Award season. Films reviewed: The Secret Agent, Eternity, Hamnet
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
One of the nice things about Toronto is the huge variety of people, music sports and culture. Imagine what mash ups they can generate! I just saw a show called Opera Mania, which combined actual singers from Opera Revue and genuine tag-team pro wrestlers! We were literally in ringside seats, arms-length from fighters body-slamming to the romance of Carmen’s Toreador and opera singers bouncing off the ropes while warbling flawless arias! All on a real-live wrestling ring. Never in my life…
This week, I’m looking at three new movies that played at TIFF this year and are finally being released theatrically. There’s an action thriller set in 1970s Brazil, an historical drama in Elizabethan England, and a rom-com set somewhere this side of heaven.
The Secret Agent
Wri/Dir: Kleber Mendonça Filho
It’s the 1970s in Brazil. Marcelo (Wagner Moura) is a bearded, bushy-haired prof heading north from Sao Paolo — where he’s lived for many years — to Recife. He’s trying to keep a step ahead of the authoritarian government’s agents and to make sure his son is being safely taken care of. What he doesn’t realize is a pair of ruthless hitmen have been hired to rub him out. He shows up at Dona Sebastiana’s home, which she has transformed into a safe haven. It’s a place where political activists (like Marcelo), dissidents, leftists, refugees from Portuguese speaking Angola, gay men, and other persecuted individuals can find a safe place to hide. Because of the importance of secrecy, they only use code names. And everyone is a bit wary of strangers. Marcelo changes both his name and his look, from hippy to clean cut, with an official-looking moustache, and lands a job at the highly corrupt local police force. They take a liking to him and place him in plain view at the station. He uses his job to look for his late mother’s missing papers, to clear up a long-held mystery. He also gets to see his son, who is staying with his late wife’s dad who runs a movie theatre. Can Marcelo 
secure his son’s safety, discover his family history, and keep his identity a secret from the two men who want him dead?
The Secret Agent a taut action thriller set in 1970s Brazil, before the fall of the military dictatorship. Always exciting and fast-moving with a complex plot, it’s full of disguises, bugging, lurid newspaper headlines, chase scenes and shootouts. Lots of blood. The plot is revealed both through flashbacks and flash forwards — strange scenes where unexplained present-day researchers are looking through old files to find out what really happened in this case. Wagner Moura is a total movie star, who switches identity more times than you realize over the course of the film. Now, I can’t help comparing this to last year’s stunning Brazilian drama I’m Still Here, also set during the dictatorship, but they are very different movies. This one is mainly there for the entertainment, sort of an I’m Still Here-lite.
But this is not a complaint — I loved this movie.
Eternity
Co-Wri/Dir: David Freyne (Review: Dating Amber)
Larry and Joan (Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen) are a happily married elderly couple, heading to a grandchild’s birthday party. Sure, they argue all the time, but that’s because they know each other so well. And they have to deal with Joan’s cancer.. But when Larry chokes to death on a pretzel at the party, he suddenly finds himself in a strange new world. It’s like Grand Central Station, with trains departing every few minutes. Is he in Heaven? No, it’s a way-station called The Junction, where you choose where to spend eternity. And to help with that decision, there’s a huge convention space with hundreds of booths, each catering to specific tastes. Maybe you like museums, or the great outdoors, or lying on a beach. Or maybe you want to spend eternity as a tourist in 1960s Paris, where everyone speaks English but with a heavy French accent. There’s something for everyone, and you have a week to decide. But Larry wants to wait for Joan, so they can choose a place together. Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) is his AC (afterlife coordinator) who is supposed to help him on his way, but doesn’t approve of him sticking around. Luckily he finds a sympathetic ear in Luke, a handsome young bartender (Callum Turner) to whom he pours out all his troubles.
He finally consents to leave the Junction, when… he sees Joan just arriving! She’s young and beautiful, in her early 20s (Larry is in the body of his 35-year-old self; when you die you revert to your favourite age.) Now that all his troubles are solved, he’s ready to leave with Joan. But not so fast! Joan was married before she met Larry and her husband died in the Korean War. And it just happens that her late first husband is none other than Luke, the Bartender. He’s been waiting for 
Joan in the junction for 60 years. Will Joan choose to spend eternity with Larry, her long time partner? Or with her first true love?
Eternity is a fantasy/ romantic comedy with an unusual view of the afterlife. It’s a “high concept” movie with a simple question: should you choose a lifelong partner, or a passionate lover? And there are some fun parts: I liked the cheesy convention centre, the commuter train motif, and the Archives they visit (no spoiler). But they don’t do much with it; it devolves into a very basic rom-com, barely exploring the potentially fun aspects of the story. A former teen idol, Miles Teller plays his role as a grumpy old man trapped in a younger man’s body, but he does it in a most unappealing way. Callum Turner as Luke is also uninspiring, and while Elizabeth Olson is better as their object of interest, there’s still not much to go on. Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early provide much-needed comic relief as the ACs, but you can’t rescue a ship that already sank.
I wouldn’t want to spend eternity with any of them.
Hamnet
Co-Wri/Dir: Chloe Zhao
(Reviews: Songs My Brother Taught Me, Nomadland)
It’s England in the late 16th century. Will (Paul Mescal) is a part-time tutor expected to follow in his family business as a glover. But his Dad is nasty and cruel, so he wants to get as far away from him as he can. One day he meets a young woman named Agnes (Jessie Buckley), like no one he’s ever met before. She’s a witch and a healer who knows how to make poultices and tinctures, and carries a trained falcon on her arm. She knows all the secrets of the forest, including the sacred caves and ancient trees, passed on to her for generations. She is suspicious of Will’s worth, but eventually he proves his love, they marry and have children. Although he spends much of his time in the city, when he’s home he loves playing with the twins, especially his son Hamnet whom he teaches how to defend himself with a wooden sword. So Will and Agnes are crushed when Hamnet succumbs to the plague while Will is away writing. 
How will they deal with the death of their young son?
Hamnet is a lovely, rich and extremely moving film about William Shakespeare, his wife and the death of their son. It’s based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell. It starts as a slow-moving historical romance, with lots and lots of details about daily life in Elizabethan England. You almost think — what’s the point of this movie? But then it turns into an amazing, emotional story, culminating in a no-holds- barred performance of Hamlet, which Will wrote about their son. (Noah Jupe, the actor who plays Hamlet in the play-in-the-movie is the real life brother of Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet). Paul Mescal is appropriately restrained as Will, but Jesse Buckley holds nothing back, she puts her heart and soul into this role. If you’re not gushing tears by the end of this movie, I don’t know what to say.
Hamnet is a must-see.
Secret Agent, Eternity, and Hamnet are all playing right now 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.
Life changes. Films reviewed: Dating Amber, No Hard Feelings, Keyboard Fantasies: the Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story at #InsideOut30
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Fall festival season continues with Toronto’s Inside Out LGBT festival playing now both digitally and at drive-ins through the weekend. So this week I’m looking at three movies playing at Inside Out. There’s love amongst refugees in present-day Germany, an odd-ball relationship in Ireland in the 90s, and a Canadian musician whose fantasies finally come true in his seventies.
Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn Copeland Story
Dir: Posey Dixon
Beverly is a musician who grows up in a comfortable middle class home in post-war Philadelphia. Her father is a classical pianist and her mother sings spirituals at church. They send her to McGill in the early 1960s, where she is one of the first black students in her discipline, and where she comes out as a lesbian, virtually unheard of at the time, when homosexuality was still illegal in Canada. Later, she moves to Toronto where the Yorkville scene is nurturing folk musicians like Joni Mitchell. She cuts an eponymous record album with famous players on backup, in a unique style, combining jazz with blues and classical music. Unfortunately it disappears without a trace. She finds work as a musician and on TV – she is a regular on Mr 
Dressup! – but eventually moves into an isolated house in Muskoka with her lover.
In the 1980s she discovers computer-generated electronic music and self-produces a cassette of beautiful passionate songs. It sells maybe a few dozen copies. But in the 2000s, two big things happen: First Beverly realizes he’s trans, and begins transitioning female-to-male; and in the 2010s his album Keyboard Fantasies from the mid-80s is rediscovered in a tiny record shop in Japan. The owner requests more copies – all of which sell out in a day or two. The record is remastered and re-released and goes viral, and Beverly in his mid-seventies, is sudden’y a star with a devoited following. He embarks on a European tour backed up by a band of millennial hipsters and adoring young fans.
Keyboard Fantasies is a fascinating documentary about Beverley Glenn Copeland’s life, music and career. It’s filled with unusual psychedelic imagery, and upside-down and negative-coloured camera work reflecting the sudden reversals of Beverly’s own gender and career. His music is captivating, his voice sublime, and his life story like none other. This tale of rebirth in old age is a beautiful history not to be missed.
No Hard Feelings (Futur Drei)
Dir: Faraz Shariat
Parvis (Benny Radjaipour) is a young, gay German with dyed blond hair who lives in his family home in Hannover. He’s into sex, dancing and Sailor Moon. His Iranian parents sought asylum there 40 years earlier, to give their kids a better life, but he feels unmotivated, cut-off and trapped in limbo between two worlds. Raised within German pop-culture he knows nothing about Iranian dance or music. At home he speaks Farsi with a German accent, but the men he meets in gay bars constantly ask “where are you from?” (He’s from there!) But his life changes when, after being caught shoplifting, he is sentenced to community 
service as a translator at a refugee centre.
There he meets an adult sister and brother, a pair that seem almost joined at the hip, who eventually become his friends. They live together almost like lovers. Banafshe (Banafshe Hourmazdi) is outgoing and savvy, fluent in German, but facing deportation back to Iran. Her brother Amon (Eidin Jalali) is a nice guy but a bit stand-offish. He tells the flamboyant Parvis not to be seen with him at the refugee centre; his friends told him gayness is contagious. But the situation changes when the brother and sister spend the night at Parvis’s home. Parvis and Amon become lovers but are forced to keep it on the down low, constantly searching for secret places they 
can meet undetected. Will their love last? Can Amon and Bana gain refugee status in Germany or will she be deported? And can Parvis find his identity both within his family and in the larger German gay community?
No Hard Feelings is a touching and realistic drama about cultural and sexual alienation set within the vast and lethargic bureaucracy of the country’s immigration machine. It’s a distinctly German story, but one told mainly in Farsi and from that point of view. Good acting with some beautiful cinematography as well as occasional experimental, stylized footage. This is a great story about a subculture rarely represented on film. And it won the Inside Out prize for Best First Feature.
Dating Amber
Wri/Dir: David Freyne
It’s Ireland in 1995. Homosexuality was decriminalized just two years earlier, divorce is still against the law, and sex education is taught by nuns. Eddie (Fionn O’Shea: Handsome Devil) is a student at a rural high school outside of Dublin near an army base. He’s wants to become a cadet to please his dad but he’s not the right type; he’s frail, naïve and skittish. And he has a crush on his (male) math teacher. Amber (Lola Petticrew) is a plain-talking girl with blue streaks in her hair, who walks like she’s wearing army boots. She lives in a trailer with her mom since her father died. She’s saving up enough money to move to London after graduation to open an anarchist bookstore. She likes punk rock, but hates penises – they make her “vom” she says. Like Eddie, she’s bullied on a daily basis. Why? Because they’re both gay (though 
Eddie won’t admit it). So Amber comes up with a plan. Let’s pretend to be a couple until we graduate, so they’ll leave us alone. Will it work? Will it last? And what will it lead to?
Dating Amber is a terrific coming-of-age comedy about an unusual relationship in rural Ireland. It draws on a wry nostalgia for the 90s – fashion, hairstyles, pop music and attitudes — to construct some very real, funny characters. It’s romantic, hilarious, and deeply touching. This is a great movie.
Dating Amber, No Hard Feelings, and Keyboard Fantasies: the Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story are all playing at the Inside Out Festival which continues through the weekend. Go to insideout.ca 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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