Iron Curtain Dramas

CORPUS CHRISTI (A-minus) - Bartosz Bielenia is hypnotic as an ex-con drifter, fleeing a detention facility, who deceives a small village in Poland into thinking that he is a priest arriving just in time to take over duties at a parish grieving over the recent deaths of a car-full of young residents in a suspected drunk-driving accident. Much of young Daniel's appeal comes through Bielenia's large, captivating green eyes.

A sense of doom hangs over Daniel, and it's a tribute to director Jan Komasa and young screenwriter Mateusz Pacewicz that they can maintain intrigue as they build toward Daniel's inevitable comeuppance. This is never less than gripping during its nearly two-hour running time, all shot in a blue-tinged gloom. It is fascinating to watch Daniel smoke, carouse and seduce while at the same time developing a spiritual connection with the mourning villagers that had eluded his elderly predecessor.  In fact, it's hard to look away.

BEANPOLE (A-minus) - Another visually stunning character study -- this one from a 20-something Russian writer-director Kantemir Balagov -- "Beanpole" follows two damaged women as they try to survive in the aftermath of World War II in a devastated Leningrad.

Working as nurses, Ilya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), also known as Beanpole after her stringbean frame, and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina) each have their unique battlefield traumas to work through -- Ilya/Beanpole has a concussive disorder that renders her catatonic at random times, and Masha sexually serviced the servicemen, producing a son who, at the start of the movie, is being mothered by Ilya, who, suffice it to say, is unfit to be a parent.

Balagov subverts expectations by shooting in lively Godardian primary colors, contrasting this palette with the grim existence of recovering soldiers and put-upon doctors and nurses in a land of deep deprivation. When Masha's son dies (in a truly horrifying scene that you'll never be able to unsee) she insists that the still-fertile Ilya conceive a replacement. 

This can be a challenge at two and a quarter hours of human misery, but Miroshnichenko, a pale doppelganger of Tilda Swinton, and the doe-eyed Perelygina providing truly alluring leading women, burrowing into the broken souls of their characters, who are fused by their complementary needs to fill the holes inside themselves and each other. Alternatively challenging and beguiling.

BONUS TRACKS
The trailers: