February 2nd 2024

Riceboy Sleeps

May December

Two films that may not yet have come to your attention are most worthy for consideration for your weekend movie going. Both are highly awarded, and both uniquely different. I thoroughly enjoyed them both, in totoally different ways! 

 

Riceboy Sleeps

Dir: Anthony Shim

Length: 117 mins

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcwwHKLY8Nc&t=2s

© Icon - immigrants, a mother's love
and a family coming to terms with the 
sadness of life

Single mother So-Young (Choi Seungyoon) has fled the disapproval of rural Korean society and gone to Canada to raise her young son after the suicide of the child's father. The little boy Dong-Hyun (Dohyun Noel Hwang) is relentlessly teased at school for his difference. Time shifts suddenly forward and Dong-Hyun, now a typically surly teen (played by Ethan Hwang), resents that his mother will not talk to him about his father. She works in a factory, has few friends, except a potential suitor Simon (played sympathetically by director Shim). When health issues affect her life, So-Young decides to take her son on a trip to meet his paternal grandparents back in Korea. Another much-awarded film, it tells an immigrant story not entirely unfamiliar, but told with such compassion and grace, that is becomes deeply emotionally moving, even though the characters are reserved by nature. Hwang junior is especially impressive as the feisty child Dong-Hyun. The film is beautifully shot, ranging from the close-up intimacy of the characters' lives in Vancouver, through to the sweeping mountainous scenes in the countryside of Korea. Based upon Shim's own experiences, eveything about the film feels truthful and is another worthy addition to the immigrant genre of storytelling.

4 - highly recommended

May December

Dir: Todd Haynes

Length: 117 mins

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z3JaevxEMA&t=2s

© Transmission - Natalie Portman's character 
takes on the mask of Moore's 

Gracie Atherton Woo (Julianne Moore) lives with her husband Joe (Charles Melton), 23 years her junior, They have three kids, the last two of whom are about to go to college so Joe willl be an empty-nester at age 36! A film is now being made of the notorious scandal that erupted when the two first met. Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), the actress playing Gracie, comes to meet the family to better understand her character and the dynamic between the couple. This confronting and challenging tale is loosely based around the real-life story of  a teacher who had a relationship with a 6th-grade student back in the 1990s. Touted as both a comedy and a drama, the film is way more dramatic for me than comedic, although both women do have some laugh-inducing scenes. The three leads are captivating; Moore's character alternating between control and naive vulnerability; Portman's Berry seductively and manipulatively altering lives around her, while poor old Joe remains a man-child, never having processed exactly what happened all those years ago. This is not a film for the faint-hearted or those inclined to judgmentalism; Haynes cleverly captures near-normality for a decidely not-normal situation, and one cannot help but question the values one brings, as an audience, to such a fraught story.

4 - highly recommended