Movie
Petite Maman
This gracefully rendered, fabular tale provides an exquisite distillation of Céline Sciamma’s focused and empathetic cinematic style, and…
By Joseph OwenJoseph Owen
Published articles
LFF
Petite Maman
This gracefully rendered, fabular tale provides an exquisite distillation of Céline Sciamma’s focused and empathetic cinematic style, and…
By Joseph Owen
LFF
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Three lovelorn episodes about “coincidence and imagination”, as described by writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, comprise this wondrous, searching and…
By Joseph Owen
LFF
La Mif
This excellent, if dramatically overburdened realist drama has the quality of texture: the lives of seven girls in…
By Joseph Owen
LFF
Language Lessons
This sincerely felt, fundamentally misguided film amounts to a lockdown exercise for bored actors. Natalie Morales directs, co-writes…
By Joseph Owen
Movie
Next Door
Daniel Brühl supposedly sends himself up in this sly and insinuating two-hander, which is part attempted self-satire, part…
By Joseph Owen
Film festivals
Brotherhood
Shot over five years in a docufictional style that fuses reality and imagination, Brotherhood is an assured second…
By Joseph Owen
Film festivals
Gerda
Gerda is a diverting, if frustrating, account of thwarted personal choice in modern Russia, speckled with striking compositions,…
By Joseph Owen
Film festivals
The Sacred Spirit (Espiritu Sagrado)
This darkly comic work walks and, for the most part, masters a tonal tightrope that few filmmakers would…
By Joseph Owen
Film festivals
Medea
The Greek myth of Medea ends in tragedy, and this bold, bullish adaptation from Alexander Zeldovich positions itself…
By Joseph Owen