aliaveryonly-17405 Reviews

The Lost Daughter (2021)

Unnerving, cloying and revealing

[8/10 · 14 February 2022]

It's so rare to find a film that explores what it means to be 'an unnatural mother', as Lada calls herself towards the end of the film.

Showing in tense detail the basic ambivalence of two mothers across time, Lada and Nina, this painful choice of living for others and wanting to follow your own authenticity is explored through narrative as well as great cinematography - the mothers' bodies and time becoming endlessly demanded of/intruded upon by their children.

I thought adult Lada was excellent - and the scenes of her standing ground/rage at intrusion and disruption through adult interruptions laid an interesting overlay to the parental wounds that came first.

The Forty-Year-Old Version (2020)

Charming

[8/10 · 18 February 2021]

This has got a lovely pace, beautifully shot, and keeps on keeping things real - with the delight and courage and struggle and beauty that real life can have. Radha is charming and funny as well as raw, and her relationships - from those on the street corner, old friends and very new ones, the teenagers she works with each week - too.