Relative to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s great masterpieces of the 80s and 90s, The Scar is a modest piece of social realism, grounded in the details of Communist Poland’s bureaucracy and its controversial small-town development of a chemical factory that challenges one sympathetic Party member’s hopeful ideals.
Even if The Yards is not a wholly original crime drama, it still retains a freshness in moving its study of classical corruption and redemption arcs in inverse directions, as James Gray draws heavily from The Godfather in style and narrative to closely examine a young gangster’s struggle within his corrupt family.
The characters of Incendies contain remarkable and shocking depths, hidden not just to others but to themselves as well, and the process of uncovering these by tracing the footsteps of family history through the Middle East makes for a disturbingly revelatory journey delivered with a deft hand by Denis Villeneuve.
Although Mimi Cave’s remarkable crafting of atmospheric tension through blood-red production design and relationship metaphors may exceed her ability to craft a wholly original story, that is all Fresh needs to pull us along in its tight, repulsive grip, where a young woman’s kidnapping at the hands of a charming, business-minded cannibal develops into a sinister, upside-down dating game.
The title Design for Living could be the name of some 1930s instructional manual on how to fit one’s life into a pre-set box, but it is exactly those rigid structures which Ernst Lubitsch shuns in his polyamorous rotating of two men around a single woman, playing out unconventional character dynamics that are as honest as they are comical.
With extensive historical research backing up his authentic vernacular and bleak visual design, Robert Eggers instils a strangely antiquated sort of realism into The Witch, unfolding the disintegration of an exiled Pilgrim family in a colonial American folktale of horrific supernatural occurrences.
Joachim Trier lets the creative sparks of two young aspiring authors enthusiastically fizzle all through Reprise, tantalising us with vivacious Truffautian editing constantly leaping beyond the immediate narrative, and weaving in novelistic qualities that seek to understand his characters the way they might ultimately one day write about themselves.
Abbas Kiarostami’s sleight of hand in Certified Copy is tremendously subtle, quietly swapping out key details of two strangers’ friendly, sparring relationship until they become something else entirely, and confounding us with a metaphysical shift in reality that ponders how authenticity can be drawn from emotional expressions and artefacts that aren’t truly original.
The dramatic interactions between a lonely hitman and an orphaned girl in Léon: The Professional are equal parts thrilling, heartfelt, and thorny, as in her bitter pursuit of vengeance Luc Besson also seeks to resolve the question – what does it take for a man who surrounds him with death to develop a taste for life?
Even after the explosions of violence in La Haine’s riots and beatings, resentment continues to simmer between the police and immigrants of Paris’ outer suburbs, fizzling with an indignant anger infused right into Mathieu Kassovitz’s aggressive cinematic style and forming a monochrome portrait of aching social realism around three disillusioned youths.
