Elena Lazic

1 week ago | theplaylist.net | Elena Lazic

“The Young Mothers’ Home,” the latest film from Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, opens on the desperation of a young girl at a bus stop, scanning her surroundings for someone she does not know. Her eagerness alarmingly stands out in this public setting, and we’re not sure she won’t create a scene. It’s an immediately gripping place to start a film that initially seems so directly concerned with the sometimes painful interplay between social roles (or rules) and private emotions.

2 weeks ago | theplaylist.net | Elena Lazic

Much of the torment of being a teenager is to do with seeing adults worry about their loved ones. Perhaps this is the fundamental way in which trauma is passed down the generations: seeing fear in the eyes of a parent instills fear in you.

2 weeks ago | theplaylist.net | Elena Lazic

The French legal term “abus de faiblesse”, which translates to “abuse of weakness”, describes situations in which a vulnerable person is pushed by another to act against their own interest. When the expression appears in the news, it usually refers to sordid tales of elderly individuals manipulated by someone into giving away their money; the image this evokes is often that of a frail person completely unaware of what they are doing due to their advanced age and failing health.

2 weeks ago | theplaylist.net | Elena Lazic

“The offscreen is more evocative”, says a Jean-Luc Godard lookalike in “Nouvelle Vague,” Richard Linklater’s Palme d’Or contender at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It is an astonishing inclusion in a film that is, ultimately, nothing more than a painstakingly detailed recreation of the making of Godard’s debut feature “Breathless” (1960) — a painfully literal demystification of the offscreen of the influential filmmaking movement that gives Linklater’s film its title.

3 weeks ago | theplaylist.net | Elena Lazic

Self-consciously drawing attention to their own workings, the films of German director Christian Petzold have always displayed a degree of abstraction. Although “Afire” (2023), his previous effort before this year’s Directors’ Fortnight entry “Mirrors No. 3,” was one of his most naturalistic in years, the romantic relationship at its core made more sense as a narrative tool in Petzold’s exploration of the misery of artmaking, than as a realistic connection.