Stars At Noon, Vortex and more of this year’s streaming gems
December is upon us, prompting a glut of year-end best-of lists from film critics, award-giving bodies and various experts. Most of those feature titles you might not have seen, and some you haven’t even heard of. In that year-end wrap-up spirit, we present the guide to the hidden gems of your subscription streaming services.
STARS AT NOON
Claire Denis’ erotic drama is immersed in the worlds of journalism, espionage and geopolitics, but the real subject is one of her standbys: the sexual dynamics between men and women, and the transactional nature therein. The participants here are Trish (Margaret Qualley), an underemployed American journalist in Nicaragua who’s doing a bit of sex work as a side hustle, and Daniel (Joe Alwyn), a British businessman who’s both buying and selling. Denis keenly observes how the power shifts between them, and rarely without a struggle; their dialogue scenes have a cockeyed unpredictability, particularly since one or both is always in a state of desperation. Alwyn is fine, good even, but Qualley is a revelation; she is, by turns, funny, sexy, savvy and broken.
VORTEX
Extremist Argentine-French filmmaker Gaspar Noé’s most recent effort is his gentlest, though only because he’s best known for provocations like Irreversible, Enter The Void and Climax. Here, he tells the story of a long-married couple (played by Italian filmmaker Dario Argento and French actress Françoise Lebrun) and how their idyllic retirement is ripped apart by her increasingly debilitating dementia. It sounds not unlike Michael Haneke’s devastating Amour, a similarly dour tale of ageing and mortality, but Noé inserts an additional visual dimension. He plays out the events in split-screen, with her separative frame a devastating visualisation of her mental isolation — a stylistic flourish that makes this harrowing drama all the more affecting.
THE SURVIVOR
Once upon a time, a Barry Levinson-directed feature based on a true story, with an allstar cast and successful debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, would have been a shoo-in for Oscar consideration. In today’s peculiar marketplace, it’s bought up by HBO only to never be seen again. But this is a stellar historical drama, with Ben Foster in fine form (both dramatically and athletically) as Harry Haft, an Auschwitz captive who survived his time there by boxing, and later used those skills to make a career as a boxer in America. The fight scenes are brutal, the dramatic stretches wrenching, and Levinson orchestrates his firstrate cast with aplomb.
ELESIN OLBA: THE KING’S HORSEMAN
In 1943, in the region of Africa now known as Nigeria, the long-standing tradition of the tribal king’s horseman committing ritual suicide after the death of the king (and thus following him into the afterlife) was prevented by British colonialists. That true event inspired Wole Soyinka’s venerable play Death And The King’s Horseman, which was adapted into this absorbing feature film by Nigerian novelist, playwright and filmmaker Biyi Bandele (who died just before its premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival). The portraiture of customs and rituals is fascinating, and the Brits are properly villainous. But the film truly comes alive in its closing scenes, a
thought-provoking and thoughtful contemplation of mortality and responsibility.
NAVALNY
Between interviews for Daniel Roher’s documentary, but on a hot mic, Russian dissident Alexei Navalny tells a friend: “He’s filming it all for the movie he’s gonna release if I get whacked.” That candour and fearlessness was part of what made Navalny a thorn in the side of Putin’s Kremlin, and as such, he was the target of a likely assassination attempt by poisoning in 2020. Roher’s cameras follow Navalny as he recovers, prepares to return to Russia and participates in an independent investigation of the poisoning, resulting in an explosive, accidental confession by one of the perpetrators. Roher carefully avoids outright hagiography (via evenhanded discussion of Navalny’s image and ethics), using his access and materials to assemble a first-rate, though nonfiction, political thriller. © 2022 THE NEW YORK