tigerfish50

A film about friendship and death should possess some depth, but Almodovar's 'The Room Next Door' treats both subjects with glossy shallowness. A former war correspondent Martha is ill with terminal cancer, has already acquired a suicide pill, and asks her old friend Ingrid to be her companion when she commits suicide. There are possibilities of legal consequences and Ingrid is fearful of death, but she reluctantly accepts this role.

The two women depart for a luxurious rental outside NYC and wait for Martha to choose the right moment for her demise. In death's waiting room, their conversations and flashback reminiscences lack any kind of intensity or credibility, and the conclusion is as much damp squib as the rest of the proceedings. The only positive is watching two excellent actors trying to make the most of third-rate material.

'Serena' is clearly inspired by Shakespeare's play about Macbeth and his dangerously ambitious spouse. The setting is changed from medieval Scotland to Depression-era Appalachia, but the screenplay merely follows the general arc of the original story without adding anything new.

The intro presents a lumberjacking operation run by two entrepreneurs called Pemberton and Buchanan who are having problems with a local sheriff. Pemberton takes a break in Boston and returns with an upper-crust new wife, Serena. At first she makes useful contributions, in between wandering about the muddy lumber camp in silk nightgowns, but soon she causes friction with Buchanan. The sheriff starts tightening the screws on Pemberton, but the script neglects to provide much motive for crucial decisions made by the couple, and with the two lead characters uninteresting, unbelievable and fairly disagreeable, it's hard to care about their fate.

It's curious how talented actors and their teams couldn't discern the screenplay's shortcomings before they started shooting this lackluster project. The cinematography is passable, but editing, direction, acting and everything else reflect the material's flaws.

'Bird' has similarities to Andrea Arnold's earlier film 'Fishtank' where an alienated teen put herself in serious danger while trying to escape loneliness and domestic dysfunction. In this new work Arnold focuses on pre-teen Bailey who lives in a squalid squat with her father and an older brother. Her dad Bug is planning to marry his kooky new girlfriend, while her troubled mother lives nearby in even more chaotic conditions with a clutter of Bailey's younger siblings, a long-suffering pup called Dave and a violently abusive boyfriend.

None of the adults in her universe seem capable of providing much guidance, leaving Bailey to chart her own course. Following a row with Bug, Bailey shadows a gang of street kids engaged in some random criminality. After evading the police, sleeping in a field and being awakened by a horse, she encounters a kilted stranger called Bird. This eccentric itinerant had been born in the area, raised elsewhere and is trying to find a father he can scarcely remember. After some hesitation, Bailey decides to help him.

Nykiya Adams delivers a courageous and convincing performance in the lead role as Bailey's pursuit of Bird's quest mingles with other digressions, distractions and sub-plots. Her apparently aimless wanderings eventually arrive at a revelatory moment which is depicted in a brief passage where the film briefly departs from gritty realism and enters the realm of the fantastic. Somehow Arnold pulls off this trick, transforming her urban drama into an intense and memorable fable.