Bradford’s The Plaza Cinema manager Mike McKenny (@DestroyApathy) gives us a round-up of his day at the Leeds International Film Festival.
I am writing this update in amongst the binge of short film watching I’ve been undertaking as part of the international jury for LIFF’s Short Film City competitions. If you haven’t had chance to get down to many of the screenings you have really missed out. The Louis Le Prince International Shorts in particular were of a consistently very high standard. You can see the winners and our jury statements here.
It has always been LIFF’s Official Selection that interests me the most. Though their genre strand Fanomenon is inventive and their documentary offering is comprehensive, in previous years it has always been in the Official Selection that I have found the real gems. Such as The River Used to be a Man or Breathing last year or Son of Babylon the year before. With the absence this year of the Golden Owl competition, it has been a little harder to separate those films that are likely to acquire a healthy arthouse distribution – and therefore I can avoid at the festival knowing I’ll catch up with them – and those that I may not get the chance to see again. The many UK premieres that played in the Golden Owl last year really left an impression on me, such as Nana, The Prize, Summer of Goliath, and the above-mentioned The River Used to be a Man. (All of which were reviewed for Film&Festivals and can be found here and here).
So last Thursday I spent the whole day in the same cinema catching four films in a row, all from LIFF’s Official Selection. The real stand out of the day for me was the first one up, Portuguese inner city drama Blood of my Blood. I have posted a full review of the film on Film&Festivals Magazine’s festivals blog, but have also summarised my impressions below.
Blood of my Blood easily justifies its long runtime – in excess of two hours – through captivating characters, patience, flawless pacing and a firm central premise that is supported with every tool at the filmmaker’s disposal. The film drifts around the experiences of several generations of one family, living in a low-income area of urban Portugal. The lynchpin is the mother Marcia, who is a definite mother of the year candidate, just as Rita Blanco, who plays her superbly, is my performance of the festival. The other major characters are her twenty something kids Cláudia and Joca, their partners, and Marcia’s sister Ivete, who pretty much all live in the same tiny flat.
Amongst the many links between characters, there are two central plot strands that stand out. Primarily, there’s Cláudia’s affair with her college professor and her mother’s objections to it. Almost as prominent is Joca’s hazardous attempts to rip off his drug dealer boss. These are quite conventional and predictable plot setups and in no way do justice to the originality with which the film is put together. It embodies a sense of interconnectedness as characters often refer to one another or cross each other’s paths, emphasizing the strength of community in such a dense, low-income area. This results in the familial bonds being watertight, and people seem sure of themselves in ways that characters rarely do in the countless narratives revolving around middle-class guilt suffering straight white men with lost souls, that encompass a great deal of arthouse hits. In this respect, Blood of my Blood avoids depicting this community with a ‘pity the poor’ agenda, and although it doesn’t suggest it is an aspirational way of life, it certainly doesn’t give the usual ‘unbreakable cycle destined to fail’ scenario. In spite of the melodramatic plot strands mentioned above, the film is more than anything an earnest and insightful snapshot of life.
Next up was a Swedish film called Avalon about ageing ex-party boy Janne (Johannes Brost) working with an old associate to open a new nightclub in a decadent region of Sweden. Brost plays Janne superbly, with a consistently surprised and confused look on his face befitting a man that has without doubt ‘powdered his nose’ a fair few times in his past. Janne’s dislocation from the motives, lives and general existence of those on a ‘lower’ social level to himself is made evident by his awkward interactions with Slovenian labourer Donatas. His bumbling middle class awkwardness drastically shifts when coming back from a shopping expedition drunk, he drives into the scaffolding, killing Donatas. Janne’s guilt is evident, particularly in contrast to the complete disregard the event is treated with by his peers; a mere inconvenience to them, whilst Janne struggles to address the unexpected return of Donatas’ girlfriend.
The film therefore competently addresses a shifting existence as this generation is portrayed as increasingly out of touch with contemporary life. The brush strokes are very broad though, with the Slovenian being quite an exaggerated sign of the future; a humble labourer, who can set himself to any task and is labouring to pay his way through law school, at which he also excels.
The next film up was a touching homage, not only to those with a passion for food, but a passion for anything. From writer, co-director and co-star of the film, Now, Forager is evidently a personal story for Jason Cortlund. It introduces us to the New York based couple, Lucian (Cortlund) and Regina (Tiffany Estab), who forage through nearby forests for ingredients, particularly mushrooms, which they then sell to many restaurants scattered around the city. The tension comes when Regina wants a more stable life, challenging Lucian’s insistence on perusing this unsustainable approach to making a living.
What follows is various attempts by both these individuals to make their specialised skills count in a world that is organised around standardisation and the suppression of individual skill and flair in favour of a Fordist approach to mass production. One example being how Lucian, for a short while surrenders all of his principals, catering a party for a hilariously caricatured rich family, with ludicrous and decadent demands.
The film is very clearly a labour of love, created by people that know this world intimately. It is therefore all the more touching a portrayal of the existential considerations they must always make.
I’m not inclined to speak too much about the final film of the day, as I didn’t stay for its duration. Having loved Giorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth when I saw it at the Bradford International Film Festival in 2010, I was really looking forward to what he would produce next, but at the same time was a little hesitant due to Dogtooth‘s hyper-stylised nature. I feared that had the boat been pushed out too fear, the film could fall flat on its face. Well this is my judgement of Alps, a film where a team of appropriately lifeless individuals assume the roles of the deceased to help with the bereavement of loved ones. I am a little perplexed at my distaste for the film, as everything about it I should like. The unsettling dead pan delivery of lines, the absurd premise, the statement it is making on ‘performance’ in everyday life, and the need to attach to things despite how fake you already know that they are, but it just prompted a gut reaction of negativity as I felt that decisions had been made primarily to provoke, with the story coming as an afterthought. I’m sure this wasn’t the case, and when the film is on general release I’ll give it another go. It may well have been that I was suffering from festival fatigue, or was just in a bad mood and took it or on this film.
Still to come this weekend is a whole host of ‘festival favourites’ giving you the chance to catch up with some of the most popular films, some of which may not play in cinemas in the country at all after the festival. See LIFF’s website for what’s on when
Mike McKenny is currently restoring The Plaza Cinema in Bradford. He is former director of award winning film society Minicine and has recently completed his MA thesis on Film Festivals and Cinephilia. Should you care to have a read, please email him on mike.mckenny1983@gmail.com or find him on Twitter @DestroyApathy