As one widow wanders the gloomy remnants of her estranged husband’s derelict home in Vitalina Varela, Pedro Costa glacially slips through cinematic paintings of a decaying Portuguese village, dimly illuminating its weathered production through harsh vignettes of light that seek spiritual healing from grief, and which challenge us to peel back the layers of its solemn visual poetry.
The rich duality of Trey Edward Shults’ compelling drama, narrative structure, and colour palettes bakes a symmetry deep into the formal construction of Waves, pivoting his rich portrait of one African-American family on a tragic turning point that divides their lives into two distinct periods of before and after, skilfully balancing out an oscillation between joyful heights and devastating lows.
Recovering from a tragedy as horrific as that which Dani experiences in the opening minutes of Midsommar seems impossible, but even more disturbing than this crushing darkness is the insidious monster Ari Aster crafts in the dazzling, psychedelic radiance of a pagan Swedish commune, delivering a distorted catharsis from past trauma through sinister, ancient rituals.
There is a quiet frustration in seeing haughty intellectual Anthony emotionally manipulate ambitious film student Julie in The Souvenir, and although it is clear which one Joanna Hogg holds more affection towards, her autobiographical self-reflection on toxic young love takes a touchingly nuanced understanding of the matter in its gentle pacing and affecting character work.
The painter’s perspective that Céline Sciamma offers us in Portrait of a Lady on Fire uses its delicate renderings of seaside cliffs and eighteenth-century French manors as the setting for a gorgeous romance between an artist and her reluctant subject, powerfully intertwining their passions with classical archetypes vividly rooted in ancient Greek mythology.
It takes a while for the humour, sensitivity, and detail of Taika Waititi’s Nazi satire Jojo Rabbit to settle in, but once it finds its footing, he effectively skewers the cowardice and superficiality of those hateful regimes which hide behind the trusting innocence of their children.
