Close shows rather than tells, speaking in elision and embodiment. The filmmakers’ depictions of internalized shame, repressed intimacy, and adolescent grief are subtle, yet profoundly moving. The weightiness of the protagonist’s words “c’est à cause de moi” land with quiet force by the film’s close, concealing his more difficult, tender truth: “il me manque.”Blame is no salve for grief, as the closing scenes remind us. With one last tender embrace, Close leaves us heartbroken, but abounding in the new growth of spring.
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Leviathan 2014
a whiskey sippin’ country heartbreak ballad, only the bourbon is vodka, the cowboys are Russian laborers, and the robber barons are corrupt local elites. a grim, eviscerating film which coldly interrogates the limits of human despair and political injustice. as the film closes, we are left with icy expanses of landscape dotted with the skeletons of giants—and poetically so. as the final shots suggest, though surfaces may shift, the bones of a leviathan may only be eroded with deep time and power.
stunning cinematography, authentic acting performances, and a heart wrenching screenplay.
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Girl Picture 2022
A Finnish baby dyke coming-of-age gem. Watching the film jolted me back to the dance floors of Berlin and my own (not-so) innocent queer youth. Pure sapphic bliss, with a cautionary tale of shitty, unfulfilling sex with cis men thrown in for good measure. In all cases, the film distinctly centers femme agency and subjectivities.
Certainly, as with most teen romance, things get messy; the heavier plot lines of totalizing emotional despair, family dysfunction, sexuality crisis, self-sabotage, and platonic breakups…
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