Mystery and Manners

Good Manners (2017, directed by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra) is the best werewolf movie anyone has made in the last 37 years. This is, admittedly, a low bar to clear, given the preponderance of Howling sequels that form the backbone of werewolf cinema during that time frame, but it's better than the Ginger Snaps movies, too, and those are pretty good. It might even be better than those two pillars of werewolf cinema from 1981, The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, but I won't swear to that. Like Ginger Snaps, this is a distaff horror movie that finds some of its horror in the biology of women, and some more horror in the social roles women often occupy, salted with problems of class and race.

Read more below the fold >>

Death and the Maiden

Somewhere in the middle of A Fantastic Woman (2017, directed by Sebastián Lelio), I began to get irritated at the miseries heaped on Marina, its titular heroine. In my head, I began to ask of the film: "Is no one going to be kind to this woman?" Is being transgender such a mark of Cain that it encourages everyone in Santiago, Chile to view her as a punching bag? There's a certain level of hopelessness in this depiction that is suggestive of the reasons trans people attempt suicide at such appalling rates. This, in spite of the fact that Marina is not a stereotype. She doesn't fall into the specific fallacies of transgender depictions. She is never shown putting on make-up even though she wears it (you have no idea of how much of a relief this is, o cis reader). She has a profession that is not serial killer or sex worker. She even has someone who loves her as the movie begins. This does everything "right," or as right as you're probably ever going to get from a filmmaker who isn't trans. Certainly, star Daniela Vega's fingerprints are all over this. She was originally hired for the film as a consultant on the trans community before director Sebastián Lelio realized that she was the perfect actress for the role, so there's more to their collaboration than what is usual between a trans actress and the director. There is certainly a level of rage involved that might elude a cis actor in the role as an equivalent collaborator. Speaking as a trans person myself, I found the film deeply infuriating, which is admittedly part of the film's design. It also made me deeply unhappy, which is probably not part of the film's design. I suggested on social media that a more accurate title for the film would be "Fucking Cis People!", but I'm sure that would be a provocation that's more headache than it's worth. Eventually, the film relented on its version of the story of Job and did allow someone to be kind to Marina, and then someone else, but it so front loads its whips and scorns that by then, it almost doesn't matter.

Read more below the fold >>

Everybody Dance Now

Longtime readers probably realize that my movie writing usually follows a formula: introductory paragraph, synopsis, bulk of the review. I'm going to skip a synopsis of Living Stars (2014, directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat), because it's not a narrative film in any meaning of the word. I mean, technically, it's a documentary, but even that seems to impose certain expectations. What this is is 63 minutes of people dancing to a variety of pop songs. That's it. In spite of its utter simplicity, Living Stars is one of the most joyful and hilarious film experiences I've had in a good long while.

Read more below the fold >>

The Waters of Lethe

Elena (2012, directed by Petra Costa) is an example of the widening scope of the documentary. It's a film that suggests that the word, "documentary," is insufficient to encompass all of the kinds of non-fiction films that are being made at this moment in time. Elena is factual, true, but it's a film that filters that factuality through a haze of memory, emotion, personal experience, and no small amount of visual poetry into a meditation on death and memory that transcends a dry recitation of facts and narrative.

Read more below the fold >>