ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

LGBTQ

Anaïs in Love – Life of passion

by Leave a Comment

Does passion provide an adequate foundation for how to live a life? In Anaïs in Love, from director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, we watch a young woman who focuses her life around shifting passions that blow through her life. Does it lead to happiness? Will it ever last?

Anaïs (Anaïs Demoustier) is a thirty something student who is constantly behind on her thesis. Actually that lateness is one of the defining characteristics of her life. She is very frenetic, flighty, and egocentric. She is willing to dump a boyfriend when she feels a loss of passion. She jumps into relationships easily, but never seems to be willing to sustain them. Her fear of elevators leads to her meeting Daniel, who is much older and married. As their affair runs its course, she becomes entranced by a photo of Daniels’ wife Emilie. She begins what can only be described as a stalking relationship, following Emilie to a writer’s conference, while blowing off a conference she is supposed to be overseeing for her thesis supervisor. Can the wife of her lover be the true love of her life?

Anaïs has a lot in common with the character Julie in last year’s Oscar nominated The Worst Person in the World. Both young women are likable even as we watch them tear through relationships without much concern for the pain they may cause others.

The subject of passion comes up in various ways through the film. Anaïs’s thesis is about the portrayal of passion in 17th century literature. When her mother has a recurrence of cancer, Anaïs wonders if this bad news is because her parents have lost their passion. Even in her relationships, we see them as passion driven, rather than personal. She is willing to have sex with someone, but doesn’t want to sleep with anyone. She’s not even going to commit to a night together.

Watching Anaïs stalk and seek to win over Emilie, is a humorous misadventure, but it tends to underscore Anaïs’s irresponsibility, to the point that we can’t see how she is ever going to find stability in her life. Perhaps she can win Emilie’s love, but viewers are going to have a hard time seeing that this will be any different than all the other relationships that she has entered and left. While Anaïs is very likable, and we want her to find happiness, we keep waiting for her inner child to start growing up. It is only then that she will have hope of something more than the desire of the moment.

Anaïs in Love is in select theaters and coming soon to VOD.

Photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

I Love America – Love and healing

by Leave a Comment

“Forgiveness doesn’t heal the wounds of the past; it transforms them.”

Lisa Azuelos’s I Love America is structured as a rom-com, but that is really just the pretty clothing put on to attract us to a story of grief and healing. In a sense it is a story of being lost and not knowing it. So it makes it all the more important to have been found.

Lisa (Sophie Marceau) is a fifty year old film director who has come to L.A. to write a screenplay, although there is much more going on in her life. Her children are grown, and her mother, a famous singer who abandoned her for a career, has just died. But this trip is not just business. When she is asked at immigration what the purpose of her trip is, she replies “I want to start a new life.”

On arrival she connects with her best friend Luka (Djanis Bouzyani), who has thrived in L.A. as the owner of a drag night club. Luka is determined to restart Lisa’s sex life, and sets her up on a dating app.  Luka has his own dating issues and while finding many partners, never finding one who will love him. But soon Lisa finds a great match in John (Colin Woodell). Their relationship grows quickly, but of course in true rom-com fashion, hits a serious roadblock.

But the film also flashes back frequently to Lisa’s childhood and teen years. Each of those flashbacks show us a bit of her sense of abandonment by her mother. Although she speaks of not feeling anything when her mother dies, we see in the flashbacks the great love she had for her mother, even if it wasn’t returned. This has become an important part of who Lisa has become, even if she doesn’t recognize it. A telling line (that isn’t emphasized, but clearly matters) is when she tells a date, “I created my kids to make sure somebody loves me in this world.” Perhaps it’s said in jest, but it is a very real sentiment. It reflects both her love for her mother and the lack her mother’s love.

As the film plays out, it is by embracing the feelings—both love and anger—that Lisa held for her mother that allows her to move on into new relationships that are based in trust and being trusted. She and Luka each learn that there is more to love that just immediate experience and connecting sexually with others. It is more important, they find, to connect emotionally. It is then that love can have a chance to bloom.

I Love America is streaming on Prime Video.

13 Minutes: The Storms of Life

by Leave a Comment

In Lindsay Gossling’s 13 Minutes, a natural catastrophe brings devastation to a community. But this isn’t your typical disaster movie that brings the survivors together to return to the way things were. Rather, this is really about the personal catastrophes that were already present in their lives.

Set in a rural Oklahoma town, we meet several people who are struggling in various ways. Rick and Tammy (Trace Adkins and Anne Heche) who are struggling to keep their family farm afloat. Their son Luke (Will Peltz) is a deeply closeted gay man. Maddy (Sofia Vassilieva) is facing a surprise pregnancy. Tammy, who also works at the clinic, strongly pushes her to keep the child. Her mother Jess (Thora Birch) is more pragmatic and suggests that Maddy has choices. Ana (Paz Vega) works at the local motel but has plans to buy a house so she and her fiancé Carlos (Yancey Arias), who is undocumented, can live the American dream. Brad (Peter Facinelli), the local TV weatherman, and Kim (Amy Smart), the local emergency response coordinator, have a hearing-impaired daughter, Peyton (Shaylee Mansfield).

The first half of the film is spent allowing us to meet all these people and see the struggles they each must deal with in their day to day lives. There is a bit of background noise that bad weather is coming. It turns out that there is a massive tornado headed for the town. Soon, people are seeking shelter (or not) as it comes ever closer. After it hits, the devastation is total. Survivors must try to find loved ones and begin to deal with the massive emergency they all are facing.

The storm is something of a metaphor for the issues that people are facing in their lives. Each may be facing the loss not just of buildings, but of the world that defines them. The film doesn’t paint a rosy picture of a community that becomes stronger in the face of adversity. Rather this film shows that life’s trials are often very demanding, and may not resolve happily.

The film spreads itself a bit to thin by trying to include so many areas of personal struggle, including LGBTQ issues, abortion, immigration, disabilities, cost of medical care, and the family farming crisis. All of those issues are well worth looking at from a personal perspective. But the film never really resolves the many trials that the people are facing. Instead the film leaves us looking at a world that has been thoroughly destroyed. There is no vision of a rebuilding community. And there is very little vision of the rebuilding from the personal catastrophes that the characters have been living. Some of those issues are exacerbated by the natural disaster.

13 Minutes is playing in select theaters and coming to VOD in November.

Photos courtesy of Quiver Distribution.

My Name Is Pauli Murray – Historic Footnote

by Leave a Comment

“I want to see America be what she says she is in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. America, be what you proclaim yourself to be!”

When filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy West were making the Oscar-nominated RGB, they came across a citation that Ruth Bader Ginsberg had in her brief arguing for women’s rights before the Supreme Court. They thought it was worth finding out who this person was. My Name Is Pauli Murray is what they discovered. Fifteen years before Rosa Parks, Pauli Murray was arrested for not moving to the back of the bus. Decades before the Wilmington Lunch Counter Sit-In, Pauli and other students desegregated restaurants in DC. Pauli was one of the founders on the National Organization for Women. Essays Pauli wrote were part of the arguments laid before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. Pauli made the case that the Fourteenth Amendment could be used to protect women’s rights (as Ginsberg argued). And yet, so few of us have heard of Pauli Murray.

Pauli Murray stars in MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAY Photo: Courtesy of Amazon Studios ©2021 PM PM Doc, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The film’s title makes it clear that this is an introduction. Pauli Murray’s name is one we should know, but don’t. And Pauli is an interesting personality. Pauli was something of a polymath. Pauli was an author, lawyer, poet, and eventually a priest. (Pauli was the first Black woman ordained in the Episcopal Church.) Pauli often practiced confrontation by typewriter, writing letters to people of power. When writing to FDR, Pauli would copy Eleanor Roosevelt, which lead to a friendship.

You may note my lack of pronouns here. Pauli was gender non-conforming, and in today’s language would probably identify as transexual. As a child Pauli dressed and acted as a boy. The family referred to Pauli as a boy/girl. For a time, Pauli rode the rails in the persona of a man. When facing surgery at one point, Pauli anticipated the doctors discovering undescended testes. (They didn’t.) This sense of inbetweenness is important for understanding some of the work that Pauli did.

Much of the film is made up tape recordings of Pauli reading from an autobiography as it was being written. It is important that we can hear that story in Pauli’s own voice. It is also important to hear the stories of people who knew Pauli and who have continued to build on that legacy.

What I miss from the film (and that is no doubt because of my ministerial background) is any real examination of the theological understandings Pauli developed while attending seminary later in life or serving as a priest. Given Pauli’s wonderful insights while studying the law, I would expect that Pauli could also bring that background and intellect to the realm of religion with similar insights.

Pauli Murray stars in MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAY Photo: Courtesy of Amazon Studios ©2021 PM PM Doc, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Pauli Murray truly was one of those unknown giants upon whose shoulders people are still standing seeing a future that can be made better. Pauli might well be seen as a footnote in the history of civil, women’s, and LGBTQ rights. To be a footnote does not lessen the impact. Indeed, we use footnotes as foundations for important ideas. Pauli may not have been someone most of the world see do important things, but great things were built upon Pauli’s work.

My Name is Pauli Murray in in select theaters and will be available in Prime Video beginning October 1.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg stars in MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAY Photo: Courtesy of Amazon Studios ©2021 PM PM Doc, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Photos courtesy of Amazon Studios.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye – Complex Simplicity

by Leave a Comment

For many people, Tammy Faye Bakker is probably best known for being the butt of jokes and SNL skits. Her outlandish makeup was a trademark that was easy to satirize, as was her singing and onscreen demeanor. But what of the person behind all that? The Eyes of Tammy Faye, directed by Michael Showalter, gives us a very sympathetic look at this woman who was an icon to televangelism, and who also became a champion of LGBTQ rights. The film is based on an excellent documentary by the same name from 2000 directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Screenwriter Abe Sylvia has done a masterful job of expanding and transforming that documentary into a narrative film. (Although, there are some small bits of dramatic license, but nothing that really does harm to the story.)

The film follows Tammy Faye’s life from a child in International Falls, Minnesota, where she was somewhat discouraged from going to church because her mother had divorced and remarried. But Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain) was so attracted to the church that she went anyway, and when she spoke in tongues, she was readily accepted. When at Bible college, she met and fell in love with Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield), who even then was proclaiming the prosperity gospel. They soon married and set out on the road as traveling evangelists.

Andrew Garfield as “Jim Bakker” and Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

When their travels took them to the area of the fledgling televangelist Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Faye started doing a kid’s show for him, which Jim leveraged into “The 700 Club”, the first Christian talk show. Soon, Robertson wanted that show for himself, so Jim and Tammy Faye started their own televangelist network (PTL) which grew rapidly. The vision was always far ahead of resources, and debt was a constant problem, especially after building a theme park that rivaled Disneyland. Through it all the couple lived a luxurious life. In time, Jim Bakker was eventually charged with and convicted of fraud and sent to prison.

While the documentary covered all this history with archival footage, this film takes us behind the curtain to see all this taking place through Tammy Faye’s perspective. And that allows us to see a multi-faceted person who has more to her than we may suspect.

The film opens with a scene (reenacted from the doc) of Tammy Faye at a TV studio having her makeup removed so that more camera-friendly makeup can be put on. While the makeup comes off, she talks about all her makeup. We then discover that some of it is permanent. Tammy Faye concludes, “Yeah, this is who I am.” We are struck by how the real and the persona are blended in such a way that it’s hard to separate one from the other. As the film progresses, we see Tammy Faye as someone who is blended in many ways.

Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

One of those ways is how she seems to be in a constant tension between her stolid Midwestern upbringing (personified in her mother, played by Cherry Jones) and the lavish lifestyle that surrounds her. Certainly, Jim’s messages of prosperity as a sign of faith gives some spiritual cover for that (even if a dubious theology). Even though she’s very comfortable with all the luxury, there is always her mother’s disapproval of it.

The film also makes a point that Tammy Faye was more than just Jim’s wife. (That is truer here than in the documentary.) To be sure, much of her life, its rises and falls, were caused by Jim and his dreams (and lack of solid morals), but there were ways that Tammy Faye had her own sense of power and her own desires. A key illustration is a scene in which Jim, Robertson, and Jerry Falwell are all sitting down at a barbecue to talk business. The women are all left on the periphery. That is, until Tammy Faye, baby in arms, pulls her own chair up to the table to insert herself into the discussion.

Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” and Andrew Garfield as “Jim Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

It should be noted that Chastain is one of the producers of the film as well as the star. When she first saw the documentary, she was moved to make it into a film and bought the rights. There is a certain “Time’s Up” feeling to that place-at-the-table scene. This view of Tammy Faye as one pushing for women’s rights adds another layer to her persona in the film.

Later, Tammy Faye became the first leader among Evangelicals to show great compassion to AIDS sufferers, which led her to be compassionate toward LGBTQ people in general. She understood them to be beloved of God. She may or may not have approved of their lives, but she saw them first and foremost as God’s children. This at a time when many of the other televangelist were referring to AIDS as a plague sent from God to punish gays.

Randy Havens as “Steve Pieters” and Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

After watching this film, I watched the documentary for comparison. While there are some differences in how the stories are told, the films together serve to give a fuller picture of the events and of Tammy Faye. The impression I had of Tammy Faye after watching both films was that the best description of her is “simple”. (By that I mean uncomplicated, not mentally deficient.) The picture this film gives us of Tammy Faye is a woman who is guileless. In spite of her garish makeup, with Tammy Faye, what you see is what you get.

Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” and Andrew Garfield as “Jim Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo by Daniel McFadden. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

That simplicity applies to her gospel message as well. The “Gospel according to Tammy Faye” is “God loves you. He really does.” As one trained in theology, I know that there are volumes written to describe the Gospel and the many nuances that grow out of God’s relationship to the world. Back when the Bakkers were riding the wave of televangelism, I would have likely belittled them for many valid reasons. But I also can say that that simple statement of God’s love is truly a full statement of the Gospel.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye opens in theaters September 17.

Defining Moments – It’s about life.

by Leave a Comment

Stephen Wallis’s Defining Moments is a collection of intersecting stories about people who are facing those times in their lives that could well change everything. This is a light-hearted film that at times seems a bit ludicrous, but within that there are morsels of wisdom and understanding.

We meet Marina (Polly Shannon) who has returned home to visit her father Chester (Burt Reynolds, in his final role). Chester declares that he’ll be dead in nine months. He feels he’s lived enough. He wants to spend the time saying goodbye. Jack (Shawn Roberts) blurts out something stupid that makes his girlfriend Terri (Kelly Van de Burg) doubt their future together. Laurel (Tammy Blanchard) is facing an unexpected late life pregnancy and the discovery that her doctor father (Eric Peterson) is showing signs of Alzheimer’s. And Dave (Dillon Casey) is hospitalized after shooting his ear off in his (about) 30th suicide attempt.

The story weaves through ten of chapters (with titles like “A Moment of Clarity”, “A Moment of Change”, A Moment of Gratitude”, or “A Moment of Truth”. Little by little the people involved must face their issues in search of that moment that will change their lives forever.

The film uses a lot of license in its portrayal of these lives. Much of it just isn’t all that realistic. However, at its core the film is about the relationships between people and how those relationships and the way we build them form our lives.

The film opens and closes with voice over monologs that focus on a cemetery. That brings to mind the assurance that we all face death. But the opening voice over as it ponders the thousand of people buried in the cemetery: “How many people are still remembered? I mean at what point does that last memory of you disappear?” That calls to mind a comment from Ecclesiastes: (For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten.” (Eccl. 2:16 NRSV) Yet mortality is not the point of the film. It notes that we all die, but also that we all live. And it is that living that is important.

Defining Moments is in theaters and available of VOD.

To see our interview with Stephen Wallis and Eric Peterson on YouTube, click here. To stream audio from the interview, click here.

Photos courtesy of VMI Worldwide.

Day 5 at AFI Docs

by 1 Comment

Often when important events happen, those involved pay homage to the past by talking of standing on the shoulders of giants. (This actually goes back to before its attribution to Sir Isaac Newton, so there are obviously lots of giants.) Today’s films look back at a couple of those giants upon whose shoulders others have stood and may still stand. One is well known. The other will likely be someone you haven’t heard of.

Celebrities often take part in social causes. In Andre Gaines’s film The One and Only Dick Gregory, we get a look at a comedian, a civil rights and anti-war activist, and healthy lifestyle activist. His humor was often built around race. He could play a room full of white people and have them laughing while at the same time making biting commentary. He was a friend to Medgar Evers and Dr. King. He was arrested frequently. He was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover. It was not enough for him to be rich and famous. He wanted to change the world.

In the film his autobiographiy coauthor Robert Lipsyte says, “He had a mission to accomplish, and it wasn’t just making jokes.” Indeed, very little of the film deals with his comedy, which was impressive in its own right. That comedy opened the door for many more Black comedians (some of whom pay a bit of homage in the film). What we see over and over is a man who was committed to the causes that affected people—racial injustice, the war in Vietnam, and later nutrition.

I was aware of Dick Gregory as a comedian/activist, but was never really connected to his work. This film, gives a very full picture of a man who was indeed a giant in many ways. The One and Only Dick Gregory will be available on Showtime July 4.

“I want to see America be what she says she is in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. America, be what you proclaim yourself to be!”

When filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy West were making the Oscar-nominated RGB, they came across a citation that Ruth Bader Ginsberg had in her brief arguing for women’s rights before the Supreme Court. They thought it was worth finding out who this person was. My Name Is Pauli Murray is what they discovered. Fifteen years before Rosa Parks, Pauli Murray was arrested for not moving to the back of the bus. Decades before the Wilmington Lunch Counter Sit-In, Murray and other students desegregated restaurants in DC. Murray was one of the founders on the National Organization for Women. Essays Murray wrote were part of the arguments laid before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. Murray made the case that the Fourteenth Amendment could be used to protect women’s rights (as Ginsberg argued). And yet, so few of us have heard of Pauli Murray.

Murray was something of a polymath. She was an author, lawyer, poet, and eventually a priest. (Murray was the first Black woman ordained in the Episcopal Church.) You may note my lack of pronouns here. Murray was gender non-conforming, and in today’s language would probably identify as transexual. Murray often practiced confrontation by typewriter, writing letters to people of power. When writing to FDR, Murray would copy Eleanor Roosevelt, which lead to a friendship.

Much of the film is made up tape recording of Murray reading from an autobiography as it was being written. It is important that we can hear that story in Murray’s own voice. It is also important to hear the stories of people who knew Murray and who have continued build on that legacy. Pauli Murray truly was one of those unknown giants upon whose shoulders people are still standing seeing a future that can be made better.

For today’s shorts, I want to make special note of When We Were Bullies. Filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt coincidentally meets an elementary school classmate decades later, they recall a bullying incident they were part of. Rosenblatt tries to contact all those involved to see if they remember it. It’s a difficult thing to realize that one has been a bully. (I made that realization some time ago.) In a way, that may be a typical part of growing up. But does that absolve us of what we have done so long ago. An excellent short.

Other shorts for today include Lydia Cornett’s Party Line, which show scenes from the very long line on the final day of early voting in Columbus, Ohio, last year. Ohio law only allows one early voting site per county, and 117,356 people voted early in that county. We see lots of masked people waiting in the snow to take part in democracy. In Halpate, directed by Adam Piron and Adam Khalil, we see Seminole allegator wrestlers in Florida with a bit of background as to why they have done this.

Photos courtesy of AFI.

Changing the Game – Knowing Who You Are

by Leave a Comment

Part of my self-identity is as a jock. That isn’t to say I’m particularly athletic, but I always wanted to be. I took part in sports, but never excelled. But that desire helps define me as a person. Changing the Game, a documentary by Michael Barnett, is a look at the struggles of three high school athletes as they strive to claim their identities. All three are transgender. [Note: throughout the review I will refer to them as the gender they know themselves to be.]

Mack Beggs is a Texas state wrestling champion, trying to gain his second title. In Texas, boys are not allowed to wrestle against girls, and gender is determined by one’s birth certificate. That means that Mack must wrestle against girls. Because he is taking testosterone as part of his transitional therapy, he has a definite advantage against his opponents.

Sarah Rose Huckman is a skier in New Hampshire. That state’s rules, when she began competing, was that gender reassignment surgery must be completed to compete as that gender. (Which is a fairly inane idea given high school students ages.) She becomes an advocate for transgender rights in her state.

Andraya Yearwood runs track in Connecticut. In that state, students can compete in whichever gender they self-identify as. Like Mack, as Andraya competes in women’s races, her body (and its masculine hormones, create an advantage.

All three of these young people are skilled at their sports. But they risk controversy to take part. Is it fair to the other athletes? Is it fair to these three if they are banned from competition? The film has voices on both sides of these questions, but there are deeper questions that arise as well, such as the nature of transgender identity and the role of sports in schools.

As we meet the three athletes, their parents, friends, and coaches, we certainly see them as the gender that they identify with. Although, Mack’s grandfather still struggles with the proper pronoun to use, all of these people are supportive of them not just as athletes, but as young people. These athletes are very clear what gender they are—even if people in the stands or state athletic systems are not.

 It is also shown how difficult it is not just to be a trans athlete, but a trans teen as well. It is noted in the film that 40% of trans teens attempt suicide. The pressures of being transgender can become overwhelming. These three athletes must deal with those pressures, and have them amplified by the controversy when they compete.

The film also looks into the value of sports for students. Andraya’s coach is the most open about his view of sports. It is not primarily about winning, but about teaching life lessons to the young people he coaches. An administrator in Connecticut makes the case for their very open policy by saying that you cannot have them live as one gender all the rest of the day, then when it comes to sports tell them they aren’t that gender.

The film is a fair treatment of the issue of the participation in sports by such athletes. There are problems with all the systems to be sure. But as a jock, I value the ways that sport (even when I failed) has influenced my life. I would not want to prevent young athletes from such experiences because their bodies do not match their gender. The three athletes we meet know themselves as more than as jocks. So do we.

Changing the Game is streaming on Hulu.

Photos courtesy of Hulu.

Nina Wu – The Dark Side of Success

by Leave a Comment

“I really can’t take it anymore. You’re not only destroying my body, but my soul.”

An actress gets the roll of a lifetime in the Taiwanese film Nana Wu, directed by Midi Z. But while it may be a dream come true, it creates nightmares that she must try to figure out. What she discovers will put her career into a completely different light.

The title character (played by Wu Ke-Xi, who co-wrote the script) has spent eight years eking out a career doing bit roles. She is offered a leading role, but is a bit unsure because it involves nudity and a sex scene. Her agent tells her that she’s free to turn it down. But he also notes that this is an excellent role—the kind that can make a career.

We watch as the film is made, seeing occasional abusive behavior by the director. When the film is finished everyone thinks a new star has been found. Meanwhile Nina returns to her small hometown where she is reunited with her former lover who is still acting in a production of The Little Prince done for school children. When she returns for pre-opening publicity, she is pressed about the sex scenes of the film. She responds by stating she is a professional actress.

While on the trip, she begins to have nightmares—usually featuring the color red and frequently involving hallways (which also play a role in the film she was starring in). As we watch these nightmares (and some daytime events that may or may not be real) we sense that there is something from her past that is trying to find its way into Nina’s consciousness. Little by little, Nina begins to piece together the memories that reveal the true nature of her experience.

It is of interest that the quote I open the review with is a line from the film within a film. We hear Nina practicing the line before auditions. We also see her deliver the line in what is obviously a key scene of the film she is making. That line serves to help us understand not just the character Nina is portraying, but the feeling that is within her that is struggling to make its way to the surface.

In press notes, Wu Ke-Xi references stories involving the Asian film industry and the abuse of actresses. These stories were coming to light around the same time that the #MeToo movement began to raise similar issues in Hollywood. These stories highlight emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. This film is a reminder of the scars that such abuse can leave.

Nina Wu is opened in limited virtual cinema locations, expanding to more and to VOD on April 2.

Photos courtesy of Film Movement.

Cowboys – Dad to the Rescue

by Leave a Comment

Is it kidnapping or liberation? Anna Kerrigan’s Cowboys is the story of a father who is trying to give his child the chance to a potentially fulfilling life. But the only way to do that is to go against his estranged wife’s wishes and do so outside of the law.

Troy (Steve Zahn) and his wife Sally (Jillian Bell) have been separated since Troy was released from jail. Their ten year old child Joe (Sasha Knight) wants to spend lots of time with Joe, and one day alone with him Joe asks Troy to tell Sally that he is a boy in the wrong body. He no longer wants to wear dresses. We have seen that Joe is always sullen when at family functions dressed as a girl and expected to act as such. Sally is not open to this revelation. She keeps trying to force girly things and toys on Joe. Troy and Sally can’t even agree on a pronoun for Joe. Finally, Joe can’t take it anymore and wants Troy to take him away. That night, Troy shows up and Joe sneaks out the window and they’re gone.

Troy leads them up into the Rockies and is headed for the Canadian border. Meanwhile, Sally has called in the police. The detective in charge (Ann Dowd) can tell that there is more to the story than Sally is telling. As she learns more, she wants to help Troy and Joe find a way out of the mess. As the manhunt draws nearer, Troy (who is bi-polar and has lost his meds) becomes more erratic.

The story is told with lots of flash backs that reveal bits of the story leading up to Joe’s coming out. That backstory also includes the reason Troy had to spend some time in jail. We also see that even with the problems Troy and Sally have had, this is a loving family. Joe having to deal with coming out as transgender was a strain that Sally was not able to deal with. It is understandable that one cannot quickly come to understand one’s child as being totally different than what you have known them as.

The film comes up a bit short of its potential. Part of the reason is the part of the story dealing with Troy’s bi-polar issues really doesn’t add much to the story. In some ways it becomes a distraction to the real issue of coming to terms with a transgender child—both for the parents and for the larger community. At the end of the film we see Joe getting on a bus to return to school for the first time. We know that will be a difficult transition as well. There is grace at that point, but we sense that it has been arrived at a bit too easily.

Cowboys is available via virtual cinema through local theaters and on VOD.

Photos courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.