Category: Drama

Little

Rated: PGLITTLE

Directed by: Tina Gordon

Screenplay Written by: Tracy Oliver and Tina Gordon

Story by: Tracy Oliver

Produced by: Will Packer, p.g.a, Kenya Barris and James Lopez, p.g.a

Starring: Regina Hall, Issa Rae, Tone Bell, Mikey Day, Marsai Martin, JD McCrary, Thalia Tran, Tucker Meek, Luke James and Rachel Dratch.

When Jordan Sanders (Regina Hall) showed-off her scientific talent in front of an audience of pre-teens only for the bully of the school to ruin her moment, her parents tell her (as they push her with a braced neck and plastered arm in a wheelchair) not to worry because when she gets big, smart kids become the boss.  And no-one bully’s the boss.

Taking this predication as gospel, she becomes a rich tech CEO, running her company, JS Innovations with a be-jewelled iron fist.

She doesn’t care if her staff hate her.  As long as they get the job done.

So when her slippers aren’t precisely 53 cm from the edge of her bed, so her feet fall on the feathered fluffy numbers she calls slippers, it’s hell to pay.  And hell to be paid by her assistant, April (Issa Rae).

No wonder April’s listening to self-help audio books with titles, ‘So You Want To Slap Your Boss.’

When Jordan finally crosses the line, calling out the young daughter of the food truck owner who sells donuts outside her company, the young girl waves her magic plastic wand, wishing the mean boss lady was little.

It’s a classic body-swap of a 38-year-old adult to a 13-year-old, pre-teen.  Only this time, it’s the black girls calling the shots.

Look, I wasn’t really expecting much with this film, maybe a bit of a giggle on a rainy night.  And there were some giggles like the term, BMW: Black Mamma Whooping.

But the story felt disjointed, like it couldn’t quite decide whether to be a girls-night-out comedy or a pre-teen kid, feel-good movie.

The editing didn’t help with the funniest moments spliced in like an after-thought, just to inject some humour in the mix.

There’s a strong performance from new-comer, Marsai Martin as Little Jordan Sanders.  Marsai pitched the idea when she noticed a cultural gap in these body-swap comedies we’ve all seen before: “There weren’t a lot of little black girls with glasses that looked like me on TV or in movies, so I just wanted to create something where you see more of myself and what you look like.”

She wanted one of those funny movies but with black characters.

And the writers make the most of this cultural difference, throwing in jokes like, ‘That only happens to white people.  Black people don’t have the time.’

But the film doesn’t dwell here, with, Jordan’s uber rich and biggest client asking, ‘Did you know there’s three dinner napkins on your back.’

‘It’s fashion,’ she explains.

She has her weaknesses.

There’s also the comment of it’s better to wake up rich and heart broken, then broke AND heart broken.

Yet, there’s not much digging here, more a focus on Jordan’s reaction to the incident in junior high, that motivated her to become a bully and get rich.

There’s a lot of praising the dollar, leading to some pretty cool outfits, nice apartment, super cool car, etc, etc…

Looking good makes you feel good – right?!

The question isn’t asked.  It’s just not that kind of movie.

Little is more about rich people having tantrums and learning life lessons like you can be yourself and succeed.  With an added BTW, money rules.

 

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Directed by: Terry GilliamThe Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Written by: Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni

Produced by: Mariela Besuievsky, Gerardo Herrero, Amy Gilliam, Grégoire Melin, Sébastien Delloye

Starring: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgärd, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro, Óscar Jaenada, Jason Watkins.

Thirty years in the making (and unmaking), director and writer, Terry Gilliam (The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Brazil, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) was determined that, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote would be made.

Based on the famous classic novel, Don Quixote (The Ingenious Gentleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha) written by Miguel de Cervantes (in two parts in 1605 and 1615), the film echoes the metafiction view, where the fiction both creates and lays bare that illusion.

Lead Toby (Adam Driver), the director of the film, ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ (that’s just one of many circles within circles here in this film of the same name), wipes the English subtitles literally from the screen, announcing they’re not required – there’s that laying bare the illusion.

Here, we have a film about making a movie about Don Quixote while combining elements of the classic novel in Tody’s present.

No wonder the script was written and re-written for thirty years.

There’s even a documentary about the difficulties of making this film, ‘This hellish adventure […] captured in great detail in the documentary feature film, Lost in La Mancha (2002),’ if you’d like to explore further.

I myself was dubious setting out on this adventure, thankful the flashbacks weren’t an attempt to hark back to the 1600s.  That would have felt pat.  Instead we have a man driven insane by Tody’s college film, yep, ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’, casting an old shoe-maker, Javier, (Jonathan Pryce), working in the small Spanish village, Los Sueños (Gallipienzo), where Toby decides to film his college project using real villages to avoid being cliché.

When Toby returns, years later, as a famous slick director, he finds the people of Los Sueños damaged after his last visit; the young and beautiful fifteen-year-old Angelica (Joana Ribeiro) broken while searching for the promise to be made a movie star, the shoe-maker cast as Don Quixote mad, with the belief he is the real, Don Quixote.

With events that range from amusing to the ridiculous (hence my initial dubious take of the film), Tody ends up in the unfortunate position of becoming the present day’s Don Quixote’s (AKA the shoe-maker) loyal squire, Sancho Panza.

This is where the movie starts to get somewhere: the slick director sitting atop a donkey, commanded by a crazy old man not afraid to hit him with a stick turns the ridiculous and amusing into outright funny.

Adam Driver as Toby bouncing off Jonathan Pryce as the mad pseudo Don Quixote make for some hilarious moments.  Only Jonathan Pryce could have pulled-off such a character, his theatre background pronouncing itself in the twinkle of a cheeky eye.

Then, as Tody gets more absorbed into his role as Sancho, the more dramatic and romantic the story as Angelica returns as the beautiful girl who needs saving from a Russian oligarch, Alexei Mishkin (Jordi Mollá) who ends up hosting a spectacular costume party in an ancient castle to celebrate Holy Week.

The setting of the film was shot in locations from Spain, Portugal and the Canary Island of Fuerteventura; ruins and castles including the Castillo de Oreja, Almonacid de Toledo and Monasterio de Piedra giving that Spanish flavour of Cervantes’ classic.

There’s also the addition of the Spanish guitar in the soundtrack and flamenco dancing with costuming that lift the film beyond the ridiculous into something more fantasy then drama or even comedy.  It’s all of it, rolled into an interpretation of the novel that mirrors Cervantes’ introduction of metafiction into the literary world, giving us that extra layer where the fiction is able to take a look at itself from the outside.

Not that the film dwells in this extra layer – this is more, a circle within a circle storyline that if you can get through the awkward moments at the beginning (Adam Driver helps here), then the reward is a film that successfully pushes the boundaries of cinematic perspective.

Five Feet Apart

Rated: MFive Feet Apart

Directed by: Justin Baldoni

Written by: Justin Baldoni & Tobias Iaconis

Produced by: Cathy Shulman, Justin Baldoni

Starring: Haley Lu Richardson, Cole Sprouse, Moises Arias, Kimberly Hébert Gregory, Paraminder Nagra, Claire Forlani.

Based on the fact people suffering from cystic fibrosis can’t touch each other because of risk of contamination, transference of bacteria; infection, Five Feet Apart is a romance between two teens: cute-as-a-button Stella (Haley Lu Richardson), who deals with her illness by controlling everything in her environment; and rebel, Will (Cole Sprouse) who now carries the bacteria strain Burkholderia cepacia, or B. cepacia for short, making any chance of lung transplant impossible.

Added to a bleak future, the bacteria’s easily transferred by casual contact, so the CF sufferers must stay six feet apart.

You’ll find out why the film’s named Five Feet Apart if you decide to expose yourself, not to the bacteria, but a film made specifically to make you cry, using every trick in the book.

Writer and director Justin Baldoni came up with the idea of this romance while shooting his 2012 series My Last Days.

While filming an episode about CF he met Claire Wineland, “One day I asked Claire if she’d ever dated anybody with CF. Claire kind of looked at me like I was stupid.

She said, ‘of course not’

And I said, ‘wait, why not?’

That’s when she explained that people living with CF can’t get closer than six feet because they could pass on dangerous bacteria to people with CF.

Once she said that, I had so many reactions,” he recalls.

Five Feet Apart is set in a hospital following CF sufferers while they contemplate their mortality.  Even with a lung transplant, the shelf-life of the new lungs are five years, while waiting to die, drowning in their own secretions.

Walking into this film, I wondered if I was going to get sucky, cheesy, teary or romantic.  None of these options was particularly appealing.

And I have to say the film is all the above.

My God, people were sobbing in the cinema.

I personally couldn’t wait until it was over.

If you like a romance, then the idea of lovers falling for each other but unable to touch is a potent idea.

Forbidden fruit and all that.

And the character, Poe (Moises Arias), Stella’s best gay buddy coming out with statements about Stella’s anal-retentive behaviour helped lighten the film, a bit: ‘I know you Stella, organising a med cart is like foreplay’.

And Cole Sprouse as Will is dreamy – even with nasal tubing.

But the whole film is riddled with slow motion takes with the underlying cheesy soundtrack.

I know I know, Brian Tyler is a very famous composer (of over 70 films including Avengers: Age of Ultron, Furious 7, Iron Man 3, and Thor: The Dark World and recently Crazy Rich Asians featuring a big band jazz and romantic string score that was voted to the 2019 Oscar shortlist for Best Score…!); but it felt so contrived, to me…

Just to re-cap: Teens, sick in hospital, fall in love, but if they kiss, they will die.  All set to that teen romance music – sobbing with tubing inserted and attached to a ventilator included.

Destroyer

Rated: MA 15+Destroyer

Directed by: Karyn Kusama

Written by: Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi

Produced by: Fred Berger p.g.a. Phil Hay p.g.a. Matt Manfredi p.g.a.

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Tatiana Maslany, Jade Pettyjohn, Scoot Mcnairy, Bradley Whitford, Toby Kebbell and Sebastian Stan.

A watery pair of blue eyes flicker and open, their colour washed out by the blazing sunshine. After what appears to be a night of heavy drinking slept off in the car, hungover and burnt out LAPD detective Erin Bell lumbers along to a crime scene. An anonymous victim lying in a drain bears the markings of a gang affiliation and with a dye stained note on his body. To Bell, this is a warning. Her long time arch nemesis, Silas (Toby Kebbell), is back and Bell will stop at nothing to track him down.

Whether we are introduced to him propped up at some bar or nursing a shotgun on the front porch, we can be pretty sure that a grizzled loner will somehow be redeemed by the end of the film. Things are more complicated when a female takes on this traditionally male role.

While many of the overseas reviewers have hailed Kidman’s role as a bravura performance, an almost equal number have described her character as a ‘demon-haunted’, ‘zombie,’ ‘crypt keeper’s bff,’ and ‘luxuriating in the flames of a personal hell’. At issue is the use of wigs and makeup, with many of the critics claiming the props overwhelmed the role and the Bell’s disintegration could have been more convincingly portrayed through acting. So, with the controversy in full swing, I was very curious to find out which side I would take.

One of the reasons for the differing views, is the way the film crosses genres, with some reading it as a cops and robbers thriller, others perceiving a horror movie slant, while Bell’s relationship with her estranged sixteen year old daughter Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn) lends a dramatic overtone.

Initially, the horror stems from unacknowledged trauma, when Bell as an undercover rookie was forced to watch on while a gang member is bullied into putting a loaded gun to his temple and made to pull the trigger. It is a seminal moment. If a life can be taken away as the mere setup for a joke, the change is profound. The future disappears.

For Bell, the trauma from that earlier life has been deeply etched into her being and any hope for herself abandoned long ago. That is until her fury is reawakened by Silas’s re-emergence. As she pursues her quarry through the fierce sunlight and blinding shadows of L.A’s seedier parts, Bell’s self-imposed mission takes on a more surreal and nightmarish cast, and the feeling is amplified by the parallel timeline that entwines the past and present. It is a montage of sensation, not unlike consciousness, and it creates a sense that we are viewing Bell’s quest through the unforgiving prism of her own interior reality.

Compounding Bell’s desperation, Shelby has been caught in the thrall of a charismatic but treacherous small-time thug, and seems hellbent on obliterating her own future as efficiently as possible. Even if Bell were prepared to forego redemption for her own sake (which she is not), nothing will stop her fighting for her daughter.

In her role as lone vigilante, Bell pulls out all the stops, at times breath-takingly so, and Kidman turns on an equally intense performance.  Whether she has taken a step too far into ‘hellmonster’ territory is up to you, but for me a ‘hellmonster’ is exactly what’s needed.

Fighting With My Family

Rated: MFighting With My Family

Directed and Written by: Stephen Merchant

Produced by: Kevin Misher, Michael J. Luisi

Starring: Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Nick Frost, Lena Headey, Vince Vaughn.

Based on the 2012 documentary, The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family (directed by: Max Fisher), Fighting with My Family is a dramatization about WWE professional wrestling diva, Paige and her rise to fame.

From Norwich (the mustard capital of England) to the sunny shores of Florida, we follow the wrestling obsessed Bevis family as siblings Zak (Zodiac) and Saraya (AKA Paige, named after her favourite Charmed character) try-out for training for a SmackDown at The O2 Arena.

There’s the tough as nuts Brit humour – ‘dick me til I’m dead and bury me pregnant’ – from the wrestling-mad family; the mum Julia (Lena Headey) coming out with lines like, ‘his legs bend both ways – you should see his dick’.  And Nick Frost cast as Rick the dad (who spent eight years in prison, ‘mostly for violence’) is brilliantly cast.

It’s the sibling rivalry that adds drama to the film, with brother Zac (Jack Lowden) wanting to make it to the WWE arena just as bad as his sister, Saraya (Florence Pugh).

Or, as it goes, Saraya has to prove she wants it just as much as him; and well, anybody.

It’s a cheering the underdog kinda movie – dog included – that goes hard on the humour to start, including some gems from The Rock himself (Dwayne Johnson).

Seeing Dwayne circle back to his origins here, showing that, fight until you win, drama gave me an appreciation of the sport.

It’s not fake; it’s fixed.

Trainer Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn – always good in a trainer role!) has to harden the want-to-be professional wrestlers so they can take the pain and winding and 60 quid if you’ll take a bowling-ball-to-the-balls action.

Then there are those dramatic moments like the advice of: Be the First You; the timing of these moments well-placed, well-stated, and really, very sweet.

The sport is shown as escapism, making sense of the outsiders who embrace it.

And I related, feeling warm and fuzzy because the characters are so down-to-earth.  I like escaping too.

Paige went on to open-up the sport – being the youngest female wrestler to succeed.  Because of Paige, the sport now shows more coverage of female wrestlers.

And the fun of the story made a surprisingly entertaining film.

I kept bursting with laughter at the obvious crude humour, but there’s also the ticklish like a literal hammer on the end of a long pole made by kids because they’re bored: hilarious.

Not a wrestling fan, I did not expect to enjoy this film as much as I did.  But Fighting With My Family is well worth a watch.

Everybody Knows (Todos Lo Saben)

Rated: MEverybody Knows

Directed and Written by: Asghar Farhadi

Sound: Daniel Fontrodona, Gabriel Gutiérrez, Bruno Tarrière

Composer: Javier Limón

Produced by: Alexandre Mallet-Guy and Álvaro Longoria

Starring: Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Ricardo Darín, Carla Campra.

Even as it delves deeply into the convoluted ties of love that bind a family and a community, and the underlying tensions roiling beneath the surface, this film is above all a taut psychological drama and an exquisite slow burn mystery.

‘Laura is a woman with a secret, and suddenly she finds herself faced with a crisis,’ says Penelope Cruz of her character.

Laura has returned to a small village in her native Spain to attend her sister’s nuptials, bringing with her Diego, her young  son, and Irene (Carla Campra), her beautiful but wild sixteen year old daughter, while her husband remains in Buenos Aires to attend to business. Before their car even reaches its destination, Irene sets the village boys agog and she is soon hooning around the countryside on a trail bike with a smitten local boy in tow. Laura’s extended family is a jovial, rumbustious and permissive clan, at once completely modern but with an abiding sense of its long history and changing fortunes.

When Irene falls asleep in the middle of the wedding festivities it is initially put down to the effects of jetlag and mischief, since she has been sneaking cigarettes and illicit sips of wine all evening. It is only when Laura finally turns in for the night that she discovers that Irene’s bed is empty. In her daughter’s place is an ominous pile of newspaper clippings about a long ago abduction where the lifeless body of the victim was pulled from a well.

One of the criticisms often levelled at mysteries and thrillers is that character development is sacrificed at the expense of plot. Not in this case. According to screenwriting lore, the deep truths at the heart of a character are only revealed under duress, and here the pressure is tremendous as the moral dilemmas multiply and the thumbscrews tighten.

Fifteen years on from the time Iranian director Asghar Farhadi originally conceived the idea, Everybody Knows has been lovingly produced. The subtitles are effortless to read and the sound design subtly underpins the drama. As Laura and her former lover Paco (Javier Bardem) set out in an unseasonal downpour to search for the missing girl, the wipers in Paco’s four wheel drive beat a heavy tattoo echoing the thrumming rain and the collective heartbeat of occupants.

The cinematography and mise-en-scène have also been skilfully designed, with the outer landscape closely mirroring the inner. Lush greens and the golden hues of early summer give way to autumn’s stubble and dust, while the graceful sandstone buildings of the plaza cede to the crumbling ruins that dot the surrounding countryside. Paco in particular is closely identified with the land through his cherished vineyard, and his transformation over the course of the ordeal is remarkable. Indeed, the entire cast have turned in compelling performances.

While this film is a beautifully nuanced portrait of characters under extraordinary pressure, it is also a tightly scripted mystery, where the boisterous and joyful wedding party gradually comes to learn that the perpetrators must be from among them: ‘Watch everyone you know, carefully.’

The Sisters Brothers

Rated: MA15+The Sisters Brothers

Directed and Created by: Jacques Audiard

Based on the Book Written by: Patrick DeWitt

Screenplay Written by: Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain

Produced by: Alison Dickey, Michael De Luca, Pascal Caucheteux, Michel Merkt, Megan Ellison, Gregoire Sorlat, John C. Reilly

Starring: John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rutget Hauer, Carol Kane, Rebecca Root.

Set in America, circa 1851, guns-for-hire, The Sisters brothers, Eli (John C. Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix) work on the request of The Commodore (Rutger Hauer).

The brothers are sent to rob, track and kill – if necessary, or if it’s just easier – Riz Ahmed (Hermann Kermit Warm).  A man who has created a formula to find gold.

The killing doesn’t seem to be personal with the Sisters brothers.  For the brothers, it’s just life.

But Riz believes life is worth examining; and a life worth examining, is a life worth writing about.

We see Riz hurl his hat at a chicken, to see the bird captured underneath.  All the while observed by another tracker, the subtle John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) hired to find the chemist and keep him in place until the Sisters arrive – a bit like the chicken under the hat, l guess.

Morris also thinks about life.

When tracker Morris and the chemist, Riz meet, it’s like a meeting of the minds.

But as is the nature of this film, there’s duplicity; the lying to one’s self to not be afflicted by gold fever but to want to create a better society by panning for gold.

That’s what Riz writes about.  He wants to create a better society.

And because he’s found a formula that separates gold from water, a chemistry that makes the gold glow, the Sisters brothers have been sent to find him.

The use of light is the common threat used by director Jacques Audiard to piece one scene to the other, one thought to the next; from the light reflected from stolen pearls hanging from a saddle bag to the sun reflected off a snowy mountain.

There’s nothing electric here, only fire light, candle light, sunlight. Yet the film doesn’t dwell on being set in the 1800s. This is more a story of character.

Based on the book written by Patrick DeWitt, we get this intricate thread of people just being who they are: killers, brothers, chemists, intellects.  The truth of each character is revealed by circumstance; to convey the subtleties that show a killer to be too nice for a whore, for a drunk to have ambition, a philosopher to have greed.

There’s so much to think about with this film, I’m still unpacking as I’m writing.

We get moments captured in fevered dreams; the nightmares that cry out, the one crying out only to laugh at the helping hand to lighten the idea of safety as the brothers sleep at night, hand on revolver.

It’s incredibly subtle, the quiet touch behind the powerful performances made it feel like no performance at all.

I was particularly impressed with John C. Reilly as Eli Sisters.  There’s something genuinely adorable about this guy.

To have layers peeled back from this character, Eli, was the drive behind this intricate film.

Superficially, this is a Western, a classic tale of two bad guys going after the man who’s found the secret to finding gold.  But underneath all the killing and gold fever is a delicate tale of humanity.

Arctic

Rated: MArctic

Directed by: Joe Penna

Written by: Joe Penna, Ryan Morrison

Produced by: Christopher Lemole, Tim Zajaros, Noah C. Haeussner

Composed by: Joseph Trapanese

Cinematographer: Tómas Ӧrn Tómasson

Starring: Mads Mikelsen, Maria Thelma Smáradóttir.

2018 Cannes Film Festival Official Selection – Midnight Section

Stranded in endless white snow punctuated by black rock, we see a man stranded.

Chains on the soles of thick rubber boots, scarf over mouth, beanie over head: eyes squint against the cold.

The beep from his watch is an alarm, marking the passing of one task to another – a methodical schedule to stay alive.

‘They’ll be here soon,’ he keeps saying.

‘We’ll be fine.’

There’s no introduction to this character.  All that’s revealed is he’s stranded, waiting for rescue because near the wreck of a small plane, he’s dug in the snow an: SOS.

The film reveals who he is by showing how he survives.

The film was shot in the highlands of Iceland during the winter – a lone surviver surrounded by virgin snow had its challenges, states cinematographer Tómas Ӧrn Tómasson.

Yet with all the difficulties of snow storms, car doors becoming unhinged in the wild wind and the unpredictability and change of weather, director Joe Penna has created a quietly moving film, using the wind, exerted breathing and touches of orchestral music (Joseph Trapanese) to expand the feeling of isolation and suspense as the character waits.

They’ll be here soon.

We’ll be fine.

When he realises he’s going to have to move, to find his rescue when a chopper finally finds him, only to crash-land because of a storm, the tension rises.

With all that quiet, there’s these perfectly timed moments that made me jump.

It’s not just the endurance of survival but all those things that can go wrong, because that’s life, right?!

Sometimes it’s so bad it’s funny

And this character gets it.  He can laugh… With tears in his eyes…

Mads is great in this role.  And a very likeable character.  A quiet strength was needed here – not an action hero, yet heroic for all his humanity.  He’s a relatable character shown in movement and expression because this is a film with very few words.

And I couldn’t look away.

Capharnaüm

Rated: MCapharnaüm

Directed by: Nadine Labaki

Screenplay by: Nadine Labaki, Jihad Hojeiy, Michelle Kesrouani

Screenplay in Collaboration with: Georges Khabbaz

The Participation of: Khaled Mouzanar

Original Music: Khaled Mouzanar

Produced by: Khaled Mouzanar, Michel Merkt

Starring: Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole, Kawthar Al Haddad, Fadi Kamel Youssef, Haita Cedra Izam, Alaa Chouchnieh, Nadine Labaki.

A slice of life taken from the streets of Lebanon, Capharnaüm means chaos: a place where kids get washed-down by hoses at a car repair garage, old men wear cockroach-man costumes with sticky tape wound around the wing of glasses, and to stop kids crying out in hunger, they’re feed ice cubes dusted with sugar instead of food.  These are the details that give this film life.

Capharnaüm is a story of fiction based on many true stories.  This is a story about Zain (Zain Al Rafeea) who eventually sues his parents for being born.  Into a hell, to be constantly told to f*#k off.  Without papers, to be nothing but an insect.

But without children, ‘you’re not a man’, explains his father.

To keep the tone of the film as close to the true stories director Nadine Labaki heard as she researched the project for three years, walking through the streets and detention centres, she cast non-professional actors to play a part very similar to their own lives.  The judge is an actual judge.  The Daraa clashes in Syria (2012) forced Zain’s parents to move to Lebanon with four children.

Nadine walked with cap and sunglasses until she found the source for the story she wanted to convey – one of destitution, courage, the want to be a good person and all the eating of shit to survive.

Zain lives in a household where his parents fight for every scrap, the children too poor to go to school.  Twelve-year-old Zain is sent to work at the landlord’s market where he carts containers of water while watching a school bus, front grill packed with children’s backpacks, the bus a place where he should be: talking about tests coming up, notebooks to be filled.

The little man in a blue jacket, white stripes down the sleeves – he watches.

When his parents sell his adored sister off to the landlord in marriage at the age of eleven, he leaves home.

I immediately warmed to this kid, his courage and maturity, his love for his sister Sahar (Haita Cedra Izam), trying to protect her from the world he understands too well.

Fending for himself on the street, Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw) an Ethiopian woman and illegal worker who can’t afford to renew her forged papers, takes Zain home.  She has a baby, Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole) to care for and no one to look after him while she works.  It’s a calculated risk shown in the look of a mother leaving her baby with an eleven-year-old stranger.

And what a beautiful baby.  I could not watch this film and not fall for this child.  So adorable, even the guys in the audience were captivated by Yonas’ clapping hands and sudden grin.

It’s the characters who take the hand of the audience, to lead through the squalor, where the small sparks of beauty are made more touching.

We see Zain struggle until eventually he’s incarcerated: ‘Stab the son-of-a-bitch!’ Zain yells when he’s being held in jail.  To be taken to court, to sue his parents.

Capharnaüm doesn’t have the tone of a drama or even a documentary.  There’s something in-between here – a picture of how it goes when your parents are too poor to get a Birth Certificate, to be not recognised as a person, not exist: to be no one.

There’s this moment where Zain patiently corrects a girl selling funeral wreaths that the man’s name is ‘Aspero’, not ‘Ospero’.  I’m sure this was off-script but another moment to add to the story.  To see more of the boy, Zain.

There’s something so refreshing about the honesty of this kid.

The camera is shot low, to show the point of view of these no-one kids, trying to be good.  Trying to survive.  Trying to tell the adults not to be idiots.

Yes, it’s a sad story.  But I found myself filled with a faith in humanity, to see the courage and love from the ones that society is supposed to be taking care of.

Ironically, the ones who are no-one made me want to believe in people again.

The Combination Redemption

Rated: MA15+  The Combination Redemption

Directed by: David Field

Written by: George Basha

Produced by: George Basha, David Field, John Tedesco

Starring: George Basha, Abbey Aziz, Johnny Nasser, Tony Ryan, Rahel Romahn, Taylor Weise, Adre de Vanny.

After seeing the trailer for, The Combination Redemption, I walked in dubious but hoping from some good Aussie crime.

I was right to be dubious with the contrived romance between returning character John Morkos (George Basha) and therapist, love interest, Amira (Abbey Aziz).  You know those painful, forced love-in’s that have no chemistry but are forced anyway? Yeah, ouch.

John meets Amira because she’s originally his therapist – not that a Bachelor in Psychology would qualify these days…  After his younger brother’s murder (in the 2009 acclaimed original, The Combination), John needs more than his passion for boxing to get him through his grief.

Thankfully, the romance between Christian boxing trainer and Muslim psychologist does evolve and become less painful with a bit of humour from Amira’s brothers.

What I did appreciate was the piecing together of scenes (editor: Shelley O’Neil) and clever camera work (director of photography: Robert Morton) of graffiti tagged water-ways and tunnels.  And the fight scenes were realistic with blood oozing from head-wounds.

It’s pretty confronting stuff.

The film explores racist violence – featuring shorn-off shotguns – enticed by politicians, the rhetoric sounding familiar with the debate of immigration still raging in Australia.  Here, the violence is taken too far by drug-fuelled anger from members of a white supremacist group who believe in a white Australia, saying things like the Indigenous population and original land owners, must have taken the country from the white’s somewhere in the distant past.

There’re drug dealers trying to recover stolen money from runners who’ve had enough of making the boss money with nothing of their own, adding more of that crime element to the story – this is where the film really comes alive.

The soundtrack added another layer to the story, a memorable moment a thunderstorm booming during the boxing scene of John fighting for his life against real-life boxing star, George Kambosos Jnr.

And the percussion and drums are like a rapid heart-beat punctuating the violence and drama of living in a multi-cultural city that struggles to accept differences in religious belief.

There’s a lot going on here: racism, drugs, religion, love, family, grief…  I would have preferred less drama, sticking with the boxing and crime.  Perhaps even a TV mini-series to round-out all the complexities.

Cringe-worthy moments aside, there’s plenty of twists and turns while capturing the underbelly of life in Western Sydney.  I just wish the film stuck with the fisty cuffs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOwKhsT1fpA

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