Firebird (Peeter Rabane, 2021)

 

Cast: Tom Prior, Oleg Zagorodnii, Diana Pozharaskaya, Jake Henderson, Margus Prangel, Nicholas Woodeson. Screenplay: Peeter Rabane, Tom Prior, based on a book by Sergey Fetisov. Cinematography: Mait Mäekivi. Production design: Eva-Maria Gramakovski, Kalju Kivi, Frantseska Vakkum. Film editing: Tambet Tasuja. Music: Krzysztov A. Janczak. 

Sergey, a private in the Soviet air force, and the fighter pilot Roman, the lieutenant he serves as orderly, fall in love. Under the laws of the Soviet military, their relationship puts them in jeopardy of being sentenced to hard labor if it’s found out. Firebird, which gets its name from the Stravinsky ballet that brings them together, is a solid romantic drama with a fine performance by Tom Prior, who also co-wrote the screenplay based on a memoir by the real Sergey. If I have a problem with the movie, it’s because the focus is almost necessarily on Sergey, given its source. We get very little backstory for Roman, played handsomely by the Ukrainian actor Oleg Zagorodnii, even though the burden of the conflict between love and duty falls largely on him. By contrast, we learn of Sergey’s boyhood love and its painful end, and about his post-service career as an actor. The lack of focus on Roman’s background almost reduces him to a beautiful object of desire, and saps the tragic impact of his story. Still, Firebird is an impressive debut feature for Estonian writer-director Peeter Rabane, and a cut above most contemporary movie love stories, especially those based in the world of LGBT relationships. 

Desert Fury (Lewis Allen, 1947)

 

Cast: John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, Wendell Corey, Mary Astor. Screenplay: Robert Rossen, based on a novel by Ramona Stewart. Cinematography: Edward Cronjager, Charles Lang. Art direction: Perry Ferguson. Film editing: Warren Low. Music: Miklós Rózsa. 

Where there’s a desert there are going to be rattlesnakes, and the one in Desert Fury is full of them, hissing and showing their fangs. The opening scenes of the movie are so full of poisonous dialogue and hostile conversations that you wonder how anyone survives in the small Nevada town of Chuckawalla. Chief among the serpents is Fritzi Haller (Mary Astor), who runs a casino and tries to run the life of her rebellious 19-year-old daughter, Paula (Lizabeth Scott), who has a tendency to get involved with the wrong men. Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak) couldn’t be wronger, a gambler and racketeer whose wife recently died under suspicious circumstances and who also used to be involved with Fritzi. Now he makes a play for Paula, which not only upsets Fritzi but also irks his … well, what is Johnny Ryan (Wendell Corey)? Eddie’s sidekick? His factotum? His fall guy? When we see Johnny sitting on the patio with a shirtless Eddie we may get other ideas, especially when Paula shows up and Johnny treats her with contempt – as, we find out, he did Eddie’s late wife. The coded gay relationship only becomes more obvious when we find out that the two men first met in Times Square, where Johnny bought the down-and-out Eddie breakfast at the Automat and then took him home with him. The only apparent good guy in Chuckawalla’s nest of vipers is Tom Hanson (Burt Lancaster), a former rodeo rider who after a disabling accident moved there and became a deputy sheriff. Tom is such a good guy that he takes off his badge before he slugs Eddie and refuses Fritzi’s offer to set him up with a ranch if he’ll marry Paula and get her away from Eddie. All of this is familiar film noir stuff, even in glorious Technicolor, but it would take a Douglas Sirk to figure out how to make it good. Lewis Allen is not up to the task, and he’s hampered by the acting limitations of Scott and Hodiak. Astor and Corey (making his debut in a film career that never quite panned out) are fine, and Lancaster does what he can with a fairly thankless role. But too often, Allen seems to be letting Miklós Rózsa’s somewhat overbearing score tell the story.

Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021)

 

Cast: Joséphine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Nina Meurisse, Stéphane Varupenne, Margot Abascal. Screenplay: Céline Sciamma. Cinematography: Claire Mathon. Production design: Lionel Brison. Film editing: Julien Lacharay. Music: Jean-Baptiste de Laubier.

After watching so many movies that thud and blunder along for more than two hours to no lasting effect, it’s a blessed relief to watch Céline Sciamma accomplish so much so quietly in just 72 minutes. Petite Maman begins with 8-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) saying goodbye to the residents of the nursing home where her grandmother has just died. She then accompanies her parents (Nina Meurisse, Stéphane Varupenne) to the house where her grandmother lived, but her mother is so overcome by emotion at the prospect of clearing out a place so laden with memories, that she leaves her husband and Nelly to finish the job. While her father does most of the work, Nelly wanders out to play in the autumnal woods near her grandmother’s house. There she meets another 8-year-old called Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), who is building a hut out of fallen branches in the forest. Immediately we are struck by the fact that Nelly’s mother, who is also named Marion, had told Nelly about the hut she had built in the forest. And so begins a bit of magic, in which we realize along with Nelly that she has traveled back in time to meet her own mother as a child. Sciamma does this revelation with such finesse that it took my breath away, crafting a haunting fable about family and memory and regret. It’s only the most recent of her triumphs as a director, following such remarkable films as Water Lilies (2007), Tomboy (2011), Girlhood (2014), and the marvelous Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019). 

Late August, Early September (Olivier Assayas, 1998)

 

Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Virginie Ledoyen, François Cluzet, Jeanne Balibar, Alex Descas, Arsinée Khanjian, Mia Hansen-Løve, Nathalie Richard, Eric Elmosnino. Screenplay: Olivier Assayas. Cinematography: Denis Lenoir. Production design: François-Renaud Labarthe. Film editing: Luc Barnier. 

Late August, Early September is what you might call a “mood title” as opposed to a “content title.” It’s like the ones Yasujiro Ozu gave his films, such as Late Spring (1949) or Early Summer (1951), not so much about the time of the year as about the feelings those seasons or months evoke. Assayas’s film is about men and women who have reached that point in middle age at which it seems there’s no turning back, no starting a new path in life, but instead they must go on into their later years on the track where they’ve found themselves. The central character of the film is Gabriel (Mathieu Amalric), a writer/editor who at the start of the film is selling the apartment where he has lived with his girlfriend, Jenny (Jeanne Balibar). They have broken up fairly amicably and Gabriel has now started a relationship with another woman, Anne (Virginie Ledoyen), who is a little more impulsive and unsettled than Jenny. Gabriel is friends with Adrien (François Cluzet), a modestly successful novelist who is fretting about how modest that success has been. Adrien, too, has an ex, Lucie (Arsinée Khanjian), but he has now taken up with a 15-year-old girl, Véra (Mia Hansen-Løve), a relationship he has kept secret from his friends. Adrien is also suffering from an unnamed disease. The film explores the relationships among these characters, who talk and smoke and make love the way people in French films do – to the point where those of us who aren’t French may get a little impatient for the film to get on with a plot. But it’s so nicely acted by some very attractive performers that it didn’t wear me down, even though when it ended I wondered a little what point it was striving to make. 

Triple Frontier (J.C. Chandor, 2019)

 

Cast: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal, Adria Arjona. Screenplay: Mark Boal, J.C. Chandor. Cinematography: Roman Vasyanov. Production design: Greg Berry. Film editing: Ron Patane. Music: Disasterpeace. 

Mark Boal’s screenplay for Triple Frontier was kicked around for several years before it was finally made. Originally planned to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who directed Boal’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker and Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty scripts, it was going to star Tom Hanks and Johnny Depp. When that fell through, other directors and other stars were talked about, including Channing Tatum, Mark Wahlberg, Will Smith, and Mahershala Ali. That it wound up starring Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Pedro Pascal is a pretty good indication that filmmakers now have a solid roster of male actors to call on. All that cast shuffling and script massaging may have taken a little toll on the final product, which is a pretty good movie that doesn’t quite have the kinetic charge it needs. The story is about five veterans of the Special Forces who get together to assassinate a South American drug lord and steal the millions he has stashed away. The triple frontier of the title is the Tres Fronteras area where Brazil, Peru, and Colombia come together. The five men have all fallen on hard times after leaving the military. Affleck’s character, nicknamed “Redfly,” the former leader of the group, is trying to make a living selling real estate and struggling with a failed marriage. “Ironhead” (Hunnam) ekes out a living making motivational speeches to new recruits. His brother, Ben (Hedlund), gets a battering as a cage fighter. “Catfish” (Pascal) is a pilot whose license has been suspended because the plane he was hired to fly was loaded with cocaine. Only “Pope” (Isaac) still has military ties: He’s a hired gun for law enforcement organizations. With such varied backstories, the characters in Triple Frontier ought to be more involving, especially when their plan initially succeeds but then falls apart in a grueling attempt to haul the cash they scavenge across the Andes to their escape vessel. There are echoes of much better movies in this one, such as The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948). But Triple Frontier, despite the hard work of its fine cast, seems muddled – and even, dare I say, muddied by the gloomycam cinematography.