Author: LaurenDolceVita

SIFF 2021: Beans

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
Beans' Review | Hollywood Reporter

Packaged with Beans was the New Zealand short film Bub. The short observes a young boy who finds himself alone in his grandmother’s house. The short is cute, and the young boy’s acting is extremely realistic. Beyond that, though, there was little substance to the short. Bud is an interesting sequence, but it does not stand alone even as a short film.

Mohawk director Tracey Deer drew upon her personal experiences in creating her narrative feature debut. Set amid the Oka Crisis, Beans is a coming-of-age story heavily influenced by external situations. The film’s themes of racism and violence permeate into the pubescent girl’s demeanor and alter her personality more than hormones along ever could. In using such a volatile setting, Deer explores the impact of hate on the most innocent.

Tekahentahkhwa (Kiawentiio), who goes by Beans, is a 12-year-old Mohawk girl who begins the film interviewing for a prestigious prep school off her reservation. After presumably bombing the interview, she and her mother Lily (Rainbow Dickerson) return to the reservation and participate in an early protest against the Quebec government’s seizing of Mohawk land to build a golf course. Things take a turn towards the violent and Beans is rushed home. Over the next weeks, Beans’s natural preteen rebellion bring her into close contact with the fighting. Under the constant reminder of white supremacy from the ongoing crisis, her coming-of-age is corrupted into something significantly more sinister.

Beans is not a subtle movie. The white Quebecers are over the top in their expressions of hatred. They decline to speak in dog whistles and instead spit blatant white supremacist ideas in the Mohawk people’s faces. Similarly, the impact that these events have on Beans are exaggerated. Her immediate violent turn is extreme and not realistic in the most literal sense. For Deer though, the exaggerations are the point. Indigenous stories are seldom told, and indigenous treaties are frequently broken to little coverage. Beans may wear its message on its sleeve, but when no one listens to a quiet telling of a people’s story, they have no choice but to yell.

In a world without context, Beans as a film screams its message rather than unveil it through the cinematic language. However, Tracey Deer knows that her people’s story has gone unheard for so long that an aggressive storytelling stance must seem necessary to her. When there is so much ignorance otherwise, sometimes a blunt instrument is the most effective.

SIFF 2021: Slalom

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Slalom movie review & film summary (2021) | Roger Ebert

For her feature film making debut, Charlène Favier chose to tackle a sensitive though timely topic. Slalom focuses on the intimate relationship formed between a mentor and mentee, and how this power dynamic can be exploited by the mentor. The film blends slow and sometimes arduous scenes of increasing abuse with loud and kinetic ski races for a perfectly balanced feature.

Lyz Lopez (Noée Abita) enrolls in a strict skiing academy where the coach Fred (Jérémie Renier) immediately pegs her as the student with the greatest potential. He dedicates extra time to help Lyz train, grooming her to be a champion and also just grooming her. From the moment she arrives, he finds ways to touch her, all under the guise of a trainer keeping the trainee’s muscles warm and ready. Lyz being only 15 and completely separated from her mother as a supportive figure stays stoic as his advances intensify. She tells herself that winning the European Championship is worth any trauma.

Slalom is an extremely singular story. Everything important to the plot is either done by or to Lyz. Because of this, it is imperative that the lead actress delivers a solid performance, and Abita does just that. The range of demeanors that her character adorns requires an extensive amount of precise body language and the puffy snow attire complicates the ask even more. Through all the acting challenges, Abita succeeds and then some. In less than 100 minutes, she transforms from timid upon enrolling, to arrogant after her first major victory, and finally to someone completely dissociate from the world due to the trauma she has endured.

Headlined by a superb performance from up-and-actress Noée Abita, Slalom has a lot going for it. Between Abita’s acting, the extraordinary ski cinematography, and a screenplay that handles the subject with the grace it deserves, Slalom is an excellent representation of an unfortunately common occurrence.

SIFF 2021: Get the Hell Out

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
Get the Hell Out Review: A Taiwanese Zombie Movie About Braindead MPs | IndieWire

Packaged with Get the Hell Out was Mom Fight a fun short from Mickey Finnegan Staring Jennifer Khoe and Michaela McAllister as two moms fighting over the last action figure that their kids have been begging for. What follows is a well-choreographed playful fight scene stuffed with innovative weapons created from other toys. It was well paired with the feature as a preparation for Get the Hell Out’s exaggerated but playful violence.

New filmmaker I.-Fan Wang bursts onto the scene with Get the Hell Out, an over-the-top zombie comedy. Tagged as a political satire, as many zombie films are, Wang enhances the Romero standard with buckets of fake blood akin to an Argento and videogame antics in the vein of Edgar Wright. All these aspects mix into an overstimulating whole.

In hopes of preventing a dangerous chemical plant from being constructed over her hometown, Hsiung (Megan Lai) manipulates Wang (Bruce Ho) a submissive security guard to get her in the room for discussions about the plant. Before her plan can come to fruition, the chemical plant explodes spreading a form of rabies that transforms the infected into zombies. It is only a matter of time before the zombies break into parliament and all hell breaks loose.

I.-Fan Wang’s approach to the making Get the Hell Out was to amplify the style above all else. Each character introduced gets their own freeze frame with their name and title/nickname scrawled in giant letters. The gore is over the top in a wonderfully campy way. During major fights he adds flashing videogame overlays to accentuate the gravitas of the moment. None of these decisions are in and of themselves bad, but they should be sparingly as moments of flare. Get the Hell Out does not appreciate the call for self-control and instead fills every frame with a flashing overlay. This combined with the constant shaky cam creates a nauseating experience.

Get the Hell Out set out to be a balls-to-the-wall comedy horror experience, and while it succeeded at that, it was not without fault. At times I felt close to getting sick watching this film. The sickness was not because of the excessive gore which I found more playful than anything, but because of the throw everything at the wall mentality of the direction. A steadier camera would go a long way to fixing this issue, but some restraint in the effects would likewise be helpful. Hopefully in Wang’s next film he will mature and make something just as fun but easier on the eyes.

SIFF 2021: Little Girl

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
RIDM 2020: Petite Fille – Cinetalk.net

As governments across the globe are taking steps to deny trans children the medical care that can save them from enduring serious dysphoric damage, Sébastien Lifshitz offers his documentary Little Girl as a positive, humanizing counter argument. To capture the personal and emotional turning point in Sasha’s life, the documentary is shot intimately. While the mom will occasionally speak directly to the camera to fill in her thought process, the camera also lingers on Sasha playing and just being a normal little girl.

From as early as age three, Sasha has told her parents that she was going to be a girl when she grew up. Now at age eight, they have decided that telling her no and making her cry is only doing more harm than good. They allow her to be herself during family times. Her bedroom transforms into a little girl’s, and her closet fills with dresses. Unfortunately, for the time being, she is forced to pretend to be a boy for both school and ballet class. The dissonance that this is plaguing Sasha results in her mother taking her to the doctor to discuss transition options.

Like with my earlier review for Valentina, this is where I admit that as a trans woman myself, the rest of the review is going to end up extremely personal. I am incapable of assessing this subject on a purely objective level. The first meeting between Sasha, her mother, and her new doctor is some of the most emotional storytelling I have ever seen. The camera holds a tight closeup of Sasha’s face. Her timid, single syllable answers to the doctor need to be flushed out by her mother so she can nod in agreement. The tears that well up in her eyes are a mixture of pain from admitting that pretending to be a boy in public is emotionally scaring and joy as the doctor assures her that being trans is normal and that she can present as a girl full time. The mixture of pain and relief in this moment resonates as a fulcrum for the rest of Sasha’s journey.

Medical documents in hand, Sasha enters another relatable step in transitioning: self-actualization. In the shots of her in ballet or school previously, Sasha seldom smiled. Up until receiving the doctors note she only looked happy while at home being herself. Once she received her medical form and started being herself full time, she was always beaming. This moment is special for any trans person. Going out in public even for the most menial tasks without worrying about being seen is liberating. By capturing these moments, the positive impact on Sasha’s life could not be clearer.

My personal bias on the topic is going to heavily bias my feelings towards this film. If I were to say anything negative it would be that the score is unnecessarily melodramatic at times and mixed a little loud. That small misgiving aside, Little Girl was an amazing and important documentary for this time. It clearly shows the life affirming impact that acceptance and appropriate medical care can have for trans youths.

SIFF 2021: Bebia, à Mon Seul Désir

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20213 Comments
Bebia, à mon seul désir' Review - Variety

In her first feature – Bebia, à Mon Seul Désir – Juja Dobrachkous explores themes of tradition and familial ties. Shot in brilliant black and white photography, the film relies heavily on local ritual to illustrate a young woman’s emotional struggle with the family that she abandoned.

Upon the passing of her grandmother Bebia (Guliko Gurgenidze), the estranged teen Ariadna (Anastasia Davidson) returns home to take part in the funeral. While undergoing preparations, for the ceremony, Ariadna is confronted with her role in Georgian burial tradition. As the youngest member of the family, it is her job to run a thread from the deathbed to the burial sight so that Bebia’s soul can find its way to the body’s resting place. For Ariadna, this means a 25-kilometer trek through untouched woods and hills. Ariadna being both largely removed from the family and a non-believer in the religious aspect is reluctant to go, but eventually resigns when subjected to enough pressure.

The standout of the film is without question the gorgeous black and white cinematography of the Georgian countryside shot by Veronika Solovyeva. The vastness of many of the shots reflect the smallness of the young woman both literally and figuratively. The extended scenes of silent walking through these shots while meticulously unspooling thread creates a hypnotic effect. These moments perfectly transition into flashbacks where Ariadna grapples with her relationship with Bebia. The interplay between walking and flashback work in perfect unison, but the same interplay that is present in the time before and after her meditative hike are less successful and lengthy.

There is a lot to appreciate in Dobrachkous’s debut feature. Bebia, à Mon Seul Désir is full of mature visual flare, and the stronger moments display advanced storytelling techniques and a deft hand for implementing metaphor. While the film was a bit overlong, and the less essential moments could have used some significant tightening, the good overshadows the lesser parts. As a filmmaker, Dobrachkous shows significant promise and will likely be an arthouse staple for years to come.

SIFF 2021: Summertime

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
Summertime

Three years removed from his breakthrough film and indictment of Oakland gentrification Blindspotting, director Carlos López Estrada sets his sights a few hundred miles south for another story of the underrepresented in an increasingly white city. While Blindspotting sported a traditional narrative structure, in Summertime, Estrada channels his experiences directing music videos for a more multimedia viewing experience. Jumping between dozens of characters, the film intertwines poetry, music, and dance for a unique storytelling medium.

Taking place over a single day in L.A., the film is an ensemble production of 25 people just trying to get by in a town that increasingly caters to the upper class. Each person deals with their own personal struggles and breaks into a revelatory poem when pushed beyond what they can endure. Tensions build for each character until many of the plotlines come to a head in a Smiley’s burger joint where a surprise visit, from the only characters who have aged more than a day, delivers an over-the-top ending to the film.

Can a gimmick make a movie? There is a lot to enjoy in Summertime. The poetry is moving and well performed, and the standout dance scene staring women in red dresses is beautiful. However, as a film, Summertime feels slight. A complex narrative is not necessary for a film to be successful, but this film is lacking in any depth. The excessive scope of the film leaves little time for nuance; each character is simplified down to one or two quirks that could be shared in the five minutes on screen that everyone gets. The poetry does offer some thematic continuity, but the film never stops feeling like a collection of Estrada’s music videos.

Estrada desired to create a fully unique film in Summertime, and in that he succeeded. The collection of poems is a strong basis, and the musicality of the productions flows well. Unfortunately, the film’s lack of depth results in it having little staying power. The themes are oversimplified and the screenplay, outside of the poetry, is exceedingly clunky. Summertime is an enjoyable watch in the moment, but one that inevitably leaves the viewer hungry for something more substantial.

SIFF 2021: Charter

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
charter | Sundance Institute

A mother’s bond with her children is precious, and any barricade between them can be detrimental to the well being of both parties. Director Amanda Kernell’s sophomore outing Charter deals with the psychological trauma stemming from the separation of mother and child.

Amid an ugly divorce and custody battle, Alice (Ane Dahl Torp) is awoken one night by a call from her son Vincent (Troy Lundkvist) crying. Her ex-husband Mattias (Sverrir Gudnason) intercepts the call and hangs up before Alice can decern what is wrong. In fear for Vincent and her teenage daughter Elina (Tintin Poggats Sarri), Alice travels to their home, and after days of Mattias denying her access to see them picks them up from school and absconds with them for a chartered holiday in the Canary Islands.

There is much that goes unspoken in the film to its benefit. The reason that Vincent called Alice crying in the middle of the night is never expressly given. Similarly, there are indications that Elina may be at the receiving end of some sort of abuse from her father, but no matter how much she and her mom reconcile, Elina never admits her father has done anything wrong. In this way, Alice becomes a bit of an unreliable narrator. She is doing what she genuinely believes to be in the best interest of her children, but whether they need saving is never expressly stated. The only thing the film shows Mattias doing that is unquestionably wrong is attempting to kiss Alice after she has already pushed him away once.

The success of Charter rests squarely on the back of its lead actress, and Torp proves more than capable lifting the load. Separated from her children, Alice experiences extreme lows which Torp actualizes miraculously. Coupled with excellent makeup giving her heavy bags under her eyes, she expresses pain perfectly. Conversely, when Alice is reunited with her children, Torp shows how loving a mother her character can be. Between joyful karaoke sessions and loving embraces in the face of disaster, Torp delivers s full realized character.

Buoyed by an excellent lead performance, Kernell’s Charter is a devastating exploration of the pain suffered by a woman separated from her children. Narrative details are blurred just enough to paint Alice as a potentially unreliable narrator, but while the story’s reality may be intentionally opaque the adoration between the characters is real and believable. Charter is an excellent drama in every aspect.

SIFF 2021: Bad Tales

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20212 Comments
Bad Tales (Favolacce) - film review on DMovies

Twin brothers Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo take a provocative look at the quiet horrors of suburbia in Bad Tales. This subject area is well suited for excessively dark satire, Todd Solondz has made a career out of it, but balancing the twisted nature of these films with the perfect amount of levity is imperative in creating a watchable film. Too much levity can come across as meanspirited at best or as an endorsement of atrocities at worse, conversely not enough levity results in a deeply unpleasant viewing experience. The Fratelli D’Innocenzo hope that with Bad Tales they created a film that land in the perfect middle.

The film follows the summer vacation through the beginning of the school year for a few families living in the suburbs outside of Rome. The Placido family is helmed by the patriarch Bruno (Elio Germano) who has a hair trigger for abusive tirades against his two children, Dennis (Tommaso Di Cola) and Alessia (Giulietta Rebeggiani). The Guerrini family consists of the unemployed Amelio (Gabriel Montesi) and his son infected with the measles Geremia (Justin Korovkin). The kids in these families as well as a handful of others attempt to have a normal childhood, but the passive aggressive and repressive suburbia upbring leads them into dark decisions unbeknown to the checked-out parents.

Bad Tales is a perfect example of a film that is greater than the sum of its parts. There were many aspects of the film that did not work. For a film that takes place in the heat of summer and relies on the simmering heat as a narrative device, the film inexplicitly employs a cooling color correction. This decision was distracting throughout. Additionally, for as dark as the subject matter gets at times, The D’Innocenzos offer little humor to cleanse the palate from the harshest moments. This leaves many stretches of the film to feel sluggish as things get increasingly worse. Fundamental issues like these should be a significant hinderance to the film, yet while they are still apparent, when considering the film as a whole, it works despite these issues.

The Fratelli D’Innocenzo state their claim as Italy’s provocateurs with their second film Bad Tales. While their relative inexperience betrays itself in some of their technical and screenwriting decisions, the pair show a lot of promise through their ability to deliver a successful product, issues notwithstanding. Bad Tales is a good though imperfect satire form a pair of filmmakers to watch going forward.

SIFF 2021: There Is No Evil

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There Is No Evil - An interview with director Mohammad Rasoulof - VIFF 2020 - Set The Tape

Mohammad Rasoulof like his filmmaking compatriot Jafar Panahi has been under legal scrutiny by the Iranian government over his films. This trouble has advanced to the point that There Is No Evil had to be shot in secrecy and is banned from screening in Iran. Consisting for four stories containing capital punishment in Iran, the Golden Bear winning film’s controversy in its home country is immediately apparent.

The anthology film contains four stories with state executions near the center. The first is of a man for whom executions have become a part of his everyday job. The second is of a man who runs when forced to do his first execution. The third is a story of a man who unknowingly executes a friend of his girlfriend, and the final a story of a man dealing with the repercussions of declining to execute anyone years prior.

While on the surface each story is connected through the capital punishment through line, themes of freedom and personal choice are just as pertinent to the films message and reflect the director’s legal status more aptly. An Overzealous execution policy is just a symptom of a government who believes they can control every aspect their people’s lives.

At two and a half hours long, the film’s breadth is its biggest weakness.  While the four parts share the thematic consistency, in both pacing and quality they are very uneven. This results in some of the lesser moments dragging and cause the film to feel each of its 150 minutes. Each story clocking in at 35-40 minutes a piece also hinders the films composition. At that length, the stories stand on their own in a way that is not as conducive for an anthology film. In most aspect there just appears to be too much film.

Excessive length aside, There Is No Evil, delivers upon Rasoulof’s directorial intentions. Through different viewpoints he creates a fully actualized condemnation of the country attempting to silence him.

SIFF 2021: Valentina

On By LaurenDolceVitaIn Festivals, SIFF 20213 Comments
OUTshine Film Festival - Valentina

Uprooting your life and moving to a new town as a teen is tumultuous in the best of circumstances. Learning a new city and making new friends so late in one’s schooling is asking a lot of a young adult. In Cássio Pereira dos Santos’s Valentina, the titular character is forced to endure this hardship while also balancing getting ahold of her estranged father for important paperwork and keeping her gender assigned at birth a secret.

Valentina (Thiessa Woinbackk) and her mother Márcia (Guta Stresser) are forced to leave the larger city, where Valentina has found a level of acceptance, so that Márcia can start a new job as a nurse. In one of their first days in the new city, both women visit the local school to enroll Valentina who and ensure that she can register under her social name. As part of the registering, Valentina is also encouraged to attend summer school as she missed a year due to details unspoken but likely related to her transition. In these classes she meets Júlio (Ronaldo Bonafro) and Amanda (Letícia Franco) whom she becomes fast friends with, but regardless of their friendship, Valentina keeps the fact that she is transgender a secret because acceptance is never a given.

This is the part that I admit in full disclosure that as a trans woman myself, my feelings on the treatment of Valentina are going to supersede all other aspects in filmmaking when reviewing this film. Thankfully, Valentina treats its protagonist, and the actress who played her, with the upmost of respect. First and foremost, the actress Thiessa Woinbackk is a young trans woman herself. The casting decision is the bare minimum that needs to be done when making a film about the trans experience, but enough people fail at it that I am calling it out. Even beyond that, the material is extremely courteous of Valentina. Trans bodies are almost always commodified and exploited, but the film does not go out of its way to sexualize or objectify her. When given an opportunity to undress the character for a medical examination, Valentina declines and the film never broaches the idea again.

While the respect for its trans character is a welcome relief in any film, Valentina is especially impressive in its capturing of the experience. The singular moment that stood out as a film talking with its trans actor to create something that feels real happens at the darkest point of the film. Valentina having been first outed and then threatened is assaulted while out for a run one evening. Rather than doing any bodily harm to the young girl, the masked men cut off a handful of her hair. For many trans girls, the hair is the first part of their body that can help alleviate body dysphoria. By attacking this symbol of femininity nothing graphic needed to be done. The emotional devastation was sufficient to get the point across.

As countries continue to take steps demonizing trans people and legal restricting a young trans person’s access to healthcare, positive representation becomes increasingly important. Valentina can help fill the void of positive portrayals of trans girls. Staring a brilliant young trans woman, the film paints a picture of a young girl who wants nothing more than to live her life as a normal teen. Valentina is a nearly perfect piece of transgender representation, and Woinbackk has the makings of an excellent queer star.