DVDebut for DARK FORTUNE, Stefan Haupt's quiet, psychologically astute drama of family, trauma, repression and loss

A very dear friend of mine, a psychologist whose life ended abruptly and far too soon, once told me that the children of psychologists are some of the most screwed-up people on earth. The doctor/parent may minister quite well to patients, yet for whatever reason(s), his/her own children are often in certain ways left at the starting gate. Why this should be -- the age-old choice of placing job ahead of family or maybe simple hypocrisy/denial -- may not matter as much as the fact that, all too often, this cliche proves true.

TrustMovies thought about his old friend and that theory while viewing the very fine, almost-new (2016) Swiss film, DARK FORTUNE, directed and adapted by Stefan Haupt from Finsteres Glück by Lukas Hartmann.

Herr Haupt (pictured at right), who gave us the unusual documentary/ narrative combo, The Circle, back in 2014, here offers up a film full of events -- seen or remembered and some of these truly awful -- in such a quiet, considered manner that he, along with his excellent cast, manages to preclude melodrama while still giving us the necessary drama, allowing us to feel all of the emotion that goes along with it.

Events include a horrendous car accident that destroys a family and leaves one orphaned child, a fight between relatives over the care of that child, an excellent psychologist who is given temporary care of the orphan, and her own family that is going through -- yep -- its own "children issues."

Dark Fortune covers a lot of ground, but its near-two-hour running time allows that ground to be explored properly. If you appreciate stories of family, trauma, astute psychology and believable resolution, you won't be bored and will finish the film is a state of pleasurable relief.

The role of the child is taken by the appealing and talented young newcomer, Noé Ricklin (above), who combines vulnerability, fear and anger into quite a personality. His psychologist and helper, Eliane, is played by Eleni Haupt (above and below) with such a strong sense of conviction and understanding that she'll win you over just as she does her young patient.

Slowly, carefully we learn more about the boy's departed family members, as well as his remaining aunt and grandmother, and simultaneously we meet Eleni's two daughters and her estranged second husband (a very good job by Martin Hug, below, right).

Together, these quiet, beautifully observed scenes build up quite a head of steam and emotion, mostly by not allowing the characters to do so. The tightly constrained script, direction and performances combine to create a tale of trauma, loss and family secrets. Most interesting of all is how the film's center of interest moves from one family to the other -- and then brings it all together via a kind of off-the-cuff, spontaneous psychology and therapy that not only seem believable but also work. This is an all-around lovely, moving job of movie-making.

From Corinth Films, in German with English subtitles and running 116 minutes, the film hit the street on DVD -- for rental or purchase -- this past Tuesday, June 23, and can also be seen via Amazon Prime Video.

Carla Simón's SUMMER 1993: a fine autobiographical slice of Catalonian life

In annals of rigorously unsentimental cinema of a child working through trauma into some kind of acceptance, there are not a whole lot of examples that TrustMovies can name off the top of his head. (Forbidden Games comes to mind, but it has been so very long since I've seen that gem of a movie that it may be more sentimental that I remember, and The Two of Us, as lovely as it often is, is most definitely sentimental.) Both these films deal with World War II, and the latter with the Jewish Holocaust -- which is often the case with these movies about childhood.

What is quite different about SUMMER 1993, the new autobiographical Spanish film from Catalonia (in Catalan with English subtitles) opening this week, is that it takes place nowhere near wartime. In fact, much of the movie unfurls in the bucolic Catalonian countryside. You could hardly ask for a more gorgeous, verdant setting, and yet the trauma that our heroine, the seven-year-old Frida, must endure -- the recent death of her mother, following that of her father some time before -- is not at all placated by that beauty.

As directed and co-written (with Valentina Viso) by first-time full-length filmmaker Carla Simón (shown above), the movie is made with the kind of deceptive simplicity that seems almost off-hand and improvisational. Performances are first-rate -- the two leading children are particularly amazing: as real as you could want -- and the adults on view give beautifully calibrated performances, as well.

The two young girls are played by Laia Artigas (as the seven-year-old Frida, above, right) and Paula Robles (as the four-year-old Anna, above, left), while the two major adult roles belong to Bruna Cusí (below, left) and David Verdaguer (below, right, of 10.000 KM), as the aunt and uncle who take Frida into their family as someone as close to their own child as possible. The movie never shies away from showing Frida as a child problemed enough to create additional problems -- some minor (a comb tossed out a car window) others major (jealousy toward her little cousin) -- for herself and her new family. All this provides additional heft in keeping sentimentality at bay.

Another great strength of the movie is the manner in which Ms Simón shows us almost everything from a child's-eye view, smartly replacing the usual exposition with realistic behavior and speech. The manner in which the adult family members talk "around" things so as to protect Frida; how non-family reacts to the child's skinned and bloody knee after a small accident; the question of what caused the death of Frida's parents (those who remember the late 80s and 90s, along with drug users, hemophiliacs and the gay community, will probably come to the right conclusion more quickly than others) -- all this is given us via dribs and drabs of very well executed dialog and visuals.

Though appearing almost improvisational, Summer 1993 is filmed with a careful precision that brings to life each small moment and situation. And though there is no war either imminent nor recently finished, because this is Spain, the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco rest always just below the surface, mirrored in the political/cultural attitudes and actions of the different generations we view. (That's Isabel Rocatti, below, as Frida's grandmother.)

The movie is extremely episodic, and this may turn off some viewers. And yet, because each episode is handled so well, the resulting movie manages to build to a finale that is both surprising and somehow hoped for. No explanation is given for Frida's sudden outburst, but discerning viewers will, I think, understand and appreciate the psychological truth -- about loss and acceptance, love and hope -- that underpins the behavior on view here.

Stick Summer 1993, a major award-winner in its own country and at festivals worldwide, on your must-see list. From Oscilloscope Films and running 97 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, May 25, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal and in New York City at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, before making the rounds of more than 20 other major cities across the country. Here in South Florida, the film will open June 15 at the Tower Theater, Miami, and the Living Room Theaters in Boca Raton. Click here then scroll down to view all currently scheduled playdates.

Another "mothering" lesson in Peter A. Dowling's Irish horror thriller, SACRIFICE

Just yesterday we got an oddball lesson in mothering via Bulgaria, and here again today, we have another one from Ireland in the new horror thriller, SACRIFICE. Yesterday's tutorial came by and for women, but today's arrives via the guys, god bless 'em, and a more nasty, crazy, blood-thirsty and uber-patriarchal bunch of sleazebags, you're unlikely to find. This is thanks to director and adapter (of the novel by S.J. Bolton) Peter A. Dowling, shown below, who has done a pretty credible job of bringing this especially grizzly tale to the screen.

Most of the violence is kept off-screen, actually, but via a discovered corpse or two (and more to come) we fairly quickly learn the specifics of what happened (they're pretty ugly), if not quite why. Uncovering the latter is up to the film's star, Australia's always-willing-and-able Radha Mitchell, who plays a doctor who desperately wants to have a baby with hubby (Rupert Graves). But this is not to be, it seems; instead the pair travels to Ireland and a little island where hubby's wealthy family has quite a nice set-up going.

Ms Mitchell (above and below) is front and center throughout the film, and she handles her duties with her usual skill. From the film's particularly impressive opening scene in the hospital where she works as a gynecologist and has a very unusual session with a pregnant patient, the star proceeds to the island on which she very quickly determines that something is terribly wrong and begins investigating.

As usual in films like this, the townspeople, including the authorities, are not helpful, and so our heroine (Tora is her name) must tackle everything from the detective work to operating heavy machinery (below).  Just who -- if anyone -- is among the good guys is up for grabs here, which adds to the suspense and danger, all of which gets sorted out within the appropriate 90-minute running time.

A few red herrings turn up, the ensemble cast does everything required, and the movie overall plays out as swift, scary and (somewhat ghastly) fun. TrustMovies is making no claims to greatness here, but as horror thrillers go, Sacrifice is perfectly presentable, though it's something one might be inclined to view at home rather than making a pricier, more time-consuming trek to the cinema.

Which is all to the good, since the movie, from IFC Midnight, opens simultaneously on VOD and all digital platforms, as well as in a theater or two. In New York City, you can find it at the IFC Center (at a single late-night screening only) beginning tomorrow, April 29. The following Friday, May 6, it opens in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema in Hollywood.  

Boys to men in Jennifer Siebel Newsom's latest documentary, THE MASK YOU LIVE IN

Having found Jennifer Siebel Newsom's earlier documentary, Miss Representation, so edifying in the way it handled how women are represented via the media, you could not have kept me from viewing her latest work, THE MASK YOU LIVE IN, which tackles the American male and how he is groomed for the kind of success that is actually much closer to failure -- so far as women and society are concerned. Both docs are important and worth seeing.

In her latest, Ms Newsom, shown at right, begins by having one of her interviewees, former NFL player and coach Joe Ehrmann (below. left), explain why the command, "Be a man!" is one of the most destructive in our culture. Trust-Movies certainly remembers being told that by his own father, along with various concerned male adults (generally at the worst possible times). You may remember having had this phrase said to you, too.

The problem, of course, is that, rather than being told to stand up for what it right, or to help others, or to treat women with respect and caring, the Be a Man phrase most often means being violent -- putting on that pair of boxing gloves and beating the shit out of the other guy (that was the way yours truly had it fed to him).

Via a series of interviews with men, women and boys, along with the use of some often startling statistics and situations, Ms Newsom weaves together a tapestry of a society way out of control so far as anything healthy is concerned.

We learn here that boys have a much greater suicide rate than do girls, probably due most to the fact that they are taught from the earliest age to repress their emotions -- to wear that mask of the title in which they cannot be seen and eventually cannot feel, either. We also learn how "being a man" adds to the current culture of rape. We see various sets of men -- in sports, in prison, in situations offering help -- and learn how some of them have found ways around this culture that would imprison and destroy.

A problem with this documentary, as with her earlier one, is that it sometimes comes too close to finger-wagging and nattering, well-intentioned as this might be (not that there isn't much to wag and natter at). Fortunately, when this occurs, it is never long before Newsom gets back on track with more statistics, information and good ideas. She is also not content to simply point out the problem; she insists on finding ways around and through it.

Consequently, you don't leave her docs depressed and feeling that nothing can be done. There is plenty, in fact. So next time you're about to exhort a boy to "Be a Man!" stop and instead take the time and trouble to explain to him what being that man ought -- and ought not -- entail.

The Mask You Live In -- from Virgil Films and running 90 minutes -- is part of The Representation Project and arrives on Digital HD, VOD and DVD this coming Tuesday, March 8 -- for sale or rental.

SPIRAL fans, rejoice: Season 5 -- the best yet -- is out now on DVD via MHz Network

As ever, the French cops/lawyers/judges/justice series SPIRAL (Engrenages) resonates darkly like little else you'll find on television anywhere. Season 5 of this remarkable show offers up children as its central theme -- one barely conceived, another dead, and the rest in various and tricky places on the spectrum in between. Parenting, too, comes in for a licking, as we see some truly shocking instances of the very bad sort and what this can lead to in the later lives of the participants.

The same six lead characters are back again and in their usual fine form. One of the things that makes the series resonate so strongly is how these characters continue to grow and change -- with their strong and weak points both contributing to this growth and change -- while engaging us with remarkable strength and force. The other thing is that makes Season 5 so compelling lies in the surprises that await us. These come both from the exquisite plotting and the fine characterization by the series creator, Alexandra Clert (shown above), the currents writers and the lead performers, each of whom gets better with each new season.

What we have this time begins with the murder of a mother and her child, and the surprise pregnancy of one of our "heroes." There is also a series of robberies going on in which young hoodlums on motorcycles and thieves in stolen cars wreak their havoc on the citizenry. A "snitch" turns out to be an unlikely if self-serving ally, and the initial suspect in the murder case appears to be possibly innocent.

Judge Roban (the marvelous Philippe Duclos, two photos up) has grown hardened in surprising ways, while lawyer Joséphine Karlsson (everyone's favorite French redhead, Audrey Fleurot) has both softened and strengthened. (The latter is shown above with that fine actor Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, here in an ace supporting role.)

That pug-ugly and extraordinarily sexy actor Thierry Godard (above, right) deepens and broadens as the cop, Gilou, while Captain Laure Berthaud (Caroline Proust, below, left) must deal with her usual work-related business while deciding how and even if to welcome a newcomer to her life. (The French -- and perhaps still too Catholic -- attitude toward pregnancy and abortion is given a very interesting workout here.)

Tintin (Fred Bianconi, above) is having his usual family problems, and that other lawyer, Pierre Clement (stalwart hero Grégory Fitoussi)  has gone from prosecutor to the defense side and is handling the case of the prime suspect. It is via Pierre's character that the series offers one of its biggest surprises to date. M. Fitoussi, below, left, is shown with Olivier Chantreau, who brings a nice combination of outsized anger and bleak confusion to the role of of the prime suspect.)

As ever, the insistence on the inclusion both good and bad in our six lead characters and most of the major supporting ones makes the series infinitely more complex and believable than many others of this genre. And the addition this time of actress Shirley Souagnon in the role of a character named Karen Hoarau, aka Oz, proves a terrific piece of casting and acting. Ms Souagnon, below, makes a memorable impression indeed.

For anyone new to this fine series, begin with the first through fourth seasons, all of which are available via Netflix and Hulu. Season 5, however, is available on DVD only from MHz Networks, and for anyone who can't wait, that would be the place to order it -- for sale or streaming (soon) via the new MHz Choice option. 

The Catholic Church in Chile: Pablo Larraín's masterfully cringe-inducing THE CLUB opens

Here's a film that makes our current Catholic-scandal movie, Spotlight, look practically benign. THE CLUB, the new film from Chilean director/co-writer Pablo Larraín tackles priestly pedophilia in the kind of manner we have not seen previously: utterly raw, angry, take-no-prisoners. Unspooling in a small Chilean seacoast town in a home in which are housed several priests with, shall we say, bad reputations, along with a "nun" (maybe former nun) who takes care of them, from the outset the movie alerts us to the fact this little group has managed to do very well for itself. In fact, the film works quite nicely as a microcosm of The Catholic Church itself -- with all of its power and rewards, hypocrisy and denial offered up in full bloom.

The Club may be the most anti-Catholic movie I have ever seen, and yet its characters also seem very human and real (if pretty bizarre). What they do here, however, is shockingly awful, and the fact that it all works out for the "best" makes it seem even more so. Senor Larrain, shown at left, has given us a tale of Catholic guilt and non-retribution that stands with the best (or is it the worst?) of them. Although we come to understand to some extent the half dozen men, along with the woman who keeps them, as individuals, it is finally the group -- that Club of the title -- that we know best.

This is rather like the Church itself, don't you think? Where all is accomplished to keep the "group" -- the power -- together and going strong, no matter the "sacrifices" that must be made along the way. Here, as with all organized religion, the end justifies the means. Interlopers of any kind (there are three major ones in this movie) must be destroyed or co-opted. Maybe both simultaneously.

How all this is demonstrated by Larraín and his co-writers (Guillermo Calderón and Daniel Villalobos) involves everything from small-minded townspeople to greyhound racing, black-market babies to sexual child abuse (performed, of course, in the name of Jesus), military torture to simple blackmail. And all this is woven into the fabric of life experienced by our little beachfront club members.

The movie opens with a bout of that dog racing and then the introduction of a new "priest" into the current group, followed almost immediately by the introduction of the classic "victim" figure, a fellow named Sandokan (a fine Roberto Farías, above), who makes this figure one of the strongest and most original yet seen in the many films about priest pedophilia so far served up.

Then we have another newcomer to the group: an investigator sent from the Vatican to assess the group and decide what to do with them, since pushing defrocked priests off into far-away places and then forgetting about them has now come back to haunt the Church. How our investigator plies his trade and how he, too, is finally used and co-opted proves one of the films darkly comic highlights.

Watching these people play off of and bounce around each other makes for some of the more unsettling, unnerving scenes experienced in cinema over the past few years. Larraín is increasingly masterful at the kind of indirection that shows us how we are all perpetrators and victims. Does this let us off the hook? Hardly. Instead the filmmaker does here for the The Catholic Church what he has done earlier in his films regarding the Pinochet regime in Chile.

The performances are all as bizarre as the subject matter would indicate, and they work individually and together to make the movie as creepily memorable as it ought to be. Organized evil never dies. Particularly when it comes from organized religion.

The Club, from Music Box Films and running a mere 97 minutes, opens this Friday in New York City (at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Landmark Sunshine Cinema), and on Friday, February 12 in Los Angeles (at Landmark's NuArt) and in Southern Florida at the O Cinema Miami Beach, the Tower Theater Miami and the Silverspot in Naples, and then on February 19 here in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters. Click here -- and then click on THEATERS -- to see all currently scheduled playdates across the country.

New horrors on video: GOODNIGHT MOMMY and COOTIES -- exploitation vs "fart" film

It's interesting to have two very different horror movies making their DVD and Blu-ray debut this past week. Neither set the box-office afire, but one, GOODNIGHT MOMMY, comes lauded with critical acclaim and is, in fact, Austria's submission for this coming "Oscar" race for Best Foreign Language Film, while the other, COOTIES, is one of those comic/horror exploitation items that appear with some regularity these days. Oh, yes: And the subject of both films involves some very, very naughty children.

TrustMovies was looking forward to both in his own way but, surprise, it's the silly-but-lots-of-fun exploitation film that brings home the bacon (or, in this case, the chicken) while the gorgeously photographed, ridiculously attenuated arthouse horror item turns out to be, yes, a "fart" film--TrustMovies' special moniker for the failed art film, usually one that's full of hot air. At 100 minutes, Goodnight Mommy is at least 20 minutes longer than its minimal content can bear; it is also so slow that I found myself dozing off at several points along the way.

The film's single surprise is telegraphed so early and so obviously that you will sit there waiting impatiently for the other shoe to drop. And finally it is one of the ugliest movies -- endurance-test torture ending in horrifying death -- I've had to sit through in a long, long time. If this were a good film in all those other ways, I could easily have borne the horror, but it's so bad so often that it ends up seeming simply pretentious -- little more than an excuse for the ugliness it ponderously builds toward. Yes, it's beautifully lensed and provides an object lesson in the hidden dangers of cosmetic surgery, but the fact that Austria would see fit to submit this piece of shit as a BFLF contender rather boggles the brain. Goodness: That country hasn't gifted us with anything this delightful, since, uh, Adolf Hitler.

Cooties, on the other hand, is low-level but rather juicy fun, well-cast and cleverly written and very speedily plotted, as it tells its all-too-possible tale of a bird-flu virus gone haywire. It comes from chickens and attaches itself, in tried-and-true movie style, to humans -- in this case children, turning them into blood-thirsty little demons. The opening scene that details a chicken's route from life in one of those horrible "bins" to death and onward into chicken-nuggetdom is alone worth the price of the movie rental: fast, funny, nasty and capped with a moment that should put you off those nuggets for good. The rest of the film -- featuring Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, Rainn Wilson and directed by a couple of smart guys and written by four more -- keeps the humor, scares, gore and thrills coming fast and furiously, right up to the clever, quick finale that offers a terrific last line paving the way for maybe a sequel. Had this one done better at the box-office. that sequel would have been insured. Still, even a straight-to-video would be acceptable by me.

On DVD/Blu-ray, one of the year's better films: McGehee/Siegel WHAT MAISIE KNEW

Covered at length this past April (that post is here), I'll just add that a second viewing of WHAT MAISIE KNEW, the very good movie from film-making team Scott McGehee (below, right) and David Siegel (below, left), holds up well (and looks even better on Blu-ray). TrustMovies still feels that one good melt-down from the little girl at the center of the film would have been a smart move on the part of the directors and adapters of the Henry James novel (on which the movie is based and has been updated to modern times). God knows this kid deserves one, and seeing her express some genuine anger would have helped balance the slightly too-sweet feeling that builds up as the movie goes along.

Balancing this are the excellent performances (every last one of them), the remarkable capture of events from the child's point of view, and the ferocious anger and narcissistic stupidity exhibited by Maisie's parents, which may set the movie record for bad parenting yet always remain within the realm of reality (no Mommie or Daddy Dearest here, thank you!).

A film to savor and maybe make you feel a little guilty about the family fights to which your own child was privy, What Maisie Knew -- from Millennium Entertainment 
and running 98 minutes -- hits the street Tuesday, August 13, on DVD and Blu-ray, for sale or rental.

Pictured at right is Alexander Skarsgård holding Onata Aprile, who plays Maisie.