What Richard Did. Photo: Peter Cox
SATURDAY
Child's Pose
Screens: 6.15pm Saturday and 2.15pm Sunday at Dendy. 112 minutes, Romania.
Rating: 4/5.
A manipulative mother dominates Romanian director Calin Peter Netzer's powerhouse drama of troubling emotions.
Hard-bitten bottle blonde Cornelia (Luminita Gheorghiu ) is well-connected in social and political circles in contemporary Bucharest.
Privately, she complains about the rudeness of her ungrateful 30-something son Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache), who lives with his girlfriend Carmen (Ilinca Goia) and her child.
Interrupted at an opera rehearsal by a call saying Barbu has had a car accident, killing a boy on the freeway, Cornelia sees a chance to work her way back into his life.
Using contacts and sly ways in a corrupt society, she interferes with the police investigation and tries to bribe a witness to stop her son being jailed for manslaughter. Eventually Cornelia is forced to confront the horror of the crime.
Shot to feel like a reflection of real life – with long talky scenes, close-ups of worn faces, background noise rather than music, everyday lighting and hand-held camera work – Child's Pose dissects the moral bankruptcy of well-off Romanian society.
– by Garry Maddox
What Richard Did
Screens: 4pm, Arc. 87 minutes, Ireland.
Rating: 3.5/5.
Irish filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson's third feature is the story of a privileged young Dubliner who shatters a community's understanding of itself in a moment of violence.
In the title role, Jack Reynor delivers a roiling, brilliant performance - reverting from budding adult to wounded child - that makes both subject and audience question whether his act was an aberration or the revelation of Richard's true character.
– by Craig Mathieson
SUNDAY
Cutie and the Boxer
Screens: 4pm, Arc. 83 minutes, US.
Rating: 4/5.
The 17th Canberra International Film Festival saves one of its best, and most effortlessly eloquent, till last.
It's a curiously engaging and ultimately poignant fly-on-the-wall portrait of the 40-year New York love story of "boxing painter" Ushio Shinohara and his illustrator wife, Noriko.
He was once the rising star of the New York art scene in the 1970s. But Ushio, now 80, needs to reinvigorate his career to help pay the bills.
Keen to shed her role as her at-times overbearing husband's de facto assistant, the demure Noriko finds that her own art, a series of illustrations depicting the ups and downs of their marriage and featuring a heroine named "Cutie", may be finally ready to blossom.
A story of love, loyalty and "action painting" with boxing gloves, Zachary Heinzerling's touching and funny documentary finds art in the quiet struggle and sacrifice of navigating marriage and negotiating ageing.
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