Karin (Helen Sjöholm) worries about her son (Jonatan S. Wächter) finding his place in a changing world in SIMON & THE OAKS
SIMON & THE OAKS (Lisa Ohlin, 2012)
The Paris Theatre
4 West 58th St. at Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, October 12
212-688-3800
www.theparistheatre.com
Nominated for thirteen Swedish Academy Awards, Simon & the Oaks is a soapy, sweeping Scandinavian epic about the search for identity. The first film based on a novel by celebrated Swedish author Marianne Frederiksson, Simon & the Oaks follows the confused, troubled Simon as he grows from a timid boy (Jonatan S. Wächter) into a strapping young man (Bill Skargård, son of Stellan) during the WWII era. Simon loves music and books, but his working-class father, Erik (Stefan Gödicke), wants him to forget about education and instead learn a physical trade. Simon becomes friends with a Jewish boy, Isak (Karl Martin Eriksson, then Karl Linnertorp), whose father, Ruben (Jan Josef Liefers), has moved the family from Germany to escape the Nazis. As Simon starts spending more time with Ruben, Erik becomes angry and resentful, while Simon’s mother, Karin (Helen Sjöholm), develops a dangerous closeness with Ruben, a wealthy businessman whose wife (Lena Nylén) is confined to a sanitarium. Simon is a dreamer, looking out at the horizon believing that anything is possible, talking to the whispering oak by the lake behind his house. But he lives in a changing world where everyone around him has to face startling realities centered around bigotry and genocide while protecting him from a powerful secret. Director Lisa Ohlin (Sex, Hope and Love, Waiting for the Tenor), who experienced some of the same things that Simon does, gives the film a lush, grand feel that often overwhelms its more personal story while including numerous clichéd scenes, particularly between fathers and sons, that detract from the already straightforward narrative. The film works best when Liefers is on-screen, playing a complex character who is fascinating to watch as he calmly moves forward despite the maelstrom that surrounds him. Simon & the Oaks opens October 12 at the Paris Theatre, with Ohlin appearing for a Q&A following the 7:00 screening.
It doesn’t get much more basic than this: Most of David Trueba’s dazzling Madrid, 1987 takes place in a small bathroom, where aging, cynical newspaper columnist Miguel (José Sacristán), with most of his life behind him, and young, hope-filled journalism student Ángela (María Valverde), with most of her life ahead of her, are trapped together, both very naked and very vulnerable. But there’s nothing standard about Trueba’s film, either, as it explores a Spain in the midst of transition to a more capitalist-based social democracy. Ángela is writing a paper on Miguel, a beloved and feared journalist who has complete disdain for his readers; the married Miguel agreed to be interviewed by Ángela primarily because he wants to get in her pants. He lures her into a friend’s nearby studio apartment, where he is disappointed to learn that she does not want to have sex with him after all. But soon, a series of circumstances finds them locked inside a bathroom in their birthday suits, forced to bare their souls as well as their bodies. The acerbic Miguel does the vast majority of the talking, pontificating on art, politics, sex, society, and other subjects, with Ángela contributing her thoughts at just the right moments, revealing the vast generation gaps that are signaling a new Spain. A well-regarded novelist and younger brother of Fernando Trueba (Belle Époque, Calle 54), writer-director Trueba (Soldados de Salamina, Bienvenido a casa) has a sharp ear for dialogue, as Madrid, 1987 never grows boring or obvious. Sacristán, who has been in the business for nearly fifty years, and Valverde, who was born in Madrid in 1987, develop a fascinating rapport that goes far beyond teacher and student, grandfather and granddaughter, and potential lovers. Cinematographer Leonor Rodríguez and editor Marta Velasco give the film added depth that doesn’t make it feel claustrophobic and limiting but instead brings it an intoxicating freedom. Trueba, who was a journalism student himself in 1987, has created a mesmerizing set piece in Madrid, 1987, a film that is about a whole lot more than just two naked people in a bathroom.
A key film that helped lead 1960s cinema into the grittier 1970s, Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces is one of the most American of dramas, a tale of ennui and unrest among the rich and the poor, a road movie that travels from trailer parks to fashionable country estates. Caught in between is Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson), a former piano prodigy now working on an oil rig and living with a well-meaning but not very bright waitress, Rayette (Karen Black). When Bobby finds out that his father is ill, he reluctantly returns to the family home, the prodigal son who had left all that behind, escaping to a less-complicated though unsatisfying life putting his fingers in a bowling ball rather than tickling the keys of a grand piano. Back in his old house, he has to deal with his brother, Carl (Ralph Waite), a onetime violinist who can no longer play because of an injured neck and who serves as the film’s comic relief; Carl’s wife, Catherine (Susan Anspach), a snooty woman Bobby has always been attracted to; and Bobby’s sister, Partita (Lois Smith), a lonely, troubled soul who has the hots for Spicer (John Ryan), the live-in nurse who takes care of their wheelchair-bound father (William Challee). Rafelson had previously directed the psychedelic movie Head (he cocreated the Monkees band and TV show) and would go on to make such films as 
After his mother’s (Kil Hae-yeon) get-rich-quick scheme doesn’t quite work out as planned, she disappears, leaving her laconic son, Kwon Youn-ho (Um Tae-goo), to continually fight off her ever-more-crazed business partner, Seo-hee (Park Se-jin), a divorced mother desperate to get back the money she claims she is owed. Meanwhile, Youn-ho is trying to make a life for himself and his fiancée, Se-kyung (Yoon Che-yong), but her mother doesn’t approve of his job in reconstruction — he convinces people to leave their homes with small payments so that buildings can be knocked down and fancier residences put up in their place. But neither Youn-ho nor Seo-hee is evil; both have been cast in difficult situations that lead to extreme measures that they regret as they try to put their lives back together. Kim Joon-hyun’s first feature film is a patiently paced drama that subtly examines how the global financial crisis affects families in both large and small ways. Everyone in the film is seeking to maintain or renew a relationship with a loved one, be it a parent, a child, a sibling, or a lover, but money complicates their situations. Um is excellent as Youn-ho, a young man seemingly disinterested in his own existence, letting life just happen to him, a fine counterpart to Park’s Seo-hee, a woman willing to do just about anything to prevent her life from getting completely away from her. Choked is screening for free October 9 at 7:00 at Tribeca Cinemas as part of the Korean Cultural Service film series “Gems of Korean Cinema,” which looks at recent independent works from South Korea.