HUSTLE

Stars: Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah, Juancho Hernangómez, Ben Foster, Kenny Smith, Anthony Edwards, Jordan Hull, Maria Botto, Ainhoa Pillet, Raul Castillo, Jaleel White, Heidi Gardner and Robert Duvall.
Writers: Will Fetters and Taylor Materne.
Director: Jeremiah Zagar

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Adam Sandler finds a winning balance between his ‘comedy sports guy’ bit and the dramatic leading man potential he displayed in Uncut Gems with his new Netflix movie, Hustle. He plays ageing NBA talent scout Stan Sugarman, a 30-year veteran of chasing leads to sign basketball’s next big thing. His mentor, Philadelphia 76ers owner Rex Merrick (the legend Robert Duvall) ups him to assistant coach for his dedicated service, but when ownership shifts to his son, Vin (Ben Foster), old conflicts see Stan punted back into the scouting game with the added pressure of finding that championship-winning rookie every club yearns for.

Stan may have found his next NBA great in the housing projects of Spain - a natural talent called Bo Cruz (Juancho Hernangómez, real-life Utah Jazz recruit and a member of the Spanish national team). He’s a true wild card, with a history and temper to match, But together, and with a little help from a cast drafted from the NBA ranks and featuring names like Seth Curry, Trae Young and Jordan Clarkson - Stan and Bo can build a partnership that ought to take them to the top of the toughest basketball league in the world.

Director Jeremiah Zagar and his writers Taylor Materne and Will Fetters do exactly what they need to do to turn the standard sports drama template into the crowd pleaser they deliver. Take a coupla of down-on-their luck outsiders, have them set goals for themselves that’ll make them strive to be better and punch out an ending that ensures they deliver above and beyond their new self-belief.

Zagar and his ace cinematographer Zak Mulligan give the game play some super immersive energy, while support players like Queen Latifah as Stan’s super-supportive wife and ex-SNL player Heidi Gardner as the more likable Merrick offspring bring the right pitch.

But it’s all about Sandler, who’s in every scene and who flushes out depth and character in his shuffling, shrugging Sugarman like he was born into the part; there’s both Walter Matthau’s exasperation with life and Jack Lemmon’s understated desperation in Sandler’s performance. Oscar loves this sort of performance - the clown who finds a place in the real world (think Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society or Good Morning Vietnam). Sandler pulls up just shy of riffing on Burgess Meredith’s classic trainer archetype ‘Mickey’ in the Rocky films, but the temptation must have been strong (they are shooting on the streets of Philly, after all!) 

While the narrative has that faint whiff of “seen-it-before”-ness about it, Hustle fits in alongside such hoop classics as Hoosiers (1986) and Coach Carter (2005) as simply structured stories that find their vibrancy in fresh perspectives, honest emotions, great performances and boundless energy.

DREAMS OF PAPER & INK

Stars: Tamara Lee Bailey, William Servinis, Neal Bosanquet, Marlene Magee, Emily Rok, Christopher Jordan, Sorcha Johnson and Anisa Mahama.
Writer/director: Glenn Triggs

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

An ageing author undertakes a melancholy journey through his earliest memories of love in Dreams of Paper & Ink, the latest work of independent sector inspiration from writer-director Glenn Triggs. A dialogue-free recounting of the first pangs of romance as recalled through the lens of age and wisdom, Triggs has crafted a film that draws upon his audience’s own experiences as much as it does his lead characters. Minus the spoken word, Dreams of Paper & Ink evokes the universal joys and pains of that first heartfelt connection.

The latest book from author Wade Gibson (Neal Bosanquet) is a fanciful medieval adventure that stumbles upon release, so much so that his publisher asks for something more personal - an account of that first time that love took hold of his heart. The assignment sends the author into a melancholy tailspin, as he commits to truthfully recalling how his younger self (William Servinis) fell for and wooed the free-spirited Kina (Tamara Lee Bailey). 

Triggs stages the older Wade’s writing process by placing the author and his typewriter in the very moment with his recollections. This creates a kind of ‘greek chorus’ effect, providing the audience with an emotional barometer, a gauge of the old man’s reactions to his own immaturity and romantic missteps. Initially, there is an overarching “Youth is wasted on the young” theme to Wade’s observations, but soon he comes to realise that it was his selfish flaws that extinguished in Kina the very essence that drew him to her.

The three leads are ideally cast, none more so than Bailey as Kina. Her joyous first onscreen impression, longings for deeper connection with young Wade and heartbreaking recognition that the magic has dissolved are conveyed with profundity by the young actress, who shares a convincing chemistry, in times both good and bad, with an equally terrific Servinis. As the older Wade, Bosanquet is wonderful in projecting the sense of personal revelation his journey comes to represent. As Wade’s wife, Marlene Magee is lovely as the woman that has come to represent love as a truly shared journey.    

‘Dialogue-free’ does not mean wordless. The lyrics of evocative songs and the prose of notes written between lovers take on added emphasis, both narratively and emotionally. Music and image convey both the thrall of that initial connection and the chilliness of love’s final hours. Triggs sets himself a true storytelling challenge, and pulls it off with a skill he’s honed in his past genre works (Cinemaphobia, 2009; 41, 2012; Apocalyptic, 2014; The Comet Kids, 2016). His first ‘serious drama’, Dreams of Paper and Ink confirms his status as one of the most interesting and accomplished independent voices in Australian film.

WHEN I'M A MOTH

Stars: Addison Timlin, TJ Kayama and Toshiji Takeshima.
Writer: Zachary Cotler.
Directors: Zachary Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Taking as their starting point a small window of ambiguity in the private history of a very public figure, directors Zachary Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak imagine a formative time in the Alaskan boondocks of 1969 for one Hillary Rodham. A commanding central performance by Addison Timlin and the skill of DOP Lyn Moncrief, whose lensing affords the film the evocative aesthetic of a European chamber piece, ensure When I’m a Moth is a captivating, if determinedly atypical study of political drive.     

Based upon a throwaway (and frustratingly unprovable) passage in her 2003 autobiography Living History, in which Rodham claims to have gone full blue-colour on a fish cannery production line after her accomplished college years, When I’m a Moth presents 20-something Hillary energised by ‘Summer of Love’ free-spiritedness yet still tied to her privileged upbringing and focussed ambition. She has travelled north to Valdez to experience ‘life’, but social graces, a crisply-worn red jacket and her writing desk downtime, penning  pristine handwritten letters home to her parents, suggest you can take the girl out of Wellesley, but…

America is embroiled in the Vietnam War, which may be why Rodham reaches out to two Japanese fishermen who eye her off daily (and why Cotler sets the men’s hometowns as Nagasaki and Hiroshima, also victims of America’s military might in years past). Mitsuru (Toshiji Takeshima; above, left) is the hardened elder, unmoved and a little disdainful of Rodham’s intellectual chit-chat; the younger Ryohei (TJ Kayama; above, right) is intrigued, and soon he and Rodham are connecting...kind of. She woos him, albeit unwittingly, with her sweet, sexy smarts, exuding promise and the potential for greatness, but when his dreams start to include her, she withdraws; ultimately, she won’t even reveal her surname to him. 

There is a strong vein of symbolism in When I’m a Moth, no less so than in the romantic connection between the two leads. Hilary’s appeal to Ryohei and her ultimate rejection speaks to the lure, disillusionment and disappointment many immigrants experience when chasing the ‘American Dream’. The film's landscape is bathed in a dreamlike haze, often the mist rolling in off the Alaskan waters but also soft-focus candles, pitch-black backgrounds and discordant angles; the world of Hilary's northern sojourn is as imagined as the narrative.

Addison Timlin is a revelation as Hilary; physically, she appears as one imagines Rodham may have 50+ years ago but, more importantly, she sells the musings of a fresh-out-of-college young WASP woman as focused and singularly linear. Rodham’s drive to succeed in public service life and ambitions of life in the highest office she can envision is conveyed with piercing clarity in Timlin’s performance. 

Also conveyed is the centrifugal force that Rodham would become, often to her detriment. Her journey to Alaska was to garner other-world experience yet, like a missionary spreading the gospel, she is equally enriched by how those around her react in her presence. As an imagined construct of a tiny portion of Hilary Rodham’s maturing, When I’m a Moth embodies the very essence of how both supporters and detractors would come to perceive America’s most popular un-elected Presidential candidate.

APE CANYON

Stars: Jackson Trent, Anna Fagan, Donny Ness, Clayton Stocker Myers, Lauren Shaye, Skip Schwink, Emily Classen and Bob Olin.
Writer: Harrison Demchick
Directors: Joshua Land and Victor Fink

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

It plays cute at key moments, confidently relying on a sweet chemistry between the leads, but Ape Canyon is also a bittersweet tale of obsession, the kind that masks a deeper sadness and inspires men to acts of madness. Co-directors Joshua Land and Victor Fink let their narrative unfold in small increments, unlike the sweeping grandeur that author Herman Melville did in his epic tome Moby Dick – a work referenced in the opening frames and clearly a thematic touchstone for screenwriter Harrison Demchick.

Ape Canyon’s Ahab is Cal Piker (Jackson Trent), a boyish man struggling to cope with his mother’s passing. He hasn’t seen his sister, English teacher Samantha (Anna Fagan), since the funeral, until the day he lobs on her at work with the news that he wants her to accompany him on a hike. Out of the blue, Cal’s childhood obsession with the legendary American cryptid, Bigfoot, has been rekindled, and Samantha suddenly finds herself by Cal’s side, deep in the woods.

Samantha needs scant nudging to comprehend the whole endeavour is a mistake, and fate keeps trying to convince Cal of his pointless quest. Their tour guide Franklin (Skip Schwink) absconds with their valuables; fellow hikers, lovebirds Mark (Clayton Stocker Myers) and Gina (Lauren Shaye), are faking it in defiance of their romantic loneliness. Only Charlie (scene-stealer Donny Ness) has his heart, and bah mitzvah endowment, in the trip. But Cal, like Melville’s tortured and damaged protagonist, becomes myopically determined to reach the titular valley.

Trent and Fagan keep things light, even when more mature adults might have recognised the mental health issues at play. Their sibling bickering is authentic, in particular Fagan’s fraying frustration as Cal’s grip on reality. A few plot developments have that ‘only in the movies’ sheen (a jailbreak sequence pushes credulity), but personality and pacing serve to smooth over such moments.

Sasquatch die-hards will sense early on that, like the great white whale, our hairy hero is of most value to the production as a metaphorical presence. He comes to life briefly, in some beautifully crafted animation sequences (and a silly but funny dream sequence), but this is not the film to finally dispel the damage down by Harry and The Hendersons (Bobcat Goldthwaite’s terrific 2013 found-footage thriller, Willow Creek, came closest).

IN CORPORE

Stars: Clara Francesca Pagone, Naomi Said, Kelsey Gillis, Sarah Timm, Frank Fazio, Christopher Dingli, Timothy McCown Reynolds, Amelia June, Simone Alamango, Don Bridges and Naomi Lisner.
Directors: Sarah Jayne Portelli and Ivan Malekin.

Available to view via LIDO at Home. 

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The challenges faced by four women who just want to shape their destinies on their own terms is the bridging device that binds this portmanteau drama from co-directors Sarah Jayne Portelli and Ivan Malekin.  

Confronted with personal and social hurdles stemming from traditional gender stereotyping, the protagonists in this bracingly contemporary work are not always likable, but that’s kind of the point; whether you love them, hate them or just don’t get them, if you don't respect the decisions they make in the running or ruining of their own lives, then you are part of the problem.

In Corpore (a Latin adverb, meaning ‘in body; in substance’) is broken into four stories, each one focussed on vibrant young women coping with relationship complications. In Melbourne, sculptress Julia (Clara Francesca Pagone) is visiting her friends and parents on a brief trip home from her New York base. Recently wed to a much older man and with broadminded views regarding polygamy and open marriages, Julia indulges her desires when she has morning sex with her old friend Henri (Frank Fazio).

In Malta, Anna (Naomi Said) is facing pressure from her long-term boyfriend Manny (Christopher Dingli) and her extended family to bear children, a life-changing decision that she is not yet willing to undertake. In Berlin, gay couple Rosalie (Sarah Timm) and Milana (Kelsey Gillis) are struggling with jealousies and insecurities steadily on the boil. Then, in New York City, we rejoin Julia as she shares her moment of meaningless infidelity with her silver-fox husband, Patrick (Timothy McCown Reynolds), who, like most of the men in the film, reacts with self-centred petulance and brattish intolerance.  

Two key directorial decisions ensure In Corpore will surface mostly in daring festival placements and in the homes of indie-minded inner-city urbanites. Firstly, the dialogue is improvised, with the actors bouncing off each other with a delivery style that is sometimes pitched a bit high. When it is done right, it conveys heartbreak and honesty and humanity with an aching accuracy; best among the cast is Naomi Said, whose soulful performance is lovely.

The other stylistic choice that Portelli and Malekin gamble with are intensely staged and extended sex scenes. These sequences are clearly designed to positively convey the nature of the emotional connections shared by the characters; in the wake of a particularly heated argument, Timm and Gillis have rough shower sex that speaks to the desperation they are both feeling as their relationship frays. Said and Christopher Dingli make passionate love, yet when their motivations are revealed, the awkward honesty captured is remarkably moving. Many filmmakers claim they only use sex scenes to advance their narratives and build character, but few achieve that noble goal; Portelli and Malekin, and their fearless cast, do so with grace and class.

In Corpore is a slyly subversive battle-of-the-sexes commentary that positions modern young women determined to chart their own course through life as a kind of new heroic narrative arc. The DNA of such landmark empowerment films as Paul Mazurky’s An Unmarried Woman (1978) and Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends (1978) courses through its veins. Like those independently-minded films, In Corpore may also emerge as a work that ushered in a period of social change.

OLDER

Stars: Guy Pigden, Liesha Ward-Knox, Astra McLaren, Harley Neville, Samantha Jukes and Michael Drew.
Writer/Director: Guy Pigden.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

A very adult film about how hard it is face adulthood, director Guy Pigden’s maturing man-child comedy/drama Older has been gestating longer than the grown-up inside his lead character, frustrated filmmaker Alex Lucas. Shot in 2013 and toyed with over the past half-decade as the multi-hyphenate channelled crowd funds and downtime into its post-production, what emerges is an engaging, Apatow-esque study in how some young, white, middle-class guys take a bit longer to realise just how f**king fortunate they really are.

Which is not a slight, in any way. In fact, Pigden’s sophomore feature (his 2014 debut, the undead romp I Survived a Zombie Holocaust, became a midnight-movie favourite) embraces a beloved cinematic tradition of privileged, self-pitying protagonists who learn to rely upon love, luck and introspection to snap them out of an existential funk (some recent favourites include Orlando Bloom in Elizabethtown, 2005; Hugh Grant in Music & Lyrics, 2007; and, Paul Dano in Ruby Sparks, 2012).  

Directing himself, Pigden picks up Lucas’ life as it stagnates in his parents’ home. The twenty-something has lost touch with his creative potential; he was a sort-of promising director, but he’s now embracing a new lease on his old life - daytime booze and bong hits, hours of video game indulgence and a lot of routine wanking (the film might have premiered sooner had Kleenex negotiated a product placement deal). 

A best friend’s wedding leads to a reconnection with two ghosts of girlfriends past - the spirited, successful, sweet-natured Jenny (a wonderful Liesha Ward-Knox, the film’s scene-stealing, breakout star; pictured, top, with Pigden), a platonic high-school chum who instantly recognises Alex for what he has become but warms to him anyway; and, bombshell party-girl Stephanie (Astra McLaren; pictured, below), who reignites their on/off passion, a fate to which Alex doesn’t entirely object. All three leads offer up plenty of skin (Pigden and McLaren especially leave little to the imagination) that might push censorship boundaries in some territories.

While plot machinations unfold in a not unfamiliar manner (jealousies develop; tragedy strikes; betrayals and dishonesty emerge), Pigden's script nails some profound truths, certainly enough for the traditional ‘romantic/dramedy’ narrative structure to hold secure. As one character notes, “This moment is all that matters,” and the film embraces that ethos. The hero’s journey is bolstered by deftly-handled support players, including Harley Neville and Samantha Jukes as newlyweds Henry and Isabelle, repping the facade that is ‘suburban bliss’ for many, and Mike Drew and Michelle Leuthart as Alex’s parents.  

It is likely that the post-production passage-of-time has allowed the filmmaker to reassess the essence of Alex. The first half of the film plays rom-com giddy at times, whereas the third act feels as if the director is far more engaged with the maturing of his character. Pigden cites as an inspiration Richard Linklater, whose 2014 Oscar-winner Boyhood also benefited from an extended production schedule; both that film and Older capture the filmmaker in the early stages of their craft, then as a more wisened storyteller. 

Most importantly, Pigden never loses focus of the unlikely (if somewhat inevitable) romance at the film’s core. It is a heartfelt union made all the more affecting in the film’s final moments by characters who, like their director, have found wisdom and truth over a long journey.

OLDER is in limited release in New Zealand with other territories to follow. It is also available to rent or buy as a download on Amazon Prime, Google Play and other platforms via the official website. 

ASTRONAUT

Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Lyriq Bent, Colm Feore, Krista Bridges, Art Hindle, Richie Lawrence, Graham Greene, Mimi Kuzyk and Colin Mochrie.
Writer/director: Shelagh McLeod

Distributed in Australia by FilmInk Presents; available to stream on Apple TV, Fetch TV, Foxtel Store, Google Play and YouTube.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Despite a premise that requires a suspension of cynicism as vast as the Universe itself, Shelagh McLeod’s feature debut soars as a heart warming/breaking study in those dreams that won’t dissolve and the memories that carry us forward. As the widowed engineer whose ageing body is failing just as his mind re-engages with life, the remarkable Richard Dreyfuss delivers one of the most moving performances of his long career. That the manic young man who won an Oscar for The Goodbye Girl should have evolved into this refined yet fiercely determined elder statesman of cinema is testament to one of the great acting talents of all time.

Dreyfuss is Angus Stewart, a 75 year-old retiree who could once oversee the construction of highways but is now home alone, prone to dizzy spells and left in debt by his late wife’s spending (she was conned into a donkey farm in her final years). Angus has lived a long life consumed by a passion for the cosmos, a dedication to staring skywards shared by his grandson Barney (Richie Lawrence), tolerated by his daughter Molly (Krista Bridges) and dismissed by his son-in-law, Jim (Lyriq Bent).

When billionaire Marcus Brown (Colm Feore, oozing Elon Musk-iness) offers one lucky winner a commercial space flight, Angus begins to dream of galactic travel in earnest. But while his imagination is scaling new heights, his body is ailing and his family are trying to get him settled into aged care. McLeod gently spins the narrative focus from what dreams may come to what worth wisdom holds; come the stirring denouement, Angus’ past as a civil engineer is afforded as much honour as any imagined future as a septuagenarian astronaut.

Unlike the jaunty adventure Space Cowboys (2000) or the sci-fi fantasy Cocoon (1985), Astronaut is more interested in the humanity of its elderly characters than it is in serving the conventions of a genre. Accepting that our elders have legitimate longings and ambitions, even as their physical strength wans, is key to McLeod’s script. It also speaks to the fear we succumb to when we are faced with ageing parents, and how that fear can cut shorter their quality of life as much as ours.

One added bonus for viewers of a certain age is the reminder Astronaut provides that, forty-odd years ago, Dreyfuss played another working class family man for whom space held an unshakeable allure. There is much warmth to be shared in comparing Angus’ yearnings with those of Roy Neary and the close encounters that led him to first Wyoming, then farther afield.

VHYES

Stars: Mason McNulty, Rahm Braslaw, Kerri Kenney, Charlyne Yi, Courtney Pauroso, Thomas Lennon, Mark Proksch, John Gemberling, Cameron Simmons, Tim Robbins, Natalie Mering, Nunzio Randazzo, Jake Head and Christian Drerup.
Writers: Nunzio Randazzo, Jack Henry Robbins.
Director: Jack Henry Robbins.

Available from July 9-19 via Perth Revelation Film Festival's online screening event, COUCHED.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

A skit-filled ‘Kentucky Fried Movie’-like takedown of kitsch 1980s media culture develops into a far more prescient and surprisingly moving satire in Jack Henry Robbin’s VHYes. Capturing that moment mid-decade when VCR/camcorder technology fused, allowing American society to change the course of how visual media was created, captured and consumed, this wacky but wise boys-own adventure as seen through the lens of late-night television and self-made home movies won’t connect with everyone (it is shot entirely on VHS and Betacam, for goodness sake!). But for those who lived that cultural shift, it’s a smart, subversive blast.

Framed as a best-friends/suburban-family adventure story (think ‘80s staples like E.T. or Explorers or The Goonies), feature debutant Robbins’ protagonist Ralphie (Mason McNulty) is introduced on Christmas morning 1987, being gifted the latest in home video technology - the camcorder. The character’s name and this setting will invoke to many U.S. viewers Bob Clark’s yuletide classic A Christmas Story, in which a young boy’s dreams were also enabled by a gift that allowed him to shoot randomly with little regard for the consequences.

Ralphie grabs the first apparently blank VHS cassette he can find and starts filming, unaware he is erasing his parents’ wedding day memories. This is a familiar comedic set-up, however it takes on a darker relevance as Robbin’s themes unfold. Soon, the unlimited potential the camcorder affords Ralphie - to both express himself and discover the bold new world that is midnight-to-dawn TV - is capturing hard truths about his household. The innocence of his young mind is being usurped, while the undercurrent of detachment his mom (Christian Drerup) and dad (Jake Head) are experiencing is being unwittingly chronicled. Appearing fleetingly between the insurgent new late-night content, we glimpse their happier times.

Ralphie’s adventures in after-dark television offer up some hilarious parodies of recognisable cable-net ‘80s programming, recalling segments from Peter Hyam’s Stay Tuned (1992), Ken Shapiro’s The Groove Tube (1974) and the anthology Amazon Women on The Moon (1987). Best amongst them include bickering telemarketers Tony V and Cindy, featuring Thomas Lennon’s ‘heirloom-pen’ salesman (“…it literally does everything that a pen can do.”); the basement-shot talk show, Interludes with Lou, hosted by Lou (Charlyne Li); and, the heavily-edited adult entertainment offerings from Cinemax-like porn peddlers, (tonight’s feature, Sexy Swedish Illegal Aliens From Space XXX). Robbins also expands upon comedy shorts he’s previously filmed, including fresh episodes of Painting (and Cooking, Plumbing and Sleeping) with Joan, featuring a side-splitting Kerri Kennedy, and the global warming-themed sex romp, Hot Winter.

The parody channels fly by, reflecting precisely the impact on a remote control of a teenage boy’s attention span, until Ralphie settles upon a true-crime special that profiles a girl’s murder at the hands of her own sorority sisters in his very neighbourhood. With best friend Josh (Rahm Braslaw) reluctantly by his side, Ralphie takes his camcorder into the burnt-out shell of a home that was the scene of the crime hoping to record a ghostly presence.

The sequence allows Robbins to come full circle in his skewering of western culture’s obsession with self-image; Ralphie becomes the star of his own handheld-horror film, the kind that came into existence as a by-product of the handy-cam boom (notably The Blair Witch Project, but there were so many). VHYes captures and contemplates the moment thirty-three years ago that has since morphed into the YouTube/selfie/profile-obsessed world that we are slaves to today.

In one final image, Jake Henry Robbins stops just shy of condemning ‘image culture’ entirely – in the credit-roll outtakes, he captures the film’s co-producers, his separated parents Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, having a happy moment on his set. The footage, which lasts mere seconds, impacts like a polaroid, providing a vivid recollection of memories captured in an instant. They are frames filled with warmth for both the viewer and, one assumes, the director and underline his point that not everything needs to be filmed and filtered and posted. Finding the essential truth in singular moments is the true skill to recording personal history.

LITIGANTE (THE DEFENDANT)

Stars: Carolina Sanín, Leticia Gómez, Antonio Martínez, Vladimir Durán and Alejandra Sarria.
Writers: Franco Lolli, Marie Amachoukeli and Virginie Legeay.
Director: Franco Lolli.

OPENING NIGHT: 58^th Semaine de la Critique, Festival de Cannes 2019.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The emotional extremes we bear witness to in the face of impending mortality and the generational flow of familial love provide the existential framework for director Franco Lolli’s elegant, often profound and deeply resonant sophomore feature, Litigante (The Defendant). Having travelled to Cannes in 2014 with his debut Gente de bien, the Colombian director’s return to the Semaine de la Critique is an understated triumph.

Fronted by two superb actresses crafting vivid portrayals of old and new matriarchy, Lolli constructs a mother/daughter dynamic not dissimilar to that utilised by James L. Brooks for his Oscar-winner Terms of Endearment (1983). Unlike that relatively upbeat slice of well-to-do white American melodrama, however, Litigante presents a middle-class Colombian family in a downward spiral of tension, grief, black humour and barely restrained conflict. This is a home that runs deep with resentment and unfulfilled expectations, despite maintaining a façade of tolerant warmth and stable intellectualism.

With co-scripters Marie Amachoukeli and Virginie Legeay, Lolli provides layers of rich humanity for his key protagonist, 40-ish lawyer and single mother Silvia (Carolina Sanín); introduced as a passive observer, she sits by her mother Leticia (Leticia Gómez) as the elderly woman reacts with defiance to the news that the cancer that has been in remission for a year has returned. Refusing an extended hospital stay and invasive treatment, Leticia decides to see out her final days in the family home, not entirely aware of the burden it will place on her family (which has been patriarch-free for many years).

As Bogota’s Deputy Legal Secretary of Public Works, Silvia is implicated in corruption charges brought against her boss – another man absent for most of the film (as are several influential males in this female-centric story). Silvia must fend for herself in a heated radio interview conducted by journalist Abel (Vladimir Durán). An unlikely romance develops, but theirs is a love destined for difficulty as the obstinate and ailing Leticia weighs in on his suitability as Silvia’s prospective partner.

Carolina Sanín is wholly wonderful as Silvia, every ounce of pain she withholds and frustration she endures etched on the lines that seem to take shape on her face over the course of the narrative. As the title suggests, she is under constant scrutiny, forced to defend herself from a judicial system out to prosecute her office or a mother questioning her entirely reasonable life choices. The personification of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Sanín is a true contemporary female heroine; stoic and determined to face her hardships, focused on others above herself and unwavering in her commitment to family, regardless of how challenging and tenuous that link may sometimes appear to be.   

All of life’s distractions, and the narrative’s subplots, fade away as Leticia’s health deteriorates; Silvia, her young son Antonio (Antonio Martínez, a natural screen performer) and 20-something sister ‘Majo’ (Alejandra Sarria) experience firsthand the daily pain and dwindling life energy of their once vibrant mother. So to does the audience, in scenes of aching tenderness and sharply focused emotionality; the astonishingly transformative performance by Leticia Gómez is even more remarkable given that the actress is the real-life mother of the director as well as the inspiration for the story, having been cared for by her son while recovering from a cancer bout.

The final frames of Franco Lolli’s Litigante speak to the cyclical nature of the parental bond, acknowledging that Silvia knows she is next in line for a similar decline and that Antonio, blissfully unaware as he presently is, will step into the carer’s role. It is a beautiful, universal, heartbreaking observation from a filmmaker fully invested in his story and characters.

TATER TOT & PATTON

Stars: Jessica Rothe, Bates Wilder, Forrest Weber and Kathy Askew.
Writer/Director: Andrew Kightlinger

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

A film so steeped in such deeply human conditions as grief, addiction and loneliness ought not also be such a sweetly engaging joy, but that is one of the many charms of Andrew Kightlinger’s rural heart-tugger, Tater Tot & Patton. Pairing two damaged humans on an isolated ranch sets in motion a narrative that affords stars Jessica Rothe and Bates Wilder some deep, dark but also delightful moments together.

Further affirmation that she is the most interesting ‘Young Hollywood’-type working today, Happy Death Day starlet Jessica Rothe plays brattish LA twenty-something Andie, who has chosen a sabbatical on her Aunt Tilly’s dustbowl farm over another stint in rehab. Upon arrival, Tilly is absent and Andie finds herself in the charge of her uncle, hulking boozehound Erwin (Bates Wilder); he has little time for the problems of a spoiled princess he hasn’t known since she was a 4 year-old that the family called ‘Tater Tot’.

Two disparate, desperate substance abuse survivors isolated with their inner demons proceeds for much of Act 1 as truth dictates; Tater Tot, forced to learn the ways of country life, and Erwin, ill-prepared for the intrusion a wilful millennial can represent, turn on each other with increasing venom. As their scarred psyches are revealed and the familial bond is repaired, the mismatched characters find themselves on a shared journey of recovery and understanding.

Rothe and Wilder, heartbreaking in what deserves to be a breakthrough lead role, bring a rich dynamic to the close-quarters life that Tater and Erwin are forced into. The intimacy they achieve is a credit to the actors, as well as testament to the inherent honesty of Kightlinger’s scripting (no aspect more so than the grip of alcoholism and the dangers of self-medicating). The director occasionally falls back on some ethereal indie visuals and wispy music to convey the grip of sad memories, but there is so much emotion imbued in the character’s plight such indulgences are not only forgivable, but mostly effective.

The lensing of Peter ‘Per’ Wigand captures the vast brown-tinged grasslands of the South Dakota setting with an artistry that re-asserts the isolation, both physical and psychological, of the protagonists. Top-tier craftsmanship by production designer Chris Canfield and art director Scott Schulte add further authenticity to the ranch interiors, which reflect the waning life force consuming Erwin. Buffs will respond warmly to Erwin’s recollection of his family’s ties to one of the great films made in the region, Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winner Dances with Wolves (1990).