Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.

It’s Valentine’s Day. For some reason, romance in movies has been inexorably tied to comedy. You’re in love? It must be a joke. Well, today I’m forsaking the romcoms and the soppy romances. I want to talk about some unusual movies about love, sex, and obsession. A Chilean movie about a divorced woman’s search for love, an American doc about a man’s search for proof, and German flick about a kid’s search for secrets.

Gloria

Dir: Sebastien Lelio

Gloria (Paulina Garcia) is an average, middle-aged divorcee in downtown Santiago. Her life is stale, worn-out. She lives alone in an apartment, with just a noisy neighbour and a hideous, hairless cat intruding on her privacy. Her home life is depressing, her office job is stultifying. And her kids are adults now. But she’s not willing to give up. She’s still full of energy – she wants to enjoy life, sing songs, fall in love, be in a one-on-one relationship. And, well, she wants to get laid.

So she starts hanging out in discos that play seventies music. (The people there all look like they went to this club back when those songs were new.) She goes there to pick up men – much older men. Ideally, she wants a man who is honest, who respects and desires her.

After some misfires, she falls for Rodolfo, a very conservative, rich, elderly man. He takes her for a drive to show her his wealth, his power. At first their relationship seems solid… but can she trust him? He interrupts their lunches with extended calls on his cel. And he’ll drop everything to run home whenever his daughters say they need him (He’s divorced – he says — but he’s still responsible for his girls.)

She wants him to meet her family and friends. Will he commit? And will he fit in with her lifestyle? (Gloria’s a free-thinking Chilean, Rodolfo’s roots are with Pinochet’s right-wing military.)

Although this movie is told in an everyday manner, this is a fantastic, bittersweet look at one woman’s life. The actress, Paulina Garcia, completely embodies and embraces Gloria – flaws and all. She convey’s what she’s thinking; not through words, but in her eyes. The whole movie is told from her point of view, and she exposes everything – body and soul —  for the camera. This is a fantastic movie, and Garcia’s performance is flawless and unforgettable.

Tim’s Vermeer

A Penn and Teller film; directed by Teller, narrated by Penn.

Tim Jenison is a tremendously successful Texan inventor of devices gadgets and software. Somehow, he became fascinated by the paintings of Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.  How could they be so perfectly lit, so realistically focused, so uncannily lifelike? He embarks on a mission – an obsession really – to discover the mechanical basis behind Vermeer’s art. He is convinced that Vermeer used a camera obscura – a dark room that projects inverted light images against a wall – long before photography and electric light was discovered. To his theory he adds the element of dentist’s mirrors, little discs on sticks.

Next he sets out to prove it – by rebuilding an exact replica of all the things portrayed in one of Vermeer’s paintings! Why? He recreates the furniture, the windows, the musical instruments, everything… then sets up his camera obscura and dentist mirrors and begins to paint. Can he do it? Told by the team of magic debunkers Penn and Teller, this is a strange but fascinating story of a rich man who has the time and money to pursue his obsession. The strangest thing about his painting is the complete and total absence of any artistic feeling or aesthetic sense.

For No Eyes Only

Wri/Dir:  Tali Barde

This is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. In that movie, Jimmy Stewart is stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg but – through his apartment’s rear window he can see into the windows of the apartment behind him. And he thinks he witnesses a crime.

In this movie, Sam (Benedict Sieverding) is a high school student in Germany. He’s the star field hockey player but has a broken leg. He was mowed down by the new kid, a tall and intense guy named Aaron (directorTali Barde). Sam is sure Aaron is up to no good. With too much time at home, Sam discovers a hacking system that allows him access to his classmates’ computer cameras – his personal rear window. This gives him an inside view of all his friends’ bedrooms – everything they don’t want anyone else to see. Including Livia (Luisa Gross), his secret crush.

Luisa is mature confident and sophisticated, while Sam loses all his bravado and stumbles when talking to her. She takes the lead and invites herself to his home for some “computer lessons”. She’s figured out Sam’s been watching.

At first she’s angry, but, soon she’s joining in on his intramural spy-project. That’s when they notice something strange is going on with Aaron. Where’s his dad? Why does he hide a kitchen knife in his bedroom? What’s he carrying to the basement? Is there really a crime? Or is it just their overactive imaginations?

It’s a fun movie but with an after-school-special feel to it – it’s a little too cute for a thriller. But if you consider it was made for just a fistful of Euros (less than 4000) by a recent college grad… Incredible! Though made in 2012, with Snowden’s recent revelations about NSA spying on ordinary people, this film is even more relevant today.

Gloria opens today in Toronto and Tim’s Vermeer opens next week: check your local listings. For No Eyes Only is playing this weekend at the TIFF Next Wave festival. Go to tiff.net/. Also opening today is the fun Paraguayan thriller 7 Boxes, and the amazing courtroom documentary Pussy Riot: a Punk Prayer about the Moscow trial of Russian activists/musicians Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com