In the Gloamin'

 

DROWNING DRY (B+) - This Lithuanian slow burn gnaws at you as it quietly examines two adult sisters and their romantic relationships in the shadow of an unfolding tragedy.

At the beginning of the film, Ernesta (Gelmine Glemzaite) tends to her husband, Lukas (Paulius Markevicius), after his victory in an ultimate-fighting cage match.  The couple then meet up with Ernesta's sister, Juste (Agne Kaktaite), and her husband for a trip to a lakehouse to relax, with each couple toting a child. One of the children will disappear under the water, and the rest of the movie surrounds the attempts to rescue Juste's daughter and get her medical care, and the aftermath. 

Writer-director Laurynas Bareisa ("Pilgrims") takes his time settling in with the characters, casually observing their banter and habits. He jumbles the timeline, jumping back and forth from a police investigation, and sometimes re-airing the same scene twice, with subtle differences the second time. One of those twists involves Ernesta and Juste doing a choreographed dance to a song that seems to go back to their childhood, and the only difference between the scenes is that the song is different the second time while the dance is the same. 

Glemzaite is compelling as the alpha sister, and Kaktaite feels like the conscience of this somber story. (The husbands are not nearly as interesting. The film's original title translates as "Sisters.") Bareisa seems to be suggesting that our memories can be a little unreliable -- or is he shifting perspective from one character to another? -- and that the mundane tasks of a weekend holiday can rival life-changing trauma. Invariably, Bareisa returns us to the lake house, itself indelibly altered as are the characters whose lives are overturned by the series of events they've endured. Just enough narrative adds up in the end for this to be slyly satisfying.

OH, CANADA (D+) - It's anybody's guess what Paul Schrader is going for here. He tells a jumbled story of a revered leftist documentary filmmaker, hours from dying, sitting for an interview with his former film students, trying to recall -- or intentionally misrepresenting -- his past as a failed husband and father and Vietnam-era draft dodger. Is he setting the record straight or setting fire to it?

Richard Gere is the only thing worth watching as arrogant Leo Fife, who welcomes director Malcolm (Michael Imperioli, bland) and producer Diane (Victoria Hill) into the home he has made with his wife, Emma (a dull Uma Thurman), who was another of Malcolm and Diane's classmates. Leo insists that Emma be present for the interview, not just for emotional support but also so that he can reconcile his past in front of her. I wish I could say what exactly that reckoning is, but I can't, because the flashbacks create quite a muddle.

It doesn't help that the young Leo is played in the late 1960s by Jacob Elordi ("Elvis") who is exceptionally tall and who looks and sounds nothing like Gere. But maybe that's Schrader's way of showcasing his unreliable narrator? Sometimes Gere as old Leo subs in during the flashbacks, perhaps again as a way to show how badly Leo's brain is misfiring in his final moments. And Thurman shows up in an early scene as a completely different character. Someone make it all make sense.

Gere sinks his teeth into this deathbed confession. You see flashes of Leo's suave old ways when he flirts a bit with the slinky production assistant Sloan (Penelope Mitchell) while his voiceover worries whether she can smell his soiled underclothes or prescription ointments as she bends toward him to mic him up.

Leo's backstory, however, is just not that interesting. He had fabricated his experiences in the media for decades, including a made-up jaunt to communist Cuba, apparently.  It turns out that he rejected a corporate job in Virginia with his father-in-law in favor of a teaching job in Vermont, which was a quick step to Canada once he was in danger of being drafted -- though even that comes with a fibbed twist.

Maybe this is more meta than meta, and it's an example of Schrader -- the legendary muse to Martin Scorsese and others before directing his own films ("First Reformed") -- losing his own grip on filmmaking. Schrader, who here is interpreting a novel from Russell Banks, stifles his cast and can't tell a compelling story to save his life.  

BONUS TRACK

The first song that the sisters dance to in "Drowning Dry" is Lighthouse Family with "High":

 

And the second time, it's Jessica Shy with "Sokam Letai":