Travelling the international film festival circuit, as I do, can be both a thrilling privilege and a source of frustration. On the one hand, seeing a flood of wonderful, adventurous films from all corners of the globe is a great perk of the job, as is contributing to early critical dialogue around them that boosts their chances of exposure beyond the festival circuit. It’s less exhilarating, however, for those who read our most enthused festival reviews, only to learn that it may be months or even years before they get to see the gem in question. In some glum cases, these exceptional films never reach British cinemas at all, having failed to woo distributors.
For more than two years, I’ve assumed that this would be the fate of Where Is Kyra?, a haunting standout from Sundance 2017. Acclaimed by critics, who acknowledged its chilly, downbeat demands on the audience, Nigerian-American director Andrew Dosunmu’s stark welfare drama was hailed particularly as a startling return to serious acting for the oft-retiring Michelle Pfeiffer. In some of the most wrenching work of her career, Pfeiffer plays an unemployed Brooklynite fighting grief, depression and financial ruin in the wake of her mother’s death. This isn’t simple TV-movie miserablism, however. Erstwhile fashion photographer Dosunmu frames it as a semi-surreal, sensually overwhelming plunge into the void, aided by the astonishing, jewel-speckled shadow play of Ava DuVernay’s favourite cinematographer, Bradford Young. Imagine it as a stylised, psychosis-addled counterpart to Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake and you’re some of the way there.
Buyers didn’t rush to it. Poverty, even with a star of Pfeiffer’s calibre attached, doesn’t sell. A year later Where Is Kyra? eventually came out in the US. Still no British distributor stepped forward. That wasn’t surprising, since Dosunmu’s equally stunning previous film, the Danai Gurira-led diaspora study Mother of George (2013), has never made it to UK cinemas, DVD shelves or streaming outlets. (I know, I routinely check for updates.)
In the event that you’ve been keeping an eye out for Where Is Kyra?, there is good news in the streaming realm, as it shuffles silently into the iTunes library tomorrow. There’s every chance you would have missed it, since the film has been rendered utterly unrecognisable by its tardy UK handlers. Rebranded with the generic new title Deceit, and saddled with ugly, cop car-bedecked cover art that makes it look like a lesser Nicolas Cage exploitation thriller, you wouldn’t look at it twice if you were casually scrolling through the streaming options.
It’s the latest in a long line of strong, “difficult” art films that are eventually smuggled online in the guise of cheap, trashy B-movies – the commercial equivalent of being needlessly placed in witness protection. A few years back, Alexandre Moors’s eerie, exquisite true-crime provocation Blue Caprice was released online as The Washington Snipers, slathered in macho, all-guns-blazing artwork. Ami Canaan Mann’s wistful 2014 folk music romance Jackie & Ryan, starring Katherine Heigl, reached the internet fashioned as a candy-pink Heigl romcom, titled Love Me Like You Do, in time for Valentine’s Day. Does this ploy work? It’s not as if anyone seeking an easy potboiler is going to stick with Deceit/Where Is Kyra? beyond a few bleak minutes, while cinephiles who have been eagerly awaiting one of the year’s best streaming releases may never know it’s there. Hold your nose and look past the facade.
New to streaming & DVD
Lizzie
(Spirit, 15)
A thoughtful, slightly underpowered retelling of the Lizzie Borden axe-murder scandal, Craig William Macneill’s film benefits from the subtle erotic chemistry between Kristen Stewart and Chloë Sevigny.
Unicorn Store
(Netflix)
Captain Marvel herself, Brie Larson, makes her directorial debut with a perky, straight-to-Netflix comic fantasy about the virtues of being yourself. It’s wholesome but terminally precious.
Aquaman
(Warner Bros, 12)
The most openly, splashily dumb superhero spectacle in many a year, this long-delayed solo vehicle for the bodacious aquatic dude is actually easier to like than the bulk of its po-faced Marvel rivals.
Mektoub, My Love
(Curzon Artificial Eye, 15)
Though it’s filmed with his usual keen eye for sultry, sensory detail, Abdellatif Kechiche’s bloated, youth-focused follow-up to Blue Is the Warmest Colour is a bit of letdown.
