Tag: boring

Babysitter

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

The Quebecois Babysitter starts at full gallop and never goes down to a trot throughout its entire 90 minute runtime. It begins with men delivering dialogue out their mouths like they’re firing semi-automatics, annoying women in front of them by asking them inappropriate questions. They’re drinking, shouting, almost screaming, the camera cutting between them in a chaotic, oppressive fashion, cinematographer Josée Deshaies favouring intense close-ups and avoiding wide shots. They’re at an MMA match, which is bloody, two men on the floor almost killing each other. We’ve been airdropped in the land of toxic masculinity. No one will get out unscathed.

Cédric (Patrick Hivon) is living in the land of misogyny, so he doesn’t think it’s a big deal to harass a TV reporter outside the match with a hug and a kiss. But he lands in hot water straight away; suspended from his job, he has to do some soul-searching, 8 1/2-style (Federico Fellini, 1963), taking us on a surreal, overwhelming and frantic comedy that I found more irritating than thought-provoking.

It’s clear that Cédric is not a monster, but he’s definitely an asshole. The question you might ask yourself is: where does the asshole end and the monster begin? It’s worthwhile for all men, and women too, to do the necessary work to see how they might be misogynists, overt or otherwise. In a clever bit of plot-development, Cédric decides to write a letter to the aggrieved TV reporter, which he later develops into a narcissistic memoir. Masculinity is toxic, but its also a hot, marketable topic. Everyone loses under capitalism.

Meanwhile, Sonia Chokri, also directing, stars as his wife, refusing to fit into any conventional category of oppressed womanhood. Nonetheless, she is also taken on a journey of confused identity when the titular babysitter Amy (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), appears, tasked to help the two exhausted parents take care of a baby that simply doesn’t sleep.

22, big hair, and cleavage always on show, she is a parody of flush, young and readily available sexuality, provoking Cédric and his journalist brother while also defying conventional stereotypes of women as mere victims. Tereszkiewicz plays the part particularly well, imbuing porno clichés with uncertain menace.

It’s ripe for a clever and biting farce, but the overbearing atmosphere, replete with chaotic sound design and rapid cutting, makes for an experience as intrusive and as unwarranted as Cédric’s drunken advances. This is an all-woman show, with Chokri working alongside playwright Catherine Léger to make fun of both men and women alike. But the final result is all over-the-place, unable to corral the material into the deconstruction of masculinity the premise deserves.

I guess the #metoo movement and the surrounding debate over male norms is due a good satire. But they need to be a lot sharper and funnier than this. Babysitter starts with a clever enough idea and boasts a fresh enough style, but the movie never does enough in the first place to actually make this a satire worth sitting through. Don’t book a babysitter to go see this one.

Babysitter plays in Competition at TIFF, running from 17th-26th June.

The Woodcutter Story

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

To say Finnish cinema is deadpan is a bit like saying water is wet. It’s not only a part of the national character, it is the default mode of expression for so many of their films; viewing the world from a slightly askew, whimsical and neatly framed angle. The Woodcutter Story at first feels like it could occupy the same world as Aki Kaurismäki: emotionless-seeming characters sat in dingy bars, weird dancing and an endlessly optimistic hero within a deeply cynical world. Unlike Kaurismäki however, I sensed little life between the frames while watching this slow, un-engaging story.

Our idiot, in the classical, literary sense, is Pepe (Jarkko Lahti), who, as the name of the film suggests, works as a woodcutter somewhere deep in the Finnish forest. Snow is everywhere in this film, caught in gorgeous widescreen images that seem to almost subsume the film’s characters. He’s not the kind of person to worry about his fate; when a convoy of sleek, black cars turns up and the suits start firing everyone in favour of building a new mine, he seems to be the only worker who thinks there has to be a good reason for such capitalist greed. The rest of the film tests his worldview against a world that is slowly fading from view.

Director Mikko Myllylahti, following up his screenplay for The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki with his first feature behind the camera, uses this catastrophic event to explore the nuances of this small village and its weird inhabitants. Violence, betrayal and plain strangeness occur one after the other, all told in a similarly reserved, slow style, bringing to mind Twin Peaks and its own collection of oddball townsfolk, or the Coen Brother’s Fargo (1996). The similarities to television are not unwarranted as The Woodcutter Story has an episodic and shoddy feel, Pepe tasked with being mostly a bystander to all the bizarre goings-ons, including unnecessary forays into science-fiction, revenge thriller and a tale-of-the-workers.

Not once did I feel like it cohered into something urgent, either philosophically, narratively or emotionally. Pepe is an inherently reactionary character, which would be fine if his resilience against catastrophe had a sense of purpose or a clear through-line; instead he encounters this series of unfortunate events with a variance of contrasting reactions, stemming from hopelessness to guilelessness to nothingness, making him frankly uninteresting to follow for the space of 100 minutes.

Compositionally, Myllylahti has a great eye for compelling frames, whether it’s capturing oppressive interiors or showing off the beauty of the countryside, showing characters at the front of the frame while the world around them feels too big for their small needs. Nonetheless, there are times when the film could’ve opted for a more direct, urgent mode of filmmaking instead of trying to keep an ironic distance throughout. Perhaps there’s some dream-logic I missed that ties it all together. I’m not going to spend my time trying to find out.

The Woodcutter Story played in Critic’s Week at the Cannes Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It is out in the UK in October as part of the 66th BFI London Film Festival.

The Score

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TALLINN

You could bring a legal case against The Score for misrepresentation. It came billed to me as a “heist-musical”. I was deeply intrigued, having never watched a film combine such genres before. Sadly, it is neither a heist film — taking place after some unspecified ‘score’ — or much of a musical either — people standing in rooms while singing instead of providing the pleasures that such a genre usually dictates. Essentially, a play-set-to-film that features a few songs, it keeps the audience in a constant state of anticipation while delivering little to no payoff. Set in a cafe for most of its runtime, it’s like being promised a gourmet steak but the food arrives late and straight out of the microwave.

Mike (Johnny Flynn) and Troy (Will Poulter) have just stolen £20,000. One of their key dealers isn’t with them, so they have to wait at a secluded café for the drop. Like Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1991), it’s all about how they act while waiting for the final resolution as opposed to the nuts and bolts of the so-called heist. The dynamic is tested when Troy falls for pretty café worker Gloria (Naomi Ackie), threatening their need for a low profile. The remaining 90 or so minutes combines a love story, crime “suspense” and several musical interludes.

Musical music need not carry the plot forward, although it can help to integrate music and story together. It doesn’t necessarily need to be catchy either, as long as it is sung with passion and heart. The songs here, written by Flynn, are created in his usual faux country-mode, using monosyllabic utterances in place of words, layered guitar lines and encompassing themes of love and striving to be free. Shot more akin to Les Misérables (Tom Hooper, 2012) than La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016), songs are caught in close-up rather than in a traditional one-shots. Dancing and movement is minimal.

Charisma is sorely lacking, both in the underproduced music and in the undercooked performances. Johnny Flynn seems like a lovely person, but when in the wrong hands, he has a rather underwhelming screen presence. His semi-sardonic personality and self-deprecation, sometimes at odds with his rugged good looks, can be a strength in a film like Emma (2020) — one of the few Jane Austen adaptations that truly bounces off the page — but he is handled poorly here, the viewer unable to determine the arc or heart of his character. Will Poulter suffers similar issues — he can be intense and brooding in anything from the Maze Runner series to Black Runner: Bandersnatch (Charlie Brooker, 2018), but let loose and his energy quickly sputters. Together, the two actors occasionally hit sparks — especially when Flynn is allowed to constantly criticise Poulter’s compulsive actions and when Poulter strikes back — but most of the time they feel mismatched, both indulging their worst acting impulses.

There’s a solid, non-musical short film in all this. But there’s a reason the bus scene in Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936) didn’t last 100 minutes. There’s only so much suspense that the audience can care for. After my initial disappointment regarding the misrepresented premise, The Score quickly exhausted my patience.

The Score plays in the First Feature Competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12th – 28th November.