‘Autobiography’
Stream it on Film Movement Plus.
In Makbul Mubarak’s chilling Indonesian thriller, the gaze is always obfuscated. People look at each other through bars and grills and in mirrored reflections. The camera peers through patterned glass and peeks slyly through ajar doors. It’s as if the reality at play is too harsh to look at directly, like a cruelly blazing sun.
The 18-year-old Kib (Kevin Ardilova) is the housekeeper for a retired military general (Arswendy Bening Swara), who has returned to his provincial home to run for mayor in the local elections. Multiple generations of Kib’s family have worked for the general’s family; with his father in prison, the general is the closest thing that Kib has to a parent around him. The yearnings of the lost young man and the paternal affection the general carefully administers on him form the central, venomous dynamic of “Autobiography”; Kib revels in this newfound attention, only to realize too late that he may have unwittingly sold his soul in the process. With sinister and evocative cinematography and two stellar lead performances, Mubarak mounts a devastating portrait of a country shaped by ruthless hierarchies and military rule, where the oppressed do the oppressors’ dirty work in exchange for measly scraps of power.
‘100 Yards’
This swashbuckling martial arts actioner is pure cinema, with luscious production design, gorgeous period costumes, handsome actors who romance and cross each other with equal panache, and intricate kung fu sequences that are hypnotic to watch. Directed by brothers Xu Haofeng and Xu Junfeng, “100 Yards” is set in Tianjin in China in the 1920s, right after the fall of the Qing dynasty and at a time when the city had a thriving French concession. At the city’s prestigious martial arts academy, a battle over power unfolds as the old Master dies, appointing his protégé Qi Quan (Andy On) as his successor, much to the chagrin of his son, Shen An (Jacky Heung). The complicated plot that ensues involves a series of duels between the two men, who break all rules to assuage hurt egos and claim authority — they brawl in public, beyond the permitted 100-yard perimeter of the academy; they enlist foreigners and street bandits in their games. The story of “100 Yards” often feels overly contrived, but it is besides the point; it serves mostly as an excuse to engineer gasp-inducing twists and stage ever more acrobatic fights, all of which are performed in baroque sets by lithe actors in ultra-stylish fusion clothing.
‘Family Therapy’
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s surrealist classic, “Teorema,” about a handsome stranger who introduces disorder and erotic chaos into a middle-class Italian family, is an obvious point of reference for this Slovenian satire. Here, a bougie household is shaken up by the arrival of the patriarch’s son from another relationship. But Sonja Prosenc rejiggers Pasolini’s film for a new and cruder age. “Family Therapy” has not a trace of subtlety or mystery; the movie is absurd and in-your-face, leveling an acrid critique of the pretensions that hold the deluded European upper class together. The family at its center lives in a literal glass house, loftily tuning out the refugee crisis unfolding around them by listening to Slavoj Zizek on the radio; the patriarch dreams of winning a contest to take them all to space. Rather than unravel under the influence of the newly arrived son, the family only exposes its already embedded dysfunction, with the good-looking young man emerging as the sanest of the lot, the witness to the rot that lies under manicured gardens.
‘Sisters’
In this wrenching Latvian coming-of-age drama, an impossible choice faces 13-year-old Anastasija (Emma Skirmante). She and her younger sister live in a crowded foster home, yearning for the care of their mother, who has rarely been present in their lives. One day, they receive news that they are to be adopted by an American family. The kids around them are jealous of their luck, and Anastasija’s little sister is thrilled at the prospect of new parents. But when the adopters arrive, they turn out to be religious and conservative, eager to conscript the kids into their faith. Anastasija can either give in, or stay impoverished and without family, waiting endlessly for a mother who cannot be relied upon. Directed by Linda Olte and anchored in an exquisitely moving performance by Skirmante, “Sisters” paints a vivid portrait of the institutions that let down young people in need of care, be it the foster system with its limited resources or an adoption industry that encourages savior complexes.
‘The Gullspang Miracle’
Rent or buy it on major platforms.
There’s a reason twins (and doppelgängers) hold such a mystical aura in the movies: They’re like miracles of creation, or glitches in a world that is premised on uniqueness and identity. In this astonishing documentary by the director Maria Fredriksson, two Norwegian sisters go to buy a house in Sweden and discover that the seller, Olaug, looks exactly like their older sister, who died by suicide years ago. More and more coincidences arise — names, birth dates, DNA matches — and release a Pandora’s box of revelations and questions about what makes people alike and different. As the family goes through old documents and stories, and even enlists a genealogist, this growing mystery begins to implicate everything from Nazi experiments on twins to a possible murder cover-up. Driving it all is the belief that something intuitive and cosmic ties together family; and then that belief starts to fray, when Olaug realizes that a wide ideological chasm separates her and her newfound kin. Fredriksson employs a cleverly reflexive framework, showing us the making of the documentary as we watch it, and inviting us into the process through which we construct narratives about ourselves and those around us.
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