Violation (Canada, 2020. Dir: Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli): We have been subjected to a fair share of rape-and-revenge films, most as tasteless as I Spit in Your Grave. Violation doesn’t bring anything new to the table plot-wise, but there’s enormous value on the female gaze, which should have dominated the conversation in the first place. Sims-Fewer (also the lead) and Mancinelli use extremely close ups to strip the movie of any possibility of titillation and to suggest they’re going deep into the psyche of the victim. Whenever not reveling in nature-inspired semiotics, the film is disturbing. Could have been more noteworthy if it wasn’t because I May Destroy You got so much more from tackling the same subject. 2.5/5 avenging planets.
Limbo (UK, 2020. Dir: Ben Sharrock): The drama of refugees trying to get into Europe has so many angles, there’s no limit to what a filmmaker with imagination can do. In the case of Ben Sharrock, that’s mining the absurdity of the situation. Omar (Amir El-Masry, Jack Ryan), a young Syrian man escaping the civil war, lands in a Scottish island in the middle of nowhere. As he waits for a response to his refugee status claim, Omar kills time by attending tone-deaf cultural awareness classes, debating with fellow asylum-seekers the plausibility of Friends and avoiding the many traps that could render his application void. While often riotous, the tragic undertones of the situation often come to the surface. Sharrock is able to maintain the balance between tragedy and comedy, but Limbo is perhaps too low-key for its own good. 3.5/5 planets waiting for Godot.
New Order (Mexico, 2020. Dir: Michel Franco): Mexican cinema can get very dark really fast and New Orderis a good example of this approach to moviemaking. Writer/director Michel Franco takes the social unrest phenomenon sweeping the world and pushes it to the next level, while stripping it of any idealistic pretensions. A wedding at a posh neighborhood in Mexico City is interrupted by impoverished rioters with no qualms about shooting the rich folk point blank. The bride ends up in military custody, but the soldiers are also in it for the money. New Order moves fast and no social group survives unscathed. The nihilism is a notch hard to take, but it’s not like the movie is wrong. The plot doesn’t hold much water, but you won’t feel like poking holes at it while watching it. 3.5/5 planets hitting the streets, demanding their share.
76 Days (USA, 2020. Dir: Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, Anonymous): The title refers to the 76 days the Chinese province of Wuhan was under lockdown following the COVID-19 outbreak. Using footage from inside a Wuhan hospital, the documentary chronicles the early days of the pandemic, when there was little clarity about the virus modus operandi, let alone how to deal with it. The film is made mostly of vignettes of patients dealing with their hospitalization: The septuagenarian man failing to understand the concept of asymptomatic carrier, the new mother unable to see her newborn baby, the infected elderly couple kept apart within the same hospital. It’s all horrible and too relatable. For all the access and unvaluable testimonies, 76 Days is unwieldy and repetitive, and can be taxing for the casual viewer. Still, for all its shortcomings as a feature, the raw material is devastating. 3/5 planets wearing a mask and judging those who don’t.
