Blood and Fire (Patreon)

The best films give us flawed, complicated protagonists, people whose responses to problems are knotty and unpredictable. Like those of us existing in the real world, rich, well-rounded characters should be composed of conflicting drives and impulses, and part of the narrative tension in a film involves watching them grapple with those internal conflicts. There are, of course, numerous ways to go about this, and realism is only one of those. However, the last two films I've seen, quite by chance, have provided great examples of how artists should and should not go about this.

Saint Frances (Alex Thompson, 2019)

This is the sort of film I almost always ignore -- an American indie character study, almost unthinkingly realist in its cinematic style, a winner from SXSW. But it really demands to be seen. It is an exceptional example of its type, having imbibed the lessons of "mumblecore" but reconfigured them into a sturdier, more deliberate form of midlife drama that, despite its apparently relaxed attitude, has a laser-sharp focus. Saint Frances is about kinship and chosen attachments, finding your family and fighting for the bonds you need when the ones you've been born into are the ballast holding you back.

The script was written by Kelly O'Sullivan, who also plays the lead. She is Bridget, a 34-year-old postgrad who is adrift in life, waiting tables and unsure of her next move. Needing a change, she answers an ad to work as a nanny for Frances (Ramona Edith Williams), the six year old daughter of two moms. Maya (Charin Alvarez) has just given birth to a second child which, we learn, is proving difficult; Annie (Lily Mojekwu) has to return to work full-time, since she does not qualify for maternity leave, not having given birth. Bridget's inexperience, and the individual struggles of the moms, provide the external dramatic framework.

But most of the film is actually about awkward personal growth, overcoming the messages that are instilled in women about who they are supposed to be. Bridget isn't just stuck in a rut; she doesn't seem to value herself all that much. When she starts dating a somewhat younger guy (Max Lipchitz), she constantly keeps him at arm's length, partly because he seems to actually care about her. And, after she gets pregnant and has an abortion, she continues bleeding for weeks but doesn't seek medical attention.

Saint Frances is refreshingly straightforward in its treatment of Bridget's abortion. She is not shamed, and at the same time her forced nonchalance wears away and she does come to terms with the emotional toll it has taken on her. Part of what makes the film function, unsurprisingly, is Frances. She does for Bridget what no one else in her life has ever done. She sees her as a fully-formed grown-up, and that makes Bridget see herself that way too. This helps her, and the film, reframe Bridget's shortcomings, seeing them not as immaturity, but as essentially human.

Ema (Pablo Larraín, 2019)

The latest misstep in Pablo Larraín's once-promising career, Ema starts out as one kind of film and quickly evolves into something else. That's not a problem, of course, and that kind of whiplash reorganization of purpose can often be a highly effective formal tool. But here, it's not entirely clear that anyone involved in Ema knows what they want the film to be, aside from superficially stylish, sexy, and hip -- a sort of reggaeton version of a Gaspar Noé flesh-fest. There's no question that I have seen plenty of worse films than Ema in the last several years, but I honestly can't think of a stupider one.

[SPOILERS COMMENCE]

The film centers on a couple living in Valparaíso. Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo) is a lithe young dancer, and Gastón (Gael García Bernal) is a somewhat older choreographer. She is a member of his large company, which seems to focus on flashy, semi-populist avant-garde spectacles of the sort that typically wow funding panels with their pizzazz. Very soon we discover the tragedy at the core of their marriage. Ema and Gastón had adopted a son, Polo (Cristián Suárez), who was too much for them presumably because he was emotionally disturbed. (In one key incident, he doused Ema's sister's face with alcohol and lit her on fire.) So they returned him to social services and revoked the adoption.

At first, we see the couple struggling to deal with their decision, the subsequent regrets, recriminations between the two of them, and most notably, the scorn with which they are met by the larger community. The more they make excuses amongst themselves, the more frequently we see an outsider -- a social worker, a teacher at Polo's former school.etc. -- provide an outside perspective. And at first this seems like it will be Ema's fascinating premise. We will be asked to identify with fundamentally unlikable, self-absorbed people, because the basics of film grammar are telling us to. But then, periodically, Larraín will snap us out of it by breaking us out of their emotional cocoon, reminding us that they are truly vile.

Alas, Ema veers not just into preposterousness, but a kind of juvenile swagger. The film obviously takes inspiration from Pasolini's masterpiece Teorema. But where that film was all about the breakdown of bourgeois morality and the shackles of kinship, Ema is about an amoral individual who destroys the family only in order to deviously reconstruct it according her her desires, and hers alone. Like its protagonist, Ema is besotted with its own infantile naughtiness, confident that nihilism and stupidity are fun and if you don't agree you're just a stick in the mud. But even nihilists require the focus of sustained, intellectualized hate. Ema, for her part, goes around town playing with a flamethrower (no, really), melting random objects like a dragon with a strap-on.

Ooh. Hot.