Tomka and His Friends

1977, Albania, directed by Xhanfise Keko (aka Tomka dhe shokët e tij)

An Albanian film that I became aware of through Mark Cousins' A Story of Children and Film, on one level a standard coming-of-age film, but of course also a film about oppression and survival on multiple levels, set against the backdrop of the German occupation of Albania, with charming, naturalistic performances from the kids, and a sometimes infectious insistence on living and thriving in adversity; there's also a terrific tracking shot to start the film. 

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

2018, US, directed by Marielle Heller

Wonderfully absorbing, with two terrific performances: Melissa McCarthy gets to show more of her range, without having to bottle up her energy, and Richard E. Grant hasn't been as good for years. Heller has a great feel for the period and milieu of the film, or more accurately the multiple milieus, from grimy day-drinking bars to down-at-heel walk-ups to glimpses of the other side at swanky parties or warm academic havens. She also has a tenderness toward her characters, as weak and self-deluding as they can sometimes be, that's deeply affecting -- and gives lovely scenes to many of the supporting players.

La Fiancée du pirate

1969, France, directed by Nelly Kaplan

I thought that Yves Boisset's Dupont Lajoie was pretty acid in its analysis of French society, but Nelly Kaplan's first feature film is at least as bleak, and certainly more thorough in its merciless dissection of the mores of its small-town setting. At times, Kaplan's wide-ranging condemnation recalls Simenon, though Kaplan is far more interested in society's view of women than Simenon ever was. The film constantly surprises in its tone, veering from the cynical to the carnivalesque, with Bernadette Lafont providing a central performance of exceptional energy and frankness that still feels fresh today, even if the character's turning-of-the-tables might take a different form in 2019.

The Bigamist

1953, US, directed by Ida Lupino

An unusually frank film, for its time, with respect to social mores, focused on a salesman who is attempting to juggle two relationships, though the picture has to stretch credibility a little to accommodate this situation in a manner that keeps the central character sympathetic.While the film seems to start out as a justification for male misbehaviour, as the narrative unspools it becomes something a good deal more interesting, a discussion of how the standard boxes don't work for every situation, and where women, in particular, are likely to fall foul of social regulations that determine acceptable behaviour. The film is quite up front about this, engineering situations in which conversations about stifling convention are reasonably credible, while Lupino makes ample time for us to hear from the two women -- they're anything but subordinate to the story. It might make a good pairing with the slightly earlier That Brennan Girl.

The Wonders

2014, Italy, directed by Alice Rohrwacher (aka Le meraviglie)

On the surface level a coming-of-age tale, and often a very affecting and unusual one, but deeper down a dissection of family -- both the ones allocated and chosen -- and, in the particular rural context, of the role of uncompensated labour within the family structure. The routines, often back-breaking, of children's work are depicted with great care, perhaps drawn from Rohrwacher'w own background, with the dividing line between domestic chores and work toward supporting the family income at best tenuous, particularly under the domination of a forbidding patriarch. The young actors, particularly Maria Alexandra Lungu as the oldest of the children, are excellent, while the particular non-touristy settings (in Tuscany and Lazio) peel back another layer of Italian life.

Malcolm

1986, Australia, directed by Nadia Tass

Very light, and interesting mostly as a time capsule these days, including of Melbourne's trams of the era, though the performances are generally quite pleasing (even if Colin Friels's character would likely be handled differently in 2018), and the set pieces mostly well-paced.

Set It Up

2018, US, directed by Claire Scanlon

White Material

2009, France, directed by Claire Denis

Isabelle Huppert in is top form here, while Claire Denis's work is typically strong, and less elliptical than in some of her 2000s work -- which is perhaps the more effective for this particular film. The sense of societal collapse is cogently and succinctly sketched in, and if I still have some vague sense of discomfort about the depiction of the African continent, Denis is trying to tease out something very challenging, including in her critique of the role of white settlers, about both her own relationship with Africa and cinematic depictions thereof.

L'Avenir

2016, France, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve (aka Things to Come)

Another fine, and attractive, recent French film, this time from Mia Hansen-Løve, and on the strength of this she's a very mature and assured filmmaker from the perch of her mid-30s, working with Isabelle Huppert in reliably strong form. Huppert plays a middle-aged professor dealing with a variety of familial upheavals, and Hansen-Løve astutely avoids the various pitfalls (though she does also set the viewer up to some degree); as with La Belle saison, the political backdrop is strong and there's an interesting, latter-day, riff on the city/country interplay that feels very much of the recent moment while also nodding to the 1960s/1970s back-to-the-land movement. The final shot is quite wonderful.

La Belle saison

2015, France, directed by Catherine Corsini (aka Summertime)

A fine film from Catherine Corsini about the romance between two women, one a Parisian sophisticate, the other a newly-arrived country girl. The backdrop, very well-evoked, is the social upheaval of the early 1970s, and the tension between the two modes of life; the depiction of debate and discussion by those engaged in social activism is especially fascinating. The obvious recent point of comparison is Blue is the Warmest Colour, including with respect to the directorial depiction of the physical relationship between the characters, though each film ultimately has quite different concerns (and each has its own strengths). The leads are both excellent, with Izïa Higelin especially convincing as the rural half of the central pair, while the evocation of the French countryside is utterly seductive in its own way. 

The Queen of Katwe

2016, US, directed by Mira Nair

Le Camion

1977, France, directed by Marguerite Duras

Duras, Depardieu, a truck. That's about it and yet this is an utterly compelling piece of work -- the visual juxtaposition of small, older woman and hulking young man is of course amusing and eye-catching, but so too is their studied verbal pas-de-deux, and the camerawork, especially in the interior scenes, has a lovely warm, limpid quality. Duras comes across as a fierce intellect, in addition to her unmistakable voice. 

Merrily We Go To Hell

1932, US, directed by Dorothy Arzner

Arzner was one of the very few women directors of the studio era, a true pioneer (though female directors still remain far too rare in the modern Hollywood era), and while this is in many was a fairly typical studio-produced pre-Code film, with lashings of alcohol and adultery, I had the strong sense that the picture was more concerned with the "home front" and the consequences of bad (male) behaviour than was the norm for the period, which adds an interesting layer to the generic elements. Also, Fredric March and Sylvia Sidney are in very fine form, and their opening encounter is a peach; screwball before it had acquired the name.

The Dressmaker

2015, Australia, directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse

13th

2016, US, directed by Ava DuVernay

Ava DuVernay’s documentary about, primarily, the ways in which black Americans have been systematically criminalized by the political/social system, with emphasis on the ways in which this has been used to subsequently disenfranchise vast swathes of the black population. It's a very effective assemblage of interviews, archival footage and, especially, statistical data, often depicted in imaginative and striking fashion, and underlines the ways in which the legacy of slavery is still very much with the United States when it comes to the daily lives and (restricted) political participation of the country's people of colour. The various talking heads are generally informative, and occasionally surprising, none more so than Newt Gingrich bluntly discussing the failures of policies past. 

Big

1988, US, directed by Penny Marshall

As charming as it was on release, with Hanks' sweet, wonderfully physical performance the absolute center of the film. Also very much of its era, with eye-popping shoulder pads and New York a haven of crime -- though some things, notably the depiction of grasping business types, never go out of style.

The Hitch-Hiker

1953, US, directed by Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino's terrifically sweaty, creative little thriller -- with the kind of tension of which Clouzot might have been proud, or indeed to which the French director owes a debt. The unusual setting in dusty Mexican backwaters adds a striking layer of authenticity, and the positive portrayal of Mexico and Mexican policemen is unusual, especially for the time period. The finale on the docks also provided a fine counterpoint to the car-bound earlier going.

Je tu il elle

1975, France/Belgium, directed by Chantal Akerman

Watched in hommage to Chantal Akerman, who sadly ended her life recently. I had not seen this before and it was an eye-opener, the work of a strikingly confident young director who has both a very strong personal set of ideas and a set of aesthetic criteria for her project, both visual and aural (the use of sound as a surprising tool for de-eroticization, for instance). The film very obviously sets the stage for some of her subsequent work, in terms of holding the gaze for extended periods of time, the interaction between sound and text (and the disconnects between the two), and so forth. Quite literally mesmerizing at times. 

Provincial Actors

1979, Poland, directed by Agnieszka Holland (original title: Aktorzy prowincjonaln)

It has been a very long time since I've watched anything from Poland, but not for the first time I was struck by the way in which a number of Polish directors were able to make interesting, even pointed films in apparently unpromising circumstances in the 1970s and 1980s. There's a strong, and welcome, female perspective at work here -- a male director might have pushed the theatrical satire further but left to one side the exploration of how the lead actor's problems on stage and at home were part of a continuum, and I found the character of the lead actor's wife to be quite fascinating in her own attempts to navigate a world of power (in multiple senses). Her journey is also very affecting on the emotional level. The debates between actors and other theatre personnel were deeply compelling for the sense in which they must surely have mirrored the processes of daily life in Poland for the people employed on the film. 

Tomboy

2011, France, directed by Céline Sciamma

This one had me from the opening shot, beautiful on both the visual and the emotional levels. Céline Sciamma got a good deal of attention this year with the US release of Bande de filles, and I hoped to see her back catalog from the beginning but couldn't find her début, La Naissance des pieuvres. This film focuses on a youngster dealing with gender identity issues, and Sciamma's method of treating the subject matter, focusing almost entirely on the child and with very little dialogue, is exceptionally effective and often strikingly funny/emotionally rich. 

I was also fascinated by her depiction of the relationship between the film's siblings, perhaps because I'm so affected by the growing evidence of a complicity between my children. Although the children have a good deal of latitude in this tale of summer, parents are nonetheless present and often very warm and involved, but this isn't a story from their perspective -- and nor is it, strictly speaking, a coming of age film with a neat developmental arc but rather an ongoing puzzling through, a snapshot in a longer process of self-discovery.