Flannery O’Connor
Stage Mother from Canadian director Thom Fitzgerald shows the life-changing good that can come from opening our minds. The wonderful Aussie actor Jacki Weaver plays Maybelline, a conservative, Texas Baptist church-choir director whose estranged son dies, leaving her his San Francisco drag bar. Maybelline played by the wonderful Aussie actor, Jacki Weaver, inherits her recently deceased son’s drag club. She travels to the city against her husband’s wishes and finds the bar and its gaggle of gender illusionists on the brink of bankruptcy. Maybelline overcomes her cultural biases almost immediately, befriends a troubled single mother, the cast, and becomes everyone’s doting mother. She helps reunite families dealing with their sons’ chosen lives. And then her angry husband shows up. Ably standing in for San Francisco, believe it or not, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Also stars Lucy Liu, Adrian Grenier, Mya Taylor, and drag superstar Jackie Beat.
Flannery O’Connor was a blazing star in the damp, mossy Southern Gothic genre of literature, turning out short stories and a few novels that looked hard at the darkness of the human soul. The doc Flannery looks at the deeply religious, ill, and solitary figure and her journey from cartooning to writing stories, via the Yaddo artists’ and writers’ colony where Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, and Robert Lowell developed their art. O’Connor’s work reflected her small Georgia home town with its flaws and embedded racism; when she became a national sensation, James Baldwin asked to visit her at home. She refused, saying she “observes the tradition of the society I feed on”, that is, she would not entertain a Black man. Her work was radical, with its mass murder, failure, dark, grotesque characters and events, family secrets, told with under the skin power. Oh, and O’Connor named names during the Red Scare. Supporting video includes Southern moments beyond belief, and fans Conan O’Brien, Tommy Lee Jones, and Alice Walker who lived across the street from O’Connor, are among the interviewees. Directed by Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco. Flannery is on now at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.
Summerland, written and directed by Jessica Swale, Variety’s Top Brit to Watch in 2019 tells the poignant story of a reclusive author in a seaside cottage, reviled by her community and believed to be a witch. It’s World War II, you’d never know by looking at the peaceful village on the White Cliffs of Dover. Gemma Arterton as the eccentric Alice is dismayed to find she must take in a child evacuee from bombed-out London. She protests, not liking children and claiming she’s too busy writing her treatise on folklore myths, witches, and women living alone with cats. She takes in Frank and tries, as annoyed as she is. He understands her nature and she begins to open up with stories about her flaming youth in London and of an affair with a woman (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) that ended. The two bond over a weather phenomenon the area that looks like castles floating in the air and she introduces him to the pagan idea of Summerland when someone shows up from the past who will impact both. The story is told by Penelope Wilton as Alice in old age, as she writes her memoirs. The film addresses the stereotypical single woman/witch stereotype and offers the possibility of love and reconciliation.
Netflix’ The Sleepover concerns a normal suburban family living a rather uneventful life as Mom (Malin Ackerman) pesters the kids to clean up and behave, the dog runs amok and the kids’ smart remarks set up their quick wit. They’ll need them because when a couple of assassins show up, all bets are off. Turns out that mom in a prior life, was a high stakes thief and her old gang has come for her to pull off a new job. Mom’s been in the witness protection program for years so how they found her is a head-scratcher. They kidnap her and she’s forced to play along. The kids are surprised when a government agent appears and tells them the story. They tie him up and set out to rescue her. That quick wit comes in handy as they face all kinds of obstacles. The smart-mouthed young son (Maxwell Simkins) is hysterically funny and a natural comedian. Directed by Trish Sie and co-starring Joe Manganiello, Ken Marino, and Canada’s Enuka Okuma.
Richard Tanner’s Chemical Hearts based on the novel by Krystal Sutherland making its debut on Amazon Prime offers a fresh perspective on teenage romance because of the chemical makeup of their young, developing brains. I don’t recall a feature with this take. The leading teen’s sister, a nurse provides a kind of Greek chorus expliqué of what’s happening to him when he falls for a new girl at school. The girl is remote, doesn’t dress or look like the other girls and uses a cane. Her leg was hurt in a car accident that killed her boyfriend and she’s grieving. But they begin a romance. She leaves him and, according to his sister, his once steady supply of dopamine is replaced by stress hormones and classic withdrawal symptoms. But is not over yet, as more Sturm und Drang awaits them. An unusual YA film that solves love’s mystery. Well, no, but that’s the idea.