Female Film Critics 24/375
A somber tale about motherhood, regrets, and class divisions in France, actress-director Nicole Garcia’s newest film, Milo (7h40 ce matin-là), offers a star vehicle for lead Marion Cotillard, who delivers a nuanced and emotional performance as a woman on conditional release from prison, where she spent 15 years for participating in a revolutionary group’s attack on a bank that left a police agent dead.
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Oyku Karayel and Metin Akdulger star as couple Elif and Mehmet. Elif is a poet who has lost her voice. It’s not until she leaves her home and responsibilities and sets out on the open road alone that she begins to feel like herself again. Along that road, she encounters a trio of women, each of whom helps her heal physically, emotionally and spiritually. She winds up at her grandparents’ mountain village, where she reconnects with her own heritage and also nature. Mehmet, meanwhile, has to bury the weight of past trauma with his own village return to care for his dying father.
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Director Daniel Monzon’s Pray for Us (Ruega Por Nosotros) takes on the history of Spain’s state-backed Catholic reform schools for girls, viciously overseen by nuns. The schools institutionalized violence against girls and young women in the name of moral salvation. Although they were opened in 1941, they didn’t officially close until 1985, ten years after Franco’s death and well into the country’s transition to democracy. The narrtive centers on two teenage girls brutalized by the nuns. This part of Spain’s history is a past worth exposing,
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Julianne Moore gives a stellar performance as a middle-aged woman who’s become invisible to even those closest to her, in Jesse Eisenberg’s pitch perfect comedy The Debut, premiering in competition at the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Sept 18-26). Moore’s Mona is ignored by her husband and, as he cruelly jokes at dinner with friends, serves no role now that her teenaged twins can drive. When she lands a part in a musical production at a local community theater, directed by despot Jerry (Paul Giamatti), she finds new purpose—which ultimately takes her down a dangerous path.
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A gentle meditation on aging and life’s small pleasures, In My Father’s Room marks bestselling Japanese novelist Maha Harada’s debut as a film director. During the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Sept 18-26), where she presented her film in competition, Harada talked about making the transition from descriptive words on page to images on film. And although her writing has been described as quite visual, she said the shift took effort to pare down exposition and allow the images to symbolically tell her tale (which is based on her own short story).
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Life advice: Find someone who looks at you the way retired combat dog Odin looks at James Belmont (Brad Pitt) in Heart of the Beast. This man’s best friend survivalist tale set in the Alaska wilderness is a beautifully constructed but stressful 101-minute journey. The film from director David Ayer played Out of Competition in the Official Selection of the San Sebastian Film Festival (Sept 18-26), where Pitt made a huge splash with local fans.
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With Brace Your Heart (Garrat du Vaimmu), Swedish-Sami director Amanda Kernell has crafted a love letter to her father’s culture and the disappearing lifestyle of reindeer herders across the Sami region of northernmost Scandinavia. The story turns on 20-year-old Ejva, who has just lost her father and is poised to inherit his reindeer herd—if she can prove herself to the men who dominate the local profession. She starts a relationship with Heaika (Andte Gaup-Juuso), which gets her into the herding group, but she’s not particularly interested in him. The fact that Ejva’s future is ultimately decided by her community doesn’t detract from the strength, confidence and resilience she demonstrates as a young woman in a male-dominated field. Heart presents a subtle but decidedly feminist tale that is both beautiful and unique.
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Former festival deputy director Maialen Beloki was selected last spring as the San Sebastian International Festival’s new director starting with next year’s 75th edition, replacing the long-serving José Luis Rebordinos. She will be the festival’s first female director and is set to lead an executive team currently made up of mostly women. The festival also announced this year that it will honor a female producer of one of the eight films screening in three key competitive sections with its RTVE-Otra Mirada Award. The prize, which has traditionally focused on films about women, will now recognize “the key role of female producers as the essential cog of audiovisual creation.”
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Inaugurating its 74th annual edition in the northern Spanish city, San Sebastián International Film Festival presents a fully diverse program (Sept 18-26) with 263 films from 47 countries screening across its line-up. The Official Selection features 17 films making their world premieres outside their production territories and competing for the fest’s top Golden Shell prize, including new works from directors Jesse Eisenberg, Mike Leigh, Fatih Akin, Nicole Garcia, Pablo Larrain and more. Here’s the lisst
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