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peggypunks
Reviews
Mobile Homes (2017)
Mobile Homes - Seeking home in the heart of freedom and abandonment
I had the luck to watch "Mobile Homes" at the Athens International Film Festival tonight,and what an amazing chance that was. This film is a documentation of almost every aspect of humanly experience and angst, based on the one of the most fundamental ones: the search for a home. The main characters, a young mother and her son, fought against themselves to realize what a home actually is. Every time they came close to an answer, they would meet the perplexity of themselves and would find a way to run away, until they would be found in the same place again.
I did not want to write a review based on the scenes, or how the plot evolves, or how the characters move during the film. I couldn't wait to get home so that I could make a mere effort to write down everything I felt and feared and waited and longed for along with the characters. The director, Vladimir de Fontenay, got us hooked (I could feel the whole cinema room vibrating) with his incredible ability to comprehend and portray the antithesis between danger and that homely feeling, between being tired and getting some rest in a motherly hug, between abandonment and that risk to reproach the one who abandons, between familiarity and cold and foreign spaces and neighborhoods and homes. I could find my self identifying with situations I have never been to, getting upset with faces I have never met and will never meet and caring so much about characters that were fictional. And I think that constitutes a great film: the intimacy it can build so that one can bring the characters into life, into one's own life.
The director, in a Q & A after the film, claimed that he likes to write about worlds that are unknown to him, claiming that he can better connect to unfamiliarity this way. I feel like he managed to create a film that had us all connected into that same space, where we all are children of a mother, longing for familiarity and warmth, watching our bodies being created as they are shaped through painful and rigid realities.
If you too long for a home of your own, or even if you want to take a glimpse of what that search takes, this film is a must watch. It's true, simple in its brilliant portrayal of family, moving, it gets you angry and upset but also protective and strong. You feel all the feelings and look for all the lookings.
10/10
p.s Mr Vladimir de Fontenay (the director) was so down to earth and spoke so beautifully, truly devoted his time to express what he felt and thought to his audience. Beautiful minds equal beautiful films.
Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Manchester By The Sea - Cinematic Realness and Humanity
Manchester By The Sea is an outburst of reality without any artsy, pretentious or stilted moments carried along with great performances that are to portray the perplexity of life and the directness of how life itself unravels through the years and the incidents. This is a must watch for those who appreciate and understand the stories and the faces and the human moments that are depicted in a cinematic structure as unique and real as real life is.
10/10
Amy (2015)
Heartbreaking
Banksy claimed that art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. "Amy" is one of the few documentaries that manages to do just that, through unraveling the heartbreaking story of a true artist and a wholehearted human. It really shakes your world. Without the need of catchy clips or gossipy statements, it delivers a story of a poet, a singer and a performer. You really get to meet Amy Winehouse, you feel like you've known her, you can sense her pure talent and raw personality. The documentary also manages to provide a clear image of the pop and media culture and how it treats a unique and different public figure, but it does it without implying anything. Lastly, the power of this work is that even though it's centered around Amy's life, it leaves you questioning about important aspects of life and of how everything interconnects. "Amy" is a must-watch.