There was a fear that Homemade, Netflix’s portmanteau of films by a coterie of 17 international filmmakers essaying global lockdown, may have turned into an arthouse version of Gal Gadot’s ‘Imagine’ sing-a-long: a group of well-intentioned cineastes loftily musing on the themes of quarantine without ever getting to the harsh, messy realities of confinement. Happily, that’s largely unfounded. While anthology films are, by their nature, a mixed bag and the filter is mostly one of privilege — there’s no film here about queuing outside ASDA — the enterprise, spearheaded by Jackie director Pablo Larraín, proves worthwhile in documenting a range of responses to coronavirus across an eclectic bunch of approaches.
Gurinder Chadha provides an honest account of lockdown life – perhaps the most down-to-earth, relatable depiction on the list.
The dominant mode here is video diary, often featuring members of the filmmakers’ family as cast and crew. Rachel Morrison, Johnny Ma, Natalia Beristáin, David Mackenzie and Nadine Labaki all deliver slight, simple efforts on the effects of quarantine on domestic life, Labaki’s following her daughter Mayroun’s adventures with a toy unicorn in an office — Mayroun herself is a force of nature. Gurinder Chadha provides an honest account of lockdown life, co-created with her kids, ranging from home-schooling to shared cooking to funerals over Facebook. It’s perhaps the most down-to-earth, relatable depiction on the list.
Others are more ambitious. With her director’s hat on, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s entry is the most narratively bold, imagining a future where the Covid-19 death toll is over 500 million and the virus is playing havoc with our atmosphere, as experienced by an isolated farmer (Peter Sarsgaard — Gyllenhaal’s husband, so no social-distancing rule-breaks). Kristen Stewart’s effort captures lockdown cabin fever, played out almost entirely on her face, and is an object lesson in close-up acting and jittery editing. Elsewhere Ana Lily Amirpour and Ladj Ly offer cinematic showmanship; the former fluidly follows a cyclist (played by Amirpour herself) around an empty, eerie Los Angeles, while the latter, riffing on a scene from his own Les Misérables, flies a drone over Clichy Montfermeil, one of France’s hardest-hit districts.
The best of the bunch, though, are more playful. Larraín’s own entry features an ageing Lothario (Jaime Vadell) Zoom-call an old flame (Mercedes Morán) from a hospital to declare his undying passion (her reaction is priceless). Sebastian Schipper delivers a funny tale about doppelgängers that grows increasingly outrageous. Another Sebastián, Lelio, serves up a smart, incisive musical about isolation, delivering perhaps cinema’s first song-and-dance number in a downstairs loo. Rungano Nyoni believably and wittily details a break-up in lockdown through the format of WhatsApp chats, and his entry is funnier and more surprising than it sounds. And Paolo Sorrentino imagines a romance between the Pope and the Queen played out through action figures (The Big Lebowski’s The Dude turns up), and includes a squabble over whether to watch The Two Popes or The Crown. “I’ve been in lockdown for 94 years,” says the Queen, voiced by Olivia Williams. We know how she feels.