NEW YORK MOVIE JOURNAL (Feb.-Mar. 2020)

[Chris Knipp]

NEW YORK MOVIE JOURNAL (Feb.-Mar. 2020)

Listed in order seen. Linked where there is a review.



PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE/PORTRAIT DE LA JEUNE FILLE EN FEU (Céline Sciamma 2019). A beautiful film about an 18th-century lesbian love affair between a painter and the aristicratic woman (Adèle Haenel) she's supposed to paint without her knowing for the man who's to marry her, who hasn't seen her. Set on a rocky coastline, dark, stormy, romantic. This may have brought Sciamma the greatest prestige yet, but seemed for all its poetry and eroticism more removed from reality than her previous films. Metascore: 95%. Watched at Village East Feb. 26.



YOUNG AHMED (Jean-Pierre, Luc Dardenne 2019). Set as usual in the Dardennes' part of Belgium, this focuses on a Moroccan-descent teenager who falls under the sway of a fanatical young imam and becomes fanatical himself. Fanatics are not interesting, and when they're inarticulate teenagers even less so. Young Ahmed becomes a negative example of the Dardennes' singleminded obsessiveness. Not one of their real successes, though for some reason this got them the directing prize at Cannes. Watched at Quad Cinema Mar. 26. Metascore: 66%.



PREMATURE (Rashaad Ernesto Green 2019). Excellent scenes of Harlem with the pungent rapid fire talk of today. Set against a young couple in a sexy, intense summer love affair while she is slated to go off to college but things go wrong with an unplanned pregnancy. They go wrong in how this story is told too (the pickle scene is a clumsy cliché - as Mike Angelo also noted) and the casting of the two leads is off, because both actors are a bit old for their parts. The moments of Harlem talk, though, are great. Metascore: 81%.



ASSISTANT, THE (Kitty Green 2019). Hour by hour depiction of one work day of a young woman (Julia Garner) just out of Northwestern employed at the lowest level in a NYC film production company with an unseen boss sort of like Harvey Weinstein. Okay, maybe a lot like Harvey Weinstein. She is not one of his victims yet but this shows the demeaning powerless system that would enable his behavior within the company. A muted shout of anger. Watched at Village East Feb. 27. Metascore: 77%.