The latest film releases include Miller's Girl, Tótem, The Breaking Ice, and The Sweet East. Weighing in are Christy Lemire and Alonso Duralde, co-hosts of the YouTube channel Breakfast All Day.
Miller's Girl
Jenna Ortega plays a gifted, Gothic, 18-year-old student who lives in a small Tennessee town with mostly absent parents. Her creative writing teacher (Martin Freeman), a failed novelist, begins to pay her special attention – and she, him.
Lemire: “As Jenna Ortega is here, and in general, she's doing a Wednesday Addams thing, where she's mean and spiky and very self aware, but also beguiling. … It all feels really inevitable, and I feel it's pointless and an empty exercise.”
Duralde: “There's almost no conversation in this movie that sounds like it would be transpiring between two human beings, and that is not the fault of the cast. I laughed out loud several times in this movie at times that I was not supposed to. It's an embarrassment for all involved.”
Tótem
A 7-year-old girl is observing her family as they prepare to celebrate her father’s birthday amid the grief surrounding his cancer. Directed by Lila Avilés (The Chambermaid), this was Mexico’s Oscars submission for Best International Film. It did not make the final list of five nominees, but it’s been well received.
Duralde: “As the day proceeds, we come to understand that the family’s maybe not as financially secure as it once was, although they still live like they are. … Avilés is very sharp at giving us character detail, and backstory, and all these things without ever making it obvious that that's what she's doing. But in the course of the action of this film, and through the eyes of this child, we get to know this family and understand what's great about them, what's terrible about them, and what lies ahead for them in their future. ... Sometimes it makes its points more than once because you are given scant clues along the way that you have to be paying attention to. It is a movie that commands your attention.”
Lemire: “I really liked a sense of place because you do feel like you are immersed in the rhythms of this house and this family. … You do feel a gradual sense of melancholy as the day is going on, like there's bustling and preparations and an undercurrent of tension the whole time because we know something is off here. This isn't a totally celebratory occasion. But then when the actual party happens, there's a sense of catharsis, so it's a real great emotional relief, so I did like it quite a bit.”
The Breaking Ice
Written and directed by Anthony Chen, three melancholy 20-somethings cross paths — and develop a love triangle.
Set in a Chinese city near the North Korean border, Nana (Dongyu Zhou) has an on-again-off-again relationship with a local restaurateur named Han Xiao (Chuxiao Qu), and works as a tour guide. A depressed finance worker (Haoran Liu) from Shanghai takes her tour, and hangs out with Nana and Han.
Duralde: “We see a definite emotional interplay work itself out where both men are clearly interested in her. And they've all got burdens of the past to deal with. The restaurateur never left the town. She was once a promising athlete who walked away from it. The guy from Shanghai clearly thought that working hard and succeeding in school and moving away from his small town was gonna bring him fulfillment and happiness. And so none of them are at a place right now where they really like their lives. But maybe by the end of their encounter, they'll move to a place where they do.”
Lemire: “I like this a lot, and so much of that has to do with the mood. … It really puts you in this sense of melancholy, wistful isolation. Anthony Chen wrote this film during the pandemic, during isolation in a hotel room. … I think you get that sense of feeling alone and introspective and in flux. All three of these characters are all running from something or towards something. But for this brief moment in time for all three of them, they become this makeshift family that feels really authentic and true. The score also, I think, does a lot to create that sense of mood. … They accomplished quite a bit visually here and also tonally.”
The Sweet East
This satire stars Talia Ryder, Jacob Elordi, and Simon Rex. Ryder’s character Lillian is a lost high school senior from South Carolina galavanting across the eastern seaboard.
Lemire: “This character is more like a super micro-indie version of Emma Stone in Poor Things because she's going on this journey, and every man she meets is trying to shape her. And she's also taking pieces of each person that she meets along the way, and that helps inform who she's going to pretend to be in the next scenario. … It drags here and there, and ultimately, I don't know what the point is. I mean, maybe it's just the journey is the destination. But I don't know that she was thoroughly any different at the end than she wasn't the beginning.”
Duralde: “You can sense that [writer Nick] Pinkerton is trying to throw his arms around a lot of contemporary issues, whether it's about neo Nazis, or about befuddled indie filmmakers, or religious fundamentalism. And you can see the ideas there … but it doesn't really quite incorporate itself into the story as strongly as it might have. … It's a bit rambling, but you have some charming bits along the way.”
