‘Vaazhai’
Mari Selvaraj’s new film might seem, at first, like a charming kids’ caper — but right from the outset, horror-tinged hints warn us that this is a movie where the joyous innocence of childhood will meet its harsh disillusionment. Far too early, the responsibilities of adulthood have intruded upon the life of Sivanaindhan (M Ponvel). The son of a poor widow in a village in Tamil Nadu, in South India, Sivanaindhan is forced to work in the plantain fields on his days off from school to help his family pay off ever-expanding debts. The boy is an excellent student; while his classmates dread going to school, he dreads his plantain-lugging weekends.
Selvaraj beautifully weaves together the two dramas at play in “Vaazhai,” one of children and one of adults. The film largely involves the adventures of Sivanaindhan and his friend Sekar: their arguments about their favorite movie stars, their plans to get close to the teacher they both have a crush on and their ceaseless attempts to get out of their grueling plantain work. In the background, the older workers negotiate with the overseer for better pay by threatening to strike, and suffer his threats and intimidation. These two arcs come together in a stunning climax, revealing that the film is both historical and autobiographical, drawing on a horrible, little-known tragedy from Selvaraj’s own childhood.
‘Fireworks’
The collision that brings the teenage protagonists of “Fireworks” together is as cute as meet-cutes get. Gianni (Samuele Segreto) and Nino (Gabriele Pizzurro) are both riding mopeds when they crash into each other and topple over. Nino apologizes profusely to the dazed Gianni — who was fleeing bullies — and leaves him, in lieu of contact information, with a crumpled sketch of fireworks. As Gianni soon discovers, Nino and his father make a living by setting off fireworks at village fairs.
It’s these little details that elevate this gay, Sicily-set coming-of-age drama beyond its familiar story beats of tentative exploration, passionate but secret romance, and tragedy. The director, Guiseppe Fiorello, builds out the setting with delicate, colorful flair. The story unfolds across striking locations: the bar, populated by chauvinistic men, near which Gianni lives with his mother and abusive stepfather; the country house of Nino and his rambunctious, soccer-obsessed family; the religious processions where the two boys set off spectacular fireworks. When heartbreak predictably sets in, it is leavened by the sense that even this insular, rural world is full of secrets and possibilities, and that the future will bring salvation for the likes of Gianni and Nino.
‘I Like Movies’
That “I Like Movies” is set in the early 2000s is clear from the very beginning, thanks to a number of canny period details. The protagonist Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen), a high-school senior in Burlington, Ontario, frequents a DVD store. He and his best friend, Matt, watch episodes of Saturday Night Live that feature Jimmy Fallon. And New York University, where Lawrence dreams of studying filmmaking, costs just … $90,000. But there’s one marker in the film that time-stamps the setting even more precisely: the upcoming release of the 2002 Paul Thomas Anderson film “Punch-Drunk Love,” which Lawrence awaits with delirious anticipation.
Lawrence is that kind of guy, and “I Like Movies” is that kind of movie: Both revel in name-drops and really specific, niche details designed to draw in a select audience. Lawrence has had a tough time at school — he’s not popular and his dad’s death a few years before has left him and his mother suspended in a state of grief. He is convinced that his life will change once he’s at N.Y.U., and he finds a job at the video store to save up for college — only to be served a sobering lesson in how real life works, courtesy of his manager, who once dreamed of being an actress.
You might think of Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” while watching “I Like Movies,” with its small-town teenage angst and sardonic wit, but there are shades of “Punch-Drunk Love” here, too: The writer-director Chandler Levack’s script allows his character no easy outs, leaning hard into the bitter part of bittersweet.
‘Retreat’
A father and son drive off to a cabin deep in the Swiss woods. The trees are towering, the snow is thick, the rocks are craggy. Beautiful wide shots and overhead views frame the son, Benny (Dorian Heiniger), against these massive and desolate landscapes, a lonely speck amid the vastness of nature. Why are they here? It’s not clear, though there’s talk of the mother and her new boyfriend, and a slight uneasiness between the duo, the awkwardness perhaps of a divorced dad who doesn’t get to see his child that often.
But when the father, Michael (Peter Hottinger), begins to insist rather forcefully on not using phones, seems to stock up on way too many cans of beans and tomatoes, and makes references to some apocalypse soon to come, one begins to suspect that something is off. “Retreat” is a film of few words and magnificent images, where the drama unfolds suggestively in hints and gestures, and in the pensive performances of Heiniger and Hottinger. Nothing much happens by way of action, yet unspoken tensions simmer under the surface, and by the movie’s surprising end, you sense that a tremendous transformation has quietly taken place.
‘I Never Cry’
To describe the humor of Piotr Domalewski’s movie as dark feels like an understatement: It is a film of pummeling grief and little respite that, thanks to its sparkling star Zofia Stafiej, somehow finds a spiky, resilient wit. The 17-year old Ola lives in Poland with her nagging mother and a brother who, because of his disabilities, needs hands-on care. Their father left to work in Ireland a while ago, but he promised to buy Ola a car as soon as she learns how to drive.
When “I Never Cry” opens, Ola has just failed the driving test for the fourth time. Soon after, she receives a call: Her father has died in a workplace accident. They can’t have a funeral unless his body is brought back to Poland — a process that involves various expenses and paperwork, for which Ola’s mother dispatches her barely-adult daughter alone to Dublin.
Everyone tells Ola off for smoking cigarettes, but can anyone blame her? She embarks on a Kafkaesque journey, trying to piece together the life of a man she hardly knew and navigate the complicated bureaucracy of death in a foreign country, armed with nothing but a backpack and a stubborn refusal to take “no” for an answer. From Ola’s tragicomic misadventures emerges a stark portrait of the lives of Eastern European migrant workers: their precarious employment conditions and makeshift families, and the immense price they pay for the slim prospect of a better life.
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