Tag: phoenix

Phoenix (Føniks)

Posted on by victorfraga

Jill (Ylva Bjorkaas Thedin) has to learn how to behave like an adult from a very young age. She cares for her alcoholic and emotionally unstable mother Astrid (Maria Bonnevie) and younger brother Bo (Casper Falck-Løvås). Astrid is still young and good-looking, despite the black circles around her eyes and the dishevelled hair revealing her dysfunctional lifestyle and personality. She’s an artist, and her paintings populate nearly every corner of the cluttered dwelling somewhere in suburban Oslo. She’s extremely crotchety and volatile, and anger outbursts are part of their routine.

One day, Astrid is invited for a job interview at the local art gallery. Could she turn her life around and rise from the ashes like the mythical bird in the film title? Jill buys her a white blouse for the occasion in order to maximise her changes of landing the new post. The white garment is a peace token, but Astrid is hardly interested in reconciliation. Her reaction is disheartening, quickly veering from affection and perplexity into gratuitous aggression. Parallel to the job interview, Jill is also expecting her estranged father Nils (Sverrir Gudnason) to visit in a couple of days in order to celebrate her 15th birthday. Astrid is jealous and bitter, telling her daughter that her former partner will simply ignore the occasion.

Then tragedy strikes. Jill is left grappling with a devastating event, but decides to conceal the fact from everyone in order to carry on with her birthday celebrations as planned. Nils does show up, but he too has a very dirty secret in store that he won’t share until the very end of the film. Jill has contend with both failed motherhood and fatherhood, plus a vulnerable young brother.

The young actress Bjorkass Thedin is rather impressive. She embodies Scandinavian stoicism and determination. She combines innocence with a subtle joi-de-vivre at the face of adversity, and she has a very unorthodox way of dealing external pressures.

All in all, this is an effective drama with elements of kitchen sink realism and coming-of-age tale. There are also a few subtle horror devices, however they never come full circle. It’s a riveting movie which will keep you guessing what happens next, and how long Jill will manage to keep her skeletons in the closet (or rather monsters in the cellar, in one of those communal basement sheds common in many European countries yet virtually non-existent in the UK). Yet this is not one of those punch-in-the-face, memorable movies that will stay with you for a long time.

Phoenix is in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 13th. On VoD on Monday, January 13th.

Big Fish & Begonia (Dayu Haitang)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Around the age of 16, people in the spirit world must visit the world of the humans, with whom they are warned not to interact, as a rite of passage. Thus it is that teenage spirit girl Chun must pass through the elemental maelstrom linking her world and ours whereupon she is transformed into a red dolphin and made to spend seven days in the seas of the human world. On her sixth day, she hears a teenage boy play a dolphin-shaped flute to his sister; on her seventh she sees blue dolphins struggling in a fishing net. Her return to her world is blocked when she becomes entangled in a net between her and the whirlpool until the boy rescues her only to be himself fatally sucked into that whirlpool. This is more or less how the Chinese animation Big Fish & Begonia sets off.

Safely back in the spirit world, Chun understandably feels she owes him a debt so trades half her life to a soul keeper in exchange for that of the boy: she must nurture the boy’s soul which will be given the form of a fish in her world and release him back into the human world when the fish reaches adulthood, at which point she will die but he will live. She names the fish/boy Kun after a legendary sea creature of immense size.

There’s a lot more to it than that: firstly, an unrequited love story introduces teenage spirit boy Qiu who fancies Chun and looks out for her even though she treats him like no more than her big brother. Then, while the old aged male soul keeper watches over the souls of departed good people incarnated as fish, his equally old female counterpart watches over the souls of departed bad people incarnated as mice. Chun’s late grandma is reborn as a phoenix; her beloved grandpa, a Begonia tree. Also in the mix are a deadly two-headed snake, a mystical stone dragon and an unearthly ferryman who steers his barge along the clouds. And while in the human world the red dolphins swim among the seas, in the spirit world they soar through the skies along with cranes and dragons.

The whole is rendered in beautifully drawn animation as effective at portraying in the heroine’s internal life as it is in bringing incredible landscapes and fantastic creatures to the screen. The pace is mesmerisingly slow in places, breathtakingly action-packed in others. Where else can you see a girl sell half her life to save someone else’s, a man play mah-jong against three other versions of himself or the terrible portent of snow falling in the middle of Summer? For the finale, it throws in cataclysmic floods and waterspouts descending from the skies.

The production, which was intermittently on then off for some 13 years, was ultimately promoted by posts on Weibo (China’s answer to Twitter) then financed by China-based crowdfunding. Very much an indie production by two directors with a unique vision, it’s a landmark entry in the annals of fantasy film and animated storytelling which deserves to be widely seen. Its limited UK and Irish release means you’ll need to make a special effort to see it. You should do so though because this magnificent home-grown Chinese offering demonstrates just how tired and formulaic most Hollywood fantasy and/or animated films are. Don’t miss.

Oh, and be warned there’s a key scene buried in the middle of the end credits.

Big Fish & Begonia is out in the UK on Wednesday, April 18th. It is screening in both subtitled (independent cinemas) and dubbed (Showcase Cinemas) versions. We recommend the subtitled version as screened to press. Click here to see where it is being screened. Watch the film trailer below:

Subtitled:

Dubbed: