December 27, 2021 2:00 pm
After a dazed 2020 we thought we could put our lives back in order. A few pieces, at least for a while, have returned to their place but, especially in these days, the road still seems long and uphill. Nothing wrong with seeking a little comfort in front of large and small screens.
Pieces of a woman
The year begins with a bang. The first sequence of Kornél Mundruczó’s film is devastating. A half hour that takes everything away from you. Then begins the slow reconstruction of Martha (Vanessa Kirby, Volpi Cup in Venice), a woman who faces pain, drowns in it and almost uses it to start living again.
News from the world
In Paul Greengrass’ film, Captain Kidd (Tom Hanks) and little Helena (Helena Zengel) are lost in the chaos of the wild west. With his news reports pitted to an audience of cowboys, the captain has an excuse not to stay home and get sad. Helena is an orphan of German descent raised by the Kiowa people and never had a home. Together they find their place. And we remember that information is an important thing.
Another round
Suffocated by US movies and series, we are now used to thinking that the only way to talk about alcohol is in front of an audience of alcoholics forced to make public amends to free themselves from their demons. Thomas Vinterberg takes us back to Europe with a Nordic comedy, light but not too much, and with Mads Mikkelsen dancing for us.
Cruelties
Punk and Disney have nothing in common. But Emma Stone’s Westwoodian Cruella almost manages to change our minds. Next to her, an Emma Thompson as sharp as a blade, and a nice and well-matched “family” of villains. Here is a film that we would have gladly seen in the hall.
Titanium
Nothing seems comforting in Julia Ducornau’s horror (Palme d’Or at Cannes) about a serial killer performer (Agathe Rouselle) getting pregnant with a Cadillac. A captain (still a captain, firefighters this time, played by Vincent Lindon) offers her an unexpected and shaky refuge. Their unlikely bond leads us to the most unlikely happy ending ever before. As if to say that there is hope for all of us.
France
One of the most beautiful characters of 2021 is France de Meurs, played by Léa Seydoux, in the film by Bruno Dumont. France is a successful television reporter, capable of holding the public in hand and making fun of the powerful, but lost, helpless and out of focus when her frailties are exposed. There is no morality, there is no teaching, there is no ransom. There is life, asymmetrical, uncertain, inexorable.
Dune
Denis Villeneuve’s film has various merits. Among these the merit of reconciling myself, after many months, with cinemas, and above all of reconciling myself after several decades with the science fiction “of the past”, slower, at times almost boring. Ah, yes, then Dune it’s so elegant …
The event. Anne’s choice
Audrey Diwan’s film, which won the Golden Lion in Venice, is about a student (Anamaria Vartolomei) who decides to have an abortion in early 1960s France, where abortion was still illegal: she wants to have children, she says, but not at the cost of living. In front of her she has a future, for which she is ready to challenge even the law. Leaving aside the discourse on the progress of civilization that are called into question, in the difficult choice made by Anne I see a generation, that of my mother, who believed in the world and in the next, more than in the dogmas imposed by fear.
Shiva baby
Emma Seligman’s, born in Toronto in 1996, is a wonderful little comedy about a girl of today surrounded by the world of adults. It is the film that I want to take as a reference point to understand how young people think. I trust Seligman, 26, much more than Joachim Trier, 47, the author of Worst person in the world, in which Trier tells about a thirty-year-old but ends up using her as a mirror where characters much older than her are reflected.
Compartment 6
Juho Kuosmanen tells the journey of Laura (Seidi Haaria), an abandoned and disheartened Finnish student, on a train that crosses the north of Russia. He shares the compartment with Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov), a drunk and not very reassuring young miner. Gradually, one stage after another, the differences between the two become more and more nuanced. Thus, with great sensitivity, the Finnish director shows us that comfort can arise where we least expect it, even above the Arctic circle.
And the Italian films? From 2021 I want to take three things with me: a balloon that rolls down into a cave in Hole by Michelangelo Frammartino, the family photos of Eduardo Scarpetta at the end of Here I laugh by Mario Martone, the voice of Marco Bellocchio who leafs through his album of memories in Marx can wait.
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