Jessie (Janet Shay) is a child psychologist. She spends her career counselling children who have experienced the most unimaginable things and it’s starting to become too much. Taking matters into her own hands, Jessie decides that it’s about time that she does what the police could never do, to give the abusers what she thinks they deserve. However, when a boy returns after years of being one of her patients, Jessie starts to realise that there are consequences to her actions.
Guilt is an Australian drama written and directed by Karl Jenner and Lyndsay Sarah. Going through Jessie’s life, the movie follows her closely as she finds one abuser after another and does what she needs to do to ensure that no other children are harmed again.
Although setting her as the protagonist, Jessie is also seen to do terrible things to people which opens up the question of whether her vigilantism is right. The trouble is that Guilt never really answers that question properly and despite showing moments of her own guilt, the movie still stays on her side even when she finishes off one last job after learning the full extent of her actions.
Jessie eventually meets Grace (Hayley Flowers), the girlfriend of a convicted child abuser and trafficker and although their initial meeting feels forced because Jessie knows exactly who she is, the movie does attempt to give depth to a side of child abuse that most people wouldn’t consider.
Shay and Flowers do play their scenes well against each other and their scenes are arguably the most compelling of Guilt’s story, but their story arc does leave the audience with mixed messages as it comes to a dramatic end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEXNGLZa9Us
Guilt may have all the right intensions and through the use of the media it shows that the movie does show that it’s not just one sided when it comes to understanding the victims, their abusers and the effect on wider society.
However, the story is just too simplistic, which leaves the audience who disagree with vigilantism to be appalled and those who support it to applaud.
Ekstase: A montage of scenes from European silent films exploring the stereotype of women on the verge of insanity. The film displays the women as captives in a continuous cycle of symptoms, diagnosis and treatment.
The rhythm of this 12 minute film is mesmerising. These textbook cases of ‘hysteria’ have the women acting out each stage to excess. Though it’s important to know that the textbook is from the late 1800s and is mostly horseshit.
Director Marion Kellman (Endre Tót – I’m glad if I’m happy, 2017) was inspired by Professor Jean-Martin Charcot’s experiments on hysteria at the Salpêtrière. A powerful yet controversial figure at the time, though you may be more familiar with his associates Tourette and Freud.
Charcot was a doctor who did as much for mental health as discredited ex-physician Andrew Wakefield did for vaccination. By this I mean that even though their arguments have been thoroughly debunked, their effects are long-lasting and damaging to society.
Charcot held that hysteria had four distinct stages, always in the same order, all very expressive and verging on the erotic. Performances were staged for enraptured audiences. This was an absolute gift to early filmmakers.
Visually dramatic in exactly the right way for silent films, we witness women swooning and contorting themselves in the presence of level-headed medical men. Such damaging misogynistic propaganda was produced to satisfy the male gaze.
However, the films are not simply artefacts of the silent era. These tropes continue to the present day, sometimes subtly, sometimes just as outlandish. Women: mysterious and unpredictable, wild yet fragile, must be tamed or restrained by rational men.
Examples include, but are in no way limited to: Metropolis; A Streetcar Named Desire; Sunset Boulevard; the Indiana Jones franchise; Fatal Attraction; anything by Darren Aronofsky; anything by Lars Von Trier…
Ekstase is fun but with a bitter aftertaste. Marion Kellman’s video essay is a lesson in propaganda from a century ago, yet some things don’t change. In 2020 big business, government, and media corporations all know: You can take any falsehood and make it true through repetition.
Senior Love Triangle is a story that follows an old man who, after falling in love with two women of similar age, decides that it is up to him to save them from the retirement home that they all live in. It is a sweet concept that lends itself well to many audiences and genres of film. It is unfortunate then that the film itself, for all its good intentions, is mostly unengaging.
The cast is strong and doing a fine job. All deliver believable performances with an offbeat edge to them. It is charming to listen to and watch. The best performance coming from lead actor Tom Bower, who many might recognize from Die Hard 2 as Marvin, or possibly from The Hills Have Eyes or Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. He plays it like a man who has seen hard times, and is currently going through hard times, but is working to keep those he cares about happy.
The direction from Kelly Blatz, in his feature film debut, is refreshingly restrained. Blatz seems more focused on letting the actors and characters carry the material, which can work for a film like this. It is honestly preferable to do so than to over-stylize the film, making it feel pretentious. The budget did hamper things a little, but you find films looking far worse on Netflix and Shudder. There is little flash, but in a film about senior romance there does not need to be flash.
The problem comes from the script. I would not call Senior Love Triangle a bad film, it isn’t, but it is overlong and uninteresting. It is obvious that the director has only done short film directing before, as Senior Love Triangle feels like it is full of padding. Like it should have been a short film, but the filmmakers stretched it beyond capacity to reach a feature length. Senior Love Triangle may only reach the ninety-minute mark, but it feels longer. At a point, if a film feels like it is an hour longer than it is, then the audience is just going to say that it was a long film.
Outside of the theme of sexuality among elderly couples, which is sweet and interesting, the film just doesn’t feel remarkable. I have seen more dramas about the elderly feeling imprisoned that left more of an impression. And that is Senior Love Triangle’s biggest sin. It just isn’t memorable. Most of the start of the film was a blur not long after first watching the film. At the end of the day, it is preferable to watch a film that was bad but left an impact than one that was decent but swiftly forgotten.
I do feel bad for coming off as harsh, as it wasn’t a bad film by any stretch of the imagination. There are some great performances and the craft of the filmmaking is on point. It is sadly not entertaining enough or interesting enough to engage for the length of the film. A few more drafts of the script would have helped a lot for the pacing issues. It is still worth a watch and may well strike a cord with many, for its sincerity and sweet topic alone.
I can’t deny my fandom for low-budget science fiction, which often leaves me championing overlooked films that many simply dismiss. As modern sci-fi predicates towards bombastic thrills over idealistic conceits, indie efforts like writer/director Guy Moshe’s latest LX 2048 play a vital role in keeping the subgenre’s spirit alive. Though his final product comes with some unevenness, Moshe’s film successful colors familiar beats with its own twisted, macabre approach.
Set in a post-apocalyptic future where most spend their days hooked into a virtual world (citizens must avoid the sun due to its damaging qualities), LX 2048 follows Adam Bird (James D’Arcy), a VR executive who vehemently works to assure his family a prosperous future (Anna Brewster as his wife Rena) before dying from heart failure (once Adam dies, a superior clone version will seamlessly take his place). As Adam digs deeper into the VR realm, he discovers that all may not be what it seems.
LX 2048 grabs audiences from jump street with its intoxicating world-building. Moshe masterfully manages his inexpensive assets to create a defined landscape, turning our planet into a desolate world that rings with a lingering emptiness (a scene where Adam drives through a vacant Los Angeles with a hazmat suit was particularly resonant). The only interactions Adam has outside his home is with AI units, which Moshe morph into an uneasy presence that tries (and fails) to replicate human behavior. Whether it’s the bright rays of the sun or the speeding trains racing by Adam’s window, Moshe uses every world-building device to develop a pervasive atmosphere that sticks with audiences. The vacant qualities of the landscape create an apt representation of humanity’s emotional distance in a VR-driven world.
As a great sci-fi film should, Moshe’s script introduces intriguing societal questions for audiences to untangle. It’s easy to observe the parallels between the film’s technologically-driven future to our own reality. Thankfully, these comparisons are drawn with a thematic bite and proper emotionality, rendering Adam’s journey for human connection into a universal search for attachment in a detached world. James D’Arcy central performance sells the character’s arc with an unhinged mania, slowly depicting Adam’s unraveling without an ounce of theatricality.
LX 2048’s notable strengths efficiently mask the narrative’s inherent flaws. Mosche’s screenplay draws from several genre hallmarks, often reusing ideas that have been conveyed with more depth and resonance before. Much of the cliches derive from the film’s go-for-broke third act. I appreciate the writer/director’s desire to keep the audience’s on their toes, but the late twists can be predicted from a mile away. Mosche’s film works better when it favors its desolate atmosphere over the screenplay’s mechanical plotting (Delroy Lindo has a supporting role that goes nowhere).
LX 2048 isn’t without its unkempt qualities, yet Guy Mosche’s film thankfully values substantive ruminations over superficial thrills.
Even the most celebrated films to delve into the realm of schizophrenia have the peculiar habit of taking the most literal of approaches. So often, fully formed people appear and make it near impossible for audiences to differentiate the delusion from reality. Generally, this difficulty is intentional and often used to significant effect allowing twists in a story. However, what makes certain depictions so peculiar is that the hallucinations of schizophrenia are known to be primarily those that appeal to the sufferers hearing as opposed to their sight. I say this to be clear about what I love about Craig Roberts’ second feature film, “Eternal Beauty”.
Not only does this film serve as a more plausible interpretation of the struggles of mental disorder, but it also plays like a breath of fresh air in a genre riddled with fierce melodrama or otherwise overly quirky misfires. Eternal Beauty finds the sweet spot right in between and is genuinely one of the funniest movies of the year while still managing to keep intact its emotional core.
The story is that of Jane (Sally Hawkins), a lonely woman who succumbed to schizophrenia after being left on the alter 20 years before meeting her. And while it is her lost love that caused her ailment, it is the actions of her sadistic and manipulative mother which have entrenched Jane into her psychosis. We learn of Vivian’s (Penelope Wilton) manipulative ways through a series of flashbacks depicting her as a mother demanding beauty and success, primarily through the avenue of teen beauty pageants. Despite Jane’s striking beauty as a youth, she was always far too shy to speak in front of the judges, leading Viviane to displace her for her younger sister Nicola (Billie Piper), who instantly adored the limelight.
These cruel maternal actions of the past twist Jane’s reality in the present. She continually receives phone calls from a mysterious man she believes herself to be in love with. She then convinces herself her nephew is her son with this man and attempts to run away with the utterly bewildered child. These are just two examples that fall into the vat of hilarity that is her generally eccentric nature. So strange is Jane’s life day to day that when we meet her, she has bought her own Christmas presents, intending to invoice her family the costs. With this said, no matter how funny things get, there’s an inescapable sombre undertone. One formed from the fact we know Jane can’t help herself and that she didn’t deserve what happened to her. Everything changes when she reunites with an old childhood acquaintance, Mike (David Thewlis), who is just as quirky as she is and the two almost instantly fall for each other.
Despite the clichéd nature of their relationship Thewlis and Hawkins are irresistible together on screen and become delightful to watch. However, it isn’t to last, and when they sour, the film reveals itself to be about the catharsis of three tormented sisters far more than it is just about Jane. The eldest sister Alice (Alice Lowe) never forgave her mother for sectioning Jane years earlier and has become estranged from her mother in exchange for becoming Jane’s main form of care. But when it becomes clear Vivian is dying, the tortured trio must find their way back to one another and to the side of their ailing mother. There’s a fair argument to make in saying that Roberts loses his focus here, and he does. The final act feels near entirely separate from the rest of the film, it may still emanate the same dramedy cocktail as the first half, but it lacks clear thoughts about what to do with its characters, with Nicola especially feeling redundant.
Uncomfortable as the transition into the films final act may be, there is one true and shining constant aspect throughout, and it is the gorgeous work of Sally Hawkins. Her work here is the funniest performance of the year. Full of quirky indifference and Jane’s own kind of razor-sharp rhetoric. Near every line that isn’t designed to make you cry will have you laughing. Thewlis is her brief but just as endearing and humorous counterpart, and as mentioned before, together, they positively command the screen.
Eternal Beauty loses its way in the final act but remains a refreshing look at mental illness and an avenue for the fantastic work of Sally Hawkins.
