Latest news with #GirlonEdge
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Girl on Edge' Review: A Mother and Daughter Hit Thin Ice in Zhou Jinghao's Alluring but Unsatisfactory Skating Drama
Zhou Jinghao's 'Girl on Edge' starts strong. A young woman is shown skating in a dimly lit ring, finishing her routine and stopping right in front of the camera. Her face is revealed, full of blood red bruises. This is the first of many indelible images that fill this psychological drama reminiscent of 'Black Swan'. Like that thriller, 'Girl on Edge' is about a competitive athlete trying to be the best and dealing with her inner demons. The film promises a tantalizing time but ultimately fails to deliver, as nothing that comes after that opening is as clean or cutthroat. The titular girl is Jiang Ning (Zhang Zifeng) a fiercely competitive skater who's been going through a demoralizing period in her training. She can't seem to get it right, never managing to finish a routine without falling. Her tough coach, her mother Wang Shuang (Ma Yili) can't hide her disappointment. She constantly berates her about her failures. The mother blames the daughter for her own short skating career; she had to give it up when she became pregnant. This fraught situation becomes even more tense when Wang takes on another trainee, Zhong Lind (Ding Xiangyua). Zhong, who's a worker at the ring and not a professional skater, has talent to spare. Suddenly Jiang has both a friend and a rival. More from Variety 'Mama' Review: A Housemaid Abroad Gets an Unpleasant Homecoming in an Intriguing Character Study That Veers Into Melodrama Chris Evans Skipped His Movie's Cannes Premiere Because It Was His Mom's 70th Birthday and 'Some Things You Just Can't Miss' Bi Gan's Cannes Winner 'Resurrection' Nabbed by Janus Films for North America (EXCLUSIVE) 'Girl on Edge' takes a while to get to the meat of its story: the relationship between the two younger women. The film asks many intriguing questions along the way. Is Zhong out to destroy Jiang or will Jiang self-implode from the pressure to succeed? As the two skaters get to train and play together, they seem to bring out the best in each other. Could the mother/coach have planted Zhong in order to give her daughter a reason to be better? Though the film doesn't provide a satisfactory resolution to these threads, the time the audience spends contemplating them is mostly enjoyable. But Zhou's feature loses its narrative edge in a series of jumbled twists. It seems to be reaching for both a profound, meaningful ending and a 'gotcha' subversion to bolster its thriller aspirations. Still 'Girl on Edge' delivers in visuals what it lacks in coherent narrative. The visual storytelling sticks in the memory: full of gorgeous images with metaphorical meaning. Jiang trains in a cast-like apparatus, as if she's in a cage, or appearing like a marionette doll manipulated by a bigger entity. The blue hued skating rinks and dance clubs Jiang and Zhang inhabit look beguilingly sinister, serving as both dreamscape and nightmarish reality. The skating scenes are full of tension, with every fall and swerve dramatically rendered in fast cut closeups on faces and skates. Cinematographer Yu Jing-pin creates an alluring visual atmosphere for these characters to play in. Additionally all three lead actors are masters of the close up. They can hold a frame well and convey much without saying anything. 'Girl on Edge' promises a psychological drama about mothers and in trying to reveal the inner turmoil of its characters, it loses its way. Instead of staying with the characters, it devolves into a jumbled mess of flashbacks, explanations and unsatisfactory resolutions. Zhou's images remain stronl; if only the script could keep up. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘I Only Rest in the Storm' Review: A Sprawling Narrative That Demands Patience and Attention
Nearly two hours into an ambitious critique of colonialism that runs almost twice as long, a pivotal scene brings 'I Only Rest in the Storm' into sharp focus. The protagonist, a Portuguese engineer on assignment in Guinea Bissau, encounters a sex worker. He fails to get excited and in an attempt to smooth things over tries to initiate conversation with her about her life. She's rightfully indignant as he's wasting her time and tells him that what disgusts her most are good men, those who act as if they care when in fact they just want to feel good about themselves. This scene encapsulates many of the topics on the mind of Portuguese director Pedro Pinho — namely, the effects of colonization on contemporary Africa and how attempts at modernization might be a hindrance rather than a way forward. The film follows Sergio (Sérgio Coragem), who's sent to Guinea Bissau in West Africa to investigate whether a road project between the desert and the forest is viable. There he meets many different people, both for and against the project. Some see it as a way to modernize and generate jobs in this developing country, while others see it as an end to their way of life as an agrarian economy. More from Variety 'Girl on Edge' Review: A Mother and Daughter Hit Thin Ice in Zhou Jinghao's Alluring but Unsatisfactory Skating Drama 'Mama' Review: A Housemaid Abroad Gets an Unpleasant Homecoming in an Intriguing Character Study That Veers Into Melodrama Chris Evans Skipped His Movie's Cannes Premiere Because It Was His Mom's 70th Birthday and 'Some Things You Just Can't Miss' Segio tries to make connections with the locals he meets. However, most are suspicious of him and his motives. There are those who consider him as a nuisance to be rid of and others who see him as an attractive shiny object to try and influence. Perhaps they can profit from him or further their own goals. In fact, the aforementioned sex worker was probably most accurate: However noble his intentions, Sergio seems passive and does not know where his priorities should be — a stand-in for the incompetent do-gooders from former colonizing nations who run NGOs trying to better lives in nations they don't understand. There are several stories in 'I Only Rest in the Storm,' ranging from funny to overly dramatic, straightforward to full of metaphors, as the film follows Sergio through Guinea Bissau. Each of them plays like a standalone vignette that could make a short film, and as with a short film program made up of multiple stories, some are stronger than others. Though the feature's demanding length manages to show how colonization kept evolving throughout history, it also tests the audience's patience. At times, Pinho includes dry scenes where tangential characters address the camera with historical facts. To his credit, the director never comes up with easy answers, but rather makes the audience confront their prejudices. 'I Only Rest in the Storm' has vast ambitions but sometimes gets overwhelmed by all the thematic topics it wants to cover. Apart from Sergio, only two other characters recur throughout, both of whom hold a romantic interest for him. The audience is first introduced to Diara, a charismatic bar owner (played by Cleo Diára, who won an acting award for her performance at Cannes). In a long scene that could be taken from a 1970s thriller, Sergio meets Diara as she's trying to escape a man following her through a busy market. She uses Sergio as a decoy, and he's immediately smitten with this stranger in the blond wig. The other character is Guilherme, or Gui (Jonathan Guilherme), a femme nonbinary Brazilian expat who traveled to Africa to develop a deeper connection with their ancestry. They become the person who challenges Sergio's motives in coming to Guinea Bissau as a European from a former colonizing country. Coragem has a pleasant screen presence, yet the character is consistently the least interesting person in whatever situation he's put in. Intentionally, he serves as the audience surrogate, but he is so passive that questions arise about why we should care about his plight at all. No wonder Diára and Guilherme fare better, as their characters are more engaging. They take action, repeatedly confronting Sergio. Even though he seems enamored with both of them, he takes no action to further a relationship with either, waiting for them to take the initiative. Segio's ineptitude stands in for all do-gooders who never take a firm stand and would rather talk than make change — a tough assignment for the actor, but one which fits in thematically with the rest of the film. 'I Only Rest in the Storm' is the kind of film that thrives in a rarefied cinematic environment like Cannes, offering so many talking points that audiences exit the film wanting to argue about it with each other. It provokes, entertains and annoys in equal measure and thus will inspire admirers and detractors alike. One hopes it travels beyond film festivals and into local cinemas around the world, especially in the Global South, where 'I Only Rest in the Storm' would most likely bring about the most passionate conversations, from people reminiscent of its characters. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
