A place in between

Jessie Savini
Review 3
The place in between: 2010. Director: Sarah Bouyain. Producer: Sarah Bouyain Cast: Dorylia Calmel, Acita Ouedraogo, Nathalie Richard. Running time: 90 minutes.

I decided to see The place in between on a whim when I was not able to get into another movie, and I am very glad that I did. I did not know anything about the movie before going into it except for a two line synopsis, so I had no clue what to expect. Not knowing anything about a film going into it is sometimes better because you can be surprised and “get your mind blown”, as one movie critic once told me. I personally got a lot out of this movie, though, and it had a strong impact on me.
The movie carries the weight of deep masked sorrow and is full of buried feelings struggling to be exposed. The place in between tells the story of an adolescent black girl who is lost in her life and does not know who she is. She is seeking her identity and a place to belong in the world. At age eight, her mother sent her to live with a white family in Paris so she could get away from the hardships she faced in Bobo, the rural town she was born in. Years later, she comes back to the town in search of what she is missing and determined to connect with her birth mother. She only finds her aunt and cousin living in her childhood home, and neither of them even recognizes her.
She goes back the next day to explain who she is, and they embrace her in a warm welcome. They tell her how they have missed her, how they want her to stay with them, and how they want to become a family. Though she does not respond to their proposition, she does say she will stay for a while and get to know them. At this point in the movie the young girl does not know what she wants in life or who she wants to be – a girl living a life of luxury in Paris with an adopted family, or a young girl living with her blood relatives in a life of struggle and hardship. The rest of the movie shows her journey to find herself, her true identity. Her true identity is unknown; the movie shows that she feels like an outsider in both places both because of her physical appearance and her mental attitude about both situations. While living with her second family in Paris, she was obviously the only person of color in the family. She felt that she did not fit in even after ten years of living with them, both because of the color of her skin and her background. She even struggles with the fact that she does not look the same as everyone else in Bobo: she is light skinned and beautiful, while everyone else is very dark from working outside and the years of hardship are shown through the wrinkles on their faces.
Throughout the movie, there are brief flashes of her mother and what she is doing during the present day. She is living in Paris, working as a janitor in an office building. The movie showed the girl searching for her mother, asking everyone in town where she could be in hope that she would someday reconnect with her. She needed her birth mother to tell her who she was, and which path to take. All the while, it would flash back to the mother, show what she was doing while her daughter was searching for her, and expose how much the mother missed her daughter as well. She was unhappy and lonely without her daughter, but it was something she was willing to do in order to give her daughter a better life. At the end of the movie, the girl eventually discovers where her mother is living, but it does not show whether she will go find her or not.
The cinematography of the scenes in Bobo was striking and contributed to the overall mood of the story. It showed the tough life in this small town and how dirt poor the family was; it showed the beauty of every object – the hand painted vase in the back corner of the room, the smile wrinkles on the old aunt, and the intricately patterned hair scarves the women wear. The town was extremely poor and the cinematography helped expose how underprivileged the family really was; there was no running water in the house, the family barely had enough food to survive, and they all slept on one bed with towels as blankets. Everything in the town was covered in a thick film of brown dust, which represented the unsanitary conditions in which they lived. There was one particular scene which stands out in my mind: the girl is walking through the market and the camera is focused on her feet. I could see that her shoes were rundown and falling apart, the brown dust was covering her feet and legs, and the bottom of her skirt showed the wear and tear of many years of use.
This film was not only a story of lost identity. It was a story of communication, perseverance, and conflict. There is a language barrier between the young girl and her aunt, so her cousin must translate for them which makes everything even more difficult. There is also the element of determination; the girl is determined to find her mother and to reconnect with her past so she can get a sense of where she comes from. Lastly, it tells of internal and external conflict; she has the daily mental struggle as to which family to be loyal to, and both families struggle with letting her go. The girl is conflicted with the right thing to do, the right path to take.
I really appreciated this movie and the thoughts it provoked within me. I have been that girl. I think every girl has been that girl right there with me, and right there with the main character in this film. Everyone has a point in life where they question their identity and what they mean to the world, just as the young girl did. She was lost and needed to find herself, find where she was from, and find who she was in the present day. The ending of the movie left me to wonder what she was going to do; was she going to stay true with her roots and her birth-given identity of a black female in a rural village, or is she going to go back to her white family in Paris to live the luxurious life that they have? I like that the movie did not show what she was going to do because it could have ruined the film for me. I do not know what she should have done; both endings have complications which would have hurt her in some way, and I would rather not know which route she eventually took. I hope that her time spent in both places did help her find the girl within herself that she was seeking, and that she came out a stronger person because of it.
This movie was a glimmer of hope in all the bad movies I have seen lately. It was a small independent film, but there story was good and it was filmed well. Every element of the story was necessary; there was no fluff and everything pieced together perfectly to form a remarkable story. The cultural clashes she encountered were very raw and exposed the struggle with which background to choose. She comes to understand how different both of her backgrounds are, and how they are interwoven to make her who she is in present day.

Recien Cazado

Jessie Savini
Review 2
Recien Cazado: 2009. Genre: Drama. Director: Rene Bueno. Writer: Rene Bueno. Cast: Babriella Vergara, Jaime Camil, Otto Sirgo, Angelica Aragon, Ruben Zamora, Magi Avila, Khristian Clausen . Running time: 109 minutes.

I wanted to see Recien Cazado because I was curious as to what comedies in other cultures and languages are like. I wanted to know if they were different than comedies that I usually see, or if they were similar to American comedies. I quickly found out that this one at least was very different than movies that I usually watch. I do not know if it was just a poor example of Spanish comedy, but it was absolutely terrible. And when I say terrible, I mean it was so bad that I wanted to walk out of the movie many times. The jokes were corny and just a little bit too raunchy. The plot did not make sense, and the actors reminded me of soap opera actors – they were overdramatic and mediocre at best. To be fair, though, I will say that there were a few people in the movie theatre that laughed at the jokes and seemed to enjoy the movie. This actually leads me to believe that the story of the movie simply did not transcend the cultural barrier (maybe the language did not translate well, or maybe I was not able to appreciate their humor) but either way, I did not enjoy it.
This storyline of Recien Cazado closely resembles What Happens in Vegas, which is an American romantic comedy about two people meeting in Vegas and getting married during a night full of drunken mistakes. Starring Ashton Kurtcher and Brittany Murphy, this movie premiered in 2008 and was much better than its Spanish counterpart. That being said, as I begin to think of what to write about the plot of this movie, I can’t seem to think of anything to write. The storyline of Recien Cazado consisted of many small trivial stories put together that kind of come together to form the larger story of a man and a woman falling in love. It seemed to me that they did not want the movie to be predictable, so they threw in small subplots to try to throw the audience off. It didn’t work. Instead, the audience is left wondering how this pertains to the story, and the movie is still extremely predictable. Basically, the main plot of Recien Cazado tells the same story of a man and a woman who drunkenly get married the first night they meet. The next day, the man does not remember a thing from the night before and wakes up to find a marriage certificate on his bedside table. Upon seeing this, he freaks out, wakes his new “wife” up, and says he wants to get a divorce. The woman does remember the events from the previous night, though, and decides she wants to wait to get a divorce until after she gets her period - to make sure she is not pregnant from the night before. Sounds a little bit ridiculous, right? She begs him to wait until she gets her period in three weeks, and he eventually agrees.
The rest of the movie is about their new marital lifestyle, and the problems that come with being “married” in this strange relationship. They can’t stand each other; the two main characters fight throughout the entire movie, yelling loud in Spanish and even throwing things at each other during one scene. The husband, a suave playboy who previously brought home different ladies from the bar every night, is sexually frustrated and angry that his wife will not let him go out with other girls. Through all the fighting and yelling, they realize that they actually do have a connection and there is chemistry between them. To be honest, the story implies there was supposed to be chemistry between the characters, but the actors completely lacked any amount of chemistry on screen. After two weeks of living together, the woman’s ex-lover comes back into her life and asks her to marry him on a whim. It was at this point that she realizes that she is in love with her “husband” and does not want to be with any other man.
There is an unexpected twist at the end; the marriage was a hoax. The man’s mom hired the woman to marry him because she wanted to teach her son a lesson and distract him from his “playboy” ways, which eventually worked. After spending a few miserable weeks without each other, the two realize that they cannot live without each other and reunite as lovers in the last scene of the film.
In my opinion, forty-five minutes of the movie could have been cut out and the film would have been much better. All of the fluff and insignificant subplots deterred from the main story in the movie in a negative way, and harmed the overall effect of the movie. Also, I think the main actress was terrible and the casting director could have found someone different for that role who actually knew how to act. Her main role in the movie was to act like a tease and tempt her husband, which she correctly did by never wearing much of anything. There were scenes in the movie when they would be sitting around eating dinner, and for some reason she was eating dinner in a bra and underwear or lingerie. It did not seem to make sense at all; the lack of clothes just left me wondering why she would not just put some clothes on because I had to see it for an hour and forty minutes and just agitated me for some reason because it would not happen in real life.
I was very disappointed in this movie. The idea of the movie was good; it could have been a fun romantic comedy to lighten my day and make me smile after seeing several depressing movies. But it did nothing of the sort. It pissed me off, and I wish I had left because the movie took two hours of my life that I will never get back. I guess I should not be surprised that it was so terrible with the storyline that it had, but the film was still a letdown.

The Reef

Jessie Savini

Review 1

The Reef: 2010. Director: Andrew Traucki. Writer: Andrew Traucki. Producer: Michael Robertson. Cast: Kieran Darcy-Smith, Gyton Grantley, Damian Walshe-Howling, Zoe Naylor, Adrienne Pickering. Running time: 89 minutes.

I decided to see The Reef because I have a bizarre attraction to movies involving sharks, and this particular movie sparked my interest. Though strange, these dangerous and mysterious animals fascinate me for some reason unknown to even myself. It may be my curiosity of the threat that these creatures offer, the thrilling component shark attack movies present, or my interest in the unknown that still surrounds sharks. Either way, I had high expectations for this movie; the first screening of the film was full before I was able to get a seat, so I decided it must be a film worth seeing. The film was a bit of a disappointment since I had high expectations, but it was still a descent movie for a person who enjoys a thrilling story about shark attacks.

Based on true events, The Reef is an action thriller that tells the story of four friends embarking on the trip of a lifetime - spending a week sailing a yacht in the Great Barrier Reef. When their yacht suddenly capsizes on the second day of the trip, they are stuck with a choice: either staying on the sinking yacht and waiting for help, or swimming to a small island with twelve miles of open sea between the boat and the island. Deciding to swim for help, the four friends leave the boat’s stubborn captain behind on the sinking yacht and begin their journey in search of safety. When the decision is made to swim, the two girls of the group panic about the thought of miles in open water and the fear of what lurks beneath them, but the men in the group, their love interests, comfort them. These relationships intertwine the feelings of lust and love throughout the plot of the story, with the main focus on passionate feelings from two past lovers that are reignited during the trip.

An element of suspense mirroring that of a psychological thriller exposes itself when the friends realize they cannot see their yacht in the distance anymore, and they suddenly begin to envision what creatures are lurking in the deep water surrounding them. After several false sightings of sharks that stem from their unsettled nerves, the group truly finds themselves in grave danger: they are in the presence of a hungry fifteen foot great white shark. The shark circles around the group several times threatening to attack, and then it seemingly swims away. The rest of the movie captures their attempt to stay alive and get to safety while being stalked by a great white shark. The shark eventually kills the friends one by one, until only one person makes it to the island unharmed. Commentary at the end of the movie informs the audience that neither the yacht nor the boat’s captain was ever found despite an extensive search, and that the sole survivor was found alive by fishermen the day after she reached the island.

The plot resembles the storyline of a stereotypical shark movie which has been created time and time again with minute changes in plot for each film; the account of the true story in The Reef has a remarkably similar plot to movies like Open Water and Deep Blue Sea just to name a few. For the clichéd shark attack story that it presents, the film was overall made well and was an effective thriller, but I had a few complaints about what could have been done to better the film. First off, the movie was overly dramatic several times when it didn’t need to be. Within the first two minutes after the boat capsized, one of the friends went on a rant about the group needing to save themselves by swimming to land or else they would die of dehydration and no one would ever find their bodies. Though it was only one scene, it seemed unnecessary and agitated me. Also, the characters looked too aesthetically perfect to be realistic; after snorkeling all say in the ocean they still had perfect hair and makeup – which I know to be unrealistic from personal experience. The only other thing that bothered me was the actual shark. A synopsis of the movie says the shark is a “fifteen foot great white” but the characters in the movie never described the shark in any more detail than saying it was “big - really big”. It also did not look fifteen feet long on the screen and most of the shots of the shark were poor computer generated images which were not entirely convincing.

On the positive side the film was effective and accomplished the goal of an action/adventure thriller it desires because I was anxious, restless, and frightened throughout the movie. I was on the edge of my seat most of the movie. Director Andrew Traucki was effective in providing startling and unexpected shocks which kept the movie from being too predictable and as a result I must have jumped in my seat upwards of ten times. The combination of underwater camera angles of the group splashing in fear and ominous music contributed to the anxious feeling I got while watching the movie; these elements were not overdone to the point where it was ridiculous and laughable, but they were used just enough to obtain the desired effect on the audience.

Overall, the film is entertaining if nothing else. I would not consider it to be particularly mentally stimulating, but it is engaging. I left the film feeling content with what I had seen – not happy, not distressed, but satisfied with the content of the story and the way it was revealed. It was not too gory, the attacks were not especially graphic, and the love story did not take away from the main theme of the film. The movie must have done a good job of scaring me, though, because I honestly had a nightmare about sharks the night after I watched it, and because of that I will probably not be getting in the ocean anytime soon.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog! For my first review, I chose The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which was presented at Cannes in 2005 where it won Best Actor (Tommy Lee Jones), and Best Screenplay (written by Guillermo Arriaga). It was also nominated for Golden Palm at Cannes.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a new-age take on a traditional western style film. Instead of involving cowboys and Indians, though, this movie involves the conventional good guys vs. bad guys in the form of illegal Mexican ranch hands vs. border patrolmen. In the movie, the border between the rural Texas town in which it is set and Mexico represents good and evil, friendship and enemies, opportunity and destruction.

The film tells the story of an unexpected friendship between two very different men – one, an American ranch owner, and the other an illegal Mexican immigrant named Melquiades Estrada. These two men meet in the beginning of the movie when Melquiades arrives at Pete’s cattle ranch in search of a job, and Pete hires him on the spot. The two men bond instantly; from the very beginning of the movie it is clear that there is an unspoken sense of respect and companionship between the two men. The director, Tommy Lee Jones, shows this relationship as one without any boundaries - the two men are empathetic and understanding of each other’s situations while not holding any prejudices towards the other though they come from very different backgrounds. The director pulls at the audience’s emotions when Melquiades is unexpectedly murdered on the ranch by an on-duty border patrolman. The rest of the movie follows Pete’s journey to bring Melquiades’ dead body back to Mexico with the forced help of the man who killed him. The border patrolman, though not remorseful at first, comes to terms with his actions in an emotional scene at the end of the movie, where he finally realizes the true meaning of friendship and companionship.

The principle message of the story is the literal and figurative cultural borders crossed within the film, and the positive/negative consequences these borders can bring. In The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, there are several instances where cultural borders are crossed which results in friendships and also several cases where cultural borders create unwanted barriers between people. The director sporadically uses Spanish language to reinforce the meaning of cultures being crossed, and to also give the movie more cultural depth.

The movie is divided into three subsets; The First Burial of Melquiades Estrada, The Second Burial of Melquiades Estrada, and The Third Burial of Melquiades Estrada, hence the name of the film. Each section of the movie contains complicated flashbacks and also elements of foreshadowing which combine to rid the film of any linearity, at least in the first three-fourths of the movie. Though complex and difficult to follow at times, these flashbacks help develop the storyline of the movie and reinforce the cultural themes and message of the director. These random, confusing scenes combined with satirical wit join to bring a sense of informality to the film.

The film made me ask myself: How do we deal with this complex situation as Americans? How do we stop the violence and corrupt politics? The movie was produced during the on-going political, social, and economic debate involving illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States. This film exposes the corruption on the American front, which is typically not shown to the American public. That being said, the film does not set out to judge the ignorant Americans nor the illegal Mexicans; it simply seeks to expose the corruption of rural border towns in both Mexico and Texas. One of my favorite aspects of the film is that both Mexicans and Americans have character flaws in the movie and it is not biased as to whose “wrong doings” are worse.

I really enjoy culturally complex films, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is no exception. The movie causes the audience to question and reflect on a lot of different emotions and ideas. Even though I may be biased because I know it was highly regarded at The Cannes Film Festival, I think this film can be enjoyed by a lot of different people of varied ages and backgrounds. It has levels of depth to it, and in my personal opinion cannot be fully respected upon the first viewing. It is the type of movie that you may have to go back and watch a second, third, or fourth time to fully appreciate all the elements it has to offer – the tough and determined rancher with his strong sense of loyalty, the irony of the border patrolman’s life, the smooth and genuine incorporation of the Mexican culture, and also the harsh reality of the story it has to offer.