Resuscitating reviews I wrote at festivals that Patreon’s crap search engine wouldn't previously have delivered because the titles weren't in the subject line.
The Currents (Milagros Mumenthaler): 78/100 [TIFF '25, AFI Fest '25]
TIFF: That rating’s significantly lower than I thought it might be both early on (opening half hour or so flirts with flawlessness) and toward the end (following what I suspect will be a strong Best Scene contender for whatever year The Currents becomes Skandie-eligible in). No more than 4-5 minutes had elapsed, in truth, before I started thinking “This might be my movie of the year.” Which indeed it is, so far, but Mumenthaler occasionally succumbs to temptation and over-explains aspects that ought to have remained mysterious/implicit. “Flawless?!?” concluded with an ill-judged (albeit still fairly subtle) flashback to earlier WTF events, accompanied by way more psychological self-analysis than I desired; there’s also eventually a big early-Egoyan-style reveal that could have been more glancing, less of an big ol’ answer key. But just about everything else couldn’t be more perfectly judged. You’ll notice that I’m dancing around what the movie’s about, and that’s because its logline, reduced to a sentence or two, frankly looks kinda dumb (feat. literal hydrophobia, as opposed to rabies); The Currents’ near-greatness resides in what Mumenthaler chooses to lightly underscore or unexpectedly elide, in how the deliberately inchoate narrative sometimes flows and sometimes stubbornly refuses to. In its “direction,” one might say. And then an actor I’ve never previously seen, Isabel Aimé González Sola, turns in one of the finest quasi-opaque (not when other characters can see her, usually) performances in recent memory. One reason I find fewer movies to love than I once did is that hardly anybody makes this kind of alienation-chic chillfest anymore—they’re very much out of fashion. Time for a comeback.
AFI Fest: Saw this at TIFF last month, wanted another big-screen viewing. It’s far and away the year’s most sensual film (that I’ve seen, duh), inspiring unease from e.g. a shot of the protagonist’s hair spilling over the back of her armchair, as seen from behind. My reservations remain the same, but I also maintain that for a movie that needlessly over-explains certain things, it does so with admirable subtlety. Noticed this time that Mumenthaler starts building toward the lighthouse sequence earlier on, with preliminary interludes/visions accompanied by Holst; have also now confirmed that said lighthouse sits atop an actual Buenos Aires building, the Palacio Barolo, in which Mumenthaler once had an office herself. So the daughter climbing up there from Mom’s office isn’t as bizarre as it seems to non-Argentine viewers. (I’d actually wondered whether that object with a crank that Lina constructs, the nature of which I don’t think we ever learn, signified building the penthouse and its rotating beacon in her mind.) Kudos to NYFF for selecting this dazzler, but demerits for burying its sole press screening at festival’s end, where it appears to have been seen by just about nobody. Calling Neon! [MAY 2026: It wound up getting acquired by Kino Lorber and is now playing at Lincoln Center in NYC.]
Renoir (Chie Hayakawa): 50/100 [TIFF '25]
Pretension level’s high from the title alone: One could call, say, Malick’s 2011 impressionistic family portrait Renoir with equal (which is to say, no) justification. That’s what the press notes are for, Chie. Reveal your non-cinematic influences there. Film itself’s admirable without being especially memorable, structurally indebted to early Davies* (self-contained memory fragments, etc.) but never reaching for his intense lyricism. In fact, two days later I can’t immediately recall any image or sequence, which one could credibly argue renders this sort of kaleidoscopic personal reminiscence (set in the ’80s, when Hayakawa was the protagonist’s age) a failure. Still, I can at least see why Fremaux thought it merited a Competition slot. It’s nowhere near good enough, but it’s definitely ambitious enough.
* I will henceforth never be able to use “early [director’s name]” without inwardly cringing, thanks to a noxious TIFF marketing film in which someone inexplicably says that audiences crave ambiguity—“like Breillat, or early Baumbach.” Still not sure whether that’s deliberately brain-dead or an unvetted assumption by someone who’s never seen Kicking and Screaming or Mr. Jealousy (which, for those of you haven’t, are not exactly ambiguous). Or maybe it’s weird shade thrown in response to Jay Kelly’s absence? “What’s a Baumbach?” is the ostensible punchline, so not impossible. Regardless, made my head hurt every time.