Five international movies to stream now
By DEVIKA GIRISH
‘The Best Mother in the World’
To call Shirley Cruz’s performance as Gal, the titular mother of this Brazilian drama, a “tour de force” would be an understatement. Right from the opening scene, when Gal is interviewed by a social worker about her husband’s physical violence, Cruz’s bruised face is magnetic — in the way it softens despite her best attempts when she talks about her partner’s drinking (“poor guy”); hardens into a resolute smile when she convinces her kids they’re having an “adventure” as they flee her husband; and creases in the rare moments she allows herself to wonder if they’ll make it.
Gal has no money and no home; she collects trash to make enough to feed her children, and has only a hand-truck to her name, which she maneuvers through the streets with superhuman strength and speed. Yet “The Best Mother in the World” has not even a touch of miserabilism. As she and her children make their way on foot (and by hand-truck) to the home of her cousin in another town, Gal turns every hardship into an occasion for cheer. They dance on the streets, bathe in a fountain and eat cookies Gal steals from a store. Director Anna Muylaert offers a gutting portrait of domestic violence, how it digs its claws into its victims, and the community one needs to escape it. (Stream it on Netflix.)
‘Mother’s Baby’
Johanna Moder’s haunting thriller builds its tension slowly. At first, we meet Julia (Marie Leuenberger) and her husband, Georg (Hans Löw), a picture-perfect couple, who are all smiles as they chat with a doctor at a sleek, fancy private clinic. They’ve had no luck in having children, but this doctor promises that their woes are about to end. A procedure ensues, Julia is pregnant, and before you know it, she’s giving birth. Then the trouble starts.
The baby is whisked away right after it is born, purportedly for a medical reason, and presented to the couple the following day with no complications. Julia is disoriented and wary. Day by day, her suspicions grow, as she notices anomalies: the baby’s ability to sleep through even the loudest noises; the fact that the midwife comes too often and offers confusing advice; the doctor’s insistence that they bring the baby to him for all issues, even though he isn’t a pediatrician. None of these things are odd enough to confirm a conspiracy, per se, and so we’re drawn into a beguiling mystery: Is Julia suffering from postpartum mental health issues, as her husband assumes, or is something truly sinister underway? The film turns up the horror quotient bit by bit, while also asking provocative questions about social attitudes to motherhood and the predatory ways of the healthcare industry. (Stream it on Tubi.)
‘The Woman in the Line’
Inspired by a true story, this Argentine drama follows Andrea (Natalia Oreiro), a middle-class single mother of three kids, whose entire world comes undone one morning when the police burst into her home and arrest her teenage son. Initially, all Andrea can muster is shock and indignation: How could anyone think that her son could have done anything wrong? But as she navigates the bureaucracy of courts and prison, she learns that the world beyond her bubble has always been hard and unfair — and that she is simply one of the many women in the long line that stretches out of the jail, all of them waiting for a brief meeting with a loved one.
Mixing documentary and fiction, director Benjamín Ávila shows us the dehumanizing rituals of incarceration as Andrea encounters them: the invasive body searches, the arbitrary rules about what you can and cannot bring in, and the brutal and absolute power exercised by the correctional officers, who can take away any privileges at their whim. But “The Woman in the Line” also shows us the force of solidarity in the face of injustice. During her visits, Andrea meets and becomes friends with a group of women, each going through a trial of her own. These women are all played by real-life relatives of incarcerated people, and their stories, shared in heartbreaking bits and pieces, expand the film’s scope beyond a drama about a single family and into a moving political statement. (Stream it on Netflix.)
‘When the Light Breaks’
This film by Icelandic director Runar Runarsson has a simple premise. Una (Elin Hall), a college student, is having an affair with her classmate (and bandmate) Diddi (Baldur Einarsson). He has a girlfriend, Klara (Katla Njalsdottir), back home who doesn’t know about his infidelity. The day that Diddi decides to end it with Klara so he and Una can be together openly, he dies in a car accident. Una is shattered — and unable to share the depth of her grief with any of her friends, because her relationship was a secret. And when Klara arrives, things get harder and heavier.
How do you mourn someone when your love for them was hidden, forbidden? Unfolding across the course of one day, “When the Light Breaks” follows Una as she grapples with her predicament, going from hospital to bar to memorial service. The landscape of the film is internal. Not much happens of note in terms of plot, but the drama plays out on the faces of the characters — young people who find that death has no secrets, no ifs and buts; and grief is a lonely place, survivable only in the company of others. (Stream it on Tubi.)
‘Jugnuma: The Fable’
Set amid the Himalayan hills in 1989, Raam Reddy’s movie invites you to ask questions — but does not promise answers. In the very first shot, a long take, we follow Dev (Manoj Bajpayee), the owner of a large orchard estate in the mountains, as he leaves home, enters a shed, straps on a pair of large wings and flies across a valley. No one in the film treats this as an unusual or remarkable occurrence, and we are provided no explanation as to why and how Dev figured out how to fly, save for a few glimpses of a toolshed where he makes the contraption. There are other bits of whimsy, too: a nomadic monk who communicates with Dev’s daughter without speaking (we never learn what he says); swarms of fireflies that light candles.
The story, however, is rooted in history. Dev inherited the estate from his grandfather, who received it from the British government for his service during the Raj. He and his family live in a grand bungalow tended to by a small army of servants, while the orchard is managed by a large cohort of laborers, all of whom live in the village at the foot of the mountain. They are obsequious and loyal to Dev, who is kind to them ... until mysterious fires start tearing through the orchard. As suspicions grow and relationships become strained, the fissures of class and the thefts of history come to the fore. Shot stunningly by Sunil Borkar, “Jugnuma: The Fable” is a treat for the eyes and a riddle for the mind; it is also, in its own cryptic way, a paean to the poor, on whose backs the rich build their empires. (Stream it on Amazon.)
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