Atlas of Disappearance (PG)
Directed by Manuel Correa
HHHHI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2KGWHNjfyw 

FRANCISCO FRANCO’s victory in the Spanish Civil War was to be “commemorated for all eternity” by the architectural monstrosity of the Valley of the Fallen mausoleum at the foot of the Guardarrama mountain range overlooking Madrid. It was built with the slave labour of political prisoners, few of whom survived.

In October 2022, the Law of Democratic Memory restored the range’s original name — the Valley of the Cuelgamuros (Hanging Walls) — a transliteration of its original and sinister 14th century moniker “Cuelga Moros” (Hanging Moors), a place where captured Moors were executed during the Reconquista wars.

After Franco’s corpse was evicted from said memorial in 2019 the place’s little known notoriety came to light. In 1940 an inventory of Civil War mass graves was made and the bones of between 30,000 to 40,000 republicans and nationalists were transported there and thrown, en masse, into large boxes and stored in the cavities within the structure to which access was now closely guarded by the resident Benedictine monks.

Manuel Correa’s documentary charts the efforts, political, archaeological and forensic, of the attempt to dismantle this abomination and identify as many individual remains as possible. Note that Spain’s judiciary did not permit exhumations until 2016, 42 years after the dictator’s death.

The process is fascinating but the findings often deeply unsettling, particularly for the relatives, when it’s revealed that random bones were transported from the mass graves and many known written records had now whole pages torn out.

A poignant reminder of the damage fascism inflicts to the fabric of nations.
MB
Atlas of Disappearance is on True Story from August 7.

Love Me Tender (15)
Directed by Anna Casenave Cambet
HHHHI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjXkDg2KJT4 

BASED on a 2020 auto-fictional novel by Constance Debre, Love Me Tender shows an intelligent single mother experiencing the full weight of her inequality when she dares to claim her sexuality.

Set in summer-golden Paris, Clemence, masterfully played by Vicky Kreips, is mother of eight-year-old Paul, (Viggo Ferreira-Redier). The rupture begins when she tells her ex, Laurent, (Antoine Reinartz) – amicably co-parenting with her after their separation – that she has begun dating women. A seemingly benign communication results in Laurent denying her access to Paul, with the French court system intervening on his behalf to institute a bureaucratic reckoning with the now outlaw mother.

The film’s structure is two-fold: the exciting energy of sexual exploration with new-found freedom plays out beautifully against a staid background struggle of tired patriarchal customs, punitive legal processes and mother and son pain.

Vicky Kreips’s restrained portrayal of a woman refusing to bow down exposes submerged expectations for female compliance. In one interview with the mediator of heavily legislated meetings with Paul, Kreips’s detached inexpression – similar to a man’s – provokes the viewer to project the required responses.  

The film’s ending is a bleak outcome after the tender intimacy of scenes between mother and son. Clemence, on her bike, reaches a conclusion that aligns with women’s experiences around the globe: a refusal of the self-sacrifice of motherhood. Excerpts from Debre’s novel are voiced throughout the film showing the anarchic power of her stark internalisations.
FO’C
In cinemas August 7

Bouchra (15)
Directed by Orian Karki and Merium Bennani
HHHII

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kVYkb5O1CI 

A SWEET, important, and moving film, Bouchra’s distinctiveness is also its weakness, namely: its dependence on garish and occasionally clumsy CG animation which detracts, in places, from the emotional core of this queer, diasporic, poetic tale.

Orian Karki and Merieum Bennani’s debut feature is loosely based on Bennani’s own life as a queer Moroccan film maker in New York. Her relationship with her mother back in Casablanca — to whom she is out, but not close — is a story she is compelled to tell, a story which overwhelms and takes over the project she is working on. This is a story of love, of reconciliation, and of living multiple, overlapping lives.

The decision to portray all the characters as anthropomorphic animals — Bouchra, standing in for Bennani, is a jackal in a leather jacket — is distinctive and adds another layer of disconnect and artifice. The characters remain deeply believable, as are the little vignettes.

There is also a meta nature to the tale, with snippets of script and hand-drawn storyboarding interspersed with 3D computer generated characters and hyper-realistic depictions of New York and Morocco.

The dialogue is natural, and the intimacy and ease of the voice actors with the characters they are playing is complete, whether in English, French, or Arabic, and especially in the awkward pauses and difficulty when communicating large and important topics. But unfortunately, this lightness of touch jars with the crudeness of the animation, which hinders your emotional connection to the characters, even though so much here is steeped in truth, kindness, and emotional vulnerability.
JW
In cinemas August 7

This Tempting Madness (15)
Directed by Jennifer E Montgomery
HIIII

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99C-EBUZvkI

A WOMAN (Simone Ashley) wakes up in hospital with broken bones and amnesia. Slowly, she discovers herself to have been the wealthy abuser of her husband whom both she and her family despise.

Both she and the film suffer disjointed flashback syndrome which disallows the establishment of real characters or, indeed, any plausible storyline. Instead, amid the luxury of upper middle-class California we get body horror, knives and nail-guns, weeping scabs and paranoia.

You wonder, as you watch it, if this gruesome and deeply unpleasant film will discover a moral compass and bring its selfish and entitled characters to justice. But it doesn’t.

Don’t be tempted.
AR
On digital platforms August 10