When Irish Eyes Aren't Smiling

Kisses (2008)
Director/Writer: Lance Daly
Studios: Fastnet Films
72 min.

The influence of the French New Wave, that mid-twentieth century film movement that stresses long tracking shots, minimal dialog, and nonprofessional actors, can be seen in the Irish indie Kisses, a nominee for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Independent Spirit Awards.  Having been funneled through the languid influence of more recent American directors like Terrence Malick and Sofia Coppola, the New Wave has found its way back across the pond to northern Europe—this ultra-obscure escapist flick was shot in Ireland on a shoestring budget.  Writer/director Lance Daly has crafted the Irish version of Lost in Translation: his camera glides through areas of inner-city Dublin both magical and destitute (much like Coppola’s did through Tokyo) to chronicle one day and night in the life of two ragamuffin kids who run away from their abusive families and savage households for one night of freedom.  Shane Curry and Kelly O’Neill, the two eleven-year-olds Daly discovered to play his leads, have never acted in anything before—meaning their performances are wonderfully devoid of the cutesy sentimental shtick most child actors have been trained to regurgitate for the camera.  A millennial interpretation of the century-old Joycean desire to flee, Daly’s sparse script expertly touches on Irish issues like alcoholism, poverty, and child sex abuse as experienced by his child characters.  What’s amazing is that the inclusion of these hot-button topics doesn’t stop this from being one of those beautifully supine films that just glides along like a hot summer afternoon.  Kisses is low-budget, independent film making at its absolute best. A

Domestic Disturbance

La nana (The Maid) (2009)
Director: Sebastián Silva
Writers: Sebastián Silva, Pedro Peirano
Studios: Forastero, Tiburón Filmes, Punto Guion Punto Producciones
95 min.

You won’t be able to take your eyes off of Chilean actress Catalina Saavedra as Raquel in The Maid.  Her un-showy performance as a nervous, flaky domestic who, after twenty-plus years with the same affluent family, finds herself fighting to retain her position is as ethereal as it is captivating.  Despite the good-natured family’s attempts to consider Raquel a part of their family, writer/director Sebastián Silva’s script is able to convey the constantly-palpable separation between employer and employee with ingenious subtlety: moments like family patriarch Mundo (Alejandro Goic) asking son Lucas (Agustín Silva) to close the door between Raquel working in the kitchen and the family eating in the dining room, or the awkward question of if, when the family sincerely celebrates Raquel’s birthday with a cake, she should clean the dishes when they’re done?  At the heart of the film lies the question of what place, if any, the help has in a family unit.  Yes, the four children—even the headstrong daughter Camila (Andrea García-Huidobro)—adore Raquel because she raised them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know she’s not really one of them.  Raquel’s disconnectedness from her own family—revealed through rare, curt, and pained phone conversations with her mother—is likely the root of her neuroses: she feels at home neither with her real family nor with the one she’s paid to assist. 

After the the well-meaning missus (Claudia Celedón) suggests hiring an additional maid to help Raquel out, Raquel’s neuroses turn into full-blown paranoia as she fiercely defends her ersatz home first from the demure Mercedes (Mercedes Villanueva) then from the belligerent Sonia (Anita Reeves).  But it’s not until Lucy (Mariana Loyola, in an ebullient and soulful supporting role) comes to stay that Raquel finally realizes what it means for someone to have their own life and a family separate from those she works for, separate from those to whom she can never belong.  The poignant final shot of the film, which echoes that of Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups, indicates that Raquel has left behind her desire to belong and accepted the challenge to form her own identity. A  

Fire Starter

Flickan som lekte med elden (The Girl Who Played with Fire) (2009)
Director: Daniel Alfredson
Writers: Jonas Frykberg, Stieg Larsson (novel)
Studios: Nordisk Film, Sveriges Television, Yellow Bird Films, ZDF Enterprises, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen 
129 min.

Noomi Rapace steals the show again in Fire, part two of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy on violence against women.  Alfredson (who also helms part three) takes over directing duties from Dragon Tattoo’s Oplev, preserving his grim color palate and expert pacing.  While the plot, in which Millenium magazine editors tackle a human trafficking ring, doesn’t have the claustrophobic hysteria that made part one so nail-biting (it was like something Agatha Christie would have written if she’d lived to see the computer age), Rapace has made Lisbeth Salander one of the most compelling film characters in recent memory, no easy feat considering she hardly ever talks, smiles, or willingly opens up to any other human being—not even her former lover Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) who’s trying to save her life.  This punk-rock post-feminist never panders to the fanboy crowd by being an easily classifiable comic book-lite femme fatale.  She’s trying to survive, not be a badass.  Let’s hope that rules out an inane video game adaptation. B+