Entertainment
A poet's novel of utopia shows less an ideal than, perhaps, a road map
Book Review
Ours
By Phillip B. Williams
Viking: 592 pages, $32
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Award-winning poet Phillip B. Williams’ debut novel, “Ours,” begins with a death — and a resurrection. A 17-year-old Black boy stands up shortly after a policeman fatally shoots him, as surprised as anyone else that he’s alive. He’s surrounded by the residents of the neighborhood: “Yes, they had left something behind to stand in that street together, blocked off from touching him and told to ‘Back up,’ had it yelled at them as though they were to have as little care and consideration for the boy as the ones who had shot him.”
From this contemporary opening, Williams takes readers back in time to the 1830s, when a woman known as Saint travels around Arkansas, freeing the enslaved and indirectly killing their so-called masters. She takes them to an area near St. Louis and founds a town called Ours, which she intends to keep safe and hidden from the outside world using her conjuring powers. She’s unsure where those powers came from. There’s a lot that Saint doesn’t know, doesn’t quite remember, but what she’s convinced of is that in order to keep the townspeople, called the Ouhmey, safe, she must keep them physically nearby and emotionally at a distance, for “if there’s anything more shockingly unpredictable than freedom, it’s love.”
Saint is only one of many characters whose stories unfold over the course of this deeply absorbing novel. Others include Luther-Philip and Justice, two boys born free in Ours, whose intimacy ebbs and flows through changing times and needs; Frances, whose pronouns and gender identity vary according to the eye of the beholder; and Joy, a young woman with a taste for vengeful violence, who accompanies Frances when the boardinghouse matrons they were staying with in New Orleans are murdered. Some get less page time than others but remain important. Luther-Philip’s mother, for instance, Miss Love, leaves the stage much earlier than her husband, Miss Wife, but her absence, and the way it came about, reverberates throughout the novel. Many of the characters’ conflicts and questions are never fully resolved, but that is because “Ours” is a book that embraces mystery and the unknown, whether found in conjuring and rituals or in the vagaries of lifelong relationships.
“Ours” has a fickle relationship with linearity. (I suspect it’s no coincidence that the novel’s title and town name is a homophone of “hours.”) The town’s denizens variously pass, reject, deviate from, travel through, ignore or lose time. It’s been interesting to see, then, how shorthand attempts to describe the book have leaned into the idea of Ours being an attempt at utopia, a word that doesn’t appear in the book.
* * *
A truism of our times is that the dystopia is already here — potentially a riff on a line attributed to author William Gibson, which goes something like “The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.” Dystopian fiction, John Scalzi wrote for The Times a few years ago, “lets us simulate our worst imaginings from the private security of our own homes, the better to avoid them in the real world.” The problem, of course, is that we haven’t managed to avoid many trappings of dystopian fiction: a rapidly changing climate and its attendant human displacement; the rise of fascist ideas and rhetoric; a seemingly ever-widening income gap; several ongoing genocides; billionaires building bunkers in case of some worldwide cataclysmic event. By many metrics, the dystopias we’ve been envisioning for decades no longer feel quite so escapist, nor fictional.
It’s against this background that I’ve come to notice a rise in recent fiction that explores possible utopias. Allegra Hyde’s 2022 “Eleutheria,” for example, follows its white protagonist to the titular Bahamian island and to Camp Hope, a commune attempting to address the ravages of climate change by living differently. Last year, in Gabriel Bump’s “The New Naturals,” a deeply disillusioned and grief-stricken Black couple tries to create a utopian society in a bunker in western Massachusetts, where they hope to abandon the plagues of capitalism, politics, racism and global warming. Gabrielle Korn’s “Yours for the Taking,” published in December and set in a dystopian near-future, features the troubling consequences that arise when a white girlboss billionaire decides to create a feminist utopia by cultivating a society without men, to prove that in their absence, peace and harmony will prevail.
None of these novels end up fully endorsing their various utopias, nor is that their intent. Instead, they ask tricky questions about what attempting to create an ideal society entails: What compromises of exclusion are made in the name of future equality? What fundamental human realities do we ignore in our fantasies of perfect harmony? What happens when a foundational ideology works for some but not others? Perhaps most tellingly, these books seem to conclude that it’s largely impossible to manufacture a utopia — which isn’t to say that the project is entirely unworthy, only that curation won’t be how we arrive at equality, safety and peace.
I’m wary of codifying literary trends. In part, the recognition of a trend so often depends on what subset of literature you’re looking at. Science fiction writers, for example, have long been interested in both utopias and dystopias, but those novels from Hyde, Bump and Korn were not presented strictly as science fiction. Another reason for my caution is that many “trend” labels arise from what is essentially marketing language, from book editors and publicists — such as the one who pitched “Ours” to me as being about the creation of a utopian town. For better or worse, this framing remained with me as I read the novel.
Williams writes in his author’s note at the end of the book that “Ours” is his attempt “at creating a contemporary mythology for Blackness in the United States of America.” He says he “aimed to write an epic taking place during the antebellum period where slavery is not the main antagonist without disregarding or disappearing the enslaved.” In other words, the author’s own framework doesn’t include the idea of utopia. Even so, his novel still ends up demonstrating what a utopia can look like.
Ours is a manufactured town, yes, created by Saint for the purposes of providing both safety and freedom to its people, but she refuses to be its leader, and when her meddling causes harm, she suffers consequences, losing the Ouhmey’s trust. In many ways, the 1800s Ours runs itself, without need for a mayor or a police force; it’s a communal effort whose people help one another when and as needed, even when they don’t particularly like each other. They come together to protect the town when it’s under assault, not because it’s perfect, but because it is their home, where they find joy and sorrow and love and heartbreak, where they relive the traumas of their past enslavement while also comforting one another. It is a messy utopia, unpredictable and full of conflict, which is to say it is human.
The novel’s opening indicates that the town has changed drastically in the nearly 200 years of its existence, becoming what Williams calls a hood rather than a town, suffering from the same police violence enacted against Black people all over the country, including infamously in Ferguson, Mo., a real town that like Ours sits just outside St. Louis. And yet its sense of community remains intact.
In a 2022 interview, Williams expressed his interest in navigating “the terrain of harsh realities without falling into the trap of valorizing them,” acknowledging that “rarely are moments simply pure in either direction of beautiful or ugly, peaceful or challenging.” Fictional utopias often fail because they refuse to dwell in complexity, insisting on a moral or ideological purity that ignores the lived realities of human beings and all their hurts. In this sense, “Ours,” for all its elements of magic, fantasy and mythology, is a realistic depiction of how we might arrive at utopia: through people who are always trying to become, always finding ways to navigate and survive harsh realities, always reaching for moments of joy and intimacy.
Ilana Masad is a books and culture critic and author of “All My Mother’s Lovers.”
Mexican writer/director Michel Franco explores the dynamics of money, class and the border through the spiky, unsettling erotic drama “Dreams,” starring Jessica Chastain and Isaac Hernández, a Mexican ballet dancer and actor.
In the languidly paced “Dreams,” Franco presents two individuals in love (or lust?) who experiment with wielding the power at their fingertips against their lover, the violence either state or sexual in nature. The film examines the push-pull of attraction and rejection on a scope both intimate and global, finding the uneasy space where the two meet.
Chastain stars as Jennifer McCarthy, a wealthy San Francisco philanthropist and socialite who runs a foundation that supports a ballet school in Mexico City. But Franco does not center her experience, but that of Fernando (Hernández), whom we meet first, escaping from the back of a box truck filled with migrants crossing the U.S./Mexico border, abandoned in San Antonio on a 100-degree day.
His journey is one of extreme survival, but his destination is the lap of luxury, a modernist San Francisco mansion where he makes himself at home, and where he’s clearly been at home before. A talented ballet dancer who has already once been deported, he’s risked everything to be with his lover, Jennifer, though as a high-profile figure who works with her father and brother (Rupert Friend), she’d rather keep her affair with Fernando under wraps. He’s her dirty little secret, but he’s also a human being who refuses to be kept in the shadows.
As Jennifer and Fernando attempt to navigate what it looks like for them to be together, it seems that larger forces will shatter their connection. In reality, the only real danger is each other.
The storytelling logic of “Dreams” is predicated on watching these characters move through space, the way we watch dancers do. Franco offers some fascinating parallels to juxtapose the wildly varying experiences of Fernando and Jennifer — he enters the States in a box truck, almost dying of thirst and heat stroke; she arrives in Mexico on a private plane, but they both enter empty homes alone, melancholy. During a rift in their relationship, Fernando retreats to a motel while working at a bar, drinking red wine out of plastic cups with a friend in his humble room, ignoring Jennifer’s calls, while she eats alone in her darkened dining room, drinking red wine out of crystal.
These comparisons aren’t exactly nuanced, but they are stark, and for most of the film, Franco just asks us to watch them move together, and apart, in a strange, avoidant pas de deux. Often dwarfed by architecture, their distinctive bodies in space are more important than the sparse dialogue that only serves to fill in crucial gaps in storytelling.
Cinematographer Yves Cape captures it all in crisp, saturated images. The lack of musical score (beyond diegetic music in the ballet scenes) contributes to the dry, flat affect and tone, as these characters enact increasing cruelties — both emotional and physical — upon each other as a means of trying to contain their lover, until it escalates into something truly dark and disturbing.
Franco, frankly, loses the plot of “Dreams” in the third act. What is a rather staid drama about the weight of social expectations on a relationship becomes a dramatically unexpected game of vengeance as Jennifer and Fernando grasp at any power they have over the other. She fetishizes him and he returns the favor, violently.
Ultimately, Franco jettisons his characters for the sake of unearned plot twists that leave the viewer feeling only icky. These events aren’t illuminating, and feel instead like a bleak betrayal. The circumstances of the story might be “timely,” but “Dreams” doesn’t help us understand the situation better, leaving us in the dark about what we’re supposed to take away from this story of sex, violence, money and the state. Anything it suggests we already know.
‘Dreams’
(In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
1.5 stars (out of 4)
No MPA rating (some nudity, sex scenes, swearing, sexual violence)
Running time: 1:35
How to watch: In theaters Feb. 27
A bartender who worked at Soho House’s exclusive Soho Warehouse in downtown Los Angeles is alleging a supervisor at the posh membership club and hotel drugged and raped her, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday.
The woman, who filed as Jane Doe, said in her complaint that she was “subjected to repeated sexual advances and unwelcomed physical touching” by one of her supervisors, Leonard Marcelo Vichique Maya, immediately after she began working as a bartender at Berenjak, the club’s restaurant, in September 2025.
Doe is suing Vichique Maya, Soho House, Soho House Los Angeles and Soho Warehouse for sexual harassment, retaliation and other claims..
“This is as egregious an instance of callous corporate indifference to workplace sexual violence that anyone can experience,” said her attorney Nick Yasman of Los Angeles-based West Coast Trial Lawyers in a statement.
Representatives for Soho House and Vichique Maya were not immediately available for comment.
Doe has further alleged that Vichique Maya made “numerous comments” about her appearance, propositioned her to be his “hook-up buddy” and told her that she “would be pregnant by now” had they met earlier, all within earshot of her supervisors and colleagues.
After two weeks on the job, Doe said that she reported Vichique Maya’s conduct to two male supervisors, including Soho House’s floor manager and food and beverage director, states the complaint, but “neither took any semblance of corrective or investigatory action.”
According to the suit, Doe claims that despite “his pattern of harassing behavior and complaints,” the company, did not address his alleged misconduct. ”
She claims his behavior escalated after a “team-bonding” work event on Sept. 13, where Doe said she became disoriented after drinking with supervisors and co-workers, eventually losing consciousness, and woke up naked in Vichique Maya’s apartment.
“Paralyzed and speechless despite her consciousness slowly returning, Plaintiff was condemned to simply watch in horror as [sic] MARCELO repeatedly raped her inanimate body,” states the suit.
The next day, Doe said that she reported to her floor manager that Vichique Maya had “sexually assaulted her.”
She said her general manager “confirmed” that he “appeared to be preying” on her during the work event, telling her that “These things happen between coworkers.”
When she proclaimed that she could no longer work with Vichique Maya,” she said the general manager dismissed her concerns telling her: “I have a restaurant to run; I can’t have it blow up on me.”
Despite informing three managers that she was “raped,” Doe said she was continuously scheduled to work shifts with Vichique Maya during which he repeatedly sexually harassed her.
In December, Doe filed a complaint with Soho House human resources, and she was assured that an investigation would be opened and “immediate corrective action” taken.
However, during the investigation, Doe said that she was placed on indefinite leave while Vichique Maya continued working. A month later, she was informed the company had completed its investigation and found her report of rape “was uncorroborated” and he “would not be disciplined.”
In February, the plaintiff said that she was forced to quit her job.
One of the first, exclusive members-only social clubs, Soho House debuted in London in 1995 and quickly became the bolt-hole of choice for celebrities and the deep-pocketed. It expanded globally with 48 houses in 19 countries.
It drew high-profile investors, including Ron Burkle through his investment fund Yucaipa.
In 2021, the company filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, but it has faced financial challenges. .
Last year, Soho House went private, selling itself to a group of investors including Apollo Global Management and actor Ashton Kutcher, who also joined its board of directors, at a $2.7-billion valuation.
Movie Reviews
MOVIE REVIEWS: “Mercy,” “Return to Silent Hill,” “Sentimental Value” & “In Cold Light” – Valdosta Daily Times
“Mercy”
(Thriller/Crime: 1 hour, 39 minutes)
Starring: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Rated: PG-13 (Violence, bloody images, strong language, drug content and teen smoking)
Movie Review:
“Mercy” is a science fiction movie based on one of the more common themes of moviedom lately, artificial intelligence (AI). This crime thriller cleverly creates an intriguing story using technology and the justice system, yet it fails to be consistently interesting and intelligent throughout. The conclusion is less significant than the initial setup, as the concluding scenes become typical action sequences.
Detective Chris Raven (Pratt) of the LA Police Department is a huge supporter of the city’s new judicial courtroom. Crimes are now judged by an AI program (Ferguson) in the Mercy Court. The court is run by an artificial program that makes decisions based on all of the evidence before it without any prejudice. Detective Raven is all for this system until he is convicted of killing his wife. Now he must use all of the data, including the AI‘s ability to tap into everyone’s electronic devices, security cameras, and even into government files, within reason, to prove he did not murder his wife.
Mercy is an interesting movie. It entertains throughout, even when the story gets sloppy and characters’ actions are irrational. This mainly occurs during the final scenes. The movie tries too hard to insert unneeded narrative twists. This is disappointing because the story is interesting. What makes it fascinating is that it happens in real time. This is the most brilliant facet.
All the other theatrics are unnecessary. Director Timur Bekmambetov (“Profile,” 2018; “Wanted,” 2008) and “Mercy’s” producers should have just kept the ending simple, no plot twists or superfluous action sequences.
Grade: C (This flick needs some mercy. Let the trial begin.)
“Return to Silent Hill”
(Horror: 1 hour, 46 minutes)
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson and Robert Strange
Director: Christophe Gans
Rated: R (Bloody violent content, strong language and brief drug use.)
Movie Review:
“Return to Silent Hill” is about one man’s quest to return to the love of his life. The problem is she has moved on to the afterlife. Meanwhile, audiences lose part of their life watching this movie, which is unlike any of the two prequels in this series. This one is a psychological horror that bores.
Artist James Sunderland (Irvine) decides to return to Silent Hill, a place where many people died during a devastating illness that nearly enveloped the entirety of the city’s population. What is left there is a horror show of freakish creatures, all with violent intent. Still, Sunderland searches for the love of his life, Mary Crane (Anderson).
Think of this movie as a slow suicide, where a guy goes back to retrieve his dead girlfriend. To do so, he must travel to the modern land of the dead that Silent Hill has become. This one is a type of swan song by the main character, and the movie becomes less scary while lackluster romantic notions wander aimlessly.
Grade: D (Do not return to see this.)
“Sentimental Value”
(Drama: 2 hours, 13 minutes)
Starring: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning
Director: Joachim Trier
Rated: R (Language, sexual reference, nudity and thematic elements)
Movie Review:
“Sentimental Value” is a Norwegian film that won the Grand Prix in France’s Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Motion Picture. It is a solid drama filled with symbolism and family connections. It is brilliant performances by a talented cast under the direction of Joachim Trier (“The Worst Person in the World,” 2021).
This screenplay is about Gustav Borg (Skarsgård). He is a father, grandfather and a famed film director. He stayed away from his two daughters, actress Nora Borgwhile (Reinsve) and historian Agnes Borg Pettersen (Lilleaas), while he was creating works as a filmmaker. The director comes back into the lives of his daughters after the death of their mother. Their reunion leads to a rediscovery of their bond at their family home in Oslo.
Stellan Skarsgård is always a solid actor. He takes his roles and makes them tangible characters that seem like you know them, even when they’re speaking a foreign language. That is the quality of his act and why he gets nominated for multiple awards each season.
“Sentimental Value” is a valuable movie filled with enriching sentiment. It is an enjoyable film for those who value a good drama. The acting and original writing alone make the movie worth it. “Sentimental Value” starts in a very simple way, but everything in between, even when low-key, remains potent. Joachim Trier and writer Eskil Vogt have worked together on multiple projects such as “The Worst Person in the World” (2021). Their pairing is once again worthy.
Grade: A- (Any motive valuable movie.)
“In Cold Light ”
(Crime: 1 hour , 36 minutes)
Starring: Maika Monroe, Allan Hawco and Troy Kotsur
Director: Maxime Giroux
Rated: R (Violence, bloody images, strong language and drug material)
Movie Review:
“In Cold Light” sticks to a very straightforward story, primarily taking place over a short period. The problem is the story leaves one in the cold. Audiences have to guess what is being communicated because this movie uses American Sign Language (ASL) without subtitles. For those moviegoers who do not know ASL, they are left deciphering characters’ actions and facial expressions during some pivotal scenes.
Ava Bly (Monroe) attempts to start a legit life after prison. Her life changes when Ava’s twin, Tom Bly (Jesse Irving) is murdered while seated next to her. As her brother’s killers pursue her, Ava must evade law enforcement, which contains some crooked cops led by Bob Whyte (Hawco).
For a brief moment, this movie hits its exceptional moment when Oscar-recipient Helen Hunt enters the picture as a motherly Claire, a crime boss who seems more like a social worker/psychologist. Her long scene is wasted as it arrives too late.
French Canadian director Maxime Giroux’s style has potential in his first English-language film, but it does not fit a wayward narrative. A rarity, this crime drama has characters commit many dumb actions at once.
Moreover, Giroux (“Félix et Meira,” 2014) and writer Patrick Whistler forget to let their audiences in on their story. They allow much to get lost in translation, especially during heated conversations between Monroe’s Ava and her father, Will Bly, played by Academy Award-winning actor Troy Kotsur (“CODA,” 2021).
Grade: C- (Just cold and dark.)
More movie reviews online at www.valdostadailytimes.com.
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