dir. Wong Kar-Wai
Opens Fri Aug 26.
Wong Kar-Wai works without a completed script, without clear motivations for his actors, and, increasingly, without a net. (At the most recent Cannes festival, he showed up to his own premiere with a print still wet from the editor.) Someday, his mountingly baroque dreamtime methods are bound to implode in an apocalyptic Wile E. Coyote fashion. But not yet.
2046, the long-awaited quasi-continuation of the director's swoony masterpiece In the Mood for Love, takes his trademark peccadilloes—women in high-necked dresses, lingering regrets, pop songs as holy writ—to what often feels like a rapturous endpoint. Set during the tail end of the '60s (the numerals in the title refer to, variously, a hotel room number, the date when China regains control of Hong Kong, and a briefly glimpsed sci-fi tale), the loose narrative follows Mood's once wide-eyed protagonist Tony Leung, now sporting an oily mustache and attempting to submerge his past romantic devastation with a series of caddish one-night stands. (Number Gong Li, Chungking Express's Faye Wong, and Ziyi Zhang among the broken hearted, with a maddeningly brief, ghostly appearance by Maggie Cheung.) Such a pessimistic downturn may initially turn off fans of the previous film, but, bummer that it is, it gradually reveals itself as a natural, achingly felt progression in the character's (and director's) continuing evolution.
For those not in tune with Wong's obsessions, this is all likely to be so much sentimental balloon juice. (Truth be told, the middle stretch may have even some die-hard devotees occasionally checking their watches.) But then there is a moment like the one where a jilted woman sits alone in a room and, in miraculous slow-mo, somehow jettisons her entire soul with one exhale from her cigarette. Divine hardly seems to cover it. Shine on, you delirious bastard. ANDREW WRIGHT
CrĂłnicas
dir. Sebastián Cordero
Opens Fri Aug 26.
The main achievement of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is that it reveals the identity of the murderer soon after the novel starts. The main mass of the book is about the mind of the criminal, who is pursued by a very patient detective. In the movie Crónicas (which means chronicles, or news reports), the serial killer, Vinicio Cepeda (Damián Alcázar), is revealed almost after the first frame; his head rises from the water, and he looks and breathes like a madman. Moments later, we watch him walk in the ruins of what looks to be a home or school or Satanic temple. The ground is muddy, flies are buzzing everywhere, and the air is thick with death and heat. Directed by Ecuadorian Sebastián Cordero, and starring Hollywood actor John Leguizamo, Crónicas is not a serial-killer thriller in the way that Crime and Punishment is not a detective novel. Dostoyevsky's book is a work of philosophy; Cordero's film is a work of social criticism.
John Leguizamo plays Manolo Bonilla, a hotshot reporter for a tabloid news show called One Hour with the Truth, which is produced in Miami and broadcast to every home in Latin America. Basically what happens in the film is this: Soon after arriving at a poor Ecuadorian village called Babahoyo, Manolo, the star reporter, learns the identity of the serial killer. Manolo's fame in Latin America is huge; even the serial killer, who is in jail on unrelated charges, is one of his biggest fans. The serial killer, however, wants to get out of jail, and so he summons the reporter, reveals himself as the killer, and makes Manolo the kind of offer that only the devil can make. And if there is anything we have learned since Faustus, in the end any gift from Lucifer is rotten. CrĂłnicas is an excellent piece of social criticism. CHARLES MUDEDE
Kings & Queen
dir. Arnaud Desplechin
Fri Aug 26 to Thurs Sept 1 at the Varsity.
Tragedy is a delicately balanced equation that requires empathy, sympathy, identification, and rubbernecking. In the case of French director Arnaud Desplechin's Kings & Queen, each response is stripped away as the film progresses—or should I say, slogs along (timing is just as important to tragedy as it is to comedy)—until only rubbernecking is left.
There's a lot to gawk at. The plot-heavy drama follows Nora (played by the lovely and very watchable Emmanuelle Devos), a 35-year-old single mother who is engaged to a rich businessman devoted to her despite the fact that she doesn't seem to love him. While Nora is visiting her cantankerous writer father, he falls very ill and is given only days to live. In a second plotline, which often feels like a different movie altogether, Nora's ex-husband Ismäel (Mathieu Amalric), a violist with a passionate and unstable personality, is forcibly admitted to a mental hospital. And in the wake of her father's death, Nora tries to convince Ismäel to adopt her son from a previous relationship whom he had helped raise during their marriage.
If that weren't complicated enough, there is a ghostly visitation, a suicide, a suicidal love interest, a drug-addicted sister, a cruel posthumous letter, a calculated marriage, and enough complications for a very busy soap opera season. The story lards on so many complications that the situations become ludicrous, and although both Devos and Amalric are excellent at navigating the hairpin turns of the emotional landscape, theirs is a thankless job. There is no salvaging this overwrought mess; the film is so tone-deaf and piles so much on that the audience can't help but leave feeling battered. NATE LIPPENS
Funny Ha Ha
dir.Andrew Bujalski
Play Aug 26-Sept 1 at the Northwest Film Forum
The college post-grads in Andrew Bujalski’s no-budget first feature Funny Ha Ha amble through their lives in aimless chaos—from dumpy apartments to boozy parties to dreary temp jobs. They seem lost, but in the pleasantly loose-limbed manner of newly minted adults. Most of them are marinating in alcohol and a quiet desperation of not-quite connections and failed attempts. None more so than the film’s charming anti-heroine, 23-year-old Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer). When we first encounter her she's drunk and trying unsuccessfully to get a tattoo. The amused but sensibly dismissive tattoo artist gently refuses to ink her. It’s the first of several rebuffs that Marnie experiences, most of them romantic attractions that aren’t reciprocated. Her main attraction is to Alex who professes disinterest but sends her mixed signals, while Mitchell, a doting friend played by the director, obviously harbors a major crush on her, which she doesn’t share.
The premise of the film is slight but it’s the minor moments that add up to life as it’s lived. The halting inarticulateness of the college grads is pitch-perfect. When they do manage to connect it’s sweetly triumphant—and very fleeting. The exchanges strike a balance between seeming stylized and improvised. In one of the more heartbreaking and comic scenes, Marnie composes a to-do list, which reveals her diminished expectations and lack of ambition: “spend more time outdoors,” “make friends with Jackie,” “learn to play chess.” It represents the movie at its best—sad and funny and utterly true to life. NATE LIPPENS
