Ema

_Ema_ is a beaten dog that bites and you don't know if you should pity it or not, because you don't know if it bites because it's beaten or beaten because it bites. But the dog doesn't care what you think, it just continues to dance. A highly stylized psychosexual drama, _Ema_ is an over-long song with so-so lyrics but great music that makes you feel like dancing.

This movie is at its best when it’s letting the incredible imagery and Nicholas Jaar score do all the work. There are quite a few individual moments that will stick with me because they’re so well constructed from a technical perspective. The acting is also pretty good. However, I don’t agree with a lot of the writing choices being made here. It opens the story at a point where a lot of the interesting events have already happened, so it recaps those through clunky expository dialogue. The focus point here leads to a film that often meanders around. It’s not uninteresting, but it feels like a lot of the story ideas are specifically build around cool visual cues. Eventually it gets to some interesting ideas about the meaning of modern dance, but it takes a while to get there. It’s not a bad piece of horrible people cinema, however certainly among the director’s weaker efforts so far. 6/10