Former film critic Kleber
Mendonça Filho, after a couple of decades making short films, experimental
videos and documentaries, made an enticing feature filmmaking debut with Neighbouring Sounds – on one hand a low-key
ensemble drama on character inter-dynamics, while, on the other, a quietly
seething portrayal of urban affluence, and in turn a caustic indication to how prosperity
is often achieved through exploitation and expropriations. The latter aspect –
and the themes of class oppression and wilful compromises on social equity in
Brazil – is something that Filho would continue to explore in ever bolder ways
in his subsequent films, viz. Aquarius
and Bacurau. Contained nearly completely
within a well-to-do Racife neighbourhood of apartment blocks, the film’s key
characters interact within this compact space – Francisco (W.J. Solha), a wealthy
and powerful former sugar baron who once owned all the real estate in the area; Francisco’s smooth-talking nephew João (Gustavo Jahn) who’s
operating as the ageing patriarch’s property agent; Bia (Maeve Jinkings), a
housewife mom who secretly smokes pot and is tormented by a neighbour’s barking
dog; and Clodoaldo (Irandhir Santos), a working-class hustler who sets up on
overnight security watch for the residents. That all the apartments are already
equipped with cameras, high walls and whatnot, and the street thefts are
largely carried out by Francisco’s own delinquent son (Yuri Holanda), added a sharp
commentary on the urban affluent’s paranoia with security and protection from untrustworthy
“outsiders”. The movie had an understated atmosphere of ominous foreboding throughout
its generous length – right from the strikingly evocative B/W photographs it
begins with, and which becomes clearer as the narrative sauntered towards a
muted payoff – though that could’ve perhaps been enhanced by a tighter
structuring.
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Ensemble Film
Language: Portuguese
Country: Brazil
Individual complicity
and guilt (as a reflection of the collective societal complicity and guilt)
formed the central tenet in the Dardenne brothers’ powerful, poignant, morally
complex and deeply affecting The Unknown
Girl. The Belgian duo’s acutely perceptive canvas of social realism and empathy
for the disadvantaged portrayed how “illegal immigrants” – among the most
vulnerable sections of contemporary European society – aren’t just harassed, exploited
and disenfranchised in life, they’re at times rendered invisible and anonymous
even in death. Jenny (Adèle Haenel) is a conscientious, compassionate and
competent doctor who spends her time taking care of Liège’s working class folks
by dividing her time between a small clinic and house visits, even as she’s
being considered for a position at a prestigious facility. Her rigorously led
life, however, faces an unforeseen upheaval when, fatigued after a long day’s
work and having to deal with a young intern (Olivier Bonnaud) grappling with
emotional challenges of the job, she ignores an after-hours buzzer. As is
eventually revealed, a desperate young African immigrant woman of unknown
identity had rung the buzzer and was later found dead by the river. Devastated
by this news, and suffering a tremendous crisis of faith on her inadvertent role
in this, she takes upon herself the onerous task of deciphering the unknown girl’s
identity with near monomaniacal obsession. The task, unfortunately, is fraught
with challenges as she needs to confront her patients – a vulnerable kid and
his guilt-ridden father (Jérémie Renier) – as well as hostile men, mistrustful
immigrants and disinterested cops. Haenel gave a stunningly layered and
understated turn as Jenny realizes, over the course of her emotionally
turbulent ride, the deeply personal nature of broader sociopolitical tragedies.
Director: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Urban Drama
Language: French
Country: Belgium
Truths and memories
aren’t just subjective, they’re often profoundly personal too – a maxim that’s magnificently
evoked in Canadian actress-filmmaker Sarah Poley’s enthralling, deceptively
complex and exquisitely genre-bending diary film Stories We Tell. Highlighting the subjectivity of eyewitness
testimonies that adds diverse perspectives to the same “truth”, Polley delightfully
chronicled a ravishingly personal story deciphering her enigmatic mother and
her own parentage. Diane Polley, her late mom who succumbed to cancer when Sarah
was just 11, was a lively, charismatic woman who charmed everyone with her
vivacious presence, but faced pain and crises herself – being forced to leave
her kids behind from her first marriage by a parochial Toronto legal system;
never getting to realize her potential during her loving but staid marriage to
the exceptionally liberal but emotionally reserved actor-writer Michael; being
torn in her marital fidelity upon falling in love with left-leaning
Montreal-based film producer Harry Gulkin. The latter aspect, in turn, also
formed the springboard for layered exploration of the two fascinating men who both
loved Diane until her tragic death, and, therefore, finally, eventual revelation
of Sarah’s father. The artistically eclectic formal choices employed were
especially engrossing – intimate yet freewheeling interviews with her two dads
and an assortment of siblings, step-siblings and others; soulful narration by
Michael from his memoir; and faux home video footage which subverted the lines
between fact and fiction. The private nature of the story aside, the docu also subtly
traversed a string of existential inquiries borne out of Sarah’s leftbank
political beliefs – feminism and woman’s agency, freedom of marital and sexual
choices, familial fluidity, personal as political – and these made this, apart
from gently affecting and poignant, powerful and stirring too.
Director: Sarah Polley
Genre: Documentary/Diary Film
Language: English
Country: Canada
The fragility of
domestic equilibrium is the dominant theme in Harmomium, Kōji Fukada’s tense and somber film, simmering with
ominous apprehensions. He captured this through deft combination of multiple elements
that imbued this taut melodrama with a touch of noir – familial fissures, arrival
of an enigmatic stranger, infidelity borne out of midlife crisis, sins of the
past that comes to haunt the present, and how an offspring can at times consume
the lives of its parents. Toshio (Kanji Furutachi), a terse machinist who
spends most of his time in his garage workshop, and his caring but neglected
and deeply lonely wife Akie (Mariko Tsutsui), are in a loveless marriage barely
held together courtesy their kid daughter Notaru. The dynamic starts undergoing
a shift upon the arrival of Yasaka (Tadanobu Asano) – a recently released
convict shrouded in mystery, with possibly a dark shared past with Toshio –
and, despite his seemingly stoic demeanour, he gets integrated into the nuclear
family by helping Notaru play the harmonium that she’s struggling to learn, and
in turn developing an affecting kinship with the emotionally discontented Akie
which gradually traverses from the platonic to the carnal. However, the delicate
stability inevitably snaps when Notaru suffers a crippling injury that leaves
her paralyzed, and Yasaka, who may or may not be responsible for that, vanishes
from their lives. As the film fast-forwards to eight years later, grief,
estrangement, guilt and obsessions have by now taken the family to the
precipice. Stunning performances by all – especially an absolutely wrenching
one by Tsutsui – along with the minimalist usage of a melody by the Indian bard
Rabindranath Tagore, suffused a haunting, viscerally discordant atmosphere to this
formally rigorous film.
Director: Koji Fukada
Genre: Drama/Family Drama/Mystery
Language: Japanese
Country: Japan
Brazilian filmmaker Kleber
Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius couldn’t
have felt a more dramatic departure vis-à-vis his latest film Bacurau; though it did have a few
stylistic flourishes – a passionate flashback here and a sweeping pan-zoom
there, which might connect back to the B-film form and pyrotechnics of the
latter – this was otherwise a startlingly intimate piece of work, imbued with
intensely personal memories that one fiercely holds on to, fleeting longings
for physical desires, familial differences, and the defiant refusal to budge.
At the center was a superlative turn by Sônia Braga as the sexagenarian Clara –
family matriarch, empathetic and strong-willed widow, cancer survivor, and
musicologist with an eclectic LP collection. She’s also deeply fond of her
thoughtfully decorated apartment in the eponymous building in Recife, with
glorious views of the Atlantic Ocean. Her life is a mix of the mundane – going
to the beach for morning swims, chatting with her housekeeper (Zoraide Coleto),
meeting with her family, dancing alone to music in her flat – alternated with
moments of both joy and resentment with her family, chance intimacy with
strangers, and even a passionate encounter with a gigolo. Her carefully laid
out life, however, starts experiencing ripples when the unctuous
American-educated grandson (Humberto Carrão) of a powerful property developer
starts using nefarious means to hound her out of her place as she’s steadfastly
refused to sell it to them even as every other occupant has vacated the
building. Mendonça explored a number of stirring themes in this quietly
absorbing tapestry, including brittle societal fault-lines borne out of class
differences and racial prejudices, exploration of sexual yearnings of an ageing
woman, and incessant realteration of urban neighbourhoods by corrupt land
sharks.
Director: Kleber Mendonca Filho
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama
Language: Portuguese
Country: Brazil
