NYFF 25: The Currents, Gavagai, is it working? | Festivals and awards

In life as in cinema, things are not always what they seem. The award-winning career woman may look successful, but once the partying crowd returns home, she finds herself alone with dark thoughts and anxiety. Filming a prestigious film may seem like an exciting prospect, but behind the scenes, chaos and hurt feelings threaten to take center stage. The comedian who seeks to charm the crowd might be a lot less funny off stage as he fumbles through his new life away from his wife and children.

Bradley Cooper’s NYFF Singles Get Closer “Is this thing on?” » opens with Alex (Will Arnett) and Tess Novak (Laura Dern) finally agreeing to end their marriage. As they begin to unravel their lives, Alex finds solace in New York’s comedy scene, while Tess returns to her love of volleyball as a coach. Although their lives seem to be moving in different directions, there is always the possibility of wondering “what if?” and a second chance to find happiness together.

Although writing “Is This Thing On?” ” isn’t as funny as a tight ten-minute set from one’s favorite comedian (it’s much darker than the premise suggests), Arnett and Dern are phenomenal, immediately tapping into the complicated and conflicted feelings their characters have for each other. As each partner digs deeper and deeper into their issues, undoing the progress they’ve made, it captures something believable about the experience of rushing to mistakes in the heat of an argument and not really saying what needs to be said. They are all naturally funny, but not afraid to get serious and vulnerable. With a supporting cast including Cooper, Andra Day, Christine Ebersole, Sean Hayes, Peyton Manning and Amy Sedaris for a brief “BoJack Horseman” reunion, the pair have plenty of different comedic foils to commiserate over their characters’ problems.

Cooper’s remarriage comedy seems a bit rawer than his previous films, like the adaptation of the showbiz cautionary tale “A Star is Born” and the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro.” Here, the heightened emotions threaten to overtake the film. As the handheld camerawork intensifies the swirling experience of a situation spiraling out of control, it ends up feeling like a double exclamation point at the end of a sentence. The stand-up scenes are almost too uncomfortable to bear, but the powerhouse team of Arnett and Dern make the most of some rock scenes to share the last word.

At Milagros Mumenthaler “The currents” Lina (Isabel Aimé González Sola) is a famous fashion designer who seems to have it all: a thriving career and a perfect, loving family. But after receiving an award in Switzerland, Lina throws herself off a bridge and finds herself in shock after escaping the water. Lingering, uneasy feelings follow her from the icy lake to Buenos Aires. Unhappy with her life, she has difficulty acclimating to her roles as a mother and wife, and her creative process also appears to have been affected. Work is no longer the escape it once was. In full rebirth after this period of crisis, Lina must decide what her new life will look like in the future.

“The Currents” is a complex portrait of a woman on the brink of depression – or is it a breakthrough? As Lina discovers her new reality, Mumenthaler and cinematographer Gabriel Sandru follow her ups and downs in numerous close-ups, punctuated with pops of color like Lina’s bright red lipstick and a sky blue coat in the Swiss scenes to grab the audience’s attention and see what its lead actress is doing with the subtle movements of her face.

González Sola plays Lina with a sense of sympathy, slowly explaining how a successful, confident woman becomes unable to speak about her darkest thoughts. She’s subtle in her movements, like when Lina carefully applies layers of glossy lipstick to pretend everything’s okay, but her increasingly unkempt hair is the physical manifestation of her tangled state of mind.

Mumenthaler channels the work of Lucrecia Martel, condensing the stifling isolation of middle-class life in Argentina, into a psychological study of a woman trapped by the pressures to “have it all.” As in “The Headless Woman” by Martel, the shocking contact with death detaches Lina from the rhythm of her daily life. The perfect husband seems less brilliant in the face of a crisis. She is increasingly exhausted by the demands of motherhood and her career, with no relief in sight.

Her annoyance with her mother-in-law intensifies as she senses the other woman’s disapproval of her behavior. She throws herself into her work because it’s her easiest coping mechanism, but her mind is elsewhere and she can no longer hide behind her crumbling facade. Eventually, she visits her mother, which reveals another part of Lina’s life and her mental health issues.

In the case of Ulrich Köhler “Gavagai” a reimagining of a classic Greek text becomes the launching pad for a broader conversation about race, gender and equality. Written and directed by Köhler, “Gavagai” uses the understated narrative of a film within a film as meta-commentary to illustrate a variety of thorny issues, particularly the power dynamics of a European film set in Africa. There are also racial and gender imbalances to sort out in the relationship between the two leads, who, for various reasons, cannot or will not be able to move forward with their steamy romance.

Emotions are high on the set of a new adaptation of “Medea”. Fashioned in a fictional world mixing futuristic clothing and modern objects like a modestly tricked boat, the scene where Medea played by Maja (Maren Eggert) shows her murderous brutality to her husband Jason played by the French Senegalese actor Nourou (Jean-Christophe Folly) will not take place as planned, and a little tyrant, the director of the film Caroline Lescot (Nathalie Richard), enters the frame. screaming. The plan has to be reset, and as its lead actress leaves, extras move away and Medea’s supposedly dead children take the boat for a joy ride.

But these are not the worst problems. As Maja and Nourou embark on a passionate affair on set, it quickly becomes apparent that they are not receiving equal treatment. As the film moves to the film’s imminent European premiere, Nourou is left out, almost literally, when a hotel guard tries to kick him off the property because he smokes, something that allegedly happened to a white member of the film’s crew. A quiet air of discontent hangs over “Gavagai” as these microaggressions add up.

The Medea-within-a-film seems comically flawed, but that’s not the problem. The film primarily focuses on how the industry treats its workers with minimal power, while exploring issues of representation and gatekeepers. There are many uncomfortable moments of shouting and disrespect towards the African cast and crew, particularly from Lescot, who seems to take his cues from Claire Denis. Later, during a heated press conference, it becomes clear that Lescot has no idea how his film is perceived and is relying on black cast members to defend choices they didn’t make. Meanwhile, Maja and Nourou deal with their own feelings of inequality, whether it’s being seen as more than a commodity or being accepted in the world they’ve made a career in.