With its sensitive blend of humour and pathos, the coming-of-age film Lady Bird is an understated triumph of empathetic cinema. As the mother and daughter at the centre of the story, actors Laurie Metcalf and Saoirse Ronan deliver deeply nuanced performances as two people who know how to press each others buttons, but struggle to express just how deeply they love each other.
Few filmmakers could do anything original or vibrant by making yet another film about a creative yet difficult man (who’s also in a relationship with a younger woman), but that’s what Paul Thomas Anderson does in Phantom Thread. With its blend of gothic romance, melodrama and Oedipal desires, it’s a mysterious, lush and ultimately playful film when it reveals how much it has been one step ahead of the audience.
For a film containing so much grief and prejudice, A Fantastic Woman is astonishingly sensitive and heartfelt. A lot of this is due to the superb performance by Daniela Vega as Marina, a trans-woman who after the death of her partner must contend with his family trying to exclude her. Marina’s humanity and resilience are beautifully amplified by the film’s delicate cinematography and score.
The Wound depicts an eight-day rite-of-passage ritual that Xhosa teenage boys in rural South Africa are expected to endure. While the film doesn’t necessarily critique the ritual itself, it does condemn the destructiveness and violence of the traditional attitudes regarding masculinity that surround it. Confronting and tough viewing at times, The Wound is not without much-needed moments of tenderness and compassion.
CINEMA AUTOPSY 