Review: BODIES BODIES BODIES

Bee and Sophie kiss slowly and happily. Cut to the pair in Sophie's car tapping manically at their phones. They drive out to a country mansion where some of Sophie's rich cronies are hosting a small party to weather a coming hurricane. The crew, caught in mid underwater meditation, are less than excited to see Sophie and meet Bee but things get kind of smoothed out. As evening comes with the storm someone suggests the detective game of the title which goes well until a slight spat breaks the fun into small pieces as old wounds are poked at. A little after that, the host staggers outside in the rain until he collapses from the great blade gash in his throat. The game got real.

This film is being sold as a black or horror comedy or a comic slasher and if that worries you then all you need to know is that while none of those descriptions quite lands it is a difficult one to encapsulate. That's a good thing. If I tried I'd call it a Tic Tok whodunnit. Instead of a self-appointed detective intoning, "you were the only one who had the key to the gun cabinet!" we get a group confrontation scene where the accusations fly and peeves hurl things off the rails while the killer's identity takes second place to the social media psychobabble that is fired in screams and taunts that ricochet around the room. The scene (which might even be in a library) is glorious and makes way for a busy third act that is variously funny and tense. 

My memory of the movie starts there and I recall the opening intimacy but then I also remember how plodding and repetitive the transition from the first to second acts is and wonder if I shouldn't highlight that as when it's happening it starts dragging the whole film out of the shape that had taken all that work to fashion. Then again, maybe I should just relax and remember how the wall to wall electronic score worked so well, that the performances were uniformly strong and how this story of identity and self (by which I don't mean narcissism) occurs between characters that are crafted to resemble each other so firmly that it takes that twist on the classic library scene with its firefight of bitchiness for us to start distinguishing one from the next. And what that adds up to for me is a film made with comedy that seldom makes us laugh in preference for amused recognition. This is a comedy of contemporary manners and aims to reveal how dark that notion is. It's all fine as long as the booze flows, the drugs work and the seamless hostility of the gleaming hip hop continues. Once the power goes out which is something that hurricanes are good at doing, the dark comes up through the floorboards in search of blood and there is always blood to be found. Maybe I should just throw my hands up and declare it: an A24 whodunnit. Yeah, I know, but it's still more accurate than horror comedy.

Review: MOONAGE DAYDREAM

While this film follows a timeline of its subject's career it is so vaguely that it cannot bear the name documentary with any faith. It is, on the contrary, an immersion. From the ominous opening moments where the name Bowie is spelled out similarly to the title in Alien where each letter appears without obvious order until its complete. In Alien this cleverly suggests an unearthly alphabet but in this film it foreshadows the form we are about to sit through: a bit from the end, some middle, there's the O, more middle etc. And then we plunge into deafening concert footage and liquid colour as stage lighting seems to soak into everything it touches and the sound of the magnetic voice at its centre holds the chaos in. We see him preparing for his early '70s video for Life on Mars, impossibly whitefaced with candy toned makeup, and in equally gaudy costume, fending off the smarmy questions of Russell Harty until the latter seems to swallow every question he utters. A couple of quotes encapsulate the way Bowie might have looked back on his ridiculed 1980s by showing him ecstatic at the stadium sized popularity and then, jaded, preferring the creative freedom of the margins. This is David Bowie in high career from the end of the '60s to the end of his life, singing, noodling, opining, stumbling through cokey interviews here, effortlessly intimidating with quiet confidence there, very often very funny, and pretty much always dazzling.

Brett Morgen who directed, compiled and edited the footage as well as inserting some of his own imagery, also mixed and shaped the music track which, apart from the concert footage, is an epic of reimagined familiarity. Like the more conventional Finding Fame documentary from 2019, Morgen worked from recording stems so he could lay down a groove from Young Americans and feed some Low on top or some plaintive isolated vocals from Cygnet Committee between the jags and wires of Heroes. Add a mass of costuming over decades, eye popping stage setups, more than a few extended live takes that might make you well up, with garnishes of antique cinema and vintage media and you have this, an experience rather than a documentary, an experience more than a film.

To be able to do this convincingly you do need a Bowie or someone whose protean faces on parade frequently brought him to the question of who he really was and how close that might be in relation to the personae he pushed on to the stage. Taken that way, this is an immersion into intoxicating fame. We don't need to see fans distraught at missing out on a sight of Ziggy or ogling upward in Speilbergian wonder. This glancing blow of what it might be like to be so beloved but also where you might have left yourself before the first word you uttered into the microphone. This is what saves this film from hagiography, while it does leave some elements out it also deals plainly by describing itself as a celebration: we really aren't seeing a saint of modern showbiz but we are seeing someone who sought to create as much as he could before his light went out. Does that mean he really did that every day? Everyone has hangovers. It might well mean that he damn near got close. If you fall a little short of Bowie fandom this film will be an assault. If you're in, you won't know where the time went.

Review: FLUX GOURMET

A performance troupe takes up residence at an institute dedicated to blending art performance and food. The trio are led by a spiky woman who keeps her two collaborators under a cult-like control. The Institute's boss is concerned about the act's direction into potentially dodgy territory with their performances as a prankster group whose application for residency failed is causing trouble by hurling freshly killed terrapins through the windows. Through all this, the writer charged with recording the residence is having severe digestive problems which the house doctor, flown in from an 18th century novel, given his sadistic bedside manner and classical snobbery, treats him for less like a doctor than a research scientist.

This is Peter Strickland's return to a more focussed narrative since The Duke of Burgundy and he has chosen archness over compassion. We get a series of repeated situations which differ by character involvement and events but the construction is set and becomes dependable, perhaps in place of empathetic. Strickland's typical pointed dialogue swings from the awkward to the satirical which offers plenty of rarefied comedy to fill the void created by the formality. But then the performances themselves and the performance workshops veer between ridiculous and genuinely compelling. Scenes of woo and sex are given a kind of Regency coquettishness but the juxtaposition between that and the contemporary setting creates an unexpected tension. Yet, none of this feels like experimental cinema in the slightest.

This is because the film plays fair with its setting and the demi-monde of the performance art cosmos. Everyone has a comedy name like Elle Di Elle or Stones which relates to digestion or the art world but the performances of an expertly cast line up lift what might well have looked like a self consuming satire into a comedy that plays by the rules of the milieu it ridicules. Strickland stalwart Fatima Mohammed breathes real life into Elle Di Elle who might well have stiffed into caricature. A scene where she is smearing faeces on her face has you assuring yourself that it's just prop Nutella before you realise that the cringe is necessary for the enjoyment of the scene which is all in performance. Gwendoline Christie is imposing as Institute head Jan Stevens and Asa Butterfield gives a kind of male Courtney Barnett in Billy Rubin, all swallowed shyness and constant discomfort behind a heavily directed fringe.

If I've given the impression that this is a stuffy piece with jokes that only an art groupie is likely to get be assured that, while most of it is directed at the art world you won't be needing a reading list to join the giggles (and there are some big laughs). If you've got used to Strickland's hauntological films like In Fabric or Berberian Sound Studio be aware that this one only does that with the score (which is quite wonderful). Flux Gourmet is much more like recently emerging British film makers like Joanna Hogg who thrive on cold observation for warmer ends. You might discern a lineage from the rich tableaux-bound films of Peter Greenaway but, as genuinely comedic as those could be, if they've learned from him they've also learned to laugh a little harder and more warmly.

2022: MIFF @ 70

MIFF: BACK AND READY TO ROLL!

The big news was that we were back in cinemas for the 70th MIFF and that it was likely to go ahead this time. The bonus was that the Play section of streamed material would continue: more movies, cheaper and without the threat of the plague.

The screenings were good. The only time I lined up was when I got to ACMI too early and got sick of looping around Fed Square in the light but annoying rain. There was a definite buzz in the crowds to be back in the old venues as though it had been much longer than two years. Getting to my front row spot in the beautifully otherworldly auditorium of The Forum for my first session felt warm.

I missed two screenings, one through a weird snag with my front door lock (one side of dead lock upside down which I somehow fixed too late to get to the film) and the other from illness. Both of these were unavoidable but really stuck in me when I had to make the decision to exchange tickets or just go to them. I didn't go if I was actually sick but, later, when the cough was not hazardous to anything but the peace I wrestled with my capacity to hold the cough. I did a lot of exchanging and managed to cough as little as possible behind my N95 mask. 

All of that meant that I missed Eami and The Balcony Movie (both at the end of quite long exchange chains).  So, if anyone wants to tell me that they were the greatest works of cinema viewable then they are free to do so.

Selection

If I went through and counted I might find fewer titles and less range than previous years but that has more to do with the times than the organisation. I found I filled my share pass easily with documentaries, titles from favourite directors, enticing-sounding unknowns and anything else that fell into my field of vision. 

I avoided titles with buzz already attached and kept a wary eye on anything that might pick up too much of an audience. The only one I kept after it was marked "selling fast" was Decision to Leave as it was unlikely I'd see it outside of the festival context. All others that filled up as I monitored them started looking too superspready. Then, of course, I walked past the wrong conversation and breathed in and gave myself a week of ghastly non-covid chest cold. So ...

I was very sorry to have to miss Blaze but it turned up at the Kino the week after the festival. I'd already exchanged Crimes of the Future away, knowing it would turn up soon and so it did. 

Process

Ticket exchanges were smoother than before. I wanted to avoid sold out sessions so got out of about four screenings and settled into a schedule that happened to be more of the adventurous lean that I used to take in setting the fest up.

Glitches

The day tickets went on general sale there was a glitch which meant that trying to access your own account resulted in an inadvertent account deletion. The email even told me I'd done it willingly.  I had already created a new account and now I was being told that I already existed on a system that had cruelly cast me out. Luckily a call to the box office got me through within a minute and I found out that the problem was across the board. A few details later and all my bookings were restored to the new account. I don't know if this was the case but the first thing I noted on regaining access was that a new discount status had been added. Not the thing to do on day one of sales, folks. Then again, my experience with righting the problem was so smooth and amiable I let it slide.

Apps

MIFF

An acquaintance of mine had trouble with the app acting erratically on her iPhone but on my Android it was smooth. Because of the number of exchanges I did (overcrowding or illness etc.) I found it very responsive to alteration. There was never an issue with the tickets getting read by the scanners and the information available on the smaller platform was up to date and correct. 

MIFF Play

As with last year the Play app for streamed content worked easily. All purchases and any exchanges or other transactions had to be done at the site, through the box office or with the main app; the Play app was for playback only.  This time I could easily get through the six minutes of ads with the fast forward button on the remote and get straight into the movie. Pausing, leaving etc were the same as using any other streaming service./

The one glitch was watching a film that needed subtitles but for which none appeared. I foraged around the app without success and then tried it on my PC which allowed, though a menu not part of the phone app, these to be turned on or off. Finally, I called the box office and was able to work out how to switch them on with the app which involved a lot of guessing between myself and the staff member I was talking to. For the record, most Play content that needs captions will have htem play automatically, if they need turning on you need to go to the white band on the app screen with the film title and the play pause icon on the right, press and hold any space within the band until the menu appears, choose ON and start it playing again. Very clunky and should have been picked up and made more obvious either in the app itself or on the Play page on the MIFF site. There was nothing that offere

NB This worked (almost) perfectly for me because I have new smart tv with a built in Chromecast, a robust NBN connection and a recent smart phone. Take any one of those out of the list and you might well face a few problems. 

Audiences

Why some people choose to sit in cinema seats as though they're at the dentist still bothers me. It is bad for their backs and, considering how well designed most new cinema seats are for correct sitting, there is no excuse at all beyond whatever behavioural meme struck them that this was the cool way to sit at the movies.

Out of ten cinema screenings I can't remember a single case of disruption or audible talking. I was almost always at the front and so might not have noticed the light pollution problem from oafs who HAVE to have their screens on didn't seem to arise.

All up, I'd have to give a thumbs up for an overall improvement in apparent respect for others at the mass events. It won't last but it was good to see after the confinement. It felt grateful. I'm sure that's projection but that's my story.

MOVIES

High

Enys Men - lo-fi auteur Mark Jenkins creates a '70s looking and feeling folk horror made mostly of  disruptive editing and it works.

The Novelist's Film - Hong Sang-soo. The name should be enough but this prolific director's work needs local release. It's too good to keep to festivals.

Something in the Dirt - current cinema's most followable duo produced a tale with roots in their past but an obvious readiness to work with the present. A cosmic horror from lockdown.

The Lost City of Melbourne - a documentary about architecture that credibly included a full and changing culture as a city moved ahead but not always wisely.

Lola - by which a young film maker proves you can brew period sci-fi and conduct it without camp or self-referential jokes. It works.

Mass - expertly handled quartet discussion about an atrocity, what parenting should be, and how to face the worst. 

Hit the Road - how a family road trip can transcend the genre's boundaries and venture into the cosmos within and without. Impressive.

Middle

Whether the Weather is Fine - tragedy plus time equals comedy, this time with a spoonful of magical realism and satire.

2000 Weeks - "lost" classic turned out to be perfectly functional debut feature by a director who forged a path in the following decade. Glad I finally saw it.

You Won't be Alone - new folk horror with body jumping witches but Terrance Malik pacing can lose its way but brings it home with honour.

Millie Lies Low - fun but sobering fable of the futile flight from oneself kept to its task without issue. 

Sissy - muscular addition to recent genre of social media influence vs real world socialising worked best as satire as its horror/comedy aspects could jar with the overall flow.

Lynch/Oz - six film essays linking the films of David Lynch with The Wizard of Oz is, as expected, uneven but at best intrigues and delights.

The Real Charlie Chaplin - conventional telling of the Chaplin timeline pauses now and then to make points about cinema itself as well as Charlie Chaplin and doesn't shy away from the controversies of his life. Made for tv but worked well in a cinema.

Dual - nice idea given a good treatment still left me wanting.

Domingo and the Mist - a sober portrait of resistance, however futile, for the good of one's own life and the legacy of the departed. Strong use of spare means and a touch of magical realism capped it off.

Low

Decision to Leave -  one of contemporary cinema's masters showed that even he could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by making an intriguing modern noir heavily repetitive when it might have been lean and mean.

The Humans - I find the term pretentious a lazy criticism, often misused, but it fits here.

The Lonely Souls Variety Hour - indigestible whimsy and cute comedy failed to be balanced by graver scenes of the protagonist in a coma. Should have stayed a stage play. As soon as it hit a screen it looked and felt overcooked.

Petrol - beautiful looking piffle about coalescing forces of the cosmos with a black hole at the centre instead of a star.

Vibes and End

I've been holidaying at MIFF for about twenty years. I say about as while 2003 was the first year I bought a mini pass and took time off work to get the extra weekday screenings, there was a ramp from choosing a small number of titles to building up to needing time off work. I'm thinking that 2002 was the first of the committed fests before I formalised it. That means that there are around twenty years of events that vibe up like nostalgia.

I don't mean a mental clipshow of fun times 'n' frolics but rather a general sense of discovery when the holidays start and I have weeks to luxuriate in my favourite art form (as it contains most of the others), wonderstruck through this one, managing micro-naps through that one, and each day bringing more in some venues that are only open as cinemas for the duration. There was a thrill of getting in first with favourite film makers or strands like Asian horror or mumblecore indies. This persisted into the lockdown years where I'd prime my living room for a morning screening and even buy a box of choctops from Coles to go with it. The sense of connection continued. This time I did both, shivery mornings in the Forum foyeur and the heated darkness of my lounge. I miss some venues like The State Film Theatre, The Regent and the downstairs area of the Forum as the festival club but some things just get dropped or swallowed over time and it's probably best to consider their loss inevitable. For all the changes that make me miss features, that spirit of cinema remains, even in the isolated dark of lockdown.

But this year, along with a fresh zero anniversary number, we were offered the best of both worlds with a good range of titles from around the sphere. The warmth of striding across the carpet of the Forum's auditorium on a cold Sunday morning, choctop in hand, felt like at long last spending something I'd saved.