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Reviews
Invincible (2022)
An astonishing short film
A great, emotional story and fantastic performances. Director Vincent René-Lortie clearly is a name to watch as is the young star Léokim Beaumier-Lépine who gives a note-perfect natural performance as Marc-Antoine as his life unravels.
The story - and it's in the bio so it can't be a spoiler - sees us follow Marc-Antione in the last 48 hours of his life as he is taken back to the juvenile detention facility where he is being held after a blissful weekend of home leave.
I hear this is being put forward for the 'live-action short' Oscar. That's perfectly well-deserved and it will take something great to beat it.
It's a truly exceptional short film and a credit to everyone involved in making it. Go and find where it's showing and give it 30 minutes of your life.
Berdreymi (2022)
Mesmerising performances from one of the great young casts
A captivating, often brutal dip into the lives of four 14-year-old boys in roughly 2000-era Iceland. Addi, the one with a conscience, takes badly bullied Balli into his group of friends after feeling a twinge of compassion at seeing him being mistreated. The acting from the four first-time protagonists is exceptional. Award-worthy. I can easily see them being named joint best actors at festivals (I saw it twice in Berlin).
Áskell Einar Pálmason as Balli delivers an understated masterclass in nervous glances, twitches and despair. It's all the more impressive to see how, as the character eases into life with his first friends, his body language changes, almost imperceptibly.
Birgir Dagur Bjarkason may well take the plaudits with his turn as Addi, he carries the film on his young shoulders and doesn't put a foot wrong, whether joining in the violence or experiencing the dreamlike (often nightmarish) visions that give the film its Icelandic name.
Snorri Rafn Frímannsson has less to do as Siggi than the others but has charisma and backs the others up as his character does on screen.
But for me it is Viktor Benóný Benediktsson, as Konni, who delivers the star turn. A thug known as The Animal, his Konni is able to deliver the aggression needed to make his character believable, punching and swinging wildly through the film in an often terrifying manner. But one by one the layers are stripped away to reveal - not that he would admit it - the scared boy trapped in the young man's body. Such a broad performance would test actors twice his age but he aces it. They all do.
A note on the fight scenes, which through a combination of beautiful camera work and expert, almost balletic choreography come across as some of the most realistic I can remember. This isn't filmic violence, these are kids kicking lumps out of each other. Harsh, cold, real, shocking.
One criticism comes in the pacing at the end and an inclusion of possibly too many story strands that don't really have chance to justify their place in the final film. It feels a bit like a 2h30 film that a producer has demanded becomes 2hrs. If that's the case I hope a director's cut will follow - I would gladly spend all day in the company of the fascinating characters that director Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson has so expertly and lovingly brought to the screen.
O Último Banho (2020)
A soapy drama that rises above expectations
A boy who needs a mother is paired with a woman who needs to be loved, and the rest is waiting to see if the rest will be what you fear it might be.
Director David Bonneville builds the tension - erotic tension, so far as it can be when one protagonist is 14 - throughout his solid debut feature as the main characters take a full-frontal approach to scenes in the bathroom and beyond that represent the cleansing of their souls as well as bodies.
Other critics have said the themes have been worked before, and they have, but if this is a retread it is a well-worked and beautifully shot one that is worth plunging into the Douro Valley for 95 minutes to experience again.
The woman is the boy's aunt, a nun, forced to take the boy in when his guardian (her father) dies. The boy, abandoned by his own mother, has been left emotionally stunted by his upbringing. As fate forces to two together, the viewer watches awkwardly on as boundaries blur. It seems neither has the experience to know when something is no longer a good idea. Or is it really naivety that allows both to let situations develop to see what may entail?
One criticism is the film appears cut down to size, as if there's a two-hour version that would make a bit more sense. As it is, the man-boy is naked in the bath being scrubbed by his aunt without much more than a shrug. It sometimes feels like a few pages of the script were lost to brevity.
Bonneville praises lead actress Anabela Moreira for investing her body and soul into the part - art-flick code for she gets her kit off - and newcomer Martim Canavarro also deserves praise for his brave performance (my codewords this time). Given his physical maturity it's easy to overlook the fact he was 13 years old when filming began, yet he pulls off the mix of vulnerable child and ready-for-the world youth whose body could tempt a grown woman with aplomb. (It is little wonder he has become a Calvin Klein model since the film was shot in 2018; this is a boy we will see more of.)
Overall, a somewhat slight but ultimately pleasing effort. A soapy opera that rises above the mundane.
Piel rota (2014)
A chilling glimpse into what we are capable of
Not an easy movie to find - it's never had a DVD release - but worth making the effort to track it down on the festival circuit or on one of its rare showings on cable TV in Mexico.
Prolific Mexican director Leopoldo Laborde returns to the well-trodden path of teenage dysfunction for this sex-filled and occasionally gory psychological thriller.
Diego and Karina are 16-year-old ex-lovers who rekindle their relationship in a no-holds-barred manner.
But hovering on the periphery of this conscious recoupling is Karina's mother, who is eager not to miss out on young Diego's vigour herself.
The first part of the film charts Diego's affairs in unflinching detail, but rather than mere titilation, you realise by the end that it is setting the scene for Diego's breakdown. And a third woman begins to make appearances in Diego's arms; a mannequin, which he is also seen having sex with. Is it a dream? Or a nightmare?
It is always likely to end in tears and it does - but that is only the start of Diego's problems as the final 20 minutes of suffocating tension chart his mental decline as he tries desperately to play the hand he's been dealt. This section - not for the faint-hearted - explains why the film is often found in horror festivals.
Like many of Laborde's efforts, Piel Rota was made on a shoe-string budget but the director is well-versed in not overstretching himself, so it doesn't distract too much from the story he is telling. The actors in the most part are amateurs and while it shows, again, it doesn't jar too badly. The film weighs on the shoulders of Luis Fernando Schivy as Diego, and he bears it - and bares it - well.
(NOTE This review is of the version that airs on Mexican TV; an unrated version stretches another 90 seconds, and a tamer version with much of the nudity removed is sometimes featured on Laborde's YouTube account.)