‘Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry’
Stream it on Mubi.
Films about middle-aged ladies looking for a brand new lease on life are a dime a dozen, nevertheless it’s uncommon to seek out one as gloriously unusual, tender and erotic as “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry,” from Georgian director Elene Naveriani. A part of the allure is the protagonist, Etero, performed by a really magnetic Eka Chavleishvili, who sports activities sharp, drawn-on eyebrows, piercing eyes poised between rage and childlike vulnerability, and a stout determine held upright and proud. Etero manages a threadbare comfort retailer in a provincial village and spends most of her time alone, chasing birds and choosing blackberries. She is self-sufficient in each conceivable means, as we be taught early on when she swiftly and determinedly ends her “48-years-long virginity,” making an advance on the native supply man, who welcomes it enthusiastically.
A lot of the movie traces Etero’s relationships with this new lover and the opposite ladies of the village, who alternate between pitying and envying her, and our heroine’s grappling with the adjustments in her physique: sizzling flashes, erratic bleeding. There are references to her troubled childhood, beleaguered by the early demise of her sick mom and the suffocating grips of her brother and father, however “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry” is much less previously than in Etero’s current and future — all the probabilities her life nonetheless comprises, whether or not or not these round her can see it.
‘Down the Rabbit Gap’
Stream it on Netflix.
If “The Suite Lifetime of Zack & Cody” have been set in a narco kingpin’s palatial hide-out, it’d look one thing like “Down the Rabbit Gap,” from the Mexican director Manolo Caro. The ten-year-old Tochtli (Miguel Valverde) lives together with his father, Yolcaut (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a cartel boss, and their tight-knit chosen household of servants and right-hand males in a ravishing property the place the younger boy has all the pieces he wants: a private tutor, a zoo with unique animals, a wall decked out with sombreros of each form. But it surely’s a gilded cage. Tochtli can not depart this dwelling — for his personal security, he’s informed — and his understanding of the bigger world is cobbled collectively from books, films and his father’s stray feedback about gang honor codes.
Whether or not “Down the Rabbit Gap” is a film for teenagers or adults is tough to say: It someway manages to convey each Tochtli’s naïve curiosity and the menace of his father’s world with out diluting both tone. The movie takes us alongside on the child’s varied little adventures — together with a visit to Namibia to seek out some hippos, a la Pablo Escobar — and attracts us into his tender relationship with Yolcaut, however violence continually laps the perimeters of his idyll, lastly exploding in a gore-and-gunshots finale. The film is an odd little darkish comedy, buoyant sufficient to see with the household and gritty sufficient to immediate some exhausting conversations.
‘Pada’
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.
An actual-life story conjures up this sensible, bristling drama from South India: In 1996, 4 males stormed an area bureaucrat’s workplace and held him hostage, demanding the reversal of a laws that robbed the area’s tribal peoples of their land. Following the activists’ plan over two tense days, “Pada,” directed by Kamal Ok.M., strikes and pulses like a thriller, deploying its message — in regards to the oppression of India’s tribal communities, and the dearth of avenues obtainable to them for recourse — with panache and with out didacticism.
The primary half unfolds like a heist film, as every of the 4 males make preparations and adapt to surprising contingencies: In a single set piece, they weave by means of a crowd, making an attempt to confuse a plainclothes policeman, whereas within the background, we hear a speech from a tribal rights activist. The second half takes the type of a chamber drama, confined principally throughout the barricaded workplace the place they maintain their hostage at gunpoint. Tense negotiations and conversations observe, touching upon moral and political questions. What constitutes a righteous and ethical type of protest? Is deference to the regulation of any use when laws is used unjustly? Thought-provoking and well timed, “Pada” ends with archival footage that reminds us of the failed guarantees of democracy and the resilience of India’s tribal peoples within the face of ongoing persecution.
‘The Gross sales Woman’
Stream it on Movie Motion Plus. Hire it on Amazon Prime Video.
A coming-of-age story from Mongolia, “The Gross sales Woman” is equal components raunchy and candy, a movie that appreciates intercourse each for its absurd humor and its revelatory capacities. Saruul (Bayarjargal Bayartsetseg), a studious faculty scholar, is roped into taking over her classmate’s job at a intercourse store when the latter has an harm and desires a dependable stand-in. Frumpy and baby-faced, Saruul cuts an incongruous determine on the store, surrounded by dildos and intercourse toys and packets of Viagra. She goes into the gig with a wide-eyed innocence that’s slowly whittled away by Katya (Oidovjamts Enkhtuul), the magisterial and mysterious proprietor of the store, who takes Saruul beneath her wing and teaches her to understand life’s — and the physique’s — pleasures.
The director, Janchivdorj Sengedorj, has a hanging eye for montage and mise-en-scène, and he ekes out emotion from well-timed cuts and music cues — together with a operating motif the place Saruul places on her headphones and tunes in to Pink Floyd, and the world round her is remodeled momentarily into one thing like a music video. This mixture of fantasy and deadpan realism offers “The Gross sales Woman” its profitable allure and informal profundity.
‘Babysitter’
Stream it on Mubi.
This Quebecois comedy from Monia Chokri is a bizarre, warped but deeply clever satire of the male gaze. The insanity all begins when Cédric (Patrick Hivon), a younger husband and father in Montreal, drunkenly kisses a feminine information anchor on reside TV. He’s swiftly suspended from his job and turns into the topic of a turbulent on-line discourse on harassment. Egged on by his brother Jean-Michel (Steve Laplante), a self-flagellating, holier-than-thou feminist — the type to interrupt ladies to loudly proclaim his respect for them — Cédric begins writing a penitent letter to the TV anchor, which quickly turns right into a book-length apologia for misogyny.
As Cédric and his brother dedicate themselves to this ludicrous challenge, Cédric’s spouse, Nadine (Chokri herself), quietly offers with postpartum melancholy and youngster care struggles, barely registering on the 2 males’s radar. Enter a brand new babysitter, performed by Nadia Tereszkiewicz, who appears to have walked out of a pinup poster in her tiny skirt and low-cut tops. Chokri makes use of eye-popping manufacturing design and a frenetic, ever-switching point-of-view to discover how this younger, impossibly cheerful girl turns into a web site of projection for every of the characters, bringing out their secret wishes: Cédric’s desperation to be helpful, Jean-Michel’s barely hid savior advanced and Nadine’s craving for connection and validation. That Chokri delivers these chopping insights with a really acrid humorousness is the icing on the cake.
