Tag: film

Estranged cousins reunite for Holocaust-related tour

Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin, left) and his cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg) get reacquainted while touring Polish Holocaust sites in A Real Pain. (Photos courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

By Richard Ades

When Jesse Eisenberg made his debut as a writer/director with 2022’s When You Finish Saving the World, some found its depiction of familial squabbles heavy-handed and its characters insufferable.

Now Eisenberg is back with another comedy-drama about family relations, and he seems to have taken the criticisms to heart. A Real Pain’s two leading characters are flawed but likable, and its depiction of their squabbles is hardly heavy-handed. To the contrary, Eisenberg makes us work to figure out just what is behind them.

David Kaplan (played by Eisenberg himself) is a successful New Yorker with a wife and young son. His cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) is single, jobless and lives in his mother’s upstate home.

Though the two were close boyhood friends, they’ve grown increasingly distant as adults, separated by their lifestyles and personalities as much as by geography. Now, however, they have a chance to reconnect thanks to their late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who left them money specifically set aside for a visit to her native Poland.

So the cousins fly to Warsaw to join a multi-day tour of Holocaust-related sites led by a Brit named James (Will Sharpe). Also on the tour are a recently divorced American (Jennifer Grey) and a Rwandan-born Jewish convert (Kurt Egyiawan), among others. Each is briefly introduced, but Eisenberg keeps his main focus on the two cousins and their increasing discomfort with each other.

David, uptight and buttoned-down, watches with simmering resentment as the unrepressed Benji easily connects with other members of the group. For his part, Benji complains that David has made little attempt to see him recently, and he pushes him to smoke pot and otherwise reclaim some of the wildness that made them inseparable childhood companions.

Benji (Kieran Culkin) gives his cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg) a hug while following other members of their tour group.

As the tour goes on, the tension between the two grows due to Benji’s increasingly angry and erratic behavior. Whether it’s caused by the loss of his beloved grandmother or other, unidentified problems, it leaves David profoundly uncomfortable. The fact that it’s happening while the group is touring sites intimately connected to the last century’s worst atrocity only adds to the stress.

As an actor, Eisenberg doesn’t stretch himself, playing David much like he’s portrayed other socially awkward characters. As a director, on the other hand, he generously allows Culkin to imbue Benji with passion, unexpected quirks and unexplored depths.

What does it all mean? Eisenberg relies on the viewers to come up with their own explanations for the cousins’ difficult relationship and their disparate responses to the tragic history they’re revisiting. His approach is unobtrusive to a fault—with one exception.

An almost constant companion to the proceedings is a score consisting of works by 19th century piano virtuoso Frederic Chopin. Other than the fact that the composer was Polish, the music seems to have little to do what’s happening onscreen. What’s worse, the dramatic and often familiar passages sometimes upstage what’s going on.

For viewers struggling to find meaning in Eisenberg’s interesting but understated story, it’s an unwelcome distraction.

Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)

A Real Pain (rated R) opens Nov. 15 in theaters nationwide.

Director continues his obsession with sex workers 

New York stripper Ani (Mikey Madison, right) enjoys a lavish lifestyle provided by new boyfriend Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) in Anora.

By Richard Ades

Sean Baker is fascinated by folks who make their living in the sex industry. For evidence, look at his last three films, which featured a trans sex worker (Tangerine, 2015), a down-and-out stripper (The Florida Project, 2017) and an aging porn star (Red Rocket, 2021).

So it’s no surprise that the writer/director’s latest flick again centers on someone plying a corner of the sex trade. Anora may differ from its predecessors in other ways, but Baker’s preoccupation with the world’s oldest occupation remains the same.

When we first meet the title stripper (Mikey Madison), who goes by the nickname Ani, she’s confidently hawking drinks and lap dances at a New York club. Then she meets a customer named Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), who turns out to be the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

Faster than you can say Pretty Woman, Ani’s life undergoes a sea change. Swept away by the 21-year-old’s boyish charm and fun-loving ways, not to mention his bottomless wallet, she’s soon enjoying (paid-for) sex, drugs and raucous parties in his luxurious mansion.

Obviously smitten, Vanya then offers Ani $10,000 in exchange for a week’s worth of exclusivity, and she happily accepts—though only after he meets her counter-demand of $15K. The week includes an extravagant trip with friends to Vegas, where Ani and Vanya engage in more sex, drugs and partying before ending up where inebriated Vegas visitors often end up: an all-night wedding chapel.

And they both live happily after ever, right? Nope, because this isn’t Pretty Woman, despite its initial similarities.

Vanya is soon contacted by his father’s fixer, Toros (Karren Karagulian), who warns him that his parents will never accept his marriage to a woman they consider a prostitute. In an attempt to squash the union, Toros then forces his way into the New York mansion accompanied by hired goons Garnick and Igor (Vache Tovmasyan and Yura Borisov). And chaos ensues.

Anora has been called a romcom, but it’s hard to see how it qualifies. What passes for romance often seems more like a business arrangement—for instance, Ani accepts Vanya’s proposal only on the condition that he put a 3-carat ring on her finger. And as for comedy, the flick does feature gobs of near-slapstick violence and property destruction, but they result in laughs only if you can ignore the threatened disaster that produces them.

What this is, actually, is a Sean Baker film, in which success is a distant goal, and mere survival is a hard-won commodity. As stated earlier, though, it’s not quite like previous Baker films.

While its predecessors offer quiet moments and revealing dialogue that help us understand the characters, much of Anora is a cavalcade of frantic scenes featuring partying, screaming and endless F-bombs. For many, this adds up to an impressive achievement, as the film has already won the Cannes Palme D’or and is rumored to be a shoo-in for multiple Oscar noms.

Personally, while I appreciate Baker’s usual sympathetic treatment of societal underdogs, I wish he had exercised a bit more restraint in terms of tone—and in terms of length, especially during the flick’s repetitive second act.   

Back on the plus side, the film’s strengths include its cast, especially the actors in the two lead roles. In very different ways, Madison’s Ani and Eydelshteyn’s Vanya are both forces of nature.

Gratifyingly, the film also boasts a strong and emotionally complex ending. Though Pretty Woman fans might be disappointed, it should make Baker fans feel right at home.

Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)

Anora (rated R) opens Nov. 1 at theaters nationwide.

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.

Good Samaritan’s generosity doesn’t extend to herself

DIANE_Still6
Mary Kay Place plays a determined do-gooder in Diane. (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

By Richard Ades

The title character in Diane is selfless to a fault. Played by a stalwart Mary Kay Place, she ignores her own needs while looking after her addicted son, visiting ailing friends and volunteering in a soup kitchen. In return for these efforts, she’s rewarded with resentment, long-held grudges and only an occasional “thank you.”

A rough parallel can be drawn between Diane and Place herself, who has rarely received much attention despite the many years she’s spent both in front of and behind the camera. Unlike Diane, though, Place has finally been rewarded.  Portraying the long-suffering Diane allows her to reveal her talent for inhabiting a struggling character without indulging in excessive histrionics.

Written and directed by Kent Jones, the film follows Diane as she drives along rural Massachusetts roads from one disappointing encounter to another.

The most painful moments involve son Brian (Jake Lacy), who insists he’s kicked his drug habit though it’s all too clear he hasn’t. “Can’t you leave me be?” he begs. Maybe it would be better for him if she did, as her attempts to help by supplying him with food and clean clothes only turn her into an enabler. But ignoring someone in need is simply not in her nature.

Also painful is her relationship with her cancer-stricken cousin, Donna (Deirdre O’Connell), who harbors a resentment over a long-ago indiscretion. Other people in Diane’s life are more appreciative, including best friend Bobbie (Andrea Martin). Maybe Diane would benefit from their support and advice if she weren’t so busy beating herself up over what she sees as her own failings.

Jones’s low-key film boasts the participation of several skilled actors, including Estelle Parsons and other veterans who are less recognizable. The result is a convincing slice of rustic New England life. After it was over, though, I couldn’t help wishing it had been more.

People struggle, people disappoint each other, people die. In the process, neither Diane nor anybody else seems to learn anything. Unfortunately, the same goes for the viewer, unless you count the realization that Mary Kay Place is a very fine actor.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Local showings: Diane (rated R) opens April 5 at the Gateway Film Center in Columbus.