Cinema going returned.
My love for French cinema was confirmed.
My appreciation of the serious, austere and not necessarily ultimately uplifting was present and correct.
Vicky Krieps continued to suggest that she is one of the most astounding actors at work at the moment (Corsage, Hold Me Tight and Bergman Island to add to other stellar outings).
Also confirmed was the urgent need to correct weaponised nostalgia and simple stories in favour of complexity, criticism and a warning that the siren voices of creeping social and political authoritarianism have to be confronted.
The usual 10 - 1 ranking follows but there are several films which only just missed the cut which deserve a mention particularly Corsage; Il Buco; Bergman Island; Flux Gourmet and The Quiet Girl.
10. Parallel Mothers : A tremendous performance from Penelope Cruz who is on screen for almost the entire running time anchors this film which is a stonking great melodrama of the kind that Almodovar can carry off with aplomb and of which Douglas Sirk would have been proud. The dignity of the grieving, the need to know the truth and not to inflict loss on others is the deeply poignant thread with the disappeared of the Civil War.
9. Lost Illusions : So very, very good. It may be a straight up period drama but it feels as much 2020s as 1820s: an attention economy in which controversy sells, mobs rule, true sentiment is dangerous, social class counts and enemies are inexorable and vicious. Great performances all round and a fully immersive experience amidst the hurly burly.
8. One Fine Morning : Yet again Mia Hansen-Love finds an unexplored angle in human relationships, this time a wonderfully rendered account of experiencing simultaneous grief and love which is grounded rather than elevated in style making it all the more moving. Aided by some truly great performances, particularly from Lea Seydoux who conveys both an aching sadness and deep stoicism in the face of a father who is forgetting her but better remembers his sometime partner and a married lover for whom she feels like a mistress. In both cases she is deeply hurt by giving love but only partially receiving it. But then perhaps there will be one fine morning when her love is returned fully.
7. Memoria : A film that demands to be seen and, even more significantly, heard in the cinema since the immersive state of being in a black box provides the requisite sensitivity to sound and motion to allow the full strangeness of the experience to be savoured.
In essence this film is about the immanence of sound in the environment.
There will be numerous takes on the sound, but a relatively straightforward reading is that it represents the accumulated experience of a place resonating over time. It is there for those who choose to hear and have been sensitised to do so. That acclimatisation may well be the result of individual trauma which then allows the echo of the past, perhaps heard most readily in relation to past trauma, to be accessed.
What might slightly facetiously be considered a Terrence Malick moment towards the very end of the film was both beautiful and wholly unnecessary. The subsequent sequence of clouds moving through the mountains as they have for thousands of years is a much better representation of the timelessness of the echo that can be transmitted to those who are willing to hear.
And perhaps more of us need to be attuned to the echo of the past as the present threatens it more than ever before.
6. The Souvenir Part II : Instantly demands a second viewing not least to work out how the many layers intersect. Strangely for a film that is about coming to terms with grief and trauma and trying to understand what actually happened, the tone is light, optimistic and often very amusing. The fabulous final sequence might be described as an honest fantasy. The very end demonstrates that Julie has now truly taken over direction of her own life by making a film which reflects on her previous attempts to make a film about the trauma of the relationship which was the focus of ... The Souvenir.
5. Decision To Leave : Between the mountain and the sea lie the mists of longing and obsession clouding judgement, offering glimpses of insight but also more tendrils snaking their way to further confusion and obfuscation. The sheer density of the material immediately suggests a second viewing but on a first encounter it is a gorgeous, enveloping masterpiece of editing and cinematography with stellar performances and, for this viewer at least, a magnificent and deeply satisfying closing sequence.
4. The Banshees of Inisherin : Tragi-comedy is the hardest of genres to pull off sucessfully but, as here, the results can be breathtaking. A brilliantly acted drama about the choice between sociability or solipsism as a means to happiness. That such a binary can never be the means of truly achieving personal or artistic fulfilment other than in narrow and self-defeating terms is the source of both the comedy and the tragedy. That purported choice is also rooted in despair about the human condition and how insularity can entrench myopic hatreds which just find more reasons to fester. The civil war heard and occasionally glimpsed on the mainland is far more than a distant echo.
3. Aftersun : Desperately sad and beautifully acted with some bravura sequences, not the least of which are the final few minutes which achingly entwine the past and the present. The father - daughter relationship is illuminated with wonderful restraint and often in a light that is lambent rather than effulgent.
2. Saint Omer : Austere, rigorous, beautifully framed and completely enthralling examination of motherhood with the wonderful notion of the chimera at its heart: mothers and children fused through organic tissue from each which persists in the body of the other.
1. Happening : Cannot ever remember gripping the seat quite so hard as at times during this unflinching and sadly utterly necessary description of the desperate situation that results from criminalisation of reproductive choice. The central performance is simply outstanding. To anyone with even a vague grip on sanity the scenario is frankly terrifying. This should be required viewing in Texas, the US Supreme Court and other sloughs of zealotry who would take us back to such awful days.
