April's Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman: MY BRILLIANT FRIEND -- a quiet tale of violence

The following post is written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

This heart-full Italian series, co-produced by HBO, is so absorbing that the woes of present-day pandemic drift imperceptibly down the grimy byways of poor suburban mid-century Italy on breath of air. Based on much-loved and admired novels by pseudonymous writer, Elena Ferrante, the story explores the challenging, adoring, quietly violent bond between two girls, Lila and Elena (Lenu), whose lives are yoked to a neighborhood of drab low-rises outside Naples. Series one begins in childhood and lasts through adolescence; their young adult relationship unfolds in the second, episodes dropping Monday evenings, now more than half concluded.

In the opener we glimpse storyteller Lenu, age 60, tapping out the story on an Apple computer. Tinged with bitterness, her tale paints pictures of dominance, machismo, submission, self-abnegation that will unfold in four series — one per novel.

The set (left) is described as one of the largest in Europe, an entire neighborhood recreated including apartments, shops, dusty streets and island vistas (Ischia, below) described in the novels.

The sets and locales are magnets for tourists, creating a boom not unlike what ‘Outlander’ inspired in Scotland. The difference is that “My Brilliant Friend” is true literary and film beauty; ‘Outlander’, despite its Jacobite history attracting genuine interest in Scotland’s clan past and wars with the English, does not climb out of the paperback fantasy/romance genre.

‘Brilliant’s’ director, 43 year old Saverio Costanzo, manages to burn into your mind the waste inherent in post-WWll poverty, emotional and physical violence nurtured in a small neighborhood governed by petty extortion and the secrets everyone knows. (Below, Costanzo, center left, above young Elena, “Lenu” with her parents, far l, siblings, and crew members.)

Costanzo is quoted in the Guardian: “It’s a story that somehow belongs to everyone. I found myself…in Elena’s and Lila’s shoes. It’s like a mirror...a kind of miracle that happens very rarely…..”. Michelle Obama is an admirer; Hillary Clinton is quoted: “...hypnotic... I could not stop reading or stop thinking about it.”

Both girls are brilliant —differently. Lila is an instinctive philosopher and didact; she sponges up everything there is to know on all subjects, a strangely exceptional child for whom the very young actress, Ludovica Nasti, is a perfect fit. (Nasti, is like a giant...a genius… says Costanzo.) Lenu, played in childhood by Elisa del Genio, is smart but must work to achieve. When she does, she is number one, but her winning is the product of dogged effort not genius. In their poor household, Lenu’s mother, grudgingly, cruelly, goes along with her advancing in school at the urging of an empathic teacher (Dora Romano, below).

Lila’s father, the gnarly owner of a shoe repair shop, dismisses education beyond elementary school for his daughter; her defiance and his brutality are the outcomes. It is the dis-affirmation of her sharp little mind, her right to succeed using her intelligence, that undergirds Lila’s perpetual spite and later self-destructive life-choices. Later you hear her father’s cruelty in Lila’s young adult voice as she forewarns Lenu: Don’t listen — the witch inside me is talking. Lenu has been positioned as the submissive, like Lila’s brow-beaten mother.

It is hard to convey how engrossing the story of these two little girls becomes. You float through childhood with them, pushing boundaries, daring, competing, yet supporting each other, recalling your own neighborhood confrontations, games and escapes as you share in theirs, likely more violent than your own.

Then come the bully-cum-mobsters, the flirtations, the books, the rain deluges, the parental shoutings, the ignored violence (even killings) the street peddler’s calls, streets fogged with dust. They sit on a bench reading and reciting ‘Little Women’ to each other, the pages of their shared copy increasingly tattered. The genteel poverty of Alcott’s ‘Little Women’ was lovely beauty to these waifs in their homely world; Jo, the writer, is their goddess.

By the third episode, rightly called ‘the Metamorphoses’, the girls are adolescent, and Lenu (Margherita Mazzucco) is mortified by the blood between her legs — is she dying? The sharply-dressed Solara brothers (they look like light is ‘shining down on them’) flatter and cajole a shy girl into their new car. ‘Those guys don’t just kiss, they bite like mad dogs’, says Lila (Gaia Girace). Sure enough, the shy girl is dropped off bruised, devoured.

Lenu discovers the power her body has over boys, even with her acne-spotted face, and secretly savors Lila’s defiance. Suddenly the fights in the street aren’t the noise of adults swirling overhead, but involve themselves.

The girls’ relationship waxes and wanes. Lila resents Lenu’s being in school; she proves her superiority by teaching herself Latin and Greek in secret. At other times, Lila teaches Lenu how to analyze text, prodding her to improve, living through Lenu’s success. To Lenu, her life is flat without the dynamite of Lila.

Lila’s defiant marriage to the thuggish Stefano (Giovanni Amura, below) steps her up from poverty into comparative luxury and offers a new target for her anger. She provokes his repeated beatings (boasting they make her stronger) and more drama is injected into the girls’ friendship.

Lila buys Lenu her high school books — her mother weeps with gratitude — our first shred of sympathy for the desperately angry woman. Then, in the chapter called ‘Erasure’, Lila turns on her friend, mocking her cruelly, transferring her rage on to Lenu who is climbing out of the neighborhood milieu into a more socially-conscious one.

As the girls mature, Lila continues to sharpen her claws on Lenu, and we imagine their adult friendship uneasily. (Ferrante describes the feral Lila as acting with “a hiss, a dart, a lethal bite.”) Lenu pines for Nino, Francesco Serpico, (below); the married Lila gets between them.

Still we watch, our own youth and dashed dreams immersed in theirs as Lenu’s passivity and Lila’s betrayals mount up. The story-telling is so dreamily fine, the atmosphere so reminiscent of one’s own despite all its differences in time and place, it will transport you there from the view of deserted streets out your windows.

View the series trailer here.

Note: If you would like to see more about epidemics, superstition, masks, and handwashing, check out the following:
Downton Abbey, Season 2, episode 6 for the 1918 Spanish flu (PBS, passport; Amazon Prime).
Outlander, Season 3, episode 10 for a shipboard typhoid outbreak in the 1700’s (Starz, Netflix).
The Physician, lovely film with Ben Kingsley and Stellan Skarsgård, for a battle with the black death in 11th century Persia (Netflix).
Ken Follett’s World Without End episode 106 for arrival of the black death in 1341, in which ancient Persian texts are used to guide the treatment of the plague (Starz).

Kelly Macdonald quietly dazzles in Turtletaub, Mann and Moverman's remake, PUZZLE

I was blown away by the Argentine film, Puzzle, written and directed by first-timer by Natalia Smirnoff, when it was first released in the USA back in 2011, and though it never crossed my mind that the film needed remaking in English, now that PUZZLE is here -- directed by Marc Turtletaub with a screenplay by Polly Mann and Oren Moverman -- I must admit that the new version is almost as good -- hell, maybe every bit as good -- as the original.

Mr. Turtletaub, shown at left, is best known as a producer with some major winners under his belt, but he has done quite a fine job in this -- his second full-length directorial stint -- of bringing to life a small-scale tale of a subdued and somewhat cowed housewife named Agnes who discovers that she has a penchant for solving jigsaw puzzles at a very fast pace.

Turtletaub and his writers are helped no end by their leading performer, perhaps the most under-sung top-notch actress working today: Kelly Macdonald (shown below), who is simply so perfect in this role that her every moment resonates, each one bringing us closer to fully understanding this unusual woman, even as she begins to better understand herself and her (so far) unrequited needs.

Agnes is mother/wife to two nearly-grown kids and a kindly-if-old-fashioned husband (the terrifically real and moving David Denman below) who genuinely loves his wife but hasn't a clue to what's going on inside her. One of the great strengths of the movie (as was true of the original version) is that, though its main concern lies with the wife and her growth/change, it is able to view the husband (and to some extent the children) with the kind of care and empathy that has you rooting for them all.

It has been a few years since I've seen the original film, but as I recall the character of our heroine's puzzle partner was a stronger, more complete one in the original. Here, as played as well as the script permits by Irrfan Khan (below, left), that character is reduced somewhat. This matters less than you might expect, however, because the film is so much more focused on Agnes and her family.

Ms Macdonald charts Agnes' inner journey so well and with such specificity that we're with her entirely -- even when, on occasion, she's unfair to those around her. Growth and change come at a price and not always so easily, and the film honors this idea, as well.

Suburban life for a woman who has known only family, friends and church is made unusually clear here; breaking free into new ideas and activities has seldom seemed as invigorating, too. And if you imagine that Puzzle is going to come down to the usual choice by a woman between one man or another, the movie is too genuinely feminist and too concerned with real growth and change to make things that simple.

This is one of the best films of the year -- as was the original in its own year -- and it deserves as wide a viewership as possible. And Ms Macdonald, giving the best performance I've seen all year, deserves an Oscar -- or at very least a nomination.

From Sony Pictures Classics and running 103 minutes, Puzzle, after hitting major cities over the past few weeks, opens here in South Florida this Friday, August 10. In the Miami area, it will play the AMC Aventura 24; in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters, Cinemark Palace 20 and the Regal Shadowood 16; at the Cinemark 14 in Boynton Beach; the Cinemark Paradise 24 in Davie; at the Silverspot Cinema, Coconut Creek; at the Movies of Delray; and in Fort Lauderdale at the Classic Gateway 4. Wherever you live across the country, to find a theater near you, click here (then click on GET TICKETS on the right side of your screen).

Blu-ray/DVDebut for Ivan Tverdovskiy's strange/moving/funny Russian hit, ZOOLOGY

Featuring a dynamic, one-of-a-kind performance by an actress new to me -- Natalya Pavlenkova -- and a story that seems almost as fantastic as its story-telling style is documentary-like reality, ZOOLOGY should prove utter catnip for cinema buffs.

As written and directed by Ivan Tverdowskiy, the movie introduces us to a middle-aged woman who will almost immediately charm and delight us before eventually very nearly breaking our hearts.

Zoology works on a number of levels, but primarily, I believe, it's a look at the plight of the "outsider" in relationship to the society in which she lives -- in this case modern-day Russia. So, yes, as usual with Russian filmmakers, we're in the land of corruption, hypocrisy, and small-minded folk who use what power they have in ways that alternate between abuse and cowardice.

Yet here, the filmmaker (shown at right) does not hammer it all home with the force and repetition that we often see coming out of Russia.

Instead, he allows his heroine (Ms Pavlenkova, shown at right, above and below) and hero (Dmitriy Groshev, ar left, above and below) to charm us and each other into a world of their own making that, for a time, takes them out of the despair of daily life.

As usual with a good movie, the less you know about plot going in, the happier you'll be coming out, having experienced the surprises that the filmmaker hopes to bring you along with the fun and challenge of piecing the story together. The tale here has to do with an unusual addition to the usual human anatomy and what this does to and for our heroine, along with how it affects those around her.

One one level this is pure fantasy, yet it works rather deeply on other levels, too: psychological, social, sexual, emotional. And our two lead actors could hardly be better. Ms Pavlenkova is a revelation: sad, needy, charming, sexy, and yet almost always mysterious, while Mr. Groschev proves her match. Younger, yet clearly very attracted to this woman, the character has his own quirks and needs, yet does as much as he can to satisfy our leading lady's.

Along the way we get a good dose of the Russian workplace -- the city zoo (for her), the medical establishment for him -- and the scenes with the animals are as beautifully handled as those in the hospital/doctors' offices are sterile and unwelcoming. Religion, along with a self-help guru (below), get trashed along the way, as well.

In the end, we're left with our heroine, her plight and the direction she chooses to take -- which is, TrustMovies thinks, not at all the necessary or right one. And yet, you'll fully understand why she's choosing this, even if you wish it were otherwise. So much more could have been had by and for our twosome, if only they, particularly she, were able to stretch and embrace it.

But maybe this is also the point: Russia and its population -- along with those of so many other countries -- can not yet accept (nor even want) change or evolution. It's simply too scary, too different, too demanding. And so we do what we think we must. Sad.

From Arrow Films/Arrow Academy and running an exemplary 91 minutes, Zoology hit the street this past November 14 -- for purchase and, I hope, rental, on both Blu-ray and DVD. The Blu-ray also contains a  lovely and informative interview with actor Dmitriy Groschev that's very much worth viewing. The film's distributor in the USA is MVD Entertainment, and you can learn more information here. 

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.

Best Foreign Language Film front runner, TONI ERDMANN, opens on Florida screens -- plus a word about this category's other nominees

So much has already been written -- much of it quite compelling -- about Maren Ade's latest, most ambitious and successful work, TONI ERDMANN, that TrustMovies will keep his coverage relatively succinct. For those of us who were blown quietly away by Ms Ade's first full-length film, The Forest for the Trees, and then found ourselves even more impressed by her second one, Everyone Else, her new achievement will not be seen as all that surprising.

We would have given this unique filmmaker placement in Variety's annual 10 Directors to Watch with the advent of her first film back in 2003, rather than only this year, with the success of her newest film. But then, that famous show-biz bible is not particularly known for its predictive abilities. (Better to wait until a director has garnered immense praise and won a bunch of awards before taking a chance on her.)

Ms Ade, shown at right with what will probably be the most talked about "costume" of the new millennium, has made a movie that many people are calling a comedy. Indeed, there are some wonderful, even amazing, laughs to be had during this long but increasingly meaningful and attention-grabbing film. Yet it takes perhaps a full hour before the comedy aspect of Toni Erdmann thoroughly sets in.

Even then, the immense drama that has built up between a father and daughter in their struggle to come to terms with each other, with their relationship and with their respective understandings of what it means to "do the right thing" -- this is what keeps the movie growing and churning with life and surprise.

The comedy, hilarious as it is, seems almost incidental. This has been true of all three of Ade's films. In The Forest for the Trees, we initially chuckle at the main character's attempt to "fit in" to the world; by the finale we're knocked for a loop by what all this leads to. Everyone Else has us alternately laughing and wincing at the hypocrisy of its characters, yet we never once lose contact with their humanity, strengths and weaknesses.

Toni Erdmann hands us the increasingly oft-told tale of a society in which appearance is all, soulless corporations rule, and the fight of one man against the many can make real change. And yet, as old-hat and obvious as this may sound, Ade's great skills at both writing and directing turns her tale into a rich and wondrous concoction, the likes of which you will not have previously seen.

She breathes new life into everything from the requisite sex scene (a humdinger, and for all sorts of reasons you won't expect: Petit-Fours, anyone?) to the lets-all-get-nude scene (an utter delight) to the moment in which our heroine is suddenly coaxed into singing a song and turns the scene into something special in, again, ways you just won't expect.

The two lead performances are award-worthy all on their own: Sandra Hüller (above) as that corporate-striving daughter and Peter Simonischek (below, left) as her crazy-like-a-fox dad, whose bizarre methods have their own wonderful logic and lead finally to making this film one of the most joyous and surprising adventures in growth and change that you will have seen for... well, a very long while.

After opening in December in New York and Los Angeles, Toni Erdmann -- from Sony Pictures Classics, in German with English subtitles and running two hours and 42 minutes -- will soon be seen around the entire country. Here in South Florida it opened last weekend at the Tower Theater, Miami, and will open this Friday, February 10, in Boca Raton at both the Living Room Theaters and the Regal Shadowood. To find the city and theater nearest you, simply click here and scroll down.

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Even though Toni Erdmann has become the darling of the critical set (myself included, unlike my mixed feelings about that other critical darling La La Land), I must admit to being a tad surprised that the film made it, not just to the Oscar shortlist, but to becoming an actual nominee for BFLF. I'd vote for it, for sure, but it seems to me to demand -- via its considerable length and unusual "indirection" (its genre-jumping tendencies) -- too much of the usual Academy voter, who might prefer a movie such as The Salesman, which I also loved and which is far easier to follow along with and understand.

That a film such as A Man Called Ove has been included among the nominees points to the Academy's ever-continuing love of the feel-good and obvious. If Ove should win, it will set back the BFLF category by a good decade or more. I have not yet seen either Land of Mine or Tanna, so cannot comment on their worthiness -- except to say that, of late, the Academy seems to include a war-themed film (last year's A War) and an "indigenous/primitive people" movie (last year's Embrace of the Serpent), so, yes, they're doing it again this time.

Owen Wilson/Zach Galifianakis/ARE YOU HERE: Matthew Weiner's first film is a sneaky winner

I don't know much about Matthew Weiner, pictured below, but I do know that his Mad Men is hands-down the best American television series I have ever seen. This of course had me a little worried about his debut as a filmmaker: So much to live up to, after all. I am happy to report that his entry into movie-making, ARE YOU HERE, which he wrote and directed, is a lovely piece of work: fresh, funny, moving and real. You can think of it in a number of different ways, one of these being a modern-day screwball comedy (with pot standing in for alcohol). It is also a kind of back-and-forth road trip (for the automobile and the soul). Best of all, it a movie in which characters actually learn and grow and change. Believably.

If Mr. Weiner does pack a lot into his just-under-two-hour film, and then ties things up rather nicely, this will go counter to expectations, since Mad Men ties nothing up. Everything simply keeps expanding outward while its characters go with the flow and often seem to have learned very little (we do, however). But that is one of the wonders of what a great TV series can offer. A two-hour film is a different kettle of fish, from which audiences demand both more and less. And Weiner gives it to them. If you pay attention, you'll come out of Are You Here refreshed and feeling good. But you'll also have had to wrestle with certain notions: that being an "outsider" (the character played  by Zach Galifianakis) has as many bad as good points, that anti-depressant drugs can be useful, that the lifestyle of a successful "player" (Owen Wilson's character), along with the easy money and sex, is so much fun that you might not want to give it up, and finally that compromise can actually result in something better than what recently preceded it.

From what we see on Mad Men and now in this film, I would guess that Weiner has a wonderfully all-embracing belief system that is able to take in opposing ideas easily and thoughtfully, play with them a bit, then send them snapping back at us. He has given us a story of two old friends, Steve (Wilson, above, left) and Ben (Galifianakis, above, right), enablers both, who care for each other in their own special way. When death and an inheritance take the men back to their childhood town, a lot begins to happen.  (Weiner's take on friendship is a particularly succulent one.)

This brings Ben's uptight and angry sister (Amy Poehler, above, right) into the mix, as well as Ben's father's widow (Laura Ramsey, below), a young woman who leavens the movie with some real surprise. The script is peppered with smart and often funny one-liners -- "Honestly, I don't know why the farmer and the cowhand can't be friends," will have some of us Oklahoma! fans chuckling -- while other bits of dialog ("Just to be clear: If I'm sober, you're interested?") are sure to bring us, as well as certain characters, up short.

Are You Here offers so much about the way we live now-- from the real estate ladies' seminar to the need for natural foods as well as for major supermarkets -- that both the fun and the substance of the film are in constant array.

And that cast! Wilson has rarely been better. He brings a complicated character into full bloom (his chicken scene, above, is something else), while Galifiianakis moves from crazy delight to a deepened, richer (literally and symbolically) man who can at last appreciate the need for behavior-adjusting drugs.

Poehler is harsh, but she never allows the character's humanity to entirely depart, and Ramsey makes what could be a too-good-to-be-true woman into a steely but fragile young lady trying her best to live up to her own high standards.

I suspect that some of my compatriots will misinterpret this movie as a "failed comedy" or some sort of "feel-good rom-com." It's much more than that. Give it a shot -- and find yourself in Matthew Weiner's complicated and very interesting universe.

Are You Here -- from Millennium Entertainment and running 113 minutes -- opens theatrically this Friday, August 22. In New York City, catch it at the AMC Empire 25; in L.A. at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas or the Laemmle Noho 7. To see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, click here and then click on TICKETS at the top of the screen.