film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Ray Lobo

  • The Day I Found A Girl In The Trash: Review

    The Day I Found A Girl In The Trash: Review

    Director Michal Krzywicki’s dystopian sci-fi film The Day I Found a Girl in the Trash places us in Poland in 2026.  We are told that the Polish government has enacted a system wherein those convicted of severe crimes are made into automatons.  These automatons are fitted with a collar that delivers a drug that erases their memory and makes them immune to pain.  Instead of having these automatons wither away in prison, they are put to do community work, work for businesses, and even perform sex work.

    Szymon (Michal Krzywicki) is an activist opposed to the automaton project.  He offers a pocket of resistance in a population that, as we are informed by a newspaper headline, overwhelmingly supports the project.  Szymon has the world media’s attention after announcing on social media and YouTube that he will commit suicide.  His suicide is a spectacle that he hopes will rally protest against automation.  He sets the date for his suicide and by all appearances is very determined to go through with it.  

    Before the day of his suicide, Szymon goes outside to toss the garbage and finds a woman underneath a pile of trash bags—making the film’s title quite literal.  Previous scenes reveal that this woman (Dagmara Brodziak) was an automaton sex worker whose collar was removed by an unhinged client.  We also learn that anyone removing an automaton’s collar or aiding an automaton will be subject to criminal prosecution.  Szymon decides to bring her up to his apartment and offer her food and shelter.  The drugs the woman was exposed to via the collar permanently altered her.  She is feral in her behavior.  She can barely form words.  One of the few words she is able to form is what goes on to become her name—Blue.  Szymon begins developing feelings for Blue.  He learns that Sweden offers asylum to Polish automatons.  Szymon and Blue set off on a road trip that they hope will end in their leaving Polish soil and finding asylum in Sweden. 

    Krzywicki gives the viewer some very clear coordinates.  The Day I Found a Girl in the Trash is obviously influenced by Blade Runner and less obviously by E.T.; however, it has neither the ingenuity nor charm of both those films.  There are obvious thematic allusions to our everyday use and consumption of animals.  Shots involving caterpillars, horses, roosters, and earthworms make that clear; a little all too clear.  Also, scenes involving Szymon, a man, training—or one could say acculturating—Blue, a woman, to use a fork and knife are a bit cringey in terms of the gender and cultural dynamics of 2021. 

    And even when there are interesting moments in the storyline, they are not taken advantage of.  A scene in which some of Szymon’s coworkers taunt a female coworker for the sympathy she shows for Szymon’s cause is a perfect example of these missed opportunities.  The coworkers chastise the woman and expose her hypocrisy by stating that her family owns three automatons.  This could have been a perfect opportunity to delve into how this society, even those who show sympathy for the plight of automatons, is fully economically intertwined with the exploitation of automatons.  But that thread stays in that office scene and does not get picked up again.  By the time Szymon and Blue are halfway into their journey to Sweden, the film runs out of gas.  While Krzywicki’s film is far from being a total failure, it is far from satisfying.                

  • The Novice: Review

    The Novice: Review

    When I was in grammar school one of the metrics by which teachers assessed students’ performance was something labelled “self-directedness.”  Given that I went to grammar school in the States, one is not surprised by the existence of such an ideological metric.  Given the US’s hypercompetitive and individualist makeup, the system demands children and adults who are not just externally motivated but also internally motivated.  The internal coach—reprimanding ourselves for our shortcomings and laziness and acting as a sort of secular conscience—is more demanding than the external coach.  The Novice presents us with a first-year college student, Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman), who takes self-directedness to a whole new level.  

    Alex is fury and intensity incarnate.  Her grades in high school were immaculate.  In college she strives for a perfect grade point average.  One day she tries out as a novice for the college’s rowing team.  If she performs better than all the other novices who try out, she may earn a spot in the college’s top-tier varsity team.  That is enough fuel for her competitive engine.  In rowing, Alex has found her calling.  She internalizes the coach’s (Jonathan Cherry) instructions and repeats them to herself like a mantra.  She identifies times she needs to beat.  She even finds the catalyst most capable of fueling her drive—her friend Jamie (Amy Forsyth).  Jamie is also trying to secure a spot on the varsity team as a novice.  She becomes the perfect adversary for Alex.  Not that Jamie is not competitive in her own way.  For Jamie, getting a spot on the varsity rowing team means a scholarship.  Alex is fueled by Jamie and Jamie is fueled by an American education system based on high tuitions and scarce funding sources for students.    

    Director Lauren Hadaway does a magnificent job translating abstract concepts such as intensity and drive into concrete visual language.  Hadaway’s camera fixates on Alex’s body, her limbs, as she pushes them to the point of burnout.  It seems that in every other scene, Alex is either bathed in sweat or dealing with the blisters that have developed in her hands from the paddles.  Hadaway also does a great job in giving the viewer just enough, and never too much, background information on Alex.  We do not completely know why she is so overly competitive.  We do get a story about a high school boy upsetting her and motivating her to be the best in her class, but that is about it. By allowing for a certain amount of grayness and ambiguity as to the source of Alex’s competitiveness, Hadaway gives the impression that Alex’s psychopathological intensity may just be the product of the society and ideology around her.     

    As I watched The Novice, there were some nagging criticisms that would just not let go of me.  The first involves the similarities between The Novice and Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash.  While there are worse things than your movie reminding viewers of Chazelle and Whiplash, the similarities both in terms of thematics and visuals are a little too much.  One begins suspecting that Hadaway is following the path already forged by Chazelle—one that certainly proved successful–and using The Novice as a first step in her journey toward more mainstream audiences and bigger studio budgets in the future. 

    The second criticism involves Hadaway’s overuse of hyper-cynical dialogue in conveying the point that all that matters to these characters is overcoming their competitors, and any human emotion or interaction that falls outside the bounds of that, is deserving of cynicism.  After a while, we get it:  all that matters to Alex is winning.  But, in spite of its flaws,  if indeed The Novice is Hadaway’s attempt at introducing herself as a directorial voice, and a first step toward bigger things, we need to take notice.

  • She Had A Dream: Review

    She Had A Dream: Review

    Ghofrane Binous is a twenty-five-year-old caught up in the political uncertainty of a Post-Arab Spring Tunisia.  Director Raja Amari’s documentary, She Had a Dream, takes us along Binous’ journey as activist and political candidate.  Through Binous, the viewer can appreciate the political and cultural complexity of Tunisia.  Binous wants to be a political voice for underrepresented constituencies.  She lives in a blue-collar neighborhood.  Her neighbors express the economic and social frustrations of every blue-collar neighborhood in the world.  She not only hears the frustrations, but she also experiences them.  Binous also embodies the tensions vented by Tunisian women caught in a push-pull between traditionalism and modernity.  As if class and gender were not enough, Binous embodies another intersectional vector—she is Afro-Tunisian.  

    Some of the best scenes in She Had a Dream involve Binous engaging in the nitty-gritty of political campaigning.  She actively listens to her neighbors’ political gripes at neighborhood get-togethers, in beauty salons, and in street corners.  Even ex-cons from her neighborhood talk amicably to her; they treat Binous both respectfully and as part of the neighborhood.  Amari gives us a palpable sense of an ideal that is oft mentioned in the abstract, but rarely experienced—community.  As Binous puts it, she never received a “wounding word” from her neighbors.  The discrimination she has faced has usually come from the “cultured” or “elite.”  

    She Had a Dream offers us an eye-opening exploration of race in Tunisia.  Parts of the country are segregated and strongly discourage mixed marriages.  Some taxi drivers will not take Afro-Tunisians as passengers.  In one scene, Binous expresses that she wants to be a role model for other Afro-Tunisian women and not straighten her hair; the implication being that straightening happens all too often.  Another eye-opener involves the country’s attitude toward their Post-Arab Spring democracy.  There is an electricity around the elections.  There is a vibrancy around different political parties competing against each other, the crafting of political strategies, and election day vote tallies; in other words, the hurly-burly of democracy.  It is inspiring seeing Binous engage in the democratic process in spite of the many personal setbacks she encounters, and in spite of the setbacks faced by the country in the form of terrorist bombings.  

    On the opposite side of this democratic vibrancy lies an apathy and distrust toward the political process, and the corrupt practices of politicians, in segments of the Tunisian population.  We see Binous’ attempts at dissuading the apathetic and skeptical Tunisians she meets.  Binous’ campaigning, depending upon which perspective one adopts, is either hopeful or Sisyphean.  But no matter which perspective one adopts, one cannot help but cheer for Binous.  We all know her challenge is great.  Apathy is perhaps more dangerous to democracy than terrorist bombs.

                 

  • Beans: Review

    Beans: Review

    Director Tracey Deer’s coming-of-age drama, Beans, tells the story of a young girl that goes by the nickname Beans (Kiawentiio).  Her and her family are Mohawk.  The film opens with Beans interviewing for admission into an illustrious prep school.  Beans is the picture of preparation and determination.  She tells the haughty woman conducting the interview that she wants to be either a doctor or a lawyer. 

    When the woman asks she why she wants to pursue those professions, she freezes; she does not know how to answer.  Beans, as is typical in any coming-of-age drama, is unformed clay.  The rest of the film tells the story of her formation. 

    Beans mixes the personal with the political.  We are informed that the film is inspired by true events.  Those events, as recounted by real news footage from 1990, is of the 78-day standoff in Kanesatake, in the north of Montreal, between members of the Mohawk community and Canadian government forces. 

    Developers want to build a golf course on a sacred burial ground.  Her parents, Lily (Rainbow Dickerson) and Joel (Kania’Tariio), hear the call to action and join their fellow Mohawk protestors.  The town’s inhabitants savagely turn against the Mohawk protesters and give evidence of their bigotry.

    Deer tells the story of the standoff through the eyes of Beans.  The cataclysm produced by the protest and the backlash give her a political consciousness.  We also bare witness to her social formation.  She tries to make friends with a group of older teens. 

    Beans gets training from an older alienated teen, April (Paulina Alexis), on how to be tough.  She begins shedding her good girl persona.  She learns to fight back. 

    I really wanted to like the film.  The thematic dilemma of assimilation versus dissent is a fertile one.  We see Beans being pulled on one side by a desire to assimilate and go to an illustrious prep school while being pulled on the other side by her newly discovered political consciousness and rage.  Beans, however, plays things way too safe.  We can predict early on that Beans will become tougher and then circle back around to a final “enlightened” stage. 

    The mixing of a political event with a coming-of-age teenage story just does not work.  It’s not that Deer does a sloppy job of combining the political and the coming-of-age.  In fact, just the opposite.  The story is told too tidily, too neatly.  Beans holds no surprises.  It is a missed opportunity at telling the story of the Kanesatake standoff.

  • Pause: Raindance 21 Review

    Pause: Raindance 21 Review

    The Cypriot film, Pause, opens with a shot of a woman sitting in a gynecologist’s waiting room.  Elpida’s (Stella Fyrogeni) face appears exhausted.  She seems zoned out, caught in a labyrinth of her own thoughts.  She gets called into the gynecologist’s office and snaps out of her daze. 

    A male gynecologist dispassionately attends to her, tells her there’s nothing to worry about, and fills out a prescription for hormones.  Medically, Elpida is exhibiting the symptoms of premature menopause.  Elpida’s malaise, however, may have less to do with her “pause” and more to do with the personal/social phenomena that are hovering around her.  

    Elpida lives in a Cyprus that has not recovered from its financial crisis.  Elpida and her husband Costas (Andreas Vasileiou) live in a humble flat.  They are barely scraping by economically.  As if things were not bleak enough for Elpida, Costas is very controlling.  He discourages her from going out, dying her hair, and even refuses paying for internet access so as to limit her interactions with the outside world. 

    Elpida is only allowed to have the money that Costas doles out to her.  He even sells her car.  Her days consist of household chores and walking to the market for groceries.  She feels more dead than alive.    

    As much as her husband tries to extinguish Elpida, a sparkling private universe still glows inside.  She has a rich sexual fantasy inner world.  Her imagination creates narratives wherein she defies Costas or even kills him.  She paints whenever her husband is away at work.  And, when her husband is away at work, she spends quality time with her friend Eleftheria (Popi Avraam).  

    Director Tonia Mishiali and actress Stella Fyrogeni’s performance bring Elpida to life as a three-dimensional character.  The film’s tone is stark and at times bleak, but it is not entirely hopeless.  No matter how much Elpida’s surroundings try to kill her spark of individuality, her internal poetry; there is still life flowing insider her.  In our everyday lives, we encounter Elpidas—at the market, on public transportation, at medical waiting rooms. 

    On the surface, these women display the burdens, sacrifices, and responsibilities imposed upon them—the raising of children, the maintenance of the household, the tending to others first.  If we were to scratch the surface, however, we would find–as in the case of Elpida–a rich and compelling psychic universe.