🎥 May December (2023) 👩❤️👨🗓️
Directed by Todd Haynes, this film offers a captivating look into a controversial marriage of 24 years, which began when Gracie (Julianne Moore) was 36 and Joe (Charles Melton) was only 13.
24 years later, with two children about to enter university, Gracie and Joe’s home is visited by Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), who aims to portray Gracie in an upcoming film adaptation of their romance. This triggers an examination of the couple’s dynamics and the scandal surrounding their relationship. The film delivers powerful performances and well-developed characters, creating a complex and erotic atmosphere where reality, fiction, and the complexities of a relationship with a significant age difference and consent issues intertwine.
Todd Haynes leaves us with an experience that, although difficult to fully comprehend and share the characters’ intentions and motives, presents an intriguing family and artistic dilemma.
⭐ 9 / 10 en Amazon Prime Video
📺Baby Reindeer (2024) 🦌👁️
After resisting for weeks the wave of recommendations and comments, I succumbed to Baby Reindeer, the “trendy” Netflix series. After watching the 7 episodes of this adventure set in Scotland and London, the main dynamic of this series is the unhealthy stalking relationship between Donny, a failed comedian who works in a cafe, and Martha, a seemingly nice woman with serious problems, who, after a kind offer of a free cup of coffee, turns Donny into her main human being and constant obsession.
The series has comedic elements, however, it focuses more on a dramatic representation of the risks and corrosive relationships that are generated in a world where it is not unusual to feel alone, unvalued or unaccepted. Turning the characters of the series into mirrors of situations that, although exaggerated, we can all somehow empathize with, despise and sincerely worry about.
I understand the social issue it raises and why the series has given so much to talk about, as is usual in Netflix, there is something of superior morality in a series that tries to go a little further than just entertainment, but treated in a way sometimes very valuable, however, I think it immerses us in unnecessarily grotesque situations and dynamics that only help to generate more shock than a greater understanding of an interesting topic.
⭐ 7 / 10 Netflix
🎥 Cold War (2018)💔🎶
A fascinating Polish film set in the late 1940s to early 1960s, where we follow the lives of Wiktor, a music director, and Zula, a young singer he discovers during a series of government-funded European folk music auditions.
Wiktor and Zula navigate a musical whirlwind where the atmosphere of war, the Russian propaganda machine, and the war situation cause many difficulties in their lives. Uncovering stories full of sadness, hopelessness, uncertainty, and, of course, intense passion. The characters, with a very carefully presented treatment of the love theme, present a search for freedom and meaning that immerses us beyond pure romanticism.
The choice to present the story in black and white combines drama with a fantastic photographic approach, and the music that binds the narrative delivers a strong, intense and very powerful emotional tone.
⭐9 / 10 Amazon Prime Video
