Review: "Love Life" Sings a Tragic Song

by Cláudio Alves

Under the right circumstances, a whisper can sound like a shout, soft caresses like barb-wire across the skin. In Kôji Fukada's cinema, a directorial style full of quiet oddities becomes the perfect context for such paradoxes to thrive ferociously. They never resolve themselves completely either, a sense of mystery prevailing until the end credits roll, whether it's the perversions of Harmonium or A Girl Missing's puzzle box plot. For his latest film, now in limited release, the Japanese auteur let go of those previous projects' violent spirits, redirecting his attention to a premise that sounds like easy-digestible melodrama. But, of course, that's not what Fukada has in store for his audience

Love Life was reportedly inspired by a romantic tune, but its final song rings barren, no rose-colored loveliness muffling the agony hiding between the notes. The sound produced is no crooning chant but a shattering, the glass of fragile joy broken before the first act is over…

Click to read more ...

Return to Dust: Against Censorship

by Cláudio Alves

Barbie this, Oppenheimer that, the Barbenheimer double feature wasn't the only title worth watching to arrive in theaters last week. Indeed, one of 2022's most controversial titles finally enjoyed its American release well over a year after it competed at the Berlinale and incurred the wrath of the Chinese government. Ruijun Li's Return to Dust deserves the attention of every cinephile, both because one shouldn't bow to the pressures of censorship but also because it's a remarkable bit of social realist filmmaking. Its ability to touch on hard truths made it an unlikely box office success before all that attention ruffled some feathers…

Click to read more ...

Review: "Revoir Paris"

by Cláudio Alves

2023 is shaping out to be the year of Virginie Efira, at least as far as American audiences are concerned. Other People's Children blessed theaters in March, and Madeleine Collins will arrive in August, all lauded leading roles for the Belgian star. This month, Revoir Paris comes to satiate Efira fans, gleaming with the promise of César gold, for this picture finally won her the prize oft called the French Oscar. Written and directed by Alice Winocour in tribute to her brother, the film, also known as Paris Memories, considers the aftermath of a terrorist attack not unlike those that befell the French capital in November 2015…

Click to read more ...

Review: Virginie Efira is miraculous in "Other People's Children"

by Cláudio Alves

Watching Rebecca Zlotowski's Other People's Children, I was reminded of a discussion I once had with a professor. Despite the class focusing on theater, we talked about cinema and what stories deserve to have the camera pointed at them. In short, we debated the merits of dramatizing ordinary people. For me, there's plenty of interest in exploring individuals whose lives are entirely un-dramatic, maybe even anti-dramatic. Great art can be created by investigating the complexities of the simplest-seeming experiences. Just because something appears anodyne or common doesn't mean there aren't beguiling specificities or that we should be above it. My professor disagreed.

At the time, a great deal of the conversation centered around the films of Chantal Akerman, but Zlotowski's latest effort feels like an up-to-date if more conventional, example. Indeed, I imagine my former pedagogue would hate the thing if he ever set eyes on Other People's Children…

Click to read more ...

Review: "One Fine Morning" is the gentlest of gut punches

by Cláudio Alves

Autofiction isn't a new phenomenon, whether in film or other arts. Nevertheless, more and more directors are dipping their toes into pools of navel-gazing introspection. For some auteurs, however, there has never been another way of making art. Take Mia Hasen-Løve as an example. Her cinema has always manifested as a reflection of lived experience, pulling from personal details in gradations of openness, extrapolating narrative honesty as a conduit for building humanistic pieces. Empathy is the tenet of her cinema, not just between audience and characters but between the filmmaker and her creation. At least, that's the feeling that persists after one leaves the theater, still dazed by the director's work. 

Within this context, it means a great deal to state that One Fine Morning, Mia Hansen-Løve's latest, might be her most personal project to date…

Click to read more ...