Tag: Reviews

Gaspar Noé always aims to divide. Enter the Void, Irreversible, Climax… The dividing line for these films lies between people who are frustrated by them and hate being frustrated by them, and those who are frustrated by them but seem to enjoy being frustrated by them. Vortex, however, will push one of these sides to the other based on how “normal” it is. Not even just normal, but also sensitive. In fact, this might be the weirdest Noé film just based on how conventional it is. Not as assaulting as his previous films, Vortex creeps into your psyche subconsciously. It’s not aggressive, rather it lets time itself do the work leading to self-destruction.

If you haven’t heard the rumors by now, Vortex follows an aging couple (Dario Argento and Françoise Lebrun) as dementia begins to set in on both of them, stumbling into madness. Struck from the original negative just days before its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (probably why it was given a time slot at midnight on the very last day), the film has an ebb and flow feel to it, as if to show the waves of old age and dementia crash and recede. (Oh yeah, did I mention it’s all in split screen?)

The use of split screen aims to, again, divide, aiding in a sort of psychological separation in the minds of the spectator by using two plots happening concurrently – one side follows the husband, and the other the wife. There’s a prominent showing of clocks throughout the film always peeking out of pockets in the frame, perhaps to serve as the only constant between both sides of the film’s plot: the time they have that’s passing.

It’s hard to sell it as a midnight premiere at Cannes, however. At some point during its two and a half our runtime, I had the thought that this move may have originally been longer, and Noé decided to use the split screen method to make it that much shorter. (Its subject matter doesn’t quite serve as “midnight” status either, but because Noé’s a fixture of Cannes, I see it.)

Yet, the novelty factor faults from the lack of counter-conventionality. It doesn’t quite make up for the somewhat opaque external journey the couple makes. While your eyes dart from one side of the screen to the other, Vortex fools you into not thinking of it in conventional terms: the conflict, midpoint, crisis moments all become secondary. For a shorter film, perhaps this would work. But its lengthy runtime stretches itself a little thin.

Regardless, the cinema world can rejoice because we have something we rarely get: a Gaspar Noé film – a film we can debate, digest, and process. “For those whose brains will rot before their hearts,” states a quote shown during the opening (or as Noé sees it, closing) credits, and with it comes his most personal, sensitive, and vulnerable work to date.

This world is hard enough to live in as it is, but to add the limitations of pre-conceived notions about who we are, it makes it nearly impossible. Sean Baker continues his use of first-time actors (he objects to the term “non-actors”) with Red Rocket, a film about past love and old relationships, even though others might tell you otherwise. Red Rocket follows ex-porn star Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) as he returns home to Texas City, Texas to his estranged wife and ex-porn partner, Lexi (Bree Elrod) and his mother-in-law, who justifiably reject him. However, he appeases, promising them he’ll get a job and pay their rent. He then returns to his old hustle of selling marijuana, and eventually falls in love with Strawberry (Suzanna Son), a 17-year old donut shop worker who lets him sell weed to construction workers at the shop. He then gets a wild idea to convince her to get into pornography, set on the mission of making her a porn starlet.

But if it sounds like this film doesn’t have a true story engine to generate conflict, you’re absolutely right. The film falters from not centering around its protagonist, which interestingly enough, is Lexi. But Red Rocket not that kind of movie, instead choosing to follow its antagonist as its lead. But this has props in itself – a perfect casting choice for an unlikeable lead (but still interesting) who always finds a way to buy time and tell people what they want to hear: he lies about his “successful” career in Hollywood, and manages to convince Strawberry he lives in a bitchin’ mansion.

However, this stretches the narrative so thin that it loses any shine or electricity it had, with an aimless second act that drifts off to sea. There are pointless sequences that don’t really add up to anything or add to the conflict at hand. The only slimmest, bare minimum through-line of a conflict is used merely as a placeholder for the film to “function” as a narrative, almost teetering on the edge of documentary.

But did I enjoy myself? Yes, absolutely. Did I laugh continuously throughout out? Of course I did. Do I think it could be better? 100%. The film just doesn’t operate or function in a way for me to be drawn to it beautifully or emotionally, because Red Rocket refuses to be one of those films.

Red Rocket will be playing at this year’s New York Film Festival on Sept. 29.

This year’s Palme d’Or winner didn’t just “premiere” at Cannes – it burst into the festival ecosystem like a thousand barrels of renegade crude, polluting everyone and everything around it. Centering around sleaze, sex, metal, blood, and fire, Titane is almost pornography for cars. Or maybe it’s just a porno, I’m still not entirely sure. The film begins with a car crash, as a young girl, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), becomes restricted in a titanium back brace, who upon release, develops an asphyxiation for cars. (Note: if you want to avoid spoilers for Titane, STOP READING HERE.)

This, in turn, leads to an asphyxiation for metal and fire, leading to a retribution of the people who have done Alexia wrong sexually (most of whom are male). What follows is an attack on masculinity, upheld by a metal hair stick that not only holds up her hair to hide the scarring from her youth, but also what’s expected of her as a woman, supported particularly by a scene in which she literally makes a man choke on wood. (Other viewers I’m sure will have different interpretations of the film’s theme.) During this assault via sexual revenge, she’s only able to make meaningful, passionate love to the thing that started it all – a car. Which, interestingly enough, impregnates her.

However, her violent tendencies get the best of her, forcing her to go in disguise as a missing boy while on the run from the cops. She sucks in her distended belly and physically changes her appearance in a scene so visceral, so tangible, that you feel the painful transformation she puts herself through. Miraculously, it works, when she’s taken under the care of the local fire fighter chief (Vincent Legrand) who is absolutely convinced that she is his missing son.

This writer does have qualms about the film, however. Such as, why does she kill? What is the motivation of her carnage? Against not just men, but women, too? This leads to the stakes being more grounded in the second half of the film than the first, and even so, the second act goes on just a tad longer than it needs to. But after finishing Titane, those concerns became secondary, because the product is Noé-level punk rock cinema.

And that’s as far as I’ll go. If I were to divulge any further, it would take away from the wild, insanely good time that movies today have forgotten to bring to cinemas.

A Hero begins with a long-tilting shot as our lead Rahim (Amir Jadidi) climbs a rickety set of construction stairs that look like they could collapse at any moment. This image, in essence, encapsulates A Hero, the newest film from acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi.

Having been granted leave from prison in order to relieve his debt, Rahim comes across a bag of 17 gold coins, which he does not know who it belongs to. He tries to turn it in for money, but the gold standard that day is not as high as it usually is. He thinks of using it to repay his debt, but he knows he’d be questioned as to how he got it. So, he makes a drastic decision: he decides to set up a scene in which he makes a good deed by “returning” the bag of gold. This, in turn, leads him to becoming some sort of local celebrity. He’s featured on TV, interviewed, and granted awards, that is until some journalists begin to grow skeptical that he made his story up. What follows is a story of preconceived identity. “Nothing in this world is fair,” goes a line in the film. Regardless of whether his “good deed” was true or not, people can’t see past his identity as an untrustworthy prisoner. They believe he has other motions behind him.

Rahim’s occupation is a painter, and as he paints a picture of himself, one by one, everyone begins to fall for his scheme. His story is then framed into another story. But as he tries to defend his original story, it’s then framed into another story. And then another… bringing other individuals and establishments into his orbit. The result is a testament to how big a web of lies can be spun, and how root-less words can be based on who says them. (Well, if everyone around me believes this story, then it must be true, right?)

The film dares to ask, “What is a hero?” Is it one who does a good deed and expects a reward in return? Or one who admits their vulnerability? What makes this film function so well is how all the story elements work together – every story beat adds onto the film’s conflict. Stakes. Jeopardy. Tension. It’s all there. It’s a masterclass in screenwriting on how taught and air tight a story can be. And based on how explosive the third act gets, you’ll be seething about how peoples’ preconceived notions won’t take into account good deeds or feelings.

Bergman Island begins with our characters Chris (Vicky Krieps) and her husband Tony (Tim Roth) arriving in Fålo, Sweden. The couple’s plan is to go to Ingmar Bergman’s old home, where he wrote most of his films, in order to draw some inspiration for their next scripts. They plug in their coordinates on a GPS. “You will reach your destination in one hour and 48 minutes,” it says, which is, unironically, the length of the film. Bergman Island, however, never reaches its destination. Ten minutes into the film, there’s no conflict, no story to chisel out from this stoic film. It’s another film about writers “going somewhere to write,” as if they just “want to be” in the foreign world they’re thrusted into.

20 minutes into the film, still no story or conflict. The film is almost comedic at times. It doesn’t quite know who its protagonist is (we assume it’s Chris, but still in the first act, there’s no way to discern that as we see her enjoying herself with one of the museum’s employees.) I guess it’s supposed to act, operate, and pay homage to a Bergman film?

35 minutes in: still no conflict ensues, but it turns into somewhat of a film geek’s fantasy. The characters are so self-indulgent in that they “need to go somewhere” to write, that there is no externalized conflict, ending up a waste of the actors’ talents.

45 minutes in: look! Finally some rejection and conflict like this movie could go somewhere! Oh… but it’s just Chris suffering from writer’s block (ok, still something.) But it then shifts into an unnecessary frame narrative that totally detours from the character’s bare kernel of a story. Fiction then blurs into reality and reality blurs into fiction a la Day for Night, as characters from different timelines appear in others, not in an effective way, however.

Mia Hansen-Løve once said, “All of my films are my version of Heat.” I just wish some of that love and passion went into this film. There’s a line of dialogue that goes “if you look at something long enough it becomes interesting.” This film, however, never does. One hour and 48 minutes later, we never reach a destination, having veered wildly off course. “There’s a world outside your own asshole,” Chris says in the film. Yes, indeed there is.

Flag Day is…

Benedetta is a testament to uncompromising vision. Much like George Miller, Paul Verhoeven’s stamina to continually appease himself is remarkable. Having started out producing films in the Netherlands, to his 80’s blockbuster stint in the U.S., he now conquers France with his diabolical taste.

The film centers around Benedetta, a nun in a convent who is so convinced she is ordained by God, that she suffers from visions of Jesus Christ himself resulting in real world consequences such as stigmata and cuts on the forehead as if she donned Christ’s thorn crown herself. She then comes into the responsibility of Bartolomea, a girl seeking refuge in the convent from her abusive father, with whom she begins a passionate affair. However, the surrounding nuns soon grow suspicious, suspecting that Benedetta’s visions of Christ is all just an act, that is until she’s appointed abbess, sparking envy amongst the nuns.

The acting is well internalized, as if these characters truly believe that it is God punishing them due to the plague ravaging Europe. The conflict is apparent in every scene, using the theme of “suffering” as its story engine. The film asks, “What does it mean to suffer?” Is it us who must suffer? Or suffer at the expense of others in order to achieve salvation? As the tension and pressure rises, including the classic narrative device of a wooden Virgin Mary dildo, the film erupts into a third act that’s easily the highlight of the film. It is a masterclass in screenwriting and casting, using its buoyancy to create an ebb-and-flow narrative. It’s never enough to see our protagonist suffer, but to see other characters suffer at the expense of our protagonist’s delusions. The film plays on the line of “Does God want us to suffer?” And “doesn’t God want us to truly be happy?”

Going into this film, this writer has to admit that they were a bit skeptical: a religious drama, a period piece, with a lesbian sub-plot… it all seemed like homework to me. Benedetta, however, is not one of those films. Every story element of the film adds to the plot, making it an enjoyable, tense, and easily digestible film.

Rounding off his “Oslo Trilogy,” Joachim Trier introduces The Worst Person in the World, a film about steadiness and vulnerability. It follows Julie (Renate Reinsve), an indecisive woman in her 20’s, as she struggles to find her purpose and place in the world. She goes from med-school dropout, to psychology student, to mediocre photographer, and meets the men that come along with these fields. She constantly rejects steadiness and stability, always in search of a satisfaction she damn well knows will never exist. But along with that come her male partners, with whom she also does not know what she truly wants in terms of a relationship, but knows what she currently has is not enough. She’s a girl who doesn’t know how to be vulnerable – vulnerable in what she wants, and vulnerable in her honesty, as proven by the near-affairs she has with other partners.

What works so well is the conflict that’s always worn on Julie’s face. She has a bone structure and piercing glare that one can tell, just by looking at her, she feels something is off, despite her words being different from how she feels.

There’s an omniscient voiceover throughout the film that’s used to convey these inner thoughts and desires of Julie which she is too afraid to speak out loud herself. It’s a constant counterpoint from what’s going on screen, that is, until midway through the film, where the voiceover overlays on top of and matches the dialogue as a result of Julie finally embracing her vulnerability.

The film dares to convey how we blame ourselves for the punishment to come as a result of our selfish acts and desires, and how it can very much feel like the end of the world. It’s called The Worst Person in the World for a reason, because that’s the very feeling we have when we feel like we’re betraying the trust of the ones closest to us. Are we bad people for what we want at the expense of others’ suffering? Trier continues his cinematic language of intimacy here through character relationships, brought to a higher, more poignant, and ethereal level.

Going into this documentary, one should know that Todd Haynes never does anything conventional. The Velvet Underground is a project he’s been gestating for some years now, and when the film was announced out of competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it immediately became our most anticipated film of the fest.

The documentary takes an in-depth, yet idiosyncratic look at the rise and fall of Lou Reed and the band, featuring interviews of the individuals that were closest to them, such as Jonathan Richman of the Modern Lovers, Jon Waters, and various members of the band who are still alive today. The result is a Citizen Kane-like frame narrative, where only the people closest to Reed give detail to what he was like, only giving moments of opportunity for him to speak for himself via archival footage.

Todd Haynes has found a way to flip the music documentary genre on its head. The Velvet Underground is just as psychedelic as the music is idiosyncratic. The entire documentary is shown in split screen, offering opposing views and constantly bleeding over into the next subject. The split screen then dissolves into more split screens within the frame, then again, until you have 16 heads on the screen all offering their views of the early days of the Underground, accompanied by a loud, engrossing, sonic soundscape that makes it necessary to be seen in a theater.

Despite being geared toward musicians and music geeks as its focus audience, the documentary could at times be a littler more coherent. It’s fragmented in that it doesn’t give the details of the speakers, who they are, and what their relationship was with the band; you’re expected to fill in those details yourself, making The Velvet Underground feel like it’s merely surface level. It lacks the emotional weight their music embodies. It’s heavy on the topic of improvisation, as if that was their claim to fame and what separated them from other contemporary artists, but it’s not the reason why audiences love the band so much. Maybe it’s the documentary Reed would have always wanted for the band, but it doesn’t function in the way for this writer to be drawn to it emotionally. But much like The Velvet Underground, it doesn’t oblige itself to be a crowd pleaser. Despite all this, it will be a hit for musicians, music aficionados, and historians.

Ahed’s Knee begins with a balls-to-the-wall type introduction where we don’t quite know what we’re looking at. We think it’s a blank white screen, that is until streetlights pass through the frame, when we see our protagonist, Y (Avshalom Pollak), on his way to a casting call for his new film, Ahed’s Knee, inspired by the real life Palestinian activist who was arrested for slapping an Israeli soldier in front of news cameras, with the tone properly set by Guns n’ Roses Welcome to the Jungle.

As he’s en route to a screening of his previous film in rural Israel, we see his disdain for his homeland and the censorship that comes along with it. His host is Yahalom (Nur Fibak), Deputy Director of the Ministry of Culture Library Department, who is in charge of making sure his film obeys the country’s censorship rules. The film plays with subjectivity throughout, as proven by his very western clothing, interest in western music, even his black Jordan Air Force 1’s and leather jacket, aiming to show no biased color whatsoever. He can’t seem to get out of his head, as the line between objectivity and subjectivity blurs. When the frame is subjective, we tend to see his interiority from the outside. However, when it turns objective, we see the surroundings he’s been thrusted into.

The landscape is very much a character in the film, as counterpointed by the protagonist’s affinity for the western world, interpreting it as his own. Every element of the film tends to act against him: the depth of field plays a character, the music choice plays a character, even the color temperature plays a character, all aiming to separate the protagonist from his homeland. The duality is present in the film as he acts against laws of restraint and censorship in order to speak the truth of his country’s oppression. He stands on the outside of brainwashing, daring to prove the inhumane acts his country has brought upon itself and its citizens.

Much like Nadav Lapid’s previous film Synonyms, Ahed’s Knee is another assault on Israel. It is a study of assimilation, where the western world is interpreted by our protagonist as his own, but still lies just out of reach. However, unlike the protagonist in Synonyms where he tries to escape his heritage, Ahed’s Knee tackles the disdain of heritage head on, as Yahalom says in the film, “At the end, geography wins.”