-Moonlight:
This film is about a black man coping with being gay within a poor society. This is one of the main concepts throughout the film and due to the fact it's relevant to today's culture, it really intrigued me as well as the rest of the audience, in my opinion, due to the fact everyone looked engrossed in the film. It is a film that includes drug and school violence, furthermore dealing with real life issues and grabbing the attention of the audience. Stories of LGBT people of colour have been largely ignored in film or at least relegated to the side-lines while instead, we’re offered up the whitewashed history of Roland Emmerich’s tone deaf Stonewall or straight-friendly Oscarbait like The Danish Girl. Writer/director Barry Jenkins’ astonishing new film is both proudly black and refreshingly queer. It’s a thrilling, deeply necessary work that opens up a much-needed and rarely approached on-screen conversation about the nature of gay masculinity. Jenkins doesn’t pull any punches in showing the crushing loneliness and horrific violence of being a gay man in a culture where homosexuality is seen as a weakness. We see the visible and invisible scars that develop from a lack of acceptance and by the time we finally meet adult Chiron, played with incredible nuance by ex-athlete Trevante Rhodes, he’s trapped by his own desire, regulating his behaviour to remove anything that could be seen as “gay”. The third act sees him return home to reunite with a school friend (an exceptional performance from Andre Holland) with whom he had his one sexual encounter with during his teenage years. There’s a thrilling, heart-pumping chemistry in these scenes as we see Chiron’s performed toughness fade in the face of a love he’s so sorely needed throughout his tortured life. It’s beautifully choreographed and easily the most believably intimate gay pairing since Andrew Haigh’s Weekend. Every single aching glance is a poignant reminder of what Chiron has endured to get here.Moonlight is a profoundly moving film about growing up as a gay man in disguise, a difficult and damaging journey that’s realised with staggering care and delicacy and one that will resonate with anyone who has had to do the same. We’re starved of these narratives and Jenkins’ electrifying drama showcases why they are so hugely important, providing an audience with a rarely seen portrait of what it really means to be a black gay man in America today. It’s a stunning achievement.
-The Handmaiden:
Park Chan-wook’s last film Stoker, his first foray into Hollywood, had Mia Wasikowska’s burgeoning killer masturbate after helping to murder her attempted rapist, a fascinatingly perverse scene that acts as something of a precursor to his latest. The rare focus on a woman’s experience of sex without a man involved is key in his adaptation of Sarah Waters’ award-winning novel Fingersmith, which relocates the story from Victorian Britain to 1930s Korea. A con artist, calling himself Count Fujiwara, hatches a devious plan that sees him working alongside pickpocket Sook-hee to steal the many riches of beautiful heiress Lady Hideko. Isolated and bullied into an impending marriage with her uncle, Hideko takes on Sook-hee as her handmaiden. But while Sook-hee’s task is getting her new mistress to fall for the “Count”, she finds herself sexually drawn instead.
Premiering at Cannes exactly a year after the handsome yet overrated lesbian romance Carol, Park has provided us with something of a compelling antidote. Unlike Haynes’s chemistry-free drama, this film is simmering with genuine sexual tension. There’s explicit sex but more importantly, there’s longing, affection and intimacy between the maid, impressive newcomer Kim Tae-Ri, and her sexually inexperienced heiress, a layered turn from Kim Min-hee. What’s so fascinating is how unsatisfying and often grotesque male sexuality is in comparison to the eroticism and warmth generated by the women of the film. The Count, played by The Chaser’s Ha Jung-woo, is merely an annoyance to the pair, a repugnant fly on their windshield. While the uncle, who involves his niece in perverted “readings” for a male audience, is a sadistic fool indulging in pornography over reality. Men are pathetic, unwanted voyeurs; misusing, abusing and misunderstanding what women really want. Given the nudity on show, some are already quick to criticise Park’s direction as gratuitous and to claim that his male gaze is affecting the depiction of lesbian romance. But the impotency of the male characters helps to counter this while the sex scenes themselves, as lovingly shot as they might be, feel vital to the narrative. The couple are exploring each other and their previously untapped desires, unshackling themselves from the men around them. The film is exquisitely designed and sexually liberating, this is a hugely entertaining thriller.
-Bleed For This
-Interchange
-Goldstone
-Chi-Raq
-Dog Eat Dog
-Free Fire
-Short films such as My Mother and I (Directed by Anna McGuire, one of our mentors at the BFI), Candyfloss and two others
From watching these films, I have learnt about different types of cinema from different countries
-The Handmaiden:
Park Chan-wook’s last film Stoker, his first foray into Hollywood, had Mia Wasikowska’s burgeoning killer masturbate after helping to murder her attempted rapist, a fascinatingly perverse scene that acts as something of a precursor to his latest. The rare focus on a woman’s experience of sex without a man involved is key in his adaptation of Sarah Waters’ award-winning novel Fingersmith, which relocates the story from Victorian Britain to 1930s Korea. A con artist, calling himself Count Fujiwara, hatches a devious plan that sees him working alongside pickpocket Sook-hee to steal the many riches of beautiful heiress Lady Hideko. Isolated and bullied into an impending marriage with her uncle, Hideko takes on Sook-hee as her handmaiden. But while Sook-hee’s task is getting her new mistress to fall for the “Count”, she finds herself sexually drawn instead.
Premiering at Cannes exactly a year after the handsome yet overrated lesbian romance Carol, Park has provided us with something of a compelling antidote. Unlike Haynes’s chemistry-free drama, this film is simmering with genuine sexual tension. There’s explicit sex but more importantly, there’s longing, affection and intimacy between the maid, impressive newcomer Kim Tae-Ri, and her sexually inexperienced heiress, a layered turn from Kim Min-hee. What’s so fascinating is how unsatisfying and often grotesque male sexuality is in comparison to the eroticism and warmth generated by the women of the film. The Count, played by The Chaser’s Ha Jung-woo, is merely an annoyance to the pair, a repugnant fly on their windshield. While the uncle, who involves his niece in perverted “readings” for a male audience, is a sadistic fool indulging in pornography over reality. Men are pathetic, unwanted voyeurs; misusing, abusing and misunderstanding what women really want. Given the nudity on show, some are already quick to criticise Park’s direction as gratuitous and to claim that his male gaze is affecting the depiction of lesbian romance. But the impotency of the male characters helps to counter this while the sex scenes themselves, as lovingly shot as they might be, feel vital to the narrative. The couple are exploring each other and their previously untapped desires, unshackling themselves from the men around them. The film is exquisitely designed and sexually liberating, this is a hugely entertaining thriller.
-Bleed For This
-Interchange
-Goldstone
-Chi-Raq
-Dog Eat Dog
-Free Fire
-Short films such as My Mother and I (Directed by Anna McGuire, one of our mentors at the BFI), Candyfloss and two others
From watching these films, I have learnt about different types of cinema from different countries
No comments:
Post a Comment