neilahunter
Joined Aug 2004
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neilahunter's rating
Terrific performances, and a directing style that throws you into the action, and trusts the viewer to find their way in a strikingly off-centre story world, make this a pretty gripping film. It's a world where adults, authority (and boys) seem to be in short supply; girls rule.
In the end, I enjoyed it more than I believed it, and the story became a little bogged down in secondary, and slightly mystifying characters. But whether the director's channelling Andrea Arnold or Aki Kaurismaki, it's a very promising debut.
The international movie database is telling me I need to write another five words to be able to submit this review.
In the end, I enjoyed it more than I believed it, and the story became a little bogged down in secondary, and slightly mystifying characters. But whether the director's channelling Andrea Arnold or Aki Kaurismaki, it's a very promising debut.
The international movie database is telling me I need to write another five words to be able to submit this review.
The peculiar vitriol of some posts suggests that if you want to make films where it appears the film-maker is doing nothing, some people are going to think that the film-maker is doing nothing. Reichardt seems to have been on a journey to eliminate the contrivances of plot in search of a new way of showing us the world. For myself, I find her recent films strangely compelling - I say strangely, because they compel in a manner that is different from the standard strategies used by film-makers to compel us.
Maybe not for everyone, but Reichardt is offering the friendly viewer the freedom to navigate their own way around this world - a world depicted with great subtlety and delicacy. Her direction may be extraordinarily unemphatic; but when every performance is so pitch perfect, so detailed, so precise, so nuanced, you may be sure the director is doing something.
Maybe not for everyone, but Reichardt is offering the friendly viewer the freedom to navigate their own way around this world - a world depicted with great subtlety and delicacy. Her direction may be extraordinarily unemphatic; but when every performance is so pitch perfect, so detailed, so precise, so nuanced, you may be sure the director is doing something.
The film initially grabs you with its air of mystery, all the things it hasn't told you about what's happened in the past. And then it sucks you into a story in the present, a criminal education, and a wonderfully ambiguous relationship between the boy and his new employer. But what does the boy really make of it all?
It's fast moving, engaging, often surprising, but never opaque. What holds you, apart from a magnetic central performance, is the style: every shot seems to containing meaning, and edited to the very bare bones.
The director made an earlier film, From Afar, that was also powerfully cinematic; this is its equal.
It's fast moving, engaging, often surprising, but never opaque. What holds you, apart from a magnetic central performance, is the style: every shot seems to containing meaning, and edited to the very bare bones.
The director made an earlier film, From Afar, that was also powerfully cinematic; this is its equal.