A REAL PAIN

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A

In A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin play adult cousins who attend a guided holocaust tour of Poland, and the tour guide is a Brit who is the only person in the group not in any way Jewish. How often does it actually happen that way, I wonder? I could be wrong, but I would expect that more often than not these tour guides are Jewish or have some connection to Judaism, or at the very least to the country they have chosen to operate in. I’m sure there are exceptions to that, as in this story, in which it’s a fascinating narrative choice.

Eisenberg wrote and directed this film, his sophomore feature film effort on both counts. It’s easy to be skeptical of yet another young(ish) actor fancying himself a director, but it really should be noted how assured and accomplished A Real Pain is. It’s a film filled with scenes set up to go a predictable direction, but which consistently go a different way. There’s a scene in which Eisenberg’s David is ranting to the rest of the tour group over dinner about Culkin’s Benji while he’s gone to the bathroom. He goes on so long that I was sure Benji would be revealed to be standing behind him and overhearing all this. Instead Benji does something totally different, serves as an effective disctraction, but is wholly in character.

Eisenberg and Culkin are two very different people, and so are David and Benji. After a while, it becomes increasingly clear that this casting is inspired. These cousins were only born three weeks apart, so they grew up very close, and you really feel it in their characters. David consistently allows Benji to walk all over him, and it’s never clear whether this has always been their dynamic, or if it’s only happening now because of a recent, sad incident in Benji’s life. Either way, I found Benji often deeply annoying, and can’t imagine tolerating him the way David does. He even asks David to lend him his phone so he can play music in the shower, making the dubious claim that he can’t on his own phone. I’d tell him to use his own fucking phone.

The magic trick of A Real Pain is how much we empathize with both of these guys in spite of their character flaws. In typical Eisenberg style, David is neurotic and nervous and awkward, taking anti-anxiety pills. At least he’s not a pretentious prick, a type of character Eisenberg excels at playing. David feels wholly his own person, someone with deep affection for the people in his life, from his wife to his son to, vividly illustrated here, his cousin.

I do love a story about grown men with an enduring love for each other, that isn’t sexual. We do get more of them these days than we used to, but there can never be too many stories of platonic but deep bonds between straight guys. Audiences need that modeled for them, and this movie does it stupendously. Granted, David and Benji are cousins, so it’s about more than friendship, as they are family. But, they are also so wildly different from each other, they function as best friends who complement each other.

The tour group they are on is fairly small, The others in the group are an older married couple (Liza Sedovy and Daniel Oreskes); a Rwandan man who escaped the genocide and converted to Judaism (Kurt Egyiawan); and a recently divorced woman played by Dirty Dancing’s Jennifer Grey. I heard her interviewed on a podcast recently on which the hosts insisted she’s “a scene stealer” in this movie, and I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. She’s fine, but the part could just as easily have been cast with any other competent actor.

Will Sharpe, though, conveys some surprising subtlety as James, the tour guide—particularly when Benji randomly breaks and criticizes James’s over-reliance on historic facts and statistics at the expense of experiencing the moment. James takes the criticism with a graceful willingness to learn, an unexpected thing to see.

This tour also goes to locations notable to the holocaust not often seen in film, in particular the unusually well preserved concentration camp Majdanek, in Lublin, Poland. David and Benji take this particular tour in part because this is the city where their grandmother was from, and they leave the tour a day early to visit the house where she grew up. There, they have an interaction with a neighbor that is characteristically awkward, but which these characters manage to turn into their own brand of sentimentality.

That is perhaps why A Real Pain really spoke to me. The characters in it struggle to make it work, but with persistence they make it work. The story is very well constructed, and I can only imagine this film succeeds in much the same way, with loving layers of polish over time.

A relationship that’s more functional than it seems.

Overall: A-

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

You could say Small Things Like These is a spiritual sequel to the 2013 film Philomena. Both films are a pointed examination of the barbaric practice of forcing young, unwed mothers to carry their babies to term in private before taking their children away from them. Small Things Like These ends with a note that this was done, at least in Ireland where the film is set, at recently as 1998. I nearly fell out of my chair, but cruelly puritanical treatment of woman should come as no surprise no matter the era.

I key difference, though, with Philomena is that it tells the story of one of these women. Small Things Like These makes a man the protagonist, something I went in wondering how they were going to pull it off. It turns out there is a very good reason for this, as Small Things Like These is very much about doing the right thing in the face of injustice, even if you’re not the one experiencing it.

Perhaps the most memorable line occurs in a conversation between Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy, predictably excellent) and his wife, Eileen (Eileen Walsh). After a chance encounter with one of these teen moms at a local convent, who desperately pleads for him to take her away, Eileen tells him: “To get on in this life, there are some things you have to ignore.”

Director Tim Mielants, working with Enda Walsh and based on the 2021 novel by Claire Keegan, takes a lot of time to get to this point. We spent a lot of quiet moments with Bill, who runs a business delivering coal—including to the convent—and comes home every night to a large house of women: his wife, and three daughters. A great deal of time is spent on what it took me a short while to realize were flashbacks to his childhood. In the meantime, I kept wondering why I was being shown these scenes, and indeed even what story was being told.

To the credit of this film—and its editor, Alain Dessauvage (who also edited the superb French film Close)—there comes a point at which the story being told finally starts to click into place, in a skillfully organic way. On dual tracks, we realize that Bill’s own mother was unwed, but granted kindness by a woman who offered her employment as a live-in maid and allowed Bill to live with them as well. She even keeps Bill with her when his young mother suddenly dies. And this is what grants Bill both a unique perspective and an unusual empathy for these girls underling forced labor at the convent’s laundry.

Emily Watson plays Sister Mary, the nun running this convent. Never before have I seen Watson play a character so effectively chilling, in just one sequence. Bill delivers his coal earlier than usual, and finds one of the teenage girls, Sarah (Zara Devlin), sleeping without a blanket, locked in the coal room in the dead of winter (Christmastime, to be precise—surely another pointed narrative choice). Sister Mary plays it off as foolish games of children, but it’s quickly apparent that this kids are being abused.

Before long, a couple of different people take Bill aside to warn him against “making yourself a nuisance.” One woman says, ominously, “Those nuns have their fingers in every pie.” Clearly news has traveled fast in the town that Bill has seen something at the convent that he shouldn’t.

I won’t give away the ending, except to say that in the final scene, I was dying to know how his wife an daughters will respond to the very consequential choice Bill has made. We never find this out, the credits rolling before the story can get there. This is an example of a film leaving key questions unanswered in a deliberate and profound way.

The idea of doing what’s right in the face of institutional injustice hangs over the entire, deceptively simple story of Small Things Like These—delivered with a finesse that Blitz reaches for, in a much louder and more chaotic way, but does not quite reach. This is a film constructed in such a way that a rewatch would likely give fresh illumination. I’m not especially eager to revisit it, given the somberness of the story. But even the first impression is one that’s going to stick with me for a while.

Big Issues Like This: standing up to self-righteous horrors is no small thing.

Overall: B+

BLITZ

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B+

Blitz turns out to be a collection of great scenes that don’t quite add up to a great movie. It’s a good movie, but one that could have used something a little more. A little more character development, perhaps.

The acting elevates it a great deal. Saoirse Ronan is always so good it’s easy to take her for granted. Elliott Heffernan, as her son George, is quite the find—proof again that truly talented child actors are out there, waiting for discovery. Someone tell the casting agent for Goodrich. And then there’s Harris Dickinson, a young actor poised to embark on a great career with the excellent Beach Rats (2017) and who has since seen that promise fulfilled. He’s very good but kind of wasted in a relatively minor part in Blitz,

There are moments in Blitz where director Steve McQueen, who also wrote the script, gets a little too on the nose. In one overwrought scene, racial tensions simmer in one of the many London underground shelters of World War II. It might as well be the start of a bad joke: “An Arab, a Jew, and a Black guy walk into a shelter….” It’s a Black, Nigerian soldier who approaches to diffuse the tension, and then delivers one of the most pat speeches imaginable, about how sowing this kind of division is exactly what Hitler wants and they are stronger united. This is all true, of course, but the delivery is practically a megaphone of allegory for current American culture wars.

That soldier’s name is Ife, and he is but one of many stops on young George’s almost pointedly Dickensian journey through the wild dangers of London during the Blitz. Mileage varies widely among the different characters whose paths he crosses. In one instance, he is basically kidnapped by a group of truly dark opportunists, enlisting the 11-year-old boy’s help in squeezing into the tight spaces of bombed-out and collapsed buildings to loot valuables.

In one of the aforementioned great scenes, Blitz cuts to a crowded night club, filled with revelers having a great night out on the town, dancing to a large brass band. The camera moves through and around the crowd for so long, among nameless characters we are only now being introduced to, until air raid sirens are heard, and the camera backs up and above the crowd, suddenly hushed and looking up to the ceiling in silence. The horrific aftermath it cuts to next is made all the more effective by the time just spent with all these people.

Blitz feels a little like an attempt to emulate the 1998 Spielberg film Saving Private Ryan, following the journey of characters in search of someone while the utterly random horrors of war play out around them, and sometimes to them. McQueen’s approach is at a bit more of a remove from the characters, with much more focus on the journey itself. This might work more for some than others.

To be certain, I was riveted by Blitz from start to finish, largely because of the sense of danger and menace around every corner. In the opening scene, a man gets knocked out by an out of control fire hose, of all things. McQueen and his editor, Peter Sciberras (The Power of the Dog), make some odd choices of timing when it comes to shifting to flashbacks. Several times, the film cuts to clearly-CGI renderings of bombs descending from the sky, only to cut to a much more serene scene. I kept expecting to be startled by some explosion or another, only for it not to happen. There are startling moments of other kinds, such as when a tube station being used as a shelter suddenly floods with water. We know George will make it out, but that makes the scene no less harrowing.

Blitz only takes place over a couple of days, in 1940, when the British have no idea they have another half a decade of war ahead of them. Rita (Ronan) puts George on a train to evacuate him for his own safety, something he fails to understand: he wants to stay with his mother. The only reason he winds up traversing a London intermittently blasted by Nazi bombs is because he jumps off that train, and makes his way back. Along the way, some people help him, some people take advantage of him. In the aggregate, this is one lucky kid.

It should be noted, too, that he is multiracial. His father, originally from Grenada, gets in trouble with the law for blatantly racist reasons, and we only learn in passing later that the reason he isn’t around now is because he’s been deported—possibly another barely-veiled reference to scapegoated immigrants in present-day America (and Britain, for that matter; this is a British production, after all—as is Steve McQueen). George’s race, as well as Rita’s association with it, is a through line in the story, a point of view rarely depicted in the seemingly infinite number of films set during World War II,

We only ever see George’s father, Marcus (CJ Beckford), a couple of times, in flashback. It would have been useful to have gotten to know him better, but McQueen is much more interested in depictions of George barely missing death at every other turn. Much of this is very well rendered, if on a clearly limited budget. McQueen is making the best of what he has to work with. And he’s working with a stellar cast, who lift up a script that is adequate but falling just short of fully realized cohesion.

A mother and son lose and then find each other through mutually steely resolve in Blitz.

Overall: B

EMLILA PÉREZ

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A
Music: B

There’s a lot going on in Emilia Pérez—some might argue too much. It’s a Mexican cartel movie; it’s a story about a trans woman’s self-actualization; it’s a musical. I kept wondering how this movie might most succinctly be encapsulated as a logline or an elevator pitch.

More than anything, the musical element is the easiest to be ambivalent about. I remain unsure as to what the point of it is. Never mind the somewhat dubious nature of Zoe Saldaña playing the protagonist when hers is not the trans character, within minutes we witness her as Mexico City defense attorney to crooks, Rita—who breaks into song while walking through the streets, providing some exposition in a fairly economical way. The crowded streets become part of an intricate ballet of modern dancers around her, with choreography that is undeniably impressive. Saldaña’s singing is competent, and this scene provides a preview to what’s to come: a film that is a musical in the most fundamental and traditional sense of the word, characters sometimes even singing lines that would make far more sense uttered straight.

Mind you, the presentation of musical numbers is the only conventional thing about Emilia Pérez. How many traditional musicals have you seen about drug cartels, or that revolve around the transition of a trans woman, let alone both? This movie has songs about gender-affirming surgery, and there really is a moment when a Chinese surgeon in Bangkok utters the line, “From penis to vagina?”—in song.

The quality of the songs, by French singer Camille (with a score composed by Clément Duco), is spotty. The singing of lines between Rita and an Israeli surgeon upon their first meeting makes little sense. But there are deeply touching musical moments too, such as the child of a post-transition parent singing about how she smells like the father he remembers.

That brings me to Karla Sofía Gascón, the 52-year-old trans actress who plays the title character and the Mexican cartel leader pre-transition. We see her first as “Manitas Del Monte,” and when we later see her as Emilia, it is a stunning revelation. Gascón’s performance as Manitas is astonishing in retrospect, an unusual sort of layered performance that skirts the boundaries of meta storytelling. She is also incredible as Emilia, filling the screen with her unforgettable presence. Gascón, as it happens, has 41 acting credits on IMDb, 37 of them from before her transition in 2018. If nothing else, we can rest assured that director Jacques Audiard cast a trans actress for this role.

Oh, did I mention that Emilia Pérez is actually a French film? As in: it’s a French production, filmed in a studio near Paris. No French is spoken, however, due to the setting being largely in Mexico City—recreated in studio. Presumably the same was done in other settings, from China to Switzerland to Israel to England. A surprising amount of the dialogue—and singing—is done in English, a logical choice given how common it is for people who don’t speak each other’s native languages to default to English in order to communicate.

I was particularly struck by Selena Gomez as Jessi, a woman convinced she has been widowed when Emilia’s transition coincides with the faking of Manitas’s death. Gomez is reportedly dissatisfied with her performance of Spanish dialogue, as she is not fluent, but for those of us watching who are also not fluent, she was excellent. Furthermore, Gomez gives a consistently flat and muted delivery of her lines in the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building, and if that’s the extent of your familiarity with her as an actor you would never expect the kind of performance you see here. I might be tempted to say she has a shot at an Oscar nomination, if not for the fact that she is given far less juicy material than her costars.

How in the world does Rita fit into all of this, you might quite reasonably be asking? Rita herself asks this, when a pre-transition Emilia has her abducted and then offers millions for her assistance in finding a surgeon who can be discreet enough not to endanger her. Rita is merely a high-powered lawyer. In the end, you could say she was tapped for her powers of persuasion.

To the significant credit of Jacques Audiard and his co-writers Thomas Bidegain, Nicolas Livecchi and Léa Mysius, Emilia Pérez takes frequent unexpected turns, is utterly unpredictable, and is always absorbing. It’s also a tad chaotic, and there is a shocking moment at the end that I truly did not see coming and am still unsure how I feel about. This film is already being met with deeply mixed responses, some finding it an incredibly original work of art and some finding it outright offensive. I find myself falling in the middle, but leaning slightly toward impressed by how well its boldness somehow actually works. This is an international feature in every sense of the phrase, and its very existence is extraordinary.

The cis-het gaze: Zoe Sadaña offers some star power assistance.

Overall: B+

GOODRICH

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

Michael Keaton plays Andy Goodrich, a gallery owner who is both a good guy and a rich guy. Maybe this is nominative determinism.

Some might debate both points. Andy is so distracted by his career that he’s the only person in his life who didn’t know his wife was addicted to pills. Keaton is a singular actor, though—a guy who can play dark and brooding as well as winning personality. As directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer (Home Again), he is very much the latter. We can’t help but root for him. As for being rich, that’s relative. I suppose the character Andy Goodrich might think of himself as “middle class.” Not from where I sit, looking at that guy’s house.

Goodrich is a solid, standard family drama, with a premise that it uses to convince itself it’s “modern.” The title character is an older man—age never stated, but if we are to assume he’s the same age as Michael Keaton, then he’s 73. He has a grown daughter, Grace, played by Mile Kunis, and Grace’s age is stated: 36. With that math, Andy would have been 37 when she was born. He also has twin childen who are only 9 years old. Andy would have then been 64 when they were born. Kunis gets an amusing line about how being 27 years older than your siblings is “pretty much unheard of. Except maybe in L.A.” Of course, this movie is set in Los Angeles.

The film opens with Andy’s call from his wife, informing him in the middle of the night that she’s checked into rehab and she’s leaving him. She trusts he can take care of the twins. People in Andy’s life sure have a lot of faith in him for a guy who’s so clueless. Even his 9-year-old daughter comments on how many pills her mom was taking. The one exception is Grace, who resents watching her dad mature in parenting the twins in ways he never did when she was their age.

Grace is also pregnant, which is a great way for the script to provide opportunities for Andy to both step up and disappoint. Goodrich is overall kind of slight as a film, but I can’t deny that I locked into it. Keaton has a singularly weird charisma even as an old man, which he knows how to calibrate in ways few other people would. I got several good chuckles out of this movie, and and it made me cry in all the spots it was clearly designed to.

I hate to pick on children, but the twins didn’t work as well for me. I’ve been spoiled in recent years by countless movies featuring child actors who are incredibly well cast and perform with a convincingly naturalistic style. I used to think kids just naturally can’t act, and then I was proved wrong. Goodrich is like a throwback to a time when weirdly precocious kids were cast in movies. I’m not blaming the kids, really; they might very well grow into some useful talent. And they’re not terrible, they’re just a little off most of the time. This is more a reflection of the direction than anything, and perhaps Meyers-Shyer is just better at directing adults than kids.

And then there’s Michael Urie, a welcome sight in a part it’s easy to be ambivalent about. He plays Terry, the divorced gay parent of a classmate of Andy’s twins, and he and Andy bond over their separations and become friends. There’s a scene where things get, let’s say, awkward between Andy and Terry. It’s both really entertaining and incongruous in the overall plot, something that makes little sense in its inclusion. At least Urie gives Terry more dimension than the script does.

There’s a couple other big names in relatively small parts, notably Kevin Pollack as Andy’s business partner, and a criminally underused Andie MacDowell in just a couple of scenes as Andy’s ex-wife, Grace’s mother. We need more movies with both of these actors in parts with more substance. And that’s not to say Goodrich doesn’t have substance—it has a fair amount—but their parts don’t particularly.

It’s Keaton and Kunis who are the heart of Goodrich, and if anything makes the movie worth seeing, it’s them. Keaton is great most of the time, but for a couple of scenes that allow his delivery to sort of trail off oddly. Kunis is lovely all of the time. There’s an overall warmth to Goodrich that just about makes up for its unevenness.

A father-daughter dance that warms the heart. Most of the time.

Overall: B

Tasveer Advance: KATLAA CURRY [FISH CURRY]

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

Katlaa Curry is only the second film ever made in the Gujarati language to tell a queer story (the first was a 2013 film called Meghdhanushya — The Colour of Life), and it happened as a stroke of fate, a quasi-accident. There is a key scene in which two characters who are destined to fall in love have a conversation over a dead fish, caught in the Narmada River (India’s fifth-longest river, and the longest one that flows through the state of Gujarat), a fisherman teaching the other one, who is very squeamish, how to get used to handling fish. The squeamish character, originally written as a woman, is meant to stick their finger down the throat of the fish—which the original woman actor refused to do. The production’s solution was to make the story a gay love story—simply because the only actors willing to stick their fingers down a fish carcass’s throat were men.

This was the second film I saw at this year’s Tasveer South Asian Film Festival, which was how I learned this behind-the-scenes story, as well as some other relevant details. The cast was made up of local theater actors. Director Prajapati Rohit shot the film in ten days. And there was no particular intention of pointed progressiveness when they first set out to make the film, but once the turn to a gay love story happened, the implications for how it might move the needle of local attitudes blossomed.

Side note: Gujarati is the sixth-most spoken native language in India, with over 55 million speakers. It is the official language of the state of Gujarat, spoken natively by 86% of the population there. Prajapati Rohit pointedly leans into this, with opening titles written in both English and the Gujarati script. There is no Hindi to be found anywhere in this film, which is Gujarati first and Indian second.

Katlaa Curry moves at a measured pace, first introducing us to Raaymal (Priyaank Gangwani), a local fish merchant. This is also notable as most of the Gujarati population is vegetarian, but Raaymal takes his boat further up the Narmada River to fish, then brings what he caught into villages and towns to sell. This is how he meets Ratan (Ranganath Gopalrathnam), who has attempted suicide and gets caught in Raaymal’s fishing net. Raaymal revives him, and ultimately befriends him.

A lot of time is spent on Raaymal and Ratan just getting to know each other, and it takes a while for it to become clear why Ratan has attempted suicide—because his lack of interest in girls has left him hopeless. Meanwhile, Raaymal helps build a kind of beach shack home for Ratan to live in since he doesn’t feel he has any family to go back to. The element of queerness kind of seeps into the narrative slowly and organically, first with a confession by Ratan that Raaymal responds to with laughter and a “What does it matter?” attitude. This attitude, among the characters of this film, becomes a bit of a theme, both quiet and extraordinary in the barriers it breaks.

They settle into a routine, Raaymal visiting Ratan every day, and eating the fish curry Ratan has learned to make even though he doesn’t eat fish, and which Raaymal loves. It’s when Raaymal gets pressured into marrying a woman that things get complicated—for all three of them. Kumati, the wife, is played lovingly by Kinnary Panchal, and I was left with a lot of questions about this whole scenario. At last night’s screening, it was noted that 80% of gay men in India are married to women, and it’s very common for these women to know about it and completely accept it. What they care about, we are told, is that they have shelter and food.

It struck me that sexual desire and fulfillment for women was never part of this conversation—neither within the narrative of the film nor in outside conversations about it. And I was sitting there thinking: What about her? Of course and as always, there is a great deal of cultural context to consider here, not least of which is how devalued women are in South Asian cultures, especially if they are unmarried (to say the least of when they are widowed). And in the discussion at the screening last night, to be fair, there was a brief comment on how, if movies like this can move the needle on cultural attitudes, perhaps over time fewer women will have to settle for situations like this. Still, all the conversations about gay men (and specifically Raaymal) falling in love, and getting their physical needs met, have this glaring ignorance of any of the women involved getting their needs met. I’m a little hung up on the fact that housing and food are not the only basic necessities they should be granted. Are we supposed to assume Kumati is asexual? That she’s content never having children? It’s odd that we never see any of the characters here even mention children.

This is Raaymal’s and Ratan’s story, and it’s a warm and lovely one—if a little overdone with dreamy close-up shots of dead fish swarming with flies. But it also has a very slight unevenness to the story that fails to address the many implications raised. There’s a deeply memorable scene near the end between Raaymal and Kumati in which they come to an understanding that shocks and relieves Raaymal. And we are happy and relieved for him, as we should be. But I am left with a feeling of sorrow for Kumati, which Katlaa Curry clearly does not intend, as we are meant just to be grateful to her, as Raaymal is.

It was also striking to me how, reportedly, none of the cast of this film is queer-identified, even though Priyaank Gangwani and Ranganath Gopalrathnam have a palpable erotic energy between them and real chemistry with each other. Here is where we get into cultural differences again, because in Hollywood the conversation has moved into the space of giving queer actors the queer roles. In India, they are still in the space of queer people being grateful for “representation” granted by straight actors. And what more could they ask for? The Indian film industry, Bollywood or otherwise, is not exactly swarming with queer actors who are out of the closet. These things can only happen one step at a time, and Katlaa Curry is but one of those vital steps.

A love that dares speak its name, at just the right time.

Overall: B

WE LIVE IN TIME

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Make no mistake: We Live in Time is a tragic story and a bit of a tear jerker. I walked in pre-equipped with tissues and I suggest you do the same.

It is not a spoiler to say this is about a woman dying of cancer, as that’s the whole premise. Now, director John Crowley (Brooklyn) and writer Nick Payne (The Sense of an Ending) sprinkle in some classic rom-com elements, some of them a bit far fetched, from a meet-cute where Almut meets Tobias by running into him with her car, to the delivery of a baby in a gas station bathroom. I was easily able to lock into this stuff, largely because it illustrated the life worth living even in the face of it being cut short.

The biggest reason it’s easy to engage with We Live in Time, though, is the casting, which can make or break a movie. I might not have even had much interest in this movie, certainly not based on the premise alone, if not for the two leads: Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield. These two are well-established as stellar actors, and neither of them have ever had more palpable chemistry with their costars. Their story unfolds with a warm sweetness that is never saccharine, making you want to hang out with them, even when they face terrible and likely fatal news. Perhaps even especially when that happens. These two are precisely what makes this movie work.

Tobias gets a job with Weetabix, an odd bit of product placement, getting several mentions in the film. Far more notably, and ultimately very key to the story, Almut is a high-end chef with aspirations to participate in a European cooking competition. A lovely subplot involves Almut mentoring another chef, Jade, and their relationship develops both personally and professionally over the course of the story. Jade is played by nonbinary actor Lee Braithwaite, in their debut feature film role, more than holding their own alongside a powerhouse actor like Florence Pugh. I only wish the Tobias character could have gotten an equivalent subplot, although a few scenes with his father (Douglas Hodge) comes kind of close. There’s a sweet scene in which Tobias’s father helps him prepare for a date with Almut, giving him a haircut and even shaving the back of his neck.

Next to the phenomenal casting, though, a key part of what makes We Live in Time work is the editing—very relevant to the film’s title—by Justine Wright. This story is told as a nonlinear narrative, jumping back and forth in time in Almut’s and Tobias’s relationship. It regularly returns to key periods, though: when they first start dating; when they have a baby; and when Almut is given her ovarian cancer diagnosis. Over time, we are even provided more context around her cancer, the risk for which could have been significantly lessened but for her choice to keep the possibility of having a baby. And even with all the time jumps, we always know where we are, and it always feels like the story is unfolding just as it should.

In the cancer-diagnosis era scenes, their little girl, Ella, is played by a tiny actor named Grace Delaney. Even this proves to be excellent casting. Delaney isn’t given a lot of lines, but she is in a lot of scenes, and her presence always feels just as natural as anyone else’s. This is likely more a product of skilled direction and editing than anything else.

In the end, though, it’s Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield who are everything to the success of We Live in Time. Their performances, and their chemistry, are the magic sauce that makes the movie deeply compelling from start to finish. Conceptually, it’s just a romantic drama with just as many joyful turns as sad ones, but on paper does not sound particularly exceptional. What is exceptional is its cast, who make this a movie well worth the time.

Don’t fret! A lot of the movie is way more fun than this looks.

Overall: B+

Tasveer Advance: WAKHRI [ONE OF A KIND]

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

In 2016, there was a 26-year-old woman named Qandeel Baloch who had gained an unprecedented kind of internet fame three years after auditioning on Pakistan Idol. She has been called Pakistan’s first social media celebrity, as she gained both widespread popularity and widespread notoriety posting funny and audacious videos. In July of 2016, she was drugged and asphysxiated by her brother.

Pakistani director and co-writer Iram Parveen Bilal, working with Pakistani trans activist an co-writer Mehrub Moiz Awan; Indian and Bollywood film editor Aarti Bajaj; and Pakistani musician Abdullah Siddiqui (who also worked on the excellent 2023 film Joyland); have made a film largely based on Qandeel Baloch’s story. I did not know this when first going in, at its Opening Night screening at Seattle’s 19th Annual Tasveer South Asian Film Festival, and to be honest, there were moments when I felt ambivalent about the narrative choices. But then, near the end of the film, Bilal includes footage of Balcoh’s actual funeral procession in 2016.

Even a small amount of research reveals that some significant artistic license is taken with the story, which goes with the territory when the only claim is that it’s “inspired by true events”—not even based on true events, although Baloch experienced several things very similar to what the main character in Wakhri, Noor Malik (a luminous Faryal Mehmood, a Pakistani model in her first lead role in a feature film), goes through. Most critically, Bilal subverts how Baloch’s story actually ended, in a kind of empowering revisionist history. In a way, it’s an inverted version of what Quentin Tarantino did with history at the end of Inglourious Basterds.

Noor Malik is a school teacher, teaching a class of young girls she hopes to provide with better education than Pakistan can typically provide: she’s trying to secure funding for a new girl's’ school, predictably meeting with resistance from both potential benefactors and parents who believe all girls need to do is learn domestic pursuits and perhaps English, all to impress a potential male suitor. Frustrated with this, she puts on a disguise of a purple wig and a beaded veil, storms the stage at her best friend’s club, and goes on a rant that multiple patrons record on their phones and post to their socials, quickly going viral.

Noor’s best friend, Guchhi (a very charming Gulshan Majeed), is a striking presence in Wakhri: an openly queer person living their life in Lahore, completely self-actualized and experiencing both sorrows and joy—something queer audiences have reportedly expressed direct appreciation for. It’s difficult to say exactly how Guchhi self-identifies, as the film reasonably never takes pains to make clear; suffice it to say that, most of the time, they present as male, if often in makeup and unusually stylish clothing, but it soon enough becomes clear that this is due to societal pressures. There comes a moment when Guchhi gets their own moment of empowerment, albeit one that comes with dangers that are made plain. More to the point: Guchhi’s club has many patrons all over the spectrum of gender diversity, and this is depicted as a lived-in, vibrant community. There is little doubt that this is a realistic representation, but to American audiences conditioned to regard a country like Pakistan as undeveloped and unsophisticated (neither of which is true), it’s an unusual depiction to say the least.

It should be noted that I saw Wakhri in an audience of probably 90% South Asian people, from a diaspora that is both diverse and has certain distinct cultural characteristics which are very different from mine. The film was received with a kind of enthusiasm—well deserved—that might surprise Americans who would have expected a conservative response, except perhaps that these are mostly immigrants living in a very different culture from their forebears. Indeed, Wakhri received a great deal of virtriolic response very similar to that shown thrown at the Noor character—and to that which Qandeel Baloch endured. On the flip side, it’s worth noting that Wakhri actually had a theatrical release in Pakistan (albeit in the country’s very limited number of movie theaters); got a lot of positive response from people who actually bothered to see it; and it actually does not have any wide distribution in the United States.

There were certain lines of dialogue that felt a bit contrived to me, particularly when Noor is performing her rants for cameras, both at the club and later at home in front of a ring light—but, what do I know? There are multiple factors at play here, from what is inevitably lost in translation, to the English words chosen by whoever wrote the subtitles, to the fact that I’m just a White guy (a queer, girly one notwithstanding) writing a review of a feminist piece of art cinema created for an audience that could hardly be more different from me. They brought the film to the States, after all—but it was screened for a festival mostly aimed at South Asian expats and their descendants. Surely they want the film to gain a global audience that enjoys it, but there’s still little room for someone like me to criticize it with any real authority.

All that said, I still found myself genuinely impressed by Wakhri, and found many of the lines it boldly crossed—if not necessarily within its own culture, then certainly within the context of representation in South Asian cinema—to be extraordinary. The cast has infectious chemistry, and audiences quickly root for every major character onscreen. I am simply rooting for more people, both inside and outside of Pakistani, to get an opportunity to see this film.

Her disguises become less convincing as her audience still somehow doesn’t recognize her—but I suppose denial is a powerful thing.

Overall: B+

A DIFFERENT MAN

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B+

A Different Man is a great companion piece to The Substance, and would make an incredible, deeply provocative double feature. Both examine vanity and beauty; both get deeply meta; both veer into body horror—but in very different ways, on all counts. There is less of the body horror element in A Different Man, but it is still definitively there: a disfigured man is given a procedure to give him a “normal” face, but instead of it slowly altering his face, the disfigured folds and mounds of skin peel off in fleshy pieces. This stuff gets far less screen time in A Different Man, but it was still gross enough that I had to look away from the screen.

The Substance gets much more into misogyny and celebrity, neither of which play a big part in A Different Man, which more specifically gets into the fine line between grotesquerie and exceptionalism. That said, much in the same way Demi Moore was cast in The Substance as an older actress giving into expectations of youthfulness, A Different Man casts the physically singular actor Adam Pearson, who has neurofibromatosis type 1 (a genetic condition that causes benign tumors to grow along the nerves), as an aspiring actor with a significant facial disfigurement.

In Pearson’s case, notably, his character, Edward, is given even more lumps and bumps all over his face than Pearson actually has. We follow Edward through roughly the first half of the movie, during which time it can be difficult to decide what to make of it. He meets his neighbor, Ingrid (Norwegian actor Renate Reinsve, previously seen in the 2022 film The Worst Person in the World), a young woman who takes an unashamed liking to him, something almost like a crush. This creates a fascinating dynamic, because she never directly addresses Edward’s condition. They get to know each other, both visiting his apartment and going out for pizza, and she doesn’t seem to notice all the people passing outside the window who turn to look at him. This only changes when a random guy knocks on the window and smiles and waves at him, which Ingrid finds strange but Edward says happens to him all the time.

And then, we learn that Ingrid is a playwright, humble at first but successful later, and she writes a play about her relationship with Edward, and the play she writes is all about how his condition plays into it. We’ll get back to that in a minute.

Because that all happens in the second half of the film, after Edward undergoes his procedure, and eventually pulls his face off, and is transformed into not so much a gorgeous man as just a regular, middle-aged guy—played by Sebastian Stan (best known as Buckey Barnes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). Writer-director Aaron Schimberg never makes it explicitly clear why Edward, post-procedure, makes this pivotal choice: he isn’t honest about who he is with anyone, not Ingrid, not even the doctor who performed the procedure and shows up at his apartment not recognizing him. Edward, as played by Sebastian Stan, just assumes a new identity on the spot: Guy Moratz (in keeping with the meta threads of this film, someone later tells him that name “sounds made up”).

It was after this turn that I became more sure of how I felt about A Different Man, and I became more impressed with it. I’m not crazy about Adam Pearson’s performance as Edward, pre-procedure. He has a lot of mannerisms, the way he puts his hand on his hip or shrugs with a hand wave, that feel unnatural—like it’s someone you can tell is acting. Then it comes clear how intentional these mannerisms are, because once Sebastian Stan takes over the role, he mimics them impeccably. Edward remains the same deeply insecure man he always was, even when he suddenly looks “normal.” Ingrid, whom Guy meets after he crashes the auditions for her play, starts to get to know him, and more than once she calls him “jumpy.” You’d think she would recognize how his vibe reminds her of Edward, but maybe not; people can be blind to a lot when context changes.

Guy, who finds himself missing the exceptionality of life with his disfigurement, lands a part in the play. This is where the meta stuff really starts to fold over on itself: a cast had been made of Edward’s disfigured face for the procedure, which Guy then brings to wear when playing the part of Edward in the play. And as if that weren’t enough, another random person walks in during rehearsals, and it’s a man with the exact same condition—played, again, by Adam Pearson.

This guy’s name is Oswald. He’s played by a “realer” version of Pearson, still with the same striking facial features but without all the extra lumps and bumps we saw on Edward. Also: he’s British. Pearson himself is British, in fact: this is only his third feature film role (he’s also been in eight different TV shows, ranging from documentary to reality to narrative), his first in the 2013 science fiction thriller mood piece Under the Skin, a UK production. This means Pearson does accent work in A Different Man, which is completely convincing.

And Oswald could not be more different from Edward. He’s totally sure of himself, comfortable in his own skin, moves through the world as though his condition is entirely incidental. But Ingrid’s obsession with the use of this condition in her art gradually pulls Oswald into the production of the play, and one of the more amusing parts of A Different Man is now Oswald may be comfortable with himself, but he’s all for high-minded discussions of how he—and his condition—is used in art. Schimberg seems less concerned with moralizing about how we treat people who are different (or to some, even scary looking) than with examining how art stretches the lines of authenticity when incorporating real-life elements. This is ultimately what makes A Different Man work.

Schimberg is working on multiple planes here, with a script that is somewhat reminiscent of the work of Charlie Kaufman. I think perhaps he is a slightly better writer than director, and it would be fascinating to see a script he wrote directed by someone else. I found myself a little closed off from A Different Man during its first half, a bit skeptical of its performances, but then it took multiple turns that really won me over. Watch this movie with someone you can have a long conversation with about it afterwards, which is one of the greatest joys of the communal experience of cinema.

Both the same and different: the man, the men.

Overall: B+

THE OUTRUN

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-

How The Outrun hits may depend largely on your relationship to alcoholism: if you are or have been close to an alcoholic, or perhaps if you are one yourself. I don’t have a lot of direct exposure to the worst effects of the disease of this particular addiction, and still there are lines that feel a bit obvious when taken out of context, but are deeply heartbreaking when uttered in this film. It will be some time before I forget Rona (Saoirse Ronan) saying, “I can’t be happy sober.”

Rona is a woman in her late twenties, to whom we are introduced as a pretty sloppy drunk, downing the leftover booze in other people’s glasses at closing time in a London pub. After she’s thrown out onto the sidewalk, a man in a car pulls up and offers her a ride. We know this is ominous, but don’t know exactly how until we return to flashback later.

This is a big part of what makes The Outrun work, how it stands as an exceptional film even among countless others about alcoholism. The narrative jumps back and forth in time, to seemingly random points in Rona’s life—a lot of them flashbacks during her extended stay in rehab. That opening scene notwithstanding, it is well into the runtime of the film before we get a truly clear picture of the depths Rona’s life sinks to. It’s the kind of thing that suggests “rock bottom” has its own set of tiered levels.

Rona is from the Orkney Islands, a deeply remote archipelago off the northern tip of Scotland. Her long-divorced parents still live there: Andrew (Stephen Dillane), whose long history of mental illness still has him vacillating between manic and depressive episodes; and Annie (Saskia Reeves), who has found solace in religion. Rona helps Andrew on his sheep farm, but still faces temptations, which she runs from by moving to ever-more remote islands in the region. She seems to be trying, in vain, to find a place to settle where there is no alcohol near her. She finds a job on a further-out island, and when she visits the local grocer, the wall behind the checkout counter is fully stocked with wine and liquor.

This environment provides a uniquely beautiful backdrop to the story: rocky shores and cliffs, hilly fields of green grass, islands seen through fog and rain and wind. It also has a personal connection for Rona, as this is her home, and does not offer the same smorgasbord of temptations that London did. Or so it seems at first, anyway. We also witness the rise and fall of her relationship with boyfriend Daynin (Paapa Essiedu), in snippets, entirely in flashbacks.

Eventually Rona meets an older man who recognizes in her a fellow sober person. He’s got over twelve years. She asks him, “Does it ever get easier?” He replies: “Yes. But it doesn’t ever get easy. It just gets less hard.” It may seem on the surface like small comfort, but it’s something for her to hold onto. This is the essence of The Outrun, really.

This is the kind of movie where it’s impossible to predict whether Rona, a deeply messy young woman we can’t help but root for thanks to Saoirse Ronan’s stupendous performance, will find happiness, or indeed even stay sober. Director and co-writer Nora Fingscheidt brings us to a conclusion that is a bit more ambiguous than it seems, until you think about it. Hope itself is not a promise, but it’s a great note to end on.

The more I think about The Outrun, the more impressed I am with it. Fingscheidt has created a nonlinear narrative that is easy to surrender to. Only once or twice did I find it hard to decipher where in time it was, but it also occurred to me that someone like Rona can easily get lost in time. I quickly cared deeply for her, to such an extent that when she was tempted by a forgotten wine glass in her dad’s home, it was like watching a horror movie: Don’t do it! But if The Outrun demonstrates anything, it is that sobriety is a process, more often than not with fits and starts. Rona learns in rehab that only ten percent of them make it through.

The Outrun also features some narrative flourishes that elevate its storytelling, not least of which is occasional voiceover narration by Rona, telling us about the myths and folklore of the islands, from how the land is formed to how the local seals (of which we see many) fit into the culture. There is also the subplot of a job Rona takes in which she recruits local farmers to participate in research on an endangered local bird. She spends a lot of time hoping to hear its specific bird call, which leaves us hoping to hear it eventually as well. There’s a connection to be made there, among many in this elegantly intricate story.

An iconic performer of human imperfection.

Overall: A-