A good doctor gets a pretty good documentary in Bernadette Wegenstein's THE GOOD BREAST

During the first few minutes of watching THE GOOD BREAST, the 2016 documentary directed and co-written by Bernadette Wegenstein, TrustMovies was convinced that any woman having to deal with breast cancer should only be lucky enough to have a doctor as good, as careful and as scientific as the one we first meet here: Dr. Lauren Schnaper. That feeling never fully dissipated but it did lessen somewhat as the documentary drew on.

This was due to the inordinate amount of time this 90-minute movie manages to spend on the subject of Saint Agatha, the patron saint of breast cancer. (More about all this later.)

Ms Wegenstein, shown at right, initially introduces us to Dr. Schnaper and her idea that the medical profession allows and, in fact, encourages many more mastectomies than are actually necessary, often by instilling such fear into the patient that full-out and immediate breast removal seems the only answer.

You will most likely have heard this before, but it bears repeating, especially when offered up in such a quiet, non-emotional, and backed-by-scientific-fact explanation as given by Schnaper. The film then wastes no time before introducing us to a quartet of women undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

These range from a very active-positive gal (shown above, right) who, by the time the film concludes, has turned into a mass of tears and tics, fears and needs, and who actually wants something quite different from the thing she appeared to most desire when the film began. It's sad in so many ways.

The saddest of these women is the one with the most faith in god -- who is so certain that "he" means her to live. She and her family are put through the proverbial mill, as that faith slowly weakens and finally vanishes. The four women provide a kind of balance, as well as a somewhat typical array of diagnoses and outcomes that can be expected here.

And yet, back and back and back again we go to that patron saint and all the many different artworks (one of which is shown above) that portray her and her awfully graphic and literally tortured experience at the hands of these "men of faith." At one point we even take a trip to Italy, below, with Schnaper and her nurse to visit and witness an entire festival devoted to Saint Agatha. Granted, the art exposes the kind of nasty, male-entitled horror to which the women of the time were subjected, so, yes, there's a feminist angle here.

But we finally spend so much time on this less-important byway that the sad saint keeps threatening to become the full-out subject here. And she's not. One wonders if this growing imbalance was more due to Dr. Schnaper or to Ms Wegenstein? Or both? Whichever, poor Saint Agatha finally does these docs  -- the film and the physician -- no favors whatsoever.

Otherwise, The Good Breast offers an interesting, empathetic look at four women facing a particularly difficult challenge -- one that goes close to what many women feel is the very heart of their femininity. The film does point out that not all women treat their breasts as something so sacrosanct. But plenty do, and the result can be as difficult as it is confounding. Just as it is for us men, when we're told our penis and/or scrotum, thanks to prostate or testicular cancer, will no longer be functioning sexually.

From Icarus Films Home Video, The Good Breast will be available on DVD this coming Tuesday, June 18 -- for purchase and rental (the latter also via Amazon or iTunes).

Magic realism, Julio Medem-style: Penélope Cruz, Luis Tosar & Asier Etxeandia in MA MA

Spanish filmmaker Julio Medem has had a promising career, probably capped a little too soon by the success of his earlier work, Sex & Lucia, which helped make Paz Vega an international sex symbol. (Pushing the sexual envelope seldom seems to hurt a career.) While Medem has made some other interesting films, the ones that TrustMovies has seen, at least, offer cross-currents of sex and fantasy, love and death, art and life all jostling for position. The guy is at it again with his latest work, MA MA, which gives Penélope Cruz (shown above and further below) the opportunity to display more of her great beauty and some of her acting chops, playing a young mother suddenly diagnosed with breast cancer.

As usual Señor Medem, shown at left, puts all this together in a manner that portends darkness and depth but actually ends up giving us some very pretty images and a lot of feel-good philosophy. Ma Ma may be his silliest movie yet, and almost because of this, it may strike you, as it did me, as particularly endearing. By its finale, it had me in tears, even though I knew damned well that those tears had been hugely manipulated, or as we sometime say, "jerked." My spouse, who gave up on the movie midway, had a different term. He called Ma Ma "a kind of pornography."

And, no, Spousie meant nothing "sexual" by this word. (The film's single sex scene is cleverly visualized via a close-up of a heart, beating ever faster as entry and orgasm are achieved.) Rather, the film is another example of what my spouse feels movies and television give us when they pretend to be showing "real life" but instead offer up a sugar-coated, high-gloss look at stuff that in reality -- where anything approaching economic "normalcy" is concerned -- is no such thing. Movies and television, he says, do this so often and so thoroughly that audiences expect life should be like this, somewhat in the manner that young men. now often raised on a diet of pornography, expect that actual sex ought to resemble what they see on film.

In this film, après diagnosis, the Cruz character, Magda, meets Arturo (the magnetic Spanish actor, Luis Tosar,above), who happens to be a soccer scout with eyes on Magda's young son, Dani (Teo Planell) shown at right, two photos below and at bottom) who loves the game and wants to be a soccer star. Magda's husband is a randy, absentee father, and Arturo has just lost wife and child in a tragic accident. Made for each other, right?

Meanwhile, Magda's physician -- Asier Etxeandia (above, left) -- is a gorgeous hunk who doubles as quite the singer. Locations includes swank apartments, seaside resorts and lovely white hospital rooms, Oh, yes, and there's a subplot regarding an about-to-be-adopted Russian orphan, plus a surprise entry of new "life" into this tale of disease and death,

All of this corresponds to what I am guessing is Medem's message to us viewers, found in the lyrics of one of the songs our gorgeous physician sings: "see, touch, hear, feel, love, suffer," (well, you get the point). And so do our characters, who reprise that song at the film's conclusion.  Still, as I say, the movie got to me, ridiculous as it often seemed.

Tosar and Cruz have such good chemistry that I'm surprised not to have seen them playing opposite each other previously. Still, I will go no farther than admitting, despite all its grasping at the straws of magic realism and themes as would-be weighty as life and death, infidelity and impotence, parenting and adoption, Ma Ma is really high-toned soap opera for the arthouse set. Well, there are some of us who enjoy that kind of thing....

From Oscilloscope and running a bit too lengthy at 111 minutes, the movie opens tomorrow, Friday, May 20, in New York City at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema, and the following week, Friday, Mary 27, down here in South Florida at a number of theaters: in Miami at the Tower Theater; in Aventura at the AMC Aventura; in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters; and in Fort Lauderdale at the Cinema Paradiso. Elsewhere? Absolutely. Click here then scroll down to view currently scheduled  playdates, cities and theaters.

New on VOD--Matt Creed and Amy Grantham's LILY covers recovery from cancer treatment

Cancer at any age can be devastating, but for a young woman who looks to be in her early twenties, it's hard to imagine the shock to the system that dealing with something like this might entail. We pick up on our heroine, Lily, the main character of the eponymously titled LILY just at the close of her treatment for what looks like maybe breast cancer, when she is just finishing her radiation sessions and still has the underarm burns to show for this. The movie opens with an extraordinarily beautiful shot of our girl (Amy Grantham, below, who both co-wrote and stars in the movie) going through one of her final radiation sessions. Though you concentrate on her beautiful face, you're also aware that you can see the pulse actually beating in her delicate neck.

The film's director, Matt Creed (shown below), wisely concentrates on Lily (Ms Grantham) for just about the entire movie, since the actress has a splendid face for the camera, as beautiful in repose as in action. If only the rest of the project were up to this level.

Lily's problem -- the character's and the movie's -- is that her life is currently shit. But the more we see and learn of it, and her, it's clear that her life was exactly that before the cancer hit. Yet she doesn't seem to know or care. She just moves, often rather trance-like, from bad event to bad event, with the camera following so that we see, as in the photo at bottom, that hugely expressive feature known as "the back of the head." Yes, it's that kind of movie. It is also, I must say, quite smart about its use of exposition, of which there is little. Very quickly, we're asking, Whose kids are those? And who's this older guy (below, left) -- their daddy? Or is he her father? Or Grandpa? (He's old enough.) Omigod -- they're getting into bed....

Eventually we learn the answers. We even get a smidgen of conversation about that incredible Cuban art school we first learned of in the fine documentary Unfinished Spaces. We meet Lily's mom, and eventually her dad, and note that one's a bigger asshole than the next. As is her husband/boyfriend. Her friends (some of them, anyway) seem a little less annoying. (Though the standard scene in which they all insist to her that she looks fabulous without her wig, as below, is something we knew the second she removed it several scenes back.)

I am told that the movie is loosely based upon the real-life experiences of its star, Ms Grantham. So it is difficult not to feel something for this young woman and her truly horrible life, at least as it appears here. But this is nowhere near enough to make a worthwhile movie. (The only positive thing here seems to be that, even without a job or any prospects of one, money is not a problem for Lily.)

We tag along as Lily visits a thrift shop, buys a pair of tap shoes and then practices at home until her neighbor complains, after which she does this outside (below), attracting, as you might guess, some attention. And then we watch as metaphor rears its head and our girl views a street vendor creating a very large bubble (above) that finally bursts.

At film's close, Lily visits an art dealer whose help she needs. Her actions appear to be every bit as clueless and unprofessional as ever, all of which makes what I suspect was supposed to be a feel-good finale for Lily (and Lily) seem a few levels less than promising.

After several film-festival appearances, the movie will make its VOD debut this coming Tuesday, December 9.

Léa Pool's PINK RIBBONS, INC. questions our standard response to breast cancer

This could be the most important documentary of the year. Forget that: of the decade. You might say that it goes against conventional wisdom, except that this isn't wisdom, really: just conventional, follow-the-leader, lemming-like behavior in the quest for a feel-good quick fix. In any case, the film is going to be extremely unpopular among the powers-that-be in the corporate and medical world.

PINK RIBBONS, INC., the new documentary from Canadian film-maker Léa Pool, shown at right, is likely to make those people apoplectic even a few minutes into the movie. Not that Ms Pool or any of her many interviewees ever raises their voice. No. These people are quiet, concerned, informed -- and fed up. As you may be, too, once you've watched the movie in its entirety.

Believe me, I have nothing against the color pink or against ribbons in general. In fact, hearing the story of the woman, now elderly, who first came up with the idea of a ribbon as a symbol for breast cancer, proved both a heartening and appalling experience. Appalling because her initial ribbon was the color orange -- nothing wrong with that -- but when a very well-known corporation wanted to buy from her the right to own that ribbon and use it to hawk product and make money, she said no. And so, clever company that it was, it simply changed the color to pink. And that's how we've become stuck with pink products galore that would have you believe that they are all helping to fight breast cancer.  

Are they not? Well, Pink Ribbons, Inc. shows us why they not only are not helping but may actually be hindering, as well. Ms Pool and her researchers get down to the nub of things by pointing out how certain companies, while going "pink" to raise money to help fight breast cancer, are simultaneously manufacturing products that are linked to causing the disease.

This is capitalism run typically amok, and further encouraged by the huge commercial success of the entire "pink" campaign that has, as the movie so insightfully demonstrates, raised millions of dollars in the name of breast cancer -- very few of which are devoted to prevention of the disease or to the real education of the public, but rather go for "research" and that long promised "cure." As social critic Barbara Ehrenreich (above, who leads off this fine film) quietly explains, "The effect of the whole pink ribbon culture has been to drain and deflect the kind of militancy we had...." As the movie points out, with specifics that encompass psychology, sociology, economics and politics, the breast cancer movement has changed from activism to feel-good consumerism.

We watch, aghast, as Pink seems to take over the world: from the expected Teddy Bears to food product (what Barbara A. Brenner, below, ex-Executive Director of Breast Cancer Action, says about a certain company's yogurt campaign is highly instructive, while what we learn about the Kentucky Fried Chicken campaign is downright shocking). Even Niagra Falls and the Empire State Building go pink! Starting back in the 1970s -- with the Reagan administration's push toward "private" and "business" solutions to health, social welfare and charity -- the film moves on to the Pink Campaign's selectively leaving out those women who are dying via Stage 4 Breast cancer (come on, this campaign is about surviving, not death!), quietly and effectively raising your hackles in the process.

By the time it gets to exactly where all the money raised for breast cancer actually goes, and why, and to the big pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lily who appear to be working both sides of the street, you'll  be ready to cry uncle. After watching this 97-minute documentary, TrustMovies has come up with a couple of slight rhymes that he plans to live by from now on:

If it's pink, it'll likely stink

and

If there's a ribbon, 
 somebody's fibbin'

Or, to put it even more succinctly by quoting the objective of this compassionate, well-reasoned documentary: to persuade the word's citizenry to simply "Think before you pink." 

Pink Ribbons, Inc., from First Run Features, will open this Friday, June 1 in New York City (at the IFC Center) and in the Los Angeles area (at Laemmle's Monica 4-Plex and Playhouse 7), and will begin a limited release that will hit at least 20 more cities across the country in the weeks to come. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates.