New to Streaming: Twin Peaks, Misericordia, Bonjour Tristesse, The Heirloom & More

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Bonjour Tristesse (Durga Chew-Bose)

There was slight trepidation going into Bonjour Tristesse. Justifying itself as another “adaptation” of Françoise Sagan’s text rather than remake of Otto Preminger’s masterpiece of mise-en-scène, there’s still some hesitation about the chutzpah that must go into thinking you can top that great craftsman at the height of his power. As directed by writer-turned-filmmaker Durga Chew-Bose with a great deal of formal assurance (you definitely won’t mistake this for something akin to, say, Maximum Overdrive in that career-switch category), this 2024 iteration is a highly respectable effort that’ll speak to countless people the original didn’t. One major difference being that Preminger made the film as a showcase for the muse he was having an affair with, Jean Seberg, casting some leering-male element onto the whole project. Chew-Bose’s project isn’t so much feminist as feminine––that a working-out of neurosis that doesn’t provide completely easy answers. – Ethan V. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

The Heirloom (Ben Petrie)

One highlight from last year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam was Ben Petrie’s The Heirloom, a rom-com psychodrama in which he stars alongside Grace Glowicki as a couple who adopt a dog and learn what it means to become a family. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “This is often very funny, even as Eric’s narrativizing threatens to further hinder the relationship. Petrie allows Eric’s new obsession to spill into sequences that feel genuinely Kaufmanesque (an overused word, granted, but a distinction well-earned here). In one example, shot from Eric’s POV, Allie excitedly turns around to inform him that Milly has peed; Eric then begins seeing the moment repeated as if in multiple takes, Allie’s performance straining to hit the desired note. Whether these repeats are real or imagined is never explicated, though it’s fevered enough to appear like a figment of Eric’s lockdown brain. In a later scene, a boom mic operator crosses the shot without disturbing the character’s flow, a jarring intrusion during a moment of real vulnerability––and a sharp directorial choice that both douses the tension and accentuates its source.”

Where to Stream: VOD

I Like Movies (Chandler Levack)

A reverie of 2002 and 2003 in Toronto’s sleepy Burlington suburb, I Like Movies initially takes on the appearance of nostalgia with its sight of lined video store walls viewed in the age of streaming. But tougher subject matter is somewhat at hand, as we hone in on high school senior and outcast Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen), the kind of kid who makes sure to note it as “Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love” when buying a ticket from a hapless cashier. A one-track mind making him oblivious to the pain of his single mother (Krista Bridges) and most of those around him, he’s basically the realistic version of the teen cinephile / aspiring filmmaker romanticized to countless young people by the character of Dawson Leery. – Ethan V. (full review)

Where to Stream: Prime Video

Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)

In a career spanning four decades and eight features, Alain Guiraudie has cemented himself as one of our most astute chroniclers of desire. If there’s any leitmotif to his libidinous body of work, that’s not homosexuality (prevalent as same-sex encounters might be across his films) but a force that transcends all manner of labels and categories. His is a cinema of liberty: of vast, enchanted spaces and solitary wanderers who wrestle with their passions, and in acting them out, change the way they carry themselves into the world. Desire becomes an exercise in self-sovereignty, a way of reasserting one’s independence––a rebirth. It is often said that cinema is an inescapably scopophilic realm, where the act of looking is itself a source of pleasure, but Guiraudie has a way of making that dynamic feel egalitarian, as thrilling for those watching as it is for those being watched. – Leo G. (full review)

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Notice to Quit (Simon Hacker)

New York City can swallow you whole. It can be an uncaring place with busied people walking down frustrated avenues. It’s not that the city is mean or that the people in the city are mean––rather that life is hard and it’s made harder with less space and more bodies and smells and noises surrounding you. Andy (Michael Zegen), a fledgling real-estate broker who needs rent money today or he is evicted, has been swallowed by the city before Notice to Quit even starts. He’s showing slum-house listings to aggravated clients, stealing appliances from those listings to make ends meet. – Dan M. (full review)

Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)

Twin Peaks (David Lynch and Mark Frost)

One of the greatest achievements in the moving image, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks Season 1 & 2 and Twin Peaks: The Return, are now easier to see as they’ve been added to MUBI. Cinematographer Peter Deming also recently spoke with Nick Newman about his process working on The Return, noting, “We shot for 141 days and so, within that period, there were two prep periods and a holiday break. So I think that, particularly, the holiday break sort of rejuvenated everyone. Honestly, we only looked at September to Christmas; we didn’t really look beyond that because it was too daunting. So as you got closer to Christmas, you started thinking about it and then, over the break, you sort of re-familiarized yourself so that, during that week of new prep, you could sort of think about the next chunk, you know, and then the next chunk. Because it was scheduled and shot like a feature film, so you could shoot any part of the story at any time. It was such a long, long story that David was really the only one who had the big picture in his head––as usual [Laughs]––so I didn’t really know where we were in the story until I sometimes had to look at the scene number, which went up to, I think, 700 or something. So that was sort of how you gauged the timeline.”

Where to Stream: MUBI (free for 30 days)

Also New to Streaming

Kino Film Collection

Madchen in Uniform
Victor & Victoria

VOD

Sew Torn

The post New to Streaming: Twin Peaks, Misericordia, Bonjour Tristesse, The Heirloom & More first appeared on The Film Stage.