Aquarela
BY FATIMA NAQVIDirector:Victor Kossakovsky
Country/Distributor: UK/Germany/
Denmark/USA, Sony Pictures Classics
Opening:August 16I
n victor kossakovsky’s masterful
essay film Aquarela, water in all its forms
provides the scale against which human
life is to be measured. We watch it meta-
morphose from ice to liquid, snow to rain
to mist. In the beginning, there are rocky
coasts, barren islands, and sheltering inlets
from which to espy the surrounding
waters. It is from an outcropping that we
first see the vast expanse of Lake Baikal, the
world’s most ancient freshwater lake, in a
languorous pan. We move down to its
frozen surface, where men are searching for
something below—cars that have broken
through the ice. As the film continues, we
travel westward toward Greenland, Florida,
and Venezuela. There are less and less peo-
ple, more calving glaciers, viscous waves,
pounding storms, and shuddering water-
falls. The shape-shifting, devious element is
shown from overhead and underneath; it is
also presented from an intimate eye level.Water takes over the screen, and we take on
the perspective of a drowned man.
Water has always conjured up exposure
and rescue; since antiquity, it has provided
the foil for conceptions of political life. For
the great German thinker Hans Blumen-
berg, the loss of life at sea is a recurring
theme in philosophical thought: no Horace
or Leibniz, no Zenon or Aristippus without
a shipwreck. A philosopher who has not
experienced near-death on water cannot be
trusted, writes Blumenberg. Who can teach
of last things and next-to-last things if he
has not been exposed to them, not under-
taken the fateful step from safety to the
boundless, immoderate waters?
Director Kossakovsky’s team, filming
chiefly on watercraft, retraces the philo-
sophical journey par excellence—and its
near wreckage. In Aquarela’s central seg-
ment on a sailboat, the film sets us adrift
to inspire awe, evoke terror, and—at 48
frames per second—induce vertigo. On a
peaceful day, a boat glides into view in
long shot, its white sails mimicking the sil-
houettes of the surrounding icebergs. The
winds shift, and two sailors try to steer the
craft through the resulting squall. The
audio records the woman’s grunts as she
throws herself into her work, water crash-
ing over her. The lack of dialogue and
camera’s position make clear how seriousto live, unchallenged. That’s the dynamic
between Billi and her parents: Billi lies to
insulate them from her financial and
professional disappointments—she’s lost a
Guggenheim fellowship and is a month
behind on her rent.
Awkwafina subdues the hammy,
motormouthed, room-filling affect that’s
made for such memorable characters in
Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8. The
slump of her shoulders at pre-wedding
gatherings reflects the stress of lying to
Nai Nai, but also how long journeys home
turn us into children again, and the way
the presence of elders makes us shrink
into being cared for, no matter how long
it’s been since we’ve last seen them. Still,
no one shines quite like Zhao Shuzhen,
who, as Nai Nai, keeps the film afloat in
the second act, bubbling with warmth and
grandmotherly playfulness. When Nai Nai
is coaching Billi on how to behave at the
wedding, she tells her she cannot be“nio nio ne ne” (bratty); then Zhao shrugs
her shoulders and pouts like a petulant
teen, full of exaggerated ennui.
It’s not until the very end that Wang
allows for a release—one that comes from
realizing how much pain Nai Nai has been
suppressing to protect her own family
from hergrief. Her grown children long
ago moved to America and Japan, leaving
her with a male companion who shuffles
wordlessly through the apartment that
they share. Zhao quietly devastates with
one gesture, a hand over her mouth, as
Billi’s taxi to the airport pulls away, when
finally no one can see her. It almost
doesn’t matter if death is imminent or
not. The Farewellleaves you marveling at
sincerity, selflessness, and grace, and
nursing a need to call your grandmother,
no matter how long it’s been.Soraya Nadia McDonaldis the culture
critic for The Undefeated.72 | FILMCOMMENT| July-August 2019With The Art of Self-Defense, Riley Stearns strives for a dark comedy intoned in Yorgos Lanthimos deadpan, but instead
of pushing the absurdity of his uncanny-valley universe as Lanthimos might have, he succumbs to its lack of specificity.SHORT TAKE
THE ART OF
SELF-DEFENSEDirector:
Riley Stearns
Country/Distributor:
USA, Bleecker Street
Opening:July 12Casey (Jesse Eisen-
berg), a gangly
bundle of insecurity,
is violently attacked
by masked motor-
cyclists while walk-
ing home one
evening. Afterward,
he’s too afraid to
leave the house for
work, and considers
buying a hand-
gun—until he walks
by a karate dojo
and falls in with its
charismatic Sensei
(Alessandro Nivola)
and ragtag group
of male rejects.
Although cordial,
their shared pent-
up aggression
explodes in violent
sparring practices.
With this follow-
up to 2014’s Faults,
Riley Stearns strives
for a dark comedy
intoned in Yorgos
Lanthimos dead-
pan. He draws
queasy humor from
Casey’s cowardice—
he custom-orders a
yellow leather belt,
matching his karate
rank, to stay
emboldened in the
“real world”—and
through the dojo,
he satirizes toxic
masculinity’s cult-
like pathology of
power. Sensei,
evoking a Tyler Dur-
den for the Jordan
Peterson era, starts
to groom Casey in
his image while
reserving a requisite
contempt for Anna
(Imogen Poots), the
children’s karate
instructor and, as
the film’s sole signif-
icant female charac-
ter, the punching
bag for his general-
ized sexism.
Casey lives in
nondescript subur-
bia, surrounded by
analog technology
and generic brand-
ing out of Repo
Man. Instead of
pushing the absur-
dity of his uncanny-
valley universe as
Lanthimos might
have, Stearns suc-
cumbs to its lack of
specificity. He jokes
flatly about the
familiar silliness of
hypermasculinity
while shortchanging
his angle on group
psychology, more
tellingly pathetic
and disturbing.
—Chloe Lizotte COURTESY^OFBLEECKER^STREET