Why Don't You Just Die!

Papa, Sdokhni | Russia | 2018 | Directed by Kirill Sokolov

Logline: A petty thief visits his girlfriend’s apartment to confront her father, only to find himself at the violent end of a very messy situation. 

Costing the equivalent of around a million Australian dollars this tale of crime and punishment in a tiny Russian apartment is the most tight-knit fun I’ve had in the hands of a bunch of losers all year. You’ll laugh, you’ll wince, you’ll chortle, you’ll grimace, but you’ll come out smiling. Why Don’t You Just Die! is as hilarious and over the top as the title suggests. 

Young Matvey (Alexsandr Kuznetsov) is dead set on bashing the living daylights out of Andrey (Vitaliy Khaev). Not just because the big man’s daughter, Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde), claims her father has been raping her every day since she was twelve, but also because she’s told him he has a very large stash of money in the apartment. Matvey has now taken it upon himself to deliver justice, and steal the cash. But then Andrey reveals he’s a crafty and corrupt police detective, and he’s none too happy with the young thug screwing his daughter. 

All hell breaks loose in the cramped family abode as lover and father go head to head. Wife and mother, Tasha (Elena Shevchenko), watches on with a bemused expression. Soon there is much collateral damage to the apartment, and Matvey has not achieved what he arrived to do. Olya and Andrey’s colleague Yevgenich (Mikhail Gorevoy) have yet to arrive, to thicken the plot, and spill more blood. 

Writer and director Sokolov’s debut feature seemingly channels the camera and editing virtuoso style of Sam Riami and Luc Besson. It’s an insane comedy of mayhem, an adult cartoon. The tone is pitch black like the Sea, the violence on the ultra-tip, full of that seriously painful-to-watch stuff like dislocated fingers, and heads being smashed against the corners of shelves. Why is it always those small injuries that often cause the biggest reactions in the audience? 

This is like a stage play on steroids. The only time the action steps outside of the apartment is a flashback in Matvey’s even smaller flat where Olya spills her traumatic beans, and at the movie’s very beginning and end, in the apartment’s elevator landing. But Sokolov’s mise-en-scene is brilliantly structured, like a choreographed danse macabre. Adding cream to this sweet brutal dessert are the performances, all are excellent, but especially the three k’s: Kuznetsov, Khaev, and Kregzhde. 

Why Don’t You Just Die! (the original Russian title translates as “Dad, die”) is perfect late night viewing with a couple of vodka and soda’s under the belt, or after you’ve knocked back a bunch of Pilsner Urquells with some mates. It swings hard and fast like a baseball bat, then chomps down, severing the tongue after it’s lodged in the cheek. Vulgar and stylish in equal measure, it’s what they call a killer comedy. 

The Wind

US | 2018 | Directed by Emma Tammi

Logline: On a desolate Western frontier prairie a woman is forced to deal with isolation and an increasing sense of fear as the landscape encroaches like a darkness. 

Having made a couple of documentaries Emma Tammi has delivered her first feature. From an original screenplay by Teresa Sutherland, The Wind tells the tale of Lizzy Macklin (Caitlin Gerard), an 1800s plains-woman, married to Isaac (Ashley Zukerman), who frequently leaves her alone in their isolated cabin. She is suffering from post-natal depression following a stillborn baby. The arrival of neighbours, another cabin visible a mile away, initially keeps her occupied, as Emma and Gideon Harper (Julia Golden Telles and Dylan McTee), are expecting also. 

Weathered in a rich atmosphere, laden with a creeping sense of doom, The Wind smoulders with supernatural intent, yet never allows its audience to feel too comfortable with what is reality and what might be going on inside poor Lizzy’s fragile mind. And just what happened to Emma? In the opening scene she is being buried in an open casket, half her head is missing, due to some horrific  injury. No doubt a shotgun blast. Lizzy has had to cut the stillborn baby from Emma’s belly, and it’s buried along with her mother. It’s a macabre opening to an eerie movie filled with foreboding. 

Utilising a non-linear narrative, flashing back and forth - in a way reflecting Lizzy’s flighty and fickle nature - The Wind focuses on her increasingly tenuous grip on reality. There is something out there, and it’s not just the hungry wolves. A pamphlet Emma was harbouring illustrates the many demons of the prairie, folk lore that seemingly conjures many different forms of ill will and paranoia. “I don’t expect God has much business out here,” Lizzy tells the traveling reverend (Miles Anderson). He is playing his cards close to his cloth, his shadow against the cabin wall suggests he might not be all he appears to be. 

Tammi’s assured as a feature director, with beautifully composed “classic” Western imagery, and terrific old school horror touches - those shadows on the wall - while she elicits fantastic performances, especially Caitlin Gerard. I find it so refreshing to see an indie Western directed by a woman - and a kind that isn’t made too often - with excellent actors I’m not familiar with at all. What’s more the casting is spot on, as they all possess that classic “Western” look of beauty (rugged, handsome, wistful, forlorn). They blend with their surroundings in an effortless way. 

Adding serious punch to the movie is Ben Lovatt’s score, full of melancholy and menace in equal measure. Westerns are often weighed down by overt orchestration. Tammi skilfully uses Lovatt’s music to punctuate the narrative, giving breath and poise, then hammering down with insidious dread. And, of course, the prairie wind never seems to stop, whispering, beckoning, stealing, consuming. 

The Wind deserves a big screen viewing - hopefully local distributors Umbrella Entertainment gives it a theatrical release following its Sydney Film Festival screenings - it’s definitely one of the more original and memorable (hybrid) genre offerings so far this year. 

The Wind screens at the 66th Sydney Film Festival, Wednesday 12th June, 8.30pm (Event Cinema 9).

In The Realm Of The Senses

Ai No Corrida | Japan/France | 1976 | Directed by Nagisa Oshima

Logline: After a master begins a torrid affair with one of his servants, she becomes morbidly obsessed with their sexual relationship. 

Still one of the most controversial “mainstream” movies ever made, In The Realm Of The Senses is a powerful and disturbing tale of sexual obsession set in a small Japanese village in 1936. It was inspired by a true, modern day incident of a deranged woman who was found wandering the streets with her lover’s severed penis in her handbag.

Kichizo Ishida (Tatsuya Fuji) is married to Toku (Aoi Nakajima). He has several servants, but a new maid, Sada Abe (Eiko Matsudo) catches his eye. She is mischievous and highly-strung and she is equally attracted to Kichizo-san. Before you can say “bullfight of love” (the literal English translation of the Japanese title) they have embarked on a torrid affair. But what unfurls as a passionate display of forbidden lust quickly turns into obsessive behaviour, as Sada exhibits an unruly fixation on Kichizo’s penis. 

She succumbs to nymphomania, and he can barely keep up with her sexual demands. Her strangely intense desire excites him and he encourages her. The other maids are forced to turn a blind eye. But when Kichizo indulges in sex with his wife, Sada becomes jealous and threatens to kill her master. Kichizo takes it all in his stride, but he knows Sada provides him with a level of passion that surpasses anything, so he surrenders to her carnal pleas. 

Sada’s obsession can only lead to an act of extreme possession, and this is fueled by Kichizo’s own journey from dominance to subservience. In order to be sublimely happy, all joy must be consumed. Kichizo allows her to bind his hands, she tightens the handkerchief around his throat, feels him deep and rigid within her, her desire surging beyond control… 

Sexual obsession had never been portrayed with such a ferocious authenticity. It was the first major motion picture outside of the hardcore porn industry to feature actual sex between the actors: vaginal penetration, fellatio, and ejaculation. In contemporary mainstream cinema unsimulated sexual activity has been embraced (or accepted, at least), but in 1976 this was unheard of. The movie was banned in many countries for a long time, including Japan. Even after it was filmed the undeveloped footage had to be snuck out of the country to France (who helped finance the movie) due to Japan’s strict censorship laws. 

Due to the movie’s graphic intensity, and the overall themes of pleasure and pain, sex and death, and the abuse of power, the movie maintains the power to shock, certainly to confront the viewer, and it exists in numerous versions. Still censored in a couple of scenes, both involving sexual violation; one scene where Sado interferes with a young boy, and another where several of the maids assault another maid with a wooden dildo. 

The whole movie plays as a kind of chamber piece of adult theatre. The lead performances, brave and unfettered, are excellent. The style is very precise, the atmosphere claustrophobic, and there are parts where the narrative becomes sticky in a mire of sexual repetition. Ultimately it’s a most curious mélange of eroticism and repulsion, and one that demands your attention.

In The Realm Of The Senses screens at the 66th Sydney Film Festival as part of the “All Night Cine-Love In”, Saturday 8th June at Dendy Newtown, five minutes after midnight. It is preceded by Eraserhead (10pm), and followed by O Lucky Man (2am) and Female Trouble (5.10am).

Eraserhead

US | 1977 | Directed by David Lynch

Logline: In a surreal landscape an angst-ridden man tries in vain to keep his family and his sanity together. 

From the tenebrous squelch and stickiness that throbs and flows between the psychological and the physiological, is the inner cosmic debris that fills the realm of Eraserhead. To David Lynch, its auteur, it is whatever you make of it, for he is not prepared to offer anything more than “A dream of dark and troubling things”. So then, let Eraserhead be Eraserhead is Eraserhead was Eraserhead.

I first saw this inexplicable excursion into weirdness in the mid-80s, late at night on British television with my father when I was barely sixteen. It was a small screen in a small room that only exacerbated the movie’s claustrophobic atmosphere. The movie lingered in my mind like a dank mould, but one with curious spores. It grew into a morbid fascination; the mood and tone, the sounds and imagery, and The Man in the Planet; I loved those huge gears, that ominous window, his horribly scarred face, his enigmatic role in the giant stormy scheme of things … and of course, Henry’s baby. That hideous thing gave me the pleasure of nightmares. 

Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) lives within an industrial wasteland. Perpetually depressed, suicidal even, he lusts after The Beautiful Girl Across the Hall (Judith Roberts), who tells him he’s been invited to dinner with Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) and her parents, Mr. X (Allen Jospeh) and Mrs. X (Jeanne Bates). This is the woman he had sex with. Or was that in his tortured mind? At dinner Mary’s parents serve up tiny artificial chickens in the midst of awkward conversation, and they chastise Henry for his lack of duty. 

Back in their cramped apartment Henry and Mary deliberate over responsibility for their newborn mutant baby, that cries incessantly. Henry would prefer to visit the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near) rather than feed the ghastly offspring. Mary leaves him, and in his despair he dreams of his head being drilled for use on the end of pencils. He sees The Beautiful Girl Across the Hall being intimate with Mr. Roundheels (Jack Walsh), and the baby cackles at Henry, seemingly laughing at his utterly pathetic existence. 

David Lynch made Eraserhead in the same way Peter Jackson made Bad Taste, over a period of four or so years. Like Jackson, Lynch handled many of the key roles, writing/directing/co-producing/production design/art direction/editing/original music. Its original title was Gardenback. In Serbia it is called Chapter for the Removal, in Italy it is The Mind That Erases, and in France it became known as Labyrinth Man.

The monochromatic cinematography, courtesy of original lensman Herb Cardwell and his replacement Frederick Elmes, is brilliant and menacing, as is the sound design, courtesy of Alan R. Splet (and Lynch). But most memorable is the animatronic effect of the mutant baby. To this day Lynch refuses to explain how he achieved it, although rumours persist that it was an embalmed calf! The creation is an astonishing manifestation of everything infantile, domestic and familial, yet shockingly, disturbingly alien.

With a smirk Lynch slyly describes Eraserhead as his “most spiritual movie”. Indeed it is a wildly existential movie that tackles metaphysics with abstract thought, it wrestles sexuality with introversion, wrangles loneliness and despair with a deep-rooted freaky control. It has a fascination with orifices; the camera is forever entering and exiting holes, like some kind of descent into a sexual phantasmagoria. Some of these entrances and exits are metaphors, while others are purely narrative tunnels.

Few films are able to capture the elusiveness of oneirodynia (or nightmare logic, if you will) with such a distinct and wholly original style; a mise-en-scene that threatens to consume itself, a narrative arc that coils and threshes with ferocity and tranquility in equal measure. 

It was after viewing the movie during its initial “midnight movie” circuit that Mel Brooks gave Lynch the job of directing The Elephant Man, while Stanley Kubrick and John Waters were two of the movie’s earliest high-profile champions. 

With Eraserhead Lynch had tapped into the oiliest reserves of his inner primordial hell and forged a magnificent monster … but not to worry, because in Heaven everything will be fine. 

Eraserhead screens as part of the 66th Sydney Film Festival’s “All Night Cine-Love In, Saturday 8th June, 10pm, Dendy Newtown. Followed by In The Realm Of The Senses (12.05am), O Lucky Man (2am), and Female Trouble (5.10am).

Apollo 11

US | 2018 | Directed by Todd Douglas Miller

Logline: Documentary traces the first manned mission to the moon over its eight-day return journey in July 1969. 

A tour-de-force of editing that captures a spectacular trajectory like nothing before or since; the Apollo 11 flight mission celebrates fifty years and in many ways its journey is even more astonishing now than it was then. 

Todd Miller was given unprecedented access to around 11,000 hours of previously unreleased NASA materials, from 70mm, 35mm, 16mm, and videotape, including audiotapes of all the commentary and announcements from the event. America’s National Archives provided surrounding radio transmissions and additional media footage. By using only the recordings from that eight-day period, with the exception of some graphics to illustrate technical stats, such as time, velocity, and distance, and not using any actors/recreations or contemporary narration, Miller has produced a truly startling portrait, not only a stark and emotional celebration of the event, but a testament to the power of cinema verité. 

Where as Damien Chazelle’s recent First Man biopic focuses on the entire career of astronaut Neil Armstrong leading up to and including the Apollo 11 mission, and takes two-and-a-half hours to do so, Miller is a succinct 90 minutes covering just the eight day mission, beginning with the awesome Saturn V rocket being slowly maneuvered toward its launch pad position and ending with part of John F. Kennedy’s famous speech about space exploration from 1961 as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins enter a 21-day regulatory quarantine having returned from the moon. 

We all know how it transpired, the words of Armstrong as he touched down on the lunar surface, “This is one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind”, are ingrained, especially for baby boomers and gen-x. Despite all this knowledge, the tension and excitement are genuinely palpable, as the mission control countdown approaches ignition, and there is even added suspense – I won’t spoil it – before lift off (was this ever revealed before?!)

The entire journey illustrates extraordinary details. One forgets just how complicated and awe-inspiring the logistics were in getting these men to the moon, the landing, the Eagle leaving the moon and docking again with Colombia, the spin around the moon to get the necessary speed up for the return home. Some of the stats boggle the mind: the Saturn V was the largest and heaviest rocket to ever travel into low Earth orbit, at lift off it produced 7.5 million pounds of thrust, and the command module reached a speed of nearly 25,000 miles per hour on re-entry. 

Seriously, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more thrilling movie this year. That Miller has made a documentary that we all know the ending of, yet operates and resonates more effectively than most dramas or thrillers is a brilliant achievement. Much of this is due to the judicious and expert editing, but also the punctuation of Matt Morton’s fantastic electronic and percussive score. In an inspired decision he only used instruments available in 1969. 

I can’t recommend Apollo 11 highly enough. One can’t deny the national pride Americans deservingly own, but the dodo expands beyond that in a beautiful way. If you’re a space nut this is essential viewing. If you’re one of the conspiracy theorists that believe the man landing was a hoax, this doco will blow your small little mind. Actually, and the irony isn’t lost on me, the restoration quality of the archival materials is so good the film looks like a Stanley Kubrick movie with his pristine, high production values, or a David Fincher movie for a contemporary comparison. 

Quite simply, Apollo 11 is the perfect time capsule, the ultimate date stamp, and a very strong contender for my favourite film of the year. 

Apollo 11 screens as part of the 66th Sydney Film Festival, Monday 10th June, 9.30pm (State), Saturday 15th June, 2pm (Casula), and Sunday 16th June, 1.45pm (HEQ15).

Apollo 11 will release in Australian cinemas nationally on July 18, 2019.

Thunder Road

US | 2018 | Directed Jim Cummings

Logline: A police officer begins to have a nervous breakdown as he struggles to deal with this mother’s death, a divorce and custody battle for his young daughter. 

Expanding on his 2016 multi-award-winning short, writer/director and star Jim Cummings has delivered what is very likely to be in my top three favourite movies of the year. Yup, it’s April, and I’m calling it. Thunder Road is a darkened comedy-drama, what we call a tragi-comedy. With a tour-de-force performance from Cummings, it’s a superb vehicle for his talents as a writer and actor. 

The movie opens with Austin, Texas police officer Jim Arnaud (Cummings) at the funeral service for his mother, attempting a heartfelt eulogy. It is painfully obvious he is struggling, both emotionally and psychologically. It’s a single take, as the camera slowly dollies down the church centre aisle, with Jim recollecting, apologising, recollecting, apologising, wavering between abject grief and tempered frustration. His endeavour to perform a dance piece is an absurd display, since the CD player won’t work. The mother of his separated wife steps in to calm him down. 

That prologue formed the basis of the short film.

The feature continues with Jim’s trials and tribulations, his plight through personal mourning and public mistake. His work performance is at risk, and his daughter, Crystal (Kendall Farr) is suffering too. Then wife Ros (Jocelyn DeBoer) files for divorce, and Jim is a crumpled heap, clutching at straws, bursting into tears at the slightest provocation. Can he pull himself together? He desperately wants to. 

Let’s hope he sorts his shit out. For everyone’s sake. But there’ll be many tears before bedtime. 

Jim Cummings seems to have sprung out of nowhere, but it turns out, apart from a number of shorts he’s directed over the years, he’s had his fingers in a few creative pies, and also did a stint as a visual affects production assistant for ILM on Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Thunder Road is his second feature (he made another comedy back in 2010) and I am very impressed with this man’s take on life’s wee ironies, the delicacies of maintaining relationships, his insightful window into the soul. Jim Arnaud is one of the most complex and rewarding characters I’ve seen in a long while; awkward and at times pathetic, but tenacious, compassionate, and utterly endearing.

The direction is not cinematic in any standout way, in fact, much of the time the movie feels like a television adaptation of a play; there are few locations and just a clutch of main roles. Nican Robinson is terrific as Jim’s police buddy Nate, as is Chelsea Edmundson as Jim’s sister, and Macon Blair makes a short appearance as Crystal’s school teacher in a wonderfully funny scene.  But Cummings keeps the narrative brisk, and his central performance - he’s in almost every scene - is one to behold, especially with his monologues. 

Thunder Road (its title is taken from the Bruce Springsteen song, which is used in the short) is one of the year’s true delights, essential viewing for anyone who has struggled with grief, struggled with the role of parent and provider, struggled with recognition, struggled with connection to those they love, and those they might have lost. Struggled with always having to put on the happy face. Thunder Road will provide the perfect emotional release. 

Feel free to laugh out loud.

“Oh oh oh oh, Thunder Road

Sit tight, take hold, Thunder Road …”

Destroyer

US | 2018 | Directed by Karyn Kasama

Logline: A troubled police detective reconnects with people from an old and unfinished undercover assignment in order to make peace with herself. 

After several years of television work Kasama returns with her follow up feature to The Invitation with a terrific crime thriller featuring Nicole Kidman in the utterly deglamorised role of a disheveled, barely functioning law enforcer on the trail of the scumbag that slipped through her fingers. Destroyer is a hard road to redemption.

Erin Bell (Kidman) is an LAPD detective still shell-shocked from events ten years earlier, when, as an undercover with a gang in the Cali desert, her assigned job went tragically pear-shaped. Now, with a John Doe sprawled in the floodway, Bell has to trace her way back through the remaining figures involved, and dig into her own damaged history, including attempting to re-connect with her estranged teenage daughter, Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn).

Phil Hay and Matt Mandredi’s screenplay weaves in and out of the present and the past creating a kind of narrative jigsaw. It’s a slow burner, like many of the notable neo-noirs. The issues I had with character motivation, especially two of Bell’s most crucial decisions, were outweighed by Kasama’s attention to mood and performance. Kidman has delivered better work, most notably in the series Big Little Lies, but this is still a solid role, and she rises to the occasion. 

Along with Pettyjohn, Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany, and Scoot McNairy all provide excellent support. If there’s one thing Kasama achieves brilliantly, it’s casting. She has Scorsese’s Midas touch. 

Julie Kirkwood, who provided Oz Perkins with beautiful cinematography for February and I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House, gives the City of Angels and its immediate surrounds the kind of desolate, sunburned glow that mirrors the protagonist’s jaded, desperate soul. From the get go it’s obvious this story isn’t going to pan out so well for Bell. The movie’s title spells things out fairly clearly.

Theodore Shapiro’s score pulsates with intent; it’s a superb accompaniment to Bell’s quest, punctuating her attack and defense with dramatic intensity. 

I’m reminded of one of my very favourite neo-noirs, Romeo Is Bleeding, with Gary Oldman in a role not entirely dissimilar to Kidman’s. They are wounded animals clutching on the present by way of the past, destined to become prey to their own guilt and misfortune. We watch with morbid curiosity as they spiral downward. This is what makes noir so damn special, especially when it’s directed so well. 

Revenge

France/Belgium | 2017 | Directed Coralie Fargeat

Logline: A young woman, on a tryst with a married man on a hunting weekend, is raped by one of his colleagues and left for dead, but soon the hunters become the hunted. 

Gotta love the French for pushing the envelope when it comes to modern horror, time and time again they deliver the hardgore goods, and Fargeat’s debut feature is no exception. In what appears on the glossy surface as your standard rape-revenge flick, it becomes an elevated exploitation flick, if such a thing can exist. Revenge kicks tight ass into the middle of next week.

Richard (Kevin Janssens) is a wealthy, good-looking CEO, on a weekend hunting trip, to let off the proverbial corporate steam. He’s a married man (as phone calls to his wife back home reveal), but he’s arrived by chopper to the lush desert pad with his young mistress, Jen (Matilda Lutz). They enjoy a bit of nooky, and Jen awakens later and is surprised by the arrival of his two hunting pals, Stan (Vincent Colombe) Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchéde) and who’ve turned up a day early. 

Later the four of them get juiced by the pool and turn the music up, and Jen parades around. Everything seems fine and dandy. But when Richard leaves the property on an errand, Stan decides to make sleazy moves on Jen, whilst Dimitri nurses a hangover. Things go from bad to worse. Oh yes, there’ll be tears before the chopper arrives, there’ll be hell to pay. 

All the tropes are in place, the remote, desolate location (which is never named, but one assumes it’s somewhere deep in the Nevada Desert), the gorgeous girl whose charming demeanour is abused, the crass and ugly assailants, the two-faced rescuer, the escape, the pursuit, the degradation, the desperation, the sweat-soaked rise to the challenge, and the oh-so cold serve of revenge.  

Fargeat has a sensational eye, and the movie’s mis-en-scene is laden with symbolic imagery, most notably the phoenix, the bird that rises from the ashes. Robrecht Heyvaert’s cinematography, shot in vivid colour, the heat undulating off the screen in waves, the sweat running down in rivulets, is stunning. Curious to note that the movie was shot on 35mm, a consciously artistic choice these days, as most movies, especially ones of this stock, would be shot with digital cameras.

Of special note is Laetitia Quillery’s terrific special effects makeup work, most notably in the movie’s second half, with a glass injury to the sole of the foot that will make even the most hardened gorehound grimace. Apparently there was so much blood spilled - just wait ’til the movie’s last fifteen minutes! - that the sfx crew kept running out of fake blood. I must point out though, that you need to suspend all belief going into this movie, as there is a major plot point at the half hour point that will have most viewers rolling their eyes. You need to push that reservation aside. In fact, there are several more along the way, but hey, this movie is actually a very, very dark comedy. So pitch black, it demands its own Pantone entry. 

So, absurdities aside, Revenge is a sensational b-movie given stellar treatment; the performances, especially Lutz and Janssens, are cracking. Lutz is an Italian ex-pat, but she oozes Californian sex appeal, whilst Jannsens has those chiseled matinee looks that belies his matter-of-fact murderousness. What’s also worth noting, Lutz has no dialogue past the half-hour mark, relying purely on body language and facial expression, and a scene within a cave, involving DIY surgery and a peyote-fuelled nightmare is a highlight. 

Yes, it’s a violent movie for those unused to it (although unusually, and notably, for a rape-revenge flick it doesn’t actually show the rape on-screen), and the last fifteen minutes are unlike anything you’ve likely seen in a mainstream horror movie, elevating Revenge into the pantheon of contemporary cult classics. With Robin Coudert’s synth-soaked score adding further seductive fuel to the fire, voila! You have a graphic hardbody horror worth hooting about. 

Revenge screens as part of the Alliance Française French Film Festival in Australia, March - April 2019.

Visit here for screening venues, dates, and times. 

Vox Lux

US | 2018 | Directed by Brady Corbet

Logline: Follows the career trajectory of a pop star and her immediate entourage from her discovery into troubled adulthood. 

At the end of the last millennium a disturbed school student drives along a lonely road, parks his van, and walks through the cold night to his final destination. 

Young Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) and her older sister Ellie (Stacy Martin) are in the classroom where the student gunman arrives, glass-eyed and determined. He guns down the teacher. Celeste tries to reason with him. She is shot in the neck, but survives. 

In the aftermath Celeste and her sister write and perform a song that becomes a surprise national anthem of hope and solidarity. Celeste is taken under the wing of an opportunistic, but savvy manager (Jude Law), who teams her with a hot shot producer, and before you can say YOLO FOMO Celeste is making her first record and on her way to international fame, with all its trials and tribulations, joys and trappings.

Jump to the present day, and Celeste (Natalie Portman) is under the thumb of pop pressure, with a tour at her doorstep, a petulant teenage daughter, Albertine (Cassidy, again), her faithful manager easing her through the gauntlet as terrorist activity hits the media, using her imagery as their disguise. 

But the show must go on. 

For his second feature actor-turned-director Corbet delivers an enigmatic, curious fictional biopic that works like an adaptation of a non-existent novel. Based on a story written by Corbet and collaborator Mona Fastvold (who co-wrote his debut feature) it is a compelling, intriguing tale of struggle and perseverance, of human frailty, and familial bonds. The relationships Celeste has with her sister and her daughter are wonderfully nuanced. Also important, though peripheral, is Celeste’s relationship with her manager, which is expressed perfectly in scenes when Celeste is teenager and adult. 

The score is by UK veteran Scott Walker, himself a pop star from the 60s, whilst the songs that are Celeste’s are written by Australian legend Sia. It’s interesting to note that Portman, Law, and Sia also served as executive producers, no doubt to ensure Corbet would be able to hold on to his vision, and it’s a bold and distinct one. 

The core cast are exceptional, Portman delivering (another) career performance, while Cassidy holds her own. Law is always wonderful when he’s given character work. He’s an actor with leading man looks and presence, but he’s much stronger when given key support work, or plays a less glamorous role. Martin, as the sister in the shadow, is solid, as is Jennifer Ehle in the support role of publicist, while Christopher Abbott pops up in one scene as a befuddled music journalist. 

Vox Lux has cult favourite written all over it, from its intense melodrama, ramblings, and wayward angst, through to its extended concert performance at movie’s end, its lingered in my head for the past couple of weeks, sure to be one of my faves for the year. An inspiring, uplifting movie that cleverly transcends the melancholy and tragedy its tied to. I look forward to more stories and style from Corbet. 

Arctic

Iceland | 2018 | Directed by Joe Penna

Logline: Stranded in the Arctic after a plane crash a man is forced to embark on a dangerous trek across the inhospitable landscape in search of rescue. 

After a series of short films and television episodes ex-pat Brazilian writer/director Joe Penna turns his hand to the classic survival genre where a resourceful man is pitted against the ruthless natural elements and has hope tugged and whipped out of him. It might not sound much like an entertaining night at the movies, but Penna delivers a thoroughly gripping exercise in narrative efficiency. 

The always brilliant Mad Mikkelsen plays Overgård, an Arctic pilot whose plane has crashed on the tundra. He is seen tending to his makeshift fishing holes and windup radio beacon at the start of the movie. It appears he’s been stranded for several days already, maybe longer, making use of the limited tools and supplies he has. He has to ration the fish he catches, and maintains a tight routine, via his watch alarm, activating the radio beacon and checking his bait line. There’s pretty little else to do. Except sleep, and thankfully the plane’s fuselage provides the essential shelter. And hope. Hope looms large.

A distant polar bear catches Overgård’s scent, but thankfully isn’t interested, since the creature has probably just eaten. Whew. But it’s only a matter of time before he and the polar bear will encounter closer quarters. Hopefully the man will be rescued before then. Surely. Yes, a helicopter swings by, but the wind gusts are too strong for the whirlybird to land. Overgård watches aghast …

With little-to-no dialogue, and an excellent ambient score from Joseph Trapanese, Penna delivers a superb vehicle for Mikkelsen. It reminds me of another recent survival flick, All is Lost with Robert Redford struggling alone on a damaged yacht on the open sea. Both excel with a pared-back narrative, with just the bare mechanics of weathered emotion and psychological resilience and the wrath of nature on display. 

Survival movies are like horror movies for realists. A nightmare scenario made absolutely palpable. If the production values, direction, and acting are top notch, a sense of authenticity is heightened, and the movie will pack true visceral thrills. Unlike many low-budget exploitation-style survival movies, like the ones popular in the 70s, Arctic makes the viewer feel like they are watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary. 

Made on a micro-budget (by Hollywood standards) Penna shot the movie over 19 days in Iceland, and Mikkelsen regarded it as the most difficult experience of his career. Although it’s not the first time he has commanded a picture with almost no dialogue set entirely outside, as he played a Viking warrior in Nicolas Winding Refn’s masterful Valhalla Rising. 

Arctic is a mostly hushed and desolate journey, with the exception of a truly hair-raising encounter with a hungry polar bear - but we knew that was coming. Of course, Overgård’s plight is brutal, there is no denying that, just as any arduous trek across an unforgiving landscape would be, and Overgård has his work cut out for him, as he valiantly attempts to save not just his own life. It becomes the classic scenario of will he make it, or will he succumb? Penna pulls all the right strings at the right time, and delivers one of the best examples of the genre, and my first favourite for the year.

[REC] & [REC] 2

Spain | 2007/2009 | Directed by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza

Logline: A reporter, numerous firemen and tactical police, a doctor, and local residents, are quarantined within an apartment block that has been infected with a diabolical virus. 

Plucky young television presenter Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo (he’s never seen and no one is credited to playing the character) are doing a piece on the night-shift at a Barcelona fire station for the programme “While You’re Asleep” and hoping for a little emergency action to spice things up. 

Sure enough, in the wee hours they’re off to rescue an old woman trapped in her apartment. When they get to the building police are already there. Inside the woman’s apartment they discover she’s covered in blood, deranged and dangerous. In fact, she’s in a raging, ravenous fit, and she chomps down on the neck of one of the police officers. 

Everyone retreats, but not before one of the firemen gets bitten also. It soon becomes apparent they have been infected with something. Before anyone can be evacuated the entire building is sealed off and quarantined. For the remainder of the movie Angela and the surviving others must navigate the building, floor by floor, trying desperately not to be bitten by the infected. 

The tension and suspense is ratcheted right up after Angela and Pablo break into the penthouse apartment, which had supposedly been abandoned by the owner. Inside they find the walls plastered with revelatory newspaper clippings. It seems they’ve stumbled onto a can of real nasty worms.

The Blair Witch Project put the found footage sub-genre back on the map, but it was another eight years before the format really took off, and [REC] was the movie to do it. Plot mechanics pared back so vehemently one wonders if the original treatment ran longer than a paragraph. Balagueró and Plaza tapped into a throbbing jugular, pulsing with the tainted blood of the good old-fashioned things-that-g0-bump-in-the-night and the viral volatility of 28 Days Later, harnessed in real time. 

[REC] kicks serious butt, especially the second half. Manuela Velasco holds fort like a champion, the support cast are solid, and what an ending!

But it ain’t over ‘til the thin lady screams. [REC] 2 continues the rabid urban nightmare as members of the GEO (a Police Tactical Unit) team accompany a medical expert, Dr. Owen (Jonathon Mellor), into the quarantined apartment building in a vain effort to get a blood sample from the young girl, Medeiros, who was the very first infected. The doctor believes an antidote can be created. But first they must find her. 

To complicate matters, three mischievous teenagers; Ori (Alex Batlloir), Tito (Pau Poch), and a hesitant girl, Mire (Andrea Ros) decide to follow a fireman and a distraught husband/father down a manhole and up inside the infected building. The manhole is welded shut. 

I like to call the sequel [REC] Part 2 as chronologically it carries on directlyfrom the first movie (like Hostel: Part II and with that in mind Halloween II should’ve been Halloween Part II, but I digress...) [REC] 2 is the easily one of the best horror sequels. Two years after the first movie Balagueró and Plazareturn with a vengeance, maintaining the same intense level of chaos and hysteria, but upping the ante, and twisting the supernatural origins with a heinous screw, culminating in a brilliant denouement (forget the third and fourth installments in the series, it starts and ends here).

There’s not an awful lot of plot going on, it’s about the immediacy of the situation and the overall visceral experience, as seen and heard through the video recording taken by TV cameraman Rosso (now identified as cinematographer Pablo Rosso), in the first movie, and by several of the GEO team (Rosso again as a different character, but obviously returning as cinematographer) who have camcorders mounted on their helmets, in the sequel. 

Like the best found footage flicks there is a genuine sense of urgency and palpable dread that exudes through the shaky-cam, the editing, and the excellent use of the location shooting. The infected humans in the [REC] movies are like the Rage-infected from 28 Days/Weeks Later, they move fast and furious! I love my shuffling undead, but the menace factor in the [REC] movies is ferocity to be reckoned with. 

The brilliant plot device of the first movie is returned to when the GEO team use their helmet cam’s night-vision during the movie’s last ten or so minutes, after Dr. Owen and a few others have returned to the penthouse apartment. It is exclusively Dr. Owen’s voice command to the outside that will allow the surviving team’s rescue. 

But there’s hell to pay. And suffice to say that all hell breaks loose. 

An atmospheric authenticity is crucial to both [REC] movies, suffice to say, the sequel even tops the first movie with its attention to detail. Perhaps not quite as confronting with the initial premise, simply because we’re returning to the scene of the crime (or is that accident?), but certainly the violence is ramped up, performances are strong, the creep factor enhanced, and all the panic buttons are pushed at once. 

[REC] & [REC] 2 are lean, mean, killing machines, short, brutal, brilliant, and with no score. I insist that they be watched back-to-back. With birra at hand. 

Leave No Trace

US | 2018 | Directed by Debra Granik

Logliine: A war veteran and his daughter, whose seemingly ideal off-grid existence is torn apart after authorities discover their whereabouts, struggle to continue in the normal world. 

Granik returns to the grim themes of her earlier features Down to the Bone and Winter’s Bone; poverty, displacement, psychological wounds, physical stress, survival of the fittest. With her new drama she and co-producer and co-screenwriter Anne Rosellinni have adapted the novel My Abandonment by Peter Rock and made a stunning and beautifully realised drama about the plight of a father-daughter relationship.

Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) is a young teenager who loves her father, Will (Ben Foster), unconditionally, and has relied on his knowledge and teaching for as long as she can remember (her mother’s absence remains a mystery). Will is an Iraq war veteran who suffers from PTSD, and can’t cope with social interaction for any stretch of time. Together they have lived off-grid, roaming and camping from parkland to bushland, living hand-to-mouth, buying the bare essentials from nearby towns out of necessity, with money Will makes from selling his veterans’ issued painkillers to other less able vets. 

It is in a large Portland, Oregon park where Will and Tom’s current makeshift home is torn asunder, after Tom is accidentally spotted by a passing jogger, who alerts the police. Father and daughter are temporarily separated by social services who try and relocate them into a decent housing and work situation on a tree farm. Tom gets a pleasant taste of the social interaction she has been so deprived of, and this upsets the equilibrium between herself and her father.

In much the same way Granik did for Winter’s Bone, Leave No Trace is a slow burn drama, with a quiet intensity that smoulders like a camp fire. Where the movie excels is in the naturalistic performances, and the gentle, perfectly nuanced pace and tone of the narrative - much of it dialogue-free. This is one of the most emotionally resonant stories I’ve seen on the big screen in quite awhile, and much of the movie’s power is drawn from the terrific performance of McKenzie. I can’t help but make a comparison to Granik’s earlier Winter’s Bone, and Jennifer Lawrence’s breakout role. Two very different actors, but both roles exude great subtlety and vulnerability. 

Michael McDonough’s gorgeous cinematography captures the forests with such tranquility and beauty, but it is the combination of many elements that have created such a satisfying movie. In this suffocating climate of neo-conservatism I found it intriguing that there is nothing vulgar or crude, nothing overtly violent or brutish (with the exception of the arrest and the destruction of the camps), nothing profane, nothing offensive in Leave No Trace, yet there is an ever-growing intensity of character, a darkening tone that spreads, shrouding any true happiness that Tom yearns for, that has been stolen from Will. 

Yet … yet, there is light peeking through the trees. “I don’t have the same problem you have.”

Leave No Trace is a mediative, reflective, and deeply affecting study of unhinged souls, a kind of al fresco chamber piece. Probably not everyone’s chipped enamel mug of black gumboot tea, but ultimately one of the most emotionally rewarding movies in years. Certainly amongst my very favourites of the year.

The Children

UK | 2008 | Directed by Tom Shankland

 Logline: Two families unite at an isolated country house to welcome in the New Year only to find their four children have become infected with a parricidal-inducing virus. 

In the crisp country retreat of a lovely country house Elaine (Eva Birthistle) and husband Jonah (Stephen Campbell Moore) arrive with grumpy teenage daughter Casey (Hannah Tointon), anxious Miranda (Eva Sayer) and Paulie (William Howes), who’s a little green around the gills. There’s an enthusiastic welcome from Elaine’s sister Chloe (Rachael Shelley), husband Robbie (Jeremy Sheffield), and their kids, broody Nicky (Jake Hathaway) and shy Leah (Raffiella Brooks). It’s a handful-and-a-half of loud, nervous, disruptive energy for the parents, but that ain’t nothing compared to the horror and terror still to come. 

The premise is very simple, yet utterly devastating; one family visiting another to celebrate the New Year in the rural English heart of winter end up with all their children infected with an aggressive, unknown virus, who then turn murderously against their parents. It’s a nightmarish scenario, and Shankland, who also wrote the screenplay, handles the increasing chaos consummately.

The story is courtesy of Paul Andrew Williams, who wrote and directed The Cottage and Cherry Tree Lane. Shankland directed the dense psycho thriller WAZ (aka W Delta Z), which had its fair share of intense horror moments and was drenched in the thickest atmosphere this side of Hell’s Kitchen, but The Children, whilst intense and atmospheric, is a lot more resonant and memorable, dripping with dread, flickering and twitching like a fever dream, and, most interestingly, feels – and even looks – like a tale of domestic disintegration straight out of the late-70s, even though it's contemporary-set. 

After the younger kids have been put to bed, and Chloe has embarrassed Casey in front of her mother, the dynamics between the children shifts. Paulie, who had vomited upon arrival, has become withdrawn, staring vacantly out the bedroom window, and now wee Leah coughs and splutters, wiping away a dark viscous substance from her mouth onto her pillow (cue: microscopic close-up of nasty swarming bacteria). 

The next day, during a snow fight and sledge run down the soft hillside beside the house, trouble, disaster and tragedy snowball. The seemingly self-involved adults, including Casey, are stretched to the end of their tether, and become helpless, even stupid and useless, against the sly and deadly machinations of the children. While the frosty rays of the sun pierces through snow-capped forest canopy, the isolation becomes overwhelming. 

Director Shankland has garnered an excellent cast, and skillfully coaxes and manipulates convincing performances of varying levels of intensity from the four younger children. The standout though is Tointon; despite her petulance and mischief, it is her plight the audience feels most empathy for, and which the movie steadily narrows in on.

The elliptical editing that occurs sporadically throughout the movie contributes to the oppressive atmosphere of feverish unease, contrasting against the tranquil images of the surrounding forest and lonely shots of the children’s abandoned toys. The moments of brutal violence pack some serious punch, and whilst not lingeringly graphic, they’re still horrendous (watch out for the ocular horror!) But most notable is Shankland’s use of close-ups and extreme close-ups, and coupled with Tointon’s large expressive eyes, gives the movie a distinct Euro-horror edge, reminding me of Dario Argento and Sergio Martino. 

The Children is an eerie, apocalyptic tale, the scope of which only becomes terrifyingly clear in the closing minutes. The ending is open and frayed, at the time possibly for sequel’s sake, but thankfully none was made, as the movie’s engulfing darkness is more powerful left as it is, and adds more fuel to the fire that 2007 and 2008 were arguably the two best years in international horror of the new millennium.  

The Big Lebowski

US | 1998 | Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen

Logline: A simple man of leisure is rudely mistaken for a rich cat and has his life turned upside down whilst he seeks restitution for his ruined rug. 

Philip Marlowe throws in the towel, rolls a fat doobie, fishes out his grooviest pari of Bermudas, grabs his smoothest bowl, and heads on down into trouble and enlightenment. Well, not quite. Marlowe, that is. But it's still the City of Angels, and there's a healthy helping of mystery, with lashings of sex, spiced with illicit drugs, and extra double dealings thrown in for good measure. Rolled like a fine burrito and spun down an alley toward ten pristine pins. This is a kooky tale in the life of The Dude, narrated by The Stranger, but you can call it The Big Lebowski. 

Joel and Ethan Coen have crafted some of the most memorable movie yarns of the past thirty-five years, in particular Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and The Big Lebowski is no exception. Effervescent dialogue, charismatic characters, bold imagery, and a delicious twist of classic genre tropes, they paint small stories with big brush stroke, embellished with rich cinematic nuances, and a most wry sense of humour. 

Between the brothers (Joel is credited as director, Ethan as producer, and both as screenwriters) they have a wonderful knack of making their movies resonate like pieces of classic literature, or a great pulpy paperback. The Big Lebowski slides along like a Tom Robbins fairytale; great visual motifs amidst playful, yet oddly serious adult ideas. Running the gauntlet of murder and intrigue, jumping the hurdles of corruption and betrayal, slapping dysfunction in the face, tripping up eccentricity, and then out the other side for a long, cool beverage, a spliff, and that important bowling tournament.

Hell, you can't let Jesus (Hey-Zeus!) screw you over, nor let some damn Kraut nihilists drop a marmot in your bath, and get away with it! Nor let any porno thugs slip something in your favourite cocktail. Watch out for that avant garde artiste sophisticate, she's looking to fornicate with intent, and the sexy wife of her millionaire father, she'll suck your dick for a thousand bucks and not bat an eyelid. Slip them shades on, man. It's cool. Dive into a dream or two, life's just one big long alley, and a rug's a rug's a rug. Or maybe it's something more. 

Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, and Julianne Moore have a ball in this eclectic suburban farce. With tasty side roles to chew on for the likes of Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, David Thewlis, Peter Stormare, and Ben Gazzara, the Coen lads, like QT, are brilliant in their casting (and we know that's half the job done!) I'm sure that was David Lynch chauffuering in one scene! And let's please not forget Sam Elliott's dulcet tones and craggily handsome features as the Stetson-topped Stranger, yes, that's just the dandy sarsaparilla on top. 

The Big Lebowski gives a big twentieth anniversary grin. If you're coming to it for the first time, it definitely deserves more than one viewing. Unassuming, yet quietly rewarding, and most satisfyingly off the wall. This is the White Russian sorbet to cleanse your cinematic palette. 

Beast

UK | 2017 | Directed by Michael Pearce

Logline: A troubled woman living in an isolated community finds herself pulled between the control of her oppressive family and the allure of a secretive outsider suspected of a series of brutal murders.

Moll (Jessie Buckley) is a young woman in her 20s who is still living at home, a prisoner of sorts, held captive by her family’s moral rigour, in particular her mother Hilary (Geraldine James). Her sister, Polly (Shannon Tarbet), is the daughter done good, very pretty and engaged, while Moll struggles with insecurity, haunting memories, and the unwanted affection of the local policeman, Harrison (Oliver Maltman). 

Frustrated at her own birthday garden party Moll slips away into the island night, and spends the wee hours dancing with a stranger at a local shindig. In the cold crisp light of dawn the stranger’s intent turns sour, but thankfully Moll is rescued by the intervention of Pascal (Johnny Flynn), a lone huntsman, scarred, but ruggedly good looking. There is an immediate attraction, Moll and he are drawn to each other like moths to the flame. Meanwhile, there are terrible murders taking place in the community and the law is closing in. 

Operating like a kind of dark fable with horror elements peeking and probing from the darker corners of the narrative, the ambiguity of its two leads become entwined, as protagonist and antagonist seemingly begin to merge, the central pathway becomes unreliable, unpredictable, dangerous. The grasp of forbidden desires becomes clammy and slippery, the pursuant clouds darken, as Moll and Pascal’s relationship becomes inexorably entangled, and confusion rears its ugly head, whose truth is real? 

This is a highly accomplished debut feature from writer/director Pearce, who weaves the machinations of a macabre psychological thriller with the poignant, delicate elements of an illicit romance, ultimately creating a hybrid creature that slinks and slithers slyly, then bites savagely. Its slow burn technique belies its truly dark heart. “Be careful what you unleash” warns the movie’s tagline, while another could be “The heart is a lonely hunter”. Beast plays with familiar tropes and conventions, whilst it gently tugs the rug from under your muddy feet. 

On much of the surface Beast plays like a regular serial killer thriller, and it isn’t until the very end that you realise how immensely satisfying the movie has been. A production where all the department boxes can be given big ticks; gorgeously shot by Benjamin Kracun, a bristling, captivating score from Jim Williams, terrific performances from the entire cast, especially newbie Buckley and Maltman, but also the ever-reliable James, in a small, but pivotal role as the overbearing mother, plus some really nifty editing from Maya Maffioli in certain crucial scenes.

Beast is a one of those delicious nightmare thrillers that I hunger for each year, and now I’m feeling sated. 

You Were Never Really Here

France/UK | 2017 | Directed by Lynne Ramsay

Logline: A man hired to rescue trafficked girls struggles with his inner demons on his toughest job yet.

Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) is an extractor, a hired gun (hammer, to be precise) who infiltrates sex trafficking rings and rescues the young girls who have been abducted. It’s a messy job, as Joe is known for his brutal methods, and he has the horrendous scars to prove his mettle. He is also plagued by nightmarish flashbacks from his damaged youth and tours of duty as an adult in the military and within internal affairs.

Joe uses auto-asphyxiation to alleviate his PTSD, which in turn exacerbates his psychological condition, with the dark abyss of suicide never far from his precarious perch. He self-medicates with self-harm. It’s the only avenue he understands and trusts. The rescuing provides him with slight relief, as it allows him to believe he is saving a sliver of himself each time, or the memory of himself. 

Joe visits his frail mother (Judith Roberts), who still lives in his childhood home. He cares for her, but the household memories are like a demonic shroud. His job supervisor, McCleary (John Doman), has a new and lucrative assignment, to rescue Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), the troubled, adolescent daughter of New York State Senator Votto (Alex Manette).

With Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood providing a brilliant, nerve-shredding electronic and orchestral score as the spine, we follow Joe’s path into the bowels of darkness. Shards of his harrowing young domesticity and chaotic and violent career pepper the mise-en-scene like stabs from a nasty migraine. Joe is simultaneously jaded and resilient, soldiering on, at all cost, and this job will take him to the very edge of the precipice.

A powerhouse performance from Phoenix (and though I am forever reminded of his late, older brother whenever I see Joaquin on screen I believe the younger brother has absorbed his tragic brother’s animal spirit), he commands the screen with his hulking form, like a kind of black angel, searching for a deliverance, aching for release, desperate for oblivion to take his hand.

Just as Ramsay has done with previous adaptations, Morvern Callar and We Need To Talk About Kevin, she has possessed a novel and made it her own, tackling the implosion of the psyche due to external forces, framing trauma as catharsis. It’s a disturbing, but stunning portrait. The violence seethes, both implicit and explicit (though the graphic element tends to be the aftermath), the tone grim as nails. The title, You Were Never Really Here, seemingly refers to psychological removal for self-protection, further hammering (if you’ll pardon the pun) the point home with past tense and in third person.

Like a new millennial mutation of Taxi Driver this searing, blistering study of violence and fractured retribution is, quite simply, a masterclass in cinematic technique, and one of my very favourites of the year.

You Were Never Really Here opens in Australian cinemas nationwide on Thursday September 6th. 

Pet Names

US | 2018 | Directed Carol Brandt

Logline: A young woman, trying to cope with her sick mother and her own fragility, finds herself on a weekend camping trip with her recent ex-boyfriend.

Call me hipster, I don’t care, but I love a dysfunctional indie romance. My darling is Evan Glodell’s Bellflower from 2011, a benchmark in terms of capturing the listlessness of summer, the fresh scent of desire, the sour odour of heartbreak, but especially those moments between the moments, the elusive awkward poignancy that so many filmmakers strive and fail to harness. 

For her third feature young director Carol Brandt has fashioned a beautifully understated observation on the search for closure and acceptance that charms effortlessly with wonderful performances from her two leads, Meredith Johnston as Leigh, and Rene Cruz as Cam. The screenplay is by Johnston, autobiographical perhaps, but either way it resonates with an authenticity that gives the movie a truly endearing edge. The kind of sideways glance you get from someone who’s caught your eye. You’ve had a taste of something, and you want more and more.

Leigh has been forced to drop out of grad school and has been living at home nursing her sick, bedbound mother. Her life has been put on the backburner. A girlfriend, Dre (Chelsea Norment), offers temporary time out, via a house party, and Leigh returns the favour by inviting her on a camping trip, a break her mother is insisting she take. But Dre pulls out, and when Leigh inadvertently finds herself in the company of her neighbour and ex-boyfriend Cam she knee-jerk extends an invitation for Cam to fill the space.

Most of Pet Names takes place on the camping ground, just out of town, as Leigh and Cam navigate each other. There isn’t tension, only unresolved issues, old wounds. Cam, with his huge Anglo-Afro, and his pet pug Chato, is happy to spend time with Leigh, as they both share a similar sense of humour and quiet sense of adventure, but Leigh is wary of Cam. Leigh’s girlfriend slipped her some Burning Man leftover fungi, so there’s that to be had, along with a few bottles of whisky, and some of Cam’s pot. There’ll probably be tears before dawn.

Like Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, American Honey) Brandt shoots in 4:3 (standard) aspect ratio, shoots quickly, is adept at capturing the beauty of available light, and also favours a naturalistic style of performance that does wonders for subtlety of character. Pet Names – yes, they do reveal them – is a terrific vehicle for Meredith Johnston, and will certainly be the feature that gives Brandt the exposure and acclaim she deserves.

Pet Names isn’t as experimental or as dark and unpredictable as Bellflower, but there is something akin in its language, its wanderings, its sense of the absurd, its melancholy, its yearning. It rewards in similar ways. Definitely one of my favourite movies of the year.

Pet Names screens as part of the Revelation – Perth International Film Festival, Wednesday 11 July, 2.45pm (Luna), Friday 13 July, 12pm (Luna), Saturday 14 July, 9.15pm (Luna), and Monday 16 July, 8.30pm (Six).

For more information please visit the festival site here. 

That Summer/Grey Gardens

Sweden/Denmark/US and US | 2017 and 1975 | Directed by Göran Hugo Olsson and Albert & David Maysles

Logline: Two documentaries that feature the eccentric mother and daughter relatives of former US First Lady Jackie Onassis. 

One of the great direct cinema technique documentaries of the past fifty years, Grey Gardens is one of those strangely fascinating fly-on-the-wall portraits of eccentric people trapped in time and space. Crumb, the doco on artist Robert Crumb and his brothers is another that comes to mind. The Maysles brothers documentary about Big Edie and Little Edie holed-up in their decrepit East Hamptons mansion is the stuff of musty legend. Now, after more than forty years several reels of film have emerged that provide Grey Gardens with a wonderful prequel, a companion piece, just as endlessly watchable, in another documentary, titled That Summer, about what took place a few years earlier, that would lead to the Maysles making Grey Gardens. 

That Summer begins in 2016 with renowned photographer and collage artist Peter Beard, now an old man, discussing his life's work, as he leafs through one of his elaborate coffee table books. He reminisces about the attempt in 1972 to make a documentary with his close friend Lee Radziwill, the younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who had spent their childhood amidst the dunes and bramble of Montauk, East Hampton, NY, chiefly at the residence of two socialites Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (Big Edie) and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale (Little Edie), the aunt and first cousin of the former US First Lady.

Big Edie was in her late 70s, Little Edie in her mid-50s. They had been living a reclusive existence in the Grey Gardens estate for decades. By the time Radziwill and Beard arrived, the mansion was infested with fleas, cats and raccoons, had no running water, and with garbage bags piling up in the cellar. It was filthy, and the Healthy Department were called in. But Radziwill and Jackie Onassis stepped in with funds to repair and stabilise the home, enough for the eccentric mother and even more eccentric daughter to continue to live there.

When Radziwill and Beard’s intended documentary was shelved, the Maysles brothers, who had been hired to camera operate, were given permission to come back and make their own documentary, focusing directly on the two Edies.

That Summer is a broader portrait, bringing into view such luminaries as Andy Warhol, who joined Beard and Radziwill on the vacation, surely one of the very rare occasions of the shy artist outside of Manhattan. Paul Morrisey, the legendary Factory director, is also glimpsed on the beach. But the 16mm footage, just four reels, is as revealing and personal and captivating as the observations in Grey Gardens. Little Edie is such a character, wrapped in her bizarre fashion, a scarf always over her head, as she dances here and there, a lost soul of sorts, once a striking teenage model who paraded the Grey Gardens lawn, who took it upon herself to become caretaker to her mother, burying any hope of romance and adventure.

There is an inherent melancholy, a floating sadness, which permeates both films. The mother and daughter seem happy in their domestic routine, the lack of contact with the outside world has somehow shielded them from despair. Big Edie lapses into song, as she was once a gifted singer, with 78s to prove it, whilst Little Edie ruminates in the possibility of returning to the city cabaret scene. They live in a bubble, overgrown with bramble, the furniture riddled with decay.

These films are beautiful date stamps, the quality of light, the fashion and decor, the recollections, the memories. Somehow the stranger the people the closer we feel. Like moths drawn to a flame, we can't help but watch these pathetic, tragic figures as they flap and flounder, as they strut and pout. Beard's own diarist inclination, his penchant for collage, is a curious reflection of the haphazard lifestyle of the once glorious Edie duo. 

Hopefully one day these two exquisite documentaries will be combined in a special edition release, as they compliment each other perfectly. That Summer also highlights Beard's exceptional artistry, which is a good thing too, as I hadn’t been aware of his safari and glamour photography.

That Summer and Grey Gardens are as essential as iced tea on a hot summer lawn. 

Good Manners

As Boas Maneiras | Brazil/France | 2018 | Directed by Marco Dutra & Juliana Rojas

Logline: A lonely nurse, hired as a nanny by a wealthy pregnant woman, becomes involved in the fate of the woman and her unborn child.

Zombies, vampires, and ghosts are a dime a dozen in horror cinema, but for some reason there aren’t many werewolf flicks, and even fewer ones with a good bite. I have a soft furry spot for a decent lycanthropy tale, and at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, in my favourite "Freak Me Out" section is a co-production, co-directed and co-written by a pair who have been collaborating for many years, that tells the bristling, shaggy tale of an unlikely romance, the birth of a particularly bitey baby, and the tenuous motherhood that followed.

It’s a hairy tail, er, I mean a fairy tale, but it is filled with much darkness and heartbreak, sadness and despair, and ends on a sharp note. 

Ana (Marjorie Estiano) is pregnant and on her own. But she is affluent. She lives in a large plush apartment. She is looking for a nanny, and ends up hiring Clara (Isabél Zuaa), who is obviously desperate, but possesses a soothing touch. The two women are worlds apart, but a bond is ignited, and love is made. But there is something in the flow of the night that is troubling Ana. The doctor orders she abstain from eating meat. Each month when Luna is full and her glow is ripe, Ana sleepwalks and lowers the stray cat population. Clara is very worried.

Fabricated like a children’s dark storybook (even with a beautifully illustrated sequence), with striking faces, sumptuous, stylized cityscape shots that suggest they’ve been painted rather than filmed, Good Manners is a fable about unconditional love, about human and animal nature, and about acceptance and resilience in the face of menace and danger. It’s a tale of fate’s cruel hunger, but it’s a little long in the tooth.

But this movie definitely needs a haircut. At least twenty minutes shorn would give it more growl to its snarl. Still, it’s a captivating story, and even surprised me to where it was going. I was sure the local priest was going to make an appearance and a long-lost connection, but I digress …

Fangtastic performances (okay, okay, I’ll stop with the terrible puns) from the key cast, especially Marjorie Estiano, who provides the movie with much sensuality and humour, while Isabél Zuaa’s poker face through most of the craziness must be noted. The cinematography is excellent, as is the special effects, in particular the clever meld of practical and CGI for Joel (Miguel Lobo – yes, Lobo) in werewolf form, a truly original and endearing look, if lycanthropes can dare to be cute, yet dangerous.

Good Manners falls short of being a werewolf cult classic (let’s face it, they’ve only ever had cult followings) mostly due to the second half taking too long (we didn’t need the full-blown ballad performance late in the piece), and for not actually showing a proper transformation (de rigour), but Dutra and Rojas have cultivated a very decent entry into the sub-genre's lore with its own distinct, bittersweet lupine scent.

It’s the certainly the most unusual family drama of the year, I'll give it that. 

Piercing

US | 2017 | Directed by Nicolas Pesce

Logline: A rookie serial killer sets up in a hotel room with his next murder rehearsed only to find himself in over his head after his intended victim upsets his plans. 

Based on the novel of the same name by Japanese author and filmmaker Ryū Murakami, Nicolas Pesce takes the guts of the book, the sadomasochistic proclivities, sexual anguish, intense neurosis, acute anxiety, and exquisite agony, and fashions an utterly gorgeous and deliberately frustrating paean to the giallo movies of the late 70s/early 80s, especially the work of Dario Argento. It’s hard candy for cinephiles, and for anyone else, it’s likely to leave a sour taste in the mouth. 

Reed (Christopher Abbott) is a man on the edge of the abyss. Married to lovely Mona (Laia Costa), they have an infant child, and live in an apartment in what feels like a vaguely alternate universe New York (or maybe it’s Nu-TokYo-rk). Reed is struggling with the diabolical urge to stab his baby boy with an ice pick. His wife seems none the wiser to her husband’s inner turmoil. Reed leaves on a “business trip” and sets up murder shop in a hotel, meticulously rehearsing his obsessive homicidal desires. His little red book is full of notes. But the first glitch arrives, as his arranged hooker is not available. Reed accepts the substitute, Jackie (Mia Wasikowska), who arrives, demands a stiff drink, briefly masturbates, and then excuses herself to take a long shower.

Reed’s perfectly planned murder set piece is not going quite to plan. But it’s going to get a lot more askew - and a fuck more painful - before the night is through.

One could view Piercing as a kind of psychosexual chamber piece. Essentially a two-hander, and almost entirely set in just three rooms; the Reed apartment, Reed’s hotel room, and Jackie’s apartment, with the single exterior scene outside a hospital looking more like a set, and the cityscape montage that bookends the movie utilizing miniatures, Piercing is a blackly comic (oh, so dark) study of deviance and duplicity that could easily have fallen into the trappings and limitations of filmed theatre, but with Pesce’s precise command of mise-en-scene (including split-screen), profondo rosso cinematography, and heavily stylised production design, the inherent claustrophobia is hardly apparent.

Superb performances from Abbott and Wasikowska (easily my fave of hers) as protagonist/antagonist/nemesis intertwined. Costa (who was terrific as the lead in Victoria, but in a small role here) plays perfect soft warm counterpart to the cold façades of Reed and Jackie, and a nod must be made to Maria Dizzia as Reed’s first victim. Also excellent is the special effects makeup from Michael Marino and Michael Fontaine (even if we didn’t get the final money shot we were expecting!)

The entirely retro-sourced soundtrack is a curious one, with its dubious inclusion of several well-known cult classic cues from Argento’s Deep Red (during Jackie’s initial cab ride) and Tenebre (over the end credits), whilst several Bruno Nicolai pieces are used throughout. Of course these pieces of music sound fabulous, but in the new context, for those familiar with them, they become distracting. I’m reminded of Tarantino’s use of Moroder & Bowie’s “Cat People” in Inglorious Basterds, which rubbed me up the wrong way. But I’m nitpicking, as Piercing definitely delivers – and teases wickedly – in macabre delight, it’s likely to be one of my year’s favourites.