Rita is an ageing and lowly cleaning lady in her local chapel in a
backwater village somewhere in Argentina. Jealous of the local pack of
ladies who always seem to have something interesting to do and the attentions of the local father, she happens
upon an old statue of a saint, supposedly the town's 'Santa Rita', missing for decades. Corralling her meek and simple husband, who loves her dearly but wants nothing more than a quiet last few years, they sneak it back home and hatch a plan to make Rita be centre stage when the statue miraculously reappears.
There's something quite arresting with this film, it is gentle but with a playful mischief lurking just behind the screen. Nothing shows this more than the viewer experiencing the unusual situation of an abrupt false ending midway through (with a minute or two of credits to dumbfound the audience), after which the hapless Rita has her perspective completely changed, along with the rest of us. It turns from a quiet caper reminiscent of an episode of Last of the Summer Wine, into something deeper and more affecting. It was a genuine surprise. 8/10
Strange as it may seem, Bhutan has only had access to the internet and TV since they were given a democratic system in 2006. Since then, filmmakers from the region have slowly started to make their presence felt. Here is one of them.
Set in 2006, just as the newly formed government pushed for democratic engagement with it's people, who viewed this new way of thinking with suspicion and confusion. In a remote village of Ura, the elderly local Lama listened on the crackling radio thrust into his personal space as mock elections were announced, sighed, and instructed his monk assistant, Tashi, to acquire two guns. He was going to sort this out once and for all.
Coincidentally, Ron, an American rifle collector appears on the scene. He has heard of an old man in the village with a very rare rifle, and might be willing to part with it for the right words. He hires local villager Benji as his guide to the area and they arrange for the swap. Problem is, a local Lama's wishes takes precedence in these situations, snatching ritches from Ron's grasp.
What does the Lama want with the guns? Will Ron catch up with the monk and do a deal, and what over the police on Ron and Benji's tail who have been alerted to a suspicious 'arms dealer' on their patch? Reminiscent of the setup from a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, each faction descends on the final confrontation and the (western, at least) viewer is kept guessing as to the outcome. If you were hoping the Lama would go ape and spend the last third of the film creating a bloodbath, I have to inform you that you will be disappointed in the final scenes, but most should see a satisfying, if unspectacular resolution to things. 7/10
As is usual these days, my dusty blog comes briefly to life once again around November, and once again I promise myself and anyone still listening that I'll post more in the following year. It probably won't happen. Hey look, this year and the 2020's have been pretty crap so far and my optimism tank is running pretty low.
At the turn of the 20th Century, a ragged group of mercenaries from a bunch of countries including the Spanish, American and British are busy colonizing the outer skirts of Chile and Argentina, and somewhere near the border of the two we find 'Lieutenant' Alexander MacLenan, a Scottish soldier in charge of a lot of other bored soldiers as they force slaves of varying colours to erect cattle fences around their newly 'acquired' land. Trouble is, the pesky Indians who seem to think that they own the place keep messing things up, and so MacLenan is tasked by his landgrabbing bossJosé Menéndez to finda safe route out to the Atlantic with which to transport their livestock. Taking sharp-shooting half-Chilean Segundo with him, self-assured and bloodthirsty Texan 'Bill' is brought along for the ride at Menéndez' recommendation, given that those indians will shoot you given the slightest chance.
What you expect to be perhaps an awakening of the morality of an embittered man doesn't work out that way, and my first reaction to that was disappointment. But this is not a nicely tied up story about how a bad white man saw that he could be a good white man, but a reflection of the barbarity on the colonized by the colonizers.
It's dark and unrelenting in this depiction of the period if Chilean history, and even when the third act takes a step back, you are still reminded that for most people of the land at the time, this was a period where many never saw justice other than the convenient interpretation of the word decided on by the settlers themselves. 7.5/10
I had to give La Palisiada a lot of slack to get anything good out of it. In the beginning, which can be roughly described as a prologue, we appear to be in the Ukraine around 2010, as two families and their children spend some time together. After a number of disjointed scenes, a throwaway line uttered by teenage son Kiril as he wanders around the flat he has managed to newly acquire, filled with his dad's 'horrible' paintings, he refers to some of them as 'the worst things he has ever done', a clue as to where the film is making it's way towards.
Kiril is a spoilt, opinionated and unlikable floppy haired little git. Somehow in a relationship with Ayasel, things come to a head during an argument and thankfully we don't have to put up with him any more in the film.
Rewind to 1996 in newly liberated Ukraine, and the parents of the couple are now the focus. At this point the purpose of the film begins to coalesce, as we are shown through deliberately gritty and grainy 4:3 format the past lives of people who in the present are known only as loving fathers, taking part in what passed for justice in the newly liberated Ukraine of the mid 90's, where the habits of soviet influence still meant that so long as someone paid for a crime, that was the main thing. Someone shot one of their comrades and Bohdan, a young offender with some mental problems seemed guilty looking enough to do. Only at this point do we reflectively get some appreciation of the prologue, showing the cleaner, high-definition and relatively carefree lives of their children who, were it not for the actions of the past, may not have a tragedy of their own to deal with. If you can be patient during the first 15 or so minutes and put up with the numerous errors in the subtitles, you can find something of worth here but this new director would do well to tighten things up a bit in their next film. 6/10
Eking out a living in one of Brazil's poorer areas, single mother Suellen sits in the toll booth day after day to put food on the table for her 'maybe' new boyfriend who seems to be taking some liberties, and her son Antonio, who has taken to posting Instagram videos singing along to campy classics in his disco-lit bedroom. What should be an escape from Antonio's dull existence and an exercise in finding out who he is and where his passions lay, Suellen sees as an illness robbing his child of a 'normal' existence.
When an opportunity arises to send her son to an expensive 'gay conversion' centre, she takes it without a second thought for the danger that she is putting her family in. With great performances particularly by the two leads, the film gives a view into the difficult waters of a culture steeped in religion and religious beliefs dictating who and what a person should be to be happy, and the hypocrisies we use to make them fit our actual lives. 8/10
In a visual style I can best describe as a Pigeon Street with modern technology, this inventive short toys with the idea that light can travel slowly through certain substances, and how at extremes, this might affect how someone sees their world. Nice but you have to leave your logic muscles at the door. 6.5
Alice is very bored and very, very horny. With colourful and flyaway imagery, we follow her through a typical day of annoying little brothers and unfulfilled fantasies, where even there the drudgery of the realities of life seem to encroach. Energetic, free-spirited and vibrant animation succeeds, often explicitly to convey the creature desperate to come out. 7.5
Remember How I Used to Ride a White Horse (Cro) (preview)
Very much one of those shorts that either pings with you based on your life experiences, or will completely go over your head. For me, it was very much the latter. A coffee shop worker, fashioned it seems from sweaty wax into a form resembling a brunette Lisa Jones from Team America, flumps around while some guy sits with his headphones on and distorted noise coming out. He does nothing, even when another man appears, lies on the floor, and then is gone again. Then there are some piles of salt, and a horse. And also a robot wood chopper chopping infinite wood. And the coffee shop is called White Horse so ... she originally rode it? Also, the actual horse was not white. The animation was wooden, the scenes abstract and nonsensical, the characters annoying and without purpose, and any message of some life unfulfilled was hidden too far behind it all for me to give a fig, and I disliked almost every part of it. 2
Suffering from a similar level of message obscurity, Suruaika did at least have some good animation. In a noir world of cats where some cats are people and some cats are just cats, one taxi-driver cat avoids the strays on the street as he ferries his clients to and fro. After running one down he feels compelled to take in the strange looking orphan kitten that remains, only for it to get larger with every day, connected somehow with the exponential growth of cat cats on the roads, that he now seems to have no problems in mowing down in their thousands. Something something something rampant consumerism? I really don't know and it makes me feel old. 4
Well. If anything was going to get us back on track it's a far-out, far-eastern parody of various western and eastern animations, as GMAN, a He-Man anime type, confronts in DBZ style, his reluctant nemesis, GHEAD, who is basically a cyclops with a tin can for a head. In super smooth but increasingly batshit fight scenes, the traditions of an anime good-evil fight are subverted as GHEAD tries to come to terms with just being sick and tired of it all. Mad. Mad as hell and I loved it. 8
A tale of childlike woodland sprites, those who exist in the sun-dappled daytime who have the power to make the ingredients of the forest floor dance and sing, and those of the darkness who covet them. When the two worlds come together, a sprite finds himself in the darkness with no way back. Beautiful, magical and with themes reminiscent of Majoras Mask. 7.5
As two conjoined beings eke out an existence next to what appears to be the river Styx, we see just how poisoned their unequal relationship is. Wracked by nightmares brought on by her hopeless existence, the sub-servant half is given a chance to break free but at a terrible price. The use of cloth and textile to create visceral flesh and bone is gruesomely effective, and puts a shiver down the spine. 7.5
Finally, a short and humorous look at how recycling could maybe go a bit too far. Cloth character models much tidier and less gruesome than in Skinned, but with the most amusingly mundane death in animation history, it provided us with an amusingly abrupt finish to our animation journey. 7.5
Freddie is enjoying the good fortunes of youth, enabling her to travel where she will, meet people and see things. I remember those days with fondness. Korean born but put up for adoption at an early age and brought up in France, her plans for a trip to Japan are scuppered by the weather and she diverts to an impromptu visit to Seoul. Fortune finds her mingling with a crowd, including the quiet Tena, who fortunately speaks French and so helps her with the locals. As we join her in the film, Freddie is contemplating her suggestion to visit the Hammond Adoption center to trace her birth parents.
Impulsive and tangential, her heart isn't truly in the escapade; and when she learns her parents are separated and only dad wishes to make contact, her disappointment is lowered further when he turns out to be a needy drunkard.
Feeling the pull of both her biological and adoptive homelands, and the emotional thump of her mother's rejection amplifies Freddie's emotional decision making - leave the disappointment behind and return to the comfort of her old life, or derail her life and stay in the hopes her mother will reply to the request, and not turn out to be another bum.
Park Ji-min who plays Freddie seems to be just barely maintaining composure throughout, you expect her pursed lips to explode with an angry release of frustration at every predicament she finds herself in, and the ups and downs on her journey of self discovery keep the interest going through to the end, sometimes leading to particularly tender and heartfelt moments thanks to a cast underplaying their parts compared to a typical high energy Korean film. 7
Jeanne is fast approaching middle age, single and her life is falling apart. The culmination of a life's work project to find a solution to the oceans microplastics has ended up as a very expensive fish toy at the bottom of the sea. Her reputation in tatters and her frantic attempt to save the project reduced to mocking YouTube videos, she also has to deal with the death of her mother, who threw herself off a bridge in a fit of depression.
Fighting bankruptcy, the only option is to sell her mother's Lisbon apartment, but first Jeanne must get there and expose her already fragile emotions to the stress of a thousand family memories as she chucks her childhood in the skip.
The plane journey gets worse as Jean, a large and oafish petty thief happens to tag along like an unwanted shower curtain salesman, and just doesn't seem to want to go away.
Everybody loves Jeanne plays out unsurprisingly as a 'girl meets idiot who turns out to be actually quite nice actually but is still an idiot but at least he's not an arse' sort of film. There isn't any plot twists here, but it is very enjoyable. It's played as a romcom of sorts but finds time to meditate on Jeanne's journey of healing as she reconciles her mixed feelings for her mother, who regularly berated Jeanne and her brother at least as much as she loved them; memories of childhood handled tenderly mix with Jeanne's inner monologue, which, much like the excellent BoJack Horseman episode 'stupid piece of shit' - which could so easily have been a direct inspiration - shows her inner insecurities and suggestions that she too might suffer from the same depression that plagued the mind of her mother. It's a beautiful, tender and funny film and one I would really recommend - and given my relationship with pretentious French films in the past, who'd have predicted that with a French romcom? 8
I originally wanted to see the Korean thriller Confession, but it had sold out so I'm assuming it was as good as Jeanne, which I managed to wangle the last ticket for.
My backup choice had some parallels to Return to Seoul, in that it dealt with a young girl brought up in a country other than her birth one. In this case, the geography is reversed, with young Kurdish teen Sarya, fleeing the middle east with her family after her father is wanted for taking part in an illegal demonstration, and finding refuge in Japan. For a while they forge an existence with a similar group of Kurds in Saitama; Sarya has a promising school record, the beginnings of a romance with a work mate and her aims to become a teacher look on track. But it starts to fall apart with the news their refugee status has been rejected and their visas are taken away. With temporary status they can't work or travel, and with their meager savings, their landlord starts to run low on charity. As with Jeanne it didn't have any major twists and turns, and whereas the earlier film had a pleasing mix of humour and emotional clout, My Small Land only has the latter. That's not to say it was only half as enjoyable, but the heavy scenes had to work harder to keep up. Fortunately, the acting, especially by Lina Arashi playing the young lead with maturity beyond her years helps to carry this off. It did meander a little and may not reach the sort of satisfying conclusion some may wish for, but I left with a hopeful warmth for the family that all would be well. 7
Ukraine, unfortunately but understandably from a western point of view gets most of the airtime when it comes to news reports, but another conflict, predating those events by over a year, still continue apace further east. The military coup that removed Aung San Suu Kyi from power at the start of February last year has seen the country's infant new democracy throttled in the cradle. For the inhabitants, it's a daily onslaught of thumping on the door in the middle of the night, snatched family members, and thousands of deaths. The civil disobedience movement, growing organically out of this, made of a ragtag of civilians brave enough to bang pots and pans, stand unarmed against groups of military police, or even join the guerillas hiding in the countryside and outright bring the war back to the military's door, give a fragile hope for the future
Myanmar diaries is a powerful window into this horrible world in which to exist. Created anonymously by Burmese filmmakers, it intersperses acted scenes in small rooms; small vignettes showing life's twisted and broken under occupation, and captured phone footage of protests, attacks, shootings and more. Though you know the former is acted out, the scenes gain additional weight because you know the situations they depict went on a thousand times, perhaps behind the curtain of that cramped flat you just saw as a mass beating of protesters took place.
Not for the faint of heart, but a much needed light shining on yet another atrocity as the pendulum continues to swing further to the right. 7.5
Climate crises (plural) is pretty undeniable now with half of Pakistan under water, regular and searing forest fires in the Americas, and of course the Arctic ice thawing at an unprecedented rate. It's depictions of these kinds of international incidents that precede the main meat of this film but somewhat surprisingly, and a little disappointingly, it settles on two relatively small and local fights, in the UK and Germany, connected by a common threat of open cast coal mining, and Clumsy, a beringed climate activist who lends his time to protesting both of them. For the UK, a small village in the Tyneside Pont Valley is under constant threat of reopening a once underground mine as open cast, a fight that has waged between the residents and banks, the coal mining company looking to get at a rich seam of black gold, for the past 30 years. Germany however has the largest open mine that has quickly spread across the site of the formerly huge Hambach forest, of which now only 10% remains. Even so, the company in charge eats ever further into it and unsatisfied with even that, uses draconian laws to evict residents in any village if they so much smell coal beneath.
Starting with an almost cozy tale of locals and activists coming together to sit and sing and make banners progresses to higher stakes and more dangerous situations; treetops and rabbit holes become the last outposts as armoured police increasingly lose control of the situation and lives of the activists themselves become chips on the table. As businesses leverage their best lawyer talent to push slowly forward skirting around the limits of the law we see just how much both sides are willing to go. What starts small becomes much bigger and a study on just two small examples of the worldwide move to a direct action approach. An inspirational film that I will be introducing to my kids. 8
The Solé family, spread across three generations spend countless summers happily picking fruit in their orchard home in the Alcarràs. Centuries old orchard trees produce bountiful harvests that provide a livable income for them, at least until now. The market trading value pushed downwards by the big buyers is compounded by news that the current head of the nearby Pinyol family - whose grandfather rewarded the Solés for hiding them in the war with a verbal agreement that the land was theirs to farm - is not much of a fan of traditional farming - or traditional handshake agreements - and likes the look of what is legally if not rightfully his land after all, covered in solar panels.
Alcarràs is a moment in time where a family must adjust, and it's told deftly with room to study the effect of change on the three generations; the youngest children play happily around the stressed parents with little understanding of the politics at work, only to gaze in confusion at the outcomes that affect them; the teens are torn between the need to have a familiar baseline in their life and the opportunity to rip it up and find something new. In the middle, father Quimet is stuck in his own ways, too young for retirement but too old for reinvention, watching helpless as his life shakes and crumbles around him and no-one seems to be entirely on his wavelength. Rogelio, grand father to the flock seems to be able to have the calm to see the coming changes and not have the will to fight them. Still worse, their friendly auntie and uncle who come over for meals and get togethers, see advantage in a deal, and seem to be taking matters into their own hands.
It's a beautifully shot, bittersweet film of the loss of a way of life, it's situation recalling themes from both the earlier climate film and my own personal situation with the politics of neighbourly land ownership. But it did feel overly long, and the use of nonprofessional actors, though providing a sense of authenticity, did mean it went a little unfocused here and there. 7
The Leeds Palestinian Film Festival is not something I was familiar with but it's been going on quietly in the shadows of LIFF for nearly a decade now. As a joint collaboration, this feature about strange and unlikely friendships was also the launch film of the LPFF.
Waleed is depressed, and we don't know why. He has been suffering clinically for.. maybe ever and is just existing. Therapy is no help and his days just revolve around sleeping, feeding the kids, and not writing his book. Variety comes in the form of Jalal, a brash, arrogant man with loud dogs and louder music tastes, but who at least gives Waleed something to take his mind off the emptiness. Jalal becomes more interesting still when it becomes clear he's mixed up with some unsavoury types who want their loan money paid back with interest, but is Waleed just after a creative writing inspiration, or something darker..
Though billed as a comedy, the laughs are sparingly applied in favour of a dark undertone that rises to the surface in the final act as things come to a head. Amer Hlehel is capable as Waleed, his ability to stare the pants off his subject matter tells of the dark thoughts within, eventually eclipsing Ashraf Farah, who plays Jalal with an initial arrogance that softens in aghast as the two parts swap places. A good, solid film that explores some of the darkest reaches of the mind. 7
For this week, that's all I can manage but with a following wind and an understanding partner, maybe I can fit a few more in next week.
Well, its been a long three years since I did much of this, and work/family commitments mean that another 2013 is a long way off. The last posts were in 2019 (apologies) but as you can appreciate, the 2020's have been a bit crap so far, and this is the first time Ive been back to a festival since. Here's hoping we're through it and we only have global recession, climate demise and an idiot government to deal with now.
The films I post are just a smattering of the films at LIFF this year; theyre chosen more because they fit my schedule than what I would prefer to watch, unfortunately. However, experience has taught me this can be where the best films can be found - the ones you happen to see because the stars align, ones you may wrinkle your nose at and scrawl a '3' next to on your initial scan of the brochure.
What nicer experience to ease me back into the festival spirit than this quiet, gentle study of the locally famous but unassuming 'the bookstore', nestled in the quiet but environmentally dynamic US town of Lenox, Massachusetts. Inside, dwells the quiet, cuddly figure of Matt Tannenbaum, proprietor since my birth year (which yes, is a long time ago, since you ask), who runs the store with occasional help from his two daughters. Learned yet characteristically set in his ways, he watches as the oft present threat of Amazon tag-teams with the in-out-in-out of the COVID lockdowns to squeeze the already modest income passing through his tills. The film introduces us to Matt as he greets potential buyers behind the door in the entranceway, doing his best to work around the restrictions of the first lockdown by getting them to shout their credit card details through the glass, and charts the ups and downs - barely registered by the man too busy enjoying his passion while he still can - until the present day. If it were just a record of the slow death of yet another bookstore, it would have not been nearly so enjoyable, but fortunately it is warmed through by his warmth and friendliness to his patrons, cushioned by readings and excerpts of choice chapters from the many shelves, or from his own life; perhaps a mix of the two sometimes, it's quite possible his memory has been sprinkled with the storylines of a thousand novels. A lovely, affectionate look into the life of a person, an building and a tonne of books that together means much more to the residents of the town. 7.5
What appears to be LIFF22's only anime offering, if you discount Unicorn Wars (which you should), GDG is a sweet coming of age tale about the "Don Glees", a duo of teens sidelined from the popular groups and habitually doing their own thing. For this year's summer break celebrations, they're joined by mysterious newcomer Drop, who convinces them their alternate and private fireworks show will be much better preserved with aerial footage from an expensive drone. With all Roma's money spent, the drone AWOL and the fireworks coming to nothing in a deluge of rain, they managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when the village has to cope with the aftermath of a huge forest fire the following morning. So begins a road trip of sorts to recover the drone and maybe some footage to prove their innocence.
With Studio Madhouse at the helm, the animation is serviceable but unspectacular, save for a few scenes where the traditional cell animation process is augmented by computer, delivering some grand scenery where it counts. Throughout, the dialogue between the three leads is engaging, though sometimes goes off in odd directions, (perhaps this may be down to my ability to parse the anime style getting somewhat rusty in recent years) but bounces along nicely fleshing the three characters out and keeping things going. A somewhat contrived ending twist takes a little swallowing but doesn't ruin the film and there's still plenty to enjoy. 7
Who will be the next Sohee, and the next, and the next...
Sohee is young, spunky and hard to faze. On her final year of school she is told how lucky she is to land an extern job at a major telecom company, somewhere that - she is assured - if she keeps her head down and works hard, could give her struggling school a much needed boost in the all important Korean rankings system. She might even get a few gold stars herself to add to her prospects. But quickly any idea of a fulfilling job post evaporates, and Sohee finds herself in the middle of a busy call centre with grueling hours, impossible bonuses, and downright horrendous customers, who seem to want to terminate their contracts with alarming regularity. When Sohees' boss is found dead in his car, she begins to spiral dangerously downwards, caught between her suspicions around the death, the unfeeling grind of the company, and her increasing isolation and reliance on a stiff drink to make it stop for a few hours.
Based on real life events, Next Sohee tries to convey the reality of both the exploitative working conditions found in some high pressure Korean workplaces, and the frustrating feeling of helplessness from anyone who sticks their head above the parapet and tries to make a change. No one is to blame, everyone is a victim, and lives will continue to be ruined.
Though a tad long, the film is split into two halves with a very different pacing for each, and this helps to keep the attention from flagging. Ultimately though, if you are wanting a film to leave you satisfied that justice has been served, I'm afraid the conclusion it reaches remains true to the real life events it emulates, and this may find you wanting. 7.5
Leaving a blog unattended for a while seems to be something people do; I'm certainly guilty of that, having left big gaps in the internet where I didn't grace it with my presence. You can see patterns emerge looking at blog sites, and as times move, other things such as the youtubes or the instagrams or whatever the young dudes are going onto these days. You see a burst of energy where the site is overflowing with content created with passion and care, and then some event comes along in someone's private life, or sometimes the curator is the sort where passion burns intensely until an inevitable burnout, and the posts slow to a stop. And its a bit like running - each time you stop, it gets harder to start again.
Anyway, such is my situation: between 2019 and now there's been a lot of upheaval; notwithstanding the global Covid pandemic, there's also been several job changes, a major house move involving a lot of delays, land-related politics and arguments that persist a year after (and probably for some time to come), and around the same time as that, I got a major infection in my knee, with 2 weeks of intense pain and undiagnosed infection led to 2 further weeks in hospital where at one point was told I may lose the leg. To complicate things, mum coincidentally went in on the same day with what turned out to be anemia and only came out a day earlier; thankfully the hard working people at the NHS managed to diagnose the issue and a full recovery followed. My own personal recovery has been slow and things still aren't right (turned out to be a major case of septic arthritis and now I have about half a meniscus between two knees), but I can jog short distances once more so I'm grateful for what I can still manage. There's a knee replacement somewhere on the horizon but for the moment I'm keeping going.
An unassuming ten year old girl loves her mum and clings to her whenever she is near. But her mother rarely visits Benni in the Foster house where she currently stays. Moved from home to home, Benni is a troubled child; some unknown but traumatic events have scarred her childhood and now seemingly random things trigger Benni's violent side - screaming fits and violent outbursts have sent her ricocheting around the Foster home circuit and the one assigned carer who she trusts has few options left.
Enter Micha, a burly, rough block of a man assigned as her school escort, who suggests some time away in his cabin in the woods. Can an unconventional holiday of sorts break the cycle?
System Crasher is a better film than to give you such a convenient conclusion; Benni is just too far gone to simply turn twee and lovely after a few nights under the stars, but the film patiently nudges her state of mind slightly closer to a happy place with stumbles and falls along the way, giving the viewer some hope for her future. The ending may not have a happy bow tied around it but I think that would have cheapened the resolution. 7.5/10
Step brother and sister Guillaume and Charlotte are hitting the time of their lives when hormones go a little crazy and relationships start to change. Guillaume is in boarding school and is struggling to find love in the eyes of the girls he meets, their qualities always falling shy of those of his friend Nicolas, if only he could find someone like him. Charlotte, on the other hand has been going too steady with her dull boyfriend Maxime and when an argument erupts, she finds herself drawn to the arms of an older man whose aire of mystery and danger beguile her.
Genesis didn't really know what era it was set in; on-screen technology and choice of soundtrack in the early scenes suggested the 80's but then suddenly modern mobile phones popped up, which was a bit jarring. That and the standard philosophising in every fricking conversation you typically expect from French films. Despite this, I kinda enjoyed the return to teenage years; the two lead parts were well played and their fragility came out of the screen at you, enough to make you care. Alas, I had to leave early, just as the film ditched all its characters and seemingly started again. I may never know just what happened in those final minutes. 6/10
Taika Waititi is making a bit of a name for himself at the moment. Among others, he has had his hands in such works as What we do in the Shadows and its series spinoff, the excellent Flight of the Conchords, two Thor films, and of course a hand in the latest Star Wars series, The Mandalorian gives his resume some real kick. Here he is as well, directing and starring in a period comedy drama, as if he didn't have enough to do.
Waititi plays a dim-witted Adolf Hitler, the imaginary friend of young Jojo, a ten year old aspiring to be a good little Nazi in the dying days of World War II. Brought up with the expected amount of conditioning to vilify and demonise those different to him, imagine his reaction when he finds a young Jewish girl living in his dead sisters' bedroom in a secret compartment. Jojo must come to terms with who he actually is and question what those around him are telling him is the truth.
Jojo drips of Wes Anderson's thematic style - wide angle lenses and symmetrical scenes, small children as the protagonists, a clutch of well known names (Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Stephen Merchant... and Waititi himself as Hitler) but somehow manages to have it's own feel as well, down largely to Waititi giving a fabulously stupid send-up in the period where the real-life dictator was being unmasked as the failure of the Aryan race rather than it's saviour. The only one who looked out of place was Rebel Wilson, overplaying a strange youth camp assistant and office worker, where no amount of amusing face pulling could make her look like she fit into the part or the period.
That small problem aside, Jojo Rabbit will be well worth watching as it hits the cinemas early in the new year. Some of the reviews have been less than kind towards it, but I thought it was well worth the time. 8/10
There was one final film on the list before the end of LIFF 2019. Just before Jojo started, long-time LIFF icon Chris Fell came on stage to show the top ten films as voted by the audience, and La Belle Epoque was - at that point - in first place, which gave me hope for a strong finish.
La Belle Époque is the name of the cafe that Viktor met his long-suffering wife Marianne back in 1974. A luddite surrounded by technology, the old cartoonist grumbles and moans his way through any social gathering with his family if they dare bring up anything that isn't pulled by a horse.
One such day provides two things of note - Marianne finally snaps and kicks him out of their house, and his son gives him a voucher to spend at 'Time Travellers' - a business catering to the super-rich that can recreate any period in history down to the finest detail. Reeling from the rejection, Viktor pines for the distant past where life was simple and he was young and in love, and asks them to recreate the moment when he met Marianne all those years ago.
Though not reaching the levels of shear beauty and joyeousness set by the now nearly 20-year old Amélie, La Belle Époque is a sumptious, dense, velvety romance about the beauty of first love, and a chance to wallow in a reality where ones most treasured memories can be played out just once more in front of you to live through once again. 8/10
And that was my lot. It was nice to get out on the festival circuit proper once again, here's to more in the future.
