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.  

Mothering, Bulgarian-style, in Maya Vitkova's gorgeous personal/political oddity, VIKTORIA

What a knockout (for a good while, at least) is VIKTORIA, the near-new (made in 2014) film from Maya Vitkova, shown below, which is said to be based somewhat on the filmmaker's own life -- with a little magic realism/ absurdity tossed in for good measure. We've long heard that popular phrase advising us that "the political is personal" -- or is it the other way around? -- but seldom do we see something that brings this idea to such specific life, if in awfully free-ranging fashion.

Viktoria, the character, is the spawn of Boryana and her live-in boyfriend who occupy a one-room apartment with Boryana's mom.The movie begins with their morning lovemaking, with mom unhappily listening. Well, this is Bulgaria under Communism, so there's little chance for even a separate bedroom. Though mom is still a true believer, who, according to Boryana, sacrificed her daughter's betterment for that of the Communist Party's, Boryana herself seems like a person drained of all hope. When her BF asks what they will name the baby he expects to have just helped conceive, she asks blankly, "What baby?"

And, yes, there is a baby -- an absolute delight of a cutie, above, who is born without a belly button (we won't get into how this is medically possible; that's part of the magic realism/symbolism on display) and so becomes a "hero" of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, and a clear sign to the powers- that-be that Bulgarian babies no longer need umbilical cords. What a country!

Ms Vitkova's rendition of the country's Communist leaders, along with her hilarious portrayal of Viktoria's education and elementary school years, where she is played by the very game Daria Vitkova (above, and the filmmaker's niece) -- how the power structure facilitates her every wish and need -- shows us a country that seems to have grown stupider with each ensuing decade. No wonder our Boryana is depressed.

She is also, as portrayed by actress Irmena Chichikova, shown above and below, one hell of a beauty, with a face the camera just loves. And this is where Vitkova begins to go a bit off-kilter. She sticks that camera on Chichikova's lovely, dark, deep face far too often and too long. For awhile we're so besotted with this weird tale and the pyrotechnics of the Communist nit-witticisms that we march along happily, both marvelling at and appalled by what we see and hear.

But the movie goes on for over two and one-half hours, and once the fall of Communism occurrs and Capitalism has reared its almost equally ugly head, much of the fun goes out of the film, and we're left with a little too much artsy-fartsy. feminist-to-a-fault filmmaking that drains the energy from Viktoria, both the character, who by now is a very sad young adult (played by Kalina Vitkova, another of the filmmaker's nieces, shown below), and the film itself.

This is too bad, because there is so much to recommend about the movie, from its use of symbolism -- cutting the other umbilical cord to the red-button phone (below) that links Viktoria to her country's leader, and showing us the great need for (and multitudinous ways to dispense) milk -- to its rich cinematography (by Krum Rodriguez) to the director's often buoyant and funny visual and verbal sense (Ms Vitkova also wrote the ambitious screenplay).

The film has its own rhythm, as well, and it's quite slow, and sometimes repetitious. But as the three generations of women we meet break further apart and then try to feebly bond again, the movie also begins to turn a bit too sentimental -- even if Vitkova does not, thankfully, go all out in this direction. We hope for better days for at least two of the three generations, for Viktoria especially. But given what we see and learn about Bulgaria through these eyes, the future is not particularly bright. There's an enormous and very real longing here for "elsewhere."  Venice, anyone?

Viktoria -- a Bulgaria/Romania co-production released in the USA by Big World Pictures and running 156 minutes -- opens in its U.S. theatrical premiere this Friday, April 29, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and IFC Center, and on May 13 in Chicago at Facets Cinematheque, and then in Los Angeles on June 10 at Laemmle's Royal. Elsewhere? Maybe, if some positive word-of-mouth builds. Goodness knows, this movie does not easily compare with much else you'll have seen. And for real film buffs, that may be enough to entice.

Xavier Dolan and his continuing MOMMY problems come to the fore once more

Xavier Dolan, the French-Canadian boy-wonder is at it again. The currently 25-year-old writer/director -- I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats, Laurence Anyways (we haven't been theatrically graced yet with 2013's Tom at the Farm) -- is still having some trouble growing up. Hell, so do we all. But most of us do not make overlong, boring and repetitive movies (yes, with some brilliant stuff in them, now and again) out of the experience. MOMMY, Dolan's latest endeavor, is yet another look, in pointlessly small-screen mode (more of this later) at an extremely troubled relationship between mother and son.

M. Dolan, pictured at left (photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez, courtesy of Getty Images), generally chooses some excellent actors to use as bait and gives them surprising, often shocking stuff to say and do. Initially, we're hooked. And then, little by little -- at least for those of us who want more than a lot of repeated yelling, cursing and getting all in-your-face -- we become so annoyed and tired of it all that we slowly remove ourselves from that hook. And so it is here: for every fine acting moment and bit of choice dialog, there are several more that grow awfully wearisome.

We should probably begin our critique with the opening credit explanation that Dolan feeds us, explaining that his movie is set in some slightly distant future when Canada has passed a new law that, if I am remembering correctly, gives parents the right to hospitalize their problemed offspring as wards of the state. I am assuming he must do this because, as Canada now stands, what happens in the movie could not happen without this slightly "otherwise" circumstance. But since the film is all about fraught relations between mother (Anne Dorval, above) and teenage child (Antoine-Olivier Pilon, below), a not particularly unusual problem, one would think that the filmmaker could have handled this without this pointless if-things-were-otherwise element.

Further, Dolan has elected to shoot almost all of his film in an aspect ratio the IMDB calls 1:1. This is ridiculously narrow, like watching an 8-1/2 x 11 piece of paper on screen. (Even more so because we are always aware that the movie's frame is not properly filled out.) Well, thought I, he'll soon open up to wider proportions. Hah. We wait almost two hours before the filmmaker finally decides to grace us with width -- and then it's only for a brief fantasy segment in which the characters appear to be have aged into better versions of their former selves. Ah, a few feel-good moments thanks to wide-screen!

Otherwise, Mommy is mostly all screaming and fighting and then making up (briefly) before starting all over again. A neighbor (Suzanne Clément, above) who has her own problems -- speech and communication among them -- gets involved with our pair, as mom's friend and son's "caretaker," and this of course leads to further "fraughtness." After now seeing four of Dolan's films, several things seem clear. Our boy likes 'em lengthy (this one runs two hours and twenty minutes) and repetitive. There are enough of what you'd call plot and content here to last an hour or so. The rest is filler, though handled at times with great passion.

Passion, along with connection and relationships, are Dolan's aces-in-the-hole -- even if all these seem to have no real consequences along the way -- until at last we get to the point that the filmmaker has been promising since that opening credit explanation. Consequence does not even exist, it seems, regarding the poor teenager whose face our boy earlier burned almost beyond recognition in the group home in which they both lived. But I guess that's OK somehow because, hey, it's all been so "passionate." If you've seen several of Dolan's oeuvre and then encounter Mommy, you may want, as do I, to make a small suggestion: Fucking grow up, Xavier! Or at least give us movies that do.

Mommy, from Roadside Attractions, opens today in New York City (at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center) and in the West Los Angeles at The Landmark.  It was, by the way, the Canadian entry for this year's Best Foreign Language Film.

Streaming tip: CAFE DE FLORE--Catch up w/yet another interesting film from Jean-Marc Vallée

During the recent Oscar telecast, you could hardly miss the gratitude and love in the speeches of Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto toward the director who helped them nail this year's Oscar for, respectively, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. That fellow, the French-Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée, has had an increasingly interesting career. His "masterpiece" so far would undoubtedly be 2005's C.R.A.Z.Y., a family film unlike any other you'll have seen.

Although this director (and sometimes writer) works quite respectfully and well on projects you'd call mainstream -- last year's Dallas Buyers Club and 2009's The Young Victoria -- Vallée seems most drawn to angst-y subjects onto which he puts his own special stylistic spin. The mesh is good. It works sublimely well in C.R.A.Z.Y. and very well in one of his later films, CAFE DE FLORE from 2011, which is now available via Netfix streaming.

Café de Flore is all about connections. What connects people who live in time periods 50 years apart, what connects a husband and wife through years of marriage, music, love and pain, what connects a Down Syndrome child (below, shampooing) to other people -- from his struggling mom to the DS girl he comes to love above all else.

If I tell you that this movie may involve things like reincarnation and karma, you might want to run screaming from the room. Don't, because Vallée, despite his combination of visual style, music and some very in-your-face performers, has a quieter, more elusive touch with all of this. He stops short of fully spelling anything out, so that the connections are there, all right, but we can make of them what we will.

His stories -- of a young mother and the Down Syndrome child she will not place in a home (with Vanessa Paradis, above, simply marvelous as a mom for the ages), and the long-term marriage of boy and girl who have loved each other (and music) since childhood and now must come to terms with infidelity and change -- are sometimes incredibly moving and rich. The fact that these connections are neither always plain nor simple, yet we feel them and slowly begin to understand them as the movie stretches out before us (this is a two-hour film), also makes it easier to accept them.

Kevin Parent (above), Evelyne Brochu (wearing the cross, below) and Hélène Florent (at right, below) turn in excellent work as the modern-day threesome, trying to do right by each other and themselves. Don't expect to come away from Café de Flore with every action and nuance pinned to the floor. Leave yourself room to expand and change your mind about what/who is good or bad and what you can and cannot handle or believe. I suspect that's what M. Vallée would want. His movie helps us achieve it.

Café de Flore can be seen now via Netflix streaming and on DVD.