nascent_cinephile

The camera in Pompei, aka So Long Billie, meanders as slowly through pretty, vacant countryside as the script does through its young characters' pretty, vacant lives. And that's pretty darn slow. Demanding a patience that is not rewarded by its ending, Pompei may end up feeling like the longest pretty, vacant 90 minutes of its viewers' lives.

Pure garbage. Special effects noise and video game violence without the merest whiff of plot or character development. A dishonor to the highly creative and entertaining original trilogy of Mad Max films.

The most noteworthy thing about first-time writer/director Andrew Steggall's Departure is its three lead actors' first-rate performances. Juliet Stevenson is unhappy British housewife Beatrice, trying to pack up and sell a French summer house in a quaint, remote village, not because she wants to, but because it is the latest project to keep her crumbling marriage together. Alex Lawther shines as her son, repressed teenage poet Elliott, trying to help mum in any way he can, but feeling quite distracted by a newcomer to town. Phénix Brossard plays that newcomer, Clément, a boy not much older than Elliott but certainly worldlier. He ran away after his father exiled him from their home in Paris for violently attacking one of his cancer-stricken mother's caretakers. Now he is attempting to return home by salvaging an abandoned motorbike he has found in a local warehouse. Clément quickly becomes wise to Elliott's crush on him, alternately teasing him and pushing him away, because he is straight. Until he is not, of course. Using this framework, the three actors bounce off each other in fascinating ways. Stevenson and Lawther interact expertly, showcasing their characters' fragile relationship and revealing the vulnerable feelings beneath each of their stiff upper lips, while Brossard maintains an outsider's playfully mysterious air.

Despite the film's title, the story never departs far from its beginnings, slowly meandering through a mostly static plot. And the late introduction of a superfluous like-father-like-son subplot fizzles. On the plus side, considering Steggall was a newcomer to feature films, Departure's use of stylistic motifs is remarkably assured. Unfortunately, that assurance occasionally leads to overuse, turning some of those motifs into clichés even within the film's own 108-minute runtime. For example, the amount of time that characters spend walking alone through the picturesque town and countryside initially contributes to their sense of isolation, but eventually drags the pace. Also, by the umpteenth instance when a character approaches camera, staring into the distance while the keys and strings of loneliness swell, even the most diehard of queer cinema fans will likely roll his eyes.

Nonetheless, it is worth tolerating the film's peccadillos to get to its satisfyingly subtle conclusion. Steggall may not let us know exactly what is in store for his characters after the credits roll, but he certainly conveys the personal growth each will carry forward. It is a remarkable feat pulled off by a writer who knows how and when to end the story, and by talented actors who know their character arcs inside-out. At the time of this writing, Departure appears to be the only entry on Steggall's film resumé, but it is strong enough to make one hope for more.

Levi Miller is a gifted young actor, so it's a shame to see him wasted here alongside the always mediocre Dane Cook in a clichéd, melodramatic father-son road trip crime caper. Also wasted is the always awesome Udo Kier, bringing a true sense of menace to his role as a shady black market art dealer. Clocking in at a mere 85 minutes, this sluggishly paced film still manages to make sitting through it feel like a long slog. For a better showcase of Miller's talents, check out Jasper Jones, and as for Kier, see My Own Private Idaho.

After an opening that feels tacked on for the purposes of informing us that we are watching a horror film, Cub opens its proper story in contrastingly sunny fashion. It introduces us to its protagonist, 12-year-old Sam (Maurice Luijten), furiously pedaling his bicycle one bright morning. Luijten infuses his performance with tension right away, allowing us to sense Sam's unease, in his conflicting desires to get to his destination as quickly as possible, yet also to flee anywhere else and avoid it completely. Soon we understand why.

Sam's Boy Scout pack shoot hoops while their two adult pack leaders, Peter (Stef Aerts), the impatient, irritable one, and Kris (Titus de Voogdt), the by-the-book but compassionate one, debate whether to leave for their planned camping trip to the Ardennes without him. After Sam arrives at the last second, the mild verbal and physical bullying he receives from his peers and even his pack leaders, eventually reined in by Kris, establishes that Sam is at the bottom of the regular pecking order for this group.

Before departing, Peter and Kris stoke the boys' imaginations, especially impressionable Sam's, by relaying a local legend about a werewolf-boy named Kai who is said to haunt the very woods in which the pack will be camping. After picking up Peter's girlfriend Jasmijn (Evelien Bosmans) on the way, the pack encounter a pair of punk off-roaders who relay another story about a group of striking bus drivers who hung themselves from the trees and now haunt the woods. The campground police officer (Jean-Michel Balthazar) implies his belief in these folk tales, urging Kris to keep his cell phone handy. It goes without saying that the campground will be out of service.

After establishing its lore, Cub's plot makes logical enough sense, at least by horror movie standards. The boy-creature Kai contacts Sam, and Sam is surprised to identify with him. Then, after Peter's obnoxious dog bites him, Sam begins his own transformation into beast. That transformation is completed one horrific night after Sam follows Kai into the woods and learns that it holds even deeper, darker secrets. It is only by searching under the surface of this sequence of events that one finds the film's hollow center.

Unfortunately, the reasons for Sam's conversion to the woods' dark side remain quite inscrutable. First-time director and cowriter Jonas Govaerts seems aware and apologetic about this failure, shoehorning a cryptic line into a conversation between Kris, Peter, and Jasmijn about Sam having an unnamed darkness in his past. Alas, despite Luijten's appropriately intense, aloof, always unsmiling performance, this conversation proves merely a red herring. Additionally, the subplot about the darker force in the forest and its possible relation the bus drivers' ghosts seems to belong in a different film entirely. It muddles what could have been a potent statement about the outcome of marginalizing and picking on a child, had the time instead been spent more firmly establishing Sam's character and his motives.

Cub is not without certain welcome light touches, for example the Scouts' tendency to refer to their pack leaders using character names from The Jungle Book, Akela (Kris) and Baloo (Peter). A scene in which an angel-voiced boy sings a "Taps"-like hymn before bedtime is a nice, ironic wink at the carnage yet to come. And the Scouts' pre-lights-out revelry in such contraband as candy, sodas, and Playboys deftly recalls the joys and vices of that point on the journey that falls precisely between boyhood and manhood. That scene in particular works well because Sam's presence at that very juncture, and his decision whether he will choose a light or dark path for the remainder of his journey is, ultimately, what the film is about. Nonetheless, by the time Cub reaches its splattered, incomprehensibly nihilistic conclusion, in which the film's opening sequence of a bloody, screaming girl running through the forest repeats itself in sequence in the film's timeline, it is likely that viewers will feel like the girl: searching for any method of escape from these woods, only to be met with a hand to the throat.