7/29/15 (Part Two): His and Hearse

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A Good Marriage, Anthony LaPaglia, bad husbands, based on a novella, Cara Buono, cinema, coin-collecting, dramas, dysfunctional marriage, film reviews, films, Frank G DeMarco, husband-wife relationship, Joan Allen, Kristen Connolly, literary adaptation, Mike O'Malley, Movies, Peter Askin, psychological thriller, psychos, secret lives, serial killer, serial killers, Stephen King, Stephen King's A Good Marriage, Stephen Lang, Theo Stockman, thrillers

How well do we really know our loved ones? Sure, everyone keeps the occasional secret but is it actually possible to be married to someone for a quarter century and not realize that they’re actually a monstrously insane serial killer? This notion of the “beloved stranger” forms the crux of horror master Stephen King’s novella “A Good Marriage” and, by default, the crux of Peter Askin’s cinematic adaptation of said material, handily titled Stephen King’s A Good Marriage (2014).

By their very nature, literary adaptations can be hit-or-miss but adaptations of King’s works seem to be even more so: for every solid to great version of a Stephen King tome, there are at least three hackneyed also-rans waiting in the wings. With the master himself actually penning this particular screenplay, does A Good Marriage end up on the “winning” column or, you know…the other side? Let’s find out, gentle readers, as we take a closer look at a relationship where “til death do us part” takes on a whole other meaning.

From the outside looking in, Bob (Anthony LaPaglia) and Darcy (Joan Allen) seem to have life locked down pretty solid. They’ve just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, they’re surrounded by loving friends and family, including their adult children Petra (Kristen Connolly) and Donnie (Theo Stockman), they have a nice house and genuinely seem to be in love with each other: even this far into their relationship, Bob calls his wife a “hot piece of ass” and they have a sex life that’s a least as healthy as folks half their ages. In other words: life is pretty damn good.

As a travelling insurance salesman, Bob is on the road quite a bit, which is all just another facet of life for the adoring Darcy: he’s a workaholic who also pursues a lifelong love of coin-collecting, searching around the country for a particular penny that will complete his collection and make him even happier. In a nice move, Darcy is not only supportive of her husband’s hobby but seems to get a kick out of it herself, to the point where she offers to buy her hubby the penny (for a mere $9K, to boot) as a gift: he won’t hear of it, however, since the “hunt” is most of the fun.

One night, while Bob is on the road, Darcy goes hunting for batteries in the garage and discovers that her husband has another hobby: turns out he’s a brutal serial killer named “Beadie” who tortures and murders innocent women, all while taunting the police and media with “clues,” mailing the victims’ IDs back as proof of his “conquests.” The S&M mag that Darcy discovers is bad enough but the little box with the latest ID? That, friends and neighbors, is a bridge too far.

Things go from “simmer” to “boiling over” when Bob returns, unexpectedly, and handily puts the whole thing together: his genial confession is, hands-down, a real corker and sets the stage for the rest of our little couples’ ride into Hell. Darcy offers to just “put it all behind them” if Bob will only agree to quit killing people: after 25 years, there’s gotta be a little give and take, ya know? Plus, with Petra’s wedding on the horizon, Darcy doesn’t want anything to ruin her little girl’s big day: having your father hauled away as a serial killer tends to put a damper on the good times, after all. When Bob starts giving comely next-door-neighbor Betty (Cara Buono) the eye, however, Darcy realizes that leopards rarely change their spots. Will Darcy be able to hold it all together or is her “good marriage” about to head to a very bad place, indeed?

For the most part, Askin’s adaptation is a thoroughly workmanlike, efficient film, spotlighted by an incredibly all-in performance by LaPaglia and a slightly less satisfying one by Allen: too often, her scenes devolve into hysterical sobbing as swelling strings soar on the score, while LaPaglia gets to cycle through just about every emotion/mannerism in the book. There’s also a good performance by the always interesting Stephen Lang, as a ruthlessly tenacious former cop, although the character doesn’t really have much to do with the story, overall: he pops up, from time to time, and then makes his “big” appearance in the film’s final reel, none of which really affect the film in any meaningful way.

The film looks good enough, with the exception of a really crappy opening black-and-white sequence (kind of a shock, given that cinematographer Frank G. DeMarco was also responsible for Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) and All is Lost (2013), both of which looked amazing) and the score is fairly unobtrusive whenever the strings are taking a break. It ends up being about 10-20 minutes too long, at almost two hours (especially considering the novella format of the original story), although that’s certainly not an issue endemic to this film, alone.

Where the film really falls apart, however, is in the almost complete lack of tension and suspense: despite the subject matter, the stakes always seem alarmingly low, the action virtually toothless. Part of this is due to the fact that almost every genuine suspense scene in the film is revealed to be either a dream or a figment of someone’s imagination. Time and time again, tension is built up only to be released in the lamest way possible: ie, Darcy wakes up and goes back to bemoaning her situation. It’s one of my oldest pet peeves and one of the surest fire ways to really get my goat: suffice to say, A Good Marriage must’ve needed an awfully large barnyard for all that livestock.

The other major issue with the film has more to do with its structure. Unlike the best of King’s stories, A Good Marriage is unnecessarily drawn-out, treading water for far too long in between necessary plot points. Although I’m sure I’ve read the original story when I was younger (I ravenously devoured any and all King literature when I was a wee one), I can’t, for the life of me, recall anything about it. Since King also wrote the script for the film version, however, I have to assume that they’re fairly similar: this means, of course, that the original story probably didn’t work, either.

After finishing the film, I reflected back on what might have (for me, at least) worked better: while I’ve never been a huge fan of “what ifs” in film criticism (I’m of the opinion that what ya get is what ya get), there definitely seem to be fundamental ways to streamline the action. For curiosity’s sake, I’ll take a look at two.

In the first “Bizarro-world” version of Askin’s film, the entire movie takes place on the evening that Darcy discovers Bob’s secret. In this scenario, the focus goes to the cat-and-mouse quality of Bob and Darcy’s relationship, allowing for a slow ratcheting up of tension before arriving at the same denouement. This eliminates the slack pace and unnecessary script diversions (like Petra’s wedding), yet still allows us to keep the nature of the revelation and response intact.

The second “Bizzaro-world” version turns the threat to Betty from red herring to white-knuckle. In this scenario, it all plays out as given, with Darcy making Bob promise to be good, etc. The difference comes with the scene where Bob first “checks out” Betty, as Darcy watches: in this go-around, Darcy would need to spring into action in order to prevent Bob from harming her neighbor/friend, which would lead us, ironically, to the same natural conclusion as the others. As with the first scenario, this plays up the cat-and-mouse aspect: Bob and Darcy would both, in effect, be running a game on each other…the tension would come from the realization that Darcy would need to destroy everything she has in order to protect Betty’s life, which would give much more resonance to the proceedings.

At the end of the day, however, speculations about “how it coulda been” are so much stuff and nonsense: in the end, the only version of Askin’s film that we have is the one before us. While I didn’t agree with many of the choices and think Allen could’ve been given a much stronger character, A Good Marriage still ends up being a decent, middle-of-the-road thriller. Hell: any film that features LaPaglia smirking and charming his way through the role of a batshit-crazy killer is always going to have a leg up on a film that doesn’t. File this with the ones that get the job done: not amazing, not terrible but just good enough.

5/10/15: A Real Wild Child

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2015 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, abusive childhood, Art Alexakis, based on a book, based on a true story, Best Actress nominee, Best Supporting Actress nominee, brother-sister relationships, casual sex, Cathryn de Prume, Cheryl Strayed, cinema, Dallas Buyers Club, dead mother, director-editor, dramas, drug addiction, dysfunctional marriage, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, flashbacks, Gaby Hoffmann, grief, hiking, infidelity, isolation, Jean-Marc Vallee, Keene McRae, Kevin Rankin, Laura Dern, Martin Pensa, memoir, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, multiple editors, Nick Hornby, Oscar nominee, overcoming adversity, Pacific Crest Trail, Reese Witherspoon, self-discovery, self-help, self-improvement, set in 1990s, sex addiction, Wild, Yves Bélanger

Author C.S. Lewis once described grief as “like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” While this is certainly a poetic and serene way to look at it, I’ve always equated the emotion with something older and a bit more mythological, personally. As far as I’m concerned, grief is a hydra: cut off one head and numerous ones sprout up to take its place. In order to truly overcome grief, one needs to get right to the heart of the matter…trying to tackle each individual feeling, each moment of pain, sorrow and heartbreak is as pointless a task as Hercules trying to sever each individual head, only for two more to grow back. In order to truly overcome grief, one must confront the inciting incident head on: emotional honesty, no matter how painful, is the only true way out.

When Cheryl Strayed started out on her 1,100-mile trek down the Pacific Crest Trail, from Mexico to Canada, she was motivated by grief: after losing her beloved mother to cancer, Strayed spiraled into a mess of drug addiction, marital infidelity and self-destructive behavior, culminating in the realization that she either had to get better or risk a complete and total meltdown. Her intensely arduous undertaking (difficult for an expert hiker, all but impossible for a complete novice like Cheryl) would begin as a way to find some sort of peace in her life but would end with her finding something more important: herself. In the hands of French filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee, Strayed’s journey comes to vivid life with Wild (2014), based on her memoir of he experience. While the story is an interesting rumination on grief, the film ends up being disjointed and rather rote, a decided step down from Vallee’s previous effort, the similarly Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club (2013).

Employing a flashback structure, Wild starts us in the “present day” (June 1995), as Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) is just beginning her incredibly long hike, before jumping us backwards to get a sense of the events that led up to her decision. We see her relationship with her hard-working, single mother, Bobbi (Laura Dern) and younger brother, Leif (Keene McRae)…we see Cheryl and Bobbi taking college classes together…we see Bobbi diagnosed with a particularly vicious form of cancer…and, of course, we see Cheryl’s life collapse around her after the death of her mother. Falling into a toxic combo of drug addiction (first smoking, then snorting, finally shooting smack), casual sex with strangers (particularly troublesome given her current married status) and self-hatred, Cheryl seems doomed, burning alive by the intense heat of her own grief.

After hitting rock bottom, Cheryl makes the spur of the moment decision that would end up changing her entire life: she decides to hike all 1,000+miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone, with no previous hiking experience. Her (now ex-) husband, Paul (Thomas Sadoski), is cautiously supportive. Her best friend, Aimee (Gaby Hoffmann) thinks she’s nuts. Regardless, Cheryl sets out on her journey with no idea of what she’s doing, a pack that’s at least five times heavier than it should be and more determination than a small city. Along the way, Cheryl will see plenty of natural beauty, run into a few natural hazards and meet lots of interesting folks, including fellow hikers, a kindly farmer, a reporter for the “Hobo Times,” sinister hunters and a Grateful Dead cover band. She’ll learn to rely on herself and the kindness of strangers but she’ll also learn an even more important lesson: no matter how white-hot the pain of grief may be, life does, in fact, go on. Sometimes, all we can do is go along for the ride and see where it takes us.

As a story, Wild has an almost irresistible pull: there’s something primal and inherently satisfying about watching a damaged, fractured human being take a healing journey, especially when the backdrop is the awe-inspiring beauty of the great outdoors. Witherspoon does a great job bringing Cheryl to life, making the cinematic version feel like a real, flesh-and-blood person as opposed to just a character. As usual, Witherspoon is an all-in performer: in order to fully appreciate Cheryl’s redemption, we need to see her degradation and Witherspoon holds nothing back, whatsoever, resulting in one of her rawest roles since Freeway (1996). While I didn’t think that her performance in Wild was the very best of last year, it certainly deserved the Oscar nomination and proves, if nothing else, that she continues to defy the expectations imposed on “mainstream” Hollywood starlets by the industry, as a whole.

While Witherspoon’s performance is typically strong, however, the film is a lot more problematic, in general. My biggest complaint comes via Vallee’s flashback structure, which ends up doing two things, neither of which seems desired: it tends to make the narrative unnecessarily confusing (in particular, the timeline seems all over the place) and makes the film feel like more of a series of vignettes than a cohesive whole. For the most part, the film breaks down thusly: Cheryl walks around, flashes back to drug use and orgies, meets interesting folks, lather, rinse, repeat. In short order, Wild begins to seem distressingly formulaic, which certainly robs the film of much of its tension: even during presumably high-stakes moments like the redneck hunters, Wild seems constrained by its structure.

There’s a sparse, spare quality to much of the film that’s both lovely and thematically important (Cheryl is, after all, desperately searching for some sort of stillness within herself, the same stillness echoed by the natural landscape) but this spare quality is constantly dashed by the endless flashbacks. Perhaps if the peeks into the past had felt more organic and motivated, as opposed to part of a regimented structure, they would have retained more impact and had less (negative) effect on the film’s tone. As it stands, however, Wild ends up feeling more disjointed and piecemeal than it does cohesive.

I also had a problem with the relationship between Cheryl and her mother, at least as depicted in the film. While I’m not familiar with Strayed’s actual memoir, I have to assume that the intense connection between her and her mom is better delineated on the page than it is on the screen. As depicted, however, we really don’t get a clear sense of this devotion: Bobbi seems quirky, positive and fun-minded, sure, but the flashbacks to her and Cheryl don’t seem to hint at an on-screen relationship that’s any more intense than any other cinematic mother-daughter pairing. Losing her mother seems to be the catalyst for Cheryl’s spiral into a drug and sex-fueled hell but, prior to her death, the pair just seem to get along okay: for me, at least, this ended up being a bit of a disconnect from the film.

Acting-wise, Wild is full of good performances, although the vast majority end up being short, bite-sized little bits as opposed to more substantial scenes: this is very much the story of Strayed and Witherspoon is, for the most part, always the focal point. Despite garnering a Best Supporting Actress nomination, I wasn’t particularly impressed by Dern’s performance as the doomed Bobbi: despite being a big fan, her transition from happy-go-lucky to hair-pulling felt too abrupt and nothing really stuck out for me. Ditto for Gaby Hoffmann, who ends up with a few minutes of screen time as Cheryl’s friend, which seems a bit of a waste given Hoffmann’s ability to handily steal focus. Kevin Rankine is personable as Greg, the hiker that Cheryl keeps bumping into on the trail, but Keene McRae is fairly awful as brother Leif…it’s a real “six of one, half-dozen of the other” scenario.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Wild but was never blown away: considering how great I thought Dallas Buyers Club was, this definitely struck me as a bit of a disappointment. While I think the core story is a fascinating one (if the notion of a complete novice hiking over a thousand miles to “find” herself doesn’t strike you as fascinating, the core issue definitely doesn’t reside with the movie), the actual film never really clicked for me. To each their own, of course: while the actual film ended up being a bit of a let-down, Strayed’s story is interesting enough to make this worth a watch, even if it’s decidedly more run-of-the-mill than it could have been.

4/26/15: Man’s the Only Animal That Foreshadows

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Aaron Staton, actor-director, camping, Christopher Denham, cinema, Cody Saintgnue, dysfunctional marriage, feuding brothers, fight for survival, fighting back, film reviews, films, Home Movie, hunting humans, hunting trip, isolation, lost in the woods, masked killers, Michael Chacon, Movies, Nick Saso, Pablo Schreiber, Preservation, PTSD, survival of the fittest, survival-horror, thrillers, Wrenn Schmidt, writer-director

You know that guy at the party who says something “clever” and then spends the rest of the evening elbowing you in the ribs, saying “You get it? You get it?” until you want to throw him off the nearest roof? Well, Christopher Denhams’ Preservation (2014) is an awful lot like that guy: the film spends the first 20 minutes hammering its main theme into the ground (“Man is the only animal that kills for fun” isn’t just the film’s tagline: it’s practically its mantra) only to have the rest of the film follow in such a predictable manner as to induce feelings of deja vu. On one hand, though, you really have to hand it to Preservation: it promises one thing and then delivers it. Over and over and over again, rinse, wash, repeat.

Our trio of protagonists are Wit (Wrenn Schmidt), her husband, Mike (Aaron Staton) and Mike’s gruff brother, Sean (Pablo Schreiber, perhaps best known as Orange is the New Black’s odious “Pornstache”). The group have headed deep into the woods so that the estranged brothers can relive one of their long-treasured childhood hunting trips, dragging Wit along even though she’s a vegetarian who’s uncomfortable, to say the least, with killing animals. “I don’t think I can kill,” Wit tells Sean, to which he knowingly replies, “You’d be surprised what you can do when it’s fight or flight.” Remember all that hammering-home I mentioned earlier? Get used to it, buckaroos, cuz it ain’t going anywhere.

Faster than Sean can say “Just because you can’t see ’em doesn’t mean they’re not there” and that old chestnut “Man’s the only animal that kills for fun,” our heroes seem to wander into an exceptionally strange situation. Waking from the previous evening’s festivities, the group realizes two things right off the bat: all of their possessions, including their packs, supplies and tents, have been taken while they slept and they each have a large, black “X” drawn on their foreheads. There’s a little bit of finger-pointing and blame-gaming thrown back and forth between Mike and Sean before we get to the revelation that should, presumably, surprise no one: the group is being actively hunted by a group of masked, heavily armed psychos.

From this point, the film hits all the standard “survival-horror” tropes, culminating with the realization that Wit must become everything that she abhors in order to survive: she’s going to have to get her hands dirty and fight to kill. Who are the mysterious assailants? Why are they pursuing Wit, Mike and Sean? Will Wit be able to make a final, desperate stand or will the silent, isolated woods become her ultimate resting place? When the game is self-preservation…there are no rules.

Despite having a more than capable cast, Preservation ends up being more than a little shallow, silly and, to be honest, rather obnoxious. The script is fairly awful, full of ridiculously on-the-nose dialogue and contrived sequences: there’s no point where any of the actors feel genuine, mostly because it’s difficult to take anything they say seriously. Schreiber, in particular, is saddled with some of the clunkiest lines I’ve come across in an indie horror film in some time: anytime he talks, it feels like he’s ticking points off a script breakdown. Schmidt and Staton have zero chemistry which tends to reduce the stakes on many of their scenes together: it was rather difficult to believe that these two even knew each other, much less genuinely loved each other.

Even stripped to its core survival-horror elements, Preservation falls well short of the mark. The majority of the action/violence occurs off-camera (sorry, gorehounds) and the handful of action scenes are poorly blocked, rarely amounting to more than a flurry of chaos and motion. While the film does build up a reasonable amount of tension, at times, it never really amounts to much, probably because everything is so familiar: if you think you know how any particular scene will progress, chances are you’re right. While horror films have a long history of predictability (just think back to the veritable oceans of anonymous slasher flicks that flooded video store shelves in the ’80s), Preservation does absolutely nothing whatsoever to mess with the formula. Even the film’s big “twist” reveal is so hackneyed and clichéd that careful (or even non-comatose) viewers should be able to figure it out after the very first appearance of the villains: needless to say, it’s difficult to be shocked, surprised or amazed by anything when we always seem to be five steps ahead of the film, itself.

To be honest, I was actually surprised by how slight and silly Preservation was for one very simple reason: writer-director Denham’s previous film, Home Movie (2008), is one of the most disturbing, well-made and haunting indie horror films I’ve ever seen. His found-footage portrait of parents coming to terms with their two unbelievably evil children is one brick to the face after another, culminating in the kind of harrowing finale that can, literally, haunt dreams. Home Movie completely blew me away when I saw it years ago and I’ve been eagerly awaiting a follow-up ever since: suffice to say that Preservation couldn’t have disappointed me more if it had actually been made with just that express purpose.

Despite this disappointment, however, I haven’t quite given up on Denham (goes to show just how impressed I was by his debut). While Preservation’s script is dreadful, Home Movie’s was quite good: ditto on the scenario end of things. As such, I’m deathly curious to see which direction his third film (whenever it appears) will take. Here’s to hoping that the next wait will bear much more delectable fruit than this most recent excursion. When your film has a problem making a life-or-death Port-a-Potty battle between Pornstache and a masked assailant interesting, well…it might just be time to pave over this preservation and put up a parking lot.

3/12/15: Where There’s a Mom, There’s a Way

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abandoned in a foreign place, adult friendships, Andres Munar, Anthony Chisholm, bittersweet, Bradford Young, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, Colombian immigrants, coming of age, courage, dramas, dysfunctional marriage, Eddie Martinez, Entre Nos, feature-film debut, female friendships, film festival favorite, film reviews, films, Gil Talmi, Gloria La Morte, homeless, homeless children, husband-wife relationship, immigration, inspired by true events, Jacqueline Duprey, Laura Montana, motherhood, Movies, multiple directors, multiple writers, Paola Mendoza, Sarita Choudhury, Sebastian Villada, self-sacrifice, set in New York City, single mother, Spanish-language films, strength, writer-director-actor

Think about Mariana (Paola Mendoza) the next time you’re having a bummer day: uprooting herself and her two children from their lives in Colombia, she follows her shifty husband, Antonio (Andres Munar), all the way to Queens, New York, only for him to suddenly head off to sunny Miami, where he’s decided to start a new life…one that doesn’t include his “old” family. Alone in a foreign land, unable to speak the language, jobless and with children in tow, Mariana’s options look as grim and hopeless as they do scarce. Like I said: there are bad days…and then there are BAD days.

The human spirit is a funny thing, though, the kind of inner power that would make a superhero blush. When someone has the will to survive and the relentless drive to keep pushing forward, against all odds…well, pretty much anything is possible. Paola Mendoza and Gloria La Morte’s extraordinary Entre Nos (2009) is testament to this notion of inner strength, a semi-autobiographical story about an unstoppable mother’s ferocious fight to keep her family together, despite every disaster, tragedy, hiccup and speed bump that the universe can possibly throw at her. What could have been maudlin, overly emotional or obvious becomes vibrant, life-affirming and genuinely resonant in the hands of the truly gifted filmmakers and cast.

While Entre Nos (roughly, “between us”) is about the struggles that immigrants face when coming to a new country, it’s also about how easy it is for people to slip from the scant comfort of the “lower” classes into the abject terror of homelessness: as Mendoza and La Morte show, there’s only a few short steps and misfortunes that lead from four walls and a floor to a park bench. There’s a universality to the film that goes far beyond the nationalities of its protagonists: while not all of may have first-hand experiences with the struggles of being an emigrant to a foreign country, it’s fair to say that any and everyone worries, at least in the back of their heads, where their next meal is coming from.

It’s to Mendoza and La Morte’s great credit that they manage to combine these twin struggles, that of the immigrant and the newly homeless, into such a potent, vibrant stew. As mentioned earlier, there’s nothing overly sentimental or aggressively manipulative about the film: we’re simply shown a woman who’s been thrown into a hole and, rather than bemoan that fact, simply puts her head down and starts digging her way out. There’s a refreshing matter-of-factness to the way in which Mariana sizes up any given situation and acts: she’s conflicted, sure, and we get more than a couple heart-breaking breakdown, along the way…that’s just the unfortunate other half of the human condition. When the chips are down, however, Mariana has a resilience and power that’s positively inspiring: if she doesn’t let life beat her down, why should we?

Entre Nos, then, is about the struggles of the immigrant and the ever-present threat of personal and economic collapse: that would be a potent enough one-two punch for just about any film. There’s more under the hood, however, than just the “big” issues: Mendoza and La Morte’s film is also about the relationship between a mother and her children, about trying to balance being a kid with becoming an adult and about the importance of providing for your family, regardless of the costs or sacrifice. It’s about friendships, those halting ones that begin over shared strife and continue based on genuine love.

This is Mariana’s story but it’s not hers, alone, to tell: characters like the kindly recycling maven, Joe (Anthony Chisholm), or Mariana’s landlord/hesitant friend, Preet (an absolutely extraordinary Sarita Choudhury), contribute just as much to the overall tapestry, but we’d be remiss not to mention the reason for Mariana’s constant struggle: her beloved son, Gabriel (Sebastian Villada), and daughter, Andrea (Laura Montana). As strong as the rest of the cast are, Villada and Montana still manage to shine as the equally resilient kids. It’s a real treat watching Gabriel, slowly, become a man, while Andrea provides a necessary innocence and sense of child-like optimism to circumstances that could certainly be deemed soul-crushing.

Entre Nos isn’t just an acting tour de force, however: the film is exquisitely crafted and looks amazing. Props to Gil Talmi for a funky, head-bobbing score that mixes cumbias with more “traditional” dramatic scores and only occasionally dips into stereotypically “serious” territory. The often gorgeous cinematography, courtesy of Bradford Young, has endless appeal: there’s one shot that frames Mariana and her sleeping children like the Pieta and is almost impossibly beautiful. In the years since Entre Nos’ release, Young would go on to shoot a couple of films called Selma (2014) and A Most Violent Year (2014): you know…no big deal…

Like the particular spot of land that it depicts, Entre Nos is nothing if not a melting pot of influences, styles, points of view and ways of life. There’s a vibrancy and immediacy to the proceedings that pulls viewers in and keeps us right in the thick of things: if I had to compare the filmmakers’ style to anything, it would be latter-day John Sayles, which is pretty damn high praise, indeed. There’s an eye and ear for the way that every-day folk talk and interact that cuts thorough generations of artificial bullshit and gets right to the heart of the human condition: each and every one of us deserves to live our lives to the fullest of our potential, regardless of our individual situations.

We find out, at the end, that Andrea became a filmmaker and created Entre Nos as a tribute and testament to the strength of her mother. It makes perfect sense: everything about the film has the feel of a passion project and Mendoza’s triple-threat of writing-directing-acting is nothing short of stunning. Reminiscent of Marion Cotillard’s powerful blend of iron-will and vulnerability, Mendoza’s performance is utterly unforgettable and the film’s deserves all of the love that it’s received at festivals since its release (although a little mainstream attention might be nice…).

Exemplifying the very best aspects of the human condition, Entre Nos is a film that deserves not only praise for its technical and thematic elements but for its ability to unite us all under one common need, regardless of race, class, gender, nationality or political affiliation: if you can’t understand and empathize with Mariana’s need to make a better life for herself and her children, well, pardner…I’m gonna go ahead and assume that you’re not human. In this one case, the film was definitely not made for you: move along…absolutely nothing to see here, whatsoever.