Festival Season Blues (Patreon)

Yes, 'tis the season. I am currently previewing TIFF films for Cinema Scope, and Venice Days films for InRO. Below are brief excerpts of the reviews that will appear later in those venues.

My hope is that (a) it will give you a sense of what I've been up to, and why I'm behind on this site; (b) the blurbs will be enough to let you, the subscriber, know whether or not (IMHO) the films are worth your time. Here we go.

Nowhere Near (Miko Revereza, 2023) [TIFF / NYFF]

"Structurally, Nowhere Near enacts Revereza’s ideas about change, dislocation, and temporary solidity. The film doesn’t proceed by argument so much as it unfurls a series of fragmented observations which orbit one another and eventually form an impressionistic whole. In one brief scene, we see a laptop screen with an essay (presumably by the filmmaker) addressing Freudian melancholia as it relates to Filipino history. As that history is always under erasure, the nation finds itself mourning for a lost totality that is inaccessible, and that may never have existed. Revereza extends this thinking to his own practice, as he remarks on moments when his cinematography is too shaky or underlit, because he was preoccupied with the events taking place, not on how they would be recorded. Nowhere Near suggests that the past is indeed another country, and that it confers its citizenship onto no one."

The Breaking Ice (Anthony Chen, 2023) [TIFF]

"The less you know about Asian cinema, the more striking you’re liable to find this film. Much like last year’s Return to Seoul, The Breaking Ice is a perfectly solid Un Certain Regard entry, reasonably well-directed and visually quite well-appointed. However, Chen hews too closely to the “alienated urban youth” template, placing his handsome actors in various scenarios that don’t lend themselves to very much development. The Breaking Ice is as aimless as its characters, whose outer orbital of disaffection keeps them hovering around one another, wandering around and smoking and staring at the dazzling neon lights with more attitude than purpose. In other words, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been essayed much more poignantly years ago by Hou or Jia."

Mambar Pierrette (Rosine Mbakam, 2023) [TIFF / NYFF]

"The first part of Mambar is perhaps the most poetic, as Mbakam focuses on Pierrette’s meticulous skilled labour. The film is set just before the school semester begins, so many area women have hired her to make new dresses and school uniforms. Watching Aboheu’s facility with the old Pfaff sewing machine is gratifying, but each time Pierrette meets with a client, they haggle with her, demanding discounts or offering partial payment. Sometimes she agrees, out of exhaustion as much as kindness. The implication is that everyone in Douala is strapped for cash, which leads to rampant self-interest and the breakdown of community ties."

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Ariane Louis-Seize, 2023) [TIFF / Venice Days]

"Sadly, the title of Ariane Louis-Seize’s debut feature tells you virtually everything you need to know about the film itself. The Quebecois horror-comedy Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person quickly establishes a premise and, apart from some notable subtleties of character, follows through on said premise in exactly the manner you’d expect. Coming as it does on the heels of about a decade of existential bloodsucker pictures, all dedicated in their various ways to convincing us that “vamps are people too,” Humanist Vampire brings very little to the table."

21 Days Until the End of the World (Teona Strugar Mitevska, 2023) [Venice Days]

"But there are [...] many sequences (or “days”) in Mitevska’s film that seem designed to signify self-exposure but are highly contrived. In one scene, she lies on a bed and masturbates while an NPR-style radio reporting on the rise in hate crimes against Asians in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the conclusion of 21 Days, Mitevska rises from a couch in her living room and starts smashing bottles and pottery with a bamboo cane, the onscreen text offering the viewer a wry retort: 'what did you expect?'"