Tag Archives: bullying

“Reinventing Marvin” by Anne Fontaine (France, 2017)

 

Reinventing Marvin

A young gay man stages a theater play about his youth, which enables him to distance himself from the environment where he grew up and allows him to come to term with it / Excellent scenario “like a postmodern collage” [Diego Semerene

Cast: Finnegan Oldfield, Grégory Gadebois, Vincent Macaigne
Director: Anne Fontaine
Writers: Pierre Trividic, Anne Fontaine
Cinematography by Yves Angelo
Film Editing by Annette Dutertre

“A Girl Like Her” by Amy Weber (USA, 2015)

A Girl Like Her by Amy Weber (2015)

Extremely and often unbearably realism! The director and her crew play an active part in the movie, giving it a documentary touch that strengthens its impact.

Actors: Lexi Ainsworth, Hunter King, Jimmy Bennett
Director: Amy S. Weber
Writer: Amy S. Weber
Music by David Bateman
Cinematography by Samuel Brownfield
Film Editing by Todd Zelin

“Before I Fall” (Ry Russo-Young, USA 2017)

Before I Fall

Variation on Groundhog Day. Lots of quality but some weaknesses in the scenario

Cast: Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, Elena Kampouris, Logan Miller, Cynthy Wu, Medalion Rahimi, Jennifer Beals, Kian Lawley, Liv Hewson
Director: Ry Russo-Young
Writer (novel): Lauren Oliver
Writer: Maria Maggenti
Cinematographer: Michael Fimognari
Editor: Joe Landauer
Composer: Adam Taylor

“The Gift” (Joel Edgerton, USA 2015)

The Gift

The script hesitates between a few genres (horror, thriller) before opting for a bully-victim relationship that loses much of its dramatic content along the way. An identical indecision hovers over who is the main character of the movie: Simon (Jason Bateman)? Robyn (Rebecca Hall)? Gordo (Joel Edgerton)?

Cast: Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton, David Denman, Beau Knapp, Allison Tolman, P. J. Byrne, Busy Philipps, Wendell Pierce, Katie Aselton
Director: Joel Edgerton
Writer: Joel Edgerton
Director of Photography: Eduard Grau

“Being 17” (André Téchiné, France 2016)

Being 17

“The moving qualities in this film are mostly a coming-out thing, so perhaps straight people won’t relate, but there are glimmers here (and in our times) of that narrative holding enough substance to speak to universal truths.” -[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4331970/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1]

Cast: Kacey Mottet Klein, Sandrine Kiberlain, Corentin Fila, Alexis Loret, Jean Fornerod
Director: André Téchiné
Writer: Céline Sciamma, André Téchiné
Cinematographer: Julien Hirsch
Editor: Albertine Lastera
Composer: Alexis Rault

“Hounddog” (Deborah Kampmeier, USA 2007)

Hounddog

“Rape and repressions are the two sides of the same coin. When you rape a girl, the problem is not that you’re taking away her purity, which gets everyone all up in arms. It’s that you’re taking away her wholeness. Trying to keep her pure, repressing her sexuality also takes her wholeness. I don’t want my daughter to grow up pure. I want her to grow whole.”  says Anja in Split.
The idea of sexual violence taking a woman’s or a girl’s wholeness is the leading theme in Deborah Kampmeier’s three movies (Split, Virgin, and Hounddog).

Cast: Dakota Fanning, David Morse, Piper Laurie, Afemo Omilami, Robin Wright Penn, Cody Hanford, Jill Scott
Written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier
Music: Gisburg
Cinematography: Jim Denault
Photography: Edward Lachman
Editing: Sabine Hoffman

 

“Virgin” (Deborah Kampmeier, USA 2003)

Virgin

A few aspects that are common to Split and to Virgin: The female lead is a ‘good’ person but some things she does puts her on the margin of society / She loves but is not loved back / A man destroys her life.
Unbearable music

Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Robin Wright Penn, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Charles Socarides, Socorro Santiago, Peter Garety, Stephanie Gatchet
Written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier
Cinematography: Benjamin Wolf
Editing: Jane Pia Abramowitz

“The Dressmaker” (Jocelyn Moorhouse, Australia 2015)

the-dressmaker

Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Writers: Rosalie Ham (novel), P.J. Hogan
Actors: Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth

A film over bullying with very intelligent aspects and many contrasts, but some very weak points as well.

A few remarks (SPOILERS ahead):

  • The main personage, Tillie, has been bullied and chased away when she was a girl, but comes back as a strong woman wanting to have her revenge. However, at the contact of the people at the origin of her sufferings, she turns weak and is bullied again (for ex., the scene when the teacher closes the door of the church on her).
    Other interesting personages: the mother, the policeman…
  • There’s an impossible chain of events: within one afternoon, Tillie learns that the man she hates is her father, that the boy she’s supposed to have killed is her brother, that she eventually didn’t kill him… and then, just after all this, she crowns her day by making love with the man she loves for the first time … and he then stupidly kills himself afterwards!!!
  • For me, the most annoying was the music: David Hirschfelder had made a musical patchwork in which we hear Ennio Moriccone, Johann Söderqvist, Bruno Coulais, and a few others. The final effect is that the music fills the movie with gratuitous references instead of sustaining its narrative. For example, whereas the imitation of Ennio Morricone nicely fits what the camera shows and how it shows it, the (over)use of the music of Les Choristes (The Chorus) makes no sense at all.