Fast Film Reviews

Director Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers is such an accessible marriage of glamorous actors and sumptuous set design that it’s easy to forget his raw beginnings. Back in the late 1970s, he had more in common with experimental talents like Andy Warhol and John Waters. His first full-length was an underground flick called Folle… folle… fólleme Tim! My apologies to Spanish speakers for the language. The ultra-low-budget 1978 comedy was never even released. Since that inauspicious debut, he’s been showered with accolades. By 1988 most North American art house aesthetes became aware of his talent with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. An Academy Award in 2003 for Best Original Screenplay (Talk to Her) followed. Almodóvar is the most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel. The evolution of his career has been kind of extraordinary.

His latest Parallel Mothers is a highly polished drama that examines the traumas of Spanish history by way of two women about to give birth. Janis (Penélope Cruz) is a fashion photographer and Ana (Milena Smit) is a single teen mother. The father of Ana’s baby is not in the picture, but Janis does have contact with her baby’s father. Arturo (Israel Elejalde), a forensic anthropologist, is married and their tryst was a casual fling. He’s also not present at the delivery either. The women’s shared experience unites them. Their lives become inextricably linked from that day forward.

Director Pedro Almodóvar has such a rapport with actress Penelope Cruz. Their association goes back to 1997’s Live Flesh. Over the past 25 years, the actress has become his muse. He has extracted some of her best performances. Volver in 2006 is a perfect example. This is her seventh collaboration with the auteur. Here again, she is luminescent in the starring role. She gives a multifaceted Oscar-nominated performance in a role that is remarkably subtle. This entertaining movie kept me transfixed for the entire runtime.

Parallel Mothers is an elegant production with a lot of working parts. There are abrupt flashbacks, melodramatic situations, and odd tonal shifts in the narrative. The glossy production vacillates between comedy to drama employing the developments of a soap opera. At one point, Janis makes a shocking discovery. The tale becomes about that information and then whether Janis will reveal this bit of news to anyone. The sweeping romantic score by Alberto Iglesias (which also got an Oscar nomination) emphasizes this.

I do contend that an understanding of the period known as Francoist Spain is helpful. The account is bookended by the history of the people who opposed dictator Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and lost their lives. Janis wants to excavate an unmarked gravesite that may contain her great grandfather. The ability to connect the dots between that painful past and the story presented here is important. It’s an artistic choice to frame the picture at the beginning and the end with this plot. Almodóvar is making a pointed political comment on his country’s past. Tellingly Spain did not submit this much-lauded release for Best International Feature. Therefore it wasn’t even eligible to compete in that Oscar category. (Fernando León de Aranoa’s comedy The Good Boss was submitted instead). Almodóvar’s refined movie is conventional when compared to the director’s earlier work, but four decades later, the director still manages to ruffle some feathers.

02-11-22

It’s a simple tale. A theater actor named Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) mourns the death of his wife, Oto Kafuku (Reika Kirishima). He’s directing a multi-lingual production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. The play features performers who speak Japanese, English, Korean, and even sign language. The international cast includes a hot-tempered star named Kôshi Takatsuki (Masaki Okada). The lothario was one of his late wife’s lovers. Meanwhile, Yusuke is assigned a personal driver, Misaki Watari (Tôko Miura). She is an expressionless young woman, cold and reserved. Misaki predictably warms up in conversations while driving Yūsuke around in his Saab 900.

This meandering contemplation isn’t about the plot. This is an account of the inner feelings of its main character. Drive My Car is based on Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s atmospheric short story of the same name. It runs no more than 40 pages. So it’s telling that director Ryusuke Hamaguchi has taken that whisper of a narrative and expanded it into a patience-testing three-hour assemblage of chats. The opening credits appear 40 minutes into the movie after an extended prologue that is the superfluous background for the proper saga. The drama basks in a disquieting atmosphere of navel-gazing.

Murakami’s lugubrious meditation has critics universally heralding it as a profound exploration of grief, trauma, and Chekhov. This garnered 4 Oscar nominations including Best Picture, the first Japanese film ever to do so. Impressive, although expanding the pool to 10 nominees (for the first time since 2010) undoubtedly helped. Critiquing a film like Drive My Car is an exercise in futility. It’s kind of like reviewing an autostereogram. A major part of the op art’s appeal was the effort. The payoff is such an individual satisfaction. Whenever that 3-D shape would pop out from behind the colorful patterns, I would inevitably say “That’s it?” Such is director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s tale. The allure lies in the joy of an expected result after staring at it. The difference is that this picture demands 3 hours of your time. I adore the filmmaking of “slow cinema.” Recent movies like Roma (2018) and First Cow (2019) were among my favorites of their years because the experience was so rewarding. This ambling rumination? Not so much. Sorry, but this doleful Saab story is not my Ford Tempo.

12-21-21

Olivia Colman is simply one of our greatest actresses. She has been steadily working for two decades. Olivia began by appearing in a ton of British TV shows and came to prominence with the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show in 2003. Her talent entered my radar with a recurring role on the TV series Fleabag (2016–2019). She famously portrayed Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix period TV drama The Crown from 2019 to 2020. Academy Award nominations for the movies The Favourite and The Father cemented her status. Incidentally, she won Best Actress for The Favourite over American acting legend Glenn Close (The Wife) no less. Her latest tour de force is a psychological drama called The Lost Daughter. She’s fantastic and (I’m predicting) will likely garner her third Oscar nomination in four years. Maggie Smith and Judi Dench, please welcome Olivia Colman to the fold. She is a national treasure.

The Lost Daughter is the chronicle of a middle-aged divorcee. Leda is a literature professor on holiday by herself in Greece. She has a very prickly rapport with motherhood. During the account, she reveals she has two adult children, aged 23 and 25. Leda has a passive-aggressive relationship with this large, noisy family that’s also on vacation there. She is constantly irritated by the family’s behavior. When Callie (Dagmara Domińczyk) asks her to move from her spot on the beach, she declines. Callie, who is pregnant, later comes over to apologize. Leda has an uncomfortable conversation with the first-time mother. Leda awkwardly concludes with, “Well you’ll see. Children are a crushing responsibility.” Then promptly leaves.

We gradually learn more and more of this woman’s past as the drama unfolds. She is fascinated by another woman in the group named Nina. American actress Dakota Johnson embodies the individual with a disquieting vagueness. Johnson is proving to be quite a talented thespian herself. Nina is a young mother with a toddler girl. At one point the story concerns a missing doll. This development causes Leda to think back in time to when she was an inexperienced mother. The present-day flashbacks to a younger Leda played by Jessie Buckley.

At the center of The Lost Daughter is the fully realized and understated performance by Olivia Colman. It’s an achievement that’s sure to garner awards. Her interactions with this family and other people on the island can be unsettling. Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal is making her impressive directorial debut. She wisely keeps things intimate and intense. There’s a sinister mood that percolates beneath the surface. It is a most compelling narrative that meticulously lays the groundwork for a boffo conclusion. Sadly the denouement elicits the inevitable discontent of a promise unfulfilled. This fascinating depiction is resolved with an ending that is as ambiguous as it is supremely unsatisfying. I had developed so much admiration for the intensity of this chronicle. The saga begs for some definitive epiphany. Unfortunately, it tarnished my enthusiasm.

01-01-22