In this post I review 6 new films
including a Canadian feature as among the best.
Veteran Italian director and co-writer
Marco Bellochio’s sprawling crime drama is based on the actual life of Tommaso
Buscetta (strikingly played by Pierfranceso Favino), a key member of the
Sicilian “Costa Nostra”, who had moved his family to Brazil when several sons
were murdered by rivals (during the internecine mob wars over control of the
heroin trade an on-screen body count clicks past 150). The flamboyant Buscetta, no stranger to
killing, became known as “the boss of the two worlds”. But after being arrested and tortured—there’s
an especially harrowing scene where his wife’s life is threatened—he was
extradited back to Italy where in the 1980s he became a protected key witness
in a famous series of anti-mafia trials, although he continued to regard
himself as a “man of honour” not an “informant”. Buscetta forged a special relationship with
prosecuting judge Giovani Falconi (Fausto Russo Alesi) who was later blown up
in a spectacular mafia hit. The unruly
courtroom scenes, with dozens of caged defendants shouting abuse, are something
to behold. Indeed the production design throughout is first rate. Buscetta survived to join his family in
witness protection in several small towns in the U.S. Bellochio brings a notorious chapter to life
in vivid detail. A-
Directed with great style and verve by
Quebec filmmaker Daniel Grou Podz, from a screenplay by Sylvain Guy adapting
the eponymous book by André Cédilot and André Noël, this Montreal-based
organized crime thriller is one of the best Canadian movies I’ve seen in years.
At the centre is the family of Sicilian-born godfather Frank Paterno (Sergio
Castellito). He negotiates shares of the
lucrative drug trade with other criminal elements. He schemes with associates across borders for
a piece of a major proposed infrastructure project—a bridge linking the Italian
mainland with Sicily. An intense rivalry
develops between Frank’s son “Giaco” and “Vince” Gamache (Marc-Andre Grodin),
the son of Frank’s master tailor Henri (Gilbert Sicotte). A middle-section backstory circa 1980
explains how the young Vince, rejecting his father, had become close to Giaco
and Frank, then was initiated into the murderous ways of the underworld. The problem is that Vince has turned into a
homicidal hothead (an especially disturbing drug trafficking play involves the
“accidental” deaths of schoolboys in Venezuela). When he goes too far and is deemed a
liability, he’s beaten half to death. That
of course sets off another cycle of violence as a hit is put on Giaco (Donny
Falsetti) which also endangers Vince’s sister Sofie (Mylène Mackay), and she’s
engaged to another of Frank’s sons Patrizio (Michael Ricci). By this time we
have already witnessed several scenes of gruesome lethal violence. And this personal connection is just one thread
among richly detailed angles that involve inter alia: complex money laundering
networks being investigated by the RCMP, with multiple arrests and attempted
prosecutions; gangland deals carving up territory; extortion and payback with
extreme prejudice. Moving on, we follow
a battered psychopathic Vince, partially recovered, into a spectacular
explosion and shootout. But that’s not
even the ultimate mortal twist. A last scene of siblings at a father’s
graveside puts a savage exclamation point on these proceedings. Overall, the movie benefits from both top-notch
production design and excellent performances (with dialogue is in English,
French, Italian, and Spanish). Highly
recommended. A
This luminous drama from writer-director
Céline Sciamma won best screenplay as well as the “queer palm” at the 2019
Cannes film festival. Set in pre-revolutionary 18th century France,
it opens with young girls learning to draw when the appearance of their female
teacher’s portrait of the title—depicting a scene from a nocturnal gathering of
women singing around a bonfire—rekindles a private pain. She’s the painter Marianne (Noémie Merlant), next
shown wading ashore in coastal Brittany to take up a commission from a countess
of Milanese background who knew her painter father. The chatelaine needs a
portrait of her daughter Héloise (Adèle Haenal) who has come from a sheltered
education in a convent. The purpose is a
marriage arrangement with a Milanese suitor who had been the intended husband
of another daughter, deceased (the cause merely whispered). The mother is trying again since a previous
attempt failed when Héloise refused to pose.
Marianne is therefore presented as a companion only—she must capture her
elusive subject’s likeness on canvas through surreptitious observation. Below that surface something deeper smolders.
Deliberately defacing the first completed portrait as not good enough, Marianne
is able to prolong her stay while the mother departs for a few days. In this household of women the other
significant figure is a young maid Sophie facing the misfortune of pregnancy, a
narrative element adding to the sense of feminine complicity even as the
camera’s focus stays intently on Marianne and Héloise. Rarely if ever has the female gaze been
rendered with more exquisite sensitivity on screen, moving from shy sidelong
glances to a post-confessional erotic flame of passionate embrace. The lovers exchange souvenirs, knowing this is
a fleeting moment before the separation a male-dominated society will impose
(with metaphoric allusion to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice). Their eyes need
not meet each other again for the last image, a haunting upwelling close-up, to
suggest a spark that cannot be extinguished. A+
(Watch a Toronto film festival conversation with the director and
principal actors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnbXcJjkc20.)
This stirring documentary directed by
Robert Greene recalls tragic events from July 1917, as commemorated in a 2017
centennial re-creation—events which convulsed the copper-mining town of Bisbee,
Arizona situated near the Mexican border and close to the historic “Wild West”
town of Tombstone. Bisbee was the site
of a huge copper mine when a strike was called by the I.W.W., the Industrial
Workers of the World, the radical “One Big Union” (nicknamed the “Wobblies”) that
represented the miners, 90% of whom were foreign-born, making them a target for
ethnic prejudice as well as anti-Communist hysteria (this was the year of the
Bolshevik revolution) and allegations of sabotaging of the war effort. Bisbee was a company town and to break the
strike several thousand scabs and residents were deputized to round up at
gunpoint some 1,300 striking miners and their supporters who were forced into
railcars and in an infamous deportation sent to the desert of New Mexico, even threated
with death if they were to return to the town.
It created deep and lingering divisions with families that are explored
through Green’s multi-layered approach that delves into personal histories, the
centennial preparations, and the experience of a young Mexican-American Fernando
Serrano who will act the part of one of the miners. If the narrative sometimes
drags a bit, it grabs hold in the final chapter six showing the re-enactment of
the violent roundup and deportation. With
the power structure of capital and state so manifestly exposed, the screen
comes alive as more than a dry lesson in long-ago labour history. A- (For
more historical details see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisbee_Deportation.)
This remarkable documentary by Afghan
filmmaker Hassan Fazili was shot entirely on three mobile phones. (Awarded a special jury prize at the 2019
Sundance film festival among other distinctions, it has a 100% score on the
“rotten tomatoes” rating site.) Fazili
with wife and producing partner Fatima Hussaini records how the family of
four—they have two little girls Zahra and Nargis—makes a dangerous journey to
safety. Fazili observes that he comes
from a long line of mullahs, and has five brothers who are mullahs. But he took a different path that aroused the
ire of religious conservatives. The
couple ran an Art Café in Kabul until forced to close. In 2015, warned of a Taliban death sentence,
the family was first displaced to Tajikistan.
But when their asylum claim was rejected they returned to Afghanistan
before embarking on a perilous 6,000 km “illegal” transit to Europe as so many
other refugees.
The film begins
with a little girl’s voice rejecting Jean-Paul Sartre’s infamous aphorism
“L’enfer, c’est les autres” (“Hell is other people”), proposing instead: “The
road of life winds through hell. Hell is
within me. This is a journey to the edge
of hell.” The family flees along human exodus routes through Iran and Turkey to
Bulgaria where they spend many weeks in a camp for migrants (who are assaulted
by far-right nationalists with police complicity). The next destination is
Serbia where they are stuck for some 16 months until making it on a list to
Hungary where they are confined to a transit zone for 3 months. It’s almost 600 days since leaving their
homeland and in a montage of moments Fazili wonders if their dreams will become
a mirage. This is the rawest and truest form of cinema
verité that illuminates a condition faced by millions forced to leave home and
country behind. A+ (The Fazili family is currently in Germany.
Read more at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/midnight-traveler-expands-the-narrative-of-the-refugee-documentary.)
With “Brexit” putting the future of
Northern Ireland in question, this Northern Ireland production observes a longstanding
marriage that is tested but survives a devastating cancer. Joan
(Lesley Manville) and husband Tom (Liam Neeson) have known grief, losing a
daughter Debbie. After a series of tests
Joan learns she has breast cancer.
Although surgery removes the cancerous growth, which has not
metastasized, precaution dictates a course of chemotherapy followed by a
radical mastectomy. It’s a terrible ordeal experienced by many thousands of
women, depicted here with realism and sensitivity. Strains sometimes erupt in
the couple’s relationship but they manage to maintain intimacy as well as steady
support. This is essentially a two-hander,
apart from the narrative addition of a sympathetic hospital encounter with a
mixed-race gay couple Peter (David Wilmot) and Steve (Amit Shah). Peter, who
has terminal cancer, is being treated in the same hospital when Joan recognizes
him as having been the daughter’s teacher.
Co-directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn probe the burdens of
pain and loss without raising the emotional temperature into tragic illness
movie-of-the-week melodrama, a restraint that serves the material well. B+
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