Tag Archives: Rachel Weisz

The Favourite

Yorgos Lanthimos tells stories about relationships. He clearly finds us human beings fascinating, but the way in which he carves his observations out of us us with such surgical precision makes me feel like Lanthimos isn’t quite one of us.

In The Lobster, he imagined that single people were so desperate to pair up, they’d agree to do so under duress, and under deadline, with failure to find love transforming you literally into an animal. In The Killing of A Sacred Deer, a man watches the innocent pay for his sins until he can not only admit them, but make a sacrifice to atone. These films strike a unique tone; Lanthimos’ voice is absurd but bold and unwavering.

In The Favourite, Abigail (Emma Stone) is a former lady fallen quite low. She’s at the MV5BYzUzNzg5ZmUtMzAwNC00NjA0LTkzOGYtMmViNzAzZmY1NjhhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjcwODY0NTE@._V1_ palace to beg for a job from her cousin, Sarah, Queen Anne’s trusted lady in waiting. Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) is mentally and physically frail. Between painful attacks of gout and a nervous disposition, she leads a lonely life on her throne, often bedridden, frequently deranged with pain or paranoia. Her only friend and companion is Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), who basically rules the country in her place. Sarah is a strict go-between, acting as a buffer between Queen Anne and the demands of her royal position, and if she uses that position to exert her own will and influence, well…of course she does. Wouldn’t you?

But Abigail is way more wily than Sarah first gives her credit for. Abigail’s had to do some shitty things in order to survive, and she’s prepared to do what it takes to make sure she never has to suffer again. She throws her charm into overdrive, ,and soon Sarah realizes she’s competing with her cousin for Queen Anne’s attention.

In The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos’s gift to us is a power struggle between the three that is never dull, never less than captivating. Emma Stone is fresh-faced but clever and calculating as Abigail, the servant with major ambition. Olivia Colman is desperately lonely and deeply insecure, but her queen has learned to wield her power to get what she needs. Rachel Weisz is brilliant, as ever. Insanely brilliant. Sarah has made a deal with the royal devil. She has goals and knows they don’t come cheap. Pretty soon there’s an insane transactional triad going on that you’ve got to see to believe – and to some extent, admire. Obviously, women in the 18th century weren’t exactly in the best position, not even if you were queen, but these 3 are making choices and bargains. They are driven by necessity, and desire.

This period piece is soaking in, nay, fermenting in, rich tapestries, both actual and metaphorical. You eyes will drip with colours and patterns and lush landscapes, but despite the beautiful 18th century dressings, this feels like Lanthimos’s most relevant, most contemporary work. Witty, naughty, and sometimes disturbingly dark, The Favourite is stunning, and an absurd amount of fun.

The Mercy

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Donald Crowhurst is hawking navigational tools for sailing that nobody really wants. When a contest is announced that would reward the fastest sailor to navigate the globe without stopping, Crowhurst decides it’s the perfect way to showcase his product, generate press, and make himself known. He’s the last man in the water, but he hopes to make up for it by speed. The problem is, he’s just a hobbyist, an amateur sailor, and he’s going up against the world’s best.

Of course, sailing around the world is the kind of competition that’s very solitary, and MV5BMjMwMTE2Mjc5NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNzk5NTAyOTE@._V1_SX1500_CR0,0,1500,999_AL_ difficult to measure. The irony is that though he’s a master of navigation, sailing-wise, it’s being away from his family that is disorienting to him. Out on his boat, alone for months, never seeing land, rarely hearing the voices of his children, Donald (Colin Firth) goes slightly mad, as one would. It’s a test of endurance, but also of mental fortitude. Though the sea and the elements thwart him at every turn, he himself is his biggest obstacle, and every day is a struggle not to quit.

At home, his wife Clare (Rachel Weisz) tries to keep the family afloat while putting on a cheery face for the children even though she frequently doesn’t know if her husband is dead or alive.

Because they’ve bothered to make a movie out of this ‘incredible true story,’ I thought I knew how it would go. I was wrong. The Mercy doesn’t exactly break new ground cinematically, but thematically it’s as crushing as it is absorbing. Colin Firth is astonishing. Frequently on screen alone, his descent into madness is magnetic. It glues your eyeballs to the screen. Rachel Weisz is no slouch, of course, but as the little woman back home, she’s given much less to do other than look fetching in a head scarf. However, when the film does call on her to be something more, you know she answers is as only she could.

The Mercy is a big lungful of salt water. It’s a surprise. It gives you a jolt. If Colin Firth is the film’s compass, Rachel Weisz is its buoy.

Disobedience

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Ronit and Esti were childhood friends and young lovers but their Orthodox community forced them apart and Ronit left in disgrace and scandal, shunned by her Rabbi father. Years later, she returns upon his death and finds that her mere presence sets tongues wagging and old rumours flying. Esti is still there and has forged herself a new life within the boundaries of her religion. She is married to a mutual (male) friend and it isn’t terrible.

Old passions are reignited between Ronit (Rachel Weisz), who lives as a photographer in NYC, and Esti (Rachel McAdams), who wears a wig to cover her hair and has careful, kosher sex with her husband every Shabbat. But as good and devout MV5BN2U1ZjllMWQtYzBlOC00ZGQyLTg0YTUtNWQ3YmI3ZjYwNmIzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTc5OTMwOTQ@._V1_ as Esti’s present life is, even the memories of her past with Ronit are scorching enough to make everyone nervous. In their community, straight marriage is the only option, and it’s not so much an option as an obligation. Esti stayed, and conformed; Ronit left, and flourished, though she has all but abandoned her faith.

Disobedience isn’t graphic or specific of pointed. It goes about things in a rounder, softer way, nuzzling up to the subject and laying at its feet. This movie gives you two Rachels for the price of one, and they keep things on simmer for a really long time. On screen like they’re magnets; there’s an electric current between them that’s full of little zaps but no big surges. I really liked Weisz’s choices in particular, how she subtly plays with her hair, reminding us that hers is on display while Esti must cover hers up. And how the uncovering of hair then becomes an act of intimacy, a form of foreplay, a zap in the movie’s current. It’s not just sexual repression that bubbles over in Disobedience; religion and culture are enmeshed in this story. And while the cast does an admirable job of making this feel true, I’m not sure this is director Sebastián Lelio’s story to tell.

Weisz and McAdams communicate a lot through glances and silence. Lelio’s interpretation is a little literal for my taste, but the women here elevate the material and make it something special.

Top 10 LGBTQ Movies 2018

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10. Duck Butter: While I dislike the title with an intensity I’ve rarely known, I very much like this movie, about two young women (Alia Shawkat, Laia Costa) who decide to buck the normal dating bullshit and spend a very intimate 24 hours together in a sort of romantic, quasi-social experiment.

9. The Death and Life of John F. Donovan: Kit Harington plays Donovan, a teen heartthrob who is no longer a teen himself, but has hidden away his true self in servitude to his leading man roles. And while fame always comes with a cost, so too does hiding your real identity.

8. The Joneses: A beautiful documentary about transgender family matriarch and all the healing and understanding it’s taken to get her family all living together under the same roof, in America’s bible belt.

7. Colette: Keira Knightley plays a real-life writer who was oppressed and overshadowed by her husband. But it’s not just her professional life that suffers – in the shadows, Colette prefers women, and this movie is about her emancipation, in more ways than one.

6. Disobedience: Ronit (Rachel Weisz) returns to the Orthodox Jewish community that shunned her for her attraction to a female childhood friend and finds that their passion is just as they left it, only Esti (Rachel McAdams) is now a married woman and mother.

5. Transformer: Janae Marie Kroczaleski was born Matt and known to the power lifting community simply as ‘Kroc.’ Her transition means giving up the thing she loves most in the world, which she struggles to be accepted by her parents and kids, and to form her own identity outside the gym.

4. Boy Erased: When Jared’s (Lucas Hedges) parents find out he’s gay, it’s off to gay conversion camp for him, so that the religious wackos there can beat it out of him. The nice thing about this film is that Jared, though religious, and a good son, never buys into their bullshit and his self-discovery is really empowering.

3. McQueen: A documentary about a guy whose background and upbringing made him an unlikely haute couture success, but he turned his name into a brand that is recognized around the world today. But his personal life never mirrored the success of his professional one; Alexander McQueen was a tortured, brilliant man.

2. Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Yes, this is a movie about literature and forgery, but it’s also a buddy romance between a cantankerous lesbian and a witty gay man. Their devotion is worthy of any love story. Although their sexualities are never exactly in the spotlight, this is the kind of sweet, platonic, taking-care-of-each-other relationship that’s common in the gay community and almost unheard of in Hollywood.

1. Love, Simon: Many of the movies on this list are better, but have any had the same impact? Simon is just a regular high school student. His coming out is bigger in his head than it actually is in life. He has a loving support system. But most of all, it’s nice to see a big-studio romance with a queer lead, and I hope it means we’ll get to see many more. There’s a lot of catching up to do.

My Cousin Rachel

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Philip (Sam Claflin), receives distressing news from his cousin and guardian, who adopted him as an orphaned baby. While recovering from an illness in Italy, he met and married a woman and now has regrets. If his strange and hasty missives are to believed, this woman, Rachel (Rachel Weisz), is trying to kill him. Philip rushes off to intervene but his guardian is dead before he arrives. He swears vengeance on the widow but she has conveniently disappeared.

Philip returns home, to the estate he will now inherit once he comes of age – and luckily, MV5BMDYxOTU1ZDItYjJkMC00ZTVmLWFhZDktNDFiODRlODI1MzQ4L2ltYWdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDcxNzU3MTE@._V1_ his required 25th birthday is right around the corner. But before it can be celebrated, the ballsy widow shows up for a social call. Draped in black, she looks like a grieving widow, but passionate kiss shared between the two perhaps belie other motives. Of course, this particular widow does not look like the wicked witch of Philip’s dreams, but seeing how she’s played by the enchanting Rachel Weisz, probably looks more like the woman in a different kind of dream altogether.

So the film’s central mystery unfolds: is Rachel trying to seduce young Philip into sharing his inheritance (the will was never changed to reflect her at all), or are there genuine feelings here? Whichever way you lean, this is a dark romance at best. A bad romance (roma, ro-a-a?). Which of course is intoxicating to stupid virginal Philip who will follow his cock just about anywhere it seems.

Gothic and moody, Rachel Weisz is a commanding and alluring black widow. Unfortunately, director Roger Michell has less of a firm grip on this Du Maurier mystery. Did she or didn’t she? Either he doesn’t know, or doesn’t care. So it’s less satisfying than it should be. But ambiguity would have been just fine by me; it’s what allows us to contemplate Rachel’s precarious position and explore the feminist slant – is a woman left penniless and powerless acting in her own self-interest really all that shocking or evil? In any case, Weisz is the reason to watch. Her every moment on screen is magnetic.

TIFF: Denial

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Movies based on true stories were a recurring theme for us at TIFF 2016. Our festival experience included five B.O.A.T.S. in a row. My favourite of those was Denial. As a lawyer, I may be slightly biased toward legal dramas, but if you have even a passing interest in law and order (or Law & Order) then you’ll enjoy Denial.

Denial tells the tale of a defamation lawsuit brought by David Irving, British holocaust denier, against Deborah Lipstadt, American university professor. The claim is brought in England, and as a result in order to defend herself, Lipstadt is faced with proving that Irving is a liar.

Director Mick Jackson attended our screening and participated in a Q&A session afterward. Jackson confirmed that the courtroom scenes were word-for-word reenactments of the trial transcripts. That was a great choice by the writers as it makes the scenes feel authentic in pace, tone and style. It was refreshing to me that the real-life scenes were allowed to stand by themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the over-the-top moments a la Col. Jessep’s crossexamination in A Few Good Men, but those don’t actually ever happen in real life. Real life is much more subtle. Denial embraces that subtlety wholeheartedly and in doing so sets itself apart from your typical lawyer movie.

Rachel Weisz puts on her best American accent and convincingly plays targeted Professor Lipstadt as a driven, determined and difficult-to-deal-with client, and Timothy Spall is wonderfully despicable as Holocaust-denier Irving. But my favourite performance by far was Tom Wilkinson as Lipstadt’s barrister, Richard Rampton, Q.C. Wilkinson is just so fun to watch in the courtroom scenes and in the strategy sessions with Weiss and the rest of team Lipstadt, led by Andrew Scott (who, thanks to his role in Sherlock, I was sure would turn out to be the evil mastermind pulling Irving’s strings). He conveys confidence while at the same time hinting at underlying conflict. I can only hope my British accent develops to the point where one day I sound as lawyerly as Wilkinson.

While I practice my accent, you should definitely watch Denial. I give it a score of eight unhandleable truths out of ten.

The Light Between Oceans

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The Light Between Oceans is a film for the literary sort. It’s poetically paced, languid in its development. It’s about a man (Michael Fassbender) who, having survived the war, is keen on some isolation and takes a job as a lighthouse keeper on a lonely island. He doesn’t count on falling in love, and is delighted to double the population of his rock when he takes a wife (Alicia Vikander). Now all they need is a baby and they’ll have a real population boom on their hands.

But wait. The babies aren’t coming so easily for this young couple. In fact, the only baby that comes is one that washes ashore, screaming in her dead father’s arms. It’s the lighthouse keeper’s duty to report orphaned baby to the mainland, no matter how much his distraught, infertile, grieving wife may want to keep her. Right?

The Light Between Oceans is beautifully shot by DP Adam Arkapaw; you’ll be sick of the postcard-perfect scenery by the end of the movie. We get it, it’s gorgeous. Fassbender and Vikander fit right in (once she shaves off his mustache anyway), pantomiming love so well they actually fell in love themselves, and are a couple to this day. They’re committed in their roles and aren’t to be blamed when this film ultimately falters.

What makes it stumble? The pace may be a deterrent. While I was okay with the unhurried pace, I worried that Sean was bored. Or asleep. He assured me he was neither, and I nearly believe him. Second, and hugely, is the contrived plot which forces the characters to behave rather stupidly. As much as you want to like them, and have liked them, you will grow frustrated. And emotional: director Derek Cianfrance is adamant that you cry. He will not be satisfied, or leave well enough alone, until you do.

Tiffing Like Crazy

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I hardly know how to begin summing up our crazy time at the Toronto International Film Festival. We’re actually only about halfway through our experience, but if I don’t start putting down some thoughts now, I’m going to run out of usable memory space.

Day 1

Demolition: Our first film of the festival is still probably my favourite. Music-obsessed Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild) calls this the “most rock-n-roll movie I’ve ever made” and while that’s not the descriptor that immediately came to my mind, I do get where he’s coming from. I would call this movie vigorous. It’s very alive, ironically, since it’s about a man (Davis, played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who’s been numb for the past dozen years or so. It takes the sudden death of his wife for him to realize that he probably didn’t love her. And once that realization is made, his whole life starts to tilt to the left. He becomes obsessed with understanding and improving small, safe things: the leak in his fridge, the squeak in a door, the defective hospital vending machine. A surprisingly confessional letter about the latter connects him to a lonely customer service lady (Naomi Watts) and they stumble together toward truth, just two lost souls helping each other without even meaning to. Gyllenhaal is nothing short of amazing. We see him removed from grief, literally doing whatever he can just to feel – manual labour, loud music, the embracing of pain. Gylllenhaal does disconnection eerily well. But he also has some bracing bonding scenes with a young co-star, the two careening from frank discussions about homosexuality in Home Depot, to the point-blank testing of bullet proof vests. The mourning in this movie is off-kilter to say the least, and jumpcuts and flashbacks keep the loopy momentum going – sometimes quite elegantly, as the editing and cinematography are both superb. Davis busies himself with demolition – he likes taking things apart, methodically, to see how it looks inside, but he can’t quite put it all back together. The physical demolition of his house, of the things surrounding him, serves as an apt metaphor for his sorrow, for his life up until now. It is brutal and quirky and offbeat. Gyllenhaal has been turning in solid performance after solid performance, but this one might be The One. It’s an unconventional movie but also deeply spiritual in its way. Jean-Marc Vallée, when asked after the movie about this theme, responded: “Have you ever smashed the shit out of something? It feels great!”

The Lobster: I realize now, having used words like quirky and offbeat to describe Demolition, that there aren’t words to describe this one. Director Yorgos Lanthimos is a sick man. He has imagined a world not so unlike ours, he thinks, where single people are so ostracized that it’s been made illegal to be without a spouse. When alone, they’re forced into this hotel where they either find a mate, or get turned into an animal. Many fail. Exotic animals abound.This is how we meet Colin Farrell and John C. Reilly as they desperately attempt to be lucky in love. It’s got the deadpan feel of a Wes Anderson movie, only instead of the warm and fuzzy nostalgia, there’s bleak and panicky hopelessness. This movie won’t appeal to most, or even many, but if you can stomach the brutality, this movie is not without some major laughs. And believe me, you earn them. Sean was having a little post-traumatic shock as he lef the theatre, but a few days a lots of reflection later, he found the movie to be undeniably growing on him. The movie is absurdist and bizarre and unique. It is occasionally shovel-to-the-face brutal. Lanthimos understatedly calls it a movie “about relationships”, and his leading lady, Rachel Weisz called it his most “romantic” yet.

Eye In the Sky: Helen Mirren and Barkhad Abdi joined director Gavin Hood in introducing this wonderful film to us – just icing on the cake as the film itself would have been more than enough. Helen Mirren, as you might expect, is completely compelling as a Colonel who’s been tracking radicalized British citizens for 6 years. Just as she’s found them she encounters bureaucratic hell trying to get permission to do her job – that is, to eliminate the threat. What I didn’t realize going in to this movie is that it would not solely be a vehicle for Mirren but a really strong ensemble cast who all pull their weight to give this film so many interesting layers. Drone warfare is obviously a pretty timely discussion, but this movie is also an entertaining nail-biter, successfully blending ethical dilemmas with on-the-street action thanks to Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips) who ratchets up the tension. The crux: there’s a house full of terrorists. They’re literally arming themselves for an imminent suicide attack. Capturing them is not an option – they must be killed before they kill dozens, or hundreds. But just outside this house is a little girl, selling bread. So government officials debate her fate. Mirren the military tour de force is adamant that the terrorists must be stopped at any cost. Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), the guy with the finger on the trigger, is not so sure. You can see the weight of this decision in his eyes, knowing it’s not his to make, yet doing everything in his power to stall. If he’s the heart and Mirren is the head of this operation, there are dozens of politicians muddling up the chain of command in between. The movie is asking us what is acceptable – the sacrifice of one bright little girl to save potentially dozens? The politicians waffle. The girl herself is not the problem, rather it’s the way it would look to the electoral public. How can they spin this? Who will win the propaganda war? Hood does a great job of subtly reminding us that no matter what, not everyone in the kill zone deserves to die. But at the same time, he lets us feel the urgency, lets us count the potential dead bodies if the suicide attack is allowed to continue. And who would be responsible for that? This movie never stops being tense, even when it draws uncomfortable laughter: Alan Rickman, at the head of the table of the dithering politicians, rolls his eyes for all of us as everyone passes the buck. This movie never flinches and it doesn’t take sides. There is an emotional heft to it and I felt it on a visceral level when this sweet little girl is callously referred to as but “one collateral damage issue.” Oof.

Sicario: Matt was ultimately disappointed with the film but was still lucky enough to be at the premiere where Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro were both on hand to answer questions along with Canadian director Denis Villeneuve.

We Monsters: A German film by Sebastian Ko about a mother and father who follow their most primal instinct to protect their teenaged daughter even as she commits an unspeakable crime. It’s weirdly relatable and abhorrent at the same time, and keeps asking us what we would do even as it pushes the envelope to deeper and darker places. Many shots are obstructed, keeping shady characters exactly that, a little out of focus, a little blurred, a little on the sly. The cinematographer cultivates a sense of dread expertly, boxing those characters in, keeping the shots almost claustrophobic. There’s a real sense of panic, of increasing alarm and desperation, and it’s not easy to watch. But it is kind of fascinating. Afterward, Ko was on hand to answer questions, and when someone asked him about the recurrent shots of a butterfly eventually emerging from its cocoon, he confessed that at first it was just meant as a metaphor for adolescence, but in the end he was struck that what emerged was a “pretty ugly creature” and made for a pretty fitting parallel.

TIFF 2015: The Lobster

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I was scratching my head about The Lobster before one of many orange-shirted TIFF volunteers had ripped my ticket. All I knew was that it had better be good. Taking our seats only minutes after Demolition (our first screening of the Festival), the Lobster had some big shoes to fill.

I found it hard to tell how the audience in general reacted to yesterday‘s North American premiere. Their applause and questions seemed more courteous than the more rapturous reaction to Demolition and Eye in the Sky. I, for one, immediately congratulated myself for gambling one of my precious 10-pack tickets on this wonderfully bizarre movie.

In what I believe is his first English-language feature, Greek co-writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos told us that he and co-writer Efthymis Fllippou got to talking about how they’d like to make a movie about relationships and so…they made this. In a world where pressure on singles to partner up has reached a whole new level, recently dumped Colin Farrell is forced to check in to a hotel where he has 45 days to find a mate or he’ll be turned into an animal of his choice (a lobster in his case). The rules of this world are weird but oddly familiar, with hotel residents desperately seeking oddly specific things they can have in common with their dates (beware the nosebleeds scene, as well as so many others). It’s weird, but as the survivor of many bad dates, I sort of understood this world.

The Lobster is a laugh-out-loud funny movie, especially in the increasing absurdity of the situation and the Wes Andersony matter-of-factness with which the cast (Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, and Ben Winstan) deliver their absurd lines. It’s also, as Lanthimos and Weisz kept insisting, strangely romantic (albeit in a perverse way). It’s one-of-a-kind and I can’t wait to see it again.