Reel-View Ratings: The Bigger The Beard, The Better The Movie

on May 11, 2015 at 1:54 pm

GIRLHOOD

This film has no relation to last year’s Boyhood, though it’s probable viewers will attempt to find a connection anyway (the film’s original title is Bande de Filles, or “Band of Girls”). But that’d be barking up the wrong tree. Girlhood focuses on Marieme, a young, poor black girl in Paris struggling to find herself, but the film’s real interest is in how society constructs women. Watching Marieme redefine herself over and over again based on her environment is fascinating, and sometimes, a little too real. Still, the film at times is so caught up in the message it forgets to focus on its character messengers.

Plays at 7:30 p.m. May 13 and 1 p.m. May 15 at Doris Duke Theatre

LOVE, ROSIE

Striking the appropriate pace for a romance is hard. Getting the couple together too quickly may lose the audience’s interest; waiting too long can do the same. Love, Rosie introduces a pair of charming teenagers (attractively played by Lily Collins and Sam Claflin) and then spends the next 100-odd minutes keeping them apart by means of horrible spouses, barely missed connections and clichés. Oh, it does some things well — a surprising dose of feminism, for one — but most of the film is agonized pining (for both characters and viewers). Wanting romantic tension is one thing, but this film is more akin to torture.

Plays at 2 and 5:45 p.m. May 17, and noon, 3:15 and 6:30 p.m. May 18 at the Movie Museum

Marie Kroyer

This tortured artist story focuses not on the miserable painter — P.S. Kroyer — but on his beautiful, equally unhappy wife, Marie. She’s unfulfilled serving as muse, wife, mother and nursemaid, and she longs for freedom and passion with composer Hugo Alfven. Happiness is not so easily found for her or for the audience, however, as the stiff, stilted dialogue and a strange disregard for historical facts deprives her of real feelings and, mostly, a real personality. But, as with most movies of this ilk, Marie Kroyer showcases beautiful costuming and sets inspired by P.S. Kroyer’s work.