Dear Mother (Netflix)
Jean Louis' (Laurent Lafitte; also, the director of this French comedy) heart stops beating one day. He's alive, but "heartless". His wife Valérie takes him to her spiritual guru, who says she needs to see the "source" from where he came in order to revive his heart. He has to bring a photograph of the vagina of his 82-old-mother Brigitte, whom he hasn't contacted in four years. Jean Louis teams up with his friend Michel (Vincent Macaigne), a vet, to find a way to accomplish this task. One ludicrous situation leads to another, revealing some secrets along the way.—Nipa Charagi
Also read: On 100 years of Ulysses by James Joyce
I Am Georgina (Netflix)
Georgina, who? you may ask. If you have been following "news", you will know that her partner Cristiano Ronaldo—the Portuguese footballer—lit up Dubai's Burj Khalifa with her images on her 28th birthday recently. Geo, as she is called by friends, walks into a Cavalli store in Milan and buys a bunch of things. As she is about to pay, the manager says, "This time it is on us". From Madrid, she takes Ronaldo's jet to Paris to visit Jean Paul Gaultier's atelier, and returns the same day because she likes to be home—one in Turin, and another in Madrid—with the kids, four of them. Then there's Ronaldo's yacht, where she spends a weekend in Monaco with friends. One word you will hear her utter a lot is "dreams"—she likes buying the lottery, because she thinks she will win one day!—NC
Rocket Boys (Sony Liv)
This series looks at the contribution of Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai to India's space and nuclear programmes. Jim Sarbh, who plays Bhabha, says: “The more you read about Bhabha, the more you see that he was a complete man. Apart from all that he gave to science, he was passionate about the arts, he played the violin and piano, painted, supported modern Indian art, wrote books on culture while simultaneously putting out papers on science, discovering particles and leading research on the atomic bomb. He also had a wicked sense of humour".
Something in the Air (MUBI)
Olivier Assayas’ Something In The Air (2012) is a coming-of-age film set in 1971. We wrote that the "spirit of 1968 courses through its night-time graffiti raids and chaotic protest meets. Assayas questions, through the central figure of Gilles, who is fighting the system but also trying to be a painter and film-maker, whether art and true revolution are compatible. “Shouldn’t revolutionary cinema use revolutionary syntax?” a film-making collective is asked. “Could it be that the revolutionary syntax you speak of is the individualistic style of the bourgeoisie?” one of them shoots back.”
I'm Not Done Yet (Netflix)
Kapil Sharma released his first Netflix special. We wrote about it: “Freed of the desperation to tickle his audience, Sharma is looser, more relaxed. I’m Not Done Yet is a sort of ‘unplugged’ session, where he discusses the struggles of his youth, the loss of his father, his issues with drinking and his battle with depression. This is a step. Kapil Sharma talking about going to a therapist reaches beyond those influenced by Deepika Padukone and Tony Soprano, and could affect the way a huge audience perceives mental health.”
Also read: Food, art, film, our picks for the weekend
