viernes, 25 de noviembre de 2011

Scene City #6: The Skin I Live In (Almodovar, 2011)



Few filmmakers portray passions as vividly as Pedro Almodovar. With a lush and vibrant visual style and heavy and operatic themes running its narratives, his movies are dense and melodramatic while they juggle between a morbid fascination and heartfelt emotions. “The Skin I Live In” takes a detour into the queasy and perverse while still maintaining his usual motifs of lust and obsession. It performs a risky high-wire act in telling its revenge story (it’s wise to avoid spoilers beforehand, especially with a shocking revelation in its final act).

The film is fragmented in dissociative scenes of underlying resonance giving the audience pieces of information that seem to confuse early on but intrigue us throughout. Almodovar also does something quite interesting in revealing snippets of back story to the audience without sharing it between the characters.

Antonio Banderas plays a brilliant plastic surgeon who lives in a mansion whilst keeping a young woman who, for some unknown reason, remains his captive (she is played by the lovely Elena Anaya). As the film reveals flashbacks of characters we haven’t met yet we begin to find ourselves adrift en Almodovar’s messy narrative game but, in a strange way, hooked on the possibilities and outcomes of its diabolical predicaments.

“The Skin I Live In” is a fascinating experiment that holds an eerie power. It’s a film that’s rough around its edges, cool and glossy on the surface but raw and ugly on its center. It’s an uncomfortable and unforgettable psychological thriller that belongs in my top ten movies of 2011.


martes, 8 de noviembre de 2011

Scene City #5: Contagion (Soderbergh, 2011)




I can vividly remember the 2009 H1N1 pandemic that caused massive panic worldwide. In Mexico people walked out with disposable mouth covers, hand sanitizers were placed virtually everywhere and the overall fear was palpable. That particular virus strain caused the death of over 17,000 people (and billions of dollars in revenue for the pharmaceutical companies).
Movies about epidemics can be quite scary. I can remember watching “Outbreak” as a kid and being terrified every time I saw someone cough and in 2001, when Danny Boyle released the great “28 Days Later, its raged fueled inhabitants gave me nightmares for days. “Contagion” isn’t really a thriller but more of a clinical procedure documenting a possible worldwide pandemic scenario. It contains lots of scientific mumble-jumble and a large cast of recognizable actors playing doctors, scientists and politicians desperately trying to find a cure and avoid as much social panic as possible. This might sound like a tedious experience but Steven Soderbergh directs with style and keeps the story interesting even when characters randomly keep biting the dust. A problem with the movie is that even while the actors are convincing in their roles, some feel unnecessary and rather contrived. Take Jude Law’s character; he plays the kind of blogger who believes in conspiracy theories and bringing the truth to the people. All fair enough, but when the movie reveals him as a fraud and a manipulator, the movie leaves a frustrating void. There’s a sense that the movie would benefit without the character.
Still, “Contagion” is an entertaining movie that simply observes the workings behind a crisis. It is skillfully made even though it isn’t as memorable as it could have been.


miércoles, 2 de noviembre de 2011

Scene City #4: We Need To Talk About Kevin (Ramsay, 2011)



There’s no guide to parenthood. Eva wasn’t certain she wanted to be a parent but still did the best she could to give her son, who was problematic almost from birth, a fulfilling childhood. Kevin is every parent’s worst nightmare, a malicious and calculating little ingrate without pity or remorse. In many ways he is the representation of pure evil; an evil oblivious to everyone except Eva, who understands his darkness (his father, played by John C. Reilly, remained painfully naïve his whole life).

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” argues that malice is inbred and that violence inevitable. Eva lives a life of guilt and a constant harassment that follows her everywhere. The film cuts back and forth in time showing us a happy marriage, a frustrated period of motherhood and at 16 the culmination of a terrible act of violence that changes both the lives of Kevin and Eva.

Tilda Swinton is a great actress and here delivers a fantastic performance that is bound to get an Oscar nomination. The movie is a hard and uncomfortable watch with an emotional climax that leaves us in shock and disbelief. Eva and Kevin have a complicated relationship that is somehow tied within a pain they’ve shared their whole life (when Eva accidentally breaks her son’s arm in a dispute, he recalls it later as the most honest thing she ever did for him).

Is “We Need to Talk About Kevin” a horror story? In many ways it could be called that, as the film pulls us into the lives of a psychopath and his victims but it’s also a fascinating portrayal of a woman and her life of misery. It is, without a doubt, one of the more interesting works of 2011.