Friday, June 9, 2023

Je'vita (2023) Tribeca 2023

A


A woman goes back to her childhood home and remembers the horrible life that made her a miserable adult.

JE'VITA is a mess of a movie. A film that wants to be the story of a girl from Lapland who was taken from her family and forced to endure life in a religious school.  The problem is the film doesn't spell out exactly what is happening until the final moments of the film when we get a card telling about the relocation of children.  In the film her grandfather dies and suddenly she is in school, there is no indication of why or how, it just is. While I understand why we don't have details, we are seeing events from Je'vita's POV and she doesn't have those details replay, it renders anyone who isn't our lead, lost. This is something that plays out with every turn of the film we have moments but no connective information until so much later in the film as to render having it meaningless.

Without the context of details we simply watch the life of a little girl who is basically abused at every turn. No one treats her well, even her grandfather, so its no wonder she becomes a sad hateful human being. Frankly the film would have been light years better losing the fleeting wrap around and being a more detailed tale of a girl getting warped by the system.

I really disliked this film a great deal. For a large chunk of it the ponderous pretentiousness of the telling had me unsure if the film was a very dry comedy or just twaddle.  

It's twaddle-its well intentioned- but its still twaddle.

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