News of the Dead (bonus entry)

[REC] (d. Jaume Balagueró; Paco Plaza, 2007)

After watching Trollhunter, I was suddenly reminded of other found footage movies. And it led me to rewatch one of my favorite foreign-language horror movies ever – [REC]. While there is a competently made nearly shot-by-shot American remake called Quarantine that isn’t half bad, there is really just something about the original that makes it infinitely superior.

[REC]’s premise is really simple. A reporter and her cameraman go on an ordinary late-night news hunt that leads them on patrol with the fire department to an apartment building where an old woman needs assistance. But what initially seems like a routine night out for the two turns into a nightmare as the building is quarantined and something is clearly not right with the tenants.

After watching it, it’s very easy to say that [REC] is pretty much a zombie movie filmed with a found footage lens. What makes the movie unique from other zombie and found footage films, however, is that the movie is fast-paced and intense. Plenty of found footage horror movies rely on the slow burn, and the subtle reliance of the audience’s attention to pick up on the smallest creepy details. [REC] throws this approach out the window as the film’s intense camerawork is matched by the tense zombie encounters.

What really makes [REC]’s zombies scary, however, is that they are used in an almost subtle yet Dawn of the Dead-esque manner. What this means is that while the film’s zombies are fast and aggressive, they are utilized well to the point that whenever a zombie encounter does happen, it’s never not terrifying or intense.

Additionally, the film does an excellent job with the opening exposition and atmosphere. The film seems to open on a deliberately slow manner, almost to lull you in to the routine-ness of the newscast crew. What this ends up doing is that the second the characters reach the building, the film just thrusts you inside an intense and terrifying ride and never really lets go. Additionally, as the characters panic, the subtle background noises of helicopters, alarms, and loud noises help add to the paranoia and claustrophobia that the film’s characters experience, and vicariously, the audience.

There is always something happening in the film to the point that it is not the found footage camerawork that makes one feel uneasy, it’s the film’s events. The chaos works very well for [REC], and this is actually where the film struggles a bit. The film is so hell-bent on thrilling and scaring, that the characters suffer. With the exception of the main character Angela (portrayed excellently by Manuela Velasco), everyone else in the film feels like they are two-dimensional and undercooked characters, only there to exist to become typical horror movie fodder. In addition, the film’s final act ends up feeling even more rushed and half-baked due to the intense manner of the film, and ends up scratching some heads in a manner that is probably unintended by the film.

Still, when the film is an exhaustingly tense and scary 78 minutes, it is hard to complain. [REC]’s purpose is to terrify and entertain, and it is a purpose that it performed well in spades. [REC] is one of my favorite horror movies ever, and if there is ever a found footage film that merits essential viewing, this is it.

A Trip To Remember

Heavy Trip (d. Jukka Vidgren; Jusso Latio, 2018)

After a semester of films that ranged from the confusing to the phenomenal, to the straightforward to the abstract, and from the discernible to the WTFness, After that rollercoaster of a film selection, it only feels fitting to end on Heavy Trip, a heavy metal film that despite its rough exterior, has an incredibly funny tone and warm heart.

The film’s premise is something that is actually almost familiar. A budding young band wants to get a gig and perform and grow big. But what makes the film unique from the start is that the film heavily embraces the heavy metal aesthetic. It is loud, it is chaotic, and it truly feels jarring if one is not a fan of heavy metal. However, whether one loves metal or not is irrelevant to the enjoyment of the film, which is actually another great part about the film. Even though I am personally not a fan of metal music, I can still see that the way the film tackles the genre’s history with respect. There is a clear showcase of genuine love of heavy metal throughout the film, whether from the many references to other acts as well as its original music.

Another thing that I also liked about the movie was the central cast. While there’s certainly nothing here that would probably be acclaimed at famous film festivals, the cast of the film, particularly the central band, are all very well acted with good comedic timing and performances. It really made them feel believable as not just a band, but a strong group of friends.

The movie is also very very accessible, even to people unfamiliar with the metal genre. An amusing example is near the beginning of the film, where one of the characters discovers their new original song by literally putting a dead reindeer through a meat grinder and enjoying the music coming from the accident. It almost feels like a double layer joke – it is funny because of the ridiculousness of the whole scene, but it is also funny because it does exactly sound like most heavy metal in the film. It is something tonally different from what is to be expected from metal, and yet it is still distinctly metal.

While there are some problems (for starters, the film’s primary antagonist in the form of a scheming and womanizing singer never really feels like a big threat), these are really just minor nitpicks at what is, essentially, a near-perfect comedy. Most comedies that I have seen, even among my favorites, admittedly have scenes that feel unnecessary or a moment in the film where it appears that nothing much is going on. But Heavy Trip does not really suffer from this. Its runtime is fast, the movie going through comedic set-piece after comedic set-piece that makes sure that even its weaker moments are quickly overshadowed by the next thing.

And that’s honestly just what makes the movie just a good time. Heavy Trip is just a feel-good movie with humor that never really gets old (the farcial scene of the border patrol agents in Norway on the final act is one of the most I’ve ever laughed at a movie in a very long time), music that can easily be appreciated, and a cast that just clicks at almost every turn.

All-in-all, Heavy Trip may be a simple film, but after the heaviness of plenty of the films in the course? It just feels appropriate to end here, with a film that is both simple and yet distinctly unique.

The Hunger Games

Without a doubt, Raw was the most disturbing movie of the class thus far. From people just outright yelling to people audibly gasping and looking away from the screen, it was certainly something that will remain in my mind for quite some time. And yet a few days after watching Raw, the more I realize that the film was more than just a movie meant to disturb or terrify. In fact, now that I think about it, Raw may also be a coming-of-age movie of sorts, although a bloody and violent one.

The main storyline of the film can be summed up in a simple sentence – and IMDB honestly nails it: “An innocent teenager, studying to be a vet, develops a craving for human flesh.” That’s the basic premise of the film, with the rest of it mainly concerning itself with how she reacts to this newfound craving and how her personality changes, most especially how the lead character handles her relationship with her sister and her attraction to her roommate.

I mentioned that the film almost might be a coming-of-age movie, and the reason for that is that after the main character begins her cravings, she begins to act much more liberated. Instead of being soft-spoken and reserved, she is more outgoing and impulsive. Once she wants something, she does anything to satisfy her cravings and it’s almost as if the movie is commentary on how one giving in too much to their urges is too much.

In fact, one of the more disturbing scenes in the film that actually contains no violence is a scene where the lead performs a dance in front of the mirror. She puts lipstick on, dances provocatively, and even outright kisses her mirror multiple times, all while a French pop song with a disorienting techno background with lyrics involving extreme sexual undertones plays. It goes to show that as much as her cravings for actual human flesh have come to the surface, so to have the other kind of cravings come to her life. Another is when she looks longingly at her roommate playing soccer. From the way she stares at him and her nose begins to bleed, it is almost uncertain if she is looking at him in the lens of attraction or the lens of hunger, and the dizzy and zig-zag camera work helps make this scene feel uncomfortable to watch.

It is this duality in violence and coming of age themes that makes Raw a unique movie to think about. While I definitely think that the violence and gore alone makes it almost a certainty that I do not want to see the film again, it is discussion of the film and thinking about its themes after that makes it stand out even more in my mind as something to remember, and part of why the film is so memorable is this said violence.

The violence of Raw is easily its biggest talking point. It is violent, it is brutal, to the point where I read that the film supposedly made people at Cannes throw up and go to the bathroom. Without mincing words, especially considering the reactions of the class, this is something that I absolutely get. A finger is cut off, part of a lip is bitten off, and full-on depictions of dead animals are shown… and yet the violence of Raw almost feels necessary to show the events of the film. Is it graphic? Yes. Is it brutal? Absolutely. And yet it never feels like blood and gore for the sake of blood and gore. For lack of a better word, the violence in Raw is tasteful and fitting to the film’s tone. It is this almost necessary graphic violence that really drives the film’s themes home.

At the end of it all, Raw is an unforgettable film. It is terrifying in its violence, thought-provoking in its themes, and all-in-all, this is certainly one of the more uncompromising and graphic views on growing up and coming of age.

The Slow Edukators

In all honesty, after watching The Edukators, I had no idea how to feel. I thought that the film was far too long for its own good, and in comparison to another film, also German at that, that I’ve seen in class, I felt the way Good Bye Lenin approached its political statements about capitalism and government was much more subtle and effective than The Edukators, which seems to just outright give the viewer a lecture in the middle of the film.

And this is puzzling because the basic premise of the movie really does not feel like it had to be almost two full hours. It’s simply about a trio of anti-capitalist activists, two of which are a couple, and them committing a kidnapping-by-circumstance, and the relationships of these three and their captor. Along the way, the captor learns to bond with them, the third wheel of the activists falls in love with the girl, and more issues are discussed.

I think what the movie also fails at from the start is introducing these characters. Obviously it is always a tricky thing to have a crime film with likable characters, considering how the very nature of the genre represents a fantasized view in the acts one shouldn’t normally do, but the main characters all start off very bland and unlikable, particularly Jule (Julia Jentsch). I never truly bought the romance between the characters as well, and the more kissing scenes there were, the more the romance subplot felt forced in as well as uncomfortable to watch. While the characters all eventually learn to grow, and they become more likable and understandable, it happens far too close to the end of the film for it to truly have any impact. In fact, the film’s ending even attempts to try a twist ending where it initially appears that the activists would not get away with their crimes only to reveal that they in fact did, but at the very end of the film I was just more annoyed they just didn’t get caught.

And another thing I felt the movie was lacking was a consistent theme. The film begins with a strong opening scene of the leads protesting a store’s sweatshop practices, and then builds up to them breaking into the home of Hardenberg, a man who would eventually be their hostage. Once they appear to get caught and commit the kidnapping, the film takes a more panic-induced tone, and the actual kidnapping is intense. But when the dust settles, the film transitions from a crime drama to an almost slice-of-life drama with the four characters. It feels almost like an entirely different film, and the sudden shift is truly jarring, with its bloated runtime also adding to the pain.

The one thing I did like about the film though was the performances. As much as the characters felt unlikable or flat, I never felt that they were poorly acted. Everyone in the film’s 4-person ensemble is doing their best, and the emotions of each character as well as the tone in their dialogue is felt. The actors all did a very good job, and their performances are easily the best part of the film.

In the end, after much thought, I honestly didn’t expect to dislike a movie any more than The Five Obstructions out of all the films I’ve watched in this class, but The Edukators successfully managed to dethrone it. It’s a well-acted film that, like its characters, sadly feels like it doesn’t know what it’s doing or where it’s going.

Time After Time

Timecrimes is an interesting movie. From the start, the film takes an almost instantaneous 360 degree spin. When at first one thinks they are just watching a weird movie that starts off with a man named Hector (Karra Elejade) peeking at a naked hiker all-the-while placating his wife, the film’s intensity suddenly ricochets when his perversion leads to a mysterious man stabbing him with scissors and pursuing him through the woods. After an absolutely intense chase sequence where the security of the protagonist is never confirmed, he ends up inside a mysterious facility where he inexplicably travels back in time to the start of the day. Then, he must find out a way to ensure that he is the only real Hector that exists.

That is the basic gist of the movie, and it’s honestly something that has been done a lot before. Films like Groundhog Day, Looper, and even Happy Death Day are all American films that focus on a protagonist that finds themselves messing with time figuratively and literally. What sets Timecrimes apart, however, is how gritty and unpolished the film looks, and yet at the same time, the film’s writing is air-proof. Even the smallest details have an eventual explanation, and it’s staggering how a time travel film like this manages to fill in all the plot holes that usually hurt films like this.

Another thing that I really liked about the film was the way it plays with tone. While the aforementioned opening act of the film is intense, frantic, and almost even terrifying (the class had a lot of people yell and jump during several moments), this is later on placated by some amazing dark humor when Hector (spoiler) finds out that he ended up being the mysterious assailant from the start, and goes very far to make sure that he makes his double cease to exist.

I also think that another aspect of the film that I really enjoyed was the length. In today’s day and age, films usually take at least two hours, and even then, they are not perfect. Movies that have a simple premise can last even longer, and yet they have plot holes galore, or the pacing hurts the film. Timecrimes’ breezy 92 minute premise somehow feels short, and at the same time it never feels like there is any downtime on screen. Every minute, something important is happening, and the second you think the film begins to wear out its welcome, it moves on to another thing. It’s really nothing like any time travel movie I’ve seen before, and it feels very refreshing to watch.

Ultimately, Timecrimes was a movie I enjoyed a lot. While I do have some problems with it (namely that despite the film’s events, the characters all feel rather hollow and insignificant in the long run – the plot feels more important than the characters which is almost an irony considering how one should complement the other), this was a fun thriller and a unique perspective on time travel that I did not regret using my own time on.

The Troll Toll

When I first found out that we were going to watch Trollhunter, I was pretty surprised. This is because I actually have had the pleasure of watching this movie before when it came out at the height of the fount footage movie boom. After Paranormal Activity’s breakout and success in 2007, found footage horror movies became the in and new industry trend, and while plenty of these movies were terrible, some used the found footage conceit to create something distinctly unique and wonderful – and it just so happens that one of those movies that I have seen is Trollhunter.

Trollhunter’s main plot concerns itself with a group of students investigating the death of a bear that was illegally poached. What begins as an ordinary investigation suddenly turns into something much more supernatural as the students find out that the hunter of the bear is actually a Trollhunter – mandated in secret by the government. With the titular trollhunter wanting to quit his dangerous and underpaid job, the students join him as he hunts trolls and risk their lives along the way.

In essense, Trollhunter’s plot is actually almost like the found footage movie that started it all – The Blair Witch Project. It is like Blair Witch in the sense that the film is about students recording something mysterious that is happening, and yet at the same time one can also see how this blind devotion to recording takes a toll on the characters. They get scared, they get injured, they risk their lives several times, and yet the camera keeps rolling as their determination sticks. What the film has differently over Blair Witch, however, is that while the scared students panic and run over each other, the film’s titular character is nonchalant and indifferent towards his work. To him, this is just something normal, and it is this neutrality that makes every troll encounter in the film equal parts thrilling and almost-comical.

Furthermore, something that really surprised me about the movie is that while the found footage style of filmmaking allows this movie’s visual effects to have more wiggle room with regards to how good it looks, the movie does not take this road and instead utilizes this style of filmmaking to amplify the scale and fearful wonder that the movie brings. When the eponymous trolls are on screen, the loud sound design and nervous camerawork keeps the film’s pace at a high rate.

Additionally, despite the film not being bound by normal means of cinematography, the film manages to capture beautiful views of the Norwegian landscape. From bright green forests to desolate and cold fjords, the film moves with its setting as much as its characters move the cameras, and this was very memorable and noticeable.

The movie, however, like most films in the genre, suffers from issues. One is that I felt that the characters were rather flat allthroughout. There was really no distinct character that stood out, and that made it very hard to empathize with any of them. Secondly, for some reason, the film felt too long near the second act. While the movie is a very easy and breezy 104 minutes, the midportion of the stretch suffers from some pacing issues that were very noticeable and contradictory to a majority of the movie. And the last issue of the film is that its ending manages to both be vague and confusing – maybe part of it is that I do not understand the social or political satire that the film attempts at times with the presence of the government agents but it just did not feel like an appropriate ending

Still, despite these problems, as a whole, Trollhunter was still an exhilarating and thrilling 104 minutes and is one of the best examples of this type of film.

Holy F***

Pardon the frankness of the title, but that is precisely what I felt all-throughout Holy Motors’ two-hour runtime. From start to finish.

I honestly don’t even know where to begin with this film. But if I had to talk about it, it’s that it is an anthology film where the framing device is one man taking a limo from segment to segment and transforming himself along the way. And yet it is not an anthology since most anthology films have different collaborators and style in each segment, but this film manages to maintain a consistent tone and feel through all of these segments.

I guess since the film has this form of structure then it’s fair to say that like the film, this entry is less about understanding and explaining the film and more of reacting to it. Some of the segments that occur are morbidly funny (one where he transforms himself into a savage being with no control and an appetite for destruction and another one where he murders a man only to be stabbed himself), some of the segments are just plain weird (one where he puts on a motion capture suit and performs stunts for an unseen director and the ending where he goes home to a family of monkeys), and some are actually beautiful and touching (one where he is an old man on his deathbed, one where he breaks out into a trumpet orchestra, and one where he seemingly drops his character and meets with a woman played by Kylie Minogue).

After finishing the film, I was just looking around in disbelief with what I just watched. And yet, somehow, after a few days of the film marinating into my mind, I can somehow admit that the film was an enjoyable experience. It’s nothing I would want to go through again, but as a form of showing what cinema can do, you can really do no wrong with Holy Motors. This is a film about filmmaking in this class that shows its power and range as a medium much much better than The Five Obstructions, and it almost sends a message of how with film, you can truly do anything you want. Creativity has no bounds, so why should film?

The Mother Trap

*Good Bye, Lenin! (d. Wolfgang Becker; 2003)*

Among all the films in the class so far that I’ve seen, Good Bye Lenin is the one I’ve been most impressed by. The film knows how to be amusing despite being a drama at heart, and the performances just help elevate the film to a level that is simply admirable, just like the main character’s actions.

The film’s plot concerns Alex (Daniel Bruhl) and his mother (Katrin Sass). Alex’s mother is a hardcore socialist who uprooted her family to live in a Socialist state in East Berlin. One day, she suffers a heart attack and winds up in a coma. During her coma, major events happen. The Berlin Wall is torn down, Berlin’s borders are reopened, and capitalism comes to East Berlin. When she finally wakes up, Alex, out of concern for her fragile state, decides to pretend and stage an elaborate ruse to fool her about the current state of the world by manufacturing a reality around his mother that things are the way she left it.

The storyline was unique because while children deceiving their parents out of concern is a storyline that has been done by many other films before, the way Good Bye Lenin does this is that it is not just something as simple as getting parents back together like The Parent Trap, it is something that affects everyone in the film and this moment is intentionally being suppressed from an individual. It is a fascinating look as you can really see the differences. From a simple background to a large city landscape that has Coca-Cola branding and Burger King’s, the way the film establishes atmosphere is that like its characters, the viewer is thrust into a world that is slowly being affected by change.

It is this specific atmosphere that makes the ruse to fool Alex’s mother even more amusing – when something as simple as a Coca Cola billboard potentially being discovered is effective at bringing forth laughs, that’s when one knows how effective the film’s atmosphere is. It’s also not just laughs, some serious ramifications of the changes in the film’s world are also shown – such as how the forgetfulness of Alex’s mother leads to the family losing thousands of money due to them both not being able to find her bank book and not being able to tell her about what has happened.

What also makes the movie even better are the performances. Daniel Bruhl as Alex portrays his character with multiple layers. While on the surface the character just seems to be a loving son, he is able to insert multiple emotions and gestures to fully flesh out his character to be more than that. More than a loving son, he is also a romantic and a creative planner. Katrin Sass is also fantastic as the mother. There is a particularly powerful scene in the middle of the film where Alex’s mother eventually gains enough strength to get out of bed and walk on her own. The way the camera follows her face as she steps out of her son’s manufactured reality and into the world’s reality perfectly encapsulates the confusion of the character herself and without saying a single word, Sass just manages to not just convey the needed emotions of the scene, but also more.

Overall, while the film is something that is admittedly a bit more straightforward than the previous films I have seen in this class, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Good Bye Lenin is a fantastic movie that wonderfully balances both Drama and Comedy and serves as an interesting period piece on the changes of Germany after the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Five Derivatives

*The Five Obstructions (d. Lars Von Trier, Jorgen Leith; 2003)*

In all honesty, the film The Five Obstructions was probably the only movie so far that I’ve seen in this class that I did not enjoy. Part of this was because I felt the film was too redundant, and another was because I felt the film was too self-indulgent for its own good.

Maybe another is that I am not a fan of Director Lars von Trier. The films of Von Trier that I have seen feel like it’s too much pandering for art for the sake of art or for something to force a message. Von Trier’s style is really just not for me, and while this specific film does not have any graphic violence or dark themes, rather it is a more straightforward look into what makes a film, I found it to be just too slow and uninteresting.

The film’s basic plotline is Von Trier challenging fellow director Jorgen Leth to remake his short film entitled The Perfect Human. The titular ‘five obstructions’ come in the form of challenges Von Trier imposes on Leth. These include remaking the film in Cuba with a forced frame limit for each cut, remaking the film in “the most lonely place in the world”, and animating the film. Leth takes on each challenge in a unique way – he films in Cuba and makes the framerate challenge work by taking on hyperspeed editing, he films in India by having a near-transparent screen, and he finds an animator to help bring his vision to life.

In my opinion, while the first version of the film was very interesting (and honestly really well-made – despite the messy and frantic editing the basic gist of the short film was still faithfully translated), the rest of the film just does not live up, despite the clear quality of the craft on display.

I think the main scene that I also have a hard time with the film is when Von Trier and Leith talk about animation in a negative way and deride it. I really just found this entire conversation pretentious and condescending, especially since they were so dead set on knowing that as long as its animated “its going to be crap”. Considering the value animation has (it is a medium where the impossible is possible, it is a world where non-realism can prevail) to cinema as a whole, I found both Von Trier and Leith’s comments very disrespectful and close-minded as directors.

Furthermore, the movie seems to be aimless. While the central conceit is interesting in seeing five different versions of a short film, what the structure of the film means is that by seeing five different versions, even though they are different aesthetically, the inner message is still the same, which leads to very very monotonous viewing. I felt that while the movie-making parts of each obstruction had their own merits, the actual showing of the obstructions felt very very slow. This is why despite the movie not even being 100 minutes long, it feels like it went on for even longer than that.

Overall, there is no denying that there is a lot of talent and craft that went into the film from both Von Trier and Leth’s perspectives. Von Trier for attempting to make something new out of a documentary framework and Leth for showing the different facets of filmmaking, particularly how a story can be told in multiple ways. However, it is really just not for me.

Viva L’Avventura

*L’Avventura (d. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)*

Prior to watching the film, I remember being warned in class that L’Avventura was going to be one of the more so-called ‘pretentious’ European movies. And admittedly, when I first started the film, I was instantly intimidated by its lengthy runtime. However, two hours later, I was pretty much surprised that I had just sat through a nearly two and a half hour film without breaking a sweat and it felt like it just flew past by. This is because L’Avventura, more than anything, is almost like a dream watching it. It is black and white, yet the sceneries and environment feel distinctly colorful, there is a central mystery to the plot, and yet the film effortlessly focuses on things outside of the core mystery without the mystery ever feeling truly diminished.

While the plot initially seems to focus on the mysterious (and unexplained) disappearance of Anna, it soon transcends into being a plot about a couple that was unsatisfied with their relationship finding an out. Anna found her ‘out’ by disappearing, and Sandro found his ‘out’ through the form of Claudia, who he ‘falls in love’ with. The reason why ‘falls in love’ is written with a quotation is because the film actually is less of a love story and more of a showcase of dissatisfied people desperately clinging to things in an attempt to find satisfaction. Almost everyone in the film is rich but has nothing substantial to make themselves truly happy. And that is the silent tragedy of the film.

While Sandro may appear to be in love with Anna, the first chance he gets, he ends up going for her best friend Claudia. While Claudia may appear to be fully dedicated to finding Anna, the first chance she gets when she thinks Sandro has found her, she runs away in a panic, conflicted over her dedication to her best friend and her attraction to Sandro. When Sandro appears to want to marry Claudia, she refuses, but then accidentally rings a bell and has a grand time dancing, with Sandro amused at her and the two appearing to be in love. The Sandro-Claudia relationship seems to consist of nothing but mixed messages, and that really sums up the film – it is not only about a mystery unsolved, it is also about a love story that never truly was.

The perfect personification of this central theme of the film is actually its final scene. After everything they’ve been through, Claudia finally confronts her feelings by admitting that she’s afraid should Anna return because it would mean losing Sandro. But despite this supposed mutual attraction, Sandro still decides to check out other women and Claudia even catches him with Gloria Perkins. In shock and sadness, Claudia runs away to cry, and an equally tearful Sandro follows her. In this final scene, both of these characters are crying, both for what may be different reasons. Claudia is crying because she is hurt, and yet she may also be crying upon realizing that this relationship is something that is clearly unfeasible, something that is only useful for the moment and nothing long-term. Sandro is crying not only because he got caught, but because he may have finally realized that no matter what he does, he can never truly be committed to a proper relationship. The closing shot of the film is Anna placing her hand on top of Sandro’s head, both still in tears, as the sight of a beautiful mountain can be seen in the background. This, I believe, is what the movie is showing. There are beautiful sights, there are wonderful auditory noises throughout, but the central core of it, its heart, similar to its main characters, is empty. It is nothing. It never was about love and was always purely about what was convenient and enjoyable short-term.

All-in-all, L’Avventura is a wonderful film. While personally it’s not a film that I would be too keen on seeing again (mainly because of its heavy ending), as it stands it is a beautifully-shot and shockingly realistic view on relationships and the complications they bring.