THE MOLE AGENT

Directing: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

It’s easy to have mixed feelings about The Mole Agent, especially once you discover that it’s billed as a “documentary,” but much of it takes a stylized, film noir aesthetic, some of the scenes clearly staged. It’s a skillful blend of fact and fiction, but is it really enough fact to be lauded as one of the year’s best documentaries? Evidently many people think so: it landed a a nomination for this year’s Best Documentary Feature award at the Oscars. (My Octopus Teacher is the likely winner. Time is the deserving winner.)

The title The Mole Agent gives away its pretty straightforward premise: it’s about a spy. The often-delightful twist is that the “mole” in question is elderly man Sergio Chamy, hired by a private investigator to go undercover in a retirement home in the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, to find out whether the staff is mistreating another one of its residents, due to the suspicions of her daughter.

I got a bit confused about the setting at first, as the home is called San Francisco Retirement Home. When Sergio is first told he’ll be going to “San Francisco,” I pondered the fact that everyone onscreen was speaking Spanish. I thought, well, California has a large Spanish-speaking population, maybe it just happens to be Latino people in this story. I finally figured out that this is a Chilean film.

The language difference aside, the themes on display in The Mole Agent are effectively universal, as it winds up being a bit of a meditation on growing old. The early scenes, in which several men answer a want ad for a man “between the ages of 80 and 90” who is proficient in technology, are hilarious. None of them are that comfortable with the nuances of smart phones, of course. This early sequence created a great sense of promise for this film, and an expectation that it might be a surprisingly delightful experience.

And, a lot of it is. But, a lot of it is also rather melancholy, as Sergio gradually comes to the realization that the woman he’s meant to be observing isn’t being much mistreated, she’s just lonely—as are most of the people in the home. Another woman, who has been in there 25 years, develops an unrequited crush on him, which he rejects in a very gentlemanly way as he explains he is still grieving the loss of his wife only a few months before. In one particularly heartbreaking scene, Sergio sits across from a woman who openly expresses fear because she doesn’t know where she is, and when he tells her she’ll feel some relief if she just allows herself to cry, she does exactly that.

Knowing that some of this film is invented, it can be difficult to gauge what is real and what isn’t, which is frustrating. Presumably an emotionally raw moment like that is authentic. To this film’s credit, in spite of its somewhat gimmicky presentation, it never comes across as insincere. It starts off surprisingly comic, and then morphs into a portrait of all of our possible futures. I found myself thinking about when some of my close friends, very smart people, might see their minds slip in old age, and how I could find myself bearing witness to it. What a horrifying thought. We won’t even get into the scenario of the roles being reversed.

It’s fascinating to see Sergio walking around these other elderly people, him being one of the few who still mostly has his wits about him. His stumbling errors with an iPhone aren’t a reflection of his mental acuity but just a lack of experience. One wonders how comfortable he is with viewers of this film just finding him adorable.

In the conceit of the story being told here, the retirement home is fully aware of the film’s camera crew, under the impression that they are just making a more general documentary about Sergio. What logical reason they would have for that, I don’t know, but since Sergio doesn’t find any real evidence of mistreatment, it makes sense they would sign off on the use of footage from inside their facility. That is, assuming none of that was staged, and who’s to say? To be fair, everything from inside the home feels authentic—it’s the scenes in the private investigator’s office that feel contrived. That doesn’t make them any less fun, though, and at least in those parts we’re not being reminded of our imminent mortality.

Sergio, the undercover mole.

Overall: B

BETTER DAYS

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

Better Days tackles worthy subjects, namely suicide and particularly bullying, but I’m not convinced it needs 135 minutes to do it. This film could have strengthened its impact significantly just by shaving off about half an hour—and, indeed, at about that far from its actual end, the film feels like it’s reaching its natural conclusion. Then, it keeps going, until reaching another presumably natural conclusion. And then it happens again.

This film, while not widely reviewed, is getting very positive reactions from its comparatively limited critical exposure. If people really cared what I thought (most don’t), then this review would take the averages down a bit. I didn’t hate this movie. I just felt done with it before it was done with me.

Besides, its intended messaging regarding bullying loses its focus, and turns into a bit of a fairy tale love story, with seemingly hopeless circumstances as its backdrop. Before we even see the opening title, text appears declaring hope that this movie will encourage dialogue about bullying. One wonders how prevalent bullying is in this film’s native China, and how it compares to the experiences of teenagers in the U.S.

And, to be sure, in the first two-thirds or so of Better Days, its main character, Chen Nian (Dongyu Zhou, who is excellent), endures a great deal of relentless, humiliating, sometimes violent bullying. If you endured a great deal of bullying as a child in school, this movie might be triggering. It really captures the sociopathic remorselessness of kids who bully for no discernible reason other than sport. Some of the adult characters, some of them police officers ineffectively investigating reported harassment, discuss how kids tend to fall into one group or the other: you’re either the bullied, or you’re a bully. I’m not sure there’s a strict duality there, although there are plenty of kids out there with no means of seeing it any other way.

Better Days plays out Chen Nian’s story within the context of not just everyday school life, but the pressures of high-stakes exams which will determine her educational opportunities, and by extension, the direction of the rest of her life. Her mother is barely scraping by, getting into dubious work and actively avoiding debtors. Near the beginning of the film, a fellow classmate commits suicide after being the target of the meanest girls in the school. Chen Nian makes the mistake of covering the body with her jacket, calling attention to herself, and thus becoming the next bullying target.

And then, director Derek Tsang kind of shoehorns in the relationship part of the movie: Chen Nian passes by a somewhat older boy getting beaten the street, and when she tries to call the police to report the violence, the attackers drag her into it. This is how she meets Xiao Bei (Jackson Yee), who eventually volunteers to protect her from the school bullies.

As this relationship blossoms, at first and for quite some time as just a platonic yet intimate friendship, the bullying aspect remains a pretty integral part of the story. But then, once one of the bullies winds up dead, Better Days takes a curious turn toward burgeoning romance, in the midst of Chen Nian being the prime suspect. Some time is still taken on the issue of bullying, but comparatively very little, as Chen Nian and Xiao Bei dedicate themselves to protecting each other.

I could never quite figure out what we were supposed to get out of their love story, after so much time was spent on Chen Nian being the victim of bullying. Maybe Tsang just wants us to root for a happy ending for them? Better Days can’t quite figure out whether it’s a movie about one of the important issues of our time, or a dark, fairy tale romance; it seems to want to combine the two but it only ever particularly feels like one or the other. One of the police officers becomes obsessed with preventing Chen Nian from allowing Xiao Bei from taking the fall for her, convinced she would never be able to live with herself.

It’s not even quite clear, in the end, whether that’s even what happens. The movie tells us what really happened, who did what to whom and why, when it comes to the dead girl. But then we see these two naive young lovers sitting on opposite sides of glass, crying at each other. I was engaged enough with all of this, but when it was done I was happy it was over. At least once I knew it was time to go write this review, I had a clear idea of direction than I had when still inside the world of this film.

Some mean girls are straight up sociopaths.

Overall: B-

THE MAN WHO SOLD HIS SKIN

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

The Man Who Sold His Skin is nothing if not a great—if imperfect—conversation piece, an examination of exploitation and art that itself becomes a work of art. Is the movie itself exploitative? Maybe, though certainly not to the same degree as the “art” within the film.

This is a movie ripe for discussion, from coffee shops to college classrooms, which is both its strength and its weakness. It might have far greater strength overall if not or its script, which seems ironically unaware of its own pretensions, making thematic declarations that are sometimes amusingly obvious. But, between its pacing and its often beautiful cinematography, particularly in its art gallery settings, I must admit for the majority of its run time I enjoyed this movie more than I ultimately feel it deserves. How do you parse such a point of view? If you enjoy a film, how does it not deserve such enjoyment?

I don’t know, maybe I feel too easily sucked in—dare I say duped?—by such superficiality. This film is not nearly as “deep” as writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania thinks it is. Still, there ‘s a lot of detail regarding its production to consider. This is the seventh film ever submitted by Tunisia for consideration of the Academy Award for Best International Feature, and the first one actually to get nominated. It’s an accomplishment to be proud of, even if it has no chance of winning.

The story is inspired by a real-life example of a live person being converted into a work of art, contractually obligated to sit on display in exhibits. Here Ben Hania grafts that concept onto the ongoing war in Syria, starting the story in 2011, around the start of conflict there that continues to this day. Sam Ali (an excellent Yahya Mahayni) gets arrested for using revolutionary talk as part of a marriage proposal on a train, and then has to leave Syria to avoid jail time, leaving his beloved, Abeer (Dea Liane), behind to marry another man in the absence of other options. When Sam is discovered in Beirut crashing art exhibits for the free food, a renowned artist makes him a proposition: offer up his back as a canvas, and he can get a visa that will allow him to travel freely through multiple countries as a legal immigrant.

The Man Who Sold His Skin thus has a lot to say about art and exploitation, depicting artist Jeffrey Godefroi (Koen De Bouw) as a soulless capitalist. The same goes for his assistant, Soraya (Monica Bellucci), who seems to serve as both a sort of broker and a handler. Many scenes depict the world of high art with millions of dollars being exchanged, and I would be curious to know how accurate the depiction is. What this film is saying about it is never in question, but the artist characters lack dimension.

I suppose that’s the crux of my issue with this film: it has no real insight into the world it’s depicting, serving as observation more than commentary with any true clarity. As cinematic empty calories go, however, this is a film that is hard to resist, thanks to great performances and intermittent gallery sequences that feel like something halfway between a music video and a dream. A bit of Paolo Sorrentino influence can be detected, giving this movie a distinct sensibility that may speak to some more than others. It spoke to me.

Predictably, Sam finds this whole scenario to be much more than he bargained for. And then the end brings two twists in quick succession, the first being an attempt at boldness that just comes across as thematically gross, the second being a kind of about-face that doesn’t quite make up for the grossness, much as it is clearly trying. This could be where the layered questions of exploitation come in. If this film’s overall point lacks clarity, is it exploiting the Syrian war for the sake of its own art, the same way Jeffrey Godefroi is exploiting Sam Ali? I suppose you could just pay to see it VOD and then discuss.

But is it art?

Overall: B

SIFF Advance: STREET GANG: HOW WE GOT TO SESAME STREET

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: A-

Street Gang is all about the origins of what might be called a revolutionary children’s television show—hence, the “How We Got to” in the subtitle. Keeping the entirety of the story told here focused on the show’s early years perhaps makes sense, given the complications of their deal with HBO since 2015. I’d sure have liked to learn more about the arc of Sesame Street’s story over its history spanning more than fifty years, but, maybe that’s better for a different documentary? I regularly complain about films attempting to cram decades’ worth of stories into just two hours, after all.

Thus, Street Gang is all about how it happened from the start, with its first episodes airing on PBS in 1969. This is going to give it massive appeal to older viewers who remember watching it as a kid when it debuted—but also, any adult who remembered watching and loving it as a child. At this point, that could include memories from as recent as 2008. Yikes, that’s depressing. I don’t suppose it is for an 18-year-old.

Director Marilyn Agrelo contextualizes Sesame Street is a program intended to harness the power of television to educate small children, and get them more prepared for entering public school. Its target audience is 3- to 5-year-old kids, but from the beginning, particularly inner city kids. It’s fascinating to see something like this, a program developed in the 1960s particularly with children of color in mind. It’s a good reminder that gets to two sides of the same coin: activism for people of color is nothing new (people forget that the 1939 film Gone with the Wind was met with Black protesters), and the difference it makes is slow-going, a never-ending, ongoing process.

All the “Black Lives Matter” sentiments of recent years are hardly new, and the spirit of that very phrase is woven into the fabric of Sesame Street’s intentions. This being from the late sixties and early seventies, though, the intentionality there was much more subtle than perhaps we are used to today. Just showing an inner city neighborhood with a fully integrated, multi-racial cast, particularly focused on children, is something we see early show writer Jon Stone state in an archival interview say “speaks for itself.” The impact on its child viewers—white or not—is likely something that cannot be overstated.

More importantly, though, Sesame Street was made as an educational tool, and its positive impact was swift and massive. Jim Henson’s muppet creations clearly made all the difference in the world, and were every bit as successful as cartoons at catching and maintaining their attention. They did a lot of research on what worked and what didn’t: one fascinating bit was that the kids retained what they learned better if their parents watched with them. And Sesame Street included a lot of cultural references that adults would get but children would still enjoy even if they didn’t get it.

Best of all, Street Gang includes a whole lot of little-seen (probably much of it never-seen) behind-the-scenes footage, showing how the sets were constructed, how the puppeteers handled the puppets, and how they integrated muppets with human actors on the show. And in addition to teaching kids the alphabet and how to count, they tackled a wide diversity of subjects, even including how to deal with death, after one of the human character actors passed away.

I have no memory of watching Sesame Street, myself; I’m 44 years old and only know it from its nostalgic place in the zeitgeist, and the many clips that have been seen in countless contexts for decades. Still, even I found this film a moving experience, as it really cultivates a sense of appreciation for the ways a medium largely seen as harmful—in this case, television—can be used as an effective took for education, or even for spreading love and support. Or, teaching how to spread those things. The movie doesn’t mention the internet or social media at all, but it’s easy for such things to come to mind. All we need is the right band of good-hearted people to come along and shift the paradigm created by the latest technology.

A time capsule of influence that still goes on to this day.

Overall: B+

MY OCTOPUS TEACHER

Directing: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

I have somewhat mixed feelings about My Octopus Teacher. It’s one of the five films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and while it’s a perfectly pleasant movie, it also could be argued it’s the least deserving of the award. It’s also by far the most populist choice of the nominees, however, and has by far the best odds of winning. Between its broad availability to stream on Netflix, and its easily consumable subject matter, in all likelihood it will have the largest audience by a long shot, and that translates to the potential for the most votes by a wide margin. The other films tackle subject matter with more gravity, from racism to disability activism to health care fraud. All three of the other nominees that I have seen (Crip Camp, Collective, and the best film of 2020, Time) are better films, but to varying degrees they are also difficult to watch.

My Octopus Teacher, on the other hand, is the very definition of inviting: it frames its narrative around the daily relationship between a South African snorkeler-photographer, Craig Foster, and a common octopus. Foster is the only person seen as an interview subject; he’s the only one telling the story. Given how much intelligence we ascribe to octopuses, I kind of wish we could have gotten interviews with the octopus telling her side of the story. It’d probably be something along the lines of, “This guy? Yeah, whatever.” We can’t get her side of the story though because she’s dead now.

I say these things partly in jest, because My Octopus Teacher walks right up to the line, stopping just short of anthropomorphism. And when we’re framing nature documentaries in such a way, we have to be very careful. Co-directors Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed make the film very much about Foster’s “journey” with the octopus, and how what they went through together made him feel. On an emotional level, this film tries hard to tug at audience heartstrings, very much from a human point of view.

And we have to remember: Foster might say that the octopus’s intelligence could be likened to that of a cat or a dog, but this is not a domesticated animal. This is straight up wildlife, part of a complex ecosystem, with no moral or emotional components. We are meant to be terrified on the octopus’s behalf when a shark comes along, which happens more than once over the course of a year or so that Foster visits the octopus every single day. I just found myself thinking, who is “teaching” whom here, and how much of value can be learned when the wildlife is being interacted with directly, particularly on such an ongoing basis?

Thats not to say there’s nothing of value here. It may be true that My Octopus Teacher doesn’t reveal any major secrets about the lives of octopuses that are not already known, but documentaries can serve as a bridge to educating wider audiences. And this cinematography, a whole lot of it using underwater cameras and footage, is particularly beautiful, especially by documentary standards. Make no mistake: this movie is beautiful to look at. It’s just that this movie is nowhere near as “profound” as it pretends to be.

I still enjoyed it. Craig Foster has a singularly chill vibe, an even-keeled way of speaking as he talks about all these experiences with the octopus, that is genuinely soothing. Be careful or this movie might even lull you into a nap—and not because it’s boring, which it isn’t at all. And we do get to see some very cool and amazing things about octopus behavior and their bodies, how they can modify themselves from color and texture changes to even growing back a severed arm. They’re like eight-legged lizards of the sea. All of this is to say that My Octopus Teach is easy to find and easy to watch: in terms of viewing, it’s the easy choice. I just don’t want it to be the easy choice for Oscar voters.

Craig Foster makes contact. But should he, really?

Overall: B

SIFF Advance: SUMMER OF 85

Directing: C+
Acting: B
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

I suppose it’s refreshing to see a movie about young gay men in the 1980s that doesn’t focus on AIDS, or even mention it. We’ve all had more than our fair share of that. Whether we need what Summer of 85 offers up instead is a different question.

This is a gay love story, and still a sad one, but also sweet, and then, just plain odd. Young Alexis and David (Félix Lefebvre and Benjamin Voisin) are teenagers falling in love as they contemplate whether to finish school or move into the work force. And, as the narrative cuts back and forth between the present-day legal trouble Alexis is in, and the back story of their affair, it becomes clear why Alexis is in trouble. It has to do with a promise David made him make.

This promise is the crux of the whole plot in Summer of 85, and it is also the film’s central problem, the reason it falls apart upon even the slightest inspection. Even though I would not recommend anyone watch this movie, I still won’t spoil it—maybe you still want to find out for yourself. Suffice it to say that the promise is utterly ridiculous. To be fair, that is clearly David’s intent: something he wants Alexis to do should he ever die. After tragedy strikes, Alexis takes the promise seriously, and director François Ozon, adapting from a novel by Aidan Chambers (you can look it up; the title of the novel is the spoiler) plays it for serious, dramatic effect. It doesn’t work, however: playing the scene as a moving fulfillment of a young lover’s promise doesn’t make it any less ridiculous.

Until that happens, the development of a romantic and physical relationship between these two young, cute gay men is genuinely sweet. But, then it takes some bizarre turns—even before the “promise” is carried out (which, by the way, gets Alexis arrested). Suddenly Alexis is visiting a morgue disguised as a young woman. Wait, what? This left-field bit of cross-dressing is something I would hesitate to judge as “insensitive,” but it’s still a weird choice. When it comes to the writing and direction, it might still qualify as clueless.

There are other odd moments early on, which perhaps should serve as warning signs of strange turns to come. When Alexis’s sailboat capsizes and David rescues him—this is how they meet—David takes him home. This is where Alexis meets David’s widowed mother, who not only insists Alexis take a hot bath, but even insists on undressing him herself. She pulls his pants down, the camera behind him so we see his bare ass, and she is knelt in front of him so that she is suddenly gawking at his penis. “Your mother can be proud,” she says. There is nothing sexual suggested beyond this, and it seems as though it’s just meant to be a throwaway gag. And I . . . just don’t get it. Granted, this is a French film and the French have a different and more open sensibility, but, I have to wonder if even the French would think this scene in any way moves the story forward. (It doesn’t.)

I was willing to overlook this scene in the first half of the film because, at first, it seemed to be an anomaly in an otherwise sweet movie. Then a mutual young lady friend of Alexis and David, who becomes in essence part of a love triangle between them, helps him dress up as a girl in disguise to visit David’s body in a morgue. Wait, what? Alexis’s grief causes him to behave in very strange ways, which is a normal part of grief to be sure, but Summer of 85 takes it to unusual extremes.

Then, he’s researching Jewish burial traditions—this is how we learn David’s family is Jewish—and things just get more uncomfortable from there. By the time Alexis is delivering on David’s deliberately ridiculous promise, I found myself laughing out loud. Not because the scene is funny, as it is absolutely not intended to be, but because it is utterly preposterous. I have not read the novel on which this is based, but it’s easy to imagine this playing out in a more successfully moving way in written prose. Actually watching it, there’s just no way to avoid being taken right out of the movie. Like: why the hell am I watching this?

The two main actors are decent performers, doing what they can with this script that takes a while to reveal its own insanity. I suppose it might have been better if, for instance, Félix Lefebvre had some other talents. Summer of 85 might have been at least somewhat improved if he were—spoiler alert!—a better dancer.

All of this could have been avoided if he had just worn a helmet!

Overall: C+

COLLECTIVE

Directing: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A+

Collective is streaming currently on Hulu, and you need to watch it, like, right now. I have never seen any other documentary feature film more well crafted, or even legitimately dramatic, than this one—and that’s even with a focus on Bucharest journalists talking about their increasingly shocking discoveries about their nation’s corrupted health care system. My jaw kept dropping as I watched this movie, over and over, lower than the last time. It’s not just the examples themselves but the sheer scale of the corruption and lethal negligence in Romanian hospitals.

Most of us in the States don’t know a hell of a lot about Eastern European countries, although I’ve sure seen a lot of movies about them lately (the narrative film Quo Vadis, Aida?, about the Srebrenica Genocide in Bosnia; the other Romanian documentary Acasă, My Home, about a homeless family expelled from the Bucharest wildlife sanctuary they were living in). It’s easy to be ignorant and assume they are societies still lost in time from a bygone era, but the footage in Collective indicates the country has just as much capability for modernization as anywhere else. It’s the widespread corruption that sets it apart.

The title, Collective, is named after the 2015 tragedy in which a nightclub of that name caught fire, killing 62 and injuring 143 more. In the opening title cards of the film, we are informed the initial death toll was largely due to a lack of emergency exists because of no government oversight. Director Alexander Nanau appears to have gotten ahold of footage taken inside the venue during the fire. He only shows a few minutes of it: the metal band seeing that their pyrotechnics have ignited highly flammable materials above the stage, then noting to the crowd that the fire is not part of the show. Chaotic footage of screams and smoke and glimpses of fire. I keep wondering how much footage there must have been, all of which would have been seen by Nanau, and presumably others who worked on the film. This bit only lasts a couple of minutes and what little is shown will still haunt me for a long time to come.

And the thing is, that incident is just the beginning—the inciting incident that later brings light to shockingly horrible conditions at Romanian hospitals. Over a dozen of the fatalities from this event could have been prevented, but instead they died from bacterial infections at the hospitals they were sent to. The reporters of a publication called The Sports Gazette (Gazeta Sporturilor in Romanian) catch wind of this, and even though they are literally a sports publication, they start to investigate. And this stunning revelation is itself just the tip of the iceberg in this story: a company that supplies Romanian hospitals with disinfectant dilutes the product. The Sports Gazette soon runs the headline DISINFECTANT DILUTED TEN TIMES! As in, tests reveal the disinfectant is one tenth as concentrated as is labeled on the packaging. This leads to revelations of corruption and bribery at hospitals all over the country, at the expense of patients, to the degree that in at least one cast horrifying footage is leaked of maggots on the neck of one patient.

While Nanau keeps the focus on this ongoing scandal, there is at least one specific reference to how sad a state Romania is in broadly speaking: footage at one of many protests that break out features a crowd thanking these journalists for this work. “The best investigations are made by a sports daily,” shouts one man. “That is the state of our press!”

Well, these journalists would certainly appear to be heroes, and Collective is a testament to how vital journalism continues to be, around the world. Alexander Nanau has taken an incredible story, and told it with unparalelled precision. There’s a reason this is only the second documentary feature film to have been nominated for an Academy Award in both the Documentary Feature and International Feature categories (the previous one being the best film of 2019, Honeyland), both films working impressively on both a documentary and a straightforward narrative level. Collective also has the distinction of being both a double-nominee this year and the first Romanian film of any kind to be nominated for an Oscar.

I still say Time should win the Documentary award, as it is just as beautiful as it is gripping and heartbreaking—but, Collective comes damn close. Whether this or Quo Vadis, Aida? should win Best International Feature is a tough call—probably the latter, just because of the gravity of the subject matter. Neither film is “better,” though; they are both stunning achievements. Collective is unfortunately a minor victim of circumstance, in fields with incredibly strong competitors. It makes a huge difference that it got these nominations to begin with—indeed, they are the sole reason I even know about the film. And now you do too! Trust me, once you start it, you won’t be able to look away.

New Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu attempts to make things better, a daunting task.

Overall: A

SIFF Advance: IN THE SAME BREATH

Directing: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

In the Same Breath begins with images of the celebrations when Wuhan rang in the year 2020, and with the benefit of hindsight, the images—thongs of unmasked people packed into public streets of a major city center—are indeed eerie. Conversely, In the Same Breath ends with images of the celebrations when Wuhan rang in the year 2021, and it’s a bizarre sight, from an American perspective, to see nearly exactly the same throngs. The only difference is that everyone there is wearing a mask. Here in the States, though, most places, while nowhere near as strictly locked down as they once were, are not yet at a point where allowing large public gatherings is advisable, masked or not.

Director Nanfu Wang, who previously directed One Child Nation in 2019 about China’s one-child policy, is in a unique position to tell the story of how both China and the U.S. compared in their initial responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is, indeed, the second documentary feature I have watched and reviewed about this pandemic and failed responses to it, the first being Totally Under Control from last fall, but that film focused entirely on U.S. failings. Wang is from China, but married to an American man, and went to visit her parents in China right around the dawn of the pandemic, in early 2020. Her husband and small child flew back home to the U.S. before she did, so she could stay behind and look after her mother.

I always wonder how much footage a filmmaker had when they put together a documentary on such a broad subject. Wang clearly recorded a massive amount. In the Same Breath is so excellently edited, it brings to mind the fact that, with enough footage, you can skillfully edit anything to tell the story you want. Here, she effectively compares the early responses to the coronavirus between China and the United States, and we can disparage communism or socialism all we want, but there are pretty stunning similarities. It should also be noted that, in many cases, the footage simply speaks for itself. Dr. Anthony Fauci, long regarded as one of the most trusted medical authorities in the U.S.—and, to be clear, I trust him even now—is shown in early interviews insisting that Americans have little to worry about. He gets specific in a way that is shocking in hindsight, saying there is no need for us to walk around wearing face masks.

American nurses are later interviewed clarifying that CDC recommendations from the start were “not based on science, but based on supply.” I never quite heard it put that way before. The problem with that, as this film makes abundantly clear, is that it sets a precedent for the people to mistrust anything the government tells them later, especially after changing their tune. What the U.S. government should have done instead, says one nurse, is make it clear from the start that the guidelines were based on supply.

One of the more impressive aspects of In the Same Breath is Wang’s complete lack of judgment as a filmmaker—and her notably open empathy. She understands that the Americans protesting lockdown measures are way off base and likely costing lives, but she recognizes in them the very same sorts of assumptions she made while in the U.S. at the start of the pandemic. She can hardly believe it herself, how much she took for granted that the U.S. was “more advanced” and thus not as dangerous a place in a pandemic as China had been, in spite of literally having just been in China and seeing all the same warning signs again in the States.

The focus thus far in this review notwithstanding, In the Same Breath spends more time on the outbreaks in China than on those in the U.S. I’d say maybe two thirds of the film is focused on China, and about a third on the U.S. China is where the virus originated, after all. And she makes fascinating comparisons between public sentiment toward their government in the two countries. She makes multiple references to the Orwellian-sounding “Propaganda Department” in China, and their methods clearly work: multiple key interview subjects, after telling stories about loss of closed loved ones due to what clearly amounts to government negligence, express earnest gratitude toward the Communist Party. This, after we are told the “official” death toll in Wuhan is around 3,000 but funeral home workers estimate it to be in the tens of thousands. And Chinese local news anchors say things like “U.S. politicians’ handling of the coronavirus is a testament to the failure of democracy.”

Well, if In the Same Breath illustrates anything at all, it’s that neither Americans nor the Chinese have cause to point fingers. Perhaps it’s a darkly universal thing, the mere hubris of humanity. Both governments dismissed any ringing of alarm, until infection rates and deaths could no longer be ignored. Wang spotlights the trauma of health care workers in both countries, the footage of nurses in China predictably limited, but she does get some. Still, this is where she interviews a few select nurses in the greater New York City area (plus one funeral home worker), and splices together the moments when each of them inevitably breaks down crying. This is not sensationalism or exploitation; it’s an illustration of the cost of these disastrous circumstances. And, while the early expression of concern in Chinese hospitals resulted in legal recourse for “spreading rumors,” in the U.S. health care workers early on were threatened with termination if they insisted on wearing face masks.

An early scene, when Wang had several camera operators taking endless footage secretly inside Wuhan hospitals, features a young man being forced to decide between taking his grandmother back home, or leaving her at a hospital that has no available beds. We’ve heard these stories many times over in the U.S. as well, a reflection of all the desperate pleas for us to “help flatten the curve.” This begs a question Wang does not even try to answer: what kind of public panic might we have been facing if the entire truth were rolled out all at once, about both the severity of the virus and the severity of lockdown measures truly needed to contain it?

There is a curious effect when watching documentaries like this, which dramatize a global event that played out over the course of an entire year and packs it into a 100-minute run time. It creates a sense of widespread chaos that was not necessarily prevalent outside of hospitals and nursing homes, and it says nothing of the endless tedium also experienced by millions during extended stay-home orders. It could be argued that we would have suffered more actual chaos had too much truth been given too quickly. Then again, and this perhaps gets back to Wang’s evident point, the authorities could have issued things like mask-wearing guidelines much earlier and just said they were out of an abundance of caution, with no imminent danger—which would have been much closer to the truth if we’d all been wearing masks and social distancing from the start. Wang also doesn’t bother to note how little was known about COVID-19 and its specific dangers until enough time had passed for proper study.

This kind of back and forth could go on forever, really. The key takeaway from In the Same Breath is that China and the United States made very similar missteps in the early days of the pandemic, and having wildly different government structures seemed to make little difference in that matter.

A nation mourns regardless of the nation.

Overall: B+

SIFF Advance: VALENTINA

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Movies about queer people overcoming adversity have kind of reached their quota, at least in the United States. Audiences here are much more eager to see far more nuanced stories about people who happen to be gay or trans, and have seen enough movies about LGBT people being treated horribly because of who they are.

That’s the only thing, really, that makes Valentina a little tricky. The target audience of this Brazilian film is clearly Brazilian, but anything I have to say about it will be aimed at American audiences. I’d say it’s a story worth telling around the world, but its sociopolitical context must always be kept in mind. I don’t presume to know how many movies are made in Brazil about trans teenagers, but I’d be inclined to say it’s not very many.

To be fair, not a lot of American movies are made about trans teens specifically either. And what of parents with trans teen children? Should they watch this? I honestly have no idea. I suppose it depends on the stage of emotional development said teens happen to be in, and how triggered they might be by depictions of trauma that parallels their own experiences.

On the upside, Valentina has no violence in it—well, at least not physical violence. A case could certainly be made that it features emotional violence, especially in a key scene in which the title character is deeply humiliated. Valentina has moved to a rural town with her mother for her mother’s nursing job, and when the town catches wind of her being trans, they respond with swift bigotry. Valentina is essentially the story of how Valentina and her mother cope with that.

More and more, when I see a foreign film, I find myself wishing I had more of a cultural context, to get a sense of how the film fits into, or connects with, its country of origin. Valentina becomes best friends with a gay Black boy (Ronaldo Bonafro), and I found myself wondering how Brazil’s history of race relations compares to that of the U.S.—even though this film depicts no racism whatsoever. A couple of Google searches later, I learned that Brazil abolished slavery 23 years after the U.S., but they did it without the massive bloodshed of civil war. As with any colonized country, of course, they are also still reckoning with that history. How much of their cultural discourse today examines such things, though? Valentina focuses entirely on the issue of gender identity, and reveals when it comes to that, things are pretty bleak: 82% of trans kids drop out of school, and the average life expectancy of trans people there is 35. Reading that just before the end title credits is a bit of. gut punch. (Side note: it should be noted that statistic is widely reported and poorly sourced, originally referring to Latin America as a whole, and its truly original sourcing and meaning is complicated. This film—and many others—would have done well to cite the source.)

One thing about the film Valentina that certainly adds to its credibility, regardless of the audience, is that the person playing the title character, Thiessa Woinbackk, is actually a young trans woman. Not only that, but she’s apparently a fairly popular Brazilian YouTuber, who last year won the Best Performance Award at Outfest. I hesitate to say the film itself would have been worse had they used a cisgender woman actor for the role, but casting Woinbackk makes it easy to feel better about it. As it happens, she does a good job.

As does the woman who plays Valentina’s mother (Guta Stresser). That said, Valentina is generally quiet, without any score to speak of, seemingly without a lot asked of its supporting players. The kids playing Valentina’s high school friends have a natural screen presence, at least. Most of the rest of the cast seem just to be performing the task of getting their lines right, Stresser and Woinbackk being notable exceptions. The cinematography is all done with hand-held cameras, giving the film an almost deadpan documentary feel. On the one hand, this means there’s no emotional manipulation. On the other hand, it’s not as easy to connect on an emotional level.

That leaves us to focus on the issues at hand, specifically Valentina’s dashed hopes for integrating seamlessly into a new community, when her transness is discovered. A lot is made of her estranged parents being still technically married, which thus requires both their signatures so she can be registered at school under what they call her “social name.” But, the way one of her classmates finds out, a deeply uncomfortable scene involving excessive drinking and what amounts to sexual assault, renders the whole signature issue irrelevant. Valentina ends on a note of hopefulness that comes as a relief, but you do have to spend a lot of time scared for her before it reaches that point.

Valentina attempts to blend into her new community.

Overall: B

SIFF Advance: POTATO DREAMS OF AMERICA

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: C+

Potato Dreams of America is a locally produced film with a small budget, and it shows. I don’t say that to shit on it, because I actually enjoyed a lot of it, but I think it’s also a bit of fair warning, to viewers for whom that might be a barrier to entry into the story. And this is tricky, criticizing a movie that is a clear passion project by a writer-director who is telling an acutely personal, largely autobiographical story. There is no doubt that this film means a great deal to the people who worked on it, and especially writer-director Wes Hurley.

It’s certainly a story worth telling. There are just some challenges in execution, particularly in the first half, which is set in Vladivostok, the Russian west-coast city where the title character (as well as Hurley) is from. The production is highly stylized, giving it a feel rather like watching a well-designed local play. Unfortunately, with one notable exception, these “play” scenes are filled with supporting actors who give distractingly wooden performances.

The exception would be Lea LeLaria, easily the most famous person in this cast, here cast wildly against type as Potato’s uptight and conservative grandmother. She loses herself in the role so effectively, it took me a while before I even realized it was her. Still, these scenes could have used some tightening up in editing. Some of these scenes feel like Hurley decided he didn’t need very many takes. (For all I know, he didn’t have time for a lot of takes.) In one memorable shot, DeLaria’s grandma casually twirls a shotgun with her index finger, and the shot that’s used doesn’t even show it twirling very well. As a result, the vibe of the production becomes somewhat amateurish.

But, here’s a compelling concept: Hurley cast different actors for Potato’s family in Russia vs. his family in America, after he and his mother move to Seattle so his mother, Lena, can get married and in so doing escape post-Soviet Russia. Potato is much younger in the Vladivostok half of the film, and played by a boy named Hersh Powers; in the Seattle half, he’s played as an older teenager by a young man named Tyler Bocock. Bocock’s peformance is nuanced in a way unlike almost anyone else in the film, and he’s easily the best actor in it; I might even say he saves it. The woman who plays his unconditionally supportive mother, Lena, in Seattle (Marya Sea Kaminski), comes close.

Also, curiously, Lena and Potato speak with American accents in the Vladivostok half, and they speak with Russian accents in the Seattle half. This effectively highlights their “otherness” as a family unit in both contexts, although the delivery is more successful in the latter half.

“Potato,” incidentally, is just the nickname Lena has given him—one of the fictions added to an otherwise true story, according to Hurley just to help give himself some distance and see Potato as a character and not just as himself. There’s a bit of a shocking twist in the last act of the film regarding Potato’s American stepfather, which would be easy to dismiss as implausibly contrived, except apparently it’s actually part of his true story. There is a nice, organically multi-ethnic sense of intersectionality to Hurley’s story, with a bit of both lesbian and trans representation. Also, Potato’s circumstances are very specific, while the essence of his story, and its relatability, is universal. The semi-flamboyant imaginary-friend Jesus is a nice touch.

To be fair, some of the script, and particularly the dialogue, really is controvied—oversimplified representation of conservative talking points, particularly mirroring how they speak now rather than twenty or thirty years ago. (This is just my own pet peeve so I’ll forgive it, but a few shots of the Seattle skyline meant to be decades ago are clearly far too contemporary—but, we already established this is a small production. I’m sure there were no resources for making composite images of Seattle of the past.)

Potato Dreams of America isn’t quite as “quirky” as the title might suggest, although the film certainly does have its quirks. A lot of it, particularly in the first half, has some unrealized potential that bogs it down a little—but, by the end, it still spoke to me.

I’d like to see more of this potato.

Overall: B-