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Archive for August, 2019

“MARIANNE AND LEONARD — WORDS OF LOVE”: A man and his muse

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen in Greece, early ’60s

“MARIANNE AND LEONARD — WORDS OF LOVE” My rating: C+

102 minutes | MPAA rating: R

As the title suggests, “Marianne and Leonard — Words of Love” is a doc about the relationship of singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, the muse for whom he wrote “So Long, Marianne.”

Except that it isn’t really.

Filmmaker Nick Broomfield starts out with the Canadian Cohen — then building a reputation as a poet and novelist — and the Norwegian Ihlen meeting in the early ’60s on Hydra, a Greek island  attracting an international bohemian crowd with its beauty and affordability.

Their relationship continued off and on for decades, ending only with her death in 2016.

Problem is, Broomfield clearly didn’t have enough material to devote an entire feature to the love affair.

So, after a promising beginning, “Marianne and Leonard…” becomes a more or less conventional summation of Cohen’s life and career, with Ihlen showing up intermittently.

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“THE FAREWELL”: Sweet sorrow

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Shuzhed Zhao, Awkwafina

“THE FAREWELL”  My rating: B

98 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Through set largely in a foreign country with its own language and cultural peculiarities, “The Farewell” hits universal themes of kinship and mortality with unerring accuracy and delicate grace.

Lulu Wang’s film, inspired by her own family, centers on two women — the Chinese American Billie (Akwafina), who lives in New York City and is struggling to establish a career as a writer,  and her beloved grandmother, Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao), back in China.

Billie’s parents — Haiyan (Tzi Ma) and Jian (Diana Lin) — brought her to America when she was a young girl.  As a result Billie is way more American than Chinese, although she retains enough conversational Mandarin to get by.

More than two decades in the U.S. have profoundly affected Haiyan and Jian as well.  He feels guilty about not having revisited his homeland in years; she is happy to have escaped the subservient lot of a typical Chinese daughter-in-law.

Then comes the news that Haiyan’s mother has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The doctors give her only three months.

But this fact is kept from the old lady; it is the custom of many Chinese families to keep such bad news from the patient until the last moment.  The rationale is that it allows the condemned to enjoy life for as long as possible.

Everyone in the family wants to visit Nai Nai to pay their respects, but how to do it without spilling the beans about her precarious health?

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“OTHERHOOD”: Saved by the belles

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Patricia Arquette, Angela Bassett, Felicity Huffman

“OTHERHOOD” My rating: C+

100 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Thank God for Patricia Arquette, Angela Bassett and Felicity Huffman.

These three classy thesps  make “Otherhood” bearable and intermittently entertaining.

The premise of Cindy Chupack’s film finds three old friends in upstate New York lamenting the indifference with which  their sons ignore Mother’s Day.

Thus the film’s title: once mothers, these three women now find themselves “others.”

But the gals aren’t gonna take it.  They load up an orange Volvo station wagon and tool down to NYC to surprise their errant offspring.

Carol (Bassett) discovers that her son Matt (Sinqua Walls) is the art director of a “lad” magazine (aimed at horny single guys) with a different girl every night.

Gillian (Arquette) finds her son Daniel (Jake Hoffman) struggling not only with a stillborn writing career but a breakup with his longtime girlfriend (Heidi Gardner).

Helen (Huffman) swoops down on the gay-centric apartment of her kid Paul (Jake Lacy) and throws a few hissy fits that alternately amuse and appall Paul’s roomies.

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