EXBERLINER Issue 163, September 2017

WHAT’S ON — Film
Editor’s Choice
It’s Trump’s world
From sobering docs to knockabout comedies, all cinematic roads
seem to lead to the US Cretin-in-Chief. By Paul O’Callaghan
When Paul Came
Over the Sea
HHH
Berlin-based
filmmaker Jakob
Preuss follows
a Cameroonian
refugee across
Europe, but struggles
to retain a sense
of objectivity as he
becomes friends
with his subject.
This touching doc offers
a fresh perspective
on the migrant
crisis. Starts Aug 31.
Mr Long
HHH
Cult Japanese director
Sabu delivers an
unpredictable tale
about a contract
killer forced to take
refuge in a small
town and pose as a
cook. It’s an indulgent
mixed bag, by turns
Tarantino-bloody and
cloyingly humorous.
Starts Sep 14.
The Wound (Inxeba)
HHHH
Set in the mountains
of the Eastern Cape
province, this is
an engaged and
memorable debut
which explores black
masculinity and
repressed sexuality
against the backdrop
of a traditional initiation
into manhood.
Highly recommended.
Starts Sep 14.
Just eight months into his reign
of chaos, the first major anti-
Trump documentary is hitting
big screens. Yet in a manner that
echoes today’s bewilderingly fastpaced
news cycle, it wasn’t actually
conceived as such. An Inconvenient
Sequel: Truth To Power is, for the
most part, an impassioned but cautiously
optimistic survey of the climate
movement from the perspective of
its leading spokesperson, Al Gore
(see interview, page 28). It kicks off
in somewhat pedestrian fashion, with
Gore highlighting the alarming rise
in extreme weather we’ve seen in the
11 years since An Inconvenient Truth.
Things get more intriguing when focus
shifts towards the lead-up to the 2016
Paris Agreement – in particular, Gore’s
work to entice a reluctant India to the
table. The happy outcome of said efforts,
coupled with an emerging sense
of new potential solutions to the crisis,
ensure that this is no gloomy, hectoring
diatribe. And yet, Trump’s exasperating
decision to pull out of Paris
necessitated the addition of a postscript
urging viewers to stand strong
in spite of shoddy leadership. And so
the film stands as a potent reminder of
the US president’s extraordinary knack
for hijacking narratives and serving as
a truly inconvenient distraction from
the issues that really matter.
Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman
(see interview, page 32) was filmed
back when all of this nonsense was
merely an implausible dystopian
nightmare, but now feels like an urgent
riposte to Trump’s call to ban transgender
people from the military. Captivating
newcomer Daniela Vega shines
as Marina, a young trans woman whose
seemingly happy existence is shattered
when her partner Orlando (Francisco
Reyes) dies unexpectedly. What follows
is a near-relentless assault on her
humanity, both by authority figures
suspicious about the circumstances
of Orlando’s death, and by her lover’s
grieving family. But Marina refuses to
play the victim, exuding a quiet dignity
in the face of her oppressors, and drawing
strength from her vivid inner life,
which Lelio conveys through slickly
stylised fantastical sequences. Occasional
bum notes, like the bafflingly
on-the-nose use of Aretha Franklin’s
“(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural
Woman”, hold this back from hitting
the heights of comparable work by
Almodóvar and Cassavetes. But on the
whole it’s a satisfyingly effective plea
for tolerance, landing at a time when
life-affirming art is seriously needed.
Logan Lucky
Steven Soderbergh announced his
retirement from filmmaking in 2013,
but he’s back in the director’s saddle
for Logan Lucky, a star-studded,
knockabout crime caper about two
down-on-their-luck brothers who
concoct a reckless plan to rob a North
Carolina motor sports complex.
From the opening scene, in which
blue-collar labourer Jimmy (Channing
Tatum) waxes lyrical about John
Denver whilst repairing a pick-up
truck, it’s clear we’re deep in Trump
country here – the poor, semi-rural,
white America so rarely acknowledged
by Hollywood. With Jimmy laid
off from work for failing to diagnose
a pre-existing medical condition, only
a harebrained roll of the dice can
save him from poverty. Fans of the
Coens’ lighter fare will dig this film’s
droll sense of humour, while there are
shades of Tarantino’s Jackie Brown
in its leisurely pacing and coolly selfassured
tone. And like Magic Mike before
it, what purports to be tongue-incheek
fluff transpires to have plenty
to say about the broken state of the
working-class United States. n
Starts Sep 7 A Fantastic Woman (Una Mujer Fantástica) HHHH D: Sebastián
Lelio (Chile 2017) with Daniela Vega, Luis Gnecco | Starts Sep 7 An Inconvenient
Sequel: Truth To Power HHH D: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk (USA
2017), documentary | Starts Sep 14 Logan Lucky HHHH D: Steven Soderbergh
(USA 2017) with Channing Tatum, Adam Driver
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EXBERLINER 163