Virtual Weekend at Sundance

Posted on by Diversions LA

So in the real world, there were bus rides and snowy car windows to clean and pizza slices and bottled water from The Library Theater, while waiting in line in the snow, or scrounging for tickets for the bigger premieres at the largest venue, Eccles. Not to mention driving back and forth from lot to condo, making sandwiches at 2 am for the next day of films which started at 8 a.m. There were in other words, interruptions from the dreamworld of cinema to the real negotiations of traversing the film festival, grocery store runs, a party or two thrown in. Sometimes we would see 5 or 6 films each day, but there was always that necessary connection outside the screen.

Viewing at home – particularly with the welcome three-hour grace time to start a premiere, and the ability to watch the Q & A following a film on Zoom on my phone while I made a sandwich or a hot chocolate in my kitchen, the dream state continues unabated. Instead of moving from theater to theater, I move between one of our two TVs or switch between iPhone and laptop – that’s my four venues this year.

So I have managed to catch 13 movies Saturday and Sunday, and live entirely in the waking dream that is film – without getting quite literal “cold feet.”

My favorite film viewed this weekend was One for the Road. It’s a beautiful love poem of a film with a rich, highly narrative story line. The love is that of friends, lovers, landscape, cocktails, and family, in a lush visual tour de force. Structured in dreamy flashbacks around a road trip across Thailand, director Nattawut Poonpiriya’s film is an emotional and magical drama with steady injections of both humor and pathos. The two main characters are New York bar owner Boss (Thanapob Leeratanakajorn) and his long-time friend Aood, played by Natara Nopparatayapon. An epic mosaic of a story, this is one of those films that makes watching movies somewhat of a miracle.

Another favorite was The Pink Cloud, a Brazilian film presciently written in 2017, shot in 2019, and yet somehow plugged into the zeitgeist of the current pandemic and at-home quarantine. This is an intimate relationship story inside a larger story of human relationships and connection. Iuli Gerbase’s first feature as a director is sleek and gorgeous, with stellar performances by Renata de Lélis and Eduardo Mendonça. The two begin the film as a couple forced to quarantine together after a one night stand, and ends in the culmination of a ten-year relationship, now with their own child, all while a death-bringing gaseous pink cloud hovers overhead. Eerie and poetic.

More conventional but nonetheless delightful was Marvelous and the Black Hole (Q and A above). A contemporary coming of age story rife with literal and figurative magic tricks, the tale is as old as time but nonetheless made fresh with elements of animation, and a winning young Mia Cech as 13-year-old Sammy.

Kate Tsang’s moving dramedy is maybe a bit predictable, but it nonetheless drew tears and smiles. The charming addition of Rhea Perlman as magician Margot is key to the heart of the film.

Together Together could likewise be termed somewhat predictable – surrogate mom bonds with the baby’s daddy, in a warmhearted platonic friendship. The somewhat open-ended conclusion was a bit unsatisfying, but I’m being picky. This film, too was a mix of laugh and tear-inducing, as loving as Ed Helms’ baby daddy Matt, whose biological clock is ticking. Surrogate Anna (Patti Harrison) is 26 and using her fee to pay for a planned college program in Vermont. Director Nikole Beckwith conveys a lot of love between the pair; in a smart script that did remind me of a favorite film viewed in September at the virtual Dances with Films Festival, Milkwater.

Passing (Q and A above), with the astonishing Ruth Negga and Tess Thompson as childhood friends meeting again in New York City in the 1920s is a lustrous black and white film under a sure directorial hand. Rebecca Hall’s film is based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, about pretense in every sense of the word.

Passing

Chiefly dealing with the pretense between two black women – one pretending to be white, one to be happily married — but also women pretending to want heterosexual-only relationships, the film walks a delicate line well. Hall and her exceptional cast walk it perfectly.

Filmed in lo-fi 16mm with a vivid, 80s slasher-film vibe, what’s passing for happiness in Superior is barely happy at all. A seemingly harmless deception between estranged, barely reunited twins turns deadly in a continuation of characters first presented in a short by director Erin Vassilopoulos in an earlier Sundance incarnation. Casting twins Alessandra and Ani Mesa (Alessandra also co-wrote the film) in the leads adds to the level of heightened realism turned surrealism; dark comic touches add levity; a chilly Halloween-setting adds to the camp. Didn’t quite work for me in a story that ultimately could have used a little more meat on its twisted bones.

At the beginning of Robin Wright’s deeply felt Land, the beauty of the raw Western frontier led me in to a story of a woman recovering from and/or wishing to annihilate herself because of a terrible loss. At first Edie, as played by Wright, seemed like a walking cliche, willfully and frustratingly bent on self-destruction. But her life-saving and burgeoning friendship with a salt-of-the-earth hunter/rescuer (Demián Bichir) also rescues the film, making it into a solid heart-warming weepy by the end of the third act. Shot lushly in Calgary, Land has already has secured distribution through Focus Films.

The tragic circumstances of Mass also deals with profound loss, in a limited setting four-hander carried by brilliant acting and incisive directing. Dark and sad, this tragedy too felt overly familiar, evoking memories of a Sundance film I saw in 2014, Rudderless, which dealt with a similar topic in a more surprising way. However this is nonetheless a solid film with vital performances from Jason Isaacs, Reed Birney, Martha Plimpton, and Ann Dowd.

The winner of this year’s 2021 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize is Son of Monarchs, a film as interesting to dissect as the butterflies studied by the film’s protagonist, Mendel (Tenoch Huerta). The mythology as well as the science of the butterflies, and their symbolic presence as souls of the dead visiting on Dia de las Muertes, gives this film a haunting resonance. Director Alexis Gambis’ presents the dichotomy of Mendel’s own metamorphosis, from orphaned boy to scientist, ably traversing territory between rural Mexico and the heart of New York City. If the story ultimately feels not quite fully realized, the soul of the film nonetheless soars, giving flight to the philosophical questions within it.

James Ashcroft’s Coming Home in the Dark might just exemplify the difference between an American versus New Zealand worldview. An American film would’ve erupted in a violent fight from the get-go, a gory revenge, whereas this taut, terribly grim thriller about a family attacked by two violent men, goes for the psychological pain as much as the physical. Chilling and tense, the film had a sense of terrifying loss woven into the script from the first shot of a stunning if barren landscape. But I kept rooting for something that never happened, and while recognizing the power of the bleak film unfolding on my screen, I never got the visceral resolution I craved.

Japanese director Sion Sono takes bleakness to an entirely new level of the surreal in Prisoners of Ghostland. The film stars Nicholas Cage as a robber unjustly accused of murder and locked in a leather suit wired to cause his testicles to explode (yes, you read that right). Cage must rescue a girl named Bernice, a faux “granddaughter” of an evil pimp “governor” (the always fine Bill Mosley) in a futuristic world. This world mashes up Mad Max rip-offs, spaghetti Westerns, samurai action films, and sci-fi schlock in a visually arresting but nonsensical apocalyptic fairytale. If this had run 80 minutes instead of 2 hours and 15 minutes, it might’ve been more fun; as it is, its a bloated meandering slog redeemed only but its pop-art visual aesthetic.

Prisoners made a good companion piece to another overly-long slog through the surreal, the virtual reality of A Glitch in the Matrix. I wanted to like this documentary about proof that we are living in a simulation (if so, I would prefer not to live in one created by Sion Sono), but ultimately it went nowhere except into troubled minds hovering on the verge of schizophrenia. Rodney Ascher, who helmed the provocative Sundance doc Room 237 (a riff on The Shining) ably tries to shed some light on the idea that we are all part of some greater intelligence’s big video game, or living in one of several alternative universes, but unfortunately only seemed to prove the great influence of The Matrix on certain beleaguered individuals.

And finally, the visually inventive Strawberry Mansion jumped the shark into viewing oblivion for me, with an arch, surreal story and sets that seemed lifted from art installations at the Bombay Beach Biennial, 2019. A tax man who taxes memories on VHS tapes in an analog futuristic weird world meets a cosmically sweet old lady. Big points for visual style on a mini-budget; 0 points for story, substance, or reason to be longer than 10-minutes (which it was.)

Summing up: some amazing viewing experiences this weekend of spectacular films – The Pink Cloud, One for the Road; deeply enjoyable ones, including Passing, Magnificent and the Black Hole, Sons of Monarchs, and Together Together; and some definite misses for me such as Prisoners of Ghostland — but even the misses were part of an overall cinematic feast.

  • Genie Davis

First Full Day at Virtual Sundance

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We viewed four films today including three enlightening Q & A’s. Tomorrow will mark the first time we try the “second run” feature, each of these were premieres.

Starting with my favorite film, this evening’s premiere of the Swedish psychological thriller, Knocking, was a succinct, riveting portrayal with a terrifically fulfilling conclusion. Director Frida Kempff gives us a compact, beautifully shot film in which protagonist Molly, upon emerging from a stay in a psychiatric facility, is thrust into a real-or-imagined rescue. Played with intense focus by Cecilia Milocco, both character and film are haunting and haunted, leading to a deeply suspenseful film under 80 minutes. According to Kempff, the taut film was shot in an equally succinct 18 days, but the visual style is nonetheless riveting.

So too are the images from the surreal-tinged In the Earth, a horror thriller set in an English wilderness. Already acquired by Neon, director Ben Wheatley’s tale of magic, madness, and terror shifts gears with ease throughout, aided by lush visuals and an ominous score. Scientist Martin (Joel Fry) and ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia) are beset by the dark magic of a rogue scientist and her mad husband, played by Hayley Squires and Reece Shearsmith. If the film runs on a bit long and devolves a bit into the psychedelic, that can be forgiven; it’s a gorgeous film that does not ignore the current pandemic but nor does it pander to it.

The fine international production of Human Factors, from sophomore German writer-director Ronny Trocker, is a Roshomon-like story with weaving perspectives from son, daughter, husband, wife, and even a pet rat, peripherally revolving around a would-be robbery, but more pointedly around a disintegrating marriage between two advertising professionals. It also examines political extremism, and how that can come into play in a crumbling personal relationship as well as a socio-political one. Trocker embraces his ambiguous ending, revealing in a Q & A that it was “up to the viewer” to interpret and dissect; it fits the tense, threatening ambiguity throughout the film. Fascinating and discussable.

At the bottom of my viewing barrel was a film I wanted to love but simply could not, the comic end-of-the-world-by-comet fable, “How It Ends.” Set in LA and filmed during the pandemic, it’s comically beleaguered heroine, along with her “metaphysical younger self” traverse the streets of the Hollywood Hills along with a few other random Los Angeles locales looking for closure from parents, lovers, and friends. Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein’s film gives the protagonist (Lister-Jones) an on-foot to-do list of reconciliation that regrettably doesn’t do all that much. Some “high” comic moments – particularly a cameo by Nick Kroll – aside, this just didn’t click for me despite its whimsical nature.

Looking forward to a long cinematic weekend.

  • Genie Davis, photos courtesy of Sundance.

Welcome to Park City: Virtually Speaking

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And we are back with some more film festival joy with a trip to Sundance on opening night. Rather than snow in Park City, there’s rain in LA, and we are watching on the biggest screen in the house along with front row seating from our cats.

Tonight we began with a screening of Coda, a feel good coming-of-age movie with plenty of heart, music, and a protagonist who hears music with her soul. This is despite coming of age in a family in which she is the only hearing member. Mom (played by Marlee Matlin, the only deaf performer to have won an Academy Award to date), dad, and brother Leo – all in stellar performances – are deaf.

The film, including a sweet boy and girl meet in choir practice story might’ve been predictable if it wasn’t so couched in a loving realism – the generational fishing industry in Gloucester, Mass.; the warmth of family life; the dependence on protagonist Ruby Rossi for the family’s ability to move more easily through a hearing world.

Emilia Jones is an absolute standout as Ruby, and anchors the film with both joy and heart. Compellingly directed by Sundance vet Siân Heder, you can smell the salt air and feel the strength of the hugs, and enjoy a tearful moment or two at film’s end.

Entirely different is the arthouse take on horror and filmmaking itself of Censor,  the debut feature for director Prano Bailey-Bond. This film, too, features a bravura performance by its lead, in this case Niamh Algar as British film censor Enid, who is drawn into strange parallels between a horror movie she’s looking to rate and edit for her job, and the long-ago disappearance of her sister.

Her descent into madness is uncertain, and the riff on whether or not the 80s-era “nasty” horror she is expected to pass judgement on is to blame or whether she has “always been that way” is part of the fun. The film reminded me a bit of In Fabric, which I viewed at the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival in 2019. That film was more over-the-top from the outset, whereas this began as grounded in realism, but soon passed into the realm of distorted fantasy.

We are left a bit hanging as to the reality and dimension of tortured Enid’s terrible deeds (did she have something to do with her sister’s disappearance?), but no matter, the astute combination of the gritty “video nasties” era and family trauma still shape this into is a scream worth making.

Despite some streaming issues off and on at the start of Coda – could be my internet, could’ve been overloaded server – the viewing process and switch to Zoom for the q and a was otherwise crisp and seamless. Full day tomorrow and Saturday, which we will be covering toward the end of the weekend. It’s not too late to pick up tickets; passes are sold out for Sundance 2021, even if you can’t go skiing between films.

  • Genie Davis

Mammoth Lakes Film Festival 2020 was a Virtual Winner on the Weekend

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Mammoth Lakes Film Festival presented its winners on Sunday of the two day festival, as the 2020 virtual iteration of the always exciting fest concluded with an awards ceremony.

The conclusion was as happy an occasion as it is in person, where it is always a joy to talk to the filmmakers one last time and see first-hand the enormous satisfaction of being chosen as a winning contender.

But prior to the fest’s conclusion there were plenty of other stellar viewing experiences to be had, each of which translated just as powerfully on my lap top, phone, and TV as they did at the festival, because utterly unique cinematic experiences are enormously involving no matter how they are viewed. For opening night, Thursday, and Friday coverage of the five day festival, visit our earlier article, here. Now, welcome to the weekend.

Saturday began with a perfect panel, an hilarious conversation with and tribute to the creators of Airplane! The seminal comedy celebrated its 40th birthday this year, and MLFF director Shira Dubrovner moderated an informative talk with directors Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, followed by a Q & A with attendees. Abrahams and Zucker were joined by a surprise guest, actor Robert Hays.

Asked if they could make the film today, Zucker shook his head “Only without the jokes. People who do this type of movie and do puns, it wouldn’t be funny today.” Discussing the way the film came together, Abrahams said “There was something special about having dramatic actors like Lloyd Bridges doing comedy…it was unique.”

Why was there no Airplane! 2? Zucker says the reason was simple “I couldn’t think of any jokes to do on a plane. I went to Paramount with the idea of [characters] Bob and Julie going to meet his family, and they’re like characters in The Godfather. Paramount loved the idea, but Coppola wanted to do Godfather 3 at the time, and so he said no.”

After the rollicking conversation, it was on to the films. Both Shorts Block 4 and 5 had some terrific works; they were followed by a screening of the moving doc Acasa, the very surreal Revolution Laundrette, and a lively Zoom Disco Dance party (below) which gave attendees not only a sense of the fun at the festival’s usual-in-person dance party, but a glimpse of participants’ pandemic homes.

Shorts Block 4 gave viewers Nero, an intimate and darkly comic portrait of a man creating a product made literally from the sweat of his labor.

Le Coup des Larmes offered a somewhat terrifying, always fascinating, look at an actress immersing herself in a role, and a confrontation with a former lover.

The Fourfold (above) Lushly and glowingly animated, the film unfolded a somewhat cryptic tale of gods and myths set against the backdrop of environmental crisis.

A grubby dairy farm and the relationship between worker and boss – and the woman who lights the match that burns them – fill the bleak but mesmerizing Sinful Pleasures.

And the Israeli film Touch provides an amusing look at the burgeoning relationship between an internet troller and her would be beau – who almost meet IRL.

In Shorts Block 5:

Marriage Counseling for Friends Episodes 1&2 gives viewers an amusing look at two platonic friends who look for a way to enrich their relationship with a marriage counselor’s help.

A Living Sculpture looks at the relationship with a muse – as artists connect and disconnect in a wry short from the U.K.

The Star Sisters (above) are nothing if not playful and chatty – but their past is dark, and this involving short was both sad and sweet. This is a story of overcoming – or perhaps simply attempting to – an epically bad backstory with heart and eccentric verve.

In the Still Night – in a film both surreal and haunting, an art curator enters a mysterious new realm in an empty museum.

Now 2 also dove into the surreal, but in a different way entirely, with an animated look at the macabre underbelly of suburban life.

Between examined the lives of middle schoolers with grace, while Love at 48 presented a wistful and rich look at a couple on a date that went nowhere through a path in the woods.

As to the features: Acasa took viewers into the life of a displaced gypsy family in Romania, a story that was as suspenseful as it was mournful. Depicting the passing of a way of life, the film chronicled the lives of the Enache family—nine kids and their parents— who spent 20 years living in a shack in an abandoned water reservoir eventually reclaimed by the authorities as parkland. Uprooted, they are resettled in an apartment, and it was not a happy transition.

Revolution Laundrette was a fever dream of images and events, taking protagonist Tomo into various unusual subcultures and a final uncovering of the purely and existentially bizarre. Definitely not a conventional film, its visualization and involving surrealism was a cinematic experience it would be difficult to find anywhere but MLFF.

On Sunday, the documentary Democracy on the Road to Savah was followed by Shorts Block 6, the dry comedy of Tapeworm, and the bold vision of the documentary Pier Kids.

Democracy on the Road to Savah offered biting humor it its portrayal of political campaigning in Tehran, proving that politics are, well, politics – no matter where they’re taking place. Dark and funny, the documentary film offered an interesting look at life in Iran.

The narrative film Tapeworm was a restrained, ironic comedy set in Winnipeg, taking us among the lonely loser lives presented in a series of emotionally linked vignettes as amusingly bleak as the setting.

Documentary Pier Kids (above) was a stand out for its riveting, heartbreaking look at transgender youth on the streets, ushering audiences into a world of both friendship and loss.

In Shorts Block 6, viewers were also treated to a vibrant series of films. Take It and End It was a poignant look at the life of a Greek butcher asked to slaughter his pet lamb for veal. His moral conundrum was thoroughly involving in a film with visuals reminiscent of the work of Old Masters in lighting and palette.

Kikokids of Paris was also moving: a look at homeless girls having a “holiday” together on the streets in the City of Light.

And I Need A Haircut offered a brief but comically harrowing look at stressed women in a short well-suited to these pandemic times.

Rio was another favorite of mine. The initially elliptical film was lonely and mysterious as it took a look at two young women working at a Russian border hotel; the arrival of a stranger changed everything, creating an emotionally intense experience with a burst of sudden action.

Wild Game was equally harrowing; a bleak Czech film about a woman caught in a nightmare when three uninvited men show up at her door.

Not to be forgotten were shorts that played exclusively before feature-length films during the festival. These included: Lover, an Iranian film depicting a necessary killing of a wolf; Wash, a deeply dark Swedish film about the terror of childhood and horror of abuse; the comedic Ava’s Dating a Senior which depicted the controversy of a younger girl dating an older boy who may not be her true love after all; and the fraught but superficial relationship between frenemies in Ding Dong.

The award winning Huntsville Station (above) gave viewers an insightful and absorbing look at incarcerated men as they are released from prison; Mason presented a heartbreaking look at a small child experiencing the toughest of love from his grandparents. And finally, debauchery doesn’t bring true pleasure in Buck; while the French film Hors Champs lets viewers participate vicariously in a strange daily ritual involving tourists, the police, and migrants.

And that brings us to awards night, Sunday evening, the conclusion to the eager devouring of 56 feature and short films by film fans.

The Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature, went to Residue ,directed by Merawi Gerima; and the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature, to Feather & Pine directed by Star Rosencrans and Michael James Beck. Narrative dramatic film honorable mention went to my personal fest favorite this year, Marlene, directed by Andreas Resch. The Jury Honorable Mention for Documentary Feature was given to Democracy on the Road of Saveh, from Turaj Kalantari.

Marjorie Conrad’s Desire Path (above) won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature; the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature, went to The Wind, directed by Michał Bielawski. Both are powerful films.

This year the Special Jury Award for Bravery, a prize awarded for a documentary film that goes above and beyond in taking risks, was won by Pier Kids (dir. Elegance Bratton).

Jury Award for Best Narrative Short was taken by Elinor Nechemya’s Follow Me; honorable mention: They Won’t Last from Portlynn Tagavi.

Jury Award for Best Documentary Short, Huntsville Station (dir. Chris Fillippone and Jamie Meltzer).

Jury Award for Best Animation Short, went to Fourfold (dir. Alisi Telengut). Honorable mention was claimed by Bryan Lee’s Cage Match.

New this year was the festival’s first annual screenplay competition. Screenwriter Matthew Dixon was selected for his screenplay, Fish Story. It’s already time to submit for 2021.

Image above created by Beau Bardos

Whether submitting or attending, or both – don’t miss Mammoth Lakes Film Festival in 2021 whether it stays virtual one more year or goes back to real life. Either way, it’s a film lover’s dream.

  • Genie Davis; photos Genie Davis and MLFF