Getting an extra screening at LIFF usually means a film has been well received, and since I'd seen it advertised earlier in the festival but didn't manage to see it, I used up my Saturday morning spot.
Brendan Fraser, complete with a mawkish expression he can't seem to shift for the duration of the film, plays Phillip, a down on his luck actor scraping by in central Tokyo playing bit parts in advertisements and whatever else he can scavenge from his agent. Luck, of sorts, comes his way when he lands an unusual job as a 'Sad American', playing a distant relation at a seizensō - an actual funeral for a person not actually dead. Seeing potential, Shinji enlists Phillip in his company, Rental Family Inc, to play bit parts in the lives of those in need, often at the request of their nearest and dearest. So one daughter hires him as a journalist to interview her elderly actor father to make him feel better about his acting legacy, while at the same time he's moonlighting as a found father to help a mother get 'his' daughter into a fancy school.
Predictably, Phillip gets too attached to the parts, and the well-meaning relatives end up getting more than what they wished for. When Phillip is asked to back away and move onto the next job, he goes rogue.
Naturally, I was attracted to the film's location; the director clearly wanted to have the many sights and styles of Japanese culture to be one of the characters, and time was set aside to allow the viewer to appreciate the vibrant Tokyo landscape. As a love letter to the country, it did elevate the film, although it had little in the way of surprises, and one of the two main plot-lines felt disappointing in it's resolution.
It had some bits that skirted around something deep to say about the nature of relationships and the quirkiness of the Japanese way of dealing with mental health, but it didn't quite get to the point of actually having anything interesting to say on that subject. It did however have just enough emotional pull to stop it sliding into the level of mawkishness written on Brendan Frasiers face, 7/10
Blue Heron (Hun/Can) (wiki)
A Hungarian family with four children move house into a rural community in Vancouver Island, sometime in the nineties. Most of the children seem well adjusted, but there is a source of disquiet. Jeremy, the eldest and the child of a previous relationship, is beginning to show concerning behavioral problems. The other kids are spooked when he does a turn, and the parents are quietly going out of their minds. A lack of mental health support, apparently a feature of the time, means there is little hope for the family, and they clearly haven't acquired the skills from elsewhere.
Told with little exposition, requiring a little patience on the part of the viewer to get on the wavelength of the film. To say much more would spoil the ingenuity in the approach to this film, so I won't. Blue Heron tells a familiar story from two perspectives and time periods in a way I haven't seen before, surprising the audience with a satisfying narrative that expects the viewers attention, and rewards it. A surprisingly satisfactory film. 8/10
Calle Málaga (Mor/Fra/Spa/Ger/Bel) (wiki)
Maria Angeles, an elderly woman living on her own in the evening of her life, still maintains an active lifestyle in a market town in Tanzania, the street on which she lives gives the film its name. Her daughter many years ago emigrated to Madrid, but suddenly returns after little in the way of contact. Maria's joy is soon turned to devastated fury when she finds out why - Clara is broke from relationship troubles and needs money, and the apartment that Maria has lived in for 40-plus years - which her late father trustingly placed in Clara's name - needs to go up for sale to get her out of the hole. A deep rift opens up between the two, but Maria has little say in the matter. Faced with the choice between a care home and living in Spain with her now-horrible daughter, she opts for the former, though its not long before the bargain basement service provided makes Maria pine for her sumptuous apartment.
Horrible though Maria's situation is, the film is told with warmth and humour, a high point of the film has Maria sharing her woes with an old friend at the local convent. Its message of finding perhaps something better when everything is seemingly lost is a positive one, although the film allows the viewer to decide for themselves what the resolution is, of which I was expecting one of a handful when the credits suddenly ran. This abrupt ending may be a little disappointing for some who would wish for the resolution to be handed to them, but otherwise, it was clear why this got the audience award at Cannes this year. 8/10
Ghost Elephants (US) (wiki)
A new Werner Herzog documentary is almost a requirement to watch, although the last film of his I managed to catch (Cave of Forgotten Dreams from BIFF 2011) didn't set my hair as alight as I was hoping it would.
Ghost Elephants is a name used by the tribes-people of Angola to describe what may be a previously unrecorded species of Elephant, one which is significantly larger than the usual ones in Africa. Thought to survive in the higher altitudes of the Angolan water tower - which feeds a good chunk of Africa from it's runoff - Dr. Steve Boyes has dedicated his life to finding and recording proof of these animals existence. A single specimen, dubbed 'Henry' was shot in 1955 and brought to the Smithsonian institute where a model of him is on display to this day.
Herzog and crew accompany Boyes, along with a handful of others traveling into Africa, first to Namibia where they take on the talents of some of the last elephant trackers, and then a hundred or so miles into Angola; first with 4x4's, then when the tracks run out and it becomes too impassable, switching to bikes and finally on foot. Along the way they contend with impassable terrain, poisonous snakes and spiders, and prey animals stalking them down.
Whether they find the elephants is less the point than the journey and the subjects covered along the way. Content warning: This is not a film for the squeamish. Lots of animal carcases left from previous expeditions and hunts, and some of the stock footage from days when elephants and similar sized beasts were hunted for sport will not soon leave my mind. If you can stomach it, Ghost Elephants is equal parts entertaining and sobering. 7.5/10
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (US) (wiki)
To round out a busy day, here is an unusual one. Therapist Linda is in way over her head. Husband Charles (played randomly by Christian Slater who is for most of the film a disembodied voice on the phone) is not around, her daughter needs nightly care that involves pumping gunk into her stomach by drip tube, and a water leak from the apartment above has just broken through, leaving a massive, ominous hole and lots of damage. Her fellow therapist (played even more randomly by Conan O'Brien) is little use and more interested in his own stories than hers, and a steady stream of half-witted patients darken her door at regular intervals to tell them how bad their life is. At rock bottom, she moves into a motel room while she fights helplessly with the landlord to get things fixed.
A person at absolute rock bottom with the entire world seemingly against them is going to have their perception of reality warped; and we are along for the ride. The endless days melt into one another, the hole begins to take on a life of its own, and how Linda avoids a complete nervous breakdown is beyond me.
A study into the mind of a woman on the edge; getting little or no support from the people in her life, the perils of being a mother to a child in need, and the effect that mental slide into madness, seen from the eyes of a victim. It's an odd, disconcerting film with a dark streak of humour, but with powerful images and a lot to say. 7.5/10
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