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    ‘The Almond and the Seahorse’ Review: Like Sand Through an Hourglass

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    In this drama, two couples grapple with how their relationships are changed through a partner’s brain injuries.“The Almond and the Seahorse” gets its title from two limbic structures inside the brain: the amygdala and the hippocampus, each shaped like their nickname, which team up to store memories. “It is remarkable what that kilo-and-a-half blob at the top of your neck files away,” a neuropsychologist (Meera Syal) says to a frazzled archaeologist named Sarah (Rebel Wilson) whose husband, Joe (Celyn Jones), has a tumor that causes his cerebral cache to continually delete every minute or so. When it happens, the piano score curdles, the camera swirls in circles, or the film cuts to waves smoothing the sandy creases on a beach — a poetic flourish more impactful than the film’s resolution which is as artificially rosy as a bag of seaside taffy.This debut feature from the directors Tom Stern (a longtime cinematographer for Clint Eastwood) and Jones (who originated the role of Joe onstage, and now adapts the play with its author Kaite O’Reilly) plays out like an educational film strip. Vignettes of Sarah and Joe’s lightly comic struggles are spliced alongside the darker grievances of the couple Toni (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Gwen (Trine Dyrholm), the latter of whom suffered a traumatic brain injury 15 years ago and gasps in horror every time she’s surprised by her partner’s wrinkles.Smartly, Joe and Gwen are more petulant than pitiful. (They’d both be happier not being reminded of all they’ve forgotten.) If the audience, too, loses track of where things are trudging, the original soundtrack by Gruff Rhys constantly chimes in to describe the plot, crooning, “I want my old life back.” Only when Sarah and Toni meet for the first time, an hour in, does the film allow a genuine conversation — and, gratefully, a moment of recognition.The Almond and the SeahorseNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Jane by Charlotte’ Review: A Mother-Daughter Duet

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      Charlotte Gainsbourg makes her directorial debut with an elusive portrait of her mother, the French-English star Jane Birkin, at age 74.“Jane by Charlotte,” the directorial debut of the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg (“Antichrist”), is a meandering and elusive documentary portrait of Gainsbourg’s mother, Jane Birkin. An “It” girl of the 1960s and ’70s, Birkin is known for starring in risqué art-house films (like “Blow-Up”), and for her romance with Serge Gainsbourg, with whom she collaborated on a hit album before starting her solo singing career.Gainsbourg pays homage to Agnès Varda’s 1988 docudrama, “Jane B. par Agnès V.,” which captures Birkin, age 40, considering her status as a muse and icon. “Jane by Charlotte” sees Birkin at 74 and picks up on fixations of hers apparent in that earlier film — her love of bulldogs, photographs and motherhood — as well as her ideas about femininity.In contrast to Varda’s metanarrative approach, Gainsbourg’s is straightforward, switching between elegantly staged mother-daughter conversations and home video-esque footage of Birkin’s everyday activities — like performing her music in Japan, gardening with her granddaughter and visiting a bulldog breeder.Gainsbourg purports to look at her mother as she’s “never dared before,” hoping to close a rift between them. Birkin speaks, rather obliquely, about intimate subjects like her lifelong dependency on sleeping pills and her maternal insecurities — the premature death of her first daughter, Kate Barry, looms over the film.Clearly a pet project for Gainsbourg (whose own electronic pop songs feature prominently in the soundtrack, clashing against her mother’s classic tunes), the documentary is defiantly insular and lacking in context.When Gainsbourg and Birkin visit Serge’s famed black-walled Paris home, for instance, the dwelling’s peculiarities are taken for granted. (The house has remained mostly unchanged since Gainsbourg’s death in 1991 and is now going to be a museum.) Those devoted to the Gainsbourg-Birkin universe may delight in the miscellanea presented here, but Gainsbourg has no interest in rendering her mother’s life, or their relationship, accessible or particularly fascinating to the uninitiated. This makes for an occasionally trivial experience, but one senses Gainsbourg doesn’t care — she might have made the film for no one but herself.Jane by CharlotteNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Suzanna Andler’ Review: French Riviera Blues

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      This film takes place in a single afternoon, as Suzanna, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, contemplates her bourgeois marriage.The central figure in the French drama “Suzanna Andler” is a woman for whom passion, tragedy and indecision elicit the same response — a shrug. Her voice never raises; her face rarely betrays her emotions. She speaks to her friend, her husband and her lover in the same monotone. Even a raise of the eyebrows is too active for this inert film.Suzanna (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is the chic wife of a wealthy businessman. He neglects her, or they neglect each other, and in Suzanna’s leisure time, she has taken a younger lover, Michel (Niels Schneider). The film takes place in a single afternoon, as Suzanna contemplates renting a summer home with her husband’s money.Michel comes to visit, and his presence pushes Suzanna to consider pending decisions that haunt her. Should she rent the house? Should she leave her husband? Should she drink herself to death? Who cares?“Suzanna Andler” is an adaptation of a play by the writer Marguerite Duras, best known in cinema for her contributions to the screenplay of the 1959 film “Hiroshima, Mon Amour.” The director Benoît Jacquot’s interpretation of Duras’s disaffected characters leads him to keep his images detached. Pans and zooms show the same dispassion that his characters profess. Lovers kiss, and the camera moves away from the action.It’s a test of patience to watch these glass figurines discuss their romantic entanglements, the doll house on the Riviera that they will maybe rent, the bourgeois marriages they will maybe leave. Even the camera seems bored, as if it might wander off.Suzanna AndlerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More