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Tigertail (2020)
Tigertail
Westernization of Asian cinema aside, the Tigertail plot, which is inspired by the personal story of its director Alan Yang, travels through three layers of Pin-Jui's life (Tzi Ma, Hong-Chi Lee and Zhi-Hao Yang) through flashbacks little linear about the personality of a desolate child, a reticent youth and a resigned adult.
The script, which is very much based on the poet Chorão's maxim "every choice, a renunciation, this is life", builds the power of its protagonist through his relationships with the most important women in his history: his mother, his great jovial love , his fake wife and his firstborn.
As time goes by, the irreconcilable versions of Pin-Jui are revealed as the young Taiwanese's interest in living the American Dream becomes more evident. When he decides to face his greatest ambition in a pragmatic way, he gives up his greatest passion, Yuan (Yo-Hsing Fang), and agrees to marry his boss's daughter, Zhenzhen (Kunjue Li), in exchange for the opportunity to moving to the United States.
Between the Taiwanese desolation and the collapse of the not-so-meritocratic American dream, Tigertail is the distressing portrait of a man who was never able to cross his own fortunes and break the barriers of his emotional inconsistency, being exhausted of carrying the weight of his own cross. As he taunts in a grocery store while his pregnant wife reaches the inevitable limit of an abandonment routine, Ping Jui becomes a demanding and empathetic husband, fading the course of his family relationships to failure.
With the older protagonist, divorced and introspective, the film transports us to a predictable attempt of approximation between father and daughter, preparing an atmosphere of nebulosity under the personality of the adult Angela. When this process begins, director of photography, Nigel Bluck, is splendid in connecting the idealism of Ping Jui's memories with his current nature adept at self-sabotage. The greatest asset of the film is precisely the melancholy natural planes and scenes performed by the excellent Tzi Ma, alone, transmitting his character's inner struggle through powerful body language.
If it is necessary to synthesize the qualities of Tigertail in one scene, there is no way to be different. The composition frame by frame in the last moments of the short work, ends in a man eternally linked to his past, but who manages to give a respite to his own imperfections. Faced with what is gone. Beside what you have left.
Maska (2020)
Maska
With the emergence of quarantine in our daily lives, the Indian Maska, by director Niraaj Udhwani, appears as a full plate for fans of medium films, but who smile a little and draw very subtle parallels between the most varied relationships of affection and dreams and longings of a young protagonist.
Set in Mumbai, the script tells the story of a Parsi family, an ethnic-religious group of Iranian origin, responsible for the administration of a traditional coffee shop that over the past ninety-nine years has become the greatest legacy of that immigrant family. Maska takes the title of the slice of buttered bread served at the establishment and seen as the flagship in practically every breakfast and afternoon snack served to his loyal audience.
Diana (Manisha Koirala) runs the cafe, the ultimate symbol of her family for generations, and hopes that her 19-year-old son Rumi (Prit Kamani) will take over the business. She just didn't expect her firstborn to inexplicably win a local beauty contest, creating other expectations about her near future. From that moment on, Rumi enrolls in theater courses and instantly falls in love with one of her groupmates, Mallika (Nikta Dutta).
Although the evolution of the script gives us obvious reasons why the protagonist will not reach the long-awaited stardom, encouraged by his girlfriend and passionate about the possibility of becoming a successful actor, Rumi faces a film producer who offers him the main role of his next production if he raised a large amount of money to finance the film. Behold, Rustom Cafe would start taking risks.
Willing to quit his family business in order to pursue his biggest personal dream, Rumi ends up meeting Persis (Shirley Setia), a young writer who is working on a book about the most diverse life stories portrayed on the tables of cafe in Mumbai's top Iranian restaurants. It is evident that cupid would shoot at the hearts of the two lovebirds while Persis tried to make the boy understand that the connection between happy memories and places that stand the test of time is stronger than he imagines.
Maska tells that kind of story that doesn't need a spoiler alert. Virtually all the elements have been delivered to us in other films of the same style and there is not much to run for. The dynamic looks more like a margarine advertisement spanning almost two hours, with the main message broken down into Times New Roman font 6 on the back of the packaging.
There is absolutely nothing new. Although Bollywood, a name that arises through the fusion of Bombay (formerly Mumbai) and Hollywood, is not attractive for all tastes, in the romantic comedy category we can consider that Maska fulfills the goal and reaches a median note, after all, there is taste for everything.
Medena zemja (2019)
Honeyland
I have heard on some of these Discovery Channel's programs that one day like bees cease to exist, humanity collapses. In this production that is too poetic for documentary and too raw for fiction, we follow a harmonious relationship between Hatidze beekeeping and nature.
A protagonist, whose dedication to the elderly mother is only rivaled with the way he treats his apiary, eats as little as possible and has the "luxury" represented by hair dye, until she has a routine shaken by the arrival of a made family.
Although it is not entirely clear if the undesirable neighbors have a problem in a malicious way, a family will decisively interfere in the context in which a character is inserted, creating contours of competition between a means of sustainability and unrestrained development.
As there are no testimonials for the camera, off-screen narrations or archival images, the documentary creates its own identity through a perfect montage and wonderful photography. It was easy to perceive the echoes of the work in the world today.
"Take half, leave half."
The Favourite (2018)
Favourite
Complex and very intriguing script.
Extremely powerful performances.
Linear instrumental soundtrack.
Sensational framework.
Magnificent photography.
Great dialogues.
So let's jump to the possible defect of the clearest film of all, the "cut-off" ending for inattentive looks:
I imagine that the last scene may have seemed brooding to some. However, the idea seemed to me to be exactly that of generating a latent nuisance but well contextualized. The winner who, when he realizes, is the loser. Abigail was just another rabbit in the queen's life. Sarah lost what most earned her lifelong efforts, power, but made it clear that Abigail wouldn't exactly be a winner either. Queen Anne, always imprisoned by her own ghosts, ends up doomed in the shadow of her own madness. The film is about the verb "to lose".
It remains to be made clear that the last scene is one of the best done rape scenes in the history of cinema. Their empty faces. Of the queen who, in theory, should feel the pleasure, and stares melancholy at the horizon. Of Abigail who realizes that what she had fought for could be, in short, her prison. Rabbits gently enter a background that, however, does not remove the features of both.