Short review
Humans.
The rich.
The poor.
Everything so well planned v gd actors.
Terrific dynamics.
People are presented as complex humans.
From a yg child to business man. Bourgeois wife. Can do mom ~ governante ~
the director author seem to take everyones side all at once.
There is no villains here.
Even over flowing toilets rides on a kind of steam punk glamour.
So why would this film not win a big prize ?
I love it.
Long Review -from memory
How did the film start? We see leaky window sills, water seeping in, and a regular drunk coming to piss in front of the window, vomit, over flowing toilets. And everybody jobless.
But the girl is v smart, they go hunting for a wifi contact, so they know must be here or there or there. They are used to not having their own wifi and must rely on neighbouring wifi.
The smell, humid, noodles, old beer, sweat, everybody in one tight underground apartment, no sunlight. Thats the lot of poor people.
The man rehearses dialogue with the son, they are up to a scheme - to get hired by a rich family. The son got a job to "baby sit" tutor a young girl, he got the job because the orginal job holder has to go on some trip, he asked this poor yg friend (his age both young but one is much more savvy and socially adapted because he came from a more socially at ease milieu) He wants his poor friend to take his place because he doesnt have to worry about this poor guy taking her away from him. And he told him to his face too. The actors are all so good.
The mother, is a v can do housewife, she might not know how to make a certain type of noodles, but she will know v quickly from ordinary cooking practice. And being a governante, a kind of house servant, being subservient, she knows how to do that, no problem!
The father, a big gd looking everyday man - he has a very friendly common sense man face, he tries to reassure his children that he has plans too - he finally revealed that his plan is to have no plan! Because when you are poor, anything can happen, all your plans can go wrong due to one thing or the other. And it is true, if you decided on a plan, to make sure everything goes according to plan takes a lot of ressources and redundency to make sure things can to centered in focus- if anything goes outside of the plan, you have to have the means to make alternative solutions and still arrive at the final scenario as planned. Poor people cannot do that, they have to see what is the current situation and make the best of it. Therefore their lot is "no plan". They may have a main course of direction, for example work hard at school, arm yourself with knowledge and get a good job etc; This is the main script. But not exactly a more stylish, precise detail plan. Not possible, unlike the rich, they want a teepee in the garden for the son, and walkie talkie to communicate from the garden to the living room, a plan to avoid anything bad happening to the son. To do this a lot of redundency, sleeping on the couch, speaking to him whenever the kid calls, though he is only a few meters away in full view... birthday party, who to invite, what to serve, which muscians, who is friends w whom, different kinds of new clothing, style of buffet, house cleaning... everything has a precise plan, a style, a script.
So our man being smart, got his daughter, his wife, his son, everybody engaged as service to the rich family. Without the rich family knowing that they are related. The rich business man - v gd actor - he speaks always w a slight haughtiness, v sophisticated. The wife, sprinkles her dialogues with some American English phrases now and then. She is kind, not particularly snobby. But she is the one being served. She takes that for granted. Hello, I will be arriving in 8mn, make xx noodles, i feel like having that. Get the soup ready so I could arrive and its ready to eat. The servant is on call 24hr almost. Yes yes yes, actually she doesnt know what xx noodles are. But always can do, she cooks it up big bowl and its eaten. The daughter complains in a spoilted, princessly sweet way, mom, you know how I want to eat noodles too...why you didnt make some for me... do you hear a girl from a poor family speak this way? very gd acting, scripting! Every detail is correct.
The house, what a beautiful volume, glass panel to a green green garden. In fact to maintain such a house you need a lot more servants than shown in the movie, the gardener, the house cleaning staff (at least 2), and unlikely the owner does not know about the underground space, but but but. Lets believe, lets move on. :)
The thing thats not believable is - such a smart girl, how could she got stabbed and died just like that? She had no intuition of danger? How could the smart one play subservient baby sitter in "undercover" position be so lack of intuition? When you are a "spy or undercover" person, you have to be very intuitive and sensitive to the dangers of being discovered at all times.
The mother is kind she had thought about the basement people and had wanted to send them food, because she considers them they are the same, they also have to eat.
Its a movie about Human predicaments.
Good details, wonderful visuals, very stylish.
We love everyone, except maybe the business man, he did not get my sympathy, he was shown as a businness man, from the movie we dont know much about him as a person.
The couples love scene on the couch is also very good. They make foreplay in such a frantic, technical way, get it done, needs to be done. We dont really see love, but sexual urgency.
Everyone else got their bit of humanity and we understand, if set into their positions, yes, its understandable, its reasonable thats how they would behave.
If the main character, the father was less good looking, just a tiny bit "sloppy", or weak not so upright in his soul, and in his physical body built, the movie would have collapsed. We would not be on the side of the poor. Without sympathy to the poor deliquent one, there is no movie.
It only works if we are on the side of the poor, only if we appreciate the underlying text, how hard it is to maintain integrity in such tight, difficult givens of urban reality.
And by extension, everybody is more or less the same at a larger scale. We feel as human beings rich or poor, we all have our tight, difficult givens of urban reality.
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