Friyay!: What to watch

BIOPIC

NORDIC FILM FESTIVAL 2022

Four films - one each from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden - will be the focus of the festival, returning this year till Aug 21.

From Norway comes Sonja: The White Swan (2018, M18, 116 minutes, screens today, 8.30pm), a biopic of figure skater Sonja Henie, an Olympic champion who conquered Hollywood. Henie (Ine Marie Wilmann), arriving in California in the 1930s bedecked with gold medals, was determined to be a movie star. Director Anne Sewitsky's portrait of Henie dares the audience to "reckon with their own response to a woman with zero false modesty", according to a review in Variety magazine.

WHERE The Projector, 05-00 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road MRT Nicoll Highway WHEN Till Aug 21, various times ADMISSION $13.50 INFO For booking and details, go to theprojector.sg

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DRAMA

LAAL SINGH CHADDHA (PG13)

169 minutes
Rating: 4/5

In this Indian remake of comedy-drama Forrest Gump (1994), Laal (played as an adult by Aamir Khan) is born to a single mother who farms her own land.

Intellectually, he is slower than other children. His mother (Mona Singh) puts him in a mainstream school anyway.

As he grows into adulthood, through school, the army and his jog across India, Laal becomes involved in the nation's most tumultuous events.

Khan's version Indianises Gump's uniquely American journey in clever ways. There are a couple of easy transpositions - Gump's Vietnam War becomes the Kargil War between India and Pakistan, and singer Elvis Presley is replaced by an Indian icon.

But there are other references that show the film-makers' desire to be historically and culturally specific. They include inserting Bollywood-style plot touches.

The arc of the Lieutenant Dan character, played by Gary Sinise in the original film, for example, has been morphed into a fun enemy-turned-best-friend plot thread.

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DOCUMENTARY

FIRE OF LOVE (PG)

93 minutes, showing at The Projector
Rating: 4/5

French scientists Katia and Maurice Krafft were united by their single-minded devotion to the study of volcanoes. This is a documentary of the husband-and-wife volcanologists living and, ultimately, dying for their passion, swept away by pyroclastic flow off Japan's Mount Unzen in 1991.

For two decades, the Kraffts chased eruptions around the world, documenting their discoveries. Theirs was the most spectacular imagery of volcanoes ever recorded.

Director Sara Dosa drew from 200 hours of their 16mm expedition footage plus thousands of photographs, and the all-archival movie eschews hard science for a visual wonder of glowing craters, molten avalanches, ash clouds and orange pulsing lava-like psychedelic art.