_Distancia de Rescate_, or _Fever Dream_ as it is less
poetically titled on Netflix, is the scariest film I
have seen in years despite not showing a drop of blood
or a ghost. It has a dream-like rhythm that slowly
mutates into a brooding nightmare. It is memorably
narrated by Maria Valverde's sick mother character
(a fish-out-of-water city girl stuck in rural Peru),
where she carries on a non-stop imaginary dialogue
with the "demonic" child David. But is he the problem,
or is it his mother (Dolores Fonzi, too scantily clad
in that backwater village), who demonizes her own son,
scheming to get her claws into Valverde's daughter Nina?

The widescreen compositions, the elemental atmosphere,
the sense of dread, and the weight of superstition,
all remind me of _Waterland_. (A scene where Fonzi's
character drives her boat up river to see the local
witch is a deadringer for that film's key sequence.
Both films are adapted from acclaimed novels too.)
Director Claudia Llosa specializes in using physical
ailments as metaphors for personality disorders. I
haven't seen her acclaimed film _The Milk of Sorrow_,
but both _Fever Dream_ and _Aloft_ have illness as the
central motif; it is something that changes your life,
metaphormizes you into a different person -- which
anyone who has had contact with cancer patients can
understand. Melanie Laurent enlivens the faith-
healing themed _Aloft_, which is not nearly as
well-made or well-edited. Here Maria Valverde brings
her aristocratic self-absorption to the fray, turning
rustic interruptions of her family life into malevalent,
metaphysical intrusions. But it may not be all in her
head after all. _Fever Dream_ is an astonishing film,
among the best I've seen all year.

---------------------------------------------------------

Mati Diop's acclaimed _Atlantics_ is a ghost story
too, with interesting takes on folklores and class
differences. The seaside, night-time cinematography
is astonishing, and she makes good use of the Senegal
seaport cityscapes. But the story-telling, acting,
and editing are not in the same league as _Fever Dream_.

It starts out well enough. Souleiman (a soulful
Ibrahima Traore) does construction work on a mythical
modernist tower with his associates, but the rich
supervisor cheats them of their pay for months. They
plan a risky a boat ride to Spain, 1000 miles away,
to earn a living. but first he has a moonlit rendezvous
with Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), in a sequence as magical
and romantic as any that ldikó Enyedi has filmed. Ada
is on borrowed time too, about to have an arranged
marriage to uber rich Omar.

Unfortunately, Souleiman disappears for the balance of
the film. Sane, who reminds me of Adele Exarchopoulos
and has all her weaknesses, soldiers on to carry the
film, but is overshadowed by too many loud characters,
too many themes (class difference, misogyny in the
form of virginity tests, dead spirits inhabiting live
people to enact revenge) ... most characters are played
by non-professionals (there isn't a huge film industry
in Senegal), and it really becomes a problem. Diop
should learn to use stylistic devices that unify the
film's tone, like the running dialogue in Valverde's
head in _Fever Dream_.

--------------------------------------------------------

Kornel Mundruczo's _Pieces of a Woman_ opens with a long
home birth scene, much of it shot without cuts. Long
takes and intricate chloreography are nothing new to the
Hungarian director, who acknowledges Bela Tarr in his
end credits; his _Delta_ and _Johanna_ are full of formal
innovations. This aspect has lessen over the years;
_White Gods_ and _Jupiter Moon_ are stylistically
bland. His first English language film seems to have
re-invigorated him in that department. Vanessa Kirby, as
the pregnant Martha whose baby dies, is as enigmatic
and taciturn as Mundruczo's earliest rural protagonists,
even if she lives in Boston. Shia LaBeouf, as her
partner, works on an oil rig while his wife comes from
money. LeBeouf talks non-stop, as if to underscore
his obnoxiousness, but is eclipsed by Ellen Burstyn's
holocaust survivor mother character in the insufferability
department. Why does Mundruczo cast these two? Soon the
husband is bought off by the mother, never to be seen
again. Good riddance.

We don't see enough pieces of Marth's life -- mostly her
suffering, not her joy or triumphs. But Kirby impresses
with her sullen poise and belated pyrotechnics in the
courtroom, as does Molly Parker as the midwife caught
in a lawsuit. The film is based on Mundruczo's and
Kata Weber's stage-play; it appears particularly stagy
during Burstyn's big speech about escaping from Nazis.
the class difference in the U.S. could be handled more
convincingly. More local Boston colors would have helped.

-----------------------------------------------------

Motherhood (real and surrogate) is also the central theme
of _The Wonder_. Florence Pugh is nurse "Lib" hired to
observe a fasting girl Anna and help document that as a
Catholic miracle. Pugh's work here reminds me of Kirby's
in _Pieces of a Woman except that Li has more life
experience (failed marriage, the Crimea War of the 1850s).
She is supremely self-possessed, takes opium, pleasures
herself in bed as she pleases, and is generally immune
to slights from the Irish locals. Come to think of it,
the actress reminds me of Maria Valverde too, perhaps
without the aristocratic bearing.

I've loved Pugh since seeing her in _Lady Macbeth_, but
there are already danger signs that the young actress,
not formally trained, is repeating herself, exhausting
the breadth of her natural talent. Her best recent
role is probably _Black Widow_, where she sports a
Russian accent and plays with martial arts; her
admirably physical work in _Fighting with My Family_
is a joy to behold too. I hope she can take a step
back, think about what distinguishes her roles, and
replenishes herself with new arrows in her quiver.

If only the plot and the filmmaking in _The Wonder_
are nearly as worth mentioning.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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