GFF Reviews

Author: gffreviews

  • Bergman Island

    Now, I liked that more than I thought I would. Not to be cheeky but it’s about two filmmakers who take a residency on Faro, the island where Ingmar Bergman lived. So I was braced for it being full of insufferable wanks going, “The thing about Bergman is . . . blahblahblah . . . genius auteur . . . blahblahblah . . . master of his oeuvre”. Actually it’s got a warmth I wasn’t expecting.

    Tim Roth plays Tony and Vicky Krieps plays Chris, an American couple who come to the island to work on their screenplays. Both love Bergman but for different reasons, and they discuss his works throughout the film. That might get you absolutely pepped for watching this film, or that might make you wilt inwardly, but really, what engages you is what you’re seeing about their relationship from their discussions. Tony can be quite flippant, and a bit dismissive of Chris, although he truly loves her. Chris needs a lot of time to herself, and likes to explore the island and other friendships without Tony, which Tony perceives as a withdrawal. Yet, cycling through the micro-moods of their day, they find a way to come back to each other each time.

    Chris tells Tony about her screenplay, so we get a film within a film. In it, Mia Wasikowska stars as Amy, reconnecting with an old flame, Joseph, played by Anders Danielsen Lie, at a friend’s wedding on the island. This bittersweet romance takes place over the sand dunes and beauty spots Chris has been exploring. The film has a loneliness and yearning that Tony seems to miss, interrupting the story a couple of times to take phone calls.

    Director Mia Hansen-Love is a obviously a big Bergman stan, and the film has been described as a love letter to him. And while his work, and filmmaking in general, is central to the movie, the real heart of the film is how we relate to those we love, how we manifest the invisible in ourselves, and how we share it outside ourselves.

  • Ashgrove

    Ashgrove is a story about relationships at the end of the world. Jennifer is a scientist who is working on a cure for a global plague when she has a blackout. She gets put on leave, taking a weekend off for the first time in a year to go relax. Her husband Jason takes her up to their house in the country for some R&R, but the wear and tear in their relationship from a year of constant stress starts to show.

    At first, my worry going into the film was this was gonna be a ‘poor female scientist, undone by her own womb and need for the love of a man’ kinda story. Like, she’s saving the world from annihilation, and you’re focusing on how her love life is going. But the plague thing is really just a device for giving stakes to what is first and foremost a relationship drama. I found it actually kinda funny, because the movie asks, “Could you hold together your marriage if the world depended on it?” and the answer is largely no.

    Jason is raging that his emotional needs have not been met in a very long time, and he’s made to feel guilty for even having them. Jennifer is raging that she can’t leave Jason alone for a year to do literally the most important thing in the world, without him acting like it’s too big an ask from their marriage. He supposedly swore a commitment for as long as they both shall live, but he needs babysat if left by himself for any amount of time. Both of them are right, and both of them are wrong, and how much you care about this is up to you. I was a bit like, if the world’s gonna end, just be single for a year, I mean if ever circumstances justified a free pass, I dunno.

    Spoilers ahead FYI

    About two-thirds of the way through the film, it’s revealed that this weekend is actually a reconstruction of the weekend Jennifer had in her blackout, at the culmination of which she solved the cure for the plague in her head. However, before she was able to tell anything other than that she’d realised the answer, she went into her blackout, and lost her memory of it. Lol. This isn’t particularly surprising because you see her leaving the voicemail about solving the problem in the opening scene, and see her husband ticking off a list of activities on his phone when they first arrive at the country house. So not a huge reveal, but definitely a headfuck for the main character. Everyone had hoped that reconstructing events would have led her to have the same epiphany.

    I guess Ashgrove attempts to capture what it feels like to save a failing marriage, that the weight of the world is on your shoulders, that it is literally the end of the world if you fail. And the performances of Amanda Brugel as Jennifer and Jonas Chernick as Jason are very good, their fighting feels very realistic and organic. But I dunno, I just never felt all that invested in their relationship. As I say, if it’s making you miserable, just be single while you try to save the world. Or let Jason dip his wick wherever if it stops him being a snarky sulk. Priorities, people! Seems like these are solvable problems.

  • Bird Atlas

    Ivo Rona is the undisputed head of his family business. He’s been a hard-nosed bastard all his life, and now finally the chickens are coming home to roost.

    Millions go missing from the company, and Ivo starts to turn himself in circles trying to find the culprit. Even when the method is discovered, his paranoia makes him dig deeper into who could be behind it all. In truth though, it is his own guilty conscience. He is certain this has been done maliciously, for personal revenge against him, and realises that almost everyone he knows would have reason to want it.

    When the police get involved, and Ivo tries to tell them how to do their job, the detective, exasperated, tells him to go for a walk in the park, just hoping to get him out their hair. Throughout the film, the birds sing good advice in subtitles beneath their calls. They tell him universal truths about family and health being more valuable than wealth. But Ivo is too arrogant to follow the detective’s instruction, and remains deaf to the wisdom of the birds.

    Ivo has a heart attack upon first hearing the money is missing, and discharges himself from hospital to pursue the missing money against medical advice. He’s too hard-headed to take advice from anyone. He pays no heed to the limitations of his body, determined that everything will bend to his will.

    Throughout the film, you oscillate between believing Ivo is blinded by his own character in his pursuit of the money, and being swept up in his suspicions as they are, after all, based on the firm foundation that he has treated others poorly and they might want to see him suffer. Are things exactly what they seem? Is this catastrophe perpetuated from the outside, one of life’s many indifferent and anonymous misfortunes? Or is that simply a mask created by someone close, someone with more than simple greed in mind?

    In many ways, Bird Atlas is a character study about how one man creates his own downfall, in one way or another. Tense, nicely paced, solid film.

  • The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic

    The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic is bloody brilliant!

    The main character is Jaakko, a guy who is blind and paralysed from the chest down, so the film is shot from his perspective. But how do you make a film, a visual medium, from the perspective of someone who is blind? While Jaakko is in focus, capturing his every expression and reaction, the rest of the shot is kept out of focus. Yes, the audience can still tell if he’s in his flat, or outside, but so can Jaakko from the sound cues, and those become really important. For anyone worried this might be a ‘gimmick’, it’s surprising how quickly you adjust to it, and it feels completely unobtrusive the entire film.

    In fact, it forces you as an audience to have to do what Jaakko does, listen, pay attention, search for clues as to your surroundings. Another reason you should take the chance to see this in the cinema, getting that full 3D sound. It really adds tension to situations you wouldn’t normally think were stressful. Like being alone in a busy train station, suddenly you are surrounded by multiple unknown factors, some coming directly towards you, and you have no idea their nature or intention, as sounds overlap and become difficult to distinguish.

    In the film, Jaakko is in love with Sirpa, a lassie he met online. She has cancer and both of them are more or less confined to their homes, unless a helper can take them out. Sirpa and Jaakko talk every day, from first thing in the morning to last thing at night. And Jaakko’s actually a great laugh, you get why she fell for him. He’s a bit of a cheeky wideo with a love for pre-90s John Carpenter films, and Stephen King adaptations. Someone who I would definitely have matched with on Tinder. Their relationship feels real, like a daily cohabiting couple, who just happen to live a town apart.

    When Sirpa gets some bad news, Jaakko decides to go to her. This involves taking a taxi, a train ride, and a taxi – simple! Except it’s not so simple in a wheelchair while blind. For Jaakko this is a huge adventure, fought with perils, one in which he’ll have to rely on his wits to make it safe to the woman he loves.

    Just so good.

  • Hive

    Hive is the story of Fahrije, a Kosovan woman who tries to support herself by making ajvar relish. In her community, for a woman to even drive a car is considered scandalous, so it’s an uphill struggle.

    Based on a true events, Fahrije’s story was big news in Kosovo. The trouble was Fahrije’s husband was disappeared in the Kosovan war in the 90s. So she was in this state of being effectively widowed without ever having the confirmation of her husband’s death. She was in this between state of being both married and widowed. As a married woman, it was her place to keep the home and not work. As a widow, it was her place to live with and look after her in-laws. Neither involves providing for yourself or your family by working outside the home.

    In the film you see Fahrije is devoted to her in-laws. She lives with her father-in-law who she affords great respect. But he is wheelchair-bound, and can only make a little money by selling the honey from the family beehives. You’d think practicality would immediately triumph, given how useful it would be if she could drive him about, and produce more money for the family. But old ways die hard.

    There is a constant attempt to intimidate Fahrije, a collective sense of disapproval and looming consequences. When events do happen, there is no one villain with a face, just handfuls of men growling daggers and bricks getting chucked through her windows. At first even the women are against her striking out, they tell her that people will say she’s driving hither and thither coz she’s seeing men, that her reputation will be destroyed and that of her family. They are frightened to help her in case the same is said about them.

    But as time goes on and God doesn’t strike her dead for selling jars of ajvar relish, the women come to see that she can be a provider for herself and her family. Even her father-in-law, who discouraged her but never outright forbade her, eventually ends up helping. Together that they realise they are capable of more than they ever thought.

    Given the grim context and the Balkan gift for brevity of speech, I wondered if this film might be hard going. But it actually is a film of resolution, strength, and overcoming adversity. It even has moments of pure joy and warmth. Great film.

  • Madeleine Collins

    That was actually a lot better than I was expecting.

    I mean that as a compliment. From the trailer, showing the main character living a double life, especially when one was obviously quite luxurious, I was worried it was gonna be a bit Anna Karenina. You know, Oh poor Anna! All she has is everything, no wonder she’s so sad! But Madeleine Collins is actually a really complex character.

    At the beginning of the film, you are introduced to the main character, who flits between the names Judith Fauvet and Margot Soriano. Judith is married to a wealthy and famous conductor, Melvil, and has two sons who are edging into teenagehood. Margot is living with her partner, Abdel, and her young daughter, Ninon.

    At first you don’t know anything about their situation, and assume she is keeping everyone in the dark. I mean, she does lie to everybody. And she is stressed out her nut trying to keep all these plates spinning, this has obviously been going on for a while. But her sons are now getting of an age to be suspicious, and Ninon is becoming more and more upset when her mum leaves for half the week.

    I assumed the main character was just a selfish bampot, who thought she could have everything and had fooled herself into thinking she wasn’t hurting anybody if they didn’t know. And now it’s becoming clear that gaslighting the people you love isn’t good for them regardless of whether they ever officially ‘find out’. In short, I was judgemental as fuck.

    The rest of this review is kinda spoilers for the film so if you’re already convinced to see it, bail out now and go see it.

    As the film goes on, more and more hints come out that the men know what’s going on. Then her parents show up one day at Abdel’s house, and you’re like, “What the fuck?!” Margot is not just any pseudonym. Margot is the name of Judith’s sister who died in a freak accident, and Judith took on raising Ninon when Abdel went to pieces after her death. In their shared grief, Abdel and her turned to each other for comfort, which became love. And as Ninon grew, Judith being her mother was all she ever knew.

    Far from being selfish, Judith took on responsibility for Margot’s life, making sure her child didn’t grow up motherless, and providing comfort and love to her husband in his darkest hours. Then she fell in love with him, and they were all locked into an impossible situation. And she’s actually sacrificed her health and wellbeing to do it. She is cracking up. The pressure of the unmeetable demands, the constant ducking and dodging, trying to keep her story straight. It’s made her into someone she never wanted to be.

    I really liked her character. Her actions are both harmful and merciful at the same time. She can be both selfish and selfless in the same action. And there is such a well of grief that has effectively led her to try keeping her sister alive by living her life.

    Really interesting film, surprisingly gripping.

  • Three Floors

    Thoroughly enjoyable slice of life in the neighbourhood. Three Floors basically focuses on the lives of several families who share a close. It tracks their ups and downs over a decade.

    The film opens with heavily pregnant Monica, who lives on the first floor, trying to phone for a taxi as she goes into labour, and walking along the road outside the building. Out the darkness comes a car, driven by Andrea, the son of the judges who live on the top floor. It’s going way too fast, swerves to miss Monica, mows down an innocent woman crossing the road behind her, and ploughs into the ground floor apartment of the building, stopping just short of the little girl, Francesca who lives there.

    Andrea is drunk, and has no idea what he’s done. His mother, Dora, tries to comfort him, while his father, Vittorio, tries to help the woman he’s hit. They come away with very different attitudes towards the event. His mother believes it’s her duty to look after her son, and fight his corner no matter what the cause. His father tells him flat out, you were drunk, you killed that woman, you’re going to jail, and you deserve it.

    Andrea is undeniably irresponsible, selfish, and violent. He has a toxic dynamic with his father, where his rigid morality and sense of disappointment in his son has hardened and formed a resolved contempt. However this has impacted Andrea growing up, he is now an adult who can’t accept the blame for anything. The accident isn’t his fault. His anger and attacks aren’t his fault. All he ever looks for is a way out of the consequences.

    Down on the ground floor, Francesca’s father, Lucio, asks their neighbours across the way to look after her while they deal with the fallout of the bloody great hole in their wall. Their neighbours, Giovanna and Renato, are like grandparents to Francesca, the old man loves giving her horsey rides and getting a peck on the cheek when she visits. He’s starting to lose his marbles a bit, but Francesca loves spending time there. On one occasion, Lucio drops her off without Giovanna being there, and Renato and Francesca go missing. When Lucio finally finds them, Renato has fallen and wet himself in the park, and Francesca is sitting with his head in her lap, stroking his hair as he cries. Despite Francesca saying the Renato simply became confused and got lost, Lucio becomes convinced she was sexually assaulted by him. This becomes an obsession he cannot let go.

    From these two events, a lot of the story unfolds. Across the years you see how Dora tries to maintain a relationship with her son after he and his father’s completely breaks down. Lucio’s suspicions of Renato lead him to make terrible choices, and permanently alienate him from Giovanna, who cannot believe he would try to drag a helpless and harmless old man’s name through the mud, after they’ve been nothing but good to his family. Monica struggles with new motherhood all alone.

    Really enjoyable film, like a mini soap, just capturing the drama in this middle-class apartment building.

  • My Old School Q&A

    So cool to get the chance to see Alan Cumming and Lulu and the director and star of My Old School in person!

  • My Old School

    My Old School got a standing ovation – and too bloody right! Absolutely cracking movie.

    It is a documentary about the Brandon Lee incident, when a 32-year-old man enrolled in secondary school as a 16-year-old boy. The reasons why are as bizarre as the story itself, but what makes the movie is it is not just a tale about one sad and slightly strange figure trying capture a part of life that escaped him, but an ensemble memoir of this odd event by the pupils who lived it. The film is a bit of a high school reunion, with people retelling stories, and misremembering, and being corrected and cajoled by their mates. It’s also fucking hilarious.

    So it’s the 1990s, and this new kid shows up. He’s looks about ten years older than everyone but he’s Canadian, so folk figure, they must mature earlier or whatever. He sits his tests, makes friends, does homework with the other kids after class, and stars in the school show. He’s a bit weird, but it’s secondary school, everyone’s a bit weird. And he seems sound.

    He has this long back story about travelling all over the world with his opera singer mother, until she died in a tragic accident. His father was a professor who wanted him educated, but had no desire to raise him, so sent him to live with his grandmother in Glasgow, and enrolled him in Bearsden Academy.

    The film pays particular attention to the role of class in all this. Anyone from here will know Bearsden is the poshest place in Glasgow. You go along the road out Bearsden until you get to Drumchapel, and the average life expectancy drops by a decade. Your postcode can make Glasgow a very different city for you. Many of the ex-pupils interviewed came from Spam Valley, the part of Bearsden which was a little more downmarket, and got its name from the saying that the folk who moved there ate spam every night of the week just to be able to afford to live in Bearsden. People wanted in because it signalled an opening up of opportunity to them and their kids, a different kind of life. The filmmaker, in the Q&A admits he and his sister only moved to Bearsden Academy after his sister was hospitalised due to the violence at Clydebank Secondary. Similarly, Brandon’s family had wanted the same.

    Because his mother wasn’t an opera singer, his father wasn’t a professor. His dad was a lollipop man and his mother worked in the old folks’ home. Whether the belief had come from him or his mother, the narrative got passed back and forth between them until it was gospel – she could have been a doctor if only she’d had the opportunity, and he WOULD be a doctor. She moved into a rented flat in Bearsden to ensure he got the best education, and he excelled academically.

    But he had no friends, no social life, no real connections outside his mother. He went to Glasgow Uni and, without any support system and under pressure to complete this supposed destiny of medicine, he had a breakdown of sorts. He doesn’t describe it as such, focusing on his bodily symptoms, but as someone who also took a breakdown in her first year at Glasgow Uni, it’s readily identifiable.

    After feeling lost for a number of years, he eventually tried to re-enroll, only to discover he was now considered too old. 30 was the age limit for commencing study in medicine, due to the number of years it took to complete, so what’s a man to do? Let it go? Change your mind? Pursue a different career?

    Brandon Lee re-enrolled in school, resetting the clock back to the last time he had been a high achiever. He went back as a 16-year-old to sit his secondary exams again.

    What’s batshit bananas is he did it at his old school, the one he went to the first time. And, and, AND was taught by some of the same teachers who taught him first go around. That’s barmy!

    So the film is structured around Brandon’s story. He gives an audio interview but doesn’t want his face to be shown, so it is played/lipsynced by Alan Cumming (yum!). But, as I say, it’s not just about him. A bunch of his classmates give interviews, and you see them trying to piece together the puzzle, try to separate the rumour from the truth. Which is great, coz you get them retelling different stories or retelling the same story different ways, and it’s all animated.

    I really loved the animation style. As soon as I saw it, I said, “Daria!” and in the Q&A the director said that was his inspiration. Because the story was full of those classic 90s high school tropes – the mean girls, the bullies, the outsiders, the music geeks. When I first saw the animation in the trailer, I was a bit like, hmm, dunno what I think of that. But it really works.

    And the voice acting is great, with Alan, Lulu, and Clare Grogan. And the music is ace, from Shelly Poole, of 90s iconic band Alisha’s Attic. Everything comes together really well, it’s just superb.

    When asked in the Q&A, why he didn’t notice that Brandon Lee was hiding the fact he was a 32-year-old-man, the filmmaker said, because he was too busy hiding the fact he was a 16-year-old gay boy. I think that does explain a lot of it. Brandon hid in a place where everyone was hiding, he was odd and awkward in a place where everyone was odd and awkward – and he did it in Glasgow, where everything’s mad anyway.

    In another city, a documentary like this might be framed with ominous tones and fades to black-and-white. In Glasgow, it’s just one big lol. A fucking cracking watch, go see!

  • Blind Ambition

    Blind Ambition is a documentary following the first Zimbabwean team to compete in the world blind wine taste testing championships.

    Now if you’re like me, the most you know about blind wine tasting is that scene from Frasier where Niles is crowned corkmaster, and they all sing, “Hail corkmaster! The master of the cork! He knows which wine goes with fish or pork!” But Blind Ambition gives you a real appreciation of just how difficult it must be. You get a sip and 2 minutes and you have to say what grapes it was made from, in which country, in which region, by which producer, and in which year. That’s ridiculously specific. And the shit can be blends, the stuff can be pure obscure labels, they can throw anything at you.

    JV is the dude who puts together the South African team, and in 2017 he noticed that he had 4 guys in his top 12 picks that were from Zimbabwe. South Africa has a sizeable community of Zimbabwean refugees, and JV asked them if they’d like to form a team for Zimbabwe.

    The guys jumped at the chance to represent their country. Mugabe and his cronies may have run Zimbabwe into the dirt politically and economically, but ordinary folks, even those who live abroad still love their home. Being able to represent a positive aspect of it on the world stage made the guys swell with pride. Also, like in many places around the world, South Africa has seen vilification and scapegoating of refugees. To have a team of refugees show their talents, show how they are an asset to their adopted country, was also something that motivated them.

    So you have Joseph, who literally went from hoeing the back garden of the restaurant to head sommelier. You have Pardon, who overheard Joseph while at the restaurant bar and was like, ‘Is that interesting work?’ You have Marlvin, son of a pentecostal minister, who had never even touched alcohol until wine became part of his career. You have Tinashe, who had to flee, but longs to return home and grow vineyards back in Zimbabwe. All are stories of unlikely success against the odds of poverty, migrant status, and racism. All of them should have their achievements celebrated.

    And here we get on to the knife edge the film has to walk. Because these are extraordinary men, who have made extraordinary achievements. But as the only Black faces in a sea of white competitors, you don’t want to fall into the racist trope of the exceptionalism of your protagonists, as if they alone are deserving to leap into white spaces.

    Blind Ambition has been described as Cool Runnings meets Sideways, which is great except Cool Runnings was racist as hell. We all loved John Candy, and I know your nostalgia holds it dear, but seriously. And you don’t want to be making the same kind of mistakes/bad choices in 2022.

    Does it succeed in guiding away from that? Mostly. I mean, I figured the directors were white just from some of the choices. Like, it doesn’t explore the team’s families and support as much as I’d like, but it is full of white people who help them on their way. And I’m not saying these aren’t worthy people, they all seem lovely. The minister who took in over 30,000 refugees to feed and shelter them, the woman who crowdfunded the team’s entrance fee because she wants to fight for more people of colour in the wine tasting world, the guys who coach the teams and lend their expertise. They are all great people, and relevant to the story.

    But does that have to draw focus? And I mean, it’s great there’s this woman wanting to increase Black representation at the world blind wine taste testing championships, but there’s no pause to question why wine tasting is so white. Like, it’s fine, but the focus is very much on the feel good factor of white people giving a hand up to these guys, instead of breaking down the barriers they face in the first place.

    Anyway, overall it’s a great documentary, going into the ambition and teamwork that takes place in this global competition. And there’s a real sense of pride that comes from going on this journey, from being a beacon of hope, representing the talent and skill of Zimbabwe. They have every right to be proud.