kOrland – The United States' Kogonada has been known to date for its interesting and complex, brain essay movies, such as the emotional content of Columbus and Young after, while effective, it is not obvious. Now, he has entered a large, bold, colorful romantic fantasy fantasy, as if Chris Marker has reinvented Thurberg's umbrella with two unpleasant Hollywood stars for the American Diversity Car. It's a musical without musical numbers (no musical numbers of its own anyway), and it's also a romantic comedy, mostly without comedy music – it's actually shared with most Romcoms. The screenwriter is Seth Reiss, co-author of the Menu (Colder) Menu, and Ralph Fiennes is a horror chef.
What Kogonada and Reiss offer is an incredible, frustrating, deep-minded desire-to satisfy the magnificent spectacle which gradually retreats from the unbearable sense of self-awareness of the initial, initial boundaries. Maybe it's just that you're used to it. We are trapped in a sleepy daydream, like in the center of children's play, all about love, relationships and the importance of opening up and risking emotional harm. This involves your past and the feelings of parents who have you remembered passionately about themselves, who are dead or will not appear on the screen in the current older person form anyway.
Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell play Sarah and David, two fascinating single professionals who meet and flirt at the wedding of a mutual friend. When Sarah's rental car broke down after it broke, they eventually shared David's itinerary and took a road trip together, moving away from unpleasant phobia and towards self-forgiving and loving.
But that's not half of it. Rental Car Agent Two Uber-zany comedy characters played by Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (the latter dropped the F-bomb and made a quirky German accent who succumbed to David's 90s wine with her own mysterious gps while meditating on the roles of us all, stand out among all kinds of magicians. They go through these to primary scenes of their past: to encounters with their respective parents, to a Canadian lighthouse where David once epiphany realized he wasn't having an epiphany, to a modern art gallery which Sarah's late mother loved in her too-good-to-be-true way and which they now visit (for some reason) in the pitch darkness with a torch, to two separate hospitals which might somehow be the same hospital, and to David's high school
After Young, Kogonada's former films touched Charlie Kaufman in their futuristic drama, telling a family who has a close emotional connection with the second-level AI human body robot they purchased because they bought their adopted daughter's companion. The film oddly owns Kaufmanesque in a mainstream way…or almost. You might expect Kline and Waller-Bridge’s characters to be revealed as Techno-Sapien robots, along with Farrell, Robbie and Kogonada and everyone involved in the film. But no.
When they realize that something real has happened, they stand out very sharply. Sarah, in a volatile excitement at the wedding, asks David to marry her, and after a moment you think David is going to bring her to her, indulging in this fantasy, he seems to think better about it, instead saying coldly: “You have destroyed some men, are you… not you…” Sarah and Sarah's high school and Sarah's real teacher, who was that teacher at that time, how she thought, how she thought, how she thought. He answered “40” – the outrageous estimate was outrageous. But, in the breathtaking race, Sarah challenged David in the car – a match that his mother likes.
The unreality of the film is what exactly happens when two people without young people decide to fall in love, but try to pause doubt and succumb to the fantasy of goodwill.
A bold and beautiful journey will open on September 18 in Australia and September 19 in the UK and the US.