Going on:
Take this waltz (Sarah Polley, 2011) -
I watched
Away from her before this one and my verdict is... well, I don't have a verdict. Their core theme is love, but the treatment couldn't be more different. Where one is austere, the other is overwhelmingly aesthetic. Where one shows restrainment in its emotions even though it's dealing with a heavy dramatic situation, the other is incredibly flamboyant to narrate something rather mundane.
Take this waltz is, of course, the latter.
This movie is a rollercoaster. I was constantly shifting my overall opinions on it. Like for example when it started I was totally out of its mood because the first dialogue are excruciatingly theatrical and unnatural. Then it gets better, but not much because the narrative of a love triangle is so tired and it had been explored before and better...
...then, all of a sudden, I find myself very immersed into the relationship between Margot and Daniel, in a way that I didn't expect at all. I think there is something that Polley gets absolutely right here about romance, and that is consent. Even in a situation where one plays the role of the seducer and the other is the one to slowly succumb... there is a mutual respect of boundaries that I find very refreshing. I love how they respect each other's timing. The development and the flow of their relationship feels natural. And at that point as well, the movie improves at depicting the marriage crisis of Lou and Margot, and gets some really poignant scenes.
But in case I was thinking that this movie was going to be brilliant, Polley kindly reminds me that she is not going to let me leave with such a great impression by introducing the scene of the rotating room with Leonard Cohen's song playing. I have some little divergences with her sense of aesthetics throughout but this one was complete. It was annoying to sit through, and narratively a bad decision that created an awkward ellipsis.
And then, the final scenes. And the overall feeling. This movie ends in a powerful note, and again, it shows that it has something to say. It is probably the most irregular and erratic of this HoF in the process, though. What a ride.