Love According to Dalva (2023)

Written for RAF News April 2023

A young girl is taken from her home and placed in a shelter after being kidnapped, brainwashed and abused by her own father. Here she must come to terms with what has happened to her, learn to trust the people in her care and reintegrate with kids her own age.

Rather than focus on the abuser, or the acts of abuse, the film instead focusses on the victim, eagerly trying to understand the world through her eyes in this powerful Belgian drama.

Dalva (Zelda Samson) is 12 years old but dresses well beyond her years in lace dresses and pearl earrings. Though her father was arrested, she wants nothing more than to see him again, making desperate attempts to flee the shelter to the prison where he is being held. Far beyond Stockholm Syndrome, she has been convinced that the sexual relationship that they had was an expression of love that others simply don’t understand.

At the shelter, her new roommate Samia (Fanta Guirassy) is hardly sympathetic – coming from a place of neglect herself. Samia is tough, but will ultimately become a friend and guardian of Dalva – especially when she is dropped into school, where there is a difference in social standing. Other children speak forwardly and matter of factly about Dalva’s experiences, trauma that she has not yet even begun to process.

Love According to Dalva is an interesting film that burrows into some difficult and uncomfortable ideas – but does so with complete consideration for the victim, played with believable conviction by Samson. A darkly complex idea that shows an insidious form of abuse from the point of view of the victim to whom everything has been normalised.

April 21, 2023 0

Leonor Will Never Die (2023)

Written for RAF News March 2023

Reality is folded in on itself in this playfully mind-bending Filipino drama turned pulp action romp.

Leonor (Sheila Francisco), an ageing screenwriter with a taste for violent movies, is suddenly thrust into one of her own films when she is hit on the head by a television that puts her into a coma, leaving her in the thick of an unfinished vengeance story she had just dug up for a screenwriting competition.

Now a fly on the wall, she writes the story as she goes, observing action hero Ronwaldo (Rocky Salumbides) as he aims to avenge his brother (Raion Sandoval) and save the girl (Rea Molina) from a gang of drug-dealing street-toughs. Meanwhile, Leonor’s son Rudy (Bong Cabrera) with whom she is living back in the real world, tries to comfort his mother and pay the bills, by shopping around her unfinished script.

And so the film jumps from the domestic struggles of Leonor’s family to stunt-work and high body count shootouts. What makes the film within the film so watchable is the B-movie aesthetic straight out of 70s Filipino cinema: funky bass score, and sound effect heavy fight scenes that have instant replays.

Leonor Will Never Die is fun and inventive, able to dip into the action whenever it pleases. As novel as it sets out, it continues to get more complex as it progresses, adding layers and blurring lines of what is in the reality of the story – at one point Leonor’s family cannot find her in the hospital, only to find her in the action movie on the television.

Building to the classic genre showdown, it stays fun but gets a little greedy, piling on the self-awareness and deconstruction until it has nowhere else to go.

March 31, 2023 0

All The Beauty and Bloodshed (2023)

Written for RAF News January 2023

Revered photographer and artist Nan Goldin reflects on the events that shaped her craft and character, all the while fighting one of the most powerful families in America, in this challenging and poignant documentary.

Goldin is funny and unflinching, able to revisit trauma by tackling it head-on. Goldin delves into the loss of her sister at a young age, the ravaging effect of Aids on the queer subculture she was a part of in 70s New York, the political indifference that they faced as a result, and their reaction: to band together and speak truth to power.

The group that Goldin fell into in this social scene was comprised of artists, activists and outcasts. People who seemed to possess a knack for self-expression and a sense of humour. It was here that her artistic sensibilities were nurtured, turning the camera on a life largely unseen, laid bare and beautiful. We see part of the slideshows that she would show to crowds, the ever-changing series ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’. In the documentary, we learn of her experiences with men and women, of domestic abuse, and sex work.

The scar that runs along the film however is Goldin’s own history with pain medication, namely OxyContin. Having battled addiction from this over-the-counter drug, and witnessed its destructive power, Goldin formed the group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) in 2017 with a group of likeminded people. Using her position in the art world to target the Sackler’s – the family and pharmaceutical empire often blamed for the opioid crisis in the United States – who have historically had their names in art galleries around the world. Here we see P.A.I.N as they infiltrate museums with elaborate signs and props, an artistic installation of sorts, that carries an important message, honouring the hundreds of thousands who have died in this epidemic.

Many of these reputable art houses would love to have the work of Goldin, but they get a little more than they bargained for.

January 28, 2023 0

Saint Omer (2023)

Written for RAF News January 2023

The line between the convict on the stand and the witness in the box is blurred in this contemplative, courtroom drama.

Rama (Kayije Kagame) a celebrated author, is in the process of writing a book when she is drawn in to the local trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda): a women charged with the murder of her 15 month-old daughter. Like Cosy, Rama is French and of Senegalese decent, and seems ambivalent about her pregnancy.

Based on a real trial, that director Alice Diop attended, we see the complexity of characters presented through their testimonies, but also in reaction to the testimonies of others. The film is very deliberate in its voyeurism. Long takes focussed on a single person allow you as the audience to become the jury. Avoiding theatricality, it is the nuance, the micro-actions and reactions, that make this film resonate so deeply.

Cosy (played phenomenally by Malanda), is introduced as someone who has committed the most heinous crime of infanticide. Having left her child on a beach as the tide was coming in, she confesses that she is responsible, and yet bafflingly pleads ‘not guilty’. This is just the beginning of this difficult and contradictory series of revelations. As we listen to Cosy speak in defence of herself, she is eloquent, a gifted student of philosophy she has a way with language, and so is able to express a certain messiness that is ultimately human.

This spell is sometimes broken by the pointed questions of attorneys, like for instance after the testimony of the murdered child’s father (Xavier Maly), a more senior man whose sincerity is deconstructed swiftly by some perfectly aimed accusations.

As well as unpicking these personalities, the film throws into question larger ideas and assumptions. The whole legal system is seen as a product of its culture when the defendant claims that ‘sorcery’ was involved, creating a debate around the validity of African mysticism in a Western court of law.

Saint Omer is slow paced and purposeful; it does not pander but simply gives you room to observe. It is simple and confident filmmaking that will appeal to active watchers who like have their views challenged.

January 27, 2023 0

My Policeman (2022)

Written for RAF News October 2022

Three lives are entwined in Brighton in the 1950s, a love triangle forming against a backdrop of criminalised homosexuality.

My Policeman jumps between the meeting of a young couple and their lives together decades later, retired in a coastal humdrum town. This is disturbed however by the presence of an old friend, now disabled and in need of care, unravelling dark secrets from their past.

Tom (Harry Styles) is the titular copper, unusually innocent and curious as noted by museum curator and amateur artist Patrick (David Dawson) who offers to draw his portrait after a chance meeting, marking the beginnings of a peculiar friendship. It is not long after this that Tom meets Marion (Emma Corrin) a plain but excitable teacher who is smitten but fears that the feeling isn’t reciprocated. This is part of the story mind, and not simply because of Styles’ acting which kills all chemistry that could have been.

In the present, Tom and Marion (now played by Linus Roache and Gina McKee) are in a loveless marriage that has become a stilted and depressing affair, highlighted by the arrival of old friend Patrick (Rupert Everett). As dull as it is bleak, these performances sadly don’t draw anymore interest than the cast of characters in the past.

The subdued love story is rather ordinary until some information is uncovered that sheds new light on this group, explaining why their lives are so fraught and joyless now. However, this isn’t enough to make the story interesting or the characters sympathetic.

As the excitement fades for the new lovers, it does for the film also, as we trudge through the sad reality of unexciting compromise and emptiness.

October 17, 2022 0