raskimono

The women in prison genre is often associated with cat-calling girl-fights and the guilty pleasure to the audience of women talking dirty and acting, actions supposed to be the purview of Tarzan aping men. Trapero's Leonera offers something else, an inquisition into how a life behind bars can change the human psyche and create a bond between a child and a mother. Echoing the early movies of the French New Wave that placed the gyneco-issues front and center and the point of view objectivity of the Dardenne Brothers, it is a worthy addition to what can be called the post-modern woman's picture. What is it like to give birth to your child behind bars? To have your child taken away, the rejoinder and enjoinder are all explored. With a wonderful performance by Martina Gusman, it is another worthy canon to 21st Century Argentine cinema.

Slow-paced by American Standards romantic comedy has its charms. Plot is basic. Man is married. Man no longer feels happy in marriage. Man wants out. Man finds a man to woo his wife away. Thus the English translation, A boyfriend for my wife. Surprisingly low key since the title professes to offer buffoonery but instead gives you a Tootsie style of comedy. Actors play it low-key and very real and one will be forgiven if they forget that they are watching a comedy considering the lead actress is so good at playing a bitch. In fact, without her performance, the movie would not work. We've seen this movie before. It offers no shockers but a sweet ending that is well-handled and a screenplay that is not forced even though you know the beats a makes it a pleasurable diversion. This continues a good tradition of Argentine cinema and its obsession with honesty and reality over extravagant fiction/unreality in terms of tone, direction and staging of scenes.

Camp de Thiaroye by Senegalese Director is a war movie without a war. Set on an army post in Senegal towards the final days of WWII, it follows a regiment of the French West African Armed Forces who have returned from a tour of duty in Europe. The story is an allegory for the resistance movement to colonialism that sprung up after the war and led to the end of colonialism. Often bloody, it captures the relationship between American soldiers stationed in Dakar, French commanding officers and the French West Africans while touching on issues of racism, inferiority complex and black on black relationships. Never one to lead the audience, Sembene takes his time staging scenes often with beautiful framing that eats up the edges of the screen. It may leisure and some scenes are didactic but it never wavers in its utmost honesty and its eventual humanism resulting from a cataclysmic ending that is both gripping that echoes the refrain that maybe we are all crazy. It is one of the better movies of this master of cinema and in this reviewer's opinion, a 10/10.