Welcome back, readers, for our eleventh serving of Hot Tea.
This week our teas on tap include: two of the newly nominated and now streaming films in the 2021 awards line-up, a techno-Gothic romance, and an obscure comedy based on a famed author’s work.
Enjoy!
Flee
Hulu - Documentary Animation - Finding home
Synopsis
A gay man reveals the true story of his difficult emigration from his native Afghanistan to Denmark during his adolescence.
My take
Flee is the best film of 2021 I have yet seen. Let’s just start there, readers.
An international documentary animation, the film operates at the nexus of typically orthogonal story-telling techniques — and takes none of that status lightly or mercenarily. Intersplicing real documentary footage between animated redepictions of both present-day interviews and past recollections, the film draws a purposeful line connecting extraordinary events, which are typically the domain of animation, with real occurrences, which are typically the domain of documentary. The result dramatically underscores the emotional ‘tension and relief’ that is the natural pulse of such a storyline, in a way that a live-action documentary retelling could never achieve.
Moreover, fusing the traditions of documentary and animation allows the film to actively explore its relationship to the audience — and I mean both the diegetic and the non-diegetic audience to the story — and find within that exploration spectacular moments that further emphasize the power of this film as a historical document of the recursive tragedies that corruption, greed, and militancy at scale wreak upon everyday people. The result here effectively induces audiences into gradually and almost imperceptibly redefining their set point for what is and is not the depth to which people will go to seek their own advantage. With the depth so unexpectedly profound, the final segment in the narrative, wherein — suffice it to say, readers — tragedy does not strike, then feels appropriately stunning to both the audience on screen and the audience at home and, frankly, saves the emotional hazard of the film with a true, if somewhat editorial, comment on the resilience of compassion as a personal response. This turn on its own, readers, is simultaneous excellence in documentary and animated film-making.
And, of course, the animation itself is beautiful. The artists behind the cells capably construct consistent palettes, lighting tones, and stylistic motifs to separate current events from memories, imagined sequences from known chains of events, and somber environments from celebratory ones. Their work on this film tells its story — and it’s riveting. Forget that hypersaturated Encanto (Bush, Howard, & Smith, 2021) or The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Rianda & Rowe, 2021) b.s., designed calculatedly to dominate in flashes and quick cuts even a flighty three-year-old’s attention; this work is beautiful animation, serving its story.
All that praise given, if I were to lob any criticism at the film, it’d be only in that, in recognizable efforts to keep up its own momentum, the film errs on the side of underdetailing the story overall and, as a consequence, particular segments relatively “suffer” where, I felt, the audience and the story would have both liked more information. For those who do watch or have watched the film, the sequence about the protagonist’s time in Estonia is one example. However, really, the extent of this persistent miscalibration is only a narrow margin, when we consider how generally well balanced and well told the story is overall.
In short, move over, Persepolis (Satrapi & Peronnaud, 2007), the last and (to my knowledge) only other time we’ve seen animation used to document real personal historical events. Flee exceeds your already high mark.
Temperature check
Steaming
Spencer
Hulu - Drama - Biopic
Synopsis
An outsider within the British royal family strives to feel herself independent of her family and her related obligations, in especially the most everyday of circumstances.
My take
Spencer was a holiday rental for me, readers. Meditating on film alone in a Manhattan hotel room while recovering from CoViD, I was probably in the ripest headspace to intake this story of transparent imprisonment, or of the stress of hyper-attention. When all I could do in quarantine was suffer the visibility of the opportunity cost I had to pay looking out from my room onto the people continuing freely with their individual lives, I was ready to identify with the characterization of Diana I saw on screen — and I wanted to like her for it, really.
The TL;DR here, however, is that, while I can admire Spencer for its scrappy rawness — in detail, in story, and in emotion — I didn’t see the film contribute anything new to the historical fiction around the life and work of the real Diana, Princess of Wales, nor to the psychological understanding of any figure whose surroundings simply expect too much from a single person; and, for that lack of contribution, I cannot wholly recommend the film to anyone except the most ardent Diana or Stewart fans.
Popular media has acquainted the rest of us so repeatedly with this particular instance of an otherwise also generally familiar trope, that it was trivial to predict exactly what I’d see from the film on the basis of those past experiences. If you’re unsure what I mean, look no further than:
Diana (Hirschbiegel [dir.] & Jeffreys [wri.], 2013), and
The Queen (Frears [dir.] & Morgan [wri.], 2006)
for the introductory course on the cultural knowledge around Diana herself and see:
Elizabeth (Kapur [dir.] & Hirst [wri.], 1998),
Election (Payne [dir./wri.] & Taylor [wri.], 1999),
The Hours (Daldry [dir.] & Hare [wri.], 2002), and
even fucking The Prince and the Pauper (Twain, 1881)
for the introductory course on the cultural knowledge around the over-extended and incessantly accompanied “privileged” psychological interior. And — let me be even more frank here, readers — the fact that it was so incredibly easy for me to write those lists is at least to me indicator enough that we as a culture are already flush with media telling the same, or very similar, stories. Stewart’s reasonably admirable, but distinctly not excellent, work at portraying Diana here is too underpowered to compensate.
The real heroes of this new film are Jacqueline Durran and Jonny Greenwood. Durran’s historically accurate costuming is integral to the telling of this particular story and steps up well and even beyond the mark for it, while Greenwood’s internally cataclysmic score finds the emotional valence that the film needs, especially at all those moments when, due to diegetic custom and expectation, the actors and setting on screen cannot show it.
That Stewart has managed to find her way into this year’s Best Actress Oscar race, for better or worse, adds cultural relevance to this film, but we keep the thermostat here comfortably at:
Temperature check
Tepid.
The Girl Before
HBOMax - Drama - Gothic Romance
Synopsis
At different points in time, two women move into the same hyper-minimalist’s smart home, only to discover how living there chafes from the rigid constraints of its architectural designer.
My take
Who says technology and Gothic romance can’t coëxist?
A cultural descendant of both Panic Room (Fincher [dir.] & Koepp [wri.], 2002) and Jane Eyre (Brontë, 1847), The Girl Before is a four-episode miniseries that does its best to wring psychological tension into romance within a stark and imposing domestic setting. For choosing that goal alone — of honoring the Gothic legacy within a highly contemporary, if not somewhat still futuristic, context — the series does deserve credit. It’s a high dive off a shaky platform that the creators themselves first had to build. In executing this dive, however, the Gothic body reads too cold and stiff.
David Oyelowo does his best to impersonate a technocratic tyrant with a past —a sort of hybrid of Steve Jobs, Mr. Rochester, and the Duke from Moulin Rouge! (Luhrmann [dir./wri.] & Pearce [wri.], 2001) — while his female co-stars, Jessica Plummer and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, ponder his enigma with commensurate personal distress. Unfortunately for us, their best is not really great work. The characterizations remain very two-dimensional and, if you’re at all attuned to how these stories tend to go, then I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out as quickly as I, the cryptic mystery for yourself — in a facile way that saps all the desired melodramatic tension out of the heart of the piece.
I won’t spoil this one for you any further, readers, but suffice it to say, B.Y.O.D. (i.e., “bring your own drama”) if you bother to tune in.
Temperature check
Cold (and not in a good way)
KIMI
HBOMax - Drama - Thriller
Synopsis
A reclusive tech worker seeks justice after hearing suspicious cries in a user’s voice logs.
My take
Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh likes tension — no, not the everyday tension of the unentangled romantic, nor the rarefied tension of a gilded age, nor even the semantic tension of a courtroom drama: no, just tension, raw and alone. In his latest drama, he channels this tension through an unusually alone character, a reclusive tech worker who manually reviews recordings from her employer’s voice-activated digital assistant, KIMI, a fictitious cousin to our own familiar Alexa and Siri, only one with humans behind the wheel at all times. Serving this behind-the-wheel function, the reviewer-protagonist works from home and, agoraphobic partially from prior personal trauma and partially from prior social trauma (i.e., the CoViD-19 pandemic), entertains but neglects in-person interactions with other people, except perhaps in her own apartment on her own terms. She is, in a phrase, the pious ascetic of our most troubled times.
The real trouble is, however, that she’s just not that sensitive, or rather he (i.e., Soderberg) isn’t. Her characterization and milieu feel wooden and overly simplistic, as if to say, “Cynics, rejoice! Bad people are bad, and the good… still suspect at least.” The whole piece is more like a technically superior episode of NCIS (Bellisario & McGill [creators], 2003) than a younger sibling to Traffic (Soderbergh [dir.] & Gaghan [wri.], 2000).
And, in that way, I don’t blame the production studio behind KIMI for preventing it from debuting in cinemas; it’s frankly not good enough for that. I do wonder, on the same note, why HBOMax picked it up. Perhaps it’s just mildly intriguing filler between otherwise dynamically planned weeks? Or did the headline of “new Soderbergh” feel attractive enough despite the actual merit of the piece? Well, who knows?
All I can say is, pay commensurate heed, readers: “KIMI, change the channel.”
Temperature check
Cold
Retrospective
Travels with My Aunt (1972)
HBOMax - Comedy - Heist
Synopsis
A mild-mannered bank manager finds himself entangled in international crime, when an eccentric woman claiming to be his aunt wheedles him into joining her on her “business travels.”
My take
We are Maggie Smith fans in this tea house, readers, proudly and loudly. One of the greatest actresses of the 20th and now 21st centuries, Dame Smith is no stranger to praise or accolade. A 2012 ‘Rich Pick’ nominee for Best Supporting Actress (for her turn in Madden and Parker’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and a two-time Oscar winner (for her performances in Neame and Presson Allen’s [1969] The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Ross and Simon’s [1978] California Suite), Smith has continued to turn out award-worthy performances time and again throughout her career; and, as a fan, I’ve sought out and seen practically every one — every one, that is, except, glaringly, her 1972 Oscar-nominated performance as the lead in director George Cukor’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s (1969) comic novel Travels with My Aunt, a somehow exceedingly obscure film in our present days, one that I admit to spending years on trying to find available on the internet. At long last this week, this exception has been addressed, thanks to HBOMax, which to my utter surprise recently began streaming the film on its service.
Travels with My Aunt, it turns out, is a curious time capsule of madcap comedy. Part heist, part comedy of manners, part slapstick, and part romantic musical, the film shifts through its multiple identities the way an international criminal might shift through disguises, all for the love of the craft. Atop this underlying drama, Smith brings her somewhat under-appreciated gift for sharp comedic timing to work miniature wonders — I laughed aloud at several moments — though, I must admit, the overall effect of the performance is not one of the actress’ very very best.1
Still, don't let that wayward comment defray you, reader, if you, like I, enjoy a ridiculous romp from time to time. I can still pronounce the work to be above the level of many a more current comedy. Cousin to Kramer, Rose, and Rose’s (1963) It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and obvious predecessor to Smith’s award winning feature in California Suite, Travels with my Aunt was nominated for four Academy Awards overall2 and won the 1972 Oscar for its fabulous multi-period costumes and remains in my scale now:
Temperature check
Hot.
No, for the very very best of Smith, readers, let me point you to the diversity of Neame and Presson Allen’s (1969) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Altman and Fellowes’ (2001) Gosford Park, Ross and Simon’s (1978) California Suite, Loncraine and Whitemore’s (2003) My House in Umbria, and Burges’ (1965) Othello.
Apart from Smith’s Best Actress nomination, the film was nominated for its cinematography, its production design, and its costume design.