EMA (2019)

EMA has a very intriguing idea (a woman wants to adopt the child she had already adopted and sent back to the system) that's perplexingly pushed to the side for most of the running time. After sitting through a lot of filler, the movie finally went back to the premise... only to execute it with eye-rolling plot twists. There are some erotic scenes and, based on how they were presented, I assumed the movie was written and directed by men. When the end credits started rolling, my guess was confirmed. The dialogue is clearly unnatural on purpose. It's supposed to establish a certain kind of atmosphere, but it came off as laughable instead. It's hard to judge Sergio Armstrong's cinematography. Although there are moments where the images are meant to look striking, most scenes are so desaturated to the point where everything looks gray. He also did that in the excellent THE CLUB (also co-written and directed by Pablo Larraín), but it made sense because of how dark the story was. Not that this story is joyful, but the drama doesn't reach the same levels. That's the difference between "unpleasant to watch yet beautiful" and "simply ugly."

4/10
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