The grudge and the rivalry between the Japanese and the Korean is no novelty, but what about transposing this inimicality into an unlikely lesbian romance with a British twang? This very ambitious endeavour is inspired on Fingersmith, a 2002 historical crime novel set in Victorian Era Britain by and written by Sarah Waters, moved to Korea in the 1930s, the period of Japanese occupation. And a big chunk of the action takes place inside a countryhouse blending British and Japanese architecture.The Handmaiden is a rich mélange of cultural references.
The very young, petite and charming Sookee (Kim Tae-ri) is hired as a handmaiden to the taller, older and equally attractive Japanese heiress Hideko (Kim Min-hee). She lives in a large, secluded and impressive mansion in the countryside. In reality, Sookee was recruited by a criminal posing as a Japanese Count in order to help him to seduce the rich lady, seize her wealth and lock her up in a mental asylum. But soon the two women are sexually drawn to each other, and the plans takes an unexpected turn. Many more twists will follow, in a very long and epic story divided in three parts.
The cinematography of the film is certain to leave you breathless: the costumes are plush, the residences are luxurious, the outside is bright and verdant. The film aesthetics are somewhere between Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) and Realm of the Senses (Nagisa Oshima, 1976). In other words, it’s a combination carnal pleasures and colourful fantasy. It’s a 100% technically accomplished movie, but it fails in some other aspects.
The Japanese heiress Hideko is extremely elegant and attractive.
The sex scenes partly are partly convincing. While there is definitely sexual tension between the two beautiful actresses, and some moments are highly erotic – including a 69, scissor sisters action and very bizarre finger-in-the-mouth moment – the gaze remains extremely masculine. Park Chan-wook may have wanted to celebrate lesbian romance, particularly as he found inspiration in a book authored by a woman, but the final outcome comes across as a piece of male voyeurism. I doubt that lesbians will relate to all the wiggling and giggling of the two protagonists.
Another problem with the film is the gratuitous violence in the end, which comes across as a very perverse substitute for the previous carnal pleasures. And the convoluted film narrative has some redundant elements. The repetition of some sequences, while placed in an entirely new context, sometimes feels a little long and unnecessary.
A few seconds – even the fractions of seconds – can make all difference the world. This complex, jarring and thought-provoking LGBT bullying drama will exploit the pressures of time in very different situations: 8s to down a funnel full of beer, 1:54 to run 800m in a sports competition or 13s for… well, I can’t reveal the shocking twist at the end of this French Canadian movie.
Sixteen-year-old Tim (Antoine Olivier Pilon) is a shy and introspective teenager struggling with a gang of bullies headed by Jeff (Lou-Pascal Tremblay) in school. Tim and his nemesis are both vying for a slot in the national 800m competition, which makes their rivalry even more pronounced. Tim’s best friend Francis (Robert Naylor) is also a victim of bullying. The gang is adamant that the boys have an affair, and this will drive both students to very extreme and different measures in order to deal with the situation.
We eventually find out that Tim used to be a star runner, but he stopped a couple of years earlier when his mother passed away. Now he sees the opportunity to turn the tables and get even with the arrogant and manipulative Jeff, but an expected event suddenly gets on this way, posing a major dilemma. The narrative gradually evolves into what seems to be a race between homophobia and tolerance, then it suddenly veers into something far more sinister and harrowing.
With convincing acting and conventional photography, 1:54 delves into the horrific ramifications of bullying, thereby exposing the twisted and inconsequential sadism of human beings at a very young age. The Internet and smart phones play a central role in deconstructing personalities and and humiliating Tim and Francis. Every possibility of love and romance has been eclipsed by sheer barbarity, and both Tim and Francis have been robbed of their inherent right to love. The cruelty of the students will leave you jaw-dropped, but sadly the reality portrayed is not far-fetched. New technologies have provided young people with a very dangerous and potentially lethal weapon.
1:54 is showed as part of the BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival in March 2017, when this piece was originally written. It is available for online viewing as part of the MyFrenchFilmFestival between January 19th and February 19th (2018)
As homosexuality becomes increasingly acceptable, coming-out dramas are gradually replaced by same-sex coming-of-age stories with little regard to the sexuality of the characters. Such is the case with the German teenage romance Centre of my World, where the gay plot is entirely devoid of the subject of homophobia and any sort social taboo attached to gayness. Another example is the American indie Akron (Brian O’Donnell/ Sasha King, 2016), which showed at last year’s BFI Flare. And there are more movies of the same nature. These films are necessary but their repercussion can also be double-edged: on one hand, we all crave for a world without bigotry and intolerance, and it feels good to breath the fresh air of gay cinema without toxic prejudice. On the other hand, it also feels a little awkward and detached from reality, as there aren’t many place in the world which have achieved this level of equality and respect.
Seventeen-year-old Phil (Louis Hofmann) lives in a ancient mansion called named Visible with his mother Glass and his twin sister Dianne. The three have a very cozy relationship, until one day the mother and the daughter fall out. Meanwhile, Phil begins a relationship with his extremely handsome new classmate Nicholas (Jannik Schümann), despite repeated warnings from his best friend Kat (Svenja Jung) that there is something wrong about the heartthrob. The movie flows seamlessly between present and past, as the 10-year-old twins struggle to come to terms with their mother’s lovers and the mystery surrounding the identity of their real father.
Get ready for an elegant, sexy and thoroughly enjoyable journey into a teenager’s world, more specifically into his first incursion into love. This is a happy-go-lucky, feel-good, clean, conventional and technically accomplished movie. You’re in a manna from heaven if you are an ephebophile (a posh word for those attracted to teenagers; ie most of us!). The camera work is very clever (with jump cuts and fast editing, not too different from a music video), the photography is elegant and sultry (think of a vaguely toned down Pierre et Gilles and you are partway there), plus the soundtrack packed with indie rock is very much fun.
Centre of my World is very beautiful and touching, and never vulgar. But it’s also too perfect: both boys live in astounding mansions, their hair is perfect, their bubble bums are gorgeous, and so is the rest of their body. And of course, there is no homophobia, and everyone (except for Kat) is extremely supportive of their relationship. This sounds ideal, but sometimes it’s hardly relatable. In other words, this is not a very dirty movie.
Another peculiar aspect of the narrative is that it slowly veers away from the gay romance, and the LGBT theme eventually becomes subordinate to something else. Of course this is not a problem: erecting a central pillar of homosexuality is not compulsory for a good film. The problem is that the subplot which ascends into foreground lacks profundity and so the drama at the end of the film becomes a little petty, and the plot becomes somewhat flimsy.
Centre of my World showed at BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival in March 2017, when this piece was originally written. The film was out in cinemas across the UK in September, and it’s now on BFI Player.
Sit back and rewind the tape manually to the early 1990s. When I say “manually” I do mean literally with yours hands: release the spool brake, stick your finger inside and rewind the VHS cassette back to a time of puerile nostalgia. Torrey Pines is indeed a handmade movie: the paper cutouts, the textures, the paint, the placement of the pieces and even the soundtrack. The director is also a singer and a guitarist, and he performs most of the songs in the movie. Live even. That’s right: the helmer and two supporting musicians played the soundtrack like at the cinema, in good old-fashioned silent era style.
Torrey Pines takes you back to Clyde Petersen’s youth (before he became transgender) in Seattle (US), particularly the feuds with her schizophrenic and chain-smoking mother, plus the realisation of her egodystonic gender identity (ie. that she was not satisfied with her female body and longed for a male one instead). The anguish, the dreams and the fantasies of this young woman are illustrated through child-like drawings with plush and sumptuous colours. Words are often replaced by allegories (such as the tigers on the image of the top, representing a wild and turbulent discussion). There are some graphic representation of her worst fears: such as giving birth and lactating.
Petersen has no qualms at representing his fears as a young girl
The sounds within the movie are also remarkable. In addition to the songs performed by the director and the supporting musicians, feelings are communicated through strange utterances (a boisterous “blergh” for disapproval, a buzzing “hmmm” for agreement, plus plenty of wailing and yodeling). The director clarified that the animator’s primal trick of “speaking through a saxophone” in order to distort the human voice was used abundantly throughout the film. Strange, squelching and even guttural sounds are pervasive but never invasive.
The film is not without flaws. At times, the animation becomes too convoluted and slips into clumsiness. Such is the case with a Whitney Houston concert where the director tried to portray all 700 crowdfunding contributors – a mammoth and borderline impossible task. Also, due to the laconic nature of the movie, it’s often difficult to determine exactly what’s happening. I would not have worked out that Petersen’s mother is schizophrenic had I not read the programme before the movie.
Despite being marketed as feature film, Torrey Pines is in reality a featurette with a duration of just 60 minutes. The film would benefit from a longer narrative, but considering the amount of time and effort it took to complete it, and that it was made at the director’s very own bedroom, I think we can forgive him for keeping it a little shorter than the average multimillionaire Hollywood flick.
Despite the flaws – normal teething problems for a budding helmer with a small budget and very little “studio” space – Torrey Pines is a major achievement. Firstly because LGBT topics are somewhat scarce in the world of animation. Secondly and most importantly, the film is a testament that cinema is a weapon for personal liberation – which fits in extremely well with DMovies‘ vision of cinema (click here in order to find out more).
What if an unremarkable Bulgarian village on the Turkish border became a safe haven for asylum seekers? What if a simple postman wanted to welcome Syrian refugees, in the hope that diversity and young people would save his little village from extinction? Documentarist Tonislav Hristov, whose films have been shown at Tribeca, Sarajevo and Hot Docs Film Festival, wanted to investigate why some Bulgarians think that Syrians cannot deal with their own problems. The Good Postman offers valuable insight into why people tend to be afraid of foreigners, exposing the roots of xenophobia.
Tonislav left his comfy house in Finland and went back to homeland Bulgaria in order to spend some time with the locals in Great Dervent. The tiny village has become heavily depopulated in the last few decades, since the demise of the communist regime.
The story focuses on Ivan, a middle-aged postman, who campaigns to bring life back to the ageing village. Likewise the Greek God Hermes, who acts as a messenger between men and gods, Ivan visits the inhabitants of his village not only to bring them letters, but also to serve as the guide of their souls. He comforts an old alcoholic man, he inspires an old lady to search for a new partner, he calls the Swiss Border guards Frontex in order to tell them that no Syrian has crossed the border. He is an anonymous border patrol agent, just like those in the film Transpecos (Greg Kwedar, 2017 – click here for our review of the movie). But unlike the fictional Flores and Hobbs in the American thriller, Ivan does want immigrants to cross the border into Bulgaria.
.
Still from The Good Postman
.
Ivan truly believes he can make a difference. He decides to run for mayor. The other candidates are Vesa, the current much more educated mayoress, and Halachev, who is against refugees settling in his hometown.
What makes The Good Postman a compelling piece is the accurate cinematography and the look at “the other”. People who lead an uneventful existence suddenly come to life. There is even a remarkable change of mind in Halachev, after he loses the elections.
The narrative proves that a good documentarist is capable of extracting the trust from isolated people if he/she has the benefit of time. The motivation of the population in that small village dates back to World War II, when the village was split and the cemetery remained on the other side. Those ladies had to show their passport in order to cross the border and lay flowers on their relative’s graves. Hristov touches an open wound, still delivering a piece packed with the poetry of hope.
Just click here in order to find out more about Human’s Rights Refugee Programme.
The Good Postman is part of Human Rights Watch Film Festival taking place this week in London – just click here for more information about the event. The itinerant Festival will next take place in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San DIego and Toronto. If you live in Eastern Europe, you can watch the film at HBO. Don’t forget to watch the film trailer below:
Olivier Assayas is a very prolific filmmaker, with a career spanning nearly four decades and nearly 30 movies under his belt. His latest flick Personal Shopper is a very unusual blend of horror and fashion set in Paris, starring the American model and actress Kristen Steward. This is major change from his previous film, the acclaimed Clouds of Sils Maria (2014): a lesbian drama starring Juliette Binoche and taking place in the Swiss Alps.
His latest movie tells the story of Maureen Cartwright (Stewart), a young American working in Paris as a personal shopper for a celebrity called Keira (Nora von Walstatten). She has the ability to communicate with spirits, just like her recently deceased twin brother. She is now trying to communicate with her recently deceased twin brother, and it’s other ghosts that cross her path.
Victor Fraga from DMovies met up with Olivier in London as the director came to the UK for his film release, and he’s says that Brits have been very positive about his new film. So we decided to ask him a few questions about the unusual connection between horror and fashion, the French horror genre, making an English-language film in France, international co-productions, Brexit and more!
Victor Fraga – France doesn’t have a consistent tradition of horror, but instead sporadic pieces such as Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955) and Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju, 1960). Why do you think that is? Do you think there is some sort of prejudice in the country against the genre?
Olivier Assayas – If you look closely there’s actually a strain, perhaps more of an undercurrent. The French have a different approach to genre. American horror is defined by this Manichaean opposition, where the visible is good and the invisible is evil. The embodiment of evil is always lurking under the surface. That’s not the way the French and, in a certain way, the European tradition works.
What I mean is, the “hidden”, the supernatural is often benevolent and benign to the French, it doesn’t have to be bad and evil. In Personal Shopper I tried to reconnect with this very specific aspect of French cinema. That’s something you see in the movies of Jacques Rivette, which are pretty much ghost stories. He’s been very influential on my work. I wrote for André Techiné when I was very young the screenplay for Rendez-vous [1985], which was also some sort of ghost story. Georges Franju is my biggest reference, he’s a remarkable filmmaker. His work is fascinating, with this strange relation to the silent era. Silent films are also very meaningful to me.
Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face is one of Olivier’s biggest influences
VF – Horror normally mandates a lot of bodily fluids: blood, vomit, saliva, sweat, yet Personal Shopper is relatively “clean” and the scares are subtle. Do you think such fluids would have ruined the fashionable outfits?
OA – I suppose I’m not big on that. You have families within genres, and I think I would connect to Alfred Hitchcock, Dario Argento and John Carpenter. They don’t show the gore.
VF – The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) was very gory, wasn’t it?
OA – Yes, you are the right. That’s the only one, when he suddenly spits it out. But it’s not there in the other ones, particularly his early movies.
VF – Was it a conscious decision to leave the gore out?
OA – Yes, it was. There is a similar opposition between fear and gore and between eroticism and pornography.
VF – Ghosts on the telephone are no novelty in cinema, there’s for instance, a remarkable sequence on Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997) of such nature. Yet computer literate entities are a novelty. Where did you get the idea from? Have you received such ambiguous messages yourself?
OA – Your question is interesting [spoiler alert: jump to the next question if don’t want to find out about the twist in Personal Shopper] because, in reality Maureen is not speaking to a ghost, she’s speaking to Ingo. She just thinks it might be an entity. I intended to have very little ambiguity, but a lot of people seem to take that side road. Basically it’s guy who is stalking and observing her.
The question I raise is: how can you be seduced by someone you can’t see and whose gender you don’t even know? That was really what I trying to question. But why does Maureen get entangled in this? Because she’s ultra-sensitive; she’s waiting for a sign. So she suddenly asks: “are you living or are you dead?”, and she breaks down in tears because she thinks she’s going nuts.
Olivier Assayas talks to DMovies in posh central London hotel, not too different from the places depicted in his latest movie
VF – Horror and fashion are a very unorthodox mixture – horror is jarring and unsettling, while beauty and splendour are meant to prevail in fashion? Did you purposely set up a very challenging task for yourself, or do you think that the two, in fact, have a lot in common?
OA – I have no prejudice in terms of where horror can happen. The more real the environment, the scarier the movie. I’m sure Dario Argento has done similar stuff. In any case, it was mostly about getting the environment right and giving it some sort of documentary feel. I tried to recreate the fashion background in a way that’s believable.
VF – Could you please explain what you mean by “documentary feel”? I never got the feeling that your film was a documentary.
OA – I don’t mean documentary in terms of syntax; I mean creating a realistic environment, but not real in the Ken Loach sense. I also wanted it to be as weird as it can be.
VF – And what do you mean by “weird”?
OA – The way we live is weird. Someone like Keira [Maureen’s celebrity boss] does exist. She floats on top of things. She has a flat in Paris where she stays for just a few days, and a boyfriend who occasionally flies in from Germany to see her, and she uses her personal shopper Maureen in order to connect with brands. It’s some sort of ghost world, except that it’s real and some people do live like that. Weird in the sense that it’s disconnected from the rest of society.
On the other hand, Maureen is a foreigner, she has no friends and no family, and she doesn’t even speak the language. So what kind of work can she do? She can only do stupid jobs like carrying bags from one place to the other. There’s something very alienating about her, but at least it’s real and you can relate to it.
What’s interesting about the fashion world is the ambiguity: Maureen both loves and hates her job. She’s attracted to it because it deals with something she’s trying to come to terms with: her femininity. Which is similar to the relation we have to the modern world: we are dismayed by materialism, but simultaneously we are craving to be part of it. There’s a metaphor in my movie.
Maureen (Kristen Stewart) is a foreigner doing a very “stupid” job in Paris
VF – This is not the first time you blend English with other languages in your films, in countries where English is not the mother tongue. Is that because you wanted to work with Kristen? Or is it because you wanted to give your film an internationalist feel? Did that upset the French?
OA – Yes, of course the French were upset. They don’t make my life easy, particularly in terms of financing. You don’t get any subsidies for films like Personal Shopper in France because they are in English language, and therefore considered an international movie. So I have to finance my films in the global market, where I’m considered an indie French filmmaker with little potential. It’s like a tighrope.
I’m interested in transnational culture, I think that the communication between languages and cultures is very exciting, very contemporary. A movie like Personal Shopper makes sense because it’s foreigners in Paris. Also, this approach enabled me to work with multiple actors; not just Kristen Stewart but also Lars Heidinger and Nora von Waldstatten. It opened doors and possibilities, and not just in terms of narrative.
VF –Personal Shopper is an international co-production between France and Germany, yet it’s London that the main character visits. Why is that? Would you consider a co-production with the UK and does the prospect of Brexit affect that?
OA – The problem is that it’s extremely expensive to shoot in London, so we had to get it all done in just one single day. I decided to film in London because I wanted Maureen to have a long text message conversation, but that only makes sense if she’s doing something else at the same time. If Maureen went to Milan instead she wouldn’t have to go through customs and sit on a lounge. A journey to London offered more background action.
Brexit doesn’t change anything for me. You normally have co-production frameworks between countries, and they exist with nations outside the EU. I think that what will change are the subsidies for British films opening in France, and the other way around. Sadly, Brexit means that there will be fewer British films showing in France and fewer French films showing in Britain!
Superficially, this is a very clean looking film. It’s anime, it’s a high school drama; school children are drawn with clean lines and bright colours in bright settings with mostly clear blue skies. Beneath that clean veneer, though, lurks dirt. Psychological dirt. Bullying. Its effect on the self-worth of the victimised and the perpetrator. Self-loathing. Suicide.
Shoya Ishida (voice: Miyu Irino) has marked the days up to the 15th on his calendar and torn off the numbers after. He does his last day at work, sells his possessions, leaves the money with his mum to pay off an outstanding debt and goes out to jump off the local river bridge. Flashback: in elementary school he is a troublemaker who picks on the new girl in class Shoko Nishimiya (Saori Hayami), who happens to be deaf. Nishimiya tries hard to be nice to her classmates asking them to communicate with her via the notebook and pencil she carries around. Perhaps she tries a little bit too hard and apologises once too often. In the playground, Ishida throws little stones at her and when she tries to be friendly, he literally lobs dirt on her face. Naoka Ueno (Yuki Kaneko) encourages his actions. Eventually he’s hauled up by the principal for repeatedly plucking Nishimiya’s hearing aid off (to the tune of some eight sets).
Shunned by others for his bullying, Ishida stops interacting with them and withdraws. This is represented onscreen by the extraordinary graphic device of an ‘X’ over the faces of his fellow schoolmates whenever they appear. It’s a very powerful way of expressing his isolation. Five years on, wrecked with guilt about his treatment of Nishimiya, he learns sign language and decides to befriend her and to make amends…
His fellow elementary classmates too are struggling to come to terms with their varying degrees of complicity in aiding or condoning his bullying. They may be children and this may be animation, but these are complex characters, deeply scarred, and yet still trying to find ways to move forward and live.
Diversity isn’t always embraced in the school playground
This film may well broaden your idea of what animation is capable. It’s nothing like Disney and equally it’s light years from Japanese SF action fest Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988) although it likewise started life as a manga and concerns teenagers. These teens, however, are not rebels against the system but simply very ordinary, screwed up kids. If this were British we’d probably have made it as a live action drama, possibly for television. It feels long at 129 minutes, but that running length allows for complexities of character and plot that a shorter running length would have sacrificed.
In the end, you get to feel how a disabled person struggles to fit in as much as you do a bully’s remorse for what he’s done against an ongoing background of other interconnected minor characters. It’s a very dirty movie, but it’s the internal dirt of the mind that’s under observation here. A challenging and demanding work, it’s also an extraordinary and groundbreaking piece of animation unlike anything else you’re likely to see on the screen this year.
Beyond that, it’s innovative on another level: it will play some UK cinema screenings with hard of hearing subtitles to allow hard of hearing audience members to experience the full film, including sound effects and music. Which seems highly appropriate given its subject matter.
A Silent Voiceis out in the UK on Friday, March 17th, with exclusive screenings nationwide on March 15th.
Kleber Mendonça Filho gained worldwide notoriety last year for conducting a very timely protest on a star-studded platform. The filmmaker and the crew of his latest movie Aquarius held signs on the red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival in May last year denouncing the coup d’état, which was taking place in Brazil then. Images of the unusual gesture (pictured below) circulated the world, stamping the cover of many international newspapers (including The Guardian). The action coincided with start of coup process in Brazil, and the opening of the film months later (in August) took place at exactly the same time as the illegitimate ousting of President Dilma Rousseff.
But Kleber isn’t just a sexy moustached face on the red carpet. At present, he is the most commercially and critically acclaimed filmmaker in Brazil, with just two feature films under his belt. The outstanding Neighbouring Sounds (2011) explores the dull urban cacophony that ties together middle-class neighbours in the Brazilian city of Recife (Kleber’s hometown). It was elected by the New York Times as one of the best films of the past 10 years– click here for our exclusive review of the movie. Last year’s Aquarius tells the story of Clara, played by the legendary Sônia Braga, a woman who resists property developers who want to knock down the building where she has lived all of her life. She uses nostalgia as a shield against her fast-changing and deeply corrupt society, as well as an instrument for both physical and emotional survival – click here for our review of the equally splendid movie.
After showing at the BFI London Film Festival last year, Aquarius will be released in theatres all around the country on Friday, March 24th. Kleber traveled to the UK specially for the occasion, and DMovies‘ editor Victor Fraga met up with him for a dirty talk. We chatted the commercial success, prestige, democracy, the future of Brazilian cinema, Recife, Robocop, happy umbrellas and much more!
…
Victor Fraga – Brazil is still a very exotic country in Britain, and most people would know neither where Recife is located nor that there was a coup d’état last year. How do you think people will relate to your film here?
Kleber Mendonça Filho – When I make a film I ask myself: will anybody see it, will it make any sense, will anyone care? I think every filmmaker should bear that in mind. I have been very lucky since I started making short films because they seem to travel quite well. All of my films did very well both in Brazil and internationally. In Neighbouring Sounds, I shot the film on the street where I live, it’s almost like a home movie, and made with just under $1 million, and it went to countries I never imagined it would.
With Aquarius, it’s even bigger. And the same story seems to take place everywhere. I’m convinced that people will relate to my film wherever there’s money and real estate. The main conflict is well understood by people everywhere. Of course you might miss out on a few details if you are not Brazilian. There are certain flavours that were built into the film which are naturally local. But I don’t think this will prevent Brits from understanding the film.
Kleber and his crew let the world know about the coup d’état in Brazil on the red carpet of Cannes
VF – So, Brits don’t need to know where Recife is in order to understand your film?
KMF – No. I grew up watching films from all over the world, as I’m sure you have. When I was at university I realised that American films were very good at presenting something that doesn’t belong to a specific culture. I love when films have a certain title which refers to a place. Such as Brighton Beach Memoirs [Gene Saks, 1986], The Umbrellas of Cherbourg [Jacques Demy, 1964], Woody Allen’s Manhattan [1979] and so on. I never knew where Cherbourg was until I watched the movie.
VF – But the Umbrellas of Cherbourg doesn’t mention Cherbourg in Brazilian title of the movie! [the film is called Os Guarda-Chuvas do Amor in Brazil, Portuguese for “The Umbrellas of Love”]
KMF – [sniggers] That’s true, oh well. Still, It was because of this film that I learnt where Cherbourg is. I love this mystifying power of cinema. I’m happy to report that the same is happening to my films in relation to Recife. This building here [he shows a picture of the eponymous Aquarius Building in Recife], they want to list it, to make it into a World Heritage Site, and my film can take the credit for that. Cinema has such power, and I’m glad that my film is doing it to this beautiful building.
VF – This is a very good moment for Brazilian cinema, 12 films at the last Berlin Film Festival, seven in Rotterdam, and the organisation Cinema do Brasil has more than 150 films in their catalogue. Are you concerned that the current coup-mongering government of Brazil will destroy this incredible momentum?
The Aquarius building in Recife, where Clara dwells and which she also cherishes so much
KMF – That’s the big question that everyone in the Brazilian film industry is asking right now. A lot of what we are seeing today, such as the films in Berlin and Rotterdam, the international acclaim of Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro, 2015) and The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert, 2015), this is all the result of years of investment and policy development supporting Brazilian film.
On one hand, we have a bunch of commercial films doing very well in Brazilian theatres. People think I’m against commercial movies, and that’s ridiculous. I just happen to belong to the other side, where we get more prestige than money. Although Aquarius had box office earnings which are not typical of a 150-minute film shot in Recife with a 65-year-old female protagonist [Clara, played by Sônia Braga]. So my film was both commercially successful and prestigious. And a lot of that came from the policies implemented by Lula from 2003. This is the incontestable truth. Some people might dislike the previous left-wing government of Brazil, but they can’t challenge this reality, which started with Lula and continued with Dilma. And now we have a completely different government, which is systematically destroying many public policies, there’s a grey cloud hanging over Brazilian cinema.
VF – Yourself, Cláudio Assis, Gabriel Mascaro, Marcelo Gomes, some of the Brazil’s most creative filmmakers are all from Recife. What is it with cinema from Pernambuco [the state where Recife is located]. Is it something in the water?
KMF – That’s a very tough question. Recife seems to be some sort of breeding ground, and not just for cinema. It is in literature, in the arts, in music. That was particularly true of the 1990s with the Mangue Beat movement in the music scene. And now we have the film scene, which is very strong! My theory is that after 400 years of sugarcane monoculture, when we were only known for sugarcane plantations and nothing else, things changed. This generated some inside mechanism forcing us to think “multi” instead of “mono”. With the presence of the Dutch invaders, combined with the distance from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, which were quite far away, we ended up with this very interesting breeding ground for culture.
Your question is asked every day in Brazil, particularly by cariocas as paulistas [people from Rio and São Paulo, respectively], and everybody is trying to understand how such cultural strength came to being.
VF – Globo is everywhere in Brazil: on print, the Internet, television and also in cinema, including your film [which was produced by Globo Filmes]. Do you think that it’s healthy for cinema, television and so on to be under purview of one single, extremely powerful organisation?
KMF – It’s not healthy at all. This is a huge discussion in Brazil right now. We need diversity of criticism and of points-of-view. Globo has historically, since the 1960s, dominated the media in Brazil, particularly in television. They have found ways of becoming even more diverse with the Internet and cable television. Now the power of Globo is being questioned through the Internet and social media, Netflix, Facebook and YouTube. At least now we can see some change in Globo’s outreach.
VF – What kind of changes?
KMF – People attention is being diverted to YouTube, Netflix (which is incredibly strong in Brazil) and so on. Plus people make their own programming.
VF – And how does that affect the film industry?
KMF – We have an interesting relation with Globo Filmes because I have always been their vocal critic. At the time of Neighbouring Sounds, I had a major fall out with their president Cadu Rodrigues. But now they have a completely new way of looking at Brazilian film, not just in relation to the “commercial side” but also to the “prestigious side”. It was very interesting that we got them to support Aquarius, you know why?
VF – No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me!
KMF – Aquarius is going to show on prime time Brazilian television, on Globo’s open channel. This is unheard of for such a long and non-commercial movie. For me that’s diversity.
Kleber Mendonça Filho and Victor Fraga from DMovies meet in London: they both believe that cinema is a weapon for change
VF – Film is a weapon for change, for denunciation, and you made good use of that in Cannes, when you held signs denouncing the Brazilian coup d’état on the famous red carpet. Can you tell us a little bit about the retaliation you have experienced since? And would you do it again?
KMF – If I had a time machine I could go back to May last year, I would have done exactly what we did. We as Brazilian citizens just did a very simple protest expressing our opinion about what was happening in Brazil: the democratic process in that very month [May 2016], and the result is what we see now. We were thinking of what’s happening right now back then. We has no choice but to quietly say: “this is wrong!”. And that what we did.
We had a lot of support for what we did, but also a lot of attacks, particularly on social media. And these attacks can be quite ravenous. Drunk and lonely guys on a Friday night go online and post some crazy shit about the film and about you. But this also brought attention to my movie. They tried to boycott it, which made it even bigger. It was just a crazy time when the film opened in Brazil, with the official ousting of Dilma Rousseff taking place then, in August, at the weekend of our release.
VF – The biggest Brazilian filmmakers of the past 20 years have all embraced an international career, including Sales with Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Fernando Meirelles with The Constant Gardener (2005) and José Padilha with RoboCop (2014). Will you be doing the same?
KMF – I’m open to possibilities, but it’s not like I dream of making a film in Hollywood.
VF – So you won’t be remaking RoboCop yet again for us then?
KMF – I would never in my life remake a film that I love, I just don’t see the point. And I absolutely love RoboCop [the 1987 original by Paul Verhoven] But, you know, good luck to… well, you know what I’m talking about! [at this stage, it’s worthwhile pointing out that José Padilha, who remade RoboCop, is one of the very few filmmakers in Brazil who supported the 2016 coup d’état].
If I make an interesting discovery in a book or a script then of course I would consider making a film abroad. But I would never make a film for some big shot just for the sake of making money. I wouldn’t do something that’s purely industrial, and not personal at all.
Asghar Farhadi did it again. For the second time, he was awarded Best Foreign Language Picture by the Academy. The Salesmanhas many similarities with his previous film A Separation (2011), but he didn’t play safe. It was indeed a political award in North-American territory, as the favourite film to win the prize was Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016 – click here in order to read our review). Filmmaker Farhadi opted out of Oscar ceremony after President Donald Trump imposed a travel ban to some countries, including Iran. The Iranian artist said: “To humiliate one nation with the pretext of guarding the security of another is not a new phenomenon in history and has always laid the groundwork for the creation of future divide and enmity.”
The most curious aspect of The Salesman is that the director uses a classic play by the American playwright Arthur Miller, ‘Death of a Salesman’ (1949), to reveal the frailties of his own society. The amateur actors Emad (Shahab Hosseini, Best Actor Winner at Cannes 2016) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) are preparing for the opening night of their production of the aforementioned play. Some dangerous work on a neighbouring building forces the couple to leave their home and move into a new flat. In the new house, a violent assault involving a mistaken identity befalls the couple. They then begin to experience a string of turbulent events.
The hint that something is about to collapse is clear and it is repeated extensively. The structure of the building is falling. Plus the play within the film is, in essence, the collapse of the American Dream. The camerawork is from the perspective of various characters, and it’s difficult to determine who to follow and to relate to. It also moves in and out the flat, up and down, and the stairs are where most crucial moment takes place. Stairs represent transition, change and personal growth. When we use them, we make direct contact with our feet. And in this case, it exposes that it is hard to keep your feet on the ground when there is a price to pay for not being vigilant enough.
The Salesman wins the Foreign Picture Oscar but the director nowhere to be seen in order to pick up his prize
A feeling of disorientation brews, as the characters transfer their personal experience to the theatre stage. Lines can be changed; actors can be replaced; and relatives and children are always in the backstage. The most crucial aggression is not exposed. Violence is not depicted and banalised. The details of the assault remain a mystery.
The Salesman is a devastating evidence that women in Iran cannot deal with some issues in public. Sometimes they cannot even tell their husbands, as judgement and misunderstanding will follow the confession. Likewise A Separation, honour and forgiveness are intrinsically related and connected to theological praxis. Somehow, though it should be kept hidden, tragic events are spread to friends and relatives. What other people think determines the fate of those characters. And sacrifice in the name of the family is almost always a sacred law.
Arthur Miller declared in an interview in 1998: “the Salesman’s ability to somehow transcend the moment that it was written in has contributed to its long-lasting success, but that’s really an enigma to start with. You see, that play was written in 1948, when we were starting the biggest boom in the history of the United States. However, a good part of the population, including me and President Truman, were prepared for another depression.” The award of The Salesman had the effect of an earthquake triggered by San Andreas Fault on Los Angeles. Once nature begins to unleash strange forces, it could continue to do so for a long time. The same applies to cinema.
You can watch The Salesman in the UK from March 17th, and it will be available on Curzon Home. Check out the film trailer below:
This bizarre and elegant tale of gore and horror is not for the faint-hearted and squeamish. The novice helmer Nicolas Pesce will torture viewers with plenty of mutilated bodies, sadistic pleasures and – above everything else – deeply dysfunctional and psychotic minds. Throw in a little bit of TLC, maternal warmth and lesbian affection, you will end up with a masterpiece of creepiness.
A mother (Diana Agostini), who was previously an eye surgeon in Portugal, lives with her husband and their young daughter Francisca (Kika Magalhães) in a secluded farm somewhere in the remote American countryside. She gives her daughter anatomy lessons from a very young age, probably unaware that Francisca would soon use her acquired skills in the most unorthodox ways imaginable. One day an intruder named Charlie breaks into their house and kills her mother, but the criminal is soon subdued and becomes a prisoner and guinea pig for the little girl’s morbid experiments. Francisca soon grows up, and the intensity of the anatomic and psychological escalates to the highest level imaginable, as she recruits new victims to submit to her sadistic ordeals.
The Eyes of my Mother skillfully blends interrupted motherhood (twice, but you must watch the film in order to understand why), female psychosis, isolation and religion in one big pan. The sharp black and white photography renders the grueling scenes more watchable and gives the film an eerie veneer, in a way similar to Hitchcock Psycho (1960) – the director opted for black and white because he wanted to spare audiences from the violence of the colour red in the famous shower sequence.
The eyes of Francisca’s mother are terrifying
The Eyes of my Mother is very Lynchian in the portrayal of a disturbed and twisted mind. In many ways, Francisca is both puerile and repulsive, in a way not too different from Frank (in Blue Velvet, 1986). The film has also elements of Cronenberg, in his pathological obsession with the human body, with all of its limbs and cavities. The changes that she will perform on the bodies of her victims may remind you of The Fly (1986) or Crash (1996), and they are certain to make Josef Mengele jealous.
Francisca’s detached reality and gruesome little world will make you cover your eyes, cringe and retch. The occasional utterance in Portuguese and the Fado music will alienate you further, giving a final touch of eccentricity to the movie (although you might notice that some of the accents are feigned, if you are a native Portuguese speaker). This is a surreal universe of which you wouldn’t want to take part anyway. You’ll be glad to be on your seat, safely removed on the other side of the fourth wall.
The world-famous American actress and model Kristen Stewart has teamed up with the French filmmaker Olivier Assayas for the second time (after 2014’s Clouds of Sils Maria), now in a film with a peculiarly different premise. The helmer decided to focus on the subject of celebrity again, but this time moving from a Lesbian drama taking place in idyllic Switzerland to a ghost story set in a very urban Paris.
The big question of course is: how do you blend horror devices, which are meant to be jarring and unsettling, with a fashion environment, where beauty and splendour are meant to prevail? Assayas has set a very difficult quest upon himself, albeit not an impossible one. France does not a a strong and consistent tradition in the horror genre, and instead a few sporadic classics such as Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955) and Eyes without a Face (Georges Franju/Claude Sautet, 1960). So Assayas had to use his very own blueprint in order to come up with personal variant of French horror. The outcome has been very divisive: Assayas received the Best Director Ex-Aequo prize last year at Cannes Film Festival, but the film was also booed in the same event. Personal Shopper is indeed an audacious and creative pieces, but a number of flaws make it a little incoherent and difficult to engage with.
Maureen Cartwright (Stewart) is a young American working in Paris as a personal shopper for a celebrity called Keira (Nora von Walstatten). She has the ability to communicate with spirits, just like her recently deceased twin brother. She is now trying to communicate with her recently deceased twin brother, and it’s other ghosts that cross her path. She is determined, however, to remain in the French capital until she has spoken to her dead sibling. She begins to receive strangely ambiguous text messages on her telephone, from an unknown source. She travels to London for a work errand, but she’s consistently harassed by the stranger on the phone on her way there. Are the dead now able to communicate through 21st century technology, or is someone pulling a prank on Maureen?
There are elements of paranormal activity, fashion and erotica in this very unusual horror flick
The scares throughout the film are very sparse, maintain the “creepy-glam” atmosphere throughout. There are elements of erotica, paranormal activity, murder and fashion in this multi-flavoured film gumbo (or perhaps casserole?). But this multitude of genres and references make the film a little disjointed and fragmented, much like a broken mirror. For example, we never find out why Maureen is in Paris, what exactly happened to her brother and why the whole saga is in English. I wonder whether French nationalists were outraged at the absence of their own language, surely an American worker would working in Paris be expected to pick up French? Maybe Personal Shopper does not want to be perceived as French film at all, but instead as an international endeavour.
Aesthetically, the film is also very hybrid. Entities probably don’t care much about fashion (they always seem to wear the same attire, don’t they?), so the idea of them creeping into this plush and colourful world is a little preposterous. Some nicely timed flying objects and green ectoplasms will make you jump from your seat, but overall a feeling a awkwardness will linger, and the inevitable WTF will occasionally spring to mind. Assayas is a very talented and bold filmmaker, but he still has some edges to polish in this newly-created horror-fashion “genre”.
Personal Shopper was out in cinemas on Friday, March 17th (2017). On Disney + UK on Friday, July 22nd (2022). Also available on other platforms.
