MIFF Session 8: SHE DIES TOMORROW

Amy is convinced she will die the next day. After an opening scene in which she is farewelling a character we don't see (unless it's the guy we see through a doorway who appears to be ranting) she returns to her house, puts the Lachrimosa from Mozart's Requiem on loop (well, it's vinyl so she just keeps putting it back to the start of the track) and does stuff while getting progressively drunk. She tries calling a friend who doesn't seem to hear her that well but says that she'll ignore her family commitments and come and visit Amy. Amy gives up on the call and keeps doing stuff.

Jan does turn up, lets herself in and talks Amy down from a wall (not suicidally high). Amy tells Jane about dying the next day. Jane observes Amy's falling off the wagon and cautions her against rash decisions but Amy isn't talking about taking her own life. Then what? She's just convinced she has less than a day to live. Assured that Amy is essentially fine, Jane leaves and goes to her sister in law's birthday drinks, interrupting a bizarre conversation about dolphin sex (which the other two guests are not comfortable with) with her own conviction that she, too, will die tomorrow. She's already tried to call Amy with this but got no answer. It got into her head and it won't leave. Eventually she does, going back to her strange home studio. We hear a conversation between the two guests who have also caught the thought and then back at the brother's house the couple both get infected. They go to their daughter's room and cuddle paternally.

The spread of the thought is then assumed to make its way throughout the city. Jane, wandering aimlessly, later comes upon two young women who are having a stunned but quite happy conversation about it. And then at one point we see the end of the chain that brought it to Amy and, while it answers no further question than that we understand that it is an ongoing malaise.

This feels less like a simple outbreak of meditations on mortality than an epidemic of existentialism. It bears the same message to everyone it touches but they respond differently. Against this the baubles of the old normal as activities, possessions and the trappings of reproduction and nesting are on display in a presentation that swings from video-verite to purple psychedelia. Once the nagging bug of an idea gets in everyone is changed, regardless of whether they will die or not, bodily or not.

Kate Lynn Sheil redeems herself from the winceable mess that was Kate Plays Christine and provides a strong central or starting figure of sliding chaos that will envelope the rest of the cast. The ever welcome Jane Adams brings her dependable convicted fragility to Jane. The scene with the doctor that morphs into a sex scene but doesn't is powered by her wonder, eagerness and barely concealed disappointment. Tunde Adebimpe whose role becomes more profound that we might expect shows us great subtlety in his polite uninterest in the party conversation which expands into the strong but quiet conviction in the subsequent conversation.

She Dies Tomorrow flirts with a kind of indy mumblecore drama but refuses to give in to it. There is pretty much nothing cute about it (which immediately tears it from those conventions) but there are stretches of warmth and authentic concern. I almost gasped to see the main production credit go to Benson and Morehead, a team whose films as writers and directors have built a growing cosmic horror realm including the adjacent After Midnight/Something Else (2018). This film bears little of their stamp but rather doesn't disagree with their branded Lovecraftoverse. It would be an apt entry into a B&M marathon. On its own, it stands as a creditable absurdist what-if. Points!

MIFF Session 7: ANNE AT 13000 FT

Anne goes skydiving and loves it. She misses it so much that even on playground duty at her work as a teacher's aide, she asks a colleague to lift her as she closes her eyes. She's good with the kids, enabling their bright imaginations, and well liked by the other staff. But all is not well.

In fact almost all of the seventy-five minutes of running time that feel like about three hours, things start at barely controllable and progressively disintegrate for the rest of the time. Anne has an undisclosed mental illness which drives her into combative episodes, leaves her confused most of the time and takes her further and further away from the euphoria of the gloriously controlled fall in the opening sequence.

While there is no condescension or judgement levelled at Anne at any time by the film itself we are kept both aloof and taken to physical intimacy. Almost the entirety of this film is shot in close-up, giving it a breathless, inescapable feel. It's hard to empathise with Anne as all of the conflicts we see are the result of her hitting out against her own lack of control. In one sequence a teacher confronted with a particularly hostile response repeatedly asks Anne if she needs assistance and the most forbidding of exchanges is: "I don't know how to help you."

Deragh Campbell in the title role brings a solid commitment to the task and we are not given a moment's break from Anne's state, from her lashing out, a helplessly drunken episode or the teetering wedding speech she gives for her colleague. All of the performances around her follow in the verite documentary style and none fail to convince.

However, without a space for the audience to assess if there is any hope to be had for this woman, there is little for us to do but witness the torment of her life. The potential for her engagement at the beginning is never fulfilled here and the sole hint that she might find some is packed into the final sequence which involves a moment's hesitation before a certain decision. Even there, as it is hard to judge where this happens on the timeline, we are still none the wiser. Perhaps that's the point, distressing as that is: we stand and walk to the exit as the late '60s sounding song groans over the end credits of this late '60s feeling film and leave her there mid-air.

SHADOWS Contactless: Friday August 21 2020 SBS on Demand + Messenger: THE CONVERSATION

You remember the song Torn Between Two Lovers? An MOR hit by Coloradan Mary McGregor way back in 1976. Well, this is the same thing except that it's more Caught Between Two Godfathers. Yep, Francis Ford Coppola was riding high on the breakthrough success of The Godfather and was only a year away from the equally celebrated sequel when he found the time to get a lot grittier, recall his indy roots and tell this tale of a man burdened with a secret.

Harry Caul (whose name sounds like a beard mask if you have an American accent) knows one thing more than anything else and that's surveillance. His pre-chic industrial digs are an impenetrable fortress against prying attention as he is the embodiment of such stealthy invasion. One of the best in the business he records a conversation between two lovers that sounds like a murder plot. He's been there before and let it happen. Does he break his professionalism or give himself another lifelong sack of rocks to haul uphill.

Gene Hackman gives his intense best, here, containing chain reactions behind his sober, knowing face. And he's just one. If you know your New Hollywood movies (and you should) most of this cast will feel like old friends. With everything so served up these days, especially in lockdown, it's easy to forget how the intention behind this work is the thing that hasn't changed: it's just got easier to do.

Join me, as I'll know if you don't.

MIFF Session 6: THE TANGO OF THE WIDOWER AND ITS DISTORTING MIRROR

Fixation. A middle aged man is confronted with his wife's suicide. He attempts to normalise his social and private lives but circles back repeatedly to the question of why she did it. A kind of haunting occurs in his apartment as her figure appears or just her wigs that course around the floor like pets or pests. Old memories recur: he shuts down her singing of Frere Jacques but this only brings back the tolling bells of judgement (or at least the church), conversations are resolved in different ways from their originals. At one point he seems to take his own life but this only results in the film reversing in a different edit until a conclusion emerges from the eerie doom of backwards motion and speech and a brilliantly resourceful use of verite lighting to convey a demonic figure in the close.

Raul Riuz abandoned this film through the necessity of having to leave his native Chile suddenly but it was reconstructed through lip readers nailing the dialogue and his widow's edit (taken in part through her dream dialogues with her deceased husband). The original intention was to have this examination of plea and guilt to be presented as blocks of images, like the movments of a piece of music or verses in a poem. As soon as you let go of an expectation of conventional narrative cinema this film is a delight of textures and moments of genuine emotion. The animate wigs on the floor (shown to be driven by toy cars) can be funny and eerie in the same sequence. The sight of a pair of feet disappearing under a bed is doubly disturbing in reverse. And so on. And so much more on.

This is anything but an hour of randomly spliced images or intentionally obscure scenes as the sense of purpose and statement develop before you can get restless and look somewhere else. IF you do start to shift a little in the second section where everything is running backwards in a different sequence than in the first half just run with it. You really will get somewhere soon. And you'll be glad you did.

MIFF Session 5: PRAYER FOR A LOST MITTEN

What have you lost that you wish you could find again. We begin at the lost property office of the Montreal Metro as faces appear at the service window and ask for personal belongings, sometimes fruitfully but mostly not. Through the snow swept streets of the city we enter the homes of people at, dinner or just enjoying a gathering with drinks and this question is addressed. Soon we hearing of lost love, the death of a parent, time, a family's warmth and further, intercut with scenes of the wintry nightscape of the northern city.

This beautiful piece about the many faces of loss, from the tiny to the life-changing, belies the lightness of its presentation. A family dinner seems to be going so amiably that we're happy enough to just go with the flow but soon we are hearing of a death scene told so plainly that its poignancy stings. It would be dismissive to describe it as an impressionist film as, beneath its gorgeously deep black and white cinematography and almost fetishistic celebration of winter nights, there beats a blood red heart. This film about loss is, as it must be, also a film about discovery, what has been found in the state of loss and where it has led. A choir sings outside on the footpath. When the conductor points to a singer, she or he sings of what they have lost. The harmony rises and builds to a tall, wide wave as one woman takes a lead and sings to an impassioned close. She's lost a binder but everyone around her knows it's more.

Finally, we hear from a teenager whose answer to the question is an impossible wish. We watch as he and his freinds stroll off into the shadows and the snow shovelling bulldozer pushes the frozen white drifts to the sides of the roads as the new snow falls. The only reason I wouldn't see it again is that it has worked so well the first time. I pegged this as a perfect 11 a.m. screening at the Forum film which is at least when I watched it.

MIFF Session 4: THE GO-GOS

 It's 1981, I'm almost out of my teens, and The Go-Gos are important to me. Why? That's a year of epoch making records like Primary, Spellbound, Everything's Gone Green and Release the Bats, why would I waste time on some Californian popsters who look like the wet dream of a major label executive? Well, because I'm standing in Rockinghourse records in Brisbane, poring through the new imports and a drum beat has burst out from the shop sound system. Hard four on the floor and swinging. A low piano note, guitar and bass thud a root note. The bass breaks free with a bluesy riff, doubled on the piano. A high female vocal, crisp and solid, sings four chanting lines before the chorus breaks through and everything explodes into wide screen. The power chords plummet as the vocals soar above in tight harmony: "They got the beat, they got the beat they got the beat YEEEEAH! They got the beat!" I'm almost welling up as I remember it. Second verse same as the first and then a riff on the riff as the guitars extend the pattern, rising to a keychange you feel before you understand it's happened. I bought the album before the song was over. "Who's this?" "The Go-Gos" G. There! Now! Bus home. Play the whole album in headphones.  Cover art was a group of young women in towels and faces obscured by moisturiser against a polarised colour background. The back cover was the glamour shots of each of them in a bathtub. First look: well, that's exploitative. Second look: it's ironic and funny. The kind of bird-flip to the mainstream typical of the era. Oh, they're all girls, that's great.

Dig? They could have been anyone from anywhere, putting out a sound like that. It was a perfect blend of punk energy with late sixties songcraft, it was exciting and it was the sound of the summer that year as I headed  back up home from Uni and settled in for the lazing and the pool and the parties. They toured the next year and a bunch of us went to Festival Hall for the gig (we didn't get the bill with Sunnyboys which would blown my head off but ...) and it was non stop.

And then Vacation came out and I didn't even bother listening to the whole album, let alone buy it. The title song led as a single and felt like the lighter cuts on the first one. I only heard about the third one years after it was released. Shrug: not everyone has ten great albums in them and there's still the wonder that is Beauty and the Beat. So, what happened? That's the reason for this film.

The Go-Gos formed in the late '70s punk scene in LA and built a following. Buoyed(see what I did there) by what felt like the fizzer that was the Pistols last gig (Winterland). Because things are always loose at that level they go through a few lineup changes and find a manager who hocks her car to get them on tours with The Specials and Madness in the UK. They come out from the wall of spit from the skinheads who want to ska and they're stronger and tougher. Back in LA the songs get better and, after a lot of knock backs from A&R men who don't think all girl bands can cut it, they get picked up by Miles Copeland's Indy offshoot IRS and get added to a Police tour. Bye bye bass player who thinks they are selling out. Hello to Blondie producer who turns their set into one of the finest crafted slabs of vinyl of the era: Beauty and the Beat. And a big shout out to the mixed-font neon-clad publicity machine that was the 1980s.

And then decline forms like the picture when the jigsaw puzzle starts making sense. Drug problem here (with the main songwriter), resentment of internal inequality there, songwriter denied a lead vocal on an album there. And then it crumbles. If you saw The Go-Betweens: Right Here and winced at the bit where Forster and McLennan dictate the end of the band to everyone else, regardless of their standing or commitment, you'll wince again when Belinda Carlisle and Charlotte Caffey dissolve the band and move on. 

From there it's the story of the reunions and the who-knows-where of the present. The difference between this documentary when it gets to this and comparable ones is that everything still feels balanced after the major fame and fortune chapters are over. The PiL documentary covered every single lineup, way beyond the point of the band producing anything compelling and felt like three hours. A Wanda Jackson doc a few years back started feeling like a promo to petition the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This film doesn't. Mostly, because the full complement of members past and present (the reformed band is the lineup from Beauty and the Beat) get more than a word in and manage to salt the nostalgia away with frankness. It also doesn't hurt that the newly released Club Zero (plays over the end credits) has ALL of the push and tangy vocals of anything from the debut album from 1981.

Rock docs should never just celebrate. Because of the associated pitfalls and ego disasters that fame in the genre bids all who enter, the opportunities for life lessons abound. The aforementioned Go-Betweens movie is a great telling of how a persistent lack of success can both show resilience and caution against hubris. The Go-Gos' story is like that except with a phase of gigantic fame. We are given time to gauge old sound against that of the fame period, decisions that now look incomprehensibly rash and self-annhiliating (the story of the dispatch of their first manager will give you serious cringes) and simply how much mess can be created with the best or, more usually, no real intentions. For me there is no better encapsulation than this: while on tour at the crest of the wave, drunk, young and happy in their hotel, the band took polaroids of a few of them on their beds pretending to give birth to Kathy Valentine. Towards the end of the movie the band sit around a table, looking at the photos, riffing and laughing. It's completely infectious.

Review: THE BEACH HOUSE

Young couple, Emily and Randall, turn up at Randall's parents' beach house for a weekend away. The neighbourhood is deserted but they like it that way. Then, at one point a strange older woman appears in the house as though she owns the place. She, Jane, is soon joined by her husband, Mitch, who recognises Randall as his friend's son. Inconvenient but what can you do, the house is big enough for the four of them. They get acquainted at dinner and when the wine runs out Randall suggests some pot chocolate which everyone gets into. One enchanted evening later and everyone gets a little psychedelic, not least Jane who goes wandering into a garden of luminous watery pods hanging from the foliage. There's a weird smell and a rising fog. And that's before you get to the frilly pink jellyfish and the wormlike infections.

This film presents a kind of Lovecraftian eco horror in which either the ancient ones have come to reclaim the human empire of wastepackaging or alien ones. It matters little to the infected as their bodies get increasingly colonised. And it matters to us as an intriguing sci-horror plot unfolds in a setting that is sending the cinematographer into a natural ecstasy. Performances are decent all round. So what's missing? Once we establish the big bad and it has its wicked way things get stodgy in the plot and we get a lot of overdrawn sequences that should be short and sharp. I noticed the same with the unsatisfying recent Color Out of Space which went in circles in act two and only barely recovered. The crsip finale of The Beach House is brought down by this as it is allowed to come across as unimpressive.

That said you could do a lot worse on a warm spring night with a bottle of something to go with those oysters.


Available on Shudder.