Film Series of the Week 

French director Louis Malle (1932-95) was best known for intelligent and provocative films like his incest comedy Murmur of the Heart and two Nazi Occupation dramas, Lacombe, Lucien and Au Revoir, Les Enfants, but he was also a heartfelt chronicler of an America that could only be seen by an outsider. This series includes several such films, including his 1978 “success de scandale” Pretty Baby, with a 12-year-old Brooke Shields as a child prostitute, and his witty Atlantic City, with an excellent Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon, from a scabrously funny John Guare script. 

 

Also included are Malle’s sympathetic documentary portraits of his adopted country during the Reagan presidency that show those left behind: 1985’s God’s Country (farmers) and 1986’s And the Pursuit of Happiness … (immigrants). There’s also a new doc, Louis Malle, Le Révolté (Louis Malle, The Rebel) by Claire Duguet, which—though too short (75 minutes)—effectively hits on the major themes of Malle’s life and career. This essential series was curated by Malle’s daughters Chloé and Justine. (metrograph.com)

 

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

If it wasn’t for the winning presence of Samara Weaving—an actress who always seems to elevate the lame movies she’s usually stuck in—as Caroline, a young woman who falls for the charming but dangerous Oliver and follows him on a deadly Bonnie and Clyde-like excursion across Texas, then Adam Carter Rehmeier’s derivative drama (the obvious script is by William Thomas Dean IV) would be even less palatable.

 

 

Routine and predictable for much of its length—even Kyle Gallner’s charismatically villainous Oliver is unoriginal—this is yet another film that wastes poor Weaving.

 

 

 

The Currents 

After successful designer Lina impulsively leaps from a bridge into icy Swiss waters, upon her return home to Buenos Aires she finds it difficult to return to normal life in Argentine-Swiss writer-director Milagros Mumenthaler’s sometimes opaque but mostly trenchant character study.

 

 

Although a few moments of fantasy and surreal touches aren’t always successful, the director’s intimate glimpse into this fragile woman’s psyche is greatly assisted by Isabel Aimé González Sola, a bracingly natural actress who makes Lina an elegantly empathetic protagonist.

 

 

 

Forastera 

Teenager Cata’s beloved grandmother Catalina dies, and Cata herself discovers her body—this leads to her trying to deal with her grief in ever more confusing ways in Lucía Aleñar Iglesias’ achingly intimate chamber drama.

 

 

Anchored by Zoe Stein’s magnificent and moving performance, Iglesias’ film shows how those we loved and lost are still among us in different ways, whether in our memories or otherwise, as her infinitely suggestive final shot underlines.

 

 

 

Streaming Release of the Week 

The fascinating true story of Emerik Blum, a Bosnian-Jewish businessman whose Yugoslav company Energoinvest was successfully run as a socialist collective of sorts (women workers were paid the same as men), is recounted in Jasmila Žbanić’s concise but often illuminating documentary.

 

 

The film is structured from valuable archival footage and interviews with many of those involved, including Blum and several colleagues, but it would have been even more interesting if Žbanić had given more time to delving into Blum’s personal history—his family was murdered during the Holocaust, which is mentioned but not gone into in any depth. 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week

Thomas de Hartmann (1884-1956) was a Ukrainian composer who composed this neglected opera—based on the Biblical story of Esther, who saved the Jewish people from annihilation—in Paris during World War II, which also threatened the very existence of the Jewish people.

 

 

This world-premiere recording displays the de Hartmann opera’s strengths, notably the lyrical vocal writing, although it also brings its static nature to the fore. Still, it’s a treat to be able to hear this valuable work in its entirety, and it’s performed superbly by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under conductor Kirill Karabits and sung beautifully by a top cast led by American soprano Corinne Winters as Esther.