So here's the thing,
As we get to the 2024 film festival in a couple of days, it's time I get around to posting my reflections on the films from the 2023 festival. Usual disclaimers - written in great haste shortly after the film, not a "review", just an attempt to capture my response and reflections, written primarily for myself to help me remember each film given the mass of movies I'll be seeing in a short space of time.
[Comments on the 39 films I saw during the 2023 film festival, after the jump]
Anatomy of a Fall
The film festival opened with this wonderfully understated courtroom drama, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes earlier in the year. Sandra Hüller plays Sandra, a successful author in a strained marriage, with a young son who is vision-impaired after a tragic accident. One day, the son returns from a walk to find the body of his father, who died after falling from the attic window. Was it an accident? Was it suicide? Or was he pushed, in which case Sandra is the only possible suspect.
Much of the film takes place in the courtroom, in the heat of the trial, and I appreciated the way director Justine Triet deliberately held us at a remove in those scenes - we weren't participants, we were observers watching from a distance. And we are never privy to any real information beyond what we are given in the trial - we don't see the husband and wife together before he dies, and while we do see the two together in moments that visualise the evidence being given at the trial, we are certainly never witness to any moments that would clarify any ambiguity around the case, and so we are left to judge what we think happened with only the information the jury has. And there is a lot of ambiguity here - while the film is certainly on Sandra's side, there is enough uncertainty around this crime that it seems a genuine possibility that she may have committed murder. I also appreciated how devoid of histrionics the film was when compared to other films in this genre - there's no big "You can't handle the truth!" moment; just a bunch of professionals in a room trying to test and explore the evidence to come to their best conclusion. The climactic courtroom moment doesn't even take place in a packed courtroom, but instead in a near-empty room where the only people present are those with an actual court function. The film so downplays its courtroom drama elements that even the delivery of a verdict, the moment the entire film has been building up to, nearly slips by without notice. And I loved this more restrained tone from the film, particularly as it gave a sense of authenticity to the story in a way that really amplified the tension.
But that sparse tone that the film adopts during the trial sequences vanishes once we leave the courtroom. Gone are the restrained, distanced shots, replaced with hand-held close-ups. There's a noticeable intimacy to these moments - watching Sandra with her son or with her longtime-friend-turned-lawyer - as we come to see these people as they are. It really drives home the artifice of that courtroom setting, and the real challenge that comes with trying to judge a person in those moments.
Hüller is just fantastic here. She brings a sense to Sandra of a character who has been completely destroyed by this experience, but who feels she needs to hold back on her grief for the sake of her son and to present a brave face for the court. There's guilt in her performance, that she does feel that she did kill him, even if she didn't physically push him, through her contributions to the ugliness of the marriage, or her failure to support him even when she knew of his mental health issues and she saw signs of possible suicidal tendencies. And as the trial begins to delve into the nature of her relationship with her husband, you feel her growing demoralisation as she realises she is going to have to stand in court and confess to her lowest moments, the things she's most ashamed of in her life.
Milo Machado-Graner is similarly fantastic as Sandra's son Daniel. It's through him that we particularly explore the fallibility of memory as he adjusts his evidence about his incident, perhaps because he realises he's misremembering, or perhaps to help his mother. And in the film's most shocking moment he goes to extreme lengths to try to process some of the information his mother gave on the stand, with the eagerness of a child who hasn't yet quite learned to process the risk and permanence of his actions. But it's also fascinating to watch this world through this young child's view - we understand what he did and did not know about his parents and his father's struggles, but there is a lot that they rightfully kept hidden from him and, as the trial goes on, it was intriguing to see his struggles to deal with insights into his parents' relationship that no child should never have.
It's a fantastic, enthralling experience. At 2 1/2 hours, it's not short, but there's a real urgency to the filmmaking that drives it forward and that ensures that it always holds you in its grip. I just loved it.
Reality
In 2017, a woman named Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran now working as a translator for a military contractor, printed a copy of a confidential document and sent it to an online news provider. Several weeks later, she returned home from the shops to find a team of FBI agents with a search warrant to search her house, car, and person. The agents made an audio recording of their conversation with Reality during the search, and this docu-drama presents, in something close to real-time, the 104 minutes as the search takes place, with the dialogue taken entirely from the transcript of the audio recording.
The fascinating thing about this verbatim approach is the way it spends time on moments that would almost always be elided over. I've seen many movies with search warrants being executed, and I've never seen anything that spends this much time on taking care of the pet dog, or the current location of the pet cat, or how long it will be before she can put away her perishable groceries, or exactly what firearms she owns (complete with amusement at her pink assault rifle), or which room would be best for the agents to have a conversation with Reality, whether she wants to sit down, whether she wants a drink of water. But it's in all of these moments, and in the time that they take, that you can feel the tension build up, as the agents just leave Reality to sit and stew in her realisation where this is all going. The agents speaking to her feel friendly, nice, but you become very aware that every moment is part of the interrogation, is part of trying to put her into a mindset where she will confess to her actions.
I really did enjoy Sydney Sweeney in the title role. She brings a nice tension to the character as we observe the version she presents to the agents - honest, open, a little bit confused by whatever is going on, but eager to help - while all the time there's a tension behind her eyes as she tries to think of a way out of this situation, trying to bluff her way into safety, or hoping against hope that perhaps the FBI are not here about that, that perhaps if she holds back any kind of confession she may discover that they are here about some other situation, something that will not result in her spending years in prison. And it's devastating when she eventually does break down and confess, because you can feel her realisation that her life as she knows it has ended.
The film is for first-time director Tina Satter, who previously worked on adapting this material as a play on stage, so she brings a real familiarity and confidence with the material. But I was impressed with how strong her filmmaking instincts were. For the most part, it's very moderated, very much a just-the-facts presentation, but she does well in embedding the audience in Reality's increasing sense of isolation in her house filled with people, her sense of violation as her entire world is turned over. The moments where the film does get showy arise when the film has to grapple with the realities of the situation. If the transcript includes some redacted text, the characters will glitch out of reality for a second to highlight that fact - even when we know broadly what was being said, the focus on presenting just-the-facts means that it's better to highlight the absence of actual dialogue then to invent dialogue that is not exactly what was said. The film also frequently cuts to the actual transcript being dramatised, or even to relevant Instagram posts from the real Reality Winner, all ensuring that the audience never loses its understanding that this is just a dramatisation, but it's also as close as we can get to an accurate presentation of actual events.
My only real issue with the film comes from the way that the constraints placed on the film, well, constrain the film. Because the film is so focused on recreating the 104 minutes of this search, and exactly replicating what was said at that time, there's limited ability to really discuss the wider issue. There's no real way to explore the merits or otherwise of Reality's actions or what her motivations were in leaking the document - after all, the biggest explanation she gave at the time was irritation that her employer was always playing Fox News. Nor is there really any way to place her actions in the broader context, to ask whether she was right to release this information, or to explore any comparisons between the punishment given to her against that imposed on other people who committed comparable crimes. But while I would be interested to see a film that did engage more fully with her choice and her motivations for making that choice, by its nature this film can never be that film.
That said, it is an excellent and riveting film, and I would recommend it.
Charcoal
In Brazil, a family in poverty struggles to cope, making money as charcoal burners, with a side-line in chicken meals with blood gravy. But then one day, the nurse taking care of their bedridden, nearly comatose, grandfather offers them a solution to their money troubles - they just need to euthanise the grandfather, and this will make room for a drug lord on the run to come and hide out in their home for some period of time. But this experience does not go well for them, especially as the drug lord is frustrated by having to go from living in a massive mansion with absolute luxury to living in a run-down, cramped house with empty shampoo bottles and needing to snort cocaine off a child's plastic toy.
Hitchcock used to talk about something called "fridge logic". The idea essentially is that it's possible to have something in a film that doesn't really make sense, but as long as you don't notice this while you're watching the film, that's fine. If a few hours later as you walk to the fridge you find yourself thinking about the film and suddenly realise it had a logical flaw, that's not a problem because the film so captured your attention at the time that you didn't notice this flaw. However, if as you're watching the film you're thinking about how it doesn't really hold together, that's a problem with the film.
Unfortunately, that's where I was with Charcoal. There is such a massive leap from "we're having financial difficulties" to "let's kill grandfather" that I was baffled by how quickly the characters made the jump to that decision. And while crime lords may have a view that life is cheap, I struggled to comprehend how anyone could be confident that approaching a regular person with such a proposal would be successful. And how do you, as a regular person, make the jump to being okay with killing a family member? Then they make the decision to burn the grandfather's body in the charcoal furnaces - which just prompted me to wonder what the plan was going to be when the time came to publicly acknowledge the grandfather's death (a question the film tries to slide past in hope that it's not noticed - believe me, I noticed). And then you see how this arrangement will work, and you wonder why it was necessary to kill the grandfather in the first place - it's not like the drug lord is pretending to be the grandfather, and the drug lord is sleeping on a makeshift bed separate from where the grandfather was, so the only reason they needed to kill the grandfather seems to be to free up a (very soiled) mattress. And that seems unnecessary. Plus there's the fact that the characters, for the most part, don't really seem to be too conflicted about having ended the life of a family member - other than one scene, where the father drunkenly forces the family to celebrate the birthday of the dead grandfather, once he's dead the grandfather seems to fade from memory. Most of the tension in the story instead seems to come from the challenges of trying to hide this person in the home, whether it be from his chafing against the constraints of the house or a consequence of living in a small village where everyone seems to just casually wander into each other's home. And then there's the late film suggestion that this drug lord may not be the only person being hidden in this small village - all of which just started to strain credulity. And to be clear, these were not issues that occurred to me after the film - these were questions and problems I had while watching the film that were never answered.
The disappointing thing is that it is an enjoyable film. It retained my engagement throughout the film. There are some nice moments of laugh-out-loud black humour that lightened the experience. And I found the characters really rather sympathetic - surprisingly so, given the action these people take at the start of the film - and this speaks to how much the actors did work to bring something to the characters that we could connect with.
But unfortunately, I simply didn't feel that the film held together, and that was a real problem.
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.
I've never read the original Judy Blume novel on which this is based. I'm obviously aware of its place as a modern classic for young adults, but being a boy growing up, the only Blume books it was socially acceptable for me to read were the Fudge novels, and there's no way I would ever have read anything about a girl's fearful approach to puberty. So I came to this film without any particular expectations or prior experience. And seen solely as a movie, the film was fantastic.
In 1970, 11-year-old Margaret is distressed to discover her family is moving from New York, away from her beloved grandmother, out to New Jersey. Once there, she falls in with a group of friends led by a proto-Mean-Girl named Nancy, who is obsessed with boys, increasing the size of her bust, and experiencing her first period. At the same time, her teacher suggests she undertake a research project that for the first time has her considering religion and trying to work out what exactly she believes in.
I can certainly see why this story would have such resonance for young girls. It feels like a very honest portrait of what that experience of growing up is like. As a boy, we get the lucky end of the puberty experience; girls have to go through much more extreme body changes, both visibly and intimate, and then as you develop you get more attention, not just from boys, but also from girls who gossip about you doing "hand stuff" just because you've developed breasts. And there's this weird tension as a young person where you want to grow up, you want to be seen as mature, as an adult, but at the same time it feels as though becoming an adult is genuinely terrifying. And the film is extremely effective in portraying and exploring the challenge of that experience. There's also the weird up and down of emotions that kids develop as they approach puberty, where they seemingly leap from highs to lows in an instant, where everything feels as though the world is collapsing under them and they can't find a firm foothold, and the film sits you down in that emotional space and forces you to live in it. At the same time, the film is also funny - consistently laugh-out-loud funny, drawing reliable humour from well-drawn characters behaving in realistically stupid ways that we relate to too much.
I really did appreciate how much time the film gave to the adult characters. It's often very easy in stories like this for the adults to feel like side characters, much in the way that kids often see their parents as beings whose sole purpose is wrapped up in being their parent. But Benny Safdie and Rachel McAdams create fully developed characters with a genuine relationship together that feels like it's been strengthened through trials and challenges. Rachel McAdams in particular is as good as she's been in years, as a woman trying to find her place away from work, while Kathy Bates as the exuberant grandmother brings a lot of memorable high points to what would otherwise be a fairly minor character.
But ultimately the film does belong to Abby Ryder Fortson as the titular Margaret, and she is just delightful - whether in the way her face lights up whenever she sees the (socially unacceptable) boy she's secretly crushing on, or the way she's so relieved to find a group of friends that she allows herself to not notice the cruelty of the group's leader, or her joyous excitement at spending time with her grandmother, or the frustration she feels when she tried praying and God didn't fix the problem she was praying about. It's a sharp and convincing performance from someone who apparently has already built quite a career, and I hope her talent continues to develop.
It's just a wonderful movie, and I'm glad that I finally had a chance to connect to this material, albeit 35 years late.
The Delinquents
So I had two possible choices for my Saturday night movie. I could have gone to see the new Wes Anderson film, Asteroid City, but I made a conscious decision not to see it because I know that it's getting a general release in the next few weeks, and I can see it then. Instead I decided to see this Argentinian film about a bank robbery, because I figured this would be my only chance to see the film.
I chose... poorly.
The film follows two colleagues working at a bank, Morán and Román. Morán steals hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bank, and only afterwards does he enlist Román to hold the money for him. Morán is resigned to spending several years in jail - in fact he voluntarily turns himself in - but he reasons the 3 1/2 years in jail will be worth it if he can come out and access the stolen money. But, between the ongoing investigation into the robbery being held at the bank and the general tension of having this money in your house, Román doesn't cope quite so well with the knowledge of holding all this money.
I should have paid attention when I saw that the runtime for this light-hearted crime heist film was three hours long. This is simply too long for this type of film, and just makes the film feel lethargic. Scenes play out much longer than they feel they need to, while the film makes use of the slowest dissolves in the history of cinema to transition from one scene to the next. But there is so much time wasted on irrelevancies - for instance, the opening scenes in the film revolve around a woman whose authorised signature at the bank is identical to that of an unrelated man. This feels so weirdly improbable that it must surely be a part of the plan for the bank robbery - but no, it has nothing to do with anything, and once a voicemail message is left for the second customer to contact the bank, it never comes up again. It's not part of the bank robbery, it's just something irrelevant we spent five minutes on.
And the bank robbery is hardly Ocean's 11. Part of Morán's job is to count the money in the vault and bring money out to the tills, so all he needs to do is sneak a bag into the box he uses to carry money in and out of the vault with, and that's your robbery done. It takes quite a bit of effort to make the most boring bank robbery in cinema history, but I think they achieve it here.
As the film carries on it just drags even more. Román decides he needs to get the money out of his house, so Morán suggest he go to some out-of-the-way town where there's a perfect hiding spot where no-one will ever find it. But while there, he happens to meet an aspiring filmmaker called Ramón, along with his girlfriend Morna, and her sister Norma, picnicking by a river, and suddenly we spend 20 minutes just with Román hanging out with these three for the day. And sure, Norma later does come to the city and have an affair with Roman - but we did not need to spend several minutes with them by the river playing a "name the city" game.
Part of the issue is that the lethargic tone also completely destroys any sense of the passage of time. Has it been a day or two since the bank robbery? Has it been several months? Has it been a year? I genuinely have no idea. This uncertainty is made worse when the film decides to squeeze much more event into a time period then there can possibly be. For example, the film initially seems to establish very clearly that there is only a couple of days between the robbery and Morán giving himself up - this seems clear by the fact that the bank's investigation into the robbery has only just started when word comes through of Morán's arrest. Except that much later we learn, in an extended 20 minute flashback, that there must have been several weeks between the robbery and the arrest, because after the robbery Morán also happened to meet Ramón, Morna, and Norma, and spent an extended amount of time with them - probably at least a few weeks - during which he too fell in love with Norma, in the kind of wildly improbable coincidence that you might be able to accept if you squint at it, but it really does feel like the film is putting its plotting (such as it is) ahead of credibility.
Then there's the illogical behaviour of the characters. Román goes to visit Morán in prison, which makes Morán angry because it draws attention to their connection - but also it's convenient that he came to visit because Morán desperately needs him to put $30,000 into someone's bank account or else Morán is going to be murdered in prison. Or there's the point where Román goes on a trip for several days, and calls in sick at work, but doesn't think to tell his girlfriend that he's going away, causing her to worry and called the bank, which then exposes the fact that he's doing something suspicious right at the point where he's under investigation because of the robbery. In what world does that behaviour make sense?
Now, it's entirely possible that there is some greater thematic richness to the film that I'm just not seeing. Perhaps the customers with the identical signatures and the anagram club of Morán / Román / Ramón / Morna / Norma all point to some bigger theme in the film. But if there is, I was so completely disengaged by the film that I just didn't care enough to want to find it. And the longer the film went on, the more I hated it.
The Munekata Sisters
One of these days, I will actually sit down and make a concerted effort to explore the works of the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Prior to this, I'd only seen Tokyo Story, which really does deserve its legendary status. The interesting thing about the film festival's decision to screen The Munekata Sisters is that it's not a film I've heard people discuss as one of his best - I don't think it has the reputation of a film like Late Spring or Floating Weeds. But it's still a real delight.
The older of the two titular sisters, Setsuko, works to keep her bar afloat while in an unhappy marriage to an unemployed drunkard. She still harbours feelings for "the one that got away", Hiroshi, so when he returns to Japan after several years, the younger sister Mariko decides to try to push the two to reunite, although she also is secretly in love with Hiroshi.
So the film is a fascinating exploration about the changes in Japanese culture that occurred around the war. Setsuko is a product of the pre-war era, she's more traditional, wears a kimono, married young and feels obliged to stay married despite her unhappiness in the relationship. But Mariko came of age in the immediate post-war era, where the cultural structures were lessened, so she feels freer, she wears Western clothing, she wants to find her own path in life. And there's a constant conflict between the two sisters and their differing worldviews. In my favourite moment of the film, the two just sit and have a discussion about what it means to be old-fashioned and what it means to be up-to-date, about the timelessness of one versus the arbitrary nature of whatever is in fashion, about the constraints of one versus the freedom of the other. It's very much a moment where the central theme of the film is stated outright, but it's an intriguing discussion, well acted, and thoroughly engaging.
As for Ozu's direction, it's fascinating to watch. I enjoy how patient he is, frequently just pausing the action, letting everyone just take a breath. And I do love how fascinated he seems to be about people thinking - he's constantly bringing the camera in on a few moments of silence as the characters sit in a comfortable quiet, or lets the camera continue to run after the drama of a scene has played out, so that we can observe the characters processing whatever has just happened. It's difficult to put in words exactly why this is so enrapturing, but it brings a reality and a heart to the work that I loved.
It's not perfect - there's a very convenient death in the third act that manages to resolve a lot of the drama in a way I did find unsatisfying, and if this really is seen as lesser Ozu, then I suspect it's due partly to some of that convenient plotting. But it is a completely charming film, that did reinforce the need for me to address this significant blind spot.
Perfect Days
To start, I should acknowledge that, due to my previous film overrunning, I unfortunately missed the first 10 minutes of the film. So when the end credits list the cast in order of appearance, and the first character credited is "Woman with Brush", I have no idea who that character was. Fortunately, this was not a film that left me feeling lost - within a couple of minutes, I just felt completely settled into the world of the film.
Hirayama is an ageing man working as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Every day he drives to visit all of the toilets on his round, taking great pride in his work to get them as clean as possible - he even uses a mirror to check the places he can't see. (His young work colleague doesn't understand the care he puts to the work, since the toilets will just get dirty again.) He takes lunch near a local shrine, where he takes abstract black and white photos of light shining through leaves, or he takes a freshly budding plant home to be cared for. He goes to the public baths. He very much has an attachment to the way things were - in the car he listens to Lou Reed or Van Morrison on cassette, while he carries a camera around with him to take photographs on film to capture any moments. He's extremely restrained and taciturn; his work colleague even jokes that he's never heard Hirayama speak. But then a collection of moments start to throw out his routine - his young colleague's girlfriend expresses an appreciation for his music; he finds the first move of a tic-tac-toe game hidden in a bathroom; his young niece comes to stay with him after running away from home.
There's something really satisfying about the film that is difficult to express. Perhaps, much like Hirayama's satisfaction at having done a good job, there's also a real satisfaction in watching a job be done well - even if that job is cleaning a toilet. Perhaps it's that Hirayama is a genuinely fascinating character, who is happy with the anonymity that comes with his job and who through his quietness really draws the audience in to learn more about him - and a late film hint about his background brings a real shading to his character. Perhaps it's just that he's a genuinely good-hearted person, giving money to his young colleague so that he can spend time with his girlfriend, or looking with concern for the homeless man who is always at this one park, just to make sure he's okay. Central to this is Koji Yakusho, whose work as Hirayama is just a delight. Because the character is so restrained, you have to look to the other clues that the character is giving you to their internal world, and he brings a real sense of joy and pride to the character.
I do find it intriguing when a film-maker decides to make a film that takes place in a culture outside their own, so I was interested to see German director Wim Wenders making a film in Japan. Could you make much the same film in Germany? Yes, perhaps But, without wanting to seem to applying stereotypes, I think the culture of restraint in that country is a big path of why Wenders choose to make this film there - a German version of Hirayama would have been very different. In any case, Wenders, working with Takuma Takasaki on the screenplay, has crafted a real gem here. They've created a character piece centred around a person who is instantly recognisable, and without any big or transformational moments, they slide the character ever so slowly towards change. It's a film that is extremely sweet, but never saccharine, and and that gives you as the viewer a genuine sense of uplift. I loved it.
River
A young waitress, Mikato, working at an inn at a small Japanese town, pauses for a moment to look at the river behind the inn, before going upstairs to clean a room with a colleague. But two minutes later, she suddenly finds herself back down at the river, and when she goes upstairs both she and her colleague know exactly what each other is going to say. When two minutes later she finds herself back at the river a third time, they realise everyone in this town is trapped in a time loop, and everyone in the town also knows it.
Two years ago, one of my favourite films of the festival was Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes, a science-fiction comedy about a television set that showed events from two minutes in the future. That film was the first film from director Junta Yamaguchi and the Europe Kikako theatre troupe, and now with their second film, this team is easily establishing itself as master of the inventive high-concept short-term time-travel comedy. While this film is perhaps not as technically impressive/insane as that earlier film (which presented itself as a single take, complete with pre-recorded recursions on the television set), they still take on the technical challenge of presenting each loop as its own single take - which is a challenging choice for a project as clearly low-budget as this.
It's a great example of how you don't need a big budget to make a great film; you just need a strong script. Here they have a solid premise for a film, but they also really think through the consequences of that premise and just how nightmarish that is. Think about Groundhog Day - yes, it must be awful to relive the same day over and over again, but a day is also enough time to do something; for instance, over enough loops it gives Bill Murray time to learn to play the piano. But imagine you're reliving the same two minutes over and over again. There's no time to go anywhere that's more than 100 metres away, there's no time to do anything. For some people it might be great, like the author who feels trapped by an impending deadline and suddenly realises he's freed from that obligation. But imagine being the people who were in the middle of eating a meal, and are suddenly faced with the prospect of only ever eating that meal for all eternity, never again getting to drink hot sake because there's no time to heat it. Imagine being the man who has already just reached the point where he's had enough of being in the bath, and suddenly finds that he's trapped in that bath for all eternity. I felt terrible for Mikato, who always has to start every loop running up stairs. Or there's the tension of realising that you're stuck forever in a room with someone you really do not like - fights break out, there's several (temporary) suicides, one person even resorts to killing the person they really cannot stand. For staff of the inn, they're always working without an opportunity for a break - and how exactly are they going to be paid for their work? And even if you're with people you like, you can't do anything - Mikato tries to go on a date with her boyfriend, watching a movie on a phone in two-minute chunks. Or when people in the town decide to gather for a meeting to work out what to do, they have to stretch the meeting out across multiple loops, and they always lose the first half of the loop because it takes everyone a minute to go from their starting positions back to the meeting room to pick up where they left off.
Now, to be clear, while I have highlighted the general horror of this premise, and the film definitely plays around with all of this, it's also a genuinely hilarious comedy. This is a fun, joyous film, filled with enjoyable characters, that loves how goofy this premise is and takes real delight in testing how wacky they can get. It's just a thoroughly enjoyable time. I was already interested in this team after their earlier film, and now I'm just completely sold on them.
Fantastic Machine
A documentary about videography and its impact on our world, which takes its title from a comment by King Edward VII, who commissioned the film pioneer Georges Méliès to film his coronation in 1902. Méliès instead staged the coronation at his studio in France with actors, and when Edward saw the film he apparently marvelled "What a fantastic machine! It even filmed things that didn't happen!"
So here are some of the things that get discussed or shown in this film:
* Election night coverage
* Reaction videos to Game of Thrones
* The difference between what's in the frame and what's out of frame or behind the camera
* The way people will ride the limits of acceptable sexualisation in their TikTok videos
* The way people will use their TikTok following to draw paying customers to their adult content on OnlyFans
* How-To videos, showing everything from how to save yourself if you fall through ice, or how to make a homemade bomb, or how to defrost your freezer
* Leni Reifenstahl talking in the 90s with pride about the techniques she used to film Hitler and the Nazis for Triumph of the Will
* Daredevils filming themselves in extreme situations
* Ted Turner taking pride in his channel showing The Beverly Hillbillies reruns because people want a break from the news
* Ted Turner founding the 24-hour news channel with CNN
* Political propaganda
* The use of the Netflix algorithm to push people towards watching Adam Sandler films rather than Schindler's List
* The psychological analysis used to develop TV programmes that will capture an audience to whom advertisers can sell Coca-Cola
* People livestreaming themselves sleeping
* People calling the police on livestreamers as a joke
* The difference between our personalities speaking to a camera vs speaking to someone in person
And it goes on - the Voyager satellite, January 6, and on, and on...
And if that seems like just a long list of stuff, that's pretty much how the film felt. It's under 90 minutes long, which is much too short to cover all of this material. And so the film just takes a scattergun, hit-and-run approach to the material. No sooner have you heard about one issue when the film moves on to another matter. And if you ever pause to actually think about anything that the film is saying, you'll wind up five or six issues behind the film. The film is in a constant race against itself to squeeze everything in - oh my gosh this is terrible look at that that is so cool oh damn that is just so fucked up look a puppy that's cute but it has no legs that makes me sad...
There's so much squeezed into the film that it never has a chance to develop any significant thought or a coherent thesis. If I had to summarise this film, it would probably be that the way we in this society film our entire lives is probably bad ... except for the ways it's good, and in those circumstances it's a good thing ... but it's mostly a bad thing ... ish.
It's just all over the place. It's an enjoyable film, in the way that it would be fun for someone to curate a YouTube feed for you, giving you just the best videos available, but I suspected that's not what the filmmakers were trying to achieve. And that's a problem.
De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Even as I bought my ticket for this film, I was dreading seeing it. I'd heard it was a really good film, which was why I was going to see it. At the same time, I'm someone who cannot stand the thought of watching Dr Pimple Popper, so the prospect of seeing a two-hour documentary filled with graphic scenes of surgery really did not appeal to me. But I made a decision for myself - I will not look away from this film. No matter what they show I will not look away. Even if they show eye stuff (shudder) I will not look away.
Filmed over a number of years in Paris hospitals, the film is a portrait of the intense amount of effort that goes into keeping a person functioning. There's no commentary to the film; our only context for anything we watch are the conversations that the medical staff have with each other about what they are doing at the moment. So we will spend several minutes watching something being cut from a person's body, and it's not until we hear the doctor express surprise at the size of the prostate that we realise what we've been looking at. There's a moment where some medical staff are examining a large piece of flesh - for some reason it actually looks on one side like a well-done steak, all charred and blackened - and the staff have a ruler to measure the size of the tumor, and it's not until they turn this pound of flesh over and you'll see the nipple that you realise this is someone's breast removed in a mastectomy. But the film is not just about the efforts that go into keeping our bodies functioning - we also rely on functioning minds, which is why some of the hardest footage to watch are the moments with dementia patients, who seem to barely have any understanding where they are and who become fixated on different things.
For the most part, I was surprised to realise I didn't find the surgical scenes too difficult to watch. A big part of that, I think, is the fact that so much of the footage was shot using microscopic cameras, where every little detail is so blown up that it becomes impossible to actually connect anything I see on screen with any form of recognisable viscera. It was much harder to watch when the body parts were recognisable. There was the dreaded eye stuff (shudder), with an operation to replace the lens in the patient's eye. Or there was a man's penis, with a massive tube inserted up his urethra.
And in the film's most memorable and enthralling moment, we watch as an emergency caesarean is performed, with the entire process, from first incision to the nurse checking the baby in the neonatal unit, presented in a single shot. When they take the scalpel and cut open the mother, it's fast, it seems almost easy - just three quick slices with the scalpel and she's cut open. When they make those cuts, the human body just seems so frail, so easy to damage. But then it takes two people, each pulling with all their might with both hands, to open the mother up to free the baby. And you see the effort involved to pull her open, and it just seems as though there's so much strength in the body. And then you see this impossibly tiny human being, and the whole process just seems miraculous. And I think that's essentially the thesis of the film - the miracle of human existence and the simultaneous fragility and strength of the human body.
At the same time, we are reminded that there are people doing all these things, and they are working within a human system - for both the good and the bad that that means. We hear a doctor complaining about overworking and his team being understaffed. Or they complain about not having the resources they need. At one point we witness a surgery potentially going disastrously wrong with unexpected blood in the wound, but someone dropped the only suction tube onto the floor and now there's a question about whether the excess blood can be cleared up.
The footage presented in this film is simply extraordinary. It really is a film that makes a massive impact. It's not an easy film to watch, but I would recommend it.
Beyond Utopia
Full disclosure: I missed the first 5 or 10 minutes of this film after stupidly going to the wrong cinema. But I rushed and made it to the correct cinema without missing too much, and I was glad I did because I really liked this documentary.
The "utopia" of the title is North Korea; at one point in the film, a defector from North Korea comments that everyone in that country is taught that their country is a utopia and that everywhere in the world is worse than where they are. The film is essentially broken up into three interweaving strands. In the first, we get a basic history of the creation of North Korea (I'd always thought the country division was a consequence of the Korean War, but apparently they were divided much earlier, and the war happened because the North invaded the South; I am very bad at history), along with stories from various defectors about the realities of life in North Korea. The second follows Pastor Seungeun Kim, who has apparently helped 1000 people defect, as he helps a family of five (including both a grandmother and young children) escape to safety after they cross the border into China. And the third follows Soyeon Lee, a defector who struggles to get word about her son after he is caught trying to cross the river into China.
The material about North Korea as a country is very interesting, if presented as fairly standard documentary fare. We get some light insight into how North Korea came to be, how the Kim family came into power, and how and why the initial success of North Korea declined to the failure of today. We get a number of talking heads from different defectors talking about their own experiences, and no matter how often you hear stories about life in North Korea, it never fails to astonish - whether it be the story of the white-gloved inspectors making surprise checks to ensure each family's portraits of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong Un have been adequately dusted, or the way people have to collect their own feces and give them to the government to be used as fertiliser, or the strength of anti-American propaganda (so strong that the grandmother expresses fear that, while the documentary makers seem nice, they might turn evil at any moment), or the fact that North Korea borrowed elements from the Nativity to be part of the story of the birth of Kim Il-Sung, who is literally revered as a deity!
The most dynamic and engaging part of the film is certainly the part following Pastor Kim in his efforts to rescue this family. When we hear stories about people defecting, it often seems like it's surely not that difficult - just find a place where you can cross the border into a different country without being seen. But watching this film, it seems a miracle that anyone ever manages to defect. The direct border between North and South Korea is impassible, so the only option is to cross into China, and then from there travel to Vietnam, and then to Laos, all of which are communist countries with good relationships with North Korea that will send defectors back if they are caught. Only once they've travelled thousands of miles, and have reached Thailand, can they be said to have escaped. Meanwhile, Pastor Kim uses funding provided by his church to make bribe payments to officials to look the other way, or make payments to mercenary "brokers" who help people escape but who do so out of financial considerations - and since China will also put up significant rewards for anyone helping apprehend defectors, there is always the risk that the brokers will see more financial benefit to handing the family over for a reward. Or perhaps the brokers might make more money if they sell the defectors into sex slavery or harvest their organs. Or there's the chance that brokers might suddenly extort more money by refusing to take them any further without further payment. And meanwhile the trip is insanely risky, having to deal with the famously massive surveillance system in China, or the need to cross three mountains in the jungle in the middle of the night, or avoid checkpoints, or take a perilous river trip that could kill them when the freedom of Thailand is literally in sight. There's genuine suspense and tension in these scenes - even if we assume that the family is going to make it, it just feels like they are doing something impossible.
Unfortunately, the one part of the film that didn't work for me was Soyeon Lee's story. And that's a shame, because in a lot of ways it's the most urgent part of the story - what happens to people who are caught trying to defect. The problem is that inevitably there's just not enough information to know what's going on - we are left with Lee sitting in South Korea talking on the telephone to a third-party broker who is passing on messages about the situation with her son after he is caught. No-one really knows entirely what happened - they are not even sure he was actually trying to defect, since there is a suggestion he may have just been trying to get his mother to return to North Korea. No-one knows what will happen to her son, whether he will be sent to prison, to work camp, or to a concentration camp, whether he'll be able to be released in a few years or whether he'll be held for the rest of his life, what torture he'll undergo, whether he'll be killed. And it is devastating for her as a mother to go through that, and it's important to explore that. But as a movie, it's very hard to make that material work cinematically, especially when contrasted with the excitement and suspense of the defector family and their long trek to Thailand and freedom, and so every time we return to Lee the film feels like it loses energy. I'm not sure how you resolve that issue, because this is important material that needed to be in the film, but the way it's presented here simply didn't work for me.
But on the whole, it's a fascinating, disturbing, and challenging documentary. It may not all work, but it is a significant film. A few years ago, there was an excellent documentary in the festival called Under the Sun, which was a horrific portrait of life in North Korea and the two films would make a perfect if disturbing pairing. Both of these films are worth seeking out.
Afire
Leon is a young author struggling with his newest book. Needing to get away to finish the novel before his publisher visits to discuss it, he accepts an invitation from his friend Felix for the two of them to go to his family's holiday home. What they didn't realise until they arrived is that there's already a young woman named Nadja living there.
Director Christian Petzold has become a strange figure for me. Over the past few years, I've taken to watching his new films every time one appears in the festival, and there's always something in each of his films that bothers me, that I couldn't get past, yet there's something about him I can't put my finger on that keeps pulling me back to his work. Here, the thing that really didn't work for me was unfortunately the main character. Leon is not a nasty character, but he is unpleasant to be around. He's sullen, moody, irritable, bad-tempered, I don't know that he smiles even once - a lot of his behaviour frankly reminded me of a teenager taken on a family holiday he resented going on. Now, some of that behaviour might be justified, or at least explained, by his insecurity over whether his new novel is actually coming together, but I found very little indication about what would make Felix want to spend any time with Leon, much less go away to a holiday home with him. He also shows no sign of having any interest in anyone else - there's a late film revelation about another character where the audience is well ahead of Leon in figuring this information out, because he seems to have just ignored very obvious signs. So when this film is about someone whose presence you just do not enjoy, that's a problem.
Then there's the point where he confesses his love for Nadja, which just made me wonder when this actually happened. He claims he fell in love with her the first time he saw her, but if so this sense of being overwhelmed was completely invisible to me. Every interaction between the two feels so completely marked by an annoyance at having to deal with her that I just could not accept the notion of his love - are we intended to view him as a 10-year-old showing his affection for a girl by dunking her pigtail in the inkwell. It's as though we are supposed to just assume, because these are the lead male and female roles, that of course they'll fall in love. The film ends on a moment where Nadja smiles at Leon, and I struggled to identify anything in their previous interactions that would justify such a warm reaction, as opposed to maybe a minor nod of acknowledgement or something similar.
But also I have a real problem with the entire writing on the film. I just don't know that I believed that anyone had any existence outside of the film. Beyond Leon's irritability, I would struggle to identify anything that distinguishes any of the characters in the film. They seem to exist solely to be present and fulfil a plot purpose, without having any sense of an internal life. And then there are the points where people just behave in a way that I could not recognise - for instance, if you were staying in an area that was dealing with a major problem of wildfires, and you had no form of transportation, I feel you would take deliberate steps to protect yourself, as opposed to doing what they do here, which is just rely on whatever the typical wind patterns are in the area. It's just so bafflingly unconvincing.
And yet ... and yet, I enjoyed watching the film, even as I was really bothered by it. And that's the contradiction I keep coming to with Petzold - there's something in there that works, even if the film is a whole does not, and it keeps pulling at me. Give it another two years, and there will be another Petzold film, and I'll go and see it hoping that this will be the one that works for me, and it will not be, and it will disappoint me. Apparently I'm fine with that.
Palm Trees and Power Lines
This one I loved. I couldn't say I enjoyed it, but my gosh I loved it.
Lea is a 17 year old girl living in a small California town with nothing to do in her summer holiday. She fights with her single-mother, she sunbathes with her best friend, she has bad sex in the back of a car with someone else's boyfriend, she drinks beer and watches movies with her group of friends. And then one day, she sees this older guy, a 34-year-old named Tom, and there's almost an instant spark between them. She's wary, but he pursues her, and he's sweet, charming, and loving, and she decides she feels safe to start a relationship with him. After all, he would clearly never do anything to harm or exploit her.
The most obvious thing I appreciated about the film was its patience. It's a really long time before we really get any indication that there's anything negative going on at all - so much so that I was starting to wonder whether I was watching a film that is actually positive about this type of relationship. She feels so alone, her mother is busy with her various boyfriends and doesn't have time for her, her friends aren't great but in this small town there's not much choice - and then she meets this guy who actually loves her, who actually cares about her, who makes her feel valued and wanted. And then, when we do starts to see the warning signs of how bad Tom is, it's always surrounded with plenty of affirmation. It feels as though he's just testing the waters - if I say this, does it scare her away - but he'll let those moments pass by so quickly and covers the bitterness with so much sugar that she just accepts it, until she's pulled down. There's a practised confidence in him, you can see that he's done this before, he knows how to recognise when an opportunity arises for him to drop a little seed to push her in a particular direction. It's fascinating to watch just how easy it is for someone to be manipulated by a person who knows what he's doing. Looking the film up after the screening, I discovered that the writer/director Jamie Dack based the film on her own experiences as a teenager in a relationship with a much older man, the way at the time everything seemed normal and natural, and how it was only with hindsight that she could see how twisted that relationship was and how he had groomed her. It sounds like things never went as bad for her as they did for Lea in the film, and I'm glad about that for her, but the film does have a great deal of insight into this behaviour, how a seemingly smart person could be seduced in this way, and it really does have the ring of authenticity. One of my favourite touches in the film was the understanding of how patterns can recur, often across generations, and how we are often better able to get perspective about other people than ourselves - there's a great moment early on where Lea gets angry at her mother for doing something unwise, which makes it particularly devastating later in the film when Lea makes exactly the same choice.
Lily McInerny's performance as Lea will be one of my highlights of the festival. This is apparently her first role, and I just can't comprehend how you get that performance out of a first-time actor. A lot of the performance is certainly typical angst-ridden teenage girl, and she is great in those moments, but you could find so many people to play that role. But then the turn happens, and she goes through the worst experience she can imagine, and she gives such an astonishing, nuanced, subtle performance of someone trying to process her trauma, that it just astonished me. On the other hand, there's Jonathan Tucker as Tom. Tucker is definitely one of those people you recognise from somewhere - for me I think it was probably from his recurring roles in Parenthood and Justified - and he's just perfect here. Achieving that delicate balance where he comes across as convincingly sweet and safe while retaining enough of the air of danger that his turn makes sense must be tricky, but he pulls it off expertly.
I also appreciated the convincing sense of a location and the community around these central characters. Having just come out of Afire, which so bothered me because of its shallow characterisation, I was really impressed by how richly developed the world and its people actually were here. Within a matter of minutes, I felt I understood this world, picked up on the barest of hints about relationships that ultimately proved true, and could predict how Lea would react to certain situations. It's all reflective of the care that Dack took both in perfectly creating this world in her script, and creating it on camera. I particularly appreciated the nuances in the relationship between Leah and her mother - you can see how a typical temperamental teen would feel hurt in how they interact, even as the mother (Gretchen Mol is great in the role) can't quite comprehend how her daughter could have misunderstood their fundamental relationship.
As I say, this is not a film that you are supposed to enjoy, but I did walk out of it feeling genuinely excited as a film fan. Between Dack and McInerny, it feels like we've been introduced to some real talents, and I'll be interested to see where they go.
(Also, it's worth noting that this is an expansion of a short film that Dack made back in 2018. The short is excellent and also worth watching.)
Sozhou River
I had never heard of this Chinese romantic mystery drama, made in 2000 by writer/director Lou Ye, until it appeared in the Classic strand in the festival programme.
A videographer is hired by a local bar to film their mermaid act for a promotional video; he and the "mermaid" Meimei then become lovers, but she's unreliable and often vanishes for days at a time. One night, she asks him whether, if she ever vanished, he would hunt for her "the way Mardar searched for Moudan". We then hear the story of Mardar's love for Moudan, as told to the videographer, mostly by his girlfriend but also partly by Mardar himself - how Mardar was a motorcycle courier who fell in love with Moudan, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, and how he was then pressured by criminal contacts to hold Moudan hostage, which ends badly. Years later, Mardar decides he needs to hunt to find his beloved Moudan, and when he comes across Meimei he's convinced he's found her, since she does look identical to the missing Moudan.
So you might have already noticed the odd thing about the film. There is this framing device, about the unnamed videographer and his girlfriend Meimei, told from the perspective of the videographer, but much of the film is a flashback - except that it's a flashback of a story that's the videographer was for the most part not present for. He heard the story from Meimei, who might have been present for the story, depending on whether she is the vanished Moudan (and the film does answer that question) - but this means that we are watching the story at best secondhand, possibly thirdhand. This feels like an odd construction for the film.
The film also adopts this very hand-held filming style, which was unfortunate because my seats were very close to the screen, and all of the shaking made me feel almost queasy - I was glad it was only 80 minutes. But it very quickly becomes clear that this film style is intended to replicate the point-of-view of the videographer - we are seeing the world through his eyes. That is, until we start the story of Mardar, since the videographer was largely not present for those events. But the shaky camera work remains, even though it makes little sense - whose point of view are we adopting when we are sitting behind the television looking at Mardar and Moudan, and if the answer is no-one's, then why is it still so shaky? But the failure to clearly delineate the filming style between the scenes in the videographer's point-of-view and the scenes that were not became actively obstructive at times. The film transitions from one to the other at several points through the story, and it felt disorienting, because it would always take a few moments to identify when a transition had occurred. And that does become a barrier to clear storytelling.
I was also intrigued to notice that the film seemed to be taking inspiration from Vertigo - both are romantic mysteries, both revolve around a man who is haunted by the loss of the woman he loves, both involve a person who is identical to the lost woman, both prominently feature scenes where a person changes their hair colour (albeit here it's by wearing a wig rather than using hair dye), both feature multiple deaths by falling (albeit from a bridge rather than a building or a tower), both feature scenes where a man dives into the water after a woman tries to kill herself, both feature a significant time jump. Now, this similarity probably would have completely slipped past me were it not for the fact that the musical score has a particular phrase, repeated at several points throughout the film, which unmistakeably (if briefly) quotes from Bernard Herrmann's score. But I did find myself wondering what the purpose of this was. The film is not a remake - while there are these elements that are so closely similar to the Hitchcock, the story as a whole and its concerns are very different - but then this question nags at me; why draw a connection between the films by quoting from it?
Ultimately, I think I just found this one somewhat unsatisfying. It's perfectly enjoyable to watch, but it feels hollow, and I don't know that I really connected to what I was trying to express. So that's a disappointment.
#Manhole
The night before his wedding, Shunsuke find himself at a surprise party organised by his workmates. After drinking too much, he sets off walking, somewhat unsteady on his feet. When he wakes up, he find he has fallen down an open manhole, and the rusty ladder has broken away. He tries calling all of his friends, but the only person who even answers this late at night is an ex-girlfriend, and he's not sure if she's being as helpful as she claims. He also (somewhat reluctantly) calls the police. But for some reason the GPS on his phone is giving him entirely incorrect location information, so he can't guide anyone to where he is. Then he has an idea - he creates a social media identity of "Manhole Girl" (because people help girls), calling for people to help him work out where he is and come to rescue him. But eventually, when it is realised the manhole is located somewhere he could never have walked to, it becomes clear that this was no accident and he has been abducted. And this revelation leads some people to take on the idea of rescuing Manhole Girl and seeking justice for her.
So for 80 percent of the film, I was really enjoying the experience. It's light, funny, extremely suspenseful. You can see Shunsuke doing some smart things, and even when he does do something stupid there's at least an understandable reason for doing so - for instance, it's extremely stupid to try throwing your phone up out of the manhole and having it fall back down to you, because there's an obvious risk of losing your only means of communication, but at the same time it's understandable as a desperate effort to get some information about the location outside. At times it's appropriately gory - the scene where he uses an office stapler to staple up his wounds is rather fun. And it's often very unbelievable, whether it be his body's weird ability to survive so many brutal falls, or the fact that he somehow survives an explosion(!) in the manhole seemingly without a scratch.
And while the satire of social media is certainly broad, it's sadly not unbelievable, with the portrayal of weaponised internet fully on display - there is this terrifying point where Manhole Girl's followers, for no real reason, become convinced that one of Shunsuke's colleagues is the abductor, and it all builds and escalates until before long someone is torturing this innocent party to find out where he is keeping Manhole Girl. But at the same time, there is something smart about utilising the entire specialised knowledge of everyone on the internet to solve a mystery, so suddenly details like the particular sound of a train can become vital clues, because there is someone out there who can use that information to narrow down the location.
So most of the film is really a very strong entertainment.
And then the third act happens.
I had been convinced through all the film that Shunsuke was dead - it would explain so much, from the weird dreamlike tone immediately before he fell in the hole, to his body's ability to survive brutal punishment. And that would have been a bad reveal. But no, the explanation is so much worse then that. Now, while I will try to talk around exactly what happens, there will certainly be hints at spoilers following.
So it turns out that it is not only not a mistake that he fell into the manhole, it is also not a mistake that he fell into THIS manhole. It is revealed that he has a secret that is connected specifically with this manhole. In fact, his secret is so strong and so connected to this location that I found it unbelievable that he didn't immediately guess where he was - as soon as he found himself in a manhole, he should have thought "this could be connected to that thing that happened", at least as a possible starting point.
But also, the film has a real challenge in the identity of the antagonist. Because Shunsuke finds himself in the manhole so quickly, and we don't leave the manhole to get any external viewpoint, the abductor could be anyone, because there is no-one we feel we really know enough for it to be satisfying that they are the abductor. Pick a person out of a hat, and I would feel no greater connection to the revelation than if it was anyone else. But now I'm left with a bunch of questions - how did the abductor come to be in possession of certain information, and having discovered this information why did they choose this particular response? Also, why give Shunsuke a phone when it is so clear that connection to the outside world through the internet is a threat to their plan? And what on earth was motivating their final actions?
Look, even in as terrible an ending as this, there was some genuine enjoyment, with the audience laughing allowed and reacting as a group to particular moments. But this ending took so much goodwill from the film and destroyed it. And that is a disappointment.
Bad Behaviour
Jennifer Connelly plays Lucy, a narcissistic, self-involved former actress who decides to go on a week-long spiritual retreat to try to find herself, and who is annoyed to find the retreat has been invaded by a famed model who is emblematic of all the worst things she sees in herself. Lucy barely ever speaks to her daughter Dylan (played by writer-director Alice Englert), working in New Zealand doing stunts for a clichéd fantasy film, although the mother and daughter are technically not estranged. But an unexpected injury causes Lucy to leave the retreat early and Dylan to travel to reunite with her.
So the film is an enjoyable work. Englert has a nice comedic sensibility that had the audience laughing hard constantly. At times there's just a gleeful absurdity - in reality, the woman explaining the importance of having no technology at the spiritual retreat would probably not be standing next to a person playing a zombie-killing game on a computer, but it was a funny joke. At other points, there's some nice character-based comedy - Lucy hilariously somehow manages to order breakfast in possibly the most inconvenient way imaginable. And sometimes there's just a shocked laughter, where the film flings you into a space you never imagined it going and there's only one way to respond.
The performances in the film are a real highlight. Connelly is a lot of fun playing a sharp-tongued toxic character who is consumed with resentment towards all around her. Englert is fascinating as a person who seemingly has gone into stunt work as a way to avoid dealing with the issues she's struggling with, largely because it offers her an opportunity to self-harm without actually self-harming. And while he is really only in the first half of the film, Ben Whishaw is hilarious as the retreat guru, a man who has been seduced by the lure of comfort and reward away from the ideas he's espousing, and who is not above manipulating circumstances to connect with a supermodel.
Where I struggle with the film is that its message feels rather shallow and obvious. It's hardly a new target for satire to set a story at a spiritual retreat, and that is a lot of fun. There is this running idea in the film that these people are actually using the retreat to feel as though they are taking steps to improve themselves without ever fully buying into the experience - indeed, it seems Lucy has been on many such retreats before, but is still the exact same person she always was. But while it is a very enjoyable part of the film, I was starting to feel that we we were starting to hit the same beat over and over again, and so it was a surprising but gratifying development when the film takes a turn away from that setting. But the ultimate revelation that seems to come to the characters - that hiding yourself away in a place where all your thoughts are indulged as self-actualisation may not actually be the answer to solving your own self-involvement, and that if you want to better connect with someone then actually connecting with them might be a good start - doesn't really feel like that profound a statement.
So while the film is a lot of fun, and I would absolutely recommend at as an enjoyable time at the movies, it does feel as though Englert is perhaps struggling to find a clear vision or point of view for the film. Still, she's a talented filmmaker, and I'm certainly interested to see where she goes.
(And one last thing - it's a very small point, but if I was the San Francisco International Airport, I would probably be a little offended that they tried using the Wellington domestic baggage claim as a stand-in for them - that does not look like any international baggage claim I've never seen. And it's so unnecessary also - they really didn't need to draw attention to it; we already know the character is flying to the US, so they could have just not put up that sign, and we would have assumed it was a connecting flight at any generic airport.)
May December
Julianne Moore is Gracie, a woman who was the subject of a national scandal after she, as a married woman in her 30s, had an affair with a 13-year-old boy, Joe, and gave birth to his child while in prison. Twenty years later, the two are married, and the scandal largely seems to have been forgotten - they are much loved members of their community, with only the occasional package of excrement sent to them as a reminder of that time. But now a film is going to be made about their story, with major star Elizabeth Berry (played by Natalie Portman) playing the lead role, and so she comes to spend time meeting Gracie, as well as everyone else who was around at the time of the scandal, in an effort to try to understand the character.
Very obviously drawing inspiration from the case of Mary Kay Letourneau, director Todd Haynes seems fascinated by what might have driven this woman into this shocking action. He also seems intrigued by the current wave of public enthusiasm for prestige true crime - the successor to the trashy TV movie that once filled our screens. There's a particularly amusing moment where we watch one such trashy adaptation of Gracie's story, and we can understand why she would be looking to this prestige adaptation as an opportunity to reframe her story. But there's a moment in the film that truly drives home just how shocking Gracie's crime was. Elizabeth watches several audition videos from various 13-year-old boys looking to play the part of Joe. Eventually she phones the film's producers and asks for them to expand the search. After all, they need Joe to be stronger, more confident, sexier. And when we eventually see the actor cast for the role of Joe, he's quite noticeably older than the 13-year-old that Joe was. The fact is, the only way to see a 13-year-old as anything other than a child is to be completely delusional. Julianne Moore picks this up - she feels genuinely damaged in her performance, someone who's putting all her efforts into putting on a public face of strength, confidence, and certainty, convinced that if only people heard her story as it truly was then they would understand her actions, and maintaining a clear lie that she was seduced, because it's the only way that she can cope with the damage she has caused. And the film definitely hints at psychological damage from her youth that may have influenced her actions. It's a clear comment on the way patterns of behaviour are learned and influence us long into adulthood.
But if the crime that Gracie committed was so horrific, then what are we to make of the decision to make a movie of it? At one point, Elizabeth finds herself talking about the experience of filming a sex scene, the way the bodies move and interact and how easy is for emotional lines to be crossed. It's a telling moment, because we are reminded that this project that she's working on will definitely involve moments that will risk such emotional line-blurring with another young child. It's a fantastic performance by Natalie Portman, partly because it's for the most part almost on the periphery. She's always present, but very rarely herself. Her reason for being in this place is to observe and learn, and so much of her time on screen is spent just watching, asking questions, maybe occasionally rehearsing a posture - until we get to the best scene in the film, a moment where she stands in front of a mirror and for the first time performs as Gracie, all the mannerisms, all the vocal notes, and it feels like Gracie is in the room.
Charles Melton, as the now-thirty-something Joe, also gives a fascinating performance. He feels like a person who simultaneously grew up too soon and also never grew up at all. Having been thrust into adulthood at such a young age, complete with the responsibilities of being a parent while still a child himself, he never had the chance to grow into that role, and so he feels like someone who is constantly yearning for a lost childhood. And much in the same way that Gracie puts on a different face for public and private, so does Joe - in public he's a mature and thoughtful father and husband, but in private his entire physicality seems to shift, and he seems to revert back to being a 13-year-old having to support this woman who might as well be a mother to him. It's as though this experience has trapped him in a toxic codependent relationship from which at just seems impossible to escape.
If I had to make a criticism of the film, I am genuinely battled by the music. It's essentially an adaptation of Michel Legrand's main theme for the 1971 film The Go-Between, but while (from very vague memory) it's effective in that film, the way it's deployed here is utterly baffling. The heavy-handed, ominous piano notes are frequently at odds with the film, and their repetitive deployment make moments as seemingly inconsequential as "We need more hot dogs for the grill" into a moment of literally laughable terror. I do not think it's an accident - as a pre-existing piece of music, Todd Haynes knew the piece in advance and will have known exactly what he was going for when he chose to deploy it. But it just feels so out of place that I cannot imagine what he was going for.
That said, the film around the music is fantastic, an intriguing exploration of the way true crime and the media can create abstractions out of real people and real victims, and the consequences of being involved in genuinely terrible crimes. I really did like it.
Chocolat
Part of the Classic strand in the festival programme, Chocolat was the directorial debut film for a young Claire Denis back in 1988. The film focuses on a young French girl, named France, living with her parents in Cameroon where her father is working as an administrator. France has a particularly close friendship with one of the main servants, Protée, who also has a definite air of mutual attraction between him and France's mother. And all this tension comes to erupt when a small plane crashlands nearby, and the passengers have to stay with the family for several weeks until they can leave.
It's very much a strong debut for Denis - but it does feel like a debut film. Denis already has an extreme confidence behind the camera and a very clear sense of artistic identity - she's a filmmaker of great patience and dramatic subtlety, and I'm always going to love someone who just positions the camera and then lets an entire scene play out in front of it. There are moments where you find your eyes exploring the frame, noting how this element or that interacts with a previous scene or sets up subsequent events, and it's always a delight.
She also draws fantastic performances from her cast of actors. Working with a young inexperienced actress like Cécile Ducasse (playing France in her only film role) must have been a challenge for a new director, but Denis brings out a natural ease to the performance that is a delight. Isaach de Bankolé is one of those actors I'm always happy to see, and it's fascinating to watch him in his youth playing the essential role of Protée - he's a character who speaks rarely, but there's real strength and character communicated through the way he carries himself or the expressiveness of his face that is just wonderful to watch.
But where the film does reveal itself as a debut film is in its heavyhandedness in exploring its themes. It's quite plainly about colonialism, about white attitudes towards black people, and almost every scene in some way feeds into that idea. There's the fact that France's father is an "administrator" helping to run the country on behalf of a foreign power, while the people who are actually native to that country are largely present as servants. There's the fact that the white family gets to have indoor showers, while the black servants must shower with a pail of water outside, only just barely hidden from public view as long as the showering person doesn't step too far away from the wall. There is the African cook who is constantly demeaned for the poor quality of his coffee or his inability to cook food in the proper French way, despite the many cookbooks available - ignoring the fact that he can't read. When the white passengers of the plane needs to have the ground levelled to create a runway to take off, it's the black people who have to do this backbreaking work. Or there's just the way the French casually talk about this place they've come to as "our country" in front of people who have lived here their entire lives. And to be clear, the film is making solid arguments. But I do wish that some of Denis' subtlety in the dramatic sphere was also reflected in her thematic approach.
Still, it's a strong film, and even this early you can see the potential in her work that would lead to her becoming a significant voice in the film world. I really enjoyed it.
Anselm 3D
Anselm Kiefer is apparently one of the most significant artistic figures working in Germany today, and this film serves as a representation of his work and also as a meditation on the philosophy of the artist himself.
Back.in 2011, in the height of the 3D craze, the festival showed two films in 3D from significant directors - Cave of Forgotten Dreams saw Werner Horzog using 3D to capture the shape of the caves on which historic cave paintings were created, while Pina was Wim Wenders' effort to capture the work of a dance choreographer interacting with the space around. The important thing is that this is all about trying to create the impression of something physical, in a way that traditional flat cinema can't quite capture. Now, Wim Wenders returns to the medium, for a very similar reason. The very first shot of the film is of one of Anselm's pieces, an empty wedding dress standing in the middle of a forest, and the tangibility of this piece, the sense that you could touch it, that it is a physical presence in front of you, is quite overpowering and effective. Later we come to see the size of his artworks, with Anselm working at a literally industrial scale in an art studio build from a converted factory, riding a bicycle around this cavernous building, or working on a piece that is so many times larger than him that it's almost impossible to imagine. Or there is this massive gallery filled with piles of rubble, much like those that could be found in Germany after the war. These are all things that you could certainly communicate in 2D, but to create this instinctive sense of feeling almost overpowered by the work and by the scale of the space really does demand the tangibility of 3D.
One of the things I found fascinating about his work was seeing almost a sense of violence in his way of working. We witness him take a sculpture he has created, or a piece on a canvas, and then set it on fire so that the scorching will bring about a change in the work. We see him take molten metal and pour it onto a canvas, with intensely hot liquid metal literally splashing around everywhere. Even a seemingly sedate piece, a canvas covered with (I think) plaster feels violent in its creation, with Anselm loudly slapping the materials onto the canvas or literally gouging away at the piece on canvas.
We get fairly little biographical information about Anselm himself. There are a handful of key moments in his life that are represented to us through recreation, with actors playing the young artist, but these moments are typically presented to us with little or no context. There is some marginal use of archival footage to help us navigate through different time periods, but other than that the film has little or no interest in the life of the man, because it's much more interested in his work and philosophy. Explanation of his work is for the most part absent, although again they do use archival footage to clarify his intent with some particularly confrontational work - his series of photos of him giving the Nazi salute caused controversy and accusations of Nazi sympathies, but actually reflects his fear that banning such symbols might lead to the horrors of that event being forgotten and thus gaining another foothold. We do hear him reflecting on the war, and its lingering effect on him as someone born in the immediate post-war era - his comment that "it's hard to paint a landscape once a tank has been through it" really stuck with me. We hear about his influences, particularly the work of Jewish poet Paul Celan, who keeps being brought up as a clear inspiration - we hear this extremely effective and moving poem about the Holocaust, while Anselm reflects on what a bitter experience it must be for that poet to have to write a work like that in the German language. We hear him talk about his fascination with the great German philosophers and thinkers, or with the great mythological stories.
But mostly the film exists as an opportunity to sit and experience, admire the work of an artist who I have never heard of. And it is truly beautiful work that I was delighted to have been exposed to.
Past Lives
Na Young and Hae Sung are two 12-year-olds growing up in Korea. The two are very close friends, are always competitive with each other, and have a little crush on each other, even going on a (parent-suggested) date together. But Na Young's family is emigrating to Canada, and the two lose contact. Twelve years later and living in New York, Na Young, who has adopted the English name Nora, reconnects with Hae Sung online, and the two resume their friendship through long video chats, until the relationship is put on pause. A further twelve years pass, Nora is now married to an American called Arthur, when Hae Sung comes to visit New York, and once again they resume their friendship.
Past Lives was probably the surprise success coming out of Sundance this year, and I can absolutely see why. It's a beautiful film, essentially a series of two-handed conversations between the three characters in their different combinations, that becomes this moving reflection about lives lived and lives not lived, and the way we grow and change.
The title proves to be a perfect expression of the ideas at the centre of the film. Firstly, it refers to the Korean concept of in-yeon - this idea that in our lives every person we come into contact with is a point of connection, and that where you have two people who are soulmates, this will have been built up over thousands of points of connection across thousands of past lives. And here, it does feel as though Arthur and Hae Sung are both soulmates to one degree or another with Nora, that in another life Nora could have spent her life with Hae Sung and been just as happy, and so there's this tone of "what might have been" and "maybe in the next life" running through the film.
But also this concept of past lives is reflective of a truth that is extremely real in this life. It's an idea best explored in a moment where Nora leaves and Arthur and Hae Sung, two men who have nothing in common except for Nora, have a conversation. Arthur feels a level of insecurity when Nora is with Hae Sung, not necessarily because he feels there's any risk to his marriage - he and Nora seem to have a great relationship - but because Hae Sung is a reminder of everything he doesn't know about Nora. He came to know her as an adult, having largely developed into the person that she will be. But he wasn't there for her childhood, for those formative years, he can never know the person that she was at that time, he can only know the person she became. And the same is true for Hae Sung - his connection is with the 12-year-old girl she was, and when he sees her today, he still sees her as the girl she was.
I've heard several interviews with Celine Song, who wrote and directed the film, where she discussed how the film was very much born out of personal experiences. In fact, the very first scene, in which we hear the discussion of a couple looking at the group of three, speculating about how exactly this Korean man, Korean woman, and American man relate to each other, was apparently something she had imagined when she went out to dinner with her American husband and her longtime Korean friend. And that grounding of the story in something real does anchor the film with a real depth. There is a lived familiarity running throughout these conversations that just makes the film feel incredibly rich.
This is a beautiful, tender, uplifting film, that is rich in emotion and generous towards its characters. It's a wonderful work, and one I would wholeheartedly recommend.
Sanctuary
For a number of years, Hal has made regular use of the services of a no-contact dominatrix, Rebecca, to act out elaborate scenarios in which he has to answer demeaning questions from his lawyer or clean the bathroom while being verbally humiliated. But now Hal's father, head of a massive chain of luxury hotels, has died, and Hal is the presumptive heir to take over the business. So, in order to avoid scandal, Hal decides to end his relationship with Rebecca. Initially shocked to be fired, Rebecca then becomes angry, claiming that the snivelling, pathetic person she first met would never have been able to take over his father's empire, and that she is solely responsible for building him up to be able to take on that role. And so she feels that she is entitled to half of the first year's pay for the job that he never would have without her. And if she doesn't get the money she deserves, she will reveal everything about their relationship and destroy his life and any chance of getting the job.
So I had a few big reasons for being interested in seeing this. Firstly, I just heard that it was really good. And a really big driver was absolutely the presence of Margaret Qualley as Rebecca - she's someone whose work I've admired for a few years, and this seems like it would be a very fun role for her. And then there was a mistake on my part - somehow I had thought this was from the same person who made the intending-murderer-and-self-harming-prostitute film Piercing I'd really enjoyed a few years ago - it's not the same person. However, Christopher Abbott does star in both films, which means he's carving out a weird niche of two-hander black comedies about sex work, which - I guess if that's where his work takes him.
So, Sanctuary is a blast. It's always enjoyable when you get a film that is just a two-hander, where you just get to sit and watch two people acting against each other, observing the evolution of the relationship without interruption. Here the movie entirely takes place in one hotel room, or in the lobby outside, and no-one else is there, so the entire film is just watching these two interact. And it's made particularly fascinating by the fact that their entire relationship is largely built on roleplay and performance, and so at no point do you really feel entirely confident about what's going on, whether what is happening is honest and sincere, or whether this is just another game. And there's also the shifting power dynamics between the two - yes, the structure between the two would appear to have Rebecca in a position of strength, but at the same time Hal is always the one in charge, he's always the one dictating the terms of their connection, and now that this negotiation has broken out, he's the one starting from a position of strength and authority, while she's starting on the back foot - she's used to playing at taking control, and now she has to do it for real. And so there's a constant ebb and flow in the discussion, as the two of them fight for dominance, and that is just so much fun to watch. And as the lies build up in the discussion, so too do the truths - their relationship may have been entirely professional, but at the same time these are two people who have for years toyed with their emotions, and it's inevitable that some form of a real connection would develop. And it's fascinating to watch these to try to grapple with what they each mean to each other, in the context of this really bitter, nasty, out-and-out brawl.
As expected, Qualley is a joy to watch. One of the most fascinating things about the role is that she is always acting, so if she seems weak, then you can see her gleefully moving herself into a position of strength; if she's in control, it always seems as though she might be bluffing. Everything about the character seems up for debate, everything seems like it could be real or an act, and yet through all of that Qualley manages to communicate a real person - you do walk away with a very real sense of who Rebecca really is, buried under all of the artifice. Abbott is also very fun here, as the man who is still processing his father's death, who does have real doubt about his own ability to do this job, who does feel that he hasn't done anything to earn this position, but who genuinely seems as though he is desperate enough that he could and would do anything to protect that position.
This was just a fun film, a fantastic black comedy, an absolute ride that left me feeling that I simply do not know where this is taking me next.
La Chimera
Arthur is an English archaeologist living in Tuscany, where he has just been released from prison after working with a gang of grave robbers taking priceless Etruscan artifacts and selling them for cheap to a black market dealer. He returns back to the home of a friendly local aristocrat, whose daughter was his former girlfriend (now passed away). While there he forms a new connection with Italia, the aristocrat's singing student who they rely on as an unpaid maid. And he teams up again with his gang of grave robbers, where he uses his strange talents for sensing the location of buried artifacts to secure new objects to sell.
So that all sounds like a lot of fun. The thing is, sometimes you just get a film that you don't connect to, either positively or negatively. This was not a bad film, this was not a film that bored me, but nor was it a film that I felt particularly engaged with. It just ... was. At times it felt like it was lagging a bit, at other times there were interesting things happening that I felt I should be more engaged with. Occasionally it did irritate me with just how silly it was - wait, so Italia is somehow hiding that she has two children with her despite the fact that they seem to have the run of the house? wait, so it's so well known that these people are grave robbers that they literally put on shows about their grave robbing activities? and isn't this dream with the dead girlfriend and the thread of wool rather tiresome and silly - but for the most part, I just felt as though it was just something playing in front of my eyes.
The one point in the film where I did really connect to the film was a fantastic sequence where Arthur manages to locate a shrine that has been buried for thousands of years. As soon as the shrine is opened and fresh air enters the space, the images painted on the walls cloud over, and for the next while, the film does get into some interesting questions about the morality of the way we treat antiquities. This is not something I've ever really thought about before - we learn in museums all the time about how this object was buried next to its former owner, and we think nothing of it. But these were objects that the former owner wanted to have with their body for all time. And there are certainly ways to justify acquiring these objects - the dead can't enjoy them, so why not bring them out and allow us to learn about these cultures from these prized objects. But then you remember that in the 19th century, people used to have parties where they would unwrap a real Egyptian mummy for "educational purposes" - is this all that different? And when you bring the profit motive into everything, then it becomes even more mercenary - people caring little for the inherent value of a piece itself, instead breaking and dismantling objects to make them easier to move quickly. This all culminates in an auction scene where a beautiful work of art, that we all saw and admired, now severely damaged in the process of removing it from its home, is sold to the highest bidder, with museums choosing to look the other way and ignore the fact that they know these objects were almost certainly stolen. It's a deeply upsetting sequence that for a moment really made me think. Realistically, is it going to change me? Probably not - the next time there's some big museum exhibition on, I'll probably still go to it and find it fascinating. But perhaps, hopefully, I might feel conflicted about it.
But beyond that one, admittedly great sequence - I can say with full confidence that La Chimera is a film I watched.
Monster
The new film from the Japanese master of family dramas, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Monster finds him using a Rashomon-style storytelling approach, presenting the film's events three times, each from a different perspective. In the first, a single mother is understandably outraged to find her son is being assaulted and insulted by his school teacher, which is made worse by the school seeming not to care and by the teacher claiming the son was bullying another student. We then backtrack, to see the teacher's perspective on how these assaults occurred, and the effect that the accusations have on him. And in the third part of the film, we get the son's viewpoint on these events and the bullying activity he's accused of.
Talking to someone after the film, they commented that it was interesting to see Kore-eda tackling bullying, which famously is a major problem in Japan but is something largely ignored in his work. And that's a good point; his work can often have an idealised nostalgic view of childhood, but childhood can also be extremely tough and challenging to survive, especially with the social pressures to conform - there were certainly moments that prompted me to flashback to my own school days, times when I was bullied and would lash out in frustration. I think almost everyone is going to approach this film with a general sense of horror, at having long-suppressed memories brought to the surface, and guilt, remembering moments where we acted in a way that makes us feel ashamed.
But beyond that major theme, his work just continues to be subtle and keenly observed. Consider the awkwardness of the moment where the teacher has to deliver an apology for the way he treated the son, or the delight that people feel when sharing the gossip about the teacher being present at the "hostess bar" during the building fire - these are real, funny moments. At other times, it's genuinely tragic, like the entire horrific experience of the teacher when he has his career that he loves taken away from him. And often it just feels real, with moments that could occur in every school.
Much of Kore-eda's revolves around, or prominently features, children, and one of his true skills as a filmmaker is working with his young actors to elicit incredible performances. Here, Sōya Kurokawa as the son Minato, and Hinata Hiirago as bullying victim Yuri, have to carry that entire third part themselves, and are given some challenging material that calls on them to be extremely vulnerable. It's truly impressive the way Kore-eda is able to guide these young performers to give an extraordinary performance.
So there's a lot of good here. But I do have a fairly fundamental problem with the film - I don't feel the Rashomon storytelling approach actually contributed anything. When deployed well, it can be extremely effective - I mean, look at Rashomon for a start. But here, I felt it almost became a barrier to the storytelling. Before I realised the structure of the film, the mother's storyline felt awkward and choppy - I actually thought that it seemed as though there were scenes missing, before discovering that there indeed were, and we would be getting to those scenes later. It held me back from being fully invested into the story and the drama playing out, because I was approaching the film like a puzzle box, trying to work out how this scene fits with that, hang on, I thought the ear injury happened a lot earlier, looking for clues, oh that's why we heard that music, that's who did that thing, that's what's going on there. And even after that, unless I missed something, I'm positive there are still questions that should have been answered but that were not. And this also means there's a lot of time wasted, because we kept needing to watch the same key moments three times, rather than using that time to really develop our understanding of the events. The only advantage to the structure is that there is a major secret revealed in the third part that would colour everything else that happens, and it is therefore easier to connect to the mother's actions if we don't have the full information. But the story would work perfectly well if we as an audience had all of the necessary information up front - if anything, it improves our reaction to the mother because, rather than simply sympathising with her reaction, our understanding is now layered with a sense of sad irony because we can see the bigger picture that she cannot. Ultimately, I found it frustrating because I wanted to watch the film thinking about "what is going to happen next?", but instead found myself constantly thinking "I wish I had known that an hour ago".
Look, it's Kore-eda; he knows what he's doing in this sphere. In some ways, he's a victim of his own quality - he sets expectations so high that sometimes he can't help but fall short, even though his films are still better than almost anyone else working in this area. From anyone else, this would be a masterpiece; for Kore-eda it's a minor work. I'm still interested in rewatching it, if only to see whether it plays better once you have that full understanding. But this is not a film I see myself revisiting often.
Sisu
It's 1944, and Finnish commando Aatami Korpi chooses to leave the war behind and go gold prospecting, where he discovers a rich vein of gold. A group of Nazi soldiers find him, and try to kill him and take his gold. Unfortunately for them, Korpi is a "mean motherfucker you do not want to mess with", a one-man death squad, a man who has killed over 300 men, nicknamed Koschei - "the Immortal" - for the fact that he just refuses to die not matter what. He does not want to be killed, and he wants to keep his gold.
So this is basically a Finnish John Wick, set in World War II with grindhouse-style exploitation aspirations. If you want to know how much of a John Wick film this is - he is a skilled killer with a Russian nickname who has chosen to live a life of peace until he's forced back into violence, who also has a cute dog companion that may or may not be killed, and somehow has even less dialogue than Keanu did. But the violence is so much more extreme, over-the-top, gory, outlandish, almost cartoonish, then anything you'll find in the John Wick films. The action may not be as cleanly or coherently shot as those films, but it makes up for it with a general excess that leaves the audience almost shell-shocked as we try to process what we just saw. There is a moment where Korpi is underwater and at risk of drowning, so he waits until the Nazis send someone into the water to kill him, and then he slits the Nazi's throat open and breathes the air from out of the dead body's lungs. There is a moment where he is being hanged, and he impales an open wound on a nail in order to support himself. There is a moment where a Nazi steps on a mine, explodes, and his severed leg flies through the air to activate a second mine. There are gruesome moments of self-surgery. There are moments where a tank runs over a body and the sprays of blood and viscera are lovingly captured. At any moment you genuinely feel like you're about to see something you've never seen before. Even the non-violent moments can be disturbing - there's a moment where Korpi removes his shirt, and we see the vast number of scars on his body that speak to the amount of violence that he has experienced in his history, and you find yourself thinking "Wait, did he survive a disemboweling?" And then the film culminates in a sequence that is definitely an homage both to a Mission: Impossible movie and to Dr Strangelove.
There is no attempt at depth here. There is no attempt at substance here. This movie exist solely as a very self-aware opportunity to watch lots of Nazis being brutally killed in ways you never could have imagined. There's an obvious point of comparison to the work of Quentin Tarantino, another admirer of grindhouse and exploitation cinema, and particularly to Inglourious Basterds - but Basterds is a much better film with thematic richness and an interest in commenting on the way cinema has approached the history of World War II. Sisu just sees a lot of Nazis and wants to "Kill 'Em All". I'm not complaining about this, it's a lot of fun, especially when you watch it in a cinema with an audience that is delighted to be experiencing this film together, but it definitely has lower aspirations. That said, it REALLY achieves those aspirations.
Only the River Flows
It's China in 1995, and an elderly woman is brutally murdered by the banks of a river. The woman had recently adopted a mentally impaired man, known to everyone as "the madman", so understandably it is assumed that he must be the killer. But the police inspector Ma Zhe isn't satisfied with this obvious explanation, especially given the host of other clues - a purse with a cassette tape carrying a hidden message, or reports of a woman with wavy hair, who could be anyone or no-one. These clues leaves the investigation in unexpected directions - a hidden love affair, a hairdresser who is strangely resigned to being imprisoned for no reason - exposing secrets in the town that people would prefer never to have been uncovered. And then more murders occur, as well as at least one suicide. Meanwhile, the police superiors are frustrated that what should be an open-and-shut case hasn't been resolved yet, and Ma Zhe is also dealing with the stress of a pregnant wife whose baby may have a serious health condition.
So for the first half of the film, I was really enjoying the experience. It probably helped that the film was shot on 16mm, which gave the film a delightfully cheap, analogue feel - appropriate for a world of cassette tapes - and made it feel like an artefact of the time. The mystery was engaging, the clues were pointing in wild directions, it was fascinating, I was loving the contemplative, mournful tone and the insight into life in this small town. And meanwhile there's this amusing criticism of the police force superiors, who seem more engaged with winning ping-pong tournaments or practising their calligraphy than with actually trying to solve the case. The whole thing was intriguing and a lot of fun.
And then that tension just left. As the pressure of the case starts getting to him, Ma Zhe starts having hallucinatory dream sequences, which is seldom the indicator of a story with a strong narrative drive. Impossible events start happening - he has a fight with his wife, and angrily flushes several pieces of her jigsaw puzzle down the toilet, yet later the jigsaw is completed; the "madman" appears to taunt him and then disappear; in a tense action scene, he shoots and kills someone, yet other officers in the area saw nothing and his gun is missing no bullets; he later kills that same person in a scene that seems like a dream but is probably(?) not. By the time the film ends, the case is resolved, but we're unsure which parts of what we've just watched actually led to that resolution. it felt as though the actual ending of the story had completely bypassed me, and I was left grappling with questions and with real holes in the story that I just couldn't fill.
Ultimately it just felt like a frustrating experience for me. I think I simply was not on the film's wavelength - they were clearly going for something here, and I just wasn't picking up on it. And that's a shame.
Showing Up
Michelle Williams plays Lizzy, a woman from a family of artists, who works at a local art school with her mother as her boss, while in her private time she focuses on her art, sculpting figurines out of clay, in preparation for a modest showing of her work. She's frustrated that her neighbour and landlord, a much more successful artist, has been so distracted trying to prepare for two simultaneous shows that she hasn't fixed the hot water heater - although she does have time to make a tyre swing. Her father has a couple of hippies staying with him. She's worried about her delusional brother. And then one night her cat attacks a pigeon, which she sends outside to die; her neighbour finds and rescues the bird, but needs Lizzy to care for it for a few hours, and so she starts to bond with the creature.
It's always interesting to see Kelly Reichardt working with Michelle Williams, one of the great modern pairings of director and muse. As always, their work together is subtle and thoughtful. Reichardt avoids any sense of manipulation or excessive drama in favour of a small, contemplative tone that feels tender and affectionate. But here, Reichardt also adopts a new note I don't think I've ever seen before - she's funny. I mean, she's never going to go for the big broad laugh, but she's certainly wryly amusing in a way I don't remember seeing from her before. This is probably helped by the fact that the stakes, while certainly important to Lizzy, feel smaller, less world-altering, which does give Reichardt the space to find the humour in this world. And it works really well.
It's a fascinating work that takes an honest look at the challenges of being an artist and trying to create something meaningful. The figures she sculpts are really rather effective - they're not the type of things your grandmother would have on the mantelpiece, they're not clean or realistic, but they are nicely impressionistic and do feel as though they are expressing something sincere. But she constantly feels like an imposter, a failure when compared against her neighbour's success, or when she considers herself against the quality of art she sees created as she walks around the art school. Then there's just the challenge of carving out some time for you to create, when your cat is meowing for food and you're anxious about your brother going through an episode and you've got to take this pigeon to be seen by someone, and before you know it the day that you took off just to be creative has been lost to the everyday stuff we deal with. And it's honest about the problem of being an artist and creating an artwork that's not what you imagined - whether it's that the artist can't quite make the artwork come together, or whether other external forces intervene to change the work from whatever was imagined - and how we react when for whatever reason you're disappointed in this piece you've worked so long on, as well as finding the beauty and the meaning in even the accidents that befall us.
One of the things I love about this film is that the issues in the film seem to be genuinely small stakes, and yet the film treats them with real significance. We're so connected to Lizzy and her desire for people to appreciate her work that it felt as though there were nothing more important - there were moments in the film where the audience gasped in horror, or where the man in the seat next to me covered his face in sympathy during the art show. Reichardt's tone has always been empathetic, but here she's particularly effective.
I really did enjoy the scenes in the art school, which really did feel like a space that had been created to foster creativity. There almost a sense of controlled chaos and the unexpected as you wander the college - you might find someone painting on a canvas stretched the length of the hallway, or a nude man hurrying to pose as a life model, or a group of students doing a Movement as Art class. It did feel like a place where everyone understood the struggles that artists go through, and so they did feel comfortable expressing genuine enthusiasm for each other's work because they recognise the need and value in supporting and encouraging them.
This absolutely stands as a highlight of the festival. I adored this film, and would love for more people to discover just how charming it is.
Kim's Video
Yongman Kim was a drycleaner who one day decided to stock a few videotapes for hire in one corner of his business. This grew to be a New York institution, with seven Kim's Video branches, the largest with 55,000 different titles. Kim's was even infamous for stocking bootlegs of movies that never had an official release. But in 2008, seeing the rise of streaming video, Kim decided to close the business and offer the collection for free to anyone willing to take it and continue to make it available for the public to view. The town of Salemi in Sicily put in a successful bid for the collection, as part of an attempt to develop itself as a cultural centre. Ten years on, former Kim's Video member David Redmon travels to Salemi to try to understand what has happened to this collection.
I love physical media. I believe that the rise of streaming video, while fantastic from a convenience point of view, has been genuinely destructive to movie culture in a way that it may never recover. It's often said that every time movies transition to a new home video format - from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray to streaming - about half of all movies released in the older format never make the leap to the new format. There is an incredible wealth of cinema history that has just been left behind. And this is amplified in the days of streaming, where not only are you limited to the films that have been made available on streaming, but you're also probably limited to whichever films the streaming service you are on happens to own the rights to. There is an incredible fragmentation that results, where new cinephiles simply are limited in their ability to discover new works to excite them. And that's before you get to the recent phenomenon of streaming services releasing titles and then withdrawing them solely for the tax write-off. It's a very different world from the 1990s, where you would have people like Tarantino being able to walk into a room and find any movie they would want to watch and be inspired by.
And that's a big theme running through the film. This idea of this massive video collection as preserving an important part of our cultural history. And here we are not just talking about the big titles - the fact is, no-one's ever going to have too much difficulty watching Star Wars - but it's just as much about the smaller titles, the obscurities, the avant-garde art films that hardly anyone would ever pay attention to, but that captures something about the world in which it was made, the culture that it reflects. You could watch some unknown title from the collection and find in it a record of what the New York counterculture was like in the 1970s. That is a thing of incredible value.
But much of the film is focused on what happened to the collection, and this was the part of the film that I found least involving. Part of the reason is that there's a lot of wasted time in here, entire scenes of the director walking around Italy, apparently without a translator, trying to find people who he can communicate with - moments that feel like they've just been included to pad out the runtime. The other problem is that there's simply no answer to many of the questions we have. Why didn't they go through with the great plans they had for the collection? Was their idea simply too ambitious? There is a suggestion that some of the money intended for making the collection available instead went into the hands of the mafia, but details of this are scant and we don't really get much clarity around what happened there. All we do know is that, when we do see what has become of the video collection, and realise the very poor conditions that it has been kept under, it is genuinely upsetting.
The film culminates in an attempt to take back the collection from this town and find someone who will genuinely be able to help preserve it and make it available. This felt very gimmicky, distractingly so, and I found myself unconvinced by it, unclear how much of this entire climax of the film was genuine and how much was contrivance to give an exciting ending to a story. Did the ultimate ending really only come about because of this preposterous scheme of the filmmaker, or was it always going to happen regardless and this ending was just a contrivance to create some excitement where there might otherwise not be.
But this also brings me to my other issue with the film - it just felt very amateurish, as though Redmon just decided to grab a camera and start recording. And that kind of personal essay style can be very effective - Ross McElwee, who gets referenced in the film, is a master of this, but you also get a sense of real care both during the filming and in the construction of McElwee's work. Here, it just feels slapdash. Witness the fact that according to the film he just travelled to Italy without arranging a translator to help with the documentary - this does not speak to someone who is taking a careful and considered approach to his filmmaking. Look at the baggy editing, which just feels as though there's a lot of wasted time. Or look at the narration, which drives so much of the storytelling, but which feels like a first draft. In fact, one of my biggest irritations about this film came from the narration - it's a small point, but it happened so much that by the end of the film it was driving me crazy. The film frequently features film clips to illustrate a particular point, show Redmon's thinking or the emotional space he is in. But it doesn't trust its audience to interpret the images and understand how they relate to the narration. For instance, they would show the scene of Kyle Maclachlan finding the severed ear in Blue Velvet, and pair it with narration along the lines of "Like Jeffrey in Blue Velvet, I felt as though I was about to find something I didn't expect." The thing is, you don't need to say "Like Jeffrey in Blue Velvet" - we can see the image, we are entirely capable of relating that image to the narration and understanding the relevance of that film clip. Yet it kept doing it - "I felt like Harry Caul in The Conversation", "I felt like Max Renn in Videodrome". The failure to trust the audience, to feel a need to hold our hands to guide us through these moments, felt frankly insulting.
Which is a shame. I'm entirely in sympathy with the message of the film about the value of physical media, and I think it makes those points well, but the film as a whole just feels as though it lacks a bit too much craft.
War Pony
In the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 12-year-old Matho hangs out with his group of friends, until he has the idea of selling drugs stolen from his father's stash; when his father discovers what happened, he throws Matho out of his house. Meanwhile, 23-year-old Bill tries to keep his head above water through honest means; his current scheme involves purchasing a $1,000 poodle so he can make money selling the puppies; he also gets a job working for a nearby white farmer, which in part involves taking the married farmer's various Lakota girlfriends home.
The film apparently had its origins when Riley Keough, one of the most interesting actresses of today, was making American Honey, and started chatting with a couple of extras, Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, about their experiences living on the reservation. That discussion lead to the two working with Keough and her friend Gina Gammell to write the script together, with Keough and Gammell as first-time co-directors. And I think you can really see their efforts to focus on capturing the realities of life on the reservation. The Lakota culture is always present as an integral part of their life, but it's never front of mind, because the people always have other concerns, focusing on the same types of issues that we all worry about - youth delinquency, economic challenges, the desire to provide a better life for your children.
The cast is made up largely of first-time actors from the reservation, and on the whole, I think they do a solid job. LaDainian Crazy Thunder, playing the young Matho, has an air of sweetness and a blind naivete - he's a good kid who you want the best for, but you feel this long shadow of inevitability as he continues the patterns that he sees his father modelling. Meanwhile, Jojo Bapteise Whiting as Bill is just a delight, bringing an overwhelming sense of optimism to his exploits, a real sense that "This time everything has to work out", even as he makes constantly impulsive decisions that seem doomed to failure or disaster. The film reminded me a lot of the work of Chloe Zhao, in films like The Rider or Nomadland, for its naturalistic use of real people to capture something of their spirit.
The big issue with the film is just that it feels a little clichéd, almost crossing into misery porn. I understand that these reservations are famously economically depressed, and there must be a real struggle for people trying to thrive in that environment. But I don't know that you really get much of a sense of hope, that there are opportunities out there that could lift them. Perhaps that's because there are no such opportunities, that there are no positive stories to tell, or at least that perhaps there is just a sense of hopelessness that pervades this community. I have to remind myself that these stories are apparently based on real experiences of people living in the reservation, and if they feel this film accurately reflects their experiences, then who am I to question that? All I know is that, while I enjoyed the film, and thought Keough and Gammell show talent as directors, this film did feel like something we've all seen before. It's a solid work, but as a film it didn't really light a spark for me.
Seven Winters in Tehran
It's a sign of the impact this documentary had that literally the entire audience sat stunned through the closing credits, and when the credits finally finished, there was an audible sigh from around the cinema before everyone stood up to leave. And as we watched the credits, we saw that the number of people credited as "Anonymous" was easily in the double digits, which certainly says something about the regime that the film is discussing.
In 2007, a 19-year-old Iranian woman named Reyhaneh Jabbari was the victim of an attempted rape by a local doctor. She defends herself, uses a nearby kitchen knife to stab the man, and escapes. But the doctor dies, and she finds herself on trial for the doctor's murder, eventually sentenced to death by hanging under the concept of blood revenge, where it is the choice of the dead man's family whether she is to be forgiven or executed.
The filmmakers made one very smart choice here - the very first thing you hear is an audio recording of Reyhaneh saying that she is shortly to be executed. This means that, while there is always the possibility of last-minute forgiveness, always the chance that something might have changed after that recording, we are watching the film with a general understanding that Reyhaneh almost certainly does not survive. I've seen films of this type that tried to build some suspense out of an outcome like this - whether a particular person lives or dies, or who in a group survived a dire situation - and it always feels a little bit distasteful. A documentary trying to build suspense out of an outcome is fine if it's something inconsequential, like the outcome of a game of sport, but when you're trying to build suspense out of something that is literally life-and-death for a real person, it makes me feel uneasy. So I appreciated the choice to make the outcome clear from literally the first minute in the film. It takes the focus away from the question of her survival, and directs the audience to examine the issues at the heart of the film.
Beyond that choice, the film is an effectively constructed film, where the filmmaking appropriately communicates, and does not get in the way of, the anger that we need to feel over this case. Because there is so much that happened here that the word "outrage" barely covers it. We hear about the extensive torture that Reyhaneh experienced; they even arrest and threaten to torture her little sister in order to force a confession. When the trial judge starts asking questions that challenge the narrative - why did a middle-aged man invite a young woman into his house to begin with - he's removed mid-trial and replaced with an Islamic scholar with no legal experience. There are absurd arguments put forwards, including suggestions that she may have been mistaken about his intentions, even that she may not have realised the doctor was actually intending to have a "temporary marriage" - a process that allows men to work around prohibitions on extramarital sex - as though that makes things any better. We hear stories about her life in the prison from woman who were inmates with Reyhaneh, and a few stories about the life experiences that lead these woman to this place - including one devastating story from a woman who was raped at home at the age of 12 by some man she doesn't know, and the turmoil she experienced when she realised her father knew about it and allowed it to happen. We hear about how, during her seven years in prison, Reyhaneh became a spokesperson for the unjust treatment of women both in prison and in this society, and how an international outcry emerged over her sentence. And we learn that, when she is executed, it was during a months-long festival during which no executions should have occurred, and on a holy day when no executions should have occurred, as though there was a deliberate effort to end the story as quickly and quietly as possible.
Above all, we hear about this process of blood revenge, which I found really unsettling, where the decision on whether to execute is ultimately left for the victim's family. In some ways, it might have a positive result, in that it creates a space where the law can take into account the wishes of the aggrieved parties - if the victim doesn't want the person to die, they can make that choice. But then you hear the other side of the equation - if they choose not to forgive, they have to be the one to pull the chair from under the person being hanged. And there is something about that notion that is chilling - it would be one thing to be angry with a person and want them to be executed, but to be the instrument of that execution feels as though it would demand such a deliberate hardening of the heart that it would actually become destructive to the person. And it also creates great opportunity for manipulation - the dead man's family refused to even consider forgiveness until Reyhaneh withdraws her accusations that have sullied the name of their father, a respected member of the community. It says a lot about Reyhaneh, and becomes a real challenge to the audience, that she chooses not to recant and stands by her story, knowing that this choice will cost her her life.
It's a powerful and disturbing documentary, as it should be. It's not easy to watch, but it is well worth it.
Saint Omer
In the French town of Saint-Omer, an African immigrant named Laurence is on trial for the murder of her infant daughter, having abandoned her child on a beach to be washed away with the tide. She admits her actions, but pleads Not Guilty, claiming not to understand why she acted as she did and suggesting that she may have been under the spell of some form of sorcery. Meanwhile, Rama, an author currently pregnant with her first child, attends the trial hoping it will help her with her new work, a book inspired by the story of Medea.
There are few crimes that society treats with more disdain then that of a mother who kills her own child - it offends against our every expectation and understanding of the way a mother should feel about her child. So it's fascinating to watch a film like Saint Omer, which is based on a real trial that director Alice Diop once observed, and see this almost incomprehensible story portrayed with real empathy and compassion. Much of the film is made up of these extended trial sequences, while the occasional moments where we follow Rama as she leaves the trial are extremely brief and much more impressionistic. During the trial, we just sit there for what feels like 20 or 30 minutes, observing the questions and answers, assessing the evidence we hear, reflecting on the story as we are told it. And those trial scenes are truly powerful - there is a real sense that this is a woman who just felt completely overwhelmed. She came to France in pursuit of academic development, but that never happened, and so she found herself drifting through life, completely directionless, in a relationship with someone she didn't seem to really care about, and when she became pregnant you feel her sense that this could be her reason for being. And so when that doesn't fulfil her, she just finds herself completely lost. Early in the trial, when entering her Not Guilty plea, she says that she doesn't understand what happened, and she hopes the trial will help her learn why she did what she did - and when the film ends, we too walk out with a clearer appreciation of how and why she found herself committing this crime.
There is a chilling moment where Laurence, who has been largely straight-faced and reserved, turns and looks directly at Rama and gives an unsettling smile. I'm not entirely certain whether it's supposed to be taken as a literal moment that actually happens, or a more figurative moment expressing in Roma's imagination a disconcerting connection between the two woman. They both have very similar backgrounds, and in that moment of connection you get a sense that Rama is genuinely afraid for her baby - and more specifically, what she will do to her baby. The change that comes when a woman become a mother is so massive, so profound, that it seems almost overwhelming and, in Laurence, Roma sees everything she fears about motherhood. Scattered through the film, we get brief glimpses of Roma's own childhood, nightmarish moments where you see how much her own mother was struggling to cope and was taking it out on her own child, and there is a palpable fear that she will be the same type of mother that her own mother modelled for her.
Alice Diop does a fantastic work directing this piece. This is her first fiction film after a career of making documentaries, and she brings her the groundedness of a documentary into the film. So much of the film is constructed out of these extended trial sequences, and it could easily become very static - cut to the person asking the question, cut to the person answering the question - but she uses the smallest of tweaks, minor changes to the viewpoint we are watching, to bring a sense of dynamism into the film and keep it engaging for the audience. It's a beautiful film, and I was enthralled by it.
Inside
Willem Dafoe stars as Nemo, an art thief who breaks into a luxury apartment while the owner is out of the country for an extended period. The apartment owner is a great collector of artworks, with multimillion-dollar pieces lining every wall. But during the burglary, security measures take effect, completely preventing Nemo from escaping. As the hours turn to days trapped here, he realises the water into the apartment has been turned off during the owner's absence, so there's no source of water; the only food is a tiny selection of mouldering items in the fridge; and the malfunctioning air conditioning keeps raising the temperatures to boiling and lowering them to freezing - all presenting challenges to his survival and his escape attempts.
So the first hour of the film is really rather good, largely because Willem Dafoe is such fantastic casting for this. Dafoe is one of these people who is fascinating to watch when he's playing an ordinary everyday person, and he's fascinating to watch when he's going full-blown unhinged insane - and here he's called on to do both. For much of the film, it's effectively a silent performance, as he sets about trying to find some way out, and therefore we are entirely reliant on the expressiveness of his face as we see him scheming and plotting to find some solution to his problem. There's also a nice gradation in his character, as he starts out desperate, panicked, before as time passes landing onto resignation, even acceptance that this is his life and he might as well enjoy it. I enjoyed the little subplot where he entertains himself by watching the building's CCTV, imagining these little relationships that form between the different people he sees. Ultimately, as time continues to pass, with a lack of human contact, you get a real sense that Nemo has just gone completely crazy - almost babbling to himself to give himself some way to breaking the eerie silence in this apartment, or possibly even to shut out the voices that he has in his head. It's a very fun performance from an actor who is always interesting.
Unfortunately the film lost me slightly in its last half hour, where it reveals what the film is actually about - and here I do need to describe elements of the ending. Right from the start, the impersonal nature of the apartment is extremely striking - there is very little sense that this is a place that actual people live. The apartment feels more like an art gallery - it even has a video installation room, where a video of people sitting looking at each other is projected onto the wall; the absence of any form of furniture makes clear that the sole purpose of this room in this apartment is to show this video 24 hours a day. Nemo even finds a hidden room used to display even more art, although the entry into the room is so tight and inconvenient that you wonder whether anyone ever actually comes in to appreciate it. Even the one personal touch in the apartment, a massive portrait photograph of the owner, his daughter, and his pet dog, feels devoid of any sense of connection between the three figures, with each standing at a distance from each other, and the most prominent feature in the portrait being the artwork at the back. And into this impersonal space comes Nemo, this person who is forced to live here despite the impossible conditions. And by the end of the film, there is no doubt that a person did live for a time in this space - for a start, the pile of decaying excrement in the empty bath stands as witness to this - and much of this collection that the owner seems to have dedicated his life to collecting now lies dismantled, damaged, or destroyed, as part of Nemo's efforts to escape and live. Art is not something that exists for its own sake, the film seems to be saying. It's an expression of life, an expression of an idea that the artist just had to get out somehow. And from that point of view, the idea that this art would just be locked up in a sterile space unable to be enjoyed starts to feel extremely offensive and upsetting. You could even argue that the giant construction that Nemo puts together in the main space becomes almost its own artwork, its own expression of an attempt to live. The problem is, it feels odd thing for a film to make this massive transition from suspenseful survival thriller into becoming a treatise on the nature of art, but that's where the film does.
I may have found that transition in the film's focus to be awkward, but on the whole, I did enjoy the film. If for nothing else, it's worth watching as a film that makes great use of Willem Dafoe.
EO
EO is a donkey working as a performer with a travelling circus. He's not treated well by the circus owner, but the woman he performs with seems to genuinely love him. Then one day the government passes a law banning the use of animal acts in circuses, and so all of the animals are removed and sold. But soon EO escapes, and goes on an incredible journey.
I've been hearing for over a year, ever since last year's Cannes film festival, just how great this film is. And so perhaps my expectations were too high, because I really could not connect to the film. There's a concept in cinema called the Kuleshov effect. The idea is that you take a picture of a man with a neutral expression, you intercut that identical image with other footage, and it affects the way people see the man's expression. If you show a bowl of soup, the man looks hungry; if you show a body in a coffin, the man looks to be in grief; and if you show a pretty woman, he looks consumed with desire, even though it's always the same shot of the man. In essence, in cinema we don't just interpret the images in front of us, but we also apply context clues from the shots before and after to add to our interpretation. EO might as well be called "Kuleshov Effect: The Movie" - the film is entirely reliant on the performance of these donkeys, but even trained donkeys are not actors, and they have long, unexpressive faces, so the director is forced to rely on editing to trick us into applying meaning to the donkey. And I could feel the hands of the director trying to manipulate the editing to work around the restrictions imposed by the reality of working with animals. Picture a shot of EO standing in a field; new shot, we see an open gate; next shot, EO is already running towards the gate - we are supposed to interpret the scene as EO observing the open gate and running to escape, but it's distracting when you realise the only reason EO is already running in that third shot is because they had to cut out the footage of the trainers starting the donkey off running. And there are so many moments like this that I just found distracting - moments where you can really feel the trainers just barely off screen coaxing the performance.
The movie really reminded me of War Horse - they're both stories about horse-like working animals that find themselves removed from their original owners, and going on an extended adventure, where their experiences change every few minutes. I did not care for War Horse, but one advantage that film had is that it had actors. Each new sequence, there were great actors giving a performance that would drive the film - in a lot of ways, the horse was actually irrelevant, and they certainly weren't relying on the horse to carry the story. On the other hand, that is exactly what happens here - there are actors in the film, even great ones like Isabelle Huppert, but the story belongs entirely to EO, and the six donkeys playing him have to carry the film. Except they are donkeys, so they don't have the acting talent to do so. The film therefore expects you to put a lot of effort into creating the connection with the animal, and I just didn't.
I was also bothered by the lecturing tone of the film. The film essentially becomes an exploration of the various ways that humans inflict cruelty on animals, and there are many moments of EO suffering under the control of someone. And, to be clear, I don't support animal cruelty. But for me the most irritating was the constant emphasis on meat production - every few minutes it seemed as though there was some restatement about the use of animals as a food source, whether it be the multiple reminders that donkey meat can be used for salami, or the scene where the truck driver reveals that he only has a lot of animal-based products (like sausages, cheese, or pork) for food. Yes, we know animals are used for meat; also, I like meat, so stop trying to make me feel guilty about something I'm never going to feel guilty about.
I came into this movie hoping, expecting, to see a great film. I walked out extremely disappointed, having felt disengaged from the film the entire night. I did not care for it, but perhaps you might.
Fremont
The thing about the film festival is that sometimes you decide to see a film, not because it particularly interests you, but because you have a gap in your schedule, this film fits the gap, and there's nothing about it that you find particularly uninteresting either. And then sometimes when you see it, it winds up being simply delightful.
Donya is an Afghan refugee who came to America after working as a translator for the American troops. She lives in Fremont as part of a community of fellow Afghans, but works in San Francisco at a fortune cookie company. She's having trouble sleeping, so goes to the doctor for sleeping pills, but the doctor is much more interested in exploring her post-traumatic stress. And then one day, an impulsive decision to include an unusual message in a fortune cookie results in an mysterious out-of-town trip, and possibly a broken routine.
This is a very small film, operating very much in a minor key, with a dry and restrained sense of humour. It feels very grounded, never crossing into schmaltz or being overly playful. The relationships with the other characters feel lived in and realistic. There's a great sense of community expressed among the other Afghans living in this housing complex with her - and the challenges she finds where, even living in America, there are people around her who view her as a traitor for working with the American troops. (This is never the focus of the films, but it's a fascinating and realistic shading that they included.) She also has a really sweet friendship with the elderly soap-opera-addicted owner of the empty restaurant she frequents. The film does possibly go slightly overly broad in her scenes with the doctor - his strange insistence that the novel White Fang could be a window into her psyche being feels marginally overplayed - but it's worth it for the gentle way he keeps prodding her to look beyond the surface and to actually deal with everything she's experienced. I also found it fascinating watching her in her relationship with her coworkers - particularly with the bright and sunny Molly. There's a marked difference between Molly's enthusiasm and optimism - when she discusses the blind date she's about to go on, she is already talking about how, if this goes well, perhaps she and this guy will move in together - when contrasted against Donya's more withdrawn, constrained being. Donya never really feels entirely at ease - even with people she feels comfortable with, there's a taciturn nature to her that leads Molly at one point to say that she speaks like a fortune cookie. Above all, she just feels achingly lonely - having left everything that she knew in Afghanistan, trying to build a life in America, filled with guilt over having abandoned her family and for the impacts that her choices may have had on them, and now she's living in a tiny apartment in a housing complex, sleeping in a single bed because her bedroom isn't big enough for a double - all of this is just beautifully shaded.
The film culminates in a series of delightful scenes where she encounters a similarly awkward mechanic. Now, admittedly, this is the point where the film does feel as though it's edging towards cliché - the character feels very much written to be an ideal third act love interest. But it does work really well - the film does rig this by casting Jeremy Allen White, because he's such an expressive actor, in this sombre, mournful, lonely role. But part of the delight of those scenes is the way it communicates that these people recognise the commonality of soul in each other, but it's not easy for them to take the step out and risk the life you've accepted for something new.
I felt like I was bouncing out of Fremont. It's a wonderful little gem of a film, that completely charmed me.
No Bears
In 2010, acclaimed Iranian New Wave director Jafar Panahi was sentenced to a 20-year ban on leaving the country, and writing or directing films. This has not stopped him; in fact, the films that he's made while under this ban have been absolutely fascinating, as he has worked to directly comment on his experiences as a man working under these restrictions.
As with all of his recent films, No Bears focuses on Panahi himself as a character. He's currently making a film that is being shot in Turkey, but since he's banned from leaving Iran, he's moved to a small village close to the border of Iran and Turkey, so he can feel physically close to the production while he directs remotely. This causes questions, since this small town has poor internet, and he could in fact direct more effectively from his home in Tehran - so, has he come here so he can escape over the border? Meanwhile, one day while taking photographs of the village, he may have taken a photo of a couple sitting under a tree; the girl, though unmarried, had been betrothed to another literally since her birth, and the possibility that Panahi has evidence of her relationship with another man causes the village to erupt.
Primarily, this is a film that is entirely focused on his experience as someone who is barred from leaving the country. Not only is this a big part of Panahi's storyline, the film he's making is a contemporaneous documentary-drama about a couple trying to secure false passports in order to escape to Paris, while the secret couple have plans to escape across the border in order to be together. This sensation of being barred from travelling leads to one of the best moments in the film - Panahi is offered an opportunity to cross the border; he is reluctant, but agrees to go and have a look. As he looks out at the bright lights of Turkey, he's told that he's standing on the country border, and he instinctively takes a leap back. Would he have a better, more free life outside of Iran? Undoubtedly. But that's not the point. Despite all its flaws, despite the burdens of the current regime, Iran is his country, he does love it, and he knows that if he did sneak out of this country then he can never return to it, and that prospect is just too painful. This exploration of the emotional turmoil he finds himself in is fascinating.
As with all of his work, Jafar Panahi seems genuinely intrigued by people and the lives that they live. Here, there's great affection on display for the people of this village, especially the man who is renting his room to Panahi, who, whether driven by genuine enthusiasm and admiration or just a desire to be a hospitable host, is always eager to do whatever Panahi needs, although he becomes increasingly wary as questions are asked about Panahi's continued presence in the village. But it's also a film that is fascinated by the cultural practises that can develop, not just in a country or within a specific culture, but down to the level of specificity that includes just a single village. This village has a number of traditional practises - some, like the ceremonial foot-washing an engaged couple participates in down in the river, seem rather harmless; others, like the practise of cutting a girl's umbilical cord in the name of the baby's future husband, are genuinely horrifying, binding that child to a future they never had a chance to agree to. These are all practices that Panahi, as someone who lives a city life in Tehran, has no idea about. Similarly, the village swearing room, where conflicts are resolved by people swearing on the Quran (although unsettingly we are told you don't have to tell the truth while swearing) is a fascinating insight into the way groups of people find their own ways to resolve issues.
There is one unfortunate flaw in the film - the exact nature of the film project being made in Turkey is frustratingly oblique. Initially it seems as though it's a straight drama, complete with scenes being restaged; later we learn that these events are apparently genuinely happening in real time, with the actors addressing Panahi about the reality of their situation. This leads us to realise this project is much like his recent films that blur fiction and reality. But what then do we make of the facts that this couple, who seem to be Iranian, are already in Turkey but still need fake passports to escape. I'm certain there is a logical explanation - in fact, in the cold light of day, I can think of some - but at the time I was watching the film I found myself fighting a bit just to piece together exactly what was actually going on in that film project. And this lack of clarity was not limited just to me - discussing the film with a friend afterwards, he expressed similar uncertainty around what was happening in those moments. Perhaps an additional five minutes needed to be dedicated to those scenes to give a bit more context to that project - and this is a fairly short film, just over 100 minutes, so there's definitely space to give an extra few minutes to clarify the confusion.
And that confusion is a shame, because that storyline is so pivotal to the film's ultimate resolution. And it's not a happy resolution. Characters do escape, in a way at least, but at incredible cost and pain. For Panahi, the prospect of escape feels illusory, an impossible dream. At least, this is true for the film Panahi. For the man himself, earlier this year there were reports that Iran had lifted its travel ban on Jafar Panahi. And that is great news. Hopefully this points to a loosening of the country's attitude to the man and his work, but until this happens, I will continue to find the work he does in this stage of life to be fascinating.
Ennio
In 2020, when the maestro Ennio Morricone, undoubtedly the greatest composer of film scores in the history of the art form, passed away, the first piece of music I felt drawn to listen to was from a film I've never watched. I have no interest in Adrian Lyne's 1997 adaptation of Lolita - I'm sceptical that a man who made his reputation with mainstream erotic movies is quite the right person to be approaching material as sensitive as Lolita. But a few years ago, I was watching a different film, and there was this piece of music in it that immediately caught my attention. Watching the end credits, I discovered it was the main theme from the 1997 Lolita, composed by Ennio Morricone. (You can hear the theme here - it's great.) I quickly hunted down a copy of that score, and to this day it is one of my favourites. The theme is beautiful, mournful, romantic, tragic, innocent, and deeply, profoundly unsettling - all the things you'd expect from an adaptation of that novel. To this day, I don't know if Lyne's Lolita is a good version of that story, but I can say that Morricone's music is a perfect musical representation of that novel.
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, who famously worked with Morricone on Cinema Paradiso, the documentary Ennio is centred around an extended interview with the maestro himself, presumably recorded sometime in the year before his passing, along with additional interviews with a vast list of contributors - everyone from colleagues, fellow composers, directors, and admirers (including Bruce Springsteen and someone from Metallica). The movie takes us through his entire life and career, from his early days being pushed by his trumpeter father to learn to play the instrument himself, his attendance at a musical conservatory and studying composition under the influential composer Petrassi, his move into song arrangements, his first tentative steps into film composition, and the explosion that occurred when he started collaborating with Sergio Leone, all the way up to his Oscar-winning collaboration with Tarantino for The Hateful Eight.
There's a great deal of information in here, and it's pretty much all fascinating. We hear stories about the complex work he would do with his song arrangements, with orchestrations that steer away from mere accompaniment towards introducing additional complex musical ideas, and the insanely fast rate at which he would produce these arrangements. We hear how his mentor Petrassi and others from his conservatory dismissed film composition as a much lesser musical form - Petrassi even described it as prostitution - when compared to the glories of absolute music, and how one of his conservatory associates only appreciated Morricone's film music after hearing his work for Once Upon a Time in America and realising what an incredible expression that music is. There is discussion about how his music changed the sound of westerns - I'd never thought about it before, because these days his music is simply what a western sounds like, but if you watch a pre-Morricone western, the musical style really is completely different. I was shocked to learn that Stanley Kubrick actually wanted Morricone to composed the score to A Clockwork Orange, but Leone said he was needed to compose A Fistful of Dynamite - I love the Carlos score to A Clockwork Orange, but I'd be fascinated to see what Morricone would have done, because it would have been very different. We hear how his approach was so often completely counterintuitive and at odds with the content of the scene, and yet he had an uncanny knack for putting his finger on the exact right tone for any movie. There's a fascinating story where the director of Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion tried to replace Morricone's brilliant discordant arpeggios for the murder scene with a more ominous earlier composition that heavyhandedly underlined the action of the murder, rather than setting the tone of the film. And on and on and on, story after story after story, and it's all fascinating. That said, I did appreciate that the film didn't fall into the trap of just being a bunch of people telling stories - people are watching this film because we love the music of Ennio Morricone, and so there were points in the film where they would just pause for a minute, and listen to one of these pieces, usually performed at some incredible concert that I would desperately love to have attended, just enjoying the magic of his work.
If I had a complaint, it would be that the film, even at a runtime of over 150 minutes, is just too short. Morricone composed for over 400 films, and the number of absolutely incredible scores in that list is astonishing - as film critic Mark Kermode says, "his music was great even when the movies weren't". And so it feels like the movie really is rushing, spending little more than a minute or two on even some of the big titles. Throughout the film they would bring up a new movie and play a clip from the music, and every time I would hear the music I would think "I know this music, I love this music, I want to hear more discussion about this music", but there was seldom time to dwell and learn more than a snippet about the piece. The one point where the film did actually slow down and spend time really discussing the music (by which I mean that they spent maybe five minutes on it) was with Once Upon a Time in America. And that's a great score, and I love that it gets that attention, but I wish it had been possible for other films to also get that focus. You really feel that time pressure at the end of the film, as the film covers the last 30 years of his life in maybe 30 minutes, leaping whole decades at a time, never even mentioning some extraordinary work (including my favourite, the Lolita score), until we reach The Hateful Eight and his only competitive Oscar win.
Perhaps there would have been more time to get into a bit of analysis if there had been more judicious use of the other talking heads. We reach a point of saturation where we've heard so many people saying how great Morricone is that you simply don't need to hear them say that anymore. It would have been better if they could have used some of those talking heads to explore his work in more detail. I'm not unreasonable - I realise Tarantino is not going to be able to discuss the work in any technical detail, and I know he's there solely to enthuse that Morricone is "better then Mozart", and that's fantastic. But when you have actual musicians and composers, recognisable name film composers like John Williams and Hans Zimmer, people with the technical knowledge to explain why his work is so effective, then it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to just have them fanboying.
Still, despite these minor disappointments, I loved Ennio. It's a wonderful celebration of an incredible body of work, and the fact that they managed to capture the maestro so close to the end reflecting on his entire life and sharing his thoughts on his work is so incredibly valuable. If you have any interest in the film music at all, then this really is a must-see.
Phantom
In 1930's Japanese-occupied Korea, a network of spies, known as "phantoms", infiltrate the highest levels of the ruling authorities, seeking to undermine the occupiers. After one phantom unsuccessfully attempts to assassinate the new Governor-General, a security chief suspects there's another phantom and identifies five likely suspects, bringing them to a remote clifftop hotel to interrogate(/torture) them all to identify the phantom. We know from the start that communications officer Park Cha-kung is the phantom, and so the film eschews mystery for suspense, as we watch how she navigates around the other suspects - the obsessive police officer, the confident secretary/mistress to a high ranking official, an awkward code-breaker, and a young office colleague of Park's - as well as avoiding the interrogation of the security officer and working to escape.
One thing that can happen in the film festival is that a movie gets what you might call the "foreign bump". You watch a film, and you suddenly realise this is a movie that if it were made in the English language would never be on the schedule - but because a movie is from overseas, that almost lends the film an extra cachet. Phantom is essentially an action thriller, a film that by the halfway point goes completely over the top, with explosions, women striding around with massive guns, a body toll a mile high, and moments that remind you of Kill Bill or The Matrix. This very much feels like the type of film that was probably made to be a massive blockbuster in Korea - and I hope it was. It's a excellent example of what this type of film can be - a cast of engaging characters, some nice suspense, enjoyable humour, and very strong, if over-the-top, action filmmaking. There's even a little bit of substance to the film, with the setting allowing the filmmakers to comment on the types of atrocities that the Japanese did commit against the Korean citizens. But it is very much a commercial blockbuster movie. If anything it's just reminds you how ill-served we often are by Hollywood - if a film a good as this can be made as a piece of mainstream cinema, then why the hell do we have to put up with having ten Fast and Furious films?
But then, that's part of the reason why this film is in the film festival. This is a very entertaining film, that deserves to be seen, and realistically it's unlikely to get a release here - the number of foreign films that genuinely breakthrough is extremely small. And so this becomes an opportunity to give an audience a chance to enjoy a wonderful piece of entertainment. And sometimes that's enough.
The Innocents
I've been meaning to see the 1961 horror film The Innocents for quite a while, so it was exciting when the film appeared on the festival schedule. Based on the Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw (about which I have no familiarity), the film stars Deborah Kerr as Miss Giddens, a woman who is hired to be the governess for two orphaned children by their guardian, an uncle who has no interest in engaging with the children and has therefore shipped them off to live out-of-sight in his country home in the village of Bly. The girl Flora is delightful, and the boy Miles is charming - which is confusing because, why exactly was Miles expelled from school? But then Miss Giddens starts hearing voices calling out, and starts seeing mysterious figures: the ghost of the dead valet that Miles hero-worshipped, and the ghost of the dead governess who Flora adored.
This really did live up to expectations. The first thing you register is the absolutely incredible black-and-white cinematography, which is just perfect. As used here, it set a distinctive atmospheric tone - the film takes place in this massive manor, with large, spacious rooms, but the effect of the black-and-white naturally brings a gloom and a darkness to this space, so even in these wide-open spaces we feel caught, claustrophobic. I also love the way the film seemed to live in the close-up, with the camera sitting mere inches away from the face of the person being photographed - most films use close-ups for emphasis, but here this almost seemed the default shot. We as humans are rarely if ever that close to anyone we are not intimate with, so by dwelling in that space the film really emphasises this sense of unease. The film also makes incredible use of deep focus, where characters a long way away from the camera are just as perfectly in-focus as the character sitting right by the lens, or sometimes they will seamlessly swap positions in the shot composition - this always feels a little unnatural, because that's not how our eyes work, we understand intuitively the need to adjust our focus between objects near and far, so when you have a film that breaks that approach, and even more so that really draws your attention to this, it just feels uncomfortable. The Innocents is a fantastic example of just how much considered cinematography can really amplify the tone and success of the movie.
But that doesn't work if the rest of the film isn't also great. Which it is. Firstly, it's a fantastic story, and I can certainly see why this is material that people have returned to again and again - there's an engaging mystery, fascinating characters, and an absolute killer of an ending that left me stunned. This must also be one of the urtexts that defines the creepy-child trope. The script, which had people like Truman Capote and John Mortimer working on it, is sharp and at times unexpectedly funny, in a way that smartly eases the tension without undercutting it. Meanwhile, director Jack Clayton, whose work I'm otherwise unfamiliar with, is just stellar, delighting in the contrast between the elegance of the setting and the increasingly hysterical panicked tone running through the film.
And the performances are just a joy to watch. Deborah Kerr seems to be enjoying playing her decline from a prim and proper parson's daughter into desperate possible insanity, and she takes great care to credibly communicate the gradations of this change so that it felt almost inevitable. Megs Jenkins is very fun as the kindly, if wary, housekeeper. And I loved the two children, Pamela Franklin and Martin Stephens as Flora and Miles, who both give very natural, convincing performances. Stephens, in particular, is incredible as this boy who is disconcertingly mature, and manages to make this performance feel entirely unaffected.
This is a brilliant film. It deserves all of the plaudits it has received, and is just as effective today as it would have been 60-plus years ago. I'm sad it's taken this long for me to see it, but am delighted to have finally rectified this.
My Name is Alfred Hitchcock
Mark Cousins is a maker of incredible documentaries about cinema history - his 15-hour The Story of Film: An Odyssey should be essential viewing for everyone passionate about the art form - and as a Hitchcock fan I was really excited to learn that he was making a 2-hour documentary focused solely on the work of the Master of Suspense. Rather pleasingly, he decides to approach the subject from an unexpected angle. Most people making a documentary about Hitchcock would focus on his techniques, the way he constructs his sequences for maximum suspense, or for his thoughts about film theory, the way he coined the term "MacGuffin" to express a concept that people still use to this day. But that is a very well-worn path, and Cousins isn't interested in repeating things that people have been saying about Hitchcock for a hundred years - in fact, at one point in the film it's actually pointed out that these are subjects that are not being discussed. Which is not to say that the film doesn't address the way he builds suspense in his films - it's impossible to talk about his work without that being a subject of discussion - but it's not the focus of the film.
Instead, Cousins picks six major themes, recurring ideas or elements that relate to Hitchcock's work, around which he constructs his film. In "Escape", we explore the different types of escape in his films, from escapes to the country, escapes from danger, or even the camera escaping from watching a particularly brutal murder. In "Desire", we hear about how he portrayed this basic driver during an era with great limitations on what could be shown. "Loneliness" discusses the way he would frequently exploit a character's isolation for maximum effect, whether it be the second Mrs de Winter feeling alone in a house that is a monument to her predecessor, or the way Cary Grant is most at risk when he's all alone and a crop duster plane appears. "Time" looks at the way the man played with time, often compressing it, or stretching out or delaying a moment for greatest impact and suspense. The film did lose me during "Fulfilment" with its reference to Hitchcock's happy marriage - every fan of Hitchcock knows there are things we just try not to think about (the man was lucky "Me too" was not a thing at the time). But it won me back with "Height", looking at the way Hitchcock would use height to survey a scene, communicate information or create an impression, or sometimes just give an omniscient perspective. It's difficult to talk too much more about this film - it's fascinating and illuminative, but so much of it involves pairing different scenes from different movies to highlight a particular idea or approach to filming, in a way that it's almost impossible to just write about.
But there is one choice with this film that baffles me. Cousins makes the very odd choice to have the entire film narrated by Alfred Hitchcock himself, as voiced by impressionist Alistair McGowan. It doesn't pretend that this is the real Hitchcock - the script opens with Hitchcock making references to having been dead for 40 years and to the existence of 5G internet - but still, this is the conceit of the film. And I don't really understand what it adds. These aren't Hitchcock's observations to begin with, they're Mark Cousins', so I'm a bit uncomfortable with the appearance of putting these comments into the man's voice. I would have been fine if they were using this impressionist to recreate his voice for quotes that Hitchcock actually said, but as it is, I'm just left wondering which parts of what we heard are things that Hitchcock actually thought, and which are not - did he ever actually use the term "chaste-arousal"? As it is, I can't see any reason why this film could not have been made with Cousins' Irish lilt throughout the film. It would have been clearer, more honest, and less distracting.
But despite that severe reservation, it's still a pretty fascinating documentary, and manages to present new perspectives on a man whose work defined a genre. If you love movies, if you love Hitchcock, this is a must-see.
Fallen Leaves
My final film of the festival, and the official closing night film, was the delightful new romantic comedy by Finnish filmmaker Aki Kurismaki. Holappa is a construction worker with a not-well-hidden alcoholism problem, who unconvincingly prides himself as being a "tough guy". One night, while at the bar with his friend, he encounters a group of women including Ansa, newly unemployed from her supermarket job after stealing expired food that was going on the bin. After a few more encounters, they impulsively decide to go on a date to the movies (hilariously watching the Jim Jarmusch zombie film). At the end of the evening, she gives him her phone number, but almost immediately he loses the piece of paper and cannot contact her. This is just the first issue that would seem to stand in the path of true love.
I really need to dig into the work of Aki Kurismaki, as I've only seen a small handful of his films, and they really are a joy. Fallen Leaves is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, but the humour is extremely small and dry - the biggest running joke in the film involves a character being mildly put out that some people think he's older than he is. Part of this approach comes from the fact that the film always starts with these well-defined characters, and then searches for the little moments that happen in real life that make us laugh. Even the one-scene characters get memorable and hilarious pieces of business - the security guard intensely staring, looking for signs of product theft, or the nurse who doesn't need her ex-husband's clothing anymore because she's changed the locks. These were funny, but real, moments that filled the cinema with laughter, from characters we never see again.
But the core of this film is this extremely sweet and affectionate relationship between Ansa and Holappa. The thing I found fascinating was the way the barriers to their relationship come in waves. As one resolves, another takes its place. I've seen movies which would take a situation like a lost phone number, and that would become the driver of the entire drama - here it's resolved after ten minutes. But then something else presents itself, and then something else again, and each of these could be the subject of a film, but instead these are just momentary issues that the characters are willing to work through. But that's the point of the film - in a lot of romantic comedies, the couple is perfect for each other, but there is just one problem that's preventing them from getting together. But that's not true in real life, where every relationship is a culmination of small coincidences, compromises, and acceptances. And some of these problems don't actually reach a resolution - Holappa's alcoholism, which caused him to drink into a near-unconscious stupor, isn't going to be cured after a few weeks - but there's a sense that, if one person is prepared to do whatever needs to be done to resolve the problem, the other is willing to step forward to provide whatever support is needed.
One thing I felt puzzled by was the fact that every time any character turns on the radio, there's always news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which people usually turn off very quickly. And it happens a lot. It's so prominent that I ultimately felt I needed to do some research after the film, just to figure out what it meant. This led me to the discovery that Finland shares a border with Russia (my geography is very bad), and that there was even a point where Finland was part of Russia. It feels as though Russia is this big aggressor neighbour, about whom there is some lingering fear that they might turn their eyes to Finland next. And this seems to leads to an attitude of quiet resignation. Whatever Russia chooses to do, Russia will choose to do. There's no point in feeling anxious about it, it's just important to enjoy whatever time we have in-the-moment, and to improve your lot in life while you can. And this Que Sera, Sera attitude seems to feed into everything everyone does in the film. You lose your job, no big deal, find a new one. You're not happy that people see you as older than you are, then take steps to improve the way you're living.
This was the perfect way to bring the festival to a close. It's an utterly joyous film, sweet but not saccharine, funny but truthful. It's wonderful.
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