This week’s roundup includes reviews of new in-theater and streaming films, including “Honeyjoon,” about a mother and daughter’s grief; “Promised Sky,” about female refugees in Tunisia; and “Changing Lanes,” a New York traffic documentary.
In-Theater Releases of the Week
Honeyjoon (Collective)
Young, single June goes to the Azores with her mother Lela on the first anniversary of June’s father’s death in Lilian T. Mehrel’s psychological drama laced with humor and eroticism about the different forms that grief can take. Anchored by buoyant performances from Ayden Mayeri (June) and Amira Casar (Lela), Mehrel’s film is an occasionally meandering but touchingly observed look at how a seemingly unbridgeable generation gap between mother and daughter can be tentatively but optimistically bridged.
Promised Sky (Film Movement)
Tunisian-French director-cowriter Erige Sehiri examines the intertwined lives of several females in Tunisia, including an orphaned young girl who was the lone survivor of a sunken refugee boat in this humane study that skirts—but never succumbs to—melodrama. Although there’s inevitably an anecdotal feel as we jump around among these characters as they navigate the difficulties of being outsiders that includes racism from the top down, Sehiri’s perceptive eye is sure and real, as are the authentically lived-in performances by the entire cast.
This Tempting Madness (Vertical Entertainment)
After a horrific incident lands her in the hospital, Mia awakes from a coma physically and emotionally scarred in Jennifer E. Montgomery’s often bluntly obvious but potent psychological study. With her memories jumbled, Mia has to try and piece together what’s happened, including her relationship with her estranged husband Jake. Montgomery (who also cowrote the scattered script with Andrew M. Davis, the film’s inventive cinematographer) can’t thoroughly fight her way past the cliches and tropes of the genre, the intense Mia of Simone Ashley keeps things focused.
Streaming Release of the Week
Changing Lanes (First Run Features)
When a beloved local teacher is killed on McGuinness Boulevard, a busy Greenpoint, Brooklyn, thoroughfare, the neighborhood is galvanized to provide more bike lanes and inhibit vehicular traffic in Ben Wolf’s succinct documentary that dramatizes how anger turns to action even as literal roadblocks are thrown up by those against changes. Led by a long-time local business, what began in the DeBlasio administration are slowed to a near-halt by the corrupt Mayor Adams. Wolf packs a lot of info into his 74-minute running time, even though more would have been welcome, especially the asides from long-time bicyclist David Byrne, who extols the virtues of cities that plan for bike lanes as he’s seen while on tours in Europe.
Blu-ray Release of the Week
VD (Cult Epics)
Dutch director Wim Verstappen’s crudely provocative (and rarely seen) 1972 melodrama follows Cornelis, the patriarch of a large and successful company that handles both meat and contraceptives (!), who tries to find an heir who will succeed him at the helm. Like any good soap opera, “VD” involves incest, adultery, abortion, suicide, orgies—Cornelis and his family are not likable people, and if Verstappen sometimes lays it on too thick with on-the-nose satire and commentary (including several look-away shots of animals being butchered), it remains fascinatingly watchable. There’s a fine restored hi-def transfer; extras include a commentary by film historian Peter Verstraten and Festival of Love, Verstappen’s 1969 short.
