#or or them watching a horror movie and mina is in the center trying not to show how afraid she is as she clutches onto hoshina and then

[narugen]

good lord my mina has two hands au….. actually thinking abt it is so cute to me both of them making mina laugh out of the blue with their antics and it’s just. (head in my hands) okay these two stinking LOSERS .!!!!!!

narumi: w?????????? (broken)

hoshina: ??????????? (also broken)

mina, unaware of her beauty and power: ????? (confused) why did both of u stop

more under cut

AND IMAGINE

narumi complaining abt something one day as they’re all walking together mina in the center holding onto both of their hands and he won’t stopppp making jabs at hoshina and mina kisses him and he shuts up instantly and goes . hm. Ha. huh. (malfunctioning) what the fuck was i saying again?

hoshimina: lol grade schooler

OR LIKE

mina tired from Captain Duties coming home to the both of them on the sofa just chilling and it’s surprising to see them being so amiable and they ask her to lie on them .. mina complaining that narumi has it easy since he dumps all his work to hasegawa and hoshina is like you could’ve asked me for help and then she’s like but then i’d be like this idiot here :(

narumi: oi… (threatening to stop massaging her legs if she keeps this up - but obv he won’t bc she actually looks Exhausted)

hoshina combing through her hair oughhhhhh both of them leaving her to rest and make dinner for her #Malewives and then fighting the entire fucking time…

mina thanks them for cooking when she wakes up and finds that she’s already been changed into more comfortable clothes Ack., noticing narumi has cuts on fingers from the knife and is like hold on … (checking hoshina’s hands to make sure he’s okay too except he turns bright red like Captain. why are u holding onto my hand. <- they’ve been dating for a year) narumi snorts at his loserisms but is ultimately no better when she goes to one of the cupboards to get her band aids except she needs a stool and she’s lazy so narumi is like AS THE TALLEST PERSON AROUND- (“it’s like 5cm max” hoshina butts in) he tries to reach for it but can’t either and it’s very hilarious. he lifts mina up by the waist so she can reach for it instead…. her carefully putting the band aids on narumi and kissing his hands… hoshina going I THINK I HAVE SOME CUTS TOO <- literally doesn’t

both of them arguing who should do the dishes with her and mina is like no i can do them myself and hoshina is like well the mighty first division captain spilled blood into our vegetables so i feel like-

and then they argue some more until she’s almost done and both of them just help out anyway LOL.

bath time where mina leans against hoshina and narumi is on the opposite grumbling about it… hoshina reminding him he got his turn yesterday and he wouldn’t be banned if he had more self control

and with bakko mina lets it slip that he likes narumi a bit more and he won’t shut the fuck about it for DAYS until hoshina reminds him that he’s the one who’s literally by mina’s side daily and also. sees bakko all the time too so it won’t be hard to turn the tides and narumi is like FUCK!!!!! angry stomping #loser.

god they’re so fun . me when ashiro mina is loved :)

and omfg on her birthday they’re coordinating with kafka and okonogi and they’re arguing over whether to make it cat themed or tiger themed . hoshina is like LOOK AT BAKKO. narumi is like SHE FUCKING LIKES CATS!!!!!!

hoshina: bakko is LITERALLY a cat. are you stupid? is the strongest soldier in the force actually Stupid?

narumi: on the verge of exploding

okonogi pipes in like … erm i think we could do a feline themed party….!

kafka can’t even say shit bro is terrified but he plans everything else like her fave food and orders the cake with nrhs

another idea i had was mina getting an award for something but both of them aren’t able to make it so they put on like goofy fucking congratulations glasses and prepare party poppers and when she’s home they pop it like “CONGRATS NUMBER 1 CAPTAIN (narumi: that should’ve been ME btw.)” and she’s stunned and kind of tipsy from the drinks they handed her and she starts laughing at how stupid they look and gooddddddd it’s so cute. they both crumble to the floor like losers when she won’t stop giggling at them . can i die

also absolutely hilarious idea i got was narumi giving mina a ride somewhere and hoshina is like what about me but he’s on his motorbike so obviously there’s no space so he’s like: You 🫵 can just walk. and mina is like, dead fucking serious, do you know those small seats you attach to the side of scooters..? or bikes…? and hoshina is like. i think i’ll pass. except narumi. LOVES THE IDSA BECAUDE ITS GOKNA MAKE HOSHINA LOOK SO FUCKING STUPID so he’s like Oh considered it done .

LILE THIS I CANT FUCKIH BRETAGEJAODOSI mina doesn’t think it’s funny in the slightest she’s just like oh yeah that’s pretty practical and hoshina is covering his face as they ride through ariake to tachikawa. they end up on the fucking news.

i can’t they’re so funny.

[azucanela]

FIRST DATE HEADCANNONS + SCENARIOS

[FT. BAKUGOU KATSUKI, TODOROKI SHOUTO SHINSOU HITOSHI]

SUMMARY: Your first date with a few some of the first year boys[Bakugo Katuski, Shinsou Hitoshi, Todoroki Shouto].

WORD COUNT: 2.9k

WARNINGS: kissing, pretty pg, wholesome, perhaps slightly ooc oops, bad writing, just a tad of spice

A/N: someone send tik tok related requests they make me laugh

BAKUGO KATSUKI

when he asks you out on a date for the first time hes not actually asking

comes up to you and tells you, “get dressed im taking you out.”

you are just there talking to mina and kirishima in your pjs like ???

“with your quirk?” like you dead thought he was telling you he intended to kill you 

“no idiot...” now he’s embarrassed oh no

mina and kirishima are like 👀👀

“on a date?” they’re really trying to help him get his point across bc playing matchmaker is fun

“SHUT UP EXTRAS”

probably takes you to like some sort of outdoor thing on the first date

has to to involve movement

stroll through the park, or through like a mall if you don’t like more athletic experiences 

take him on a date to a trampoline park. do it. 

COOKS FOR YOU ON THE FIRST DATE!!!!!!!!

ITS AMAZING 

YOU HAVE BEEN BLESSED

is quieter during a date rather than his normal explosive self, he wants to listen to you, get to know you better

won’t kiss on the first date unless there’s a pre established friendship

your next date happens the same way, just tells you that you guys are going out, but you get it this time

lets you choose where you guys go that time

wants equal contribution to dates 

katsuki in street clothes is just beautiful, just ART, a masterpiece, he looks like a grumpy piece of ART

Katuski had just asked Y/N on a date, completely out of nowhere. Katsuki had asked Y/N on a date. It was difficult to believe, and considering his loud tone, the rest of Class 1-A also found it shocking, the student who claimed to have all his focus on becoming the number one pro-hero was now seeking a relationship. Ironic.

Though Y/N herself initially didn’t understand what he had been trying to say, she quickly got the message, and off they went. She was necessarily shocked by his feelings for her, they had discussed it in the dead of night, when she couldn’t sleep so he decided to forgo his normal grandpa sleep schedule. He fell asleep shortly after that conversation though, in her arms, he’d likely deny it if she ever mentioned it though.

Now, she sat on the counter in his parent’s kitchen, though neither of them were home, and the kitchen looked mostly unused. Y/N had tried to assist him but he’d brushed her off, “I asked you out. And you’re a horrible cook.” 

Y/N hopped off the counter and came up behind him, “whatever.” She mumbled, half expecting Katsuki to shove her away as she wrapped her arms around his torso as he sliced vegetables. He didn’t, though he did freeze momentarily before grumbling something about how dumb she was, Y/N knew he didn’t mean it based off the blush on his cheeks. 

Katsuki placed the vegetables into a pot of boiling water, covering it with a lid before tapping Y/N’s hand, signaling for her to let go. When she did, he turned around, and Y/N’s brow was raised. “C’mere.” He pulled her closer with one hand, and placed another on the back of her necks, bringing their lips together. 

She hummed in response, hand tangling into his hair, this wasn’t the first time they’d kissed. But it was the first time they’d gone on a date, he’d been sure to hide the dining room from her on the way inside, and she couldn’t help the excitement that bubbled up inside her. 

Y/N’s free hand found it’s way to his bicep, nails digging into his soft skin, courtesy of his quirk. Meanwhile, Katsuki’s hand found its way to the curve of her back, pushing her body closer to his only for Y/N to pull away, “pay attention while you are cooking.”

Turning to look at the pot, he’d realized that it was boiling far too much for comfort and cursed, releasing Y/N to salvage his food, she began to laugh. Katuski glared at her as he turned off the stove and put the put the vegetables into a nearby plate. 

With a smile on her face, she pressed a kiss onto his cheek, only for him to roll his eyes as he picked up the plate and moved out of the kitchen, Y/N trailing close behind as he headed to the dining room. “Can I see now?” She asked.

After a moment of contemplation, he nodded, and together they entered the dining room. It was a basic set up for a date, but it certainly set an intimate atmosphere that was rare when you lived in a dorm with several other students, and Mineta. There were candles lighting the room, and a rose in the center of the table, along with more food that he had already placed on the table. 

Grinning at him, Y/N spoke, “god you are such a sap.”

His cheeks flushed as he responded, “shut up.” 

SHINSOU HITOSHI

lol cutie, he asks you out on a date, you two are probably close friends and he just really likes your personality and attitude and stuff

“you don’t have to- well you know that but-”

“no, i’ll go out with you.”

“it’s fine i understand- wait what?”

did not think he’d get this far so he had no plans, he was expecting to plan a funeral for your friendship

ends up being the basic movie and food date

he picks a horror movie because he wants to protect you!!!

it makes him feel useful and bb needs validation

hold his hand during the movie

give him AFFECTION

you guys end up skipping dinner because you filled up on popcorn and other snacks during the movie so y’all just walk around

gives you his j a c k e t if its cold

he’s classy like that

unlike other people, he would kiss you on the first date

it would be an AMAZING experience that probably occurs at your front door, super adorable, he asks if he can kiss you

“can i kiss you?” fully expects you to say no

“yeah you can.”

“its fine, thanks for going out with me- wait what?”

same vibes as asking you out, did NOT expect this

walks you home because he is a GENTLEMAN change my mind, Shinsou brought back chivalry 2020

treats you RIGHT!!! the entire date, opens doors for you, pulls out your chair if necessary, pays for you unless you try to split the check but he might propose if you do that and pay for you regardless

When Shinsou asked Y/N out, he genuinely expected her to say no. His plans for the date included a funeral for himself and the friendship between the two of them. But, Shinsou was an honest guy and wanted to confess his feelings to her, secrets were a rarity between them, and this was no exception. They’d known each other for a while and his feelings weren’t something he could make disappear, no matter how hard he tried.

The last thing he expected was for her to agree to go out with him. 

She was still clinging onto his arm rather harshly as they exited the movie theater, having seen a horror movie, she exclaims, “I am never letting you pick the movie again.” 

Shinsou can’t help it when his heart skips a beat at her comment, looking over to her as he smirks, “again? So there will be a next time?” He asked, hoping that he hadn’t misunderstood.

Her cheeks warm, even though he asked her out, and Y/N looks away, “yes, if you want.” She mumbled, loosening her grip on his arm as they stepped outside. Cool air hits her, and Y/N can’t help the shiver that goes down her spine at the sudden cold. 

“I asked you out, of course I want a second date.” He replied, taking his arm from her grasp to remove his jacket, which he puts around her shoulders. “You still want dinner?” 

Y/N hums, taking his hand in hers and grinning as his cheeks turn red, “I’m not really hungry after all the snacks we had.” She replied, leaning her head onto his shoulder. “Let’s just walk.” 

They walked throughout the small shopping center, speaking with each other in regards to a variety of topics before beginning the walk home, when it started to rain. Thankfully, they were nearby Y/N’s home, and the laughs that consumed them as they ran didn’t stop as they ran up under the roof of Y/N’s porch. Shinsou’s hair was now matted onto his head thanks to the rain, their clothes soaked. 

Looking up at him, Y/N let another laugh escape her, “I like your hair.” She teased, bringing a hand up to ruffle it, though it had little effect.

Shinsou playfully glared at her, “yeah, yeah.” A smile found its way onto his face as he looked at her, the rain still hammering down on the roof, he found himself not wanting to let go of her hand as he asked, “can I kiss you? You don’t need-” He began to ramble, and Y/N was reminded of when he first asked her out as she watched him. 

Y/N’s hand released his and she grabbed his face, bringing his lips to hers, effectively silencing him as his hands fell onto her hips. They broke apart momentarily, only for Y/N’s arms to circle around his neck and pull him closer for yet another kiss.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He mumbled as they pulled apart.

Tilting her head, Y/N smirked, “you’re cute.” Shinsou ducked his head to hide the pink in his cheeks at this comment. “Be here next Saturday around 2 in the afternoon. This time I pick the movie.”

Looking back up, he raised a brow. “I happened to enjoy the movie, particularly the parts when you-”

“I don’t have to agree to a second date.” Y/N threatened as she playfully slapped his shoulder before heading to her front door, looking back at him as she walked.

Shinsou hummed, eyes meeting hers as he grabbed her hand and yanked her back. “I think I liked the way you shut me up the first time around better.” He presses a gentle kiss to her lips before releasing her hand so that she can head inside. 

TODOROKI SHOUTO

THIS BOY

you probably don’t know its a date he’s like “so how was the date”

and you there like “im sorry how was the WHAT?”

asks his siblings for help because he’s clueless, also asks izuku and maybe even bakugo during their remedial course, though camie is 10x more helpful

this is because shoto always spends all of his father’s money on you

while you two are just best friends, he’ll see you look at something and then he’ll just buy it

you guys already act like a couple. like stfu we get it, you have Class 1-A’s resident pretty boy wrapped around your finger jeez no need to brag

it because he’s in love with you already but he doesn’t know that its not his fault he is oblivious to his own emotions

this just amplifies on a date

tries to take you to a ridiculously fancy restaurant and you’re like???

settles for a cafe

you get lost in the convo and forget to actually drink your drink so he just reheats it or makes it nice and cool again ya know

super useful bb

give him validation

listens to you super intently 

intellectual conversations EVERYWHERE he is literally so fun to talk to like discuss any and everything with him

First date at a cafe, he’s rich, he stole his dad’s credit card, and he happens to love trying new things since he was sheltered as a child so he will buy EVERY S I N G L E DRINK for you two to try them all together

50/50 chance he kisses you on the first date

100% chance a kiss happens if you initiate it

he walks you home, and depending on if you are feeling hot or cold, you’ll stand by his side, preferably away from the road because shoto is a gentleman who gets hit by cars for his partner 

When Izuku had suggested that Shoto take Y/N out on a date to help confess his feelings for her, he figured it would be a good idea. Except, he forgot the part where he asked her on the date.

Oops.

This didn’t really dawn on him as she led him away from the fancy restaurant he had tried to convince her to enter,  “we both know that neither of us would understand a thing on the menu because it’s probably all in french.” Though she had dressed for the occasion, and so had he. “Why do you even want to eat there?” Y/N asked, her hand still holding his as she dragged him along the side walk.

She knew very well how much he disliked such places. They reminded him of all the high end restaraunts he had been forced to go to as a child. And since his father was an infamous pro hero, and Shoto himself was one of the more popular Class 1-A students, it wasn’t uncommon for reporters to frequent areas he was seen in. Carrying their cameras as they tried to get a story about him or his father. He’d told Y/N numerous times how much he disliked the attention, which is why he avoided certain areas of the city. 

Shoto stared at their joined hands, that feeling of joy bubbling in his chest, “my understanding is that you take people to a nice restaurant for a date.” Came his response.

Y/N stopped walking, though Shoto didn’t, causing him to run into her and nearly trip her had he not grabbed waist to keep her from falling. “This is a date?” She asked, hands clinging to his arms as she tried to maintain balance. He’d been acting different, so Y/N felt as though she shouldn’t be shocked, but the fact that Shoto liked her?

He said nothing, releasing her from his arms before taking a step back, “I feel as though I should apologize-” Shoto began, realizing his mistake.

“I know a nice Café I’ve been meaning to visit that’s nearby, you want to continue this there?” She interrupted, extending her hand. Y/N wasn’t stupid, neither was Shoto, she knew he was inexperienced in the romance department and it was clear this was his attempt to woo her. 

It was cute. 

Looking up at her, he couldn’t help but give her a small smile, which she returned as he took her hand. Shoto was thankful that she hadn’t mentioned his poor preparation for the whole ‘date’ thing, since he failed to really ask her about it. Thankfully she was just going with it, “I really like you, Y/N.” It was blunt, but it was the truth, and it was Shoto, being himself. 

Y/N felt her cheeks warm as they approached the Café, “I really like you too, Shoto.” He moved in front of her to open the door, “and here we are.” She gestured to the small Café as they entered, it was a nice set up and she had been meaning to visit. The fact that it was Shoto that she was visiting with made it all the better.

“Why don’t you go find us somewhere to sit?” He suggested, small smile on his face. “I’ll save us a spot in line.” Y/N nodded, and it was clear that she had yet to notice that there was no line, and Shoto had Endeavor’s beautiful black mastercard in hand. 

Which is how they ended up with every possible drink on their table, some of which were going cold, and the cashier thanking Shoto for the $200 cash tip, laughing quietly side by side in their small corner within the Café. Y/N had chosen a more isolated part, though there were already very few people within the store. 

She looked up from her drink to find Shoto’s eyes on her, an unreadable look in his eyes, but she couldn’t help but smile at him, one that he returned. “I like this.” He said, his hand finding hers as he played with her fingers. 

“Me too.” Y/N replied, watching his movements. She found herself Y/N bringing her hand to Shoto’s cheek, and his eyes met hers momentarily, looking up at her in awe as she leaned forward and pressed a kiss against his lips.

Neither of them knew what they were doing, Shoto’s delayed reaction reminded them both of this fact as he finally kissed back after a few moments. The hand that had once been fidgeting with Y/N’s free hand, making its way to her bicep to rub circles in the spot. 

The moment didn’t last long, and when she pulled away, his lips were chasing hers, “we should do this more often.”

A small smile was on his face as he stared at her with what seemed like stars in his eyes, “yeah.” He pressed a kiss to her hand, “we should.”

A/N: when i tell you season 4 made me CRY

[letterboxd]

After Agnès: Ten French Filmmakers to Watch in 2021.

It’s not every day that a grass-roots fandom inspires a Letterboxd Easter egg, but the love for Portrait of a Lady on Fire was so strong that those flames are here to stay. With a new Céline Sciamma fairytale on the horizon, we invited Sarah Williams—one of the #PortraitNation instigators—to highlight ten femmes de cinéma with new works due out this year, and suggest films from their back catalogs to watch now.

Among many dramatic moments in cinema in 2020, there was the resignation of the entire César Academy board, following protests about the nomination of filmmaker and child rapist Roman Polanski (dubbed ‘Violanski’ by French feminists). Then there were the walkouts at the 45th César Awards ceremony itself, led by actress Adèle Haenel, after Polanski won there. Firm calls for change followed from Le Collectif 50/50, a movement that has urged parity on festival selection committees, after seeing how few female filmmakers were allowed into competition categories. (They have had some success, particularly with Cannes, where selection committees have moved towards more transparency and a better gender balance.)

Actress Adèle Haenel has a message for the 2020 César Awards, shortly before walking out of the ceremony.

This year’s Césars were tame, by comparison: actress Corinne Masiero stripped on stage, using her brief spotlight to focus on the pandemic and the crisis of shuttered cinemas across France. May they open as soon as it’s safe, because many of the filmmakers prominent in these social movements have new movies on the horizon. As the older generation retires, this newer group of progressive filmmakers is making waves on the festival scene, working from perspectives often denied or overlooked in mainstream cinema. French cinema is at a sort of crossroads, and the next Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Divines or BPM could be just around the bend.

Letterboxd members are well schooled in the power of Agnès, and Céline Sciamma has entered the worldwide critical sphere—and Letterboxd’s highest ranks—thanks to the success of Portrait of a Lady on Fire (🖼️🔥 forever), but there are many more French storytellers worthy of your watchlists. Alongside Sciamma, here are nine more for your consideration.

Céline Sciamma’s ‘Petite maman’.

Céline Sciamma

Coming soon: Petite maman Watch now: Water Lilies, Tomboy and Girlhood

Before her worldwide hit Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma helmed a trilogy of acclaimed coming-of-age stories, Water Lilies, Tomboy and Girlhood. Her fifth feature, Petite maman, both lives in the world of this trilogy, and radically differs from the trio.

Petite maman premiered at the 2021 Berlinale, where the North-American rights were snapped up by NEON, Sciamma’s partner on Portrait’s release. In the film, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) is eight years old when her grandmother dies, and she goes with her parents to help empty the house. One morning, her mother, Marion (Nina Meurisse) disappears, and she finds a young girl also named Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) building a fort in the same place her mother had as a child. A non-traditional view of motherhood, Petite maman’s supposed twist is never meant to be a twist at all, as this Miyazaki-like fairytale never tries to hide where Nelly’s mother really is.

Unlike other time-travel films, Petite maman is not concerned with physics. It’s a gentle act of love that blurs generational lines, answering the question of what it would be like to see life through your parents’ eyes at your age.

What Sciamma does here is radical even for her, creating an entire film that lies in a safer place of childhood. Where in Water Lilies, Girlhood and, especially relevant, Tomboy, shot in the same forests of Cergy, she depicts the full violence that comes with adolescence, the two young girls here console each other, and don’t have a camera on them for the rougher events of their childhoods.

Sciamma’s earlier films about youth feel like personal catharsis, but also unflinchingly show coercion, a child being outed, and teenage gang violence. With Petite maman, the two young girls are allowed to live in the more innocent parts of their childhoods, and though they deal with grief, worries of abandonment, and one nervously awaits a major surgery, Sciamma now tells a weighty story without needing to show pain on screen.

The end result is a warm, nostalgic film that isn’t bound by time period or the specifics of setting. It’s a live-action Ghibli fairytale that, despite having Sciamma’s youngest leads, has matured from her earlier work. The plays acted out by the children sometimes parallel their own stories, and once, in a scene of a countess and maid, almost seem to be calling back to past films, in this case Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Many times, including at the film’s Berlinale Q&A, Sciamma has said she does not write characters, but stories and situations to enter. This feels more than true with this latest effort, a steady hand extended to an audience, promising us that it will be okay, some day.

Alice Diop’s ‘We’.

Alice Diop

Coming soon: We (‘Nous’) Watch now: Towards Tenderness (‘Vers la Tendresse’)

Through the many shortcomings and scandals of France’s César Awards, a memorable win of recent years was Alice Diop’s 2017 award for best short film for Vers la Tendresse (Towards Tenderness), a prize she dedicated to victims of police violence. The film is a 38-minute poetic exploration of how men view sex and romance in the French banlieues (suburbs). One line in the film summarizes Diop’s central thesis: “It’s just hard to talk about love. We don’t know what it is.” These young men struggle to conceptualize love from what they are taught, and their flaws are laid bare in the name of understanding the limitations of masculinity.

Though more abstract, Diop’s new film, We, which had its premiere in the 2021 Berlinale industry selection, comes from a similar desire for collective understanding. The train line of the RER B crosses Paris from north to south, and with it, so does an attempt to connect fragmented stories around the city. The film heavily recalls the Varda tradition that a documentary can be made just by walking and waiting. Using a series of suburban vignettes, Diop is able to piece together a wildlife conservatory of ordinary lives, looking at her own community and trying to capture the warmer side of society. She talks to a mechanic, a writer, and even her own father, in a sort of David Attenborough of human landscapes. We weaves through parts of the city with overwhelmingly Black and immigrant populations, building a nostalgic breed of documentary not focused on the gotcha! reveal.

Rebecca Zlotowski’s ‘An Easy Girl’ (2019).

Rebecca Zlotowski

Coming soon: Les enfants des autres Watch now: An Easy Girl (‘Une fille facile’)

Writer and director Rebecca Zlotowski has steadily released a film every three years since 2010. Her stories have centered on Jewish and North-African characters, and her television series Savages, based on a series of novels from Sabri Louatah, focuses on the attempted assassination of a fictional Arab President-elect in France. Very little has been spilled about Zlotowski’s newest film, Les enfants des autres, which began shooting in March. We know that Virginie Efira and Roschdy Zem are attached, and there were casting calls looking for children, and for extras for a scene set in a synagogue.

Though each of her four previous features have their strengths—and I’m even partial to Planetarium, an overzealous magical-realist film about American sisters with a supernatural gift, set in the Parisian film industry around the rise of anti-semitism—2019 Cannes selection An Easy Girl, readily accessible on Netflix, is a choice pick. Notable for its controversial casting of Zahia Dehar, who became infamous for relations with the French national football team while an underage sex worker, this choice proved to be a clever deception in a film about how women said to be easy with men are dismissed.

Dehar plays the older cousin to newcomer Mina Farid’s Naïma, a sixteen year old who longs for her cousin’s seemingly glamorous lifestyle. Naïma soon learns this life isn’t just fashion, but about learning to please wealthy men in order to get what she wants, while never having to give too much of herself away. While most of the director’s closest contemporaries are pioneers of a coherent movement of female gaze, Zlotowski chooses here to shoot through a decidedly male gaze, challenging her audiences’ perceptions of how they treat her characters before we come to understand them.

Also noteworthy is Zlotowski’s debut feature Dear Prudence, based around a diary she’d found in the street. Starring a very young Léa Seydoux as a seventeen-year-old girl who joins a motorcycle gang after the death of her mother, the film’s unique source material makes this Zlotowski’s most intimate film.

Julia Ducournau’s ‘Raw’ (2016).

Julia Ducournau

Coming soon: Titane Watch now: Raw (‘Grave’)

Julia Ducournau’s cult-favorite, coming-of-age, cannibal gorefest Raw quickly made her a name to watch. When Garance Marillier’s Justine tastes meat for the first time at a veterinary-school hazing, it awakens a cannibalistic desire within her. Shot as one would an erotic realization, Raw is at its essence an uncontrollable thread of self discovery.

Already backed by NEON for US distribution, with a possible mid-2021 release date, Ducournau’s follow-up Titane looks to be a wild thriller, if somewhat more traditional than the teenage “monstrous feminine” body-horror of her early work. Much of the production has been kept under wraps, but we know Vincent Lindon stars alongside newcomer Agathe Rousselle. Lindon plays the father of a mysterious young man named Adrien LeGrand, who is found in an airport with a swollen face, claiming to be a boy who had disappeared ten years before. Ducournau is a filmmaker unafraid to shy away from the provocative, and Titane is all but guaranteed a major platform come premiere.

Catherine Corsini’s ‘La Fracture’ (2021).

Catherine Corsini

Coming soon: The Divide (‘La fracture’) Watch now: Summertime (‘La belle saison’), An Impossible Love (‘Un amour impossible’)

Coming a generation before many of the other filmmakers here, Catherine Corsini is best known for her complex romantic dramas. Her most recent are the 1970s feminist-tinged Summertime (2015), starring Cécile de France and Izïa Higelin as a couple torn between rural farmlands and Paris, and An Impossible Love (2018), a novelistic chronicle of a couple (Niels Schneider and Virginie Efira) as their relationship sours from 1958 to the present day.

Summertime, which is currently available to rent or buy in the US, is Corsini’s first film to consciously depict a relationship between two women (though 2001’s Replay is ambiguous as to what is happening between Pascale Bussières and Emmanuelle Béart’s characters). The young lovers learn what freedoms they gain and lose between the pastoral countryside, and the feminist organizers they run with in Paris. It’s a fairly standard romantic arc, but illuminates a fiery counter-culture feminist era, and is a staunchly progressive film from a national cinema built so firmly upon a more traditional view of seduction.

La fracture, Corsini’s latest (and the third film produced by her life partner Elisabeth Perez) centers on yet another couple (Marina Foïs and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) who are on the verge of breaking up when a demonstration outside causes tensions to rise at the hospital they’re confined within. A relationship under strain alongside French protest culture? Extremely French subject matter indeed.

Claire Burger’s ‘Real Love’ (2018).

Claire Burger

Coming soon: Foreign Language (‘Langue étrangère’) Watch now: Real Love (‘C’est ça l’amour’)

Most likely known for her Clouzot-tinged music video for Kompormat’s ‘De mon âme à ton âme’, starring Adèle Haenel, Claire Burger is a filmmaker heavily rooted in location. Her past films, including a graduation short and two features, have been set in the north-eastern town of Forbach, where she grew up, just fifteen minutes from the German border. This looks to be a thread that runs through her next film: Foreign Language is about a friendship between two girls who live on either side of the French-German border. BPM producer Marie-Ange Luciani is set to produce; a poster for BPM made a cameo in Burger’s last feature, Real Love.

A personal story, Real Love is one of non-traditional fatherhood and a family that does not rely on masculinity. When his wife leaves, Mario (Bouli Lanners) is left to raise his two teenage daughters in their small town, all while taking part in a community-theater production. Most of the film is told from the perspective of the younger daughter (Justine LaCroix), experiencing first love with a girl from school, who doesn’t seem to want anything serious.

Notably, after her debut and a lengthy series of short films, this was the first time Burger, who edits her own films, cast professional actors, in the case of Lanners and Antonia Buresi (as a theater director). Yet it is the performance of the actresses playing the sisters that most touched the hearts of Letterboxd fans—as Lyd writes, “Maybe it was the opera music or the fantastic performances by Justine Lacroix and Sarah Henochsberg as the daughters, but it just affirmed so many things about life choices and the tipsy-turvy nature of love as just, everything.”

Marie Amachoukeli’s ‘Party Girl’ (2014).

Marie Amachoukeli

Coming soon: Rose Hill Watch now: Party Girl

A rare non-Sciamma project backed by producer Bénédicte Couvreur, Marie Amachoukeli’s solo debut is much anticipated, after Party Girl, where she was one-third of a directing trio with Claire Burger and Samuel Theis (who is shooting a feature of his own titled Petite Nature). Outside the collaborations with Burger, which began in film school, Amachoukeli is screenwriting for a number of films including Franco Lolli’s The Defendant, and has collaborated with animator Vladimir Mavounia-Kouka on two shorts, The Cord Woman and I Want Pluto to Be a Planet Again. A synopsis has yet to be released for Rose Hill, but in an old interview with Brain magazine, Amachoukeli mentioned searching for backers for a lesbian spy comedy.

Party Girl is essentially docu-fiction, with actors cast as versions of themselves building an authentic troupe of real people. Though it’s a collaboration, Amachoukeli shines as a screenwriter, introducing the story of a bar hostess who still lives the partying, single life of a woman in her twenties, despite having reached sixty. She is thrown when a man asks her to marry him, and she must reconstruct her outlook on love. From such young filmmakers, Party Girl is a sensitive portrait of an imperfect, ageing woman, which feels so rare in a cinematic landscape that longs for a fountain of youth.

Audrey Diwan’s ‘Happening’ (2021).

Audrey Diwan

Coming soon: Happening (‘L’evenement’) Watch now: Losing It (‘Mais vous êtes fous’)

French memoirist Annie Ernaux works by reconstructing her life over and over as time passes. One of her more well-known books, L’évènement, retraces her experiences trying to get an abortion in 1963, during a time when the procedure was banned in France.

Audrey Diwan—whose 2019 debut film Losing It follows a pair of young parents (the always-charming Pio Marmaï and Céline Sallette) working through the father’s spiral into addiction and recovery—has a knack for solid performances. She’s able to write a relationship under strain with nuance, and Céline Sallette’s character shows strength as a mother choosing between protecting her children and repairing her relationship to their troubled but good-hearted father, whom she still loves dearly. This skill for writing family should pair well with Ernaux’s deeply personal prose.

Happening sweeps up a small army of promising young actors: Being 17 star Kacey Mottet Klein, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire and School’s Out supporting breakout Luana Bajrami, appear alongside lead actress Anamaria Vartolomei. Her character, Anne, is a bright student who risks everything once her pregnancy starts showing, so that she can finish her studies. Audrey Diwan’s film isn’t the only Ernaux adaptation currently, with Danielle Arbid’s Passion Simple having premiered at Venice in 2020.

Claire Simon’s ‘I Want to Talk about Duras’ (2021).

Claire Simon

Coming soon: I Want to Talk About Duras Watch now: Mimi

One of few figures to bridge cinema and literature equally, Marguerite Duras was a social commentator on her world; she grew up poor in French-colonized Vietnam, took on a staunch leftist perspective, and developed a singular tone in her observational assertions. Duras’s 1975 film India Song, based on her novel of the same name, was a landmark in feminist film. Through a hypnotic structure (“a viewing experience like no other, one that touches all of the senses,” writes Carter on Letterboxd), India Song delivers a strong criticism of class and colonialism through its story of Anne-Marie Stretter (Delphine Seyrig), a French ambassador’s wife in 1930s Kolkata.

In I Want to Talk About Duras, writer-director Claire Simon (best known for her documentaries on the seemingly mundane) adapts a transcript of conversations between Duras (Emmanuelle Devos) and her much younger partner Yann Andréa Steiner (Swann Arlaud), in which the pair break down the codes of love and literature. These conversations were published in a book named after Steiner, who met Duras when he approached her after a screening of India Song.

The highlight of Simon’s previous work is Mimi, in which she settles down in the countryside with an old friend, and tells her life story over 105 minutes. Recently programmed as part of Metrograph’s Tell Me: Women Filmmakers series, it’s clear the film was selected for its authenticity. However, many Letterboxd members may heavily benefit from seeing The Graduation, her 2016 documentary about the famous Parisian film school La Fémis, and its difficult selection process. Most of the other filmmakers in this list passed through its gates, and Claire Simon’s Wiseman-lite documentary sheds light on the challenges these young people take upon themselves for a chance at a world-renowned filmmaking education.

Amandine Gay’s ‘Speak Up’ (2017).

Amandine Gay

Coming soon: A Story of One’s Own (‘Une histoire à soi’) Watch now: Speak Up (‘Ouvrir la voix’)

Amandine Gay has much to say about access to film school—and opportunities in the film industry—for those outside the mainstream. Initially on the radar for her Afro-feminist activism, Gay arrived on the cinema scene with Speak Up, a narrative reclamation focusing on the diaspora in France and Belgium.

Talking to Francophone Black women who may not be considered formal scholars, allowing her subjects to speak as experts on their own experiences, Gay disproves the idea that France is a race-blind society. She shoots mainly in regal close-ups and using natural light, allowing her subjects the clarity to speak for themselves, unfiltered. (And to put to bed the misconception that Black performers are harder to light, one of many important angles discussed in an excellent interview with Letterboxd member Justine Smith.)

Using family photos and home videos from subjects, Gay’s engaging documentary work is a mouthpiece to spark conversation. Her next documentary, Une histoire à soi, centers on transnational adoption and will likely take a similarly conversational approach in exploring a unique cultural divide; putting the microphone in front of those who can provide a first-person point of view. Though not officially backed yet, she’s also—for years!—teased a Black lesbian sommelier film on podcasts and in interviews. That’s a story that I hope won’t need much more maturing before we see it. A votre santé.

Related content

Feature-length French films by Women—Sarah’s list

The Official Top 100 Narrative Feature Films by Women Directors—featuring Portrait of a Lady on Fire at number one

Little White Lies: 100 Great Movies by Female Directors

Follow Sarah on Letterboxd

[vanilluhbeaux]

Not Another Au!

vanilluhbeaux (distinque

Chapter 3

: three

Prinicpal Nezu ran down the hall as fast as his little legs could carry him, which admittedly wasn't very fast, but it was the effort that counted—and he put in a lot of effort. It wasn't that the principal was fat—he preferred the term husky—the deliciously round man just did not like to look anything other than professional, and he'll be damned if he would dare break a sweat for any of these stupid students. Denki Kaminari and Mina Ashido, for example, were gifted students—he'd never seen a kid eat thirteen hamburgers in less than fifteen minutes before Denki arrived in his building, and Mina, well, she was pretty and could dance, he supposed—but they weren't gifted students. Together, maybe they could muster enough brain cells to form an average person—but separately? Whew. Honestly, he had a hard time believing how they survived all these years being born with the mental capacity they had.

That being said, there were students Nezu enjoyed. They all just so happened to have an IQ higher than three. Momo Yaoyorozu and Tenya Iida, for example. He would run to the ends of the Earth for those two. Their intellect was something to be marveled at—their test scores rivaled those from private schools across the entire country. And both of them were avid athletes—Momo being the captain of the volleyball team and Tenya being a forward on the basketball team. Back in his day, Nezu was quite the active student himself—he was the captain of the chess team and president of the debate club and those did count as sports in his spectated eyes.

For students like Momo and Tenya, he'd run to the ends of the Earth, and he wouldn't run a lap for students like Denki and Mina, who make up the majority of kids at his school. Go figure.

Knowing this, he didn't slow his stride as he ran down the halls to class 1-A, intent on reaching them before the school day ended. Ran by Miss Midnight, class 1-A was a class he watched very intently, for fear of disaster if he took his eyes off of them. He didn't necessarily fear the disaster itself, but parents like Aizawa, who feared the disaster more than needed. After all, people die everyday—and no life was worth more than any other—so what does it matter if it's your kid? Spoiler alert: it doesn't. But if he wanted to keep his life—much less his job—then he knew that he could not share that tidbit of information.

Still, it would be nice if everyone thought like him. He continued to run, passing a blonde student, who yelled, "No running in my halls!" He stopped in his tracks.

"I'm the principal!" he yelled back, turning around to look the students in his big blue eyes. The student remained unaffected, his blue eyes blank.

"And I'm the hall monitor," he said, his voice even and undisturbed, "who has the authority to give anyone detention." A slight manic smile broke out on his face as he raised his notebook, prepared to write a ticket.

"Shouldn't you be in class, Monoma?" Nezu argued back, placing a large hand on his hip. His students were going to be the death of him, he just knew it.

"Shouldn't you be in your office?" the student bit back, taking his pen and scribbling something in his notebook. He tsked and shook his head disapprovingly, saying,"This is going to be a huge blemish in your permanent record." With that, he ripped the note off of his pad and handed it to the principal with a disapproving glare. He tsked again before he walked off, looking for another victim to punish.

Crumpling the note up in his giant hands, Nezu took off again—though his pace was slightly slower than before. He turned a corner, and jogged until he came face-to-face with his destination—Class 1-A. The normally quiet class was brimming to life through the closed door, porbably due to the two new students who entered. Nezu heard that Todoroki was quite popular—albeit hot and cold—at his previous school, and Shinsuo seemed like he could stir the pot a little. He opened the door, and his large, black eyes scanned the room, finding the all of the students talking amongst each other in slightly hushed voices. It was a small, almost normal gesture, but it never failed to warm his heart. He loved when his students caught a break and—wait all of the students? His eyes darted back and forth, counting the students in his head, finding that there was one too many participating in the classroom discussion. Nervously, he asked, "What the hell is going on here?"

"Language, Principal Nezu!" Miss Midnight scolded, pointing a red finger in his direction.

"Yeah! You're supposed to use 'fuck' so that people know you're serious, Nezu," Denki chided, shaking his head. Nezu looked over and found Miss Midnight nodding her head in approval, and he sighed greatly. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand found that he was sweating—fantastic.

"Why is everyone is class participating?" he said, opting to ignore the blonde wonder.

"Because Todoroki's a fucking idiot," Bakugou barked from his desk, his eyes ablaze, "and Deku...well, I don't know what he did wrong, but he fucking sucks anyway."

"That's not nice, Kacchan," Izuku called in a sing-song voice, not looking up from his work with the new student, Shouto.

"Kacchan's going to kick your ass," Bakugou replied in that same sing-song voice. "Both of your asses," he added.

"Didn't you say I get a pass if Mineta dies first?" Todoroki said, raising a brow. "Although we can fight. I'm with the shits."

"Face it," Mineta said, standing on his desk, "Tokoyami's gonna die first. He's probably going to croak as soon as we leave the building."

"Why me?" a dark boy with a darker aura, Tokoyami, said, crossing his arms. He rolled his brown eyes and stared at the small, purple haired pervert, and couldn't help the laugh that was forming on his lips.

"It's basic horror movie plot—the black guy dies first." Nezu was going to have a heart attack.

"That's racist, Mineta. And there's two other black people in class—Izuku and Mina. Who's stopping them from dying first?"

"One of the leading causes of death in black women just so happens to be black men," Mina said, putting a hand on her desk and turning to face Tokoyami. "So if I die, it's probably going to be your fault. Or Izuku's." A stroke maybe? Was their principal going to have a stroke?

"If anyone dies it's Izuku's fault," Denki added. Oh, he was going to have an anuerism.

"Stop it—all of you!" Nezu said, putting his hand on his temples and sighing. "So the curse has been activated?" he said, looking directly at Momo and Tenya, who were partnered up and seemingly ignoring the spectacle that was unfolding in the class.

"Sorry Sir!" Tenya said, standing upright and bowing, "I didn't get a chance to talk to Todoroki before he violated our rules! As a class representative, I take seventy-five percent of the responsibility—though Momo should take twenty-five percent as she did only have one job."

"It's kind of hard to say 'Don't talk to the green-haired kid' without acknowledging the green-haired kid exists, but go off, I guess," Momo added from her seat, rolling her dark eyes.

"It's fine," Nezu said, propping himself on one knee and touching Momo's shoulder, "Sometimes things just happen. The important thing is that we learn from the past and move on, and try not to repeat past mistakes." She smiled at him and leaned into his soft touch, feeling his warmth. "And moving on means accepting that Class 1-A has two new students, so we need to update the class photo! If everyone could please gather around outside."

x

The sun beat down on Shouto's head and warmed his scalp, and he found himself moving towards a large tree, some of its green leaves strewn across the ground haphazardly. He sat down against it's trunk, leaning his head against the hard bark, finding it better than letting the sun beat down on him. His eyes darted back and forth between the students in the class, finding that they seemed to blend into each other but stand apart at the same time. He took special notice to Momo, ducked off away from most of the class to laugh with the same purple haired girl from earlier, a bright smile on her face as she stared at the smaller girl. They made up an un-cohesive whole, bright colors jamming into each other at odd angles to form a picture that he found different, but not bad to look at. As he looked on from the outside, he seen Izuku break away from Ochako and Tenya, making his way towards him.

"You look lonely," he said, his voice bright and happy. He took a seat next to him and said, "It's not often we get to come outside for class, and we all haven't been together for a while."

"It's nice, I suppose," he responded after a while, looking at the teenager.

"You going to the water park today? You can ride with me, if you want."

"I already told Bakugou that I'd go, and I don't wanna be looked at as a liar," he laughed off, looking Izuku in those bright green eyes. "But riding you—with you sounds nice."

"I've never had any complaints," he said, shrugging, "but sometimes I get a little too crazy with the aux cord. Denki thinks he knows trap, but Mina and I know trap."

Shouto opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by the principal, shouting, "Scooch together everyone! I don't want to have to use up more space than I have to!" As directed, the class got together, finding themselves close to him, underneath the tree he found himself in. Izuku stood up from his spot and moved closer to the girls, seeing as he was one of the shortest boys in the class and he wanted to be seen in the picture. Todoroki moved towards the center of the class, finding himself sandwiched in between Denki and Tenya. "Say cheese!" The camera let off a bright flash and temporarily blinded him, and he felt a strange sensation wash over him. It was cold, freezing, filling up his entire being and shaking him to his core.

And just like that, it was over.

His classmates rushed over to the phone to look at the picture, and he hung back, not wanting to crowd the principal. He looked around and found Izuku staring at him, and he wandered over to him, and found himself staring down at the phone, anyway. It was a good shot—the background was pretty and their uniforms were wonderful—but there was something off putting about it. There was something not quite right at what he was looking at.

"Where's Tooru?" Mina said, squinting.

"Right here," a short girl said, raising a hand,

"No, dumbass," Denki said.

"That's rich coming from you," the principal muttered under his breath.

"We mean like in the photo. You don't show up," Mina said, and Denki hummed in agreement, scanning the photo. The small girl pushed her way to the front and gripped the camera in her own small hands, staring down at it with intense eyes. She furrowed her eyebrows and stuck her tongue out a little, letting it rest on her face. The school bell rang in the background, and a few moments later students began pouring out of the building.

"I'm right here," she said, zooming in slightly, "I'm just little." Her voice was light but carried over the noise of everyone leaving the building, meeting up with their friends. The class let out a collective sigh of relief before splitting off, Izuku sticking to his side and grasping his hand lightly, his head turned away and laughing at something Ochako said. His hand was small but rough in his hand, and he noticed a large scar running across his palm and he felt responsible, for a reason he could not name.

"My car's this way," he said, leading him into the crowded parking lot. The students pulled into the parking lot quickly, whirring past them without regard for their safety, and Shouto wondered if it really took a curse for a casualty to happen in their school. Still, he stuck by Izuku and followed him throughout the parking lot, until they stumbled upon a bright red, but awfully small vehicle. Proudly, Izuku patted the hood, saying, "Jeezy sent me the car because I'm always wearing their shoes." He opened a door and hopped in, prompting Shouto to do the same.

"Jeezy?" he asked, "Like the shoe company?"

"Exactly," Izuku confirmed, revving up the car and pulling out of the parking lot. He handed off his phone to Shouto to key in the directions, which he did, but then he found himself scrolling through his playlist. Glancing over, Izuku smiled and said, "Pick anything you want."

"Say no more," Shouto complied, tapping the screen once before a familiar beat came on through the speakers. "My dad was an old hip-hop head," he said, before the words came in, "I knew this song like the back of my hand when I was six."

"It's not the original," Izuku said, before continuing, "It's the City Girls and you know we'll out-fuck you, so get out my face before I touch you, heaux. Don't you know? Can't you understand? If you fuck with me I'll take your man!" He spared a glance over at Shouto, who sat in the passenger's seat with a slightly perplexed look on his face, but he said nothing. Slowly, a smile broke out onto his face and he shook his head, his soft hair fluttering in his face.

"It's almost like the original," he offered, a laugh on the ends of his lips. "Though, I never really cared too much for the original—anything my dad liked, I hated."

"You and your dad don't get along?"

"My dad's in jail for severely abusing me for most of my life."

"You're oversharing, but okay."

"Oversharing would be telling you that when we get to the house, my mom might be high." Izuku shot him a confused, disturbed look, prompting him to add on, "She's not a crackhead or anything—but my dad really fucked her up and she smokes a lot of week to mellow her out."

"You were right, Shouto," Izuku said, pausing for just a moment, "That would definitely be oversharing. Do you do that a lot?"

"Only with people I trust."

"You just met me—but that was cute."

"Shut up and let me flirt," Shouto said, a fake sigh leaving his voice as he tried to sound exasperated.

"You don't know how to flirt if you call that flirting."

"Maybe you could show me how sometime," Todoroki proposed, not missing the smirk that crossed Izuku's eyes.

"There's a lot of things I could show you," Izuku promised.

Notes:

if there are any references or jokes you do not understand, feel free to hit me up and I'll explain! Next chapter is where things really start to takeoff—I was going to add it in this chapter but I felt like it would crowd the chapter.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home and Drive-In Edition July 24, 2020: THE RENTAL, MOST WANTED, YES GOD YES, AMULET, RETALIATION and more

Are we all having fun yet? Does the fun ever truly begin when you’re in the middle of a pandemic, and no one can seem to figure out how to get out of it? While I love New York’s Governor Cuomo and the amazing job he did getting us through the worst of it, he just doesn’t seem to know how to get movie theaters reopened, nor does he seem to care. I mean, they’ve had four months now to figure this out and New York City is already in Phase 4 (which was supposed to be the last phase of the reopening).  It’s a real shame, because this has been a ridiculously hot summer and with none of the “cooling centers” from past summers being possible, it is brutal out there. Fortunately, there are a few decent movies this week to watch at home and some in the drive-ins that are popping up all over the country.

I gotta say that I’m particularly bummed that my favorite local theater, the Metrograph, won’t be opening any time soon, but starting Friday, they’ll be starting “Metrograph Live Screenings,” which will consist of the type of amazing programming the theater has gained a reputation for since opening four years ago. They are offering new “digital memberships” at $5 a month or $50 annually (about half the price of a normal membership) so that you can watch any of the movies being offered at home. The program begins on Friday with Claire Denis’ 2004 film, L’Intrus, which Metrograph Pictures picked up for release. That’s followed on Monday with St. Claire Bourne’s doc, Paul Robeson: Here I Stand.  You can see the full list of screening times and dates (many with filmmaker introductions) on the Official Site, and this will be a good time for those who can’t get downtown to the coolest area in New York City to check out the Metrograph programming until they reopen. (Apparently, they’re working on a drive-in to open sometime in August. Wish I had a car.)

If nothing else, it’s safe to say that IFC is killing it this summer. The indie distributor stepped right up to the pandemic and said, “Hey, we’ll play in those drive-in theaters that have mostly been ignored and didn’t play our films for decades!” It has led to at least two big hits in the past few months.

This week, IFC releases the horror/thriller THE RENTAL (IFC Films), the directorial debut by Dave Franco.  In it, brothers Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Josh (Jeremy Allen White) decide to take a weekend away with their significant others, Charlie’s wife Michelle (Allison Brie) and Josh’s girlfriend Mina (Sheila Vand), who also happens to be Charlie’s creative work partner. They have found a remote house to rent, but they’re immediately suspicious of the caretaker (Toby Huss), who they think may be spying on them. He’s also racist towards Mina’s Arab lineage.

The premise seems fairly simple and actually quite high concept, and there have been quite a few thrillers that played with the premise of a creepy landlord/caretaker, including last year’s The Intruder, directed by Deon Taylor, and a lesser known thriller called The Resident, starring Hillary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Part of what makes The Rental different is that Franco co-wrote it with Joe Swanberg, so you know it’s going to be more of a character-based thriller than some kind of gorefest. Sure enough, this deals with the competitive nature between the brothers and the jealousy that arises when you have such a close working relationship with your brother’s girlfriend. It’s what happens between these two couples over the course of this vacation that makes you even more interested in their behavior after things start happening to them, but there’s a pretty major twist that happens just when you think you know where things may be going.

That’s all I really should say about the plot to avoid spoilers. Although the third act veers into the darker horror tropes we may have seen before, that’s also when it starts to get quite insane. Franco clearly shows he has the eye for the type of suspense and timing necessary for an effective thriller, and his cast, including wife Alison Brie, really deliver on all aspects of his script to deliver shocking moments that will keep you invested.

In some ways, The Rental might be the most obviously accessible movie of the weekend, and since it will be playing in drive-ins (and maybe a few still-open theaters?), it probably is worth seeing that way i.e. with others, although it will also be available via digital download, of course.

Another “Featured Flick” this week -- and I’m guessing this is one you won’t be reading about anywhere else --  is Daniel Roby’s MOST WANTED (Saban FIlms), a real-life crime-thriller starring Josh Hartnett as Globe and Mail journalist, Victor Malarek, who discovered that a French-Canadian junkie named Daniel Léger (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) had been sentenced to 100 years in a Thailand prison for drug trafficking in 1989.  As Daniel attempts to survive the violent conditions of the Thai jail, Victor tries to uncover the crooked practices by the Canadian federal police to get Daniel imprisoned for their own means.

This is one of two Saban Films releases that really surprised me, maybe because I’ve gotten so used to them releasing so much action and genre schlock meant mainly for VOD, usually starring fairly big-name action stars from the past, usually not doing their best work. Most Wanted is a far more serious crime-drama that tells an absolutely amazing story from North America’s famed war on drugs from the ‘80s. First, we meet Antoine-Olivier Pilon’s Daniel, a lowlife junkie who is trying to find a place to live and a job, something he finds when he gets into business with Jim Gaffigan’s Glenn Picker, a complete low-life in every sense of the word. It’s funny, because when Gaffigan’s character is introduced, you’re immediately reminded of the famous “Sister Christian” in PT Anderson’s Boogie Nights, and as we watch Picker completely humiliate and then betray Daniel, you realize that we might be seeing one of Gaffigan’s best performances to date.

What keeps Most Wanted interesting is that it tells the story on a number of concurrent storylines, ignoring the fact that one of the threads might be taking place years before the other. Through this method, we see how Daniel begins working with Glenn, while also seeing Victor’s investigation, as well as the sting operation being perpetrated by the Canadian feds, as represented by the always great Stephen McHattie. (McHattie’s appearance is also a telltale sign that this is indeed a Canadian production, as is the role played by author and filmmaker Don McKellar.)  I’ve always feltHarnett was a really underrated actor especially as he got into his 30s and started doing more mature roles, and while his reporter character may not always be the central focus of the story, his attempt to get his editor to respect his work is something far too familiar to far too many writers. One also can’t sleep on the fantastic performance by Antoine-Olivier Pilon, who really holds the film together by starting out as a scumbag almost as bad as Picker but through his troubles to survive in Thai jail, we start to become really invested in his story. (The only character who doesn’t get nearly as fulfilling a story arc is Amanda Crew as Victor’s wife Anna who gives birth just as he gets involved in this major story.)

I wasn’t at all familiar with Daniel Roby’s previous work but the way he broke this story down in a way that keeps it interesting, regardless of which story you’re following, makes Most Wanted as good or better than similar films by far more experienced and respected filmmakers. (For some reason, it made me think of both The Departed and Black Mass, both movies about Whitey Bulger, although Daniel’s story is obviously very different.)

Okay, let’s get into a trio of religious-tinged offerings…

Natalia Dyer from Stranger Things stars in YES, GOD, YES (Vertical Entertainment), the semi-autobiographical directorial debut by Obvious Child co-writer Karen Maine (expanded from an earlier short), which will open via virtual cinemas this Friday as well as at a few drive-ins, and then it will be available via VOD and digital download on Tuesday, July 28. The coming-of-age comedy debuted at last year’s SXSW Film Festival and won a Special Jury Prize for its ensemble cast. Dyer plays sixteen-year-old Alice, a good Midwestern Catholic teenager, who has a sexual awakening after a racy AOL chat. Wracked by guilt, Alice attends a religious retreat camp where the cute football player (Wolfgang Novogratz) catches her eye, but she constantly feels pressure to quell her masturbatory urges.

I’m not sure I really knew what to expect from Ms. Maine’s feature film debut as a director. I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy this movie as much as I did, nor did I think I would relate to Dyer’s character as much as I did --  I’ve never been a teen girl, nor have I ever been Catholic, and by the early ‘00s, I was probably closer to the age that Maine is now versus being a teenager discovering her sexuality. In fact, I probably was expecting something closer to the Mandy Moore comedy Saved!, which was definitely more about religion than one character’s sexual journey.

Either way, I went into Yes, God, Yes already realizing what a huge fan I am of coming-of-age stories, and while there were certainly that seemed familiar to other films, such as Alice’s inadvertent AIM with an online pervert early in the film. Even so, Maine did enough with the character of Alice to keep it feeling original with the humor being subdued while definitely more on the R-rated side of things. On top of that, Dyer was quite brilliant in the role, just a real break-through in a similar way as Kaitlyn Dever in Book Smart last year. (Granted, I’m so behind on Stranger Things, I don’t think I’ve even gotten to Dyer’s season.) The only other familiar face is Timothy Simons from Veep as the super-judgmental (and kinda pervy) priest who Alice has to turn to when confessing her sins. (A big part of the story involves a rumor started about Alice and a sex act she committed on a fellow student that keeps coming up.)

Yes, God, Yes proves to be quite a striking dramedy that I hope more people will check out. I worry that because this may have been covered out of last year’s SXSW, it might not get the new and updated attention it deserves. Certainly, I was pleasantly surprised with what Maine and Dyer did with a genre that still has a lot to tell us about growing up and discovering oneself. (You can find out where you can rent the movie digitally over on the Official Site.)

Another horror movie that premiered at this year’s Sundance is AMULET (Magnet), the directorial debut by British actor Romola Garai, who also wrote the screenplay. It stars Romanian actor Alec Secareanu as Tomaz, a former soldier who is offered a place to stay in a dilapidated house in London with a young woman named Magda (Carla Juri from Blade Runner 2049) and her ill and dying mother. As Tomaz starts to fall for Magda, he discovers there are sinister forces afoot in the house with Magda’s mother upstairs being at their core.

I was kind of interested in this one, not just because it being Garai’s first feature as a filmmaker but also just because Sundance has such a strong pedigree for midnight movies, probably culminating in the premiere of Ari Aster’s Hereditary there a few years back. It feels like ever since then, there are many movies trying to follow in that movie’s footsteps, and while this was a very different movie from the recent Relic, it had its own set of issues.

The main issue with Amulet is that it deliberately sets itself up with a confusing narrative where we see Tomaz in the present day and in the past concurrently, so it’s very likely you won’t know what you’re watching for a good 20 minutes or so. Once Tomaz gets to the house, escorted there by a nun played by Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), the movie settles down into a grueling pace as the main two characters get to know each other and Tomaz explores the incongruities of the decaying house.

Honestly, I’m already pretty burnt out on the religious horror movies between The Lodge and the still-unreleased Saint Maud, and the first inclination we get of any of the true horror to come is when Tomaz discovers some sort of mutated bat-like creature in the toilet, and things get even more disturbing from there. Although I won’t go into too many details about what happens, the movie suffers from some of the same issues as Relic where it’s often too dark to tell exactly what is happening. As it goes along, things just get weirder and weirder right up until a “what the fuck” moment that could have come from the mind of David Lynch.

I don’t want to completely disregard Garai’s fine work as a filmmaker since she’s made a mostly compelling and original horror movie – I have a feeling some might love this -- but the grueling pace and confusing narrative turns don’t really do justice to what might have been a chilling offering otherwise.

Going by the title and the fact it’s being released by Saban Films, I presumed that Ludwig and Paul Shammasian’s RETALIATION (Saban Films/Lionsgate) was gonna be a violent and gritty crime revenge thriller, but nothing could be further from the truth. Adapted by Geoff Thompson from his 2008 short film “Romans 12:20,” it stars Orlando Bloom as Malcolm, a troubled ex-con doing demolition work while fighting against his demons when he spots someone in the pub from his past that caused a severe childhood trauma.

This is another movie that I really didn’t know what to expect, even as it began and we followed Bloom’s character over the course of a day, clearly a very troubled man who has been dealing with many personal demons. Make no mistake that this is a tough movie, and it’s not necessarily a violent genre movie, as much as it deals with some heavy HEAVY emotions in a very raw way.

Honestly, I could see Geoff Thompson’s screenplay easily being performed on stage, but the way the Shammasian Brothers have allowed Malcolm’s story to slowly build as we learn more and more about his past makes the film so compelling, but they also let their actors really shine with some of the stunning monologues with which they’re blessed. While this is clearly a fantastic and possibly career-best performance by Bloom, there are also good performances by Janet Montgomery, as the woman who loves Malcolm but just can’t handle his mood changes. Also good is Charlie Creed-Miles, as the young priest who tries to help Malcolm.

I can easily see this film not being for everybody, because some of the things the film deals with, including pedophile priests and the effects their actions have on the poor, young souls who put their faith in them, they’re just not things people necessarily may want to deal with. Make no mistake that Retaliation is an intense character drama that has a few pacing issues but ultimately hits the viewer right in the gut.

A movie I had been looking forward to quite some time is the Marie Currie biopic, RADIOACTIVE (Amazon Prime), directed by Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) and starring the wondrous Rosamund Pike as the famed scientist who helped discover radiation. Based on Lauren Redniss’ book, this is the type of Working Title biopic that would normally premiere in the Fall at the Toronto Film Festival, and sure enough, this one did. The fact it wasn’t released last year makes one think maybe this didn’t fare as well as potential awards fodder as the filmmakers hoped. It’s also the type of movie that works too hard to cater to the feminist resurgence from recent years, which ultimately ends up being its undoing.

The problem with telling Marie Currie’s story is that there’s so much to tell and Redniss’ book as adapted by Jack Thorne just tries to fit too much into every moment as years pass in mere minutes. There’s so much of Marie’s life that just isn’t very interesting, but trying to include all of it just takes away from the scenes that do anything significant. Maybe it’s no surprise that Thorne also wrote The Aeronauts, Amazon’s 2019 ballooning biopic that failed to soar despite having Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as its leads.

I’m a similarly huge Rosamund Pike fan, so I was looking forward to her shining in this role, but she does very little to make Marie Currie someone you might want to follow, as she’s so headstrong and stubborn. This is the most apparent when she meets Pierre Currie, as played by Sam Riley, and maybe you don’t blame her for being cynical, having had much of her work either discredited or stolen by men in the past. Shockingly, Pike’s performance seems all over the place, sometimes quite moving but other times being overly emotive. Almost 90 minutes into the movie, Anya Taylor-Joy turns up as Curie’s grown daughter, and it’s one of the film’s biggest infraction, wasting such great talent in such a nothing role.

While Radioactive could have been a decent vehicle for Ms. Satrapi to flex her muscles as a filmmaker, the movie spends so much time having Currie fighting against the male-dominated science field that it loses sight of why she was such an important figure in the first place. Radioactive just comes across as a generally bland and unimaginative by-the-books biopic.

Also on Digital and On Demand this Friday is Chris Foggin’s FISHERMAN’S FRIENDS (Samuel Goldwyn Films), another quaint British comedy based on a true story, much like the recent Military Wives. Rather than being about a group of singing women, this one is about a group of singing men! What a twist!

Daniel Mays plays Danny, a music biz exec from London who travels to the seaside town of Port Isaac, Cornwall with some of his record company coworkers. Once there, they discover a local group of singing local fisherman, known as “Fisherman’s Friends,” who Danny wants to sign to a label. He also wants to get closer to Tuppence Middleton’s single mother Alwyn, who, no surprise, is also the only pleasant-looking younger woman in the town.

Fisherman’s Friends isn’t bad, but if you’ve seen a lot of British movies from the last few decades, then you’ve already seen this movie, particularly the “fish out of water” humor of a guy from the big city trying to relate to the down-to-earth ways of folk in a fishing village. It’s the type of really forced humor that is perfectly pleasant but not particularly groundbreaking in this day and age with so many filmmakers trying to do cutting-edge work.

Instead, this goes for a very typical and cutesie formula where everything works out with very little real conflict even when it throws in a needless subplot about the local pub falling on hard times and selling to a rich man who has little regard for the ways o the town.  On top of that, and even if this wasn’t based on a true story, it’s very hard to believe anyone in the music industry or who buys records would be that interested in this group to make them worth signing a million-pound record deal. (Apparently, this really happened!)

I think it’s adorable that filmmakers are trying to turn character actor Daniel Mays (who you’ve seen in everything!) into a romantic lead, especially when you have James Purefoy right there! Instead, 56-year-old Purefoy is instead cast as Middleton’s father, while she’s put into a situation where she’s the love interest for a man that’s 23 years her elder. This kind of thing rarely bothers me as it does many younger female critics, but their romance is just ridiculous and unnecessary if not for the formula. As much as I enjoyed seeing Dave Johns from I, Daniel Blake as one of the singing fishermen, there really isn’t much for him to do in this.

If you like sea shanties and you are a woman over 60 (or have a mother that age) then Fisherman’s Friends is a cute butnever particularly hilarious British comedy that tries to be The Full Monty. But it never really tries to be anything more or less than the formula created by that movie 23 years ago, so it’s quickly forgotten after its saccharine finale.

Unfortunately, I just wasn’t able to get THE ROOM (Shudder/RLJE Films), the live action directing debut from Christin Volckman (Renaissance), but it’s now available on VOD, Digital HD, DVD AND Blu-Ray! It stars Olga Kurylenko and Kevin Janssens as a couple who leave the city to move into a an old house where they discover a secret hidden room that has the power to materialize anything they want, but this is a horror film, so what might seem like a fairy tale is likely to get dark. (I actually think I saw the trailer for this on Shudder, so I’ll probably check it out, and if it’s worth doing so, I’ll mention it in next week’s column.)

Yet another horror movie hitting On Demand this Friday is Pamela Moriarty’s A DEADLY LEGEND (Gravitas Ventures) that stars Corbin Bensen as a real estate developer who buys an old summer camp to build new homes unaware of the dark history of supernatural worship and human sacrifice. I’m gonna take the fifth on this one, which also stars Judd Hirsch and Lori Petty.

Available via Virtual Cinema through New York’s Film Forum and L.A.’s Laemmle is Gero von Boehm’s documentary, Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful (Kino Lorber), about the photographer who had a nearly five-decade career before dying in a car crash in 2006.

From Colombia to various Virtual Cinemas is Catalina Arroyave’s debut, Days of the Whale (Outsider Pictures) set in the city of Medellin, where it follows two young graffiti artists, Cristina and Simon, who tag places around where they live but coming from very different backgrounds, but they eventually bond while part of a revolutionary art collective.

Danny Pudi from Community and Emily C. Chang from The Vampire Diaries star in Sam Friedlander’s comedy Babysplitters (Gravitas Ventures) as one of two couples who have mixed emotions about having kids, so they decided to share one baby between them. Okay, then.

Netflix will also debut the rom-com sequel, The Kissing Booth 2, once again starring Joey King as Ellie, who is trying to juggle her long-distance romance with Jacob Erlodi’s Noah and her close friendship with Joel Courtney’s Lee.  I haven’t seen the first movie. Probably won’t watch this one.

Next week, more movies in a variety of theatrical and non-theatrical release!

If you’ve read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com, or tweet me on Twitter. I love hearing from my “readers,” whomever they may be.’