TLDR: Cannes is Coachella with fewer drink options, In My Room is an amusing parable about masculinity, Dogman a pressure-cooker character piece with more than enough bark to make up for its lack of bite, Sorry Angel is a charming little period piece which accomplishes exactly what it needed to and little else.

Intro

Astute readers may note that it has been almost a full week since my Cannes Day 0 post.

See, when I set out for this Three Days In Cannes thing, I wasn’t entirely clear on the details. Here’s roughly what I’d imagined: four nights on the French Riviera, attending what would effectively be a low-key, exclusive, single-track conference on cinephilia which just so happens to include celebrities. 2-3 films would screen a day, and in between there would be free-flowing wine, shameless mingling, and comfy chairs for online movie reviewing. It would be chaos, but a restrained chaos with plenty of room for solitude.

As it turns out, three days in Cannes is less like a conference and more like a Black Friday sale at a Hugo Boss with the thermostat on the fritz. With two weeks and press badges, I imagine it might be a fairly comfortable, even relaxing, experience. With zero invitations and an impetus to see as many films as possible on a very limited schedule, it’s madness. Chaos. It’s thousands of sweaty Europeans smoking in formal wear at 3pm on a Thursday, forming a single-file-until-the-moment-some-douchebag-who-let’s-be-honest-is-always-male-and-always-French-and-always-has-whimsical-shoes-which-are-not-by-any-convention-black-tie-realizes-that-single-file-is-a-bourgeois-convention-and-we’d-all-be-better-served-by-a-Mad-Max-style-free-for-all queue, sunburned, hoping to catch an arthouse flick whose name they don’t remember. These lines are often formed after security, which means no food or drink, much less cozy laptop lounging. It’s Coachella in France without the overpriced Bud Light option; it’s an outdoor dinner party with the wrong dress code and no open bar and a survival-of-the-fittest invitation scheme; it’s a dry wedding in California. In short, again, madness.

And I loved the madness. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But madness is a situation far more conducive to 4-hour-nights sleep and lone 11pm breakfastlunchdinner combo meals than it is to a rigorous blogging schedule. So I quickly gave up on writing these in realtime, and opted instead to save them for my present situation: lounging in a bathrobe in an overwater bungalow on a French Polynesian island with my girlfriend, with nothing to do till dinner time and coffee and scotch in tow. I am now, geographically and metaphorically, about as far from a sweaty line in Cannes as is humanly possible.

So, OK, I think I’ll keep these in the daily-update format, paragraph or two per film, and for titles I really dug I might break into long form reviews later. So let’s get to it! Our Thursday Cannes journey opens, as always, in a big ass line.

In My Room (3.5/5)

This particular B.A.L begins at the Theatre Debussy around 10am. My ~36 hour travel marathon having been “totally cured” by a 4 hour nap and espresso chaser, I was ready to see my first (and only) premiere from the Un Certain Regard selection: Ulrich Köhler’s In My Room. A film about which I knew absolutely nothing. But the crowd was admirable, the caffeine was bumpin’, and once seated I was able to give a (reciprocated!!!!) head nod to Benicio Del Toro, two rows ahead of me in a green baseball cap. Thus, already complete, my day began.

Going in blind, it turns out, was the perfect way to see In My Room; I’ve read the public synopsis since, and am quite disappointed in how much it reveals. But since there is no way this film will come to the states without its premise being spoiled, I’ll give you some (not all) of the major details. Armin (Hans Löw) is a not-quite-middle-aged-but-not-quite-young man whose life has wound up, if not in a rut, at least in a series of aggravating snares. Like many in their late 30’s or early 40’s, he has found that occasionally tripping over modestly-set bars is more demoralizing than aiming for higher ones and failing. He is a videographer/photographer by trade, but he never seems to be given an interesting subject — and on the rare occasion he is (as shown in a very funny opening gag which, at first, might seem like a projector glitch) he ensures it won’t happen again. He maintains a relationship of sorts with his parents, but it feels fractured and strained even in those moments it ought to be profound: a breakfast conversation with his father, while his grandmother lies dying in the adjacent room, plays less like familial bonding and more like two old men struggling to make small talk on a golf course. Single, he still frequents epilepsy-beat dance clubs and is still able to pick up women, but he fumbles at the ten yard line for reasons that aren’t monstrous so much as tone-deaf and apathetic. It’d be easy to say that Armin is selfish, but I think the more salient truth is that he’s too tired to advocate for anything, self or otherwise. Everything has gone soft, eroded: his gut, spirit, hopes, mood. Is there a pill to get that up?

Then, something happens. The recovering childhood Tim LaHaye reader in me wants to call it The Rapture (and a scene involving choir practice might back it up, slightly), but the truth is, we’re given about as much to go on as Armin is. He wakes up one morning to find that everyone living is gone. Cars have skid off the road, convenience stores are left permanently closed, planes (we imagine, given budgetary restraints) have fallen from the sky. His grandmother’s body is still where he left it, but the grieving man at the breakfast nook has vanished, and with him all vestiges of social obligation. Watching it dawn on him feels a lot like watching the first episode of Last Man On Earth, as quiet horror gives way to high speed joyrides, anarchy and fire. A more moralistic film might argue that this strange, new world is what Armin had really wished for all along: a place that doesn’t need him, bereft of any alarm to snooze or boss to satisfy or partner to complement or bereaver to console. In Köhler film, there’s nothing quite so tidy. Like yesterday’s date or a job assignment gone wrong, this disappearance seems like just another shitty thing that happened to Armin. A case of the Mondays gone apocalyptic.

There’s a common joke (whose source escapes me), about a man who finds himself stuck in an elevator and immediately reverts to Survival Mode, defecating in the corner and drawing straws to eat his fellow captives before a horrified technician discovers him some 25 minutes later. Armin’s transformation has the cadence of that joke. Despite the whole of modern civilization in his grasp, within minutes he is living in an agrarian wasteland: gnarled-bearded, nude, rifle in tow, wrangling sheep abreast his trusty steed. We get the sense that he wants this more than he has wanted anything pre-rapture; here is a place, finally, where he can feel of some use. Of some hard, simple, undeniable use. As an exploration of the male ego, it lands — like much of Köhler’s film — somewhere between tongue-in-cheek and sincere. But the longer it unfolds, that playful back-and-forth becomes deeper, more complex, and I won’t spoil it (though I’m sure stills at least partly will). There are echoes of Z For Zachariah here, as well as the aforementioned FOX show. Now that Armin can truly be anyone, who will he be? Will he build a simple life for himself, reimagined as all aspects of “Man” the 21st century has evolved beyond — Provider, Warrior, Tamer, Builder Of Things? Can he find contentment in life, now that he determines the rules? Or will that same selfishness, that cycle of apathy, reassert itself?

It’s a small movie, more parable than narrative, and its style is as subdued as its performances. But I quite liked this one.

Dogman (4/5)

I lied, before, when I said Cannes was all waiting in line. A few days before arriving, I was allowed to request a few invitations on an online form, and received exactly one: the 3pm showing of Matteo Garrone’s Dogman. Having an invitation affords you many luxuries, chief among them: being able to actually eat lunch. Well-fed, I entered the theatre.

In Gomorrah, Garrone effectively does for Naples what David Simon does for Baltimore: he zooms out to show how organized crime operates within the region, whose lives it touches and whose pocketbooks propel it. It’s a gritty, bleak, and sprawling portrait. If Gomorrah was The Wire, Dogman is an episode of The Sopranos, likely centered around Artie Bucco: a study of a man who is, at most, crime-adjacent, but whose life nonetheless becomes undone.

Marcello (Marcello Fonte) is, if nothing else, a people-pleaser. Whether out of self-preservation or genuine love, his driving impulse is to make people happy. He lives under the shadow of crime, in much the same way that a high-profile businessman might live under the shadow of corruption, but within that framework he operates as a Mostly Good Guy. He grooms dogs for a living, and treats all breeds with equal affection — whether floofy little poodle or towering mastiff. He smiles, constantly; a toothy reflex so well-worn it almost doesn’t matter if it’s sincere. He means it, in the permanent sense; he chooses it. He wants to take his daughter on vacation to the Maldives. He wants to be at peace with his community, to sit at the sidewalk cafe sipping espresso and being one in whom others confide. He plays second fiddle in the occasional theft, and trades a little coke on the side, though both seem to be more calculated vices than earnest bad deeds. We get the sense that Marcello isn’t out to line his pockets, so much as to extend an olive branch to some of his seedier neighbors: the criminal equivalent of buying a round of shots when you mostly dislike liquor, or joining a bachelor party strip club when you’d rather stay home. He is spineless, yes, but he is not without compass: after an overheard robbery involves throwing a puppy in the freezer, he drives back separately to rescue her. He views himself in the same way a lifelong Republican might view his role in the Trump Cabinet: an adult in the room who can pick small battles and mitigate damage. If it just so happens to also make him filthy rich, well, it’s an honor to serve his country.

The problem is Simon (Edoardo Pesce). The vein-bursting bulldog to Marcello’s whimpering Chihuahua, the Trump to Marcello’s Preibus, the Season 5 Tony to Marcello’s Season 1 A.J., Simon is never not on the verge of explosion. He snorts coke in front of his 10-year-old daughter. He bashes in heads for sport. He refuses to pay back his debts, no matter whom it pisses off. He cannot be reasoned with, not even by the eminently reasonable Marcello; his response to all rational suggestion is to nod, grunt, and do the damn thing anyway. He’s a bully. And as he becomes more and more unhinged, Marcello’s affable, yes-and disposition becomes his ruin. He loses his reputation as a trustworthy buyer. He loses his standing in the community, his seat at the espresso table. And after a botched robbery leaves him the sole, prosecutable suspect, he loses a year of life with his daughter.

Dogman is pretty cleanly split into two parts: God tests Job, Job beats God with a metal pipe. Fonte is a revelation in both the decline and the upswing, and a worthy winner of that Best Actor prize. He communicates all of Marcello’s contradictions with perfect control, never losing that plastered-on smile even when he’s screaming bloody murder. The film, like Simon, wears its short fuse on its sleeve: we know, without question, that everything will blow to bits before the credits roll. The joy is watching it get there. And while Garrone isn’t doing particularly much with this story — the obvious parallels between dog and man, or between man and governments; Marcello’s loyalty as a cautionary tale — there’s a grunginess to the proceedings that permeates everything. I loved the inevitability, the ticking-time-bomb of this film; loved basking in the dusty, sepia wreckage that is Marcello’s life. Some might find it too simple in its brutality, too unsubtle in its metaphors. I say not every breed can be subtle; not all are conducive to delicate trims, well-coiffed manes. Some are hulking, singular beasts. I had a blast watching Garrone tear off the leash.

Sorry Angel (3.5/5)

In what would become a recurring pattern on this trip, I didn’t actually set out to see Sorry Angel. Having somewhat enjoyed her prior film, Where Do We Go Now?, I spent the first two hours of this late afternoon / evening trying to catch the premiere of Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum. Which is to say, waiting in another Big Ass Line. Roughly ten heads away from the red carpet, I was turned away with that withering French smile I’d come to know so well. So I retreated to the Cinema Les Arcades for one of the few showings in my official Three Days track which would actually be subtitled in English: Christophe Honoré‘s Sorry Angel. Or, to use the more compelling French name, Plaire, aimer, et courir vite. Please, love, and run quickly.

I pride myself on having a fairly good memory when it comes to movies. I never take notes; when it’s good, the image burns. So maybe it’s damning with faint praise to admit that, one week later, Sorry Angel has left me with virtually nothing to criticize. It isn’t that I forget what happened, only that I’ve forgotten how any of it felt.

What happened: it’s either the late 80’s or the early 90’s, and the AIDS crisis is in full swing. Arthur (Vincent Lacoste) is a young, queer man living in Brittany. Charming. Playful. Handsome and knows it. A Free Love lifestyle set to a New Wave dance beat, he floats from partner to partner in a joyous daze. Jacques (Pierre Deladonchamps) is a middle-aged playwright just off the train from Paris, briefly in town for a speaking gig. He has an easy smile, a son whom he adores, and an experation date only a few close friends are aware of. When Arthur meets Jacques in an afternoon movie screening, he doesn’t know that he’s dying of that godawful disease. All he knows is that he suddenly wants to stay.

There’s a moment in Andrew Sean Greer’s novel Less (which I happened to be reading on this trip), where the protagonist — a writer about to “celebrate” his 50th birthday — reflects that he sometimes feels like “the first homosexual ever to grow old.” Young adulthood, there had been a template for that: there were generation after generation of youth culture and music to fall back to. Even 30’s and 40’s, there were always veterans out blazing the trail — including the poet, two decades his senior, whom he spent his San Francisco 20’s swept up in. But 50’s? AIDS had all but ensured no one made it that far. Here was uncharted territory.

Sorry Angel features a similar exchange. Jacques says that he often feels jealous of Arthur’s generation; they are more beautiful, more at ease with themselves. They know exactly who they are, in a manner that his cohort was never granted. I see, in Jacques, that same old guard Less remembered so fondly — the trail-blazing generation that, sadly, would never make it to middle age. And I see in Arthur the new souls who would: would finally be allowed to grow up, marry, travel the world, become protagonists in prize-winning novels that don’t end in tragedy; would have a period far enough removed from “the wild years” to use that phrase without irony. Arthur will eventually experience the ultimate luxury: he will become boring.

Through a series of vignettes, parallel and intersecting, we watch how their lives slowly change. Jacques opens his home to a former lover, too far gone in his own disease to take care of himself. He stands as a vision of the Jacques’ future, a symbol of the mortality he’s trying so desperately to stave off. Arthur continues to enjoy his freedom in the way only a young person can, taking on new lovers and (never irreparably) hurting old ones in his wake. He stands as a vision of Jacques’ past; of those years when life was sun-bleached and careless. As the disease worsens, and their love affair deepens, they finally treat the two head-on. We’re granted tiny hints of maturation in Arthur — glimmers of tenderness and understanding that will surely bloom into more offscreen. We also see life, again, in Jacques — vestiges of youthful exuberance, given to him freely while he still lives to receive.

It’s a lovely story, which keeps its scope small and never attempts to venture outside of it. Gone is the wild romanticism of Call Me By Your Name, or the shimmering eroticism of Carol. Sorry Angel isn’t much about longing at all. It’s about the conversations that happen in the cracks between grand gestures; a gentle portrait of two men and two generations. How the older teaches the younger; how the younger comforts the older. While that smallness is appropriate for the subject matter, and well worth the ride, it also doesn’t leave much fuel to burn. I enjoyed this one for what it was. Your mileage may vary.

TLDR: Burning is the closest to a visual transposition of Murakami’s style I’ve ever seen. That is both a very good thing and a less good thing, depending on what you focus on. Some of my hangups about Murakami’s (recurring) treatment of female characters bleed into the film as well, smudging what should be great into only good.

Bloggy Bits

Greetings from Cannes! It is currently around 2am. By my tally, that means I’ve been awake for roughly 35 hours, and have been the proud owner of a not-yet-supposed-to-be-functioning Cannes badge for 10 of them. Since waking up in SFO todyesterday, I have: changed my mind about which suitcase to bring twice, attended three work-related meetings, consumed six alcoholic and four caffeinated beverages, listened to some five hours of podcast material, read 35% of a new book (2018’s Pulitzer Fiction winner, Less, great so far!), and watched four movies. Three were plane homework, one was at Cannes proper: Lee Chang-dong’s Burning (3.5/5).

But I’m getting ahead of myself; first let me set the stage. At 4pm today (Wednesday) I picked up my badge, and was told it would be useless until the “3 Days In Cannes” program begins in earnest tomorrow. The badge comes with two major components: entry to a special selection at the Cinema Les Arcades which will cover a large swath of films we’ve missed, and standard entry to all Palais screenings — Lumiere being the primary theatre for Official Selection picks, with 1.5 other theatres also showing reruns. Fun thing about Lumiere: you need an invitation to get in, and early invitations appear to be extremely rare for us 3 Days folks (I applied for 8, got 1 so far). Fun twist on Les Arcades: no English subtitles, unless the film is in French! These constraints combine to form a sort of manic zig-zag of a Thursday and Friday, to maximize the (promising) Competition flicks I can catch. They also create an interesting phenomenon, wherein tuxedo-wearing badge holders choose to stand in the street waving cardboard signs that say “[Film Name] Invite, s.v.p” in a script identical to “Will work for food.” The more fortunate Invitation holders have been known to take pity — though in 30 minutes of watching, I never saw such a transaction actually occur.

And so, after a brief detour wherein I wandered the Palais in search of water and wound up in a trudging, Lemming death-march to see John Travolta (I was, in fact, admitted, but ultimately shooed at the door), I gave up. Better to eat a good, early meal and wake up at the crack of dawn, I reasoned. And so I walked home in the rain, bought an eight pack of macarons and a bottle of beer, and prepared to have myself a night.

Then, at 6:10, the tweets started to roll in. Burning premiere starting in thirty. Here is the line to see Burning. Here’s a selfie from the line to see Burning. As I sat there in my underwear staring down the barrel of my sad, pastel communion, I thought, what the hell. Give it a go. Throw on the tux, figure out how bowties work, run as fast as humanly possible toward the Palais in the rain. When I arrive at 6:30 on the dot, a French man happens to walk by and ask if I want his ticket. Anne Hathaway was right. It came true.

So, ok. Wheeze up the red carpet, find my seat just as the film is starting. Soaking in what I hoped was rain (it wasn’t), wishing I’d thought to have at least a sip of water in the last couple hours. I’m crammed between two people who will, insanely, be on their goddamn phones (!) for the entire (!!) movie (!!!). My inhaler has likely already slipped out of my pocket at this point, though I don’t know it yet, so that panic attack was forestalled. In short, we’re doing fine.

Actual, Sloppy, Sleep-Deprived Review

Let’s start with an important disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about the work of Lee Chang-dong. Widening still: I know very little about Korean cinema in general. Sweating in that theatre between a pair of glowing, life-sized emojis, I found myself wishing I’d done the homework I promised.

But, as I quickly realized, Burning does have some context I feel comfortable speaking on: the work of Murakami. See, unbeknownst to this (ill-prepared) filmgoer, Burning is a loose adaptation of “Barn Burning”, a short story from The Elephant Vanishes. And while I don’t remember that particular piece enough to recognize the plotting (though Kindle insists I’ve read it), fans of Murakami should know that hardly matters. He’s the authorial equivalent of Tarantino: his fingerprints are always a dominant gene.

I don’t know how close Lee intended to hue to the source material, so all I can speak to is my own, lopsided experience. In my estimation, this is by far the closest I’ve ever come to seeing Murakami’s voice emulated in film — and no, I don’t mean in the obvious “I’ve never seen a film adaptation of Murakami” sense. Specific plot duplications are easy, and mostly uninteresting — yes, there are cats and music analogies and frank treatments of sex. It’s the transposition of style that blows my mind.

Here’s an example of a thing Murakami is excellent at: creating a yearning in the reader, or rather, a nostalgia for the time that you still knew how to yearn. I have no clue how he does it. He writes sparse, extremely understated dialogue; his descriptive prose is never self-consciously showy, particularly with regards to romance. At most, he might toss out a nature-related simile (numb like ice, passionate like fire), and that’s if he’s feeling frisky. You feel like you could read him in one sitting, easy…and yet you continually choose not to because the emotions he taps into insist on slowing down. Passages that might read as fanfic out of context (see: any sex scene in Norwegian Wood) take on a special resonance, a haunting voice. “Wistful” isn’t the word; it’s direct, uncomfortably direct. Feeling things head-on, childlike. Loving naively. Bruising easily. He taps into a particular brand of tenderness like no author I know.

Burning has none of those raw materials to work with (omniscient narrator, jarring simplicity in prose), but it absolutely nails the resulting feeling. I feel wanting everywhere. I feel it when Jong-soo (Yoo Ah-in) stares out at an open expanse of green and brown, can practically hear the poetry he’s writing in his mind, the things he would do and places he would go if class/life/circumstance had been otherwise. I feel it whenever Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo) is on screen, or the rose-tinted version we see through Jong-soo’s eyes. Her furtive glances, her head turns, the way she seems to ping pong through emotions, searching. I feel it when she dances on the porch in an extended take, gradually unfurling, pulling things into her orbit, lifting his Small Hunger into a Great Hunger. It’s beautiful.

But that’s also a huge problem I have, with this film and with Murakami in general: the way women always seem to be reduced to manic canvases for Want. Hae-mi is Sputnik Sweetheart’s Sumire, is Norwegian Wood’s Naoko, etc. etc — she’s frail, she’s hurting, she’s impossible to pin down, and she always A) needs saving by or B) heaps complicated affections upon our {thoughtful, shy, artistic} protagonist. This asymmetry puts the indulgent sex and masturbation scenes in an uncomfortable place for me — Nice always lusting after Fragile, Fragile always alternating between teasing and appeasing but never actually rejecting. She never strikes me autonomous; it feels like her emotions flutter on cue. I’m inconsistent, I’m sure: plenty of films I love (Call Me By Your Name, most recently) pull that depth asymmetry off; I’m happy to have Object Of Affection Exists Solely As Catalyst For Personal Growth when it suits me. Maybe it’s just this particular casting of a relationship dynamic, between the Male Friend and the Hurting Girl, that I have trouble with. I’ve heard that story too many times before — told it in my own life — and it’s been toxic bullshit every time.

Roughly half of Burning suffers from that problem, and if that’s all there were, I’d probably be feeling more sour here. Then the other half goes in bolder, far more refreshing territory — which I wouldn’t dare spoil, though it’d hardly count as a twist. All I’ll say is it harnesses another key element of Murakami’s style, one I’m never annoyed by: his knack for creating surreal mystery out (on paper) very little, by tilting the world just so. Everything works in concert to build that same mood here, particularly Steven Yeun’s perfect poker face and Mowg’s throbbing, stringbare soundtrack. I have no complaints, it’s masterfully handled. Lee totally nails the landing. In fact, with more sleep and time to reassess, it might even retroactively modify some of my deeper reservations — recasting the desires the film is playing with, here.

Maybe people with less Murakami baggage can feel the power of that landing on first blush, without having it be diminished by the more predictable bits it’s stapled to. I hope so. Like Murakami’s output, there’s plenty here worth loving; it’s that goodness I’m certain they’re capable of that makes me cringe at the thematic misfires.

A Tale of Two Corinthians, or, A Therapy Session Posing as a Review

“Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.” – 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

“Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” – 2 Corinthians 12:10

Mine was a dusty, moonlit rock tucked behind pine trees, somewhere uphill from the chapel. From my perch I could make out the dirt road snaking past cabins, and with it an exodus of overloud teens, but they couldn’t see me (thankfully) bawling. It was Tuesday night and, per unwritten summer camp custom, that meant it was time to feel life-changing emotions. Sunday through Tuesday a.m. are the pep rally ramp up, Wednesday on is for new beginnings, but this, and only this, was the moment to cry. And I didn’t, usually. I’d been there there too many times, had heard the story of the Prodigal Son in all its clever variations (faux autobiography, historical drama, modern updates featuring dumpster diving drug addicts, at least one involving Avril Lavigne). Crying was for the “troubled” kids; altar calls for the friend-of-a-friend lulled by the promise of sports. I had an apologetics website with a spinning cross GIF and a five song worship playlist in the navbar. I didn’t cry at church camp.

Yet here I was, crying just about as hard as I have in my life, over one crushing realization: I was a monster. An unredeemable fraud. Every action I had ever taken had been based on selfish instinct. Yes, some were the banal sins the other kids were probably repenting of: I’d thought hateful thoughts, I’d lusted in my heart, I’d looked at porn without clearing the history, I’d lied to cover up this-or-that embarrassment. There were shoulder-clutching prayer circles and accountability groups for that typical, forgivable variety. But the truly crushing blow was the sin I had no defense against, the kind no counselor could resolve: the realization that my own goodness was itself a brand of meta-hedonism. I acted nice because I wanted to be seen as nice. I did “the right thing” because I wanted to be the sort of person who did it, either in others’ perception or in my own self estimation or, in my loftiest moments, in the eyes of God. I loved people because I wanted to be loved back, desperately, and I loved Him with the same implicit quid pro quo; what, after all, was righteousness if not the ultimate con I had pulled on the universe? With every layer of external holiness, I was only hiding the charlatan inside; the one aching for approval, hungry to be seen as the best in all things. I could never be truly selfless—could never do anything without that toxic self, somewhere, polluting the equation—and that recognition just about destroyed me.

You might find it amusing, this picture of a 14-year-old bowl cut who had never drank, never cursed, never rounded any bases (despite plenty of swinging), crying his eyes out over what amounts to a linguistic “gotcha!”. With the benefit of hindsight, I do too. He’s a bit of a dweeb. On that rock, though, there was nothing funny about my predicament. It was full-fledged war. Mainstream cinema, if it chose to depict this kid at all, might make him a side character in a riotous coming of age comedy, stage-quivering for fear of eternal damnation. But the truth is, hell had nothing to do with it—it rarely did. The Jesus Freak movement had replaced fire-and-brimstone with love-and-forgiveness long before I attended any retreat. There was nothing stuffy, or fearful, or externally-imposed about what I was experiencing that night. Everyone from my youth pastor to C.S. Lewis (enter: “The Weight Of Glory”) would have happily defeated my little paradox if given a chance. No, I didn’t cry out of fear or oppression; I cried out of a genuine desire to reconcile my own spiritual certainty with the messy vagaries of adolescence. I was trying to cram a hormonal rollercoaster into a steeple. If you self-identified as a Church Kid, you can probably relate.

Rockin’ that church camp tee

This shouldn’t come off as a sob story: I was happy, and lucky, and privileged in all things. I only bring it up to say that I know how it feels to be at war with your own instincts, with those things at your core that you know to be immutable. And I can only imagine how infinitely more painful that battle gets when it isn’t self-inflicted; for those whom the church itself has labelled “perverse” and prayer groups offer no respite. There are plenty of tragic stories in the LGBTQ community with regards to American Christianity; of young people forced to “change” to appease this or that parent, and the myriad abuses that come with it. I mourn them all. But the one I personally empathize with most is one I’ve never seen on screen: the tragedy of actually believing yourself to be fundamentally incorrect, fundamentally broken. To truly want to change something that can’t be changed, not for the benefit of some tight-collared authority figure but for your own formative worldview. Clawing uphill against the inexorable gravity of self; Sisyphus versus the moonlit rock.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)

So perhaps my disappointment with The Miseducation Of Cameron Post (2.5/5) isn’t Desiree Akhavan’s fault. After all, I’m bringing some 20 years of baggage to the table. Set in small town Montana in the early 90’s, the film (based on the eponymous novel by Emily Danforth) tells the story of Cameron (Chloë Grace Moretz), a Bible-carrying highschooler who is caught having a backseat hook-up with another girl on prom night, and subsequently shipped off to God’s Promise. God’s Promise is a faith-based camp with one stated purpose: convert queer teens back to good, old-fashioned Bible Belt heteronormativity. Or, in the camp’s parlance, to “defend against the temptation of same sex attraction (SSA).” See, according to Dr. Lydia Marsh (Jennifer Ehle), there’s no such thing as sexual orientation; only temporary, sinful desires that need to be uprooted. Case in point: her brother Rick (John Gallagher Jr.), now the camp’s mustachioed worship leader and (in)effective guidance counselor, once struggled with those same sinful urges. Everything but his facial hair bears witness to her triumph.

At camp, Cameron meets a host of other teenagers in various stages of uprooting. There’s Jane Fonda (Sasha Lane, her first role since she was discovered in my 2016 favorite, American Honey), the pot smoking daughter of former Flower Children. Born on a commune, she and her mother eventually fled into the arms of a born-again conservative—hence, “family values.” With her is Adam Red Eagle (Forrest Goodluck), the Native American Two-Spirit whose nonbinary gender identity was determined to lend “bad optics” to his father’s political campaign. Sent away more for expedience than any deeply held conviction, neither Jane nor Adam are drinking the Promise Kool-Aid; like Cam, they alternate between can-you-believe-this-shit skepticism, and horror at the psychological trauma inflicted on its more impressionable residents. Impressionable residents include Erin (Emily Skeggs), the Blessercizing roommate who blames her SSA on an overprotective father and intramural sports; Dane (Christopher Dylan White), the designated “troubled” kid who attributes his struggles to familial abuse; and Mark (Owen Campbell), a long-time believer who has worked hard to overcome his effeminate “weaknesses” and is slated to graduate soon.

It’s tempting to compare this to Short Term 12, and not just because of John Gallagher Jr’s counselor role. Both are intimate portraits of bruised adolescence, which contrast slice-of-life quietude with searing melodrama. They even share a few character arcs—watch both back-to-back, then talk to me about certain monologues by departing residents and their eventual denouement. And yet, where Short Term 12 wore its heart on its sleeve, it’s not entirely clear where Cameron Post’s heart lies. Its message is there, of course, written in bold: gay conversion camps are an atrocity, and history rightly condemns them. But heart implies taking our characters at face value, whereas Akhavan wraps them in protective layers.

First is the obvious treatment of religion. From the prim-and-proper Bible study leader to the clueless Reverend Rick, it’s clear that faith is meant to be little more than the butt of the joke—mawkish platitudes about “icebergs” and Jesus ring so hollow, it’s hard to believe even their most cartoonish utterers. Adults pray with eyes poised vapidly to heaven, teens parrot altruisms with cultish zeal, a Christian Rock band is contrasted with 4 Non Blondes and The Breeders, and the whole affair just smacks of satire. Which is entirely justified, of course—in a situation this dire, there’s nowhere to punch but up. It’s not that it’s wrong to satirize American Christianity, or that painting it as a laughable enemy is somehow unfair; it’s just that it’s such an uninteresting angle. That mockery undercuts what might be the most insidious aspect of real-world conversion camps: their ability to sound persuasive, to make their wrongheaded delusions seem righteous. It’s hard to feel the power of a movement when it’s cushioned by a punchline.

Moreover, the overt wrongness isn’t limited to audience perception: our protagonists are granted that same skeptical remove. From opening romance to closing escape, Cameron never seems vulnerable to the dogma being shouted at her. Like Adam and Jane, she is saddened by it, inconvenienced by it, even terrified of it—but there isn’t a moment of doubt. Despite her ostensibly fundamentalist upbringing (possibly complicated by a death in the family, which the book might expound on but the film barely touches), Cam leaves with the same quiet certainty she entered with: there is nothing wrong with who I am, who I choose to love; it is you, the manipulative leaders who couch emotional abuse under the guise of “psychology”, who are wrong. Again, this is a fine choice—the film doesn’t owe me an authentic exploration of faith and its inherent contradictions, even if the precise degree to which it dodges them feels a bit revisionistic. It just strikes me as overly safe, and oddly limiting. How are we meant to explore emotional trauma, if we aren’t privy to the mind of anyone who feels it? Why have me mourn solely through the eyes of characters who think precisely as I do, who decry their peers’ treatment with my own present sensibility? I see what brainwashing looks like; I share your well-earned outrage. Now tell me how it feels inside.

There are glimpses here which hint at what could have been; raw outbursts of feeling from young minds incapable of reconciling the selves they’ve been buttoned into with the selves that keep climbing out. In one particularly stirring scene, a devout character recites 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 from memory, repeating the final sentence till it mutates into a manic mantra, a battle cry. When I am weak, then I am strong. When I am weak, then I am strong. It feels a lot like a thesis, and a heartbreaking one at that: stop posturing, stop fighting, dig deep and find rest. I wish the film had taken that same advice. I wish it had allowed its characters real moments of weakness, of doubt, of honestly not knowing rather than being told what to know. I wish it had chosen vulnerability over validation; had trusted us with truths its characters hadn’t yet learned.

Wrapping up

Maybe this brand of storytelling will ultimately help more people. Maybe solidarity against a harmful ideology is more important than properly representing it. God knows the film is resonating: from a Sundance Jury Award to rave reviews across the critical spectrum, the world seems to have latched on to something profound. Good on them, honestly. There’s more than one way to come of age. All I can speak to is what I wanted, what I’m certain this creative team could have delivered had they chosen, and what my 14-year-old self would have desperately needed: a peek into a mind that is actually at war with itself. Not a wink, not an eye-roll, not a rallying cry from act one. I wanted to see someone strain against that rock, earnestly, hopelessly. Feel the weight of all its contradictions, widen their worldview to make room. Then smash it to pieces.

There’s a (commonly misattributed) saying that those who stand for nothing will fall for anything. That’s true in art as well as in life — a clear point of view is important. But I think a related lemma should be added: trying to say everything is equivalent to saying nothing. And a mid-afternoon festival audience will likely fall asleep.

Zoe (1.5/5) is a mostly pretty looking Sci Fi flick that tries to say everything, and I mean everything. Set in an ambiguous future where humanoid robots are so lifelike they don’t even know they’re robots AND people purchase other, entirely less lifelike robots as sex workers AND BUT WAIT a computer can score the likelihood that a relationship between two humans will succeed OH ALSO a new drug can synthesize the feeling of falling in love for the first time…it’s hard to say what exactly the movie thinks it’s about. Is it about what it means to be human, à la Westworld or Ex Machina? Is it about the boundaries of human connection, à la Her? The danger of reducing love to a number, à la that one episode of How I Met Your Mother? The Sisyphean coup of committing to love in spite of certain failure à la Eternal Sunshine or MTV’s Date My Mom? The hedonistic peril of choosing immediate pleasure spikes over long term rewards? Drug addiction, also, for some reason? Any one avenue could have easily made for a riveting experience (as evidenced by the many wonderful films that have tread this ground); all of them together feel like the ramblings of a motivational speaker at a lifeless corporate retreat.

Everyone is fine here. Léa Seydoux is fine as Didn’t Have The Budget For Scarlett. Ewan McGregor is fine as the inventor whose entire life’s work is effectively a giant Freudian slip he can’t decide if he recognizes. Christina Aguilera is fine as an aging sex robot named Jewels, which A) is not a sentence I ever thought I’d write, and B) is a real slap in the face to Jewel’s prospective acting career. Rashida Jones is fine as the ex wife whose sole purpose seems to be to remind us of Her. Theo James is fine as Ash The Fuckable Android, a role that is somehow less robotic than any of his appearances in The Divergent Series. Technology really has come a long way.

I imagine that, somewhere on the cutting room floor, there’s a pretty decent movie waiting to be found. The one we’re left with is bewildering. Characters alter their life trajectories on a whim. Huge existential questions are raised entirely out of nowhere, resolved unsatisfactorily, raised again one act later, and resolved again. An entire love story is reduced to a wordless montage, scored to a song I immediately forgot and backlit by a giant OSX screensaver. I can’t stress to you just how rote, how limp, how paint-by-the-numbers emotional this journey is. It feels like a slideshow at a wedding reception for a couple we’ve never gotten to meet; or like the result of some future singularity event wherein Levi’s commercials have grown sentient and begun directing their own Levi’s commercials, lengthening to infinity long after earth’s denim supply is depleted.

TL;DR, this is a weird ass movie that only made me pine for better ones. Chris and I talk Zoe in another Tribeca installment of podcast:

I love standup comedy. I also love media that is at least peripherally about the world of comedy, as told by those who live in it. Don’t Think Twice. Crashing. WTF with Marc Maron. The Big Sick. If there’s a common thread here, beyond the occupation of its subjects (and creators), it’s that each treat humor as a thinly-veiled coping mechanism, a public exorcism of personal demons. Heartbreaking monologues that seem to arise fully formed; the stage as device for uttering the unutterable; all the insight of an omniscient narrator with none of the cheeseball.

That list also summarizes what I love about Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s acting: her ability to unravel tangled emotions in long, unbroken takes. With a camera trained on her for nearly its entire runtime, 10 Cloverfield Lane may be the most obvious showcase, but my personal favorite is Smashed. Having hit rock bottom (as the title implies), Winstead’s Kate is asked to tell her story at an AA meeting. Over the course of one extended monologue, she flows from reluctance to skepticism to denial to detachment to caution to fearful, full-throated vulnerability. It might just be the best performance of 2012, and it singlehandedly makes the film.

All About Nina (3.5/5) features a similarly stunning, film-making monologue. Winstead’s titular Nina is now an acerbic standup comedian rather than an alcoholic teacher, but she’s exorcising demons just the same; peeling back guarded layer upon guarded layer to get to something true. Something that stings, that I wouldn’t dare spoil for you. It’s a beautiful moment in a performance packed with them, and it’s likely my single favorite scene of the festival. It’s also a culmination of so many things I care about in art: confessional storytelling, raw emotion, the antihero-rich world of standup comedy. So why am I not more bullish on this?

Part of the problem, I think, is tone. Eva Vives has constructed a film that absolutely sidelines you. This is by design. All About Nina is a heavy-hitting drama in hindsight, but for much of its runtime it plays as a lighthearted rom-com. See, having cut her teeth in the New York comedy scene, Nina now finds herself friendless in Los Angeles. She’s there to fulfill her dream of landing a gig at Comedy Prime, the weekly sketch show produced by mysterious kingmaker “Larry Michaels” (GET IT EVERYBODY?! GET IT?!). “Sketch” is the operative word here — after moving to the best coast, Nina meets a host of barely-drawn secondary characters: a pop spirituality author who introduces her pronoun preferences before saying hello, a drum-circling support group raising money for a “cat sanctuary”, a brash-talking agent who’s liable to stay in the office till her water breaks, and an alt comic who literally shits her pants on stage. It’s all perfectly funny, if a bit West-Coast-as-seen-by-a-New-Yorker hack. But orbiting the incredibly believable (as a standup and a person) Nina, it throws the narrative into the uncanny valley. If this world is a satire, why do I feel so invested? If the world is real, why does so much of it feel corny?

Speaking of corny, let’s talk about the common problem shared between this one and Blue Night; or, rather, the Common problem. As in Lonnie Lynn. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy, and I don’t think his acting chops are the problem. He oozes nothing but peace, love, and authenticity, both on and off the stage. But maybe that’s the problem: his charisma is so unique and self-insisting, he’s physically incapable of hiding behind a character who isn’t also secretly Common. Or, at least, I’m incapable of sharing the delusion. Here he plays Rafe, the Nice Guy antidote to Nina’s Bad Boy relationship streak. Whether wooing her at a bar, sharing a starlit heart-to-heart, or engaging in an implausible third act shouting match, he possesses an almost otherworldly charm. As a love interest in a spoof of the LA comedy scene, that might be perfect; as a catalyst for change in a film meant to be taken seriously, I found it unbelievably distracting. After Nina riffs on stage about the gap between her sensibilities and Nicholas Sparks’, I couldn’t help but think that the script would benefit from the same separation — for all the talent elevating the material, the romance itself is cookie-cutter Sparks. And it suffers for it. Still, quite a few others have praised Common’s work here (Chris in particular), so take my criticism with a grain of salt. And water, and chocolate.

Ultimately, this is a very good movie that carries a handful of pretty mediocre movies on its back. The core is wonderful, and thankfully the narrative thrust — Winstead’s turn alone is well worth the price of admission. It’s my favorite performance of hers to date. I just wish the film would have cut the dead weight, and realized that it’s possible for a movie to be disarmingly funny while still taking itself (and the audience) seriously. Chris and I argue about standup, the relative virtues of Common, and my massive hypocrisy in another Tribeca episode:

What’s the line between risky and ridiculous? Over the past few years, I’ve come to realize that, categories aside, I have no idea what I value in art. Sometimes a plodding pace is “subtle” and “wonderfully naturalistic”, others it’s “pointless” and “inert.” Sometimes in-your-face emotion and over-the-top themes are “obvious” or (the worst of the bunch) “ham-fisted”, others they’re “earnest”, “bold”, and “deeply felt.” For all my attempts at phrasing things properly, at the end of the day it’s a mostly pointless exercise. My ideal film is like jazz, or porn, or a color clash: I’m not sure what defines it, but I know it when I see it.

The Party’s Just Beginning (4/5), written and directed by its lead Karen Gillan (Jumanji, Guardians of the Galaxy) is by no account a subtle film. A synth-laden blitz through depression and alcoholism among the disillusioned Scottish youth, it echoes all my favorite aspects of the mid-nineties Glasgow scene: the profane irreverence of Trainspotting, the everything-is-meaningless-so-pour-another-dram sadcore of Arab Strap. Intentional tonal dissonance; a funeral dirge you can dance to.

In her few words before the screening, Gillan described the film as her attempt to grapple with the inordinately high rate of suicide in her hometown of Inverness. But from the bold pink karaoke title sequence to the myriad scenes of stylized death, it’s clear that she has no intention of giving us an even-handed portrait of of the subject — though it’s also clear that she isn’t being intentionally divisive. Instead, she’s reaching for top shelf melodramatic phrases as a proxy for more common feelings: finding yourself down on your luck, out of prospects, unable to connect to others. In that sense, it’s hard not to compare this to another directorial debut by a beloved comic actor: Zach Braff’s Garden State. Like Braff with mental illness, Gillan may rightly be criticized for going too big too often; for using wild dramatic arcs as a sort of emotional shorthand rather than tackling them head-on. She also, like Braff, is just too damn earnest to let that sort of criticism weigh her down. One wonders if a filmmaker with a gentler hand would even be capable of depicting the restless highs and lows of young adulthood; is it possible to emote immaturity without, on some level, sharing in it? Her nuance may be off, but her heart is very much in the right place, here — which is to say, bleeding.

I can’t adequately defend it, but I very much enjoyed this debut. It was vivacious, intense, and unlike anything else I saw at the festival. Chris and I debate The Party’s Just Beginning in another Tribeca episode of The Spoiler Warning:

After reading Naomi Alderman’s The Power, I expressed frustration with her tendency to lob compelling concepts into shallow waters. In that case, a premise full of possibility (women suddenly evolving physical dominance over men, and society changing as a result) collapsed into a collection of bullet points and inevitable conclusions. Politics: let’s flip the genders! Religion: let’s flip the genders! War: you get the picture. My uncharitable take was that it read like sociopolitical fanfiction.

So it’s hard not to wonder if my problem with Disobedience (2.5/5) is, in large part, a problem with Alderman’s source material. Having never read the book, I might be totally off the mark. But here, again, is a thought-provoking premise squandered by what appears to be a total lack of curiosity in probing it from any challenging angle. The unexpected death of her Rabbi father pulls Ronit (Rachel Weisz) back into the small, Orthodox community of her childhood. There, she crosses paths with Esti (Rachel McAdams), her (scandalous, at the time) lover of years past and present wife to the Rabbi’s successor (Alessandro Antine Nivola). Ronit’s return trudges up buried feelings in both women, and they struggle to reconcile then with the community writ large. Sci-fi grandeur is here scaled down to human particulars, but similar themes abound: sex as catalyst for liberation, women turning the tables on a repressive society, faith as simultaneous sickness and balm. More than enough fodder to say something meaningful.

And the film does say it. Sort of. Despite my negativity, Disobedience has its share of highlights to recommend it. Particularly with respect to the Judaism angle: Sebastián Lelio gives certain scenes ample space to breathe, imbuing the (myriad, unsubtitled) scenes of worship with a genuine sense of awe. You feel, in these moments, how the same orthopraxy might be beautiful or suffocating, mystical or impenetrable, depending on the observer. At its best, it reminded me of A Serious Man; which is to say, a wonderfully vague secular examination of belief.

The problem is, where A Serious Man reveled in questions, Disobedience always has the cadence of an answer. And the answer seems, frankly, bland. Characters turn their worldviews on a dime, with arcs that feel motivated solely by some Important Drama Bingo card: there will be love, it will be forbidden, someone will be angry, someone will forgive. Lacking proper grounding, the leads can’t help but come off as stilted; Nivola always either overly stubborn or overly understanding, McAdams always on the verge of some preordained epiphany. Even the romance between Ronit and Esti — which, hindsight notwithstanding, is certainly played as the film’s centerpiece — was oddly inert. Given the extreme authenticity of Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman, I’m surprised to be levying this particular criticism, but: it’s virtually impossible to forget that this was directed by a man, starring straight actresses, acting out a love more metaphorical than true. Sex scenes feel, if not male-gazey, at least off in a distinctly male way — vulnerability replaced with vigorous moaning and a few too many pints of saliva. All the problems of Blue Is The Warmest Color with none of its tenacity. Their romance feels like every other aspect of the story (faith, forgiveness, awakening). Like a conclusion so inevitable no one bothered to actually build to it.

The film opens in earnest this weekend, and given the overwhelmingly positive critical consensus, I may well be alone on this one. But I thought this was a huge step down for all parties involved. Chris and I argue about what works and what doesn’t in another late night Tribeca episode:

The festival isn’t over, but I’m calling it now: State Like Sleep (4.5/5) is the best film in competition at Tribeca. It’s not even a fair fight. Tonally hovering somewhere between Blade Runner and In The Mood For Love, Meredith Danluck’s debut feature is a dreamy, synth-infused meditation on grief and the pain of letting go. Not the letting go of people, per se, but of the thirst for hindsight rationality — that gnawing urge to trace tidy narrative arcs over events that rarely yield them. It’s about the endless “if only I’d” and “if only they’d”s that mutate passive hurt into proactive obsessions; in other words, it’s the perfect thing for noir to dissect.

The less you know about plot the better, so I’ll stick to the basics. A young fashion photographer (Katherine Waterson, outstanding) has moved from Brussels to New York, following the unexpected death of her celebrity husband (Michiel Huisman). “Fled” to New York might be a better term: faced with such overwhelming trauma, she has chosen instead to vanish, leaving her life (like their shared loft apartment, and her unspoken guilt) cryogenically frozen. When a phone call brings her back to the city, and new evidence slowly comes to light, those feelings begin to thaw.

Have you ever kept your hand out in the cold so long, that the first hints of warmth (a pocket, a hot breath) actually hurt? It isn’t a burning sensation; on the contrary, it feels a lot like freezing. When cells reawaken, the first thing they sense isn’t their gradual slope toward normalcy, but the depth from which they’ve fallen. Katherine’s slow healing feels an awful lot like pain, and the bits of warmth she opens herself to may seem chilly on first impression. The advances of her philandering neighbor (Michael Shannon), the intrusive concern of her mother (Elizabeth Jeanne le Roux), the shared grief of her husband’s mysterious friend (an almost unrecognizably Eurotrash, bleached-and-gelled Luke Evans) — they look like a step in the right direction, but they open mental alleyways that leave her feeling even more alone.

Give it time. There’s warmth to be found in this, I promise. Though, honestly, even if there weren’t I’d love it all the same. Much of that has to do with ambiance: Danluck and DP Christopher Blauvelt paint the nightlife of Brussels with such vivid, striking texture, like some hybrid between Taxi Driver’s Manhattan and Lost In Translation’s Tokyo. Alternatingly romantic and seedy, inviting or overwhelming, depending on which door you choose to open. There are shots framed in windshields, through cigarette smoke or rain, that are just about as haunting as any I’ve seen all year. And the electronica soundtrack, with its sludgy, quaalude thumping, is perfect.

But the real revelatory pieces, here, are the lead performances: Katherine Waterston and Michael Shannon. Coming from two of the most consistently excellent actors working today, the quality’s hardly a surprise; but the degree to which they play against type really is. And for my money, it yields what might be career-best performances for both. Waterston has always been wonderful, but her characters are often a bit enigmatic, more catalyst than anchor: Inherent Vice’s hazy Shasta, Queen of Earth’s haunting Virginia, even Fantastic Beasts’ Tina wriggles away from direct inspection. Here she is utterly, wonderfully raw — for much of the film the camera is trained on her face, seeing the world through her tiny reactions. Shannon, likewise, is unlike any role I’ve seen him in, trading his typical cerebral powers for something gentle, subdued, disarming. Like Katherine, he’s flawed and incapable of answers. But there’s a strength to him, here, a stirring thing I hadn’t seen before, and their wordless exchanges speak volumes. Are there any two people with more emotive eyes in Hollywood?

At one point in the film, the pair has a conversation about linguistics; about words that sound the way they feel. Currrvy. Anguish. Bur-den. State Like Sleep is a work of art that looks the way it means. Tender and disorienting in equal measure; viscous and blurry but moving nonetheless. It looks the way acceptance feels. Like something heavy beginning to thaw.

I loved this movie, and attending the premiere alongside Waterston, Shannon, Danluck and co. only made me want to champion it more — they approached the affair with such humility, you’d almost think they hadn’t just made one of the best films of the year. But they have. I’ll be shocked if this doesn’t make my Top 10 list come January. Chris and I give a spoiler-free review of State Like Sleep in our latest Tribeca installment:

It feels presumptuous to review an adaptation of a play I’ve never read. I mean, reviews like this always feel presumptuous, but this time it stretches the breaking point. Much, I’m sure, has been written about Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull — its criss-crossing courtships (a love hexagon if I’m counting right?), its meta-commentary on pretension in art, its mirroring of creative and romantic obsessions — and here I am, basing my opinions on a 98 minute treatment 120 years after the fact. Featuring Brian Dennehy wheeze-laughing his way through a drunken uncle routine (but enough about the Q&A).

On the other hand, maybe this is a good test; after all, stage-to-screen adaptations often lean heavily on nostalgia / some winking pact among actors playing dress up. In short, they tend to feel overly satisfied in their own delivery. Could I, a Philistine whose only familiarity with Chekhov is his namesake gun, still find something to enjoy?

I, thankfully, could. Which isn’t to say that The Seagull (3.5/5) avoids any those self-satisfied tropes. It’s just that it opens itself wide enough to let me in on the whimsy. In Joss Whedon’s (great) adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, he chose to keep the Shakespearean vernacular even while relocating the speakers to 21st century Los Angeles; a mishmash of classic and contemporary that captured the overtly play-pretend aspect of theatre in a way a direct period piece might render inert. The Seagull hues much closer to the original, in both setting and (translated) text, but there’s something distinctly modern in the telling. The best word I can find to describe this sort of film is “shimmering.” Glossily edited and romantic to a fault, it’s anchored by a stellar ensemble who are visibly, contagiously, in love with the material. Billy Howle chews scenery as the tragicomic Konstantin, an aspiring young playwright who wants his art to bleed — waxing about life, death, and universal themes like an Intro to Philosophy student. His naive, often inept (but always sincere) heart bleeds in kind; particularly for Nina, an idealistic young actress (Saoirse Ronan) who dreams only of being remembered. She likes Kostya just fine, she just doesn’t get his obsession with “challenging” the audience at the expense of being beloved by them. Far more attractive is Boris (Corey Stoll), an older, accomplished author who has managed to achieve fame without shedding a drop. He sees art as an obligatory habit, some nagging bodily function to be used and discarded — observe the world, write it down, sell it, repeat. He can control it no easier than he can control his attraction to Nina, much to the chagrin of his lover Irina (Annette Bening), a once-famous actress who also happens to be Konstantin’s mother.

I could go on. There’s Elisabeth Moss’ Hot Topic Masha, Brian Dennehy’s curmudgeonly Sorin, Jon Tenney as a Doctor who might also be auditioning for Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man In The World. Their tangle of unrequited loves is hard to keep track of but easy to enjoy; there’s a playful, slapstick rhythm to the proceedings that the cast totally nails. There are also quiet moments of heart, particularly from Howle, who morphs over the course of the film from satirical hyperbole into a character I genuinely felt for. In his more sober monologues, he reminded me of Tom in The Glass Menagerie (particularly as played by Malkovich); a little over-pronounced and prone to false grandeur, but soft and reflective just the same. Those moments, though rare, help add a “point” to what would otherwise be a fun but trifling affair.

I don’t know if it’s necessary, or what, exactly, it set out to accomplish. But I was won over by this one’s charms pretty quickly. It felt appropriately theatrical without ever seeming goofy, and the concepts it wrestles with (art, love, and the perils of being obsessed or flippant about either) are well worth the watch. Even if the film, like Irina, is a bit too in love with itself. Chris and I review The Seagull in another Tribeca bonus episode:

When I signed up for the Tribeca film festival, I had no idea what the lineup would be. But, based on prior years, I had a hand-wavey sense of the brand: shoestring-budget indie flicks, filmed primarily on location in some metropolitan area, following one or two characters (and virtually nobody else) as they navigate an emotional journey that is, outwardly, invisible. It’s the sort of film where a synopsis tells you virtually nothing, optimally viewed with either A) a rapt audience in a hushed arthouse theatre, or B) a cocktail of international redeye, noise-canceling headphones, crappy United merlot blend, and a sappy disposition prone to tears. Think Ira Sachs, or “New York as a character” spoken unironically in a Q&A.

I’m pleased to report that my stereotype is, mostly, wrong — the variety of genre / subject matter on display has been huge (barrage of reviews forthcoming). But I’m also pleased to report that, sometimes, a film comes along that is a dead ringer. Blue Night (3/5) is exactly the sort of thing I signed up for. Which is to say, quite rough, but with its heart in the right place: documentary filmmaker Fabien Constant’s first foray into narrative has eyes that are quite a bit bigger than its stomach. Following jazz singer Vivienne (Sarah Jessica Parker) over the course of a single day, it lands somewhere between Medicine for Melancholy and Born To Be Blue, without the latter’s sheen or the former’s restless energy. Alternating between slice-of-life and hyperreal and nailing neither, it often feels like a sketch of a great film he didn’t quite have the time or budget to create.

But sketches have a way of winning me over, especially when armed with the right personality. Blue Night has two strong personalities to commend it. The first is Sarah Jessica Parker, excellent here as a neither-washed-up-nor-wildly-famous performer faced with an existential curveball. It’d be cheap to say she’s grappling with mortality (though, also, there’s that): she’s grappling with the way things (fame, relationships, friendships, neighborhoods) vanish into history, and with her inability to shape whatever imprint is left. Between this and HBO’s Divorce, Parker has shown a graceful transition from the brash charisma of her earlier work into a gentler, world-weary relatability — the Bill Murray Trail, if you will. She absolutely carries this film, and I’m excited to see where she goes next. The second is Constant himself. He has an eagerness that shines here, even when the movie he’s making falters. I see it in the (many) swings for the fences: subtext-laden conversations with complete strangers, quick cuts stitched by a Manhattan traffic percussion, secondary characters who announce their presence with unbelievable exposition dumps — they don’t ever totally land, but I feel the heart behind them. This heart is best exemplified by the character of Sami (Waleed Zuaiter), a Lyft driver who intersects with Vivienne repeatedly throughout the day. His introduction is heightened and borderline offensive: shouting in Arabic and cranking up heavy metal he feels far more outdated-cabbie-stereotype than guy-who-needs-5-star-reviews-to-stay-employed. Vivienne, with her bizarre requests, is no more believable in her interactions with him. But slowly, though a series of improbably-convenient events, their relationship thaws into something genuinely moving — that transient, therapist-slash-bartender relationship that can evolve between strangers in a late night metropolis who, hearing no context and offering no advice, see each other clearly. Momentarily. Before they, like a life or career or friendship or lover, blend back into the noise.

Blue Night often swings high and misses. But when it lands, it lands exactly where I needed it to. Chris and I give a quick review in another spoiler-free, Tribeca episode.