Tag: Better Than Average Bear

Review: Materialists

Celine Song’s Past Lives was one of those rare films that quietly worked its way into our hearts and stayed there long after the credits rolled. Its power lay in the intimacy of its missed connections and the sharp emotional focus on its leads. So it was always going to be interesting to see what Song might do with a broader canvas.

MATERIALISTS, the follow-up to her award-winning debut, certainly boasts a more marquee-friendly cast, with Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans headlining. While Song embraces some of the familiar contours of mainstream romantic dramas, she also consciously subverts them, offering an almost aggressively downbeat meditation on love, money and emotional detachment in the big city.

Johnson plays Lucy, a top matchmaker at Adore, an elite dating firm catering to clients seeking meticulously curated partners. She’s brilliant at her job: nine of her matches have resulted in marriage, but she remains deliberately detached, choosing celibacy and professional success over entanglement. That changes when she meets Harry (Pascal), the groom’s brother, at the reception for her latest match, who immediately begins love-bombing her with his expensive lifestyle. She also reconnects with John (Evans), a struggling actor and Lucy’s ex, now waiting tables at the event.

In a typical Hollywood romance, we know how this all plays out: two princes vying for the same woman, one seemingly perfect, the other lacking what she thinks she wants until, of course, he doesn’t. On the surface, that’s exactly what Song appears to be doing, right down to the emotionally articulate finale. That’s what makes MATERIALISTS so surprising: Song is clearly aware of these familiar beats but chooses to approach them askew.

It’s all the little deviations that make the difference: the muted exchanges, the low-key reflections on the calculated risk of love. Lucy’s philosophy is something like Moneyball for relationships. A darker subplot involving one of her clients being assaulted underscores just how high those risks can be. In another inversion of romantic convention, no one runs through rain to seize a final shot at love. Instead, they rush to help a friend in trouble.

The film is bookended by an awkward caveman motif about the inevitability of love, one of several thematic ideas Song toys with but doesn’t fully resolve. MATERIALISTS is an admirable attempt to deconstruct the well-worn terrain of modern romance. Song may ultimately arrive at the genre’s familiar checkpoints on her own terms, but she stills comes to the same conclusions all the same.

2025 | USA | DIRECTOR: Celine Song | WRITERS: Celine Song | CAST: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal | DISTRIBUTOR: A24 (US), Sony Pictures Releasing (International) | RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 12 June 2025 (Australia), 13 June 2025 (USA)

June 16, 2025
Review: The Blue Trail

There have been a number of well-received films in recent years, most notably Here I Am and The Secret Agent, examining the tight grip of Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. Yet it’s to the future that Neon Bull director Gabriel Mascaro turns in THE BLUE TRAIL (O Último Azul), envisioning a world in which an oppressive system is simply accepted as a daily fact of life—marketed, even, as a social good.

Sometime in an unspecified future, government propaganda reminds citizens that “O futuro é para todos” (“The future is for everyone”). Now 77 years old, Tereza (Denise Weinberg) is declared part of the “national living heritage” and scheduled to be relocated to a state-run colony. But Tereza isn’t finished living. Determined to fulfil her dream of flying a plane, and undeterred by bureaucratic rules requiring her daughter’s approval, she hires a boat from skipper Cadu (Rodrigo Santoro) and sets off to find her wings.

From the moment I first saw a still from Mascaro’s film (pictured above), I was captivated by the world his character inhabited. Mascaro immerses us in this vividly imagined future, with cinematographer Guillermo Garza capturing the Brazilian Amazon in rich, otherworldly hues. Tereza may be racing the clock, but the film is not. Mascaro and co-writer Tibério Azul let the story unfold at a meditative pace as our hero drifts upriver.

Part of the film’s dreamlike atmosphere comes from the titular blue trail: the residue of a native snail said to induce visions. In the film’s second half, Tereza bonds with a fellow traveller, a similarly aged boat captain who has bought her own freedom. Mascaro threads these ideas together in the neon haze of a casino that may or may not offer Tereza a final path forward. It’s here that the slow build begins to falter. The final act feels rushed, slightly fracturing the spell Mascaro has cast over the preceding hour.

THE BLUE TRAIL is a quietly potent meditation on ageism and the insidious reach of government control, steeped in the lived reality of a country with a very real history of authoritarianism. It doesn’t offer clear answers, leaving us instead with a lingering sense of unease. But it’s a beautiful, haunting journey getting there.

2025 | Brazil, Mexico, Netherlands, Chile | DIRECTOR: Gabriel Mascaro | WRITERS: Gabriel Mascaro, Tibério Azul | CAST: Denise Weinberg, Rodrigo Santoro, Miriam Socarrás | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2025, Palace Films (Australia) | RUNNING TIME: 86 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 4-15 June 2025 (SFF 2025)

June 15, 2025
Review: The Secret Agent

Speaking to the audience at the Sydney Film Festival, the first public screening of THE SECRET AGENT (O Agente Secreto) since it won multiple awards at Cannes, director Kleber Mendonça Filho described the Brazilian government as having effectively given itself amnesty for the abuses committed during two decades of military dictatorship. He noted that the film isn’t strictly about that, but rather a “reconstruction of an atmosphere.”

With its sweaty, smoky period detail, Mendonça certainly achieves that. Set in Recife, Pernambuco during Carnival in 1977, we’re introduced to technology academic Marcelo (Wagner Moura), who has earned the ire of a corrupt businessman and now finds himself the target of a pair of hitmen. As he reconnects with his estranged son Fernando, he begins searching government archives for clues about his mother’s past.

None of this is immediately clear. Mendonça immerses us so completely in his setting that we often feel like unseen observers to a series of loosely connected vignettes. After opening with a scene so bleak it borders on dark comedy—a body left under a piece of cardboard at a gas station, waiting days for the police to show up—the film is punctuated with moments of violence and quiet surveillance.

When an unexpected shift takes us into the modern day, two women are seen sifting through digital recordings of conversations Marcelo had under assumed names. If the film sometimes feels disjointed, it’s because someone is trying to reassemble it all later.

Departing from its gritty realism are surreal interludes featuring a CGI hairy leg hopping through Recife’s downtown, violently kicking pedestrians. Based on a real urban legend that appeared in the local papers of the day, it was a coded way for journalists to report on police violence against minorities with slightly less fear of retribution.

THE SECRET AGENT isn’t lacking in perspective or historical weight, but its length, glacial pacing and fragmented narrative may keep audiences at arm’s length. Curiously, it shares this distance with Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, which also explores a similar period in Brazil’s past. The coda, which follows a violent pursuit, avoids any tidy on-screen resolution in favour of more impressionistic fragments of memory.

2025 | Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands | DIRECTOR: Kleber Mendonça Filho | WRITERS: Kleber Mendonça Filho | CAST: Wagner Moura, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Gabriel Leone | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2025, Rialto Distribution (Australia) | RUNNING TIME: 160 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 4-15 June 2025 (SFF 2025)

June 14, 2025
Review: How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

It’s a sign of the times that this is the second Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois animated film to get a live-action remake this year. Following Disney’s Lilo & Stitch redux, DreamWorks has begun its own journey down the reboot path with this reworking of their 2010 hit. Like Stitch, the original has grown into a small empire over the past decade, which perhaps explains why there are so few surprises here.

In fact, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2025) is a shot-for-shot, beat-for-beat remake of the original. Once again, we find ourselves on the bitter isle of Berk, where dragons and humans have been locked in conflict for generations. Young Hiccup (Mason Thames) shows no aptitude for living up to the dragon-slaying expectations of his father, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler).

That is, until he accidentally wounds Toothless, an elusive and much-feared Night Fury dragon. As Hiccup slowly rehabilitates the creature and earns its trust, he discovers a gentler side to dragonkind. His newfound connection elevates his status among his peers, including love interest Astrid (Nico Parker), but also puts him at odds with a culture entrenched in fear and tradition.

Let’s address the elephant, or rather the gargantuan dragon, in the room. Outside of commercial motivations, this near-identical remake offers little in the way of artistic justification. And yet, it’s hard to deny how entertaining it remains, even in such close proximity to the original. From the opening moments, it’s clear this is a technically accomplished production, with top-tier effects recreating the dragons in stunning detail against the chilly beauty of the Northern Ireland landscapes. Toothless, in particular, is beautifully realised, and I’ll admit I still got choked up during that now-iconic bonding scene.

The casting is also top-notch. Once you adjust to not hearing Jay Baruchel’s voice, Thames (The Black Phone) confidently makes the role of Hiccup his own. Gerard Butler reprises his role as Stoick with appropriately gruff gravitas, and his pairing with the always-reliable Nick Frost provides a welcome comic double-act. Not all of the character designs translate perfectly to this semi-realistic world, but somehow it still works.

For me, animation holds a unique and irreplaceable magic, a singular blend of art and cinema. There are moments here, especially when Hiccup and Toothless first take flight, that can’t quite replicate the painterly beauty of the 2010 film. Still, the climactic dragon battle makes thrilling use of every inch of the IMAX screen, and if studios insist on remaking beloved animated films, this is at least how it should be done.

2025 | USA | DIRECTOR: Dean DuBlois | WRITERS: Dean DeBlois | CAST: Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gerard Butler, Nick Frost, Julian Dennison | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 125 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 12 June 2025 (Australia), 13 June 2025 (USA)

June 9, 2025
Review: Vie Privée (A Private Life)

One of the big drawcards for Rebecca Zlotowski’s VIE PRIVÉE (A Private Life) is unquestionably Jodie Foster, making her debut in a French-language role. Yet there’s broader appeal here too. While the film may entertain more than it surprises, it’s a throwback European thriller, with just enough light comedy mixed into the noir to almost qualify as a cosy crime caper.

Foster plays psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, a woman of cool reserve who records her sessions on an outdated MiniDisc player. Her personal life is less tidy: she has a strained relationship with her adult son and her ex-husband Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil). When Paula (Virginie Efira), a long-term client, fails to show up for an appointment, irritation gives way to shock. Paula has died, and her death has been ruled a suicide.

Lilian is rattled, not least because Paula’s grieving husband (Mathieu Amalric) seems to blame her. But soon Lilian begins to suspect foul play. Together with Gabriel, she embarks on a strange journey through the clues Paula left behind—missing tapes, buried secrets, and the cryptic suggestions of a hypnotist who believes the answers may lie in past lives.

Zlotowski’s script, co-written with Anne Berest (Valiant Hearts) and Gaëlle Macé, has plenty of twists and turns, though discerning viewers may find few real surprises. At times, it feels as if they’re ticking off a checklist of genre touchstones: a Roeg-esque girl in a red coat, a dash of early Verhoeven, a Hitchcockian flirtation with duality and déjà vu. Yet even if the film isn’t breaking new ground, it’s still a compellingly watchable mystery, bolstered by its sly tone and stylistic flair.

The tonal shifts in the film’s back half aren’t handled as well. Audiences who sat stone-faced through a hypnosis-induced flashback were audibly cracking up when Lilian later recounts it to her son’s family. Which brings us back to the cast, without whom none of this would quite work. Foster is flawless in any language, and she makes a pitch-perfect double act with Auteuil.

Some may feel let down by the denouement, which comes in a flurry of revelations and convenient connections. It may fit the character’s arc, or perhaps it’s intended as a final winking joke, But if so, some of that may have been a little lost in translation. Still, if this is the beginning of a series of mysteries (Nights in Normandy?), I’d happily sign up for more.

2025 | France | DIRECTOR: Rebecca Zlotowski | WRITERS: Rebecca Zlotowski, Anne Berest, Gaëlle Macé | CAST: Jodie Foster, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Daniel Auteuil | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2025, Transmission Films | RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 4-15 June 2025 (SFF 2025)

June 9, 2025
Review: One to One: John and Yoko

Is there a millimetre of Beatles footage left that hasn’t been explored? Arguably the most documented band in history, John Lennon alone has been extensively diarised in Imagine, Gimme Some Truth, and countless others.

Yet as Peter Jackson proved with almost eight hours of The Beatles: Get Back, sometimes a shift in perspective makes all the difference. Michael Epstein’s LennoNYC already covered the icon’s time in New York with Yoko Ono, but here Kevin MacDonald and editor Sam Rice-Edwards not only unearth previously unseen (and unheard) footage from the lead-up to the 1972 One to One Madison Square Garden benefit concert, they also manage to frame Lennon and Ono as products and symbols of a divided America at a cultural crossroads.

In the early 1970s, Lennon and Ono moved into a small Greenwich Village apartment for 18 months. The way they tell it, they watched a lot of television. MacDonald and Rice-Edwards lean into this anecdote, intercutting newsreels, commercials, and pop culture ephemera with concert footage, interviews, and audio recordings. The effect is that we’re there with them, watching America flicker by on the box. In doing so, the filmmakers contextualise Lennon and Ono’s activism, arguably reframing their prolific output as reactive to this cultural saturation.

At times the quick-cut archival clips verge on the excessive, but the method feels deliberate: a kind of sensory overload that mirrors the media landscape Lennon and Ono inhabited. One especially affecting sequence features footage from Willowbrook State School, where an impossibly young Geraldo Rivera exposed the horrific treatment of children with intellectual disabilities. It’s this segment that led directly to the One to One concert.

Like Johan Grimonprez’s The Soundtrack to a Coup d’État (2024), ONE TO ONE makes use of on-screen text for phone conversations, offering Lennon obsessives a treasure trove of transcripts. Conversations with David Peel and fellow activists are among the highlights, though one surreal aside involves Ono’s efforts to acquire live flies for an installation piece.

Did the world need another Lennon documentary? Probably not. Will fans discover brand-new revelations? Unlikely. And yet, MacDonald and Rice-Edwards carve out new emotional ground, particularly in rebalancing the Lennon/Ono narrative. Ono is finally given a voice equal to Lennon’s, portrayed not as a disruptive force, but as a fierce, feminist, proto-punk artist whose own griefs, especially the search for her estranged daughter, are present throughout.

By the same token, the filmmakers make some very conscious choices about what not to include, sometimes leaping between years without narration and very deliberately curating songs from the concert that fit the story. In these moments, the burden shifts to the viewer, our cultural knowledge is expected to fill the gaps.

At times, the squabbles between musicians and activists border on the absurd, like Bob Dylan refusing to tour until A.J. Weberman apologised for, among other things, rummaging through his garbage on camera. But these scenes ground its icons in human moments. And maybe that’s the point: this was just a couple living through a moment in time.

2024 | UK | DIRECTOR: Kevin Macdonald | EDITOR: Sam Rice-Edwards | CAST: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, David Peel, Allen Ginsberg | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2025, Madman Entertainment | RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 4-15 June 2025 (SFF 2025)

June 9, 2025
Review: It Ends

Filmmaker Alexander Ullom, who has transitioned from online shorts to this debut feature, has said in interviews that he’s trying to coin the phrase ‘hangout horror.’ If he wanted a visual companion to that phrase, it would be IT ENDS, a film that begins as an unnerving mystery in the woods and gradually drifts toward existential dread.

A late-night drive down a wooded road turns otherworldly when old friends James (Phinehas Yoon), Tyler (Mitchell Cole), Day (Akira Jackson), and Fisher (Noah Toth) find they’re unable to leave. After driving for days, the road never turns, never ends. Stranger still, they don’t feel tired or hungry. When they finally stop, desperate people emerge from the trees, pleading for access to the car. It’s in these moments that Ullom’s film is at its most traditionally unsettling, delivering scares through bursts of action after long stretches of stillness.

As curiosity gives way to despair and resentment, the group begins to question what they’ve done to deserve this—and whether it will go on forever. Eventually, even the fear dulls. Hypotheticals, road games, and minor puzzles become the only way to pass the time. On the surface, you could read Ullom’s tight screenplay any number of ways: a metaphor for Gen Z’s uncertain transition into adulthood in a relentlessly bleak world, perhaps.

What’s remarkable about IT ENDS is how little actually happens—and that’s kind of the point. Just like in real life, there are no mile markers to tell you that you’ve reached the next stage. The group can take short breaks from the car and occasionally stumble upon other abandoned vehicles, but there’s a limit to how long they can stray. They come to realise the way forward is the only way, and that way is uncertain.

Ullom plays with some great ideas here, and elicits strong performances, particularly from Yoon and the taciturn Cole. Still, for all the time we spend in the car, we learn surprisingly little about these characters. If this is a hangout movie, it’s one in which ennui is baked in from the beginning, and there’s no obvious way to shake it. For more than one generation, that might be the most terrifying thing of all.

IT ENDS is a clever debut, one that deliberately skirts around tropes like time loops and postmodern horror to avoid being pinned down. That said, you could argue Ullom doesn’t quite know what to do with his setup once he’s set things in motion—and the final act may frustrate some as a result. Just like real life.

2025 | USA | DIRECTOR: Alexander Ullom | WRITERS: Alexander Ullom | CAST: Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth | DISTRIBUTOR: Sydney Film Festival 2025, Snoot Entertainment | RUNNING TIME: 87 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 4-15 June 2025 (SFF 2025)

June 5, 2025
Review: Doctor Who — Season Two (aka Series 15)

WARNING: This review can’t help but discuss a few spoilers, sweeties. Proceed with caution.

Ncuti Gatwa’s second full season as the Doctor does two things almost immediately. The first is expected: Gatwa settles confidently into the role, his energy and charm now fully aligned with the character. The second is more troubling, and perhaps emblematic of Russell T. Davies’ second era—it looks back. Through callbacks, recycled plot points, and direct sequels, DOCTOR WHO’s second full Disney+ season spends a surprising amount of time revisiting its own past.

Take the season opener, The Robot Revolution. It introduces new companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu), a nurse, in strikingly familiar fashion: abducted by aliens and imprisoned by an AI on a star named after her. It’s hard not to think of Martha Jones’ debut alongside the Tenth Doctor. Sethu—who made her WHO debut last year as Mundy Flynn in Boom—proves a perfect companion: forthright, questioning, and initially unwilling to take the Doctor at face value. The episode itself offers a lightweight commentary on male entitlement—complete with Gatwa’s wry “planet of the incels” quip—but mostly serves to lay the groundwork for the season arc.

Unable to return home to the date they left—a classic WHO trope and one of the great sci-fi conceits—the Doctor begins to suspect something’s wrong with Earth. Using this as a springboard, he and Belinda bounce through time and space collecting data and having mostly one-off adventures. Well, I say “one-off,” but few of the season’s eight episodes go without a direct nod to the past.

Lux plays like a remix of the previous season’s The Devil’s Chord, even reusing some of its sets. Its rubber-band animation is striking, but like Dot and Bubble before it, its commentary on racial segregation is buried beneath stylistic flourishes. The Well, by contrast, is a standout—a taut horror outing showcasing deaf representation with Rose Ayling-Ellis in a central role. That said, even this is slightly undercut by the late reveal that it’s a direct sequel to 2008’s Midnight.

Lucky Day and The Story & the Engine are possibly two of the more successful episodes of the season. Millie Gibson returns as Ruby Sunday in a Doctor-lite episode that is ultimately a timely exploration of toxic online vitriol and misinformation. Subtle it is not, but writer Pete McTighe gives both Gibson and the show some time to explore the fringes of the world. The Story & the Engine, written by Nigerian-born British poet and playwright Inua Ellams, is a wonderfully intriguing meta-commentary on the nature of storytelling. Gatwa shines in this episode, one that also features a welcome cameo from Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor.

Yet it’s hard to escape the feeling that this season feels almost apologetically shackled to the past. Davies has always had a taste for cutesy aliens and pop culture riffs, but the years may have worn down the novelty. What once felt fresh and irreverent now teeters on the edge of schtick—a greatest hits tour when the audience is ready for a bold new album. The Interstellar Song Contest, for instance, follows in the footsteps of 2005’s Bad Wolf, disguising a major narrative turn beneath layers of pop cultural nods.

The two-part finale also marks the return of the Rani, a rogue Time Lord last seen in a smattering of classic episodes and specials decades ago. In a bold—if convoluted—move, the enigmatic Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) bigenerates into two versions of the character, one of them a new incarnation played by Archie Panjabi. It’s a reveal clearly designed to set up future storylines, but from a storytelling perspective, the ground is getting shaky. Russell T Davies has now used this supposedly rare deus ex machina twice in 18 months to wedge in major lore shifts. For newer fans, the sudden reappearance of the Rani—swiftly followed by a hefty Omega reference—may land as whiplash rather than wonder. Yet for us older fans, there’s a certain giddy thrill to these episodes, and a momentum that’s hard to resist.

Every year, someone declares the death of DOCTOR WHO but we’re over 60 years and they keep finding new ways of regenerating. The bigger Disney budgets are evident, and there are as many misses as there are hits in any given season. Gatwa is unquestionably one of the best Doctors, and will be remembered as such – and I was definitely hoping he could continue to build this character in a third season. Yet RTD saved his biggest surprises for last, but even that was a dip back into his own past.

2025 | UK | DIRECTORS: Peter Hoar, Amanda Brotchie, Makalla McPherson, Ben A. Williams, Alex Sanjiv Pillai | CREATORS/WRITERS: Russell T Davies (also showrunner), Sharma Angel-Walfall, Pete McTighe, Juno Dawson | CAST: Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu, Anita Dobson, Archie Panjabi, Millie Gibson | DISTRIBUTOR: BBC One, Disney+ | EPISODES: 8

June 1, 2025
Review: Nonnas

Lots of us have stories about our grandmothers. Our nans. Our nonnas. The formative memories often revolve around special occasions—and, invariably, food. That’s where Stephen Chbosky’s comedic drama Nonnas finds its heart, drawing inspiration from both nostalgic sentiment and the real-life story of Staten Island restaurant owner Joe Scaravella.

When the fictional Joe (Vince Vaughn) loses his beloved mother, a chance encounter with his high-school sweetheart Olivia (Linda Cardellini) prompts him to buy a rundown restaurant and staff it with local nonnas, recreating the feeling of home-cooked meals for the people around him.

Despite enlisting his mother’s best friend Roberta (Lorraine Bracco), local hairdresser Gia (Susan Sarandon), retired nun Teresa (Talia Shire) and Olivia’s friend Antonella (Brenda Vaccaro) to cook, Joe must overcome a closed-minded community, and confront his own grief, if the business is to survive.

There are very few surprises in Chbosky’s film. From the opening flashback to the predictable trials, romantic detours and life lessons, you’ve seen all of this before. Even Marcelo Zarvos’ light score is peppered with expected Italian background music. If you’re humming “Funiculì, Funiculà” right now, you’re spot on.

Like many nostalgia-tinged streaming originals, the runtime stretches itself with parenthetical detours before the inevitable conclusion. There’s a food fight between the nonnas. There’s a full-blown makeover montage with Sarandon, Shire and Bracco. If you asked me how we got there, I probably couldn’t tell you now—but they did make me smile.

If NONNAS feels out of step with modern sensibilities—particularly in Joe’s montage of rejection from food bloggers, online press and usually content-hungry critics—it’s because Chbosky bathes the whole film in the golden glow of nostalgia. In the end, it’s the memory that matters. It’s about how coming together over food makes you feel. And in every way, the feeling here is ‘good.’

2025 | USA | DIRECTOR: Stephen Chbosky | WRITERS: Liz Maccie | CAST: Vince Vaughn, Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire, Brenda Vaccaro, Linda Cardellini, Susan Sarandon | DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix | RUNNING TIME: 114 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 09 May 2025

May 10, 2025
Review: Flat Girls

Thai filmmaker Jirassaya Wongsutin has long been drawn to the themes she explores in FLAT GIRLS, her first feature-length film. The delicate portraits of adolescent friendship in the collaborative project Lost in Blue and the exploration of multiple families living under one roof in the television series One Year both find new expression in this meditative coming-of-age story.

The film centres on Jane (Kirana Pipityakorn) and Ann (Fatima Dechawaleekul), two daughters of police officers living in the same flat complex as hundreds of other families. In this intimate environment, they have been virtually inseparable since birth, but their bond is tested by the arrival of Tong (Pakorn “Boy” Chatborirak), a handsome young officer.

Wongsutin’s film is in no hurry to reach any grand destination, nor does it seek one. In her broad exploration of class divides and the turning points in young lives, she revels in the small moments: lingering over games of badminton, the pleasures of ice cream and bok kia, or sneaking into a neighbour’s flat to steal some booze.

This claustrophobic world contains multitudes, and Wongsutin’s perspective recalls filmmakers like Ken Loach and Andrea Arnold. Her leads yearn for escape but can scarcely imagine a life beyond their lifelong confines. Outsiders briefly brush against their world, such as a privileged tourist who buys street food and moves on, while the girls sport T-shirts emblazoned with the names of faraway places like Harvard. Fleeting glimpses of other worlds, seen from river ferries or through distant fireworks, are always just out of reach.

While the film’s slower pace may keep some viewers at a distance, Pipityakorn and Dechawaleekul are compelling leads. Their relationship transcends simple friendship or attraction, with Wongsutin lightly touching on the latter as the girls begin to question what love means. Their growing awareness of the forces that divide them — family struggles, money, and their emerging desires — forms the heart of their emotional journey. Chatborirak is well cast as the young officer, though, as the title suggests, this story firmly belongs to the flat girls.

Wongsutin offers no dramatic conclusions or sweeping resolutions, but there are subtle tonal shifts that hint at change. For one girl, a new life filled with uncertainty awaits elsewhere; for the other, life remains rooted in place. FLAT GIRLS marks Wongsutin as a filmmaker with a deft, empathetic hand for intimate storytelling.

2025 | Thailand | DIRECTOR: Jirassaya Wongsutin | WRITERS: Jirassaya Wongsutin | CAST: Kirana Pipityakorn, Fatima Dechawaleekul, Pakorn Chatborrirak | DISTRIBUTOR: Cine Asia | RUNNING TIME: 129 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1 May 2025 (Australia)

April 29, 2025