Father & son bond over the loss of their women in Robert Jan Westdijk's charming WATERBOYS

Yet another fine European movie rescued-from-obscurity (so far as American audiences are concerned) by Corinth Films, WATERBOYS takes its title from the renowned (in Scotland, anyway) British-Irish folk rock band formed in Edinburgh in 1983, The Waterboys, whose sound has gone through various iterations during the nearly forty years that the band (with a severn-year hiatus during the 1990s) has been making music.

Music, in fact, play a major part in this alternately funny, charming and moving tale about two men -- father and son -- whose behavior has gotten them tossed out of the homes of both their women: the father's wife and the son's girlfriend.

As written and directed by the Dutch filmmaker Robert Jan Westdijk (shown, right), the movie offers parents who've long been smitten with The Waterboys' music, while their son, not especially a fan, makes music of his own via the cello, which, we eventually see and hear, he plays quite beautifully. 

The father, Victor, is essayed by a noted Netherlands-born actor Leopold Witte (below, right), while son Zack is brought to slowly resonating life by the younger Dutch actor Tim Linde (below, left). 

Initially, we're not terribly taken with either of these guys, nor do they seem to be with each other. But as we get to know them, we begin to understand both what is going on between them and how and why each man continues to struggle with his own individual problems. Which are certainly noticeable -- particularly Dad's.

While we meet the very pretty (and very angry) girlfriend of Zack, we never even see Victor's wife, Elsbeth. Yet so well-written and -conceived is Westdijk's screenplay that Elsbeth comes quite marvelously to life in any case. She's always there, somehow working behind the scenes, and her importance to both her husband and son comes ever clearer as the film moves on.

With suddenly having nowhere to live, Zack must accompany his dad -- who's a successful crime fiction writer -- to a book-signing in Edinburgh, where Dad is confronted by a woman from that branch of his publisher who refuses to put up with even an ounce of his bullshit (the very fine Helen Belbin, shown above, with her back to us) even as Zack meets and bonds with a lovely young hotel worker, played by Julie McLellan, below. 

By the gentle, moving finale, no major bridges have been crossed, nor tons of growth achieved. But a small change can be even more believable and certainly important, and so it is here. "We are who we are," this movie seems to say, but even who we are can be tinkered with and perhaps improved a bit.

From Corinth Films, in Dutch (with English subtitles) and English, and running just 93 minutes, Waterboys hits home video this coming Tuesday, April 20, on DVD, and is available via digital streaming on Prime Video (members can view it free).

From Paraguay, THE HEIRESSES: Marcelo Martinessi's first full-length film is a rich and moving character/situation study

It is unusual enough to view a movie from Paraguay, but when that movie is also a first full-length film from an unknown director that turns out to be not only thoroughly involving but first-class in every respect, this is grounds for rejoicing. So it is with THE HEIRESSES (Las herederas), written and directed by Marcelo Martinessi.

Señor Martinessi (shown at right) has managed to combine themes involving class, change, entitlement, old money vs new, relationships, power, control and prison (of various sorts), all the while providing a study of character and situation that is really quite close to perfection. It has been a long while since I've seen a first film this well done in all areas -- on both sides of the camera.

The tale told is of two women -- Chela and Chiquita -- each from a wealthy (formerly, at least) family who have been lovers/partners for decades but have come upon hard times, due to which they are now forced to sell many of their most precious belongings.

As essayed by Margarita Irun (shown above, who plays Chiquita) and especially Ana Brun (below, left, as Chela), who has the more important role, these women resonate hugely. Ms Brun, in what is apparently her debut role, could hardly be better, as she slowly and quietly wraps us in her at first stand-offish but finally almost warm and completely understandable near embrace.

We get to know the two women, as well as their circle of friends and neighbors, especially once Chiquita has been "removed" to some extent from Chela's immediate life. How and why provides one of the film's many interesting plot devices, leading to some very quietly surprising changes along the way.

We get a look a Paraguay's prison system (women's variety, above), as well as a number of glimpses at the elderly, card-playing old-money wealthy (below) and their gossipy, judgmental habits,

and in particular one younger woman, Angy (very well-played by Ana Ivanova, below,  right), to whom Chela has clearly taken a shine. What happens between these two provides a good deal of the small but irrevocable changes that occur throughout the film, many of which involve those that Chela must make in order to grow and survive.

The manner in which Martinessi has laid out this growth and change is calibrated in such a way -- never too obvious but with enough information provided to keep up interested and on our toes -- that his movie proves consistently compelling and finally moving and even, yes, uplifting. Yet in a very minor key.

What we first perceive as a kind of love is eventually understood to be control. How Chela learns to circumvent some of this makes for one of the great, low-key pleasures of this just-beginning movie-going year.

From Distrib Films US and running 97 minutes, The Heiresses opens in its U.S. theatrical premiere this Wednesday, January 16, in New York City at Film Forum. Elsewhere? Well, it's scheduled to play Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal in early March, but I can't find any other currently scheduled playdates. But it is difficult to imagine that a foreign film this good won't eventually hit major cities around the USA. Keep watch.

In Cédric Klapisch's BACK TO BURGUNDY, vintner siblings harvest, fight and reunite

Oenophiles (both real and would-be: who can afford good wines these days?) will probably be drawn to (and with good reason) BACK TO BURGUNDY, the new French film by Cédric Klapisch, one of our favorite, consistently-on-target filmmakers. Whether he is dealing with family (Un air de famille), a group of young, free-spirited students (L'Auberge Espanole and its couple of continuations, as these kids grow up), his lovely/funny/moving ode to the city of Paris, or his look at the French "haves" and "have-nots" (My Piece of the Pie), his films are alert, stylish and eminently watchable. With this new endeavor, M. Klapisch (shown below) returns to the theme of family, this time with a slightly narrower canvas than that of his early work, and the result is a film that resonates ever more strongly as it moves along, uncovering character, growth, humor and immense beauty -- in both its good-looking cast and its gorgeous vineyard locale.

Back to Burgundy (its French title, Ce qui nous lie translates as "That Which Binds Us") begins with a little boy looking out on the vineyard his family owns and describing his feelings about it. It's a lovely scene that immediately engulfs us in the environment of a vintner. This kid will appear now and again throughout the film, especially toward its finale when, in a couple of scenes handled with simplicity and great feeling, the past and present are beautifully united.

Our kid will grow up into a character played by Pio Marmaï (shown below), an actor TrustMovies has enjoyed since seeing him in Living on Love Alone, back in 2010. Marmaï, as Jean, had left his home in France after a falling out with his father, leaving his two siblings to run the family vineyard. He has traveled the world until settling down and starting a vineyard in Australia, where he has formed a strong relationship with a woman and fathered his own son. Now, news of his father's approaching death has brought him back home.

The strong bond between brothers and sister remains, even if it has been frayed a bit, and the movie's major concern has to do with how the three will handle their estate, which, thanks to government taxes, presents some major problems. His sister, played by Ana Girardot (below) is the only one of the three to be presently unattached to some romantic relationship.

Brother Jérémie (François Civil, below) is married to the daughter of a local and competing vintner who is both powerful and controlling. How the three will solve their problem--  which seems to have a number possible solutions -- by joining forces or perhaps with more certainty by remaining apart becomes the thrust of the story. Along the way, we meet various employees, see a harvest or two underway, and get to know subsidiary characters with surprising finesse by Klapisch, who seems to have tamped down somewhat his usual improvisational style to meet the needs of this particular and more formally-told tale.

The film is filled with mostly decent people, doing the best they can while trying to stay out of their own way. Smartly co-written by Kalpisch and Santiago Amigorena with collaboration from supporting actor Jean-Marc Roulot, Back to Burgundy is especially clever in the manner it acknowledges how so many of us prove to be our own worst enemies. On the other hand, these folk's specific problems can also be offset by their specific gifts.

The screenplay also allows us to see those differences in male and female characteristics and how these can be made to work to the advantage of both, to be amused once again by generational differences, and eventually to meet Jean's partner (Maria Valverde, below, right) and the couple's son and begin to understand the vagaries of this relationship, as well. Finally, and despite maybe one coincidence too many, the question of who -- and what -- constitutes family is addressed with emotion and skill enough to make this movie even more moving and encouraging than you may expect.

A film for anyone who loves family, France and wine -- from Music Box Films and running 113 minutes -- Back to Burgundy (in French with English subtitles) opens this Friday, March 23, in New York City (Angelika Film Center), San Francisco (Vogue Theater) and Seattle (SIFF Cinema Uptown) and then on March 30 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal and Playhouse 7 theaters -- as well as elsewhere across the country, where it will play some 50 locations. Here in South Florida it will open on April 13 at the Savor Cinema, Cinema Paradiso, and the Movies of Delray and Lake Worth. Click here (then scroll down to click on THEATERS) to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and venues.

Our March Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman: Jacques Audiard's RUST AND BONE

Rust and Bone (de rouille et d’os):  

the taste of blood when a blow to 

the mouth crushes lips against teeth 

Noted French director Jacques Audiard (shown below) wrote the screenplay and directed the much feted 2012 film, RUST AND BONE, streaming now on Netflix and elsewhere, based on short stories by Canadian Craig Davidson from his “Rust and Bone” collection.

The film is set in Antibes, nearby Cannes on the Cote d’Azure — a surprisingly un-lux world of everyday realism — a dark, unglamorous slice of life in a blue-collar community where there’s economic hardship and labor conflict. Sun glinting on ocean adds irony rather than glamour and so do some American pop tunes, like Katie Perry’s ‘Firework’ included in the score by Alexandre Desplat. (At last Sunday’s Academy Awards Desplat won the Oscar for best original score for best picture, The Shape of Water, and has scored dozens of films.)

This film is full of contradiction — a strangely wonderful and uplifting love story deployed in a gritty, feel-bad movie. It is also a soap opera designed to push one’s buttons, a beauty-and-beast fairy tale in which the melodrama is far overshadowed by its compelling characters.

Playing Ali is Belgian actor of growing note, Matthias Schoenaerts. Ali is a loner, a boxer, drifter, grifter, and father to little Sam, (played by Armand Verdure— see them below), whom he has collected from a mother using him as a drug mule, and traveled to Ali’s sister who lives in Antibes on the coast. Director Audiard uses the odd little boy as a touchstone and a lingering source of concern. Sam is in the shadow but an unspoken witness of adult behavior, a victim in a life made uncertain by his elders whom we see through his eyes.

Ali’s sister Anna (Corinne Masiero),a supermarket cashier and her truck driver husband, call home a dingy, crowded cottage but she takes them in and provides some structure and care to the skittish 5-year-old. The father finds work variously as a club bouncer, night watchman, and boxer, mostly neglecting the son. Ali doesn’t think ahead to consequences — he’s a creature of the moment with somewhat mindless and muscle resistance to threats that have seen him through whatever life hurls his way.

Each of Schoenhaerts’ films has attracted interest by other actors and directors who simply want THAT — whatever it is that makes him magnetic, sympathetic, and not celebrity-like. (I think it is his evident sincerity and unshowy, modest affect.) Rust and Bone in 2012 led Carey Mulligan to want him for the part of Gabriel Oak in Far From the Madding Crowd. Since then he has done Suite Française with Michelle Williams, A Little Chaos with Kate Winslet, The Danish Girl’, and recently, Red Sparrow among other projects in a growing wave of interest in his wares. (I’d like to see him lead films rather than be a spark in the ensemble parts he has done most recently.)

The other protagonist here is Stephanie, the brilliant Marion Cotillard (Midnight in Paris and Allied are two of her English-speaking films), who plays a beautiful whale trainer at the local Marineland. She lives with a man in whom she apparently holds little interest; we meet him once before her life changes utterly.

We see her skill and confidence as an animal handler just moments before she is brutally wounded by an Orca. She wakes in the hospital to find both legs missing from above the knee, leaving her devastated, almost suicidal (being consoled by a colleague below). Cotillard is breathtaking at engaging the viewer to feel what Stephanie feels; Meryl Streep is our mistress of empathy but Cotillard pulls you in just as much, quietly without histrionics.

The story chronicles Stephanie’s gradual recovery, her reassertion of control over her body as a working woman, a sexual woman. She sets aside her awkwardness in order to have sex, and we share with her the incremental recovery of joy and self-confidence. Ali becomes enmeshed in this, beginning as an acquaintance, barely a friend. He treats his many sexual encounters as mindless events — the unemotional business of satisfying a need; he becomes Stephanie’s unromantic agent of healing.

He first takes her swimming and later suggests sex in response to her wondering aloud whether ‘everything’ still works. With her own cool, un-self-pitying urge toward self-discovery, she will not kiss him, a match for his kind but matter-of-fact indifference, but his being unperturbed that her body is broken sets in motion her emotional recovery.

One day she accompanies him to an illegal street fight, a particularly repulsive encounter that progresses until he is on the ground being slammed and bloodied by a bulkier, brawnier opponent.

Stephanie gets out of the car on her prosthetic legs and walks with half-smile and quiet certainty toward the scrum of staring male onlookers until Ali can see her; her courage and implicit support leads him to muster the will to throw off his opponent. He doesn’t realize it in the midst of the intensely physical encounter or even afterwards, but her cool assertiveness on his behalf is the precursor to his maturity into a sentient adult who will take responsibility for his actions.

While in the main we appear to be dealing with Stephanie’s recovery, in fact the changes in Ali signify even more than her repair from loss of limbs. From a muscle driven, live-for-the-moment combatant in his own life, he slowly lets Stephanie and his son occupy his mind and heart until at last he finds he desperately cannot do without them. Events proceed in which he betrays them both, and his sister, as he goes about his business ignoring the results of decisions he makes and disappointments he causes. ‘You’re being a pain’ he replies to being called on his thoughtlessness. (What woman hasn’t heard that or seen it on her man’s face and been fearful of being thought a nag.) 

Ali is worse than the typical male who acts on instinct without thinking. So it is especially satisfying to see this man understand that what he’s got to lose is worth conscious attention and change to his indifferent behavior. In the end, Ali, the woke man, the beast who chooses to be tender, is proud of Stephanie’s boldness and her sureness that disability does not means she is less. Her acceptance of his ugly boxing pastime is harder to like, but she appears to experience his physicality with vicarious pleasure given her own loss. At any rate you feel the self-confidence-building effect they have on each other; it is an in-depth dive into a relationship that is beginning to work.

Rust and Bone won almost 30 awards in France, here, and inother countries, and was nominated for about 50 more. For a grim little slice of life it is particularly affecting and memorable.

The above post was written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman.

Blu-ray/DVDebut for Kelly Reichardt's best yet: the quiet, beautifully crafted CERTAIN WOMEN

TrustMovies has run warm, though not hot, on the work of Kelly Reichardt over the past decade -- from Old Joy though Wendy and Lucy, Meek's Crossing, Night Moves and now a work that brings together all this filmmaker's gifts, while doing away with the ungainly combination of outré plotting, bizarre characterization and unnecessary melodrama that marred certain films (like Meek's and Moves). The great strength of Reichardt's most recent movie, CERTAIN WOMEN, lies in its strong, assured characterizations coupled to performances so specific and lived-in that there is not a single untrue moment in the entire movie.

It may be that Reichardt's greatest strength (the filmmaker is shown at left) comes in telling the movie equivalent of short stories, for that is what we have here: three tales joined in the most interesting of ways. This joining is handled not in the typical overly clever manner we've seen so much of over the years, but rather by the relationships of four women, not so much to each other as to other people in or near their same Montana town. Certain Women is a remarkably quiet movie, too -- considering that it deals with subjects as usually inflammatory as hostage-taking, infidelity and unrequited love.

As screenwriter (adapting from stories by Maile Meloy), Reichardt has, as usual, cast her movie extraordinarily well, using Laura Dern (above) as centerpiece in her first tale of a lawyer whose oddball client (a wonderfully goofy, sad and afflicted Jared Harris) goes calmly ballistic;

Michelle Williams (above) in the second story of a wife trying to save her marriage, family and self via a building project that will stay true to its organic community roots, even as her husband (James le Gros) strays and her daughter grows further distant;

and the duo of Kristen Stewart (above) and Lily Gladstone (below) in her final tale, in which a local ranch hand (the glowing-from-within Ms Gladstone) slowly becomes involved with a night-school instructor (Ms Stewart) who visits the town twice weekly to teach the locals "school law."

Each section is filled with the kind of rich, right detail that holds the viewer fast, while deepening story and characterization. So real and so vital is moment after moment that, despite the lack of what we might call normal "drama," the movie remains consistently riveting. In all, Certain Women proves a profound and beautiful experience, involving growth, change and deep disappointment.

Had I seen this film during at the time of its theatrical release, it would certainly have made my last year's "Best List."  As it is, I am grateful to have viewed the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray disc in a lovely transfer that captures equally well the majestic Montana landscape and these actresses' near-perfect performances. The movie hits DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow, Tuesday, September 19 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Viewing a unique gay relationship in Händl Klaus' strange, passionate love story, TOMCAT

If you want to know just how far and how fulfilling movies about gay characters have come and have become over the past half-century, take a look at the Teddy award-winning film, TOMCAT. I'd call this one a "must" for gay male audiences (and cat-lovers of almost any stripe: the many shots of the cats in this one rival KEDI and just about anything else you may have seen). As spectacularly intimate and encompassing as the movie is, however, there are some caveats I had better mention.

If you object to viewing male genitalia, be warned (there is ample on display here, in one scene even erect and bouncing). However, the manner in which writer/director Händl Klaus handles this full-frontal could not be more real nor more "ordinary." It brings us as close as film has gotten (even, I think, more so than the recent Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo) in terms of showing us the love and passion these two men feel and express in a way that seems so normal and ordinary. In this sense, it is indeed groundbreaking. There is also a moment of sudden, game-changing violence in the film that will prove very disturbing -- as it should be, and as it is for our two protagonists.

Also, as good as the movie is, it's a little too long. Its lack of incident during the latter half is not made up for by any increase in understanding of our two main characters. They don't seem to grow, nor do we comprehend them any more fully. This is too bad because the two lead actors -- Lukas Turtur (above, right) and Philipp Hochmair (above, left) -- are excellently cast. They are attractive but not gorgeous (and consequently more real), and they inhabit their characters about as fully and well as you could expect, given the limitations of Klaus' script.

So shocking, sudden and seemingly unexplainable is the incidence of violence that changes the film that, of course, we want some kind of explanation. Herr Klaus refuses to give it to us, and that is his right -- particularly if his point is that sometimes this sort of thing really is impossible to explain or understand.

Yet his barely giving a nod to psychiatry or the medical establishment runs the risk of making his movie seem less deep than facile. Sure, medical science can't explain everything, but, hey, why not give it a try? If this has happened here, we're not privy enough to it. No CAT scans or MRIs, and we don't even get to sit in on a therapy session.

Still, what exists is certainly potent: The event that breaches the relationship is a stunner, and then the long, difficult road back to forging some kind of healthy, enduring bond is believable enough. There's one scene on the soccer field that is also memorable. The work environment, too, is nicely handled: One of our guys plays in the local orchestra, the other appears to be perhaps the manager of that orchestra.

We meet some of the pair's good friends, mostly orchestra members, too. German society in general, as it so often appears to be in these movies, seems more inclusive, caring and accepting of the gay community than are those of many other countries, including our own. And oh, my god, are the two cats in this film absolute keepers!

From First Run Features and running just under two hours, Tomcat made its DVD debut yesterday, Tuesday, June 13 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Li Lu's complicated love-at-first-sight tale, THERE IS A NEW WORLD SOMEWHERE

A young woman named Sylvia -- whose boss at a New York art gallery explains that her work is not good enough to be included in even a group show -- is so fed up that she quits, leaving town to attend the wedding of a friend in Austin, Texas. At the night-before party she makes eye contact with a hot-looking guy who, on this first date, invites her to come away with him. This could be the start of a movie in any number of genres, from kidnap thriller to feel-good love story. In the hands of writer/director Li Lu, however, it becomes something more complicated and interesting.

Ms Lu (shown at right), a Chinese-born filmmaker whose first full-length film this is, seems most interested in slowly developing character, and while the manner in which she does this may seem initially rather typical, if beautifully filmed, stick with THERE IS A NEW WORLD SOMEWHERE. It gets better as it goes along, and in its two attractive and talented leads, Agnes Bruckner (two photos below) and Maurice Compte (below), it boasts actors who can hold the screen and our attention well enough to hit pay dirt thoughtfully and quietly by movie's end.

A psychotherapist friend of Trust Movies once told him that any two individuals could form a lasting relationship, the only prerequisites being that the two were autonomous and that they wanted that relationship. Ms Lu's movie would seem to bear out this theory, even though our two characters here are not yet autonomous. But they're trying to be, and by movie's end they've made some growth in that direction.

The ups and down, stops and starts of that growth, as well as the small bits of information we begin to learn about Esteban, the male part of this duo, is what gives the movie its slow, quiet propulsion. The dialog ranges from simply OK to a good deal more than that. "You don't trust anyone, do you?" he asks of her early on. And this seems, unfortunately, to be true.

She also does not appear to enjoy sex all that much, though the pair has it with some frequency. (It may be that he does not know how to or care about satisfying her, but she may also not be able to be satisfied so easily.) And yet they are drawn to each other both physically and emotionally.

So "New World Somewhere" is a road trip/getting-to-know-you kind of movie -- which turns darker as more and more reality, along with the past, begins to intrude. Leaving the wedding party so suddenly was a selfish thing to do, and Sylvia will eventually cop to and pay for this. Esteban, for his part, has major abandonment issues resulting in an inability to "try."

When, at a particular moment, an early lie in the relationship is uncovered, everything seems to change. But even then, Ms Lu has more on her mind that simple closure and conclusion. There is indeed a new world somewhere. But getting on the right road to that world can take an awful lot of work.

From Emerging Pictures (in its theatrical release) and Gravitas Ventures (for its VOD release, which began this past Tuesday, August 2), the movie, running 103 minutes, is worth seeking out and wrestling with. Click here to see all further theatrical screenings. VOD platforms include iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, Playstation Store, VUDU, Amazon Video, Microsoft and Hoopla.