generation casseroles
Carlota Pereda in the seminal short film ‘Cerdita’ He has already proposed a combination of the most meaningful and unexpected: rural customs, fear of fatness, “bullying” and “psycho-killer”.. And a totem hero: Laura Galán. These fourteen minutes of humiliation and cruelty under the sun and the bitter sweat of an extreme summer suffered by a girl, Sara, and some of her malevolent classmates are now extended into a movie that plunges us into the bowels of adolescent agony injured by abuse. the female body and aesthetic violence at the center of the discourse.
That is why it is so encouraging that this societal reflection becomes the seed of an apparatus of pure terror, in which the flesh is tainted and wounded in different ways. It’s as if Catherine Breillat’s ‘Fat Girl’ intersects Tobe Hopper’s ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ with a pop key through the chronicle of the grotesque Iberian noir.
There may be some imbalances in the narrative as some elements may not fit together, but Carlota Pereda’s ability to structure her own universe, create atmospheres of brutal discomfort in daylight and construct images of this sinister expressive force is undeniable. They immediately begin to occupy a cult place in contemporary terror iconography, as they give them an iconic meaning. And the offal gets a reason to be in ‘Cerdita’ with the ironic play that the filmmaker plays about his protagonist through the slavery of the gaze of others. That’s why he doesn’t shy away from ‘blood’, blood and internal organs, any form of violence. Therefore, it actually becomes a cathartic festival of liberation from flesh and prejudice.
‘Halloween: The End’ by David Gordon Green ★★★★
The contagion of evil
David Gordon Green is lucky enough to wrap up the clever trilogy that John Carpenter started with ‘Halloween Night’ in 1978. especially one of the most influential ‘slasher’ movies and horror movies generally modern. With the complicity of Jamie Lee Curtis, the young kangaroo besieged by masked psychopath Michael Myers in the epic prequel, Gordon Green has brought the myth to life and brought to life in three films with hands-on and perfect metrics. After ‘Halloween night’ and ‘Halloween kills’, he closes the circle with ‘Halloween: The End’, the title of which couldn’t be more precise.
After Rob Zombie’s attempt to explain Myers’ origins failed, Gordon Green opted for it. Extending the age-old feud between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode. The first tagline of this latest installment resonates: Haddonfield, Halloween night 2009. Haddonfield is more than a city; It is a mood for ‘slasher’. The director uncomfortably films this as a defining geography for the transmission of evil Myers presupposes. Laurie says Myers is an infection, and that’s what the movie is about, with a very interesting reversal of the movie—a kangaroo instead of a kangaroo—and the final shots of the voids of a house echoing the movie’s final images. carpenter.
‘Peter Von Kant’ by Francois Ozon ★★★
A hands-on and free exercise
François Ozon’s new film is incomprehensible without comparing it to the masterful melodrama that RW Fassbinder directed in 1972. Based on ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant’; And yet, ironically, confronting him isn’t doing him any favors. If this is the story of a fashion designer’s sadomasochistic love triangle with his apprentice and personal secretary, then this movie reproduces psychosexual dynamics but alternates both the gender of the protagonist and his profession—now he’s a filmmaker. To clarify links to Fassbinder’s biography, which he once kept veiled. Which ending? Unknown.
Meanwhile, she tries to be a much more accessible work than her model: 40 minutes shorter, her dialogues straighter, her characters more expressive, and a lighter tone; The apartment in which he moves is less claustrophobic, and in general there is hardly any trace of the kind of formal courage that has done so much to make his model such a meditation. attractive and fascinating about desire, obsession, narcissism, manipulation and humiliation. Ultimately, he is less interested in eliciting and generating authentic emotions or reflecting on something relevant than affirming Ozone as a good student of German genius. And again you have to ask: why?
‘Dibolic’ by Antonio and Marco Manetti
a colorful pack
The model on which the Antonio and Marco Manetti brothers’ new feature film is based is not the ‘pop art’ jewel of the same name, directed by Mario Bava in 1968, but directly Original comic book created by Angela and Luciana Giussini half a century ago and starring the title thief. Specifically, the main inspiration is the first series of this broadcast, where the character is a ruthless and ruthless man who does not yet have the moral and ethical values u200bu200bacquired in later vignettes.
Probably in the first part of an epic, we see the crime plot involving the robbery of a diamond and a safe in an impregnable bank, and in the meantime we meet someone who is both his enemy and accomplice and lover; Likewise, he is caught, tried and sentenced to the guillotine. As you look, The film exudes stylization both in the night visions of deserted cities and in the collection of exaggerated sixties showrunners it exhibits., and seems to pay attention to the official traditions of ‘giallo’. At the narrative level, yes, it is much less complex. The sequence of events is simple and predictable, which makes Manettis’ attempt to overexplain it particularly misplaced. When it comes to the leading anti-hero, it has no more volume than the pages of paper it originally appeared on.
‘Wild Sunflowers’ by Jaime Rosales ★★★★
Open the door
Jaime Rosales’ latest film is in three parts, and with a somewhat disturbing tone at first, it tells the story of toxic masculinity and an inner character’s journey on an emotional level, a journey not of an abused young woman but of a search for herself. absolute happiness. Young woman Anna Castillo. She plays a single mother with two children. The young man is Oriol Pla, somewhat exaggerated in his role as an individual, as violent as he is seductive. She falls in love with him. He has it. He doesn’t let her breathe. Suffering episodes of suspense, suggested or manifested violence follow each other. Nevertheless, There are bright moments like the beach sequence with Triana’s song ‘Abre la puerta’A basic flamenco-rock band from the ’70s, where Rosales used another song that later made great sense.
The other two segments tend to use more ellipses, A narrative space where Rosales feels as comfortable as how she uses split screens (‘Loneliness’) or chronological disorder (‘Petra’). Everything happens quickly, but this acceleration is necessary in the calculation of the film’s narrative: the disappearance of a girl in Melilla, a new pregnancy, a new son. My favorite thing about the tone of the movie is the way Rosales disturbs the seemingly absent when it comes to the gorgeous sequence in the lake.
‘Hasan’s Promise’ by Semih Kaplanoğlu ★★★
Calm against high voltage
Turkish director Semih Kaplanoğlu’s ‘Hasan’s Vaadi’ is a patient film with very detailed images that requires patience for the viewer to taste better: we don’t have a single frame in the movie. The sense that we don’t is Well thought through, shot and put together. The filmmaker tells the story of the countryside and survival, one of the themes of contemporary cinema.that a farmer saw threatening his already precarious way of life with the installation of a high-voltage tower in his orchard.
Without going any further, as in ‘Alcarràs’, the film simultaneously confronts two opposing lifestyles and documents the sudden disappearance of one of them, the people who earn their living from family farming. Kaplanoğlu always takes the time to show the feelings of this quiet and calm individual who is a kind of David versus a systematic Goliath who neither knows nor wants to know the secular traditions. Conflict serves the director – best known for the ‘Huevo’, ‘Milk’ and ‘Miel’ trilogy ten and a half years ago– also detailing the portrait of family relationships and the study of religious beliefs. All this is regulated by audio-visual restraint, but sometimes an extreme stylization prevails, as in the opening sequence in the water well.