Resurrection review – fascinating phantasmagoria is wild riddle about new China and an old universe

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In Bi Gan’s ambitious alternate reality, where humans can live indefinitely, a reincarnating dissident dreamer travels through history in different guises Bi Gan’s new movie in Cannes is bold and ambitious, visually amazing, trippy and woozy in its embrace of hallucination and the heightened meaning of the unreal and the dreamlike. His last film Long Day’s Journey Into Night from 2018 was an extraordinary and almost extraterrestrial experience in the cinema which challenged the audience to examine what they thought about time and memory; this doesn’t have quite that power, being effectively a portmanteau movie, some of whose sections are better than others – though it climaxes with some gasp-inducing images and tracking shots and all the constituent parts contribute to the film’s aggregate effect. Resurrection is, perhaps, a long night’s journey to the enlightenment of daybreak; it finishes at a club called the Sunrise. It is also an episodic journey through Chinese history, finishi...
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Elaha review – sex, patriarchy and second-generation identity

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A sexually candid, seriously intentioned drama about a young Kurdish woman who feels she has to surgically ‘restore’ her virginity before her wedding

There is a heartfelt and courageous performance from 28-year-old Syrian-born, German-based actor Bayan Layla in this drama about sex, patriarchy and second-generation immigrant identity. It is a drama which hits the buttons squarely and efficiently, but might perhaps have played better as a three-part TV drama.

Layla plays Elaha, a young woman of Kurdish family background in a German town (director Milena Aboyan is herself German-based and Armenian-Kurdish). She has finished high school and is now attending classes on how to apply for jobs, picking up skills she uses mainly to help her dad find employment. There seems to be no discussion about university, despite her obvious intelligence. Her mum works hard minding Elaha’s younger sister and disabled kid brother, and Elaha has part-time work at a dry-cleaners; she is saving for her wedding to a local guy from a prosperous family.

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