Three recent French dramedies boast their own individual je ne sais quoi, less in spite than because of their wacky storylines.
Eileen G'Sell
Eileen G'Sell is a regular contributor to Salon, VICE, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. In 2019 she was nominated for the Rabkin prize in arts journalism. She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
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Relic Joins the New Era of “Mommy Horror”
Relic delves into a darkness beyond filial caregiving, approaching the mother figure as the first, and last, monster, her house a veritable womb for distinctly female trauma.
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Photos That Honor the Interior Lives of Diverse Black Women
In her photographs, Katherine Simóne Reynolds suggests that vulnerability is vital to a full sense of self, but it is a luxury that Black women across age and background are perpetually denied.
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A John Lewis Documentary Probes Tensions Between National and State Power
For any American even mildly ignorant of the rich, complex legacy of Civil Rights within our decidedly disunited country, Dawn Porter’s John Lewis: Good Trouble should be mandatory viewing.
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The Delirium of Female Desire
Across Josephine Decker’s work and in her new film about Shirley Jackson, Decker wants us to ask what right she, or anyone, has to make another’s story her own.
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A Model Who Shunned Celebrity for Marxism
The Disappearance of My Mother honors the staunch conviction and introversion of Benedetta Barzini, who shunned Warhol celebrity for political solidarity, and in her later years, Spartan solitude.
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The Eccentric Genius of Agnès Varda
With her devotion to cats and heart-shaped everything, Varda personified adorably unconventional thinking — without apology or apparent self-consciousness.
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The Quiet Dignity of Peter Hujar
Hujar wrote that his portrait subjects were “those who push themselves to any extreme” and those who “cling to the freedom to be themselves.”
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The Power and Limits of Ai Weiwei’s Irreverence
While his political commitment comes through in many works, it’s hard to square talk of “revolution” with Ai Weiwei’s staggering mainstream US success.
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Dora Maar, More than a Surrealist Muse
The Centre Pompidou’s Dora Maar honors Picasso’s famous muse for the pivotal part she clearly, and often daringly, played in the establishment of the European avant-garde.
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Reveling in the Languor of David Hockney’s World
A Bigger Splash, Jack Hazan’s 1974 documentary on Hockney’s circle, basks in the full-frontal, day-to-day details of their tightly interwoven emotional lives.
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Juliette Binoche Offers a Tantalizing Performance in Her Two Latest Films
In both High Life and Non-Fiction, Binoche is a temptress equally tender and intimidating.