Serbia's "Father" is Amazing. And other Calgary Fest thoughts...
Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at 8:30PM by Nathaniel R
"Father" wins Calgary International Film Festival
We're in an unbelievably overcrowded stretch of festivals -- AFI (a month early this year for some inexplicable reason), Middleburg, Chicago, and NewFest. And with all the movie madness, and our just concluded Montgomery Clift series, I realized with horror this weekend that I had neglected to share thoughts on the recently concluded Calgary International Film Festival.
I had the honor of being on the international narrative jury this year and after the jump, takes on the ten films we watched in ascending order of how much I dug them...
Dimitri Laloz with co-stars in Kala Azar and All the Pretty Little Horses
The 'didn't much care for it' entries
Two of the most brutal movies we watched were from Greece and both starred Dimitris Laloz (a fine actor). Unfortunately, both featured dog murders or dog corpses. If you're going to subject audiences to that, please have amazing artistic reasons that justify it! While we often like confounding art films (see festival success Beginning, that Jason recently reviewed for a good example), Kala Azar really tests the patience with its impenetrable and frankly disgusting milieu. It's about a frequently fucking couple (explicit sex scenes are a plus) who have the very gross employment of collecting dead pets from their grieving humans to cremate them and return their ashes. There's infinite shots of flesh and fur and wounds and whatnot. It's all very bodied, but to what end?
The more straightforward All the Pretty Horses has the misfortune of following behind Parasite since it's also about an economically challenged family, making themselves at home on the sly at their enormously wealthy bosses house. It's relatively unfair to compare them given that the tones are wildly divergent but Parasite burns so bright in memory and its such a three dimensional multi-mooded masterpieces that it was hard to not think about its mastery on every level during this film's self-serious long shots of the couple looking morose and longing to return to their more plush days. Some affecting scenes but mostly we were left wanting.
Not all of the films we saw were heavy. The Outside Story, from Casimir Nozkowski, was a comedy about a New Yorker (Brian Tyree Henry) who accidentally locks himself out of his brownstone just after a break-up and, to make it yet more stressful, he has a work deadline pending and he's not wearing shoes! The characters we meet are semi- endearing, but it feels very much like a first film (*investigates* -- it is) and one that's probably extended from a short (*investigates* -- oh whoops, guess not). As exciting as the notion of seeing such an amazing dramatic actor as Brian Tyree Henry headline a light souffle of a comedy initially was, he doesn't quite pull it off. He's got screen charisma to burn, of course, and handles the romantic arc well but the physical comedy feels a bit belabored, lacking the amusing nonchalance you'll see in stars that are naturally gifted at existing in silliness without signalling that they're doing 'a bit'.
Mixed feelings
I liked the high school drama Beast Beast more than my fellow jurors. The movie follows three characters -- a gun obsessed YouTuber (Will Madden), a theater geek girl (Shirley Chen), and a pot and skateboard loving new student (Jose Angeles) who starts doing petty crimes -- and waits for thair paths to collide. Well, "waits" is not the right word since the film is somewhat hysterical and restless to get places from the jump via the hyper editing. Some of the plotting is uncomfortably forced and all of the moods err on the side of hysterical/manic. That's a lot to take in feature length, but it's still the right headspace for these characters. I'm curious to see how the director Danny Madden evolves. It's definitely self-indulgent and undisciplined but it never lost my interest or attention and the three lead actors are all quite natural onscreen.
Another hit and miss film was Freeland (US), from directors Mario Furloni and Kate McLean, stars Krisha Fairchild who you'll remember from the hit indie Krisha. She plays a long-time marijuana grower struggling to go legit. She'll soon be left behind given the increasing legalization happening around the country if she doesn't make drastic changes to her operation. Freeland is well acted, has a compelling general atmosphere and the premise is welcome in its specificity but does the film go anywhere from a strong starting point? That's debatable.
Recommended.
Marygoround is a surreal comedy from Poland about a 50-something virgin will appeal most to cinephiles who like "heightened" and very art-directed films about women. (*Raises hand!*) There are frequent flights into the unreal... or versions of the real, rather, that are too-much since we're in the woman's delusions and fantasies about her life. Some memorable setpieces, especially an indulgent shopping trip that results in a dinner date that goes off the rails, but the parts feel more than the whole.
Another comedy, Shiva Baby from talented debuting writer/director Emma Seligman, is less visually exciting but has a strong screenplay and a swift pace (always welcome!). It would feel most at home in streaming since it felt like good television (I know the line is now hopelessly blurred but I don't mean this as an insult). It's a very slickly made but no-frills comedy that gets a lot of entertainment mileage out of what was surely a small budget, aside from the large cast. It's about a directionless twentysomething (Rachel Sennott) at a funeral service her parents (Polly Draper and Fred Melamed) dras her to where her highly compartmentalized worlds begin to collide. Her ex girlfriend (Molly Gordon) and her current fling and his wife (Danny Deferrari and Dianna Agron) are all at the service. Whoops. Emotional chaos follows.
Side note: I think I've probably mentioned this in the past but I literally can't get enough of Polly Draper and I wish Hollywood would cast her as often as they do, say, Margot Martindale or Ann Dowd. It feels like we never see her and then on the rare occassions that we do, she completely nails it. I only learned last year that she's the mother of two young actors we see regularly now onscreen: Alex Wolff (Hereditary, Bad Education) and Nat Wolff (The Kill Team, Paper Towns).
With juries on film festivals you're always looking for common ground. One film that all of us liked so it ended up being our "honorable mention" was The Wolves a family immigration drama about a struggling mother and her Disneyland-loving sons trying to build a new life in the US. Samuel Kishi's deft hand with child actors, and the sensitive inventive storytelling make for a warm and moving film about parenting, community, and survival. The animated interludes, used to show the children's headspace, might remind you of We the Animals only here they're deployed for less emotionally devastating reasons. It's now streaming on HBO Max.
Just loved them!
These were easily my two favourites of the Calgary lineup.
Once I got used to the erratic moods of Cocoon a LGBTQ teen drama from Germany, I was all in. It's about a young girl, her older sister, their high school flings, and their absent often drunk mother. The sisters are inseparable until the younger one starts to realize she likes other girls. The drama is finely observed, beautifully acted, and has just the right balance of queer specificity and universal coming-of-age feeling. Bonus points for its lack of sentimentality while still being utterly humane to all of its characters.
Our jury unanimously agreed that Father, a Serbian drama, was the best of the world cinema lineup. It stars Goran Bogdan (who you might recognize from season 3 of Fargo) in a superb minimalist performance. From its bracing opening scene to its patient absorbing finale, this story about a Serbian man fighting a corrupt bureaucracy for the right to parent his own children is brilliantly told. Confident direction and the stellar central turn transform misery into something like inspiration, not through simplistic triumph but from dogged loving persistence. (Here's to sincerely hoping that Serbia submits it to the Oscars!)
Reader Comments (3)
Funny as "The Father" is starting to get similar raves. Excited for both!
Oooh, I'll be on the lookout for "Father." Coincidentally, not only is there the Hopkins/Colman film, but there's also a Bulgarian film called "The Father" that played TIFF last year and (I think) may be eligible to be Bulgaria's submission this year. The plot was pretty standard, but I found it engaging and well-made.
Ah, Polly Draper, the TV version of Debra Winger. Why Hollywood can't find a place for either one and isn't begging them to be in their productions, I'll never know.