This slow-building Swedish drama (with a number of comedic parts) uniquely and subtly explores modern gender roles. Tomas and Ebba (Johannes Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli) are a married couple who take their young son and daughter to a ski resort in the French Alps. They seem like, and are, an ordinary family. But a near-disaster the next day has the children frightened and their parents estranged over their divergent reactions in the face of an apparent emergency.
In depicting this estrangement, as well as the reactions of another couple, friends who hear what happened, writer-director Ruben Östlund asks, in the age of egalitarian marriage, whether fundamental differences remain between men and women, what they still expect in a partner, and how trust and respect can be regained when they’ve been lost.
IMDb link
viewed 10/26/14 3:00 at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival]
Showing posts with label ski lodge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ski lodge. Show all posts
Friday, November 7, 2014
Friday, November 2, 2012
Sister (***3/4)
Making a movie about from a child’s perspective that’s not aimed at kids must be a labor of love, since it’s not exactly the path to riches. Possibly that’s why so many of the ones I’ve seen have been so good. The recent Japanese film I Wish comes to mind. It may be worth mentioning that hardly any of them of are American. This Swiss drama, set in the mountains of the French-speaking west (and partly in English), is told from the perspective of Simon, who’s not yet a teen but already the primary breadwinner, sort of, in a household of two. Louise (Léa Seydoux), several years his senior, is inconsistently employed, and so Simon spends his spare time at the local ski lodge, nicking skis and related gear for resale to classmates, tourists, and anyone else with the amazingly colorful Swiss Francs.
Even without the surprise twist in the middle of the film, the relationship at the heart of the story is genuine and original. Louise should be a mother figure to Simon, yet he is, despite being a thief, arguably the more responsible one, and certainly the more resourceful. Yet when he sees a boy about his own age with his mother (Gillian Anderson), you can see that he longs for a more ordinary childhood. Yet there is a deep bond between Louise and Simon that would be unusual in ordinary siblings living with two parents. The writer-director, Ursula Meier, carefully avoids injecting melodrama into the story, and the ending may therefore come off as meandering or anticlimactic. Simon is still not a teen when the movie ends, so we don’t know his future, but this beautifully shot and well-acted film made me wonder about it.
IMDb link
viewed 11/8/12 7:30 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/8/12
Even without the surprise twist in the middle of the film, the relationship at the heart of the story is genuine and original. Louise should be a mother figure to Simon, yet he is, despite being a thief, arguably the more responsible one, and certainly the more resourceful. Yet when he sees a boy about his own age with his mother (Gillian Anderson), you can see that he longs for a more ordinary childhood. Yet there is a deep bond between Louise and Simon that would be unusual in ordinary siblings living with two parents. The writer-director, Ursula Meier, carefully avoids injecting melodrama into the story, and the ending may therefore come off as meandering or anticlimactic. Simon is still not a teen when the movie ends, so we don’t know his future, but this beautifully shot and well-acted film made me wonder about it.
IMDb link
viewed 11/8/12 7:30 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/8/12
Friday, December 2, 2005
Christmas in the Clouds (***1/2)
A hilarious family comedy of
misunderstandings and quirky characters set an American Indian-run ski lodge.
This is a movie I saw three
and a half years ago at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, which
was a year after its premiere at Sundance. (It got the third highest audience
rating, 4.56 out of 5, of any non-documentary at the Philly festival. One of the two
films that beat it is the Korean My Sassy Girl, one of my favorites.) It’s a comedy about
the characters at an American Indian-run ski lodge. (It was filmed at Robert
Redford’s Sundance resort in Utah.) The story revolves around a series of
misunderstandings, but the humor stems from the various personalities working
at the place. There’s a romantic-comedy element as well. I happened to look
this up on IMDb a few weeks ago and saw that it had never been released on video*; nor
had its writer-director, Kate Montgomery, made a film before or since. I have
no idea why it’s getting a theatrical release at this late date, but it’s one
of the flat-out funniest films I’ve seen. I assume the fact that its biggest
star is the character actor M. Emmet Walsh has something to do with its
relative obscurity and its relatively limited release. Despite this and its
film festival pedigree, it’s not at all highbrow. Too frivolous to be a
critics’ darling, too little publicized to be a mainstream hit, it’s likely to
have a rather short run, I suspect, but I think it’s a safe bet that a better
family film won’t be playing this holiday season.
* It has since the writing of this review; Montgomery only post-credit is as executive producer of a 2010 documentary.
circulated 12/1/05 via email and posted/slightly revised 9/21/13
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