Another year of non-blogging, another film festival. This one will be a little different though. Why? Ive got a 30 film pass and by god am I gonna use it.
A Private Life (FR) (Wiki)
My very first 2025 festival film is taking a slight risk as it is a French film; Don't get me wrong, I have had some excellent experiences with French cinema, but they also have tendency to be a bit up themselves. While A Private Life cannot lay claim to hitting the pretentious highs of, say ... The Pandrogeny Manifesto, I did get a feeling a couple of times that things might be heading in that direction. The line however stayed uncrossed.
Jodie Foster, who we don't see so much these days, plays Lilian, a middle-aged psychoanalyst. American but fully naturalised in France, she is distant from her son Julien, and her estranged husband Gaby. She works robotically through her client list without joy or interest, recording her patients woes whilst recording them onto Mini-disc for her records, a technologically averse tic that belies deeper issues.
One day, Paula - a patient many sessions absent - is found dead, and at the funeral, Lilian finds herself accosted by both Paula's husband and daughter, both distraught for their own reasons at her inclusion on the guest list. Mystified by the incident. Lilian plays amateur sleuth following a chain of mysteries to learn the truth of Paula's disappearance.
Purposefully wrong-footing the viewer, A Private Life has a narrative that is pretty difficult to pin down, taking in the hallucinatory dreams whilst under hypnosis, seemingly revealing a past life of the main players, perhaps revealing the next link in the mystery, or perhaps not - the movie doesn't seem to care all that much, rather concentrating on the stream of experiences of varying levels of believability as we move to a conclusion. Thats not to say that A Private Life is unwatchable; both Foster and Daniel Auteuil, who plays her clumsy but amiable ex-husband Gaby have a strong chemistry, and Mathieu Amalric, the unhinged widower, burns a hole for himself into the celluloid. I enjoyed the film - not as much as I'd hoped, as it was easy to get lost in the sometimes haphazard logic and untied loose ends - and looking at that more positively, its the sort of film that would reward a second viewing, after which some of its mysteries would become clearer. 7/10
Bugonia (Ire/UK/USA/SK/Can) (wiki)
I didn't manage to see Yorgos Lanthimos' last film-but-one Poor Things when it was playing at Leeds last year, but I was very glad to see it in the cinemas a month or so later. A very divisive film for many; I found it to be an example of pure cinema; taking you places where you had genuinely never been before, full of unforgettable scenes and emotions. Ms Plants, however, after being persuaded to come along for a second viewing, was significantly less impressed. I think some of the best films are able to do this; to incite such strong emotion and it is either loved or hated. I loved it.
So to grab one of the last seats on opening night was a goal of this festival; one I can confidently say I will be able to enjoy more films than probably the last three festivals combined. Kids, eh?
Bugonia is a loose remake of Save the Green Planet, a Korean film from about 20 years ago. Repeat Lanthimos collaborators Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone play opposing sides in a battle of wills between Stone's corporate speaking, high flying business woman Michelle, and Plemons conspiracy addled maniac Teddy who is convinced - not unreasonably - that the unintended consequences of some of Michelle's business output is responsible for the coma state of her mother. But also that she is an alien, come to execute a plan to cleanse the world of humans, Aided by Don, a trusting and overly dependent friend who was probably dropped on his head a few too many times throughout his life, they pull off the improbable and land the kidnap. A battle of wits ensues, but how can Michelle win when chained to the floor, trying to reason someone out of their delirium, armed only with things she learned in diversity training?
Though I loved Poor Things a lot, even I could accept there were elements of filler that could have been trimmed, and the same is true here; there are some protracted scenes that could have lost a couple of pounds, but for every minute of that, there are five more pushing things along, with a couple memorable scenes in particular creating audible gasps around me. As for the ending, you can kind of guess what is gonna happen, but the ending might stick with you longer than you think. 8/10
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