Capone's Art-House Round-Up with VICTORIA, LOVE, I SMILE BACK and RADICAL GRACE!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


VICTORIA
It's no accident that when the end credits for German actor-turned-director Sebastian Schipper's VICTORIA begin, the first name to pop up after the film fades out is not that of the filmmaker, but that of cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, who somehow manages to pull off the no-longer-impossible: the entire movie consists of one, unbroken shot for roughly two hours and 15 minutes. And don't think for a second that the screenplay by Schipper, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, and Eike Frederik Schulz (although the specific dialogue is largely improvised) makes it easy on the cameraman to keep up with his subjects, who are nearly always moving, talking, running, getting chased, dancing and driving.

It's impossible to fathom how many times this film was shot or how infuriating it must have been when someone flubbed a line or missed a mark after an hour and a half. These thoughts will cross your mind for maybe the first 30 minutes, at which point you'll absolutely lose yourself in the gripping, real-time events in the heart of late night Berlin.

Spanish actress Laia Costa plays the titular character, a young woman living temporarily in Berlin—her German is not good and she spends a great deal of the film speaking in broken English. We meet her in a club, dancing alone, but ready to end her night out when she meets four young German men, one of whom—Sonne (Frederick Lau)—is flirting with her with some degree of success. While it may not seem the safest of ideas for a young woman to run around Berlin with four strangers, they seem harmless enough (at least with regards to her), and they race around the streets, drinking, getting to know each other and becoming friends.

The first hour of the film plays almost like a BEFORE SUNRISE-style romance between Victoria and Sonne, who eventually end up alone in the café in which she works and is scheduled to open in a couple hours, apparently on no sleep. But before anything touchy-feely happens, his three friends reappear having gotten a call from an acquaintance about a mysterious job that requires four people to carry out. With one of the four too drunk to function, Victoria volunteers to drive, into what, she isn't quite sure. And considering Sonne's friends have names like Boxer and Blinker, you know nothing good is about to happen.

Since it's essentially told from Victoria's perspective (she's rarely off screen), we get a sense that this is her adventure. She never truly thinks she's in any danger—partly because she doesn't understand German—until she actually having her life threatened by a random gangster and former prison friend of Boxer, who is paying back a protection debt by agreeing to pull off a bank robbery just as the employees are coming to work. Victoria is so game to do just about anything, that even audience members will feel the same false sense of confidence that she has that nothing truly awful will happen. But there are small clues scattered throughout the film—including a moment set at a piano—that indicate Victoria is running away from something in her native Madrid, and she's not quite sure (or perhaps doesn't care) where her life is headed—the perfect formula for reckless behavior.

One element that adds to the momentum and immediacy of VICTORIA is that it feels like it's always in motion, even when the characters are chilling on a roof drinking beer or otherwise being still. Shot across more than 20 locations (including a return to the club from the opening that sees the characters in a wildly different state of mind) but denying himself the luxury of editing, director Schipper has carefully crafted the flow of his narrative so that there is almost zero lag time between set pieces. Combined with an often pulsating, hypnotic score from Nils Frahm, the movie feels like it's breathing in our ear and that we share a heartbeat with the characters.

Watching a film dedicated to keeping things organic and special effects free, I'm still trying to figure out how the camera operator fit into the many cars VICTORIA squeezes us into, seemingly entering from the back seat but positioning himself in the dead center of the car so he can see all four seats by rotating slightly. But the film is far from just at technical masterpiece; it's a vital, aggressive beast that isn't afraid to leave its emotional edges exposed, allowing us to actually care about the fate of these characters. Imagine that.


LOVE
I'm a great admirer of the films of Gasper Noe, although most of them feel like he's hit you over the head with a sledgehammer to make a fairly obvious point. Still, the messages and themes of his works always resonate and stick with me long after I've seen them. I'm fairly certain that my brain and/or senses were damaged by some aspects of I STAND ALONE, IRREVERSIBLE, and ENTER THE VOID. His latest work is titled LOVE, and his approach, much like the title, is simple. Although it has been heralded as art-house porn, there's a great deal more going on here than simply explicit sex. LOVE is actually a tale of pure heartbreak after a whirlwind, passionate relationship between two 20-somethings seen and considered after the fact, which by no means diminishes the impact and residual pain of the male half of the pairing, Murphy (Karl Glusman).

Murphy is an American living in Paris, studying to become a filmmaker. As the movie opens, he and his new wife Omi (Klara Kristin) are awoken by a phone call, the voicemail from which Murphy eventually listens to, discovering it's from the mother of his ex-girlfriend Electra (Aomi Muyock), who has been missing for many weeks, and her mother is desperate for information. Murphy is clearly shaken by the news, although we're not entirely sure why. We also discover early on that Murphy and Omi have a two-year-old child who was something of an accident, but they appear to have made the best of it.

At the first moment Murphy is alone in the apartment, he begins to remember (not necessarily in chronological order) the events of his time with the French Electra, from their meeting to the painful reasons their affair ended, and all the sex and drugs in between. LOVE is an exercise is capturing the raging, burning heat of young love/lust/passion/rage—it all blurs together for Noe, and it feels pretty much on the money. The film is most reminded me of was Michael Winterbottom's 9 SONGS, which also featured graphic sex, interspersed with the couple at various concerts. And I guess in many ways, that defines young love—an almost constant soundtrack, punctuated by bouts of athletic sex.

The couple in LOVE is clearly the end-all connection of his life, even though he's a bit of meathead who barely hesitates when given the chance to cheat on Electra with a cute young neighbor. Electra is a would-be artist, with precarious ties in the art world, a place where Murphy never quite feels at home and is convinced that everyone wants to sleep with Electra. The film is a collection of tender moments and near-violent arguments that show us the chasms in their relationships long before they break up for good. And while LOVE does feature its fair share of fully nude, fully engorged bodies, there are also quite a few lower-key love scenes that don't insist on getting graphic.

Although he often takes the loud, painful way to get there, Noe's brand of storytelling often gets at the heart of his characters in unexpectedly moving ways. Here, the methods are perhaps his most conventional, but no less penetrating and revealing. The emotional core of his characters and their heightened awareness (they do a lot of drugs) is so exposed as to cause them a great deal of agonizing pain, but when they click, it's a tremendous buzz.

LOVE was shot in 3-D, but is mostly playing in 2-D across the country, and that's how I saw it. It's pretty easy to tell which scenes would have been particularly amusing with third-dimension, but let's just say, I don't need that in my face any more than 2-D provides, thank you. LOVE is skillfully crafted, lushly lit and photographed, and gets to the heart of the tumultuous ride that is young people with feelings for each other, and it's an experience I enjoyed reliving.


I SMILE BACK
When we meet Laney Brooks (Sarah Silverman) at the top of the addiction/depression drama I SMILE BACK, she's already deep into her issues with substance abuse and sleeping with men other than her husband, in this case the husband (Thomas Sadoski) of a family friend. To drive us more into the realm of being shocked by Laney's behavior, we find out she's married to Bruce (Josh Charles) with two young children. Based on the novel by Amy Koppelman (who also adapted with Paige Dylan), the film paints Bruce as a bit of a self-help douche bag, which I suppose is designed to make us think initially that Laney's behavior is a product of her home life. But before long, we learn that Laney is clinically depressed and numbing her pain with the tools at her disposal, the ones she knows best.

I SMILE BACK is not a great movie on the subject of depression or addiction—it oversimplifies, deals less with the root causes and more with the consequences (in this case, a broken family)—but regardless of what your reaction to the film is, the sheer dramatic perfection of Silverman's performance is impossible to deny. She reaches deep and places her heart and raw nerves on full display for Laney to stomp on, if she sees fit. All traces of the great comic stage performer are gone; Silverman's bag of tricks is empty, replaced by a stunning stand-alone accomplishment. Laney cares so little about what anyone (including the audience) thinks about her that she masturbates with her daughter's stuffed animal. It looks funny to see it typed out, but it plays out as pure, fearless tragedy.

Directed by Adam Salky (Dare), the movie makes it incredibly clear that it doesn't expect you to like Laney and her decisions or means of coping with depression, but it wants desperately for you to understand her to a degree. I SMILE BACK manages that about 50 percent of the time. By film's end, there's a half-hearted attempt on Laney's part to get her life and family back together, but by then, it may be too late and the damage may be permanent.

The scenes of Laney's domestic life are quaint, a bit cliché, and never quite pop off the screen with the aftermath of her behavior the way you wish they would. While the sequences involving her self-destructive behavior are made to feel illicit, with a strange but interesting sense of titillation and revulsion. I wish the rest of the I SMILE BACK were that interesting, but it's certainly worth seeking out for Silverman's gripping work.


RADICAL GRACE
One of my favorite documentaries from last month's Chicago International Film Festival was RADICAL GRACE, wonderful work from first-time director Rebecca Parrish about a group of American Catholic nuns who have paved a bold course by backing feminist and social activist causes using grassroots methods, all the while really upsetting the centuries-long status quo of the Vatican. The nuns were such upstarts that the Church placed them under censure and investigation until it could be determined whether they were in line enough with the Vatican to stay a part of their order.

The film focuses on three particular nuns, who campaigned hard for the Affordable Care Act, and when the general public found out that their future as nuns was threatened, they received overwhelming support. Gone are the habits and other drab garments that we associate with nuns. Their weapons of choice are personality and a strong sense of right and wrong, dignity and grace, especially when it comes to women's rights. And with each new warning from the Vatican, the belief on their part that Jesus would back their causes grows stronger.

Just when they become convinced that their days as nuns is limited, the unexpected resignation of the highly conservative Pope Benedict XVI and eventual selection of the seemingly understanding Pope Francis gives the nuns hope that they may continue their important work. The nuns, all of whom are fairly old, make it clear that if they are stripped of their titles, they will still rage on as social justice warriors. The nuns make important spiritual journeys that double as means to get their messages out and drum up support.

RADICAL GRACE is a remarkable profile in courage and kindness, and points out to church-going folks (and everyone else) that being religious or spiritual is not just about agreeing with like-minded types with a political agenda; it's meant to be about looking out for those being oppressed or who are otherwise suffering. The nuns featured in this film are a special type of hero, and trust me when I say, you want them on your side.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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