Directed by Women. Films reviewed: The Blue Caftan, Priscilla, Rodéo
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Fall Film Festival Season in Toronto continues in November with Cinéfranco presenting its 26th year of Canadian and International Francophone cinema. This means not just great movies from France, Belgium and Switzerland, but also a Spotlight on the African Diaspora, with films from Congo, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco as well as four new Québec features curated by La Tournée Québec Cinéma.
This week, I’m looking at three new movies directed by women — two of which are playing at Cinéfranco. There’s a craftsman in Morocco with eyes on his apprentice; a trucker in Québec on a road trip with his daughter, and the wife of a certain rock’n’roll singer in a mansion called Graceland.
The Blue Caftan
Co-Wri/Dir: Maryam Touzani
Salé, Morocco.
Haliim and Mina (Saleh Bakri, Lubna Azabal) are a childless couple with a small tailor’s shop in the town’s marketplace. Mina is petite with angular features, her black hair pulled back. She runs the front of the store, balancing the books. Halim works at the back. He is tall with blue eyes and a moustache. He’s a maalem, a trained craftsman who sews and embroiders in the traditional way. No sewing machines here; he does everything by hand. But customers complain he’s taking too long. They want modern, chic clothes not old fashioned caftans. To speed up the process, Mina hires a new apprentice, but with low 
expectations. They cheat, they steal and they quit after just a few months of training. But Yousef (Ayoub Missioui) is a quiet and gentle soul who really wants to learn. Money is not his goal, he says — he has supported himself since he was eight. But as they all work together on an exquisite blue caftan embroidered with gold thread, Mina notices an unusual dynamic: Halim seems taken by the young apprentice, who is always close to her husband. And the couple is facing another crisis that could totally change their. Can they solve these problems together?
The Blue Caftan is a beautiful and touching story about an unexpected menage a trois in Morocco. It’s languid and subtle, with a sensual, though not explicit, undertone. The camera focuses on Halim’s fingers touching Yousef’s hand as he guides him in sewing a thread… or the bare feet of two men revealed behind a door at the local hammam — or bathhouse — looking for some furtive sex. Belgian actress Lubna Azabal gives a powerful as Mina, while Saleh Bakri will move you to tears. I’ve never seen Ayoub Missioui before but he also gives a great performance within the triangle.
The Blue Caftan captures not just the look of small-town Morocco, but also the the constant sounds of the souk: the voices, music and calls to prayer always drifting through the windows along with the smell of ocean air.
A beautiful movie.
Priscilla
Co-Wri/Dir: Sofia Coppola
It’s the late 1950s. Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) is a 14-year-old American girl on a military base near Bad Nauheim, West Germany. She’s an army brat, living a typical American life but overseas. She misses her friends back home and feels stifled on the base. Enter Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) the 24-year-old superstar. He’s drafted into the army but manages to live a life of luxury and stardom while serving his time. But when his pimp — I mean superior officer — asks Priscilla if she’d like to meet Elvis, everything changes. It sets in motion a years-long courtship and their eventual marriage many years later. And a strange courtship it is. They share a bed, but sex is forbidden. Elvis is always on pharmaceuticals, but when he slips her a sedative, she wakes up two days later with no recollection of what happened. He chooses what dresses she can wear, what colour to dye her hair — she’s almost like his own personal Barbie doll. And he is always somewhere far away, shooting a movie in Hollywood with Ann-Margaret or recording a record with The Boys, his entourage of old friends and musicians 
who never leave his side. Is Elvis is cheating on her? Will they ever consummate their relationship? Or will she remain an icon of virtue and purity in his eyes, but with no life of her own?
Priscilla is a biopic about the life of Elvis’s girlfriend and wife from the late 50s to the early 70s. And in the world of celebrity biopics, this a strange one, where the main character functions mainly as a side kick or an afterthought to the much more famous singer. It feels like all the fun stuff is happening off screen, and we’re left with Priscilla waiting for Elvis to come home. We constantly hear about his manager the Colonel but he rarely appears (no Tom Hanks in this version, thank God). As in most of Sofia Coppola’s films, there’s an air of detachment and ennui that only a third-generation Hollywood icon could feel. And though skilfully made, Priscilla left me feeling like I missed the real movie and had to watch this substitute instead.
Rodéo (Eng. title: Stampede)
Wri/Dir: Joëlle Desjardins Paquette
Serge Jr (Maxime Le Flaguais) is a trucker in Eastern Quebec. He is macho, with long hair and a beard and quick to fight, especially after too much to much to drink. Maybe that’s why his wife Jessica divorced him. He likes death metal music, and his prized green semi. He has the truck jacked up with flashing lights and horns, the perfect thing for drag racing. But most of all, he loves his daughter Lily (Lilou Roy-Lanouette). She’s cute, blonde and sharp as a tack. Only ten, but she can already scare grownups with her foul mouth, loud yells and lethal karate moves. But when Serge keeps Lily overnight at a truck rally, against custody rules, Jessica cuts off all ties. She won’t let Lily see her dad anymore. Until he shows up one day at her karate dojo, ready to roll. They’re heading out on a cross country drive, just the two of them — with Jessica’s permission, he says — to participate in the biggest truck drag race in the country — the Calgary Stampede! So she climbs into his truck and they take off, due west. But is there more to this trip than meets the eye?
Rodéo is a working-class, father-daughter road movie about 
meeting strange people, getting into trouble, and discovering the much- hated Canada — outside of Quebec — for the very first time. It’s also a bit of a thriller, as the two reveal their secrets and lies even as a larger world closes in on them. The camerawork and art direction is stunning, with flashing coloured lights and clouds of mist, steam and smoke mysteriously following the two of them on their journey. And the acting — and accents — are first rate.
I like this movie.
Priscilla just opened at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, with the Blue Caftan and Rodéo/Stampede both playing at Cinéfranco at the Carlton Cinema in Toronto.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
A More Perfect Union. Films reviewed: The Big Sick, The Beguiled, In the Name of All Canadians
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
With the 150th anniversary of Confederation in Canada and the 4th of July south of the border, this is a long weekend with lots of movies to watch. This week I’m looking at two comedy/dramas from the US and a documentary from Canada. There’s a comedian coping with blind dates, a girls’ school dealing with a wounded soldier, and a country coming to terms with a new constitution.
The Big Sick
Dir: Michael Showalter
Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani) is a stand-up comic who wants to make it big. He’s a self-described numbers geek, who is into the X-Files and corny horror 
movies. He’s dating Emily (Zoe Kazan), a young woman he met at the comedy club, and their relationship is getting serious. But Kumail has a secret. His Pakistani-American parents (Anupam Kher, Zenobia Shroff) insist their son marry a 
Muslim-Pakistani woman, and constantly surprise him with blind dates. His parents don’t know about Emily and she doesn’t know about his arranged dates. Everything goes well until 
Emily uncovers Kumail’s “X File”, a cigar box filled with photos of all the women he secretly dates and rejects. She is livid and never wants to see him again. But the next time he hears from her she is in hospital on her deathbed with a mysterious ailment, the “big sick” of the title. He stays by her 
bedside as she falls into a coma. Things get complicated when her parents Beth and Terry (Holly Hunter and Ray Romano) arrive. They know all about his secrets and lies and don’t trust him. But their relationship grows as they cope with Emily’s troubles together. Will Emily recover? Can she forgive Kumail? And can he tell the truth to his family?
The Big Sick is a very sweet romantic comedy mainly about the relationship of a young man and his true love’s parents. Spoiler Alert: it’s based on Kumail and Emily’s real life story, so obviously she didn’t die. I liked that it doesn’t succumb to crass toilet humour but instead finds jokes in the normal life of a standup comic. Holly Hunter and Ray Romano are especially good as the parents. A good date movie.
The Beguiled
Dir: Sofia Coppola
It’s rural Virginia during the US Civil War, where a school for young ladies remains untouched by the war raging all around them. There, beautifully dressed women study literature, French, music and the bible, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem outside the school’s wrought-iron gates.
There’s the imperious Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman); dowdy Miss Edwina (Kirsten Dunst); the recently grown-up Alicia (Elle Fanning) and nature-loving little Amy, among many others. They live in harmony in an old 
plantation house with two-storey, ionic columns, but no slaves, mind you – they all ran away. No one has breached the gates so far. Until one day, young Amy is out picking mushrooms and she finds a wounded yankee soldier. Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell) says he joined the Union army straight off the boat from Dublin. Now he’s a deserter. Can the ladies help him?
Miss Martha sews up his wounds lets him stay, but only as a prisoner. That’s when the corporal turns the charm level to high and begins beguiling and seducing all the girls and women. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, he tells one. You’re the one I like the best, he tells another. 
We have a special bond he says to a third. Soon, the women are fighting one another to spend time alone with the handsome young soldier. This culminates at a dinner where all of the women are all gussied up, each hoping he will choose her. But something unexpected happens that turns the smiling charmer into a violent ogre. What will the women do with him now?
The Beguiled is a dark comedy, a remake of Don Seigel’s movie from the 1970s, told from the women’s point of view. It includes lots of twists and turns for a simple ninety minute movie. I thought the acting was good, and the looks of the movie itself is fantastic. I’d describe it as over-the-top subtlety, with oak trees groaning with Spanish moss and a constant mist covering everything. I liked this one.
In the Name of All Canadians
It’s Canada’s Sesquicentennial, 150 years since confederation, so Hot Docs commissioned a multipart documentary made any a number of filmmakers. I dreaded watching this because I was afraid this would be yet another treackly look at toques, poutine, 
multiculturalism, our health system and Tim Hortons. But I was way off the mark. It’s actually a reality check, a hard look at the all the egregious errors Canada’s governments have made over the past 70 years or so. Did you know Frenco-Manitoban school teachers were forbidden from teaching in French 
for 50 years? Then there’s the case of Mr Abdelrazik, a Sudanese- Canadian man tortured then forced to camp out inside the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum for three years before he was allowed to come home. There’s the mass arrests at the G20, the 
internment of Japanese Canadians, discrimination faced by black and Muslim Canadians. And the biggest issue of all, Truth and Reconciliation with aboriginal Canadians — First Nations, Inuit and Metis — for the countless crimes, including Residential Schools, inflicted on them.
In form, most of these docs use actors reading scripts, animated sequences, talking heads and reenactments, rather than fly-on-the-wall records of actual events. Some parts are very moving, while other parts veer into speechifying. The serious parts 
are tied together by cute short sequences asking various Canadians what they prefer in a huge range of topics. While not perfect, altogether it gives a good hard look at Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, its successes and failures. Worth seeing.
In the Name of all Canadians is playing now at the Hot Docs cinema; and The Big Sick and The Beguiled both 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
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