Oscar Countdown Films

The Lost Daughter is full of mystery, pathos, and intrigue, but it's first and foremost a character study. The central character, Leda, has arrived in Greece, alone, for a working vacation. She's a professor of Italian literature, or something similar, and she's brought notebooks and reading material to occupy her on the beach. She doesn't quite fit the mold of "Mediterranean vacationer" but the old man who shows her to her apartment (Ed Harris) and the younger man who tends the beach chairs and concession stand have no trouble accommodating her.

Little by little her character emerges.  She's chatting with her daughter on the phone until her daughter abruptly hangs up.  When a family of rowdy Americans arrive at the beach by boat and ask her to move down a few yards, she politely but firmly refuses. (The beach attendant later advises her, as agreeably as he can, "Don't do that again. They're bad people." )   

Watching the intruding family's children play as she writes in her journal, Leda is reminded of her own years as a young mother in flashbacks that are full of tension, noise, and confusion, as she and her husband struggle to keep their family life intact while also keeping their fledgling academic careers afloat. Subsequent flashbacks take us to a scholarly conference where the young Lena shines, basking for perhaps the first time in the praise of her idols.

 Back on the beach, one of the toddlers wanders off. The family is horrified.  Lena happens to locate the child, for which the parents are grateful.  She also finds the little girl's doll, and decides to keep it for herself.

Olivia Coleman holds the screen in the role of the enigmatic Leda, who seems a little out-of-place on the beach. Civil, but hardly ingratiating. People can't figure her out, and a mood of subtle malevolence begins to develop. Or are we merely imagining it?

 The film is based on a 2008 novel by Elena Ferrante, and first-time director Maggie Gyllenhaal  deserves great credit for successfully adapting it for the screen. There is nothing conventional about the plot, and perhaps nothing appealing, either, but the film nevertheless succeeds in opening to view those realms of the psyche that have been irrevocably wounded by actions that were both necessary and wrong.

The Worst Person in the World focuses on four years in the life of Julie, a bright twenty-something who's unsure of her career path and also has difficulty maintaining her relationships with men—stable though they may seem from day to day. This might sound like one of those "coming-of-age" dramas in which the protagonist "finds" herself after a good deal of Sturm and Drang, but Julie seems to be riding an endless wave of effervescent charm throughout the film that renders introspection all but unnecessary. In any case, Julie doesn't seem to have any female friends with which to hash out her life-choices. Her adventures are varied and fun to witness, but the success of the film depends on sustaining her allure for viewers in the same way that she sustains the trust of her mother and the interest of her successive boyfriends.   

In the title role, Renate Reinsve, succeeds in that regard--they even gave her the "best actress" award at Cannes. She comes across as genuinely ebullient rather than merely narcissistic and exploitative. Has she figured anything out by the end of the film? I'd rather not say. Do we like her more or less? Once again, it's a matter for discussion. But the film itself is fun to watch, and unusual, and annoying, and problematic. And did I mention fun?

(The film might also serve well as an advertisement for the glamour of the Swedish welfare state. Julie earns a living working as a bookstore clerk, and one of her major boyfriends is a barista at a coffee shop, yet they seem to have a nice pad and no financial problems to speak of.)

Drive My Car

Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi's previous films include Intimacies, which is four hours long, and Happy Hour, which passes the five hour mark. With Drive My Car, he wraps up his story in a tidy three hours, maintaining a sure, steady pace and a solid story-line that touches on grief, infidelity, crime, guilt, story-telling, art, and work...but has almost nothing to do with cars.

The film is based on three unrelated short stories by Haruki Murakami, well-known for his elusive and enigmatic narratives. If you happened to Google the film, you'd read the following brief description:

"An aging, widowed actor seeks a chauffeur. The actor turns to his go-to mechanic, who ends up recommending a 20-year-old girl. Despite their initial misgivings, a very special relationship develops between the two."

Every bit of information here is wrong. In the film, the actor has a chauffeur imposed upon him as part of a contractual obligation, following more than an hour of development during which his wife is very much present. There are no auto mechanics in the film. The young female driver is 23 years old. And the relationship that develops between them is only one part—albeit an important one—of a much wider range of relationships between our protagonist, Kafuku, his family, and the various people he gets to know in the course of rehearsing a stage production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.

There comes a point in most "long" films where the plot takes a new turn and you find yourself saying, "Boy, this is getting LONG." Drive My Car remains fascinating throughout. It starts out conversationally, almost in neutral, and every new character or twist is welcome, as is also the spectacular Japanese countryside through which Kafuku is sometimes driven to and from rehearsals. Kafuku himself is a tightly wound spring of melancholy emotion, and that feeling quietly sustains the unhurried pace of the film. The rehearsals of Uncle Vanya add yet another layer of potential meaning...One of these days it might be fun to watch Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd Street again. 

Brighton 4 follows a few weeks in the life of Kakhi, a famous wrestler in his home country of Georgia, now retired, who comes to the Brighton neighborhood of Brooklyn to find out how his son Soso is doing. He discovers that Soso isn't studying medicine, but working for a moving company, and he owes $15,000 in gambling debts to a local Russian gambling ring. He was planning to use that money to "buy" a marriage, and a green card, from a Russian woman named Lena. Kakhi moves into the boarding house with his son and gets a job caring for an elderly couple in a effort to raise money.

It's a harsh life, but made more agreeable by eating, drinking, and the spontaneous deep-throated singing of the men at the hostel.  In an amusing subplot, father and son, making use of Kakhi's still considerable wrestling skills, come to the rescue of two cleaning ladies who are being exploited by a Kazakh employer. Levan Tediashvili , a Georgian Olympic champion in real life, pretty much carries the film playing Kakhi, with his resigned, gentle force and humane disposition. The plot holds a few surprises, but the film succeeds  largely on the strength of the exotic ethnic milieu it depicts and the pathos of the individual lives it lovingly details.

I was interested to learn, reading about the film later, that the role of Soso's green-card fiancée Lena was played by Nadezhda Mikhalkova, the daughter of the great Russian director Nikolai Mikhailkov. His film Burnt by the Sun won the foreign film Oscar in 1995, though his earlier films Dark Eyes, The Slave of Love, Oblomov, and Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano, are all better.  

Mysteries (I Misteri) an Italian documentary that had its world premier in Minneapolis recently, has been described as "visually stunning, powerful and breathtaking." It's not. Rather, it introduces viewers to four minor Sicilian village festivals reminiscent of church events many of us may have been involved in as children, where costume-making, pageantry, and general horseplay abound. But these events are on a much larger scale, and in an Old World environment much more exotic and attractive than what you're likely to find in the Lutheran towns and suburbs of the American Midwest. That's what makes it fun. There is nothing powerful or breathtaking about boys trying to jump over a bonfire or walking out to the end of a wooden pole above the sea to grab a white rag. The energy and excitement comes from the fact that everyone in town seems to be involved in one way or another. The film lacks subtitles, so we have no idea what anyone is saying, and that, too, adds to the giddy atmosphere.

  

Most of The Great Silence takes place within the library of a mansion overlooking the Gulf of Naples, where author Valerio Princip writes his books. He has refused, with aristocratic distain, to sell the rights to various film and TV interests, and now finds himself strapped for cash, to the point where his wife, Rose, becomes determined to sell the distinguished edifice and move to somewhere less drafty and more affordable. In the course of this stagy production (which was originally a play) Valerio gets lectured not only by his wife, but also, in turn, by his two grown children, both of whom unload a litany of complaints about his lifelong pride, remoteness, and dedication to his work. Yet they don't seem to hear a word he says in defense of himself. The only person who really listens to and understands him is the family's long-time maid. In the course of the drama she helps him to see his life in an entirely new perspective.

Watching The Great Silence is a lot like watching a play. Little has been done to make it cinematic—we hardly see the exterior of the mansion, much less the Bay of Naples—and even the "library" is less than impressive, but the well-timed entrances and exits, odd-ball minor characters, and long-winded soliloquies have their own charm.