Twins in trouble: Stéphanie Chuat/Véronique Reymond's remarkably fluid and alive family drama, MY LITTLE SISTER, hits home video

The death of a sibling is difficult enough, I should imagine (being myself an only child), but the death of a twin at an untimely age must be one of the most difficult losses to endure. That is the tale told in Switzerland's entry into this year's Best International Film "Oscar" race, MY LITTLE SISTER, which opened in virtual cinemas earlier this year and this week hits home video. But if  you are now expecting some dreary slough through pain and distress, relax a bit. Oh, the pain and distress are certainly there, but also present is one of the most lively, dramatic, vital and thoughtful films of this past year.

Written and directed by Stéphanie Chuat (at right, above) and Véronique Reymond (above, left), the movie insists upon liveliness over all, despite its somber theme which is shown us at the outset. This liveliness is certainly due in great part to the family in question being a highly theatrical one. The self-involved and perhaps now slightly demented mom (the wonderful Marthe Keller, below) was a noted actress and her late husband an evidently famous theater director. 

Their son (played by Lars Eidlinger, below, right), now ill with leukemia, is a well-known actor, while his "little" sister (born a couple of minutes after him) is an equally famous writer (played by noted German actress Nina Hoss, below, left) -- who appears to have given up her career to act as her brother's ever more full-time nurse.

Sis, however already has a loving husband (Jens Albinus, below, right) and two children -- all of whom demand her time and energy. In fact, her hubby's own career is currently taking off, and -- as helpful and caring for her brother as he already is -- he needs his wife's attention even more just now.

All this is communicated in near fast-and-furious fashion that somehow never detracts from the imminent pain and sorrow with which these characters are constantly dealing.  The very vigor and energy of the film makes these people and their situation all the more believable and important. Clearly the filmmakers understand how life and its constant, immediate demands vie for attention -- no matter how awful the surrounding circumstances might be. 

Ms.Hoss and Herr Eidlinger could hardly be better (I can't think of an actor who's portrayed the pain of cancer any more convincingly), and supporting performances are aces right down the line. My Little Sister lasts but 100 minutes, yet by its conclusion, you'll have lived through what may seem like a  lifetime or two -- and have been entertained and learned a hell of a lot in the meantime.

From Film Movement, in German and French (and a bit of English) with English subtitles, the movie -- after a theatrical release early this year -- is now available via DVD and streaming. Click here for more details on how and where to view.

NYC's Film Forum screens the seldom-seen-theatrically Ozu film, TOKYO TWILIGHT

I've only seen a half dozen or so films by the Japanese master Yasujirô Ozu, so the chance to view TOKYO TWILIGHT (from 1957) -- not to be confused with his more famous Tokyo Story (1953) -- seemed too good to miss. Being an Ozu film, it proved just that. Here's the stationery camera, along with the mid-level angles he so loved to use, and most important (it seems to TrustMovies at least) is that quiet pacing at a speed that allows (some might say forces) us to fully view and more deeply understand all that is happening and what this means to the participants.

For those raised on (and who never grew out of) car chases, gunshots and explosions, Ozu (shown at right) will no doubt rate a zero. But for those who want a look at Japanese culture and mores of the pre- and post WWII period, together with family tales that are as close to universal as you could want, this filmmaker is a keeper.

That said, Tokyo Twilight seems to me one of Ozu's lesser efforts by virtue of its a-little-to-close-to-soap-opera plotting, along with events that -- though they certainly apply within the framework of his themes and concerns -- do seem awfully coincidental and, well, a little too easy. Not for the characters to bear, mind you, but simply for good storytelling technique.

Still, the man was a master of casting and drawing wonderful performances out of those casts -- all of which is true here once again. A splendid Chishû Ryû (above) plays the banker father of two now-grown daughters, the mother of whom left early on in the marriage, for reasons we'll slowly learn.

The older of the girls (Setsuko Hara, above), pushed into a bad marriage by dad, is now trying to work her way into a better life, while the younger sibling (Ineko Arima, below) is the one with the problem that becomes the movie's main event upon which much of the plot hinges.

Then there is the older woman (Isuzu Yamada, below) with some connection to the family whose identity becomes rather obvious well before Ozu decides to fully confirm it to us. That said, the departure scene at the train station toward film's end is a kind of classic of gratification more than merely delayed.

There are so many lovely and moving moments and scenes in Tokyo Twilight that it almost seems churlish to complain. Yet by the final scene there have been enough soap-opera situations to give us pause. "A shock that great is seldom heard of," notes one character far into the film. This may have been somewhat true in Japan of the 1950s, but that sort of "shock" had been a staple of movies almost since their inception.

While Ozu has often taken what might initially seem like soap opera and raised it to art, here that art may be a little less apparent. Still, this is quite a lovely, poignant and fulfilling movie. And, really, who's going to complain about anything Ozu? (Except for those action lovers.)

Distributed via Janus Films, Tokyo Twilight -- in a new 4K DCP restoration -- opens for a week-long run tomorrow, Friday, November 8, at Film Forum in New York City. (Shown above is Masami Taura, handsome and sleazy, as younger sister's ratfink boyfriend.)

In Celia Rico Clavellino's JOURNEY TO A MOTHER'S ROOM, a daughter bonds even as she pulls away from mom

The multi-award-winning Spanish drama, JOURNEY TO A MOTHER'S ROOM, walked away with many Gaudi awards (the main film awards of Catalonia) but didn't win any of its four nominations in the yearly Goya awards (the premiere film awards of the entire country of Spain). The film, written and directed by Celia Rico Clavellino (shown below), is a small, intimate and I am guessing quite low-budget tale of the relationship between a nearly adult daughter and the single mother who clearly loves her offspring but maybe "mothers" her a bit too much.

This is a fairly simple tale, simply told (via stationary camera in front of which the actors and any action moves), and it is also, I must say, very slow-paced. But -- and this is a fairly big but -- the film is buoyed by two excellent performances: from famed Catalan actress, Lola Dueñas, (below left, as mom), and Anna Castillo (below, right) as the daughter.

The slow pacing has to do most with lack of incident to fill up the film's 95-minute running time. There is some, of course, but an awful lot of time is spent with the camera focusing on Ms Dueñas or Ms Castillo pondering. Both actresses do this very well, and Ms Clavellino, as filmmaker, is skilled enough to make certain we know what it is the characters are most likely thinking about. But a little of this goes a long way.

The film's theme would seem to be the moving of that daughter away from mom and toward her own life and career (if indeed a career is even available anymore to the youth of Europe and the West, given globalization and automation). But everything the daughter does -- supposedly going to London and getting a "nanny" job" -- we learn via phone conversation. And since the daughter is shown to be not very good at her old job in a garment manufacturing plant, gotten we assume by her mom's connection (mom was a much-loved seamstress there), and she lies to her mom about smoking, we do wonder if maybe she's telling the whole truth about London.

Well, probably, mostly, she is, but it is mom who registers strongly here. During daughter's time away, she must come to terms with loneliness and her place in the world, and she does blossom just a bit before reunion occurs. (A job creating costumes for a would-be talented dance troupe provides some incident and energy.)

In its way the movie is like a small but telling chapter in the lives and relationship of these two women. It's probably no turning point, and not much of anything is resolved. But there's enough character here, provided via the filmmaker and her actors, to make the viewing worthwhile. From Outsider Pictures, Journey to a Mother's Room opens here in South Florida today, Friday, May 17, in Miami at MDC’s Tower Theater, in Fort Lauderdale at the Savor Cinema, In Hollywood at the Cinema Paradiso (Select showings only), and in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters.

Personal Appearances! 

The writer/director (above, left) and one of the stars of the film, Lola Dueñas (above, center) will attend the events listed below:
 
Savor Cinema, 503 SE 6 Street, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301 on Friday, May 17 at 6:30pm for the reception and 7:30pm screening with a 9:00pm Q&A.

Living Room Theaters on FAU Campus 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431 on Saturday, May 18. Q&As will take place late afternoon/early evening. Click here for showtimes. Or call theater for further information: 561-549-2600.

Back to the 70s in Thomas Vinterberg's surprising period piece, THE COMMUNE

If you are expecting here -- because Thomas Vinterberg's new film, THE COMMUNE, takes place in and around one of those experiments in communal living that were popular in Scandinavia back in the 1970s -- something akin to another internationally popular Scandinavian movie about "community," Lucas Moodysson's Together,  better reset your sites. That earlier (2001) and quite funny/charming film was much more a rom-com-dramedy that this new effort. Oh, there are some laughs, all right, and romance (of sorts), too. But this is altogether a darker, deeper and more unsettling -- as we've come to expect from Mr. Vinterberg, who earlier gave us The Hunt and The Celebration -- look at the, ummm, "joys" of communal life.

The filmmaker, pictured at left, who co-wrote (with Tobias Lindholm) and directed the movie, wants to explore, as he always does, things like motive, need, and in this case especially, marriage and the male prerogative as middle age occurs.

While The Commune is indeed an ensemble film, that ensemble is clearly led by the couple -- played very well indeed by two fine Danish actors, Trine Dyrholm (shown below) and Ulrich Thomsen (two photos down). In fact, the movie mostly belongs to Ms Dyrholm's wife, Anna, who initially pushes her husband, Erik, into this new communal living and then lives to regret it.

As a dissection of marriage of a couple entering middle age -- exploring everything from their respective careers to their lovemaking and the psychology of their various behaviors -- the movie is first-rate, pulling no punches nor sugar-coating a thing.

Set in the 70s, when both feminism and greater sexual freedom for all were coming into vogue, the movie still makes quite clear the ways in which men act and women adapt. The new commune is born mostly because Erik feels that he, Anna and their teenage daughter, Freja (a terrific performance from newcomer, Martha Sofie Wallstrøm Hansen, below, who, if she wants to continue this career should probably shorten that name a tad) cannot afford to live in the large "family" house he has just inherited.

As the commune grows, we get a nice mixture of characters and types, the arrival of whom provides the movie with much of its humor, and then some surprise and unexpected drama. Leading the little group is an actor of whom TrustMovies grows increasingly fond: Fares Fares (at left, below), who did such a fine job playing second fiddle in the recent Department Q trilogy and made worthwhile appearances in two of the Easy Money movies.

Other members include the initial couple's best friend, along with a sweet, trouble pair and their little son, who turns out to not be quite as healthy as we earlier imagined, and finally a newcomer (Helene Reingaard Neumann, below, right) who can perhaps be called a "marriage destroyer." Or maybe not.

Because of Vinterberg's astute handling of everything from psychology and sexual roles to guilt and responsibility, this marriage, as we discover, has most likely long been in trouble. As with so many of our lives, it simply takes some shaking up to bring out the truth of things.

From Magnolia Pictures, running 111 minutes, and in Danish with English subtitles, The Commune opens this coming Friday, May 19, in Los Angeles area (at Laemmle's Royal, Noho 7 and Playhouse 7) and New York City (at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Landmark's Sunshine) and will spread out to another dozen cities in the weeks to come. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates.

On Video -- Ned Benson's THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY: HER, HIM & THEM

TrustMovies may be selling this unusual compilation short, since THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY arrives in a single and complete package that includes all three versions: Her, Him and the one titled Them, which, I imagine, includes at least some of both the "her" and "him" stories. Because time is fleeting and I seem to have less and less or it at my disposal, I decided to view the Them version first, and then, if I liked it well enough, to move on to the two individual accounts. Not to keep you in undue suspense, Them -- which runs just over two hours -- proved tiresome enough to keep me from further viewing.

Written and directed by Ned Benson, pictured at left, who moves up from making short films to making a much-more-than-full-length one, the movie contains the kind of dialog that, despite the best attempt of a crack cast, often rings false, alternating between cliché and pomposity. Early on we're told that "Tragedy is a foreign country." Well, it ain't. Japan and Afghanistan are foreign countries (unless you happen to have been born and raised there, of course). Even taken metaphorically, the sentence can only remind of you of a much better one, "The past is a foreign country," from L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between (book and movie), which actually resonates on various levels.

Later in the film, à propos the death a very young child, the hero is told, "A shooting star lasts only a second, but aren't you glad to have seen it?" This is "poetic," all right, but it pretty much misses the entire point of the wreckage that occurs because of that death. And then there's "family": Notes mother to daughter at one point along the way, "I don't want you to take our relationship too personally."

Mr. Benson's dialog is full of this sort of nonsense, and given the excellent work of a fine cast -- including Jessica Chastain (above), James McAvoy (below), Ciarán Hinds, William Hurt (at left, two photos below), Isabelle Huppert (center left, two photos below), Viola Davis, Jess Weixler (at right, two photos below), Bill Hader and Nina Arianda (at bottom, left) -- the performances raise our enjoyment level, while keeping our minds off some of the sillier give-and-take.

Even the use of the old Beatles' Eleanor Rigby song for the movie's title and the lead character's name is good for a so-what joke about character history and little more. It's simply misjudged, like much else in this movie.

But there's another big problem, too. Everything here is finally about the death of that child. Unfortunately this seems to rule out the film's being about much of anything else, including character, history and the marriage in question. We learn so little else about these people that they remain attractive ciphers mouthing pompous proclamations. Everything is surface: employment, desires, relationships. Yes, a child's death is indeed major, but the environment that surrounds it must be brought to deep and meaningful life if we are to be made to care.

Perhaps the Him and Her sections solve this problem. I'm afraid I don't have the time to invest to find out. If you do, please watch and then advise me. Meanwhile, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby in all its incarnations -- from Anchor Bay Entertainment and The Weinstein Company -- hits DVD, Blu-ray and On-Demand today, February 3, after an early digital download window that opened up last month. With the Blu-ray and DVD, you can see all three versions for the price of one. 

Pieter Gasperz & Sabrina Gennarino's AFTER tracks the trying turmoil of a fractured family

After what, you might wonder? I did, and finally determined that this movie's title had to do with "after" the diagnosis of Alzheimer's or some other sort of dementia was laid upon one of the movie's characters. But after watching the entire film, and seeing the dedication at its end -- For those who have fallen. To those who remain. -- and then taking into consideration the movie's time frame (it's set back a decade or more), I suspect it has more to do with the aftermath of the 9/11 attack. In any case, AFTER, a thoroughly tiresome and woefully conceived and executed little movie written by Sabrina Gennarino (who also plays one of the ensemble roles) and directed by Pieter Gaspersz (shown below), is such a plodding affair about a family of such clueless assholes, starting with mom and dad on down, that I really don't know why the film is being given a theatrical release.

There are some very good actors in the cast -- John Doman, Kathleen Quinlan, Pablo Schreiber, among others (Ms Gennarino is pretty good, herself) -- and god knows, they give it their best shot. But the screenplay manages to be both repetitive and ridiculous. Spoilers ahead: After treating us to his impossible prejudices, Dad has such a sudden change of heart and mind and probably liver and kidney, too, that you can only wonder what miracle has happened. Further, when his business is utterly trashed so that the big job that needs to be done can't be, he saves the day by calling in every able bodied man in town -- all of whom seem to be available and versed in stone work! If you buy this kind of nonsense, by all means, line up now for tickets. After spending the first two-thirds of the film showing us what nitwits most of her characters (shown at bottom) really are, Ms Gennarino, shown below, does one of those "happy ending" rush jobs that defy explanation, gravity and every other rule of science and art.

Full disclosure: the press screening link I watched via Vimeo worked so poorly that it stopped, started and skipped every couple of minutes. I've only has this bad an experience with one other film --  the Easy Money sequel -- yet that one I enjoyed immensely and gave it a good review. After I did not enjoy, and I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone except maybe those of you so new to film viewing that you're still able to bask in just about anything and everything tossed your way.

The movie -- from Paladin, in partnership with Accretion Films -- opens this Friday, August 8, in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and New York City, and next Friday, August 15, in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tampa. You can see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters listed, by clicking here. The movie will be released simultaneously to VOD platforms nationwide through Virgil Films.

Streaming tips for the tragic view: try the underseen TWICE BORN and TWO LIVES -- all about parenting and parentage, secrets and lies

These two foreign films, both very much worth seeing and pondering, tackle questions that go to the heart of relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives. Granted, neither film features your everyday problem -- TWO LIVES involves a woman who spied for the East German secret police (the Stassi), while TWICE BORN tracks the history of a single child, born from the rubble and disgust of one of our more horrific modern genocides, the Serbo-Croatian war -- but both movies force us to confront terrible situations and work our way through them.

Twice Born is the glossier of the two, as is usual with the films of Italian actor/director Sergio Castellitto.(Don't Move, Love & Slaps) Adapted by Castellitto and his wife Margaret Mazzantini, from her original novel, the film stars Penelope Cruz (below, left) and a mis-cast Emile Hirsch (below, right) as lovers unable to conceive a child who also become involved in the war in the former Yugoslavia, where they are part of the "arts" community that refuses to believe that said war will ever happen. Castellitto's movie moves back in forth in time and place, from Italy to America to Yugoslavia.

In doing so it never quite finds its focus, so that we trail along thanks to the performers and the gloss and the beauty of some of the actors in display. It's not a difficult watch at all, though it is also never spellbinding -- not, at least, until the final half hour, in which the parentage of the Cruz character's son (played as a young man by Castellitto and Mazzantini's son's Pietro Castellitto, below) comes to the fore.

Suddenly this movie pulls us up short, and from then until its conclusion, we're watching prime and primal stuff. The idea that truth should and will come to the fore is severely tested here. You may find yourself admitting, against everything you've formerly believed, that there is indeed a place in our lives for secrets and lies, where protecting our children is concerned.

Two Lives, another film that divided critics and barely saw the light of theatrical release, tackles parenting and parentage from quite a different angle. Here, a middle-aged German woman, happily married with husband and daughter and living in Norway, finds herself suddenly thrust back to a time when she worked actively with and for the East German Stassi secret police. Since the fall of the Berlin wall and the dissolution of the USSR, much of her former life has conveniently disappeared. Co-directed (and very well) by Georg Maas and Judith Kaulmann, who also had their hands in the screenplay,

Now suddenly, it could all come back to destroy what she's carefully built up. This woman, played very well by Juliane Köhler (near left), has quite the checkered history, yet she's proven herself a decent wife and mother, and so we root for her to somehow transcend the past. But the more we slowly learn of that past, the more difficult this transcendence seems. How all this plays out is suspenseful, unsettling and very real.

In the excellent cast are Sven Nordin (far left) as the uncomprehending husband, and Liv Ullman (below, second from left) as a very badly-used mother. What comes through most strongly in this film is how we must finally pay for the past, one way or another.

You can stream both film now via Netflix (and probably elslewhere), as well as viewing them on DVD.

New from MHz Networks: the original Danish/ Swedish television collaboration, THE BRIDGE

Don't worry if a television program titled THE BRIDGE (Bron/Broen) sounds somehow familiar, but if its countries of origin -- Sweden and Denmark -- don't immediately come to mind, you're probably thinking of the remade American version that aired last year starring Diane Kruger and Demian Bechir, another season of which is about to begin. TrustMovies didn't watch the American go-round (wanting to wait for the chance to see it commercial-free), though his spouse did and highly recommended it. Then the opportunity came to watch the original Scandinavian series on DVD via the four disc package recently presented by the popular purveyor of quality foreign television, MHz Networks.

Operating on the assumption that an original might be better than a remake (we won't even go into comparisons of American television vis a vis European, as in Borgen vs The West Wing), I took a chance on The Bridge, and I am awfully glad that I did. This is a superior police procedural/mystery/family drama that grabs you from its first hour-long episode and holds you through to the finale (there are ten episodes in all). And it is an actual finale, by the way: none of this pretend-to-end business, as in the American remake of The Killing.

My partner, in fact, sat down to watch some of the first episode with me, and then checked in periodically for a few minutes during several others. "The American version seems to have followed this one almost completely," he noted, but admitted after a time that the original was better done than its follow-up. That may be due to location. The story begins with the body of a murdered woman, above, found exactly in the middle of a bridge separating Sweden and Denmark. One half of her body lies in Sweden, the other in Denmark. In the American version, the locale is the U.S. and Mexico -- two countries hugely different from each other, while Scandinavia is fairly similar culturally from country to country.

Although directed and written by a number of different people, the series stays steadfast and true to itself for the entire season. So carefully conceived and acted are all the characters that it is difficult to determine much variation in style throughout. Finding the murderer of the woman on the bridge -- and other murders to come -- is paramount here, but within that search a number of sub-plots surface, some directly connected to our main one, others seemingly not so much. All are fascinating and executed very well.

The two lead characters -- one cop from Sweden (Sofia Helen, above, left), the other from Denmark (Kim Bodnia, above, right) -- are beautifully played and keep the series rolling forward. She has something akin to Asperger syndrome, though the medical name is never stated. How he comes to understand and appreciate her (she's terrifically good at her job) is part of the joy of the series. The two leads are not nearly so conventionally attractive as are Kruger and Bichir in the American version, and this helps keep things more believable. Their acting is very strong, however (particularly Ms Helen), as is that of every last character on view.

By the time this first series wraps up, we've been thrust into lives that have been turned upside down, sometimes for good. This is a very dark show, but with numerous flecks of humor scattered throughout. (How our leading lady goes about trolling for sex is one of the highlights -- as believable as it is initially surprising.)

As in life, we cannot count on much of anything, and while coincidence does play a part here, it is never foremost in the scheme of things (a la Downton Abbey). Instead, character and past performance create the present experience, and it is not, for the most part, a pretty one.

The Bridge can be purchased now via MHz Networks and elsewhere. Click here to order.