NYFF 64: Austria’s “Rose” is much more than merely another Sandra Hüller showcase

by Cláudio Alves

While our TIFF 51 coverage isn’t over – sometimes, it feels like it will go on forever, with Eurocheese and I falling into Sisyphus' fate – one must acknowledge the other big festival of the moment. Right now, the New York Film Festival is blessing audiences with some of the best in world cinema, from September 25 to October 12. As we’ve done in years past, Joanna Sodeman-Taylor will join me in covering the fest from a distance, relying on screeners and whatnot. Hope you enjoy this wild virtual ride.

To kickstart these NYFF musings, why not consider another Best International Oscar submission? This one’s from Austria and last Berlinale’s Best Leading Performance Silver Bear winner, Rose. Indeed, most of the chatter about Markus Schleinzer’s latest has focused on Sandra Hüller’s work, a tour de force at the heart of a film that, nevertheless, is much more complicated than a mere acting showcase. Set in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, Rose is a story assembled from various cases documented in legal archives of the time, about those who were born as women to society’s eyes yet assumed male identities to liberate themselves from the limits of their sex. In the 17th century and beyond, there were and there are many Roses…

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TIFF 51: Germany’s “Everytime” and Italy’s “The Spiral”

by Cláudio Alves

Every year, a good part of my TIFF journey involves seeking the films that will eventually compete for the Best International Film Oscar. After all, here at The Film Experience, we’ve always prided ourselves on giving in-depth coverage to a race many overlook. Sometimes, the films have already been submitted by their nations by the time I arrive. Toronto. Sometimes, the news comes midway through the fest, after I’ve watched a picture and dismissed it despite the fun we had together. Who knew AMPAS’ most awarded nation would go so wacky, even tacky, for their selection? As to why I decided to pair these two? Well, they both offer portraits of families in crisis, grief as seen through the prism of mothers on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And yet, they couldn’t be more different.

From Germany, a country already in the running thanks to Berlinale winner Yellow Letters, we have Sandra Wollner’s Everytime, which took first prize in Cannes’ underrated Un Certain Regard competition. From Italy, the rare horror film to fight for the Venice Golden Lion and a Midnight Madness delight for the Toronto crowd, Paolo Stripooli’s The Spiral…

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TIFF 51: Jury of Two, Part I

Let’s take another break from those endless TIFF reviews, with Cláudio Alves and Eurocheese appointing themselves juries to choose the best of the fest, beyond Best Actress chatter.

I AM ROCKY was the People’s Choice Award runner-up at TIFF, just behind LA BOLA NEGRA. Will its popularity be reflected in Cláudio and Eurocheese’s picks?

EUROCHEESE: Having covered our favorite leading ladies at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, Cláudio and I will be naming our favorites in a number of categories. To start things off, let’s stick with the actressexual theme.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Many actresses were considered for this category, and there were some formidable runners-up. Adia matched her on-screen father, Mahershala Ali, in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, where Cláudio was right to call out the intensity of their scenes together. Olivia Colman may have a small part in Elsinore that registers mostly as a potential detractor, but of course she still finds enough notes in it to make her scenes with Andrew Scott sing. I also appreciated Gemma Chan’s loving but inadequate parenting in Josephine. In the end, though, there was a clear top choice…

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TIFF 51: Denmark’s “Woman Unknown” is an unnerving proposition

by Cláudio Alves

It’s funny, sometimes, how films can converse with each other. And those conversations aren’t even limited to a festival’s program. As I watched May el-Toukhy’s somewhat controversial Golden Lion winner, Woman Unknown, my mind drifted to The Odyssey. Not just Nolan’s blockbuster, but all the adaptations I’ve seen of the Homeric poem and how they deal with the mass femicide near the end. Or, better yet, how they ignore it, erasing a part of the story that might have a modern viewer regard Odysseus and Telemachus as nothing but cruel men, as monstrous as any of the creatures that tried to prevent Ithaca’s king from returning home. Do the maids that served Penelope’s suitors deserve to die? Were all of them co-conspirators or women caught in a patriarchy that demanded their total subservience to the desires of violent men? And what if, like Emily Wilson, we read the word “δμῳαί” as “slave” instead of “servant”? 

To define culpability and blame isn’t something we can wholly separate from how gendered our world has been through most of its history, or the power imbalances defined within class structures. And even those who commit wrongs, atrocities beyond belief, have a right to fairness in their trials and judgments. Theoretically, they do. More often than not, one tends to ignore these problems and believe in the simple dichotomy of heroes and villains, good people and bad, and be done with it. Ontological reductionism can be so comforting. Then again, both-siding everything can be just as soothing. Woman Unknown, recently selected as Denmark’s submission for the 99th Academy Awards, denies us these comforts. Indeed, it might have been one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences I suffered through at TIFF in the four years I’ve attended, and I don’t mean that as a negative critique. Far from it…

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TIFF 51: “Tender Loving Care” could be Mike Leigh’s perfect swan song

by Cláudio Alves

In 1971, Mike Leigh appeared on the scene with Bleak Moments, an exercise in social realism that wouldn’t immediately open the doors one might hope for in the British film industry. Instead, he became a TV writer-director, slowly building his reputation and drawing on the easy rapport with actors and improvisational methods he’d developed on stage. By 1988, he’d make his grand return to theatrical features with High Hopes. Eight years later, he won the Palme d’Or for Secrets & Lies. Eight years later still, he’d take the Golden Lion for Vera Drake. In the past decade or so, such accolades meant little, as he struggled to finance projects after a couple of period drama flops whose majesty proved unpersuasive to investors. By the time he returned in 2024 with Hard Truths, headlines were written about how Cannes and Venice had rejected his comeback before a more modest world premiere at TIFF. It’s been a storied, eventful, and difficult career. And it might be over. 

Tender Loving Care, which premiered at Telluride before screening at TIFF, the NYFF, and sweeping San Sebastián by taking the Golden Seashell, Best Leading Performance for Kate O’Flynn and Best Screenplay for Leigh himself, is likely his last work. At 83, health issues have turned filmmaking into a painful endeavor, and financing remains an issue. Well, if this is to be Mike Leigh’s swan song, it’s a pretty perfect one at that…

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