SOUTH MOUNTAIN (2019) (B+) - This is a lyrical visual essay about a woman dealing with the dissolution of her marriage. It's not a tragedy, but rather a mere slice of life. Talia Balsam anchors a uniquely lived-in drama, full of authentic characters.
Lila (Balsam) lives an idyllic existence in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York with her writer husband Edgar (a solid Scott Cohen, Max from "Gilmore Girls") and their blended family. (She married him after his wife, her best friend, died.) Lila's pal Gigi (Andrus Nichols) is dealing with breast cancer, while their daughters fall in and out of friendship. Edgar's bad habit of infidelity hits a crescendo when his girlfriend gives birth, and Edgar finally moves out, triggering traumas of his past infidelities for Lila and her family.
Edgar's older daughter Sam (a sharp Macualee Cassaday) has a skeptical view of her parents' relationship, understandably. Sam's friend Jonah (Michael Oberholtzer) hangs around doing odd jobs and ends up in bed with Lila, who treats him as nothing more than cynical payback to her spouse, or merely a scratch to an itch. Naian Gonzalez Norvind is the secret weapon here as sharp-tongued Dara, the daughter of both Lila and Edgar.
Balsam has an even keel, and her wistful Lila grounds this deeply satisfying dramedy. She plays well against Cohen as her selfish husband, Nichols as her best friend, and especially Norvind's Dara. They are all surrounded by a wonderfully detailed set, centered around a summer house stuffed with a lifetime's worth of detritus. This comes from writer-director Hilary Braugher ("Stephanie Daley," "Innocence"), who has crafted a quiet, authentic chronicle of a familiar story of a middle-aged woman.
NO BEARS (C) - Jafar Panahi has made some brilliant films, but his latest is alternatively confusing and inert, a sloppy story about people limited by oppressive governments. It is honorable that Panahi traveled to the Iranian border to craft a meta-narrative about border politics; I wish it held together as a coherent narrative.
Panahi plays himself, a director who has gone close to the Iranian border with Turkey but who hides out in a remote rented house and directs the film-within-a-film remotely. The film he is making is about a couple -- based on a real couple he knows -- trying to cross from Turkey to Iran; meantime, Panahi gets caught up in some local intrigue in the Iranian village, as a young couple is planning to cross the border in the other direction.
It's an interesting set-up and a meta concept nested within a meta concept; if only Panahi had presented it that clearly and sensibly during his 106-minute odyssey. If it hadn't been so dull it might have been easier to engage with and follow. Furthermore, Panahi is just not a dynamic screen presence, and he is featured in nearly every scene.
Panahi, the man (as opposed to the actor), is a heroic filmmaker. He is a renegade fighting his government and willing to walk the walk, as he now sits in prison for his crimes of creating art. He brilliantly depicted his house arrest more than a decade ago in "This Is Not a Film," and he produced a much better meta experiment with "Jafar Panahi's Taxi." Not all of these experiments will pan out. Even great filmmakers can have an off year.
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