‘No strong emotions’
Post it on the Goethe-Institut website.
If you’re looking to watch something off the beaten track this week, browse “New Directions: 20 Years of Young German Cinema,” a free online series hosted by the Goethe-Institut.
Among the lineup’s gems is “No Hard Feelings,” a bittersweet queer romance by Iranian-German filmmaker Faraz Shariat. Parvis (Benjamin Radjaipour), a young homosexual and son of Iranian exiles in Germany, leads a proud and carefree life. We first meet him when he’s in vogue at a nightclub, his bleached blonde hair and white mesh top shimmering under the strobe lights. Later, when a man he meets through a dating app makes a racist comment, an unfazed Parvis puts him in his place – “I’m not into man-child krauts” – and leaves.
But Parvis’ assured sense of belonging is disrupted when he is assigned to community service at a refugee detention center and befriends two newly arrived Iranian asylum seekers, Amon (Eidin Jalali) and his sister Bana (Banafshe Hourmazdi). As Parvis and Amon begin to fall in love and Bana faces deportation, Parvis relies on all the ways he’s similar but different from his new companions, thanks to nothing but an accident of birth.
Heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure, “No Hard Feelings” delivers deep insights with a dynamic pop sensibility. Shariat’s characters may suffer from insecurity and prejudice, but the director doesn’t deny them queer joy, capturing them in bright pastel colors, sunny scenes of sensuality, and music video-style editing.
This Mafia epic in the Malayalam language opens with a long sequence of bravery: the camera travels through the rooms and corridors of a crowded house, taking us in and out of wandering and intrigue-laden conversations, before entering the office of Sulaiman (Fahadh Faasil), a grizzled mobster who has decided to straighten up and embark on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The shot sets the scene for Mahesh Narayanan’s dense and breathless thriller, which immerses us without much exposition in its gritty milieu. Repentant Sulaiman is arrested trying to board his plane, and the police enlist his 17-year-old nephew, Freddy (Sanal Aman), to secretly kill him in prison. As the young man contemplates this daunting task, he is visited by various relatives who recount the bloody story of Sulaiman’s rise from the impoverished son of a teacher to the righteous protector of a coastal village of impoverished Muslims and Christians. .
A mob film crossed with a Greek tragedy, “Malik” puts a moral test for viewers. As each new puzzle piece of Sulaiman’s sprawling story is revealed, the film forces us to wonder if his noble ends – to uplift his oppressed community – justify his means of revenge. But “Malik” also invites us to broaden our focus beyond individual actions to indict an entire system. In the face of larger historical events in India – including the religious riots of 2002 and the tsunami of 2004 – the film unfolds as a bold critique of opportunistic politicians who stir up internecine enmity for selfish ends.
A disturbing gothic tale about a black maid and her white employer, Jenna Cato Bass’ “Good Madam” exposes how South Africa’s apartheid past continues to haunt its present. Aging Mavis (Nosipho Mtebe) has spent most of her life as a housekeeper for a lady named Diane, while Mavis’ daughter Tsidi (Chumisa Cosa) was raised by her grandmother in the poverty. At the start of the film, Tsidi has been driven from her family home after the death of her grandmother, and she arrives at Diane’s abode with her young daughter in tow.
A strange air permeates the house from the start. There’s a dead dog that seems to have come back to life, and the colonial artifacts on the walls exude malevolence. Then there’s Mavis’ overly obsequious behavior towards the bedridden Diane, an unseen presence lurking behind closed doors. Is Mavis’ bondage, which Tsidi finds ridiculous and outdated, the result of an evil spell or simply decades of racist indoctrination? Reimagining racism itself as a kind of black magic, “Good Madam” draws plenty of chills from this central mystery, turning the sounds of Mavis’ scrubbing and cleaning into terrifying refrains.
“The City of Wild Beasts”
Stream it on HBO Max.
A coming-of-age drama about a tough kid from a tough neighborhood, “City of Wild Beasts” is devoid of both the sensationalism and sentimentality that typically plagues the “slumdog” genre. Instead, a rare tenderness runs through Henry E. Rincón’s feature film, which centers on Tato (Bryan Córdoba), a 17-year-old delinquent in Medellín, Colombia.
When Tato’s mother dies, he must fend for himself on the rough city streets. Struggling to scrounge up cash while avoiding the wrath of local gangs, our hero leaves town to take refuge with a grandfather he’s never met. Curmudgeonly at first, the old man, Octavio (Óscar Atehortúa), a horticulturist in the countryside, ends up taking Tato under his wing, and the two form a close, taciturn bond. They work the land together and gaze at the horizon, and at the end of the day, Octavio gives Tato a wad of cash and a valuable life lesson: “Work is sacred.”
This moving portrayal of cross-generational male affection grounds the film even as Tato returns to Medellín, and the plot takes tragic turns. Rincón never loses sight of his protagonist’s thirst for love and beauty, which persists despite – or perhaps because of – a milieu in which both are hard-earned.
‘Clytemnestra’
Stream it on Mubi.
A layered drama about a South Korean theater troupe rehearsing a play in Greece, Pak Ougie’s feature debut could be described as the evil cousin of “Drive My Car.” While Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winning drama turned the theatrical creation process into a fertile site for personal and philosophical ruminations, “Clytaemnestra” offers a more salacious and cynical behind-the-scenes story, in which the direction and the acting emerge as tyrannical power games.
An acclaimed (and anonymous) director brings five actresses from Seoul to a house in Greece to prepare a production of Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon.” The women are friendly, but the director’s methods of intimidation — which involve disorderly shouting and probing questions about the actresses’ private traumas — spark conflict, especially between Hye Bin (Kim Haru) and a sycophant newcomer, Kim. Ian (Kim Taehee). The two women compete for the role of Clytemnestra, the queen who murders her husband, Agamemnon, and her new conquest, Cassandra.
The lines between performance and reality begin to blur, as one might expect, but “Clytaemnestra” achieves something much sharper than just allegory. Pak choreographs stark, understated rehearsal sequences against a backdrop rich in dramatic history (one scene takes place at the Theater of Dionysus), ironically undermining the director’s assumptions of grandeur. While the character berates his actors for not enjoying his source text, Pak shows that the impulses that underlie even classic tragedies are far grosser and more mundane than one might assume.