Parky At the Pictures (8/8/2025)

(Reviews of Late Shift; 40 Acres; and Young Hearts)

LATE SHIFT.

Swiss director Petra Volpe has been making films since the turn of the century. Following a string of shorts and TV-movies, she made her feature bow with Dreamland (2013). She made an impression on UK audiences with The Divine Order (2017). But she is set for her biggest success to date with Late Shift, which considers the strain placed upon nurses at a time when the global shortage is rapidly increasing.

Having taken a train and a bus to reach the Zurich hospital where she works as a nurse, Floria (Leonie Benesch) exchanges waves, smiles, and jokes with everyone she passes en route to the locker room. She chats to Bea (Sonja Riesen) as she changes into her scrubs (fresh from the opening dry cleaning shot), but Floria barely has a second to herself after she receives a handover briefing from colleague, Jan Sharif (Alireza Bayram). She nods at the mention of each name on her floor and they will soon become familiar to the audience, along with their conditions.

Floria helps Jan clean up Mrs Kuhn (Margherita Schoch), a dementia patient who has soiled herself, but hurries off to scold Mr Osmani (Ridvan Murati) for chatting on the phone to his son about the family business instead of getting changed for a gallbladder operation. His wife (Albana Agaj) takes his part and dutifully fusses over him and feels treacherous when Floria tells her she can't wait beside his bed until he returns to the ward.

Eager start her rounds, Floria reassures Mr Leu (Urs Bihler) that Dr Strobel (Nicole Bachmann) will see him about his test results once she's out of theatre. He has been in hospital for six days and been told nothing and is beginning to feel afraid and frustrated. Urging him to be patient, Floria calls on Mr Nwachukwu (Urbain Guiguemde), an illegal migrant from Burkina Faso, who tells her to call him Nana. He is awaiting tests and is worried that he won't be able to work and provide for his family back home.

In the next room, Pascale Schneider (Doris Schefer) is fretting about her father (Heinz Wyssling), who is in pain. He has terminal cancer and she simply wants him to be spared discomfort in his final hours. Aware that Pascale also needs to look after herself, Floria promises to bring some morphine, but is distracted by a phone call from the mother of a discharged patient who wants Floria to find a pair of reading glasses and send them home as quickly as possible. Remaining polite, Floria takes a note of the number before rushing off to wheel Nana for a CAT scan because there aren't any orderlies available and her only other colleague is a trainee, Amelie Afshar (Selma Jamal Aldin), who is never where she is supposed to be.

Back on the corridor. hauling the twin trolleys carrying computers, vital sign machines, and medications, Floria goes to the `poison room' to fetch painkillers for Schneider and dextrose for Leu, a diabetic who is too flustered to eat. She also collects some tablets for Mr Severin (Jürg Plüss), a successful businessman who is used to being obeyed and snaps at Floria for keeping him waiting while pretending all is well to a client on the phone. Floria is also berated by Turkish brothers Nabil (Ali Kandas) and Bekir Bilgin (Mustafa Kuzucu), who believe that their mother (Eva Fredholm) is being neglected.

Popping in on Mr Leu, Floria finds him distressed about his dog, Charly, who is being looked after by a neighbour who thinks he smells. Floria smiles at a photo as she takes Leu's blood pressure and tries to persuade him to eat. She is called away, however, to fetch Osmani back from theatre and is called in to see Mrs Kuhn, who has become confused after speaking to her daughter on the phone from America. Remembering Jan saying she was in a choir, Floria starts singing to calm her down and Mrs Kuhn joins in before settling down.

After such a fraught scene, Floria is relieved to visit Mrs Cosatto (Maja Tanner), who has been given the all clear and has decided to quit her job in order to live a little. Mrs Lauber (Elisabeth Roll) proves more taxing, as her arm has become inflamed and Floria has to find a new place for her drip, with Lauber grumbling incessantly about the poor standards on the ward, even after Floria finds a vein first time and patches her up. Despite being in a worse condition in the next bed, Mrs Morina (Lale Yavaº) is much more pleasant, as Floria sends her husband and two daughters (for whom she has remembered some lollipops) to the canteen while she runs some tests. She holds Morina's hand, as she has a little cry because her cancer has returned and she knows her time is short. Yet, despite worrying for her happy little family, she still takes the trouble to ask how Floria is coping since she got divorced and has less time to see her young daughter.

Although upset when Emma is too busy to talk to her on the phone at her dad's, Floria has to go and collect Mr Song (Jeremia Chung) from surgery. As she runs up the stairs, she bumps into Dr Strobel and admonishes her for electing to go home rather than reassure Mr Leu. She gets a stern reprimand in return and then has to face Leu on the corridor with the news that the surgeon has been too busy to see him.

Frustrated that she can't help a nice man and that there are never enough people on the job or hours in the day, Floria bellows at Amelie for letting Mrs Kuhn get in a mess with her supper. She then stomps on to the balcony to confiscate some cigarettes and a lighter from Mrs Frei (Dominique Lendi), who complains that she has a right to do what she wants with her own body.

Having composed herself, Floria returns to the corridor to learn that Leu has packed up and left. She rushes out to the concourse, but there is no sign of him and she is nettled that she will be held responsible, even though Dr Strobel had refused to see him. Already feeling riled, Floria is subjected to a torrent of entitled abuse from Severin, who has private health care and can't understand why he's had to wait so long for a cup of the wrong tea.

Promising to rectify the situation, a flustered Floria collects some painkillers from the medicine store. She carefully marks the bottles, but Song suffers an allergic reaction and duty doctor Leonie (Anna-Katharina Müller) tells Floria not to blame herself because these things happen and there's no harm done. But there's no consoling Floria when Mrs Bilgin dies and her sons accuse her of wilful neglect. Aware she hadn't got round to seeing her, Floria cries on the balcony before pulling herself to together to prepare Mrs Bilgin so her sons can say goodbye.

Floria is wound tight when Severin buzzes her for attention. She tries to be polite, but he needles her so much that she taunts him that his pancreatic cancer is terminal and hurls his expensive watch out of the window. Storming out, she seeks sanctuary at the nurses station and makes Bea laugh out loud when she confesses what she's done. Realising she's going to get into trouble, Floria goes searching in the bushes beneath Severin's window. Frei watches her, as she puffs on a cigarette and weighs the watch in her hand.

Calling on Severin, Floria apologises for her lack of professionalism. He forgives her and agrees he deserved to lose his watch. Indeed, he says she can keep it if she finds it. But he cracks and sobs in asking why he should have to die so young when he had striven so hard to live healthily. They part on good terms and Floria takes the chance to wheel Mrs Bilgin to the morgue. On the way back, she runs into Frei, who gives her the watch and has her fags returned in gratitude. Creeping into the sleeping Severin's room, Floria leaves the watch on his bedside table and takes the chance of a rare moment of quiet to catch up on some paperwork and logging entries on to the ward computer.

As she munches on a sandwich in the lift, we see the various patients sleeping, as the night staff comes on duty. Floria runs for the bus and sinks into a double seat. Wearing the colourful scarf that Floria had placed around her neck, Mrs Bilgin's ghost wanders down the aisle to sit next to her and Floria rests her head on her shoulder. A closing caption reveals that, by 2030, Switzerland will be short of 30,000 nursing professionals because 36% of nurses quit within four years. But this is also a global crisis, with the shortfall expected to reach 13 million by end of this decade. No wonder the German title of the film is Heldin, which translates as `heroine'.

Anyone who saw lker Çatak's The Teachers' Lounge (2023) will already be familiar with Leonie Benesch's capacity to endure slings and arrows. But the multi-tasking Floria is markedly more sympathetic than Carla Nowak, even though she shares her tendency to let her heart rule her head. It would be so easy to make this insight into the workload borne by nurses into didactic melodrama, especially as one suspects that Floria's surname is Lind purely because Jenny Lind was known as `the Swedish Nightingale'. Perhaps Nachtigall would have pushed the point too far. But Benesch - who completed a hospital internship to prepare for the role - refuses to be a put-upon angel of mercy and her insistence on showing an imperfect human side makes her performance all the more fascinatingly authentic and Petra Volpe's loose adaptation of Madeline Calvelage's autobiographical novel, Our Profession Is Not the Problem. It's the Circumstances, so potently persuasive.

Mixing acting professionals, first-time performers, and actual medical personnel, the support playing is also exemplary, as each patient emerges from the litany of names that Jan and Floria discuss at the start of her shift to being credibly vulnerable souls by the end of it. The incident with Severin's watch risks being gauchely soap operatic. But Volpe reels it back with the poignant exchange between Benesch and Jürg Plüss, who, for all his boorish bluster, turns out to be just as fragile as the confused Mrs Kuhn, the crushed Mr Leu, and the courgeous Mrs Morina.

It's all been done in dozens of films and TV shows before. But production designer Beatrice Schultz's refitting of an empty hospital evocatively suggests the outward sense of antiseptic calm that one might expect of a hospital ward, which leaves it to Judith Kaufman's fluid camerawork and Hansjörg Weißbrich's decisive editing to convey the exertion required to maintain the manageable level of controlled chaos that makes effective care possible. With Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch's metronomic score ensuring that emotions never run too high, this may not necessarily be an eye-opener. But it is convincing and compelling and how wonderful would it be if Volpe and Benesch could reunite for a companion piece that focussed solely on Floria's life away from the ward?

40 ACRES.

Taking its title from the broken promise on which modern America is built, R.T. Thorne's feature debut, 40 Acres, is a survivalist allegory that ponders the clashing costs of freedom and security. Combining post-pandemic paranoia with anti-Maga angst, this may not always be subtle. But it's plausible, atmospheric, and involving and even shows flashes of innovation within an unwaveringly stock format.

The Freeman family had owned its farm since the Reconstruction Era, when the US government had vowed to give emancipated slaves 40 acres and a mule. Owing to a fungal outbreak 14 years earlier, the animal population had been decimated and society had been forced to return to an agrarian existence. Following a civil war, however, law and order had broken down and those fortunate enough to have land on which to grow food had to be constantly vigilant against marauding gangs, especially as cannibalism had broken out among some of the more desperate groups.

A former soldier, Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler) runs her property along strict military lines. As a result, she is able to resist an incursion by a band of itinerants, with partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes), stepdaughter Raine (Leenah Robinson), son Emanuel (Kataem O'Connor), and daughters Danis (Jaeda LeBlanc) and Cookie (Haile Amare) all knowing their roles in surveilling, stalking, and slaughtering the intruding militiamen. Even though everyone has done their bit, Hailey chides Manny for not following orders to the letter and he starts to resent his mother's rigid control.

In addition to a bank of CCTV screens, an extensive armoury, and a secure bunker, the farm also has a CB radio, with which Hailey communicates with the only outsider she trusts, Augusta Taylor (Elizabeth Saunders). She has heard that another family has succumbed to the cannibals and warns Hailey that vicious carpetbaggers are posing as patrolling soldiers to gain admittance to homesteads.

Along with their military training and their chores on the land, the children also have book reports to write, as Hailey believes in education. She also sets great store by Galen's ancestral traditions and trusts him to maintain the electrified perimeter fence and drive to the nearby trading post in one of several vehicles and quad bikes that they appear to have sufficient fuel to run. But Manny has taken to playing hooky from his tasks and, while swimming in the river, he spots a girl of around his own age. He follows her to the camp where she seems to be protecting some younger children and his detour cause him to miss Danis's fire ceremony.

Having been reprimanded by Hailey, Manny thinks back to how she had left him as a small boy with her preacher father, Felix (Tyrone Benskin), while she served in the army and he had been reluctant to leave when she came to collect him. Tired of being told he doesn't pull his weight, Manny accompanies Galen and Danis to the trading post, where they find the staff strung up like curing flitches. He suggests they check the premises, but Danis is wounded by one of the cannibals and Manny blames himself for putting her at risk.

As Augusta has fallen silent, Hailey fears that her farm has been overrun. She orders everyone to be extra watchful, but Manny can't resist helping the swimmer when finds her nursing injuries outside the fence. He hides her in the barn and discovers her name is Dawn (Milcania Diaz-Rojas). She claims to be Augusta's niece and insists she had been sent to get help for the children she had been sheltering. The lovestruck Manny believes her and is hugely impressed when Dawn stitches her own wounds. But he decides not to tell Hailey after she exhorts her children to trust no one and shoot before asking questions.

Such is the tension around the house that even the sanguine Galen loses his temper with Raine and Cookie for eating some sauces they have found in the store, when he insists on them only eating fresh food and spices. Hailey is similarly snappish at the dinner table and Manny goes to the barn because he would rather be with Dawn than his kin. Unfortunately, a suspicious Hailey follows him and she has Galen detain Dawn when she finds her dancing to some music. Although she disbelieves her claim that Augusta is her aunt, Hailey thinks back to the debt she owes to the older woman, who had protected Manny from thugs on the night that Felix had been slain. Yet she still berates the teenager for disobeying orders and he barks back that he is tired of living with her because she refuses to accept that she distrusts people as a result of a post-combat trauma.

Feeling beholden to Augusta, Hailey drives to her farm, while giving Manny and Dawn permission to fetch the children from thw disused bus in which they had been hiding at the camp. However, Hailey is ambushed and finds herself in the same cellar as Augusta who warns that their captors are cannibals. Dawn apologises to Manny in revealing that she had cut a deal with the brigands to lure the Freemans off their land so that they could be divided and conquered. As she speaks, Galen is attacked at the fence and has nails driven through his palms as he is staked out on the ground. Somehow he summons the strength to free himself and overcome his assailants.

With the CCTV sabotaged, Raine and Cookie take sanctuary in the panic room, although they are forced to leave Danis in her bedroom. Hailey is taunted by the leader of the desperadoes, as she watches Augusta have her throat cut. However, she manages to overpower the man detailed to sever her leg and she is reunited with Manny and Dawn (who have managed to reach her in spite of the fact that the leader had boasted of his massed ranks of followers). Bundling the children into Hailey's truck, they speed back to the farm, where Raine is using a machine gun to pick off trespassers in the field.

Returning to the house, Galen brings Danis down to the bunker before turning off the power, so he can shoot those encroaching into the parlour. He then dispatches a man and a woman who have strayed wide-eyed into the gun room. Ushering Manny, Dawn, and the kids into the house, Hailey gives them cover from the garden. However, she is forced to retreat to the barn, where she is backed into a corner before Manny bursts in to deliver her. As the film ends, the extended family sits down to enjoy the fruits of their labours. But it's evident that this is merely a pause rather than a cessation of hostilities.

Opening with a brutal rearguard action, Thorne makes it clear that there's nothing idyllic about living off the land in this brave new dystopia. The Canadian and co-writers Glenn Taylor and Lora Campbell might have gone into more detail about the calamity that prompted the Freemans to tool up in order to protect their patch. Who is in charge of the country (if anyone) and why has nothing been done to harness the manpower of the marauders (because they are mostly men and white ones at that) for the common good? More might also have been said about the wealth of resources at Hailey's disposal and the psychological effects of her stint in the military. But setting the scene has become outré in an age of shortened attention spans and the need to plunge the audience into the middle of the action as quickly as possible.

While there's nothing new about the backs-to-the-wall struggle against insurmountable odds, Thorne makes the most of Danielle Deadwyler's subversively imposing presence to make Hailey a unique heroine. Her clash with Kataem O'Connor's Manny is intriguing for its insights into mother-son dynamics within Black families, particularly as he is driven by very different concerns from the ones that shaped his mother. But the other family members are thinly sketched and it feels like too much of a cliché for Manny to help Dawn because he fancies her rather than because it's the right thing to do.

Having won numerous awards for his music videos, Thorne is already an accomplished image maker and cinematographer Jeremy Benning's views of the parched countryside and his lighting of the interiors are very strikng. The shootout in the darkened room, in which flare flashes from Galen's gun and the sounds of bullets flying and bodies falling are the only clues as to what is going on is adroitly staged. But editors Dev Singh and Sandy Pereira opt for the modern method of shredding action sequences into rat-tat fragments that give the illusion of violence while actually depicting next to nothing.

Todor Kobakov contributes an unsettling score that complements Dermain Finlayson's immersive sound design. But it's the silences that prove the eeriest in a rural setting devoid of livestock, household pets, and birds. Deadwyler also establishes her own sonic rhythms, as she delivers her orders in measured tones with total expectation of them being carried out to the letter. She also slips in shards of disconcerting humour, while occasionally letting the mask slip as maternal and killer instincts jar in the way that has affected so many gun-toting male action heroes down the years. But not since the Blaxploitation heydays of Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson has an African American woman kicked butt with such conviction and composed control. Just as much as sci-fi writer Octavia Butler will be smiling in recognition at this parable of the sower, D.W. Griffith must be spinning in his grave at this rebirth of the nation.

YOUNG HEARTS.

Just because first-time director Anthony Schatteman hails from the same country as

Lukas Dhont, it doesn't follow that their respective films about teenage sexual identity will have much in common, even if they do both contains scenes of cycling along sun-kissed country lanes. Dhont's critically acclaimed Close (2022) was very much an arthouse offering, while Schatteman's Young Hearts feels less intense and more inclusive in a teleplayish sort of way, as it charts how two 14 year-olds negotiate their burgeoning feelings for one another.

Elias Montero (Lou Goossens) lives in the East Flanders town of Wetteren, with his older brother, Maxime (Jul Goossens), and their songwriting father, Luk (Geert Van Rampelberg), and homemaking mother, Natalie (Emilie De Roo). He is dating classmate Valerie (Saara Rogiers), but is struck by the beauty of the new boy next door, Alexander (Marius De Saeger), who has come from Brussels with his younger sister and widowed father, Marc (Olivier Englebert).

Over the weekend, Elias cycles off to spend the day with his farmer grandfather, Fred (Dirk Van Dijck), who lets him drive his tractor and puts no pressure on him to be anything but himself. On Monday morning, he is bashful at seeing Alexander through his bedroom window, even though he gives him a wave. But he says nothing about knowing him when he is introduced to his class at school and is ticked off by the others in his group, who tease the newbie about his attempts to speak Flemish.

Cycling home together, the boys stop to buy cherries and eat them on the river bank. Alexander admits to finding it hard to get to know people, but asks Elias if he's ever been in love. He is surprised that he doesn't love with Valerie and casually remarks that he had been involved with a boy named Arthur the previous summer.

Not sure how to react, Elias heads off alone to help Fred and returns to find Alexander's family in the garden for a welcome party. Maxime is embarrassed by Luk's cheesy new single, but Alexander likes it. He asks Elias over to the house and they sit together at the piano, with their faces reflecting in the polished wood, as Elias shoots shyly admiring gazes. He's even more impressed when Alexander tells him he's studied judo and will beat up the older boys who have been bullying him over his father's pop songs.

After Luk embarrasses him by trying to discuss the facts of life, Elias takes Alexander to the farm, where they pet some piglets and wrestle on the hay bales stacked in the barn. When some bigger boys call them `gaylords', Alexander kicks their bikes over and they make a high-speed escape. They go to an abandoned house in the woods and Elias is shocked that Alexander finds a way to get inside and explore. Finding some epées, they duel, but have to hide when the bullies come looking for them. Biding their time under a table, they make their escape and head for the river, where Alexander skinny dips and lifts Elias on his shoulders in the dappled water. Getting caught in a downpour, they shelter in a barn, where Alexander breathes on Elias's back to stop him shivering and they kiss.

Confused by his feelings, Elias hides away in his room and Natalie is worried about him. She has no problems with him sleeping over at Valeries and packs him off for a birthday party with the gang. Alexander turns up and the girls comment on how handsome he is, but Elias says nothing when one of the other boys agrees and gets told off. Unsure how to treat him, Elias keeps his distance and is relieved when he leaves before dark. Someone has smuggled some beer and Elias gets drunk. Unable to sleep, he leaves Valerie sleeping (after a chaste goodnight kiss) to cycle home and wake Alexander with pebbles on his window. Awkwardly trying to kiss him, Elias is hurt when he pulls away and gets into a tantrum when Maxime taunts him and he's sick in the sink.

At school, Valerie catches Elias resting his head on Alexander's shoulder and she tells him to keep away from her. Undaunted, he accompanies Alexander to Brussels to stay with Uncle Tony (Wim Opbrouck) and Aunt Pia (Florence Hebbelynck), who run a drag bar. Elias is thrilled when he's introduced as Alexander's boyfriend and he watches him play the piano for a song by LaDiva (LaDiva Live). Back home, they spend an idyllic day on Fred's farm, with Elias sketching Alexander, as he reclines on the grass. But they go further than kissing and hugging when they're alone together.

Annoyed with Alexander when he tries to hug him after a basketball game at school, Elias sulks and smashes Luk's gold record when his mother makes him a costume so he can go to a fancy dress party with Valerie as Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as Romeo and Juliet. He kisses her passionately when they meet up and she forgives him. But he gets jealous when Alexander kisses another boy during a game of spin the bottle and they get into a row that causes Valerie to flounce off. Distraught, Elias runs to the cow shed, where Fred finds him and give him a consoling hug.

Realising his grandson needs some time out, Fred takes him by train to the Ardennes to visit the special spot he shared with his beloved wife. Elias wishes he could wake up and find he was back with Valerie and hadn't hurt anyone, but Fred reminds him to follow his heart and they go for a swim in a picturesque pool. Hugging Natalie on the train station, Elias summons the courage to tell her he loves Alexander in the car and she assures him that she will love him no matter what he does.

He arrives home in time for the Harvest Carnival and he reluctantly joins his school friends on the dodgems. He gets knocked over when he jumps out on seeing Alexander, who has been ignoring his texts and messages. Eventually, he finds him and they kiss and Luk leaves the stage where he is performing to give his seal of approval. A few days later, Elias gives Fred a sketch of him with grandma and he is deeply touched, as Elias scoots off with his pals to hold hands with Alexander, as he rides on the back of his bike.

Scrupulously tying the loose ends, this is a bit too neat and tidy to convince as a coming out or a coming of age saga. Schatteman has said that he wanted to make the kind of film that he wished he could have seen when he was a conflicted youth and, from that perspective, his debut is a poignant success. As a piece of narrative cinema, however, it does little that hasn't been done before, even if it does it rather nicely, especially when pastiching the fish tank gambit from Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996).

The cherubic Lou Goossens gives the picture its heart, as he barely changes expression to convey lovesick longing and sulky petulance. When he does smile, he radiates the joy of adolescence. But Schatteman's awareness of the age of the characters prevents him from depicting a crush rather than a passion and this restricts the amount of chemistry he can allow Goossens and Marius De Saeger. In a way, it's sweet that the pair are so innocent. But most viewers will know what teenagers get up to when their hormones rage, whether Elias is with Valerie or Alexander.

Emilie De Roo makes an empathetic mum and Dirk Van Dijck a model granddad. But the whole plot strand concerning Luk and his twee muzak falls resoundingly flat and strands Geert Van Rampelberg, who comes across as self-absorbed and neglectful even when he is actually being supportive in his own distracted way. Having wasted time on a cornball recce to Brussels, Schatteman also ducks out of the bullying subplot and avoids having any discussion about their sons between Marc and the Monteros, which might have helped the latter understand Elias's increasingly erratic behaviour.

Cinematographer Pieter Van Campe makes picturesque use of the rustic landscapes, while also bathing each tryst in golden sunshine. But the lush visuals only reinforce the notion that this is a glossy entertainment rather than a gritty treatise. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it confirms the superficial nature of this charmingly sincere, if determinedly affirmative feel-good melodrama.