“Someone somewhere”
Cedric Klapisch’s Unconventional Encounter-The cute drama is completely dwelling in what’s happening Previous Not after a fateful encounter to become two lovers. The movie begins with shots of a man and a woman sitting next to each other on a train in Paris. We soon realize that these are our protagonists — factory worker Remy (Francois Civil) and lab researcher Melanie (Anajilard) — but they are strangers to each other. They live in adjacent buildings, frequently go to the same supermarket, visit the same pharmacy, and look for medicines for the opposite illness. Remy can’t sleep. Melanie is too sleepy.
Still, their lives develop in parallel and do not intersect. The movie “Someone, Somewhere” about a journey that you have to go on your own before giving others a sense of fulfillment is a deconstruction of the myth of a romantic comedy that holds faith in fate and magic. Similar (but different) when Remy and Melanie go to therapy and slowly rediscover themselves (through dating apps, pets, and family enthusiastic visits), without knowing they pass by every day. It’s comfortable to see the predicament living so close to those who are as lonely as they are. It’s a moving memory of that essential fact of the human condition: we are always together.
This Polish midlife crisis thriller has all the elements of a pressure cooker premise: a woman suffering from family responsibilities, a frayed marriage, and a scandalous incident (or two). Still, Lukas Gujegorzek’s films do not explode to the point of boiling, allowing tenderness and humor as the heroine’s life collapses.
Joe (Agatabzek), a high school teacher, is working on a crisis melange. His mother has Alzheimer’s disease, his little son fails at school, and his eldest son lives in Joe’s house with a combative wife and a screaming baby. Joe secretly smokes cannabis and has an affair with a colleague at his school. Just below his husband, his principal. Suddenly she begins to receive her anonymous message from someone watching her, threatening to reveal her secret.
The “My Wonderful Life” that swirls around Busek’s delicate and restrained performance has a surprisingly refreshing texture. Filmed with a handheld camera in a clear, airy light, the film explores the suspense and sorrow of her predicament while living in the everyday moments of Joe and her family. The plot set in the first half of the movie eventually recedes without a clear answer, but the movie leaves us more satisfied: even in our worst moments, life is once. The feeling that there is enough capacity to hold a lot of things-joy, sadness, mourning, peace, etc.
“Nude Mixteco”
Set in a small Mexican village, this triptych shows three women in the region’s Mishteca community fighting poverty, patriarchy and the suffering of immigrants. Each story is inspired by the character returning from the city. Initially, a gay woman shunned by her family returns to her home to attend the funeral of her mother and reunites with her old lover. Second, after spending three years abroad, I suddenly noticed that a man reappeared and his wife decided to leave him. (“My body had its own needs,” she declares to the village council). And third, the woman regains her daughter from her predatory uncle’s clutch and returns to serve his long-deferred justice.
Vignettes are sharp and pointed, like short stories and parables, but are shot in a relaxed naturalism. Each story takes place during the same day, so the characters and incidents glimpsed in the background of one story will be central to the next story. The result is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a personal and collective range, tracing the structural and social issues that underlie individual trauma.
“Mountain Mariner”
The filmmaker Karim Ainouz was born to a Brazilian mother and an Algerian father who met while attending graduate school in the United States. When Ainos’ mother became pregnant, his father left to fight the war in Algeria and promised to return for his wife and son. — But he never did. In “Mariner of the Mountains,” Ainos, who grew up in Brazil, visits Argeria for the first time in search of his father’s village. A cross of travel, diary and essay films, the documentary consists of a montage of people and places where Ainos meets in Algeria. Mediterranean horizon and cobblestone alleys. A tea seller and a greasy old smoker. Winding roads and vast coastlines.
Prolonged absence of Ainoz’s parents — his father was alive but not around. His mother was always there, but she is now dead — shape these abstract temporary images. In his narration addressed to his mother, Ainos is drawn to details reminiscent of the illusions of his parents. What did the sea look like in the eyes of his mother? What does his father think of a young man sitting by the sea hoping that the French never left Algeria? These autobiographical thoughts open to broader remorse about asylum and the diaspora’s longing, making “Mountain Mariner” like an intimate epic — a story that feels personal and eternal at the same time.
In Tamil satire in this region, public toilets cause bloody riots. Voting for local elections is auctioned for millions of rupees. An unnamed man without ID has adopted the nickname “Nelson Mandela.” Madonne Ashwin’s debut is a bit of a farce, but it provides a very realistic critique of India’s political opportunism and casteism.
This movie uses Soorangudi, a remote village in South India, as a microcosm. The village, like Verona, is deeply rooted between the two clans. When the heads of both clans decide to challenge the next election, the swing vote falls to the only “neutral” man in town: Mandela (Yogibab), who considers him an acceptablely low caste. Barber being bullied by either clan or by both. The man who suddenly kept him out of the house now kisses his leg and spares him with a gift.
But soon bribes become a violent threat, and Mandela faces life-threatening catch 22. “Mandela” draws relentless cheerfulness from its irony. This is because the system it skewers is very ridiculous. The movie tells us that unfair democracy is a joke. Still, this movie is more than just a trick or screed. It ends with an optimistic note and reminds us that as long as we have solidarity, we also have hope.