David Bezmozgis' NATASHA explores the Russian emigrant community in Canada

Beginning with some promise, as we view a family of Russian emigrants in Toronto and soon learn that one of the family, an "uncle" with pretty consistent marital problems due to some rather bad choices, is once again about to embark on matrimony, NATASHA -- the 2015 film from Canadian writer (of Latvian birth) David Bezmozgis -- soon concerns itself with the title character, the daughter of that uncle's new wife, and her budding relationship with Mark, the teenage son of one branch of this family. Mark's mother encourages her son to introduce little Natasha, unhappy and estranged from her own mom, to her new city.

That introduction soon includes sex, lies and teenage obsession, the latter on the part of poor Mark, who turns out to be the perfect mark for the wiles of this budding Russian trollop. Mr. Bezmozgis, shown at left, is said to be an acclaimed writer in his native land, but on the basis of this movie, an acclaimed filmmaker he ain't. Natasha is as tiresome, trashy and obvious as its non-heroine, with just about enough content to fill a half-hour television show.
Unfortunately, the film lasts 96 minutes.

It also offers up an ending that simply stops dead -- exactly at the point where we finally have a bit of interest in "what happens next," the preceding portion having been more than apparent and utterly predictable.

Performances are perfectly OK, befitting the material to a tee, with Alex Ozerov (above) making a hale, hearty and hot-looking teen with those typically raging hormones, and Sasha K. Gordon (below) providing a blandly non-expressive face in order to make us understand how coolly deceptive our little girl really is.

Other family members fare better and are more interesting, but there is finally no getting around just how banal and obvious is Bezmozgis' message. The Eastern Europe emigrant experience in the West is, of course, an often fraught and difficult one, but I find it odd that My Father's Guests, a French film by Anne Le Ny that you can stream via Netflix -- a comedy no less -- offers a much more nuanced, interesting and even believable look at an emigration-for-marriage situation than does this supposedly "dramatic" movie.

While we get a bit of family conversation regarding Israel, politics and the Jewish experience during the course of Natasha, the movie's main goal seems closer to titillation than anything else. This tiresome exercise, from Menemsha Films, opens tomorrow, Friday, April 28, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. Further playdates? Nothing appears to be on the agenda as yet.

However, Mr. Bezmozgis and the film's two young stars will make personal appearances over this coming weekend at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. Click here or here to see the appearance schedule.

Andrea Arnold's AMERICAN HONEY--with an able cast of kids--hits Florida and elsewhere

Having enjoyed the work of British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (Red Road and Fish Tank), I looked forward to her latest movie and her first to be made here in America, AMERICAN HONEY. And for the first half of this long and rambling road trip that features a kind of very low-end Capitalism at work, I certainly did. Ms Arnold and her casting directors (Brit Lucy Pardee of Attack the Block) and Yank Jennifer Venditti (Lost River) have come up with a fine group of kids who play the group of kids that grounds the film. Each is odd and specific and real.

Ms Arnold, shown at left, has also gifted us with a beautiful and charismatic new actress named Sasha Lane (on poster, top, and two photos below) who will surely be seen again if she chooses to pursue this new career. Ms Lane has a face and body from which one does not want to remove one's eyes. And she is moment to moment so emotionally "there" that she helps fill this movie with life and meaning.

The rest of the cast includes the likes of  Shia LaBeouf (below, right) and Riley Keough (below, left) as the "leaders" of this pack of kids whose job it is to comb our country's south and southwest, selling magazine subscriptions. (Yes! This, at a time when print magazine are mostly dead and dying. But no one, neither the kids nor the would-be suckers to whom they're selling the subscriptions, ever brings up this fact.)

This is but the first of a host of believability problems the movie has. Yet so feisty and so much fun (for a time, at least) are these kids and their keepers that we let it pass. Ms Arnold's oeuvre so far would indicate that one of her favored themes is the resilience of teenagers, despite severe problems economically and with their irresponsible parents. So it is here.

This makes for some moving moments along the way, and Ms Lane is particularly adept at making us feel these without ever seeming to jerk us around. The movie and its plot, however certainly do. As writer and director, Arnold simply leaves out any logical consequences to our protagonists' behavior -- which grows more and more crazy as the movie progresses.

The filmmaker might have at least once thought to have the cops show up at one of the motels' the kids stay in and tell them to quiet down (if not haul them off to the nearest jail). These kids rob their marks of jewelry, too, but -- hey -- no problem. The most ridiculous scene arrives as LaBeouf brandishes and shoots off a gun and steals a car from some rich and, from what we can tell, rather powerfully-connected men. No problem. No consequence.

As the movie goes on and one for two hours and 43 minutes, this makes for quite a bit of blather and a near complete loss of credibility. If you buy into American Honey and stay there, you'll either have checked the logical portion of your brain at the door or will need to treat the movie as some kind of fantasy. We do get a couple of  hot sex scenes between Lane and LaBeouf (above), and a very interesting scene in which Lane attempts to play prostitute to a needy but decent oil rig worker.

There is good stuff here, intermittently, but I just can't help but wonder why Arnold didn't think out her movie with a bit more rigor and the kind of logic that would insist on a more honest and encompassing look at this entire situation. From A24 and having already opened in our major cultural centers, American Honey lands this Friday, October 14, here in South Florida in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Boca Raton theatres. Click here then click on GET TICKETS in the upper left-hand corner to find a theater near you.

YOUNG & BEAUTIFUL: Ozon's newest tracks a teenage prostitute & creates a stunning new star

"Ohhhh... she's beautiful!" my spouse whispered as the camera lingered over the gorgeous and leggy new actress (whom we'll bet becomes an overnight star), Marine Vacth, who plays and quite well, the lead in François Ozon's new movie YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL (Jeune & jolie). M. Ozon handed me my favorite film of 2013, In the House, so I suppose one cannot expect a filmmaker as prolific as he to come up with something that good every time. (He's made 17 full-length films in as many years, plus myriad short movies.) Though it will not be my favorite film for 2014, still, this one is plenty good enough: thoughtful, stylish, intelligent, well-acted by all concerned and with a theme -- teenage prostitution -- that should certainly corral a portion of the arthouse crowd.

Ozon, shown at right, is up to his usual tricks here by not insisting on what point is being made. He lays it all out, very well, very intelligently and artfully, and lets us make of it what we will. This does not mean that he is fudging or waffling, however. He's just not a filmmaker who likes to drive his points home. His movie bears more than passing resemblance to a film made for French TV and known over here as Student Services (Mes chères études), by Emmanuelle Bercot, about a college student who hooks on the side to help pay her bills. In Young & Beautiful, however, our heroine is getting paid for sex not out of necessity but more, perhaps, for the sense of power, control and occupation the trade allows her. She is also exploring what sex is and means, for both her and her partners, whilst separating it rather thoroughly from any emotional content.

It's that latter point that will, down the road, present the most trouble for Isabelle (the character played by Ms Vacth, above), who begins the film while on a family vacation by getting involved with a slightly older German student (Lucas Prisor) and losing her virginity with barely so much as a goodbye. She evidently felt nothing pleasurable or otherwise -- as I suspect lots of young girls these days experience with their first time (and maybe always have). With the young, everything is rushed.

Yet Isabelle knows that this sex thing is marketable with men, and soon she is surfing the web, posting availability and finding partners who will pay (though not always as much as was promised). We see her engaged in various couplings with men quite different in type and age. Her favorite partner, in fact, is the older man, Georges, played by Johan Leysen (above); the rest are all just johns.

What happens in the film is both expected (in the ways society handles this sort of thing) and not (in the manner that Ozon handles his characterization of Isabelle). Thanks to his quietly probing but never insistent viewpoint and to Ms Vacth's very believable characterization -- not exactly confused but certainly exploring: Isabelle is only 17, remember -- we end up with an unusual film that offers a hot-button topic done coolly and credibly.

As is often the case with Ozon, there are bonuses aplenty, starting with the appearance, late in the film, of Charlotte Rampling, in a small but wonderful role that the actress fills to the brim. There is also a lovely, sad chapter around mid-way that explores Isabelle' relationship and love/sex life with a boy her own age (Laurent Delbecque, above). The difference in maturity between the genders, along with the characterization of the girl's inner life against the boy's outer has rarely been shown so clearly and pointedly.

Isabelle's family, too, is shown in all its ravaged glory. Mom (Géraldine Pailhas, above, left) is divorced, but step-dad (the ever-present and always fine Frédéric Pierrot) is a decent guy, while (Fantin Ravat) is everything you'd want and expect in a kid brother -- and twice as adorable. Yes, this family has its problems, but because it is made up of relatively decent people, you can't look to it for anything approaching a full explanation of Isabelle's unusual behavior.

In fact, considering some of Ozon's visuals of Paris (such as the one above), you might more helpfully look at society, media and culture for explanation. In any case, Young & Beautiful -- from Sundance Selects/IFC Films and running 95 minutes -- opens here in the USA this Friday, April 25, in New York City at the IFC Center. I can't find it playing anywhere in the Los Angeles area -- that's surprising -- but as it will appear on VOD simultaneous with its theatrical release, you should be able to view it in practically all major markets across the USA.