Giz_Medium

Missing the screening sometimes means missing the movie, or having to wait 6 years to watch it. There's a couple I still regret not making it to (and still would like to watch...). Anyway, This documentary is on the subject of « slums » or « bidonville » though the terms are being targetted as inacurrate from the opening, and the way squatters are the principal form of urbanization in the world. New neighborhoods are slums that are being annexed by the city, and there would be a billion of squatters worldwide. Though the movie seem to gloss over the problems going along the way an urban environment and absence of greywater evactuation create problems, it deals a great deal with the positive aspects of self-governance in a matter of housing.

No spoilers? Ok. I found out about the filmmaking duo of Brit Marling & Zat Batmanglij some years ago while watching « The East » with some old housemates of mine. We laugh wholeheartedly at the jokes people played on them while they were out researching the film. Then I got to watch their other films, as well as the first season of OA and enjoyed the feeling of mystery when you don't actualy know if there's anything surnatural in it, or if it's all in our heads. This second season, which include its lot of mysteries seem to mostly revolve around tying the unresolved ends of the first one, as if producers had called for its making because they had not « gotten » it.

It's twenty years after this and a decade after that as they joke about in the movie, and that third act just killed it. Whenever it was that I first watched the first one, a somewhat untypical romantic comedy starring the 1990's old Julie Delpy, a frenchwoman on her way back from her grandmother, and Ethan Hawke, an american man flying home from vienna after some time backpacking in europe. They talk for a minute before reaching the trainstation, and upon getting out, he crabs his courrage to ask the silly question : do you want to go out with me? Litteraly. Out of the train, meaning. Well, that's the first one. A lengh-long dialog between the two smart 20- something in linklater's screenplaying style, and the second act, shows the man as a writer whom found some success based on a novel he wrote about their encounter. But twenty years later, it seems like none of the rom-com clichés are left to exploit. The two worned out forty something still have some wit if only to satirize over the bad shape of their relationship, after ten years of daily lives and twins, which only makes it more realistic. I wonder if they'll go as far as making a fourth one...