Binge-r #215: We Are Who We Are + A Very English Scandal
Staring at the Sea: Jordan Kristine Seamon (Harper) and Jack Dylan Grazer (Fraser) in We Are Who We Are
WE ARE WHO WE ARE
Streaming Service: SBS on Demand
Availability: All eight episodes now streaming
The Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino has impeccable form when it comes to lyrical coming of age tales, having directed the acclaimed 2017 movie Call Me By Your Name (currently streaming on Netflix). With this tender and emotionally buoyant series he expands upon his signature elements – the formative influence of attraction, fluid and coolly revelatory cinematography, and sudden shifts in emotion – to create a larger canvas that’s detailed even as it drifts, but which never feels diluted. Sharp exchanges puncture the calm of companionship and families are flailed at by their teenagers, but We Are Who We Are never feels rushed or easily conclusive.
The setting is a U.S. Army base in Italy, circa 2016 and the arrival of red MAGA hats, which is a concentrated slice of American military might and consumer comfort as seen through the eyes of 14-year-old Fraser Wilson (Jack Dylan Grazer), an unsettled boy whose petulance and inquisitiveness run up against the standing of his mother, Sarah (Chloe Sevigny), the base’s new commander, and her wife and fellow officer, Maggie (Alice Braga). The facility is full of American kids, some of whom have never lived in America, which is an apt metaphor for the transitory phases experienced by Fraser and the fellow adolescents he meets. One of them, Harper (Jordan Kristine Seamon), the daughter of another officer, is starting to experiment with gender. The pair’s friendship is instinctive, but also more powerful than they casually comprehend.
Military buffs may query the authenticity of the setting shaped by Guadagnino and his co-creators, but it proves to be resonant as the backdrop to the aimless afternoons and experimental sorties. The bland architecture means that as the director Guadagnino never luxuriates visually, there’s an edge to his storytelling that draws on sublime influences such as Claire Denis’ 1999 classic Beau Travail. Sexual experimentation and youthful solitude give way to each other, with the parents and fellow soldiers drawn into the narrative. We Are Who We Are makes you work at empathising with Fraser and Harper, but once the first two episodes show their initiation from their respective outlooks it takes shape with artful assurance. You’re watching what will be titanic memories occur in the moment.
Parliamentary Privilege: Hugh Grant (Jeremy Thorpe) in A Very English Scandal
A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL (Netflix, all three episodes now streaming): Having previously aired on Foxtel via the BBC in 2018, this tart and illuminating limited series is a terrific pick-up for Netflix. Adapted from real life events by Russell T. Davies (Queer as Folk, Dr Who) and smartly directed by Stephen Frears (The Grifters, The Queen), it has an often comically farcical plot but two deeply drawn lead characters whose differing limits tease out historic shifts and personal failings. Hugh Grant plays Jeremy Thorpe, a prominent English MP in the 1960s who happily lives as a closeted gay man, while Ben Whishaw is the younger Norman Josiffe, Thorpe’s kept lover who becomes an adversary after chafing at the life he’s offered in the margins. Both actors are exemplary, showing how for all the pair’s contrasts a bond endures even as matters get out of hand, with their respective generations revealing vastly different responses to the legal and social repression of gay men at the time, and how the establishment happily makes accommodations for its own. It’s a cracking – and concise – watch, complete with telling witticisms that Grant despatches with sly mastery.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: A Vietnam War drama shot in England, Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987, 116 minutes) is a bleakly barbed depiction of how the military mindset crushes the individual, with Matthew Modine and Vincent D’Onofrio among the subjects; Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name (2016, 106 minutes) was an animated blockbuster upon release in Japan, a skilfully composed body swap tale that acquires a moving momentum.
New on SBS on Demand: Set in 1940 Marseilles as occupation looms but dressed with contemporary details, Christian Petzold’s Transit (2018, 98 minutes) is a study of rootlessness and identity with a shattered lead performance from Franz Rogowski; alternating between serene satisfaction and grim grit, Terence Davies’ Sunset Song (2015, 131 minutes) is a contemplative period drama about a young woman’s struggle to farm her family’s land.
New on Stan: Todd Haynes’ 1950s drama Carol (2015, 114 minutes) is a romance for the ages, with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as two women whose attraction defies the era; With A History of Violence (2005, 96 minutes), starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, and William Hurt, David Cronenberg digs into the ripe underbelly of the American family, criminal malice, and the illusion of second chances.
>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to catch up on Ethan Hawke’s period drama The Good Lord Bird on Stan and Netflix’s Sarah Cooper (and Helen Mirren) comedy special.
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