Tag: Glasgow Film Festival

Wake Up

Posted on by Paul Risker

In the fourth feature by the Canadian filmmaking collective, Road Kill Superstars (RKSS), François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell, a group of Gen Z activists sneak into a home superstore before closing. They plan to make a political statement against the company’s active role in deforestation by vandalising the store and posting protest videos to social media. Their plan, however, hits a problem when they encounter Kevin (Turlough Convery), a security guard keen to reconnect with his primitive side. He sees them as prey on his hunting ground and when the hunt begins, the activists must survive the night.

Wake Up is the type of film that encourages its audience to kick back and enjoy as all hell breaks loose. Borrowing the popular phrase, it does exactly what it says on the tin, it’s a rollicking 80 minutes of fun – for us, not the unfortunate characters fighting for their lives. However, it lacks the guttural punch of other survivalist films like John Carpenter’s classic, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000) and Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin’s Ready or Not (2019).

While some may salivate for more excessive violence, the hunt and the kills are entertaining and creative enough. The main qualm will be that the characters’ motivations and interpersonal dynamics are underdeveloped. RKSS, working from a screenplay by Alberto Marini, does the minimum necessary. They introduce a potential romantic motivation for new recruit Tyler (Kyle Scudder), and Ethan’s (Benny O. Arthur) distrust of him, as well as one activist talking about how stores like this put her father out of business. This contrasts with other survivalist films that take time to develop the interpersonal dynamics of its characters, their pasts and motivations. It’s a decision that’s not to Wake Up’s detriment, because it can be enjoyed as a breezier take on this type of story that’s crossed with the slasher.

Wake Up also leans into the archetypal story of the man who has reached breaking point, calls to mind Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down (1993). The construction of cause and effect in pitting the activists against Kevin, may also be a nod to Frankenstein, and the traditions of the sympathetic horror monster.

RKSS and Marini refuse to emphasise the environmental activism angle and enter the timely and contentious conversation about what’s an appropriate form or way to protest. There’s a version of Wake Up that’s more consciously engaged with these social anxieties that would certainly elevate its presence. The filmmakers, however, slip in metaphors that may be missed in favour of the film’s orgy of violence. An effective touch is how the activists who are being killed off one-by-one wear animal masks, metaphorically becoming the thing they’re advocating for and are trying to protect. In the aftermath, we’re reminded of how the engines of commerce and industry continue to endure, despite righteous indignation from the conscionable.

Wake Up continues RKSS’ rebellious affront towards authority. From the orphaned teen’s battle with the older and ruthless warlord and heroics to save the girl in Turbo Kid (2015), to teen Davey spying on his neighbour, a police officer, who he suspects of murder in Summer of 84 (2018), and three young slackers against a corporation in We Are Zombies (2023), RKSS have stacked their films with young characters standing up to the status quo. They challenge authority and institutions of power in an effort to empower themselves.

RKSS are drawn to stories where the young and innocent step out into the adult world, where they try to become heroes of their own stories. These films appeal to the audience’s inner child. They are offering a nostalgic reconnection with not only youthful imagination and desire to grow up, but also the types of films prevalent in the 80s and 90s that tapped into this sense of being. RKSS’ films convey this sense of fun with heavier undertones, where innocence is in peril. All the time, they’re moving between diverse settings, from an apocalyptic world to suburbia and now a deserted home superstore.

Wake Up screened as part of FrightFest at the 2024 Glasgow Film Festival.

Dreams on Fire

Posted on by Paul Risker

The metaphor about the danger of playing with fire is a familiar one to us all. In Canadian filmmaker Philippe McKie’s Japanese urban dance film, the dangerous flames are those that emerge from daring to dream. It’s a spirited tale of the fragility and strength of hope. The title even has an apt double-meaning because fire is a force of destruction, but in the context of the pursuit of one’s dreams, it can be symbolic of a life illuminated by the transformative flames of success.

The young dreamer in this tale is Yume (Bambi Naka), who rebukes her father’s instructions and runs away to Tokyo to become a dancer. The difficult reality of achieving success soon sets in, and penniless, she finds work as a hostess in Tokyo’s red-light district. She continues to study and integrate herself into the dance community, never giving up on her dream.

From the beginning we feel we’re in the company of a storyteller brimming with confidence, who is unapologetic for his vision. Dreams on Fire will not please everyone, and there will be those that will accuse it of being an aspirational story that saunters, failing to explore deeper themes and ideas. This is to perhaps miss the filmmaker’s intention. A stylised story, it’s an unrestrained love letter to the aspirational journey that he chooses to not weigh down. He pays tribute to the arduous pursuit his protagonist undertakes, and the storyteller and character are not completely divisible from one another, as he concludes a significant step in his own creative journey.

At an 120-minutes it’s not short, and what struck me was a moment when I realised the passage of time that had come and gone. Thinking about our own lives, we lose sight of time, coming to realise that it’s passing us by of its own volition. In hindsight, our experiences are not necessarily what we pictured in our mind, and this is true for Yume. Finding a brevity in the time the story covers provokes a feeling that while we’ve been following her, we’ve been lost in a trance.

Emphasising the focus on the human body and its movement, the choreography of a single or group of bodies becomes hypnotic. Watching the young woman dedicated to training her body, perfecting her craft draws us in, and nestles us into the fierce ambition where perhaps dance is more important than life itself. While the world continues to move around her, it feels that she’s on her own plane of existence. The dance and music set pieces add a dreamy layer to the trance like feel, that in one scene conveys a deep eroticism, and in another a surreal nightmare.

A single viewing of Dreams on Fire is not enough, it requires a second viewing to see through this trance, to see clearly what she feels, when she feels it, how and when the journey takes shape.

Ironically, Bambi Naka plays the young and aspirational protagonist, who herself knows what it is to have this dream. Alongside her then romantic partner Aya Sato, she was one half of the duo AyaBambi, the lead dancers for Madonna on a two-year world tour. She plays Yume with a vulnerable shadow, even as she finds confidence and sheds her meekness. When another dancer she replaces in an ensemble warns her about the peril of injury, we find ourselves intermittently holding our breath. We realise that the smallest misstep, whether dancing or not could be disastrous, and we fear for her fragile dream.

Dreams on Fire is about characters on the fringes, but it’s not a cold or lonely space. While she lives in a bare and cramped apartment, she’s integrating herself into a community full of life. The harsher reality would be denying herself a chance at her dreams by remaining at home. With an optimistic eye, McKie shows the warmth of belonging to the fringes. A mature piece of storytelling, it does not play to either the saccharine or cold cynicism, instead it honours that joy and the sorrow go together.

If the film is a love letter to Tokyo, the Canadian filmmaker’s spiritual home having left film school in Montreal to spend 10 years living and working there, for us it’s neither a love letter to a city, nor any fringe culture. For western audiences it’s a look into the Japanese urban dance scene, that only scratches the surface of this cultural phenomenon, and other Japanese subcultures. As an unrestrained love letter to the aspirational journey, it’s also an expression that life is an empty shell we must fill with purpose and meaning, that exposes us to both the fragility and the strength of hope.

Dreams on Fire premiered in March at Glasgow Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It shows at the Fantasia International Film Festival (in Quebec) in August.