drama

Tough Enough

Chet Kozlowski — Fri, 30 May 2025 13:29:32 +0000

Tough Enough Chet Kozlowski May 30, 2025 - 09:29

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Moviegoers expecting the Irish film Swing Bout to be a violent boxing movie will instead find a gripping ensemble drama with sharp writing and strong performances. The violence is in the hearts of men (and women) who are working toward their own desperate ends. FYI: A “swing bout” is a filler boxing match, which happens on short notice, when the main event ends prematurely. Swing Bout is in keeping with that: most of the action takes place in locker rooms, toilets, and offices. Fighters train and preen and wait for a chance that may not come.

Everybody’s got an angle in Swing Bout. Everybody wants something, be it fame or fortune or simply to survive. All the players, those gloved-up and otherwise, spew sweat, vitriol, and self-doubts.

The boxing ring is run by two brothers: coke-snorting Jack (Ben Condron) and beleaguered Micko (Frank Prendergast) who have run afoul of gangsters. They have much riding on the outcome of the fights. New fighter Toni (Ciara Berkeley) is anxious to prove her pugilistic gifts against all contenders. “I’m gonna be world champ,” she crows to her manager, the sexy and duplicitous Emma (Sinead O’Riordan). Emma replies, “Everyone’s going to be world champ until the real world champ starts punching their face in.” Toni’s next fight is against her dreadlocked nemesis Vicki (Chrissie Cronin) and Emma tells her to take a fall in round two. Toni objects: “I’m better than this.” Emma’s reply: “We are nobodies. We’re swing bout fighters.” But Emma complicates matters by being in cahoots with Gary (Gerard Kearney) after carrying on with Micko while fucking Jack… well, you get the picture.

Having this many balls in the air requires control, and director Maurice O’Carroll is up to the task. He keeps his camera steady, either gliding along next to characters or rooted midlevel, filming the various clashes in one-shots, heightening the you-are-there authenticity. These scenes expertly ratchet up the tension and subvert the clichés of the genre. Mr. O’Carroll is part of a wave of new Irish films. He’s worked as an editor in TV series and shorts, and his penchant for the long take lays the film’s foundation. This is his first feature.

Swing Bout centers on Toni, played by Ciara Berkeley. Ms. Berkeley is tall and elegant, more suited to Downton Abbey than the ring. Her ferocity as Toni comes as a surprise. Toni punches the air incessantly and blots out noise with big headphones. She bolsters herself with a motivational tape: “The one who looks outside dreams; the one who looks inside awakes,” intones the recorded voice of the Guru (Jack Connors). Toni is dismissed by one character as “a criminal.” To her, boxing is the path to redemption.

But the story isn’t just Toni’s. This is a true ensemble, with many standout performances. Ben Condron is electric as Jack, peacocking in a shiny suit and new cowboy boots. Mary Malicious (Megan Haly) is an able foil. She’s addlebrained from a fight, suffering the blows that we anticipate for Toni. Chrissie Cronin brings bravado and vulnerability to Vicki, who spits and growls but wants most to not disappoint her father and manager Bomber (Johnny Elliot), once a boxer himself. Flann (Baz Black) is a totally tattooed fighter insisting on his shot; his short scene sets the stakes and lingers in the mind.

Swing Bout resembles a stage play in its economy of space while packing a real wallop. And yet, no real fisticuffs come until the climax, despite the constant drone of muffled cheers and blow-by-blow commentary of the fights in the other room.

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Swing Bout. Directed by Maurice O’Carroll. 2024. From Orion Productions. Runtime 90 minutes. On digital platforms.

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Passion Play-ed Out

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 26 May 2025 13:28:11 +0000

Passion Play-ed Out Chet Kozlowski May 26, 2025 - 09:28

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The new film Electra wants to join the ranks of the Deceitful Guest Crashing the Party genre established in films like The Talented Mr. Ripley, Saltburn (which is really just Ripley), and Performance.

It starts off sassy: stylish graphics in the opening credits, characters introduced with freeze frames and name labels. The staging is clever, and there’s an ersatz music video. We watch pretty rich people living decadent lifestyles in Rome. Electra promises a romp with polyamorous couplings.

Journalist Dylan (if that’s his real name) and “girlfriend/third eye” Lucy meet up with celebrity Milo in Rome for an interview. Milo is charming, foppish, and flaky. He has a partner with benefits, Francesca. The pair is all over each other in a restaurant. They invite Dylan and Lucy for a weekend at Milo’s country estate.

What Milo and Francesca don’t know is that Dylan is not who he claims to be. He has an agenda: a heist. He’s there to steal a valuable painting of a unicorn sitting on a chair. “Only a true, pure soul can be a unicorn,” says Milo. “Like me,” says Francesca. What they don’t know is that Dylan is also there to avenge a woman named Electra.

The film Electra wants to be kinky, but runs out of steam. Or nerve. Innuendos are cast, games are played, and beds are swapped. So why, looking back at its many antics, do I only remember the characters sitting down, talking?

The proceedings wind down as the film goes on. Even an eleventh-hour LSD trip doesn’t liven things up. What starts out as sturdy and confident filmmaking, putting us right in the middle of extravagant experience, ends up in long shot, timidly observing. At the end, the most flash it can muster is (spoiler alert) the screen going red when somebody is stabbed.

The actors are appealing. Daryl Wein as Dylan is a convincing Everyman: his confusion masks a deeper avarice. As Milo, Jack Farthing has a sinewy rock star charm. The women fare less well: Maria Bakalova’s Francesca displays a surprise prudery, while Abigail Cowen plays Lucy as a superficial flake. Her role is underwritten, and maybe unnecessary.

Electra is the first feature by director Hala Matar, who is listed as one of three writers in the screenplay, besides Paul Sado and Daryl Wein. Looks like they plotted it out to be an impressive first feature, but had trouble pulling all the threads. They plant clues (the sexual libertines have a painting of a unicorn; get it?), Milo makes furtive phone calls, Francesca whirls around Lucy, donning masks and enticing her to cavort topless in the backstreets of Rome.

But all those are just red herrings, distracting us from the illogic and incoherence of the plot. Sadly, for all its promise, Electra falls short of a passion project.

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Electra. Directed by Hala Matar. 2024. From Level 33 Entertainment. Runtime 86 minutes. Available on VOD.

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Labors of Love

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 19 May 2025 22:15:31 +0000

Labors of Love Chet Kozlowski May 19, 2025 - 18:15

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The family in the new Portuguese film Autumn is close. Maybe a little too close. Mom is cupping Dad's balls when interrupted by a call from their Son, who's packing for college. Mom leaves Dad hanging, so to speak, to go help Son find his bongos.

Later, Mom will lament that her son "was raised in my belly. Closer would be impossible. But since he came out, he's just been getting further and further away. Sometimes I wish he would come back inside me." Yikes.

Dad is a man-child, a self-professed "adventurer," who doesn't appreciate Mom's angst. But even he reacts to the coming separation when wrestling with his grown Son. Their coupling goes into slow motion, and the camera lingers as he holds the boy, smelling him in.

Then there's Sister. She, too, is touchy-feely and makes goo-goo eyes at her brother. (Dad won't see Sis as a woman until she is half-dressed and in distress. Again, yikes.)

Maybe it's how they do it in the country. The family is isolated and has spent a life in close proximity, their only contact with the outside world being those who come off the occasional train.

Autumn (more literally translated from the Portuguese as My Little House) is the debut feature of Portuguese director António Sequeira. It's a first film, and the choice of subjects in first films can be revealing. Is it wrong to see a sexual subtext running under these scenes? Does Autumn simply display the joys of being in a demonstrative family? All we can safely assume is that the film is a labor of love.

Dad Octavio (Miguel Frazão) is a burly Zorba type, singing and dancing, and expecting everyone to join in. To him, life is all happy-happy joy-joy. He is given to racist jokes, wrasslin', and hunting gifts on birthdays. Mom Susana (Elsa Valentim) is the family’s soul and dutiful center. Son Tomas (Salvador Gil) is ambivalent: he'll leave to start a new life, but also doesn't mind having his feet rubbed (and kissed) by his doting Mom. And Sister Belinha (Beatriz Frazão) has plans of her own to escape. She aspires to attend fashion school in Germany. She presents her brother with a shirt she has sewn, and is put off when she sees Son’s new girlfriend sporting it.

Autumn bursts with color. The family home is a glorious mess, a riot of tapestries and tchotchkes. You want to live there yourself. Autumn is fast. It zips along, flashing subtitles and riding a score of pop-ish songs that overexplain easy emotions.

But speed doesn't mean substance. No one in the family has been bruised by the ways of the world. For all the commotion, viewers may realize that they're not seeing much. The characters, with the notable exception of Mom, don't really ripen or mature. They get older, yes (in one of the film's more fun flourishes, young Mom and Dad stroll along the beach, Dad in front pontificating. Matching shots of Mom have her holding a baby, then an increasingly older child, until she is old and is burdened by a fully-grown Son on her back.

That's not to say Autumn isn't entertaining. Its zest can be contagious. It's a stylish exercise, reminiscent of other joie de vivre movies, and you might well get swept up in the ruckus. Even so, Autumn has all the elements of an impending storm, but the storm never comes.

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Autumn. Directed by António Sequeira. 2023. Portuguese with English subtitles. 114 minutes.

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Incident Report

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 14:37:44 +0000

Incident Report Chet Kozlowski April 14, 2025 - 10:37

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The Canadian film Darkest Miriam is a character study of a mild-mannered librarian whose life is defined by her low-key job. Miriam fields cryptic messages, unsigned screeds, and the unwelcome touches of lonely men. She wanders amidst rows of books and gazes out windows. She dresses in simple khakis and sensible shirts. She rides her bike through the Toronto city streets, her biggest risk being occasionally letting go of the handlebars. At home she doffs her clothes at the door and assumes a crouch in the shower.

The film is written and directed by Naomi Jaye, also known for 2013's The Pin. Darkest Miriam is based on a novel by Martha Baillie more aptly titled The Incident Report (the film's title can suggest something sinister). Ms. Baillie collaborated on the script, with Maureen Dorey. The reports in question become a narrative thread of disses, offenses, hopes, and dreams. Quirky characters abound: "Fainting Man," an immigrant who can’t afford health insurance, and so constantly faints and recovers; "Pale Female Patron," who won't give up the computer; and a fellow who whacks off to auto manuals and leaves the mess. Miriam fills out reports but never submits them.

Darkest Miriam is really a showcase for Britt Lower, a talented actress who is currently having a moment in her starring role in the TV series Severance. Ms. Lower has a pleasing expression framed by red hair bluntly cut into bangs. Even while still, her large eyes express much. And her stillness here pays off in her character's eventual flowering.

The monotony of Miriam's life is broken by Janko, a Slovenian cab driver, played engagingly by Tom Mercier. They scope each other out in a park and eventually meet by comparing scars. Janko has a neat little apartment, paints volcanic abstracts, and is an easy fit. He tells Miriam, "The most frightening moment of my life is now because I've met you."

Darkest Miriam is a throwback to mumblecore movies of the '90s: low budget, largely improvised films set mostly in Brooklyn (in fact, HBO’s High Maintenance is amongst Ms. Lower's credits). Darkest Miriam never comes to a boil but is appealing in its steadiness. One of the executive producers is Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation., I'm Thinking of Ending Things). Darkest Miriam matches Mr. Kaufman's quirkiness but not quite his panache.

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Darkest Miriam. Directed by Naomi Jaye. 2024. From Game Theory Films. On digital platforms. Runtime 90 minutes.

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Honey From The Hive

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 02:08:57 +0000

Honey From The Hive Chet Kozlowski April 7, 2025 - 22:08

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Time passes slowly here in the country, which is the whole point of the new film, That They May Face the Rising Sun. The countryside in question is Ireland’s. Our visit will be punctuated by languid, ruminative shots, a rich celebration of a simpler way of life.

We see it through the eyes of middle-aged British expats, Joe and Kate Ruttledge. Joe is a writer, Kate a photographer and gallery owner. They’ve bought a farm in this small lakeside community as an escape, but find themselves deeply immersed in the day-to-day life. Their rustic kitchen is open to all. Their small farm is the hub of activity, and they host a variety of characters and confidences. Out of earshot, one character asks another, “Still here, are they?” surprised that they haven’t scurried back to the comforting chaos of London.

The clash of the old and new ways is the film’s frisson. Joe has found “all that life could give of contentment and peace.” Erecting a structure with a crusty local, Patrick, he pauses to appreciate the quality of light defined by the frame. Patrick has no such sensitivities. “People have been locked up for saying less,” he replies. Joe praises the tranquility. Patrick hears the birds chirping and offers, “listen to the fucken quiet and see if it don’t drive you daft.” A business associate of Kate’s visits and comments that Bill, another local, is like “something out of a Russian novel.” Kate bristles. “He’s all ours,” she bristles. Offers Patrick: “Country’s full of battered folk.”

Barry Ward—whose face you’ll instantly recognize from many BBC shows—plays Joe as a generic Everyman, accommodating and wise yet capable of great empathy. He moves through the movie wearing the same white button-down shirt, whether jotting notes or doing heavy labor. Kate—played by Anna Bederke, a German actress of classical beauty—is beatific, blessed virgin of the kitchen, childless herself yet everyone’s mother. As narrative figures, Joe and Kate provide beacons, a point of focus, that raise That They May from a reenactment of the simple life into a meditation about its loss.

The understated acting of Philip Dolan (Jamesie), Brendan Conroy (Bill), Lolar Roddy (Patrick), John Olohan (The Shah), Ruth McCabe (Mary Murphy), and Sean McGinley (Johnny), et al., in their roles adds to the authenticity. There isn’t a false note in the cast; kudos to all.

Director Pat Collins has the features Silence (2012) and Song of Granite (2017) to his credit. His screenplay with Eamon Little is a tapestry of serene moments so nuanced that they don’t immediately reveal their literary shape. First viewing is simply a delight: a surrender to the power of cinema as it delivers its sumptuous message. On second viewing, one appreciates more the lynchpins of the plot: church (if not religion), rituals, family and community, gossip, and legacy.

All this is abetted by Keith Walsh’s editing and Richard Kendrick’s cinematography, and their lingering shots of the countryside. The ever-present chirping birds are modulated by sound recordist John Brennan.

That They May Face the Rising Sun is authentic to a fault. Hay is baled, sheep are herded, fireplaces lit, we run across an open field to meet the mailman, beehives are tended for honey, we stroll down bucolic lanes laced with green foliage. (This motif, people walking away from the viewer toward an infinite horizon, becomes the equivalent of “walking toward the light.”)

It's also telling that the action is set in the 1970s, undiscernible but for its lack of technology. Joe writes with a Bic pen and a portable typewriter. In its subversive way, That They May Face the Rising Sun posits a world before the internet and what social media might do (or probably has done) to make this idyll a thing of the past.

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That They May Face the Rising Sun. Directed by Pat Collins. 2023. From Fís Éireann, Ireland, and the BBC Northern Ireland. Distributed by Juno Films. Runtime 111 minutes.

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Whimsey While You Work

Chet Kozlowski — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 12:22:55 +0000

Whimsey While You Work Chet Kozlowski April 4, 2025 - 08:22

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The new film Corina is a candy-colored confection that handles its premise with heart and humor.

Pity poor Corina. Her kindly single mother Renee is an agoraphobic, hasn’t left the house in years. She’s limited her daughter’s life to the radius of one city block in Guadalajara, Mexico. Corina, now 20 years old, clings to routine. She counts the steps to work every morning, to the publishing house where her father used to work. On the way she stops for a coffee—same order every day— at a bodega that she is distressed to see is expanding into the storefront next door. Change is in the air and Corina isn’t comfortable with change.

Even though Corina works in the most harmless editorial department—she’s a “style corrector”—she is swept up in the crisis of the moment. Her boss has received a manuscript from their most successful author, X. Silverman, who has decided to end her popular franchise, and likewise the company’s bestseller. The publishers panic. Mousey Corina covertly reads the pages and rewrites the book, asking her mother, “Do you think cowards can have a moment of courage?” Too shy to take credit, Corina’s version is inadvertently published, and attributed to Silverman, whose intention was to off her beloved protagonist by suicide.

Events take a turn with a road trip, Corina and Carlos—a handsome hombre (Cristo Fernandez) whose mere presence gives Corina a nosebleed—traveling to locate the mysterious Silverman and try to curb the damage. (You’ll recognize Mr. Fernandez from TV’s Ted Lasso.)

The film takes a sprightly tone, matching Corina’s rituals to a drum tattoo. But in quieter moments she delights in the creative process, floridly piling on the metaphors and slashing swathes of punctuation. “Once the red pencil stabs the paper it’s impossible to stop,” the narrator tells us in voiceover.

The acting is as brisk as the mise en scéne. Naian González Norvind plays Corina as wide-eyed, virginal, and skittish, not quite convinced that the outside world is for her yet yearning to participate. Ms. Norvind projects impish appeal and has an impressive list of credits, having worked in TV in the US and Mexico, and with directors like Gus Van Sant. Carolina Politi casts a benevolent figure as mother Renee, a prisoner of her own neuroses. Mariana Giménez and Laura de Ita round out the cast.

Director Urzula Barba Hopfner has said that Corina grew out of her own agoraphobic episodes while working abroad. She’s fashioned something special here. Despite Corina’s lighthearted exterior, it handles some weighty topics: identity, ownership of your ideas, ownership of your own life. She keeps the action buoyant, and the whimsey works. The color palate is Almodovar with notes of Wes Anderson. This is Ms. Hopfner’s first feature film.

Corina is an engaging parable about a bygone era, all the more charming as retro: the computers are clunky and revisions still happen on hardcopy.

Corina. Directed by Urzula Barba Hopfner. 2024. In Spanish with English subtitles. Runtime 96 minutes.

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A Powerful Serve

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 14:00:00 +0000

A Powerful Serve Chet Kozlowski March 25, 2025 - 10:00

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It’s a rare film that doesn’t just depict an emotional state but becomes the state. Such a film is the quietly devastating Julie Keeps Quiet.

Start with the poster. The title is intriguing enough, simple and direct. White type over a photo of a figure on a blue background. The photo is a contradiction: a young woman, her features twisted in anguish and rage. If a poster could talk, this one would be screaming.

This simple image captures the restraint of its protagonist, Julie, an up-and-coming tennis star in a Belgian high school. She’s headed for the nationals. Julie is a person of action, and she’s uncommonly reticent since the suicide of her friend and teammate Aline. Julie watches a video of Aline extolling the virtues of Jeremy, their coach. Aline looks bright and hopeful, not like anyone who’s carrying a weight. But she does.

And so does Julie. She has a secret, has internalized it and tries to subdue it. She goes about her mundane day. She goes to practice. She walks her dog. She eats dinner with her supportive parents and tries very hard to keep a lid on her emotions. Regret, desire, loyalty, betrayal…all are balled up inside her. She is young enough to feel but not old enough to process. The only sign of her turmoil is the ferocity of her serve: that hard twack is Julie’s release.

If you think you know Julie’s secret—we’re looking at you, Larry Nasser—you’d be right. But that isn’t the film’s revelation. It’s its state of mind. Belgian director Leonardo van Dijl’s penetrating study delves deep into Julie’s private purgatory: the film’s color palette is earth tones and light is always caught at a midpoint: no sunshine or dark shadows. Julie sees her world as if looking through a dirty windshield, grayed, smudges that blend with other smudges.

That isn’t to say it’s dull by any means. Julie Keeps Quiet is immersive, masterfully composed of empty spaces by Mr. Dijl and director of photography Nicolas Karakatsanis. For two hours, they put us in Julie’s headspace, her indecision, the guilt, and the confusion. (The film was chosen as the Belgian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.)

As Julie, actor Tessa van Den Broeck is astonishing. She was chosen from a host of young tennis players and projects serious depth even when still. The camera is right up on her, in extreme closeups of her face, while she stares into nothing. Her teammates suspect but Julie won’t confirm. Her conundrum is not so much Aline’s death as it is her similar circumstances with their coach, Jeremy. He’s been suspended yet still calls Julie, and meets with her, sussing out her version. Will she testify against him? If not for Aline, for herself? They speak in codes, in person or on the phone. “When you told me to stop, I stopped,” he pleads cryptically.

So much at stake for so young a woman. The finals, her team, her sanity, all get mulched together. The images grow grainier. And then the voices in her head: Caroline Snow’s score has the force of an epiphany. Try as Julie does to quell her thoughts, they break through when she least expects them: the rising voices of women, a choir of angry angels that rises as Julie’s path becomes clear. Those voices are a thrilling complement to what we’re watching.

Julie Keeps Quiet is deceptively simple. Not much happens but the everyday, but that’s the point. Julie tries to maintain order. What will break through and what will it mean? The film is an intense and cohesive vision, and a risky one: when you say nothing, the impression is that you have nothing to say. Julie Keeps Quiet, but for its silence, is screaming out loud.

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Julie Keeps Quiet. Directed by Leonardo van Dijl. 2024. Belgian with English subtitles. From Film Movement. Runtime 100 minutes. In theaters.

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Chekov in the Pines

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 18:08:12 +0000

Chekov in the Pines Chet Kozlowski March 16, 2025 - 14:08

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Passions erupt in the curious new film Appalachian Dog.

Teddy's home from a war, back to his mountain home, and reunited with his wife, Marion. He and Marion run a tailor shop, and while he was away, a seamstress named Peggy assumed his role. Teddy's hands (and head) suffer PTSD, and he suspects he's been replaced by Peggy in more ways than one.

Appalachian Dog starts out as a chamber piece. The opening scene is the shop Teddy shares with Marion. Peggy's there, and Cate, a neighbor who is comically interested in the carnal. It’s all very casual and genial until Cate’s coat gets torn. Who will mend it? In that quiet way, the drama of Appalachian Dog begins.

This is writer/director Colin Henning’s first feature. He also plays Teddy as an acerbic character who tries to sew, gazing at his shaky hands, willing them to work right. Teddy is all aggravation and non-sequiturs. He grouses, pontificates, and searches for his loyal dog while his steadfast wife Marion negotiates relationships. She discreetly slips Peggy the task of repairing the coat. Teddy's first night back isn't fireworks in the bedroom, either. The best he can muster is to longingly watch his wife undress.

Domestic dynamic established, the action opens up, all the way up the mountain, and soon somebody's expressing secret love, somebody's frolicking in the barn with somebody else's significant other, mothers are dying, and a wedding gown becomes an item of contention. To reveal more details is to ruin the surprises of the movie, of which there are many.

What's striking about Appalachian Dog is its artificiality. The sets are thrift-shop. The actors sometimes veer into community theater territory. There's little attempt at authenticity. No way Teddy looks like he's been through a war. Mr. Henning plays him more like a grad student, appearing in a sports coat with a shock of unruly hair. The women are mismatched as well; Georgia Morgan plays Marion as more refined than she might be, while Cate (Brooke Elizabeth) is too delicate to be convincing as a farmer's wife toting bales of hay. Hayleigh Hart Franklin plays Peggy as a steady presence, biding her time and watching how the wind blows. Cate's husband, Andrew (Aaron J. Stewart), is a specter, seen at a distance for most of the runtime. The actors are mostly newbies, building their reels, appearing elsewhere in bit parts and commercials.

Yet… the inauthenticity works. I accepted the conceit completely and was along for the ride. Much of that has to do with Mr. Henning's filmmaking. Those sound lapses are intentional, part of his style, and happen abruptly enough to send a chill. Crucial dialogue is self-consciously overdubbed, and the sound drops out completely in key sequences. Atmospheric montages are inserted at unfitting moments, diverting the ordinary action in a different direction. Even these leave an impression, especially in one of the best orgasm-by-the-river sequences I've seen lately. Are we in Appalachia? No one's particularly bereft. Life may not look easy, but it is not hard.

Yet, as I say, it works. Appalachian Dog is inventive and original, a quirky little gem. The unreality is hard to put your finger on, but Mr. Henning is obviously in control. Themes of sexuality, desire, love, betrayal, and perfection bounce around like tennis balls. Some good lines, too. "Andrew's best left lonesome." "Velvet's spendy." "You got past the dragon."

Appalachian Dog is proudly out of sync, prim, and worth your proper attention. This first production from C.H. Squared Films, the company of Colin Henning and Chad Hylton, shows tremendous promise.

But where is that darn dog?

Appalachian Dog. Directed by Colin Henning. 2025. From C.H. Squared Films. Runtime 100 minutes. Available On Demand.

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The Male/Female Gaze

Gary Lucas — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 03:28:05 +0000

The Male/Female Gaze Gary Lucas March 5, 2025 - 22:28

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Izumi Suzuki by Nobuyoshi Araki from his book Izumi Suzuki: This Bad Girl

"I have looked on many women with lust. I have committed adultery in my heart many times." - Jimmy Carter, Playboy Magazine (Sept. 1976)

A historical if not downright heroic statement concerning the "Male Gaze," courtesy of the 1976 Democratic presidential nominee.

This comment was published as part of writer Robert Scheer's interview with Jimmy Carter in the September 1976 issue of Playboy, which nearly derailed Carter's campaign and was leveraged (unsuccessfully) in an effort to smear Carter on the eve of his campaign by such outstanding citizens as Gerald Ford and the Rev. Billy Graham.

But to Jimmy Carter's credit, he was, let's face it, just being honest here—unlike serial groper-in-chief Donald "Women, I am your protector" Trump, greasy Matt Gaetz, phony populist J.D. Vance, and other oleaginous Republicans currently strutting and fretting their hour on the stage.

(It is to laugh, but highly appropriate, that the moralistic Vance's own Hillbilly Elegy memoir—hardly salacious reading—was recently censored and removed from public school libraries in Michigan.)

As someone who, at a tender age, took a stand in favor of Free Speech while attending Syracuse's very public Hurlbut W. Smith Junior High School by often sporting a bright orange button emblazoned with the legend F*CK CENSORSHIP—I also advocated in my AP English class against the suppression of editor/publisher Ralph Ginzburg's artsy stroke-book Eros Magazine. Though relatively tame by today's standards, the publication of Eros sent Ginzburg to prison for 8 months.

Speaking of today, l look askance at the current recuperation of the late Andrea Dworkin's stentorian anti-porn pronouncements from the late '60s—still cringe-worthy after all these years—in which several contemporary literary journals are lauding her views as proto-feminist. I've always found her writing to be strident and tone-deaf, especially her unintentionally hilarious anti-heterosex harangues.

Case in point is the recent republication of her 1981 book Pornography, a book-length critique of the subject in hand (!) in which in the service of her argument Dworkin summarizes the narratives of several cheapo porn paperbacks of the Beeline Books variety that are, in her re-telling of their major plot points, dare I say even "dirtier;" i.e., more erotically charged, than the texts of the original books in question.

(She had a real way with words, our Andrea.)

But do women also enjoy taking advantage of, and is there such a thing as the "Female Gaze?"

The late Pauline Reage (who wrote under that pseudonym and also under the name Dominique Aury, although her birth name was Anne Desclos) came close with 1954's Histoire d'O, which was written to entertain her male lover Jean Paulhan, from the point of view of a female submissive.

Some years later, in 1973, Erica Jong had a bestseller with her novel Fear of Flying and its central conceit of "the zipless fuck." Jong's novel was pre-dated by science fiction author Joanna Russ's steamy The Female Man, which took only five years to publish. And recently, Miranda July has raised the female-centric erotic stakes again with her novel All Fours.

For my money, though, the absolute greatest of all female smut purveyors was my old friend Iris Owens, who, as an ex-pat in Paris, wrote some of the wildest and filthiest erotic novels for Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press under the pseudonym Harriet Daimler—classics including Darling, Innocence, and The Woman Thing—all well worth tracking down, all more than worthy of her friend Terry Southern's (himself a sometime dirty book author) Quality Lit seal of approval.

In underground comix, Italian graphic artist Giovanna Casotto wrote and illustrated fantastically explicit erotica like her Bitch in Heat collection in the '90s. These graphic novels push the transgressive envelope while celebrating the forbidden and illicit.

In cinema, Candida Royalle distinguished herself in the '60s and '70s as a sex-positive feminist and went on to produce and direct numerous erotic "couples" films.

Most recently, Dutch film director Halina Reijn certainly exercised her droit du seigneur with the recent directorial succès de scandale of her film Babygirl, which I've written about here: http://culturecatch.com/index.php/node/4404

But this expansive female sex-positive attitude has certainly not consistently enough been the case, as the infamous Frank Zappa versus the PMRC congressional hearings spearheaded by Tipper Gore attest to.

Pornography, as we all know, is definitely in the Eye of the Beholder, both male or female or intersex, pace Supreme Court Justice Potter Stevens's landmark ruling of 1964 regarding the banning of Louis Malle's 1958 film Les Amants in Ohio on the grounds that it was pornography:

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ['hardcore pornography'], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so.

But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

Regarding the Male/Female Gaze:

I adored the late Al Goldstein's Midnight Blue cable TV series in the '70s and '80s.

The very IDEA of Al Goldstein (publisher and editor of Screw Magazine)—a loud-mouthed vulgarian, a tummler, a rager, a stand-up comedian, and swaggering teller of hard truths—the living embodiment, in fact, of the anti-semitic Jewish Pornographer stereotype, which hearkens back to Ulysses's first American publisher, First Amendment champion Samuel Roth (a lifelong Orthodox Jew), and Olympia Press major-domo Maurice Girodias (half-Jewish but wtf)—always warmed the cockles of my heart.

No one essayed the role of Jewish Pornographer with a capital P better than Al.

I especially loved his infamous televised "Fuck You!" Department, a staple of Midnight Blue.

Al was a goddamn one-man Consumer Reports, mouthing outrageous take-downs of sacrosanct institutions like the high-end Hammacher Schlemmer department store, who sold him some broken-down crap, or bitching about the staggering bill for inferior food or service at some tony restaurant in Manhattan.

This segment always ended with Al's middle-fingered kiss-off to the product or person at hand deserving of his righteous scorn:

“Hammacher Schlemmer--FUCK YOU!!”

Al took no prisoners—naming names and reporting phone numbers of the folks working at these joints who'd done him dirty that he encouraged his viewers to harass!

This outrageous tactic was to eventually prove his undoing when he went after his ex-wife and her divorce lawyer and gave out their phone numbers. (Bad move.)

Yes, not everyone loved Al.

My life partner, Caroline Sinclair, f'rinstance LOATHED Al Goldstein. She found his show gross, obnoxious, and odious in extremis (all points in the show's favor, IMHO)—and she always demanded I immediately switch channels whenever the show came on over Manhattan Cable's Public Access channel.

This was true also of the other Manhattan Cable Public Access sex-centric cable shows back in the day, helmed by colorful New Yorker characters such as Ugly George, a Polish American emigre who roamed the streets of the boroughs shirt-less in silver lame hot pants with a Sony video portapak strapped on his back who specialized in sweet-talking random hotties he encountered into back alleys and secluded nooks where he (somehow) coaxed them into taking off their tops and bras for his camera—the raw footage of which he gleefully aired every week.

Also, the man known simply as "Dan" (no last name given), a bearded, somewhat portly Jewish erotic connoisseur referred to as "Rabbi" by the mainly male callers-in who watched the show.

Dan was frequently seen cavorting in the churning waters of a hot tub with two nekkid and nubile young ladies, all the while fielding on-air calls over his phone from fans watching the action live—one of whom set him up unforgettably one summer night by asking if he could personally address one of Dan's female tub consorts.

Dan passed the phone to her (all calls were heard over the air):

"Tell me dear…when you're sitting in that hot tub next to Dan...and things start getting steamy and intimate with him...(Dan and his partner both smile and nod here)…and you turn to Dan to kiss him...and you two start getting it on.

Tell me, does Dan smell??"

A faint smile played over Dan's mainly serene and enlightened visage as he hung up the phone with a cool:

"Next caller."

Then there was the Robin "Baby Let Me Bang Your Box" Byrd show, which concentrated on interviews with hot lesbians and gay male models, new ones every week, new kids fresh in town working and dancing at Show World on West 42nd Street—something for everybody!

Photo from Hideaki Anno's 1998 film Love and Pop

It is surprising to me that Caroline was so repulsed by such, in retrospect, innocent TV fun—as once upon a time in a world long ago and far away, she had been an illegal alien in our fair city until she wasn't (Reader, I married her). She had (shhhhh!) occasionally supported herself back in the days without a Green Card by working in the Forty Deuce porno film industry as a part-time editor and set decorator on a couple of films starring Al's good pal with a big schlong, the gross Ron Jeremy.

Let me backtrack a bit here:

My interest in the erotic was stoked via my random discovery at age 10 or 11 of a well-thumbed European pirated edition of Ulysses on my father's bookshelf, which it turned out he'd liberated in the '40s from the Zeta Beta Tau Jewish frat house while a student at Syracuse University.

That, and stumbling on (and eventually going steady with) my older sisters's paperback copies of Mary McCarthy's The Group, Grace Metalious's Peyton Place…and my own close encounter in summer camp with a fellow camper's copy of Roslyn Drexler's I Am the Beautiful Stranger, which we passed around in our cabin in the woods like Russian dissidents sharing samizdat literature in the former Soviet Union.

The truth, though, is that in the current digital moment, things like specifically erotic novels, adult cinemas, x-rated stores, and their like have more or less gone the way of all flesh, vanishing vapor trails in the polluted ether, with the bit-torrent of hardcore porn but a click away on your iPhone (or so I've been told. I have never availed myself of the opportunity—have you? I prefer to patrol the precincts of my own dirty mind—À la recherche du temps pair deux—and need no visual stimulation to "fire my imagination," as Mick Jagger so succinctly put it in the sensational '60s).

I bring this up in regard to a recent viewing of a new restoration of Japanese cult anime director Hideaki Anno's experimental 1998 live-action film Love and Pop, which is now playing at the IFC Center here in the West Village. It's a film that is simultaneously a critique of a porn-centric world and the virtual Thing In Itself—a real Peep Show Bible for obsessive oldsters and "nasty narrow-minded jades" (to quote Vivian Stanshall).

Boasting some of the weirdest camera angles and more outre discontinuous edits ever seen before "on the big screen" outside of certain avant-garde classics, the film is based on the book Topaz II by Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami (often confused with Japanese writer Haruki Murakami—definitely not the same animal), author of the indelibly lewd Almost Transparent Blue (for years available in English translation only in NYC at a Japanese import store on West 57th Street) and other explorations of the soft white underbelly of Japanese decadence. It is a glittering dark jewel with many facets that shimmer in its depiction of wayward Japanese youth coming of age.

It concerns a quartet of cute teenage girls living in the Shibuya district of Tokyo who are devoted advocates of "sugar dating"—lining up dates with creepy older men through a phone service specializing in connecting such erotic hook-ups, the goal of the girls being to obtain the maximum amount of gifts from their furtive male patsies without actually putting out.

(And btw, I've never seen such repulsive male marks as portrayed in this film, two of whom the main female protagonist Hiroshi has to endure in one endless long day's journey to the end of the night in the hope of scoring enough yen to purchase an expensive ring.)

The film, while exposing the machinations of both sexes in this twisted Japanese mating ritual, lingers lovingly Tarantino-like on plenty of close-ups of bare, barely pubescent female feet, ankles, legs, etc.—all the better to make the viewer complicit in the whole seedy story—a voyeur, if you will, of the film itself; a regular Peeping Tom.

We're kinda in Ghost World film territory here, but way more in-your-face and outrageous.

As an objet du cinema, I've never seen anything like this film, frankly—other than—thematically, anyway—the 2009 Polish film Mall Girls, directed by Katarzyna Roslaniec—which tells a similar tale of young Polish girls from poor families who semi-prostitute themselves hanging around in large bustling malls hoping to pick up older sugar daddies to basically "buy them stuff."

Well, it is a "mean old world," to quote Little Walter, if not a dog's life, for 98% percent of the human population hereabouts, vis-à-vis hierarchic capitalist exploitation based on the old in-and-out, top man/bottom man dialectic.

Three cheers then for Sean Baker's audacious and hilarious film Anora, which, as I write this, just swept the Oscars —and his acceptance speeches (two of them) wherein he praised the lives of sex workers.

(Although, hey, Love and Pop's bourgeois teenage Japanese girls are hardly "sex workers." These grrrls just wanna have fun, i.e., go shopping).

Love and Pop is definitely worthy of the attention of cinephiles of any persuasion, especially as the film has never had a proper release in North America (and it's been a 27-year wait).

It looks like it should be playing on and off at the IFC on 6th Avenue in the West Village for a while in any case, and it's set to open in other U.S. cities later this year.

And while I'm grazing in the "Asian Babes" section:

All broad-minded literati are recommended to check out the recent publication of new English translations of Japanese novelist/model/actress Izumi Suzuki's superb books Terminal Boredom, Hit Parade of Tears, and Set My Heart On Fire—all of which might well be filed under the Love and Pop category, dealing as they are with complicated and claustrophobic male/female relationships and romantic agony in Tokyo in an age of disposable chintzy popular music and glitz.

All were recently published by (go figure) Verso Books, devoted mainly to leftist political and philosophical writings, such as our friend Cineaste editor Richard Porton's important study Film and the Anarchist Imagination.

And Izumi Suzuki's books are decidedly not that in any way, shape, or form. Suzuki was both a brilliant writer and a stunning-looking woman (I'm exercising my Male Gaze prerogative again here—sorry!).

She achieved much notoriety in Japan as both a radical science-fiction author and film actress—as well as an erotic model for famed Japanese photographer/one-time lover Nobuyoshi Araki—but her flame burned too brightly, she suffered mental health issues, and eventually, Izumi Suzuki took her own life at the tender age of 36. Perhaps in the mistaken belief that at that point she was over the hill in a Houelllbecque-ian "Female as Commodity" sense.

Her books are fascinating, and her writing is a profound glimpse into the female psyche, like the work of Elena Ferrante.

Both Izumi Suzuki's books and Hideaki Anno's Love and Pop should be a lot better known in the world.

Hopefully, this essay is a beacon pointing you, the voyeur, in their direction.

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Somewhat Enchanted Evening

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 01:40:05 +0000

Somewhat Enchanted Evening Chet Kozlowski February 23, 2025 - 20:40

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

Being an auteur is easy these days. Digital technology quickens and makes less expensive production and distribution. So when a first film is the product of a single sensibility that is writer, director, cinematographer, and editor, we have to consider the distinctiveness of what they choose to put in front of us.

In One Night in Tokyo, Joshua Woodcock's first feature, Sam, a 30-something American, has just arrived in Tokyo. It's Sam's first time in Japan, and he's set for a week with his equally American GF Becca, whose job has taken her there. They've been separated for six months. But something's off: Becca isn't there at the airport to meet him. When he arrives at her apartment, she seems distracted, pleads prior commitments, and gives him the key to a hotel room. Hmmm. Sam's Japanese friend Jun is indisposed as well. He suggests Sam join his girlfriend Ayaka for beers with her friends. The evening is awkward; Sam doesn't know Ayaka or the language (one of the best scenes is Sam trying to make small talk, his new acquaintances explaining references). When the friends disperse, Sam is left alone with Ayaka, who is indifferent.

An event bonds them, and Sam resolves to return home on the morning flight. The pair spends time in funky bars and neon streets, and they warm to each other. They compare favorite films (spoiler alert: his is Chaplin's City Lights; hers is Ozu's Tokyo Story). Confidences are shared and affection blooms.

Notice I don't say "love." One Night in Tokyo is not exactly a romcom. It has a conspicuous lack of passion. Its stakes are pretty low, which is surprising for a first film over which the maker has full creative control. The film looks professional; it’s not a knockoff. Joshua Woodcock writes and directs confidently, coming from advertising and shorts. He's the cinematographer and editor, too. Mr. Woodcock is based in Tokyo, as are his cast and crew.

But while One Night in Tokyo is endearing in the moment, it adds up to a shrug. Its characters are attractive but bland and pretty ordinary. The dearth of passion appears intentional, despite a bossy score by Topher Horn, which is designed to guide our emotions and provide whimsey that is not on the screen.

Mr. Woodcock's scenario has neither the clever dialogue of Linklater's "Before" series, or the quirkiness of Coppola's Lost in Translation. The cast works and is appealing. Reza Emamiyeh plays Sam as a likeable hangdog. Tokiko Kitagawa has an endearing smile and plays Ayaka with quiet skill: her conversion from impassivity to interest is convincing. The cast also includes Cailee Oliver as Becca and Shinichiro Watanabe as Jun.

One Night in Tokyo is an enjoyable enough Fish-Out-of-Water cum Opposites-Attract picture. But it’s pretty thin and not very unique. Even the streets of Tokyo seem ordinary: only a few distinctive locations are visited and not much is made of Sam being a stranger in a strange land. Mr. Woodcock serves up cautious helpings of emotion.

As in most contemporary films, the phone is a character. Time that could be spent considering each other is spent checking the screen. The language barrier is breached by a verbal translation app. After they use that, Sam and Ayaka speak fluently to each other.

Doesn't anybody just stare into each other's eyes anymore? In a movie like One Night in Tokyo, bells don't have to ring, but they could at least vibrate.

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One Night in Tokyo. Directed by Joshua Woodcock. 2024. From Buffalo 8. Runtime 95 minutes.