Tilda sun, Julianne moon
A critic's notebook from Austin Film Festival, including 'The Room Next Door' and 'The Last Showgirl'
I try to see as many movies that come out as possible. Kind of like Ash from “Pokémon,” except my thing doesn’t involve sending a mouse into a cage fight with, like, a dragon made of rocks.
Austin Film Festival wrapped up on Thursday night, and while I didn’t make it to every marquee film, I clocked in for a few highly anticipated releases. Here’s a lil’ critic’s notebook.
‘The Room Next Door’
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Loving Almodóvar means never having to say you’re sorry. Obvi, he misses as often as he hits. For every treat like “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” or “Law of Desire,” you get a dud like “Strange Way of Life” or problematic cringe like “The Skin I Live In.” Regardless, you’re gonna get pure, industrial-grade Pedro. I’ll excuse a lot if a movie has a POV; an embarrassment can be endearing as long as it’s genuine.
Good news. My most anticipated film of the fest, “The Room Next Door,” hits. In Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, he casts Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore as women who form a strange, troubling bond. That is the plot of every one of his movies, give or take an Antonio Banderas.
The plot more specifically: Death-phobic author Ingrid (Moore) reconnects with old friend Martha (Swinton) after years of drift. Tragically, former war correspondent Martha is now dying of cancer. Through circumstance and nostalgia, they become enmeshed. Then Martha asks an impossible favor: She plans to take an illegal euthanasia pill and, fearing a lonely death, wants Ingrid to be in the room next door when she does it.
As a Pedro-head, I loved seeing the filmmaker’s signature style applied to an American setting full of American characters. My man loves him a color-blocked moment, of course. When his films are set in Madrid, my bumpkin ass sees the vibrant sets and thinks, “Ah, yes, the look and feel of Spain.” Translating that palette to New York — specifically the habitats of wealthy white women who work in the arts — is a whole different experience. Monochromatic deck chairs become modern sculpture. A cherry-red door signals foreboding and emergency instead of appetite and passion.
Almodóvar shoots these ladies like he’s waited all his life to do it. Moore’s hair, for example, earns its own SAG card. Swinton’s sharp-edged bones catch every sunbeam, and one extreme close-up of her mouth as she applies red lipstick makes you so grateful that your eyes have rods and cones.
Since Ms. Garcia’s ninth- and tenth-grade Spanish classes didn’t make me fluent, I’ve always been at the mercy of subtitles when watching an Almodóvar movie. The dialogue in “The Room Next Door” sounds ever-so strange to the ear — not poorly written, but akin to the heightened, heady words you might hear in a dream. It fits the vibe.
Immaculately designed and paced like arthouse mystery. This is diva worship that delivers.
‘The Last Showgirl’
Directed by Gia Coppola
Much like a guest star on “Baywatch,” this one was destined to live or die at the hands of Pamela Anderson. The story of a fading Las Vegas showgirl faced with the closure of her long-running revue has been hailed as a comeback vehicle — or a “we’re sorry, we never let you truly arrive” vehicle — for Anderson, the definition of a maligned ’90s woman.
Listen, I loved it. But I admit that “The Last Showgirl” isn’t a filmmaking revelation. Some ill-conceived montages and odd direction choices keep it from feeling like an all-timer. But to the movie’s benefit, it’s much weirder than I imagined. That’s all Pam. She plays Shelly, the titular showgirl, as a woman who long ago forgot that she was selling a fantasy. All those rhinestones and feathers are as much part of her skin as her freckles.
It’s easy to feel invested in her uncertain future. Anderson taps into her own public image to explore what it’s like for glamour to become gauche. Shelly is bubbly and passionate, but also willfully naive. She’s frozen in time — a remarkably well-preserved specimen of pinup sex appeal with arrested emotional development to match.
Shelly is unable or unwilling to maintain an interaction that doesn’t involve a spotlight. In those moments, Anderson does her most interesting work. Whether it’s a confrontation with her estranged daughter (Billie Lourd in a cool turn) or an uncomfortable conversation with the younger showgirls who’ve become her surrogate kids (Brenda Song, underused, and Kiernan Shipka, kinda running away with the movie), Shelly can’t deal.
This is a good start to the Pamaissance. Let’s get her in a Greta Gerwig or Sean Baker joint next.
‘A Real Pain’
Directed by Jesse Eisenberg
A well-made film about how traveling with Kieran Culkin would make me throw myself from a moving train.
I was unfamiliar with Eisenberg’s behind-the-camera game, but “A Real Pain” pops off. This classic buddy trip dramedy — about cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) trekking across their ancestral Poland — builds in classic scenarios, like a stressful ticket-less train ride, language barrier shenanigans, what have you.
But it’s apparent within just a few scenes that “A Real Pain” takes its title seriously. It doesn’t just refer to the scenes caused by Culkin’s charming but antagonistic, selfish, and confrontational Benji (my nightmare person). At least not only on the surface level: Eisenberg pretty elegantly develops the story into one about the burdens we don’t reveal, even to those we love.
Great movie about rough stuff. I never need to see it again.
‘Nightbitch’
Directed by Marielle Heller
For a movie called “Nightbitch,” this is awfully heterosexual, and in the most boring way possible. I love one of Heller’s previous films (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”) and really enjoy another (“The Diary of a Teenage Girl”). Now I can complete the spectrum with this, a movie that baffles me via gutlessness.
I can’t fathom why you’d bother to take on such a fucked-up, diabolically alienating premise — a harried suburban mother believes she’s turning into a dog — and wuss out two-thirds through the movie. Any edges that organically arise, from flashes of black comedy to a soupçon of body horror, are sanded down to “We Bought a Zoo”-like sentimentality by the end. Don’t waste my time!
Found innocent: Amy Adams, often lol-irl-level funny in this and unafraid to get into the literal mud. She’s an actor whom I respect but whose agent seems determined to upset me personally.
One rad thing
As we say goodbye to pumpkins (as decorations) and say hello to pumpkins (as pie), my heart cries out for fall feelings. I’m keeping the A/C at 70 degrees, because I refuse to sweat on my couch in November. The pine-scented candle I bought last week has already burned to the bottom of the tin. I’m thinking of fleeing persecution to a new land overseas, where I’ll make my religious fanaticism everybody’s problem.
To prime the autumnal pump, I wanted to pick a song for this week’s issue that gets me into a seasonal headspace. “I Don’t Live Here Anymore” by The War on Drugs feat. Lucius won the bid.
The title track off the band’s 2021 album hits the right balance of contemplative and soaring. The shimmery melody and crispy drums evoke reflection and regret, the kinds that come with the last couple pages of a calendar. It’s the audio equivalent of lens flare on a photo of fallen leaves and runny noses. It also kinda makes me think of a shopping montage from an ’80s movie, which is fall-coded.
I considered a few other songs, like “Piazza, New York Catcher” by Belle and Sebastian or the collected works of Sufjan Stevens and Justin Vernon. But “I Don’t Live Here Anymore” hurtles me back to a solo trip to Boston a few Novembers ago. I have this vivid memory of walking along the waterfront at night and positively levitating to this sound in my earbuds. May it be a boon to you, too.
Outbound message
By the early 2000s, a woman named Christine Farrell had collected everything ever published by DC Comics, according to NPR affiliate Vermont Public. Farrell died this spring, so of course, her insane archive was donated to a research institution that could properly catalogue and preserve this one-of-a-kind chronicle of a distinctly American art form.
Just kidding! A Dallas auction house broke the collection up and started selling it off last month, beginning with the rare$t issues. Farrell’s four-color estate contain the first appearances of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and she was just in it for the love of the game.
In a 1992 interview with a PBS affiliate, she said:
“I buy them because I want to read them — although my reading is about 10 years behind. … But not for resale, not at all. I do not intend to sell the collection. That's not what I'm in it for.”
Cool! Good job, everyone!
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To end on a hopeful and/or beautiful note about death, enjoy Patti Smith’s thoughts on Nov. 4, a day that’s brought her both great love and great pain.