FILM REVIEWS:
BODY ODYSSEY (Italy/Switzerland 2023) ***
Directed by Grazia Tricarico
BODY ODYSSEY directed and co-written by Grazia Tricarico is described as an obsessive female bodybuilder’s quest for a perfect body and perfection. Of course, nothing will go the way she intends in this stylized horrific psychological drama. The film is shot in English though it is a co-production between Italy and Switzerland.
Mona (Jacqueline Fuchs) is a female bodybuilder obsessed with an ideal of perfection and beauty. The body is her inseparable container, her most faithful ally, her partner responding to laments. Together they find themselves on the threshold of their destiny. Fuchs is nothing short of phenomenal in her role, capturing the weirdness and completely insane obsession that she has. Her daily schedule is carefully followed by her obsessive coach, Kurt (Julian Sands in one of his final performances), who rigorously monitors her every action like a demiurge: her sleep, her nutrition, her training, her doping, her psychology and even her sexual life. This unyielding regimen, however, becomes disrupted when a brief romantic encounter with a young man impacts both her discipline and her will.
The film’s beginning sets the tone for what is to come. The female bodybuilder’s body flesh is pinched at different parts, and no matter how bulked she looks, there is always some loose skin somewhere. But she is told that she is up to standard. As she tours the gym, she is asked for tips by a fellow bodybuilder who says he wants a game changer. “You need a change in your mindset,” comes her reply. As she tours the gym, she sees a fat man using the treadmill, slowly but surely. She moves to his machine and speeds up the dial from 3.0 to 8.0 as he watches one and increases his pace on the machine. Quite an impressive start to this stylized drama.
Director Tricarico ups the ante during the last third of the film with it getting grimmer and scarier. He uses a variety of techniques including sound, colour (bluish and greens as if shot on another planet), and fade-outs to black but mostly images of the perfect yet grotesque and o over-muscled competition body. Mona also hears sounds just like a psychotic person hears the voice of demons. Watching the film is like living through a nightmare and though the film is well made, the ultimate question on the tongue of audiences will be: Are we actually enjoying this?
Mona’s home invasion scene is also discomforting and marks the film’s most disturbing segment.
The film has a definite David Cronenberg feel, as in his horror hits like THE FLY. Grazia Tricarico, who captured Best Director at Sitges in 2024.
BODY ODYSSEY is dedicated to Julian Sands as this is his last film. The words “To Julian….” appear at the beginning of the film. Sands is a good-looking British blond actor known for films like the horror flick WARLOCK in which he had the title role.
BODY ODYSSEY makes its North American premiere on Indiepix Unlimted on February 28th, 2025.
Trailer:
LAST BREATH (USA/UK 2025) ***
Directed by Alex Parkinson
LAST BREATH is the live-action 2025 survival thriller film directed by Alex Parkinson and written by Mitchell LaFortune, Parkinson, and David Brooks. It stars Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, Finn Cole, and Cliff Curtis. It is a feature film remake of the 2019 documentary that Parkinson co-directed with Richard da Costa.
The 2019 Netflix documentary used genuine footage and audio recorded at the time of the accident on the divers' radios and body cameras, supplemented with interviews of several of the individuals involved, as well as some reconstructed footage, to tell the story of the accident. Chris Lemons, along with his colleagues Duncan Allcock and David Yuasa, was carrying out repairs 100 metres (330 ft) below the surface of the North Sea, supported by the support vessel Bibby Topaz. The vessel's dynamic positioning system, supplied by Kongsberg Maritime, failed. This caused the vessel to drift in rough seas, dragging the divers away from the area they were working and eventually snapping the umbilical tether that provided Lemons with heliox to breathe, as well as hot water to heat his suit, power for his light, and a communications link to the surface. He was left with only five minutes of breathable gas contained in the cylinders he wore on his back.
The new film follows very much the story of the doc with stars Woody Harrelson playing Duncan and Simms Lio and Finn Cole the two divers. More is added in the 2025 version in terms of emotion and human characters. The result is not always good, with the film teetering towards unnecessary sentimentality and artificiality. The ultimate question is whether the world needs a remake when the doc is still available to watch. The 2025 version also shows the intricacies of the vessels and equipment used to mend the pipeline. Again the question arises whether it is worth putting human lives and the environment at stake for the purpose of complying profit in oil. There is a slight debate about risking human lives to save the environment, a solid debate topic but which is unfortunately not taken any further.
The big miracle of the whole incident is Chris Lemmons’ survival against all biological and medical reasoning. For reasons that are unclear to Lemons and his colleagues, but attributed in part to the cold water and having been breathing a gas mix with a high partial pressure of oxygen, Lemons survived for around 30 minutes while he was located by a remote underwater vehicle and then by Yuasa, who was able to pull him back onboard the diving bell.
LAST BREATH opens in theatres on February 28th.
Trailer:
SUPERBOYS OF MALEGAON (India 2024) **
Directed by Reema Kagti
Directed by Reema Kagti, SUPERBOYS OF MALEGAON chronicles the life of Nasir Shaikh, whose no-budget, community-sourced movies turned his hometown into an unlikely dream factory. This is not the first film made about Nasir (Supermen of Malegaon or Malegaon Ka Superman) was made in 2008 as a Hindi documentary) as this true story is perfect feel-good filmmaking fare. It is 1997, and movie-mad Nasir (Adarsh Gourav) is certain he’s destined for cinematic greatness, but great cinema never came out of his humdrum small hometown of Malegaon. Borrowing gear from a wedding videographer and assembling a cast and crew of locals and friends, Nasir sets out to remake Ramesh Sippy’s beloved 1975 film Sholay. At best, the film reveals both the life of the people in the small town of Malegaon, where poverty rules and people are looking for escapism in the movies and the problems and conflicts involved in making a movie, at its worst, director Kagti resorts to humour and silly antics of the characters pursuing lighter entertainment and compromising more important issues.
