Thoughts on Victims of Sin/Víctimas del pecado

    On Criterion, I watched the 1951 Mexican musical melodrama/crime film Victims of Sin, or Víctimas del pecado, directed by Emilio Fernández, co-written by Fernández and Mauricio Magdaleno, and starring the Cuban-Mexican icon Ninón Sevilla as Violeta, a popular dancer at a nightclub in Mexico City run by the ruthless and maniacal gangster Rodolfo (Rodolfo Acosta). At the club, Rodolfo refuses to acknowledge paternity of a baby boy by one of the dancers, Rosa (Margarita Ceballos), and forces Rosa to choose him over the baby, pressuring her to put the baby in a trash can. Violeta rescues the baby, and, with the help of neighborhood women and her own fight to survive as she goes from dancing in the club to doing sex work on the street, that she has tenacity and toughness and won't let anyone hurt the baby or break her spirit.

    When Violeta dances at the club, Sevilla is riveting to watch, dancing with a mix of sensuality and athleticism and a lust for life. She knows she is in a patriarchal society that she has to literally fight against, standing up to brute men who demand that women know their place, and takes a huge risk in taking care of the baby, earlier stating that they as poor dancers "don't have the right to have children." Her dancing is stunning to watch, with way more abandon than in a usual Hollywood musical, and the climatic dance is when she finds her way to the nightclub La Maquina Loca, doing an impromptu audition to prove her dancing skills to get out of sex work, and she performs as a rumbera to Cuban music, and she reaches an emotional peak of her character truly having her happy joie de vivre as a dancer, finding power within herself, and doing a fun call-and-response dance with a drummer who joins in on the dance floor. It's a truly spectacular scene to behold.

    The film is a fantastic mix of musical moments, including songs with sexual innuendo sung in a flirty manner, soap opera melodrama, and film noir, with gorgeous black and white cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa, considered one of the greatest cinematographers in Mexican cinema. There is an excellent scene where, when Rodolfo is slapping and hurting Violeta, a whole lineup of fellow sex workers swarm in to protect her by pulling Rodolfo off of her and beating on him, it's glorious to watch.

 I had heard of the film through the YouTube channel Be Kind Rewind, highlighting Sevilla's performances in her annual Twelve Days of Actress video to celebrate female actors' performances in films across genres and cultures, and I'm really happy I took her recommendation to watch this film.

Thoughts on Nightbitch

    On Hulu, I watched the 2024 black comedy written and directed by Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), based on the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder. The film stars Amy Adams as a former artist and current stay-at-home mother simply known as "Mother," who is struggling with feeling stifled at home taking care of her toddler son while her husband is busy at work, essentially making her feel like a single parent. 

    She keeps a polite smile when talking to others, while having fantasies about wanting to vent about her frustrations at putting her career on hold for motherhood and feeling like she is losing her sense of self. She goes to a library event for mothers and toddlers, for the kids to listen to a children's music performer play, and is initially resistant when the other moms are trying to bond with her, wanting to have normal conversations with other adults outside of being stay-at-home moms.

    Her husband (Scoot McNairy), just known as Husband (the child is known as Son or Baby) is glaringly oblivious to her struggles, thinking she's having fun being at home and playing with the baby all day, not realizing the toll it's taking on her to be alone with their child all day, with his dependence on her. The child refuses to sleep by himself, and will keep her up when she is trying to read him to bed, and she blames herself for not following a sleep cycle idea for him when he was a baby, thinking she screwed him up.

    The story takes a magical realism turn where Mother finds strange new developments on her body, like a patch of white fur on her back, pulling out a tail through a pustule boil on her lower back, and growing two rows of eight nipples on her torso. And that local dogs are attracted to her, coming up to her in the park and at her front door. She realizes that she is turning into a dog, and at night, she transforms into a dog, racing around her neighborhood, and feeling more free as a dog. As a person, she has heightened senses, bonds with her son more by pretending he is her puppy, and feeling a renewed sense of life with her dog spirit. 

    She learns more by going to the library and checking out books recommended by the librarian (Jessica Harper of Suspiria and Shock Treatment fame), researching cultural myths and of animal spirits and transformations in women to understand the change in her. Harper as the librarian has this mystery to her that makes her feel more understanding of Mother's position in life, and she brings this quiet and eccentric grace to her role.

    The film is interesting when tackling how a woman could feel isolated and lonely as a stay-at-home mom, especially with husbands who only want the fun parts of parenting and don't know the day-to-day routines of childcare. And it has a lot of great needle drops that is influenced by Heller being a Gen-X director, like Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid," songs by the Cocteau Twins and Joanna Newsom. 

    I wasn't as interested when the film would try to make it more about female empowerment in a way that felt cliched, or how her resolution with her marital issues felt too pat and like her husband still wasn't going to be emotionally there for her. I liked it more leaning into the dark satire and weirdness, not trying to have a wrapped-up happy ending that felt too "nice" for me. And as this film's plot reminded me a lot of Marianna Palka's 2017 film Bitch, where a similarly-frustrated SAHM starts acting like a dog as a nervous breakdown reaction, I felt Rachel Yoder may have taken some inspiration from that and made the protagonist turn into a literal dog. 

    It's a decent movie at just over 90 minutes, that likely could have gone weirder and darker (though I was annoyed at a scene of implied animal abuse, though nothing was shown graphically), but it's always great to see Amy Adams onscreen, and I liked that Heller took on this film as a comment about motherhood and artistic expression and feminism.

Thoughts on Nosferatu (2024)

 Yesterday I went to see Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu with my friend Chris at the Alamo Drafthouse in Lower Manhattan, and really liked it a lot. It’s moody, atmospheric Victorian Gothic horror, with the psychosexual stuff is more text than subtext, and while I was mixed on Lily-Rose Depp’s performance, picturing Olivia Cooke in her place for a better actor, I still liked how the film was about her childhood trauma being haunted by the vampire, both being repulsed by it while not wanting to admit that a small part of her craves his demon touch. It’s more interesting to play it that way, and I liked how the film could get macabre with squishy gore effects (anyone who saw Robert Eggers’ other films can know what to expect with use of animals as harbingers of doom), while being darkly funny with Willem Dafoe’s occultist character Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, based on Abraham van Helsing.

    I had seen the silent film as a teen, and would make comparisons with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Coppola film version from 1992, like with the Renfield character (renamed Herr Knock, portrayed by Simon McBurney) or Thomas and Ellen as the Jonathan and Mina Harker characters.

    I just saw the film, so it hasn’t marinated in my brain for too long to make a better review, but I did like it as a spooky and layered film, and it was fun seeing Chris and catching up as fellow film nerds.

Thoughts on Requiem

    On YouTube, I watched an upload of a 2006 German film titled Requiem, directed by Hans-Christian Schmid, and starring Sandra Hüller in her feature film debut in a film based on the life of Annaliese Michel, German woman who was allegedly possessed by six or more demons and died in 1976 of malnutrition, abused by her family and priests through forced exorcisms.

    The film centers on Michaela (Hüller) a 21-year old woman in 1970s Germany who wants to study pedagogy in college to become a teacher, but her deeply Catholic mother is against it because Michaela lost a year of schooling due to a health issue. She goes to college anyway, makes a best friend with a finger classmate and has her first boyfriend, but is struggling with mental health issues, and secretly has epilepsy, but doesn’t want her parents to find out. She is caught between confusions with her religious faith, hearing voices in her head, and thinking she is possessed by demons, in part by a young priest planting the idea in her head.

    I like how the film doesn’t play like a thriller or a horror film, but feels more like a quiet character study, and Hüller feels so natural in the part, being 28 at the time but able to play a younger, vulnerable woman caught in between her mother’s possessiveness and her need to be an independent adult. I heard of the film through Be Kind Rewind’s recommendations of notable actress performances, and really liked this film for its documentary-style filmmaking and her performance.

Thoughts on Hale County This Morning, This Evening

    I watched RaMell Ross' 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, and really liked it. It was Oscar nominated, and it is centered on Black families in Hale County, Alabama. Ross had moved to Alabama in 2009 to coach high school basketball and teach in a youth program, and was already trained as a photographer and filmmaker, and he made a really interesting documentary with no narration, no music soundtrack, with natural interviews that don’t feel like sit-down confessionals, and brief intertitles between scenes. It’s a very intimate and personal film, very much of the time, as a teen boy named his baby son Kyrie, likely after the NBA player Kyrie Irving.

    I had just seen a Criterion Closet video with Ross, as he directed the new film Nickel Boys, adapted from Colson Whitehead’s novel, and hasn’t heard of him before. This came up on my weekly newsletter from Le Cinéma Club, which uploads one movie at a time weekly, usually short films. This is 76 minutes long, and can be seen until Friday at https://www.lecinemaclub.com/.../hale-county-this.../

Thoughts on Dream for an Insomniac

     On Tubi, I watched the 1996 indie romantic comedy Dream for an Insomniac, written and directed by novelist, filmmaker, and founder of indie record label Bright Antenna Tiffanie DeBartolo. The film starred Ione Skye, Mackenzie Astin, and Jennifer Aniston, and is largely set in a family-run coffee shop in San Francisco, called Cafe Blue Eyes, run by Leo (Seymour Cassel), named in honor of his friendship with Frank Sinatra. The film centers on Frankie (Skye), an aspiring actress who lives above the coffeeshop and is close with her cousin Rob (Michael Landes), and they both work at the coffeeshop. Frankie has struggled with insomnia ever since her parents' death in a car accident during her childhood. She sees the world in black and white, as does the audience. until she meets the new barista at her job, David (Astin), and her world switches to vivid color (a la The Wizard of Oz) as they begin a romance and recite poetry to each other.

    Rob is gay, and isn't ready to come out to his father yet, so he has his friend Allison (Aniston), also an actress, pretend to be his girlfriend, and she plays around with French, American Southern, and Irish accents as practice for acting. This came out at the height of Aniston's fame with Friends, and the beginning of her run in romantic comedies, appearing in She's the One the same year, and she would be in other 90s romantic comedies like Picture Perfect and The Object of my Affection. She's fun and breezy in this movie, and her star power makes it feel like she shouldn't just be the best friend in this film, like she was already too famous for that by the time this film came out.

    The film is a snapshot of the mid-90's indie scene in romantic comedies, with young city people hanging out in coffeeshops, gay friend characters but not the main leads yet, jazzy score, and alternative and indie rock songs, like the eels' "Novocaine for the Soul" opening the film.

    Mackenzie Astin is alright in the film, but I felt like he was overshadowed by the other stars, and I kept picturing James LeGros in his role, as he has had more charisma and more of a history in independent films of the 1980s and 1990s.

    Ione Skye is fun and quirky and cute to watch in the movie, coming off more like a relatable city friend who is stylish and hip and pretty, and it is a difference seeing her starring in this romantic comedy to being in best friend roles later in her career in the 2004 remake of Fever Pitch as Drew Barrymore's friend.

    It's a nice movie, not too memorable beyond the title, sort of trying to be artsy but still staying pretty conventional to the times.