5. Drive My Car
Ryusuke Hamaguchi released two very strong films in 2021 but only one of them made this list (sorry to the wonderful Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, which you should still seek out). Drive My Car is a feat in its own right. The three-hour-long neorealist parable of sorts sticks with you long after it’s over. It follows a Japanese theatre director who reluctantly agrees to have a working-class young woman as a driver to and from his rehearsals for a production of Uncle Vanya.
Western audiences might be hesitant towards Hamaguchi’s more Eastern philosophy of entertainment and filmmaking, a patient approach that, when executed well, is profound in the way it creates space for the viewer to sit calmly, think clearly, and process deeply alongside the characters on screen.
For those disinterested, it’s the kind of movie that can alter what you think you know about slow cinema. One will continue to think great slow cinema is “boring” until they let it in and see how it transforms viewers for the better, the entire concept of entertainment reshaped as a result.
That’s not to say Drive My Car will necessarily be that film for you, but it could flip the switch. It has the power, the potential, the profundity. Love it or hate it, if you make it through the final act untouched, you should seek out emergency therapy.
4. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Starting your movie with a raunchy out-of-context sex tape is a bold, perhaps ill-advised move. Unless you’re Radu Jude. Frankly put, the Romanian film scene is thriving, and the Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn writer-director is hovering at the center with the likes of Puiu, Mungiu, and Porumboui, to name a few.
Few filmmakers could pull off a romp as controversial, thought-provoking, and openly slanderous of one’s country as this, a movie about an unlucky primary school teacher, Emi (Katia Pascariu), whose sex tape with her husband somehow makes its way onto the internet and then into the hands of her students and the local community.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is divided into three very distinct acts. The first sees Emi going about town running errands, living through a day. The camera sits at a distance, tracing her path voyeuristically, making a point in each shot to drift away from her and onto objects in the street or design pieces on buildings. There’s murky meaning in it, but it’s wrapped in a coded symbolism that makes it hard to unpack.
The second act clears things up a little. Emi is gone. The story has been put on pause as Jude takes us through a series of visual metaphors (20? 30? 40??) that range from the back of a beaten child with the word “Family” laid over it to film-philosophy musings on the nature of Athena’s polished shield. It speeds by at lightning pace for an overall bewildering, titillating experience.
Then comes the third act, Emi’s ravenous trial before the — slowly revealed to be — bigoted parents of her students. You really don’t want to miss it.
3. Ema
It’s hard to believe at this point, but Ema premiered next to Joker at the Venice Film Festival in 2019. A whole world of cinema has emerged since, including Pablo Larrain’s own Spencer.
This sensual, Chilean mountainside movie about experimental dance and a botched adoption was held by distributors long enough to have incidentally relegated the masterwork to year-end-list limbo. It didn’t qualify for 2020 lists because it hadn’t technically come out yet, and it won’t be on many lists this year because “that movie came out so long ago… it premiered last decade!”
Despite its place in a forgotten realm, Ema is finally available to watch with ease, and I can’t recommend the experience enough. Grounded in a radiant, moody score from electronic maestro Nicolás Jaar, what begins as a colorful drama twists and turns into an unexpected thriller — one in which characters and their motivations are equal parts fascinating and baffling.
Lead Mariana Di Girolama knocks her performance out of the park, bringing a lucid sense of movement that makes the dancing pop off the screen and intoxicating confidence to a character that simply couldn’t exist without it. As if everything else isn’t enough already, co-lead and Larrain regular Gael Garcia Bernal plays an impassioned choreographer who dons some terrific costumes.
2. Undine
The German fairytale of Undine might be lost on American audiences, but all you need to know is this: she is a siren of sorts who is cursed to have to kill any man that leaves her. Christian Petzold’s Undine is a modern spin on the story.
Instead of a mermaid, we have Undine Wibeau (Paula Beer), a historian for the German Senate whom we meet as she’s being broken up with at a cafe. Mere minutes later, she meets Christoph (Franz Rogowski), a charming, humble, tender softie who goes head over heels for her in record time. Lucky for him, she feels the same.
As is often the case in Petzold’s films, everything in Undine somehow seems connected. But loosely enough to make you think you’re reading too much into it. It weaves between romance and fantasy, leaving us with burning questions about the nature of Undine’s existence, the fawning connection between the two, and the ill-fatedness of love.
Petzold’s direction is absolutely intoxicating. The romance at the center bursts with so much genuine chemistry you’ll want to kiss whoever you’re sitting next to. And the blend of convoluted Berlin history, ancient fairytale romance, underwater imagery, and baffling narrative beats make for a movie memorable enough to need to return to every year.
1. Memoria
One of two Palme d’Or-winning directors on this list, Apichatpong Weerasethakul is always one — or ten — steps ahead of us. He makes the kind of movies we have to learn to acclimate to because he aims to push the boundaries of what film can capture and communicate. If we can meet his work where it’s at, the reward is greater than what most cinema can offer.
Here, it comes in the form of Weerasethakul’s first project outside of Thailand and his first in Spanish and English. He and the film’s lead, Tilda Swinton, had been angling for a project together for nearly a decade before Memoria came together. In simple terms, it’s about a Scottish botanist researching diseased plants in the Colombian jungle who keeps hearing a loud banging noise, which no one else notices, and the strange, peaceable path to discovery of self and source that unfolds.
It’s an interior tale that hinges on one of the most effective sound designs this side of the 21st century. So effective, in fact, that the movie will only ever be viewable in theaters provided with specific sound instructions from Weerasethakul himself. The first release ever to announce a tour instead of a distribution plan, it will travel from city to city, week to week, for the rest of its life (apparently), only playing on one screen in the world at any given time.
The downside is that you won’t get to watch and rewatch and rewatch at home. But the upside is a singular film experience, one you’ll have to track down like a groupie to have. Like I said, Memoria is a movie you have to reach out to, not the other way around. It’s like a wise, loving parent as opposed to content that bleeds for attention. Its arms are open, waiting to embrace you if you come. The final moments are sure to leave you in awe, perhaps a bit changed.
Related Topics: 2021 Rewind
