Film Reviews: Io Capitano & Seagrass

Prize winning films from Italy and Canada

Io Capitano & Seagrass

By Marc Glassman

Io capitano (Me Captain)

Matteo Garrone, director & co-script w/Massimo Gaudioso, Massimo Ceccherini & Andrea Tagliaferri

Starring: Seydou Sarr (Seydou), Moustapha Fall (Moussa), Issaka Sawagodo, Hichem Yacoubi, Doodou Sagna, Khady Sy (Seydou’s mother)

The Italian entry into this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscars’ category, Io Capitano made the Academy’s final five list and could very well win the top award in early March.  Veteran filmmaker Matteo Garrone, who has previously won the Best Director prize at the European Film Awards and garnered a Grand Prix at Cannes for tough Mafia-oriented thrillers, has outdone himself with this film, which combines an action filled narrative with a nuanced appreciation of day-to-day life in Africa. Working away from his native Italy, spending time in its neighbouring southern continent, he’s fashioned a modern journey of learning with a 16-year-old Senegalese lad, Seydou, moving from boyhood into becoming a man.

Io Capitano begins in Seydou’s home, Dakar, the capital city of Senegal, where he lives with his mother and sisters in a crowded but loving environment. Though life in Dakar is stimulating with vast market places, mass impromptu celebrations involving dancing and drumming in the evenings and football during the afternoons, it’s clear that the people are impoverished, and they lack many Western conveniences. Seydou and his cousin Moussa have a plan to leave Senegal and become big successes in Europe, which will allow them to send money home to their families. When he shares his fantasy with his mother, Seydou is berated for his foolishness and warned that many Africans die in their attempts to flee Africa. 

But boys will be boys, with the call of adventure far outweighing a mother’s sensible warning. Filmmaker Garrone takes us on an epic trip from Senegal to Mali to Nigeria and then, terrifyingly, through the vast Sahara Desert toward Libya. The money the cousins had saved through manual labour is taken, big chunks at a time, for passports and food and transportation on funky ancient buses and cars, as their fears are matched by the uncertain progress they’re making. Upon arriving in Libya, they’re separated, with Moussa arrested by the police and Seydou taken by gangsters who eventually sell him off to a rich man, who wants a wall and fountain constructed on his villa in the desert. 

Luckily, an older, more powerful, and experienced African who has been sold into slavery with Seydou, is able to build a fountain so beautiful that they are freed and driven to Tripoli. That’s where Seydou miraculously finds Moussa, wounded and needing hospital treatment denied to blacks in Libya. And that’s what forces Seydou into becoming a hero: he becomes the captain of an illegal rusty old ship, which transports hundreds of impoverished Africans across the Mediterranean to Sicily, in order to aid Moussa. 

Io Capitano is a heroic tale that depicts a young man coping with the harsh realities of illegal emigration, emerging through it all, as a grown man, able to take care of riotous passengers and a sick, pregnant woman, despite a total lack of education in how to pilot a ship. Seydou Sarr is astonishingly good as the film’s young protagonist: charming with women, fearful but restrained when dealing with tough, angry men and immensely appealing as someone with hidden resources who can rise to the occasion–whatever it is–when needed. As his impulsive best friend and cousin Moussa, Moustapha Fall is likeable and persuasive—although it’s a stretch that he can pilot the ship, sick and ill-equipped as he is, when Seydou must deal with the acrimonious passengers at one critical point.

The great virtue of Il Capitano is its hearkening back to the Italian cinema’s neo-realist masters Rossellini, de Sica and Visconti. Like them, Garrone has made a tremendously moving film with a cast of non-professionals including a charismatic lead who may never appear in a film again. Just like those cinema masters, he has focused on tragically real situations in the world and crafted a story about them, which everyone can understand. Most importantly, he has shown us what it’s like to be alive and vulnerable, wanting to do something worthwhile in a world that is becoming harsher and less open to the hopes and dreams of those who are more vulnerable than us. To make such a film is worthy of recognition. Maybe an Oscar. You can never tell. 

Seagrass

Meredith Hama-Brown, director & writer

Starring: Ally Maki (Judith), Luke Roberts (Steve), Nyha Huang Breitkreuz (Stephanie), Remy Marthaller (Emmy), Sarah Gadon (Carol), Chris Pang (Pat), Hannah Bos (Sam)

The seagrass is the only flowering plant which grows underwater, forming huge fields in the oceans. In the aptly titled first feature by Asian-Canadian filmmaker Meredith Hama-Brown, Seagrass, the emotions manifested by her lead character Judith (Ally Maki) and daughters Stephanie (Nyha Huang Breitkreuz), and Emmy (Remy Marthaller) are subterranean until they emerge fully formed in startling moments of clarity. Their terrific performances work well with an understated one by Luke Roberts as the family’s stolid husband and father, Steve, while effective support is given by Chris Pang (Pat) and Sarah Gadon (Carol) as a couple with whom they form a tentative friendship.

The couples meet in a week-long set of therapy sessions in a glorious rural retreat on the coastline of British Columbia. While the 11-year-old Stephanie and 6-year-old Emmy are negotiating friendships with other children, Judith, Steve, Pat, and Carol explore their feelings with a group of life partners all of whom are in difficult relationships. Judith, whose heritage is Japanese, is someone in distress: she’s been depressed since the death of her mother months ago. Steve is a classic white Canadian guy: loves hockey, his daughters and wife—and really doesn’t want to reflect on anything at all. By contrast, tall handsome Chinese-Australian Pat is all about feelings and exploration; his relationship with the gorgeous all-Canadian Carol seems so good that it’s hard to imagine why they’re going to therapy at all.

Meredith Hama-Brown has crafted a film that explores the emotions of a dysfunctional family in a caring, intimate way. Like a novel, this character laden drama moves carefully from scene to scene, building up our concern for every member of the family. We see Judith struggling with her identity, finding herself ashamed of how little she knows about her parents’ confinement in the notorious Japanese internment camps during the Second World War. 

Her children are finding life difficult in their own ways. 

Emmy lives in her own world, quietly filled with possessions which mean a lot to her, whether it’s a purple plastic ball at the pool or a huge, beautiful rock on the stormy beach. She’s prone to nightmares and finds it hard to talk to other people apart from her sister. Stephanie is going through the rite-of-passage from being a child to an adolescent, trying to act sexy and mature and working hard to build up a friendship with the top mean girl in her group. 

Steve tries his best: one sees him struggling through it all. As a father, he’s great but he doesn’t know how to deal with Judith’s psychological turbulence nor can he handle Pat, who he considers to be a phony for caring so much about intimate revelations. (There’s a funny scene where Steve wants to talk about cars and Pat is interested in discussing Buddha’s philosophy.) 

Inevitably, a tragic situation nearly develops when Emmy tries to find the ghost of her grandmother in a purportedly mystic cave. Although everyone survives physically, it’s clear that Judith’s family is still dealing with huge personal issues. 

Seagrass is an intimate film made with delicacy and understated style. You care deeply about the characters Meredith Hama-Brown has created: they’re three-dimensional entities, not the stereotypes all too typical in films. Seagrass won multiple awards from the Vancouver Film Critics Association ranging from Best Film to Director and garnered the FIPRESCI Prize at TIFF for best first feature. I urge you to see this superb, award-winning Canadian film.