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      ‘Swan Song’ Review: Udo Kier, on His Own and Fabulous

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      In this drama from Todd Stephens, Kier plays an Ohio hairdresser who takes a long walk to do one last job — on a corpse.The German-born actor Udo Kier has one of those faces that can turn from angelic to demonic in an instant. His eyes are in part heavenly lapis lazuli, in part impenetrable quartz. He’s an invariably uncanny presence. Directors who have hired him more than once include Paul Morrissey, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Dario Argento, Lars von Trier, and S. Craig Zahler.These days, more often than not, he’s cast in character roles, rarely asked to carry a movie. For “Swan Song” though, he’s in almost every frame. One could say he’s a revelation, but longtime Udo partisans always knew he had this kind of performance in him. And as the title of this movie, written and directed by Todd Stephens, indicates, the role is age-appropriate for the 76 year old.Kier plays Pat, a former hairdresser now in a Sandusky, Ohio, nursing home. Back in his heyday, his flamboyance was mostly accepted in this straight community as a byproduct of his profession. In assisted living, he sneaks More cigarettes and obsessively folds paper napkins. Soon a lawyer arrives, asking him to do, as they say in crime movies, one last job: to style a dead ex-friend for her funeral.There’s some bad blood here: “Bury her with bad hair,” Pat responds, despite the promise of a $25,000 honorarium. But he soon rouses himself and takes a long walk into town. Memories and hallucinations accompany his painful, sentimental journey.Kier is unfailingly captivating in the film, which makes it all the more bothersome that the film itself doesn’t match him. A few plot inconsistencies seem like arbitrary land mines designed to trip Pat up, and the device of having certain characters speak wisdom from beyond the grave doesn’t land.Swan SongNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      A New Improv Theater Tries to Be the Anti-U.C.B. Is That a Trap, Too?

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      A diverse board of comics is trying to build an inclusive, accessible institution. But knowing what they don’t want to be may not be enough.When the Upright Citizens Brigade permanently closed its New York operations last year, the news hit Corin Wells like a death in the family. She moved to the city because of U.C.B., invested time and money, evolving from a student to a teacher and in the uncertain early months of the pandemic, the theater represented an anchor to the past and hope for the future. “When I got the email, I cried,” she said in a video call. “I didn’t have anything to go back to.”Then a sense of betrayal sank in, one shared by many improvisers, particularly since U.C.B. had held onto its theater in Los Angeles, where its founders are mostly based. “We were the bastard child,” Wells said. “Decisions were being made for us that did not serve us, almost like taxation without representation.”In recent years, U.C.B. had moved its popular Del Close Festival from New York to the West Coast, closed its East Village theater and exited its longtime space in Chelsea. But for Michael Hartney, the last artistic director of U.C.B. New York, the final straw came when the institution took out a Paycheck Protection Program loan worth hundreds of thousands of dollars before closing his theater. He felt “very gamed,” sparking an epiphany and a call to Wells to propose starting their own improv theater. She immediately agreed. They brought other U.C.B. veterans to form a board that met remotely every week last summer.“We wanted to reinvent what the improv theater looked like,” Wells said.The challenge: How do you hold onto the good parts of the Upright Citizens Brigade but avoid the flaws that made it so susceptible to collapse?Squirrel Comedy Theater is trying to reinvent how an improv institution is run.Gus Powell for The New York TimesOf all the art forms hurt during the pandemic, none was disrupted as much as improv comedy. Legacy institutions like Second City and iO in Chicago were sold after economic turmoil and a racial reckoning. In New York, the vanishing of U.C.B., a longtime juggernaut, left a vacuum that many are now competing to fill. It’s a moment of remarkable flux, turmoil and opportunity. Relative newcomers to New York like Asylum NYC (currently in U.C.B.’s old 26th Street home) and the Brooklyn Comedy Collective (which recently moved into a new space in Williamsburg), are both offering classes and putting on shows. And staples like the Pit and Magnet (which both scaled down in the pandemic) have started to reopen, producing shows and offering classes, virtually and in person.And what began with Hartney’s phone call is now the Squirrel Comedy Theater, the name a wry reference to the term for people who practice Scientology outside of the official organization. Even though the Squirrel was born in part from disenchantment, it still distinguishes itself by its faith in the aesthetic of the Upright Citizens Brigade. “The U.C.B. taught us a method of creating comedy that works,” Hartney said. “Those other theaters are amazing and valuable, but they don’t teach that. We feel like it has to keep going.”The Squirrel started as a residency in June at the Caveat, a theater on the Lower East Side. Hartney and his board, which includes the improvisers Lou Gonzalez, Patrick Keene, Maritza Montañez and Alex Song-Xia, are looking at real-estate options.The Squirrel has started a residency at the Caveat theater on the Lower East Side.Gus Powell for The New York TimesThe board members quickly came to a consensus on principles that would put them in contrast with their former home. Squirrel would be nonprofit (which until recently was very unusual for improv theaters), pay onstage talent (U.C.B. did not), and in an effort to remove barriers of entry, open classes to any student, regardless of level. Because it’s nonprofit, the Squirrel’s long-term sustainability may depend not just on ticket sales and class fees, but on its ability to raise money, too.Its mission statement emphasizes a commitment to diversity, inclusion and representation. U.C.B. also claimed to value inclusion, instituting a diversity scholarship, but that often didn’t translate to the stage. In June 2020, it came under considerable criticism for its diversity efforts, leading its founders to announce they were giving power to a “board of diverse individuals.”So how will Squirrel be different?Hartney and Wells say it starts with leadership. In contrast to the U.C.B.’s founders — Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh — this board includes no straight white men or women and are majority Black, Indigenous or people of color. Hartney described himself as “a de facto artistic director,” which he said he was very hesitant about because of the appearance of continuity, but added that because of his experience, others insisted. Whereas programming decisions at U.C.B. were made by himself alone, now the group decides.When asked if they would program a troupe like the Stepfathers, a popular, talent-rich company that ran at U.C.B. for many years with performers like Zach Woods and Chris Gethard, he shakes his head: “I’m not excited about an all-white weekend team.”Michael Hartney, in red, is the de facto artistic director, a job he held at U.C.B.Gus Powell for The New York TimesOn Sunday, the Squirrel did premiere a weekly show with a diverse cast, Raaaatscraps, that was hosted by two former members of the Stepfathers, Connor Ratliff and Shannon O’Neill, also veterans of the most famous U.C.B. show, Asssscat. Without mentioning the old theater, O’Neill went onstage and described the show as a “renamed, rebranded” version of Asssscat, and it relied on the same format: A monologue by a surprise guest (Janeane Garofalo this time) inspires a long-form improv.How the Squirrel navigates its relationship to the U.C.B. is going to be an evolving process that Wells said will depend to some degree on trial and error: “What’s going to sell tickets: An old U.C.B. team with a recognizable name or a new group of artists who will bring their friends? “It’s a hard balance,” she said, adding that they need to do both. “Always be testing.”But one guiding principal is a skepticism of permanence, of shows that run indefinitely, even of founders who stay too long. “We designed this to be taken over,” said Hartney, who doesn’t see himself at this job in 10 years. “We want the next people to address the changing needs of this community.”U.C.B. built its reputation in part as an incubator of stars like Kate McKinnon, Ilana Glazer and Donald Glover, and the Squirrel wants to be a competitive environment for ambitious comics as well as a warm, welcoming community. Hartney recognizes that there can be a tension. Of the board members, “I am probably the one most interested in hosting an ‘S.N.L.’ showcase,” he said.Wells is, too. It will surely help the Squirrel get attention from people in comedy that last week, Wells was named one of the new faces at Just For Laughs, the industry festival. It’s an irony not lost on her that building a theater in opposition to U.C.B. can tie you to it. “In a perfect world, we could separate ourselves,” she said, but in every conversation they’ve had, U.C.B. “has always been a part. I think to be able to fix a system that U.C.B. set in place, you kind of had to live in it.” More

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      After Uproar, Matt Damon Tries to Clarify Comments on Anti-Gay Slur

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      The actor was recently quoted as saying that he had decided to “retire” the word his daughter calls the “f-slur” after she objected to a joke he made.Facing a backlash after he was quoted saying he had recently decided to “retire” a homophobic slur, the actor Matt Damon said in a statement on Monday that “I do not use slurs of any kind.”The statement followed an interview published this week by The Sunday Times in which Mr. Damon recounted a conversation with his daughter during which he “made a joke” that moved her to write him an essay on the historical harm of what she calls “the ‘f-slur for a homosexual.’”“She went to her room and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous,” Mr. Damon said, according to The Sunday Times, a British newspaper. “I said, ‘I retire the f-slur!’ I understood.”In the statement, which was obtained by Variety, Mr. Damon said that he had never “called anyone” the word in his “personal life” and that he understood why his framing in the interview “led many to assume the worst.”He added that in the conversation with his daughter, he had recalled that as a child growing up in Boston he had heard the slur being used on the street “before I knew what it even referred to.”“I explained that that word was used constantly and casually and was even a line of dialogue in a movie of mine as recently as 2003; she in turn expressed incredulity that there could ever have been a time where that word was used unthinkingly,” Mr. Damon said in the statement. “To my admiration and pride, she was extremely articulate about the extent to which that word would have been painful to someone in the LGBTQ+ community regardless of how culturally normalized it was. I not only agreed with her but thrilled at her passion, values and desire for social justice.”“This conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening,” he continued. “I do not use slurs of any kind.”In the Sunday Times interview, Mr. Damon seemed to suggest that the word had come up in a joke.“The word that my daughter calls the ‘f-slur for a homosexual’ was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application,” Mr. Damon said in the interview. “I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter. She left the table. I said, ‘Come on, that’s a joke! I say it in the movie “Stuck on You”!’”He did not specify in the interview which of his daughters the interaction happened with.Many on social media were unimpressed by Mr. Damon’s story, saying that he should have known better years — not months — ago. Some also wondered why Mr. Damon shared the story in the first place.Charlotte Clymer, a former Human Rights Campaign press secretary, said on Twitter that although she understood the sentiment of the story, “This is like 10+ years ago kinda stuff. And he knows better.”This is not the first time that Mr. Damon has courted controversy with comments about L.G.B.T.Q. people.In 2015, he told The Guardian that in acting, it was key that “people shouldn’t know anything about your sexuality because that’s one of the mysteries that you should be able to play,” adding that he imagined “it must be really hard” for gay actors to be public about their sexuality. On The Ellen Show, Mr. Damon defended the remarks, saying that “actors are more effective when they’re a mystery.”In his statement on Monday, the actor acknowledged that “open hostility” against L.G.B.T.Q. people was not uncommon.“To be as clear as I can be, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community,” he said. More

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      Zazie Beetz Grew Up With Shel Silverstein and Nina Simone

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      The “Atlanta” actress talks about her latest film, “Nine Days,” her desire to become a doula, her love affair with all things French, and how Debussy and Lianne La Havas got her through some difficult times.In “Nine Days,” Zazie Beetz plays Emma, an unborn soul in an otherworldly limbo interviewing to inhabit a human body on Earth, or else vanish into oblivion. But unlike the other candidates in Edson Oda’s supernatural drama, Emma is seemingly unconcerned — she shows up late for her first appointment — with winning over Will (Winston Duke), who will decide her fate. Instead, she approaches the exercises to test her fitness with a guilelessness that at first confounds him — but that ultimately impels him to confront his own tumultuous existence.“I think that Emma is in some way what we all would hope to be in our purest sense of childhood wonder,” Beetz, who is German American, said. “She’s also somebody who’s very present. She might not have the opportunity to live, but there is something that is a semblance of life right there with her right now.”Conversing with Beetz, who speaks with an almost wide-eyed enthusiasm, you get the feeling that her onscreen outlook may not be too far from her real one.Still, the woman has range. An Emmy nominee for the role of Van, who shares a daughter with Earn (Donald Glover), in FX’s “Atlanta,” she will soon star alongside Jonathan Majors and Idris Elba in Jeymes Samuel’s western “The Harder They Fall,” and Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock in David Leitch’s assassin thriller “Bullet Train.”Beetz was taking a break from shooting the new seasons of “Atlanta” — she revealed no plot details, other than mentioning a foray to Paris, a city that made her list of cultural essentials — when she called from the Minnesota family home of her fiancé, the actor David Rysdahl (who also appears in “Nine Days”). These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy For a very long time after school, I would come home and listen to that every day as my wind-down. It was one of the pieces of music that guided me through my first experiences with anxiety and mood issues. And to this day I think of it as this meditation that guided me through one of my first emotionally very difficult times.2. Shel Silverstein As a child, I adored Shel Silverstein. I had many of his poetry books that I read over and over and over again. He had a very child-friendly playfulness in his work that also reflected very seriously on how we should engage with the world, a body of work that was philosophical and thoughtful and not condescending. It’s important to not condescend to children.3. “Fruits” by Shoichi Aoki My dad, when I was 11 or so, he gave me this book, just randomly came home with it one day. It’s photographs, one after another, of Japanese people of all ages dressed in Harajuku street fashion. It changed my point of view on how I could dress myself. My parents tell me from when I was very young, I was very clear that I wanted to clothe myself. And I’m still this way. I’ve always been like, “How do I create my own thing?” And “Fruits” — the colors and the combinations, and no rules around how you can express yourself — was positive and joyful and so unique. The next day, I came to school in this rainbow outfit. And then for years I was known as the Rainbow Girl.4. Doodling My entire life, all of my notebooks in school, constantly, constantly doodling, just an endless doodle of doodles. I couldn’t sit still without having a piece of paper and a pen with me. Even in note-taking, I was always very interested in making my notes look aesthetically pleasing. I think this is also partially a reason I’m still very analog. I can’t have an electronic planner.5. Nina Simone One of the first songs I consciously realized was hers that had a very profound impact on me was “Four Women.” I remember hearing that for the first time and I was dancing to it. It’s not just about music and it’s not just about sound. It is about truth. You feel her pain and her human self. That is also femininity and strength in womanhood and her unapologetic approach to her blackness and what she represented during her time. Of course, there are other artists that do a similar thing. But I don’t think Nina Simone makes it pretty, and that draws me in.6. “Zazie dans le Métro” My namesake is “Zazie dans le Métro,” which is a French book by Raymond Queneau, and [Louis Malle] made a movie of that. I grew up watching this movie. This film is about Paris relatively soon after World War II. The story is about a 10-year-old girl named Zazie who visits her uncle and her aunt in Paris for the weekend, and shenanigans ensue. Even though I would watch the German version, I always felt like I was her and this was me. I felt driven to be able to read my namesake and watch the film in its original language. So I was a French major in college and then I lived in Paris for a year.7. “Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth” I am obsessed with midwifery, to the point where I looked into school. I wanted to be a doula. A few years ago, David gifted me for Christmas this book because I am so interested in this transition and in this complete surrender of power in a way. I think women are looking death squarely in the eye as you give birth to a little being who is still, in my point of view, attached to the universe. I’ve never given birth, so maybe I’m romanticizing it all, and it’s terrible. But I want to help women feel empowered on their journey.8. Knitting When I was 8, my mom taught me very basic stitches. For a long time I could knit in one style: rectangle. Then four years ago, I picked it up in a serious way. I devoured videos on YouTube and bought all these books and taught myself a craft and a trade. And now I’m like: “I’ve learned a skill. I can make things that are useful to people.” I’ve found great pride in that.9. Period Clothing One of my most transformative moments in acting is when I put the costume on. It informs the character so much. It changes how they move, it changes how they engage with the world and who they are. I am enamored with the Jane Austen world. One of my favorite movies is “Marie Antoinette” by Sofia Coppola. And a huge part of that is the costuming and the aesthetic of it all. On red carpets, my inspiration for hair is honestly Marie Antoinette, and in my head that’s what my hair looks like — though obviously not what it looks like in real life.10. Lianne La Havas I discovered her when I was in college, and I felt this immediate kinship. She’s around the same age as me. She is also mixed race and her hair was similar to mine. At the time, the natural hair movement in the U.S. was just getting its wings, and I identified so much with how she looked. Each album she comes out with, she’s grown up more, and I’ve grown up in this same way. I feel this quiet friend who I’m like, “I know you.” More

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      ‘Pray Away’ Review: Atoning for an Anti-Gay Stance

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      In this documentary, people who had promoted the idea that sexual orientation could be changed express their regrets.The Netflix documentary “Pray Away” profiles several people who, in the public sphere and in the context of Christianity-cloaked “conversion therapy,” peddled the idea that homosexuality could be changed, and who now regret the suffering they caused. It also features one activist, Jeffrey McCall, who identifies as previously transgender and still pushes the ideas the others believed in.The director Kristine Stolakis devotes much of the film to the past lives the members of the first group have disavowed. Yvette Cantu Schneider speaks of how she went to Washington, D.C., in the 1990s and became a savvy spokeswoman for the Family Research Council, the right-wing Christian organization. Michael Bussee, a founder of Exodus International, considered one of the major organizations that preached that sexual orientation could be changed, was both an early promoter and an early skeptic.The harms conversion therapy causes, and the tactics it uses, aren’t news at this point, and “Pray Away” is more interesting when it focuses on how most of its subjects eventually embraced gay and bisexual identities despite having formerly been so public in their homophobia. Some shifts weren’t long ago.Randy Thomas says that after seeing the protests that followed the passage of Proposition 8, the ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California (but was ultimately overturned), “a voice inside me said, ‘How could you do that to your own people?’” Julie Rodgers describes appearing on TV opposite conversion therapy survivors and feeling like she was “sitting on the wrong side of the circle.” In 2013, The New York Times quoted her as saying she would stay single rather than date women. The movie follows her as she prepares to marry her fiancée.Pray AwayRated PG-13. Discussions of sex-related matters. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Marsha Mason’s ‘New York Loft in a Hayfield’

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      After more than two decades in New Mexico, the actress and director is back on the East Coast, with new digs and a renewed focus on the theater.From the front, Marsha Mason’s house in Washington, Conn., is modest as can be — low slung, with small windows — no reason to stop and covetously gawk.“It looks very unassuming,” said the similarly unassuming Ms. Mason, 79, a four-time Oscar nominee (including for 1973’s “Cinderella Liberty” and 1977’s “The Goodbye Girl”), who plays Arlene on the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie,” now in production for its final season.But stroll around to the back, and it’s a different story altogether: an expanse of floor-to-ceiling glass framed in gray cedar, and a terrace with a seating and dining area that runs the width of the rectilinear structure, making the great outdoors feel part and parcel of the great indoors (and vice versa).Think of the house and the eight-acre setting as Ms. Mason’s Act Three.After more than two decades in Abiquiu, N.M., where she built a 7,000-square-foot house and an art barn, and started a business that specialized in organic medicinal herbs, Ms. Mason was eager to downsize and refocus her attention on theater work — in particular, directing.Marsha Mason, a four-time Oscar nominee and two-time Golden Globe winner, lives in a custom-built contemporary house in Washington, Conn. Much of the furniture in the house comes from her previous residences. Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesMarsha Mason, 79Occupation: Actor and directorSense of direction: “I feel that getting more serious as a theater director came out of building houses. It’s all about preproduction.”To be sure, she has lovely memories and no regrets.“When I moved to New Mexico, the movie business was changing. It was getting very youth-oriented, and roles weren’t coming as much as before,” she said. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. In some ways, I was having a little bit of an identity crisis. What Abiquiu was about was me maturing and becoming a full-blown human being, in that I had my show-business work and a lot of other, different work.“It was an interesting place during all those years,” she added. “Gene Hackman lived there while I was there. Jane Fonda lived there. And my friend Shirley MacLaine lived up a mountain across the road. She’d come down to my house for Christmas dinner on a golf cart dressed as Santa.”“I knew I wanted this house to have a great room,” she said.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesIn 2014, Ms. Mason sold the 247-acre property and returned to the New York area, where she had typically owned or rented an apartment even after moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s with her second husband, the playwright Neil Simon. (The marriage ended in 1983.)This time, she decided to hang her hat in western Connecticut, where she had friends in the area. Briefly under consideration was a large house with many bedrooms, many nooks and many crannies. “Then I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to have something of that size again,’” Ms. Mason recalled. “But I asked the owners if they would sell the hayfield that was attached to the house, and they agreed.”It took a while to conceptualize this, the fourth home she would be building from scratch. (The others were in New Mexico and Los Angeles.) But Ms. Mason was clear on certain points long before the heavy machinery rolled in: She wanted it to be all on one floor and of manageable dimensions. She wanted solar panels (but didn’t want to see them), radiant heat, a great room, a “really nice bathroom” and a guest room on the opposite side of the house from her own quarters.“The design grew out of all that,” Ms. Mason said of the resulting 2,600-square-foot contemporary, which she is fond of characterizing as a “New York loft in a hayfield.”A photo of Ms. Mason and her friend Paul Newman hangs in the laundry room. The two bonded over their love of car-racing.Tony Cenicola/The New York Times“I find that, in general, it’s the details that set things apart — what kind of door you choose or what kind of sconce,” she said, offering the example of the bright red bookcase that on one side houses a television screen and, on the other, serves as gallery space for several paintings. “I knew I wanted to do certain things like that.”The house is a study in contrasts: plain exterior and — thanks to a trove of furniture and art from around the world and from various stages of her life and career — vibrant, eclectic interior. Here, a 19th-century Spanish chair; there, a sofa from Design Within Reach. Over there, a country French bureau.Twenty-five years ago, when Ms. Mason was being honored at a film festival in Egypt, she did some shopping and brought back a game table with parquetry inlay and mosaic chairs. Those made their way from New Mexico to Connecticut. A pair of spindle chairs with rush seats and leather cushions were bought for the Bel-Air house that she shared with Mr. Simon. After the couple split, she kept the chairs, which have since been outfitted with crushed-velvet pillows.The Tulip dining table and chairs were bought post-divorce when she moved into a co-op on Central Park West. They’re now in a corner keeping company with a vivid abstract and a painted wood sculpture of a mother and child that was part of the décor during her years with Mr. Simon.Three wood female figures from Thailand and a wooden head of a merry-faced king from one of Ms. Mason’s trips to India are displayed atop the Stûv fireplace that dominates the great room. A Ganesh statue sits sentry in the hall outside her bedroom.Ms. Mason bought the game table and chairs in Egypt 25 years ago, when she was being honored at a film festival.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesBehind the antique rosewood desk in the office are shelves with assorted trophies, among them two Golden Globes. And perhaps because distraction is always welcome when you’re folding towels and sheets, a wall in the laundry room is given over to framed award citations and photographs of Ms. Mason’s stepdaughters, of her with her father, and of her with Paul Newman. The two became fast friends through their shared passion for auto racing. “He eventually invited me to Lime Rock, here in Connecticut, his home track, and I drove one of his GTs,” she recalled.“The sink where I wash up after I do my gardening is here in the laundry room,” Ms. Mason said. “So I see these pictures every day.”Moving into the house necessitated winnowing, she said. Many things were jettisoned or left behind for the new owner in Abiquiu.“This place,” she added, “reflects my sense of aging and ‘what do you need?’ not ‘what do you want?’ It’s about a few nice pieces as opposed to a lot of nice pieces — the whole psyche of simplifying.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      Stream These Five International Films Now

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      This month’s picks include a deadpan Moroccan comedy, a Polish film about an influencer, a nail-biting Indian crime thriller and more.In the age of streaming, the earth is flat — screen-size, with travel to faraway destinations only a monthly subscription and a click away. We’ve journeyed through the world of options and chosen the best new international movies for you to watch.‘The Unknown Saint’Stream it on Netflix.In the prologue of Alaa Eddine Aljem’s charming comedy, a robber-on-the-run hides a bag of cash in the middle of the Moroccan desert right before he’s picked up by the cops. When he returns after some years in prison, he finds that there’s now a mausoleum dedicated to “The Unknown Saint” on top of his loot, and an entire village around it.Milking the quirks of small-town life and the strange workings of faith and superstition, “The Unknown Saint” embroils a cast of droll, deadpan characters in amusing high jinks. There’s the thief and his dolt of a sidekick, ironically nicknamed “the Brain”; a newly arrived doctor faced with a daily parade of petty hypochondriacs; and a barber who doubles as a D.I.Y. dentist.Undergirding the film’s playful satire is a sincere regard for the things that often fuel belief: survival, sustenance, hope. We soon learn that the villagers are migrants from a neighboring drought-stricken town, where a lone farmer still prays for rain, while the explosions from a nearby construction project signal fast-approaching change, though they’re sometimes mistaken for signs from God. Rich with such revelatory details, “The Unknown Saint” turns its slight, sketch-like premise into a deceptively profound parable.‘Sweat’Stream it on Mubi.That life on social media can be lonely and shallow is not a revelation, but in “Sweat,” a behind-the-screens glimpse into the life of a Polish fitness influencer, the director Magnus von Horn pushes past moralistic presumptions to get at the heady emotional rush of the digital realm. Right from the first scene, a bootcamp-style workout session at a mall, the camera plunges us deep into the weird intimacies of internet celebrity, staying close to Sylwia (Magdalena Kolesnik) as her trainees swarm around her with almost religious fervor.Like the hundreds of savvy self-marketers who have built empires on Instagram, Sylwia seemingly subsumes every aspect of her life — her meals, her shopping, her choice of taking the stairs instead of the elevator — into her brand. Is she conning her fans or herself? “Sweat” poses this not as a judgment but as a genuine existential question. A particularly candid post muddies things even further as fans eager to overshare accost Sylwia in public spaces, while a stalker parks himself outside her apartment.These developments take some dark turns, but “Sweat” is more a character study than a drama, following Sylwia closely as she goes through her daily routines. The camera remains trained on Kolesnik’s face, which masterfully conveys the currents of emotion that ripple under a stoic, camera-ready surface.‘Nayattu’Stream it on Netflix.“Nayattu” unfurls a labyrinthine cat-and-mouse chase amid the venal world of police and politicians in the South Indian state of Kerala. Three small-time cops are caught up in a road accident that results in the death of a man from a lower-caste community, and with the local elections just around the corner, the incumbent chief minister demands that the unlucky officers be made scapegoats. As they flee across the state, other police on their tail, the rot of systemic corruption slowly reveals its horrifying depths.Even with its barreling, twist-a-minute narrative, the film abounds in dense, scene-setting detail — such as the tug-of-war contest that opens the film. The thrilling sequence foreshadows the macho posturing and one-upmanship that color this world. And a later moment pithily drives home the chasm between the vested interests of the powers-that-be and the needs of the people they serve: When the cops-on-the-run suggest to a farmer involved in a raucous water dispute that the police might be of help, he replies: “The police will ask for documents, witnesses, evidence. All we need is some water.”‘Air Conditioner’Stream it on Mubi.This magical-realist mystery from Angola is resounding proof that to make truly inspired cinema, all you need is resourcefulness and a vision. A marvel of low-budget world-building, the film unfolds in a sweltering Luanda struck by a most unusual techno-disaster: Air-conditioners keep falling from buildings, causing injuries and worsening the already unbearable heat wave.On the radio, we hear politicians make grand statements about import bans and trade wars, while on the ground, the poorest of the poor are forced to bear the brunt of the problem. Two such folks, the security guard Matacedo and the maid Zezinha, are tasked with fixing a wealthy apartment owner’s air-conditioner. Their quest leads them into the ramshackle shop of an eccentric electrician — a kind of Luandan Doc Brown — whose crazy experiments seem to summon the ghosts and lost memories of Angola’s civil war.But don’t go into “Air Conditioner” expecting clear answers and resolutions. Set to a transcendent jazz score, the film moves unpredictably between fantasy and gritty reality, summoning historical trauma and contemporary malaise through a séance of melding moods, colors and sounds.‘Lina From Lima’Stream it on HBO Max.“Lina From Lima” is the rare film about immigrant labor that is as attuned to the vibrant inner lives of workers as it is to their hardships. Maria Paz González’s exuberant indie follows a Peruvian maid, Lina (Magaly Solier), who works for an affluent family in Chile. As Christmas approaches, Lina tries to scrape together enough money to buy presents for her teenage son, who seems to be drifting away from her in their WhatsApp and video calls. Lina burns with yearning — for her son, for home, for love, sometimes just for sex — and finds her escape in glamorous musical daydreams in which she pictures herself as a synchronized swimmer, a cabaret dancer, even Our Lady of Sorrows.Real life has its own adventures, too, mostly with the other immigrant workers Lina encounters at her hostel and at work, and sometimes invites for hookups on the plastic-covered beds of her employer’s swanky, in-construction house. These moments of breezy comedy don’t blunt the blow of Lina’s disappointments, as when she realizes she can’t afford her trip home for Christmas. Powered by Solier’s enthralling, openhearted performance, Lina emerges as a woman who contains multitudes even as she aches for more. More

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      From ‘Call My Agent!’ to Hollywood Career

      by

      The French series was a pandemic hit in the United States. And now its star, Camille Cottin, is emerging to find herself in demand.At some point during the pandemic, perhaps between the debut of “Ted Lasso” last August and “Bridgerton” in December, you may have happened upon Netflix’s French import “Call My Agent!” (“Dix Pour Cent” in French), a sweet yet absurd sendup of the global entertainment complex as seen through the lens of a Parisian talent agency where the agents are mostly good-hearted lovers of cinema at the beck and call of their highly demanding clients.If so, you were one of millions who discovered Camille Cottin, the French actress who played Andrea Martel, the hard-nosed striver with the piercing green eyes who is trying to keep her agency afloat while her personal life falls apart.The show was one of the few joys of the pandemic, one that prompted viewers to sample additional international content like “Lupin” and “Money Heist,” overcoming “the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles” that the “Parasite” director, Bong Joon Ho, referred to during his 2020 Golden Globes speech. The success of “Call My Agent!” has prompted spinoffs in Britain, Quebec and Turkey. And there is now talk of a stand-alone movie that will see Andrea Martel headed to New York.But Cottin, 42, whose background includes theater and sketch comedy, completely missed the phenomenon that “Call My Agent!” became in the United States while she was in lockdown in Paris with her husband and two young children. Turns out, she was just as miserable as the rest of us.“I was quite worried in the pandemic and I was a bit paralyzed,” Cottin said in English during a recent video call. “I wanted to be creative, but I wasn’t at all. Also I had the feeling like I’m never going to work again. I was scared.”“Now you tell me during the pandemic everybody watched ‘Call My Agent!’ I was miles away, imagining that I was buried alive,” she added with a grim laugh.Cottin as a talent rep in Paris in “Call My Agent!” with Grégory Montel, left, and Assad Bouab.Christophe Brachet/NetflixCottin was conducting this interview in a car on her way home from a costume fitting for the Cannes Film Festival. (No “Call My Agent!” fans, the fitting did not involve a fussy feathered gown like the one Juliette Binoche awkwardly donned at the end of Season 2.) Cottin’s new film “Stillwater,” in which she plays Virginie, a working actress and single mother who guides Matt Damon’s remorseful father through an ill-conceived journey in Marseilles, has just debuted to mostly positive reviews. Manohla Dargis called her “electric” in The New York Times. Vanity Fair called her performance “bright and winsome.”But this moment in the car was far less glamorous. Her 6-year-old daughter was fast asleep, head in mom’s lap. And when the car stopped, I could see the multitasking Cottin at work, scooping up her groggy child, a poof of pink taffeta in one arm, her video call still on in the other, a bright Parisian sky in the background. She paused for a moment to put her daughter to bed before continuing the conversation on the floor of her bathroom, a compromise she made with her child, who asked her not to stray too far. Then her husband, Benjamin, came home. “The father is here!” she exclaimed. “Virginie would have had to handle that situation alone.”After a small role in the 2016 “Allied,” starring Brad Pitt, “Stillwater” represents Cottin’s biggest introduction yet to American audiences. It just may be the role that lets her officially cross over from obscure French actress to global sensation. Later this year she will star opposite Lady Gaga and Adam Driver in Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci,” playing Paola Franchi, the girlfriend of Maurizio Gucci (Driver). And she’s set to reprise her role as Hélène, a high-ranking member of the assassin organization the Twelve, in BBC’s “Killing Eve.”The international community awakened to Cottin’s charms far before all of us in the United States were stuck at home. When “Call My Agent!” showed up on British television, Cottin discovered the show had found an audience across the English Channel. It was 2019, and she was attending a casting director festival in Kilkenny, Ireland, with her own French agent. Suddenly she was the center of attention.“They were like, ‘Oh could I make a selfie with you?,’ and I was like, ‘What? You’re the James Bond casting director,’” she said, laughing.That trip and another to London led to her casting in “Gucci” and to her meeting the producer of “Killing Eve.”Cottin said she was much less assured than her agent character: “If I have to make a choice, it will take me too long, always too long. And I will ask everybody his opinion about it.”Tania Franco Klein for The New York TimesYet “Call My Agent!” had no bearing on the “Stillwater” director Tom McCarthy’s decision to cast Cottin. He hadn’t yet seen the show when he met her. Rather, he hired her based on an audition that he said astonished him and his co-writers, Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré.“You kind of can’t keep your eyes off her when she is on the screen,” he said in a recent interview from France. “She’s a bit scattered, a bit all over the place. She’s funny, she’s self-deprecating, she’s empathetic. She’s tough. She’s straightforward. And I feel like after watching her for a year and a half in the edit room, every moment with her is very lived.”To Cottin, Virginie, who is open and nurturing and always looking for something to fix (like Damon’s Oklahoman roughneck), is a near facsimile of herself.“Virginie is the closest character I’ve had to play to me,” she said even though it’s one of the few roles she’s played in English. “We have the same energy. And until now, I’ve mostly been counted for women with a lot of more tension. A bit more in control.”There is a disarming ease to Cottin that is evident on initial introduction and belies the icy veneer of her “Call My Agent!” character. She doesn’t take herself too seriously — McCarthy calls her “goofy” — and you realize quickly how great her potential for comedy is. It’s a skill she exhibited in her most well-known French role, playing the lead in the prank TV show “Connasse,” which means “bitch” in her native tongue. Her exploits included scaling Kensington Palace in search of an introduction to Prince Harry.Cottin with Matt Damon and Lilou Siauvaud in “Stillwater.” She won the role on the strength of her audition. The director hadn’t seen “Call My Agent!”Jessica Forde/Focus FeaturesA “Call My Agent!” producer, Dominique Besnehard, described Cottin as “the pretty, biting, bold one” who in the role of Andrea “is very good at going from harshness to fragility.”To Cottin, it’s a character she both admires and understands, yet still finds at a remove from her own personality.“I have much less assurance than Andrea. She is more self-confident and strategic and good at making decisions,” she said. “If I have to make a choice, it will take me too long, always too long. And I will ask everybody his opinion about it.”Cottin is decidedly not uncertain about her career, but as an actress in her 40s she is more aware that the highs she’s experiencing today may not predict the highs she will see in her future.“Maybe if I was 20, I would think, ‘Oh my God, maybe I’m going to have an Oscar,’” she said, laughing, in a mocking American accent. “It’s never vertical. You can make a step, you can consider that you’ve been up and then suddenly, you can go down. Nothing is a straight line. I see these projects as trips, great trips. I can’t say, ‘Oh, now that I’ve done that I can tell you what’s coming next,’ because I don’t know. And it doesn’t mean that it will happen again.”Besnehard suggested she could have a career like Binoche, taking roles both in France and the United States. “I hope the American people would not monopolize her,” he said.McCarthy sees a much clearer trajectory.“I predict great things for Cami and not just because of our movie, which I think she’s sensational in but it’s just her time,” he said. “You can feel it when someone’s earned a moment in their career, and put in the work, and they’re ready to take control of it.” More