Weekly round-up

>>Wacky aunts, evil kids and crazy parents

by MALCOLM FRASER,
MATTHEW HAYS
and JEFFREY MALECKI

Ma tante Aline

High-strung charity executive Geneviève (Sylvie Léonard) is under pressure to raise $10-million in a funding drive, while stickhandling an office romance with sensitive younger man Pierre-Alexandre (Les Invicibles’ Rémi-Pierre Paquin). In the middle of it all, she gets saddled with taking care of her eccentric aunt Aline (Béatrice Picard), a lounge singer who’s several decades past her prime but hasn’t quite realized it yet. Léonard’s charitable impulses get the better of her, and she lets Picard move in with her, soon realizing to her horror just how outré her aunt is in both her tastes and her behaviour.

Wouldn’t you know it, though: the old gal is frustrating at first, but ends up teaching Léonard some valuable lessons about life and love. It’s impossible to dislike Picard’s irrepressible character, with her gaudy garb, comically embarrassing antics and wide-eyed reminisces about singing in “the classiest joint in St-Henri.” The film also shows a glimmer of cynical smarts with a subplot taking a clever, if broadly drawn, satirical look at Quebec’s charity industry.

But director Gabriel Pelletier lays everything on a bit too thick; broad humour can be a great thing, but broad drama tends to make a film indistinguishable from cheap TV cheese. Léonard and Paquin’s romance is never quite convincing, the film’s climactic revelation is visible from a long way away, and a major plot device introduced at the 90-minute mark is just frustrating. Picard’s spirited performance ends up being an island of charm in a stagnant pond of corny clichés. (MF)

Joshua

The director behind Joshua knows a thing or two about horror. George Ratliff is the man behind the excellent doc Hell House. And this one plays like an ode to stinking-rotten-kid movies of the ’70s, including The Omen (there’s even a body-fluid-scene ode to The Exorcist early on).

Joshua, as played by Jacob Kogan, is a highly intelligent kid with rich parents who live in a fabulous Central Park condo. Dad (Sam Rockwell) and mom (Vera Farmiga) are thrilled to have another child, a baby girl. But you can just see the hatred in Joshua’s eyes as he leers at his new rival for attention. Ratliff certainly understands how to give us the creeps, though the quiet moments of nastiness are sometimes upstaged—not in a good way—by some downright ludicrous moments.

Fans of The Omen, The Exorcist and—the grandmamma of them all—The Bad Seed will appreciate Joshua’s lurking menace, but be warned: there are no typical horror-flick payoffs towards the end of the film. What the movie does crank up is the genre’s themes of the inanities of a culture soaked in therapy and pop psychology. And it’s also at its best when it subtly indicts the parents for their status-obsessed posturing, vapid materialism and not-so-genuine nurturing. Farmiga’s descent into madness is particularly harrowing to watch, and Rockwell’s bible-thumping, interfering parents make for hilarious supporting characters. Joshua won’t change any horror buff’s universe, but it’s still a worthy entry. (MH)

Libero

In his impressive first feature, Italian director Kim Rossi Stuart also plays Renato, a volatile but loving single father. While negotiating with his own troubles, Renato is raising his two children, especially his son Tommy, with a heavy hand. Their mother, meanwhile, is caught up in her own distress, occasionally coming home and then shattering the family with her inevitable departures.

It is 11-year-old Tommy (Alessandro Morace) who is most embroiled in this mess. While he lives in intensely close proximity to his family, his emotional ambiguity remains largely hidden from others. The viewer, however, is allowed telling glimpses of his solitude via his clandestine escapes to the expansive rooftop of his building and in a wonderfully anomalous and horrific dream sequence.

Rossi Stuart has wisely shied away from the arty accoutrements that you might expect in a European film of such emotional intensity, though there are some shots—centering around the staircase and elevator of the family’s old apartment building—which add an understated beauty to the film’s themes with their evocations of physical space.

Generally, the film sleeks by at a gentle narrative pace, but is punctured by the emotional instability of the two parents: on one hand, intense paternal love and anger, and on the other, the flighty uncertainty of the mother. But Tommy remains stoic throughout, and his few hesitant words speak with great force. Libero does not over-gloss the turbulence inherent in many families, and although its implicit and humane messages of love and forgiveness are not new, they are powerful. (JM)

>> Movie Listings