What I Do In the Shadows (Patreon)

I've been writing a fair amount for In Review Online, and this means I end up reviewing films that don't necessarily get addressed on this site. So as I've done before, I'll post excerpts from those upcoming reviews, and add links to the full-length pieces once they go online.

Vera (Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, 2022)

Together with Covi and Frimmel, [Vera] Gemma achieves the seemingly impossible. She offers us a complex portrait of a glamorous film-industry scion that is not only sympathetic but at times genuinely tragic. We learn that Vera’s parents berated her for her average looks, coercing her into cosmetic surgery at a young age. She was taught that her physical appearance was the only thing that mattered, and that it would never measure up to the family standard. Vera has a younger boyfriend (Gennaro Lillio), a film director who at first seems distracted and indifferent and then begins hitting Vera up for production funds and wants her to put him in contact with Monica Bellucci. In short, no one seems to see Vera as her own person. In one amusing yet poignant scene, Vera meets up with her friend Asia Argento, and they discuss the stifled subjectivity that results from having famous artists for parents, standing in a cemetery next to a grave marked “the son of Goethe.”

Before, Now & Then (Kamila Andini, 2022)

With admirable subtlety, Andini maps Nana’s personal experiences of marriage, motherhood, and divorce onto the broader cultural and political (mis)fortunes of Indonesians, particularly those who, like Nana, do not belong to the Sundanese ethnic majority. Nana knows her second husband Darga (Arswendi Nasution) is cheating on her, yet those around her strongly suggest that she’s lucky he married her at all.) Andini displays the sexism and racism Nana faces but avoids the trap of horizontal violence. Ironically, the one person Nana can rely on emotionally is one of Darga’s mistresses, Ino (Laura Basuki). And Nana’s unexpected decision to leave her family behind happens to coincide with the fall of Indonesia’s founding leader, Sukharno, and the installation of pro-Western dictator Suharto.

Obscure Night - Goodbye here, anywhere (Sylvain George, 2023)

Goodbye here, anywhere is just over three hours long, shot in crisp digital black-and-white, and for the most part alternates between two types of footage. George embedded himself with a small group of homeless immigrants barely scratching out a living each day in Melilla. We gradually learn some of their names – Hicham, Amine, Medhi, Hassan – but crucially we come to know them by their outfits. One kid wears a hoodie with Minions on it. Another has a sweatshirt with the word “WHITE” emblazoned across it. Before long it dawns on the viewer that the only clothes these kids own are the ones on their back. They hang out, try to find food, get high, and generally exhibit laddish behavior, threatening to f*** each other’s mothers or giving each other jovial beatdowns.