The latest indie turn from Kristen Stewart, a doc about Japan’s biggest glam-rock band, and more.
Aquarius
Movies starring older women have become a quiet box office phenomenon, the likes of Lily Tomlin, Sally Field, and Blythe Danner attracting female-skewing audiences eager to see stories about life over 60. But, with all due respect to those august ladies, they've got nothing on Sonia Braga in Kleber Mendonça Filho's vivid (if a little too sprawling) Brazilian movie Aquarius.
Braga, at 66, is vibrant, sensual, and so very compelling as Clara, a retired music journalist living alone in a gorgeous art deco apartment building being targeted by developers. As the life she's carved out for herself is threatened, Clara only seems to take firmer hold of it, fighting back against attempts to bully her out of her home and blooming under the pressure. When the shady investors hold a raucous shindig in the empty apartment above hers, she responds by blasting Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls," an act of rebellion that segues into a party of one, a portrait of a woman enjoying the glorious, hard-earned certainty she has in her own identity.
How to see it: Aquarius is now playing in limited release — check out a list of theaters here.
Vitagraph
Certain Women
There are three parts to Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women, all set in Montana, each focused on a different female character looking for connection in a small town. There's the barest bit of overlap between them, but for the most part, the sections exist in their own constrained orbits, adaptations of Maile Meloy short stories turned into slender, subdued segments — a little too subdued, in the case of the first two, which feel dwarfed by the expansive horizons against which they're set. Laura Dern is a lawyer with a difficult client, while returning Reichardt collaborator Michelle Williams plays a mother and wife who negotiates to buy a pile of sandstone for her house, a sequence in which the dramatic rise and fall is almost imperceptible.
But then there's the third part, about how a lonesome ranch hand named Jamie (Lily Gladstone) stumbles into a night-school law class being taught by Beth (Kristen Stewart), who lives four hours away and has to make the dangerous drive home each night. Jamie isn't a law student, but she starts attending anyway, getting into a routine of escorting Beth to the diner afterward, listening to her talk, and yearning for something more from the relationship. It's a story about longing and loneliness that's sad, sweet, and perfect — and while Stewart continues her fascinating run of indie films, it's the newcomer Gladstone you remember. She funnels those swelling emotions into a few terse words.
How to see it: Certain Women is now playing in limited release — click on "Watch Now" here to see a list of theaters.
IFC Films
The Handmaiden
The Handmaiden is a movie made of contradictions. It's about an elaborate scheme to defraud an heiress named Hideko (Kim Min-hee) with the help of a thief named Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) who poses as her new maid, though who the target is and who's being taken advantage of soon becomes unclear, the con crumbling in the face of an unexpected romance. It's set in Korea, but it's a Korea under occupation in the 1930s with many of its characters affecting Japanese-ness as a sign of social status. It's almost entirely staged inside a Frankensteined manor that's done in half British architecture and half Japanese — a giant, conflicted monument to colonialism. And it's a film fueled by the degree to which its women are underestimated and objectified by men, only it features some of the male-gaziest lesbian sex scenes imaginable.
Well, no one goes to the director of Oldboy expecting restraint. Park Chan-wook has ported Sarah Waters' Victorian England–set novel Fingersmith halfway around the world and adapted it into an opulent, twisted, overheated gothic drama. But, thanks to its strong lead performances, The Haindmaiden is also an irresistible love story about two women who find themselves genuinely seen and appreciated for the first time — by each other.
How to see it: The Handmaiden is now playing in limited release — check out a list of theaters here.
Magnolia Pictures
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
A horror movie guaranteed to drive many a horror fan wild with frustration, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is, fair warning, an exercise in building dread, but not one intent on delivering a big payoff. In fact, Lily (Ruth Wilson), the main character and often the only figure onscreen, tells the audience how the movie's going to end right at the start, murmuring in voiceover that she's a 28-year-old live-in hospice nurse, and that she won't live to see 29. She's been hired to take care of a mentally and physically deteriorating, once-famous author named Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss) who insists on calling her "Polly." The two are alone in the house, except when they're joined by a ghost.
It's not a slow burn so much as a bunch of glowing embers, but if you can reconcile yourself to director Oz Perkins' pace, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House turns out to be almost unbearably creepy on atmospherics alone. It uses space with remarkable artistry — dark doorways hold potential horrors, empty parts of the frame become places where mysterious things can lurk, and characters facing away from the camera seem terrifyingly exposed. Lily, who scolds herself for her fear in antiquated language ("Silly billy," she mutters), is like a figure out of a Shirley Jackson novel, but then Iris, in a lovely touch, is inspired by Shirley Jackson herself, character and creator trapped together in a nightmarish meditation on death.
How to see it: I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is streaming on Netflix.
Netflix
