The Plague review – water polo camp turns into tween hellscape with impressive stylistic bite

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With Fincher-like intent, director Charlie Polinger scopes out concealed psychological depths in a debut that sees the laws of the jungle play out Set at a boy’s water polo training camp in the summer of 2003, Charlie Polinger’s debut feature plunges beneath the waterline to scope out concealed psychological depths. It may not be news that these kids operate in a brutal, animal-like hierarchy driven by braggadocio, bullying, hazing and gaslighting – but from the stunning initial submerged shot of a pool glittering like a starfield, Polinger brings impressive stylistic bite to this tween hellscape: the kind of trenchant intent you might associate with David Fincher. Latecomer Ben (Everett Blunck) is thrown in at the deep end when he arrives. Desperate to ingratiate himself with the cool crowd lorded over by the impish Jake (Kayo Martin), he aims to avoid the pariah status of house lummox Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), who is supposedly afflicted with a (made-up) disease the brats dub “the pla...
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Berlin film festival 2023 roundup – prestige, politics and ethical starpower

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This year’s Berlinale continued the tradition of combining earnestness with red-carpet glamour – featuring Kristen Stewart, Bono and Steven Spielberg, and this time some real crowd pleasers

Berlin may not be as glitzy as the other big European festivals, Cannes and Venice, but it knows how to make the most of what you might call “ethical starpower”. Hence Steven Spielberg, present this year to accept the Golden Bear for lifetime achievement, who made an eloquent and imposing speech about longevity, healing and – as befits the locale – the weight of history. And hence serious-minded Hollywood actor Kristen Stewart heading a jury including Iranian-French star Golshifteh Farahani and previous Berlinale-winning directors Carla Simón and Radu Jude – a lineup that seems highly likely to make some daring awards choices.

But there’s also that long-standing Berlinale tradition of combining red-carpet prestige with a certain earnestness that doesn’t always flourish on the screen. A prime example this year was Golda, a solemn, sluggish drama about Israeli premier Golda Meir and the Yom Kippur war, with Helen Mirren giving a solid, thoughtful performance, only to be upstaged by her uncanny prosthetic makeup. And then there was Sean Penn’s documentary about Ukraine, Superpower, co-directed with Aaron Kaufman, in which an understandably starstruck encomium to Volodymyr Zelenskiy was overshadowed by much narcissistic hyperventilating about what an amazing thing it was to be Sean Penn caught up in the Whirlwind of History. It was a phenomenally gauche, ill-advised piece; by contrast, Eastern Front, from Ukraine itself, was the real deal, a sober, urgent, profoundly troubling documentary by Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko, based substantially on the latter’s footage, shot on duty with a volunteer medical crew.

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