Fireworks
Giuseppe Fiorello
2023, 134 mins.
“I’m not going anywhere”
Set in a small Sicilian town in the early 1980s, the plight of blossoming love between two young men is dealt with honestly, emotionally and horrifically.
Gianni (alluring Samuel Segreto expertly finds the dignity in a part that ranges from forced lipstick, to bullying and beating from neighbours and family alike) has already been to a reformatory for “the cure”, but, nonetheless remains true to his heart and nature. Nino (Gabriele Pizzurro ideally cast as wiser-than-his-years teen) who knows how to create forbidden fireworks and, quite literally, how to set off the real thing.
The film begins with a rabbit hunt, introducing Gianni and younger brother Totò (appropriately impish Simone Cordiano) who learns more than he wants to about the deadly power of bullets even as confusing love unfolds before his boyish eyes.
Gianni and Nino meet by accident which leads to a wonderful moment where the latter has no qualms about giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to his knocked-off-his-moped sudden acquaintance. From there, the pair become inseparable, knowing full well that their elders would be aghast at their growing relationship.
Fiorello who along with Andrea Cedrola wrote the script (based in part on a real-life incident—the Giarre murder) has finely balanced the affection of the loving couple with the, at times, brutal pushback from those in their lives who live only for Italy’s chances in the World Cup and utter disdain for “certified faggots”. Beyond a few lingering kisses, the actual sex is left for another day—even the couple’s watery retreat (“The place only I know about,” offers Nino). Ramiro Civata’s expert cinematography captures these underwater moments with equal amounts of discretion and joy.
Another telling, memorable moment comes when Gianni and his unsurprisingly apprehensive mother (a wonderfully nuanced performance from Fabrizia Sacchi) dance together in the kitchen. Volumes are spoken without need for any dialogue.
As if knowing their doomed fate, the lovers retreat one last time to their sanctuary, only to be hunted at the instigation of those ignorant and afraid (in one case with “I’m just like you” false macho) of two beings who just want to live and share their lives.
Thank goodness, that is no longer the case… JWR
Origin
Ava DuVernay
2023, 141 mins.
It has happened here, and could again
“We’ve never been a racist country.”
- candidate for U.S. president, Nikki Haley
On the same day as the nominations for the 96th Oscars were announced, I looked with hope against hope that Ava DuVernay’s brilliant film, translating author Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents to the screen, would find its way into at least one category.
Sadly, expectedly, it was nowhere to be seen—silently making its point yet again that the land of the free and home of the brave cannot face its own truly pathetic racist history. Not content to kill and/or displace the country’s “we were here first” Indigenous peoples from their land, white men with power and weapons set up the importation of Blacks to do their menial work—especially in Haley’s Deep South.
But others noticed the “success” of America’s slavery program, studied it closely and then moulded “solutions” of their own. Nazi Germany couldn’t play the “colour” card but devastatingly embraced the related caste methodology to simply state that all Jews are inferior to Aryans as a means to justify the eradication of 6 million plus innocent souls. Thousands of miles away, India made its caste system a way of life and death, ranging from the “untouchables” (Dalits) to the exalted Brahmins. Also coincidental this week is the consecration of the Ram temple by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the same site as previously housed a Muslim mosque.
For the film, Aunjanue Ellis delivers a superb performance as Wilkerson, the author that doesn’t necessarily ask questions: “I write answers”. Following the tragic, unexpected death of her husband, Brett (Jon Bernthal), she is eventually persuaded to begin her quest and write her second book focussing on systemic inequality in Germany, the U.S. and India. Along the way she loses her gritty mother (Emily Yancy, marvellous in her understatements) and cousin Marion (Niecy Nash adds yet one more level of knowing humanity to the production).
DuVernay crafts a deliberate, seldom rushed, pace that invites viewers, no matter where they are from or “status” in life, that can’t fail to cause moments of reflection, a few tears and seething anger at our “betters”.
Herself of Indian descent, Haley (and virtually any elected Republican) needs to see and absorb a production that demonstrates so succinctly that the U.S. Civil War was about slavery: plain and simple, just as the swastika and Confederate flag come from the same ugly root. JWR
Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos
2023, 141 mins.
Frankenstein’s daughter
Imagine committing suicide while pregnant due to an abusive husband, only to be resurrected with your baby’s brain being transplanted into your noggin.
That’s the far-out premise (book by Alasdair Gray, screenplay from Tony McNamara) that forms the bedrock of this feature that strains credibility in almost every scene. Sadly, what gives it away from the get-go are the out-of-tune violins in the stratosphere that, sadly, are at one with the narrative that is long on sex, but far too short on believability.
Emma Stone gives a courageous performance as the “reborn” Bella Baxter (not far from Bela Lugosi?). Willem Dafoe does yeoman’s service as Dr. Godwin Baxter (only related to Bella by scalpel)—his makeup being one of the film’s few highlights. Newly recruited assistant Mac McCandles soon becomes the unexpected love interest of the “feeling her way in the world” second-chance life. The fly in this pathetic ointment comes in the person of failed lawyer (so common in the news today…), Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Buffalo gamely frolics in the role of initiating the newcomer to life in the ways of sex, travel and survival).
The randy lawyer and his willing sex partner’s boat cruise tour is suddenly interrupted when Bella, in a moment of compassion, gives away her sudden paramour’s cash (onboard poker winnings to the Alexandria’s destitute population, or so she thinks—note to writers: tickets for cruises like this must be purchased in advance not port by port…) but then the story would collapse.
Then as Godwin finds himself at death’s door (no child brain for him), the principals are reunited only to move forward with a wedding of the damned.
By journey’s hard-to-believe end (guess who shows up at Bella and Max’s long put-off nuptials?—clue: think back to the reason for suicide), those who enjoy narratives that make sense may well want to jump into the drink themselves (poor us), while everyone else can say they now know Ms. Stone like never before. JWR