A Brazilian film about a family of women marooned in the desert is both moving and profound. Elsewhere, a split-screen romantic drama and Band of Horses offer pleasant late-summer surprises.
I know that recommending foreign-language movies can be a risky endeavor: You’re asking people to sit and read subtitles for two hours. But with The House of Sand, that isn’t so much of a problem – some of its finest moments are practically wordless.
The House of Sand (Sony Pictures Classics)
Folk tales have an ancient but also corny quality to them – the stories are so simplistic and the morals are so obvious that while they may work well on children, they don’t have much resonance for any one else. Then there is director Andrucha Waddington’s parable about three generations of women left to survive in the harsh Brazilian desert – a folk tale not handed down from our elders but newly minted, one that manages to encompass the stages of most anyone’s life while also rendering an ironic history of the last century.
Any filmmaker can shoot sand dunes under a cloudless sky and seem like a visionary, but Waddington transforms the desert into an endless purgatory, a place beyond time, and also a beautifully unforgiving metaphor for the entirety of a person’s time on Earth – a constant cauldron of the desires, fears and compromises that make up existence. Even better, these revelations present themselves slowly and subtly into a very stirring story of survival and abandonment – only near the end does Waddington’s whole intention present itself in the film’s poignant, brilliant epilogue.
Some may find The House of Sand too much of an allegorical slog; others may be thrown by actresses Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres’ multi-character portrayals as one generation gives way to the next. But no film since Yi Yi has had so much to say about the interconnection of family members or has so wisely recognized that we are mere parts of a larger collective of genetically linked individuals forging forward through time.
I’m not saying The House of Sand is perfect. But its emotional honesty and thematic audacity override any momentary slow stretches. It is utterly stunning.
Conversations With Other Women (Fabrication Films)
Gimmicks are desperate ideas masquerading as creative ingenuity. By comparison, director Hans Canosa and writer Gabrielle Zevin reinvigorate the confessional romantic drama with a very intriguing idea.
This tale of a flirting, verbally jousting pair of lonely people (Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter) negotiating a hookup during the waning moments of a wedding reception is divided into two frames on the screen. (One camera is assigned to each actor.) The split-screen technique has several intriguingly juxtaposing advantages: Its novelty gives the audience the same sort of electric charge one gets from a random meeting with an attractive stranger, but at the same time the distance between those two screens – and, by extension, the two actors – magnifies the isolation every person feels from every one else, even those we’re trying to take to bed. Plus, by supplementing the images with alternate reactions from the characters as well as their individual flashbacks, we get a more lifelike presentation of how a conversation between two people works – how the actual exchanges are merely the surface covering other emotional and mental layers going on underneath.
Eventually, the novelty of the potential hookup wears off, and the movie bogs down in a series of recriminations and soul-baring monologues we’ve seen in a thousand nights at the legitimate theater. But, all in all, Conversations With Other Women is a more engaging one-night stand than most of us have known in our real life.
Scoop (Focus Features)
What is supposed to be an unmitigated disaster is, in fact, a charming minor work, and I think a lot of the credit go to our two leads. Scarlett Johansson, the moody ingénue of the early 21st century, has fun playing light – watch how she doesn’t just become another Woody sound-alike, finding a sexy playfulness she’s never before exhibited. And, yes, there is Mr. Allen, also quite good. While others will lament his return to a starring role in one of his movies, this performance, as with his in Anything Else, shows a much different twist on the Woody screen persona. No longer unquestionably lovable, no longer the romantic foil to some beautiful woman, he’s feeling his age, letting his younger costars carry the movie. I didn’t say he was no longer funny, though – not since Small Time Crooks has he been this consistently gut-busting. I think it’s because he knows his place now – marginal but still pleasurable.
Quinceañera (Sony Pictures Classics)
Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have made a charming, low-budget look at Echo Park, a slice of Los Angeles most of us think of as the area we speed past to get to Dodger Stadium. There are characters in it, too, but while I was engaged in their lives, they do feel slightly familiar – their battles with love, religion and family have a universal, hey-we’re-all-the-same-people tone to it, as if the filmmakers wanted to make a Joy Luck Club for Latinos. If that sounds glib or harsh, it’s just my way of suggesting that Glatzer and Westmoreland are stronger at studying this particular melting pot as gentrification dulls its distinctive edges – the characters serve that story more than they emerge as resonant individuals in their own right.
Miami Vice (Universal Pictures)
While I don’t quite love Michael Mann’s movies – with the exception of The Insider, the only time he hasn’t let his it’s-a-man’s-world swagger get in the way of the story – I do find myself eagerly anticipating them. They don’t just have a look and a feel – they are a world to themselves, sleek and stunning and burning with atmosphere. So if Miami Vice is the most prototypical Mann movie ever, that’s a very cool thing and a very limiting thing as well, for as much as I loved every second of what I was watching I couldn’t have cared less about who I was following or what was happening. Mann’s so good at the details he fusses over that he develops horse blinders – someone assign him a writer sharp enough to bring the human element up to the same level.
Band of Horses, Everything All the Time (Sub Pop)
"Is this My Morning Jacket?" my wife asked me when she came into the room, and while I’m sure many have made the same comparison, it struck me as a fresh revelation. Where Jim James is all cosmic reverb, downcast and hippie to his bones, this duo has a warmer palette and a more straight-ahead approach. Ben Bridwell’s voice doesn’t have any mystic in it – he’s your drinking buddy from start to finish, whether decrying the evils of Hollywood (which proves he’s indie) or admiring "The Great Salt Lake" (which proves he’s a happy human being and therefore not that indie at all). Modest aspirations wrapped in magisterial guitar – a perfect recipe for a charming underdog worth telling everyone about.
Third Eye Blind, A Collection (Rhino)
Once the jokes about being the ex of the pre-famous Charlize Theron are exhausted, what more is there to say about Stephan Jenkins? Not much, except that his disposable post-grunge ‘90s band were far from the most offensive of their ilk – and while I never cared for "Semi-Charmed Life," I was impressed how many of their other hits still stood up straight and tall on this sum-up. Jenkins was just one more educated guy who took out his insecurities about girls on the pop world, but he and his band had the hooks to make those girls sing along. I suppose this means that Third Eye Blind were ultimately an underrated anonymous mainstream rock band – damning with faint praise, you might say. But keep your expectations low, don’t think too hard about what you’re listening to, and you’ll experience a series of mostly small surprises.
Gomez, "How We Operate" (from How We Operate, ATO Records)
Apocalyptic dread dolled up with a catchy riff. Boy and girl working out their problems with an indie kid’s sense of dramatic license. He tries to get her to see things his way before he realizes that will never work and then develops the proper empathy to see her position. I’ve always enjoyed songs where a couple’s problems seem both resolved and left dangling as the track fades out – anybody in a real relationship knows that’s the way it actually works.
Consumables is a biweekly overview of popular culture.
