FILM | Reviews
COMEDY DRAMA 20TH CENTURY WOMEN (15) 118min ●●●●●
Exploring familial bonds has been a common theme throughout the work of writer-director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker, Beginners). His third film tells the story of three women living in Santa Barbara in 1979, including a mother struggling to raise her teenage son, and it’s based, in part, on Mills’ own upbringing. Framed like a school report of sorts, a grown-up Jamie (played as a teen by newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann) reflects on the lives of these women. Each of them are assigned their own soundtrack that captures their spirit and they each get some killer lines. Annette Bening turns in a sophisticated performance as Jamie’s chain-smoking mother Dorothea who rents out her home to punky photographer Abbie (Greta Gerwig), while Elle Fanning plays Jamie’s promiscuous friend Julie. Mills tells the women’s stories with a distant fascination, with the narration recalling Kevin Arnold’s bittersweet bewilderment in the TV show The Wonder Years. Though aspects of the film play out like a guide to the female psyche, for the most part this is a poignant and witty mixtape. All the characters get their moment to shine as they throw glorious and awkward shapes to their own personalised tunes. (Katherine McLaughlin) ■ General release from Fri 10 Feb.
BLACK COMEDY PREVENGE (15) 87min ●●●●●
Alice Lowe is up the duff and on the hunt in the provocative Prevenge, a film which gets considerable mileage out of its creator’s own pregnancy. It balances an exploitation movie plot with a society-savaging agenda, mocking the tendency to pigeonhole and mollycoddle expectant mothers. Writer-director Lowe turns in a performance of eerie passivity and typically brilliant comic timing as a woman in her third trimester who has become a conduit for her unborn child’s murderous desires.
For a directorial debut, it’s remarkably well-realised (it’s Lowe’s second shot as screenwriter after Sightseers). Despite the extreme nature of the narrative, Prevenge plays on common pregnancy frustrations and fears with its strong vein of demented wish-fulfilment. It also pleasures in making you squirm, the discomfort enhanced by the intimacy and explicitness of the execution, the spiralling events reflected in woozy camerawork and a seesawing score. The conceit reaches its logical conclusion when the result of Lowe’s own gestation, her baby daughter, cameos in a sequence where the actress is able to showcase her genuine maternal pride; a disarming moment of nice among the large dollops of nasty. (Emma Simmonds) ■ Selected release from Fri 10 Feb.
COMEDY TONI ERDMANN (15) 162min ●●●●●
This superlative, award-winning comedy from German writer-director Maren Ade wields its silliness to potent effect – with scenarios ranging from titter-inducing social awkwardness to more flamboyant lunacy – but it is also a textured portrait of the parent- child relationship, and a shrewd satire of corporate shenanigans. It sees a father and daughter reconnect in Bucharest when Winfried (Peter
Simonischek), an underemployed music teacher and serial prankster, springs a visit on his miserable management consultant offspring Ines (Sandra Hüller), much to her horror. When she packs him off, he returns sporting an ill-fitting brown wig and his cherished false gnashers, in the guise of his alter-ego, the titular Toni Erdmann. In the process of crashing his daughter’s social scene and constantly threatening to humiliate her professionally, he teaches Ines to lighten up. There’s a wonderful naturalism to the often excruciating interactions and the leads are
astonishingly game and utterly convincing. The film’s fly-on-the-wall visual style, too, captures the unfolding insanity in a way that keeps it grounded. In its own inimitable and genuinely unforgettable way, Toni Erdmann takes a pin to the corporate bubble, ridiculing business-speak, highlighting the stubbornness of workplace sexism and showing the increased pressure to succeed that divides generations. Ultimately we see that Ines fears her father’s presence not because of a lack of love or commonality but because it forces her to confront the consequences of her professional decisions, and to see her life through his eyes. Never mind her career achievements, what Winfried wants is what all parents should: for his daughter to simply be happy. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 3 Feb.
BIOPIC – COMEDY DRAMA THE FOUNDER (12A) 115min ●●●●●
The story of the men behind McDonald’s, John Lee Hancock’s 1950s-set dramedy is like The Social Network sandwiched between two sesame seed buns. This is not a film about the way the fast food giant changed our eating habits. Rather, it’s about the fulfilment of an American dream and the ruthless battles that took place beneath those golden arches.
Who is the founder of the title? Is it Dick or Mac McDonald (played here by Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch), who took a tiny hotdog stand and grew it into an ingenious San Bernardino burger joint
that bore their surname? Or is it Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), the travelling salesman who signs a deal with the siblings to franchise their concepts across the country and edges them out? Scripted by Robert D Siegel, the film is a fascinating study in ambition. Brilliantly played by
Keaton, who is even better here than in the flashier Birdman, Kroc is the embodiment of capitalism. The result is an absorbing account of a cultural (and culinary) phenomenon that will leave audiences divided. Some will sympathise with Dick and Mac, others will cheer on the shameless Kroc. But all should be able to recognise just what a fine job Hancock et al have done. (James Mottram) ■ General release from Fri 17 Feb.
60 THE LIST 1 Feb–31 Mar 2017