not to artificially provoke emotions establishes a cadence and structure that may feel monotonous at first, but that absorbs the viewer as it develops, capturing everyday images shot over three years in 35mm. with a 4:3 format that refers to the British documentary films of the sixties. It is remembered that 75% of the Jewish population of Amsterdam did not survive the occupation, losing about 60,000 Jews of the 80,000 who lived there, cold numerical data that nevertheless reminds us of the magnitude of the horror. By choosing a cinematographic format and an immovable narrative structure, there is a clear invitation to get caught up in the images and the voice-over, within their uniform tone, which reveal two different Amsterdams: one that remembers and another that seems to forget.
[CPH:DOX '24] The director's style extracts the reality of the lives of the inhabitants of Mandø, but more than an observation documentary it is a planning documentary. There is a preparation of the scenes that arise from small everyday details: the elderly Mie turns 99 and 100 years old, which marks the temporal space of the film, some neighbors gather around a radio frequency system that they use to play bingo with Neighbors from other islands, tractor buses transport tourists who visit the area, telling the story of the flood of 1634 and therefore reminding its inhabitants of the inevitable future that awaits them. Ingeborg goes to Ellen's shop and they talk about how the full moon nights affect them, while Søren seems to enjoy bringing up the topics of conversation that bother Gregers the most over coffee, such as the lack of resources that the Danish government provides to help area. This humanist look is fed by an observation of the environment, through wide shots that reflect the exuberance of the landscape and its contrasts, such as an area of the island where there are tanks and military cars abandoned for a long time. Peter Albrechtsen's sound design establishes a certain musicality in the rise of the tides and the sound of the birds that populate the island. The film thus adopts a temporal atmosphere awaiting the arrival of a decisive event, a kind of calm before the storm that provides a feeling of doom.
[CPH:DOX '24] After having managed to escape the gang dynamics in Gottsunda, moving to live in Stockholm with the intention of becoming a filmmaker, the director has embarked on a three-year personal project in which, using Super 8 cameras and some recordings with his cell phone offer an incursion into the environment of this suburb to adopt a perspective that is already external, but he has the understanding of the closeness and direct contact with many of his friends who remain within the circle of drugs and crime, involved in the dynamics of masculinity and loyalties towards their community. What stands out about the documentary is its more humanistic nature, the conversations he has with some of his friends, in which they talk about the low expectations for the future within the gangs and the growth of violence in the neighborhood, with some notes of nostalgia. towards the generation born in the 70s and 80s, the one that proclaimed that it was "them against the system, not each other." But there is also a questioning as a filmmaker, about the danger of romanticization, and the need to finish a film that he seems to cling to as his last link to his old life.
[CPH:DOX '24] The directing pair's latest film was presented last year in a short version of one minute as part of the exhibition at the Royal Academy in London dedicated to the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, who designed the building of the REHAB Rehabilitation Center in Basel, built to provide the architectural design itself with a therapeutic function. The center specializes in the treatment of neurological diseases and paraplegia, and possibly one of the most surprising aspects is the youth of many of its patients, who are under thirty. But it is also a more personal proposal in which Louise Lemoine, through texts on the screen, tells of her own experience in different rehabilitation centers where her disabled father was, which she remembers as "the worst rooms of my life." While the human stories are left a space for observation and proximity, interacting with them, the look towards the surroundings of the building becomes more playful. The directors manage to create a film that is at the same time moving, funny and poetic, confronted with the real experience of the director, with a point of view of hope about the capacity of human beings to face the challenges that their own body imposes on them.
[CPH:DOX, '24] The director addresses her own family history in this documentary that confronts the permanence of grief after the death of her mother six years ago. Now she is trying to organize a kind of tribute event with her father and her sister, who don't seem to have the need to share the mourning and are reluctant to celebrate a farewell that they have already experienced alone. It gives the impression that the celebration of this act of homage serves more to the dramaturgy of the film than to the real need of the characters. There is an evident lack of communication within the family that the director highlights by exposing the cinematographic artifice, when she shows the cameras with which she is recording, or when the characters tell each other that they should not look at the lens. The title refers to the story of Jonah and the whale, a prophet shared by the three main religions, appearing in both the Bible and the Tanakh and the Koran. Although the film doesn't always find a balanced way to present its main topics, it addresses some interesting questions about family relationships, guilt and the need to heal emotional wounds.
[CPH:DOX '24] Two months after having her son Roja Pakari was diagnosed with incurable bone marrow cancer, which turned her motherhood into a kind of fight against time to take advantage of the moments she could share with Oskar among her continuous hospital admissions. Over the past six years, she has crafted a beautiful and inevitably painful love letter that she presents through a second-person narrative that sometimes has the tone of a farewell. The film is full of deep sensitivity, always attentive to Oskar's gaze, but without placing him in the center of the camera. Roja Pakari has taken as a reference the extraordinary book "The Year of Magical Thinking" (2005), in which the writer Joan Didion (1934-2021, United States), narrated her experience after the sudden death of her husband, the also writer John Gregory Dunne. And it actually flies over throughout the film that idea of "magical thinking", which attributes causes to effects that have no concrete relationship, as if the inevitable could be avoided by carrying out different actions. But placing it closer to the power of resistance and the need not to give up, driven mainly by her condition as her mother. It is a powerful idea that has especially moving moments in this powerful reflection of love for a child.
[CPH:DOX '24] The construction of the film based on constant questions develops in a meandering way, making clear the limited knowledge about how thoughts are developed in the animals that surround us. Since the euthanasia carried out on the giraffe Marius at the Copenhagen Zoo in 2014, questions arise about the meaning of life, about death, free will or the place that the human being occupies in the evolutionary chain. Marius's story takes up too much screen time to connect questions that seem to want to motivate reflection rather than find answers. There is an intention of the director to frame the interviews within a context of everyday life, which is reinforced when he maintains the shots in which a zoo employee passes in front of the camera while interviewing Bengt Holst or when a man interrupts an interview in the forest greeting the interviewee. But it is a somewhat scattered reflection in which the most interesting thing is to find the scientists themselves questioning the meaning of life, such as the Danish evolutionary geneticist Eske Willerslev: "If it's all about survival of the fittest and reproduction, if this is really how it all works, what a horrible Earth we're living on, what a terrible place."
"Rådebank" has been throughout the first two seasons a perfect portrait of the problems of young people in their twenties, those who have already dropped out of school and begin a difficult search for financial and sentimental stability in their maturity. With a first season more focused on heartbreak and loss of love, the second managed to take a stratospheric leap by addressing the drama of economic instability, and managed to catch a spectacular audience. The series ends at its best moment of social repercussion, achieving incredible figures of half a million viewers in the first two episodes of a third season that is also the last, and making the series one of the most successful in the history of NRK. But creator Lynn-Jeanette Kyed ends up building a sentimental drama that falls into the worst flaws of cheesy teen love stories. The objective, it is clear, is to offer a season of stability for the protagonists, after the first two that shook their lives.
Glenn Tore (Odin Waage) is once again the main character, but the story focuses more on Hege Husby (Maja Christiansen), a character who had not shone too much in previous seasons and who in the second seemed anchored in the first stage of mourning: the negation. Now she assumes control through her romantic relationship and the beginning of her professional projection. The vicissitudes of the "rånere" culture that has developed in some small towns in Norway, which consists of a community focused mainly on using long hours of driving in their tuned cars as a hobby, are now in the background, reduced to a somewhat simple subplot about competition between two groups of "råneres" that doesn't really lead anywhere. The central story is the one starring Glenn and Hege, and although it is easy to predict what the end of the season will be, the writer leaves some stones in the way, such as the difficult coexistence of the professional development of the protagonist with her personal relationship, but only to stretch and capsize a more topical love story than a series like this deserved. The capacity for unpredictability and surprise that it gained from previous seasons is lost in backlit sex scenes and cheesy whimpers. There is still an empathy with the characters that has been achieved throughout the previous episodes, but the conclusion ends up being conservative and somewhat sexist. Something like that it is worth giving up a promising future to achieve emotional stability, as if both things could not be complementary. "Rådebank" has an accommodating ending that doesn't live up to the great series it had been to date.
[Netflix] This final season is focused more on the war between the cartels and therefore disperses the focus on different drug lords. But that does not benefit it too much, making the narration decentralized and the pace, despite the action scenes, more monotonous. There are some especially notable moments like the chase at the airport in the episode "GDL" (S3E4), one of the two directed by Wagner Moura, who played Pablo Escobar in the first two seasons of "Narcos."
The introduction of femicide and journalistic investigation are interesting elements that, however, remain somewhat diffuse in the whole of drug trafficking, as two issues that are of interest in themselves but that are blurred in the middle of the war of the cartels. It is surprising that a more general vision has been decided precisely when there is a character like Amado Carrillo, who can be considered even more prominent than Félix Gallardo. The final conclusion about the possibility that his death was a cover is cleverly shown in the toy plane that sits atop the piano. In general, the season has maintained an excellent technical level but it has been somewhat repetitive compared to previous seasons. It is a less forceful finale than one would have expected.
At the end of the film reference is made to the expulsion of 75,000 Muslims from the North of Sri Lanka in 1990 by the separatist militants, the Tigers, during the civil war. But the tensions between the Catholic, Muslim and Buddhist religions, which are the majority, continue to this day, and recently the government proposed a ban on the burqa, after an attack claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) that claimed 270 victims during the Easter celebration in 2019. The story takes place during the post-war period, when Tamil separatists were defeated, but an internal division still persists in a society that has not yet healed its wounds. Laitha (Sharmini Masilamani) returns to her country after several years emigrated to Canada, but finds a family in which the trauma of the disappearance of her brother Jude still persists, especially in the personality of her mother, who clings to ideas of betrayal by a neighbor, whom he accuses of being the cause of the complaint against his son.
The film is shot with almost theatrical simplicity, still shots in unique settings in which the camera in hand is sometimes close to the characters, in a semi-documentary style. There is a certain amateur air both in the performings and in the planning itself, but the intention has been achieved to reflect an inner look, a kind of identity crisis, in which the concepts of religion, community and family are exposed from the perspective of the woman. displaced person, who already has a different point of view, like that of the director herself, whose life experience is reflected in the character of Laitha. Sumathy Sivamohan is a professor of English at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and in her directorial debut she offers a reflection on a country that is failing to shake off the division that caused the bloody civil war. The protagonist family, which in a certain way functions as a reflection of the nation itself, hides secrets and hides information that is relevant to knowing the fate of the missing brother. The film works better in its poetic representation than in its narrative conception and in the elaboration of the dialogues, but it discovers relevant aspects about the sense of identity in a country that does not seem to find its own. Particularly noteworthy is the hypnotic soundtrack created by the young Anglo-Sri Lankan pianist Kausikan Rajeshkumar, who won first prize at the prestigious María Herrero International Piano Competition in 2013.
[NRK] It tries to humanize the characters so much that it cannot avoid falling into sentimentality and chauvinism, but curiously it does a disservice to historical characters like Princess Märtha by inventing an unbelievable romantic relationship with President Roosevelt. An uninspired example of "inspired by real events", monarchical and patriotic in the worst sense, and surprisingly produced by a public channel.
No one discuss that historical facts can be used as the basis for constructing a fictional narrative ("The Crown" (Netflix, 2016-) does so consistently with good results). The question is if it is really necessary and if that contributes to making a more interesting narrative. Norwegian historian Trond Norén Isaksen said in the newspaper Aftenposten that "there is no indication that the princess and the president had an affair or that Roosevelt was sexually active after being paralyzed from the waist down in 1921." And that the alleged romantic relationship was a "fake new" created by the president's opponents and especially The Chicago Tribune newspaper. This historical reality is so fascinating, with its political intrigues and conspiracies, that the sentimental story of unrequited love. La ficción evita la realidad para crear una narración que es mucho menos atractiva. Fiction avoids reality to create a narrative that is much less engaging. And it is the great mistake of the screenwriters, who also detract from characters like Prince Olav, here portrayed as a simple jealous husband, and Eleanor Roosevelt, overshadowed by her husband.
[tv+] After a first season that convinced by it optimistic outlook on life, the second season seems to strike a difficult balance between bringing more depth to the characters, especially in the coaching circle, but without abandoning the optimism of the first. There is an interesting development in characters like Nate (Nick Mohammed), although it is not well executed, with a certain tendency to the bad description of his motivations, and the tribute episode to "After hours" (Martin Scorsese, 1985) in which we discover the surreal side of Beard (Brendan Hunt), the least stereotyped and most open to unpredictable surprises.
The tendency to romantic comedy as an obsession that the series has to become a kind of Tinder for its characters is worrying. In this sense, it falls into sentimentality very easily, and loses the balance sending the message that love is the cure for all worries. But the foray into psychological issues is brave, especially in the case of Ted Lasso, although surprisingly it wastes such an interesting character as Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles), who was announced as the anti-Ted Lasso but in the end is underused.
Somehow the second season is still unbalanced, increased by an excessive number of episodes and an irregular timing of them, as if they need a time that they really do not need to explain everything they want to explain (the series is not deep for that) .
[HBO] As in "Stieg Larsson: Mannen som lekte med elden", director Henrik Georgsson is interested in the investigation, and makes journalists Anton Berg and Martin Johnson protagonists of the documentary, who analyze the evidence obtained for the conviction of Helge Fossmo as the instigator of the murder of his wife and the attempted murder of her lover by Sara Svensson. It is a story of psychological domination, religious cult, extramarital sex and secrets kept in the Knutby community.
The problem is that this investigation is leading nowhere. Journalists raise doubts about other people's involvement, specially Åsa Waldau, raising suspicions around her. But without really consistent evidence and, worse, based on the credibility of Helge Fossmo current statements. But it is not possible to hold an investigation into the words of a character who the same journalists demonstrated that he had lied on several occasions.
In the absence of consistent evidence, the documentary dragged on trying to find stories about the oppression and violence that was exercised in the sect to give credibility to its theories. And the point of view doesn't work either, because it constructs frankly boring scenes in which the two journalists discuss the next lines of investigation. In a letter written by Åsa Waldau, she shows them her refusal to participate in the documentary because she thinks that her words will be adapted to the plot line of the press. And it certainly seems that what the documentary does is just that.
Long season that possibly is one of the worst in the series. It is surprising that the first episode premiered in October 2019, and a year and a half later it has concluded. It's clear that TWD is AMC's flagship series, and the channel needs to continue to attract a loyal audience, even though the narration has actually been losing steam. The announcement of the final season is also a way to keep viewers aware of the story.
As in the series itself in general, the season should have ended much earlier. And possibly the Covid caused a new season to be replaced by the filming of several "extra" episodes. The showrunners have taken the opportunity to rehearse with the characters of Carol and Daryl in some of them. And the conclusion is clear: they are the most boring characters in the series, despite the announced spin-off.
It is significant that Negan is the protagonist of the last episode, surely the best of all, the one that contains interesting information, a suitable pace and, finally, walking deads. And everything seems to indicate that he will be one of the main protagonists of the last season, especially in his confrontation with Maggie.
[MUBI] The particularity of the film is in its reference to the cinema of Yasujirō Ozu, to the point that it could be considered as a kind of erotic version of "Tokyo Story" (1953). In fact, many critics find in some films by the Japanese director an implicit sexuality that is not directly represented, but is shown through symbolic objects, such as a vase. And we could say that what Masayuki Suo does is make explicit the sexuality of the Japanese master's films. He uses some very characteristic Ozu resources, such as his famous "tatami shots", a camera position at ground level, flush with the tatami, which shows us a very careful but static composition of the scene, in which the relevance is in the internal rhythm of the dialogues.
Tatami shots predominate in "Abnormal family", which Masayuki Suo uses as a contrast to sexual scenes. At the beginning of the film, one of these frontal shots alternates, showing the father and his two sons as they listen to their brother and sister-in-law having sex upstairs in the bedroom, where the camera is also positioned flush with the bed. In fact, almost all erotic scenes are seen from the ground or in a medium shot, but in most cases as a contrast to that of the family representation. In some way, it can be said that Masayuki Suo carries out a deconstruction of the cinema of Yasujirō Ozu, with some of its characteristic elements: a vase, a teapot, a poster or with the representation of the outer life in front of that inner universe that develops inside. family, and that also functioned in Ozu as a kind of kaleidoscope of society. This position of the family in which everything remains is taken to the incestuous extreme in the film, in which the sister-in-law ends up sexually initiating the youngest son.
The sex here is more explicit, but less violent than in other pink movies. Or at least it proposes a "calm" violence, because the wife, Yuriko, takes such a static position in sexual relations with her husband Koichi (and later with his brother, Kazuo), that it seems almost a rape. This statism contrasts with a kind of later sexual liberation, in a masturbation scene. At the same time, her sister, Akiko, made the decision to work in a soapland, a kind of Turkish bath that was drifting towards what are now massage parlors, a euphemism for prostitution. But this apparent social transgression is shown as a way to become an independent woman.
In some cases, there are "pink films" in which the woman is represented as a heroine, as in this movie. The director, Mamoru Watanabe, is another of the fundamental names of this subgenre, which he cultivated for more than forty years, and in this film he presents a story starring Okayo, a woman who is chased by a corrupt policeman, who catches her and sells her to a gangster sadistic. She has a tattoo of Benten, the goddess of fortune, on her back, which is an offense to men.
In this film, shot in black and white but with colored inserts for the sex scenes, there is a representation of violence and torture that works as a reflection of patriarchal oppression. The director uses inserts from erotic Japanese prints, and places sexual violence in an environment of natural landscapes that seems idyllic, as a kind of contrast that further reinforces the dramatic character of the scenes. The fact of turning the protagonist into a heroine, creating a kind of mixture between "pinku eiga" and "jidaigeki" (period drama films), causes the scenes of rape and sadism to acquire a different meaning, more as a critical representation than as a vision of violence from an aesthetic point of view. Because, contrary to what happens in "Blue Film Woman" (1969), for example, the punishment ends up being for the rapists, not for the victim. In fact, this film is a sequel to "Otoko-goroshi: Gokuaku benten" (Mamoru Watanabe, 1969), which also starred Tamaki Katori, one of the muses from the "pink films", who played the classic "Flesh market" (Satoru Kobayashi, 1962) with which this subgenre began film.
[MUBI] The budget for pink films was limited to 3.5 million yen (about 25,000 €), so directors could not afford to use color, although certain scenes were highlighted using color in some titles. Therefore, "Blue Film Woman" (Kan Mukai, 1969) is a rarity in this context, since it is one of the few films shot entirely in color, and one of the few that have survived in its 35mm original copy. The director Kan Mukai is one of the main representatives of the Pink Cinema, to which he dedicated himself for almost his entire life, directing some 200 films and producing more than 500. And in this case, it is a story that can be framed directly in the subgenre, with all its consequences.
With less tendency to experiment than in other titles, "Blue Film Woman" has an almost dreamlike beginning, in which the color is highlighted in a sequence that seems to evoke the credit titles of the films of James Bond, but then the story unfolds in a linear fashion, focusing mainly on the erotic aspect. When a father of a family loses all his money in a bad investment, a lender demands the payment of the interest, but proposes to offer him another loan in exchange for having sex with his wife. The woman becomes an object of exchange between men, but it will also cause the family breakdown. Her daughter, a young student, promises that she will avenge her family by getting a large sum of money... by becoming a whore.
"Blue Film Woman" is presented as a more conventional story than others, but introduces an interesting approach to psychedelia in the visual conception, both in the beginning sequence and in those that take place inside the disco, or those that show the apparent sexual submission of the protagonist. In this sense, Kan Mukai offers a different treatment of the image, taking advantage of color, but also proposes a certain social criticism of capitalism. Prostitution functions here as a representation of the strengths and weaknesses of a capitalist society. "She's so stupid. She thinks it's wrong to have sex for money." So there is a background that largely fuels the interest of the film. There is a hint of female empowerment, but victory is not possible in a story that is intended for an eminently male audience, and therefore the rebelling sexual object (the woman) ends up being punished.
[MUBI] "Inflatable sex dolls of the Wasteland" (Atsushi Yamatoya, 1967) is a film noir that marked the directorial debut of Atsushi Yamatoya, the same year he had participated in the script of "Branded to Kill" (Seijun Suzuki, 1967 ), considered one of the best yakuza movies ever. The story begins with a businessman commissioning a hit man to kill those responsible for the rape and murder of his lover, who have also recorded in his presence.
The film unfolds towards almost hallucinatory terrain, in a way of telling the story that dives into the protagonist's past and that proposes a plot that bends in on itself. It could be defined as a kind of psychological "film noir", in which the director rehearses with experimental shots, underlined by an excellent free jazz soundtrack by the pianist Yôsuke Yamashita. But the story and the lines are quite disastrous and the lack of budget causes ridiculous moments. The woman is represented as a nympho and as an inanimate object (literally), but the film does not contain too many erotic scenes. It is also an example of the production way of "pink films", since at the same time that they participated in these film, the actors Noriko Tatsumi and Yūichi Minato starred in "Love's milky drops" (Ario Takeda, 1967), which it was shot on the same sets.
[MUBI] Masao Adichi was a collaborator of Nagisa Oshima and Kôjî Wakamatsu, but above all he was a left-wing political activist. In fact, "Gushin prayer: A 15-year-old prostitute" (1971) is one of his last films before joining the Red Army and living for twenty-eight years in Lebanon. He had previously made other "pink films" such as "Sei chitai: Sex zone" (1968), and had presented two films as a screenwriter at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival: "Violated angels" (1967) and "Sex Jack" (1970), both directed by Kôjî Wakamatsu.
In "Gushin prayer" the director introduces four teenagers who become aware of their sexuality, but at the same time wonder if they can "beat sex." The protagonist, Yasuko, tries to discover through her sexual intercourse if she is capable of feeling her own body. One of these relationships with a teacher causes her pregnancy, and therefore she is considered a prostitute by her friends. In a way, it is a contradictory reading with that sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies, in which the body is the object of vindication. But Masao Adachi turns it into a political element, an instrument of acceptance of an identity and a reflection of "the way society is blocked", in his own words.
In reality, more than as a representative film of the "pink films", "Gushin prayer" is revealed as a description of youth in a time of social upheaval. What, apart from the representation of the feminine as an object of sexual abuse (Yasuko is abused by the teacher, but there is also verbal abuse in the way her friends treat her), is also reflected in the verbalization across the story of real letters left by teenagers before committing suicide.
The appraisals about the Scandinavian public channels are usually somewhat archetypal but also have a basis of certainty. Danish public television DR has a reputation for being too serious, and therefore it is difficult to connect with viewers at times. And, certainly, in recent years we have seen productions with a very dramatic profile, such as "Rides upon the storm" (DR, 2017-) or "When the Dust Settles" (DR, 2020).
The story created by Maja Jul Larsen works correctly in the use of narrative resources that lead the viewer to doubt everything and everyone. In this case, the social services make the decision to take the children of a couple to a foster home because her eldest daughter wrote an essay in which it is suspected that her stepfather has abused her. The construction of the series focuses on knowing if the girl is telling the truth or not, and maintains the suspense at all times, sometimes perhaps in a somewhat tricky way, but in general supporting the writing on well-defined characters, and above all very well performed, who achieve that necessary ambiguity that always leaves us on the edge of doubt. Especially noteworthy are Peter Plaugborg as Simon, the father accused of being violent, who manages to balance a forceful physique with a feeling of always being about to explode emotionally, Flora Ofelia Hoffman as the mother who is overtaken by events, and the two children , which show the fragility and at the same time the strength of different personalities.
This is a solid, well-constructed drama, to which, however, some objections can be raised, such as episode 6, which seems too forced in the manipulation of the viewer, or the implausible attitude of the social services counselor. But it raises an interesting reflection on the social services for the protection of minors, which, especially in countries like Denmark and Norway, claim to be so protective that they end up being harmful to children and their families. Unfortunately the screenwriter finally decides to take the easy path instead of really asking questions about what are the parameters of govern institutions in their assessment of the correct or incorrect education of children.
[Apple TV+] S1 was possibly somewhat underestimated, but it built a space between horror and absurd humor, which is even revealed as a premonitory of the subsequent confinement, given its narrative premise of taking place only in the house where the protagonists live. Although chaotic in its development, the typical ending of Shyamalan productions revealed great surprises.
In S2 it seems clearer that they are trying to build a more extensive narrative arc (M. Night Shyamalan has commented that from this season they started to work in a plot that lasts 40 episodes, that is, four seasons). And in a way it's about putting some order into the chaos of S1, especially around the character of Leanne. They certainly do, but without finishing building a homogeneous development.
One of the most interesting characteristics of this series is the selection of directors, mainly from European fantasy and horror films: the French Julia Ducournau does a splendid job in her two episodes, marking a beginning of great visual impact. But there are also the Swiss Lisa Brühlmann, the Swedish Isabella Eklöf or the Hungarian Nimród Antal, apart from two episodes that are reserved by M. Night Shyamalan and his daughter, Ishana Shyamalan.
S2 has an excellent start and a haunting ending, but in the middle of the season it gets repetitive and seems to want to play more clearly on the absurd humor, which is disconcerting at times. The revelation of Leanne as a kind of fallen angel who is able to bring back to life (to Jonathan, but also to Julian), but who behaves like a rebellious angel, opens up the possibilities for a plot that seems to be turning her ever-growing into the real protagonist (in the second season the characters of Julian and Sean are a bit blurred). And the end of the season, with the entrance of Josephine, promises more than they possibly end up offering us later.
The mourning for the death of a loved one has five phases, according to the theory developed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969: Denial stage, anger stage, negotiation stage, depression stage and acceptance stage. Basically, "WandaVision" is a representation of Wanda Maximoff's mourning for Vision's death, the phases of which are present throughout the nine episodes of this first MCU proposal as a long-story development. This grieving process, which leads the protagonist to build an idyllic life, transformed into a transposition of family series from the 1950s to the 1980s, is the most interesting of a concept that began with certain doses of risk, although it was not what fans of the Marvel universe expected.
But the first three episodes of "WandaVision" are the best we have seen so far in the beginning of 2021, a splendid tribute to the evolution of television comedies, and by extension, to how not only our environment has been transformed throughout the last decades, but mainly the way of producing audiovisual content for the whole family. At the same time, the introduction of disruptive elements of this "idyllic" reality (it depends on who) has been creating a disturbing vision of that representation of reality that is fictitious (something like a version of the false envelope that was shown to us in "The Truman Show" (Peter Weir, 1998), when the supposed reality manifested itself as a nightmare). It's certainly a brave approach, not least because Marvel fans aren't exactly demanding visual experiments or especially risky ones. But for those of us who don't have much interest in this MCU that appears to us as a puzzle made up of pieces that unfold between series and movies, it is an interesting approaching.
"WandaVision" has been adopting the Marvel aesthetic, putting its story on track to follow the highway to the rest of the MCU (something like what happened with "The Mandalorian" (Disney +, 2019-) in the second season, after a first one that went out of the lane and was therefore more attractive). Because the problem of producing series that are part of a set, that depend on the above but above all must link with other projects (in this case mainly with "Doctor Strange 2: The multiverse of madness" (Sam Raimi, 2022)), is that many ends cannot be tied, they must be left open to be coupled without loopholes (actually, it doesn't matter that much either, because every time it has to solve narrative inconsistencies in its characters, Marvel pulls a multiverse up its sleeve). In this way, "Wandavision" ends up being so subordinate to what will come that it stays halfway, in a kind of independent story in which, yes, it is concluded in the Acceptance stage of the mourning, but the character of Scarlet Witch practically does not evolve. This dependency is such that, of the 50 minutes that "The series finale" lasts, 10 minutes are of credits with introduction of post-credits scenes that announce what will come in the near future.
There is a dangerous trend in some recent "adaptations" that seem to take the original more as a marketing ploy than a real source of inspiration. "Ratched" (Netflix, 2020) was a typical Ryan Murphy "American Horror Story" (FX, 2011) with hardly any connection to the character on which it was supposedly based; "Clarice" (CBS, 2021) is a typical CBS procedural show that little or nothing maintains the creepy atmosphere and psychological depth of "The Silence of the Lambs" (Jonathan Demme, 1991). And "The watch" (BBC America, 2021) supposes the construction of a Discworld with characters that little resemble those of the novels in which they are inspired. The reference works as an element of attraction, but the development follows different paths, which is ok, but in many cases insulting the original source.
In "The watch" there are characters that work well if you do not know the one on which they are based. For example, Richard Dormer is a good Jack Sparrow, but he has little to do with Sam Vimes. And the show in general works the same way. There are interesting and funny moments, as long as you don't take Terry Pratchett's novels as a reference. And it almost looks more like "The magicians" (SyFy, 2015-2020) cyberpunk than the original.
If Steve McQueen shows the racial discrimination in England between 1969 and 1982 en su antología "Small Axe", we could almost take "It's a sin" as the witness to sex discrimination from 1981 to 1991. "They all died because of you," says the character in Jill, in a phrase that is a clear accusation to Margaret Thatchers or Ronald Reagans that caused thousands of deaths. In times of coronavirus, it is important to remember that there have been diseases doomed to inaction and rejection.
It has been said that it is the best series by Russell T. Davies and without a doubt it is, perhaps because he has managed to create a mosaic of lives in which practically all positions are in front of AIDS, starting with ignorance and misinformation. Ritchie, Roscoe, Colin and Jill, perhaps to a lesser extent Ash, are representations of a threatened community (aka society), facing unknown danger. But the anger that has caused the abuse, denial and death is replaced by an optimistic position: "I wanted you to be the first to know: I'm gonna live." The first episodes, above all, show the vitality of a secret but explosive freedom.
"It's a sin" is an exciting series, heartbreaking, difficult to see especially for those of us who live the AIDS pandemic in the present, who feel fear and pain very close. It is a tribute to the victims, but also a story of survival.
Nothing like a therapist to solve the narrative needs of a character. Easy script resource, especially in times of coronavirus, this episode reveals the mysteries of Jules and her difficulties in establishing a conventional relationship. But that mystery was the one that worked perfectly as a contrast to the character of Rue.
With a soundtrack that looks like a random Spotify playlist, where Zbigniew Preisner and Rosalía also have a place, the episode explains many things about Jules (an excellent interpretation of Hunter Schafer), perhaps too many things, trying to soften the vision that the character had offered at the end of the first season. A way to explain, according to Sam Levinson, the character, to justify her actions and to show another profile of a depressed "millennial" that could perfectly overshadow the main character if it were developed further in the second season (something that probably will not allow to do).
It is clear that "Euphoria" has a powerful visual style, elaborate and certainly "beautiful" aesthetically, but sometimes it falls into a certain superficiality. In this episode, the aesthetic is between the visual imagination of Gaspar Noé and the crudeness of Adrian Lyne's perfume advertisement. Without a doubt, it is an episode that reconciles the character with the followers of the show, but at the same time squanders the opportunity to build a bridge between the first and second seasons.
Bruce Lee failed to develop this project primarily because of race, at a time when David Carradine was made to look oriental. Currently, "Warrior" does not seem to make a major difference either, with Chinese characters barely speaking Chinese with each other, but rather anachronistic English. The series had elements to be a great martial arts show, but it soon forgets its origin and ends up being a narrative disaster with little fortune when it comes to transferring the time.
Jonathan Tropper has seen many (Italian) mafia movies and possibly many martial arts movies, but he builds a scattered and messy mix that draws from so many sources that it ends up being excessive in his representation of the time. There is a nonsense in these productions that want to represent a historical era but introducing modern elements.
Personally, I don't find much interest in fight scenes, which are bland and poorly directed. And again we find a lack of rigor in the choreographies, which want to be modern when they could have been inspired by the different fighting cultures that are represented in the story. And you can't help but think about what directors like Gareth Evans could have done with material like this.
The second season of "The Mandalorian" was important to establish the path that the creators decided to follow. After laying the foundations in the first season, two paths were opened to the future of the series: 1. Having a personality of its own (which was defined by its references to western and samurai movies) and 2: Becoming a fanservice product, offering references, tributes, character cameos and a development directly connected to the saga. What this second season has shown, and especially the last episodes, is that "The Mandalorian" does not aspire to have a life of its own, but to be dependent.
As if it were the son who has to decide between staying home with his parents or being emancipated, the creators have decided to stay home (or, in other words, the easy way). Because "The Mandalorian" had all the elements to build its own universe. The end of the last episode is a tribute to the past, but it is also the destruction of a path to the future. Or, at least, of a path with some independence, which would have been interesting. But, after the investors meeting (and watching the post-credits scene), what Kathleen Kennedy wants is to connect all the series and movies, because that gives her the possibility to force the need to see them all.
The last episode of "The Mandalorian" thus becomes the closing of a season, but also the trailer for a new series. There are no more independent universes in the galaxy, it is not allowed to be a rebel, but only to become a henchman of the Disney Empire.
