GFF Reviews

Author: gffreviews

  • Update about the blog

    Ok, so when I first started this blog, I envisioned covering the GFF and only occasionally posting the odd interesting film review in between times. But certain events have changed things. Can you guess what event I mean?

    So Covid has already changed how I interact with cinema. The pandemic is still not over, but it has changed how festivals are delivered, and the cinema industry as a whole. Festivals moved totally or partially online, giving people around the country the possibility of participating in distant festivals. Cinemas have co-operated in sharing films from one another’s festivals to give people a real in-cinema experience while bringing them distant festival goodies. And cinema and film as a whole has needed our support like never before.

    This has made me take a number of decisions:

    1. In addition to the GFF, I will cover partner festivals. If Sheffield reciprocally carry GFF films, I’ll support their films when they come to Glasgow. This seems fair to me, plus a great opportunity to show just what is available right here in Glasgow because of the work of Glasgow Film.
    2. While I have previously covered smaller festivals that take place in Glasgow, usually with some support from Glasgow Film, I’m going to make the effort to cover them more thoroughly, as I don’t want to see these smaller festivals dying out while times are tough.
    3. All this means I’m just gonna be seeing more films and posting more frequently generally.
    4. I want to spread word about the GFF and good cinema more widely. Because I feel like this is a critical time for cinema in the UK. and because changes under Covid have made these films much more widely accessible. This unfortunately means dipping my toe into social media, which is a complete garbage fire I wanted to avoid at all costs. However, it’s where people are so I’m gonna have to go there. I’ve set up an Instagram, so you can follow me there if you want.
    5. The only donations I’ve ever asked for on this blog were to go directly to Glasgow Film to support the GFF. However, as I’m now just going to much more film than ever before, I have decided to add a Donate button. In effect, you’ll just be donating money to Glasgow Film via me, but it will allow me to keep doing what I’m doing on this blog. There is no obligation to donate, I’m just putting it there as an option, a tip jar of sorts.

    So yeah, things have changed since I first started the blog. And I’ve enjoyed writing for it much more than I realised I would. And where you’ve given feedback, you’ve been kind enough to be positive, which has been gratifying too. So here’s to continuing in that vein!

  • A Fish Tale

    A hard watch. Because this isn’t about things coming together, it is about them falling apart.

    A Fish Tale follows Johnny, a Ghanaian fisherman who came to Israel to learn modern fishing techniques. Over the course of 10 years, he tries with everything he has to accomplish this single task, so that he may bring the knowledge back home to Ghana and make a success of the family fishery business. But being poor means every single part of every step is difficult, even impossible.

    He finds Raana and Yoav who allow him to learn at their fishery for free, teaching him the techniques he will need to increase his yield. And it seems at first like a godsend, a free education with hands-on experience. But he still needs to earn money, which means working every hour he can at his cleaning job, and having only study time on the side.

    On top of this, he has a young son, and before much longer twin girls arrive. Johnny and his wife Therese moved to Israel 12 years ago, leaving behind a young son and daughter, thinking it would be temporary and that they would return with what they needed soon. Now they have more children born outside Ghana than there, and Therese’s sense of responsibility shifts.

    The film begins with Johnny receiving the news his father has died, and he is now head of the household. The responsibility weighs heavily on him from the outset. His duty to bring home the means of prosperity is for his family as a whole. However Therese starts to question what life she will be taking her children back to. Fewer opportunities, no internet, inadequate infrastructure, she doesn’t want to deprive them of things they have grown up their whole life knowing.

    As racist, far-right marches are on the move, and protests are held condemning Christian Africans for ‘taking up a place’ that could be used for a Jew in Israel, Johnny decides to send Therese and the kids home, before harm can come to them. But Therese must make a choice about what the future holds for their family.

    A hard watch about the raw unfairness of the world.

  • Elder’s Corner

    Fascinating documentary looking the popular music of Nigeria from the 50s to the 70s. It takes in highlife and juju music, interviewing many of biggest names of their time. And through their musical legacy, seeing the history and character of Nigeria as it emerged from colonialism.

    So many things you don’t even know you don’t know. Elder’s Corner is such an eye-opener. I was unaware of what a rich and varied musical landscape Nigeria had in the mid-20th century.

    It starts in colonial Nigeria, where jazz and calypso fuse with tradional Nigerian music to make the 5-beat highlife genre, a music for dancing, singing, and spreading the rising sense of optimism that attended the decolonisation movement. Many artists had a socially conscious message to their music as well as a great rhythm.

    Similarly you get juju music emerging in the early days of independence, which takes much of the features of highlife and attempts to decolonialise it, reindigenising it with traditional Yoruba sounds. This sense of the deep pride in Africanness and heritage resonated with the younger generation experiencing self-rule for the first time.

    The film also looked at the impact of the military coups and civil war, which saw a decline in highlife as a reflection of the decline in optimism in the country. On a practical level, it prevented any live music being played while strife was ongoing, but the horrors of war also put an end for some musicians to their ability to create such light-hearted tunes.

    The film wraps up its musical memoir in the 1970s, when the wave of Black Pride across Africa and the whole globe was bringing focus to the rich contribution Black culture and creativity brought to the world. Nigeria hosts Festac, Festival of African Culture and Arts, hosting all the stars from Nigeria, from other African nations, and the African diaspora, including Sun Ra and Stevie Wonder. It is a great celebration of the Nigerian musical landscape, as well as showing its connectedness with global music genres.

    However, in its shadow, when outspoken critic of the military government, musician Fela Kuti slated Festac as a propaganda exercise, as well as a money laundering scheme, his home was set ablaze by soldiers, destroying its studio and all the records and instruments stored within.

    This moment of ambiguity, where on one level you have Nigerian music being celebrated and uniting people from around the world, while there is repression of expression at home, kinda captures the sense of how people feel about modern Nigeria. The music of that time spoke so of its age. The optimism and the light-heartedness, the return to roots and infusion of pride in African heritage. It kinda of peaks and rolls back as a new age of more nuanced, arguably more cynical perspective takes hold.

    Elder’s Corner is a wonderful treasure trove of interviews and musical insights. Great film.

  • The Tragedy of Macbeth

    Absolutely exquisite.

    Joel Coen adapts the Shakespeare play for the screen, with a stellar cast and resplendent cinematography. With spartan yet evocative set design, filmed in black-and-white, light is used not only to frame the story, but transform scenes. In my post on French Review, I criticised Wes Anderson’s use of visual symmetry as hollow, whereas Macbeth shows us the opposite of that. The archways, the pillars, the bowed heads, all create and convey meaning. On a set so bare, its geometry communicates the relations of characters to one another, and evokes the thematic underpinnings of a scene.

    I loved the bird motif being brought to the fore. The crows of the dead coming with the bloody and portentous entrance of Macbeth, the bird as familiar of the witch, the owl shriek which announces King Duncan’s death in the night. Repeated is the psychopompotic heraldry of birds, and their stark contrasting forms against the white day or black sky.

    Kathryn Hunter has to be given the highest of praise for her performance as the witches. Gollum-esque, contorted, gibbering, and altogether unnerving, she is just a stunning presence on screen. Frances McDormand’s Lady Macbeth also is to be commended, with her seeming to regard warily this man, who had to be chided into one tactical killing, but who now becomes someone who embraces the wholesale slaughter of women and babes. Denzel Washington’s Macbeth I found a bit patchy, ending strong at the climax, but a little too throw-away in his delivery at the beginning. I dunno, judge for yourself.

    Really excellent, what a film.

  • Titane

    What the fuck was that?

    Titane is a film that will leave you asking the question, what did I just see? If I had to say what it’s about, if I had to put it into words, I’d say that a psychopath, who sees themselves more mechanical than human, falls pregnant by a Chevrolet, and to escape capture for a killing spree, poses as the long-lost son of a steroid-addicted firefighter captain. You know, the classic tale.

    So is it sci-fi? Well, falling pregnant by a car does probably qualify as low-end sci-fi technically. Is it a crime thriller? Well, it starts with a murder spree and follows the killer’s run from the law. Is it a comedy? It’s certainly filled with dark humour and moments that will make you laugh out loud. Is it a horror? It is definitely full of the madness and mayhem you’d expect from a horror. So what is it? I guess I’d say reproductive body horror with elements of splatstick.

    Because you see everything from the perspective of the main character, Alexi, you see the others through her kinda contempt, their moments of emotion and vulnerability are played as comical, because she as a psychopath finds them funny. So it did make me wonder at first if this whole ‘pregnant by a car’ thing was maybe just in her head. But as the film goes on, it makes it very clear that all of this is actually happening.

    Strangely, the car pregnancy actually manages to feel like just another practical element of this world, while the central conundrum for Alexi is that she actually grows attached to the man whose son she is impersonating. For a half-human psychopath, her view of the most bizarre thing in this film is the unexpected bond she begins to share with another human being.

    Starts with a lot of nudity and violence, so expect that right out the gate. Apparently the film has been inspiring a lot of fainting in cinemas, this happened in our showing, so I guess there’s truth to that it. It certainly was enough to make an entire audience in Glasgow go, “OOOWWW!”

    Gotta say, to me, Titane felt like a very queer horror. I mean, it starts from the character’s viewpoint that sees objectophilia as normal, and treats a traditional family bond as bizarre. The main character has sexual encounters with both men and women before murdering them. She spends the majority of the film binding down her breasts and living as a man. Her dance on top of the fire truck is very queer. I mean, not saying it’s all not problematic – it’s horror so of course it’s gonna be problematic as fuck – but it comes off as a very queer horror.

    One that screams cult favourite.

  • Flee

    An intimate and powerful film, Flee shows the life of Amin, a gay Afghani refugee who fled to Denmark during the Afghan Civil War in the 90s.

    Mixing animation and archival footage, it is a memoir of Amin’s life up until he finds refuge. Simultaneously, it has contemporary scenes where Amin and the filmmaker discuss what he feels comfortable talking about and what he wants to get from their work together. In these scenes you get to see Amin with his Danish partner Kasper, and get hints of how his journey has affected him even now.

    You come to a refugee story thinking you know what the hard parts are going to be, the travel across the sea, dodging the police. But it’s the things that you don’t consider that leave the lasting mark. How Amin has to say or do anything to get to Denmark, but once he’s there, he’s left with all these fractured narratives, all these stories he’s had to tell to survive, and how hard that is to assimilate back into a whole. This film is the first time he has ever told the true complete story of his journey. He’s lived with lies his entire adult life because there is a constant sense of insecurity, that anything he’s said in the past can be used to destroy his life now.

    At heart this is a film about a family trying to survive, how they try to save one another, and somehow stay together despite being miles apart. Really moving.

  • The Beta Test

    Mm.

    I really loved Jim Cummings’s first two films, but this is just . . . fine. The trailer had me a bit skeptical but trailers are frequently deceptive.

    Clearly inspired by the Ashley Madison leak and the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, The Beta Test focuses on a guy at the centre of an attempt to harness our social media footprint for a sleazy hookup scam. But the film is largely about where this is going. There is a pervasive sense of dread, like what is this matching algorithm designed to do? Is it designed to give people satisfying hookups? Is it designed to provide opportunities for blackmail? Is it designed to break up couples? Or even target those likely to end in violence?

    And that’s something I will say, right up top there is a piece of extraordinary, horrific domestic violence. A scene which seems to be there purely for the shock value and to grab the audience’s attention. Unpleasantly unnecessary and gratuitously explicit.

    So I watched The Beta Test thinking what about it didn’t work the way Thunder Road and Wolf of Snow Hollow did. Firstly, the main character is not a good guy. The character humour in the other two stemmed from the fact the guy was essentially trying to fulfil all these good roles, father, son, lawman, and failing due to some flaw or vulnerability. They acted like an asshole, but their goal was not be an asshole. The main guy in The Beta Test, Jordan, is an asshole. He both is an asshole and his goal is to be a bigger asshole. He’s not really sympathetic in any way, and he lacks that raw vulnerability that made Cummings’s other roles so tragic.

    Also, there’s no heart in the film to anchor anything to. In Thunder Road, it was his relationship with his daughter, and in Wolf, it was his father and his kid. There was this central relationship that was actually valued and which was vitally important to the main character. It gave stakes to the main character’s actions and a sense of their motivation and priorities. In Beta, you have no idea what Jordan actually wants. Does he actually love his fiance? Is he just looking for any way out of that relationship?

    Also, the character starts way too manic, it gives them nowhere to go. It makes them seem like they’re just a loon, as opposed to showing them slowly loosing it as the tension of the film ramps up.

    So you have a main character, who you don’t know what he wants, facing off against this shadowy sex ploy instigator, who you don’t know what they want, for stakes that are unclear.

    Mm.

  • Petit Maman

    Petite Maman is a quiet, gentle film about childhood understanding of grief and mortality. It is about Nelly, who is 8-years-old and has just lost her beloved grandmother. She is very close to her own Mum, Marion, and goes with her to her grandmother’s family home to help clear it out. While playing in the woods nearby, she encounters her own mother, Marion, at 8-years-old, and follows her home to see her grandmother as a young woman.

    The magic is very unobtrusive, and accepted readily without comment by Nelly, with a child’s practicality of seeing is believing. The 8-year-old Marion is worried because she is going into hospital soon for an operation, and there is a wordless, inarticulate anxiety for her. Nelly distracts her with play, and Marion comforts Nelly for her loss in the same way.

    There is a wealth of unspoken tenderness about the whole film. Of Nelly getting one last chance to fill in a crossword with her grandma, and tell her goodbye properly. Of Marion’s awareness of her own mortality and her mother’s. Of the closeness of mother and daughter playing out in a unique way with them both as kids.

    Quietly and understatedly beautiful.

  • Paris, 13th District

    Paris, 13th District is a film about a fuckboy and various women he meets. The characters feels very much like twenty-somethings, although the only time I can recall anyone mentioning their age it was in their early 30s. Anyway, you know that thing in your 20s where you’re flatmates and coworkers and friends and lovers, and frequently some combination of all four, that’s this film.

    Fuckboy Camille shows up on Emilie’s doorstep looking for a flat, and kinda meets his match. They share a passionate physical affair, before tapering off into resentful flatmates. Emilie is every bit up to Camille’s level of shitbaggery, trying to sabotage his new relationship with co-worker Stephanie. When he finally moves out, he flings in her face that she has obviously fallen in love with him, while he hasn’t with her. She tells him to go fuck himself.

    Meanwhile Nora tries to start back at uni as mature student. However the risque outfit she wears to a Fresher’s party has her mistaken for famous porn actress Amber Sweet (which just set off in my head the song from Repo! The Genetic Opera “Amber Sweet is addicted to the knife! Addicted to the knife? Addicted to the knife!”) and she is roundly bullied out of uni. To get some kind of closure on this trauma, she goes online and talks to the actual Amber Sweet, asking her how she copes with that level of constant abuse. This strikes off an unlikely friendship between them.

    As fuckboy Camille takes up a part-time job, he ends up hiring Nora. Her need to set firm professional boundaries, after everything she’s just been through, poses an intriguing challenge for him, and he begins to play a long-game for her affections. However, this means he isn’t about to get his dick wet anytime soon, so he calls up Emilie again, hoping to lift and lay her for his own needs in complete disregard for what he openly acknowledges is her love for him. Emilie, keen to prove she is over Camille and that he means nothing to her, meets him for a hook-up, and they begin to hang out together as friends.

    The last act just reeks of 20-something mess as all relationships progress at once, Camille manages to break through Nora’s exterior to become her lover, while simultaneously developing a deeper relationship with Emilie, and Nora’s online friendship with Amber Sweet has become a sincere romance.

    Shagfest of the emotionally incompetent. Entertaining.

  • Ali and Ava

    Ali and Ava is about ordinary people falling in love.

    To be honest, it’s actually weird to see a romance set in such realism. No one in this is a vampire, or a model, or a sexually twisted billionaire. In this movie, love looks like what it looks like for most of us, meeting someone, getting to know them, figuring out if it’s a good idea to go further. Instead of rising crescendoes as characters stand in the rain, all that emotion is contained within the same mundane constraints of needing to get yourself to work or keep the house tidy.

    Ava is a good example of this. She is a loving, family-orientated, middle-aged grandmother, who works with kids at the local school as a classroom assistant. Everyone knows someone like Ava, who just live for their kids. And yet, this woman, with her rings reading Mum, and the tattoo of a swallow across her breast, living in a council house with her teenage boy and his new baby, when have you ever seen a woman like that depicted on screen with anything other than contempt, or as a punchline? Much less as a romantic lead.

    Ava and Ali meet when he drives a friend’s kid to school, and offers to run Ava down the road at hometime when it’s pelting rain. It’s crazy how falling in love never really changes with age. They talk and make each other laugh, and share what music they like and mess about. Watching Ava and Ali sing to their tunes at the top of their voices in the livingroom, it just makes your heart swell to see love looking so familiar.

    The course of true love never did run smooth though, and for Ali and Ava this takes the form of family. Ali has not fully extricated himself practically or emotionally from his soon-to-be ex-wife. Ava has not really prepared her family for her moving on from the memory of their father. Both are keeping illusions going for their family that they are reticent to shatter. And it is whether they are willing to take the risk of disappointing those closest to them that proves the challenge for their nascent relationship.

    Lovely story celebrating the love and strength of ordinary folk.