Why this year you should not shy away from watching a Christmas rom-com.

It is not a very common occasion to come across a rom-com that is set during Christmas in London. This description, alongside Peter Bradshaw’s review of the film for The Guardian, scream “this is the trashy movie that I should definitely avoid before the end of the year.” Or, if you are like us: “this is the trashy movie I should definitely watch before the end of the year.” And we certainly did not regret the evening we spent immersing ourselves in the universe of this film, where humour and politics come together to show us how everyone’s lives are interconnected and how the power of hope that lies in human connections can surpass both individual and collective struggles (especially in a city like London). If you think this movie is going to be ‘trash’ you are in for a surprise!

The story follows Kate (Emilia Clarke) around London. Kate is homeless, working as an elf and struggling to realise her dream of becoming a West End star. Her family is originally from former Yugoslavia, and Kate has a very rocky relationship with her mother (Emma Thompson, who is the co-writer of the film). Their two worlds seem to constantly clash and Kate finds it hard to accept any help from her. Meanwhile Kate’s messy personal life is also interfering with her friendships and her job selling christmas decorations. A serial victim of her circumstances, she avoids facing her problems until she meets the mysterious, yet superbly kind and wise, Tom (Henry Golding). The romance that is sparked between the two characters takes us on a walk around London that is painting a picture of how inhumane the city can be but also how powerful human connection is in holding the strings of our lives together. 

An interesting point about this film is how it played off genre expectations through its promotional material to create a very specific picture of the film. Trailers and posters leaned on the romantic aspect of the plot, the fact that the lead character was, at some point, ill as well as emphasizing the connection to George Michael’s music. However, these aspects are not necessarily the most prominent or time-consuming for the plot. Instead, Last Christmas is largely about Kate’s growth and independence through social connections. While her journey out of self-sabotage begins with a few nudges from Tom, it’s really when she starts having bilateral relationships with others that she moves towards a healthier lifestyle. Kate only starts taking care of herself, being mindful of her health condition, when she stops seeking others out only because she needs something from them. At the start of the film we see Kate as someone who only takes, who gives  the bare minimum back to the people in her life who offer her help. These egoistic tendencies were hurting others but also negatively impacting all of Kate’s well-being.

The film does not provide a Christmas-miracle solution to Kate’s problem. There is no magical moment of revelation where Kate realizes she cannot keep her lifestyle up, as there are in other Christmas films. Last Christmas shows a gradual recognition of issues and a gradual way to take action in a holistic way to resolve existing problems. Kate doesn’t just have to change how she eats, she doesn’t just have to meet the “right guy” who changes  her world, she doesn’t just have to be kinder to those that have given her opportunities, she has to do all this and more. 

The didactic message of the film is that changing oneself is hard work and that it is not possible in an isolated manner. In other words, Kate is able to find tranquility, love, and a healthy way of accepting her immigration story, by integrating herself back into social life and by working on all aspects of herself. When she starts volunteering at a homeless shelter she starts taking responsibilities again, which means that she must be well-enough to be depended on. The people she meets there become her friends. When she begins to care about work again not only does she help her boss, Santa, but she also decides to pause the auditions that were making her miserable. When she begins to repair her relationship with her family, she also helps her mother feel more independent and she unearths a new empathy towards her Yugoslavian community and identity. In this film, actions are the most important thing and the most impactful, so said by Tom that “you’re made up of everything you do.” And it is through her new attitude and actions that Kate’s full potential begin to shine. What seemed like a paradox at first, that you need to rely on others to get more independence, makes sense: it is through sociality that annihilation of the ego begins and that we can start being present for those around us.

Last Christmas also does what many other apparently “lighthearted” films do: sneak in serious issues unexpectedly. Because it is set in 2017, the plot coincides with the beginnings of Brexit. As Yugoslavian immigrants, the discourse of xenophobia that followed this political move affects Kate’s family. Her mother, in particular, is almost inconsolable, believing they would be forced to leave another country because of political situations. While this is not a major aspect of the movie, I think it is notable that it is in a George Micheal song-title-based Christmas rom-com Brexit and rise of hate crimes are discussed and not in any other major releases I have seen. Comedy is often a great way to get people to think about difficult topics such as this. Once you grab people’s attention with what seemed like just entertainment, you drop the message you want. Films like “Step Up: Revolution” that appeared to be dancing chaos but actually discussed issues of displacement that seriously affect people living in Miami. A movie like “Fist Fight” that can be silly and questionable but also was heavily about how budget cuts make teacher’s lives unbearable. Why is it that releases like this tackle very real issues? Is this just as efficient a way to discuss topics as when the same themes are put in dramas? Do wide releases not have a bigger audience anyway? 

This film does have a sympathetic outlook towards the very real and very scary peril immigrants face in a Brexit environment. However, neither writers or directors are immigrants themselves. Emma Thompson is not from former-Yugoslavia and yet she plays and writes this role. In a way the sentiment an immigrant story rang hollow knowing it did not come from a voice with this experience. Similarly “Knives Out” suffered from the same issue: as much as it sided with the horrors of the immigrant experience Rian Johnson is not an immigrant himself. As a Latin American immigrant who wants more representation I ask: if you want our voices, let us speak for ourselves. No amount of research will give you lived experience, which is essential to these stories.

We don’t want to spoil the brilliant plot development, but we can simply say that this movie sets out on a mission larger than its cinematic life. This rom-com is more than just about romance and normative ideals of relationships. It is the story of the immigrant, the working class person, the homeless, and the human that lies within all of us but we at times forget, being carried away by the rapid rhythms and pressures of the city.

8/10

Last Christmas is still playing in select cinemas worldwide. Check out the trailer below:

Angelos Angelidis reviews Daniel Scheinert‘s follow-up to Swiss Army Man. 

Warning: this review contains descriptions of rape and bestiality. 

Following the success of Swiss Army Man (2016), a movie about loneliness, shame and homoeroticism, Daniel Scheinert’s newest film The Death of Dick Long (2019) delves into a darker aspect of American life. Premiering at London’s Sundance Film Festival, Scheinert’s film – penned by Billy Chew – fomented hesitation in me but turned out to be an absolute delight both for its humor and its intellect.

The film follows the death of one of three friends living in a small town in Alabama. After a drunken night out, Dick Long is dumped outside the hospital by his friends Earl (Andre Hyland) and Zeke (Michael Abbott Jr.). Following his death, a police investigation begins while the two friends try to cover up evidence linking Dick’s death back to them. The majority of the film takes place within the twenty-four hours following the incident, charging the plot with panic as Zeke and Earl blunder their way towards vindication.

The police investigation is carried out by Sheriff Spenser (Janelle Cochrane) and the rather inexperienced Officer Dudley (Sarah Baker), whose inability to quickly put the pieces of the puzzle together alongside the foolish decisions and deficient alibis of Zeke and Earl aptly instil elements of comedy in an otherwise tragic story.

Dick’s death – which is initially thought to be a homicide following a brutal rape – turns out to have been caused by a horse. Zeke’s wife Lydia (Virginia Newcomb), after realising that something is wrong with her husband, asks him to come clean. Zeke confesses that he and Earl have been engaging in bestiality with Zeke’s horse for a long time, and that the horse bears responsibility for Dick’s death. The reveal not only causes an earthquake in Zeke and Lydia’s relationship but a huge rupture in what held the family together. The subtleties of everyday life that are so easily overlooked capsize to reveal a hidden underworld of perversity and sexual deviation. Thus, catharsis was not followed by absolution but by a radical reconfiguration of what Zeke’s life was to become.

The movie’s careful balance of darkness and humor does not necessarily present bestiality as the ultimate sin; rather, a lack of transparency or honesty ultimately leads to a dissolution of everything that holds the everyday life of the characters together. This reaches a peak when Dick’s wife visits Zeke in his stable, wondering if her husband is cheating on her while she is patting the very horse that fucked him to death.

An underlying tension of homosexuality is present both in Zeke and Earl’s character development, whose duplicity stems from a deeply repressed desire that goes against societal norms. This subconscious pressure to conform to American ideals of heteronormativity and propriety is in a way an engine of a largely invisible darkness within society, in this case resulting to the death of a friend. This repression is best exemplified by Zeke and Earl’s displays of toxic masculinity. Even if the message of the film is not that repressed homosexual desire leads to your friend dying in a bestiality accident, there is a clear need for the characters to be released from the structures of intolerance and judgement that underlay much of Southern United States, specifically in regards to sexuality, gender or skin colour.

The double-pun title implies the death of the toxic masculinity that leads to the whole situation in the first place. Zeke and Earl flee together and (in my imagination) are free to explore their bromance away from the small-town bigotry and its societal regulations. Life seems to move on as if nothing ever happened and the viewer is left with a deep internal itch. Could this have happened in the real world? Despite the bizarre scenario, the canny camera-work and spot-on acting makes me reckon that Zeke and Earl’s story is more real than mere facets of a scriptwriter’s imagination.

Rating: 8/10

The Death of Dick Long will be released by A24 in September 2019. The U.K. release date is not yet known. Check out the trailer below:

Angelos Angelidis reviews the intersex-directed and starring short film.

Ponyboi is the result of a creative collaboration between co-director Sadé Clacken Joseph; writer, co-director, and lead star River Gallo; and executive producer Seven Graham. Following the story of Ponyboi, a Latinx, intersex runaway from New Jersey, the film exposes us to a life so contained physically and spiritually by societal restrictions through which non-normative bodies belong according to mainstream imaginations. Ponyboi works and lives at a laundromat, also prostituting themselves for a living. Meanwhile, the eponymous character is also caught up in a secret, coercive sexual affair with their friend’s boyfriend, who, at one point in the film, cruelly spits out to them that he decides “whether I fuck you like a bitch or like a faggot.”

But all that is swept away with the arrival of a very handsome and courteous cowboy who is almost too good to be true. In the short, it appears that the cowboy is only a figment of Ponyboi’s imagination; he encourages them to escape from the environment that restricts their self-expression. Breaking away from the abusive nature of allowing the world to determine such fundamental aspects of one’s self, like sex or gender, Ponyboi’s story can resonate with anyone who has too often caught themselves wishing for a more liberated, unbound life. Yet the film most importantly brings to the forefront the narrative of an intersex person, without making that the sentimentalist center of attention.

During this short film’s 19 minute course, time is visually bent, oscillating between dreamlike states and reality and between past and present in a style reminiscent of American New Wave films of the 1980s. Ponyboi takes us on an exquisite sensory journey exploring the reality of a character that has long been kept in darkness, unrepresented in mainstream film and television. Colour and lighting saturate the image and play with ideas of open and closed space, while editing adds a hallucinatory haze that transports the viewer straight into the mind of the protagonist. The music complements and skyrockets the cinematography — the best example of which being the establishing scene of the film, which sets the bar pretty high.

The screening was followed by an intimate Q&A with Seven, Sadé, and River, during which they opened up about trauma and about navigating the film industry as a person of colour, as a woman, or as a member of the LGBTQIIA community — especially an intersex person. Young directors like River and Sadé have continually been at the fringes of popular representation in the realm of the entertainment industry. They are claiming these spaces and helping raise the voice of thousands of people across the world through a film that pays homage to the existence, power, and perseverance of people whose identities do not fit into a binary. The fact that this film was made as a graduation project by River makes it all that more impressive.

The short is currently being extended into a feature film, so keep an eye out for this fresh art piece by following it on social media @ponyboi_film. I have a feeling that the cowboy might be more real than we are left to think (despite his dreamy looks) and I am very excited to follow Ponyboi on the rest of their journey.

Ponyboi was a part of the short film line-up at BFI Flare 2019. Check out the trailer below: