Drive My Car-nf
****

This three-hour film may be difficult for you to handle. It is mostly in Japanese with a little English and some sign language and of course with English subtitles. The story unfolds as we meet a Japanese couple, he a theater director and she a playwright. They seemed to be very much in love although he has good reason to doubt her fidelity. Sadly, she dies of a stroke at a young age. The complicated emotions of grief and anger unfold as he is asked to put together and direct the classic theater production of Uncle Vanya. The automobile in which a good deal of the action and dialogue takes place is actually a Swedish Saab and not a Japanese brand. Most of the action takes place in the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Even more important is the relationship which the talented and grieving director develops with the young woman who was assigned to drive him around and essentially be his chauffer.

The film is written and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi based on a short story by Haruki Murakami. Although the names of this cast may not ring a bell with American audiences, they deserve credit. They are Tōko Miura, Reika Kirishima, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Sonia Yuan, and Masaki Okada.

This film has received four Oscar nominations and it won the Oscar for best International Film. It is the first Japanese film to be nominated for best film. Other Oscar nominations were for best director and best adapted screenplay.

Parallel Mothers
****
How important is it to you to know who are your biological ancestors? If you learned that some ancestor was murdered by the Nazis or some other dictator and thrown into an unmarked grave and there was now a chance to identify him or her and take their remains and give it a proper burial, would you be intent on doing it? Since we are trying to ask some challenging questions, let us ask you some additional contemporary questions, which other films in addition to this one have brought up. If you were to get a notice from the hospital where one of your children was born that notified you that they were computerizing their records and they determined that your child was accidentally switched at birth, would you want to meet your biological child? Would you tell your grown child or children? What if you learned about this error several weeks after you took your child home from the hospital? What would you do? How would you react? In these days of modern DNA testing, true maternity and paternity can be determined. The first and latter hypotheticals are a part of the theme of this film. It is from Spain and stars Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit as the “Parallel Mothers.” It is directed by Pedro Almodóvar. The movie is very well done, and we believe will stimulate the kind of questions that we raised above. Earlier films that have dealt with variations of this theme are:

Like Father Like Son – a Japanese film where the parents learned that their child was switched at birth when the child is 6 years old.

Philomena – deals with the Catholic Church and unwed mothers and what happens to their babies.

The Kids Are All Right – grown children track down their sperm donor biological father.

People Like Us – encountering siblings that you never knew existed.

Mother And Child – yearning for a connection with biological parents that you never knew.

Parallel Mothers is a griping tale of mothers and children and even generational trauma. It is not only well worth seeing but will also stimulate discussion as have these other films that have dealt with related subjects. It is a very good contender for Best International Film for the 2022 Oscars that are coming up in a week from when this is being written.

The Lost Daughter-nf
****

This is an intense film about the various dimensions of motherhood that might be best understood by a mother looking back at the pulls and pushes she has experienced. Leda is a woman in her late 40s who by herself goes to a Greek Beach Resort. She interacts with a woman and her family that she meets there who reminds her of herself when she was a younger mother of two young girls. We see her as a young academic, who translates written materials, in a marriage where her needs and wishes are subsumed by those of her husband, who takes for granted that she is always there to pick up the pieces. We see her frustration and exhaustion from the relentless demands of her children. We also watch as she goes to a professional conference where she is seduced by a well-respected professor and who values her intellect as well as being physically attracted to her. The cinematic experience allows the viewer to understand the love and devotion that she has to her children yet how she leaves them to achieve a certain degree of self-fulfillment. She returns three years later but carries the guilt of her actions as an ever-present burden

On one level, the viewer feels that we are watching bad parenting as loving children are abandoned for periods of time, but on the other hand, there is never any doubt that in her heart she loves the children but is struggling with her own conflicts.

Olivia Colman is terrific as the older middle-aged Leda and Jessie Buckley as the somewhat young Leda who not only captures her role but seems to have a strong physical resemblance to her older self. Both women are nominated for Oscars as best actress and best supporting actress respectively.

Maggie Gyllenhaal directed and wrote the screen play based on the story by Elena Ferrante and one cannot help feeling that these women have the capacity to identify with the main characters in the film. It is also impressive when a director achieves such realistic performances by the young children in the film as was done in this film.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

****

Even if they are not our religious cup of tea, we all have heard about the famous TV evangelists such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Joel Osteen, and, of course, Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye. This film, directed by Michael Showalter, takes a deep dive into the lives of this duo played by Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain. They both were fantastic in their roles and Ms. Chastain is being recognized with an Oscar nomination. She clearly was able to sing, be the voice of puppets and play the role of a wife demonstrating the complicated relationship with her husband as well as their work as a famous religious duo.

This film gives us a view of the behind the scenes evangelical politics. The storyline traces Tammy Faye’s life from being a little girl, to becoming part of this famous couple and of course her very complicated interaction with her husband. The film allows us to get some insight into the politics, corruption, infidelity, and many other fascinating aspects of their lives. Interestingly, we know very little about the two children of this couple. We see her giving birth to her children, but there is no further mention of them during the film

The movie is unique, well done, and we strongly recommend it.

West Side Story
****
One of our all time favored Broadway musicals as well as the subsequent motion picture was West Side Story. It first hit the Broadway stage in 1957, directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins based on a book by Arthur Laurents and inspired by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The music is by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. In 1961 there was the first film adaptation staring Natalie Wood, which we saw as a newly engaged couple.

There were numerous revivals on the Broadway stage as well as by many touring companies and now there is a new motion picture that had a $100,000,000 budget for this great musical production directed now by Steven Spielberg, starring Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ansel Elgort as Tony.

The storyline highlights the turf battle between the whites and the Puerto Ricans on the streets of Manhattan on the Upper West Side. It features interracial love, gang violence, and a lot more weaved into a fantastic memorable music and dance production. The film not only showed the disrespect that various ethnic groups had for each other but also showed the insensitivity of the police at that time.

While this was an excellent film, we do feel that some of the changes made did not serve to enhance the production. For example, the classic scene which took place in a gymnasium where the two groups were in conflict, which had lots of dancing seemed less ebullient than the original.The scene where the Puerto Rican girls were dancing and singing the praises of America with counterpoint by the Puerto Rican boys yearning for their former home was in memory from the original film, a perfect blend of choreography, color and longing contained on a rooftop setting. In this version, the whole number is opened up, taking place on the streets of Manhattan with a growing number of onlookers joining the dance. Somehow, it felt diluted in its new form and lost the punch of the original. Also, some of the emotional scenes were not as intense as we recall from the original. Nevertheless, we would strongly recommend this classic musical experience. The music, the lyrics, the dancing and the story can’t fail to grab you and keep you engaged. West Side Story continues to be magnificent, beautiful, painful and important.

Te Ata
****

Generally, there is not as much attention paid to the historical treatment of Native Americans as there is to other groups. This film focuses on a young girl growing up in Oklahoma in a small poor town made up mostly of Native Americans from the Chickasaw Nation tribe. Orianka Kilcher inhabits this character magnificently. As we see her growing up, she is drawn to acting and story-telling. She convinces her parents to let her go to a college in Oklahoma on a scholarship, where she comes under the tutelage and encouragement of some of her teachers. She develops a mission to tell the story of her people and does it extremely well. The trajectory from a poor Native American girl to an actress who appears on Broadway and eventually performs at the White House for the President of the Unites States is heartwarming and unforgettable.

This is the true story of Mary Thompson Fisher, best known as Te Ata. She is shown as a beautiful person who is portrayed magnificently by Ms. Kilcher in an unforgettable performance. Both mind and heart are captivated by this important film.