Suspenseful, subversive ‘Blue Velvet’ continues to beguile

December 15, 2011 by

Blue Velvet/1986/MGM/120 min.

David Lynch

In “Blue Velvet,” writer/director David Lynch dazzles and disturbs us as he probes the evil beneath the surface of sunny small-town Americana. Twenty-five years later, its trippy shimmer has not dimmed, reminding us of Lynch’s auteur power. (The film was released last month on Blu-ray.)

Setting the action in Lumberton, N.C., a real-life city with a retro vibe, Lynch introduces us to Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a college student with an Eagle scout vibe. Jeffrey stumbles into a sordid mystery when he discovers a human ear lying in a field.

As he investigates, he’s aided by cute, cheerful Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), who is also the police chief’s daughter, always a plus when you’re short on clues. Jeffrey quickly finds that the bloody trail of badness traces back to Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychotic abuser you’ll never forget.

Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern

Top on Frank’s list of victims is a sad and broken nightclub singer named Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who sees death as her salvation. As Jeffery is pulled into Frank’s world, he finds himself falling for both Dorothy and Sandy, slowly spiraling until he meets the ugliest side of his soul.

The nightmarish world of “Blue Velvet” is a perfect melding of sly, suspenseful tone, subversive storytelling and marvelous, beguiling images that only painter-turned-filmmaker Lynch could concoct. There is baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. There are also curtains, stages, disguises, halting juxtapositions.

Jeffrey finds the rank, insect-infested ear just seconds after a beautiful shot of brilliant color – red roses, a white fence, pure blue sky. Savage violence co-exists with moments of buoyant charm. (Compare the slow-motion shots of friendly firemen waving at us with Dorothy’s unrelenting degradation.) Lynch ferrets out the good guys’ guilty secrets and furnishes warped humor – such as the camp comic relief from Frank’s bisexual friends, including a twisted impresario played by Dean Stockwell.

The performances are particularly haunting. Fresh out of rehab, Hopper shrewdly saw that the role could launch a comeback for him. In the DVD extras, Rossellini recalls being moved by Hopper’s talent as he let tears fall down his face.

Rossellini brings uncommon depth and richness to her breakthrough American role. (Lynch originally wanted Helen Mirren). Ideally cast, MacLachlan and Dern nail their parts as well – soft-spoken and gentle straight-shooters who spend much energy suppressing their turbulent, darker desires.

Now 25 years old, “Blue Velvet” remains weird, wild, risky and wonderful.

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‘Blue Velvet’ quick hit

December 15, 2011 by

Blue Velvet/1986/MGM/120 min.

Baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. Gangsters, stray body parts and sadism. Writer/director David Lynch takes us on a journey to the seedy side of small-town America. Laura Dern is a sweet and sheltered high-school student. Her wholesome boyfriend Kyle MacLachlan can’t resist prying into the secrets of mysterious chanteuse Isabella Rossellini and her malevolent boyfriend Dennis Hopper. Disturbing, surreal, thoroughly mesmerizing.

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Dreary, draggy, drawn-out, ‘I Melt with You’ is one to avoid

December 10, 2011 by

I Melt with You/2011/Magnolia Pictures/129 min.

I knew I was in for a long slog early on in “I Melt with You,” a noir-infused drama about an annual reunion of four 40something yuppie buddies, when one of them delivers this clunker: “Some things never change.”

Granted, writer Glenn Porter might be trying to indicate how stilted these relationships have become, but the mere fraying of friendship is incidental in comparison with the dreary nihilism that unfolds.

The friends are played by Thomas Jane, Jeremy Piven, Rob Lowe and Christian McKay; Mark Pellington directs. There is no shortage of generic male bonding and trying to talk during their stay in idyllic Big Sur – all through the blur of heavy drinking and drugging, music blaring, natch. (The movie’s title refers to the Modern English song from 1982; it was rerecorded for use in the film.)

Through this blur of excess, which would be nauseating if it were a little less boring, their Important Issues emerge: a broken marriage and washed-up career, stale grief, unchecked greed, chronic womanizing (shocker!) and a shelved dream.

As we learn more details about their histories and their current situations, we see that whatever they were in college, they are now angry, mean-spirited, self-indulgent, entitled, whiny dullards. When their drawn-out and draggy self-destruction becomes literal, prompting a local cop (Carla Gugino) to start asking questions, it’s hardly much of a loss.

I’m not really that hard to please. A little humility from a few of the characters, a whiff of intelligence, passable writing or solid acting might have redeemed this film somewhat. But, with the exception of McKay (who played Welles in “Me and Orson Welles”), the acting is risible. For example, when Piven’s character is called a rat, he actually begins twitching his nose and baring his teeth.

“I Melt with You” doesn’t melt fast enough – it’s a chore to endure.

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A must-see, ‘In Darkness’ is uncompromising, deeply moving

December 9, 2011 by

Michael Wilmington

In Darkness/2011/Sony Pictures Classics/145 min.

By Michael Wilmington

Sometimes we let the horror of the past recede into a comforting mist of remembrance, melancholy and well-meaning cliché. We shouldn’t.

Agnieszka Holland’s “In Darkness” is a drama of the Holocaust, and a remarkable one, even given the high standards set by other real-life World War II film chronicles like “Schindler’s List” and “The Pianist.” The movie – which is Poland’s official submission for this year’s foreign language film Oscar – is almost fearsomely realistic, horrifically uncompromising and deeply moving.

Holland’s film, like Steven Spielberg’s and Roman Polanski’s, is based on a true story, a tale of terrible anguish, fear and, finally, of profound humanity. But it’s done with an excruciating physical realism those other two movies didn’t really try for.

“In Darkness” is based on the true story of a small time criminal and burglar named Leopold (Poldek) Socha, who used his day job as a sewer inspector in Lvov, Poland, during the German occupation, to hide a small group of Jews in the sewers for 14 months. As we watch, we are plunged into an abyss of fear and suffering, lit by faint glimmers of incongruous hope. It is a great, stark, sometimes awesomely emotional film, with an incredible lead performance by the Polish actor Robert Wieckiewicz as Socha, and brilliant, penetrating direction by Holland.

Agnieszka Holland

Holland and her crew, especially cinematographer Jolanta Dylewska, make this experience so gritty and tactile that it almost hurts to watch it. The sewers of “In Darkness” are not like the sinister, shadowy and strangely romantic Viennese sewers of Carol Reed and Graham Greene’s masterful 1949 film noir “The Third Man,” those vast echoing tunnels through which Orson Welles ran like a rat in a maze.

Nor are they stark and grim and deadly like the Warsaw sewers where the anti-Nazi Polish partisans hid in Andrzej Wajda’s 1956 WWII-set masterpiece “Kanal.” The sewers of Lvov are smaller and inky black, steeped in an airless-looking gloom, cramped and comfortless, wet with sewage and slime. They are true hell-holes, and the people hiding there are a mismatched crowd of businessmen, operators, snobs, adulterers, families and even children.

There is daring Mundek Margulies (Benno Furmann), who twice eludes the Nazis. The Chiger family – father Ignacy (Herbert Knaup), mother Paulina (Maria Schrader), daughter Krystyna (Milla Bankowicz) and son Pawel (Oliwier Stanczak) – are a tight-knit group, being pulled apart.

They have entered this hell out of desperation. All around them, before their voluntary imprisonment begins, other Jews are being arrested and taken to the death camps, or shot on the streets or killed in the forests, as we and Socha see in the movie’s shattering opening scene.

Their “savior” Socha, isn’t acting out of the goodness of his heart. He does it for money and, when the story begins, even shows signs of anti-Semitism, something typical for many Catholic Poles (like Socha) in that era. As the months go on, as Socha has to feed and watch over the fugitives, reassure them and provide their only link to the outside world of daylight and fresh air – as he has to resort to ever more dangerous ruses to keep them all hidden – we see him change. Socha is a crook, but he’s also a fearsomely competent man, someone who dares to do what others can’t, and that very competency eventually helps humanize him, while as the Nazi “efficiency” turns them into monsters.

Robert Wieckiewicz as Socha leads the group into the sewer to hide.

Eventually Socha’s Jews run out of money and he must make a decision: to abandon them or to go on hiding and helping them. What he chooses to do, why he chooses to do it and what eventually happens make for an astonishing and inspiring story.

Socha’s story in fact provides something relatively rare in our movies: a true story of moral growth and redemption under the most extreme and terrifying conditions – centering on a character who initially seems far from heroic, even if he’s gutsier and sharper than the Nazis he keeps outwitting.

Playing this meaty role, Wieckiewicz gives us a human being so real and so full of seeming contradictions that he ultimately shocks us with the sheer human truth and rough grandeur of his performance. The rest of the cast are all fine, especially Furmann as Mundek and Michal Zurawski as Socha’s Nazi buddy Bortnik. But it’s Socha’s movie and he wins us easily, while always, like any great actor, letting his cast-mates shine as well. This movie is an extraordinary work, a link to the past. You feel it in your heart and soul and senses. And it demonstrates something we sometimes forget: Agnieszka Holland can be one of the world’s great filmmakers. [Read more…]

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McQueen paints harrowing portrait of addiction in ‘Shame’

December 2, 2011 by

Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender

“Shame” by London-born writer/director Steve McQueen is a searing study of a man, both buttoned-up and out of control, obsessively seeking oblivion and teetering on the edge of disaster. A sex addict perpetually on the outside looking in, he lives solely for his next physical encounter.

On the surface, the laconic, hauntingly good-looking Brandon (Michael Fassbender) seems very much together. His colleagues like and respect him, he lives in a stylish Manhattan apartment, women are easily drawn to him.

His sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan), a struggling singer, is not faring as well and lands on his doorstep because she has nowhere else to live. Starting with Brandon finding Sissy in his shower, the two begin a tense co-existence. Brandon attempts to keep his porn, rooftop trysts and hotel hookups private, but we sense Sissy is completely up to speed on his compulsion; she tries half-heartedly to curb her own partying and sleeping around.

Whereas Brandon strips any feeling from his encounters (the one exception is a colleague he courts, the ethereally pretty and warm-hearted Marianne, played by Nicole Beharie), Sissy is the opposite, fiercely clinging to whoever will buy her champagne and share her bed for a night. Sissy’s mounting desperation eventually forces Brandon to confront his self-destructive compulsion.

With muted emotion and spare dialogue, McQueen, who wrote the screenplay with Abi Morgan, implies more than he tells but we know with certainty that Brandon and Sissy’s history is rooted in pain and deep dysfunction. The scene in which Brandon and his boss (James Badge Dale) come to hear Sissy sing at a club – she performs a wrenchingly sad version of “New York, New York” – flawlessly conveys their baggage and buried guilt.

McQueen, an acclaimed artist and director of 2008’s prize-winning “Hunger,” which also starred Fassbender, heightens the mood of numb despair by using long takes, cool tones and stark lighting. Toward the end, in bed with two women, Brandon’s anguished face tinged with yellow brings to mind a tortured figure in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, expunging any hint of sexiness or erotic allure.

Nicole Beharie and Michael Fassbender

Noirish shots of Brandon prowling New York streets at night reveal the energy he expends to shroud his life in secrecy and keep his emotions at bay.

There are many graphically raw scenes that earned the film a NC-17 rating and many are harrowing to watch. Harrowing, to be sure, but also moving – Mulligan and Fassbender are marvelously compelling in these roles that let them express uncommon depth and a mighty struggle. Beharie and Dale strike us as real people as opposed to stock types, yet they neatly suggest the general pattern of Brandon and Sissy’s superficial relationships.

To some extent, “Shame” follows in the tradition of “The Lost Weekend” and “The Man with the Golden Arm,” as well as “Last Tango in Paris,” but McQueen’s work seems broader, more resonant in our instant-gratification, must-have-it-now culture. Says Fassbender, “It speaks to this constant drive we have for satisfaction and highs, one that is followed by feelings of shame and self-loathing.”

“Shame” also speaks, in tough language, to vulnerability, damage, connection and love.

Tilda Swinton plays a beaten-down mother.

Also opening today (in a limited release) and very highly recommended: “We Need to Talk About Kevin” by Lynne Ramsay, a thriller in which neo noir meets New Age parenting. We witness, in jagged pieces that jump back and forth in time, the unthinkably brutal rupture of a dysfunctional but not entirely unhappy family.

Tilda Swinton plays a mother struggling to love her son Kevin (Ezra Miller) who comes into the world seething with anger. John C. Reilly plays her denial-prone husband. Though the script isn’t fully there and I just couldn’t buy Swinton and Reilly as a couple, this is nonetheless tour de force direction from Ramsay. I hope her vision and style are recognized during awards season.

Rich with visual metaphor, bold use of color and captivating performances, this is destined to be a neo-noir classic.

Emily Browning

In writer/director Julia Leigh’s erotic reworking of the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty” we meet Lucy (Emily Browning), a perverse college student using her stunning looks to make a living in the sex industry.

Though I admired Browning’s performance, the movie was disappointingly sluggish and dull.

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Film noir with Farrell and Knightley is a little bit of all right

November 18, 2011 by

London Boulevard/2010/GK Films, et al/103 min.

“She’s not wearing that dress, the dress is wearing her,” the fashion police might grumble before making an arrest. “London Boulevard” commits a similar crime – it’s a movie that ultimately overpowers its director.

That said, there is much to admire in this work from William Monahan, who directed and wrote the script from a novel by Ken Bruen. Monahan, having won the Oscar for “The Departed,” is completely in his element with noir scripts, setting up compelling narrative threads and knocking out smart, fast, sometimes-funny lines.

Colin Farrell plays Mitchel, an ex-con determined not to return to jail. But, in need of quick cash, he hooks up with simple-minded Billy (Ben Chaplin) and helps him make his rounds collecting money in South London for flashy gangster boss Rob Gant (Ray Winstone). At a pub gathering to celebrate Mitchel’s release, a pretty girl (Ophelia Lovibond) tells him he could approach a “retired” friend of hers for a job as a handyman.

The friend turns out to be anxious and vulnerable Charlotte (Keira Knightley), a famous actress who can’t leave her Holland Park home without being bombarded by the snapping and flashing of verminlike paparazzi. He catches her eye (Colin Farrell just has a way of doing that), then earns her trust as well as that of her manager, Jordan (David Thewlis), a former actor and fluent drug-taker. At the same time, Mitchel tends to his unstable sister (Anna Friel) and seeks retribution for the murder of a damaged old criminal (Alan Williams).

Still, the ties with the underworld are tough to break. After Mitchel endures a beating from rival thugs (Billy flees), the boss offers him a promotion. “No thanks, got a new job” does not go over well and Mitchel has to find a way to extricate himself from Rob.

“London Boulevard” has many of the elements of a first-rate neo noir. It starts with high energy (the music helps) and an exciting pace – Monahan seems in command of his material. Chock full of dodgy characters, the movie is nicely cast and all the actors are interesting to watch. Farrell and Knightley have a spindly spark of chemistry, which is about all you could expect from this ships-in-the-night liaison.

But, about two thirds of the way though, the movie’s rhythm goes haywire, lingering too long on one storyline, then rushing abruptly to another. It’s hard not to notice the drafty holes in the story as it shunts to its slightly surprising, yet far from inevitable, conclusion.

Flaws aside, however, “London Boulevard” is an entertaining yarn with a considerable amount of visual flair (Chris Menges shot it) and intelligence. So the movie police might complain – film noir with Farrell and Knightley is still a little bit of all right.

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‘Le Cercle Rouge’ is an icy thriller by an immaculate artist

November 5, 2011 by

“Le Cercle Rouge” plays Saturday, Nov. 6, at 4 p.m. at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood as part of AFI FEST 2011.

Le Cercle Rouge/1970/EIA, et al/140 min./in French with English subtitles

By Michael Wilmington

Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973) was, in some ways, the Vermeer of the heist movie. A master of classic noir and neo noir, Melville was a cool, sure-fingered expert and an immaculate artist. Like Vermeer, his pictures were deceptively simple and utterly haunting, punctilious and mysterious. And, like Vermeer, he didn’t leave many behind him.

One of the greatest of all Melville’s films, with one of his most spectacular heists, is “Le Cercle Rouge,” a neo-noir which has, as its centerpiece, a spine-chilling depiction of a jewel robbery at the Place Vendome in Paris.

The job is pulled off with rare skill by three strangely honorable thieves, played by three international film stars: ex-convict Corey (played by Alain Delon), escaped prisoner Vogel (Gian Maria Volonté) and ex-cop Jansen (Yves Montand).

Alain Delon

The movie is about how these three come together, how they execute the robbery, and how they’re finally driven apart – largely through the quiet skill and determination of their relentless police antagonist. Deceptively lumpish, bourgeois-looking Inspector Mattei is played by comedy star André Bourvil.

Mattei is keeping watch over his prisoner, Vogel, on a train journey. But Vogel slips out of his handcuffs and escapes from the sleeper car of the speeding train. Mattei is humiliated, then obsessed with finding Vogel. The broken handcuffs become a psychological link.

Mattei has an invaluable source in Santi (François Périer), a double-dealer and underworld mole, who looks like a ferret in a suit. Santi owns a nightclub that seems to specialize in crooked assignations and ersatz ’50s American movie musical numbers, set to a cool jazzy score by Éric Demarsan. (The chorus girls in those numbers are almost the only women we see in the movie, except for one faithless lover and one cigarette girl.)

The title “Le Cercle Rouge” refers to a story of Buddha, who supposedly draws a red chalk circle and explains to his students that those who are destined to cross paths will do so within the circle, no matter what.

Melville made and released Le Cercle Rouge in 1970, one year after making his World War Two French Resistance masterpiece, “Army of Shadows” (1969) and two years before making his last film (with his last heist), the flawed “Un Flic” (Dirty Money), starring Delon, Catherine Deneuve and Richard Crenna. “Le Cercle Rouge” was his last masterpiece.

Back to Vermeer for a moment. There is one vital quality of Vermeer’s that Melville misses completely, probably never tries for: warmth. Melville’s films noirs are cold, especially when cinematographer Henri Decaë (of Melville’s “Le Samourai”) shoots them. His crooks are cool. They speak little, wear raincoats and fedoras, and smoke cigarettes, like Bogie. His cops are icy. His world is dark: noir to the brim.

Why was Melville so obsessed with criminals, with heists and with heist movies? Maybe because this underworld reminded him of the world that was the French Resistance, in which he had fought during the war.

And maybe it’s because of the one that got away. In the ’50s, Melville was hired to direct the movie that became one of the greatest of all heist movies (François Truffaut’s choice as the greatest of all film noirs), 1955’s “Rififi.” Melville was later fired and replaced by Jules Dassin, who chivalrously refused to take the job without Melville’s consent (which Melville gave). [Read more…]

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CIFF roundup: more neo noirs, After Dark and documentaries

October 28, 2011 by

"Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" is a nod to Leone.

There was something for every cinephile’s taste at the Chicago International Film Festival. Here are a few more impressions.

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan earned much praise from critics for his nod to Sergio Leone, “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,” a slow-burn search for a buried body led by a police team, a forensic doctor and a prosecutor with the killer in tow.

As the hunt drags on (the killer can’t remember the exact location), other secrets emerge from these richly drawn characters. Starring Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan and Taner Birsel.

Riley Keough

“The Good Doctor” (US) might make you think twice about heading to the ER. Orlando Bloom is Dr. Martin Blake, ambitious, hard-working and a bit of a fish out of water as an Englishman working in California. He also has a pesky habit of playing God.

It’s intriguing, to be sure, but a shame that we never get any sense of why Blake goes to the dark side. Riley Keough co-stars as his trusting teenage patient; Taraji P. Henson is the head nurse, Michael Peña is the partying orderly. Directed by Ireland’s Lance Daly.

After Dark
The fest’s After Dark horror-movie lineup, full of guts, gore and zombies galore, was expanded to 17 films and for the first time these titles were part of the official competition. Highlights included “Rabies,” Israel’s first slasher film and the first Cuban zombie film, Alejandro Brugues’ “Juan of the Dead,” which was an audience favorite.

I couldn’t fit “Juan” into my schedule, but enjoyed “Rabies” by Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales, a former critic. An ill-fated walk in the woods leads a man to beg for help from four strangers. At the same time, a Good Samaritan in another part of the woods sees the work of a crazed killer firsthand (his beautiful dog is slain) and tries to prevent more harm. Cops are called too but to no avail. Extremely entertaining with a whip-smart script.

Far less entertaining and rather a let-down was “The Whisperer in the Darkness” (US), from director Sean Branney with a screenplay by Andrew Leman based on an H.P. Lovecraft story. Shot in black and white as an ode to 1930s horror flicks, “Whisperer” is a movie you’re really hoping to like. Unfortunately, the stilted acting, tepid direction and feeble script all keep the movie earth-bound and draggy.

Documentaries
In a world where individualism is on the wane, welcome inspiration for living your own personal dream comes from fashion icon and legendary editor Diana Vreeland. Drink in her influence when you see “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel” (US), a movie full of personal history, pure whimsy and gorgeous images. No matter where you fall on the style spectrum, you’ll enjoy this first-rate film by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, who won the fest’s Silver Hugo for her work.

Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog’s “Into the Abyss” (US) looks at the far-reaching repercussions of a 2001 murder case in which three people were killed, one man was executed and another is serving a 40-year prison sentence.

Herzog told the Los Angeles Times: “I think in this particular case, with this very senseless crime, so senseless it’s staggering, what fascinated me was that it points to a decay in family values and the cohesion of society, all these things that looked so big and beyond this case. It was not a question of proving [the perpetrators’] guilt or innocence.” Enthralling throughout.

Werner Herzog image from The Guardian; Riley Keough image from 411mania

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The Marilyn Chronicles at Chicago film fest

October 27, 2011 by
Chicago saw the installation this summer of a 26-foot-tall tacky statue of Marilyn Monroe by J. Seward Johnson, so maybe it’s fitting that the city’s film fest hosted two Marilyn flicks, both much more elegant than the gargantuan “Seven Year Itch” tribute.
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Simon Curtis’ “My Week with Marilyn” (UK) offers a glimpse into a brief period in the troubled actress’ life: her 1956 trip to London to shoot “The Prince and the Show Girl” in which she co-starred with Sir Laurence Olivier.
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The source material is “The Prince, the Showgirl and Me,” a memoir by Colin Clark, an assistant director on the film and son of art historian Sir Kenneth Clark (of “Civilisation” fame). Curtis brings the memoir to life with sumptuous cinematography and spellbinding, Oscar-worthy performances from Michelle Williams as Marilyn, Kenneth Branagh as Olivier and Eddie Redmayne as Colin Clark.
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“MWWM” also explores profound changes in the world of film acting as the Stanislavski/Method school took hold of Hollywood and clashed with British style, still deeply rooted in stage tradition.

"Nobody Else But You"

Darkly funny, quirky and delightful to watch was the story of a modern-day Marilyn, “Nobody Else But You,” by Gérald Hustache-Mathieu. Sophie Quinton plays Candice Lecoeur, a luscious weathergirl in a remote French village whose life oddly parallels Marilyn’s and in a “Laura”-like way becomes the focus of a murder mystery.

Hustache-Mathieu’s most brilliant achievement is the unlikely mix of disparate mood and tone – farce, black humor, drama – fluidly, splendidly coming together. The audience loved it and high-energy Hustache-Mathieu was humbly charming at the post-screening Q&A.
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In writer/director Julia Leigh’s erotic reworking of the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty” (Australia) we meet another stunning blonde: Emily Browning as Lucy, a desperate college student using her looks to make a living in the sex industry. Though I admired Browning’s performance, the movie was disappointingly sluggish and dull.
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Tomorrow: More highlights from the fest
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Dark dramas shine at Chicago International Film Festival

October 26, 2011 by

Dark domestic dramas led the fine slate of high-style movies at the 47th Chicago International Film Festival, which boasted a lineup of nearly 200 titles.

In “We Need to Talk About Kevin” (UK) by Lynne Ramsay, neo noir meets New Age parenting in a haunting thriller. We witness, in jagged pieces that jump back and forth in time, the unthinkably brutal rupture of a dysfunctional but not entirely unhappy family.

Creating buzz at many fests, Tilda Swinton will doubtless continue to earn acclaim for her wrenching portrait of a mother struggling to love her son Kevin (Ezra Miller) who comes into the world seething with anger. Chicago-born John C. Reilly plays her denial-prone husband. Rich with visual metaphor and captivating performances (though the script is not fully there), this is destined to be a neo-noir classic. (“We Need to Talk About Kevin” does not release in the US until February.)

Samuli Niittymaki

I doubt Finnish director Zaida Bergroth had “Mildred Pierce” in mind when she made “The Good Son,” which won the top prize in the new directors competition. But I kept thinking of Michael Curtiz’s 1945 classic starring Joan Crawford as a flawed single mother of two daughters, the elder of whom is a bit of a snake, as I watched Elina Knihtila portray Leila, a flawed single mother of two sons, the elder of whom (Samuli Niittymaki as Illmari), is a bit of a psycho.

Eero Aho plays Leila’s new love interest, a kindly writer named Aimo. Anna Paavilainen is excellent as Illmari’s girlfriend as is Eetu Julin as Unto, the younger brother. Arresting images, subtle acting, nicely paced.

Arguably, “A Dangerous Method” (Germany/Canada) by David Cronenberg could be classified as a domestic drama, dealing as it does with the long-term adulterous relationship between renowned Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and a patient-turned-student-of-psychoanalysis Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). Viggo Mortensen is Sigmund Freud; Sarah Gadon is Jung’s wife. This finely crafted film is already generating Oscar buzz.

“Martha Marcy May Marlene” (US) is the kind of film that leaves you reeling, then lodges in your mind for days. Elizabeth Olsen (sister of Ashley and Mary Kate) stars as a young woman who escapes from an evil cult and struggles to reconnect with her estranged sister (Sarah Paulson) and her new brother-in-law (Hugh Dancy). Writer/director Sean Durkin’s fragmented narrative swerves from past to present; the tension mounts masterfully to a claustrophobic level. Thoroughly mesmerizing, but as much as I admired Olsen’s presence and vulnerability (she may be an Oscar contender), I felt no sympathy for her character. John Hawkes (of “Winter’s Bone”) is unforgettable as the warped cult leader.

English actor Dexter Fletcher makes an impressive directorial debut with “Wild Bill.” Though the story is essentially rooted in cliché, the fresh writing and powerful acting inject vitality into this tale of an ex-con (Charlie Creed-Miles) reconnecting with his young sons (Will Poulter and Sammy Williams) in London’s East End.

A desire for a father-daughter reunion drives the ex-con (Mark Pellegrino) in “Joint Body” by Brian Jun. But he gets sidetracked when he meets a stripper (Alicia Witt) in a seedy residential motel in downstate Illinois and the two end up on the run. (The term joint body refers to a convict who works out and walks the walk with confidence.)

Too melodramatic to be a real thriller, Thierry Klifa’s “His Mother’s Eyes/Les Yeux de Sa Mère,” (France) about a writer’s plan to ingratiate himself into a fractured family, is still intelligent, engrossing and features an easy-on-the-eyes cast, which includes ever-lovely Catherine Deneuve, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Géraldine Pailhas and Jean-Baptiste Lafarge.

And though definitely not a noir, the festival’s grand-prize winner, “Le Havre” (Finland/France) by Aki Kaurismaki, recounts the forming of a temporary, makeshift family. A working class French man (André Wilms) befriends and protects an African boy (Blondin Miguel) who lands illegally in Le Havre on the way to reuniting with his mother in London. Lit and composed like an Old Master painting, Kaurismaki’s film brims with humanity and humor.

Tomorrow: More about movies at the festival

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