Traversing a narrative conception that could have divulged into overwrought social commentary, Derek Tsang's Better Days manages to instead transform its opening conceit around the bullying epidemic into a rapturous melodrama that exhibits an acute sensitivity towards teenage alienation and social distortion. Tsang brings a directorial vision that is familiar in its expressivity yet distinctive, managing to avoid self-indulgence due to an acute understanding of when to show restraint throughout a film that largely relies on kineticism for its formal style. Two great, symbiotic performances also elevate the film considerably, as Better Days avoids feeling didactic due to being imbued with the aura of a lovers-on-the-run film seeping with melodrama in which these two actors deserve praise. While the text of the film in its bookends feels more like agitprop or the type of didactic dribble that has more in common with a PSA than a film - perhaps coercively placed onto the film in post by an external entity - Better Days remains an assured and ultimately poignant story with an interesting subtext related to the inefficiencies of any authoritative apparatus that relies on coercion as its primary tool for social cohesion.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
|