Partir ***

Director: Catherine Corsini
Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Sergi López, Yvan Attal
Bernard Blancan, Alexandre Vidal, Daisy Broom

With the concept of a romantic novel and the execution of a realist work-with strokes of Truffaut- Partir proves to be a perfect showcase for the renaissance of Kristin Scott Thomas who, once again in French, takes hold of the screen with melancholic ferocity.
She plays Suzanne, a well to do woman living with her husband Samuel (Attal) and children (Vidal and Broom) after whom she looks day after day.
When she starts renovations on her house she meets Spanish construction worker Ivan (López) who she immediately likes. After a strange accident she begins to get close to him and soon they begin a torrid love affair for which she's willing to leave everything.
From this point on the film becomes a simple, but never simplistic, study of bourgeoisie ennui and how the middle classes turn into the labels they fear so much.
On her own, Suzanne has to get back to a job she hasn't practiced in two decades (while she filled the role of "wife" and "mother") and discovers that love is not enough to live on (as she probably was taught before her marriage).
Director Corsini is a bit condescending towards the social class she criticizes and apparently forgets to create profound triggers to the events that unfold. When the film starts Suzanne doesn't seem to be miserable and her passive aggressive rebellion isn't convincing enough to justify her unorthodox actions.
Perhaps Corsini was less preoccupied with intent and had set her mind on pure emotion which gives Suzanne the characteristics of an Emma Bovary or a Lady Chatterley.
Thomas makes the most out of this and delivers some of the best work of her career. Hostile and detached in scenes with Attal (who is remarkable despite the film's attempt to make him a villain) she finds herself completely transformed in her moments with López (again channeling raw male sexuality).
"You act like a whore in heat" exclaims Samuel as Suzanne flees a family dinner to meet her lover.
At that moment it's difficult not to pass judgment on her character but as soon as she meets Ivan, her face lights up with contagious happiness.
Few actresses can do what Thomas does with her face; she only needs to lift an eyebrow to evoke heartbreaking disgust and a smile to show us how one surrenders to happiness.
"This is the happiest day of my life" she says in English to Ivan during a rapturous encounter; even if he doesn't comprehend the words, he knows what she's talking about.

Darling.

The luscious Julie Christie turns 69 today.
May the film gods bless her with more work and may she be as beautiful as ever.

Kinatay ***

Director: Brillante Mendoza
Cast: Coco Martin, Maria Isabel Lopez, Jhong Hilario
Julio Diaz, Mercedes Cabral

Young, police academy, student Peping (Martin) takes a job for $2,000 in order to marry his girlfriend (Cabral).
After leaving school on the appointed day (he's in a criminology class in the first of many Dostoevskian touches the film offers) he gets on a van with a group of men-all his superior officers- who then go to a strip club where they pick up Madonna (Lopez), a dancer who owes them drug money.
After she gets in the car they beat her, drive for hours (literally, the scenes inside the van cover roughly one third of the film's running time) and take her to a basement where they proceed with their plan as a display of extreme violence ensues.
Once there Peping realizes it's too late to back off and enters a path of moral decay through which director Mendoza tries to encompass the state of Filipino society and ask us what we would've done.
Kinatay is not a movie for those who are easily disturbed (the title is Filipino for "butchered"), it features moments straight out of the goriest horror film, paired with dark sociological implications that make the violence seem more shocking.
Shot with handheld cameras and what appears to be a great use of natural light-and darkness-the film tries to put us inside Peping's head and make us see what he sees and hears.
For long moments the screen turns almost completely dark while Mendoza experiments with interesting sonic devices. There is a disturbing ambient sound throughout the movie which suggests the cloudiness that invades the protagonist's conscience as he becomes part of a crime.
It's impossible for audience members not to expect Peping to take an heroic path and when he doesn't Kinatay turns into a cinematic experience unlike many you've had.
It's easy to leave the film and call Mendoza's work pornographic, sensationalist or abusive, but where is our responsibility as active audience members who sit through this?
In a way, like Peping, we are drawn to brutality and even those with the intention of obtaining some sort of knowledge out of the situation are accomplices of sorts.
The entire running time we watch how the events unfold; a feeling of impotence prevails over the entire film as we try to decide whether Peping is antihero, victim or perpetrator.
What Mendoza has to say about the corruption that seeps within law enforcement is really nothing new but what he wonders about the way it vacuums people into its destruction is fascinating.
Could Peping do something? Can we?

Birthday Wish.

If this had been released today it would've been the coolest present ever.
Still had a fantastic birthday hehe.

Happy Birthday Max!

He has played chess with death, narrated for von Trier, been the Savior, the Conqueror, an emigrant, a priest, an Allen player and a moving dad.
Today he turns 81 and we can only wait and see what else he has up his sleeve.
You can always go watch Shutter Island to celebrate him but I suggest you find your copy of The Seventh Seal, sit back and enjoy the work of one of the greatest acting masters of all time.

Love is All We Need *1/2

Director: Jorge Durán
Cast: Cauã Reymond, Ângelo Antônio, Fabiula Nascimento
Simone Spoladore, Victor Navega Motta

Love is All We Need (Não se pode viver sem amor) is the third film by Chilean writer/director Jorge Durán. Set in Rio de Janeiro during Christmas Eve, it follows multiple characters as they reach collective epiphanies revolving around love of course.
Young Gabriel (Motta) and Roseli (Spoladore) arrive to the city looking for the boy's father, unemployed lawyer Joao (Reymond) decides to try the criminal way in order to get enough money to elope with his girlfriend Gilda (Nascimento), while university professor Pedro (Antônio) wonders where his future will take him.
To say that the film's opening credits (a Saul Bass-y stars and jazz stunner of an opener) are much more interesting than anything that comes later, might be a disservice to anyone who worked in the film but becomes quite accurate when the movie reaches its climax.
Durán focuses on forcing the connections instead of letting them grow organically and all the characters seem to know they're predestined to know each other and learn something valuable.
It doesn't help that each of their stories isn't never that interesting to begin with and we might create assumptions of our own to make the whole thing matter more.
Therefore as Gabriel travels around the city looking for his dad we begin to assume he might be connected to Gilda-the stripper with a secret-in the end of course they are, but not in conventional ways.
The characters' motivations are never clear and the actors end up giving extreme performances that hurt the film's theme of unity (Reymond and Antônio are all about restraint, Nascimento is extreme theatrical and Motta intends well but suffers because of the ridiculous twists his character endures).
Durán chooses to end his film with a moment that should recall magical realism but comes off as a tacky deus ex machina complete with the ugliest looking visual effects ever.
If the director was trying to unite the rawness of digital film (in honestly most of the film has the texture and look of a soap opera) with the richness of Brazil's culture, the result is often more confusing, dull and shallow than magical.