Le Capital is a very interesting French movie, directed by renowned filmmaker Konstantinos Gavras, starring Gabriel Byrne and Gad Elmaleh. Elmaleh plays Marc Tourneuil, a highly intelligent individual of the financial market, that is promoted to head of Phenix, an increasingly valuable high risk bank of Europe, that rises to be a giant of the financial system. 

Marc Tourneuil, married to Diane (Natacha Régnier) is a very skilled and intuitive pawn of the financial market, that is promoted to president of the Phenix Bank as soon as the current president becomes sick. He is chosen in a hurry by a select group of the board committee, that constitute the elite of the European financial system, which already elaborate plans to substitute him as soon as the former president – a sort of mentor for Tourneuil – dies. Acknowledgeable, determined, lucid, very wise, and assuming that he will become a sort of puppet at the hands of the shareholders, who detain the real power behind the bank, Tourneuil immediately employs a private detective to work for him, with the intention to discover who his real enemies really are, who are the ones he can really trust, and the ones he can’t. 

As soon as he assumes the presidency of the bank, he gets close to Dittmar Rigule (Gabriel Byrne), a very unscrupulous individual, that knows how to present himself as lovable, trustful and friendly. Likewise, Tourneuil, on dealing with extremely dubious persons, learns how to perfectly play the game in the financial market, never satisfying the demands of the real detainees of the power, but never disappointing them either. When he gets involved with a very beautiful and exotic, but promiscuous international top model, he immediately suspects that this could be an arrangement made by the bank elite, to blackmail him in a future occasion, in order have him fully controlled, to act as the head for their illicit ordeals, under the threat of ruining his personal life and marriage. Nonetheless, always one step ahead of his enemies, Tourneuil knows that, one way or another, he will be used as a puppet for all kinds of fusions and financial transactions. Having no alternative, besides being astute and intelligent, he becomes a master at the corporative cat and mouse game, with the fraudulent acquisition of a Japanese bank becoming the apex of his vengeance against the leaders of the financial market, that orchestrates his downfall behind his back. In a world where luxury, money, greed and power games are at the forefront of the coffee table every day, the winner is the one who always thinks ahead of his enemies, knowing that you have no friends or allies to support you whatsoever.    

Bright enough to absorb the professional dynamics of the financial market, Tourneuil rapidly acknowledges each and every possible aspect of the environment. Travelling constantly to close deals and arrange an equilibrium between his hold on power, and the constant demands of the shareholders – specially Dittmar – Tourneuil soon learns that he is playing a game that no one can really win. In the end, to postpone his downfall, and to delay the attack of his enemies on him, is the best he can do. Nonetheless, he arranges the Japanese bank deal to be fully and embarrassedly compromised, threating to expose the fraudulent ordeal involving the acquisition. 

Le Capital is a very good movie, that really captures the attention of the viewer from the very beginning until the last scene. Showing literally all the wild interests that lies behind a corporative organization, and all the sordid intricacies that revolves around the financial market, and how this affects us, ordinary human beings, the film is very honest about all the dirtiness, political intrigues, struggles for power, emotional tensions and corrupt schemes of the economic system, exposing the perfidious rottenness of a machinery that feeds itself from the very own greed of human ambition, in a parallel pursue of power, influence and fortune, that never rests, until someone is hurt, or finally out of the game. 

With incredible performances, amazing dialogues, systematic realism and a very graceful lust that seems to contaminate each and every character within the movie – specially Tourneuil, the lead character – Le Capital is a formidable, imaginative, intriguing and very crude portrait of what really happens in the financial market: a real den of wild animals – specially tigers and lions – eager for victims, disposable flesh, and ready to devour themselves vehemently, and without any compassion or consideration. The movie shows a system where no one have any kind of friends or colleagues, only explicit and implicit enemies, and the ones who are kings today, probably will suffer a tremendous and unpredictable downfall tomorrow. A major, superb and very drastic movie, Le Capital has everything an excellent movie about the financial market is expected to have: tension, emotional affliction, intrigues, inevitable conflicts of personality, collisions of interest, and a vast amount of illicit schemes. If you like this genre of movie, you certainly can’t afford to miss Le Capital.    



​Wagner

The Big Short is a 2015 American biographical drama film, directed by Adam McKay, with an ensemble cast that stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt in the main roles. Christian Bale plays Michael Burry, a hedge fund manager of Scion Capital LLC, whose mathematical genius predicts the real estate market collapse that led to the American financial crisis of 2008.

Michael Burry is an awkward, eccentric and sometimes incomprehensible man, which is the founder and CEO of Scion Capital LLC, a financial company. Burry has a glass eye and Asperger syndrome, which makes him an individual with very limited personal skills and poor social interaction.  Nonetheless, he is a mathematical genius, brilliant with numbers, having made a solid reputation for himself in the financial business. After a brief analysis of the passive and active revenues of some real state reports, he notices financial discrepancies, that makes obvious to him that an impeding shortage very soon will take the real estate market by storm, and consequently, the financial system will inevitably collapse. He rapidly realizes how he can profit from that, creating credit counterpart funds against the frail banking system, which is blind and obtuse, never prepared with contingency plans.

Coming up with a plan to create a creditor insurance line against default, he makes deals with banks, initially appearing to be a fool that doesn’t know how to spend money properly, as everyone thinks that the entire financial system is infallible, and that the mortgage system structure is a solid one, as in thirty years no big scale problem has ever happened. Nonetheless, despite looking like an idiot in the eyes of the bankers, Burry knows everything about real state, and how the system works, precisely predicting how and when the system is going to collapse.     

Meanwhile, Mark Baum (Steve Carell), from FrontPoint Capital (in real life, Steve Eisman, from FrontPoint Partners) meet the ambitious and ludicrous Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling, based on Greg Lippmann), an astounding genius that works for the Deutsche Bank, that also come up with a plan to profit from the remarkable fails that soon will take over the entire financial system. He is also the narrator of the events told in the movie. Upon hearing the inconspicuous rumors about the inevitable collapse disseminated by Burry, and astonishingly realizing that he is probably right, Vennett form a solid, but backsliding partnership with Baum, to incisively deal, and profit as much as possible, with the impeding financial ruin that will take the United States by storm. Doing some field research, upon discovering a series of frauds, ghostly transactions, and horrendously abnormal discrepancies in the financial market that for some time prompted the system to seem stable, Mark Baum becomes severely distraught when he discovers how giant it is the blank space in the financial system that very soon will destabilize the entire American economy. Visualizing how big the crisis could be, he becomes a very desperate man, severely shaken by the weaknesses of the system on which the entire capitalist economy is built. 

Brad Pitt plays Ben Rickert (in fact, Ben Hockett) a wise economist, that mentors two brilliant, but inexperienced youngsters in the financial market, Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro), who are not being taken seriously by bankers or investors alike, since their fund capital of 30 million, in a market that deals with billions of dollars, is seeing as a very small change. Shipley and Geller also became aware of the flaw in the system that will cause a major crisis in the country, and rapidly come up with a plan to their advantage. Upon perceiving that they are probably right, Rickert decides to guide them, but being very cynic and contemptible on human greed, he also realizes with deep anger and sadness what the crisis will do to the country: millions of people will lose their jobs and their homes, and the United States will have to deal with an horrendous scenario of financial, political and moral crisis, being totally unprepared for it.  

Eventually the crisis happens, exactly as Burry had predicted. All of them, with their well-designed schemes and plans elaborated to profit from the fails in the structure of the financial system earn enormous amounts of money from the situation. Nonetheless, neither of these men becomes happy, and the impending doom that finally takes the United States by storm eventually brings disgrace to millions of people, that lose their homes and their jobs, scattering all over the country a sense similar to the stock market collapse of 1929, with all of these men realizing how frail and fallible the financial system really is. Some of them, like Burry and Rickert, leave the financial business for good. Being responsible for the crisis a great deal of fraudulent schemes and investments, nobody but one person is arrested for the ghostly financial wall created by those fake banking transaction arrangements, and after some years, the very same scenario begins to take place, although arranged by other people, and with other names for the same schemes, raising the possibility that very soon, another potential crisis can strike the entire economic system, as no financial platform is 100% secure.  

Surprisingly, The Big Short is a very dynamic movie, not boring at all, despite being two hours long. With its all-star cast, unfortunately only the characters of Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell interact with each other. Showing the financial market in several different angles, the movie is very honest about the malignant and egotistical opportunism that those in command of the financial business arrange for their own personal gains. Setting aside economical terms and conventions, the movie is built upon a very credible storyline, easily comprehensible, and interestingly good to follow. With total respect with the audience, you don’t have to be a mathematical genius or a theoretical economist to understand what is going on. With simple terms, and an easy way to correlate the financial situation in line, you can rapidly identify and visualize precisely the awful scenario built by a series of fraudulent investments, monetary obligations, mortgage finances and security schemes all set by a system indefinitely fed up by its own flaws and faults, which is somewhat the very own basis of the American economy: to deal with money that, in fact, does not exist.

Besides being a very systematic movie, you can understand very well the treacherous elements of the financial market that inherently generated the 2008 crisis, and the situation responsible for that. Changing from storyline to storyline, The Big Short presents an interesting and very interchangeable chain of events, built by a fragmented plot linked by a common concept, that presents the different perspectives of all the men that already knew that a nationwide financial ruin was in development, and that subsequently the banking system would inevitably collapse. Like a giant avalanche that could not be stopped or detained, all of these men, each one on their own terms, prepared themselves to respond to the financial and social consequences of the monumental event. Most of them, unfortunately, were seeking only their own personal gains in the process. 

The movie also greatly interprets moral, ethical and genius evaluation of personalities, since each one of these characters have their own personal merits and qualifications to stand in the places they are. Nonetheless, they hardly think for the benefits of others, and are almost all the time working only to sustain what they already have, and to build a more solid base beyond that, setting up their personal and professional grounds of activity only to gain upon the losses of others.

Finally, The Big Short is a terrific movie. Dynamic, easy paced, fast, interesting and enthusiastic, besides the brilliant choice of actors, the plot and storyline are driven in an excellent and very ambitious manner. Showing honestly the controversial side of the financial market, and the rotten side of the American economy – and how it impacts in our daily lives, even if you live outside the United States – The Big Short is an astonishing movie, that shows the raw, savage and horrendous side of the financial system, with all of its ups and downs, with all of its downward spirals, and chaotic hordes of frightening hangmen always ready to do everything in their power for easy money. Although you can get a little tired being in offices and conferences all the time throughout the movie, The Big Short is a fantastic film made to make history. Certainly deserves a four stars rate, undoubtedly.     


​Wagner

The Girl in the Book is a 2015 American drama film, directed by Marya Cohn, and stars Emily VanCamp as Alice Harvey, a literary assistant editor, that is constantly harassed by an old writer, Milan Daneker, portrayed by Michael Nyqvist, with whom she had a brief, but turbulent illicit relationship, as she was under age when the two got involved.  

Alice is a competent, but very unhappy woman, that fulfills her empty life with alcohol, and a succession of afflictive and regretful one night stands. When her senior editor asks her to take charge of a new edition of the book Waking Eyes, by author Milan Daneker, her life suddenly becomes more inhospitable and chaotic. Trough flashbacks, we learn that her parents were literary agents, and her father was the sole responsible for the successful bestselling career of author Milan Daneker. From then on, the story is intertwined with present day events, and recurrent flashbacks, upon which we understand that Alice, in her teenage years, being always surrounded by writers and intellectuals, developed very early her own writing skills, and started to nurture the possibility of a literary career. When the soon-to-be-notorious author Milan Daneker is introduced to the young Alice, he is instantly attracted to her, and using literature as a pretext, he tells her that he wishes to read her manuscripts, but in fact he is looking for an excuse to get close to her. Becoming a literary mentor to the young Alice, both soon began a teacher and pupil relationship, seeing each other almost every day. Daneker starts to give literary advices to the young Alice, and not long after that, he starts abusing her physically, turning her mind into a whole new set of confused feelings. After some encounters, Alice tells everything to her parents, that confronts Daneker. Giving a sordid excuse, he dismisses all that she told them as a lie, saying that she is probably too impressed with him, a much older and fascinating man. When her parents choose not to believe her, Alice becomes very distressed and traumatized. 

In the present day, Alice fights hard to endure the difficulties presented by having Daneker one more time in her life. Being forced to meet him several times by virtue of the book’s rereleasing process, she has no other choice, but to confront demons of the past and scars of the present. Being somewhat thoughtful, and always addressing her properly, showing a decent degree of affection towards her, Daneker’s attitudes sets Alice into a downward spiral of emotional trauma and turmoil, not knowing exactly how to react to his advances, as he acts as if nothing bad had happened in the past. Not being able to deal with the situation properly, her relationship with friends and family are deeply affected by her desperation, and everything in her life starts to fall apart. Going through hard times, when she is finally stable enough to have a decent and constant relationship, on one particular occasion, she becomes so distressed with her current confrontation with ghosts from the past, that she cheats her boyfriend, finding difficult to resist to her old habit of engaging on empty and painful one night stands, as a form of temporary relief for her grief. 

Through another flashback, we learn that Milan Daneker not just abused her, but plagiarized her literary works as well, incorporating some of her texts into his most famous novel, Waking Eyes. When Milan Daneker gives his first reading session to a crowd in a bookshop, she becomes terrifyingly disturbed when she listens her own work in his book, being excruciatingly hurt by his lack of ethics and morals, struck hard by the brutal feeling of having her own words painfully stolen. More shocking indeed, comes the fact that Alice was incorporated as a character in the book, hence the title of the movie, The Girl in the Book. 

In the present day, when Alice’s boyfriend finally forgives her for cheating him, Alice decides to take her life back on track, and the only way she finds appropriate for doing this is finally confronting Milan Daneker. One day, when she comes to his house, she clarifies everything that was disturbing her, and spits it out on his face all the wrongdoings that he did to her in the past, finally being able to set herself free from his invisible chains, severing ties with Daneker for good. The audience also learns that Daneker was possibly a mediocre author and a literary fraud all the time, lacking real talent as a writer, as the books that he published after Waking Eyes were all commercial failures. The success of his most famous novel was probably all inspired by Alice herself, as a character, and also by her plagiarized text. In the end, her boyfriend gives her a hug, and, coming up with the correct conclusion, finally understands what she has been going through, saying “You’re the girl in the book”, to which she replies “not anymore”. 

Well, The Girl in the Book, although it is a little slow sometimes, is a great and terrific movie. The intense drama, and the high sensibility of the characters – especially Alice, the main character – are developed really well all the way through, and the audience does not get tired of the story in any moment, as the plot unfolds in a very interesting and dramatic manner. The bridges built by the characters’ emotions towards one another, and the fact that all of their feelings are perfectly interconnected by a major link of profound humanity is also a major achievement of the movie, giving to all individuals a deep sense of real life drama, sense of morality (or in some cases lack of it), perception and failure, and a drastic element of individual sensibility towards life.

The partial linearity of the story, always featuring the constant interchangeable connection of the present day with the flashbacks can be tiresome at times, as you may easily lose your patience with so many roads going back. Nonetheless, this artifice serves very well to the plot, as you can accompany Alice’s journey through her ordeals in life without hard waste.  

Although The Girl in the Book is really a very good movie, you will had, inevitably, several times throughout the story, the feeling that you have seen this same exact plot in a lot of other movies, a hundred times before. A little exhausting and obvious in some points, The Girl in the Book is a good movie, that escapes the drama clichés easily, with a little degree of originality. Nevertheless, you will have that sensation in some moments that the movie seems exactly like another chapter of the boring and old soap opera that you used to see with your grandmother, when you were a teenager. It is a good movie, but it is far from being great. Although it is compelling, dramatic and profound, at some point you realize that this is just another movie that complies with the regular standards of the genre, showing a decent level of technical proficiency, which is no hard task for the most professional companies of the movie industry. But the picture per se will hardly achieve a remarkable score in the personal evaluation of anyone that chooses to see it, since it is filled with a lot of the sticky elements that fulfills the plot of a large amount of boring and ridiculous afternoon TV shows. Okay, here, it is portrayed in a much more decent manner, with a high level of  competent skills, but anyway, in the end, all the good story flows in a common ground floor, giving you the impression that you are watching a very predictable and lengthy melodrama, hardly worthwhile remembering it. Regardless, it is a good and very well done drama movie, that unfortunately fails to be more than that. My rate for The Girl in the Book is three and a half stars.        


Wagner              

Anatomy of a Love Seen is an American drama film, starring Sharon Hinnendael and Jill Evyn. Written and directed by Marina Rice Bader, which also star in the movie, the plot deals with two lesbian actresses that reunite for a day, to reshoot sensual love scenes for a movie on which both starred some months earlier, after they had a brief, but intense relationship, having split recently in a very unfriendly manner.

Zoe Peterson (Sharon Hinnendael) and Mal Ford (Jill Evyn) met while working on a movie. In the movie, both play lesbian girls, that have a very torrid love affair, and shoot together very ardent and passionate love scenes in the bed. Nonetheless, both women are actually lesbians, and fall in love for each other while shooting their love scenes for the film. After the movie is finished, they begin a love affair, that abruptly ends after a few months, when Mal dumps Zoe for no apparent reason. Several months later, both are called again to do a reshoot of the love scene, and both actresses find very hard to endure the ordeal to meet each other again, after their horrendous breakup.

To deal with the situation, they have the movie director, Kara Voss (Marina Rice Bader) committed to help them, doing her best, trying to hold on the emotional turmoil that slowly begins to develop in the movie set. When soon became obvious that their meeting will be a very difficult one, Kara enlists the help of her assistant, Anne (Constance Brenneman), another very emotional woman, that tries to do everything in her power to deal with the situation in the best way possible. Kara even arranges for Zoe to have her own space on set, so she can deal with this stressful situation in an easy way. 

For Zoe and Mal, seeing each other one more time is a very hurtful process. Nonetheless, for the sake of the movie, they have to reshoot the love scene they had done together a few months prior, but the two women don’t seem capable to solve their differences, nor put their problems behind them for good. When the situation appears to cool off for some moments, horrible arguments and heated discussions reopens striking emotional turbulences, and Zoe and Mal find a hard time trying to understand each other, which provides a lot of setbacks and troubles for the movie crew and the shooting schedule. 

Despite the best efforts set up by Kara and Anne, Zoe and Mal discussions just get worse, and the two women seems incapable to forgive or understand each other. When they finally go to bed, and the shooting gives sign that may finally happen, both women, doing their best to appease themselves, and achieve a peaceful atmosphere of serenity for the sake of the movie, after a calm and easy interaction – that finally provides at least one good scene – had another severe falling out, and for a moment, everything seems definitely ruined.  

As the discussion between them progresses, we learn that Mal was a recovering addict when both women had a relationship. Insecure and afraid that Zoe could leave her, Mal broke up with Zoe before Zoe had the chance to break up with her. Resented and heartbroken, Zoe underwent a very difficult period on her life after the relationship ended, and now she finds hard to forgive Mal for what she had done. Acting as mediators, and trying to be bridges that communicate feelings of comprehension and reconciliation between the women, Kara and Anne do everything they can to provide for Zoe and Mal the possibility to achieve a platform of mutual understanding, which proves something very hard to realize.   

Obvious as it is, the emotional setbacks just gets worse, and Anne, a very frail woman, begins to be severely affected by the sentimental turmoil of the situation. As Kara tries to calm Zoe, Anne gets closer to Mal. Rigorously shaken by the difficulties of the situation, Anne confides to Mal that she have a lot of professional ambitions, but everybody appears to treat her as if she was invisible, and she doesn’t feel properly appreciated by anyone. Revealing to Mal that she wants to direct a movie with Kara, Anne displays a great fear of rejection, saying that she is afraid to ask Kara for a movie partnership. Sensitive to Anne’s insecurities, Mal deeply comforts Anne, listing the incredible and beautiful qualities of Anne’s personality, making her intensely emotional.  

After so much difficult and antagonistic situations, and seeing no better prospects for the trouble in question, Kara finally confesses to Zoe, Mal and Anne that a reshooting of the love scene was not necessary at all. She arranged the situation all by herself, in order to reunite Zoe and Mal, to finally give both women a chance to reconcile, heal their love and come back to each other. Shocked upon hearing this, the three women becomes deeply disturbed, and Zoe and Mal leave the set in their separate ways, both very distressed and deeply resented. Terrified by the revelation, Anne uses the moment to disclose all of her personal anxieties to Kara. As Kara listens to all of Anne’s afflictions, she comforts her by saying how much she is necessary and meaningful, and how deeply she appreciates everything Anne does. When all of her worries are finally relieved, Anne smiles, and kisses Kara in the mouth, upon which we learn that both Kara and Anne are probably undergoing a very similar situation to Zoe and Mal, although without going to severe detrimental extremes.

As the movie approaches the end, we see Mal coming up for Zoe, after seeing her seated in a street, next to a car. Both women look deeply at each other’s eyes, and suddenly, instead of the movie finishing with the typical “The End”, appears the sentence “The Beginning” onscreen, and subsequent scenes shows that both women have reconciled, and gave to each other another chance for their relationship. And from this point on, both women do very naturally in their real life the love scenes they had found difficult to follow for the reshoot procedure of the movie. 

Well, this movie is a very unconventional one, in almost every way possible. The entire film revolves around a movie set, with two women – the director and her assistant – trying to resolve the drama that involves the two main actresses. Surprisingly, the movie has a real and very expansive life of its own. With the obvious potential to be a boring movie, the drama and the intensity brought on to the screen with the great acting of the four main actresses is a very enthusiastic one, and the drama energy created by the characters of      Zoe Peterson and Mal Ford resulted in great remarkable performances, with the incredible potential to hold your attention for the whole movie. Despite all performances being astonishingly great, deeply artistic and superbly well driven, the character of Zoe Peterson, played by Sharon Hinnendael, outshines herself over the others. Zoe, being hurt by Mal with the breakup of the relationship, carry on her eyes all the painful drama that outstands and reverberates her grief for being rejected, and, as a result, Sharon Hinnendael gives a very convincing performance as a woman severely hurt by an insecure partner. Her eyes are drowning in grief all the time, even when she tries not to appear sad, and her profound, yet smooth facial expressions easily shows the tragedy of a heart broken as well as the sensitive nature of sorrow and disappointment in the human heart. Her subtle facial expressions create amazing dramatic devices even in soft moments, as she is able to drive her character’s presence throughout the hardest scenes of the movie only with her indefinite exhilarating eyes. Nonetheless, all the four main actresses are a great team that drives by the force of their acting abilities a simple, but well designed and perfectly arranged drama, whose final result impersonates a story brilliantly conceived, and amazingly told, settled  in the very uneventful journey of the scars of unresolved love.      

On the other hand, the direction, although it is not brilliant, it is also surprisingly well driven. One of the greatest pleasures of the movie is seeing the director (Marina Rice Bader) playing a director in her own movie! Despite the amazing performances, the good direction, and the fact that the movie is short (only 80 minutes long, which makes the story goes direct to the point), sometimes you get tired of being in a movie set all the way through. With very little exceptions, an entire movie set indoors is a little upsetting, and sometimes you feel the plot not going anywhere, as you get the impression that the movie is sometimes motionless, and lacking cinematic dynamic. The final plot device – the fact that Kara, the director, arranged the reshoot just as an excuse to give the women an opportunity of reconciliation, and a chance for them to go back to each other – also seems a little exaggerated, pushing too hard the boundaries of an acceptable and realistic plotline.    

Nonetheless, Anatomy of a Love Seen is a very good movie, that will hardly disappoint or dissatisfy its audience. Surprisingly well driven, filled with the sentimental bridges that extracts humanity from the characters, as well as the audience, in all of their senses, and identifying all the potential sensibilities that build human interactions, while also analyzing the stronger values of love itself, this interesting film manages to be above the average score of the genre, for a movie in this category, and certainly deserves three and half stars for its outstanding final result.     
       

Wagner