Crafty Women. Films reviewed: Hevn, Love & Friendship, The Intervention
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
In movies, tricksters or con artists are usually played by men. But this week I’m going to talk about movies where women are the sneaky ones. There’s a scheming widow in England’s stately mansions, a mysterious visitor to Norway’s wild west… and a couples’ reunion in the deep south.
Love & Friendship
Dir: Whit Stillman, Based on the novella Lady Susan by Jane Austen
Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale) is a ravishing woman in 19th Century England. She has beautiful auburn curls and a plunging neckline. She’s also very intelligent – she could charm the cufflinks off a shirtsleeve. Men are like putty in her hands. She’s also morally lax. Marriage is a contract for the hoi polloi – for the priveged it should be thought of as a stepping stone. Lady Susan loves her landed gentry lifestyle, but after the death of her husband Vernon, she has no land, no home… and no income. Luckily she still has 
ample friends and in-laws with money to burn. But when word of her extramarital dalliances reaches the wife of her host, she is forced to flee and come up with a new plan. She sends her grieving daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark) off to boarding school and starts the gears aturning.
In addition to her secret bedmate, Lady Susan is being wooed by two men. One is Sir James (Tom Bennett), a rich landowner who smiles a lot and is dumb as a post. The other is young and handsome Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel) in whose home 
she is now a guest. He has been warned about her wily ways and is initially resistant to her friendship. But he learns to love her witty repartee and complex verbal jousting. Though she never says so, Lady Susan hopes to marry him and secure her — and her daughter’s — financial status. But her plans start to crumble.
Frederica is kicked out of boarding school because Lady Susan never paid tuition. Lady Lucy Manwaring suspects adultery involving her husband and tries to expose it. And her best friend 
Alicia (Chloe Sevigny) can help her with her schemes in London but only if her much older husband (Stephen Fry) is kept out of the loop. Can Lady Susan win her man, restore her status, keep her secret lover and get the money she wants and needs?
Love & Friendship is a Jane Austen novel re-imagined as a wonderfully witty screwball comedy. Director Whit Stillman took the unfinished story and added his own touches. He introduces each character – and there are many — with their names and brief descriptions appearing on the screen. The acting is good across the board, the costumes, music and settings (shot near Dublin) are all delightful. I liked this one a lot.
Hevn
Dir: Kjersti Steinsbø
Andrea (Siren Jørgensen) is a soft-spoken travel writer with a short boyish haircut. She arrives in a small town in western Norway in the middle of the night, unannounced. Why is she there? She works for a famous travel magazine and wants to interview Morten (Frode Winther) the local hotelier. So the scruffy bartender, Bimbo (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) promises to introduce her to him in the morning.
This is a small town where everyone knows everyone else. And it’s a beauty. Rows of wooden houses line one side of a
pristine green fjord, and stark mountains dominate the other side. And Morten’s white hotel overlooks it all.
The next day the blond and athletic Morten welcomes Andrea and offers her a suite in the empty hotel. And his wife Nina, noticing Andrea came without a suitcase, offers her 
open access to all her clothes.
Andrea is clearly uncomfortable with all the nice things being offered. So uncomfortable that she runs to the bathroom to puke. She hasn’t told them why she’s really there. She’s not a travel writer, her real name is Rebekka, and she’s there to get revenge… through entrapment.
She visited the town with her much younger sister when she was just a teenager. And Morten did something then that led to her sister’s suicide. She wants him to suffer for what he 
did… but did he actually do it? Is he still assaulting young women? And will she be discovered before she carries out her goal?
The movie is called Hevn (means revenge in Norwegian) but this is no Valhalla; its a festering pit of deceit and treachery. ‘s a not-bad psychological thriller. The Nordic scenery is breathtaking and the cast is attractive, but the story is not that gripping. We can understand Andrea’s struggle and feel her passion and fear, but we never learn anything about her backstory. It’s as if she lives only for revenge for her sister’s suicide. The film wavers between Big Issue and psychological thriller, without ever deciding which one it wants to be. This movie is OK, but not great.
The Intervention
Dir: Clea DuVall
Four couples, old friends all, are having a reunion. They meet up in a huge house amidst the Spanish moss of a Carolina plantation. It’s a surprise party of sorts. The surprise is they’re there not to celebrate but to break up a marriage. Ruby and Peter (Cobie Smulders and Vincent Piazza) have careers and kids. But their friends all think it’s a sham – they don’t love each other anymore so why are they still together. So Jessie (Ruby’s sister) and Annie another friend plan to hold a secret intervention to tell that couple to face the music. But look who’s talking! Annie (Melanie Lynskey) is a heavy drinker and refuses to commit to her fiancé. Jessie (Clea DuVall) is in a longterm relationship with her girlfriend but they have yet to move intogether, still don’t live together. And the newly single Jack arrives with another surprise: Lola (Alia Shawkat), a 22 year old loose cannon he picked up at a music festival. Lola is openly bisexual, and ready to jump into bed with anyone who strikes her fancy. Will the intervention succeed or fail? And will any of the couples survive this fraught-filled get-together?
The Intervention is a light and likeable relationship dramedy. By light I mean there’s nothing remarkable about the story. It succeeds on the strength of the excellent comic acting of three women: DuVall, Shawkatt and most of all Lynskey.
Hevn and Love & Friendship both open today: check your local listings. The Intervention — which will be released later this summer — is premiering at Toronto’s Inside-Out LGBT film fest. The festival is on now and for the next 10 days. Go to: insideout.ca for showtimes.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks to burlesque stars Judith Stein and Camille 2000 and director Rama Rau about The League of Exotique Dancers
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
In the days before pole dancing and pornhub, ecdysiasts plied their trade in show palaces across North America. These women performed their acts on stage with live music, costumes, and comedians. It was known as burlesque and 
produced stars of its own, known for their songs, dances and looks. Burlesque reached its heyday in the 1950s and 60s before taking its last bows.
Now the original dancers are performing together again at a special Las Vegas show honoring inductees into the Burlesque Hall of Fame. A veritable League of Exotic Dancers.
The League of Exotique Dancers is also the name of a new documentary that had its world premier at Hot Docs. It’s directed by award-winning Toronto-based filmmaker Rama Rau and features the original burlesque stars. I spoke with Rama Rau and burlesque artists Canadian Grand Beaver Judith Stein and Camille 2000.
They told me about the glamour and costumes of burlesque, Judith and Camille’s early days, burlesque vs neo-burlesque, burlesque and Bollywood, why strip bars pushed burlesque out of the picture… and more!
The League of Exotique Dancers opens today at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto.
War and Peace. Movies reviewed: À la vie, Dheepan
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
The War and Peace Report is Democracy Now’s morning news show – it’s on the radio right after this one. Be sure to stay tuned because today
host Amy Goodman is broadcasting from Toronto. So my theme this week is war and peace, and I’m looking at two new dramas from France. There are three war survivors who carry their emotional baggage to the beach, and three other war survivors who arrive with minimal baggage at a crime-filled housing complex.
À la vie
Dir: Jean-Jacques Zilbermann
It’s the early 1960s in Calais, France. Hélène and Lili are good friends meeting up to spend three days relaxing on the beach in Berck in northern France. Hélène (Julie Depardieu) is a wispy, ginger- haired woman, always loving and giving. She works as a men’s tailor in Paris. Lili (Johanna ter Steege) arrives by bus from Amsterdam, a smartly-dressed modern woman with blonde hair. And she brings a surprise: their third friend, the voluptuous but petulant Rose (Suzanne Clément). She flew in all the way from Montreal for this get-together. And what is it that connects these three woman and why haven’t they seen each other since 1945?
They’ve been separated because they were all prisoners at Auschwitz. They survived 
together thanks to Lili getting them work in the kitchen. But in the death march at the end of the war they were separated, and thought the youngest one, Rose, died there. Now the three of them are together again, and all three married other survivors. Lili is divorced, Rose has a troubled marriage in Quebec, and Helene, though she loves her husband, Henri, lives a sexless life. She’s still a virgin since her husband suffered horrible mutilation in the camps.
They are staying at a beachside apartment courtesy of Raymond, a handsome communist 
from the French Resistance during the war. He still has a thing for the married Hélène. Haunted by their past the three friends save every scrap of food and reuse teabags over and over. They catch up on their missing history as they play in the waves. The beach is filled with girls in bikinis and boys in trunks, Club Mickey, and everyone dancing the twist. Especially a young animateur, a camp counsellor on the beach named Pierre. He likes Hélène, and he’ll kiss her if she lets him. Will Helene be faithful to her husband, forge a relationship with a rich communist or a try a fling with the Club Mickey counsellor?
A La Vie is a light friendship drama set against a heavy topic – Holocaust survivors. Aside from the period nostalgia – beach life in 1960s France — the best thing about the movie is the three friends and the actors who play them so well. Julie Depardieu as hesitant Helene Gerard Depardieu’s daughter, Dutch actress ter Steege is excellent as Lili, and Suzanne Clement (as Rose) who’s featured in Xavier Dolan’s movies – she’s fantastic as Rose. A light movie, but well done.
Dheepan
Dir: Jacques Audiard
Dheepan and Yalini (Jesuthasan Antonythasan and Kalieaswari Srinivasan) are a young Tamil couple in France. They arrive in France with their cute daughter Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby) and are resettled in a public housing complex. They are refugees from the Sri Lankan civil war. At last they have escaped the horror of death and violence, and can live like a normal family in France. The thing is, they’re not actually a family at all. Dheepan is a former Tamil Tiger who needed to get out of Sri Lanka, fast. They put together a fake family, strangers from the refugee camp
that would match the description on his visa – a married couple with a young daughter. It worked, but what will their life be like in France?
Not great. Far from paradise, their lives are cold, dark and miserable. They soon discover their housing complex is a haven for Russian gangsters, and a hangout for sketchy teenage druggies. Dheepan works as a caretaker for the buildings and Yalini finds work as a caregiver for a dying old man. Their fake daughter is doing worst of all, with no support at home; her parents are at best indifferent to her problems, and at worst outright mean to her.
But they face even more trouble from the outside. Yalini’s patient is the father
of an especially violent gang leader, holed up in his apartment, facing attacks from rival gangs. She’s Hindu but wears a make-shift hijab to stop unwanted sexual advances. Dheepan, though he keeps his head low, gets involved in conflicts between the buildings. And Tamil Tigers based in France want him to return to the fold and act as a gun runner for them. With a major gang war on the horizon, and violence escalating, Dheepan is forced to return to his past role as a soldier and fight 
for his family’s lives.
Dheepan is a dramatic action/thriller with a good story, but it didn’t exactly grab me. It was interesting to watch, but I could only observe, not connect with the main characters. I was troubled that it portrays refugees as potential sleeper-cell terrorists. It’s directed by Audiard – who made two fantastic French movies, The Prophet and Rust and Bone — so maybe I set my bar especially high. Dheepan isn’t as good as those two, but it’s definitely still worth seeing.
Dheepan is playing now and À la vie opens today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
New Places. Films reviewed: Sunset Song, Neon Bull, A Bigger Splash
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Someone asked me recently what I like about movies. I gave the usual answers: story, emotions, acting, images, themes, novelty… but she said she likes the places movies can take you, countries you otherwise wouldn’t get to visit. So this week I’m looking at dramas that take you to new places. There are celebrities in the Mediterranean, cowboys in Brazil, and farmers in northeast Scotland a century ago.
Sunset Song
Dir: Terence Davies (based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon)
It’s the early 20th century in rural northeastern Scotland. Chris (Agyness Deyn) is happy and bright, a schoolgirl who lives on her family farm. She’s one with the land, but holds future ambitions of a career, maybe a schoolteacher. But her family life is less than nice. Her mother is depressed, her father (Peter Mullan) is a brute. She’s closest to her 
brother, Will, who hates their dad for good reason. Their father is quick with the whip and will bloody Will’s back for the slightest infraction, even a play on words using the name Jehovah. It’s a rough life.
And when Mum survives an incredibly painful childbirth – it’s twins — she loses it and the family falls apart. Will leaves for greener pastures, Mum’s out of the picture, Dad has a stroke. Chris has to run the farm basically by herself, plowing the fields and harvesting the grain. She marries for love to a kind and gentle man named Ewan (Kevin Guthrie). Their post-honeymoon life is idyllic until WWI. Then, suddenly, it’s loud sermons from the pulpit saying the Kaiser is
the antichrist and anyone who doesn’t join up to fight in the muddy trenches is both a coward and a traitor. He signs up. The next time she sees Ewan he’s been replaced by a horrible creature she doesn’t recognize.
Sunset Song is a coming-of-age novel about a strong and independent woman and the troubles she faces. But, being directed by the great Terence Davies makes it a different movie than you might expect. Time passes and scenes change like memories recalled much later. Chris is the narrator but she speaks in the third person. And as in most of his movies, characters are as likely to start singing songs or reciting poetry or quoting biblical texts as they are to have “normal” dialogue. But it never feels odd or affected, it’s just how they talk. Sex and violence, fury and pain, anguish and celebration are all played out… by candlelight. Beautiful.
Neon Bull
Wri/Dir: Gabriel Mascaro
Iremar (Juliano Cazarré) is a vaqueiro – literally a cowboy – in Brazil. He’s tough and swarthy with a black beard. He lives among the cows, feeding, washing and shoveling manure. His job is to tend the bulls used in a type of rodeo match called a vaquejada. Two men riding horses with a bull running between them have to take him down and cut off the end of his tail. Iremar is the one who powders the bull’s tail and pushes him into 
the ring. His work is rough, dirty and badly paid. But a more interesting life exists in the creative part of his mind. He sees images and fantasies which he brings to life, in the form of clothing and costumes.
He lives on the road as part of a travelling, impromptu family. There’s model-like Galega, his boss (Maeve Jinkings), her young daughter, the unfortunately-named Caca (Alyne Santana), and 
others. In his free time he observes and collects: A mannequin he finds in a dump; surfing fonts he sees on a sign; the hair bobbed off the bulls tails at the rodeo… he keeps them all. And he sketches his designs over pictures of nude women in skin mags. He “dresses” them.
And he translates these into outfits for Galega to wear and perform in. But what outfits they are: a sexy mixture of horse and human.
And there lies the crux: they work with cows but dream about 
horses. Caca wants to own a horse, Galega dresses like one, and Iremar either wants to become one or have sex with one – it’s never completely clear. He certainly has erotic dreams involving horses, as well some real-life sexual interactions of a sort between man and beast. (I’ll say no more about that; you have to watch the movie yourself to understand what I’m saying.)
There’s not much of a story; see it for its images and ideas. It’s beautifully shot, alternating between explicit sex and amazing documentary-style animal scenes with the screen completely filled with white bulls. This is the kind of movie that gradually grows on you long after you’ve seen it.
A Bigger Splash
Dir: Luca Guadagnino
Marrianne Lane (Tilda Swinton) lives in a secluded villa on a rocky Italian island in the Mediterranean. She’s a former rock star used to preforming in glam makeup and sequins before thousands of adoring fans. Until she lost her voice. Now she’s doted on by her much younger, faithful husband 
Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts). They spend each day playing in bed or relaxing in their serene swimming pool.
Paul was introduced to Mariann by her first husband, Harry (Ralph Fiennes) who felt a change was needed. Harry is a larger-than-life celebrity in his own right, a rock producer, who loves recalling his adventures with Mick Jagger. So Paul is in 
awe of both Marianne and Harry. Which is why he can’t really object when Harry arrives uninvited at their doorstep with a blasé young woman named Penelope (Dakota Johnson). She lives with her mom in Connecticut but recently discovered she has a dad – Harry, of course. And here they both are.
Harry loves it. He’s the kind of guy who always needs a dramatic 
entrance. And once he’s on stage he walks around naked for most of the movie. Penelope is looking for sex, and has her eye on both her putative father (she wants to see a DNA test) and Paul. Marianne is less than pleased by the interlopers. It opens up old wounds and unfinished business. She also prefers centre stage, she doesn’t want 
to be a side kick in her own home. And Paul is overwhelmed by the uncomfortable situation, but keeps it to himself. Until things explode.
This movie feels like a stage play with four characters played by four great actors. They’re all fascinating but in a grotesque, hateable sort of way. As celebrities they’re used to being watched but they also need privacy. We get to watch them how they really are, and it ain’t pretty.
Some of the camera work bothered me – too show-offy and distracting — but the scenic beauty of a Mediterranean isle that’s also a landing point for asylum-seekers more than makes up for it. Luca Guadagnino also directed I Am Love in 2010; A Bigger Splash is less stylized, more mature.
Neon Bull, A Bigger Splash, and Sunset Song all open today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Do Not Resist director Craig Atkinson
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Enormous armoured vehicles ply the streets of small town New Hampshire? Police are training in military-style bootcamps? And helicopters are surveilling the movements of everyone on the streets? 
Sounds like something out of Robocop or Minority Report. But it’s all happening now. Homeland Security is intentionally giving military weapons to civilian police forces across the US. And they say, if you know what’s good for you, Do Not Resist.
Do Not Resist is also a new documentary about the deliberate militarization of US police forces by the 
federal government. It was directed by cinematographer and filmmaker Craig Atkinson and won Best Feature Documentary at the Tribeca film fest. It had its international premier at Hot Docs in Toronto and is playing again this weekend.
I spoke to Craig at CIUT.
He told me about SWAT teams, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, BEARCATs, MRAPs, CSIS, DHS, NSA, DOD, Ferguson, excessive fines and fees, aerial surveillance, “civil forfeiture”… and more!
Sweet Love in Bitter Times. Films Reviewed: Princess, Fever at Dawn PLUS TJFF
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
TJFF, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, is one of the biggest of its kind, with comedies, dramas and documentaries from Canada and around the world. This year they’re featuring works from the Golden Age of Canadian TV, from comics 
Wayne and Shuster’s Shakespearean take on baseball, to an early TV drama with a young William Shatner. The festival is on now, including many free screenings. This week I’m looking at TJFF movies about the search for sweet love in bitter circumstances. There’s a dying man in Sweden looking for love in letters; and a young Israeli girl in a dysfunctional family who finds her match on the streets.
Princess
Dir: Tali Shalom-Ezer
Adar (Shira Haas) is an extremely intelligent 12 year old schoolgirl who is flunking out of school. She sleeps in every morning, and never shows up for class. She lives with her divorced mom Alma (Keren Mor) a beautiful doctor who is always at work, and Alma’s boyfriend Michael (Ori Pfeffer). Michael is a friendly, gregarious guy who also seems to lie about all day painting watercolours. He lost his job as a teacher.
Alma is worried about her daughter’s “illness” but not overly so. She’s more concerned that Michael isn’t paying enough attention to her: forget the kid, I’m the 
beautiful one, aren’t I? she keeps asking. But Alma is a deep sleeper, and doesn’t notice Michael’s late night visits to Adar. Is he just comforting his “prince”, as he calls her, or is there something more sinister going on? Adar looks outside her home for answers. Wandering the city one day she sees a street kid play-boxing with a tall, skinny girl with long hair. She meets the girl and discovers… 
he’s a boy! Alan (Adar Zohar Hanetz) is a lanky boy around her age, almost her doppelganger. They hit it off right away, sharing clothes and sexual secrets. He’s homeless, so he moves in with Adar’s family, just for a few days. But Michael starts paying too much attention to Alan now, and the 
tension escalates.
Princess is a troubling and disturbing coming-of-age story told through the eyes of a young girl. The scary parts are horrific. It cuts away from night scenes to the point where you can’t be sure if she’s being abused or just imagining it – she blocks them from her mind, treating the “visits” as dreams. Not for the faint of heart. But this is not an exploitative movie — there are sweet scenes between Adar and Alan, the two kids just trying to figure things out. This is a difficult movie to watch, but one that treats the unspeakable with nuance and sensitivity. And all the acting, especially Haas and Hanetz, is fantastic.
Fever at Dawn (Hajnali láz)
Wri/Dir: Péter Gárdos
It’s 1945, just after the end of WWII. Miklos, 25, (Milan Schruff) is a former journalist from Hungary who finds himself in hospital in Sweden. He was a prisoner in a Nazi death camp and is in desperate need of medical attention. Along with many other Hungarian Displaced Persons, he is now in a refugee camp, not as a prisoners this time, but still kept locked up behind fences. That’s the good news.
The bad news comes from Doctor Lindholm (Gabor Mate). He says Miklos, you have 
spots on your lungs from Typhus and TB is gobbling up what’s left. You have six months to live. That’s why Miklos has a fever each morning and regularly coughs up blood.
But instead of giving up, he decides to write letters. 117 to be exact, all to Jewish Hungarian women in D.P. camps in Sweden. The letters are written in the particular style used only in Debrecen, a city in northeastern Hungary. He hears back from many of them, but with one, Lili (19) he feels something more. Lili (Emöke Piti) treats each letter as a treasure she hides 
under her mattress, awaiting the day they can meet. Although they’ve never spoken to each other, or even seen each other’s faces, they both see it as true love.
But they face serious obstacles from well- meaning friends. Judith (Andrea Petrik) is a beautiful, raven-haired woman who survived the camps with Lili. Judith is devoted to her — she once hid potato peels in her mouth to save a starving Lili. When she hears of Miklos’ 117 letters she sees him as a womanizer 
or a conman, and tries to sabotage their love. She wants to keep Lili all to herself. Meanwhile, Dr Lindholm wants Miklos to stay put, for the sake of his lungs — despite all his attempts to see her.
Can the two of them ever meet, even for a day? Will they love each other in the flesh as much as they do on paper? And do either of them have many days left to live?
Fever Dawn is shot in beautiful black and white, with dialogue in Swedish, Hungarian and German. Based on a true story, it’s a good old-fashioned romance of the purest kind. It hasn’t been Disney-fied — there is suicide, death, crime, racism and debauched sex going on all around them. But it’s up to true love and destiny to bring them together, even if it’s just for a moment.
Princess and Fever at Dawn are both playing at the Toronto Jewish film Festival. Go to tjff.com for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
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