Tag: 75th Locarno Film Festival

The 75th Locarno Film Festival: dark films for dark times

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Something happened this Locarno Film Festival that never happened to me at a film festival before. Not only did I see the Golden Leopard winner, but it was actually my favourite film of the festival! Julia Marat’s provocative and fascinating Rule 34 (pictured above) — anchored by a great performance by Sol Miranda as a legal student moonlighting as a camgirl — deservedly received the top honour, which importantly contains a 75,000 CHF prize. Basically on parity with the Euro, it’s probably enough to last you half a year in Switzerland.

But Switzerland, despite the obscene prices, is a very nice place for rich people to retire. So many iconic people move there in the latter stages of their lives. James Joyce died in Zurich in 1941. Tina Turner moved there in 2013. Patricia Highsmith — commemorated in Loving Highsmith (Eva Vitija) in the Panorama Suisse section — literally died directly in Locarno in 1995, while Douglas Sirk is buried in nearby Lugano.

I didn’t hear “The Best” blasting across the Piazza Grande, but in two nice moments of serendipity, my wife sat in our hotel room reading the Ripley novels while I used some free time to check out the Douglas Sirk retrospective. Both novelist and filmmaker have been long gone, but their influence on our present popular culture is unabating.

All That Heaven Allows

And I truly needed some Sirk to counteract the programming at Locarno (covered both by myself and my colleague John Bleasdale), which, although bold and fascinating as usual, veered deeply towards the darker parts of human interaction. Starting with a deepfake exploration of dictators stuck in purgatory thanks to Alexander Sokurov’s competition entry Fairytale, continuing with the war-as-stasis theme in the endlessly repetitive Sermon to the Fish (Hilal Baydarov), and ending with a three-hour tribute to passivity with Tales of the Purple House (Abbas Fahdel), the Concorso Internazionale looked at the present moment and decided there is incredibly little we can do about it, either on a personal level or a political one.

And from the first and second feature competition Concorso Cineasti del presente: the deeply dark tale of Astrakan (David Depesseville, pictured below) — luring one into a simple coming-of-age story before cruelly stealing that childhood away in a triumph of style and beauty in service of narrative ugliness; Arnold is a Model Student, an oddball school satire that doubles up as authoritarian critique; and the suicidal fixations and societal breakdowns of Safe Place (winner of Best Emerging Director in Juraj Lerotić and Best Actor Award in Goran Marković). Some optimism might’ve been found in Before I Change My Mind (Trevor Anderson, pictured bottom) — a pleasant enough coming-of-age story — but it was too slight to make a difference. First time directors might want to make their mark with tragic stories, but piling them on top of each other made for a brutal experience. The programming choices were rarely safe, but they could’ve done with some stylistic variation. It asks the key question: why do comedies so rarely play in competition?

Astrakan

I know the world is a dark place right now — war, droughts, inflation, etc — but some optimism wouldn’t go amiss. That’s why I was so happy to see Rule 34, a film that doesn’t just ask questions but actually explored some answers, take the top prize, showing that even in a country such as Brazil, ruled by someone as incompetent and quasi-fascist as Jair Bolsonaro, pushing back is possible.

Meanwhile with Douglas Sirk, we get an unambiguously happy, norm-breaking ending in the form of Take Me To Town (1953) — a peppy comedy-western filled with glorious costumes and brilliant musical numbers — and the complexity of society’s prejudice pushed back against in All That Heaven Allows (1955, pictured up top), an incredible revelation beamed in 35mm.

Sadly, I cannot claim to have “discovered” Douglas Sirk, a director almost everyone in the film industry admires for his savage satire, dynamic use of light, and elegant blocking. All That Heaven Allows, for example, was prefaced by Todd Haynes fully geeking out about his favourite director. Nonetheless, experiencing his films on the big screen has completely transformed my opinion of his work, which I previously admired but never really counted among my top directors. Now its blindingly obvious that his melodramas are some of the finest art committed to screen. It’s just sad that it’s almost a completely lost form, as realism — and almost all of the competition entries were rooted in capturing a sense of “authenticity” — takes over as the most “serious” art form.

Before I Change My Mind

Still, if the films themselves were miserablist, the experience of Locarno remains as enjoyable as ever; whether it’s walking through the quaint, buzzing old town during the day or night, sitting in the dark screen of the Teatro Kursaal, discussing films with like-minded folk, or even enjoying a negroni or two from the Campari Lounge (great choice of sponsor!). And the true magic of a film festival was found in a ramble to Ascona — ducking out of the Pardo Di Domani party, we discovered a bar where the owner Salvatore turns paper into cigarettes and lighter fire into pearl necklaces. Roaring back to full normal life after last year’s light-touch coronavirus controls, these kinds of moments displayed the true value of being physically present at a film festival. Locarno, irregardless of the offerings themselves, is always a pleasure; hopefully next time I can rave a little bit more about what’s actually on show.

Read all of our Locarno Film Festival coverage now.

Tales of the Purple House (Hikayat elbeit elorjowani)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

During lockdown I tried to learn Russian. It wasn’t a success. My wife tried to make her own bread. It was definitely a success. Abbas Fahdel made an epic three-hour documentary. It’s a mixed success.

Both a video essay depicting painter Nour Ballouk (and Abbas Fahdel’s wife) living during the coronavirus pandemic, and a portrait of Lebanon coming apart at the seams due to the legacy of wars with Isreal, the Syrian refugee crisis, and chronic mismanagement by the government, Tales of the Purple House is both a sweeping, ambitious panorama and an endless series of cutesy YouTube videos.

And just like YouTube’s popularity, a significantly large part of Tales of the Purple House, relies on Nour’s several cats. They chase after mice, scamper after lizards, attack each other and love lounging about. Cats are considered holy, clean animals in Islam, and a metaphor for humanity at large; we are reminded by the owner of a dog shelter that how you treat your animals will determine your fate in the afterlife.

But if the cats in Lebanon are treated well, the people are left behind by constant blackouts, ammunition depots exploding, a depleting currency and skyrocketing inflation. We see protests all across the country, and people getting incredibly frustrated. Everyone except for Nour, who seems to take the closing of borders and the constant presence of death all in her stride.

She is an incredibly passive person, constantly observing and painting the world while it goes on without her input. After all, painting a landscape cannot alter it, neither can filming it. Neither do the many anti-government songs appear to have pushed Lebanese society in the right generation. She even admits at one point, evoking Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia (Lars Von Trier, 2011), that if the world was to end in a week, she would go about almost exactly the same routine.

She is upset with the way the world is, but this frustration never seeps into the movie, which almost seems to accept the status quo and the idea that things will only ever get worse. She is a privileged woman, able to get gas for her car on the black market and never suffers from a blackout. It’s surely one women’s philosophy, almost touching on Buddhist teachings, and it’s interesting to observe, but it gets exasperating and won’t make much impact on the state of things in Lebanon.

The film gets even stranger considering how staged some of the conversations feel — from Nour interacting with her Syrian neighbour, a young boy who likes to kill snakes and help his elders out for free, to her visit to a refugee camp, the likes of which feels rather self-congratulatory. Additionally, Fahdel himself, despite being Nour’s husband and probably experiencing lockdown and the refugee crisis and many other issues along with her, never inserts himself into the movie, making this documentary feel even more artificial.

Neither a fly-on-the-wall slice of observation, or a political polemic, Tales of the Purple House comes across as an arthouse video project that got out of hand and ballooned into 184 minutes. And while there’s nothing wrong with video diaries or movies over three hours, it lacks the kind of internal rhythm or perspective that would make the film sing. Too personal to be universal while too vague to be intimate, it’s a fascinating lockdown project, and a solid capsule of our current era, but it’s unlikely to make an impact outside of hardcore documentarian circles. All in all, a massive lost opportunity.

Tales of the Purple House plays in the Concorso internazionale section of the Locarno Film Festival, running from 3-13th August.

Medusa Deluxe

Posted on by John Bleasdale

When a leading competitor in a regional hairdressing competition is found scalped, the evening is thrown into chaos, and paranoia and rivalries come to the fore in Thomas Hardiman’s stunning debut feature: Medusa Deluxe.

If you thought the hairdresser’s was just a place you went to get a haircut, enjoy elaborate puns and read month old magazines, you are sadly mistaken. It is a world of Hair Today Dye Tomorrow – murder and intrigue, as well as hairspray and scissors. One thing’s for certain: no one is going to ask you where you’re going for your holidays this year.

Told in one (seemingly) continuous shot, we’re backstage in the immediate aftermath of what appears to be a murder. Mosca has been found dead and the suspects are many. The hairdressers and rival competitors have a furious passion for what they do. Cleve (Clare Perkins) sums this up in a beautifully played scene as she vociferously defends her own work and tells a story of how Mosca got in trouble with his wife. Her stories of hairdressing reveal a Tarantinoesque level of violent danger. Then there’s Divine (Kayla Meikle) who has found Jesus and believes in the holiness of the hair. Kendra (Harriet Webb), another rival, is perhaps getting fringe benefits from Rene (Darrell DeSilva), the organizer of the competition. Add to that a bald security guard called Gak (Heider Ali) with creepy eyes and the hair models who sport the elaborate coiffures, one of whom Timba (Anita-Joy Uwajeh) found the body.

The corridors and dressing rooms of the exhibition centre are the setting as Robbie Ryan’s camera swoops and glides, following the characters who themselves are trying to find out what is going on. The police are upstairs asking question, but we never get a scene with them as you would in a traditional whodunnit. In fact, everyone is more in danger from each other and themselves rather than the off stage authorities. The tension has something of Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964), but there is restraint here and the Grand Guignol is located more in the bitchy dialogue rather than blood spilled. The appearance of one of the cutest toddlers on film only locks in the feeling of dread.

Technically, the film is a cut above the rest. The one-shot pony is a bit overladen following so close on the heels of last year’s Boiling Point. We’ve had a one shot realtime version of a chef and a hairdresser. What next? Baker? Candlestick maker? But here the technique is relatively unobtrusive and works. It is actually the performances of the cast which makes the film thrum with its own rhythm.

There’s also the suspicion that this is a shaggy dog story. There are mysteries and questions which are resolved in an unexpected but also bathetic denouement. The musical title sequence feels like an admission on a part of the filmmakers to go out with a bang rather than a pop.

That said the film is so well styled and fun that its churlish to nitpick. Medusa Deluxe marks the arrival of a new British writer-director who looks likely to be way more than just something for the weekend.

(Please note: any hair puns contained in this review were entirely unintentional).

Medusa Deluxe premiered at the 75th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, when this piece was originally written. In cinemas across the UK on Friday, June 9th.

A Perfect Day for Caribou

Posted on by John Bleasdale

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

Fatherhood and failure are the subjects of Jeff Rutherford’s ambling debut feature. Jen Berrier plays Herman, a man who finds himself at the end of the road with a filched pickup truck packed with his belongings. He is recording a message for his son Nate (Charlie Plummer), explaining “I don’t want you to know me as just the father who killed himself”. A fortuitous phone call from Nate offers Herman an opportunity to meet and talk with his son face to face and meet his young grandson Ralph. However when they do meet – in a windswept cemetery – Ralph goes missing and father and son go on a meandering search for the lost boy.

Filmed in a pristine black and white, Alfonso Herrera Salcedo’s cinematography is as sharp as a pencil sketch made with a H2 pencil. The 4:3 ratio underlines the contained littleness of the story even as the characters are dwarfed beneath huge skies and epic open landscapes. There seems to be little urgency in the search for Ralph as if the characters know that his absence is more a metaphorical underscoring than an actual child in danger. Nate is seeking to reconnect with his father as a way to also understand if he is going to repeat the mistakes that Herman made. Herman in his turn finds that the ease with which he spoke to his son via the dictaphone is replaced by a shuffling inability to communicate. When Nate tells him Ralph has some behavioral problems – he only eats food on the right side of his plate – Herman keeps mistakenly wondering if Ralph has a hole in his head.

A careless hunter and a black janitor wander into the action as well as vaguely lost as the main characters but they skim off the surface of the story, making barely a ripple.

The ghosts of other films haunt Rutherford’s first feature. Alexander Payne’s Nebraska (2013) is an obvious influence, while in its offbeat characters and quirky dialogue there’s also the feel of early Hal Hartley. The opening of the film superbly sets up an unexpected character and a story that is going in an unexpected direction. Little flashbacks appear as silent slices of the past, memories stubbornly lurking.

However as the film goes on the dialogue becomes grating in its obvious writtenness. Berrier can handle it, suggesting a man at the end of his frayed rope, but Plummer is less convincing: a callow twenty-something with an oh-for-goodness-sake-cut-it haircut. And the lack of urgency becomes stultifying and when two characters decide to play paper-scissors-stone it feels less Jarmusch and more B roll. It also has to be said that using a suicide as a trope to give a character heft should really be stopped. It’s cheap and unhealthy.

A Perfect Day for Caribou showed at the 75th Locarno International Film Festival.

Declaration (Ariyippu)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP:LIVE FROM LOCARNO

A naturalist drama that incorporates thriller elements into its slow-burn atmosphere, Declaration shows just how disposable immigrant workers can be. A perceptive work from Malayalam director Mahesh Narayanan, it smartly captures the intersection of class, gender and race-based oppression, showing how an atmosphere of exploitation and corruption hits those at the bottom of the human food chain hardest.

Husband and wife Hareesh (Kunchacko Boban) and Reshmi (Divya Prabha) are from Kerala, in India’s south. They move to the northern state of Uttar Pradesh for a better life. Not only can they find solid work at a disposable glove factory, but they have a better chance of getting their visas approved in order to move abroad. The first images we see are shot on an iPhone, showing Reshmi taking gloves off mechanical hands and putting them in a bucket. This is her skill video, a necessary part of getting her visa application approved. But another, more private video is somehow tacked onto the end of the film, causing a rift between the previously relatively content couple.

The whole film was shot and set during the coronavirus pandemic, which helps to up the sense of paranoia at almost every turn. While no one seems to actually contract the disease, the film makes use of the power dynamics involved with mask-wearing in particularly acute ways: for example, those in charge either choose to forego the mask entirely, wear it under their chin, or have an FFP2 mask instead of the generic blue medical mask. The workers themselves are almost always covered, because they know that the disease would either mean serious health complications or a loss in salary. Coronavirus may seem to infect you no matter who you are or which precautions you take, but the way that you deal with it often depends on your race and class status.

If coronavirus was supposed to be the great leveller, it only really entrenched class privilege all across the world, allowing the rich and powerful to further line their pockets. Marital drama dovetails with the tale of the factory cutting corners, the film slowly accruing details of misplaced and faulty gloves, managers sweeping away inaccuracies and workers blithely uncaring about the quality of the product. Why would they? They’re not even getting paid on time.

If the narrative is relatively straightforward, it’s the way that it’s told that allows complexity to grow in the corners. Narayanan doesn’t necessarily spell out every detail, allowing the camera to linger on certain elements (which I won’t spoil here) to further enrich the hypocrisy that permeates almost every frame. The handheld cinematography and general lack of score immerses the viewer within this realist setting, echoing both the moral dramas of Asghar Farhadi and the class-based consciousness of Ken Loach’s cinema.

While the editing could’ve heightened the stakes in the final act by tightening the tension and removing some fat, the final result is a fascinating drama that makes full use of the coronavirus pandemic — and its attendant measures — as a metaphor for class exploitation.

Declaration plays in the Concorso Internazionale plays as part of the Locarno Film Festival, running from 3-13th August.