As it is every month, there are plenty of fantastic movies from around the globe. However, those who can only handle films in English aren’t left out, while the super-strange and wonderful Sasquatch Sunset doesn’t have any words at all.
Film of the month: Green Border
Once the opening aerial shot of the forest between Poland and Belarus fades permanently from verdant green to stark black and white, it’s a long, cold, dark night for humanity in Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s savagely gripping indictment of those two countries’ migration policies.
In 2021, Belarus’s president Alexander Lukashenko maliciously began weaponising Middle-Eastern and other migrants against the EU by offering airline tickets to his country and the promise of onward entry to Europe. As we see one Syrian family touch down in Minsk, believing they are heading to Sweden only to be driven to the Polish border and forced through a barbed-wire fence, it’s clear they are the abandoned victims of a vicious hoax.
They are now in the exclusion zone between Belarus and Poland, a swamp-infested, freezing forest, with no food, water and little phone signal. And from here, the cruellest of Kafka-esque nightmares begins, but with guns, batons and snarling dogs.
If they manage to reach the Polish side of the zone without perishing, border guards will drag, push and even hurl pregnant women back through the wire to Belarus with a lack of compassion equally as terrifying as their Belarusian counterparts. From there it’s a brutal back and forth with seemingly no end.
However, Holland cleverly opens up the story from the vantage of the other players in this harrowing farce. There’s the Polish border guard who’s told by his commander, “These aren’t people, they are weapons of Putin and Lukashenko. They are live bullets”, but appears to have doubts about his role. And there are the activists operating risky clandestine forays into the forest, providing food and medical aid.
This could all be too grim were it not for Holland’s propulsive, thriller-like hand (she has form on this, directing episodes of The Wire and House of Cards). It’s pulsatingly tense from start to finish, with every character on the edge of disaster. Although Holland offers hope, too, in a scene when young Africans and the children of the Polish family they’ve found sanctuary with find global connection with a tear-inducing joint rendition of rapper Youssoupha’s Dying a Thousand Times.
There’s an equally troubling coda, too. As Putin’s forces invade Ukraine in 2022, we see the same border guards mobilised to assist the massive influx of refugees; only here, it’s warm smiles for the incoming “white” faces…
In cinemas June 21
The movies you should see this month
Four Little Adults
Nevermind Zendaya’s throuple-lite flirtations in Challengers; trust the Scandis for a more broad-minded take on polyamory. Oscar-nominated Finnish director Selma Vilhunen’s domestic ménage à quatre is a wry, intelligent portrait of a middle-class couple attempting to solve infidelity by way of an open marriage. MP Juulia (Alma Pöysti) and Matias (Eero Milonoff) are deeply in love but, although he's a priest, Matias has a coke habit and a woman on the side, whom Juulia eventually discovers. Her progressive solution? To buy all three of them a manual on polyamory and hit Tinder herself.
Soon a four-way relationship is in full swing, but of course not all players get to have multiple lovers, so jealousies (and further complications) kick in. It’s a sensitive, smart examination of the subject that plays it with humour (there’s a delightfully awkward dinner party with extended relatives) while avoiding titillation. If you found last year’s three-way Passages too downbeat, this is a hopeful, optimistic riposte.
June 7
Rosalie
Dismiss this jokily as simply “the one about the bearded woman” at your loss. While Stéphanie Di Giusto’s period drama (loosely based on the life of famed bearded Frenchwoman Clémentine Delait) plays things straight, it’s a rather beautiful portrait of queerness and love against all odds and instincts. While waiting to be carted off to her prospective husband by her father in exchange for a sizeable dowry, fresh-faced young Rosalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) is begging to her crucifix, “Make him love me.” Older, gruffer, less refined Abel (Benoît Magimel, the perfectly heavy-breathing romantic lead of few words) agrees to marriage, but on their wedding night he’s in for a hairy surprise.
As Abel plunges into a dark night of the soul, searching for a glimmer of amour towards Rosalie, she embraces her beard, becoming the star attraction to save their indebted café. Meanwhile, the village locals, being backward 19th-century yokels, aren’t all pleased with the strange incomer…
The conclusion is a gorgeously ambiguous moment of swooning tragedy and, of course, the parallels to 21st-century treatment of “otherness” are clear. In a world where acceptance isn’t always easy to come by, vive la différence and long live Rosalie!
June 7
Sasquatch Sunset
Whatever arthouse antics stomp your way this year, they’ll be hard-pushed to out-weird brothers David and Nathan Zellner’s hilariously enjoyable beast, which had people both roaring with applause and scrambling for the exit at its Sundance premiere earlier this year. There’s zero dialogue, no narrative as such, just Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough unrecognisable under mountains of hair and prosthetics as one half of a bigfoot quartet grunting, munching, shagging and shitting their way through a year in the American wilderness.
If you’re not guiltily tittering at the deadpan, voyeuristic gawping of two sasquatches (and the bemused reactions of the other forest animals) as the other pair rut away in a crude Nat Geo sex scene five minutes in, it’s unlikely this is for you. Which would be a shame because, although goofy and gross, what follows is an ingenious and somehow incredibly funny series of episodes as the hapless foursome stumble evermore perilously close to encroaching human civilisation (yes, this is an eco parable too). As mad as barrel of monkeys, but rather magical too.
June 14
Àma Gloria
At 83 minutes, Marie Amachoukeli’s touching tale may be petite, but it comes with a gigantic heart. It also heralds a truly remarkable debut from Louise Mauroy-Panzani who, at the tender age of only six, runs a gamut of delicateemotions like a seasoned veteran. Cléo (Mauroy-Panzani), whose own mother died before she can even remember, is living in Paris with her father and immigrant nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno, also excellent) with whom she has become incredibly close. Following the death of her mother, Gloria has to return to Cape Verde permanently in order to look after her own children. To soften the goodbye, Gloria invites Cléo to Cape Verde for the school holidays to spend one final summer together.
Told through the ever-watchful gaze of Cléo, this is partly a premature coming of age story, as she wrestles with her confusing emotions over the impending separation as well as jealousy of Gloria’s newborn grandchild. It’s also an intimate tribute to the unsung motherly/child bonds formed between nannies and those they care for. Previously untrained Mauroy-Panzani may or may not have plans to continue acting, but based on this astounding performance she really, really should.
June 14
The Bikeriders
I reviewed Mud director Jeff Nichols’ slice of Sixties biker culture when it screened at last year’s London Film Festival. Quite why it has taken so long to hit cinema screens, I don’t know, as it’s a throbbing, purring, beautifully sumptuous mood piece. Kathy (Jodie Comer) is romantically drawn into the orbit of a motorcycle gang by quietly charismatic Benny (Austin Butler), which leads to an evolving beef for Benny’s attention between her and leader Johnny (Tom Hardy). Meanwhile, rival gang violence escalates from fists to knives and eventually the pop of bullets. Comer (I can’t vouch for the veracity of her treacly, southern-fried accent) is absolutely firing on all cylinders (surely there’s more crackling Hollywood action to come for her). You can read the full review here.
June 21
The films you might want to see this month
Riddle of Fire
Back in the day (we’re taking the pre-nanny state, child safety era here), it wasn’t unusual for young kids to head off, air rifles in hand, into the woods on a self-made “mythical” odyssey. Ah, halcyon times… So hurrah for Wyoming’s “Three Immortal Reptiles”, the mini-motorbike-riding, paintball-gun-toting tween heroes of Weston Razooli’s charming debut.
The trio have a simple plan to bake a blueberry pie for their sick mother, but are rudely beaten to the last egg in town by a beardy outlaw type. “We’re gonna get a speckled egg from that woodsy bastard!” declares Alice (Phoebe Ferro, as feisty and endearing as her co-leads). It’s a quest story that leads them to the dastardly Enchanted Blade Gang (complete with their own special “faery” language) and then ever deeper into a forest of devilish deeds. Reminiscent of The Goonies or even older films like Escape to Witch Mountain, besides a couple of clunky supporting adult performances, this is free-wheeling little joy.
June 7
The Dead Don’t Hurt
Like Viggo Mortensen’s horse, which barely breaks out of a relaxed amble, besides a clutch of shocking interjections this American Civil War-set romantic tragedy moves at a steady pace. We know from the opening scene that the love of Mortensen’s life (Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps) is dying and that there’s also a callous killer on the loose. To bring us to this point and beyond, time then slips back and forth between Krieps’ childhood (and her dual visions of the brutal death of her father and the heroism of Joan of Arc), the days she made a happy home with Mortensen and her lonesome years when he was away fighting the war.
As a young girl, Krieps asks her mother, “Why do men fight?” The answer, told elegantly through two very different warriors in her life, is for both good and evil. Mortensen also wrote, directed and composed the music (the auteur of the month prize goes to him), and perhaps this was one too many reins for him to handle to keep this beast trotting along perfectly.
June 7
Sorcery
Righteous fury, revenge and anti-colonial guerilla witchcraft make for a potent brew in Chilean director Christopher Murray’s drizzly atmospheric drama. And that’s just the flesh and bones, as the heart of this eerily folkloric tale is the coming of age of a 13-year-old indigenous girl. It’s 1881 and Rosa (Valentina Véliz Caileo, brilliantly introspective in her debut) and her father work for German settler “master” Stefan. When all his sheep drop dead suddenly, Stefan is quick to blame the nearest “Indian”, summarily dispatching his dogs to savage Rosa’s father to death.
Long story short: in search of vengeance, Rosa leads herself into the arms of an underground resistance group of sorcerers called La Recta Provincia who are covertly fighting Chile’s European colonisers. Stefan receives his comeuppance, although it’s nothing so barbarous as the authorities’ witchhunt for La Recta Provincia (a true story upon which this is loosely based). But this is really about Rosa and how to become a witch the hard way.
June 14
The G
Wonderfully crag-faced Dale Dickey plays Ann, aka “The G”, nicknamed so by granddaughter Emma on account of her severely badass grandmotherly ways. So when Ann and her ailing husband are abducted in the middle of the night by their new “legal guardians” and taken to a mysterious care home, you know she isn’t gonna take it lying down. In fact, “just until I castrate these pig-f***ers” is how long Ann plans to stay incarcerated against her will. Her guardians are after “the money”, Ann wants retribution, and so with a jigsaw of low down and dirty, double-crossing players, vengeance is messily served.
As the film makes no reference to it, this comes across simply as a gloriously pulpy, hard-boiled B-movie. However, a little googling reveals that the seemingly preposterous notion of random bad guys obtaining legal guardianship over vulnerable old folk in order to drain their assets is actually “a thing” in the States. Ann’s gangster granny fury might not be the real-life solution though…
June 21
Also out this month
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return as the buddy cops in Bad Boys: Ride or Die (June 5). If you liked the previous Bad Boys, know you what you’re getting and should be similarly thrilled.
The same goes for Inside Out 2 (June 14), although every human on the planet loved the first instalment, so this should be a hot ticket for Disney. And hello new emotions, Anxiety and Ennui...
Russell Crowe as a troubled actor who begins to unravel while shooting a supernatural horror film? I’ve got my fingers crossed The Exorcism (June 21) has some bite and ol’ Rusty is starting to pick some good movies again.
Hot on the heels of the fantastic Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos is back with darkly odd anthology Kinds of Kindness (June 28). Emma Stone is onboard too, as is Jesse Plemons, who just won best actor at Cannes for the role. Cannot wait!
And Kevin Costner is back in the saddle, directing and starring in Horizon: An American Saga Chapter One (June 28), the first three hours of a four-part epic Western. Warner Bros must surely have faith in its investment. So giddy up, and enjoy your month of cinema.
