mini reviews: 'Ema' and 'Sweet Girl'

Here I am, loving a movie about dance. Not because it's joyful, but because it's the antithesis of it. I'm curious how other people will receive this film. I'm one of the few people within my circle that loved Pablo Larraín's Jackie. Many of my peers in and out of the critic world, saw it as a shallow, meandering discourse about grief, where I viewed it as a fascinating portrait of the many stages of loss. Some may call it pretentious and that’s absolutely fine, but I call Ema honest.

Atmospheric, dark, haunting, these are the type of things that appeal to me in cinema. The world Larraín creates feels like you're suffering a pounding headache from a long night of excesses. Your senses are numb, probably from all the drugs, and the annoyingly similar beats of party music vibrating against the walls of the room you're tripping out in. It’s uncomfortable, but subtle. The subjects are filmed looking at the camera rather than adhering to the standard over the shoulder setup. We’re looking into the character’s souls by having them address one another via our eye-line. The flamethrower Ema uses matches the scolding sun background everyone is thrusting too.

Dance is a release for Ema (Mariana Di Girólamo) The movement of the body in close conjunction with one another keeps the fire alive in her soul where otherwise she’s dead inside. Failing to support her son by giving him up for adoption, Ema uses dance as a means of distraction. When we dance, our bodies are free. The thoughts of others becomes non existent as the dancer only focusses on their physicality. For Ema, it’s a means to fight off her guilt.

Regrets haunts Ema. Sharing in her declined parenting is her ex-husband Gastón (Gael García Bernal) To him, Ema's alleviation in performance art is a joke. A façade to masquerade her disgrace. Instead of drawing in sorrow, Ema uses lust as a weapon to achieve her selfish needs, by manipulating others to punish herself for her sins.

Ema isn't a musical or celebration of life. Nobody sings to the camera or jumps with joy. There isn't a grand crescendo to close the curtains with applause. All that's shown are practice sessions. The musical element for the film itself performs as background to the narrative drama. I love movies like this—films where the main character is openly cruel yet empathetic. We see the monstrosity in their actions yet understand where those decisions come from, relating it to ourselves.

In my opinion, a great film does not have simple answers because if life had that, none of us would be like Ema. Making bad decisions as a means of self destruction or punishment. Larraín's passion for the theme of remorse continues to strong with his newest film.

Availability: iTunes Pre-Order on September 14, 2021.

Straight off the Steven Segal rack from the direct to video aisle, Sweet Girl is the worst type of bad movie, the boring kind. The fight the power message the film contains has no clear intent other than a revenge fantasy. But the movie tries to be a daddy-daughter drama that would have played far better as a revenge comedy. Movies like God Bless America, or Django Unchained works because of how consciously absurd they are. 

Tarantino is aware that Django likely would suffer a tragic demise. But he turns a chapter in one of the darkest periods of American history on its head as a hilarious show of over-the-top murders towards the evil of the world. Sweet Girl is too tone-deaf to have the audience root against the villain.

Ray Cooper, who, when I see Jason Momoa I think of a guy named Ray. It’s like when movies would cast Arnold Schwartzenegger to play someone called Hank or Harry. Jason’s wife Amanda (Adria Arjona) is dying from cancer. The Pharmaceutical company that has a miracle drug that could save her, pulls it from the shelves for financial benefit. After her death Jason goes out on a revenge quest with his daughter in aid against those who’ve wronged him.

Whenever a filmmaker gets aesthetically stuck, they shoot the movie handheld. I know this because I've done it when a deadline was approaching. If I needed to be off the set at a particular time and it would take too long to set up for the next scene, I'd throw the camera over my shoulders then roll. I wonder if the director (Brian Andrew Mendoza) ran into those very scenarios. 

Whatever drive or tension there is in the story is immediately deflated when the big baddy is killed off within close to thirty minutes of the film. The parental drama isn’t enough to go on for the story to continue. Every convention is thrown in a perfect recipe of sameness soup with a lack of quality action to make anything engageable.

If Sweet Girl is worth any unintentional laugher, it's when DP (Barry Ackroyd) shoots Jason Mamoa pacing comically around the hospital in a master shot while wildly overacting in a moment of grief, or hulking out.

There's nothing to go on from making Sweet Girl feel like a struggle to sit through. Missing a voice, script, or a structure, I'd only watch this if it were the single thing download on my phone while waiting in the hospital. 

AVAILABILITY: Now streaming on Netflix