‘On The Fringe’ Review: Hot-Button Eviction Thriller Starring Penélope Cruz Sticks Up A Righteous Finger At Landlords [Venice]
theplaylist.netHeavy on Loachian social realism and undergirded by the intensity and heavy stakes of a Safdie Brothers flick, Juan Diego Botto’s gritty eviction thriller “On the Fringe” — produced by Penélope Cruz, who also lends her name to the billing sheet — makes for hard-hitting stuff.
Premiering at the Venice Film Festival today in the Orrizonti section, here’s a slice of agitprop that feels as timely as ever, with the energy crisis surging across Europe, the costs of living rocketing from shore to shore, and society’s most marginalized left to pick up the tab.
Anyone with half a heart and half a brain will be quickly won over by its interweaving stories, following three different people in the same Spanish city living under the cold, foreboding shadow of red-stamp eviction notices: though a little baggy in the second act, the first and final thirty-minutes are appropriately earnest and affecting.
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