REVIEW: Olga [2022]

You’re my warrior, right? Director Elie Grappe and co-writer Raphaëlle Desplechin waste no time showing their gymnast drama Olga is about more than the parallel bars. They introduce the titular fifteen-year-old Ukrainian (Anastasiia Budiashkina) perfecting the maneuvers necessary to advance onto the Jaeger technique—a move she hopes will help the team medal at the forthcoming European championships. She and best friend Sasha (Sabrina Rubtsova) are having fun as the nation’s top two athletes in the sport, their confidence so high that Olga doesn’t even really mind the fact her mother…

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REVIEW: Плем’я [Plemya] [The Tribe] [2014]

Dismissing Miroslav Slaboshpitsky‘s Cannes award-winning drama Плем’я [Plemya] [The Tribe] as mere gimmick is easy and most especially lazy. I’d let you do so to Oscar-winning The Artist before I would this dialogue-free look at teenage rage and criminal exploitation because rendering that one silent was a purely aesthetic choice. It most certainly is here too, but don’t think the quiet isn’t also necessary to the story. Just because I—along with most people watching—cannot understand what’s being said doesn’t mean words aren’t spoken. Dismissing the film as an exercise in…

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