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Reviews
Sweet Sixteen (2002)
Realism Done Right
Providing a better representation of reality than most documentaries, Sweet Sixteen begins on a starry, starry night and ends on a gray drizzly day, signifying that life is more often about happy beginnings than happy endings. There is a dichotomous set up of innocence and experience in this film, and also of family relations: mother/daughter, sister/mother, bother/son. This film is brilliant in its subtlety: the subdued aesthetic of blues, greens, blacks, grays and tans; the use of the weather; the semi-documentary style of the cinematography; the unobtrusive soundtrack. Martin Compston and Annmarie Fulton give two of the best performances I've ever seen, keeping with the subtleties of the film by portraying, with the savvy of youth, the last vestiges of innocence veiled through humor. This is a savvy of interactions and dialog not seen in many films. I found myself smiling at the dialog even as my heart was breaking.
As an end-note, I found the dialect accessible and therefore found the subtitles very annoying.
The Law of Enclosures (2000)
Moving yet frustrating; resonates long after you finish watching it.
I bought this film on a whim because it was cheap and looked interesting; what I got was a moving story about the repetitious nature of romantic commitment. Greyson draws many resonating parallels between the older and younger incarnations of the couple, demonstrating that some dynamics never really change, especially in smaller, economically resource or industrial based towns. This is not to say that there is nothing progressive about the film; on the contrary, the narrative structure of this film is very complex, and the careful juxtaposition of ideas and images reveals a lot about the reassuring nature of companionship, even of the most frustrating kind.