{"id":19560,"date":"2023-01-25T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=19560"},"modified":"2023-01-30T10:35:03","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T18:35:03","slug":"sundance-dispatch-sacrificing-for-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/sundance-dispatch-sacrificing-for-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance Dispatch: Sacrificing (for) Children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\u2019ll do anything for our kids, won\u2019t we? I mean, I don\u2019t have any, but I\u2019ve heard that\u2019s how it is. The Sundance Film Festival isn’t a \u201cfamily\u201d fest in the sense that you would want to bring your children to it \u2014 it\u2019s too cold and expensive and a lot of the movies are dirty \u2014 yet quite a few entries are about<\/em> children, parenting, and all of the joys and horrors attendant to those subjects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We start with a favorite genre: movies about unorthodox teachers helping disadvantaged students discover the joy of learning while skeptical school administrators threaten. I am a sucker for these. Grind them up and let me snort them. It matters not if they are formulaic or even cheesy. This one’s called Radical<\/em><\/strong>. \u201cRadical,\u201d for crying out loud! This is a movie that turns its chair around and sits on it backwards so it can rap with the kids face to face. It’s Stand and Deliver<\/em> and Dead Poets Society<\/em> and Lean on Me<\/em>, based on a true story and set in the dangerous border town of Matamoros, Mexico. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eugenio Derbez, the often grating Mexican comedy star who played a teacher in 2021’s CODA<\/em>, is much better here as Sergio, a science teacher who has requested a transfer to teach sixth grade at a dumpy school that’s especially underfunded because the corrupt local government siphons away the funding it does<\/em> get. We focus on a few of Sergio’s students: scrawny, unsupervised Nico (Danilo Guardiola), whose older brother is pressuring him to work for a drug dealer; brilliant, quiet Paloma (Jennifer Trejo), who lives with her father at a garbage dump and has to hide her books from him (he seems OK with the concept for \u201cschool\u201d but disapproves of any extracurricular learning); and sweet Lupe (Mia Fernanda Solis), who likes school but is preoccupied with helping her parents care for her younger siblings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sergio gets the kids interested in the subject of flotation: Why don\u2019t boats sink? With no computers or library to assist in finding the answer, Sergio teaches them to use lateral thinking, logic, and trial and error, guiding them toward the solution without giving it to them \u2014 teaching them to fish, as it were. Meanwhile, the well-meaning but feckless principal (Daniel Haddad) observes warily while despairing of Sergio\u2019s class ever being ready for the standardized tests when they spend their days dropping things in water tanks instead of memorizing dates and names (\u201cteaching to the test\u201d evidently not just an American problem). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christopher Zalla, whose grim Padre Nuestro<\/em> (retitled Sangre de Mi Sangre<\/em>) won the top prize at Sundance 2007, is more upbeat here, though every story like this must have at least one tragic turn. Seeing kids get excited about learning is a dopamine boost, even in contrived scenarios. It\u2019s wholesome, you know? Derbez is a strong lead, showing Sergio’s energetic confidence in the classroom alternating with self-doubt when the children aren’t around. The kids are funny and sweet (did I mention Nico has a crush on Paloma?). Without getting preachy or even very sentimental, Radical<\/em> is a satisfying addition to the inspiring teacher canon. Grade: <\/strong>B+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shayda<\/em><\/strong>, the debut feature by Iranian-Australian Noora Niasari, is the partially autobiographical story of an Iranian woman, Shayda (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi), living with her young daughter, Mona (Selina Zahednia), in Australia in the mid-1990s. When we meet them, Shayda and Mona have just arrived at a women\u2019s shelter and are building a custody case against Shayda\u2019s abusive soon-to-be-ex-husband (Osamah Sami), a traditional Iranian man fond of pointing out to Shayda what they do to \u201cprogressive\u201d women back home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though set in the \u201990s (and presented in the old square aspect ratio, I guess to remind us of VHS), a film that addresses Iranian women\u2019s rights is very timely in 2023. Without getting on a soapbox, Shayda and the women around her \u2014 including kindly Australian social worker Joyce (Leah Purcell), Iranian friend Elly (Rina Mousavi), and fellow single mom Lara (Eve Morey) \u2014 represent different ways that women are oppressed, as well as the ways that women overcome their oppressors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zar Amir-Ebrahami, recently seen with similar steely resolve in Holy Spider,<\/em> is terrific as Shayda, addressing her trauma realistically but not so heavily that it becomes the focus of the film. Niasari wants us looking forward with optimism, not backward with fear. To that end, Selina Zahednia, the adorable little girl playing Mona (presumably an analogue for Niasari), is a constant ray of sunshine and a reminder to her mother (and us) that there’s hope for the future. Grade: <\/strong>B<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes the children are creepy; sometimes it\u2019s the parents who are creepy; sometimes it\u2019s both. Welcome to Run Rabbit Run<\/em><\/strong> (at least the third movie to exist with that title), an Australian psychological thriller that unfolds interestingly enough to reward a single viewing but that I doubt would offer much on rewatch. \u2013 a single-serving movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It stars Sarah Snook (Shiv on HBO\u2019s Succession<\/em>) as Sarah, the lightly frazzled divorced mother of 7-year-old Mia (Lily LaTorre), who starts saying odd things like that she \u201cmisses\u201d Joan, her grandmother whom she has never met. When Sarah apprehensively takes Mia to meet Grandma, who’s in a nursing home whose phone calls Sarah keeps ducking, the diminishing old woman thinks Mia is \u201cAlice.\u201d But who\u2019s Alice? And why is Mia now insisting that she is indeed Alice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of Alice, there’s a white rabbit, too. It shows up in Sarah and Mia’s yard and is presumed to be a portent. (Sarah Snook tells it to \u201cf*** off,\u201d in case you\u2019d like to hear her say the Succession<\/em> catchphrase in her native Australian accent.) As Mia\u2019s behavior continues to be weird \u2014 though still within the bounds of acceptable childhood weirdness \u2014 Sarah\u2019s grip on reality starts to fail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The screenplay, a first for Aussie novelist Hannah Kent, parcels out information in the manner of a novel: slowly, carefully, letting us wonder about each new mystery (who\u2019s Alice? What happened to her? What’s happening now?) long enough to be curious but not frustrated. The trouble with telling a story that way, though, is that once everything has been revealed, the audience might take a step back and say: \u201cThat’s it?\u201d But along the way, director Daina Reid delivers a few shivery scenes and tense moments, even if it is ultimately a familiar sort of story. Grade: <\/strong>B-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Courtesy of Sundance Institute.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


Just over 50 percent of this year\u2019s Sundance films were directed by women, a remarkable achievement in inclusivity. Birth\/Rebirth<\/em><\/strong> is one of them, and I\u2019m so glad \u2014 glad the movie exists, and glad it wasn\u2019t a man who made it. Playing in the Midnight section, it\u2019s a messed-up horror film that is messed up in ways so specifically related to womanhood that if a guy thought of it, he\u2019d be accused of being tasteless and exploitative. But a non-guy? Hey, more power to you. As a fan of messed-up horror movies, I\u2019m thrilled to see director Laura Moss (who co-wrote with Brendan J. O\u2019Brien) being every bit as sick in the head as a Cronenberg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judy Reyes, whom you will recall as Nurse Carla on Scrubs<\/em>, returns to her medical roots to play Celie, a maternity nurse and single mom whose life revolves around her energetic young daughter, Lila (A.J. Lister). Working at the same hospital as Celie is Dr. Rosemary Casper (Marin Ireland), a chilly morgue technician who has an off-putting manner and is awkward around living people. When a fatal case of bacterial meningitis strikes poor Lila, Rose has a solution: \u201can experimental treatment I\u2019ve been working on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor meningitis?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor death.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, then. Here we have two women, one driven by love for her daughter, one driven by scientific curiosity, tampering in God\u2019s domain<\/a>. The ghastly details of how, exactly, a deceased girl is kept alive, and what Celie and Rose must do in order to procure the necessary treatment elements, I will leave for you to discover; suffice it to say that Celie\u2019s daily interaction with pregnant women is a stroke of luck. Rose contributes, too, in a horrific and darkly funny way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHorrific and darkly funny\u201d just about sums it up. When Celie yells \u201cYou mad scientist princess bitch!\u201d at Rose, it occurs to me that this could have been \u2014 though not necessarily should<\/em> have been \u2014 much campier than it is. Instead, it\u2019s mostly deadpan, the insidious plot executed with chilling matter-of-factness. Reyes and Ireland are as committed to their performances as their characters are to their insane plan, never winking at the audience. You completely believe that both women would do the things they do. Grade: <\/strong>B+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere on the spectrum of \u201cdevoted mothers\u201d we find Earth Mama<\/em><\/strong>, writer-director Savanah Leaf\u2019s thoughtful exploration of an agonizing maternal quandary: What if you weren\u2019t capable of caring for your children? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In San Francisco, a Black woman named Gia (Tia Nomore) is facing that reality. Only recently clean and sober, she\u2019s jumping through the hoops necessary to get her two kids back from foster care \u2014 court-ordered classes and programs and whatnot, which she struggles to attend because she\u2019s also working as many hours as she can (which the court also requires). Oh, and she\u2019s pregnant, and very reasonably afraid that she will lose custody of this baby as soon as it\u2019s born. At the suggestion of a counselor, she considers an open adoption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaf sympathetically captures the details of Gia\u2019s precarious living situation and poverty. Tia Nomore, a newcomer, embodies Gia\u2019s weariness and frustration as she navigates the government programs and comes to terms with the fact that loving her children isn\u2019t the same as taking care of them. It\u2019s a quiet gut-punch of a film. Grade: B+<\/strong> \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check out our coverage of this year\u2019s Sundance documentaries here<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his first Sundance roundup of the year, our old pal Eric D. Snider looks at \u201cRadical,\u201d \u201cBirth\/Rebirth,\u201d \u201cRun Rabbit Run,\u201d and more films about the joys of children. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":19562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416,340],"tags":[1419],"class_list":["post-19560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","category-movie-reviews","tag-film-fests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}