Cultural Mining

Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Get ready folks, it’s Spring Film Festival season in Toronto again, with Images on now through April 13, showing films, art and installations on digital, film, and video formats. And Wednesday, April 15th is National Canadian Film Day, showing free movies across the country, presented by filmmakers, actors and cinephiles, including Philippe Falardeau’s fantastic Mille secrets mille dangers (Lovely Day).

But this week I’m looking at three new movies set in Tuscany, Tokyo and London. There’s a woman from New York looking for love in Italian vineyards, a young man in Tokyo looking for a way out, and the heir to a Shakespearean throne …looking for vengeance.

You, Me & Tuscany

Dir: Kat Coiro (Marry Me)

Anna (Halle Bailey) is the talk of the town in the picturesque Tuscan village of San Conessa. Everyone there seems to know her and love her. But three days earlier, she was a broke, homeless orphan in Manhattan. How did she get from there to here?  Until her single mom died a year earlier, she was studying at a culinary academy with the goal of opening a restaurant together following a triumphant visit to northern Italy. Since her mom died Anna couldn’t bear to enter a kitchen. Instead she works as a professional house-sitter, until… she was kicked out of her last job for being caught wearing her employers clothes, jewelry and underwear.

But fortune favours the bold: that same day, she met a dashing young Italian jet-setter named Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor) at a hotel bar, who happens to own an empty villa in Tuscany. After spilling their life stories, they end up in his hotel bed together (just sleeping.) And the next day she grabs her last remaining possession — the plane ticket to Italy her mother gave her —  and ends up in Matteo’s villa alone. But when she’s discovered by his Grandmother and Mother half-naked and sporting a wedding ring she found in a drawer…they call the cops and threaten her with jail.

Thinking quickly, she tells them she’s his fiancee, and — bang! — she’s immediately embraced by the family and the entire village, all of whom are overjoyed she’s bringing Matteo back to the hometown he abandoned. Everyone, that is, but Michael (Regé-Jean Page) Matteo’s half brother/cousin who owns the massive vineyard estate next door. And when Michael, shirtless, shows Anna his grapes, she swoons. Is this love? But Matteo is expected to return soon. What will happen if he exposes her story as a big fat lie? Will her newfound family abandon her? And will she ever see Michael again?

You, Me & Tuscany is a conventional rom-com with few surprises. The biggest one is an American woman falling for a rich Italian heartthrob and they both happen to be Black. Fortunately, Halle Bailey is sweet and adorable, while Regé-Jean Page — the popular star of Bridgerton —  is an appealing leading man. Unfortunately, it’s a comedy and those two just aren’t funny. So they make sure to surround them with funnier people, like Anna’s best friend (Aziza Scott) who calls her all the time, and a bevy of Italian caricatures — suspicious grandma, forlorn mom, angry dad, goofy cousin, funnier other cousin, affectionate cab driver (Marco Calvani),  opera-singing gardener — all straight out of Central Casting. Add a bit of food porn, pretty scenery, sportscars… and there you have it.

Is You, Me & Tuscany corny, unbelievable, predictable and full of cliches? Yes to all four. But it’s cute enough to keep your attention and is a very easy movie to watch. 

Exit 8

Co-Wri/Dir: Genki Kawamura

A young man (Kazunari Ninomiya), who works at a temporary, part-time job in Tokyo is heading home by subway. But when he leaves the train and walks toward the exit, the same one he uses everyday, he finds it somehow different. Because after following the usual pathway, through a number of underground white-tiled tunnels, he finds himself back at the very place he started. (Tokyo stations have multiple exits so people follow the signs on walls to find their way out.) After repeated tries, he realizes he’s trapped in some sort of maze, from which it’s impossible to exit. 

It’s uncanny. Despite following the meticulous signs, he can’t get out. And he’s not alone, there are others walking these same halls in the opposite direction. Like a terrifying man with a rictus smile on his face (Yamato Kochi), a young student (Kotone Hanase) and a little boy (Naru Asanuma). But they all seem to be caught within their own traps, oblivious to him, almost like echoes off their past selves. Is he in hell? Or Limbo? Or some strange experiment? And will he ever find his way to Exit 8 and escape to the outside world?

Exit 8 is a mystery, thriller horror based on a video game. Although it’s repetitive, simplistic and bleak, I found this movie gripping to watch, and quite scary. It’s full of surprising details, that the audience, and the characters, have to keep track of if they ever want to escape. (I can’t say anything else without spoiling the story.)

While I generally find movies based on video games as the worst of the worst, Exit 8 is an exception to that rule. 

Hamlet 

Dir: Aneil Karia

It’s present-day London, and Hamlet (Riz Ahmed: Mogul Mowgli, The Sisters Brothers, City of Tiny Lights,  The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Trishna)  is in a bad state. Though he is next in line for the ownership of a major multinational called Elsinore Properties, all he can think about is the sudden death of his father. He is also shocked that his mother, Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha) is set to marry Claudius (Art Malik), his uncle and now step-father.  He has taken over the corporation, and seems to be handling it well. But Hamlet is furious by these events. He has to deal with his uncle’s lackey Polonius (Timothy Spall) always getting in Hamlet’s way. Meanwhile he’s in love with Polonius daughter Ophelia (Morfydd Clark) and a colleague of her brother Laertes (Joe Alwyn). But when his dad’s ghost appears one night — telling Hamlet that Claudius murdered him — all his plans change. Now he is boiling with rage to fulfill a single goal: revenge upon his Uncle for killing his Father and marrying his Mother. He plans to do it in a series of events, including Claudius and Gertrude’s Hindu wedding and the various performances during it.

But his fury sets off a series of unexpected events, and number of unplanned deaths. Can a nihilistic Hamlet get his revenge without losing his mind or dying in the process? And what will become of Ophelia, Gertrude, Polonius, Claudius and Hamlet himself? 

In case you haven’t guessed, this is a new version of one of the most famous tragedies of all time, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which has gone through countless other versions, interpretations and locations. This one is set in London, not Denmark; the kings and queens have become oligarchs and CEOs; and it’s all situated within the lives of mainly upper-class British South Asians. This includes rituals from the initial ablutions of his father’s body at his funeral to the grand wedding itself. But it’s less a classical tragedy than a contemporary, violent, mystery thriller, a genre at which the BBC is so skilled. Most of all it’s a vehicle for Riz Ahmed, one of the best British actors working these days. Which is why I wanted to see it. 

But I think he overdoes this one. He’s centre-stage in virtually every scene, in a constant state of deranged fury and panic. This means “to be or not to be” is expectorated between clenched teeth as he speeds his car in the wrong direction on a highway. And he morphs into a human beat box in the middle of his embarrassing speech at his mother’s wedding. Hamlet has always been a tragedy, but in this one death is bloody and brutal, and involves dragging corpses down halls, leaving a bright red trail behind. 

Is this a great Hamlet?

It’s an interesting one and totally different from any I’ve seen before… but great, it ain’t. 

Hamlet, Exit 8, and You Me & Tuscany all open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. 

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