Before I Forget Mamma Mia!

Before I Forget

Time Investment: 108 min.
Return on Investment: 95 min.

Aging is the one monster powerful enough to turn the butchest muscle top into a squealing pile of emasculated nelliness. A sort of psychological horror tale for the gay and pretty, French film Before I Forget (Strand Releasing) creeps up like a silent killer, mercilessly forcing you to confront your worst nightmare—growing old and lonely—with brutal hopelessness and disturbing beauty.

Writer and director Jacques Nolot plays Pierre, a former hustler now facing destitution as a withered 60-year-old afflicted with HIV. When his even older sugar daddy dies after 30 years of doling out cash, Pierre’s left with nothing but himself, devolving into one of the desperate hustler-buying johns he tricked with decades earlier. One hot 29-year-old rent boy coldly comments, “I hope I won’t end up like you. I’ll shoot myself first.”

Grim, definitely. Yet an intriguing and scathing comment on a youth of whoring and frivolity ending up like the film’s first 10 minutes—a glimpse at an achingly pathetic man, depressed and isolated, running through his banal day-to-night routine of sleeping, drinking coffee and dining alone, nude and bathed in an harsh, unflattering light. Nolot, who has directed a series of films tracing this character from youth, fills long shots of deceptive inaction with rich, shifting emotional timbres and variations of the grey called loneliness. “Be warned,” every gesture cautions, “the ugliness of life might strangle you in the night.”
— Aaron Coleman

Mamma Mia!

Time Investment: 108 min.
Return on Investment: 45min.

Adapting a stage musical based around the songs of the ’70s group ABBA into a full-fledged movie is a daunting task and Mamma Mia! just isn’t up to this mission: impossible.

The barely there script revolves around Sophie (Amanda Seyfried, Mean Girls) and her quest to find her father out of three possible candidates (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård) on the eve of her wedding to Sky (an often shirtless and always sexy Dominic Cooper). Add to the equation Sophie’s free-spirited and goofy mother (Meryl Streep) and her two friends (Broadway darlings Christine Baranski and Julie Walters) and farcical, if not entirely unbelievable, high jinks are supposed to follow. The cast is in top form and appear to genuinely be having a great time—especially Streep, who proves she can elevate even the shakiest material—but the story is not solid enough to make this the frivolous treat it could have been. Just like the long-running Broadway show that spawned it, the strained script lacks authenticity and nuance and leaves many questions unanswered. The choreography is cliché and uninspired and Phyllida Lloyd’s direction is oftentimes sloppy.

The film does, however, take place on a Greek isle, which justifies the gratuitous shots of half-naked 20-something dancers in the bigger production numbers. Mama Mia! may get your toes tapping to some familiar melodies, but those good ol’ disco standards and buff bodies aren’t enough to make this a fun night at the movies. —Max Berlinger