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      ‘Empire of Light’ Review: They Found It at the Movies

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      Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward pursue a bittersweet workplace romance in Sam Mendes’s look back at Britain in the early 1980s.“Empire of Light” takes place in and around an old movie palace in a British seaside town. This cinema, which is called the Empire, is more than a mere setting: it’s the movie’s center of gravity, its soul, its governing metaphor and reason for being.In the early 1980s, the Empire has fallen on hard times, rather like the global power evoked by its name. The sun hasn’t quite set, but the upstairs screens are now permanently dark, and a once-sumptuous lounge on the top floor is frequented mainly by pigeons. The public still shows up to buy popcorn and candy, and to see films like “The Blues Brothers,” “Stir Crazy” and “All That Jazz,” but the mood is one of quietly accepted defeat. Even the light looks tired.That light is also beautiful, thanks to the unrivaled cinematographer Roger Deakins, whose images impart a tone of gentle nostalgia. It’s possible to look back fondly on a less-than-golden age, and Sam Mendes (“Revolutionary Road,” “1917”), the writer and director, casts an affectionate gaze on the Empire, its employees, and the drab, sometimes brutal realities of Thatcher-era Britain.“Empire of Light” has a sad story to tell, one that touches on mental illness, sexual exploitation, racist violence and other grim facts of life. But Mendes isn’t a realist in the mode of Mike Leigh or Ken Loach. The period-appropriate British movies that find their way to the Empire’s screens are “Gregory’s Girl” and “Chariots of Fire,” and Mendes borrows some of their sweet, gentle humor and heartfelt humanist charm.Olivia Colman plays Hilary, the Empire’s duty manager, who oversees a motley squad of cinema soldiers. There is a nerdy guy, a post-punk girl and a grumpy projectionist. They are soon joined by Stephen (Micheal Ward), a genial young man whose college plans are on hold.Hilary and her boss, Mr. Ellis (Colin Firth), are carrying on a desultory affair. For her, the rushed encounters in his office are part of a dreary workplace routine, evidence of an ongoing malaise. Things could always be worse, and for Hilary, they have been. She has recently returned to work after spending time in a mental hospital after a breakdown and takes lithium to maintain her equilibrium.Stephen’s arrival jolts her out of her torpor, which is both exciting and risky. He seems more open to experience, more capable of happiness, than anyone else in this grubby little city, and he and Hilary strike up a friendship that turns into more. His encounters with hostile skinheads and bigoted customers open Hilary’s eyes to the pervasiveness of racial prejudice. Together they nurse a wounded pigeon back to health.For a while, their romance unfolds in a quiet, quotidian rhythm that allows you to appreciate Colman and Ward’s fine-grained performances. “What are days?” the poet Philip Larkin asked — he’s a favorite of Hilary’s, along with W.H. Auden — and his answer was both somber and sublime. “Days are where we live.” The daily rituals of work at the Empire, and the pockets of free time that open up within it, add a dimension of understated enchantment, as if a touch of big-screen magic found its way into the break room, the concession stand and the box office.It’s inevitable that the spell will break, and when it does, “Empire of Light” falters. Mendes raises the stakes and accelerates the plot, pushing Hilary and Stephen through a series of crises that weigh the movie down with earnest self-importance. A film that had seemed interested in the lives and feelings of its characters, and in an unlikely but touching relationship between two people at odds with the world around them, turns into a movie with Something to Say.The message is muddled and soft, like a Milk Dud at the bottom of the box, and the movie chews on it for quite a while. “Empire of Light” arrives at its emotional terminus long before it actually ends. Things keep happening, as if Mendes were trying to talk himself and us through ideas that hadn’t been fully worked out. There isn’t really much insight to be gleaned on the subjects of mental illness, racial politics, middle age or work, though an earnest effort is made to show concern about all of them.What “Empire of Light” really wants to be about are the pleasures of ’80s pop music, fine English poetry and, above all, movies. Like everyone else at the Empire, the grumpy projectionist takes a liking to Stephen, and shows him how to work the machinery, eliciting exclamations of wonder from the young man, and also from old-timers in the audience who might remember the vanished sights and sounds of celluloid. The velvet ropes and plush seats, the beam of light and the whirring — it’s all lovely and bittersweet to contemplate.Movies have always been more than a source of comfort: They have the power to disturb, to seduce, to provoke and to enrage. None of that really interests Mendes here, even though the story of Hilary and Stephen might have benefited from a tougher, less sentimental telling.Empire of LightRated R. Sex and violence, just like in the movies. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Review: ‘The Treasure of His Youth: The Photographs of Paolo Di Paolo’ Delights

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      A documentary by Bruce Weber about a nonagenarian Italian photographer is sprinkled with la dolce vita, our critic writes.Late in this charming, exhilarating and revelatory documentary, Paolo Di Paolo, a prominent Italian photojournalist from the late 1950s who quietly and deliberately dropped off the map at the end of the 1960s, recalls a bittersweet love affair. It was with a woman several rungs above him on the social ladder (she is not named, although Di Paolo’s portraits of her are shown) who, when she called off the affair, told him “I will always be who I am. You are just a big paparazzo.”Obviously, Di Paolo was more than that. The American photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber was inspired to direct “The Treasure of His Youth: The Photographs of Paolo Di Paolo” after coming upon some startling Di Paolo prints several years ago, at an Italian gallery. “I had been dreaming about them long before I knew they existed,” Weber said. The subjects included poor children, literati, movie stars and more, captured with an engaged and searching eye.Di Paolo was 94 when Weber started shooting the documentary. Energetic and articulate, frequently with his daughter Silvia, a champion of his rediscovered work, at his side, he is full of stories that directly reflect the artistic temperament he still possesses in retirement. “My luck was to have great relationships with important people,” he says.For that reason, among others, Di Paolo’s images remain breathtaking. Weber assembles them to create mini-essays about some still-startling Italian figures, such as the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini and the actress Anna Magnani.As is his custom, Weber sprinkles the movie with that quirky dolce-vita dust that distinguishes his own sensibility. At one point, he throws in an “Intermission” montage scored with Barry White’s version of “Volare.” It not only fits — it’s delightful.The Treasure of His Youth: The Photographs of Paolo Di PaoloNot rated. In English and Italian with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘One Fine Morning’ Review: The Moments That Make Up a Rich Life

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      Mia Hansen-Love directs Léa Seydoux in a delicate look at a mother, daughter and lover whose quotidian existence is instantly recognizable yet sublime.Sandra, the French single mother at the center of “One Fine Morning,” is always in motion, striding here and there, racing up and down, circling back and forth, and always with an intensity of purpose. With her head held high and her clear, unwavering gaze, a dowdy backpack strapped to her back, she doesn’t resemble one of pop culture’s fantasy gamines. She looks like the woman she is: a mother, daughter, friend, lover and worker who, in order to keep going, needs to maintain a steady course even when buffeted by strong winds.Sandra is an appealing, sympathetic character, a rich mix of complexity and familiarity that the director Mia Hansen-Love — and her star, the great Léa Seydoux — subtly reveal in fragments. Much happens in the story, often quietly. Yet while the movie occasionally surprises, what distinguishes it, giving it unexpected force, are less the kind of life-altering events that are generally regarded as milestones. Instead what matters here is the delicacy with which Hansen-Love puts those events into play with modest moments, how she reveals the sublime in the in-between spaces of ordinary existence.A widow, Sandra lives in a bright, modestly cramped Paris apartment with her cheerful young daughter, Linn (Camille Leban Martins). Much of Sandra’s time — her many comings and goings — involves her family, though mostly her father, Georg (an affecting Pascal Greggory). A philosopher, Georg has been diagnosed with Benson’s syndrome, a degenerative ailment that’s robbing him of his memory and sight. The movie opens with Sandra visiting her father, whose condition is so dire that she needs to guide him on how to let her inside. “Where is the …” he says, his voice trailing off. “The key?” she asks. “In the lock,” she continues from one side of a shut door that now feels like a wrenching divide.The story is simple and its telling generally restrained even as Sandra’s life begins to take a turn for the progressively more complicated. There are arguments and spilled tears, but Hansen-Love’s touch here is insistently discreet and light, which remains true even as the narrative begins to unobtrusively divide into separate tracks. One involves Sandra’s anguished relationship with Georg, while the other centers on a love affair that she begins with an old friend, Clément (Melvil Poupaud). Each relationship pushes and pulls at Sandra, who’s saying a slow goodbye to one love even as she’s finding a new one.Like Hansen-Love’s direction, Seydoux’s performance has a calm, understated quality that helps gives the movie a natural, comfortable flow. Sandra, who works as a translator, is almost always moving somewhere or toward something — her father, her daughter, her job — and because Hansen-Love likes medium and long shots, your attention tends to be concentrated on Sandra, her body and movements. You see her, but you specifically see her in the world, at her home, on the job, though mostly amid her family, friends and colleagues. You see, in other words, all the many pieces that make up a life.One of the pleasures of “One Fine Morning” is how it sneaks up on you emotionally. The scenes between Sandra and her father are expectedly poignant, true. Yet what makes them resonate is how Sandra resolutely maintains her focus and composure even in the face of mounting catastrophe, how she tries to help Georg navigate his rapidly fading world. She patiently helps him recover his lost words, holding it together even as his condition worsens and the family decides to move him into a nursing home. Despite some low-key family tension, most generated by her carelessly self-involved mother (an amusing Nicole Garcia), Sandra seems so unflappable that you sense (worry) that a part of her has shut down.The movie builds incrementally through scenes of varying dramatic and emotional intensity, some of which might seem like atmospheric filler (or just filler) in a different movie but here deepen the story. Again and again, Hansen-Love returns to the subject of memory, to the past and the ebb and flow of time. In one sequence, Sandra serves as a translator for an audience of American World War II veterans, mirror images of her father and grandmother, whom she later visits. When Sandra asks how she is, carefully taking a fragile, translucent arm, the older woman haltingly replies, “It’s a bit difficult at times … living.”In her pursuit of uninflected naturalism, Hansen-Love has sometimes been a more interesting than wholly successful filmmaker (her second feature, “The Father of My Children,” is lovely), but “One Fine Morning” is beautifully balanced, persuasive and moving. Much of what occurs is familiar, including Sandra’s affair, which Hansen-Love makes specific and different simply by where she lays the stress and how. The story’s ellipses and graceful structure are certainly admirable, but what elevates “One Fine Morning” is the texture of Sandra’s emotions, the revelation of her character, the hunger of her embrace, the wildness of her mouth, the stillness of her sated body, and the love that she gives and will movingly embrace once more.One Fine MorningRated R for some partial female nudity. In French, English and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘2/Duo’ Review: Relationship Rituals

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      This spare Japanese drama from 1997 gets a belated New York release.Regular film festival attendees might recognize the name of the Japanese director Nobuhiro Suwa (“H Story” and “A Perfect Couple”). But his 1997 feature, “2/Duo,” is only now receiving a New York release; it’s showing in tandem with a series at Metrograph on “Japanese indies from the punk years.” But little about “2/Duo” is particularly punk.Rather, the film is a spare relationship drama centered on a volatile couple, Kei (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and Yu (Eri Yu). Kei is a nonentity of a screen actor. (Near the beginning, he is shown practicing incidental dialogue before being informed that his scene has been cut.) Yu works at a clothing boutique. After Kei proposes, in a manner so abrupt that Yu thinks he’s rehearsing lines, their innocuous conversations increasingly turn into arguments.Given Kei’s profession, Suwa suggests there might be a performative aspect to the bickering. (Kei has a habit of phoning Yu, who asks where he is; he always says he doesn’t know.) As the film observes them in lengthy shots — occasionally interrupted by cuts to black — with Kei’s unmotivated outbursts sometimes breaking up interactions that drag or stall, their behavior looks suspiciously like the result of actors’ improvisation.It is not surprising to learn that a script was tossed and the performers developed their own lines. Similar techniques yielded brilliance from John Cassavetes, Jacques Rivette and Mike Leigh. But here they mostly result in characters who don’t appear fully realized. Whatever makes Kei and Yu tick, to the extent that the collaborative process ever fleshed it out, does not come across onscreen.2/DuoNot rated. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘To the End’ Review: Seeing Red While Left on Read

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      This documentary follows climate activists and politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as they lobby for the Green New Deal.The last image that flashes before the title card on the documentary “To the End” is video captured from inside a car as it drives through a forest engulfed in flames. The footage shows the inferno of California’s wildfire season, and more than any image that follows, this opening presents a stark view of the apocalyptic effects of global climate change.The film quickly moves from the ravages of the earth to conference halls and the chambers of Congress‌. Using interviews and vérité footage, the documentary follows activists and political strategists like Varshini Prakash from the Sunrise Movement and Alexandra Rojas from Justice Democrats, as well as the policy writer, Rhiana Gunn-Wright. These young people have made finding political solutions for climate change their life’s work. The first major milestone that they face is the midterm elections in 2018, which mark the election of the progressive candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is interviewed extensively throughout the documentary. The director Rachel Lears then follows her subjects through the 2020 presidential election, and up to the passing of the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.Through this time period, the activists and politicians depicted experience countless versions of no before they hear a yes on meaningful intervention into the climate crisis. They are often forced to compromise based on lack of support from voters, and lack of interest from politicians. Lears clearly feels earnest sympathy for her subjects and passion for their cause, but the film often replicates for viewers the same atmosphere of hopelessness that makes climate activism a hard sell for voters. Representative Ocasio-Cortez offers the best onscreen antidote to despair — she’s funny, a canny political strategy.To the EndRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Nr. 10’ Review: A Strange Joke, Too Dryly Delivered

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      The tenth feature from the Dutch auteur Alex van Warmerdam tracks one man’s strange journey into determining the origins of his birth.An actor is having an affair with the co-star of his latest play. The play’s director, who is the co-star’s husband, is suspicious. The actor’s daughter is secretly recording rehearsals on a video camera. Another man is tracking the actor’s every movement from a distance, and elsewhere, a sneering priest watches athletic competitions while receiving status reports on the actor from afar.The Dutch auteur Alex van Warmerdam’s strangely inert “Nr. 10,” in other words, has plenty of initial intrigue, an unvarnished tableau of human conflict and emotion that he constructs only to brazenly toss out the window. After the actor, Günter (Tom Dewispelaere), is exposed for his affair, his life begins to unravel. In the midst of this, Günter, who was adopted after being found in the woods as a child, encounters a stranger who whispers a word in his ear that dredges up vague memories and dreams, cast in a gauzy haze, of his birth mother.As Günter descends into the rabbit hole of his origins, the film morphs into something else entirely, in what feels almost like a practical joke, too dryly delivered, on van Warmerdam’s part. Most of the pleasure of “Nr. 10” comes in the building tension and titillating mystery of its setup, and the early moments as it begins to pull the rug out from under us.Yet, what the film ultimately becomes — a sci-fi mystery, a smirking satire of religion — doesn’t possess enough actual narrative meat, formal style, or wit to justify its structural gambit. It’s all a bit of a playful tease from van Warmerdam (its title is a plain declaration of this being his tenth film), but the punchline doesn’t add up.Nr. 10Not rated. In Dutch, German and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Hidden Letters’ Review: Sororal Secrets

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      This documentary about the enduring legacy of Nushu, an ancient, secret language developed by women in southern China, raises more questions than it successfully answers.Throughout history, women have survived the stifling strictures of patriarchy by using their own codes of communication — be it intergenerational secrets, whisper networks or gestures legible only to other women. Several centuries ago, in Jiangyong County in southern China, women went a step further, inventing an entire language that they used to write songs, poetry and furtive missives to one another.This fascinating language, Nushu, is the subject of the documentary “Hidden Letters,” though if you’re expecting an illuminating deep dive into its history, you’ll be disappointed. The director, Violet Du Feng, uses Nushu mostly as a cursory framing device for a broad portrait of gender relations in modern China, structured around the stories of two Nushu practitioners: a divorced museum guide, Xin Hu, and a soon-to-be-married musician, Simu Wu.The brief epigraph that opens the film, introducing Nushu, doesn’t mention when and in which region the language emerged, or how exactly it was developed. As the film goes on, haphazard scenes raise more questions without providing answers. Glimpses of business meetings about the need to commercialize Nushu lack any context on who stands to benefit from such a plan. We hear a tutor at a regressive “princess camp” for girls praise Nushu as an embodiment of the camp’s values, but it’s not clear how this applies to a script that was developed for sororal solidarity in the face of repression.“Hidden Letters” compels when it dwells in the everyday lives of its two leads, capturing the stray misogyny leveled at them by their partners, fathers, bosses, customers and even strangers. Like a totem from their ancestors, Nushu evidently helps these women reckon with their own lives and ambitions. But the film’s attempts to connect the past and the present feel too glib, lacking the force of historical detail.Hidden LettersNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Blanquita’ Review: The Victim’s Dilemma

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      Based on a sex scandal that sent waves throughout Chile in the early 2000s, the film looks at the meaning of victimhood and the impotence of black-and-white systems of justice.In the opening minutes of “Blanquita,” an adolescent boy, the victim of a child sex ring prone to violent breakdowns, is deemed psychologically unfit to testify against his abusers, terminating the case.Enter Blanca (Laura Lopéz), an 18-year-old single mother with a major chip on her shoulder. Living in a foster home for victims of sexual violence, Blanca is regularly surrounded by damaged, disadvantaged souls; her own life has been far from easy.Encouraged by Manuel (an excellent Alejandro Goic), the aggrieved priest who runs the foster home, Blanca claims to have been a victim of sex trafficking and charges a senior politician of imprisonment and rape — a single strand in a larger conspiracy that traces back to the Pinochet dictatorship. As the case heats up, Blanca and Manuel are ordered to back down — sometimes aggressively, as mysterious cronies terrorize the duo with intimidation tactics. Facts emerge that poke holes in her story.Based on a criminal case that sent waves throughout Chile in the early 2000s, “Blanquita” looks at the meaning of victimhood and the impotence of black-and-white systems of justice.Unfolding like a David Fincheresque procedural and doused in gloomy grays and blues, the film, by the writer and director Fernando Guzzoni, may seem provocative to some in the context of #MeToo and its popular mantra to “believe women.”That’s because Blanca, an unflappable figure who likes to party and slings profanities with machine-gun-like speed, doesn’t square with the stereotypical understanding of a victim. Her methods of righting wrongs aren’t traditional either.In one scene, a female politician offering Blanca support discusses the case with Manuel, noting that he clearly loves his foster children. He snaps, “Here, love means housing, infrastructure, psychologists, teachers” — not the conceptual kind she’s referring to. Blanca, like Manuel, has had enough with the empty platitudes and promises of the most powerful; interested in results, not moral righteousness, she dares to play them at their own game.BlanquitaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More