#‘The Balconettes’ Review: Noemie Merlant’s Genre-Bender About Female Friendship and Sexual Violence Is a Hot Mess

#‘The Balconettes’ Review: Noemie Merlant’s Genre-Bender About Female Friendship and Sexual Violence Is a Hot Mess

Noemie Merlant, best known beyond France for her performances in Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Todd Field’s Tár, made her debut as a writer-director-actor a few years back with Mi Iubita, mon amour, which starts with a bachelorette party. Merlant offers up another female-solidarity story in the shape of The Balconettes…

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#‘The Girl With the Needle’ Review: A Dark, Urgently Timely Danish Drama About an Unwanted Pregnancy

#‘The Girl With the Needle’ Review: A Dark, Urgently Timely Danish Drama About an Unwanted Pregnancy

Like one of those fiendish knots that tighten the more you squirm, director Magnus von Horn’s Cannes competitor The Girl With the Needle builds to a devastating climax, taut as piano wire. Danish actress Vic Carmen Sonne (Holiday, Godland) offers an understated but multi-layered performance as Karoline, a vulnerable but resilient seamstress living in post-WWI/early-1920s…

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#‘Close Your Eyes’ Review: Master Spanish Filmmaker Victor Erice’s Moving Homage to the Power of Movies

#‘Close Your Eyes’ Review: Master Spanish Filmmaker Victor Erice’s Moving Homage to the Power of Movies

It’s been 31 years since the great Spanish auteur Victor Erice made his last feature-length film, and as Cannes topper Thierry Frémaux pointed out during a brief introduction to the 82-year-old director’s long-awaited return to the screen, Close Your Eyes (Cerrar Los Ojos), that beats a record previously set by Terrence Malick. As amusing as…

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