A Few Feet Away
Tadeo Pestaña Caro
2025, 89 mins.
What I’d do for love
Here’s a decidedly different sort of, er, two-hander featuring perpetually horny Santiago (the camera’s favourite, Max Suen) and his cellphone’s dating apps. Gamely trying to serve as a somewhat sage referee is confidante Karen (oozing with love and vigour by Jazmín Carballo), whether offering up hopeful advice or throwing up into the sink.
Director-writer Caro (after what, one assumes, was copious amounts of first-hand research) has offered viewers a curious mix of “Oh this might be a fun sex romp” (the opening scene featuring lies akimbo during an apparent apartment-for-rent “viewing” only to steadily, gradually, becoming a testament for “sex right now” without any hope of connection beyond a quick release then “Who’s next?”
And so after the rental skirmish fails to consummate a lease, it’s a quick pep talk from Karen then off to the wilds of night life in Buenos Aires, featuring failed bathroom sex, surfing some workmates (never a good idea to bring fellow employee copulation into a call centre…) before failing (at first) to gain entry into a very hot club where the price of admission is a half-cut shirt: all the better to put on offer your navel and any treasure trail leading to further bushy delights below.
Bookending the drama is some mockery of a down-on-his-luck homeless person caught peeing on the street. Surely that will never happen to me!!
Caro is at his best when he manages to let Santiago hookup with all manner of men (some of whom he likes), but as the initial kiss, nipple feasts, eventual stripping downs (curiously, hard to believe no one seems to lose a wallet or cellphone in these “never met you before trysts”), the expected (for some viewers hoped-for) sexual heat cools down with every attempt for sexual bliss.
Those new to the hookup-by-cellphone method (er, hello there Grindr) would be well advised to take in a screening, even if, “Oh, that will never happen to me” thought propels them to keep trying anyway. For all others, this production is a testament to lessons learned: if only they’d been taken to heart (rather than hard) sooner. JWR
Dead to Rights
Ao Shen
2025, 148 mins.
Picture this!
The atrocities committed on the citizenry of Nanjing (1937) are well, if detail-light, known. It was such a long time ago and wasn’t it just Asians fighting Asians, so any real harm done? Seen now, with Japan having recovered from both those war crimes and losing WW II, and China now threatening to usurp “America First” as the predominate world power, what is the possible benefit of retelling long-ago forgotten imperialistic attempted takeovers?
Lots.
Mostly importantly, director Shen (and his co-writers Luyang Zu and Ke Zhang) have wisely opted to focus their narrative on the power of images (in this case, black-and-white still photographs—no all-seeing, instant sharing internet in those days) to weave these murderous tales into a coherent whole. Imagine the invaders’ chief photographer (done up with convincing duplicity by Daichi Harasmima) fine and dandy snapping propaganda photos but totally at sea in the darkroom. In none other than the Lucky Photo Studio, a humble postman (Liu Haoran) magically morphs into a film developer extraordinaire, apparently eager to develop his invader’s films in return for a free pass out of the devastated city (think Gaza, today). Who wouldn’t.
Of course, in any war, there are those of the oppressed who make various deals with the devil in hopes of living for another day.
See the film for yourself to dig deep into the subplots filled with hideaways, family members struggling to survive, a newborn whose giveaway cry threatens to cause more calamity and—sadly, pathetically, outrageously—wave after wave after wave of innocent civilians being shot, raped, buried alive and stabbed to death largely because their invaders know full well that no evidence of their crimes will ever see the light of day at a war crimes trial. But, as in all human enterprise when under horrific stress, there is a way of telling the truth and finding justice one grainy snapshot at a time.
In our present world, the same situation is repeating itself as, file by file, Jeffrey Epstein’s “associates” are starting to be revealed one repugnant person at a time. Equally appalling—but oh so similar to bringing death and destruction on civilians just because “I say so”—the strongest, “bulliest” military on the planet relies on selective pictorial evidence to (entirely without evidence) claim that “With every [unarmed] boat bombed, 25,000 American lives will be saved”.
Accordingly, Shen’s film is so much more than a gruesome re-enactment of atrocities past, but much more a clarion call for today in the hopes that enough people will realize that decades’ old outrages are being ferociously rekindled right now.
Yet the looming question remains: Will today’s deadly/evil perpetrators ever be brought to final justice, or will the entire picture of their crimes ever be fully developed? JWR