The Daring Role of Emma Thompson, Bar Mitzvah and the Israeli Point: Summary of the Sundance Festival

The most talked about film is also the most Jewish film, the role of Emma Thompson brings it to a climax and the films that force us to look in the mirror - Sundance Festival summary, just before the awards ceremony

Avner Shavit

27/01/2022

Thursday, 27 January 2022, 00:08

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Trailer for "Nabalani" (CNN)

The Sundance Festival will end this weekend, with the awards ceremony taking place on Friday.

Then we'll also know if "Tantura," Alon Schwartz's acclaimed and controversial documentary, comes out of the event with a prize, which could further fuel the fire around him.

Either way, it can already be summed up.

The festival has provided quite a few headlines this year, mostly thanks to the documentary series about Bill Cosby's crimes, or the documentary in which Owen Rachel Wood revealed that Marilyn Manson raped her in a shocking way, and we've covered them here before.

Beyond that, we will save you the full viewing diary that includes dozens of movies, and settle for the most talked about ones, which are likely to provoke more lively discourse over the coming year.

These are works that will be screened in Israel in the future, in one form or another, so we will be content with a short opinion on them, and we will keep a surplus for the future.

More on Walla!

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To the full article

The opposite of "beautiful woman".

From "Good Luck to You, Leo Grande" (Photo: Sundance Festival / Nick Wall)

"Good Luck to You, Leo Grande"

Above all, the Sundance Film Festival is ultimately a marketplace, where independently produced films stand on the shelf at the most affordable price.

This year, one of the most sought after films was "Good Luck to You, Leo Grande", which ended up being sold to Circlelight Studios for seven and a half million dollars.

The studios, it was reported, have big and besieged contracts for the film and especially for its star Emma Thompson, whom they plan to run for the Oscars.

The veteran British actress plays a new widow here, who during her life had sex with only one man - her late husband, with whom she slept in only one pose, a missionary pose.

After his death, she hires the services of a young and well-equipped gigolo, who teaches her for the first time the pleasures of the body, and she too has some important lessons for him.

In the age following the MeToo, the whole of popular culture and cinema in particular are recalculating a trajectory when it comes to representing men, women and everything in between. The solution of Sophie Hyde, the Australian screenwriter-director who signed this film - to do everything upside down. Previous hits, such as "Beautiful Woman", featured characters from women working in the sex industry? Then she will introduce a character from Gigolo. The films before her described how a man has an affair with a woman younger than him? So here we see sex between a woman in her sixties and a man in his twenties. Are we used to wanting women? So here the camera lingers over and over on the man's transfigured body, except for one scene, which will surely still resonate, in which Thompson stands in front of the mirror in full nudity.

This is also an interesting point: the festival screened a variety of films dealing with the sexuality of young women, and in all of them the camera was careful not to show the naked bodies of the heroines.

"Good Luck to You, Leo Grande," however, enjoys exposing Thompson's body, for the same reason mentioned above.

We're already used to nude scenes of twenty girls, so now sixty is the new twenties.

This is how it is in today's Hollywood: everything in defiance, everything in reverse.

And beyond that, how is the film itself?

This is a chamber drama, which takes place mostly in a hotel room, with two main characters, and besides Thompson we are forced to turn around Daryl McCormack's unbearable presence in the role of the gigolo.

Beyond the reversal of roles, there is not too much here, but nowadays even that is enough to become a sought-after commodity.

Either way, this comedic drama has been acquired for distribution with us as well, so there will still be an opportunity to tread on it.

Emma Thompson talks about the film

"Cha Cha Real Smooth"

Another one of the most talked about feature films at the festival. Coincidentally or not, this is also the most Jewish film in Sundance, and there is even an Israeli connection: Odia Rash, charming as always, stars in it.

The film is another illustration of the long-standing Hollywood attraction to bat / bar mitzvahs. The Gentiles are dying for it, because in Christianity there are no such fun maturation ceremonies (after all, in Christian baptism there is no refreshment and it is impossible to invite a DJ); And Hollywood is dying for it, because a bat / bar mitzvah is an opportunity to bring a variety of characters, events and music into one space, which is a good basis for drama and comedy.

Cooper Reif wrote and directed the film and also stars in it, as a young Jew from New Jersey who becomes a dancer at bat and bar mitzvah parties.

This is how he also meets a woman played by Dakota Johnson, which is one of her two films at the festival.

He extends his patronage to her daughter who is on the spectrum and fills the void left by her fiancée, a travel lawyer.

Similar to the previous film we mentioned, here too there is an age gap motif, but this time the relationship does not develop sexually - and yet it has dramatic implications for the lives of the characters.

One can understand why the film gets such a warm embrace: it does indeed shed tears, but unlike most Sundance competitors, it is not tears of utter despair and of a desire to cut veins.

It is a fun comedy drama to watch and full of joy of life, which leaves a glimmer of hope for the sequel and proves that even if it did not happen to you at the age of 12 or 13, it is never too late to grow up.

Four bar mitzvahs and one milf.

From "Cha Cha Real Smooth" (Photo: Sundance Festival)

"Palm Trees and Power Lines"

I would not be surprised if it would be the winner of the first prize in the American plot competition. Even if not, for me it's the best feature film I've seen in Sundance, so at least one of us has already received an award.

This is American director Jamie Dek's first feature film, and it is based on her short film of the same name. The stunning discovery Lily McLannery, whose resemblance to Avishag Samberg is hard to ignore, embodies here a young woman from a low socio-economic background and a dysfunctional family, who has a toxic relationship with a man older than her.

There are movies that are hard to explain what is good about them. They are just like that. Palm Trees and Power Lines grab the viewer from the first second to the last. It does not have too much meat, but it also does not have one unnecessary bone or one wrong movement. Jamie Dek demonstrates mastery and skill in the means of expression available to her, and following the questions we mentioned earlier, avoids easy solutions as she presents scenes of sex and sexual exploitation. We'll hear more about her and this movie.

We will hear more about him.

From "Palm Trees and Power Lines" (Photo: Sundance Festival)

"Nabalani"

In perfect timing with the winds of war between the United States and Russia, this documentary was added to the festival at the last minute.

He is named after Alexei Navalny, Putin's most prominent opposition figure, who is currently in a Russian prison and just before the premiere revealed that the Kremlin has put his brother on his wanted list.

The film is a joint production of HBO and CNN, and is behind Canadian director Daniel Rohr.

This docu follows a villain as he tries and manages to prove that Putin was behind the attempt to poison him, which miraculously did not end in his death.

The plot to eliminate Navalny and the way he exposed it are materials for a Netflix hit series, but the film does not bring out the best in them, quite the opposite.

The culprits are the director but also the subject of his documentation, who finds it difficult to hold this docu on his shoulders.

Without detracting from his political importance, at least as a cinematic hero he is revealed as a cold, arrogant and not charismatic personality.

In addition, as the freedom fighter himself admits, he has a hard time having a conversation in English.

It is possible that if the film had been made in his mother tongue, the result would have been more sweeping.

"Citizen Number 4" is not.

From "Nabalani" (Photo: CNN)

The one who is revealed here as the real heroine is Dasha, the daughter of Navalny, who is currently studying at a prestigious university in the United States, and she has the charisma, grace and rhetorical skills that her father lacks here.

It is likely that one day another separate film will be dedicated to her.

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Tags

• Sundance Festival

• Emma Thompson

• Alexei Navalny

• Dakota Johnson