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    ‘Drift’ Review: Cynthia Erivo Keeps a Breakdown at Bay

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    Anthony Chen’s quiet character study follows a traumatized Liberian woman (Cynthia Erivo) on a Greek island who befriends an American tour guide (Alia Shawkat).“Drift,” a patient character study set on a craggy Greek island, proves a mesmerizing showcase for the actress Cynthia Erivo’s talents. She plays Jacqueline, a traumatized Liberian refugee whose cautious air is a gentle source of forward motion even as the film around her stalls.The story takes place during a season of vagrancy in Jacqueline’s life, tracking her efforts to find shelter and enough food to keep from fainting. She spends her days selling foot massages to sunbathers and her nights sleeping in sandy beach nooks, and is often pictured alone against the coastal scenery. Eventually, she meets Callie (Alia Shawkat), a chatterbox American tour guide whose hunger for friendship helps Jacqueline to open up.The director, Anthony Chen, is sensitive to Jacqueline’s struggles, and shows her mental state as a delicate equilibrium. The film features limited dialogue, and Erivo conveys feeling through body language, expression and small glances. What emerges is a portrait of a young woman using survival mode as a means to stave off an impending breakdown.“Drift” frames the source of Jacqueline’s psychological torment as a mystery, meting out cryptic flashbacks to the character’s back story in Liberia. Those scenes culminate in seemingly inevitable tragedy that the film treats as a grand reveal. This upheaval is informative, but the film is at its strongest when it lingers in present tense, exploring how Jacqueline’s strategically cultivated myopia keeps her alive.DriftNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Breaking Ice’ Review: Desire on the Border of China and North Korea

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      A love triangle takes shape among three 20-somethings in this melancholy film by Anthony Chen.In “The Breaking Ice,” a new film written and directed by Anthony Chen, three lost 20-somethings find one another in a liminal world. The movie takes place in Yanji, a Chinese city bordering North Korea, where two languages and cultures mix in the shadows of snow-blanketed mountains.In this icy town, Nana (Zhou Dongyu), a tour guide, crosses paths with Haofeng (Liu Haoran), a financier from Shanghai who is visiting for a wedding. She recognizes in him a melancholy that rhymes with her own, and invites him along to dinner with Xiao (Qu Chuxiao), a friend who works at a restaurant and pines after Nana.As the three down copious drinks, ride about on Xiao’s motorcycle and engage in youthful adventures, a love triangle takes shape — though it never results in predictable conflicts. It’s as if the cold, otherworldly solitude of Yanji sublimates the characters’ unrequited desires into a deeper yearning for connection. They are grateful to have each other, even if not in the ways they really want.The setting is rife with metaphoric potential, and it is here that Chen falters as a director. Haofeng’s depression is signaled by his habit of chewing on ice cubes and balancing dangerously on snowy cliffs; Nana repeatedly encounters reminders of her thwarted ice-skating career; and news reports of a North Korean defector appear throughout the film, provoking something in the restless Xiao.Deployed without subtlety, these motifs weigh down a film that, in its best moments, feels as light and refreshing as a cool breeze.The Breaking IceNot rated. In Mandarin and Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Year of the Everlasting Storm’ Review: Home Movies

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      Seven directors present their views of the year of pandemic lockdown, but most fall into predictable territory.You can’t blame filmmakers for keeping busy during lockdown. The omnibus film “The Year of the Everlasting Storm” assembles pandemic-made shorts from around the globe. But with just two decent segments out of seven, this anthology uncannily replicates the sensation of feeling trapped.The highlights come first and last. Iran’s Jafar Panahi, who has dealt with the restrictions of filming at home before (he made his extraordinary “This Is Not a Film” in his apartment, defying a moviemaking ban), delivers a sweet, minor document of a cautious visit by his mother, who arrives wearing what looks like full hazmat gear. She video chats with her granddaughter (spritzing the phone with sanitizer first) and negotiates an accord with Panahi’s pet iguana, Iggy.From Thailand, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”) closes out the feature with a nonnarrative short that intermingles the reverberations of tube lights and the buzzing of insects. Weerasethakul recorded the sound himself, and at a point the bugs’ fluttering seems to merge with scratchy spoken words.The other segments fall into more predictable territory. Anthony Chen (“Wet Season”), whose chapter is set in China, follows two parents and their young son as stir craziness sets in. In California, Malik Vitthal (“Body Cam”) mixes media, using camera phone footage and animation for a short documentary in which the coronavirus complicates an already complicated custody situation. The Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor (“Too Late to Die Young”) and the American David Lowery (“The Green Knight”) barely make impressions.And Laura Poitras (the Edward Snowden doc “Citizenfour”), working with the London-based research group Forensic Architecture, conjures a paranoia-suffused atmosphere as she shares highlights from an investigation into an Israeli cyberweapons manufacturer. But the brief running time does not allow for sufficient context.The Year of the Everlasting StormNot rated. In Persian, Mandarin, English, Spanish and Thai, with subtitles Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Wet Season’ Review: Teacher’s Pet

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      An immigrant schoolteacher finds solace in a relationship with one of her students in this suggestive drama from Singapore.A beacon of Southeast Asian prosperity and a haven for the ultrarich, Singapore represents a promised land for migrant workers. In “Wet Season,” a Malaysian schoolteacher named Ling (Yann Yann Yeo) seems to enjoy comfort and stability in her adopted country, yet life in Singapore gnaws away at her dignity. This conflict sets the stage for a reckoning and rebirth by poignant, if morally objectionable, means.When we first meet our heroine, a soft-spoken but resilient 40-something, she’s friendless and taken for granted by just about everyone, which the director Anthony Chen subtly links to her immigrant status. Ling teaches Chinese, but no one seems to take the subject seriously, while a haughty administrator lords his superiority over her by speaking exclusively in English.Struggling to conceive through in vitro fertilization, Ling privately anguishes as her businessman husband grows conspicuously absent. The couple’s relationship screams divorce, but the two stick it out — if only because Ling is her ailing father-in-law’s caretaker.Shot in melancholy blues and greys — and proceeding through Ling’s many small tragedies with cool, measured restraint — the film receives a jolt of teenage hormones with the entry of affable remedial student, Wei Lun (Koh Jia Ler), a competitive wushu practitioner obsessed with Jackie Chan. The two — a neglected child and childless woman — circumstantially hang out outside of class, as Chen patiently, if predictably, builds toward an abrupt and rather shocking consummation.Wei Lun comes off as one-dimensional in his brash, immature pursuit of Ling, yet their illicit relationship is portrayed in an anti-sensationalist light, blurring the lines between maternal and romantic love. Nevertheless “Wet Season” focuses less on the scandal than what the inevitable fallout can achieve for its floundering protagonist: a bittersweet second shot at life.Wet SeasonNot rated. In Mandarin, Hokkien and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. More