Reviews

Giving their all to protect reproductive freedom

Francine Coeytaux (left) is a co-founder of Plan C, an organization devoted to making the abortion pill available and affordable even in conservative states such as Texas.

By Richard Ades

Recent developments in the battle over abortion rights have mostly favored the forced-birth side of the argument. In particular, there’s the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, emboldening conservative state legislatures that had already been working to restrict access to abortion.

Such developments are disheartening to those who care about reproductive freedom and women’s health care. For them, the documentary Plan C offers a reason to hope. Directed by Tracy Droz Tragos, it introduces us to a group of intrepid women who have been working behind the scenes to keep abortion available and affordable.

The doc is named after Plan C, an organization devoted to spreading information about the “abortion pill” drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. In interviews, co-founders Francine Coeytaux and Elisa Wells talk about the group’s efforts to adapt to the changing political landscape.

The COVID pandemic made their work more important than ever because (1) people seeking a surgical abortion were often prohibited from visiting a clinic, and (2) a mid-pandemic court ruling made the abortion pill available without an in-person medical appointment.

The documentary also introduces us to Just the Pill, as represented by medical director Julie Amaon and clinic director Frances Morales. The group works to deliver the abortion pill to those who need it—when they need it. Its distributors have been forced to shift into hyperdrive to keep clients on the right side of new state laws that prohibit abortion after as little as six weeks.

Supporters of the abortion pill hold a strategy meeting in a scene from Plan C.

Plan C also interviews several medical personnel and patients who prefer to keep their faces and names hidden due to their fear of legal repercussions and even physical attacks from abortion opponents.

Thanks to political rhetoric, abortion has long been a polarizing issue, and it’s becoming even more so as Republican-led legislatures pass increasingly extreme laws. The documentary devotes much of its attention to Texas, where one such law encourages citizens to spy on each other and to sue anyone they suspect of helping someone obtain an abortion. One day, predicts lawyer and journalist Carrie Baker, the Lone Star State will turn to surveillance to ferret out even those who perform their own abortions.

Much of the documentary presents a similarly cautionary viewpoint, as underscored by composer Nathan Halpern’s ominous score. In fact, it may strike some viewers as overly pessimistic, since it fails to note that all the restrictive laws may be sparking a backlash in the form of Republican election losses and statewide votes to protect abortion access—for instance, Kansas’s August 2022 rejection of an attempt to remove constitutional protections for the procedure.  

On the other hand, the film offers one big reason for optimism in its portraits of brave women who have devoted their lives to fighting for reproductive freedom. Their efforts leave even the most jaded observer feeling uplifted and inspired.

Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)

Plan C opens Oct. 6 in select theaters, including Columbus’s AMC Dublin Village 18, AMC Easton Town Center 28 and the Gateway Film Center.

Dad’s new romance leaves daughter fuming

Howard (James Cosmo) enjoys the seaside scenery with housekeeper Annie (Brid Brennan) in My Sailor, My Love. (Photos courtesy of Music Box Films)

Senior citizens need love, too, as ABC hopes to prove with its upcoming debut of The Golden Bachelor. The same holds true across the pond, as Finnish director Klaus Haro demonstrates with his Ireland-set tale My Sailor, My Love.

The TV series, of course, is an extension of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, “reality” shows that specialize in steamy encounters and dramatic histrionics. Don’t expect much of the former in Haro’s tale, but there are plenty of the latter. The only difference is, they don’t emanate from rejected suitors but from a daughter who’s unhappy about her father’s sudden interest in romance.

The daughter is Grace (Catherine Walker), a healthcare worker who spends most of her waking hours worrying about her aging dad, a retired sea captain named Howard (James Cosmos). When we first meet her, the situation has not only made her miserable, but it’s left her husband feeling so neglected that her marriage may be in jeopardy.

Realizing she can’t carry the burden of caring for Howard by herself, Grace hires a kindhearted widow named Annie (Brid Brennan) to serve as his parttime housekeeper. Howard, who’s accustomed to living on his own in his seaside home, soon sends Annie away, but a haphazard discovery convinces him he made a mistake. He then gathers a bouquet of flowers, starts up the car that’s been gathering dust in his garage and seeks her out.

Cue the heartfelt apology, courtesy of screenwriters Jimmy Karlsson and Kirsi Vikman. Also cue the gushing music, courtesy of composer Michelino Bisceglia. Set it all against gorgeous images of the Irish coastline, courtesy of cinematographer Robert Nordstrom.

In other words, love ensues, even though one wouldn’t expect a gruff hermit like Howard to jump into it so eagerly. But he does, resulting in a December-December romance that would be touching if it didn’t feel a bit contrived.

Then, just when we think the film is setting Howard and Annie up for happiness, Grace drops by with a sour attitude that looks a lot like jealousy. Rather than being grateful to Annie for making her father happy and taking care of his needs, she seems to resent her presence. Meanwhile, Howard displays a coldness toward his daughter that’s just as surprising, given the sacrifices she’s long made on his behalf.

What’s going on? Clues are doled out stingily over the course of the film, but an “aha” moment never arrives. The result is that despite assured performances by the major players, we don’t quite understand Grace and Howard’s motivations, and even Annie sometimes acts in a puzzling way.

With its combination of senior romance and family dysfunction, My Sailor, My Love is a tricky balancing act. Haro and company make a valiant effort, creating a handsome and sometimes appealing film in the process, but they don’t quite pull it off.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

My Sailor, My Love (no MPAA rating) opens Sept. 22 in select theaters and will be available through VOD outlets beginning Oct. 24.

Indiana Jones has nothing on Ohio-based glacier explorer

Lonnie Thompson and his colleagues go to great trouble to extract ice cores like this from remote glaciers to learn the secrets they store about the earth’s past.

By Richard Ades

One admirer compares research scientist Lonnie Thompson to Indiana Jones. Another compares him to Clark Kent, the deceptively average-looking individual who is, in reality, Superman.

Both comparisons are apt, as we learn from Canary, a documentary directed by Danny O’Malley and Alex Rivest. The film details Thompson’s decades-long effort to uncover the history stored in glaciers found in some of the world’s highest and least-accessible locations. It also explains how the Ohio State professor became a major voice in the fight against climate change.

Even before the opening credits appear, we’re shown an incident in a war-torn area of Indonesia that encapsulates Thompson’s bravery and commitment to the environment.

After demanding to meet with him, members of a local tribe ask why he and his team are drilling into a mountaintop glacier that they consider the head of their god. Is he trying to steal the deity’s memory? Thompson tells them that’s exactly what he’s doing, because the glacier that stores the “memory” is in danger of melting away.

Serving as the film’s narrator along with other experts such as his wife, Ellen Mosley-Thompson—a glaciologist in her own right—Thompson explains that glaciers are like the canary in the coal mine. In the olden days, caged canaries were taken into mines to serve as early warning systems. If the air got too thin to keep the tiny birds alive, miners knew they had to leave quickly or suffer the same fate.

Thompson’s point is that glaciers have served the same function. By melting and shrinking, sometimes with shocking speed, they’ve offered some of the earliest evidence that the climate is changing and we’d better do something about it or suffer the consequences.

The analogy comes naturally to Thompson, as he was born and raised in a poor area of West Virginia that’s dominated by the coal industry. Ironically, considering the role fossil fuels have played in climate change, he originally enrolled at OSU to study coal geology. However, he eagerly switched fields when he was offered a job studying glaciers.

Thompson and his team climb to reach the next glacier.

With a combination of archival footage and contemporary interviews, the documentary explores Thompson’s career, which started with a years-long effort to access a mountaintop glacier located in a remote area of Peru. Though at first he was motivated solely by scientific curiosity, his discovery that glaciers around the world were shrinking eventually turned him into what he is today: a prominent cautionary voice in the fight against climate change.

Dramatic photography by cinematographer Devin Whetstone, accompanied by Paul Doucette and Jeff Russo’s equally dramatic score, set an appropriate tone for a film about a man engaged in a struggle for humanity’s survival. They help to make up for co-director O’Malley’s script, which sometimes fails to fill in salient details. Just what, for example, do Thompson and his colleagues do with the ice cores they work so hard to extract from glaciers? And what do these samples of ancient ice tell them about our planet?

But the film fills in just enough details when it reports on the rise of climate-change denial, a movement that caused politicians as diverse as Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney to change from science supporters into science questioners. An eye-opening depiction of their transformation underscores the uphill battle Thompson and other activists face as they work to save humanity from its own excesses.   

Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)

Canary opens Sept. 15 in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles, as well as the Gateway Film Center in Columbus. Subsequent one-night screenings are planned Sept. 20 in multiple markets. For details, visit canary.oscilliscope.net.

Motherless girl shocked by dad’s sudden reappearance

Georgie (Lola Campbell) turns to petty crime with the help of her friend, Ali (Alin Uzun). (Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber)

By Richard Ades

Scrapper’s title is the perfect description of Georgie (Lola Campbell), a 12-year-old struggling to survive in a working-class suburb of London.

Having recently lost her mother and with no father in sight, the girl scrounges for money by stealing bikes with the help of her friend, Ali (Alin Uzun). She then tries to fence them to a local shop owner by arguing that soon everyone will want one because the Tour de France is imminent.

Even when Georgie and Ali are caught stealing by a bike’s owner, she manages to talk her way out of trouble by pretending they were just making sure it was mechanically sound. She also succeeds in keeping concerned social workers at bay by convincing them she’s living with an uncle rather than on her own.

As depicted by first-time actor Campbell and first-time writer-director Charlotte Regan, Georgie seems unfazed by anything that comes her way. That is, until a man named Jason (Harris Dickinson) shows up and claims to be her long-lost father. That sets off a wave of paranoid suspicions (Is he a vampire? Is he a gangster?), along with recriminations toward the parent she accuses of deserting her.

“At least he’s here now,” Ali argues, leading to a fallout with his mercurial friend.  

Jason (Harris Dickinson) tries to mend fences with Georgie (Lola Campbell), the daughter he never knew.

Will Jason stay around long enough to accept the parenting role he abandoned as a young man? Will the resentful and independent Georgie let her guard down long enough to let him try?

A situation like this seems guaranteed to generate pathos and sentimentality, but filmmaker Regan relies on quirky humor to avoid the former and to head off the latter as long as possible. Reportedly, she also relied heavily on improvisation, which explains why some scenes have a freewheeling quality.

Though the resulting film is a bit uneven, a winning cast keeps the story interesting. Uzun and Dickinson are fine as Georgie’s faithful friend and belatedly concerned father, while Campbell is irresistible as the girl who falls back on her ample wits to survive one of the worst losses a child can face.

Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)

Scrapper (no MPAA rating) can be seen in select theaters and is scheduled to run Sept. 8-14 at Columbus’s Gateway Film Center.

Staged ‘Frozen’ is icily beautiful and warmly poignant

Carolyn Bowman plays Elsa, a princess with a dangerous magical gift, in the North American tour of Frozen. (Photo by Deen van Meer)

By Richard Ades

Disney’s 2013 flick Frozen was met by universal acclaim and won the Oscars for best animated film and best song. The stage adaptation, which opened on Broadway to mixed reviews in 2018, was nominated for three Tonys but won none.

Apparently, the stage musical is not as perfect as its cinematic forebear. But after seeing the touring version Thursday at the Ohio Theatre, it’s obvious that it remains pretty entertaining.

Not that it couldn’t be better. To pad out the running time, book writer Jennifer Lee added extra scenes that often seem superfluous, while composer/lyricists Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez added extra songs that aren’t as catchy as the original eight.

That the show delivers as much entertainment as it does despite the filler is due to the sterling work of director Michael Grandage and his talented cast, as well as the beautiful stage vistas created by scenic/costume designer Christopher Oram and lighting designer Natasha Katz.

Anna (Lauren Nicole Chapman) and Hans (Will Savarese) dance the night away. (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

Like the film, the stage show revolves around the troubled relationship between royal sisters Elsa and Anna, whom we first meet as adolescents. The older Elsa is cursed with the magical ability to inadvertently freeze anyone or anything around her. After a careless act nearly kills her younger sister, Elsa’s parents force her to isolate herself from the world, and particularly from Anna.

On Thursday night, Norah Ann Nunes and Erin Choi played the rambunctious Anna and tortured Elsa, respectively, and indelibly established the personalities they would retain as young women. (Avelyn Choi and Sydney Denise Russell take over the roles at alternate performances.)

The action then fast-forwards several years to find queen-to-be Elsa (Caroline Bowman) still avoiding public contact and nervous about getting through her impending coronation without freeze-drying the guests. Meanwhile, Anna (Lauren Nicole Chapman) is stir-crazy and more than a little man-crazy and looks forward to meeting possible beaus at the coronation ball.  

As Anna, Chapman sometimes lays on the comic schtick a little heavy, but both she and Bowman have abundant acting and singing chops. They use them to flesh out the sisters’ estranged relationship, which suffers a seemingly mortal blow after Elsa accidentally plunges the kingdom into eternal winter and flees into self-imposed exile.

Anna (Lauren Nicole Chapman) and Kristoff (Dominic Dorset) struggle to cross an icy bridge. (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

Other major cast members include Will Savarese as Hans, a prince who meets Anna at the coronation and immediately wins her heart; Dominic Dorset as Kristoff, an ice merchant who comes to Anna’s aid after she wanders into a snowstorm in search of her sister; and Jeremy Davis as Olaf, a snowman brought to life by Elsa’s magic.

Olaf is one of the show’s two most ingenious creations, being a puppet that Davis supports and manipulates in full view of the audience. The other is Sven, Kristoff’s four-legged companion, whose expressive movements and postures are delivered by the limber Dan Plehal in a reindeer costume. (Collin Baja plays the role at alternate performances.)

While the relationship between Anna and Elsa provides the show’s dramatic heart, it’s Kristoff, Olaf and Sven who provide most of its humor.

Snowman Olaf (Jeremy Davis) meets Sven (alternately played by Collin Baja and Dan Plehal), who seems to be eyeing the carrot that serves as his nose. (Photo by Matthew Murphy)

As in the film, the musical highpoints are the hummable “Do You Want to Build a Snowman,” “For the First Time in Forever” and especially “Let It Go.” The latter showstopping earworm is beautifully delivered by Bowman’s Elsa and is accompanied by a feat of stage magic that defies explanation.

As for the musical low point, that would have to be “Hygge,” a goofy song-and-dance number that wasn’t in the original film. It’s one of several moments that make you wonder why Broadway’s Frozen couldn’t have skipped all the filler and been staged as a poignant one-act.

Still, a two-act Frozen is better than none at all. Onstage or on film, Disney’s tale of sisterly love is a treat.

Broadway in Columbus will present Frozen through Aug. 6 at the Ohio Theatre, 39 E. State St., Columbus. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes (including intermission). Tickets are available at BroadwayInColumbus.com, by calling CAPA at 614-469-0939 or at the Ohio Theatre’s CBUSArts Ticket Center. For information on future tour dates, visit frozenthemusical.com.

Character studies dominate Irish doc, U.S. road flick

Tana (Lily Gladstone) takes a cross-country trip in her late grandmother’s Cadillac in The Unknown Country. (Photo courtesy of Music Box Films)

By Richard Ades

Opening this weekend are two indie films that have more in common than you might think.

The Unknown Country, a drama by first-time director Morrisa Maltz, is about a cross-country trip taken by a grieving Native American woman. North Circular, an Irish documentary written and directed by Luke McManus, is described as “a musical trip through Dublin’s inner city.”

What unites the flicks is their willingness to digress in the presence of strong personalities. In each case, this is a mixed blessing.

The Unknown Country ostensibly focuses on Tana (Lily Gladstone), who takes time to travel to a family wedding in South Dakota even though she just lost her beloved grandmother. She then drives her granny’s Cadillac to Texas in a trek that ends at a landmark once visited by the dearly departed.

Co-written by director Maltz and cast members Gladstone and Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, the film is primarily about Tana’s attempt to come to terms with her loss. However, Tana herself ends up being overshadowed by a series of strong peripheral characters she meets along the road. Among others, there’s a waitress who lives for her cats, a bride and groom who feel they were destined to be together, and an elderly woman who comes to life on the dance floor.

Most of these characters are real people simply playing themselves, making the flick an adventurous blend of fiction and fact. Each of them is interesting, as are several sights Tana sees along the way, including a Native American wedding, a small-town winter festival and a brightly lit Dallas dance club.

The only problem is that we don’t get to know protagonist Tana as well as the people she meets, making the film a bit less than the sum of its very worthwhile parts.

Holding forth at Dublin’s Cobblestone Pub in a scene from North Circular are (from left): folk singers John Francis Flynn, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, Killian O’Donnell and Lisa O’Neill. (Photo courtesy of Lightdox)

In a similar way, North Circular spends much of its time introducing us to people who live near the titular roadway, which winds around some of the poorer sections of Dublin. One of the first is an army veteran who plays the bagpipes for military ceremonies and complains that the younger generation shows little interest in learning the traditional instrument. Yes, it’s a shame, but his story comes across as unnecessary digression.

Fortunately, most of the other interviewees can speak more directly to the film’s subject, which is the neighborhood’s struggles with poverty and encroaching gentrification. And several of them do more than speak—they sing about their losses and grievances, often delivering a cappella laments to a silent audience. The sum total is a memorable trip to a side of Ireland’s capital that is never experienced by the average tourist.

Besides their plethora of minor characters, the two films have one other thing in common: striking cinematography. Andrew Jajek’s images in The Unknown Country are engrossing whether they’re showing quiet human interactions or majestic landscapes such as South Dakota’s Badlands and Texas’s Big Bend National Park. And North Circular’s black-and-white images combine with its somber folk tunes to create what at times amounts to cinematic poetry.  

Rating for each film: 3½ stars (out of 5)

The Unknown Country opens July 28 at the Quad Cinema in New York City and the Nuart in Los Angeles, and will open at additional theaters across the country in the following weeks. North Circular opens July 28 at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema in New York City.

Reality intrudes on sheltered life in ‘Chile ’76’

Carmen (Aline Kuppenheim) is asked to put her life on the line by helping a political dissident. (Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber Team)

By Richard Ades

After being blown away by last year’s Argentina, 1985, I wondered if Chile ’76 would turn out to be an equally instructive look at its titular country’s painful history.

But it’s not, mostly because it doesn’t try to be. Manuela Martelli’s debut film is more of a psychological thriller than a historical drama.

Though it’s set three years after the military coup that brought President Augusto Pinochet to power, the right-wing dictator’s name never even comes up. Instead, the focus is on Carmen (Aline Kuppenheim), an upper-middle-class woman whose privileged life has allowed her to ignore the brutal suppression Pinochet unleashed on her country.

That begins to change, however, in an early scene. Carmen is picking out paint to renovate her family’s vacation home when the sounds of one of the country’s many political kidnappings are heard outside the store.

Quiet soon returns, but we’re left with the impression that Carmen’s life is about to be complicated by the upheaval going on around her. Director/co-scripter Martelli signals this with some rather blatant symbolism: A store employee mixes blood-red paint with a neutral shade, after which a couple of drops spill onto Carmen’s immaculate shoes.

Sure enough, once Carmen reaches her vacation home, a priest friend named Father Sanchez (Hugo Medina) involves her in a matter with political overtones. He asks her to provide medical care for Elias (Nicolas Sepulveda), a young man who he claims was shot while trying to steal food.

Elias (Nicolas Sepulveda), a wounded fugitive, is nursed back to health by Carmen (Aline Kuppenheim).

Being a doctor’s wife who once worked for the Red Cross, Carmen agrees to help, and she keeps helping after she learns Elias is in reality a political dissident hiding from the government. Eventually, she even offers to deliver messages to the fugitive’s left-wing cohorts, involving her in political intrigue for which she’s dangerously unprepared.

Remember the unseen kidnapping that first reminded us we were in Pinochet’s Chile? Most of Martelli’s film is similarly understated, concentrating on Carmen’s fears rather than on the real perils that inspire them. The only un-understated element is Maria Portugal’s musical score, composed of dissonant sounds designed to keep our nerves on edge.

Otherwise, Chile ’76 is a uniformly low-key effort thanks to Kuppenheim’s muted portrayal and Martelli’s restrained script and direction. The result is a film that may not excite viewers but is sure to leave them impressed by its subtle workmanship.  

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Chile ’76 can be seen in select theaters and opens June 30 at the Gateway Film Center in Columbus.

Overheard honesty threatens marital bliss

Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) tries to drown her sorrows in You Hurt My Feelings. (Photos by Jeong Park)

By Richard Ades

When a couple exchanges wedding vows, they promise to love and cherish each other, among other things. What they generally don’t promise is to be honest with each other.

Whether or not that’s a good thing is a topic writer-director Nicole Holofcener takes up in her entertaining and chuckle-worthy new film, You Hurt My Feelings.

Long-married New Yorkers Beth and Don (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies) love and support each other to a fault—the fault being that they occasionally express that support by telling little white lies.

When Don gives Beth earrings as an anniversary present, she greets them with such forced enthusiasm that it’s obvious she doesn’t like them. And when Beth reciprocates by giving Don a V-neck sweater, his disappointment is equally clear because his first comment is, “Oh, a V-neck.” (As all fans of Louis-Dreyfus’s former series, Seinfeld, know, saying the name of a gift after you open it is a sure sign you didn’t want it.)

All this is no big deal, right? When you’re in a relationship, telling the occasional little white lie can help you avoid hurt feelings or unnecessary friction.

But then Beth catches Don in a lie that doesn’t seem so little: She overhears him admitting to his brother-in-law that, even though he’s told Beth he loves the novel she’s been working on for the past two years, he actually hates it.

Beth is hurt and humiliated, telling sister and fellow eavesdropper Sarah (Michaela Watkins), “I can’t look him in the face ever again.” Sarah tries to soften the blow by admitting she tells actor-husband Mark (Arian Moayed) that he’s more talented than he actually is, but it seems the damage is done.

This unfortunate incident comes to dominate the flick, as well as supplying its title, but it’s actually just one of several examples of the fragile egos and self-doubts that afflict all the major characters.

Aspiring novelist Beth worries she won’t be able to duplicate the success of her previous work, a memoir about growing up with an abusive father. (Not that the memoir was as successful as it might have been if her father hadn’t been just verbally abusive, she muses ruefully.)

Therapist Don (Tobias Menzies) has trouble keeping his clients’ backstories straight.

Don, a therapist who seems to be chronically tired, has trouble keeping his clients straight, and he worries that he’s not helping them get any better. Sarah, an interior designer, has similar fears about pleasing her clients, while Mark suspects he’s really not such a great actor.

Finally, there’s Beth and Don’s 23-year-old son, Eliot (Owen Teague), who’s working on a play that he fears is no good, while dating a woman who he worries will break up with him.

My one quibble with the way all this trauma is acted out is that Louis-Dreyfus falls back on her old Elaine Benes mannerisms at one or two inopportune moments. Otherwise, everyone’s great, including the several supporting actors who play Mark’s eccentric and generally dissatisfied clients.

With its New York setting, sardonic wit and neurotic characters, You Hurt My Feelings may strike some as a lighter, gentler version of early Woody Allen. But Holofcener is really doing her own thing with this portrait of everyday worries and squabbles, giving viewers a breezily pleasant hour and a half in the process.

Rating; 4 stars (out of 5)

You Hurt My Feelings (rated R) opens May 26 in select theaters.

Faith community faces unwelcome intruder: sex

Jem (Eliza Scanlen, second from left) enjoys expressing her faith through liturgical dance. (Photo by Brian Lannin/courtesy of Bleecker Street)

By Richard Ades

Years ago, I was visiting a family of fundamentalist Christians in another state when a group of local feminists held a topless protest. A news crew went out to cover the event, and one of the protesters ended up on the evening newscast (from the neck up) explaining what they were protesting about.

Watching the interview on TV that night, the matriarch of my host family clearly was not impressed by what the woman had to say. “You can tell she just wants attention,” she said dismissively.

The comment left me with the immediate thought: “What’s wrong with that? Doesn’t everybody want attention?” But I quickly realized, “Oh, it’s a fundamentalist thing.” Apparently seeking attention was considered sinful in that culture—especially, I guessed, if you’re a woman.

The incident came rushing back to me after watching The Starling Girl, writer/director Laurel Parmet’s debut film about coming of age in a fundamentalist community. It revolves around Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen), a 17-year-old Kentuckian who’s devoted to God and her faith. She especially loves expressing her faith through the liturgical dances she performs at services along with a handful of other girls.

After one such performance, however, her mother (Wrenn Schmidt) undermines her joy by pointing out that she’d immodestly allowed the outline of her bra to show through her dance costume. Later, adding to her daughter’s perceived sins, the mother asks whether Jem dances “for God or for vanity.”

Or, as my long-ago host would have put it, “The girl just wants attention.”

Growing up in a restrictive religious community can be tough, and it becomes even tougher when you’re a teenager whose hormones are awakening urges you’ve been taught to suppress. Jem is critical of a boy who’s been sent away to have the sin beaten out of him after he was caught looking at online porn. But she soon faces challenges of her own.

Her parents want to arrange a courtship and eventual marriage to their pastor’s younger son, Ben (Austin Abrams), an awkward boy who thinks barnyard diarrhea is an appropriate topic for a first date. Jem, though, is more interested in Ben’s older brother, Owen (Lewis Pullman), a future pastor who’s just returned from mission work in Puerto Rico. She’s so interested, in fact, that she engineers excuses to be around him, ignoring the inconvenient fact that he’s married.

As it turns out, Owen’s marriage is not a happy one, and he’s not averse to giving his young admirer the attention she so desperately wants. The result is a situation for which Jem’s upbringing has left her totally unprepared.

Competently acted, and naturalistically written and directed by Parmet, The Starling Girl offers a searing portrait of Jem’s difficult life. Though the filmmaker tries to leave her with a slim ray of hope, it’s less convincing than the film’s indictment of the intolerance and injustice that flourish when religion tries to overrule human nature.

Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)

The Starling Girl (rated R) opens May 25 at the Gateway Film Center in Columbus, with wider distribution to follow.

Preserving film history one frame at a time

By Richard Ades

The worst job I ever had was working in a motion picture lab in the late 1970s. Not only did I spent much of my time trapped in a dark room with very pungent chemicals, but I sometimes had the difficult task of copying old, shrunken films that had to be coaxed through our machinery.  

Too bad I couldn’t have seen Film: The Living Record of Our Memory back then. It would have allowed me to feel some pride in the small role I was playing in the massive (and massively difficult) effort to preserve our cinematic history.

Spanish director Ines Toharia Teran’s documentary is about the worldwide quest to save films that otherwise would be lost due to chemical degradation, disasters and other causes.

It’s a quest that began in spite of the early film studios, we’re told, as they thought of movies as commercial products rather than works of art or historical documents that needed to be preserved. In fact, flicks that had already made the theatrical rounds were often destroyed to recover the silver in the film stock, thus helping to pay for future productions.

An additional preservation complication: Early film stock was composed of nitrate, which was dangerously inflammable. If it ever caught on fire, not even water could extinguish the flames.

The documentary tells us that the result of this danger and neglect is that 80 percent of all silent films are likely gone forever, along with half of all the “talkies” ever made.

Film is not a tragedy, however, but an account of the heroes who have devoted themselves to protecting film history. Numerous preservationists and other cinematic experts from around the world talk about the challenges they face—such as trying to reconstruct a formerly “lost” film by splicing together the least-degraded frames from various recovered prints.

Why go to all this trouble? Because otherwise we’ll lose pieces of art that help to define our cultural history. And sometimes we’ll lose pieces of actual history, as in the case of home movies and other nonfiction films that depict scenes from the Holocaust and other world tragedies.

At nearly two wide-ranging hours, Film will be of most interest to those who care about cinema’s past, present and future.

Does it bother you that Alfred Hitchcock’s 1926 film The Mountain Eagle may never be seen again? Is it important to you that people be able to watch the early works of India’s Satyajit Ray, or the many independent films that depict Africa’s anti-colonial struggles?

Do you want such influential flicks as Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and Cuban director Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment to be available to future cinema lovers?

If so, the documentary will be two hours well spent.

Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)

Film: The Living Record of Our Memory opened May 5 at the Gateway Film Center in Columbus, with additional screenings planned May 8-9 in Los Angeles, May 11-14 in St. Louis, May 20 in San Francisco and May 21 in Cleveland. The film will be available through VOD outlets beginning May 16.