14 THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER18, 2019
COURTESY PATRICIA MAZUY/IMA PRODUCTIONS
Yet another masterwork made for French television and unreleased in
the United States is getting a rare screening: “Travolta and Me,” directed
by Patricia Mazuy, plays at Lincoln Center, on Nov. 15, in a retrospective
of her work. The hour-long drama, from 1993, is a furious rendering
of a teen-age girl’s desperate passion. It’s set in 1978, in a provincial
French city where Nicolas ( Julien Gérin), a cynical and Nietzsche-
besotted adolescent, picks up, on a bet, a sixteen-year-old student named
Christine (Leslie Azoulai), who’s obsessed with “Saturday Night Fever.”
She falls for him instantly, and, when she has to break a date with him
to tend the family’s boulangerie, she takes extreme measures to see
him again. Mazuy deftly sketches her characters and their milieu and
conveys frenzied emotions swiftly and sharply; her distinctive fusion of
monumental poise and reckless energy, documentary-based observation
and tragic forebodings, bursts out at a skating-rink birthday party, to
the songs of Aerosmith and Nina Hagen.—Richard BrodyINREVIVAL
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MOVIES
Honey Boy
The genesis of this intimate drama, written
by Shia LaBeouf and directed by Alma Har’el,
is built into the plot: as part of his therapy
in court-mandated rehab, a well-known actor
named Otis (Lucas Hedges) writes a script
about his past, which is shown in flashbacks.
The story is centered on the twelve-year-old
Otis (Noah Jupe), a rising child star who is
chaperoned in Hollywood by his father, James
(LaBeouf). They live in a grubby motel where
James, a former rodeo clown, a recovering
alcoholic, an ex-convict, and a sex offender,
conveys to Otis his own severe discipline and
comedic craft, along with physical and emo-
tional violence, egocentric fury, and a well of
self-pity. The public misconduct that landed
Otis in rehab is linked to his impacted rage—
as is his artistry. LaBeouf plays James with a
psychodramatic intensity that’s nonetheless
methodical. The strongest moments are when
Otis is caught off guard: on a phone call with
his mother (who remains unseen), and in scenes
from movie sets where his acting and his life
converge.—Richard Brody (In limited release.)
Marriage Story
Noah Baumbach’s new film stars Adam Driver
as Charlie, a successful theatre director who
lives in New York with his actress wife, Nicole
(Scarlett Johansson), and their eight-year-old
son, Henry (Azhy Robertson). Nicole and
Henry go to Los Angeles, where she is appear-
ing in a pilot for a TV show, and never really
come back; the story is as much a battle of the
cities as it is a clash of characters. Nicole, while
staying with her mother (Julie Hagerty), files
for divorce and hires Nora Fanshaw (Laura
Dern) to fight her case. Charlie fights back
with lawyers of his own, though it’s a conflict
that neither party wanted in the first place; as a
vision of good souls enmeshed in legal machin-
ery and debased by the whole experience, the
movie—fervid and funny though it is—often
sinks the heart. With Ray Liotta, Alan Alda,
and Merritt Wever.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed
in our issue of 11/11/19.) (In limited release.)Recorder: The Marion
Stokes Project
Matt Wolf’s documentary reveals the secret
greatness of a reclusive activist. A black fe-male librarian fired from her job, around 1960,
for being a Communist, Marion Metelits
considered political injustices inseparable
from media misrepresentations. She became a
local-TV producer and on-air personality and
married a wealthy white colleague named John
Stokes, Jr. In the nineteen-seventies, when
VCRs were first marketed, she bought many of
them, and, until her death, in 2012, she fanat-
ically recorded broadcasts, mainly news—sev-
enty thousand cassettes’ worth—while living
with her husband in deepening seclusion. (She
also foresaw the importance of personal com-
puting and collected Apple products from the
start.) Wolf relies on interviews with Stokes’s
family and domestic staff, plus well-chosen
samples of her recordings, to reconstruct her
life and her ideas. (He also indulges in some
misguided dramatic reënactments that muddle
the film with simulations of archival footage.)
An information revolutionary, Stokes, despite
her decades of isolation, touched the nerve
center of the times.—R.B. (In limited release.)Terminator: Dark Fate
The latest chapter of the “Terminator” saga,
directed by Tim Miller, is by no means the
least. For one thing, it sees the return of Linda
Hamilton as Sarah Connor, the heroine of the
first two films. She is older, wiser, tougher
than ever, and still on the trail of any cyborgs
who travel back from the future. The new
model is Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna)—indestruc-
tibly malleable, and, for some reason, bent
upon killing Dani (Natalia Reyes), a young
Mexican woman. The good news is that Dani
is shielded by Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an
augmented human soldier who, likewise, has
travelled through time for the occasion. Also
on hand is a solid fellow named Carl (Arnold
Schwarzenegger). Among his other skills, he
makes curtains for a living. The movie drags,
and much of the plot is a retread, but the final
third, loaded with shock and awe, is worth the
wait.—A.L. (11/11/19) (In wide release.)Waves
The gyrating and glowing images in this
melodrama, written and directed by Trey
Edward Shults, can’t mask its flimsy storytell-
ing or facile manipulations. The action is set
in South Florida, where a popular high-school
senior named Tyler (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), a
star wrestler, suffers a shoulder injury that
threatens his athletic career. When his girl-
friend, Alexis (Alexa Demie), gets pregnant,
she considers an abortion, and the resulting
conflict yields a devastating outcome that the
teens’ families struggle to confront. Much of
the film concerns Tyler’s relationship with
his father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), a
contractor; his stepmother, Catharine (Renée
Elise Goldsberry), a doctor; and his younger
sister, Emily (Taylor Russell). Early scenes
of Ronald’s stern but warmhearted coaching
and the family’s bruising banter suggest a
depth and a complexity that little else in the
film matches; the pushing of hot-button is-
sues and the stoking of terror and anger are
detached from the characters’ lives and the
wider world. With Lucas Hedges.—R.B. (In
limited release.)