Christopher Schroeder

Category: movie

  • Of Course They Do And

    Of Course They Do And

    The new movie Girls Like Girls, which is widely recommended, seems as confused as its characters are supposed to be.

    Teenage Coley (Maya da Costa), who has relocated from San Diego after her mother’s death to her estranged father’s rural Oregon home, is befriended by Sonya (Myra Molloy). Their friendship soon becomes romantic and then is abruptly ended when Sonya leaves for summer dance camp, and both confront their feelings and fears, and renew their relationship, after Sonya returns.

    Director Haley Kiyoko, who co-authored the screenplay with Stefanie Scott and Chloe Okuno, explains in introductory remarks that this movie originated as a song (2015) and later became a novel (2023). She also adds for those who are unfamiliar with these previous versions that it’s an account of being seen, and addresses the need for more queer stories.

    Girls as a movie is successful enough. The cinematography is evocatively languid, and elicits high school summer experience. Also, Da Costa is credible even as she stops short of exploring some emotions, which seems as much a directing and writing problem.

    One problem however is its relevance. Lesbian love has a long history at least in the West (e.g., Sappho’s 630-570 BCE love poems). Moreover, more than 6 in 10 Americans today still believe that gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable, and most LGBTQ Americans today report feeling socially supported.

    A bigger problem is that the story seems as confused as some of its characters. The movie is considered a romantic coming-of-age story, but its plot suggests something more complicated that to its detriment is never examined.

    One obvious possibility is the challenge to heterosexual expectations that Coley’s and Sonya’s relationship poses as expressed by Sonya’s sometime boyfriend Trenton (Levon Hawke). Another perhaps less so arises in the awkward exchanges between Coley and her estranged father Curtis (Zach Braff), which seem less about Coley’s sexual identity than their family history, and which reappear in the mostly off-camera interactions between Sonya and her mother and sister.

    These and other possibilities offer opportunities to offer something more than saccharinely superficial sentiments about lesbian love, and explain why this story from someone whose fans consider “lesbian Jesus” seems more like an after-school special. This condition seems confirmed by my discovery after the move that the adapted song was offered as a YA novel.

    This movie also represents the icult of the individual, but this constraint is part of a larger cultural immediacy complaint, and not specific to this movie. That however is only one more reason why this movie is more suitable for smaller screens, such as a music video, and not a big one as a feature film.

  • Too Much for Tuner

    Too Much for Tuner

    Most credible critics recommend Tuner, a new movie written by Daniel Roher and Robert Ramsey, which surprises me.

    Niki (Leo Woodall), who has hyperacusis and no longer plays piano, works as a piano tuner with his father’s friend Harry (Dustin Hoffman). On a job, he meets Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a piano student whose dream is apprenticing for a famous maestro (Jean Reno). They meet a second time with Harry, who is soon hospitalized and then dies, leaving behind big medical bills.

    To pay these, Niki uses his hypersensitive hearing to help criminals crack safes, and later gives Ruthie a stolen watch, which is a replacement for the one from her grandmother that she left on a train. She wears this watch to her audition, and learns in conversation with the maestro that it has been stolen, which ends her relationship with Niki. Niki manages to restore her reputation with the maestro, and his own with her.

    This movie, which is directed by Roher, intriguingly mixes genre conventions and offers lavish visuals and appealing performances, especially from Woodall and Hoffman. These however cannot compensate for its specious plot, which overshadows everything else.

    This story is filled with implausible circumstances. Niki for example memorizes cryptocurrency account recovery codes despite being ordered at gunpoint to destroy and then consume the document, and later reconstructs these codes to access the account, but he neither steals this money nor offers this information even after he is kidnapped to obtain these codes, which forces him to miss Ruthie’s audition performance.

    These circumstances also appear at the center of the story. For instance, the maestro recognizes the watch he had stolen from him on Ruthie’s arm in his discussion with her about the apprenticeship, and agrees to avoid the authorities, and apparently still offer Ruthie the apprenticeship, after Niki offers to obtain the second stolen one — both had been secured by the maestro’s grandparents before they departed for a concentration camp — from his co-criminals who are apprehensive about keeping stolen goods from Holocaust victims.

    This pattern is only reinforced by the conclusion. Niki, who has lost his hearing from a beating after he was caught by his co-criminals while retrieving the second stolen watch, is nonetheless asked by the maestro to tune his piano, but Niki first plays it, and demonstrates both his proficiency and credibility, for his ex-girlfriend, who is moved by the moment.

    Such situations stretch the suspension of disbelief past the point of breaking at least for some. Those who can overlook all these coincidences will have an entertaining experience. The rest might realize that Niki, who tells Harry early in the movie he’ll never getting back the time he spent trying to understand Harry’s joke, was more right than they realized.

  • Reality For Few

    Fantasy Life, which is a new movie written and directed by Matthew Shear, is a more substantial story than some critics seem to think.

    Sam (Shear), a law-school dropout, agrees to babysit his psychiatrist’s (Judd Hirch) granddaughters and soon thereafter finds ways to spend their mother Dianne (Amanda Peet), an unemployed actor. Dianne, who does little to discourage Sam’s attention, nonetheless ends the affair almost before it begins but uses it to needle her estranged, and increasingly inebriated, husband (Alessandro Nivola) and their parents over dinner in her parents’ summer home.

    Dianne’s husband, who drives away and then crashes his car, recovers in his parents’ home, but she eventually invites him home. Dianne later encounters Sam between sessions in another psychiatrist’s office, and asks him to meet her in a nearby coffee shop after hers, and they discuss their lives and split dessert before going their separate ways.

    Most credible critics seem satisfied with this movie, which some nonetheless consider “slight” or even unoriginal. I however found it perhaps more subtle and refreshing, which made it even more satisfying.

    The directing and acting are accomplished enough to support this unconventional plot. Dianne, who initiated their meeting and later hears the limitations of her belief after her new psychiatrist mirrors it back to her, seems incapable of expressing herself, and retreats into the less challenging topic of Sam’s missing money. Sam for his part seems relieved that Dianne doesn’t challenge his account of his life since he left after that disastrous dinner and in return accepts Dianne’s retreat.

    Both in other words recognize, and resign themselves to, unfinished realities, and neither pushes for more, which are choices only mature people, however messy, could make. Such lessons are ones many of us could learn, which is why it is a more substantial, and significant, story.