Horses are good company -- The Witcher

The White Countess is a historical drama from Merchant + Ivory + Kazuo Ishiguro and my dad and I both liked it pretty well. Set in Shanghai in 1936, the movie follows a couple of people who have washed up in the city after fleeing other places. They have to flee again at the end of the film when the Japanese invade, so it's like this little eddy in time, where people are relatively safe and make these connections, before being swept back into the current of world events. (As Amos from the Expanse calls it, "The Churn": when the rules of survival change).

Ralph Fiennes plays a former American diplomat who has a dream of setting up a perfect nightclub. He's blind after experiencing some kind of accident. He seems to want to move on from his previous life and connections.

For his nightclub staff, he recruits Sofia (Natasha Richardson), a former Russian countess who got kicked out of Russia during the revolution. Sofia is the more interesting character here; she is living in poverty with her daughter and her in-laws, supporting them all by being a sex worker, which also earns her scorn and suspicion from her mother-in-law (Vanessa Redgrave) in particular.

This film is fairly low on plot, and allows you to really spend time with the characters; you can tell it's based on a book. There were a few odd choices here (like why are we focusing on this white American man, idk maybe that is a marketing ploy) but overall I liked this!