By Ray Pride

On the simplest level, “A Separation” is about the end of a marriage, or the attempt to separate.

But that’s too simple. In Asghar Farhadi’s fifth feature, the mere fact of one life in contemporary Tehran brushing up against another leads to fateful conflict. Simin (Leila Hatami) wants husband Nader (Peyman Moadi) to leave Iran with their young daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi), as she says to a judge at the opening, “In these circumstances…” But Nader won’t leave his father, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Without his wife to help him, the middle-class Nader hires a young woman, Razieh (Sareh Bayat), to tend to his father. But Razieh keeps this from her unemployed husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), which leads to harrowing complication after complication in what the writer-director calls “a detective story without a detective.” (The performances comprise the best ensemble acting of any film nominated for an Oscar this year: vital, electric and often wholly unexpected in detail.) “A Separation” also builds on what Farhadi’s countryman, Abbas Kiarostami, calls the “unfinished film,” one that the viewer must complete with his or her attention to suggestions and inferences. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo’s brilliant, urgent “Miss Bala,” which was his country’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film, and easily the best film of 2012 so far, is getting an abrupt release in the Chicago area after failing to make the final five for the Academy Awards. It’s under the Fox International banner, which co-produced the film with Canana, the Mexican production company whose principals include Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, and it’s their first release in the U.S. “Miss Bala” is the propulsive story of a working-class woman in Baja California (Stephanie Sigman) who wants to enter a “Miss Baja” competition but who falls into a series of coincidences that send her on the run for the duration of the film after witnessing the murder of members of the drug cartel and DEA agents at a club. (“Bala” translates as “bullet.”) Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

A simple scrim, lightly dancing, a sheer of muslin, ripples across the screen at an acute angle, like a movie screen, but translucent, in the briefest instance of prestidigitation introducing the 3D element to Wim Wenders’ “Pina,” a film for his late friend, dance choreographer Pina Bausch. In its own fashion, it’s as revolutionary a way of introducing the rare, effective stereoscopic effect as James Cameron’s slow reveal of the far reaches of the highly active spaceship in the opening shot of “Avatar.” Wenders was extremely articulate about the low-budget experimentation that led to the form of “Pina” in a keynote address to June 2011′s Toronto International Stereoscopic 3D Conference, which is worth finding on his website.  Read the rest of this entry »

By Ray Pride

When does work become a “work”?

Almost as fascinating as the cool, perfectionist sheen of David Fincher’s version of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is the tattoo of tales of the making of the movie. Collaborators seem to go to special lengths to point out that the painstaking focus Fincher applies to his work is just what he does: his splendid perfectionism isn’t workaholism, it’s work, the work. He’s Lisbeth Salander in his own immodest analytical skills. As the film industry transforms in so many ways, in every way, from distribution to projection to production, the directors who’ve unapologetically forged their own way are often as fascinating behind-the-scenes as they are on screen. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Xavier Durringer’s “The Conquest” (La conquete) is a perky, cheeky take on the rise of French President Nicolas Sarkozy from 2002-2007, featuring a fine turn by veteran comic actor Denis Podalydès as the wife-shedding social striver. Podalydès does a splendid job of typing the small, schlumpfy man’s apparent (and reported) well of arrogance. While there may be subtleties that were more apparent to the local audience, as well as the litany of scandals mentioned, Durringer’s approach is that of the boulevard comedy, of ready and amusing caricatures of politicos behind the scenes—a supremely foul-mouthed Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy as “the chirping magpie”—that beg the question whether it is a diminution of stature in politics or simple satiric instinct that makes such an acerbic portrait ring true. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Nothing more than felines. Vincent Bal’s 2001 beguiling Dutch family film, “Miss Minoes,” which won a Best International Feature nod from the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival (2002), gets a worthy big-screen outing. Talking cats! But without rampant CGI and conga-line-scaled musical numbers. Read the rest of this entry »

By Ray Pride

“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” a labyrinthine tale about British espionage and spycraft, is an adaptation of John le Carre’s 1974 novel, from Tomas Alfredson, the director of “Let The Right One In.”

The level of patience and control is similar between the two films: in the superb, measured “Tinker Tailor,” we realize there’s horror inside all of us, the potential for terrible things. George Smiley (Gary Oldman) may not even know it consciously, but he’s just waiting to spring cruelty on someone. After a botched mission, a search for a double-agent in Britain’s MI6 begins: the complex interlocking narratives are enacted by a brilliant, precise Oldman, but also John Hurt, Mark Strong, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon McBurney, Toby Jones and Colin Firth. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Benjamin Marquet’s 2008 documentary falls neatly between two equine film studies this year, the inspirational “Buck” and the soaring “The War Horse.” (More on this next week.) A study of Steve, Florian and Flavien, three petit fourteen-year-old jockeys and their education at a rudimentary training center for future male and female “Lads & Jockeys” in the village of Chantilly outside Paris, the visual style is observant and straightforward for the most part, with an only slightly insistent score. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

“Tyrannosaur,” Paddy Considine’s violent, profane, engulfing debut as feature writer-director, has the hallmarks of his performances as a natural actor: sincerity that can scintillate or scald in unpredictable measure. As production began, Considine reportedly told his actors they were making “cinema,” not just another small British movie. Shot on seedy locations in Leeds, “Tyrannosaur” expands Considine’s short film “Dog Altogether,” which introduced Peter Mullan’s Joseph, a violent man prone to the drink and self-pity. Here, he’s a cauldron of hurt and rage, and when he meets Hannah (Olivia Colman, crushingly good), a kind woman who runs a Christian charity shop, his emotions run higher. (They wash up against each other in a storefront clotted with the trash of others.) Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Very few storytellers have the wherewithal to attempt something as comprehensive and kaleidoscopic as “The Wire,” but in his second police fiction set in the favelas, the huge slums that surround and envelope Rio de Janeiro, José Padilha is on the scent. “Elite Squad 2:  The Enemy Within” (Tropa de elite: O inimigo agora e outro) is a headlong, violent, breathless, melodramatic, and even exhilarating rollercoaster ride spanning four years as an intelligence agent unfolds not just criminal conspiracies, but organized crime inside the police force. (It’s Brazil’s highest-grossing film and its Best Foreign Language Oscar entry.) This hyper-hyper maelstrom of moral conflict and straight-up action is both involving and calculating: the first “Elite Squad”‘s sympathies seemed on the side of the more authoritarian and militaristic strains of Brazilian society. Rio looks magnificently harrowing throughout this documentary-trained filmmaker’s fierce fistful of righteousness, guns and machismo. In past weeks, the Brazilian police have sent armored police into the favelas to start some kind of clean-up before the 2016 Olympics. If “Elite Squad 2″ is close to the truth, it’s going to take oh-so-much longer than that. Next up: Padilha reboots “Robocop.” With Wagner Moura, Seu Jorge (“The Life Aquatic”), Tainá Müller, André Ramiro, Milhem Cortaz. 116m. (Ray Pride)

“Elite Squad: The Enemy Within” opens Friday at Siskel.