Buzz Blog

By Scott Renshaw except where noted
Peter Hujar’s Day **** [Premieres]
When you describe the latest from director Ira Sachs as two actors performing the transcript of a 50-year-old interview, it hardly sounds like the stuff of stirring cinema—but Sachs turns it into something so layered that it feels like a major work. The interview in question was conducted on Dec. 19, 1974 in New York, when photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) followed up on the request of his friend, writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), to chronicle in detail what he did the previous day, no matter how mundane. Not that the day was particularly mundane: It included a photo session with Beat poetry legend Allen Ginsburg and a phone conversation with Susan Sontag, among many names Hujar drops in a particularly vivid portrait of the arts intelligentsia of ’70s New York, where homosexuality could be spoken of without fear. The conversation itself is lively and frequently amusing, performed with a wonderful familiarity by Whishaw and Hall, but Sachs frequently inserts reminders that this is a filmed re-interpretation, adding to the layers of distance and artifice already present in a transcript of a recording of a memory, with Hujar himself noting his tendency to lie. And there’s something particularly thrilling about Sachs’ use of Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, which somehow gives an epic, Ulysses-like feel to the idea of one day in any human life. It’s history, it’s character study, it’s 100 percent cinema, and it’s so much more than two actors reading a transcript.

Bubble & Squeak ** [U.S. Dramatic]
Historically speaking, I should be a prime audience for a movie that is 1) a deadpan comedy in the style of Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), and 2) a “marriage under stress” story, but here we are—with an absurdist extended metaphor that exhausts its welcome long before it gets to make its point. Writer/director Evan Twohy adapts his own play set in a fictional central European country, where American newlyweds Delores (Sarah Goldberg) and Declan (Himesh Patel) find themselves in hot water for smuggling cabbages into the country, where the vegetable’s association with wartime deprivation has made its possession a death-penalty offense. The episodic narrative that ensues finds the couple on the run from a dogged government official (comedian Matt Berry, imagining Inspector Javert as Werner Herzog) and encountering various obstacles in conveniently titled chapters. It’s all meant to add up to portrait of whether this particular relationship was meant to be, including a preposterous-but-not-entirely-unaffecting late sequence in which they imagine the arc of the rest of their lives through Proustian future-remembrance of meals as yet uneaten. The gags that Twohy drops along the way just aren’t funny enough often enough to sustain the flat tone and even flatter filmmaking, as earnestly as the cast attempts to perform them. Like the narrative’s forbidden crucifer, it’s the same thing served up repeatedly to the point of madness.

Magic Farm *1/2 [Premieres]
You can see all the broad sketches of culture-clash comedy in writer/director Amalia Ulman’s feature, and absolutely none of them manage to move beyond the sketch stage into something recognizably human. The premise involves the film crew for a travel-documentary series—host Edna (Chloë Sevigny), production assistant Jeff (Alex Wolff), sound man Justin (Joe Apollonio) and videographer Elena (played by Ulman)—as they discover that their travel to a small Argentinian town for their latest subject has landed them in the wrong place. In theory, the chaos that ensues as the team tries to salvage their trip by manufacturing a kooky trend would be a fun, edgy way to explore Americans exoticizing other cultures’ peculiarities, but Ulman gets ham-fisted about emphasizing how this community is dealing with impacts of toxic crop-dusting, making it hard for any of the comedy to land. Meanwhile, the narrative is desperately over-stuffed with subplots—an impending MeToo scandal for Edna’s partner/the show’s producer (Simon Rex), Elena’s unplanned pregnancy, man-whore Jeff’s romantic interest in a local young woman (Camila del Campo), Justin’s flirtation with their hotel’s manager—most of which don’t seem to add up to anything except padding out the run time. Throw in an obsession with fish-eye views of the local livestock and riding-on-the-back-of-a-dog cam, and the result is 50 pounds of quirk in a 10-pound bag.

Brides **1/2 [World Dramatic]
Director Nadia Fall and screenwriter Suhayla El-Bushra attempt a road-picture drama about finding an identity that sometimes struggles to find its own. Set in 2014, it follows two teenage British Muslim girls, Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar), as they run away from home, flying to Istanbul with an ultimate destination in Syria, where they plan to join the cause of the Islamist civil war against the Assad regime. Copious flashbacks make clear the reasons for their dissatisfaction with their lives in England—racism and Islamophobia in their school, abusive men at their respective homes—and the narrative does offer an intriguing look at the factors that can lead people to search for a sense of purpose in a cause. The problem is that all the time spent on our protagonists’ adventures and misadventures in Turkey leaves many of the details of their lives obscure, and Muna in particular feels like too abstract a character until the film is nearly over. A final scene that brings us back to the moment when Doe and Muna forge their friendship captures how powerful it can be when you feel like someone is really seeing you, after believing that no one else does. The movie itself doesn’t take quite enough care to make sure that Doe and Muna are similarly fully seen.

Serious People **1/2 [NEXT]
Balancing the looming reality of parenthood and the pressures of the music industry, Serious People explores identity, ambition and absurdity. Pasqual, a successful music video director, hires a lookalike to manage his job responsibilities, hoping to achieve harmony between his personal and professional life. Hilarity and chaos ensue as his doppelgänger Miguel’s brazen, impulsive behavior unravels the plan. Miguel’s apparent obsession with his own reflection is at the forefront, as he is frequently caught flexing and admiring himself in the mirror; he seems more enamored with his physique than focused on the job at hand. This recurring gag, while perhaps meant to provide comic relief, further detracts from the seriousness of the narrative, and makes it hard to take his character’s ambitions seriously. While Serious People aims to tackle profound themes like identity and work-life balance, it ultimately falters in delivering a cohesive or impactful message. The chaotic pacing and exaggerated plotlines often feel out of touch with reality, making it difficult for viewers to connect with the characters or their struggles. Rather than providing meaningful insights into the challenges of modern life, the narrative gets lost in its own absurdity, sacrificing depth for comedic effect. (Aimee L. Cook)