TIFF '23: Love! Sex!! Cinema!!!

by Cláudio Alves

"The Beast"

So far at TIFF '23, no film has more stubbornly remained in my thoughts than Bertrand Bonello's The Beast, an ambitious genre-bending experiment with shades of Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle" and incel rhetoric. You can't fault the French maverick for a lack of ideas, but I'm not sure they all coalesce. Still, it persists in the upper levels of my mind, nagging for reconsideration, spiking me with lost images I saw projected monument-like on an IMAX screen. Truthfully, I've never been as intimately acquainted with Léa Seydoux's face, and at times, she looked like a beautiful titan about to devour the audience, mayhap the whole universe.

The Beast's thoughts on love across the ages are especially fascinating in how they compare to other artists' visions of the amorous realm. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed and Fallen Leaves couldn't be more different, so let's talk all three after the jump...

THE BEAST, Bertrand Bonello
We're stuck between yesterday and tomorrow, our present time nothing but a permeable limbo that can, at any moment, dematerialize into nothing. At least, that is the fate of people within Bonello's oeuvre, each new film bringing this theory closer to literalism. With three intercut timelines, The Beast represents the peak of the artist's thematic obsession, positing a reality where the same couple has met across the sprawl of history – 1910, 2014, 2044. First, they are forbidden lovers in Belle Époque, playing out a facsimile of Resnais' Marienbad. The second era sees an incel stalker and his model prey, unravelling in Los Angeles.

Finally, what's to come is a conjecture where AI has surpassed the affect-ridden humans who, to get good jobs and other privileges, rid themselves of their past lives with all the emotional baggage attached. The two leads, played by Seydoux and George MacKay in all segments, are far from the only repetition. Bonello matches his sometimes-star-crossed lovers with symbolism, premonitions, and echoed gestures. Technology and its advancement for, by, or in spite of humankind are another major point of reference in the three timelines.

This is best illustrated by the evolution of dolls as a product cum concept. First porcelain, then rubber robotics, and, finally, near-perfect replicas indistinguishable from the real deal. And yet, the turn-of-the-century toys feel more imbued with humanity than the "perfect" copy. Going through the motions of progress, tech advancements present new possibilities but also limits. Pass by enough stages of innovation, and something that was there ceases to be. It's like a photo reproduced, digitized, compressed until all you have are mismatched pixels – a copy of a copy corrupted over time. 

Can humanity's dream be its end? The beauty in The Beast is possessed by the irrational fear of James' prose. She thinks something horrible is about to happen, but what? In the prelude, she's even asked to act out this fear, terror at a monster who's not there. That disquiet transfers to the audience with insidious persistent dread, until the fall off a cliff into oblivion. All of this culminates in a final shot of such emotional verve that you can feel the whole 145 minute ordeal slotting into place, its disparate parts converging in Seydoux's anguished visage. Cue the QR coded credits.

 

THE FEELING THAT THE TIME FOR DOING SOMETHING HAS PASSED, Joanna Arnow
Fragments of a life re-emerge as a structural gambit in this sophomore feature, springing from the commonplace life and kinky needs of Ann, an office worker who is played by the writer/director herself. Ann is stuck in a tedious job made worse by a company merger, while, at the same time, she's trying to fulfill her masochistic desires. Each chapter in the chaptered flick is named after one or multiple sexual partners, creating a mosaic-like effect of BDSM experimentation. Arnow observes this with utter frankness and an eye towards cringe comedy. After all, sex can often be ridiculous, silliness as integral to its depiction as the charge of eroticism.

In that regard, The Feeling That The Time for Doing Something Has Passed captures sexuality like few recent films have, handling it as part of life and not some hush-hush subject meant to be hidden from the big screen. Indeed, though Arnow and her fellow performers rarely stray from the picture's deadpan register, their acerbic presentation allows space for vulnerability to emerge. Look past the deliberate awkwardness, and you'll see a portrait of how we're all persistently stuck in a process of discovery, figuring out our wants and needs, and how those match or contrast with our own expectations.

Along with the surging belly laughs, this comedy is bound to hit some people in deep places. I confess I was one of those lucky(?) spectators. At one point, a capitulation to an easier narrative tracks threatens this effect, but Arnow sticks to her guns and sticks the landing. But even beyond the impact of recognition, Arnow's work shines for its assured construction – pitch-perfect editing matching the textual wit beat for beat, rhythms cut to a sharp point, and visual idioms with a penchant for evocative composition amid the pseudo-naturalistic indie aesthetic. With this cinematic calling card, Joanna Arnow is definitely one to watch.

FALLEN LEAVES, Aki Kaurismäki
From a filmmaker at the start of her career to a world-recognized auteur closing on his twentieth fiction feature, we arrive at this year's Cannes Jury Prize winner and likely Oscar submission for Finland. Like most of the director's best work, this romance earns its honors while letting itself remain slight and of little consequence, no notions of grandeur tempering a simple story of love in hard times. Fallen Leaves looks at  two lonely people falling from dead-end to dead-end job in Helsinki 2024, their plight scored to constant news on the radio about the war in Ukraine. That said, this is not a gloomy picture and any inklings of poverty porn are cut at the root.

Kaurismäki's characteristic lensing helps a great deal, as does his choice of comedic style, dry and disaffected even at the height of melodrama. His is a laconic cinema painted in bright hues. Timo Salminen's cinematography performs miracles to highlight vivid reds and swaths of brilliant blues, the pitch darkness of night followed by the cold light of day at morning's call. Somehow, it looks materially real and on the edge of fantasy at the same time. It also feels timeless despite clear commentary on the now and its future imperfect. Ih short, it's Kaurismäki-land, a place of pure cinema that we're invited to attend occasionally, allowed to awe at the master at work. 

Such is this splendor that Fallen Leaves would've worked just as well without sound, its imagery eloquent enough to sustain silent narrative. In fact, the picture's main inspiration seems to stem from Chaplin's Modern Times, that erstwhile god of funny business on mute. The parting shot all but confirms this, both in framing and a cheeky last line. If we were to limit comparisons to the Finnish director's filmography, Fallen Leaves  most resembles Drifting Clouds, a masterpiece of love in times of economic precarity. Like that gem, this new romance balances sweetness with pathos, touching on alcoholism, among other subjects. 

Where there's light, there's shadow. Where there's karaoke fun and cute dogs, there's the stench of corrosive solitude and an empty wallet. Still, in Kaurismäki's vision, hope perseveres, just like love.

MUBI will distribute Fallen Leaves. Magnolia Pictures has the rights to The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed in the States. The Beast has been been sold to many international markets but is still looking for an American distributor.