list.co.uk/fi lm REVIEWS | FILM
NOIR UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (TBC) 139min ●●●●●
DRAMA THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER (TBC) 96min ●●●●● FANTASY BORDER (15) 110min ●●●●●
David Robert Mitchell turned his hand to teen drama for his debut The Myth of the American Sleepover, before updating the slasher film with It Follows. Here, he takes an ambitious detour with a sprawling, LA- set neo-noir that’s fitfully amusing.
Playing Sam, an idle man about to be evicted,
Andrew Garfield puts in a performance that is both checked out and tuned in – to the strange vibes of this labyrinthine, Lynchian trip. Sam spends his time spying on women through binoculars, and becomes fixated on Hitchcockian blonde Sarah (Riley Keough) after spotting her swimming; when she disappears, he goes in search of her. Sam’s investigation unearths cryptic clues and dead ends, with Mitchell making numerous pop culture references, while critiquing a generation who refuse to grow up. Sam is constantly looking for a distraction from his responsibilities and is obsessed with conspiracy theories, like the media utilising symbols that only the wealthy understand. In Under the Silver Lake, Mitchell acknowledges the ridiculousness of the male gaze but can’t help indulging in it. Nevertheless, the director occasionally digs up gold as his protagonist delves around Hollywood. (Katherine McLaughlin) ■ Selected cinemas and on MUBI from Fri 15 Mar.
Writer-director Sara Colangelo elicits a disturbing performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal in this New York-set remake of Nadav Lapid’s 2014 Israeli film which asks: at what point does a teacher’s interest in a pupil go too far? The idea could have taken a Fatal Attraction-esque turn and it’s to Colangelo and Gyllenhaal’s credit that the film stays grounded even as its protagonist flies off the rails.
Lisa Spinelli (Gyllenhaal) is the titular educator, a downtrodden woman who takes a poetry class in Manhattan, but her efforts don’t impress her peers or tutor (Gael García Bernal). When one of her 5-year- old students, Jimmy (Parker Sevak), creates poems of his own, Lisa passes them off as her work. But Jimmy’s family come to distrust Lisa and question her interest in him. Whether Lisa is justified in her increasingly unhinged
actions is the issue; the film builds to a brief, almost silent coda that makes the filmmakers’ agenda clear. The punchline’s power, however, narrows rather than expands the potential meaning; despite sensitive direction and a nervy turn from Gyllenhaal, The Kindergarten Teacher doesn’t do enough to deliver a satisfying pay-off to a well-developed, intriguing situation. (Eddie Harrison) ■ Selected release from Fri 8 Mar.
Blending Nordic Noir with a magical realist fable, Border is a very strange film. Based on a tale by John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of Let the Right One In, it’s the second feature from Iranian-born, Scandinavia-based writer-director Ali Abbasi. It introduces us to the Neanderthal-like Tina (Eva Melander), a customs officer working in a Swedish coastal town. Destined to be forever the outsider, Tina possesses a preternatural sense of smell which allows her to detect a person’s fear or guilt. When she sniffs out a man’s stash of child porn it sets her on the trail of those creating the images. But events take a different turn when Tina meets Vore (Eero Milonoff), who has a similar appearance to her own. Who is he? Or, more to the point, what is he? And what is Tina’s relationship to his kind? Digging into Scandi mythology, Border only gets weirder from here on in, with one sex scene where you simply won’t believe your eyes. Kudos should go to Melander and Milonoff for performing through layers of prosthetics. Yet Abbasi stumbles at points; his intriguing curio is hampered by its clumsy pornography ring subplot, which distracts more than it delivers and thus never quite lands emotionally. (James Mottram) ■ Selected release from Fri 8 Mar.
DRAMA CAPERNAUM (15) 126min ●●●●●
Capernaum is a rare and thrilling film. Propelled by a seething sense of injustice, it fuses expert storytelling with a striking cinematic sensibility to take the viewer on a gripping, highly emotional journey through life on the streets of Beirut.
Nadine Labaki’s drama has been compared to Slumdog Millionaire but feels a tougher tale. There are the characters and rich sweep of a Dickens novel in its understanding of poverty and the way it grinds down hope and ends innocence. 12-year-old Zain (Zain Al Rafeea) is the Artful Dodger of Beirut. Part of a large, chaotic family, he refuses to let his circumstances define his life. He works selflessly to make things better for those around him. Resourceful, determined, protective of his younger sister – he has a heart of gold and the wary eyes of someone for whom trust must be earned.
When the film begins, Zain is bringing a case against his
parents for having brought him into the world. He is also serving a prison sentence for a violent attack. Over the course of the film, we learn how his life amply justifies his case and of the events that prompted his crime. Purely as a piece of storytelling, Capernaum is captivating,
carrying the viewer along with its twists of fate, coincidences, unexpected friendships (including one with illegal Ethiopian immigrant Rahil, played by Yordanos Shiferaw), and awful partings. We really feel that we have come to know Zain and the world he inhabits. Beautifully photographed by Christopher Aoun, Capernaum needs to be seen on a big screen. It is a film that requires the attention that only comes with surrendering yourself to a cinema performance. The reward is a haunting salute to an indomitable human spirit. (Allan Hunter) ■ Selected release from Fri 22 Feb.
1 Feb–31 Mar 2019 THE LIST 67