Wicker
When the marketing strategy for your film is "the movie where a menopausal woman gets absolutely railed by a wicker basket", will any moviegoers take your film seriously? I sure hope so, because Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson's Wicker is a lovely, kooky, horny fable and is so much more than a woman of a certain age (Olivia Colman) getting her brains fucked out by a man made of wicker (Alexander Skarsgard)...although that does, of course, happen.
Set in a faraway land (vaguely European) a long time ago (vaguely 17th century), Wicker follows the lives of the residents of a coastal village. No one in this film has a name--they are called by their occupations or by the occupations of their fathers or husbands (example, Elizabeth Debicki plays the regal, snobbish "Tailor's Wife"; Peter Dinklage plays "Basket Maker", etc).
Colman plays "the Fisherwoman", an unmarried woman who lives alone and fishes for a living. She is mocked for her fishy smell and the fact that she is unmarried. After the latest wedding among the townsfolk, the Fisherwoman goes to see the Basket Maker and asks that he make her a husband. A what a husband he makes her! The Wicker Husband, as he is soon to be called, is handsome, tall, kind, anatomically correct, and helpful. The Fisherwoman finds bliss, sexual and otherwise, with her Wicker Husband.
But soon, the bafflement and disgust of the townswomen turn to jealousy when they see how helpful the Wicker Husband is around the house and how freely and openly he loves his Fisherwoman wife. They begin to nag their husbands that they should be more like the Wicker Husband. The husbands become angry that a man made of wicker is seen as the pinnacle of manhood in the village and that they look like lazy bums in comparison. Additionally, the seeds of jealousy are planted in the Fisherwoman's mind by toxic gossip from the Tailor's Wife. She begins to wonder if her virile Wicker Husband is fucking the women of the village.
There are many simple morals in this fable: not letting other people's jealousy or lack of understanding come between you and your happiness; the importance of egalitarianism in a relationship; the fact that some people need a scapegoat in their lives to feel superior to. But just because these morals are simple doesn't mean they don't bear repeating. The joke of Wicker is that despite the absurdity of the premise and the fictional world in which it is set, we can all probably relate to one--or many--of the characters. I could relate to the Fisherwoman's lack of trust after being teased, and I could also relate to the jealousy of the village women and the insecurity of the village men. Fables are so powerful because they speak to universal feelings and truths. Wicker is a fairytale for adults and worth seeing.
Grade: A-
***
Don't Look Now
Don't Look Now, a supernatural and psychological thriller starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, certainly has a reputation. I've always heard two things about it: 1) it's an excellent horror film and 2) it has a super long and explicit sex scene. I can now report that one of these is true!
Following the accidental death of their young daughter, John Baxter (Sutherland) and his wife Laura (Christie) travel to Venice for John's work restoring a church. The couple are still processing their grief when Laura meets two elderly sisters, Heather (Hilary Mason) and Wendy (Clelia Matania). Heather is blind and claims to be able to psychically "see" Christine, the Baxter's deceased daughter. Heather tells Laura that Christine is happy and Laura is overcome with emotion and feels joy and hope for the first time since her daughter's death.
Without going into the entire plot, Laura spends more time with the sisters, with the goal of communicating with Christine, while John is skeptical and even disturbed by his wife's behavior. However, he keeps seeing a mysterious figure in a red raincoat--just like the one his daughter was wearing when she died. Is John seeing Christine too?
I hate to say it, but Don't Look Now is pretty boring. After all the hype, I expected it to be scarier or at least more interesting than it was, but it's kind of a dull, slow burn. There is definitely an eerie quality to it, but I was just so, so tempted to play on my phone while watching it, which is always a bad sign.
The sex scene, however, lives up to its reputation (at least in length). 👀
Grade: C+
***
Between the Temples
Here's another movie I wanted to like more than I actually did! Directed by Nate Silver, Between the Temples follows Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman), a cantor grieving the death of his wife. After a long sabbatical, he returns to his position at Temple Sinai, but cannot sing. It's less of a physical issue and more of a mental block. It doesn't help that his moms, Judith (Dolly de Leon) and Meira (Caroline Aaron), are trying to set him up on dates that he's obviously not ready for.
Enter Carol Kressler (Carol Kane), an older, vibrant woman who helps Ben after he gets in a bar fight. While talking, the two discover they already know each other: Carol was Ben's music teacher in elementary school. When Carol finds out that Ben teaches classes to prepare students for their bar and bat mitzvahs, she shows up, saying that she never had a bat mitzvah as a girl and wants to have one now.
Ben initially refuses, but Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel) pulls rank and says it's ok. As Ben helps Carol prepare for her bat mitzvah, the two grow close and Ben actually feels something like happiness for the first time since his wife passed.
Between the Temples has been compared to Harold and Maude for obvious reasons and, sure, it's about a friendship between a whimsical older woman and morose younger man, but this movie felt a bit more grounded. The film suggests the possibility of romance, but doesn't go all the way there. Instead, it's more about Ben processing these intense feelings of coming alive again after so much pain and grief--and identifying those feelings as "love" for Carol. The film is gentle and gracious enough not to make Ben the butt of the joke. He does love Carol, and Carol loves him, albeit perhaps not in a romantic way. But the two find something in each other that they needed, despite the disapproval of their family members (the film has an epically cringe dinner scene where Ben airs his feelings for Carol to everyone--including the Rabbi--during the Shabbat meal)
My main issue with Between the Temples is the chaotic editing and camerawork, which almost made me a bit motion sick (lots of handheld cameras and quick zooming in and out...like The Office and similar TV shows), as well as the twee humor, which made the film feel retro. Like it should have come out in 2006. There's a lot of "people behaving in cute/weird ways that people don't actually behave like in real life" here, and I wasn't expecting that.
That said, the cast is great and the chemistry between Schwartzman and Kane is wonderful--they're so comfortable with one another. Between the Temples is a heartfelt film with a lot to love about it. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but I would definitely recommend others check it out!
Grade: B
***
Night Nurse
An intriguing premise utterly ruined by a slow and boring pace. Night Nurse follows Eleni (Cemre Paksoy), a young woman working as, you guessed it, a night nurse at an upscale retirement community for wealthy elderly folks. She is assigned to work with Douglas (Bruce McKenzie), a man suffering from dementia.
She realizes that Douglas and his day nurse, Mona (Eleonore Hendricks), are running a scam where Mona calls elderly men and pretends to be their granddaughter and in need of money for bail. When these vulnerable men drop cash in pre-arranged locations, Mona and Douglas split the money. Eleni gets in on the scam and Douglas guides her through making the calls, which involve a lot of breathless "Grandpa, I need you! I need your help!" while Douglas strokes Eleni's luscious curves.
Something tells me that this Douglas guy doesn't actually have dementia.
I like a gross, sleazy movie, but I can't abide by a boring one...and Night Nurse is BOR. RING. The pace is glacial and nothing really happens. I'm not a huge fan of seeing young women with significantly older men (Douglas is older enough to be Eleni's grandfather), so this was not an erotic movie for me at all. Which would be ok if it was thrilling in any other way, but it's not. The main musical theme is pretty good, and there was one scene that was actually kind of emotional, but other than that Night Nurse made my eyes glaze over.
Grade: D+
***
The Seventh Victim
This 1943 horror film concerns a young woman, Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter), who leaves boarding school in search of her sister, Jacqueline (Jean Brooks), who has gone missing. In her search, Mary talks to Jacqueline's business partner, Esther Redi, who claims that Jacqueline sold her cosmetics business to Esther and then disappeared. Mary also meets Jacqueline's husband, Gregory, who has no idea where Jacqueline is (and, grossly enough, "falls in love" with Mary).
All of the sleuthing leads Mary to discover that Jacqueline fell in with a group of devil worshipers who are now encouraging Jacqueline to kill herself since she revealed their existence to her doctor. The Seventh Victim feels very 1940s in its portrayal of so-called devil worshippers. We learn nothing about their beliefs other than the fact that they believe in "nonviolence" (this is why they are pressuring Jacqueline to commit suicide rather than kill her themselves). No rituals, no sacrifices, no weird orgies? What kind of lame satanists are these folks!?
There's one aspect about The Seventh Victim that doesn't "feel 1940s", and that's the film's nihilism and exploration of suicidal ideation. Jacqueline is described as someone who thinks and talks about killing herself a lot, aka a person with suicidal ideation. This is treated in 1940s fashion as a sort of curiosity or strange philosophy of life rather than a symptom of depression. But the film does feel very dark for its time period (then again, there were a lot of film noirs in the 40s, so maybe I just haven't seen enough films of that period to compare).
Regardless, The Seventh Victim was good, but not great, which is what I felt about Cat People--another film produced by Val Lewton that feels in conversation with this one.
Grade: B-
***
Don't worry, I also re-watched a ton of scary movies in celebration of Halloween!
The Thing: A
Freaks: A
The Others: A-
Pet Sematary: A-
Sleepy Hollow: B
