A highly skilled professional masseuse, Mai moves into town and joins a spa. No one really knows what she does for a living, but speculation abounds as to her likely source of income. Disrespectful terms like “sugar baby” and “hooker” are thrown at her behind her back while one neighbour accuses her of attempting to steal her husband (the blame being placed on Mai instead of the lecherous spouse in question). When she is not looking, ladies in the adjoining flats litter her doorstep with garbage and dog poop. These civic squabbles and jealousies may be presented in a melodramatic manner but they highlight the struggles of single women living by themselves in South East Asia (and elsewhere). Judgement and a lack of privacy are two issues that are commonly faced. Local playboy Duong and an independent, middle-aged woman are the only people who are accepting of Mai. If her domestic situation wasn’t hard enough, there are co-workers at the massage parlour upset with Mai’s success. She is booked on most days, with her colleagues worried about their regular clients being poached. When male customers wish for special services, she is quick to tell them that she is a professional and to keep any dodgy requests at the door. This attitude further enrages her contemporaries. Meanwhile, Duong, who’s footloose and fancy-free, takes a genuine liking to his neighbour.

Mai isn’t a film that can be easily categorised. Sure, there’s a love story on which everything hinges, but to reduce it to just that would be doing it a huge disservice. Sexual violence and suicidal ideation, complex family dynamics (not on the part of Mai alone but Duong too), deep-seated issues of trust and self-loathing as a direct result of past abuse, the inability of the child to sever ties with the parent, gambling addiction and resultant debt—there is a lot of heavy subject matter to uncoil here. And the intrigue makes each subsequent part of the story fairly unpredictable. You know some bad things are coming, but you’re neither sure of their extent nor their scope. Phuong Anh Dao does a phenomenal job as the film’s lead. Sensitive, kind and understanding, though she keeps those who try to get too close at an arm’s length. Her past is something that has clearly affected her life in an adverse way, and she wishes to steer clear of vulnerability. Even as Duong sheds his playboy persona when he develops feelings, she resists the urge to reciprocate. Shame is another repetitive theme witnessed through the film. It is indeed unfortunate that Mai judges herself so harshly; it is for those who wronged her (including her gambling addict father dependent on her for money) to feel shame. Sadly, that’s not how things work. And despite a supportive daughter, a benevolent benefactor and a man genuinely in love with her, it is hard for her to see her true worth.

Complicated parent-child dynamics are seen through Mai, with it being a difficult subject to shake off. Mai’s relationship with her father is fraught with issues; a role-reversal of sorts can be seen (she has to mother and protect him constantly). For all intents and purposes, he was a terrible father, putting her early life at grave risk. Duong, for his part, lives forever in his wealthy, single mother’s shadow. He stays on his own and dreams of pursuing a career in music, but everything is done on her dime. And not for a moment does she allow him to forget any of the sacrifices made. Worm, his pet name, only reinforces where all the power lies. These two parents, at different ends of the graph, are both equally to blame for their children’s internal struggles.

Beautiful and poignant, it is the sheer emotional range of Phuong Anh Dao and Tuan Tran that holds the film together. What is not said leaves a mark. Their faces and eyes tell a story beyond the dialogue. Mai has this strange ability to surprise you when you finally feel like you’ve called its bluff, and that remains one of the film’s foremost qualities. The writing doesn’t deal with its themes in a flippant manner. It goes to the heart of trauma, where love was once broken (perhaps even irreparably), to see if a small window of trust may yet remain. There are layers to Mai that aren’t easy to decode. The film attempts to understand that undefinable feeling, romantic or otherwise, setting itself apart in the process.

4/5 stars

Rarely has figure skating been shown as so pure, poetic and sensual than in My Sunshine, Hiroshi Okuyama’s feature about two young ice dancers and their coach over one winter in a small town in Hokkaido, in Japan.

Filmed in the classic four-by-three screen ratio and boasting a desaturated colour palette which gives everything a dreamy quality, My Sunshine revolves around Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama), a stammering boy who is as awkward at sport as he is with his speech.

Bad at school in both baseball and ice hockey, the boy finds himself captivated by figure skating – or, specifically, the elegant star skater Sakura (Kiara Nakanishi). His perseverance in trying out pirouettes is noted by the girl’s coach Arakawa (Sosuke Ikematsu), who gives the boy proper skates and then private lessons.

Sensing a prodigy in the waiting, Arakawa begins to train Takuya alongside Sakura to compete in a pairs skating competition. Through this, the man rediscovers the joie de vivre he seems to have left behind after his retirement and relocation to the rural hinterlands.

Teasing natural and dynamic turns from his cast – with Sosuke looking very much the part with his smooth moves on the ice – Okuyama delivers scenes that ooze youthful energy and human warmth.

In the film’s pièce de resistance, a scene depicting Takuya and Sakura’s full routine, the duo glide gracefully across the ice, their breathing and the crisp glissando produced by their skates saying much more about their emotions than words ever could, whether about their dedication to the sport or the unarticulated feelings bubbling within each of them.

But My Sunshine is not all sweetness and light. Its descent towards tragedy is perhaps prefigured by Okuyama’s frequent positioning of his characters as small dots in vast spaces – an allusion, perhaps, to how their fates are somehow shaped by unspoken social forces they could not control.

And it is exactly such tacit norms which will eventually snap the trio’s growing bond.

Eschewing melodrama, Okuyama simply hints at the prevalent conservative attitudes in the town, the disapproval of Arakawa’s private life never really breaking into the open beyond one single word Sakura throws at her erstwhile mentor.

It is an altercation that is as brief as it is heartbreaking, and it speaks volumes about Okuyama’s deftness in evoking such emotions through his very economical storytelling and stylistic rigour.

Not long into Coralie Fargeat’s campy body horror The Substance, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is unceremoniously fired from her gig as the celebrity host of a daytime exercise program. The former actress’ credentials — an Academy Award, a prominent place on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — aren’t enough to save her Zumba-meets-Jillian-Michaels-style show, fittingly called Sparkle Your Life. Her producer, an oily personality conspicuously named Harvey (Dennis Quaid), wants to replace Elisabeth with a younger, more beautiful star. In his words: “This is network TV, not charity.” 

The Substance, which premiered at Cannes in competition, is Fargeat’s second feature. It builds on the director’s interest in the disposability of women in a sexist society, a theme she first explored in her hyper-stylized and gory 2017 thriller Revenge. She gave that film a subversive feminist bent by turning the trophy girlfriend — a sunny blonde who is raped and murdered — into a vengeance-seeking hunter.

In The Substance, a woman also takes fate into her own hands and combats underestimation, only this time she’s at war with herself, too. Fargeat combines sci-fi elements (as in her early short Reality+) with body horror and satire to show how women are trapped by the dual forces of sexism and ageism. Beauty and youth are the targets at the heart of this film, but the director also takes aim at Hollywood’s ghoulish machinations and the compulsive physical and psychological intrusiveness of cisgender heterosexual men. 

Fargeat flaunts an exciting hyperactive style. Ultra wide-angle shots, close-ups and a bubble-gum color palette contribute to the film’s surreal — and at times uncanny — visual language. The British composer Raffertie’s thunderous score adds an appropriately ominous touch, especially during moments of corporeal mutilation. 

There’s a lot going on in The Substance, and while the ambition is admirable, not everything works. The thin plotting strains under the weight of its 2 hour 20 minute runtime; there are scenes, especially in the middle of the film, that land as leaden repetition instead of clever mirroring. But strong performances — especially from Moore and Quaid — help sustain momentum through the film’s triumphantly amusing end.

During his final meeting with Elisabeth, Harvey doubles down on his offensiveness. By the time women reach the age of 50, he suggests to Elisabeth while stuffing his mouth with shrimp, it’s over for them. Fargeat heightens the perversity of Harvey’s blunt assessment with shots of his mouth masticating on shellfish bits. As he crushes the coral-colored creatures with his molars, Elisabeth stares at him with a faint disgust bordering on hatred. Quaid’s character lives in the more satirical notes of The Substance, and the actor responds with an appropriately mocking performance.

Harvey’s words, coupled with the blank stares Elisabeth now receives from passersby, drive the actress to seek a solution. She reaches out to the anonymous purveyors of The Substance, a program that allows people to essentially clone a younger version of themselves. While Fargeat’s screenplay leaves much to be desired when it comes to conveying the company’s scale of operations or how they function in her version of Los Angeles, the rules of the experiment are straightforward. After individuals spawn their duplicates, it’s critical they maintain a balanced life. Every 7 days one of them enters a coma, kept alive through a feeding tube, while the other roams free. Then they switch. The catch, of course, is the addiction of youth. 

Elisabeth and her younger self (Margaret Qualley), Sue, follow the program rules for a bit. The middle of The Substance is packed with scenes underscoring the difference in treatment they receive. While Sue blossoms, winning the affection of Harvey and getting her own exercise show, Elisabeth languishes in the shadow of her invisibility.

Moore imbues her character with a visceral desperation, one that enriches the unsettling undercurrents of Fargeat’s film. She plays a woman who can’t quit the addiction of having youth at her fingertips despite its lacerating effect on her psyche. In one particularly strong scene, Elisabeth, haunted by a giant billboard of Sue outside her window, struggles to leave the house for a date. She tirelessly redoes her makeup and each attempt reveals the layers of anguish behind the actress’s pristine facade. 

Moore leans into the physical requirements of her role later in the film. Elisabeth eventually learns that upsetting the balance of the experiment reduces her vitality. Sue, greedier for more time outside the coma, becomes a kind of vampire, and Elisabeth wilts. Moore’s slow walk and hunched shoulders add to the sense of her character’s suffering. Special makeup effects by Pierre-Olivier Persin render Elisabeth’s withering even more startling and persuasive.  

Qualley does not have as meaty a role as Moore. Her character functions as Elisabeth’s foil, seeming to exist only to help us understand the perversion of Hollywood’s gaze on the starlet. That’s a shame, because The Substance’s smart premise and direction promise more revelatory confrontations between Elisabeth and Sue than the one we are offered.

The reality of this experiment is that it traps both characters in the same toxic, self-hating cycle as the standards imposed by society. The most compelling parts of The Substance deal with how social conventions turn women against themselves. A stronger version of the film might have dug into the complexities of that truth, instead of simply arranging itself around it.