Being Maria is a mildly engaging and well-acted, but somewhat shallow  biopic on Maria Schneider (Anamaria Vartolome), an actress whose fame skyrocketed at the age of 19 when she starred in Last Tango in Paris with Marlon Brando (Matt Dillon). Based on the memoir My Cousin Maria Schneider by Vanessa Schneider, the screenplay by writer/director Jessica Palud and co-writer Laurette Polmanss barely scratches Maria's surface. It fails to design enough of a window into Maria's heart, mind and soul as it focuses too much her filming scenes from Last Tango in Paris including the infamous rape scene. There are glimpses of her dysfunctional family life, her romantic relationship with another woman and the humiliation that she endured after filming the rape scene, but they're not unflinching enough to provide much-needed depth to the film. Maria starts as a stranger to the audience and remains one by the time the end credits roll.  Anamaria Vartolome gives a decent performance that doesn't manage to rise above the vapid screenplay. At a running time of 1 hour and 42 minutes, Being Maria opens on March 21st, 2025 at Quad Cinema via Kino Lorber.  

 

      Hamid (Adam Bessa), a Syrian refugee in Germany, works for a group tasked with hunting down Syrian leads who kidnapped and tortured people in the Syrian regime in Ghost Trail. He thinks that he has found the man who tortured him at a university, but all he has is a blurry photo of him, so he's not 100% percent sure and neither is the audience. The screenplay by writer/director Jonathan Miller and co-writer Florence Rochat feels like it could've been based on a novel because the narrative is so complex and compelling.  Miller and Rochat do an excellent job with exposition as the audience gradually learns about Hamid's past while avoiding flashbacks. It's suspenseful, but in a way that feels grounded and psychological rather than going for cheap thrills. The horrors of how Hamid and others were tortured remains in the imagination of the audience because they're not shown although Hamid does listen to audio recordings of some of the testimonies of those who were tortured. Ghost Trail could've easily become a convoluted and unfocused thriller because it juggles so many subplots, like Hamid's relationship with his mother (Shafiqa El Till) whom he communicates with via Skype. Fortunately, it avoids those pitfalls while also offering a few surprises up its sleeve while keeping the audience engaged on an emotional level.  At a running time of 1 hour and 46 minutes, Ghost Trail is a spellbinding, intelligent and engrossing psychological thriller. It opens on May 30th, 2025 at Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center via Music Box Films. 

Number of times I checked my watch: 1




 

       After his father dies, 18-year-old Totone (Clément Faveau) must take care of his 7-year-old sister, Claire (Luna Garret), and to make ends meet in Holy Cow. He accepts a job at a dairy farm where he meets one of the farmers, Marie-Lise (Maïwene Barthelemy), and begins a relationship with her. Meanwhile, he steals milk from her farm to make Comté cheese  in hope of entering it in a competition where he could win €30,000. Writer/director Louise Courvoisier and co-writer Théo Abadie have made an engrossing, nuanced and quietly moving coming of age film with shades of the Dardenne brothers. The film remains an understated slice-of-life without veering into dullness, melodrama, heavy-handedness or schmaltz. When Totone's alcoholic father dies after crashing his car into a tree, you don't see the accident happening; just the aftermath from a distance. The filmmakers don't dwell on the tragedy nor do they ignore it either. In a powerful scene, Totone chills with one of his friends who tells him that he's willing to talk about his father's death with him if he wants to. It doesn't seem like Totone has the emotional maturity to confide his feelings with him nor with anymore for that matter. The relationship between him and Marie-Lise feels real although it's not the narrative's main focus. It's quite clear from the beginning that their relationship isn't serious, that they're not compatible and that it will soon come to an end. Totone's struggles to make Comté cheese for the competition doesn't generate much suspense because it's obvious that he can't win without experience or understanding the bureaucracy, i.e. the requirement for PDO certification which takes at least a few years. Yes, he's naive, but determined and passionate. He's got a lot of learning to do, but there's hope for him even if he doesn't win the competition. Clément Faveau provides authenticity with his raw, breakthrough performance. At 1 hour and 30 minutes, Holy Cow opens on March 28th, 2025 at Film Forum via Zeitgeist Films. It would be a great double feature with Rosetta and The Kid with a Bike.

Number of times I checked my watch: 1




 

       In When Fall is Coming, Michelle (Hélène Vincent) lives in an idyllic home in the French countryside. When her daughter, Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier), and grandson, Lucas (Garlan Erlos), visit her, an incident occurs that sends Valérie to the hospital for eating poisonous mushrooms that Michelle had picked with her friend,  Marie-Claude (Josian Bolakso).  Valérie believes that her mother poisoned her intentionally, so she leaves with Lucas back to her apartment in Paris. Meanwhile, Marie-Claude's son, Vincent (Pierre Lottin), gets released from prison. More happens that won't be revealed here so as not to spoil the twists. The screenplay by writer/director François Ozon sounds like it could've been a convoluted thriller, but it turns out to be an understated psychological crime drama and a poignant character study. Ozon has a fine grasp on exposition as he reveals layers of each character very slowly while leaving some room for the audience to interpret things on their own. There are no flashbacks nor any voice-over narration to get inside the characters' heads. The suspense is slow-burning and the pace moves slowly, so Ozon clearly trusts the audience's patience. Kudos to Ozon for not shying away from taking the narrative into very dark and disturbing territory without going too far.

      The entire ensemble cast is superb, especially Hélène Vincent who breathes life into her role with her radiant warmth and tenderness. As a comedy, though, When Fall is Coming isn't very funny per se, although one could imagine the Coen brothers or Martin McDonagh turning the premise into a macabre black comedy or Frank Capra turning it into something like Arsenic and Old Lace. Audiences searching for a funny and much lighter crime thriller that also takes place in the French countryside should check out Misericordia. At 1 hours and 42 minutes, When Fall is Coming opens on April 4th, 2025 at Film Forum via Music Box Films.

Number of times I checked my watch: 1




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