By Roger Costa
PENDULAR
Brazilian director Julia Murat’s previous film, “Found Memories” was a humble, naturalistic, personal journey of a young photographer exploring an isolated region. In her latest, “Pendular” which was awarded at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, the director changes these elements for others more aggressive, yet her sensibility and profound feminine perspectives continue to exhale throughout each frame. Two established artists are living together and sharing the same working place, as each are creating a different new work. She’s rehearsing a new dance, which has a solo and a duet, and he’s working on a new sculpture, with the help of a couple of assistants. When they are not into their creative processes, they are engaged into themselves, exploring their ideas, their dreams and fantasies, their compulsive co-dependent relationship, as well as varied sexual experiences. Murat beautifully observes the anxieties of these two human beings, both delving into multiple concepts of identity crisis: emotional, personal and artistic. In everything they do, there’s a sense of high tension, as if they were about to explode with the overwhelming loads of influence, inspiration and need of relief. Here also, the director explores the place and environment as a character: the abandoned, old building where they work, becomes the most important key in the film, a place unifying, shaping and dividing. The actors give superb performances, elevating the dramatic, poetic and philosophical aspects of their past traumas, longings and uneasiness. The romantic and troublesome structure of the narrative is coherent and charming, despite some lines feel like presumptuously liberal and sometimes arrogantly intellectual. Also, the extreme, long, exploitative sex scenes lose its erotic appeal with unnecessary and exhibitionist insights- at one point he even becomes the woman in bed. But not everything is lost here; the film has a strange, melancholic beauty that maintains the interest for the artists’ dilemmas. (An Official Selection at New Directors/New Films 2017. Playing Friday, March 24th at MoMA, and Sunday, March 26th at Film Society of Lincoln Center.)
PERSONAL SHOPPER
Olivier Assayas’ text-message horror-drama kicks off the list of worst of the year claiming the number 1 spot. Kristen Stewart gives a lazy, snobby, superficial performance as the worker of the title, a young medium who receives messages from beyond, and during her shopping breaks, she experiences ghost encounters with her dead twin brother. On top of that, she has to deal with her major client, a wealthy promiscuous blonde bombshell, and her abusive lover. Stewart spends the whole film talking over and over how she manages her “talents” and how she must make “contact”, as well as trying to figure out what is bothering her brother in the beyond. In a phantasmagorical atmosphere, utterly different from his usual aesthetic, Assayas explores the use of technology with creepy images of spirits flying around the abandoned house she moved in to, leaving crosses marks everywhere. Also, the introduction of a villain through text messages could have been better explored, instead, it becomes dragging and exhaustive. It is very hard to accept this is Assayas’ film. You wouldn’t expect anything from Stewart, despite she’s improving as a dramatic actress, but coming from the French director, it feels like “killing the art”. There’s a great, sensual sequence though, where she’s trying on her client’s expensive dresses, facing her own fears and fantasizing about her sexual ambiguity and the glamorous enchant of fashion, that is certainly unforgettable, as she finishes it with a masturbation, gorgeously dressed in black. As they are all trying to make it serious, I spent the entire film LOL. (Now Playing)
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