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.

8/31/14 (Part Two): 15 Going on 90

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abused children, Alexis Kavyrchine, Anais Demoustier, Celine, cinema, drama, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, foreign films, foster kids, French films, Funny Games, homeless children, l'Enfance du Mal, Lolita, Ludmila Mikael, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, Olivier Coussemacq, Pascal Greggory, Sweet Evil, Sylvain Dieuaide, writer-director

When we first see Celine (Anais Demoustier), the wise-beyond-her-years teenager who forms the chaotic focal point of writer/director Olivier Coussemacq’s Sweet Evil (2010), she’s literally looking in from the outside: specifically, we see her framed in such a way that she appears to be physically separating the couple of Henri (Pascal Greggory) and Nathalie Van Eyck (Ludmila Mikael) as they dine at their kitchen table, unaware of their hidden observer. It’s a smart, canny bit of cinematography and one that will be repeated to good effect throughout the dark, thorny narrative. Indeed, throughout the course of the film, Celine will handily succeed in ripping the troubled couple to shreds, using them as pawns in a game of her own devising, although this is anything by a one-player: Henri and Nathalie, in the end, have just as much a hand in their inevitable destruction as Celine does. In a world of gray, with no heavily defined sense of morality, we see that everyone is capable of evil: whether a supposedly innocent young girl or a theoretically incorruptible judge, humanity is always but a hairbreadth away from its own absolute destruction.

Without a doubt, Celine is quite the complicated character. When not shaking down perverted older men with the aid of her male accomplish, Romain (Sylvain Dieuaide), she wiles away her time in the garden house of the well-to-do but aloof Van Eycks. The jig is up, in a way, when Henri happens to catch Celine on the property one night: she tells him that she’s a 16-year-old foster child who’s run away from her foster home, although this conflicts with her earlier admission to a wannabe john that she’s actually 14. With a little reverse-psychology and a whole lot of manipulation, Celine wheedles her way into the judge’s good graces, although she seems to have a bit of an agenda that extends beyond finding a roof, four walls and a hearty meal. Indeed, Celine tips her hand fairly early when she “innocently” proclaims that being a judge must be nice, since people respect the law, but wonders how many innocent people have been unfairly locked away. What if, she reasons to Henri, life has really left them no choice? There’s always a choice, Henri snorts back. As we’ll come to see, this is absolutely true, although clarification may be necessary: there may always be choices but they aren’t always good ones.

As Celine insinuates herself into the Van Eyck household, she stirs a hornets’ nest of repressed desire, barely concealed anger, resentment and misplaced parental instincts. She plays the couple against each other by appealing to each partner’s basest needs: Henri desires her, sexually, while Nathalie seeks to mother her as substitute for her own inability to have children (in a telling bit of character development, the childless Nathalie is obsessed with dolls, although Celine complains that they all look like “old dead children” to her).

It turns out that Celine has a plan, however, a rather diabolical scheme that involves Henri, her incarcerated mother and the increasingly unstable Romain, a young man whose favorite hobby involves stabbing innocent dogs. As Celine moves everything towards her end game, Henri’s weakness may spell the couple’s doom, while Nathalie’s ferocious desire to be a mother may mark her evolution into something other than Henri’s “faithful spouse.”

Tone-wise, Coussemacq’s film certainly recalls the work of misanthropic German filmmaker Michael Haneke, in particular his most famous film, Funny Games (1997). There’s an austere severity and frigidity to the film that nearly constant, a solemn tone that seems to be heightened by the almost playful musical score. The world of Sweet Evil is a cold one, all arctic whites, blues and chilly winter sunlight: in certain ways, the film’s look serves as a compliment to Tomas Vinterberg’s equally chilly The Hunt (2012). As previously mentioned, Alexis Kavyrchine’s cinematography is consistently exceptional, serving up not only beautifully staged images but also expanding on the film’s themes by way of the imagery: Kavyrchine has a particular way of shooting the trio of Henri, Nathalie and Celine that always manages to place one person between the other two, a perfect visual representation of the characters’ inner conflicts.

Coussemacq’s script, like Kavyrchine’s cinematography, is exceptionally smart: one of my favorite sustained bits was the notion that all of Celine’s lies end up being halfway between reality and fiction. It’s an idea that’s made explicit regarding her age (she introduces herself to the first john as being 14, tells Henri that she’s 16 but is actually 15) but is revealed in other, more subtle ways throughout the narrative. Coussemacq also has a particular way with dialogue, giving Demoustier plenty of choice lines to chew on. The development of Nathalie’s character was also quite impressive, particular given that the disparate elements of her personality could easily have across as “movie-shorthand” but feel much more organic than that. Her work with women’s rights parallels nicely with Celine’s more dastardly machinations and allows for a nice sense of evolution in the third act. Craft-wise, Sweet Evil is top-notch filmmaking.

While the cast is generally good, Demoustier is pretty impressive as the less-than-innocent waif: she has a way with subtle facial expressions and vocal inflections that manages to reveal hidden dimensions within her character. Most impressively, the 27-year-old actress is pretty convincing as a 15-year-old, no mean feat in itself (just ask any of the middle-aged “teenagers” that frolicked through most ’80s slasher flicks). Demoustier manages to walk a fine line between playing Celine as a hard-edged loner, a dutiful daughter and a confused teenager: one of the better aspects of Sweet Evil is the way in which Celine’s ultimate character is left up for the audience’s interpretation. Viewed from various angles, it’s possible to see Celine as a cold-blooded criminal, the shattered product of abuse, a victim of the welfare system and a wiser-than-her-years “emotional con-artist.”

Ultimately, Sweet Evil is an atmospheric, well-acted and appropriately thorny (if occasionally confusing) film, the kind of movie, like The Hunt, that gives one plenty of food for thought once the final credits have rolled. If the film offers no easy answers, particularly regarding the character of Henri (it becomes exceedingly difficult to fully sympathize with Henri once one sits through the scene where he tries to sneak a peek at Celine’s sleeping body), it also offers plenty of interesting characters, a quick pace and a climax that handily splits the difference between tragic and ironic. I’m still not really sure how I feel about Celine, although I must admit to being completely swept up by her self-assurance: when she believes in herself that much, it’s kind of hard not to feel the same way, regardless of her ultimate goal.