FILMS

film roundup

KEITH UHLICH

Parallwl Mothers.

Benedetta (Dir. Paul Verhoeven). Starring: Virginie Efira, Charlotte Rampling, Daphne Patakia. Paul Showgirls Verhoeven directing a nunsploitation movie? That’s a match made in heaven. Or hell. Virginie Efira stars as a 17thcentury novice prone to religious visions that revolve around a Fabio-like Jesus. These lurid reveries (equal parts Roberto Rossellini historical and late-night softcore) make her a thorn in the side to her abbess (Rampling), as well as an object of mutual lust to a feral woman (Patakia) to whom her convent gives refuge. Plague runs through the land, a blood moon occasions a murder-suicide, and a dildo gets carved out of a Virgin Mary statuette, among other blasphemies. You could call all this par for the course with Verhoeven, but he orchestrates the ecclesiastical chaos with a master’s touch, especially once Lambert Wilson arrives as a seethingly hypocritical nonce longing to burn Benedetta at the stake. [N/R] HHH1/2 Drive My Car (Dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi). Starring: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tôko Miura, Reika Kirishima. Japan’s Ryûsuke Hamaguchi has been making waves on the festival circuit for a while now. Drive My Car, his adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story, is proving to be a breakthrough. Hidetoshi Nishijima plays Yûsuke, a theater director who believes himself to be happily married. For the film’s first forty minutes, that theory is tested…and only then do the opening credits roll and the main story begin. In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Yusuke travels to Hiroshima where he plans to direct a production of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya. While there, he befriends his female driver (Tôko Miura), who slowly helps him open up to his grief. The drama is low-key to a fault, though there isn’t a moment when Hamaguchi’s directorial hand wavers; see the extended conversation between Yûsuke and his hothead of a lead actor for an example of how to make a subdued conversation unbearably tense. Perhaps it is that sense of total control, though, that leaves the film feeling somewhat cold and clinical overall. [N/R] HHH1/2

Parallel Mothers (Dir. Pedro Almodóvar). Starring: Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Rossy de Palma. Melodrama becomes the Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodóvar, something particularly evident in his latest feature, Parallel Mothers, about a pair of women, photographer Janis (Penélope Cruz) and waitress Ana (Milena Smit), who give birth on the same day…with complications. The central twist (not to be spoiled here) is as hoary as they come. Yet Almodóvar uses it as a pretext to bring the women closer together, and to excavate his characters’ innermost longings and desires—some of them so transgressive that > 24