Film reviews: An American Pickle | Perfect 10 | Young Ahmed | Papicha

An American Pickle (12A) ***

Perfect 10 (15) ***

Young Ahmed (15) ****

Papicha (15) ****

Endings, Beginnings (15) ***

Sleeper and Idiocracy meet Trump’s America and cancel culture in An American Pickle, a smart-dumb satirical vehicle for Seth Rogen. He plays Herschel Greenbaum, a hard-working early 20th-century Polish-Jewish immigrant who falls into a vat of pickles just before the factory he works in closes and wakes up – having been fully preserved – in present day Brooklyn where, weirdly and hilariously, he fits right in among the hipster residents who dig his rabbinical beard and peasant threads.

But his Old World prejudice brings trouble for great grandson Ben Greenbaum (also Rogen), an app designer whose imminent sale of a product designed to instantly check the ethical credentials of any business quickly falls apart when Hershel gets into a fistfight with construction workers that leaves both him and Ben with criminal records. Based on humorist and former Saturday Night Live writer Simon Rich’s short story, “Sell Out” (Rich also wrote the script), and directed by cinematographer-turned-debut-director Brandon Trost, what follows is an amusing tale of intergenerational rivalry as the cautious Ben’s frustration with his long lost (and only) relative is exacerbated by Herschel’s savant-like rise among the woke sheeples who don’t realise that the artisanal pickle empire he quickly establishes is sourced from garbage. Exacting his own revenge by using his internet savvy to bring down Herschel, Ben’s repeated ability to hoist himself with his own petard underscores the insanity of a world in which rational thought is sacrificed for a quick hit of righteous anger, and here the film scores sly laughs at the ease with which both sides of the political divide rush to weaponise outrage.

If the film’s satirical bluntness feels oddly appropriate for the moment, though, its need to wrap everything up with a kind of feelgood neatness softens its impact with a lurch into sentimentality. Nevertheless, Rogen is amusing in both roles and the film’s refusal to get hung up on the plausibility of its goofy high-concept premise generates one of the film’s biggest laughs.

Scottish director Eva Riley makes a promising debut with Perfect 10, a coming-of-age drama about a vulnerable teenage gymnast called Leigh (newcomer Frankie Box) whose life with her failure-of-a-father takes an intriguing turn with the out-of-the-blue arrival of Joe (Alfie Deegan), the half-brother she never knew she had.

Although the precariousness of her protagonist’s situation here points towards a typically British cinematic tale of woe (Leigh has no mother, no money, no confidence and is being bullied by the other member of her gymnastics team), Riley doesn’t give in to those clichés. She may flirt with them a little, particularly when it comes to Leigh’s confusion over her intensifying bond with her half-sibling, but she also subverts them, using the hazy glow of the film’s Brighton-in-summer setting to illuminate the transformative effect of having an ally – even a wayward scamp like Joe – in Leigh’s corner whenever thinks look bleak.

Bleakness abounds once again in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s latest film Young Ahmed – and once again, the Belgian auteurs transform something that should be too tough to watch into a heartbreaking and compelling piece of cinema. Revolving around a 13-year-old Belgian Muslim newly radicalised by a local imam (Othmane Moumen), the film offers a devastating account not just of the ease with which impressionable minds can be corrupted by extremist thought, but an empathic portrait of the challenge deprogramming such hatred entails.

Like earlier Dardenne brothers films such as The Son and The Child, this is about the complex challenges marginalised teens present to a world from which they feel excluded and, with typical brilliance and brevity, the Dardennes tease out the source of Ahmed’s rage in an absent father, a martyred cousin and the echo-chamber of the internet. But they don’t make excuses and a strength of the film is how it forces us to try to reconcile how unapologetically despicable his actions and attitudes are with how young he is – something aided by a remarkably assured performance from newcomer Idir Ben Addi in the title role.

Islamic extremism is explored from a different angle in Papicha, a drama (based loosely on true events) about the violent oppression suffered by a group of female students living and studying in Algiers as the developing chaos of the Algerian civil war starts impacting on what they can do, wear and say. Writer/director Mounia Meddour, who based some of the film on her own experiences, is good at capturing the defiance of her young heroine Nedjme (Lyna Khoudri) while exposing the hypocrisy of those around her and her friends. Meddour builds to a bold ending that’s all the more powerful for how shocking it is.

Set on the affluent fringes of the LA arts scene, Endings, Beginnings casts Shailene Woodley as an ennui-prone twentysomething who drifts into a relationship with a novelist (Jamie Dornan) at the same time as falling for the charms of his wilder best friend (Sebastian Stan). Though the melodramatic fallout of this love-triangle is a bit hackneyed, co-writer/director Drake Doremus infuses the film with an appealingly dreamy style that compliments Woodley’s internalised performance. Despite the film ultimately outstaying its welcome, Woodley makes it worth watching. ■

An American Pickle is in cinemas; Perfect 10 is available to stream on demand from Curzon Home Cinema and BFI Player; Young Ahmed is available on demand on Curzon Home Cinema; Papicha is available on demand and in virtual cinemas from papichafilm.com; Endings, Beginnings is available to stream on digital platforms including Amazon and iTunes.

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Film reviews: An American Pickle | Perfect 10 | Young Ahmed | Papicha | Endings, Beginnings