Indie Focus: Exploring women’s inner lives in ‘Things to Come,’ ‘Jackie’ and ‘Always Shine’
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
It’s all happening. Year-end prestige titles are now in full effect, as are nominations and awards from all sorts of awards-giving groups. It’s an exciting time, particularly when the crop of awards-season favorites are films as great as “Moonlight,” “Manchester by the Sea” and the rest of this year’s strong field of contenders.
There are a lot of great screenings and Q&As coming up. We’ll have events for “Afterimage,” “My Life as a Zucchini,” and “Land of Mine” over the next week or so. On the 12th, there will be a screening of “The Neon Demon” — and this is a movie to see big and loud in a theater — with a Q&A after with director Nicolas Winding Refn and composer Cliff Martinez. For more information, check in with events.latimes.com.
“Things to Come”
Filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve has long been a favorite around here. She makes movies that have a wispy off-handedness, seeming to envelope around a viewer like smoke. And she has never before worked with a performer quite like Isabelle Huppert, which gives her new film “Things to Come” a newfound emotional clarity. Huppert’s performance here, as a woman who finds her comfortably settled-in life upended, is complementary to her recent role in “Elle,” as taken together the two turns show the real breadth of what she is capable of as an actress.
In his review for The Times, Kenneth Turan wrote of the collaboration between Hansen-Løve and Huppert that “their strong joint commitment to emotional truth above all else has produced the quietly wonderful ‘Things to Come,’ a film whose subtle satisfactions very much sneak up on you. … A life is unfolding here, under our eyes, and we never lose sight of how special that is.”
In his review for the New York Times, A.O. Scott posits “if you need distraction from all the other arguments going on right now. Isabelle Huppert: great actress or world’s greatest actress? Once that is settled (in favor of the second option, of course), we can turn to more advanced Huppertiana. Is she the queen of sang-froid or the avatar of extremity? Does she freeze the screen or burn it down? Does she inspire pity or terror?”
At the Guardian, Mark Kermode wrote “Despite her reputation for going the extra mile, however, Huppert’s true talent is for understatement, conveying complex conflict through restrained physical gesture, a quality too often misdescribed as ‘cool’ … Huppert delivers a note-perfect warm and wry performance as a philosophy teacher whose life is defined by ideas rather than circumstance, a woman of substance — intellectual, emotional, financial — who faces unexpected constraints and freedoms when the assumed certainties of her domestic life unravel.”
For the New York Times Magazine, Rachel Donadio has an enviably long profile on Huppert that if for nothing else is worthwhile for the incredible series of photos of Huppert through the years.
“I am an actress from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes,” Huppert says in the article. “I know exactly what it means to suffer for a character, to hate a character, to love a character. Although as an actress it’s completely different. You don’t suffer the same way the spectator suffers. When you suffer as an actress, you don’t suffer, you have pleasure.”
“Jackie”
Directed by Pablo Larraín from a script by Noah Oppenheim and with a stunning performance by Natalie Portman, “Jackie” is a close-up on Jackie Kennedy in the period just after the assassination of her husband in 1963, with much of the action revolving around the planning of his funeral. At once at a cerebral remove and immersively emotional, the film is a portrait of grief and trauma while also acknowledging how the preliminary strokes of history get written.
In his review for The Times, Kenneth Turan called Portman “superb” and “utterly convincing” before adding “her Jacqueline Kennedy, half resolute warrior, half frightened wreck, is a completely believable study in agony, sophistication and steely perseverance.” He added, “Finally, however, it is the powerful collaboration of star Portman and director Larraín, their determination to make this story their own, that has made all the difference.”
The Times’ Amy Kaufman spoke to Portman about the role. “It’s kind of asking for trouble to play someone so well known,” the actress explained. “I felt like it was dangerous territory unless I was creatively in the right hands.”
In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis noted “Intensely affecting and insistently protean, the film ‘Jackie’ is a reminder that for a time she was bigger than any star, bigger than Marilyn or Liz. She was the Widow — an embodiment of grief, symbol of strength, tower of dignity and, crucially, architect of brilliant political theater. … The assassination was a national and personal tragedy, one which she answered with a myth which was an act of radical will and sovereignty. She married John F. Kennedy; she also helped invent him.”
For the Tribune News Service, Katie Walsh wrote “Portman is simply magnetic in the role, but it’s a performance that works when in concert with all the other elements of the filmmaking — cinematography, production design, costume design, score, supporting performances. It’s entirely of a piece; a perfect film because all of the details are perfect together. But far greater than any meticulously artful style is the beating heart of the woman who was known simply as ‘Jackie.’”
“Always Shine”
“Always Shine” is an unnerving portrait of female friendship, professional jealousy and the confusing slippage that can happen when someone loses sight of who they really are. The film is the story of two young actresses, one sort of successful and the other definitely less so, who take a weekend away together. The film also becomes a gripping examination of the roles women are asked to play in their everyday lives, and the pressures that constant state of performance creates. The film is directed by Sophia Takal, whose previous feature was the equally psychologically complex “Green,” and her latest has a dangerous, out-of-control feeling that Takal keeps skillfully on-track while getting deeply committed performances from actresses Mackenzie Davis and Caitlin Fitzgerald.
For The Times, Sheri Linden noted that the film “blends art-house flourishes with such horror conventions” while also noting that “performance and reality bleed into each other, finally spiraling out of control.”
At the New York Times, Glenn Kenny wrote that the film “is a tense thriller about failed female alliances — much of the time it seems poised to become a remake of ‘Persona,’ as made by the horror director Alexandre Aja. But it’s not that, or rather, it’s not just that. … ‘Always Shine’ is a deft, assured movie with a sly self-reflexive undercurrent containing commentary on sexism and self-idealization that’s provocative, and sometimes disturbing.”
Takal appeared on the MTV podcast “Lady Problems” to talk about the film.
I interviewed Takal, Davis and screenwriter Lawrence Michael Levine for a story that I’ll be publishing soon. They’re three very sharp people who are well aware of the deeper ideas their movie is engaging with and are particularly adept at talking about them. It’s more rare than you’d think.
Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.
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