Ainbo: Amazon Princess <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/windows/21/000000/star-half.png"/>

Ainbo: Amazon Princess

A young Amazonian girl bounding around on a tree like Mowgli in The Jungle Book opens this Peruvian/Dutch/German co-production. We soon discover that this is the Ainbo of the title, and that her best friend, Zumi, is about to be crowned leader of their tribe. A relatively quick whip- round of characters introduces us to the two leads; a smarmy village thug called Atok; Zumi’s father and current tribal chief, Huarinka; Ainbo’s foster mother, Chuni; as well as two ‘loopy’ spirit guides, Dillo and Vaca (a bespectacled armadillo and a clumsy tapir).

The environmental theme is also introduced early on, in the form of dying fish and disease in the village, attributed to a curse but, as we find out later, the result of something more real, and more troubling. Ainbo is convinced by her spirit guides to embark on a trek to find a magical root that will save the village. On her journey she must deal with various perils, ranging from a pursuing Atok, and a gigantic sloth in his volcano home, to the jungle demon, Yakuruna, the appearance of whom might be a bit much for the smaller humans in the audience.

Throughout Ainbo’s quest, Zumi is trying to juggle her new leadership duties with her concerns for her best friend’s safety. This sisterly dynamic plays out in a familiar way - it’s basically Elsa and Anna in the jungle but without all the irritating singing. Co-directors Richard Claus and Jose Zelada keep the pace tight and the sight gags light, while also attempting to address the actual ‘curse’ of the Amazon, the despoliation of nature. The message of standing up to the corporate vandals is admirable, though at one point it strays dangerously close to lumping modern medicine in with the mining companies’ dirty tricks.

There are some nicely rendered visuals (with art direction by Pierre Salazar), especially in the village scenes, and the film’s resolution, while a little sad, is also affirming. Unlike some of Pixar’s work, there’s not much here for adults, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s refreshing to occasionally find a film that aims squarely at a younger audience.

Now for some reason, this film is subtitled Amazon Princess in some territories and Spirit of the Amazon in others. I reckon the latter is more apt, as you'll understand when you watch it.

Ainbo: Amazon Princess (in Australia) is showing - where cinemas are open - from Sep 16th.

[Most of this review was also published on the Film Ink site - https://www.filmink.com.au/reviews/ainbo-amazon-princess/]

See also:

For Amazon content you can't go past Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), and The Jungle Book (1967), directed by Wolfgang Reitherman (cracking name!) was the first film I saw at the movies. A few years after initial release, thanks.

Comments

Hard Truths

It's been six years since Mike Leigh stepped behind the camera for the disappointing Peterloo but this film is a return to tip top form. In fact, by my reckoning, that 2018 historical record was his only career misstep. And in Naked , Secrets and Lies and Happy-Go-Lucky , he has written and directed some of the very best British films of all time. Hard Truths reunites him with one of the stars of Secrets and Lies , Marianne Jean-Baptiste. She plays Pansy, an angry, fearful misery guts who can't help but annoy her family (and members of the public) with her constant, nasty invective. At first, her moaning is quite funny until the realisation that this woman is suffering takes hold. Pansy is married to plumber Curtley (David Webber) and they have a son in his early 20s, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who doesn't say much and stays in his room playing flight simulator games. Both these guys deal with Pansy in their own way, in quiet despondency. Her only real friend is her sister,...

I'm Still Here

Walter Salles directs this true story of Brazil's military regime and the people they 'disappeared'. It's mostly set in 1970/71 in Rio de Janeiro and focusses on the Paiva family, which consists of a fairly well-off father, mother and five kids. The first third of the film is all set-up. We're introduced to the family, their group of friends, their housekeeper, the local beach, it's a great, leisurely paced buildup. All throughout this opening though, there's a hint of intrigue - late night phone calls to the father, Rubens (Selton Mello); people off-camera popping in to pick up things; talk of envelopes; glimpses of army trucks driving along the beach road. Foreboding embedded. The family's middle-class idyll is blown apart one day when some humourless bastards arrive at the house to escort Rubens away to 'give a deposition'. Rubens' wife, Eunice is obviously worried but shows a calm exterior, mindful of her children, especially the younger...

The Story of Souleymane

The Story of Souleymane was the media preview opening film of this year's Alliance Française French Film Festival . This drama of frustrations, directed by Boris Lojkine, feels like a real story, probably not too far removed from the myriad other folk trying to find a better life in Europe (or other, more economically advanced countries than their own). Souleymane is a young Guinean bloke working as a fast food courier (ala Uber Eats) in Paris, but this is more complex than it sounds. For reasons soon made clear, he has to borrow the courier account of another guy to earn his bikkies. A simple request from the courier company to upload a selfie sees Souleymane dashing to the workplace of the guy who 'owns' the account, to get the pic. Just one of the many anxiety inducing trials this poor lad goes through. The nugget of the story is that Souleymane is a couple of days away from his residency interview. For whatever reason, it's decided that he must lie to the authorit...

Captain America: Brave New World

This is very much a soft launch for phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's not terrible, just kind of a facsimile of earlier, better films, specifically Captain America: The Winter Soldier , which was a throwback to 1970s political paranoia films. There are also echoes of films like Telefon , The Ipcress File , The Manchurian Candidate and Three Days of the Condor . And there are clear parallels with the skip fire that is the USA these days. Harrison Ford's character, Thaddeus Ross, is the newly minted president and is presented as a blend of Biden (old and doddery) and Trumpington (a literal monster in the White House). I imagine it took a mountain of cash to persuade Ford to take up the reins after William Hurt (who played Ross in five MCU films) died a couple of years ago. The presence of Ford is actually one of the best things going for this, he still has that 'old film star' charisma. Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, the old Falcon but new Captain America, d...

Conclave

Conclave (or Knives Out in Vatican City ) is a cracking religio-political thriller full of meaty performances and an Oscar-winning script by Peter Straughan that winkles just enough out to leave the audience with some work to do. Straughan has some excellent work on his resume ( Frank , Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , etc), so throwing him together with director Edward Berger ( All Quiet on the Western Front ), and heavyweights like Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow, was a recipe for success. The start is also an ending. The pope has passed away and the high-ranking priests are gathering to grieve and plan the succession. Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, and as Dean of the College of Cardinals, it's up to him to organise the conclave, the meeting to elect the new pope. I'll say now, one of the positives of the film is that there's not too much jargon, so it isn't completely baffling for us atheists. It actually plays a pretty straight ba...

The Monkey

What's this then? Modern horror, I guess. Or just another addition to the relatively recent spate of animal-titled films: The Lobster , The Crow , The Whale , Pig , Lamb , First Cow , Black Dog , Red Dog , Dog Man , Monkey Man , Wolf Man , Cuckoo , Cocaine Bear , and Hundreds of Beavers . Whatever the reason for its existence, this Stephen King adaptation is a curious beast. Osgood Perkins (son of old Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins) writes and directs here. He also has a pretty funny cameo. The story starts with a bloke in a pilot's uniform (Adam Scott) trying to sell a windup drumming monkey toy (DON'T CALL IT A TOY!!). A bloody event occurs, not for the last time in the movie. Cut to 1999 where we meet Hal Shelburn and his twin, Bill (both played by Christian Convery), who live with their mother, Lois (an in-form Tatiana Maslany). The pilot of the opening scene is the dad/hubby who has done a runner, leaving the cursed monkey for the lads to find (though, to b...

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

This will be a quickie review as there's a pod to follow that gets into it more. But I'll say right now, I loved this doco. It's an excellent cold war history lesson pieced together from fascinating archive footage, much like Asif Kapadia's films, Senna and Diego Maradona (I guess his other feature docs Amy and Federer are a similar style, but I've not seen them). This film, directed by Belgian, Johan Grimonprez and edited by Rik Chaubet, is about the murky removal and subsequent assassination of Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the (Democratic) Republic of Congo. It's a panoply of found footage, mostly newsreels and old interviews, interspersed with a jazz soundtrack and band visuals that really fit the era. Honestly, this sifting and compiling must have taken a fecking age, so big props to Chaubet and Gimonprez (who has some experience with this form of doc - Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y. , for example). The 'stars' include the likes of Nikita Khrus...

Tatami

Tatami is the semi-spongy flooring you might find in an old Japanese house. Or in a judo dojo where competitors try to stay off their backs while trying to pin or throw the other (I'm hazy on the rules, as you can tell). That's how tatami is used in this Iranian/Israeli coproduction of the same name, directed by Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Iran) and Guy Nattiv (Israel). The film opens with Leila (Arienne Mandi) and her teammates on their way to the world championship of judo in Tbilisi, Georgia. We peg Leila immediately as a bit of a rebel as she's listening to hip-hop on her headphones. We also see her coach, Maryam (Zar Amir, see above) eyeing her suspiciously on the bus ride. When we arrive at the stadium, Leila bumps into fellow judoka, Shani (Lirr Katz), and they have a natter like fellow competitors do. But Shani being Israeli complicates matters slightly. Bout-wise, Leila is in the groove, dispatching opponents with relative ease. And here's where things get murky. The h...

All We Imagine as Light

This meditative exploration of the lives of women in Mumbai has a lot to say about class, religion, poverty, the patriarchy and the strictures of Indian society. This could be a tinderbox of themes but writer/director Payal Kapadia treats the characters and situations with a mild, sympathetic, even phlegmatic touch. We meet a nurse, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and her younger colleague and housemate, Anu (Divya Prabha). The two of them have relationships, tangible and nebulous, as well as interactions with people like Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) a cook at the hospital, and the temporarily placed doctor Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), who yearns after Prabha. Anu has a secret Muslim boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) and workplace rumours paint her as a bit of a trollop. Prabha's 'arranged' husband married her and then promptly upped sticks to Germany (the arrival of a German rice cooker is loaded with meaning). The desperation and sadness of the people, especially the women, seeps through th...

High and Low

I caught this at the Luna back in November as part of the Akira Kurosawa retrospective and was happily gobsmacked to find screen one nearly full. It was the biggest crowd I've seen at the cinema for a long while. Kurosawa still packing them in! It's actually the first non-samurai film of his I've seen but it has his stamp of lingering, physically moving mid-shots and busy action within the frame of the wider shots. The setting is Yokohama, Japan in the early 1960s (the film was made in 1963). A shoe company executive, Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is planning a share takeover when his son's friend, mistaken for the son, is kidnapped. The kidnapper demands roughly the same amount of money required to finalise the financial coup, putting Gondo in quite the tsukemono! Mifune is commanding in the lead (odd seeing him in a suit) but detective 'Bos'n' Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama) is the standout. He looks like so many of the oji-sans hanging out at the horse tracks of Jap...

Film Shapes

Search This Blog