A retired rapper comes to work at an arts centre in an underprivileged neighbourhood of Casablanca, teaching the kids to express themselves through rap and hip hop. They start out a bit rough, but as time goes on they learn and grow, and each kid does a rap about what’s going on in their lives, and at the end there is a concert, and the teacher sagely nods, seeing how far they’ve come. So pretty much by the numbers.
I forgot, going into this, how much anxiety it gives me to watch folk perform on stage, even in a fictional film. And learning to rap, it just made me go, “Eeeeee!” That being said, all the actors were really good, the dancing was ace, and the film hung together really well.
Based on the written confession of 19th century French killer, Bruno Reidal. The murder puzzled everyone as Bruno was a quiet, intelligent, devout seminary student.
After my hand-wringing over Nitram, I pretty much give Bruno Reidal a free pass on account of it being really old and everyone involved being dead. Even though, if you think about it, all the same arguments apply. And Bruno Reidal is way more explicit than anything in Nitram. Like, WAAAAYYYY more explicit.
Beautifully shot, the film has all the scrumptious detail of a period drama, despite its dreary subject. We follow Bruno’s narration of his own life story. Born as a peasant in rural France, he tends his family’s cattle in the fields. He shows academic promise and is sincerely religious, so he is chosen to go to seminary school on a scholarship. Despite starting off behind all the other boys, who are from well-to-do middle-class backgrounds, he studies night and day and goes on to win 7 prizes in his first year.
But there is something no one knows. Since the age of 6, Bruno has been fantasising about killing other boys. The thoughts are obsessional and pleasurable, and once he comes to sexual maturity, erotic. He is a sexual sadist, reaching climax without thought of sexual interaction, but only violence. It is this that has driven his piousness, as he prays daily for God to rid him of this desire, and his academic achievement, as industry distracts him.
Because he is so articulate, you see his mindset clearly. He is devoid of empathy for others. His attachments are very shallow, his inner life predominates. His biggest relationship is with God, and he desperately wants to be obedient to God and reach Paradise in the afterlife. He feels guilt at his inability to abstain from masturbation but not really at the grief he’s caused by his killing. He frequently thinks of suicide but is prevented by fear of damnation.
The crime itself is super explicit. Like, seriously. And there is an unnecessarily explicit child molestation scene elsewhere in the movie. The director clearly had no qualms.
It’s a really well put together drama, but I realise the subject matter won’t be for everyone.
Alma is this character who is larger than life. She’s a whirlwind of energy and passion. She seems like she’d be a good laugh on a night out, and also could start a fight in an empty house. A wee drama llama.
Her best friend is Margot. They are both aspiring actresses and go on auditions together. Alma brings Margot out her shell a bit more, and challenges her. Margot grounds Alma, and comforts her when the highs become the lows.
At the beginning of the film, Alma scores her first part as the lead in a play. Margot, who also auditioned for the part, gets cast as her understudy. Margot is genuinely happy for Alma, and Alma is delighted. It means they get to practice and rehearse with each other, hang out every day.
But that all goes to shit when Alma collapses on stage on day during rehearsals. She has cancer, and she’s kept how sick she is from Margot, from everyone. Margot is devastated, but Alma’s mum convinces her to keep rehearsing with Alma in the hospital. The only thing keeping Alma going is the idea she might be able to get out here someday and finish the run as the lead in the play.
The relationship between the two women change. Not so much because of Alma’s jealousy, she does feel a spike of it, but when she sees Margot is still on her side, she reconciles herself to the fact Margot will have to go on for at least the first few shows. No, the biggest change is the weight of guilt Margot feels. For being the lead in the play, for having some success in her career, for being able to laugh and relax over drinks with friends, for be healthy, for being alive. Every joy feels like a betrayal. Yet, she can’t let her spirits down, she has to be strong for Alma.
Throughout the film Alma is delusional about her capacity to return to the show, and Margot tries to protect her from some of her more unlikely ambitions, while at the same time, herself buying into the possibility of hope. These two women really love each other, with a fierceness that is only matched by the intensity of their grief.
A film about love and friendship, sisterhood and the fundamentals of life and death.
I picked this film to see because the synopsis described it as The Parent Trap directed by David Lynch. Man, is that right on the money.
A very Twin Peaks feel. Set in 1987, it’s one of the few films I’ve actually looked up to check wasn’t a new release of a restored film from the time, so realistic is it. There’s a sparsity to how it’s filled. Many scenes have no score, and the rooms of the house where most of the film is set are painted bright, block colours, with little furniture. If the scene only requires a table and two chairs, then the room only has a table and two chairs. It leaves the film feeling bald, but in a good way. Stripped of anything unnecessary to allow all focus on the character interaction.
It stars Alessandra and Ani Mesa as Marian and Vivian, twin sisters whose lives have went in very different directions. Vivian has settled down to suburban life in her hometown and married just the biggest dork. When the film starts, she hasn’t seen Marian for 6 years.
Marian tells her sister a rosy version of the truth about her life. She’s in a band, she goes on tour, she isn’t tied down. What she leaves out is that she had an abusive boyfriend, who successfully kept her isolated and terrified, and whom she mowed down in her car as she literally ran for her life.
Hiding out at Vivian’s seems like a safe option, and the majority of the film is this really enjoyable journey as they reconnect. Vivian’s insufferable dweeb of a husband insists Marian get a job to pay her own way if she’s to be a longterm house guest. But Marian hates it, and Vivian switches places with her, happy to let Marian take her daily chores to get out of the house. Vivian ends up smoking dope with the local teenagers while working at the ice cream shack and actually starts enjoying her life again.
This switching back and forth is fun, and the twins bond over their secret game. But the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads is Marian’s violent ex. Did he survive being struck by the car? And if so, is he looking for Marian for revenge?
La Civil is a drama about a Mexican woman who searches for her daughter after a kidnapping. These aren’t rich folks, Cielo and her husband Gustavo are just ordinary people. They live in an ordinary house and run a shop the size of a closet, just an over-the-counter thing. You would never dream of being a target for kidnappers with such modest means.
But this is Mexico, and this is a standard cartel business, lifting people and squeezing their loved ones for cash. You don’t have to be rich, they have the time and manpower to work everybody, since they are so unlikely to be caught. In Mexico, life is cheap, female life especially.
The film starts on an ordinary day with Cielo and her daughter chatting and putting on makeup before leaving the house. As Cielo is driving around town, a car pulls up in front of her, and a guy gets out and approaches her vehicle. He tells her that her daughter Laura has been taken and she needs to give them a vast sum of money for her return.
Cielo tries to get every penny she can, even though it still falls short of the amount demanded, but after she pays, Laura doesn’t come home. And this is where the nightmare that couldn’t possibly be worse, gets worse.
Because how to do you track down these people? They are just “them”. It’s not like the cartel leave a calling card saying, “You have just been extorted by cartel so-and-so, please contact us on this number for more information about your case”. Which cartel? What people? What are their names? Where are they?
In action movies it’s just a matter of shooting your way to the truth, but the reality is much more grim. Cielo jumps every time a body is reported found on the news. She turns up at funeral homes to see if she can identify any newfound corpses.
In one of the most brutal scenes of the film, the funeral director tells her that the police dump murder victims on her, because the country’s coroners are all full. Naturally, she doesn’t have an infinite capacity of storage either. So she leads Cielo back into this closet. It’s not refrigerated, bodies and just put wherever there is space, across the floor, whatever. In this stinking, tiny room, she tells her that many come in decapitated, but two girls’ heads were discovered that morning, and shows her two severed, discoloured heads in a bucket.
The horror that this is not just a film, this is based on real people’s stories, this is how real people live, it’s unimaginable.
In Mexico there is virtually nowhere to turn. The police are overwhelmed, indifferent and corrupt. The cartels hold everyone in fear, and the police make only sporadic and piecemeal dents in their arrests. In La Civil, Cielo manages to make inroads with an anti-cartel unit of soldiers, but even they torture and execute according to their own needs. There is no one to turn to, no rule of law effectively.
La Civil is powerful, unflinching, and heartbreaking. How anyone survives living through what this mother endures is a miracle. Excellent film.
Irina is a 22-year-old Romanian woman struggling to escape her violent and domineering family. She lives with her sister, aunt, uncle and cousins. They run a hotel as a family business, but they come off more like gangsters.
I’ll be honest, aside from the two main characters, I had a hell of a time figuring who everyone was in this film. There’s Irina, an intelligent lassie who wants to go to Bucharest to study, but is constantly being discouraged and having roadblocks put in her way by her family. Her smart mind is something they can use in the business, and she already does all the accounts. Liviu, her cousin, a complete brute that beats the shit out of her constantly. He pretends she’s worthless, but takes her everywhere because he is functionally illiterate. There is Sergiu, who I think is her older brother, he runs the family and is the only person with any self-possession. Sergiu can’t have kids so has commissioned Liviu to buy him one, on the down low, which is proving a difficult task. And there is her sister Viki, who can occasionally be just as bullying towards Irina, but underneath genuinely has a heartfelt relationship with her. She has a secret lover, and it transpires, is secretly pregnant, something she hides for fear that Sergiu will take her baby.
What anybody else’s story is, I have no idea. This is not one of those movies that explains what’s going on straight to camera. You’re kinda just dropped in it and have to figure out what’s going on. And there are so many people trying to keep the truth from each other and posturing, because the family is such a mess.
Throughout the film you’re asking yourself, will Irina escape? And if so, how? And will it require her to play this game of violence and domination?
It’s a gripping drama. It just can get a bit confusing at times, as obviously nobody reacts in a normal, communicative way, but spirals off into dysfunction.
Of all the films at this year’s GFF, this was the one I was most looking forward to. A South African horror, Good Madam focuses on multiple generations of women living in the house of the white employer of the grandmother. Despite being elderly, in failing health, and confined to her upstairs bedroom, Madam’s silent presence dominates the household.
Mavis has lived with Madam for the past 30 years, looking after her house and raising her kids. This work meant she had no time to raise her own daughter Tsidi, whom she sent to live with her own mother. She also had a son, who she gave to be adopted by Madam, so he could have a better standard of living.
Tsidi is pissed off. She’s argumentative to the point that people disengage with her, but she is almost always in the right, and knows exactly when she is being fucked over. When the film starts, the family’s great-grandmother has just died. Tsidi has nursed her through all her illness, living with her and looking after her, as she has been more of a mother to her than Mavis. Mavis doesn’t even get time off work to come to the funeral. When the rest of the extended family show up, Tsidi’s cousin lays claim to the great-grandmother’s house. Tsidi understandably kicks off, and to keep the peace a family elder tells them to share it. Tsidi is so affronted that this man who did nothing for his great-grandmother can walk in and claim the home Tsidi lives in, was raised in, has invested in and redesigned. Rather than ease everyone’s conscience by going along with the compromise, Tsidi storms out, taking her daughter Winnie, and the great-grandmother’s fur coat. A relative warns that leaving before they have concluded dividing the great-grandmother’s things is effectively leaving before completing the last of the funeral rites, and will cause her bad luck. Tsidi leaves regardless.
Mavis is not happy to see Tsidi and Winnie have come to stay, and keeps them crowded into her room, clearly a second rate servant’s room in an otherwise huge and comfortable house. Tsidi finds this ridiculous, considering there are multiple unoccupied rooms in the house, but Mavis points out it is Madam’s house, and Mavis’s room is the only one really at her disposal. Tsidi is incensed, how can this not be Mavis’s house if she’s lived her 30 years?
There is huge strain in the relationship between Tsidi and Mavis. Tsidi is still grieving, and all that pain and rage has been followed up quickly with her sudden and insulting dispossession, and being forced into an environment replete with the wounds of the past. She is angry that her mother chose to devote herself to Madam more than her own family. She is angry at the injustice she sees in the home. She is infuriated by Mavis’s unwillingness to stand up for her own interests. She hates going along with the numerous stifling rules of Madam’s house. She hates how Madam still seems to have all the power in the home, even now as a dozing invalid clinging to consciousness and life.
Then spooky stuff starts up. All is not well in Madam’s house. Mavis is insistent that everything is fine, but Tsidi is sure that malevolence is within their walls.
Sound and music are excellent, Madam literally has one line in this movie and is on screen for maybe a handful of minutes, but her presence is constantly felt through the sound work. Good and full characters with believable interpersonal relationships, spooky stuff has some creepy moments, tension is well built throughout. I feel like it could have done more to underline the exact nature of the peril towards the end, but otherwise was really pleased with it. Good exploration of themes of race and gender, labour and possession. Solid film.
Like my browser history, Benedetta is full of lesbian nuns. I know I’ve been down on the recent spate of lesbian period dramas, saying they were anemic and lacked fire. Well this one’s French, so it’s fun and sexy and silly and melodramatic. It’s great! Just total nonsense, like you want. Stow your moping, stow your ennui, give me shagging, fighting, and sooking the Virgin Mary’s titty. This film is so worth the ticket price. Treat yourself to a good night out.
The main character is Benedetta, a devoted convent nun, but not the boring kind. She seems to attract miracles showing she is favoured by God, like having a bird shit on guy she doesn’t like. When she meets Batholomea, this uncanny ability seems to go into overdrive.
Batholomea shows up doing peasant chic, and immediately catches Benedetta’s eye. She’s more worldly than her, and can tell instantly that there’s an attraction, and has no compunction about pursuing it. Benedetta is more hesitant. The turmoil of a lifetime of chastity mixes with her emerging sexual desire. Unsurprisingly, the mix of sex-starved women and oppressive religious atmosphere produces all sorts of crazy.
Benedetta starts to evidence the stigmata and replaces the consummate gem Charlotte Rampling as abbess. This gets her a private room for her and Batholomea’s assignations, but draws her into a world of church politics beyond her ken.
This film is great fun. Nowt po-faced about it. It revels in its telenovela ludicrousness. It’s hard to know what’s the best part – Jesus riding in on a white horse and beheading cunts like it’s Game of Thrones; Charlotte Rampling getting spritzed with breast milk; the Goodbye Horses crucifixion moment; or the Virgin Mary dildo.
It’s definitely the Virgin Mary dildo.
This has to be the only film where you can say the main character could have been saved by fisting.
Inu-Oh is an anime film about a blind biwa player and a dancing bogle, who invent rock and roll in medieval Japan.
600 years ago, two shoguns are fighting to prove they are the legitimate leader. They have a huge battle at sea and the losing side are soundly thumped. The royal sword is lost to the waves though. Tomona and his father are divers who get hired to retrieve it. However a curse hangs over all the wreckage. When Tomona’s father unsheathes the sword, its brilliance blinds Tomona, and kills his father.
Tomona learns to survive by becoming a biwa player. He tells stories, singing and playing for the aristocracy and commoners. One day he runs into Inu-Oh.
Inu-Oh was subject to a curse at birth that left him hideously deformed. And I don’t mean, a bit uneven in the face – when we first meet him he is essentially a ball with two hoofs and a hand. He has a mask that permanently covers his face, and has eye holes in odd places. But Inu-oh isn’t melancholy, he’s always upbeat and mischievous. He grows up around the dance studio for the shogun’s official Noh performers. There, a fanatic troupe leader drills the dancers mercilessly. Inu-Oh loves dance and copies all their moves.
Tomona helps Inu-Oh with his curse by telling him to listen to the spirits, and they realise he is surrounded by the souls of the defeated fleet. Tomona sings their stories, while Inu-Oh dances and with every success, the curse is lifted from a part of Inu-Oh’s body.
Together they form their own troupe which is the greatest music sensation the land has ever seen. Taking from The Who, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, among numerous others, their performances incorporate gymnastics, acrobatics, pyrotechnics, light shows, breakdancing, and all the spectacles of modern concerts.
