Xavier Dolan opens It’s Only the End of the World with the caption: “Somewhere a while ago, already.” The comma is extremely important, as it plays with the past tense of a while ago and the present tense of the already, almost as a physical presence, already there. It was a while ago since I…
Bullying normally leads to lasting enmity between the perpetrator and the victim. Only occasionally does it lead to friendship. Rarely does it lead to love, but such is the case in André Téchiné’s (“In the Name of My Daughter”) masterful coming of age drama, Being 17 (Quand on a 17 ans), his best film since…
Admittedly, things are bound be lost in translation when watching an international film. Certain cultural nuances from any given nation can mystify another nation that has its very own set of cultural nuances; that’s just how the world works. Particularly with folklore and mythology, the complete lack of social and cultural context outside of the…
Fear that your children may mimic your worst qualities is the driving force in Hirokazu Koreeda’s (“Our Little Sister”) After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku), a compassionate look at the struggles of a Japanese family. Its title derived from the lyrics of an old pop song, the film is set in Kiyose, a…
Dedicated to Ozu star Setsuko Hara, Argentine director Matías Piñeiro’s Hermia and Helena follows his three previous films, “Viola,” “The Princess of France”, and “Rosalinda,” with a work depicting characters loosely based on female heroines in William Shakespeare’s comedies. Shot in Buenos Aires and partly in New York, the film centers on Camila (Agustina Muñoz,…
While The Unknown Girl, the latest film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (“Two Days, One Night”), is suggestive of social and political issues such as immigration, unemployment, and economic imbalance, its main concern is with moral character, accountability, and spiritual redemption. Like many other films of the Dardenne Brothers, it is simple, natural, and direct,…
The cinema of Kosovo, or indeed Eastern Europe in general, does not receive much attention from Western viewers. This is due to the difficulties of production, distribution and exhibition, all of which are daunting for a filmmaker in any part of the world. It is therefore heartening when a film from this under-represented area does…
