Not your average cop movie.
TWITTER
Mexican filmmaker s Alonso Ruizpalacios third feature, a Netflix original, premiered in competition online at the Berlin Film Festival.
Despite its simple title, Mexican filmmaker Alonso Ruizpalacios’ latest feature is far from a simple shoot- em-up cop movie. It’s more like a cop movie written by Jacques Derrida, directed with nods to Wes Anderson and Jean-Luc Godard and then remixed by Abbas Kiarostami in its efforts to tear down the fourth wall.
Which is to say that this Berlinale competition premiere is not exactly a commercial venture, nor does it resemble the kinds of
policiers that Netflix, which will release the film online, usually places at the top of your viewing queue. But it’s nonetheless an intriguing, completely deconstructed look at what it takes to both be a cop and to play one, especially in a place where cops are often regarded as criminals themselves.
A slow-burn police drama that never fully ignites.
TWITTER
French actor-director Xavier Beauvois latest feature stars Jérémie Renier as a small-town gendarme whose career takes an unwanted turn.
Most cop movies and most movies in general spend the first reel setting up a story that usually kicks off after an “inciting incident,” to quote various screenwriting manuals, which takes place within the first ten or 15 minutes. For the rest of the film, we then watch how that incident unravels and affects the lives of all those involved.
In Xavier Beauvois’ low-key police drama
Drift Away (
Alabtros), the veteran French writer-director does a curious thing: He spends about an hour on exposition, introducing us to a small-town gendarme named Laurent (Jérémie Renier) as he deals with different situations on the job, then returns to a stable home life with his long-term girlfriend Marie (Marie-Julie Maille) and daughter Poulette (Madeleine Beauvois).
Courtesy of MicroFilm
Berlin Golden Bear winner Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn was shot entirely under COVID-19 lockdown, with cast members wearing masks.
An uneven but enjoyably provocative pandemic polemic.
TWITTER
Director Radu Jude s Berlin competition contender is a scathing social satire about sex, lies and videotape.
Opening with a very real-looking hardcore sex tape, and climaxing with a deranged orgy featuring super-sized dildos, Romanian writer-director Radu Jude s latest taboo-busting polemical comedy is refreshingly untroubled by tasteful restraint. Shot during COVID lockdown last summer, with cast and crew all wearing anti-viral masks, the snappily titled
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a scattershot attack on sexual hysteria and political hypocrisy in an era of online slut-shaming. The humor is broad, the satirical targets many, the overall effect mixed.