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Movie Review – Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Written & Directed by Céline Sciamma

For the majority of the film’s runtime, we do not see a single male character on screen. In the third act, when a man is found eating breakfast in the kitchen, it is a jolt to the system, signaling that whatever has come before is over. The expectations and duties of these women must be resumed, and the life they were able to experience for a brief time is over. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a subdued and even unsentimental look at a relationship between two women in a time where they had no future where they could stay together.

Movie Review – Things to Come

Things to Come (2016)
Written & Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve

What we expect is not what we will get. This is a lesson for both the protagonist Nathalie and the audience. Life unfolds with surprises that are not necessarily earth-shaking but create ripples out through your day to day choices. After twenty-five years of marriage, Nathalie learns her husband is having an affair, and it’s decided with little bombast that they are divorcing. In the year that follows she has to deal with a mother that has severe depression and anxiety, her daughter gives birth to the first grandchild of the family, she struggles with her career as a philosophy professor, and reconnects with a former student.

Movie Review – Elle

Elle (2016)
Written by David Birke and Philippe Djan
Directed by Paul Verhoeven

Elle is a deceptively simple film, jolting its audience by opening on the ending of a brutal assault and rape inside the home of Michele, an upper middle class older single woman. The rapist, his face covered in a ski mask, flees and Michele with almost mechanical automaticity takes a bath, puts makeup over her black eye, and goes about her day and the next with no reaction. It’s only the following evening at dinner with friends and her ex-husband that she casually reveals, trying to laugh it off, that she was raped. The viewer is meant to be unsettled by how cold Michele is through all of this with her friends and family acting as our stand-ins, utterly shocked at what happened.

Movie Review – Girlhood

Girlhood (2015)
Written & Directed by Céline Sciamma

Marieme is a sixteen-year-old black teenager living on the outskirts of Paris. She learns that her school’s guidance counselor is pushing for her to follow a vocational track as her academics don’t appear to be high enough for an academic one. Marieme knows the expectations of her mother, who works as a custodian, are that she eventually go to university. In this moment of frustration, the young woman finds friendship with a trio of girls. These young women are known for getting into brawls with other women in their neighborhood, and through them, Marieme feels like she has power in an otherwise powerless position in the world. Over the course of this year, she will move from being a child into a young adult and have to face the obstacles and struggles that come along with that territory.

Movie Review – April and the Extraordinary World

April and the Extraordinary World (2013)
Written by Franck Ekinci & Benjamin Legrand
Directed by Christian Desmares & Franck Ekinci

April Franklin is a woman living in a world where history took a markedly different turn than our own. During the reign of Napoleon III, a scientist is charged with creating animal-soldier hybrids. He creates two hyperintelligent beings that escape and soon after the world’s greatest scientists and engineers begin disappearing. This impediment to progress leads to a mid-20th century where energy is still based primarily in coal and steam power. April’s parents and grandfather vanished years ago during a government crackdown, and she has been fending for herself alongside her genetically altered cat friend Darwin. The two uncover a plot to destroy humanity and the secret solution for the ultimate formula, a serum that would make all life impervious to harm.

Movie Review – Amour

Amour (2012)
Written and Directed by Michael Haneke

Anne and Georges are retired music teachers enjoying the fruits of their labor, visiting former pupils who have excelled in their craft. They have a tense relationship with their daughter Eva and her English husband, but it’s not bad. Life is a beautiful natural thing. Then one morning Anne goes silent during breakfast, unresponsive to Georges’ pleas. She comes to after a moment, but the couple seeks out the opinion of their doctor. It turns out that Anne suffered a stroke, and her body will slowly degenerate as a result. We watch as Anne goes from being a vibrant, joyful octogenarian to becoming a person who is losing both their physical abilities but additionally the faculty of their mind. Georges is ever dutiful taking care of his wife and making a promise never to send her off to a home, but to keep her in their home.

Movie Review – High Life

High Life (2018)
Written by Claire Denis & Jean-Pol Fargeau
Directed by Claire Denis

Monte lives aboard a spaceship, raising a baby girl by himself. How he got here is told in a series of flashbacks that reveal Monte was one of a crew of convicts, taking a deal to participate in a mission to gather data from around a black hole for alternative energy. The secondary purpose is to produce a child via artificial insemination to study the effects of conception and development in space. As the crew gets further from Earth and the realization of their fate sets in they begin to lose their minds and lash out at each other. As we can see from the framing device, Monte will be one of only two who makes it, but what lies ahead for him and this child.