Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

I recommend The Last Brunch, also from this year. It's available on Cummings' youtube channel.
He's not in this one, but the cringe factor was off the charts as usual.

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I saw the sex at the end as being twofold. First, yes, it's a little jab at the sexless (and especially queer sexless) world of the Marvel films.

But I also saw it as the way that this man copes with spending his days putting on a smiling face for a corporation that dehumanizes him even more than many corporations do by forcing him to defend their choices. I don't think it's an accident that there's this contrast between the little boy's room covered in Marvel posters and Kyle's living room absolutely plastered with posters of "real" movies. Further, the person he's having sex with is someone whose literal identity, as he says, would never be acknowledged by the people he works with because they'd have to say, *gasp*, Taiwan. I don't think that he chose his boyfriend because of Marvel's politics. But I think that his choice in home decor and, yes, having sex with his boyfriend are probably for him the little acts of "rebellion" that get him through the day.

Same. Most cringe comedy is almost unbearable to me. I get legitimately distressed at vicarious embarrassment. But somehow the way Cummings does it brings enough humanity and growth to the characters that I stay invested.

Thanks!

I think that all makes sense, yeah. If anything having the boyfriend be from Taiwan is kinda on the nose, but for something like this, you don't really have the time to have a ton of tact, so I get it.

My best guess is that it's because his characters are so clumsy that it's actually hard to experience what they do vicariously. Too many examples of "okay even if I would never stumble that badly" to feel relatable and thus put us in mind of our own awkwardness, real or imagined.

It is on the nose, but I think the film is interested in going deliriously over the top in terms of showing all of the ways that this person has to compromise his personal identity to meet his professional obligations.

I think that it works for me because his characters are always heading somewhere, and their embarrassing moments are usually catalysts for some sort of personal growth. They are the nightmare, exaggerated version of "hitting rock bottom", and you're right that this exaggeration makes them more tolerable.

Past Lives, 2023

Nora (Greta Lee) is a young woman whose family immigrated to Canada from South Korea when she was a child. Years later, she reconnects with her childhood friend, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) via social media. The two develop a long-distance relationship, but as both are unwilling to compromise their personal trajectories, things come to an end. Years later, Hae Sung comes to America to visit Nora and the pair must confront what could have been.

Heartfelt and deeply empathetic to its characters, this is a fantastic drama.

Life is full of choices large and small, and even someone who is not prone to feeling regret might still find themselves wondering how their life might be different---for better or for worse---if they’d taken a different path.

What gives this film a certain maturity over other movies with similar plots is that Nora is not stuck in a rut, in a bad marriage, or otherwise in a rough situation. She is experiencing maybe a normal level of mid-life reflection---sort of “Oh, so this is my life. This is it.”---but she’s thrown into a deeper turmoil as she reacts to the emotional weight of Hae Sung’s attentions.

While the film largely centers on Nora, and in particular how her feelings shift as she spends time with Hae Sung and how she is forced to reflect on her marriage to Arthur (John Magaro), Hae Sung is the person whose emotions are more volatile. It is hard to watch at times, the way that Hae Sung feels the sting of lost possibility. His trip speaks to someone who needs something to happen, who is holding onto the hope of an impossible outcome. In the moment, of course, he isn’t trying to tempt Nora away from her husband. He doesn’t really seem to think that she will run away with him. But it is clear that he has never been able to find closure regarding Nora, and this lack of closure has kept him from maybe building more relationships in his life.

The central performances from Lee and Yoo are stunning. They both play characters who let politeness and calm sit over emotions that come closer to a simmer as they spend more time together. Magaro is very good in his supporting role as Nora’s husband. While he is unable to fully suppress his jealousy, he is loving and supportive of his wife. It is under Arthur’s patient questioning that Nora is forced to confront her feelings about what is happening. I had to laugh a bit when Arthur asks Nora if Hae Sung is good looking. The answer, of course, is OMG YES. Nora’s reluctance to answer this question honestly---”Yeah, now that you mention it, he’s a total babe”---seems to have as much to do with being diplomatic as with the fact that Nora herself might be studiously trying to ignore that fact.

Through the film, Nora frames her relationship with Hae Sung in terms of the concept of inyeon, the idea that the relationship between people in the present is defined by their relationship in their past lives. It is a very interesting notion when it comes to reconciling those very normal feelings of regret and what ifs. In a lovely choice, the film has a touching scene where Hae Sung and Arthur discuss the idea, abstracting it away from just being an idea centered on romance.

There was nothing about this movie I didn’t think was great. The performances, the writing, and the way that it was filmed that centered the characters in time and place just sang for me. This is a movie that is all about the internal workings of its characters. There are no villains, just good people trying to make sense of their lives, and trying to come to terms with the fact that you cannot walk two paths in life.

Very glad to have caught this lovely film on the big screen.

La Captive, 2000

Ariane (Sylvie Testud) lives with her boyfriend, Simon (Stanislas Merhar) and Simon’s grandmother (Francoise Bertin). The relationship between Ariane and Simon is defined by her passivity in the face of Simon’s increasing jealousy and conviction that Ariane is hiding secrets from him.

An interesting look at a quietly dysfunctional relationship that suffers a bit from closed off characters.

I avoided this film for a while, under the mistaken idea that the title was a bit more literal: I thought that this was a movie about someone holding a woman hostage and just wasn’t super interested. But learning that the film was not some kidnap thriller (no shade, I love a kidnap thriller now and then) and that it was directed by Chantal Akerman renewed my interest.

There are a shocking number of people who are in situations, and specifically relationships, mainly because the emotional distress of ending or changing things is worse than just continuing with the status quo. The relationship in this film starts out looking like one of those, a flat romance continuing mainly out of inertia. But rather than staying settled in some sort of homeostasis, the relationship rocks and reels as Ariane’s withdrawal inside of herself only fuels Simon’s paranoia about what’s really going on inside her mind.

The tragic unfolding of their relationship is just a gradual worsening of both of their worst impulses. Ariane is a picture of compliance and submission. When Simon asks if it was okay that he undressed her while she was asleep, she agrees. We later see that Ariane is in the habit of feigning sleep while Simon has sex with her, seemingly something driven by his needs. In a later scene, she compliantly pretends to fall asleep in a car so that he can put his hands on her. When Simon questions her schedule or implies that she has feelings for her female friends, her defenses are weak.

But what looks to most people like someone doing what she can to avoid conflict looks to Simon like evasion. He begins to spend his days following Ariane, tracking her across the city and even pulling her out of an event with a singing group. For every step back that Ariane takes, Simon advances one step toward her. His need to know everything about her, an ultimately futile attempt to know what is in her heart and mind, is suffocating.

One of Simon’s obsessions is the idea that Ariane is secretly gay, something that a standout sequence later in the film seems to possibly support. Naturally this idea is actually more about his own insecurities, and rather than thinking about what Ariane actually wants, he uses it as fodder for more obsessive sleuthing about her life, including “interviewing” a lesbian couple about the nature of same-sex desire. In one of the best sequences in the movie, Ariane sings a duet from behind a barred window with a woman standing in another window. Whether Ariane’s longing is sexual in nature, or if it’s just freedome she wants, remains ambiguous, even if the allegorical nature of the bars is not.

The film makes the double-edged choice of largely restricting us to the information that Simon has. In many ways, this is effective. When Ariane looks away and denies sexual interest in one of her fellow singers, is she trying to avoid an argument, or is she hiding something? In failing to let us into Ariane’s internal motives and true feelings, we find ourselves curious and maybe even dip into Simon’s salacious interest in her sex life. But the downside to this approach is a distance from Ariane. Her capitulations to Simon’s ridiculous sexual needs become frustrating, as you wonder why she doesn’t just dump this loser.

But perhaps these feelings are part of the point. How often do we read stories about people, and specifically women, who suffer abuse or controlling behavior at the hands of a romantic partner and ask, “Why didn’t she just leave him?”. I know more than one woman somewhat trapped in relationships because they would legally have to evict their male partners and are afraid--emotionally and even physically--of what those 30 days of cohabitation might look like. Going into the final act, we understand just how desperate Ariane might be underneath her placid exterior. How many people---men and women---might be hiding similar fear and desperation under a calm appearance? How many people, like Ariane, could not point to any actions or words that legally constitute threats or harm?

I do think that the distance from the protagonists, disgust in Simon’s case and intentional obscurity in Ariane’s case, dings this one a bit. Still, it’s a well-acted story that’s filmed in an interesting way, and the final ten minutes pack a punch that’s a surprising but coherent conclusion to what has come before.

I really liked that one. As you said, a weaker film would've made Arthur unlikable or made Nora's regret more blunt, but I think the film successfully captures how just because you might not change your life, it doesn't hurt other people along the way. Though we're not given a clear answer as to how much Nora regrets her life choices at the end, there's more than enough provided to make it clear that a nuanced answer is in there somewhere.

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Exactly. And the thing is, Hae Sung from Nora's point of view and Nora from Hae Sung's point of view will always live with the halo of possibility. The reality could be that if they'd dated in their 20s, they would have driven each other crazy and split up. Or the reality could be that their relationship would be like Nora and Arthur's, good, but just different. Their relationship will always live in the unknown ether of a dream.

There's a lot of cultural weight that gets put on finding "the one". The one romantic partner. The one job. The one city. That ONE thing that is the best for you. And the reality is that there are probably many people, jobs, places that are good and work out fine. I think that those final moments with Nora and Hae Sung on the street capture the emotional intensity of coming face to face with what could have been.

The last three or four minutes of the film had me on the edge of my seat, just exploding with wanting them both to have the perfect life, and knowing it's impossible. I could probably write several paragraphs about the way the film explore inyeon and specifically the line about the bird alighting on the branch.

I was rooting so hard for this one to win best picture.

Mon Oncle Antoine, 1971

Benoit (Jacques Gagnon) is a young man who lives with his Uncle Antoine (Jean Duceppe) and Aunt Cecile (Olivette Thibault), who run the local store in a small mining town in Quebec. As Christmas approaches, Benoit flirts with Carmen (Lyne Champagne), creates store-front decorations, and generally observes the events in town. But on Christmas Eve, emotions run high and Benoit is unprepared for how complicated life can be.

This coming of age film fully inhabits the delirious flush of living on the edge of adulthood.

One of the more challenging things about being a child can be the fact that your autonomy is limited: you do not get to choose where you live, what you do with your days, etc. Benoit living not with his parents but with his aunt and uncle speaks to a decision made probably without Benoit’s input. This situation is echoed, though a bit more upsettingly, in Carmen’s life. Carmen works for the couple and is often looked after by them, but her father comes over to visit from time to time. Oh, not to visit Carmen. He strolls in to collect her pay for himself, as if she’s a piece of equipment he’s loaned out.

So life is hard for the kids, and despite all of the things they have in common with each other, Benoit and Carmen never quite click in the right way. (It doesn’t help that after Carmen is humiliated by her father’s antics, Benoit chooses that moment to go for a boob grab). Much of what we watch are the kind of awkward teenage antics that most people will look back on with a potent mix of nostalgia and wincing.

But this isn’t just about the uncomfortable throes of teenage years. What adds to the impact of the film is the way that it threads in unpleasant hints that adulthood and independence will not offer the freedom and stability that Benoit and Carmen would hope for. There’s a sequence in which the townspeople gather on their porches as the owner of the local mine throws small gifts at them in lieu of a holiday bonus. A drunken, emotionally raw conversation between Benoit and Antoine takes place as the two go to retrieve the body of a local man who has passed away.

Benoit is very much a recognizable teenage boy, which is to say that he’s not the most likable person. His behavior toward Carmen at times trips over into kind of creepy, for me. And he’s all too happy to violate the privacy of one of the store’s female clients, spying on her as she tries on clothing. He participates in abusing an animal for a laugh. But I don’t think that you need to like Benoit or even identify with him to recognize the low-key anxiety that runs through his dawning awareness of the complications that await him in the adult world.

The setting of the movie is also incredibly notable. It’s the kind of landscape where it’s very snowy, but always resisting looking like any kind of winter wonderland. It’s more slush than snow, the cold more oppressive than crisp. The fact that this is all happening under the Christmas holiday only adds to the awareness that this is a gray space, and too often joy is just a sparkling decoration put in a window as a distraction.

What I liked most about this film was the mood. I’m not sure I clicked with it as strongly as I would have liked on a character level, but it’s certainly a visceral portrait of what it’s like to live in the last throes of adolescence.

Demonlover, 2002

Diane (Connie Nielsen) has just ruthlessly elevated herself to a more executive position in the Volf Corporation as the firm is attempting to acquire the rights to distribute adult animation from a Japanese studio. Diane’s tactics put her in the crosshairs of her co-worker Elise (Chloe Sevigny), and she also struggles to get a bead on her boss, Herve (Charles Berling). As negotiations become more complicated, corporate espionage and ethically questionable content come into the mix. Diane’s ruthlessness, it turns out, might have its limits.

This is a moody, entrancing reflection on the intersection between control, desire, and commerce.

I watched a very brief interview with Olivier Assayas about this film in which he said that he doesn’t have any of the answers, but he thinks he was asking the right questions.

Generally speaking, I’m very much inclined to agree with his self-assessment, and I thought that the movie raised very interesting questions about desire, desensitization, commerce, control, and the degree to which we surrender ourselves to any or all of those things.

There is a good reason why the loss of control is considered a pretty common fantasy trope for both genders. Think the powerful executive being punished by a well-paid dominatrix. Think the woman being carried off by the hunky pirate. This entire film is a waterfall of the loss of control----sometimes intentionally, most times not---and the dawning horror that the person who has taken control has no interest in your wellbeing.

The film starts with an incredibly upsetting sequence of loss of control. Determined to get into a more powerful position, Diane drugs her co-worker, Karen (Dominique Reymond), who is abducted from the airport by two men. (Much of Elise’s animosity toward Diane comes from her loyalty to Karen and her certainty that Diane was involved in the abduction). When a shaken Elise visits Karen in the hospital after the incident, a distraught Karen insists that she was raped during her ordeal. It’s unclear if Karen believes she was literally sexually assaulted, or if she is referring to the abduction itself as rape. Either way, the loss of control, the not knowing what happened while unconscious has done terrible things to Karen.

And this is the horror that underlies much of the film. Karen becomes nothing more than an object---to Diane, to the men who help her, and to the organization that arranged it all---and not an object of desire, per se, but a means to an end of desire. This distinction becomes incredibly important as the film progresses. Desire is a natural, healthy part of being a human being. But Assayas presents us with a world in which the pursuit of sexual desire or the pursuit of power doesn’t take into account the pleasure or wellbeing of the person being used to achieve that desire.

This is a landscape, both personal and corporate, where people unabashedly pursue their desires, yet there are increasingly diminishing returns. At one point, Diane and Herve tour the Japanese animation studio. They watch films that all center on women being abused and assaulted, with lingering closeups on the women weeping as they are raped by a range of characters and creatures. But there is a sterility to it all. They speak about the films in a matter-of-fact way, and there is no sense of passion behind any of it. Numbed to the animated pornography, and also numbed to the live-action pornography she later watches in her hotel room, Diane becomes fixated on an underground website called the Hellfire Club, which seemingly features real women being tortured and assaulted.

As her deceptions become more and more complex and more and more upsetting, we see in Diane a desire to surrender, and in ways large and small she begins to. She places herself in harm’s way when Elise draws her into a disorienting, eerie confrontation deep in a parking garage. (Elise’s demands of “lower, lower, lower” as they descend the concrete spiral of the garage is hypnotizing and deeply upsetting). She starts to lean on Herve a bit more. But what Diane is about to learn is that the reality of surrendering control never matches the fantasy when you hand the reins to someone who doesn’t really see you as a person.

This movie is full of imagery of women being handled: carried, restrained, held down, bound, and even being gently tucked into bed while unconscious. And with the exception of the latter, what is maybe most striking about them is the lack of passion. Even the men who anonymously torture (kill?) the women on the Hellfire site seem to do so robotically. It is the visual language of sexual violence, but it’s covered with the horrifying sheen of commercialism and profit. Someone will pay to watch this woman suffer, therefore we will make her suffer. Her suffering can be yours to enjoy once we have your credit card details. It is dehumanizing to a degree that individual violence never could be.

Nielsen brings an unraveling intensity to her character that I loved, and it is perfectly complimented by Sevigny’s turn as a woman who at first just seems like a bitchy co-worker and gradually takes more and more power for herself. Berling’s turn as Herve is enjoyably enigmatic---will he ultimately prove to be an ally or an enemy? In this movie, you don’t know that answer regarding any character until the last moments. Gina Gershon also deserves a mention for her portrayal of a superficially bratty, but possibly deeply conniving, representative of an American distributor.

This is a movie that, the moment the end credits rolled, I immediately knew would demand a rewatch at some point. I keep circling back to different sequences and ideas. It kind of floors me that this film was made in the early 2000s, and yet the questions it raises about consent and stimulation and people-as-product continue to be incredibly relevant, if not more so, now.

Nocturama, 2016

A group of young adults, including couple David (Finnegan Oldfield) and Sarah (Laure Valentinelli), decide to lash out at the society that they see as corrupt. As we follow them, they plant bombs in various buildings, assassinate the head of a large bank, and set fire to the Jeanne d’Arc. As their plans come to fruition, they find themselves holed up in a closed shopping mall, hoping to wait out the night without attracting the attention of the authorities.

This is an intriguing thriller that packs the majority of its emotion and suspense into the long stretch between action and reaction.

Young people often struggle with the unfairness---real, perceived, or both---of the world around them, and this sometimes comes out in the desire to act out and kick the metaphorical barricades. The choice to not give the youth in the film a very specific cause is an interesting one, because the emotional depths it wants to explore relates to what it means to act in a way that will forever alter your future.

What the people in this film learn is that it’s not actually that hard to commit violence. The first hour of the film follows their preparations and then execution of their plan, and for the most part it unfolds without a hitch. And even when things do go wrong---resulting in harm to an innocent bystander, resulting in harm to one of the youth---the plan rolls on. The terror caused by four bombs and the terror caused by five bombs are maybe that not far apart.

Then the film really settles in, as the group meets up at a closed mall and tries to make it through the night as panic spreads in the city and repercussions start to peek over the horizon. While at first the group seems a bit numb, perhaps shocked that they actually did this thing and that it actually worked, it’s not long before fatalism starts to settle over the group. Sure, they talk as if everything is going to plan, but there’s something about the way that the group goes fully hedonistic and consumerist in the mall that tells you they’re enjoying life while they can.

On a very superficial level, this framing could feel like a cheap critique of the group. Hey, look, they think banks and big corporations are evil, but they like wearing Nike and listening to mainstream music just like everyone else! Hypocrites! But instead the night in the mall feels much more like the last meal of someone on death row. It all leads to the inevitable question: was THIS worth giving up your life---possibly literally---for?

The group themselves are a bit tricky in terms of understanding them as people. I understand why the movie resists giving them a specific point of view, but the lack of a specific passion leaned me towards feeling like they were a bunch of people who just wanted an excuse to do harm. Several times during the movie we see members of the group emotionlessly execute innocent people who are in their way. Adding to this is the impression that several of them are rich kids, and at times it has the vibe of a bunch of entitled bored kids who got their hands on some explosives.

I wish that the movie had given the characters more personality, and that we had more insight into their motivations and backgrounds. There is the tragic sense that if these kids are trying to make a positive difference in the world, their actions have had the opposite effect. At one point, David invites a homeless couple into the mall as an act of kindness, something that has tragic consequences. In fact, from the very first moment, I found myself wondering what exactly the group thought their violence and destruction would yield. If putting a bullet in the head of a bank executive could reduce the harm of the banking industry . . . . that’s a problem that would have long ago been solved. Blowing up buildings and shooting people---including everyday office workers----leans things away from activism and into terrorism.

I find myself comparing this to a film that explored similar territory, Kelly Reichhardt’s Night Moves, and that similar sense of the dread that follows an extreme action. In comparison, that film greatly benefits from both a specific point of view driving the characters’ activism and an actual moral conflict in the main character. It’s not surprising that the characters in Nocturama would be focused on their own survival, but the fact that they don’t seem to give a single second to reflecting on the harm they’ve done is very distancing. Despite many sequences that seem to hint at vulnerability and tragedy, there’s something cold about them as a whole, and puts a limit on the sympathy I was able to feel for them.

I did really enjoy the idea of spending the majority of the movie between the moment an arrow leaves a bow and the moment it strikes the target. The empty mall is a wonderful setting, and the performances are solid. But there’s a critical gap in the humanity of its main characters that somewhat dulls the impact, despite strong building of suspense.

I really like that movie. And Dirge by Death in Vegas is such a great soundtrack.

Yeah, I'm honestly surprised I don't hear it mentioned more.

I think I've said it here before, or somewhere else on MoFo, but I totally recommend all of his work. I still haven't seen The Beta Test or a couple of his shorts, but after watching two of his features and 11 shorts, he's definitely someone I look forward to.

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The Strangler, 1970

On the streets of Paris, the innocuous looking Emile (Jacques Perrin) goes out night after night to find and kill women he deems to be too sad and lonely to live, strangling them with white scarves he makes at home. Desperate to catch Emile is detective Dangret (Julien Guiomar), who ends up posing as a psychiatrist in order to lure the killer out. Also in the mix are Anna (Eva Simonet), a lonely woman who seems to want to be Emile’s victim, and “La Chacal” (Paul Barge), a violent, opportunistic thief who happily robs Emile’s victims once they’re dead.

At times wonderfully moody and visually evocative, a somewhat lackluster premise keeps the film in subdued and at times cliched territory.

It’s not necessarily the fault of a movie when it falls in the shadow of another movie that tackles similar themes or plot points. For me, this film could not escape the shadow of Stranger by the Lake, another movie in which longing and violence tangle and where death might be a price to pay for an end to loneliness.

In Stranger by the Lake, however, the film takes time to establish the strong erotic attraction between the (possible) killer and his (possible) victim. But in The Strangler, Emile merely wanders the various avenues in search of the women he can just tell are so sad that they need to die. The jolt from the film comes from the way that the women lean into his deadly embrace, the intimacy of being murdered being vastly superior to another night of spinsterhood. There’s a whole subgenre of movies where women are victimized and, brace yourselves, they actually like it, and this one falls into a lot of the pitfalls of those films.

Something the film never quite gets around is wanting to have things both ways. On the one hand, the movie makes sure to give us a peek at Emile’s traumatic past that set him into the very specific need to kill women. But on the other hand, the movie wants us to believe that Emile is basically always right! It’s mostly accepted that these women are glad to die, and it’s never really discussed that . . . maybe they just needed a good cry, a glass of water, and a good night’s sleep. Emile’s past lampshades the fact that he only targets women (because we all know that lonely men with low self esteem aren’t something that exist). Paul Barge’s opportunistic thief is there seemingly mainly to boost the notion that Emile is in any way moral. Hey, guys, he kills people because he’s taking mercy on them---can you believe that someone would want to do something as depraved as stealing a purse?!?!?!?

Where the film gets a lot more interesting is in the last third, where things get a lot weirder. There’s a great sequence where Emile looks around him and we see the depravity that he anticipates in other people. Notably, despite Emile only targeting women, in this sequence we start in a very predictable place---a woman being assaulted by a group of men who tear her clothing off, and brace yourselves, but eventually she likes it!---but then we see a man stripped naked and beaten to death in the street, a couple fighting in a car, a woman shooting a man in the face, two men stabbing another man. Emile seems to see everyone as both a potential victim and a potential assailant, and we can see in Perrin’s portrayal of the character just how overwhelming this is.

The last third is also where we get Emile’s first failure, the unsuccessful attempted murder of a sex worker. And unlike the other victims, here we can see that Emile is fully projecting onto Claire (Nicole Courcel), whose only complaint is that she’s having a slow night and longs for some non-transactional intimacy. Significantly, Claire does have a support group---a whole crew of other sex workers and a woman who runs a cafe and looks after the women, chiding them to cut down on their smoking and eat their dinner before it gets cold. When she screams, unlike Emile’s other victims, her friends come sprinting through the park to come to her side.

It’s in this final third that the film really begins to explore the way that the characters are all projecting onto each other, and the way that they seek to exploit each other to get what they want. Emile begins to question his own actions, and without his murder as a dark center, the secondary characters in his orbit start to wobble. It’s a very strong ending, and hilariously this act seems to be kicked off by a sequence in which a man walking with a female friend explains to her about how he had to reevaluate his sexuality after his first wife talked him into letting her put a few fingers in his butt during sex. There’s a charming mix of humor and empathy that coheres in the final act, and I wish the whole film had been in this gear.

Despite not totally loving the character of Emile, I do have to give Perrin credit for his portrayal of a man who is basically living the life that’s a stereotype of how he imagines his victims. Emile spends evenings at home---when he’s not out murdering---knitting hit little murder scarves and hanging out with his beloved dog. While I likewise had mixed feelings about Anna, Simonet gives an expressive performance. Both Perrin and Simonet evolve their portrayals as the film goes on, showing different types of vulnerability and determination.

Not uniformly strong, but worth it for the last act.

I liked The Beta Test but it's not quite the same vibe as his other stuff. Still worth the time if you love his work, but you'll probably enjoy it more if you go in not having that expectation.

I think that The Beta Test is more systems-focused than character-focused, and I also think that Cummings was juggling a LOT of ideas for one movie. I still really enjoyed it, and it still centers on a very Cummings character, but you're right that the vibe is a little different.

That's a good way to put it, I feel like the film has one more idea than I was expecting, and possibly one more than it's entirely ready to deliver on. Still very good, and the "last" idea sort of functions as a de facto twist (but in such a way that I don't think knowing that really spoils anything). Very odd.

I was left really cold by that one. Looking back, I think a lot of it has to do with how indecipherable the characters were. I may have been too harsh though with my rating.

I enjoyed reading your review of it, because it's always interesting when someone dislikes a movie you like, but is in basic agreement about most of the film. (I think that the editing bothered you much more than it bothered me, but I appreciate your criticism of it).

I liked the surreal setting of the mall, and also the hypocrite-meets-hedonist nature of the teens' time there.

I will concede that I can't imagine watching the first hour or so again.