At The Movies II – May/June 2010
At The Movies
Superb **** Very Good *** Good ** Mediocre * Forget It -
Worth your While
Cinco Dias Sin Nora (Nora’s Will) *** (vo Spanish) Mexican director Mariana Chenillo charms and amuses with this wry drama about a woman who plans her own wake. It features a stubborn atheist ex-husband who gets stuck with arranging the funeral while the local rabbi wants to take over the corpse. It’s Passover, the table has been set and the maid is preparing the Seder meal that the woman has left in the fridge. Close friends and the son and his family are arriving while the ex begins to discover some long-hidden facts about their past. Fernando Lujàn is fine as the husband in this revealing gem of a social comedy of errors.
Solutions locales pour un désordre global *** (vo French) From the socially-crusading director Coline Serreau, of such films as La Belle Verte, La Crise and Chaos, this documentary is a vital message about the killing of the soil and our atmosphere as a result of pesticides that have been disingenuously forced down the throats of farmers of the world by huge conglomerates (such as Monsanto, the biggest and most ruthless of them all). To put it in a nutshell, when you next sit down at the table, instead of saying good appetite, say good luck! That’s how far we’ve come in this battle between money and common sense. Serreau has a myriad of experts and workers tell of the perils of pesticides and the possible solutions. Both frightening and hopeful, this is an important, informative film for all who care about their health and that of our earth. (The site: www.solutionslocales-lefilm.com.)
Cold Souls (Âmes en Stock) *** Sophie Barthes directs this weird, metaphysical film about a depressed actor (Paul Giamatti playing himself – like Malkovich in the film Being John Malkovich) who decides to store his soul with a specialized company in N.Y that keeps them in vaults. But things get complicated when it is trafficked to Russia (in the shape of a chickpea!) and borrowed by the spoiled wife of an oligarch. Something between a farce and a serious metaphor on the state of our lives in a morally and financially corrupt world, this is both touching and amusing – a tongue-in-cheek change from big Hollywood productions.
Rabia *** (vo Spanish) Here’s another fine film from the southern hemisphere – this time from Ecuadorian director Sebastian Cordero via Columbia/Spain. A love story between two South American immigrants in Spain turns perilous when the man, who is tired of being treated as a second-class citizen, accidentally kills his foreman and then hides out in the huge house where his girlfriend is working as a maid. This is a torturous study of an upstairs/downstairs situation, with tension that is palpable and an outcome that is like a Greek tragedy still valid in our modern times.
L’amour c’est mieux à deux **1/2 (vo French) It’s trés French, it’s a sweet romantic comedy, and it has the always charming Clovis Cornillac (powerful in dramas such as A la petite semaine or hilarious in Brice de Nice) along with an adorable Virginie Efira as the girl he wants to fall in love with, but only accidentally! You’ll see – check it out for a heartwarming feeling…
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