Capital Projections: Happy plant edition
Capital Projections is The DC Line’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting arthouse and repertory screenings in the coming week.
LITTLE JOE
Oh, the plant kingdom! Its delicious species supply us with tasty nutrients; its dazzling varieties provide delight for the eyes and the nostrils. But plants can also harm us, with spikes and poison their built-in defense mechanisms. What might happen if humanity should tamper with nature’s bounty? Could plants have their revenge? The new thriller from Austrian writer-director Jessica Hausner (Amour Fou) suggests the creeping horrors that may await us as scientists develop new and mysterious strains of flora.
Emily Beecham (Hail, Caesar!) stars as Alice, a single mother who works as senior botanist at a company that specializes in bioengineered plant hybrids. The firm is getting ready for a major flower convention, and Alice is working on a doozy, developing a species that blooms in bright crimson fuzzballs that almost purr when you speak to them. Even better, the plant seems to be a natural antidepressant; being around it makes people happy and triggers the brain to produce oxytocin, the so-called “cuddle hormone” associated with maternal instinct. But there’s a catch: The plant, which she calls Little Joe after her son (Kit Connor), is unable to conventionally reproduce. Fortunately, nature (in captivity) finds a devious solution to this problem — and humans better watch out.
Little Joe colors its cautionary tale with shades of bio-horror films like Safe and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and even a dash of Rosemary’s Baby. While Hausner’s 2009 drama Lourdes looked with dismay at the commercialization of religious pilgrimages, her latest film is a quietly devastating commentary on the billion-dollar industry of mood-enhancing drugs: What if, by altering our moods, we alter our true nature? The movie can be slow going, but one might say it moves like a plant: patient, deliberate and inevitable.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Dec. 6, at Landmark E Street Cinema. $12.50.
SHOOTING THE MAFIA
Letizia Battaglia is a natural subject for a documentary. The Italian photojournalist produced more than half a million images in the 1970s and ’80s working for the Sicilian left-wing newspaper L’Ora, and her primary beat was the Mafia. With an unflinching eye, she amassed what she called “an archive of blood,” documenting the grisly corpses and embittered, mourning survivors left behind by cosa nostra. Then in 1985, the photographer turned to politics, getting involved in environmental and women’s issues. Now in her 80s, Battaglia has led a full life, but unfortunately, this on-screen chronicle lacks one of the core elements of journalism: information.
There’s more than enough promising material here, with plenty of Battaglia’s photos of the Mafia’s victims. But the filmmakers provide few details about her images; most photo subjects are unidentified, with the contemporary news broadcasts used in the film only occasionally shedding light. Worse, Battaglia’s personal storyline is often evoked through unidentified stock footage, much of it used to illustrate her love affairs. When one of Battaglia’s former lovers tells the filmmakers what a beautiful young woman she was, we see some home movie footage, but we also see unrelated scenes of young lovers from an Italian melodrama of the time. This is typical of the film’s mixed priorities; director Kim Longinotto (Dreamcatcher) spends far too much time on her subject’s colorful love life and not enough on her inspiring career.
For a revealing contrast, it’s telling to look at Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. Repeatedly throughout that 210-minute epic, chyrons appear to quickly explain the morbid fate of a minor organized crime figure. Those split-second captions provide more information than any 20 minutes of Shooting the Mafia. Battaglia’s lens captured a tragic period in Italian history, but if you do your own research into her career, you’re likely to learn much more than the film tells you.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Dec. 6, at Landmark West End Cinema. $12.50.
DAFNE
This modest drama from Italy initially comes across like a tragedy, but despite the somber subject matter, it ends up quietly optimistic and life-affirming. Dafne (Carolina Raspanti) is a 30-year-old woman with Down syndrome. She has a good job and a good relationship with her elderly parents. But when her mother dies, she struggles with her grief and becomes impatient with her father Luigi (Antonio Piovanelli), who’s having trouble adjusting to life alone.
For the most part, writer-director Federico Bondi doesn’t make much of Dafne’s condition. While she has friends with Down syndrome and attends events with them, she’s treated without condescension, and you never feel that the film is exploiting her. What Dafne focuses on is the tender but sometimes fraught father-daughter relationship. In one of the film’s most moving scenes, Luigi explains to a stranger his disappointment when he first learned of his daughter’s condition. But as the film demonstrates, it’s Dafne who ends up leading the way for her father and showing him what life is about. The movie is screening as part of the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center’s annual European Union Film Showcase, which runs through Dec. 22. Read my Washington City Paper preview for capsule reviews of seven other titles in the festival.
Watch the trailer.
Tuesday, Dec. 10, at 7:10 p.m. (with a Q&A featuring director Federico Bondi); Saturday, Dec. 14, at 3:15 p.m.; and Monday, Dec. 16, at 3 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
BEAR WITH US
This 2018 comedy-drama from Czech director Tomás Pavlícek makes light of the domestic squabbles that arise when a beloved but underused family cottage is put up for sale. Veteran actress Ivana Chýlková stars as the matriarch who reluctantly decides to sell — but not before gathering her family for one final celebration in the woods. Eye for Film writes: “The film has a fine sense of absurdity — not least when one character spends a considerable chunk of the runtime wearing a bear costume for no particular reason — but also tons of charm.” Bear With Us (the Czech title translates simply to Cottage for Sale) is part of the Avalon Theatre’s series Lions of Czech Film.
Watch the trailer.
Wednesday, Dec. 11, at 8 p.m. at the Avalon Theatre. $13.
THE MINAMATA MURAL
In 1956, fishing villages on the Japanese island of Kyushu were devastated by an outbreak of severe illness, and in the months to come, debilitating birth defects. The culprit was mercury poisoning, caused by a chemical plant dumping waste in Minamata Bay. This 1981 documentary by director Noriaki Tsuchimoto chronicles the work of husband-and-wife artists Iri and Toshi Maruki, whose murals depicted this horrifying environmental disaster. The film is also notable for its score by composer Tōru Takemitsu, whose music provided stark atmosphere for dozens of Japanese films from the ’50s through the ’90s, including Woman in the Dunes and Ran. The National Museum of Asian Art’s curators write that “Takemitsu’s score plays a vital role in allowing the Marukis’ mural panels to flourish in all of their complex beauty and horror, underscoring their visual catharsis with a more primally guttural one.” As part of the ongoing series Cinema Revived, the Freer Gallery of Art will be showing a 16-mm print of this rarely screened title, along with a digital print of director Kon Ichikawa’s 1970 short film Kyoto, which also features a Takemitsu score.
Sunday, Dec. 8, at 2 p.m. in the Meyer Auditorium at the Freer Gallery of Art. Free.