The mix of young love, lust, and summer in Northern Italy in Call Me by Your Name has allowed director Luca Guadagnino to deliver a film of immense beauty and emotional resonance. The film’s slow burn pace allows a wonderful build of tension and desire, to underpin the romance between 17-year-old Elio and his father’s student Oliver, both played to perfection respectively by Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer.
The Florida Project continues filmmaker Sean Baker’s spotlight on marginalised and invisible people living in the USA. Set in a low-budget motel, within walking distance of the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, it follows the lives of mother and daughter Halley (Bria Vinaite) and Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) whose defiant struggle to get through every day is both gleefully audacious and heartbreaking.
Paddington 2 maintains the original film’s blend of good natured humour and warm hearted message of acceptance and diversity, without losing any of the charm or stylistic inventiveness that defined the original film. While 2017 has seen the release of many films that capture the current grim mood of the times, the release of this child-friendly crime-caper/prison film right at the end of the year is a much needed tonic.
In Between begins as an enjoyably light drama about three Palestinian women living in Tel Aviv, and then transitions into a more serious film to explore issues of religion, gender and sexuality. The joy of the film is the solidarity the women share with each other despite their differences, while the tragedy of the film are the ways patriarchal oppression under the guise of religion and tradition continues to assault them.
In This Corner of the World begins as a domestic drama about a young woman in 1930s Japan entering into an arranged marriage, and then gradually becomes a powerful drama about living during wartime. The animation is impressive, especially when it incorporates the main character’s own artwork, and the restraint used to depict the horrors of war and losing loved ones is quietly powerful.
Not knowing anything about the Scandinavian indigenous Sami people, most of what occurs in Sami Blood was new to me. However, it was also depressingly familiar as through the experiences of a 14-year-old Sami girl in 1930s Sweden, the films reveals how yet another indigenous group was expected to assimilate while also being made to feel inferior. This is an excellent drama and a bold new development in Swedish cinema.
The New Zealand film Waru comprises eight short films that all take place simultaneously during the funeral of a young boy who has died as the result of neglect and abuse. All eight films are single takes, all are directed by Māori women and all feature a different Māori woman who is directly or indirectly affected by the death. This is powerful and urgent storytelling.
And finally, I caught up with Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond on Netflix, a documentary combining an interview with Jim Carrey along with previously unseen footage of the making of the 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon. The result is a compelling portrait of both Carrey and Kaufman, and also a fascinating study of the artistic process that is at times hilarious, unsettling, disturbing and surprisingly moving.
Thomas Caldwell, 2017
CINEMA AUTOPSY 