Celebrate the holidays with cinema. News and features offered by the screen / Article

Movie marathon

On May 4, as usual, the Latvian film marathon organized by the National Cinema Center will take place. This year it will be held for the 20th time and will offer the opportunity to watch the latest Latvian films for free.

The live screenings of the Latvian film marathon will be held in the “Splendid Palace” cinema.

Here you will be able to watch the latest domestic films, among which I would like to highlight two documentaries in particular: the documentary “Potnieks par Podnieku. Laika liecinieks” by Antra Cilinska and Anna Viduleja and “Patricia” by Inese Kļava and Dāvid Ernsthreit.

The premiere of Dzintra Gek’s documentary “Juris Jurjāns. Seven days with painting, talking, silence” is also expected.

A separate selection of films will be shown on Filmas.lv worldwide on May 4.

Sports drama “Rivals”

Tennis is a sport where love means nothing – quite literally, zero in the scoring system is called “love” in English. There are different versions of the origin of this term, but the idea of ​​the inadequacy of love has been included by the Italian director Luca Guadagnino in his latest film “The Rivals”. “Rivals” will be shown in cinemas from April 30 and, presumably, will be able to interest not only tennis fans – the film is an intense drama in which sport is a metaphor for stormy relationships.

Luca Guadagnino is one of the world’s most famous Italian filmmakers, who also works in Hollywood; “Rivals” is the director’s latest film made there. In Guadagnino’s works, great emphasis is often placed on the bodily side and sensory pleasures – for example, “I’m Love” shot in 2009 was a gorgeous drama in which the enjoyment of the taste of food played an important role, in the remake of the classic Dario Argento’s iconic horror film “Suspiria” the bodily aspect was highlighted by dance . The director often films the characters of his films in close-ups and highlights their bodies in various ways – just like the statues of Ancient Rome.

The story of “Rivals” tells about the relationship of a rising tennis star with two friends – both on and off the tennis court. After a sudden injury, the player has to put her career on hold, and then she becomes a coach for one of the guys. Tashi Duncan, played by actress Zendaya, known from the TV series “Euphoria”, is the one who believes that talent and love for the game are not enough – you have to put in a lot of work to reach the top. And she goes for this idea regardless. Thanks to the excellent selection of actors, Mike Feist and actor Josh O’Connor, known from the series “The Crown”, play radically different characters: exemplary and shameless. All of them together form a vivid triangle of relationships – this thread is also often used in scripts in the context of cinema history and can be compared to an almost separate subgenre (we remember, for example, the recently reviewed “Ripley”, a triangle of relationships between the main characters can also be observed here).

Tennis is a game of both tension and the vital need for strategy, which Guadagnino subtly weaves into the script. But this is not a classic sports drama – there is also a kind of irony and paraphrase about this genre. The director has deliberately exaggerated the most typical techniques of sports dramas – slow motion, close-ups of athletes’ faces covered with sweat drops. “Rivals” is a film in which everyone will see something different – for sports fans, this will be as intense a drama as an excellent sports match, for example, at Wimbledon, but cinema connoisseurs will see here an ironic, dynamic and metaphor-laden comedy. Although at first glance the excesses raised to the level of kitsch annoy, “Rivals” nevertheless reveals a very smart and talented film style with skillfully portrayed characters and an ingenious approach to montage or sequence of shots.

“Rivals” in cinemas from April 30.