Tag Archives: Mia Goth

Sundance 2021: Mayday

After a terrible encounter with her boss inspires her to put her head in an oven, Ana finds herself on a mysterious island of girls – but this is no Themyscira.

On this island, Ana (Grace Van Patten) joins Marsha’s (Mia Goth) army of girls where war is constantly being waged against men. Along with Bea (Havana Rose Liu), Gert (Soko), and June (Juliette Lewis), they lure what appear to be WWII-era planes of soldiers with mayday calls of distress. Planes that answer the call and steer toward the island are mysteriously wrecked, and any men who survive and wash ashore are taken out by the girls, who’ve been training as snipers.

If the island is meant to be some sort of limbo for suicides, it’s populated by women who’ve been done wrong by men and are out for revenge. There is strength in numbers and strength in taking one’s power back, but while the island’s unique mission is exhilarating at first, Ana comes to realize she’s not entirely the killer Marsha wants her to be. Leaving won’t be so easy, though. Even if there’s a way to leave, Marsha isn’t keen to lose her newest recruit.

I love the vision and I love the attempt but I didn’t love the movie. The island is a great premise for exploring feminism and suicide but it doesn’t know how to create tension or sufficient reason to keep watching. Director Karen Cinorre is clearly very talented at putting together snappy, stylish visuals and has a knack for emotional dexterity, but Mayday needs a better grounding, better world building, better character development. Without those things, the film lacks dramatic propulsion and a good idea just never really becomes a good movie, but Grace Van Patten makes a strong case for future roles and Cinorre is a director to look out for.

Emma.

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Emma is 21, handsome, clever, and rich. She is her father’s last unmarried daughter and she fancies herself a successful matchmaker. It is the thing upon which she prides herself the most (and there is quite a bit of pride), but though she seeks the best matches for her nearest and dearest, she has no interest in or plans to marry herself.

Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy) currently has her sights set on her good friend Harriet (Mia Goth), a young woman of questionable parentage and no wealth. Though Harriet already has a romantic interest in a farmer of little means, Emma persuades her to reject his advances in favour of a better (read: richer) match, Vicar Elton (Josh O’Connor).

Of course, Emma’s meddling could never be as straight-forward as that. George (Johnny Flynn) accuses her of vanity, her father (Bill Nighy) implores her loyalty, Miss Bates (Miranda Hart) pesters her continually, Jane (Amber Anderson) seems to best her at everything, and the sudden appearance of handsome, mysterious Frank (Callum Turner) has everyone in a twitter.

First, let me say I am fully on team Alexandra Byrne for costume design this year. The dresses, the jackets, the trousers, the hats – they all share a romantic, period feel, but they’re all elevated, better than real life, and believe me, if I thought for a second Byrne could live comfortably in my closet, I’d kidnap and hold her there in a heartbeat (note to Byrne, should she read this: please don’t take that as a threat, though it does share the same qualities as a certain felony – I am merely a great admirer with a tendency to over-dress).

Second, Bill Nighy. I mean: Bill Nighy. He lights up every scene he’s in, he snatches giggles like they’re his life force, he’s an absolute treasure and I simply could not get enough.

And of course, the script. I love how Eleanor Catton has adapted it from the Austen. Altough it is hard to improve upon a classic, Catton’s Emma. is a lot of fun (sorry if that’s confusing, the one-word title has a period at the end, apparently emphasizing that this is a “period piece”). Emma is young, obviously, and quite sheltered in her father’s home. In her naivete she reinforces a classist and of course sexist social construct and can’t see the error of her ways until it’s reversed. Austen’s comedy works because there’s quite a lot of tension, quite a few misunderstandings, and some very complicated love triangles.

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Anya Taylor-Joy is up to the task, though I couldn’t help wondering what it might have been had Florence Pugh stepped into the role. Besides Nighy, which is a given, the performances I enjoyed best were from supporting players Miranda Hart and Tanya Reynolds, who add a lot of life to film.

But even with the sumptuous gowns and the glittering brooches and the tasseled coaches, I wouldn’t want to live in this period where a woman’s only achievement is in marrying “above her station,” dead birds are offered by way of apology, and a twisted ankle is considered top-tier flirting.

In response to the closure of cinemas due to the COVID-19 corona virus, Emma. has been given a VOD release. You can rent the film for $20, which may sound hefty for a rental, but it’s less than you would pay to see it in theatres, and while this is still early days of terms of quarantine and chill, even Netflix’s deepest back-catalogue will exhaust itself at some point. And Emma. is a pretty great way to fill that void.

Suspiria (2018)

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I keep writing this and deleting this because it keeps sounding like I’m describing a nightmare rather than a movie. Which actually should tell you a lot about how much I enjoyed this film.

Suspiria is MEANT to be confrontational. It’s so emotionally and visually confronting I was simply overwhelmed, and got out my ironing board in order to deal. With a buffer of a white denim jacket and a bunch of iron-on patches (including a little gremlin named Gizmo, Wonder Woman, and IT’s Pennywise), I did my best to brave the onslaught.

Susie (Dakota Johnson) is an untrained dancer who arrives in Berlin hoping to be admitted to a venerated dance company run by the fearsome Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). Many scoff at her ambition (conceit?), but her audition dazzles the evaluators and just her luck – there’s a spot that’s opened up. Actually, that spot belonged to Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz), who we saw crack up during the film’s opening scenes. She was paranoid, disturbed, certain that the academy was targeting her for some nefarious thing. And now she’s MIA.

And the thing is, something IS seriously afoot at the dance company. It seems to be a front for witchcraft; the instructors belong to a coven and the dancers are new recruits – either possible witches, or possible victims. Suspicion is met with violence, and the movie LOVES violence, embraces every and any excuse. Even the dance itself feels aggressive, but the gore is second to none. The narrative takes a back seat to the dedicated and repeated brutality, so you can either get in step with the stylized lunacy, or avoid it altogether. Attempting to fight your way through it is probably only going to result in a frustrating and disappointing (not to mention disgusting) cinematic experience.

Do I admire director Luca Guadagnino for swinging so big? Sure. But I don’t have to like it. I was oddly excited for this film because I tend to like a cinematic risk, but Suspiria (2018 edition) proved to be a test of my endurance, and beyond the limits of my patience. To be honest, I was half-lost just by the casting of Dakota Johnson alone. I realize her acting “pedigree” may impress some, but her parents (Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson) aren’t known for being good in things so much as just for being in them. They’re famous, but not exactly lauded. And despite her celebrity parents, Dakota Johnson has still had to break her way in by getting naked (Fifty Shades of Indignity: the series) and has yet to make an impression on me as someone worth watching. Her blandness and blankness may have somewhat been the point in this, but I just don’t find her remotely compelling and I could equally be watching a rock or a potato or the space above her left shoulder and it would all shake out to about the same. Tilda Swinton is of course made for movies such as these, but she gets not one but 3 roles, and at least one of them is trash. Yes, makeup can do marvelous things. But even when Tilda Swinton is made up to look like an elderly man, it was still very obviously Tilda Swinton made up to look like an elderly man.

Did I enjoy Suspria? I did not. I think there’s some trick to melting into a movie like this, but to be honest, we struggled so much just to find the German to English captions, finding the trick and using the trick was clearly beyond us.