AFI drive-bys (part two) (Patreon)

No need for further preamble, except to note again for the record, as if anybody would have the slightest reason to care, that I actually saw The Eternal Daughter at a non-AFI press screening (though it did in fact screen at the festival).  

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason): 58

Magnificent for as long—roughly an hour and change—as it remains an arduous, physically and mentally debilitating wilderness trek in the venerable tradition of everything from Aguirre to Meek's Cutoff. (The Mission might be its most obvious forebear, strictly from a narrative standpoint, but it's been some 35 years since my sole viewing of that film and I don't remember it very well.) Pálmason excels at forbidding landscapes, as an Icelandic filmmaker well might, and also maintains, while they're in transit, an invigorating balance between the sensitive, scientifically- and artistically-minded Danish priest and his ultra-masculine Icelandic guide (A White, White Day's Ingvar Sigurðsson). Was rather surprised when everyone reaches their destination around the film's midpoint, and a bit disappointed to see it shift toward a dynamic that reminded me a lot more of Witness (though that's another movie I've not seen since the mid-'80s), what with the big DIY construction project and the struggling with unfamiliar rural customs and the outsider's tentative courtship of a comely female and etc. None of this is bad, by any means, but it's considerably less inspired, culminating in two climactic acts of violence that seem at once inevitable and contrived. Though Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir (Pálmason's daughter, as those familiar with Icelandic surnames could surely gather on their own), who played the granddaughter in White, White Day and gets a more active and mischievous role here, is fast becoming a potentially terrific actor. Anyway, I'd recommend Godland for its first-rate first half alone, and plenty of smart folks disagree with me about the relative merits of what happens once the hiking finally stops. 

ANAL-RETENTIVE TITLE CORNER: I have nothing to struggle with, thankfully, since the English-language title is unequivocally Godland. Not sure what I'd do were I one of those ultra-fanatics who always uses the original title, however, since Pálmason presents it in both Danish (Vanskabte Land) and Icelandic (Volaða Land) on no fewer than three separate occasions. Neither means Godland, turns out—it's something more along the lines of Wretched Land. 

Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella): 63

Doubly intimidating due to its seemingly untranslated title (which is just the name of a mid-sized Argentine city; think of it as Buenos Aires, only smaller) and its four-hour runtime*. Like La flor, though—Citarella was that behemoth's producer (Mariano Llínas returns the favor as a creative consultant here) and has cast two of its four lead actors—Trenque Lauquen is much more playful than it is daunting moment-to-moment, serving up a new intriguingly mysterious development any time energy seems as if it might be starting to flag. Thought for a while that Citarella might be crafting a stealth romance hinging on shared obsession, but that element eventually fizzles, while what had seemed to be the narrative focus gradually gets replaced by something altogether different and considerably weirder. I can't claim that any of this gets resolved in a satisfying way, nor is it deliberately, hilariously unresolved, as are La flor's first two parts in particular. Film #1 devotes its final section to a character who never appears in part two, without wrapping up his story at all. For those who get on the film's oddball scavenger-hunt wavelength, though, it's a breezy, always engaging, often delightful journey to who the hell knows where even once you've arrived. And you just don't see many films that are equally at home with casually outré curveballs (much of part two revolves around something found in a lake that's variously described as human, animal, and plant life!) and with burrowing into every quotidian detail of running a local radio station's regular chat program. 

* Is it one film or two? Very hard to say, really. IMDb currently has two separate listings, titled Trenque Lauquen parte I and Trenque Lauquen II, and I briefly decided to go that route when the first part featured its own complete end credits. But then the "second film" just says Part(e) II, without ever noting what it's part two of. And it seems as if both parts are always being screened back-to-back, as was the case with e.g. The Boys of St. Vincent (which I've always considered a single film; IMDb gives that one two entries as well). AFI screening was one ticket and just gave us a 20-minute intermission. It really doesn't feel as if Citarella expects anybody to watch only one or the other, so for now I'm logging Trenque Lauquen as a single feature shown in two parts. But I reserve the right to switch if it winds up getting a staggered U.S. release à la La flor. 

Saint Omer (Alice Diop): 26

No way to avoid potentially looking like a callous asshole, so I'm just gonna own it. Look: It's by no means impossible to persuade me that a woman who killed her own infant daughter deserves my empathy. Diop just makes a terrible case—one that's shamelessly manipulative and unproductively filtered through her own stand-in. (To a large extent—probably at least 70% of its two hours—Saint Omer is a movie about watching someone look stricken as she watches someone else being questioned in court. Some critics have deemed this approach bold rather than stultifying. I can only forcefully decline to concur.) Infanticide's a uniquely revulsion-inducing act to begin with, and this specific instance—basically Under the Skin's most horrible moment, if Johansson were the baby's mother rather than an alien—really demands extreme circumstances to...not "justify" it, certainly, but at least render it comprehensible. You need to feel as if this poor woman was trapped in a truly insupportable situation, one that caused her to temporarily lose her reason, see no other recourse. And I simply didn't get that from Coly's testimony, extensive and ably performed though it is. (Guslagie Malanga remains admirably stoic throughout, refusing to make any bid for pathos.) Even if I had, the defense attorney's summation, delivered directly to the lens (i.e., to us) and arguing, in effect, that all mothers are fundamentally monstrous for placental reasons, would have undermined whatever allowance I might have made. And then Diop actually cuts to four different women in the courtroom—including the judge!—as their eyes well with tears of recognition. Can any male viewer of Saint Omer call this patent bullshit and not seem like he's part of the patriarchal problem? Maybe not, but this is still patent bullshit. 

The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg): 47

Another autobiographical project (this time with Tilda playing the director as well as her mother), and I'm afraid that Hogg finds her own life considerably more fascinating than I do. Which is fine—I'm surely more fascinated by my own life than she would be. But I'm not making movies about it. To be fair, while Julie's career as a filmmaker gets mentioned frequently (and I think parts of The Eternal Daughter retroactively become scenes from a film that Julie will make; my alternative hypothesis for certain apparent anomalies is even stranger), it's not really crucial to the central relationship, which Hogg could easily have wholly fictionalized were she not now firmly committed to the Hoggiverse. And the inarticulate "celebratory" tête-à-tête that triggers a major rupture would work beautifully in almost any imaginable context, with Swinton doing glorious work in both registers. But oh my god there's so much A24 Brand Elevated Horror Atmosphere, and while I went in knowing absolutely nothing other than Hogg + Swinton—not even the casting conceit—it only took me about five minutes to get waaaaay out ahead of what the film's up to. Which would bother me less had Hogg not clearly expended a great deal of effort trying to prevent that from happening. I'm dancing around a major spoiler here, and would rather not say more, but will single out the first occasion on which a meal gets ordered as the point at which I thought "Damn, you're trying very hard to seemingly establish something while also providing just enough ambiguity so that there'd technically be no cheating should my assumption be correct." And so even the ostensible genre subversion was a tad deflating. There aren't sufficient words of praise, however, for Carly-Sophia Davies (in what's apparently her feature debut; she has one other credit, a guest spot on Midsomer Murders), whose performance as the hotel's night clerk constitutes the most perfect demonstration of passive aggression (a constantly misused term) that I've ever seen in my life.