When was the first time you learned that your parents were just like you? When did they lose the veneer of infallibility that many children bestow upon them growing up? It starts with the most innocuous memories - the acknowledgement of a mistake, a moment of shame or regret or sometimes, something completely unrelated.
When Nelly (Josephine Sanz) loses her grandmother, she tries to come to terms with that fact, as she and her family clean out her childhood home. Things get complicated when her mother disappears and Nelly comes across a child her age, Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), who looks exactly like her.
Celine Sciamma follows up the masterful Potrait of a Lady on Fire with a tender, quiet examination of grief viewed through the eyes of a child. It draws comparisons to, of all things, Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro (1988). In both films, children use the unreal and the supernatural to make sense of an uncertain and scary world.
But the processing of grief isn't limited to Nelly, as she is not the only one who grieves. Sciamma shows us, in little bits and pieces, how mother and child process their grief separately, then together, saying that sometimes it's easier to deal with loss and say goodbye if one deals with it in simpler terms.
When was the last time you talked to your neighbor? When was the last time you formed a connection with them? The concrete towers that house us are a far cry from the villages and communities of our collective past. In the here and now, one can live their life without ever talking to the people living mere meters away from them. We are becoming a society of complete and utter strangers.
Jin-ah works as a call center agent for a BPO. Ironically, though her profession requires her to talk to people on a daily basis, she does not connect with any of them, as they are merely customers on a queue, words and personal information on a computer screen. She lives a solitary life, estranged from her parents, spending her off time alone in her apartment, falling asleep to background noise. That all changes when she meets Sujin, a new recruit to the call center who has trouble fitting into the call center. At the same time, her next door neighbor dies unexpectedly, making her wonder if eventually she'll end up like him, unloved and alone.
A quiet but powerful examination of loneliness and identity in an increasingly depersonalized world, Hong Seung-eun's debut film Aloners thrives in small, impactful moments of human connection, pinpoints of light that burst into fireworks. It is both a reminder and acknowledgement of sonder, that is, the idea that each and every person has a life as vivid and complex as your own.
There seems to be a tendency among the filmmakers of the Romanian new wave to stretch societal boundaries to see if something will eventually break. Radu Muntean's latest film Intregalde explores the relationship between giver and taker, and what happens if the taker takes all and the giver is given nothing in return.
When three humanitarians come across an old man in an isolated country road and help him, the proceedings feel like they might erupt into horror at any minute. What happens instead is no less suspenseful and perhaps far more interesting and funny. He leads the three into further and further into the woods as they begin to question the man's sanity. There is no benefit to helping the man further; why even try? All three answer this question differently - with indifference, annoyance or genuine concern, and it's a treat to see these things pan out.
There is a battle here in this film between the desire for self preservation and the desire to help others. Is altruism truly selfless, or is most of it done for one's self-satisfaction? And when help has been given but is rejected, how far does one go to keep helping? The epilogue feels optimistic, or at least hopeful - perhaps not a complete affirmation of humanity, but definitely not a repudiation of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment