2023 film round-up part 1: dramas & dramas with a twist

 2023 Film Summary

•  Eat the Rich

Perhaps we were meant to empathise with those in Damien Chezelle’s ‘Babylon’, but although it was impressively mounted and performed – although Margot Robbie, who’s brilliant, starts out as one of those aggravating Free Spirits and Brad Pitt starts at his smarmiest – and is marked by a number of brilliant scenes, it wasn’t quite as insightful as it thought, and not really more than a frequently impressive confection.

Emerald Fennel’s ‘Saltburn’ was a confection quite pleased with itself too, but with a wicked streak rather than film school pretension, and therefore just more fun.

A little jump ahead to more Horror themed films... Paris Zarcilla's 'Raging Grace' is a film where the Gothic House tradition is seen through the Filipino staff, and in that way achieves both a lot of genre subversion and social commentary. And seeing through this lens also makes sense of why the English characters are verging on grotesques: if it's a little broad, that arguably fits with the Gothic melodramatic custom (even look to 'Cobweb' for comparison to horror parallels). The four leads are exceptional: Jaeden Paige Boadilla is especially endearing and disarming as Grace.

Jon Clarke's score makes sure the Fillipino roots are always foregrounded - and this is how you end a film on a dance number. Paris Zarcilla (in the FrightFest Q&A) talks of the rage that fueled the script, the anger he felt when during Covid, how Filipinos were staffing the NHS and yet the British government committed more and more to demonising immigrants. It was this anger echoed by the other crewmembers and this aspect that evidently greatly moved much of the audience. Indeed, the choir that we see at the end are all NHS workers which only seemed to add to the poignancy. Again, adding increasingly diverse viewpoints to familiar tropes only reveals how potent genre is for expressing and exposing rage and social injustice. And yet, Zarcilla talked of getting past this to get to the joys of life, and to that end the film never feels despairing and this agenda is captured in the final musical sequence. In this way, the film achieves its goal and ends up unexpectedly moving and deeper than its surface pleasures.

 

• ·         To the disenfranchised:

 

Gina Gammell and Riley Keough’s ‘War Pony’ was the kind of coming-of-age tale that educated an audience to a specific community, in this case the Pine Ridge Reservation. It wasn’t interested in misery porn or even melodrama, but rather just to outline just day-to-day living and struggle. And in that way, it was poignant and effecting.

Even a minor sci-fi horror like ‘Slash/Back’, being set in a small arctic hamlet and using non-professional teen actors had authenticity and winning scruffiness that slicker productions can’t reach. Sometimes, teen banter and energy is enough to carry a film and win you over. Look even to ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ or Miles Morales. Don’t look to ‘Kid vs. Aliens’, though. The alien invasion of ‘Slash/Back’ was almost secondary to the tale of the kids combatting the boredom and the limits of their hometown.

 

Fyzal Boulifa’s ‘The Damned Don’t Cry’ had a similar non-judgmental, sympathetic view of its protagonists as ‘War Pony’, portraying the disintegration of a relationship between a drifting mother and son. Naturalistic and convincing, a quietly bruising tale of not having the privilege to be yourself when you’re just scraping by.

 

Kore-eda Hirokazu gave another sharp, affecting portrait of the disenfranchised, and the criminal. If ‘Broker’ was not quite as devastating as ‘Shoplifters’, it wasn’t for want of trying or skill. Like Ozu, Kore-eda is a master of just dropping in a line of dialogue or an action or two that shocks and puts a whole new perspective on the deceptively easy and mild veneer that has gone before. But even if we started out with a bunch of unsympathetic orphan dealers, Kore-eda still turns the screws by the end. His tales of outsiders are always subtle, empathic and masterful.

But Jean in Georgia Oakley’s ‘Blue Jean’ was just trying to get through the day without the truth of her sexuality being exposed during a time of when the British government was passing laws prejudiced against gay and lesbian lifestyles. It was typical of British drama of this type: scruffy, truthful, a little on-the-nose, performances that were both obvious and nuanced, but most of all full of sympathy and positivity from its angry core.

 

• ·         And there were plenty of narcissists:

Kristoffer Borgli’s ‘Sick of Myself’ was a fine satire on the Look At Me social media generation. Almost Cronenbergian (ref. ‘Crimes of the Future’, ‘Antivirus’) with its vain protagonist using self-induced medical issues to boost her profile and popularity. Social media being just a medium, and the empowerment it provides here was totally in the service of vanity rather than, say, positive empowerment of ‘Eighth Grade’. Lots of Comedy of Discomfort and Embarrassment, and amusing enough as a parody on privilege and self-centredness, headed by an ironic title that nevertheless – if taken as more than just a familiar phrase to play with – might hint at an even deeper self-hatred.

Ira Sachs’ ‘Passages’ also gave an accurate portrayal of an everyday narcissist but focusing upon the manipulations and damage. Tomas Freiburg – an excellent Franz Rogowski – is a director who wasn’t so much malicious as so focused on self-gratification that he was unaware of the repercussions of his behaviour. Promiscuous, manipulative, charming, wayward A guy who thinks nothing of wearing a crop-top when meeting the parents of the woman he’s impregnated because he wants to try a straight relationship at the expense of his gay lover. A solid work with an outstanding opening scene of Freiburg at work followed by melodrama, messy relations, sex, and streaks of humour where characters barely know where they are heading.

 

Davy Chou’s ‘Return to Seoul’ also had a protagonist guided mostly with her own whim and indulgence. From the opening where Frédérique Benoît (an excellent Park Ji-min) ~ who decides to return to Seoul from France to find her father ~ charms the concierge at the hotel, and then turns a simple café visit into a kind of party, her charm and confidence is obvious and freeing in a more reserved culture. But there’s something self-centred in her that also makes her destructive and heartless; that’s the flipside of “free spirits”. A little short-sightedly, the film seems to lay the fault of her defects at the feet of her being adopted; or at least that seems to be what Frédérique wants to blame. It’s picaresque, sly, and deceptively charming and fluid as our main character learns both to connect more earnestly with others whilst simultaneously monetising her failures of empathy.

• ·         And elsewhere…

Location work of a startling kind came with Hlynur Pálmason’s ‘Godland’: the stunning scenery of remote Iceland with edges rounded off the frame as if looking through a viewfinder. Slowly revealing itself as an acerbic condemnation of the arrogance of colonialists as one man representing austere and humourless religion attempts to bring austerity and humourlessness to a remote village that is doing just fine, thank you. Unapologetically contemplative cinema that becomes totally immersive and features the kind of film-making where you think How did they make the dog act so brilliantly? And How did they cue that fly on his eyelid like that? (CGI?)

But for a Finding Yourself And Others story, Celine Song’s ‘Past Lives’ took the prize for being deceptively easy, never quite given to melodrama and always mature. Refreshing in that it was dealing with mature characters who knew themselves enough to negotiate what could be a tricky reunion into something fulfilling. It was ultimately a subtle and positive film about the effect we have on one another where even the things that didn’t happen are worth shedding a bittersweet tear for.

Kôji Fukada’s ‘Love Life’ however, was almost totally full of dysfunctional people unable to truly come together in a time of tragedy. It emerged as an indictment of Keeping Up Appearances, showing the mess of grief and lack of true communication and confusing behaviour between those society labels closest. Below its bright and light surface, something screaming with confusion and yearning lurked.

 

In one day, I had a triple-bill of ‘Past Lives’, ‘Love Life’ and ‘Passages’, which proved quite the emotional workout.

 

And if you were after an even more unashamed heartbreaker, Lukas Doht’s ‘Close’ would do the job, describing the disintegration of a childhood friendship and the aftermath. Led by remarkable young performances – devastating too – it is a film that treats adolescent feeling with full respect and space, almost a condemnation of cultural stifling of male affection. It may utilise some manipulations of a weepy the further it goes, but that’s no disparagement; it avoids all-out melodrama, is gorgeously filmed, stunningly acted, and presents a world where kids and adults alike are mature and affected. Anyone that remembers the pains of teenage relationship turbulence will be affected.   

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s ‘The Beasts’ was tense, relatable and upsetting. Escalating problems with neighbours, thriller suspense, an examination on injustice and grief with a nod to the primal and territorialism. There’s considerable tonal control and breadth being covered, never forgetting its complexities.

Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s ‘Pamfir’ was impressively directed, running on a common Criminal Comes Home And Tries To Sort His Life Out narrative. Possessed of several elegantly choreographed long takes, Nikita Kuzmenko’s vivid photography, compelling performances, and a concentration on character so that eventual bursts into violence don’t undermine the deeper investment already earned. It’s good on the caring side of a seemingly brutish man too, even when misfortune brings him on the losing side. The limitation of village life the familiarity of the crime story coalesced into a localised Ukranian condemnation of corruption killing people’s opportunities. 

 

 If ‘Beasts’ and ‘Pamfir’ were very much concerned with the brute force of machismo, there were a couple of courtroom dramas that interrogated the elusiveness of female identity.

Alice Diop’s ‘Saint Omer’ was a fascinating, chilling and slightly frustrating, telling the tale of the trial of a woman guilty of leaving her baby to die on a beach.  Kayije Kagame is the writer wwho thinks to find a topic in the case, but instead finds an example for her anxieties about pending motherhood. The quasi-documentary approach allowed the unreliable/conflicting testimonies to weave their own impenetrable mysteries without speechifying and expositioning. However, it takes recourse to long, fraught, frigid, and thick glares; in fact, it is the glare of Guslagie Malanda that is likely to be the major take-away memory. A troubling examination of the unknowability of motivation, then, but also of the disturbing realisation that we may see a reflection of ourselves in such cases. And yet the film never quite finds the coda that brings it all together.

Justine Triet’s ‘Anatomy of a Fall' needed its full running time to fully move into and flesh out its true agenda: the unknowability not of motivation, or even truth, but of relationships. When her husband falls to his death, an author is suspected of murder, but only her blind son seems capable of influencing the outcome of the trial. Mostly, it’s the stunning performance of Sandra Hüller that grips as an intelligent, articulate, slippery commentator on what is happening to her. And accompanying her is Milo Machado Graner’s turn as her precocious son, both vulnerable and resilient. Not that anyone else is lacking, but these two demonstrations of the art of acting consistently stun as the narrative goes beyond ambiguity to the grey areas of lived experience, faulty perspectives and choice of truth.

Despite a lot of  male characters, Thomas Hardiman’s ‘Medusa Deluxe’ had a strong female vibe because a dresser and model woman had such a fierce presence. It was another One Take Wonder and, although that didn’t necessarily add to the theme (for example, Philip Barantini’s ‘Boiling Point’ used a single take to chronical work life in real time and in Beth de Araújo’s ‘Soft & Quiet’ it was to show how quickly things can escalate), that’s a gimmick that ordinarily impresses with choreographed camerawork and the actors maintaining the momentum and developing a performance before our eyes (like theatre), and it certainly did that here. Full of British brashness, plenty of colour and verve, ostensibly hung on a murder-mystery set during a hair dressing contest, there was a lot here to impress.

•        And a little magic realism and/or the uncanny and/or artifice:
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And if we’re talking confections of reality, Wes Anderson’s ‘Asteroid City’ was a diorama smorgasbord of Rocket Age Sci-Fi tinged Deadpan Comedy Drama, with a dose of black-and-white cinema thrown in. And a fair bit of Artist Angst too. Designed within an inch of its life and then some more, it was designed to inspire haters who despise hipsters, but Anderson has always been hit-or-miss, and the melancholy and milieu hit many of my buttons.

Mark Jenkins’ ‘Enys Men’ was also an excellent mood piece with and faultless recreation of ‘70s TV/cinematic spookiness and scruffiness. That its mysteries remain untangled left it perhaps a frustrating curiosity, with its insistence upon repetition and mostly wordlessness; but with flare-ups of folk horror to mitigate its insistence upon keeping its abstractness intact, its bright creepiness exuded a lingering and compelling aftertaste. As a tale of a woman seemingly trapped in the temporal loops amongst the ghosts of an island, trapped in a nightmare filmed with Jenkins’ trusty Bolex camera, it’s grit and grain and audacity proved compelling.

Less successful at abstract uncanny was Fridtjof Ryder’s ‘Inland’. Nicely shot and trying hard, and sporting the ever impressive Mark Rylance, it ultimately proved less than its genre mash-up intentions.

 

The magic-realism of Léa Mysius’s ‘The Five Devils’ was always alluring and achieved some poignancy, even after abandoning the potential of its initial pull of time-travel-through-scent. Rather than explore the possibilities and pitfalls of this conceit, the temporal displacement was used to explore regret and existential existence. But though a near-miss, it still had emotional kick.

 

I liked Ari Aster’s ‘Beau is Afraid’ for its gung-ho provocation. Like Robert Eggers ‘The Northman’, it felt like the director just going for broke before he fell out of favour, and he would no longer get the budget or chance. It was full of striking set-pieces and performances, overlong, indulgent, but also funny. When the symbolic point has been made early, you just see what else will be heaped on, and in this case the digressions and weirdness fulfil a complete portrait of life as a perpetual anxiety attack.

Great Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’ definitely had its Battenberg cake and gorged on it too: surprised everyone by being entertain ing and good and provocative - but it was only to the mainstream.

And whatever you thought Jerzy Skolimowski’s ‘Eo’ was going to be, it was likely to confound you very early on. If you are an empathic audience, watching the most vulnerable of protagonists – a donkey! – being put the whim of dramatic dice-rolling was quite nerve wracking. Fascinating and restless, a film that succeeds in making the audience contemplate the plight and status of the animals we both adore and maltreat. Unusual and mesmerising.