Tag: Berlinale

Crowning the dirtiest movies: our verdict of the 74th Berlinale

Posted on by victorfraga

This was my 12th Berlinale, and the seventh one since I founded DMovies in February 2016. It is no exaggeration to say that the event is very close to my heart. This year I had the privilege of attending both as a journalist as I normally do, but also as the producer and co-writer of The Visitor, a very British, hyperpolitical and pornographic reimagining of Pasolini’s Theorem (directed by the consistently transgressive and inventive Bruce LaBruce, and made possible visceral arts organisation a/political). Our movie did not win any prizes, but it did conquer a lot of hearts. David Opie of Indiewire called it a “depraved masterpiece”, and we received mostly positive coverage from the biggest outlets in the world, including Variety and The Film Stage. You can read our own review of the film here (obviously not written by me!).

The numerous parties, pitching and networking events related to The Visitor did not stop me from viewing and reviewing other films. In total, we published 29 pieces (21 of which by my own hand). You can see them all in our review archive.

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The winners, the dirty gems and the turkeys

My favourite film to win a major prize at the Berlinale this year was Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s The Devil’s Bath (pictured at the top of this article), by Ulrich Seidl Film Productions. A story set in rural Austria in the 18th century, and based on real court records. It is so shocking it is almost unbelievable.

I am glad that Hong Sang-soo’s A Traveller’s Needs and Mati Diop’s Dahomey snatched major prizes. I just have to highlight a couple of strange coincidences. The Berlinale gave its top prize the Golden Bear to a French documentary for the second consecutive year. And Mati Diop is the first Black woman to win the Festival, in a decision made by Lupita Niong’o’s jury. Lupita is also a Black woman, in fact the first one to preside the jury at the Berlinale.

My three very favourite films La Cocina (Alonso Ruizpalacios), Who Do I Belong To (Meryam Joobeur) and My Favourite Cake (Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha) all left empty-handed. The Competition included three genuinely awful movies (I gave one star/splat to each one of them, something I rarely do): Small Things Like These (Tim Meilants), Another End (Piero Messina) and Gloria! (Margherita Vicario). Sebastian Stan (from Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man) and Ema Watson (Small Things Like These) won the Best Lead and Best Supporting Performance prizes respectively. I would have given the awards to Anja Plaschg (The Devil’s Bath) and Adam Pearson (A Different Man), also respectively.

Outside the main Competition, a special mention to the rockumentarey Teaches of Peaches (Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer) and Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath).

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Complacence and censorship

The Berlinale has been complacent with the Gaza genocide, and it has attempted to censor critics. The event has repeatedly denounced Hamas, Iran, Russia and other oppressive regimes, yet it has failed to say a single word about Israel, a country that has illegally occupied and terrorised another one for 75 years, while implementing an Apartheid state and carrying out mass murder. A guerrilla protest was performed inside the Martin Gropius Bau, where the European Film Market (the industry side of the event) is held. Many award winners gave speeches denouncing the Festival’s silence and bias. Festival director Mariëtte Rissenbeek claimed: “it would have been appropriate in terms of content if the award winners and guests at the Award Ceremony had also made more differentiated statements on this issue”, in a shocking act of censorship (the clear objective here is to intimidate and indeed censor future award winners and guests).

The Berlinale has a history of supporting free speech and combating authoritarianism. Mariëtte Rissenbeek’s statement (which can be read in full here) is a barbaric attack on these values.

This good friend and fan of the Berlinale sincerely hopes that the event will reassess its position, and side with those who denounce the oppression of Palestinians with the same vigour its sides with those who denounce the horrors carried out by Putin in Ukraine. Surely if you are ballsy enough to pick a pornographic, ultra-subversive film such as The Visitor, you are able to challenge the rotten narrative that falsely and maliciously equates genuine criticism of a criminal state with anti-Semitism. Instead you chose to purge those who dare to speak up. I am extremely disappointed.

Our lowdown on the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival

Posted on by victorfraga

I have a very cosy and intimate relationship with the largest film festival in the world, as well as very fond memories. It was the very first such event that I attended as a journalist, nearly two decades ago in 2005. This is also where I saw some of the best films in my life. In 2006, I watched Jasmila Žbanić’s Grbavica, the movie that affected me most deeply during my 44 years of existence on this planet. I literally had to lock myself in cubicle of the press centre adjacent to the Berlinale Palast because I couldn’t stop crying compulsively. In 2020, I watched Mohammad Rasoulof’s There is No Evil, which immediately made it to my top 10 of all time. Both films won the Golden Bear, the event’s top prize. I returned this year with great expectations, after being unable to attend the Festival for two consecutive years (2021 and 2022). I was a little disappointed.

In all fairness, no film festival can be consistently good. But I did expect to enjoy more films in the official selection. I watched 16 out of 19 movies in the main competition, and I was only genuinely moved and stirred by one of them, Lila Aviles’s Totem. This achingly beautiful Mexican film tells the story of a young father dying of cancer, seen from the eyes of a young child. It will ring bells with those who’ve seen Carla Simon’s equally impressive Summer 1993, from five years ago. Incidentally, Simon was in the main jury. I was surprised that the Latin film left almost empty handed, taking home an independent prize from the ecumenical jury (of which Simon wasn’t part) The big winner was Nicolas Philibert’s On the Adamant, a topically fascinating yet cinematographically mediocre documentary about patients living in a psychiatric institution that encourages creativity (through music, painting, etc). A heartfelt and moving film that merits a viewing, but not the top prize at such a prestigious film festival.

Other winners include Sofia Otero, who snatched the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance in Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s 20,000 Species of Bees. The eight-year-old actress plays a trans girl living with a Basque family of farmers. The Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution went to Helene Louvart for the cinematography of Giacomo Abbruzzese’s Disco Boy (a hypnotic and sometimes confusing allegory of European refugees and colonialism). The Silver Bear for Best Screenplay went for Angela Schanelec of Music (I wasn’t particularly impressed by either the film or the award). Best Director went to Phillipe Garrel and his family affair/ puppeteer drama The Plough (another undeserving prize). The Grand Jury Prize went to Christian Petzold’s Afire, while the Jury Prize went to Joao Canijo’s Bad Living – sadly I missed both films.

Transsexual actress Thea Ehre received the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance in Christoph Hochhäusler’s Till the End of the Night. The script of this queer gangster flick is extremely shoddy, going around in circles to no satisfactory conclusion. I overheard someone compare the film to Fassbinder. The enfant terrible of German cinema is probably turning in his grave.

Interestingly, both top performance prizes went to actors impersonating trans characters (Ehre of Till the End of the Night and Otero of 20,000 Species of Bees).

And that wasn’t the only coincidence. Three of the top prizes went to German filmmakers (Christian Petzold, Christoph Hochhäusler and Angela Schanelec). These three people are the oldest and most prominent directors of the Berliner Schule (a 21st century movement of German cinema).

You can read all of my 20 pieces in our review archive here.

The ugly face of female violence, from the horse’s mouth

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

We first meet the hero of Askar Uzabayev’s latest film, Happiness, standing in front of the mirror. Pulling down her bathrobe to reveal her naked chest and shoulders, illuminated only by candlelight due to regular power outages, she inspects her many bruises. Played by actress Laura Myrzakhmetova, but named archetypically as just “Wife”, she is one of millions of women across Kazakhstan living under the brutal spectre of domestic violence.

This issue is of epidemic proportions. As producer Bayan Maxatkyzy tells me, “Every year, about 400 women die from domestic violence. Only seven per cent of victims report domestic violence, despite nearly one in two women in the country suffering some sort of abuse. And this is just the official data. There could be more.” And with no official law for the protection of victims, “thousands of abusers get away with this crime on a daily basis.”

Maxatkyzy suffered intense domestic abuse herself, but counts herself as one of the lucky ones. She’s a genuine movie star in Kazakhstan, talking to me across Zoom while wearing large sunglasses and sitting on an opulent couch with an expensive-looking handbag in full-view. Rising to fame for her role in the popular 1993 Kazakh melodrama Love Station followed by a successful journalism and acting career, she has four million Instagram followers, more than any other celebrity in the country. So, when her first husband, Bakhytbek Yesentayev, beat and stabbed her four times in 2016, the story became national news, eventually leading to his 9-year imprisonment.

Happiness

Maxatkyzy’s fame give her case widespread attention, but the woman at the heart of Happiness, which recently won the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin Film Festival, has no such protection. The first half is utterly drenched in sadness and desperation, a culture of misogyny permeating almost every scene. Her daughter (Almagul Sagyndyk) is getting married, yet nobody seems to be celebrating. The perennially drunk Husband (Yerbolat Alkozha) tells the bride-to-be in an embarrassing liquor-sodden speech to “never raise your voice” if she is to be a good wife, displaying a cycle of submissiveness and shame handed down from generation to generation.

When he later rapes his own wife on his daughter’s wedding night, a cardboard cut-out of a beautiful woman wrapped in clingfilm lingers in the background; an ironic contrast of feminine perfection that perhaps represents the ideal, voiceless woman. Despite her tragic home life, the Wife works as an influencer, selling perfume that she promises will give other women happiness.

In her posts, the Wife lays out a rehearsed theory, underscored by Antonio Vivaldi’s “Winter”. She says that happiness is 50 per cent nature, 10 per cent living conditions, and 40 per cent a result of free will. But the reality of the film, imbued with endless beatings, police corruption and sexual menace, lives within that middle 10 per cent, resulting in a horrifying, hard-to-look-away portrayal of living under the fear of death with little chance of state protection.

Both Maxatkyzy and director Askar Uzabayev, who adapted a script co-written with journalist Assem Zhapisheva, avoided state financing models when finding funding for the film. Maxatkyzy crowdfunded $20,000, with many women “sending one, two dollars” to the cause. “As many rich producers are men, and this was [Kazakhstan’s] first movie about domestic violence, they didn’t want to take part. Because they are men,” Maxatkyzy says. “Maybe they just didn’t believe in this project.” Uzabayev also believes the crowdfunding was the right choice. “When the government pay, they tell us what to do, like not showing police corruption,” he says.

The film takes a freewheeling turn by the end, anchored by Myrzakhmetova’s performance. The actress both empowers and teases out the nuances of her unnamed hero, who is neither victim nor a stereotypical “strong woman”. But Myrzakhmetova was not the first choice for the role. In fact, according to Uzabayev, “six candidates before Laura rejected the role. Our last candidate refused to take it two days before we planned to start shooting. In the beginning [the actresses] were inspired, but after discussions with their husbands, they were prohibited from taking this role.”

The film’s overwhelming atmosphere of shame and fear, coupled with the wider, grim context, is a far-cry from stereotypical Hollywood portrayals like The Invisible Man or Promising Young Woman, which can lean more poppy, revenge-laden and digestible. Happiness is so powerful because it doesn’t borrow inspiration from genre cues, such as the meticulously-planned revenge or a final belief in the police to fix the problem, and pursues its own uncompromising, highly distressing path. As Maxatkyzy says, “We didn’t take ideas from American or European movies because our mentality is completely different. Our society is totally patriarchal.” Her hope is that the movie will be widely-seen in order to start a conversation, both in Kazakhstan and further afield: “My intention is that people will remember situations that happened among their own families. I hope the inconvenience that they feel will lead to the realisation that they could take action to change the situation.”

Happiness premiered at the Berlinale. Stay tuned for a wider release.

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All images in this article are stills from ‘Happiness’.

The Novelist’s Film (So-seol-ga-ui yeong-hwa)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN

There are some huge changes in Hong Sangsoo’s filmmaking obsessions with The Novelist’s Film. Characters smoke e-cigarettes as opposed to regular ones, they wear/sort-of wear FFP2 masks in different poses and they are drinking makgeolli instead of soju. Otherwise, it’s another trip down the personal obsessions of one of the world’s most repetitive directors. If you’re already enamoured with his style, you’re in for a great time, but if you don’t like his work, you’re likely to get quickly bored. As I probably said last year. And the year before that.

One of the many in-jokes of Hong Sangsoo’s films is that the characters almost always seem to know each other well before they bump into each other: of course they do, they’ve been in the same films together over and over again! The Novelist’s Film starts outside a bookshop with the novelist Junhee (Lee Hyeyoung) having a smoke then walking and catching up with an old friend.

They sit and drink coffee, while Junhee explains how she has become bored of writing over and over again in a certain way. This sentiment is later echoed by a chance meeting with a filmmaker, another Hong doppelgänger, who adamantly states that he believes his work has changed. Having missed the chance to have her work adapted into a film by him, she meets his former muse Kilsoo (Kim Minhee), who she asks to star in her first ever film. And yes, they drink a lot, and the film finally ends, like The Woman Who Ran (2020) did, with Kim Minhee in a cinema alone, watching a film.

Why a novelist directing a film — a phenomenon that is not rare whatsoever — is presented as such a fascinating innovation with form is never really interrogated, but it’s worth pointing out that a Hong Sang-soo novel would be something I’d be first to read. Would it skew like Hemingway’s Iceberg-theory Short stories or the French nouveau roman? Given that the conventional novel is a place for evocating people’s inner lives, Hong Sang-soo is unlikely to turn in a Victorian or 19th century Russian style-epic anytime soon. His whole thing is highly cinematic, creating textures and ideas through performance, cutting, camera movement and lighting — but it’s an interesting thought experiment nonetheless.

As for the eponymous film itself, we catch glimpses of the 47-minute meisterwerk at a screening (previously attended by two (2!) critics and remarkably not even watched by the programmer of the cinema) by the end. It’s an even grainier and unfiltered work than what we’ve previously watched. And the storyline and themes are conspicuously absent. What does Kilsoo think as she finally walks out of the screening? We are never told. Hong, the ultimate, playful, trollish filmmaker, once again dances around the subject without facing it head on, inviting us to read between his Pinteresque pauses and excessively mannerized politeness.

Hong’s digital-aesthetic is even more bare bones that usual: you can count the number of cuts in the entire film with your hands, the black-and-white cinematography is super exposed with very high contrasts, and his characteristic zooms are sparsely deployed. When the director complains about finding funding, it shows in this work, which looks pretty cheap. Once again this is an actor’s showcase, a hangout study in art and life that is rich in nuance and line delivery. And leaning more funny than profound, this metatextual, stripped-down work is entertaining without ever reaching the heights of his best work.

All actors are on fine form, especially when their reserved nature and formal speech breaks down or is violently ruptured, resulting in more laughs than most genuine comedies at the Berlinale. But all the people laughing are film critics, the exact kind of people that have watched several Hong movies — especially at Berlinale, where he basically has a reserved competition slot — and revel both in the sameness and the ever-so-slight permutations. I never get too bothered when he has a slightly substandard, inconsequential work like this. He’ll be back next year. We’ll laugh once more. And probably make the exact same comments. And I’ll write another review.

The Novelist’s Film plays in competition at the Berlinale from February 10th to the 20th.

Leonora Addio

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

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Leonora addio is dedicated to the late Vittorio Taviani, with whom Paolo wrote and directed tens of films since 1954. One senses that the shadow of mortality hangs over the head of the now-solo nonagenarian director, creating an interesting if non-urgent reverie on the death and legacy of Luigi Pirandello, Italian and American relations and Italy’s post-War past. Fluid, experimental, handsomely-made and rather expansive in concept, I was never quite bored while watching it, but I never felt the need to sit up and pay any concentration either.

It starts in 1934, with the legendary Italian playwright receiving a Nobel Prize for literature. Two years later, he is on his deathbed: his children arrive, and slowly get older in front of his eyes. Mortality, whether individual or nation, is weaved throughout the film, which is alternately melancholic and bittersweet, as if the playwright is the aged Paolo himself, looking at the past through a mixture of essay and narrative forms.

There’s vintage footage of passing trains, neorealist films, refugees from the conflict, and texts explaining the legacy of Pirandello. Then there’s the first story, a plot so simple you can describe it in one sentence: An official carries Pirandello’s ashes from Rome to Sicily. Mussolini wanted a proper fascist burial, and did the pomp and circumstance back in 1936. Ten years later, his wishes for a simpler ceremony in his birthplace is finally carried out.

But people are superstitious about ashes, with no one wanting to take them on the plane. So he must travel through the old country by train. These sequences are some of the most gorgeous in the movie — shot in black-and-white wide-screen, the film offers gorgeous tableaus, romantic rendezvous, men playing cards, cigarettes being lit, lots of smoke. It’s all very cool and stylish, even if this is undercut by a repetitive sequence when the ashes are momentarily lost.

I’ve focused more on describing the film than analysing it, because, to be honest, I’m not quite sure what it’s about — especially when the movie cuts to New York to adapt a different Pirandello story altogether. Throughout Italians and Americans mix; whether it’s the soldiers in Italy, or the Italians in New York, and they don’t always get along. Despite the Italians building New York, the Americans liberating Sicily and the two of them coming up with spaghetti carbonara and the Americano, tensions still manage run deep between the deeply-intertwined countries.

While there is tension, there’s no conventional conflict to explore that tension in any deeper way, with the film kind of ambling along in a relatively pleasing way. I am basically a writer in search of an explanatory review. While they usually flow out of my hand without even really have to think about the words I use, Leonora addio has totally stumped me. I’ve been staring at a blank page, putting my hands in my head, and scrolling Twitter as much as I’ve actually spent time typing stuff down. Perhaps there’s a Pirandello play about writer’s block. It seems likely. So, in that way, weirdly, this film has my respect.

Leonara addio plays in Competition at the Berlin Film Festival, running from February 10th to the 20th.

Return to Dust (Yin Ru Chen Yan)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

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China might have made massive economic advances in the last few decades, but what of the people caught between the cracks of the country’s huge economic achievements? Li Ruijun looks at a simple farmer couple in northernmost Gansu, creating a poetic tale that unfolds with the simplicity of a fable.

Ma (Wu Renlin) and Guiying (Hai Qing) didn’t have much say in their marriage, arranged by their respective families, but slowly warm to each other anyway. She is severely disabled, unable to hold her bladder, while he is very taciturn, happiest when working the field. Their relationship is sweetly rendered by Ruijun, whether it’s the way they cook for each other, keep one another warm or imprint the shape of a flower on each other’s skins with individual grains. You won’t hear phrases like “I love you” or see them making love or cuddling, yet the love they have for each other is self-evident. But they are hopelessly, bitterly poor, their poverty viewed by others in the community as more of a hindrance than a problem to be solved. This pride and passion eventually clashes against a world that seemingly has no more use for them.

This is a sad yet dignified story, buoyed by slow cinema techniques that rarely cut away. Shooting with a boxy frame, the beauty and toil of working the land gains epic dimensions, the characters often dwarfed by the sky behind them. The pain and reward of their lifestyle is rendered in unwavering detail, the camera utilising long takes in showing the process involved in farming. With so many films using computer generated effects almost without thought, there is something epic about the physicality and realism of the landscapes and the way they are transformed here.

Both Renlin and Qing turn in fine performances — there is a real skill in being able to play people with so little without delving into caricature or moral simplicity. Ruijun doesn’t have any grand speeches or wider sociological screeds, but seems to simply observe, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions.

The film asks: who are these rapid changes for and why are people being left behind? When offered an apartment Ma points out that there would be no space for his trusted donkey, pigs and chickens. But when you’re proceeding on a so-called Grand Plan — the likes of which the Chinese government loves to implement — considering every individual’s problems simply isn’t an option. With so much Western focus on China on its huge population and staggering technological advances, Ruijun invites us to zoom in and focus on the minutiae of rural life, with people kept in a trap of poverty through no fault of their own. The final result is quietly devastating; there’s no bang, but a long sad whimper.

Return to Dust plays in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, running from 10-20th February.

Before, Now & Then (Nana)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

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A once stylish yet reserved, opulent yet modest, Before Now & Then creates a reflective portrait of a country in turmoil through the romantic experiences of one women. More of a contemplative character portrait than a traditional romance, it offers rewards in its resplendent filmmaking while smartly examining the nuances of the feminine experience.

Nana (Happy Salma) has a comfortable life. She lives on a large Dutch colonial estate alongside her husband Mr Darga (Arswendy Bening Swara) and children, hosting gatherings of women where they listen to music, eat food and talk about family. But her dreams suggest otherwise, reminding Nana of her violent past escaping the coups and genocides that characterised 60s Indonesia. Having lost her first husband and child in the coup, she remembers the war in vivid detail, unable to move forward in a country that’s on the cusp of rapid change.

The role of women in this patriarchal society seems yet to be defined. While men are free to go and do as they want, as seen through Mr Darga’s dalliances with other women, Nana gathers the small pleasures while she can, like smoking a cigarette on the terrace or playing with her children. At the meat market she meets the mysterious Ino (Laura Basuki) — with a kind smile, she simply radiates empathy, allowing Nana to figure out how to navigate this new reality.

It’s not only Nana who seems stuck between past and present; the film itself has little concern with traditional narratives, instead giving us a full sense of who Nana is. A lot of the time, we simply watch her thinking, captured against the gorgeousness of her house and almost always impeccably dressed. Her daughter asks her why women’s hair has be kept up: the answer is “to keep secrets”, the likes of which are slowly revealed to us piecemeal throughout this carefully crafted story.

A great sense of romanticism and unspoken longing comes through the music, mixing contemporary 60s songs, traditional and a lush score that moves between waltzes and playful string movements. The music, bringing to mind In The Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000), is almost constant throughout the film, almost acting against the slowness and consideration of the characters themselves. Credit must go to Salma herself, able to command the camera and allow us to see her perspective even when it seems like she’s not doing much at all.

It’s likely that many of the cultural and feminine nuances of the story eluded me — it’s not particularly illuminating for anyone learning about mid-twentieth century Indonesian history for the first time — yet once I settled into its rhythms, I found it to be a fine, absorbing aesthetic experience, even if I was never fully enraptured by its style.

Before, Now & Then plays in Competition at the 72nd Berlin Film Festival, running from February 10th to 20th.

Rimini

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Ritchie Bravo (Michael Thomas) is the kind of loveable, broken rogue that you can’t help but love. He calls his casa a pirate ship; he dons a huge “sealskin” jacket; and he always provides a bon mot on the right occasion, especially in front of the ladies. But beneath the armour, the persona, the legend, is a man, adrift in a miserable seaside town, covered in snow and blanketed in cloud.

Ritchie Bravo is a schlager singer, crooning the kind of cringe-worthy songs that make Tom Jones sound like an opera singer. He lives in Rimini, a far cry from the warm, sunshiny city of its most famous son Federico Fellini. Unlike Fellini, who actually recreated the town on set in Cinecittà Studios, Ulrich Seidl shoots firmly on location, finding the kind of places so cringe-worthy — like an oldies bar named 007 Dancing (3.6 stars on Google Maps) — you simply couldn’t make them up.

Bravo navigates these wintry spaces with ease, sliding between shoddy slot casinos, beachside boozers and shuttered hotels, breezy and easy in public, desperately alone in private; drinking vodka to hide the stench of booze on his breath, and covering his pouchy belly with tape to look better when singing dreadful, sentimental belters in front of coach-loads of elderly Austrians. To supplement his income, he sleeps with some of the visiting ladies, these sex scenes shown in almost all of their unadorned glory.

In these scenes, Seidl shows a part of human life others may shy away from: normal people have sex; old people have sex; fat, ugly people have sex. It’s a part of what people are, no matter who they are or how they look. In this way, his sex scenes, however awkward they look — and using minimal cuts — are somewhat revolutionary in conventional, non-pornographic cinema.

But watching all this, it’s hard not to wonder: what does Ritchie think? What does he actually want out of life? In Ulrich Seidl’s characteristic style, borne from a seasoned documentary career before moving to features, he shoots almost exclusively in medium and long-distance frames, favouring planimetric compositions and still camerawork over flashy inserts or rapid cuts. It’s almost like he’s following a real guy called Ritchie instead of creating a story about him — which starts in North Tirol at his mother’s funeral before taking us back to his life in Rimini, where a sudden blast from the past requires him to rapidly (and perhaps unethically) increase his income.

In this manner, it’s not too different from Sean Baker’s Red Rocket (2021), also featuring a sex-adjacent hustler that toes the line between good and evil, relatable and awful at the same time. The most satisfying part is how cleverly the dramaturgical line snaps into focus: despite looking like a shabby character portrait, this is a neatly plotted story with a beginning, middle and end, simply composed of the kind of longer, more contemplative, enigmatic and interesting scenes that many other screenwriters would choose to leave out.

Touching on themes of race, identity, belonging, sexuality and more within its runtime, it nestles various ideas within its simple seeming style; resulting in a touching, intellectually rich and at-times hilarious portrait that I would simply love to watch again. Thankfully for us, Ulrich Seidl has already wrapped on a continuation of that same world. I will be first in line: Ritchie Bravo is too big for just one film.

Rimini played in competition at the 72nd Berlinale, when this piece was originally written. It premieres in the UK in October as part of the BFI London Film Festival. In UK cinemas on Friday, December 9th. On BFI Player on Monday, September 4th.

Flux Gourmet

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

In-fighting, flatulence and freaky food is all on the menu in Flux Gourmet, the latest offering from oddball auteur Peter Strickland. Conjoining his pet themes — the meaning of compromise, deep dives into noise, and the way sex is used as a weapon — into one culinary package, it’s further proof of his unique, uncompromising style. While not reaching the heights of The Duke of Burgundy (2015), it’s a strangely amiable comedy that might not provoke any belly laughs, but kept me wryly smiling throughout.

It occupies a realm between what I’d term horror-light — taking the giallo-lighting, penchant for gore and rapid zooms the genre is often-known for — and light-fantasy, set in an institute dedicated to the fusion between cooking and music. Heading a “band” taking up residency for an undefined amount of time in this location is Ella (a brilliantly prickly Fatma Mohamed), berating her colleagues Billy (an emo Asa Butterfield) and Lamina (a more straight-laced Ariane Labed) for not following her vision to the letter. Soon the band find themselves butting heads with the institute leader, excellently played by Gwendoline Christie. She wears so much black-eyeliner that she resembles a panda.

The film betrays its left-field approach to storytelling early on, when the narrator, Jan Stevens (Makis Papadimitriou), a Greek journalist tasked with documenting this collective, complains of gastric turbulence. There is something wrong with his intestine, leading him to constantly hold in farts. This means that he’s perennially uncomfortable, making his job chronicling the various disagreements within the band incredibly difficult. Their pursuit of culinary performance perfection is later complicated by various rifts between the group, including the sly machinations of the institute leader and a rogue collective previously rejected from the institute lingering menacingly around the edges.

Strickland does a great job of establishing and interrogating the unique personalities of all the players, giving us a TV series worth of content within just two hours. These aren’t just types, but people with their own hang-ups and neuroses, not easily solvable within the confines of a movie. Repetitive moments — from the teams synchronised wake-up to their morning walks to crucial “after-dinner speeches” — give us the full overview of each central character, allowing us to see the story from a variety of different perspectives. One could easily imagine a longer-form adaptation with a different collective appearing each episode.

This is definitely true when it comes to the actual art at the heart of the film, developing Strickland’s obsession with noise as previously seen in The Berberian Sound Studio (2012). I wanted more: from the crackle of fresh food hitting the pan, to the boiling of water, to the crack of an egg opening, hearing conventional kitchen sounds blown up to surround sound is a true auditory delight. But beyond a running joke about a flanger ruining their performance and generic droning sounds, the actual mechanics of the music is left sorely unexplored.

And when the “wind” does finally comes, it simply arrives too late, making for an unsatisfying finale. Nonetheless, I’m happy someone is giving Strickland the money to make films this stylish and weird. I’ll come to his restaurant anytime.

Flux Gourmet played in the Encounters section of the 72nd Berlinale, when this piece was originally written. It is out on monst VoD platforms in September.

The Line (La Ligne)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN

The distance between mother and daughter is represented quite literally in The Line, with a 100 metre painted border separating Margaret (Stéphanie Blanchoud) from her mother Cristina (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi). The line, created by her younger sister Marion (Elli Spagnolo), is a last-ditch resort to stop the perennially angry Margaret from hurting her mother again.

It’s a film that starts in exaggerated fury, women chasing each other across a room in slow-motion to opera music. It doesn’t matter what set Margaret off: everything sets her off, with physical violence her first resort when she feels she can’t win an argument. She is given a restraining order. She repeatedly ignores it. Hence the line, both physical necessity and apt metaphor.

While the premise might seem absurd, it never stretches the bounds of plausibility. This is because, to paraphrase Tolstoy, every family is absurd in its own way. Ursula Meier’s Swiss-French drama is highly attuned to the neuroses and internal logic every family abides by in order to survive, crafting a touching exploration of mother-daughter relationships and the difficulty of seeing eye-to-eye.

The focal point is Marion. She might be the youngest in the family, but she possesses a steely resolve, aided by God, that makes her the ultimate go-between, standing on the line outside their house like a friendly border guard. Untouched by the neuroses that make up adult life, including Christina’s melodramatic, selfish nature, Margaret’s stress and their other sister Louise’s (India Hair) bad brokering skills, Marion has the kind of conviction only afforded by youth. Credit must go to Spagnolo, who holds her nerve excellently against veteran actors.

Using music as a through-line, whether it’s ex-concert pianist Cristina’s impending deafness, Margaret’s guitar skills or Marion’s choir-practice, the family bound together by both deafening highs and almighty lows, all in search of some kind of settled harmony. While the cinematography by regular Denis-collaborator Agnes Godard is mostly unshowy, the clean blocking and the occasional flourish help to elevate the material from being a mere actor’s showcase. So do the fine Swiss locations, adding mountain grandeur and rustic charm to the kind of story that could be set anywhere in the world.

But great music lingers not only in their harmonies and melodies, but also their cadences. The Line fails to wrap up its music and distance metaphor in a satisfying way; cross-cutting between different events and ending on a cliff-hanger just when they should finding a neat way to converge. Cliffhangers work best when you can resolve the chord yourself, but this diminished ending left me wanting a more satisfying and pleasing conclusion.

With that said, family isn’t a battle, it’s a war. Once the lines are drawn, it’s hard to put them away again. The Line shows this conflict in all its messy glory.

The Line just premiered in competition at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival, running from 10-20th February!

Robe of Gems (Manto de Gema)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN!

The limits of good intentions are sorely tested in Robe of Gems, a moody crime-and-family drama simply too inscrutable for its own good. Despite boasting assured mise-en-scène, fine naturalist performances and a sense of lingering dread, it had me constantly asking all the wrong questions, namely: who, what, when and how?

The where is easy. This is rural Mexico, a place where crime appears to be rife and even the local police are in on the take. Gangsters boast of the ease with which they can buy guns from a show in the USA, disassemble them and then legally transport the parts across the border. The middle-class Isabel (Nailea Norvind) returns to her mother’s villa, where they learn that their long-time domestic servant María’s (Antonia Olivares) sister has gone missing. Isabel, despite warnings to the contrary, goes on a quixotic quest to get to the bottom of this drama, her story intersecting with a policewoman’s son (Juan Daniel Garcia Treviño) working for the local cartel.

This is Natalia López Gallardo’s first feature, having previously worked as an editor on the films of Amat Escalante, Lisandro Alonso and Carlos Reygadas. There is a touch of Reygadas to the start of the film featuring a long take of the sunrise that brings to mind Silent Night (2007). And despite the real-life relevance of the story — considering a shocking 100,000 people are currently missing in Mexico – she takes a similarly slow and atmospheric approach throughout the entire film.

On a purely formal level, it’s very well-made and contemplative: whether it’s shooting at the twilight hour, delving into dream sequences, making use of epic floating takes or turning up the sound of insects to an almost unbearable degree. But it doesn’t proceed story-wise with dream logic, allowing us to find poetic connections between characters, but with a kind of 4D chess approach — making it hard to know who is who, why they are acting in certain ways or why we should care. This approach is most effective when these women brush up against the banality of evil found in the local crime scene, but I don’t know why the film itself had to be so banal at the same time.

In the right hands, this kind of angular drama can be effective, such as Ridley Scott’s The Counsellor (2013), which had a similar sense of tragic inevitability while also needing a roadmap to sort things out. But on top of becoming confused, I was also annoyed: the film more interested in piling moments together than ever throwing in a few clues to help us along. Additionally, the camera often shoots scenes where we only see one character’s face while the other is talking, or with no one’s face at all; simply lingering on the tools they use at work or eating at the family table. While in a drama with a couple of players, this approach makes sense, it proves fatal in an ensemble piece.

By the end, I had one final question to ask myself: why? I definitely can’t answer that one.

Robe of Gems just premiered in competition at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival, running from 10-20th February!