Early April Movies, Including Three Canadian

Early April Movies, Including Three Canadian 

April 17 is “Canadian film day”, but in a previous post I lamented the few opportunities to see films nominated for the Canadian Screen Awards. So I’m happy to report that Stockholm is now getting a multiplex release (a year after premiering at the Tribeca festival), and I was able to see the first Canadian title reviewed below, Chien de garde (English title “Family First”) thanks to Crave TV (formerly The Movie Network).  This Quebec film was a somewhat surprising choice as Canada’s 2018 submission for the foreign-language Oscar category, ahead of, for example, Quebec master Denys Arcand’s latest The Fall of the American Empire (which has yet to screen in Ottawa), and Sebastien Pilote’s The Fireflies are Gone, awarded best Canadian feature at the Toronto film festival (also ignored by the Canadian Screen Awards).  Meanwhile, the first English-language feature from Quebec prodigy Xavier Dolan, The Life and Death of John P. Donovan, fared poorly with Toronto festival critics and awaits release.   

Chien de garde (“Family First” Canada)

This dark debut feature from writer-director Sophie Dupuis focuses on two brothers, JP (Jean-Simon Leduc) and the younger Vincent (Théodore Pellerin) who do dirty work collecting debts for a crooked uncle Dany (Paul Ahmarani).  Together with their mother (Maude Guérin), JP and girlfriend Mel share an apartment with Vincent in Montreal’s working-class Verdun neighborhood.  JP at least has future job prospects but the boisterous lanky Vincent is a jittery wacko who still sleeps with his mom (and she’s alcoholic). Pellerin won best actor at the Canadian Screen Awards for his over-the-top performance. While there’s a gritty force to this dysfunctional family affair it’s no surprise when JP and Mel have had enough of the scene and split, or when inevitable screw-ups have a depressingly downbeat destination.  B

Giant Little Ones (Canada)

Filmed in Sault Ste. Marie, this well-acted teen drama from writer-director Keith Behrman (a native of Shaunavon, Saskatchewan) seethes with adolescent confusion, anxiety and aggression.

The central character Franky Winter is played by Texan Josh Wiggins who has matured since his breakout role in 2014’s Hellion. Franky lives with his sister and single mom (Maria Bello). A popular member of the swim team, Franky has a girlfriend with whom he plans to lose his virginity the night of his 17^th birthday.  Instead, after getting drunk with best friend Ballas Kohl (Darren Mann), a sexual incident occurs between them about which the boastful jock lies, betraying and “outing” Franky to the school. Deeply hurt, he quits the swim team. At the same time he’s fortunate to have emotional support, not only from family but also from Ballas’ sister Natasha (Taylor Hickson) who has struggled with her own psychological challenges, as well as from a transgender girl “Mouse” (Niamh Wilson) who identifies as a boy.   

            Adding to Franky’s distress in the world of high-school shunning and homophobic slurs has been a refusal to accept his dad Ray (Kyle MacLachlan of Twin Peaks fame), who left the marriage to live as a gay man with his male partner. That changes after Franky gets assaulted.  A heart-to-heart father to son talk is one of the film’s best scenes. We sense that Franky will move past the hurt to become a better, more tolerant and understanding young man.  A-     

Sgaawaay K’uuna - Edge of The Knife (Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_the_Knife)

This award-winning drama co-directed by Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown is a first in the endangered Haida language which had only about 20 fluent speakers at the time of filming.  The evocative cinematography has intensified my desire to visit the stunning ancient landscapes of Haida Gwaii, the B.C. coastal archipelago where it was shot on location with an Indigenous crew and Haida actors recreating a traditional legend of pre-contact Haida society. The title is from a Haida proverb: "The world is as sharp as the edge of a knife; as you go along you have to be careful or you will fall off one side or the other.” The wikipedia entry linked above has fascinating details of a production process that has benefited a revitalization of Haida language and culture.

            The central character is a young man Adiits'ii (Tyler York) who, after causing the death of the young son of another prominent tribal member Kwa, retreats in shame to become an outcast feral creature in the forest wilderness, an almost zombie-like wildman known as Gaagiixid, The creature’s capture reopens wounds in the multi-generational clannish society. The dialogue can be somewhat stilted but the emotions exposed of grief and recrimination are raw, even violent—this is no romantic fable of a pacific eden.  It’s interesting that one of the producers is Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk acclaimed for Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, a story of murder and revenge set in the distant past.  The Canadian cinema can only benefit from increased opportunities for Indigenous peoples to translate their stories to the screen.  A-    

Hotel Mumbai (Australia/India/U.S. http://www.iconmovies.com.au/movies/hotel-mumbai)

Director and co-writer Anthony Maras’ dramatization of the tragic events of November 26-29, 2008 that terrorized India’s largest city is chillingly effective. The final toll was 164 people killed and 308 wounded.  Although the 10 Pakistani Islamist terrorists targeted a dozen sites, the worst carnage occurred in the luxurious Taj Hotel, a favorite of VIPS and the 1%.  There were 1,000 guests and 500 staff at the time.

The psychopathic disregard for human life of the young male shooters (and they are always angry young men), who also lobbed grenades and started fires, is intensified by their zealously suicidal  belief in doing it for Allah, while being directed from abroad by a merciless mastermind “Brother Bull” (who’s never been brought to justice). The initial police response was wholly inadequate and it took many hours for special forces to arrive from Delhi. The life-and-death drama is heightened by a focus on some individual fates—in particular, a wealthy couple (played by Armie Hammer and Nazanin Boniadi) with an infant, a Russian tycoon (Jason Isaacs)—and heroic efforts by staff, notably Head Chef Oberoi (Anupam Kher) and a turban-wearing Sikh waiter played by Dev Patel.  B+

The Aftermath (UK/Germany/U.S. http://www.foxsearchlight.com/theaftermath/)

Director James Kent’s Second World War melodrama, adapted from a Rhidian Brook novel, is set in a devastated Hamburg the winter after the Allied victory.  A British officer Lewis Morgan (Jason Clarke) and his wife Rachael (Keira Knightley) are given lodgings in a luxurious house belonging to a former architect Stephen Lubert (Alexander Skarsgård) who lives there with teenage daughter Heike. Trauma has been suffered on both sides—Lubert’s wife was killed in the Allied bombing firestorm; the Morgan’s young son by a German bomb blast.  Lewis generously allows the Luberts and their housekeeper to stay in a separate upper part of the house rather than being sent to a detention camp.  While the taciturn Lewis is beset by the troubles of occupation and denazification, Rachael is left to brood. Her initial distrust and coldness towards the handsome Stephen turns rather too suddenly to a shared sexual attraction. As they become secret lovers and make plans to move away, a subplot has the resentful Heike falling under the sway of a young Nazi involved in violent resistance. Both scenarios reach a crisis point. Like the shattered society around them, there’s no easy way to pick up the pieces of their lives.  While period details and performances are fine, some plot points are less than plausible.  B

Ash is Purest White (China/France/Japan https://www.ashispurestwhitemovie.com/)

A multiple award winner, Jia Zhangke’s sprawling drama begins in 2001 in the underworld of a chain-smoking, gun-toting criminal brotherhood, the ‘jianghu’. At its centre is the relationship between the mobster Bin (Fan Liao) and female companion Qiao (Tao Shao), set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing China steeped in corruption and capitalist contradictions.  After a gangland murder Biao rescues Bin from a violent assault.  Serving prison terms that separate them, they make their way through situations of deception and disregard before returning to where they started.  Each is scarred; Bin now disabled from a stroke.  The title refers to volcanic ash burned pure white at the highest temperatures.  But in this society of volcanic change the fallout on human lives is more likely to be ashen gray. If at one level the “people’s republic” is still a nominally “Communist” one-party dictatorship, below that controlled veneer burns a cinema as compellingly raw and challenging as any. A-