Hulu continues to be a movie lover’s secret weapon in February 2022, getting ahead of Oscars buzz with the streaming debut of Guillermo del Toro’s carnival noir Nightmare Alley, starring Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett as a sham psychic and a conniving psychiatrist playing a dangerous of cat and mouse in ‘40s Albany, New York.
And the Oscar winning director is in good company. We don’t say that just because another del Toro picture, The Shape Of Water (2017), hits Hulu in February: Two standout 2021 indies, the Indigenous coming-of-age story Beans and the post-#MeToo Hollywood satire The Beta Test, are also debuting this month. They’ll sit beside honest-to-goodness modern classics like Whiplash (2014) and The Tree Of Life (2011), both of which got the elusive “A” grade in their A.V. Club reviews.
Beans (2021)
Beans (Available 2/4)This debut feature from writer-director Tracey Deer illuminates a specifically French-Canadian and Native coming-of-age story that’s heavy handed in some ways and delicate in others. The latter aspects are largely owed to 13-year-old Mohawk actress Kiawentiio, who stars as the title character. The story is based on Deer’s own childhood memories of the “Oka Crisis,” a three-month standoff in 1990 where two Mohawk communities blocked the roads leading onto tribal land, including a cemetery, that the Quebec regional government was planning to turn into a golf course … And the virulence of the racism Deer weaves into her story—including a real-life event where Beans, her mother, and her little sister have rocks and slurs hurled at them—is painful to watch.Through Kiawentiio, Deer uses this pain to show how exposure to hate can affect a young person’s life, as Beans transforms from a sweet, trusting child to a sullen, rebellious teenager over the course of those three months. There are aspects of the story that are typical coming-of-age fare—a first drink, a first kiss—and aspects that are unique to a time and place in history. Without the latter, Beans would be memorable mostly for Kiawentiio’s intuitive performance as the title character, which shows a vulnerability that’s remarkable for an actor her age. But the projection of universal experiences onto this very specific backdrop has a poignancy all its own. [Katie Rife]Read our review of Beans from the Toronto International Film Festival
