Reviews: I am Greta, Irresistible, Hope Gap, Miss Juneteenth

Greta Thunberg became world famous overnight with her passionate campaign for climate action. Now she’s on the red carpet.

Despite these attacks, and despite dealing with Asperger’s syndrome, Thunberg remains implacable

I am Greta (tbc)
Limited release (outside Victoria)
★★★½

The Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg became world famous almost overnight with her passionate campaign for action against climate change. Documentary filmmaker Nathan Grossman started filming her in August 2018 when she was a lonely 15-year-old conducting a solitary school strike against climate change in front of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm. The film vividly demonstrates how this tenacious and single-minded activist, with support from her father, Svante, became a figure on the world stage, having friendly but inconclusive meetings with Emmanuel Macron and the Pope, and attracting vast crowds of mostly youthful climate activists all over Europe. She has also attracted the scorn of those opposed to her views (the Swedish film has even tracked down comments made on Australian media by commentators including Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones, whose advice to Greta is “Wake up, grow up, shut up”).

Despite these attacks, and despite dealing with Asperger’s syndrome, Thunberg remains implacable, courageously sailing the Atlantic on board a small yacht — because she refuses to fly — to address the United Nations. Like her or not, she is clearly a passionate, dedicated and courageous youngster and this revealing film celebrates her tenacity.

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Irresistible (M)
National release (outside Victoria)
★★★½

Irresistible, the second feature film directed by former TV satirist Jon Stewart, is an up-to-the-minute satire on electioneering in the US, and the most startling moment comes during the end credits when Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election Committee, tells an unseen interviewer (Stewart presumably) that the far-fetched corruption and manipulation we’ve just been witnessing is completely plausible; in fact, the system allows such things to happen.

Rose Byrne stars as Faith Brewster and Steve Carell as Gary Zimmer in Irresistible

The film doesn’t deal with the Trump-Biden contest directly, but instead focuses on electioneering in miniature. The setting is Deerlaken, a backwater farming community in Wisconsin, where widower Colonel Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper), an ex-Marine, works his property with the help of his daughter, Diana (Mackenzie Davis). Rather unexpectedly Hastings becomes the Democrat’s candidate in a contest against Billy Braun (Brent Sexton), the longstanding Republican Mayor.

Thanks to a YouTube clip that has gone viral, Hastings has come to the attention of jaundiced Democratic campaign consultant Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell), who is still reeling from the result of the 2016 election. Zimmer sees Hastings as being the sort of American you’d expect to be a Trump supporter, but who has unexpected Democratic leanings (“Like a churchgoing Bernie Sanders with better bone density”) and he leaves his comfort-zone in Washington to take control of Hastings’ campaign. Deerlaken is a small community where everybody knows everybody else and an ominous number of businesses have shut down.

Zimmer’s presence in Deerlaken is not lost on the Republicans, and they dispatch the very smart, very elegant Faith Brewster (Rose Byrne) to the town; she’s been in a love/hate relationship with Zimmer for years and this grassroots contest will test them both. But first they have to raise enough money to put their respective candidates on the map.

In Stewart’s film, money really is the root of all evil, and the ways in which both parties set about raising it are both funny and chilling. But IrRESISTible — when the title of the film appears on screen the middle word is highlighted — is not as funny as you’d like it to be, nor as hard-hitting. It starts well and ends with an unexpected twist that is pretty satisfying but, like Stewart’s first feature, the Iranian-set Rosewater (2014), it’s a bit flat in the middle. Carell, Byrne and Cooper are all so good that you want the film to soar, but despite some terrific ideas it tends to sag. Stewart is aiming at a potent political satire in this election year, but Irresistible falls short of its targets.

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Hope Gap (M)
Limited release (outside Victoria)
★★★½

Grace (Annette Bening) and Edward (Bill Nighy) have been married for 29 years. They live comfortably in a house close to the White Cliffs of the Essex coast of England, but they have largely separate lives. Grace is a poet for whom Catholicism is an important part of her life; Edward teaches history. Their son, Jamie (Josh O’Connor), lives alone in London. He comes to stay with his parents for a weekend and on the Sunday morning, while Grace is at Mass, his father tells him he’s had enough; the marriage is over, he’s found another woman and he’s leaving that very day.

Writer-director William Nicholson, who has based the film on his own play (The Retreat from Moscow, a reference to Edward’s favourite period of history), has said it was inspired by the separation of his own parents. It’s a sad little story because Grace — beautifully played by Bening with a flawless English accent — is completely unaware that Edward has become tired of her, tired of the way she constantly criticises him, tired of being quietly, silently miserable. In this role, Nighy — always very good at playing withdrawn characters — gives one of his best screen performances.

This is a small film, but a quietly captivating one.

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Miss Juneteenth (M)
Limited release (outside Victoria)
★★★½

The title of this modestly scaled first feature from Channing Godfrey Peoples refers to a pageant and beauty contest held annually to celebrate the end of slavery in the State of Texas.

Incredibly, emancipation took place almost three years after the end of the Civil War, and the celebrations are important for African-Americans in the state, especially teenage girls.

In 2004, Turquoise (Nicole Beharie) won the contest and the scholarship that went with it, but winning didn’t do much to improve her prospects. Today she is a single mother, raising Kai Marie (Alexis Chikaeze), who turns 15 during the course of the film and who, with her mother’s full encouragement, is competing in the latest Miss Juneteenth contest.

In order to make ends meet, in a suburb of Fort Worth where there’s not a white person in sight, Turquoise holds down two jobs; works in a bar, waitressing and cleaning, and prepares corpses for burial at a funeral home. There’s never enough money, and paying for items like the dress Kai Marie requires for the contest, poses a challenge. Turquoise is not exactly helped by her mother (Lori Hayes), a Baptist preacher and alcoholic, or by Kai Marie’s father, Ronnie (Kendrick Sampson), who drops by occasionally.

“Ain’t no American Dream for black folks,” sighs Wayman (Marcus Mauldin), the owner of the bar where Turquoise works, and clearly a stagnant economy and high levels of disadvantage are huge barriers to overcome. Despite its title, Miss Juneteenth isn’t a feel-good movie; rather it comes across as an insider’s look at what life is like for African-Americans, especially women, in some parts of America today.