Author: LaurenDolceVita

SIFF 2021: The Teacher

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
The Teacher (2019) | MUBI

Set in Taiwan, the only Asian country to have legalized gay marriage, director Ming-Lang Chen paints a picture of a world where, regardless of political progress, bigotry and ignorance still largely shape the acceptance of diverse people. For his characters on the disenfranchised side of the cultural schism, additional strife is magnified by the division and results in their entire world comes tumbling down.

Kevin (Oscar Chiu) is a civics teacher who, upon discussing the country’s ongoing marriage equality debate with his students, finds his personal life of increased interest to the school administration. Kevin is not closeted about his sexuality with himself or his family, but he understands that his relationship with Gao (Chin-Hao Chang) could lead to difficulties for him going forward. This ensuing dilemma is further complicated when Gao, who Kevin has been with for some time and has been sexually intimate with, informs Kevin that he is HIV positive.

At the core of The Teacher is the relationship between Kevin and Gao. This is introduced before all else when the two first have a bathhouse encounter before eventually building to something more personal. After the point of attack, however, the relationship becomes unintentionally murky as other aspects of Kevin’s life receive equal if not more screen time. It becomes difficult to tell the gravity of the emotional connection between the pair. Kevin’s mother, who is nothing but accepting of her son’s sexuality, has never met Gao, and Gao keeps details about his HIV status and ex-wife hidden from Kevin. None of these secrecies are things that could not be useful in telling a similar story, but they do not work with the climax of this film.

Any expansion of queer representation in Asian cinema is an important step to universal acceptance. The Teacher shows no hesitations in providing such representation. While some of the entrenched systems in the film take umbrage with the leads’ relationship, the film gives the characters enough support to show endorsement of the cultural changes. Unfortunately, the central relationship to the film falls apart muddling the message. The Teacher is a welcome show of queer respect but a lacking film.

SIFF 2021: The Spy

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Director Jens Jonsson’s feature The Spy is a biopic of a woman in need of more recognition. The Norwegian actress turned spy Sonja Wigert has an effectively empty English Wikepedia so Jonsson’s interest in giving her her due is understandable. Unfortunately, the biopic format feels repetitive as always irrespective of the topic.

Ingrid Bolsø Berdal plays Sonja starting with the 1940 premier of her film in recently occupied Norway. Despite her father’s participation in the resistance Sonja is ambivalent to the war and is willing to work with the Germans if they would allow her to make her dream film. When her apparent slight against a German officer ends in her father’s imprisonment, Sonja takes a Swedish government official’s offer to become an undercover spy in exchange for his help in arranging her father’s escape to Sweden.

The Spy is an extremely conventional film. While the Sonja is a figure who is worthy of having her story told, Jonsson does little to elevate the material into an interesting film. The screenplay hits traditional espionage plot points, but the tense moments lack the appropriate framing to deliver the anxiety to the audience. At one-point Jonsson apparently understood that the film never built appropriate stakes, so the cruelty of Sonja’s target is explained via voiceover letter reading with no accompanying imagery. Each decision is flat an unobjectionable creating an adequate but uninspired film.

While the uninventive storytelling and filming may have stopped The Spy from ever being a great film, technical issues completely sink the film. Specifically, the films sound is a complete mess. The loud sounds in the mix are extreme enough that they start to distort and crack at moments. Another issue present in the audio was that a few lines were completely missing. Characters mouths would open, and subtitles would pop up, but the audible lines did not make it through the editing.

Sonja Wigert lived a fascinating life that she was never able to share with others before her passing in 1980. Unfortunately, The Spy does not deliver on the potential of her story. A combination of unimaginative storytelling and technical flaws results in a feature undeserving of Wigert’s legacy.

SIFF 2021: Too Late

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
Too Late

Preceding Too Late as part of the festival was the 2019 short film by David Bornstein, Unholy ‘Mole. The outrageous premise of the creative short was well served as a test viewing before digging into the equally extreme feature. Unholy ‘Mole’s mixture of comedy and body horror was an inventive and fresh prelude to the feature to come.

In her debut feature, Too Late, director D.W. Thomas delivers an uproarious comedy that blends in horror elements to deliver an on the nose allegory in an always entertaining manner. Taking place in the Los Angeles comedy scene, the film feels very of the time in its critique of monstrous men who impose their power over anyone, but it also has enough physical comedy and universal jokes to give it an appropriate level of levity less the viewing experience become a slog.

Alyssa Limperis stars as Violet a part time comedy booker, with dreams of performing herself someday, and fulltime assistant to Bob Devore (Ron Lynch) a famous comedian and monster (both figuratively and literally). Bob always works her to the bone but especially so during the dark of the moon each month when he demands she bring him fresh comedic talent. When Violet and Bob both set their eyes on up-and-coming standup Jimmy (Will Weldon), Violet must do whatever she can to save Jimmy from her boss’s monstrous side.

One of the best parts of Too Late is how cutting the satire is while never dipping into melodrama. The film maintains its comedic disposition throughout with horrific but cartoony visuals to build in narrative depth. Bob Devore may not represent any single person, but he does represent the archetypical powerful man in the entertainment industry. Violet is unable to further her own career because of his oppressive nature; all the while she is expected to cover for and enable his abusive tendencies. The promising comedians he takes for his own needs further cement the industry as a system designed to keep the people on top there ad infinitum regardless of the people they spit out along the way.

With a witty premise and a loveable cast, D. W. Thomas succeeds at everything she tried in her first feature. The horror elements were used just sparingly enough to create the necessary jolt at times and solidify the satirical message. Limperis’s lead performance offers the perfect audience surrogate for the unique film and portents great future things for both her and Thomas.

SIFF 2021: Topside

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
Topside (2020) - IMDb

At a greyhound station in the middle of Texas, directors Chris Filippone and Jamie Meltzer capture the first moments of freedom that former convicts experience in their documentary short Huntsville Station. Rather than pass any judgement on why the men were incarcerated, the film focuses on the overwhelming and often silent joy of the people on the outside of society. In this way it makes a perfect companion for the feature it was attached to.

Husband and wife filmmaking pair Logan George and Celine Held have made a handful of short films over the last few years, but with Topside they make their feature debut. In their Safdie Brothers influenced film, they shine a spotlight on the lives of unhoused people living in the underground tunnels in New York City.

Five-year-old Little (Zhaila Farmer) has lived her entire life in a makeshift community in the abandoned subway tunnels with her mother Nikki (played by one of the directors Celine Held). When an upcoming renovation to the tunnel requires the pair to vacate abruptly, Little is greeted with the harsh florescent lighting and sensory overload that she had never been forced to endure previously. With no concrete plan or next steps, the pair traverse a uniquely terrifying version of the city.

Topside asks a lot emotionally of its audience. Nikki is an addict whose supplier arranges for her to sleep with men in exchange for her fix. In her current state, it is understandable to believe that she should not be in charge of Little. Little herself show signs of being stunted. She has never had any education and living so long underground has left her with little to no understanding of the world. Though, for all the reasons why their relationship is unhealthy, they share an undeniable love, and a daughter and mother’s bond is precious.

The emotional turmoil of the film comes to a head in the film’s elongated climax. These minutes star Nikki exclusively, and Held’s acting becomes a major selling point of the film. The camera holds tight on the staring actress while her appearance becomes increasingly disheveled and her performance distraught.

Topside is an excellent first feature from the directorial pair. Celine Held proves to be a triple threat as her performance stands out in addition to co-writing and co-directing the film. While some moments may briefly dip into manipulative melodrama, they are few and far between. Instead, the emotional extremes explored in the film are largely warranted, and the climax is a devastating piece of cinema.

SIFF 2021: Rebel Objects

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
Rebel Objects

Anthropologist Carolina Arias Ortiz’s first foray into documentary film making is a deeply personal memoir complete with family slides and naval gazing hyperbole. Rebel Objects, which is primarily about Ortiz’s return to her childhood home of Costa Rica to mend relations with her dying father, aggrandizes the experience through various film making techniques and a heavy reliance on cultural lore.

Despite clocking in at under 70 minutes, Rebel Objects attempts to be two separate documentaries blended thematically. The first film inside Rebel Objects is a History Channel-esque conspiracy theory laden history of the spherical stones that have existed in Costa Rica for centuries. The film even makes constant allusions to their potential extraterrestrial nature. While Ortiz herself does eventually acknowledge the racist undertones in attributing great works of non-white people to aliens, this is included as an afterthought in the last five minutes of a film that has given the conspiracy plenty of credence already.

The second, and better, film within the film is Ortiz’s return home to repair the relationship she has with her father. The anthropology aspect of the film pairs well with these moments. Shots of Ortiz piecing together broken pottery parallels with her reassessing memories from her past. It is just unfortunate that these moments are broken up with the spherical conspiracy theories.

Another misfiring of the film is the black and white cinematography. Ortiz likely made this choice to add a level of mystery when discussing the spheres (she even includes a horror movie score at times) and to invoke nostalgia in the personal exploration moments. While these decisions make sense in paper, they failed in execution. Pictures of the spheres were primarily captured in medium shots or the occasional closeup, but neither of these options provided the contrast needed to accentuate the stones. Instead, the stones became the same color of the surrounding foliage camouflaging them. The black and white photography works slightly better from a nostalgic perspective, but her family pictures being in color made the present-day video footage feel like creating a memory that was never there to begin with.

For a first time creating a movie, Carolina Arias Ortiz attempted to bring a personal and expansive story to the screen. While Rebel Objects ended up being more of a mess than anything, her decision-making process is theoretically sound even if they failed. Rebel Objects is a film that can be skipped, but Ortiz likely has something better in her waiting for a sophomore attempt.

SIFF 2021: Wisdom Tooth

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Wisdom Tooth | IFFR

In his debut film Wisdom Tooth, Liang Ming blends a crime thriller with a coming-of-age story all told through the lens of poverty. Accompanied by gorgeous photography of a snowy northern China fishing village, the film leans heavily on its eclectic cast to tie everything together.

Xi (Xingchen Lyu) is an undocumented teenager who works as a maid and lives with her brother Liang (Xiaoliang Wu) whom she loves deeply. After a mix-up in the public showers, they meet Qing (Jiajia Wang) who quickly becomes an older sister figure to Xi and love interest for Liang. The three along with the siblings’ friend Dong (Weishen Wang) must navigate their existence when an oil spill poisons the fishing population impacting each character’s wellbeing in interconnected ways. This complex narrative is all conveyed through Xi’s young impressionistic eyes and reflects her youthful, scattered focus.

Liang Ming bit off a lot with his first feature. Wisdom Tooth attempts to balance multiple genres with tangled plot points and four unique co-leads. This results in an expectedly messy film, though messy in this case is not synonymous with bad. Using Xi as the film’s focal point. The sporadic energy that comes from being so young supports the convoluted premise. Even when side plotlines are dropped without any conclusion, it is because Xi’s attention moved elsewhere. As the film progresses, its point of view is eventually entirely within Xi’s perspective. Latter scenes give way to her daydreams net displays them as reality. Eventually, Xi’s comprehension of life loses grounding to deliver an intense, dreamy climax.

As an actor himself (Shadow Days 2014), it makes sense that Ming Liang’s greatest strength as a director is focusing on his characters. All four leads standout through the multilayered plot, but Xingchen Lyu’s Xi is what holds the film together. While her character did not bring structure to the muddled film, it did provide a purpose to the chaos.

SIFF 2021: Strawberry Mansion

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Strawberry Mansion' Blurs Dystopian Dreams Of Monetization, Consumption & Love Into A Quirky Lo-Fi Surreal Swirl [Sundance Review]

Written by, starring, and directed by Alison Rich, The Other Morgan is the short film that was programmed with Strawberry Mansion. Centered around an absurd premise, the reason Rich’s character is the “other” Morgan, the short blends a twee tone with enjoyable character acting to create a largely entertain film. The ludicrous premise of the short makes it a well chosen pairing for the following feature.

Taking heavy influence from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, directors Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney created their own take on the surrealist portrayal of bureaucracy in Strawberry Mansion. Set in the 1980’s idea of the near future, the film playfully blends live action with stop motion and animation to create a unique look for the dream heavy feature.

James Preble (played by director Kentucker Audley) works for the government to audit people who have not paid the taxes on their dreams. The eccentric Arabella, or Bella for short, (Penny Fuller) alerts Preble that she has never paid taxes on her dreams, so that he will come out to her home for an audit. Upon arriving at her remote location, Preble is greeted with over 2,000 VHS tapes each containing one of Bella’s dreams. While meticulously viewing each of them, Preble becomes enamored with Bella’s younger dream self (Grace Glowicki) and eventually stumbles into a conspiracy theory within the dream state.

Focusing so much on dreams, Strawberry Mansion leans heavily into a style above substance hierarchy. The plot may be simple to a fault, but the sensory experience more than makes up for it. The production design of each dream looks artificial and cheap but in a way that is endearing. From Preble’s all pink one room home to Bella’s sound studio field, the artificiality enhances the dream aesthetic rather than detract from it. While the mise en scène helps to sell the directors’ unique world, Dan Deacon’s perfect, haunting synthesizer score brings everything together.

Implementing significant homages to many of the 1980’s trippier features, the Strawberry Mansion nails the most important aspects in creating a surrealist cult film. Any widespread adoption or commercial success may be out of the film’s reach, but headlined by a perfect score, it will fit nicely into midnight, cult screenings for years to come.

SIFF 2021: The Earth is Blue as an Orange

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
The Earth Is Blue as an Orange - Archive - Zurich Film Festival

In The Earth is Blue as an Orange, director Iryna Tsilyk provides her twist on the current events documentary. Ostensibly exploring the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Tsilyk focuses on the intimate implications of the war rather than reasons behind it. The Earth is Blue as an Orange offers no explanation of the terrible situation engulfing its subject’s lives but paints a picture of the life changing impact it has on a family attempting to live the most normal life that they can.

Anna is a single mother who along with her four children lives in a small town near Donbass, Ukraine which is under constant bombings. To maintain morale, she and Mira, her aspiring cinematographer daughter, write and shoot an original movie in their hometown. The shelled remains of buildings around the town provide interesting on location sets, and the tanks patrolling the city make capturing dystopian b-roll as simple as pointing a camera out the window. The family project helps them make the best of their unenviable predicament.

The Earth is Blue as an Orange represents the change towards a more Gonzo style of documentary filmmaking that has become increasingly popular. By foregoing the traditional hallmarks of many documentary films, Tsilyk delivers a feature that may be devoid of hard facts but tells a personal story. While the viewer may have no better understanding of what the conflict is about, through Anna and her children’s struggles, the impact of the conflict is clear. This stylistic choice treats a documentary as film rather than a news report, and in doing so creates a film with a longer lasting impression.

While the narrative film created by the family is never shown, its meta quality in context with The Earth is Blue as an Orange is readily apparent. Anna and Mira’s film is about a family coping with living in a war zone. While Tsilyk may be literally creating a documentary about the pair’s film production, the fictional film itself is a coping mechanism for living during the conflict. The line between each movie blurs until they are one in the same: a unique and extremely cinema literate package.

SIFF 2021: Sweat

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Sweat' Review | Hollywood Reporter

Sweat is Swedish director Magnus von Horn’s take on influencer culture. The three-day character study of a fictional workout trainer with 600,000 followers plays with themes of artificiality and parasocial relationships that affect many real influencers. More than just the personal aspects, Sweat looks into the potential extreme repercussions of having a personality so public facing.

Sylwia (Magdalena Kolesnik) is a fitness guru and influencer who hosts packed workout sessions, sells workout tapes, and advertises the products of her many sponsors. After giving a recorded workout in a mall one day, she meets with her manager who relays some concerns one of her sponsors had with her uncharacteristically personal post the night prior that had since gone viral. She reminds him that she has always had carte blanche with her social media accounts and he agrees. This singular post, however, portends the increased breaking of character caused by the events in the rest of the film.

Von Horn makes some risky direction decisions that pay off well in Sweat. Sylwia’s constant need to film herself with a phone no more than an arm’s reach away is paralleled in the cinematography with uncomfortably tight closeups. These shots are held extreme enough that, as Sylwia moves, the camera loses focus on her reflecting the loss of self that she experiences through her constant vlogging. Small decisions like this set the groundwork for a film exploring how cracks can form under the constant need to wear a mask. While these moments hint at genius, they are regrettably lost in the screenplay’s implementation of a somewhat standard stalker plot which moves Sylwia’s character in a direction antithetical to the smaller decisions.

There is a great film somewhere in Sweat. The moments where Sylwia’s perfect exterior cracks from the day-to-day grind of her chosen profession are personal and revelatory. These combined with the unique cinematography give a glimpse into what the film could have been. Unfortunately, the more narratively conventional plot points result in a safer though less interesting film.

SIFF 2021: Waikiki

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Waikiki — Urbanworld

Played with Waikiki as part of the festival, was PIIKSI/Huia the short film from Joshua Manyheads and Cian Elyse White. The short shows Sophie Williams as she auditions for her nation’s top ballet academy and blends traditional pointe ballet with dancing channeled from her indigenous roots. The film shares these themes with the paired feature propping up the message of both.

Christopher Kahunahana’s debut feature film opens with a seemingly picture-perfect scene. Many tourists are sitting at dinner watching a live hula performance in front of a picturesque Hawaiian landscape. This artificial performance provides unrealistic starting point for a film that dives into the commodification of indigenous people and the shared trauma that they experience.

After the hula performance ends, Kea (Danielle Zalopany), one of the dancers, leaves to apply for an apartment before returning to the van in which she is currently living. After resting some, she prepares herself to go out as an escort to make the last money that she needs for the security deposit. This last job ends violently when Kea’s ex Branden (Jason Quinn) shows up and aggressively removes her from the karaoke bar and her john. Angry and scared, Kea breaks away to her van, and while frantically driving hits Wo (Peter Shinkoda) an unhoused person. Feeling guilty, Kea takes Wo into her van and to keep him safe over the next few days. When she is denied the apartment and loses her van Wo ends up being her guide forward.

At about the two thirds mark, Waikiki breaks away from a traditional narrative and begins to earn the Lynchian moniker that some have bestowed upon it. The film proceeds with frequent quick cuts between different times and realities, all of which are used to convey trauma both personal and cultural. The dizzying dream like direction of the extended climax brings significant depth to the film’s exploration of indigenous people’s place in the current world and will likely require repeat viewings to fully comprehend.

While Waikiki may become inaccessible to many as the narrative breaks away to a freeform surrealist experience, the result is a nuanced film that explores its serious themes in a unique manner. The terror of Kea’s traumatic breakdown is perfectly juxtaposed with the paradise setting to reflect upon the impact of colonization. Kahunahana delivers and excellent first feature raising an underrepresented groups voice.