Catching up on last year's better foreign film releases is one good reason the streaming services exist, as these films would not normally enjoy commercial runs.

Monster (Japan - Amazon Prime on Demand) - This beautifully executed film was screened in Manila, but only at Festivals and small independent cinemas, such as Cinema 76. It has a Rashomon effect/premise - the same set of facts given different interpretations by different individuals to help unravel the truth; but concerns itself with a small school and the circumstances surrounding two of the students and how they affect the behavior of the people around them. This includes the single mother of one of the boys, the teacher of the boys, the principal of the school, and so on. This was awarded Best Screenplay at Cannes last year, and it’s easy to see why the film was such a darling at the Festival. Suppose the Kurosawa Rashomon film harped on the unreliability of witnesses. In that case, this film of Hirokazu Koreeda is more about the elusiveness of truth and how children ‘escape’ the harsh reality of their world.

The ‘friendship’ between two boys in one class is at the story's center. One is the child of an overprotective single mother, and her POV kicks off the story as she thinks her son is being mistreated by his homeroom teacher. The son has a friend in this other boy whose classmates are constantly bullied for being ‘girl-like.’ It’s a friendship with unique layers. When we get the POV of the teacher, it would seem that the monster in the class is the son of a single Mom, and we’re thrown off balance, seeing the same incidents that the mother witnessed but in a different light. This is the particular ‘magic’ that the screenplay conjures up, further complicated when the POV of the school’s headmistress and that of the other boy come into play. It is rendered in a straight-headed style that belies the careful plotting, acting, and editing. Masterful film-making.

Fallen Leaves (Finland - Amazon Prime on Demand) - Proletariat love and how it survives despite the grim realities of their lives is one of the major themes tackled by this unassuming film. It’s got a wisp of a narrative; not much happens, yet it manages to charm us during its running time via its simplicity and direction. Sure, there may not be much to remember or discuss after, beyond whether the choices made are the right ones, but one can’t help but feel you’ve had a brush with reality and how these relationships of couples we see on the street of any ordinary city, have come to be. At one level, it’s about acceptance of the frailties and deficiencies of the person in front of you while still acknowledging that they’re the one for you. The film beguiles in a way that’s hard to analyze.

Directed by Aki Kaurismäki, this film was Finland’s official entry to the Oscars for Best International Feature Film and had made the rounds of Cannes, Toronto, Telluride, and New York. It stars Alma Pöysti as Ansa, who works in a supermarket until she doesn’t. And there’s Jussi Vatanen as Holappa, who we first met working at a metal works company but lost his job and ended up on a construction site. It’s about alcoholism, isolation in an urban setting, job loss, and near despair. The two meet at a karaoke bar, but they don’t connect at all. The courtship is tentative, and each is trying to avoid getting hurt. And yet, we sense how these long silences are filled with longing. Everything here is filled with understatements, so what hope there is is treasured and closely guarded. Has its own charm.