9 stars

dir: A.V. Rockwell

2023

Life is hard, whether it’s today or 1994 New York, if you’re an ex-con. Especially if you’ve burned every bridge, and lost custody of your child, who ends up in the welfare – foster system.

A Thousand and One puts us in the unenviable position of watching a character who often does the worst possible thing in a given situation, and still hope that she’ll be able to find a way to get by and get through. It’s a hard balancing act, because she’s a complex character, and she is certain she’s doing the right thing, but most people who do stuff that turns out awful are certain they’re doing the right thing.

Inez (the formidable Teyana Taylor) is just out of Riker’s, and has nothing, and no place to stay. It’s the early 90s, so we have multiple scenes of her using a phonebook to try and call people that might still take her in for a while. At something called a “phone booth”, with that accordion glass door and all.

Drifting back to her Brooklyn neighbourhood, there are as many people who remember her skills with a hot comb, finger weaves and box braids, as remember her for whatever landed her in jail again.

She’s spying on someone in the neighbourhood that she’s likely enjoined by law not to approach, a little guy she calls T (Aaron Kingsley Adetola), for Terry. He can’t even make eye contact with her, but he knows who she is. Life in foster care doesn’t seem to be that enjoyable, which results in Terry spending some time in hospital, which gives mother and son more of a chance to bond, somehow, despite Terry’s constant fear that she’s going to disappear again.

Inez herself is a product of the foster system. I should just call it “The System”. Later on she’ll refer to it as being the reason why she is so hard, so uncompromising, so brittle and fierce.

The boy speaks of his earliest memory, of being abandoned by his mother on a street corner. Inez is stunned, and aflame from this, and embarks on a course of action as unwise as it is heartfelt.

(An Cailín Ciúin)

dir: Colm Bairéad

2022

It’s a bit funny to me that this flick has been nominated for an award in the International Feature Film category in the upcoming Oscars: An Irish flick nominated for Best Foreign Film. As wonderful as the category is, as nice as it is for some of these films to get a bit more notice out in the world, it always begs the question: “foreign” to what?

Everything outside of America is foreign, but, let’s say a film was produced in the States or Canada, and it was in a First Nation’s language or set of languages, would it be considered a potential Best Foreign Film for a given year? Would a film from Mexico, despite being part of the continent of North America, be considered a foreign film?

Anyway, whatever, this noodling doesn’t change anything, really. This is a lovely film regardless of classification, whether it’s considered foreign or exotic or not.

For a very long time I could not really tell when this was set. I am reliably told by the internets that it is set in 1981, but really, it could have been set any time from the 1960s to the 1990s and it would hardly make a difference. The main point is that there is a young, fragile girl, yes, the girl of the title, and she is very quiet.

Cáit (Catherine Clinch) is fearful and evasive. She lives in a house with a lot of sisters. Mum’s pregnant again and expecting soon. Her Da is a bit of a prick. Actually, he’s a lot of a prick, and a drunken one at that. The house and kids are neglected, the farm is rundown, and Cáit always feels like she’s in the way.

So, yeah, this is very much an Irish movie about Irish people being Irish, but without all the clichés. This has none of the blarney of The Banshees of Inisherin.

dir: Mark Mylod

2022

The Menu…The fucking Menu.

It’s a glorious and delightful satire of something that can’t be satirised. You can’t satirise the world of high-end dining. It’s beyond satire, beyond parody. You satirise it only by replicating it.

Admittedly I have never been wealthy enough or entitled enough to “enjoy” the kinds of places where they have 14 course degustation dining or where they throw bits of food onto a table, say some poetry and then expect you to eat it without using your hands even, but I’ve read about it (with awe) and watched some of the shows even mentioned in this flick (like the Netflix series Chef’s Table). It is, to me, insane, the height of insanity.

I have only ever had the honour of eating stuff with foam particles or nitrogen cooled ice creams or desserts coated in gold leaf when it’s been work footing the bill for some obscene conference somewhere, so it’s mostly been against my will, but not at gunpoint.

To someone who grew up working class this kind of stuff seems insane, but I am also a man of a certain age. Once you get to a certain age, unless you’ve been involved in cooking for most of your adult life, your taste buds start to dwindle, you’ve drunk or eaten everything available to most people, so you start craving flavours or sensations of some elevated nature, something beyond what other mere mortals get to enjoy.

You want something more, so the prospect of paying hundreds of dollars per head doesn’t seem as alien, as wasteful anymore. But this is an escalating arms race. Restaurants are no longer restaurants – they are test kitchens or food laboratories. Early in this film the head chef bellows at the patrons “Don’t eat”. They are not meant to be eating – they are meant to be savouring, ululating, trembling with ecstasy, but at no stage are they meant to be just eating. Eating is animalistic, crude, disgusting.

What the highest of high end restaurants like Hawthorn are trying to achieve, is something beyond our worthless flesh.

Chef here is played by Ralph Fiennes, played pretty much exactly as you would expect him to play such a role: a mixture of concentration camp Commandant Amon Göth from Schindler’s List, the subtlety and playfulness of Voldemort from the Harry Potter flicks and the gentleness and curiousity of serial killer Francis Dolarhyde from Red Dragon.

There’s a bit of rueful sadness as well, maybe. After all, this is the most acclaimed chef in the world.

(L'événement)

dir: Audrey Diwan

2021

I’ve seen many films in my time on this planet. Many of them have been thrillers, ticking time bomb stuff, stop the villain or the world gets it kind of stuff, where the result is never in question.

This flick, Happening, being its English title, is one of the tensest exercises in the format, and then there is no bomb set to explode, no villain to be thwarted with seconds to spare.

The terror induced with the feeling of impending doom is whether young French university student Anne (Anamarie Vartolomei) will be able to figure out a way to legally or illegally terminate her pregnancy before it ruins her life and stops her from completing her literature exams.

Abortion. Let’s not dance around it – she’s trying to get an abortion at a time in France where abortions are profoundly illegal. It’s, as far as I can tell, the early 1960s. Women have only had the vote for about 15 years. During the war, thanks to the Nazis, women were guillotined for providing this necessary and life saving health care to other women.

This is a fictional telling of it, but it’s based on the real story of what author Annie Ernaux, who wrote the book this is based on, and who received the Nobel Prize for Literature about a month ago, went through in order to survive. That the author is still alive, thankfully, and in her 80s now, still writing, is a testament to choices made, and to having the choice to make, that every woman should have.

The majority of the flick proceeds chronologically, starting at about 3 weeks, up to around 12 weeks. Twelve weeks of what, you might ask? Well, of her pregnancy, of course, her unwanted pregnancy.

She sees this unwanted intrusion into her life as a terrible fate worse than death. She and her other friends really want to hang out with guys (and by hang out I mean fuck), but they live in a time when birth control isn’t that reliable, men have never been reliable, and pregnancy generally means the end of your dreams, especially if you have ones based on educating yourself out of your parent’s basement.

Anne has formed some idea of what she wants out of her life, and it doesn’t include dropping a baby before she’s even completed her baccalaureate. As a single unwed mother she’d be relegated to pariah status and likely poverty, you know, just like millions of other women throughout history.