Elizabeth McGovern shines in Michael Engler/Julian Fellowes' PBS/Masterpiece movie, THE CHAPERONE

If you're looking for a pleasant, beautifully produced, alternately funny and a little bit dramatic piece of nostalgic fluff that features a real-life famous person as one of its characters, you could hardly do better than THE CHAPERONE. This production of PBS Disitribtution/Master-piece Films -- with all of the pluses and minuses connected to that long-running collaboration -- is impeccable in its production design and decor, well-written and directed, and features a crack cast that nicely delivers (with one exception) exactly what is needed.

As directed by Michael Engler, shown at left, with a screenplay by Julian Fellowes -- both of whom, particularly the latter, were responsible for much of the success of Downton Abbey -- and starring DA's popular Elizabeth McGovern (below, right) in the title role here (Ms McGovern also acted as one of the film's producers: She clearly knows a good role when she sees one), The Chaperone goes down as easily, and with the intended result, as a glass of cold bubbly in very warm weather.

The story is all about the young days of famous silent film star Louise Brooks and how,  in order to go to New York to attend the also famous dance academy, Denishawn, run by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, the under-age Brooks must have a chaperone to accompany her. Enter Ms McGovern in the pivotal role.

The relationship between Louise (played by Haley Lu Richardson, below, center) and her chaperone, Norma, initially wary and near-unfriendly, soon turns warmer and of course both women grow in the course of their time spent together. No surprise there. And not much either, concerning the various sub-plots on view:

Norma and her hubby (Campbell Scott) have marital troubles; Louise gets involved with various young men (above) as she progresses with her dancing; Norma wants to learn the identity of the birth mother who abandoned her as a child; and eventually Norma, too, gets involved with someone -- the handyman (Géza Röhrig, at right, two photos above), at the Catholic nunnery/orphanage where she stayed as a child.

All these strands eventually reach a relatively happy conclusion, just enough to leave us satisfied and sated. There's little depth here -- just a good story, nicely told. McGovern is simply terrific, however, showing us not just the uptight, mid-western woman trying to fit into her own (and everyone's else's) idea of what's right but, as she confronts her various situations and begins to loosen, she hits precisely the right mark again and again.

The one disappointment turns out to be Ms Richardson. I've admired this actress in literally every role I've so far seen her -- from The Bronze to Columbus -- but she simply cannot rise to the occasion and amazement that was Louise Brooks. The filmmakers seem to understand this because they keep insisting, over and again (via the words of the Ted Shawn character), how amazingly gifted she is. Yet neither her dancing, appearance or performance bears this out. Richardson's attractive and has plenty of energy and talent. But the darkness, mystery and magic of the character are missing. You can't imagine this girl ever becoming our Miss Brooks.

That said, the movie's still a lot of fun, and the finale -- together with where we find Norma, her husband and their respective mates -- is handled with tact, delight and subtlety. From PBS Distribution and Masterpiece Films and running 103 minutes, The Chaperone, after opening last month in New York City, has expanded weekly into theaters across the county. Here in South Florida, it opens this Friday, April 12, and will play Fort Lauderdale at The Classic Gateway Theatre and in Palm Beach County at the Living Room Theaters of Boca Raton and the Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth.  Wherever you live across the USA, click here, and then click on THEATERS in the task bar at top, to find one near you.

Júlia Murat's PENDULAR explores creativity and sex in a Brazilian warehouse loft

When Júlia Murat's Brazilian movie, Found Memories, opened in New York back in 2012, TrustMovies was extremely impressed -- with its enormous beauty, its quietude, and the unobtrusive formality of its mise en scène. That film took place in a lovely and quaint old country town. Ms Murat's new film, PENDULAR, is set in the midst of a major city, in a somewhat abandoned warehouse that has been converted into a loft by and for a couple of artists -- she's a dancer, he's a sculptor -- that they now use as both work space and living quarters. One must assume the two are somewhat successful, since the furnishings and accoutrements with which they've surrounded themselves are rather impressive (they've got a particularly beautiful kitchen and bath).

Ms Murat, shown at left, lets us see some of their respective work (more of hers than his) and it looks interesting enough, if nothing all that original or special.

As to their character, the filmmaker keeps that pretty much at bay. They are both mostly fixated on their work, except when they're having sex, which is somewhat frequently throughout this 108-minute movie.

The sex is hot and heavy, and while neither actor -- Raquel Karro (shown above and below, who's both a dancer and actress) and Rodrigo Bolzan (below and further below) -- is drop-dead gorgeous, both performers are certainly attractive enough of face and figure that watching them either clothed or nude proves no problem.

We meet their friends and co-workers, briefly, off-and-on, and we're privy to snatches of this twosome's conversation -- though not all that much. Even then, most of it deals in some respect with their art. He needs more work space for his (maybe) massive sculptures; she gives in, if somewhat grudgingly. When they fight, each uses the other's art as his or her weapon.

Once again. Ms Murat's visual sense and formal composition is a consistent pleasure to view (the cinematographer is Soledad Rodríguez). Whether her heroine is trying to track the path of a odd cable wire that ends within the warehouse (but where does it begin?) or dancing or even fucking, the design is just fine.

Eventually, though, you may want more. I know I did. Late in the film, the man expresses a major personal need (I'll let you discover what this is), and conveniently (or inconveniently, depending on your viewpoint), the woman suddenly finds herself able to provide this  That leads to the movie's major drama and climax.

This might be enough, if only we knew more fully just who these characters are. Despite decent performances, using what little Murat and her co-writer Matias Mariani provide, the two actors are unable to manage this, and we have to content ourselves with some minor ruminations on work and art, watching Ms Karro in action, and the viewing of a good deal of pleasurable sex. Hey, that may be more than enough for a lot of you out there.

From Big World Pictures, Pendular -- which could as easily refer to some of our heroine's dance moves as to our hero's heavy-hung sexual equipment -- opens this Friday, November 30, in Chicago at the Facets Cinematheque. In December it will also play the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Time and Space, Ltd. in Hudson, New York. Click here (and scroll down) to keep abreast of all currently scheduled (and possibly more upcoming) playdates, cities and venues. 

This year's MOTHER! AWARD goes to Luca Guadagnino's re-imagining of SUSPIRIA

After this past Tuesday's South Florida critics' screening of SUSPIRIA -- the remake/re-imagining by Luca Guadagnino of the 1977 Dario Argento movie of the same name -- several of us were chatting about the film, and mentioned how it reminded us in some ways of last year's uber-divisive movie, Mother! This current Suspiria, we agreed, is as likely to be nearly as divisive, with the negative feedback perhaps stronger than the positive.

There are a lot of reasons for this, starting with the remake's enormous and uncalled for length. The original ran 97 minutes, this one lasts 152.

Both films' plots send a young and talented dancer to a famous European dance academy that doubles as a witches' coven. But Signore Guadagnino, pictured at left, has used all that extra time to gussy-up his movie with a bunch of themes and ideas that go nowhere and never add up to more than mere poorly-thought-out excess.

The director, along with screenwriter David Kajganich (based on the original by Argento and Daria Nicolodi), tosses in everything from family dysfunction, Baader-Meinhof terrorism, psychotherapy, guilt and shame to World War II and The Holocaust, some sort of coming apocalypse, a modern dance recital, satanic rites, and enough guts and gore to fill a dozen so-so slasher movies.

Worse, none of this ever really coalesces. It just piles up rather conspicuously, as the two-and-one-half-plus hours wear on. "What the fuck was he thinking?" may frequently occur to you along the way, about the fellow who earlier gave us much better movies, including I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, and Call Me By Your Name.

Guadagnino does possess a visual eye, at least, so there are compensations to be had now and then. And he has rounded up another first-rate cast -- even if he uses them rather poorly. Almost no characterization can found anywhere here. Even the usually fabulous Tilda Swinton (above) can barely bring to life Madame Blanc, the school's choreographer. Swinton fares much better playing the role of Dr. Josef  Klemperer (below), credited to Lutz Eberdorf but now known to be Swinton in some excellent make-up.

Although the leading role and main draw would seem to be Dakota Johnson (below), who plays the "star" student, Susie Bannion, you may find yourself, as did TrustMovies,

more interested in Mia Goth (below), who plays Susie's friend, a plucky but unlucky young dancer named Sara. Ms Goth works wonders with very little, while Ms Johnson proves pretty drab and one-note throughout.

In the film's opening, Chloë Grace Moretz (below) gets a nice scene as one of the academy's more frightened students, but then disappears from the proceedings until returning a good deal later as pretty much a corpse.

Yes, there's a bunch of meaningless scribbles and symbols, and eventually that maybe longed-for ritual so the blood can spurt and splatter.

The weirdest and most effective scene (for those who appreciate extremes) is probably the one early on in which a dancer (Elena Fokina, below) alone in another room is somehow pummeled, jerked, beaten and scrunched to death via Ms Johnson's oddball dancing. Go figure.

Some of us older viewers might take pleasure in seeing a few of Europe's noted actresses -- Germany's Angela Winkler (below, left),  France's Sylvie Testud and Holland's Renée Soutendijk (below, right) -- playing supporting witches. Winker gets the most screen time, while Testud and Soutendijk are utterly wasted.

Fans of the original film's star, Jessica Harper, can see her do a small cameo as the good doctor's dead wife. Otherwise, wait for all the climactic blood-letting and see what you think. I could only roll my eyes and mutter, "Oh, please" and then "So what?" All this is not just grueling but noticeably ugly, just as is the junky-looking poster for the film, at top.

From Amazon Studios, the new Suspiria opened in our cultural coastal cities last week and hits South Florida this Friday, November 2, at some of the local venues. To find the theater(s) nearest you, try clicking here, and I think some of these may appear....

Saffire & Schlesinger's RESTLESS CREATURE WENDY WHELAN goes inside a legendary ballet dancer facing age, pain and retirement

A great ballerina coming to terms with aging, a possibly career-ending hip operation, necessary change and the eventual need to do something other than dance -- all this and more is covered in one of the best ballet-dancer-biographies yet brought to the screen. RESTLESS CREATURE WENDY WHELAN, the new documentary from Linda Saffire and Adam Schlesinger, is right up there with Nancy Buirski's Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq and much better than the recent Misty Copeland bio-doc, A  Ballerina's Tale.

Saffire and Schlesinger (shown at right) appear to have had remarkable access to Ms Whelan -- at rehearsal, in actual performance, at home with her husband (photographer, David Michalek), and with her New York City Ballet "boss" Peter Martins (who, as always, comes across as someone you can trust about as far as you can toss), and with many of her ballet partners, past and present. The result is a multi-faceted look at Whelan that makes the ballerina seems remarkably consistent: a huge talent who is simultaneously a good person. As one of her contemporaries points out far into the movie, Whelan's behavior to everyone in the company -- from security guard to dresser to other dancers -- changed for the better the way that the dance company operated.

Restless Creature (which doubles as the name of the dance project Whelan came up with as a route to her post-NYC Ballet career), though it does not spend all that much time on her past and childhood history, opens in media res, as the dancer is faced with an upcoming hip operation that could end her dancing career. How she handles this, with courage and difficulty, is as exemplary as so much else that we see.

And yet, because the filmmakers zero in so finely and consistently on this woman, we can easily believe what we see and hear.  Whelan does indeed seem beloved of so many of her co-workers and choreographers, and as we see her dance (at first just in snippets, then longer and more involved as the documentary proceeds), we actually get some understanding of how difficult all this is and why dance careers, so like sports careers, are usually quite circumscribed, if not downright short. (At age 47 -- when the movie was shot -- Whelan has had an unusually long and successful run of 30 years.)

We hear from her choreographers, too, and learn something of how they work with their dancers to create the beauty and magic we view from the audience. Though the idea -- first of the operation and what its result might be, and then of the actual retirement that looms  -- seem to have our dancer often on the verge of tears, she never (or the filmmaker have chosen not to let us see this) gives in to them.

The post-operation ups and down are shown us, too, and at times the movie seems almost like a suspense thriller: So the career is over? Wait: Maybe not! "When am I gonna know that I'm safe again?"  the  dancer asks at one point.

Overall, bits from some 20 different ballets are shown us, and at the conclusion, we realize what all this has been building toward: a final dance that is so sensational that you'll fully appreciate and understand both why ballet is such a beloved art form and what Whelan has done to enrich it. Then all the applause and the flowers and the love arrive. What a moment. What a movie!

From Abramorama, Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan opens in New York City this Wednesday, May 24, at Film Forum and The Film Society of Lincoln Center. It hits Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal on Friday, June 9, and will play a number of other cities around the country, as well. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

NY EXPORT: OPUS JAZZ goes theatrical at Bkyln's reRun and onto DVD November 23

Dance mavens (movie mavens, as well): rejoice!
A beautiful new dance film -- revisiting a famous ballet by Jerome Robbins -- that made its premiere this past March at SxSW (and then on TV) is getting its New York theatrical debut at the reRun Theater in Brooklyn this week, prior to making its DVD debut (on Blu-Ray yet!) toward the end of this month. NY EXPORT: OPUS JAZZ takes Robbins' 1950s ballet into the 21st Century, using today's young dancers dressed in current jeans/t-shirt/
sneakers fashion, dancing to the fine jazz score by Robert Prince.

In its leap from legitimate stage to film, gone are the theatrical sets, which are now replaced by various NYC environs -- from schoolyard to gymnasium, pristine ballet school to overgrown-and-out-of-use rail yard, diner to building roof to empty warehouse. The theater director has been replaced by two filmmakers -- Henry Joost (above, left -- of the now famous Catfish) and Jody Lee Lipes (below, right -- cinematographer of AfterSchool and the just-releasing Tiny Furniture), and these guys have done

quite a  job of bringing dance to the screen. They don't give the typically fast 'n furious editing that robs us of of the pleasure of watching real dancers strut their stuff. They allow the choreography to shine -- and since it's Robbins, shine, it does. The movie-makers make the dance seem natural, an extension of all the joy and lust and sadness and longing that is life.They use ambient sound to introduce the dancers.  The music, when it finally arrives seems itself almost ambient.

The views of the filmmakers' ultra widescreen cameras range from dead-on (above) and overhead to tracking shots and close-ups that allows us to observe the dancers' contempt, annoyance, impatience and joy.  The locations cover the city in day and night, and the dancers themselves are terrific: lean, youthful, energetic and highly sexual. But of course, for this is Robbins' choreography.  The dance king's work offers a sensuality that bores deep, rather than the lighter-weight Fosse model, with its incessant hip-flips & gimmicks.

Note the venue of the love duet (above) in that gone-to-seed rail yard, as a couple puts longing into movement. The image of her head, cradled in his bent elbow, is a keeper. Those who complained about the tackiness and ugliness of Joost's Catfish (to my mind, exactly what was necessary there) need to see his work here.
  

For the remaining reRun/Gastropub Theater screening times and dates for NY Expo: Opus Jazz, click here.  The DVD, via Factory 25, will be available in just two weeks (on November 23) for sale or rental.  Either way, don't miss this one.  At the theater and on the DVD is a 15-minute extra: A Ballet in Sneakers: Jerome Robbins on Opus Jazz.  A time-trip back to the 50s, this little short fascinates on a lot of levels.