Cláudio's 2021 Top Ten

by Cláudio Alves

Ever since late 2019, there's seldom been a week when I didn't write for The Film Experience. Being part of the blog's team is a dream come true in many regards, having followed it since I was a baby cinephile back in the mid-aughts. Considering how much The Film Experience has become part of my life, it's with great delight that I'm now sharing my year-end personal top 10 in these hallowed pages. While I love to read everything my fellow Team Experience colleagues write, we all have distinctive tastes. Indeed, many are the movies where many disagree – just look at the polarizing reactions to Spencer. This means that it's unlikely there's much overlap in any list of favorites, including that of our beloved editor, Nathaniel. Our heterogeneous opinions are part of what makes The Film Experience so special. 

With that in mind, here are my ten favorites features released in 2021. (First, though, some honorable mentions)…

I'm Portuguese but, since this is an American website, I am only listing features released in the United States between January 1st and December 31st, 2021, whether in theaters or streaming. Be assured that Sebastian Meise's Great Freedom, Ninja Thyberg's Pleasure, and Susana Nobre's Jack's Ride would feature on this list otherwise. I've also not seen everything, which means some titles won't be here, though I suspect they would be if I had seen them. In other words: "A screener, my kingdom for a The Souvenir Part II screener."

Finally, before moving to the top 10, I should mention some beautiful films that came close to making the cut. Tsai Ming-Liang's Days has persisted in the memory ever since I watched it in 2020, growing greater as time passed. Pablo Larraín's Spencer is a marvelous mess, whose boldness I fell in love with instantly. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? is also a marvel of invention, a lovely city symphony by Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze that charmed me from its first minute. The same happened with Celine Sciamma's Petite Maman, a profound miniature that similarly plays with magical realism. At last, I wish I could have found space to honor Fernanda Valadez's Identifying Features, whose final act is some of the best cinema 2021 had to offer.

THE TOP TEN

10) SWEAT, Magnus von Horn 
This Polish wonder is a searing exploration of intimacy in the age of selfies and influencers, gradations of consent, the vulnerability of social performance. In the lead role, Magdalena Kolesnik is astounding, playing someone who seeks normalcy while being unable to navigate any scenario where she's not the center of attention. Anchoring the film, she constructs one of the year's most formidable character studies, aided by editing patterns that emphasize a push-and-pull of autonomy, personal perspective. Von horn's script is empathetic but not toothless, confronting social media stardom as labor, its good side, and sharper edges.

9) FLEE, Jonas Poher Rasmussen
In Flee, beyond blurring the lines between doc footage and reenactment, animation is a tool used to conceal identities, expose internal experiences. For instance, watching the air run out of an enclosed space was one of the top horror scenes of the year. In another moment, the necessary economy of gesture made the connection between two boys in the back of a van all the more impactful. Transcending matters of medium and approach, there's no way to oversell the picture's emotional power. The revelation of queer acceptance at a moment when it seemed impossible turned me into a puddle of tears.

8) PRAYERS FOR THE STOLEN, Tatiana Huezo
From my review:

"Even the darkest lives contain sublimity and peace, genuine joy, and the contemplation of delight. To flatten the complexity of a harsh existence into unilateral unchanging torment is a disservice, a disrespect, a sad commonality in many films that pertain to shine a light on difficult circumstances. Through incredible direction, Huezo centers girlhood under peril but is able to see beyond the dark forces that loom nearby. (…) Prayers for the Stolen is a poem of solidarity, sisterhood, and innocence that resists and stubbornly survives like a dandelion bursting through concrete."

7) THE POWER OF THE DOG, Jane Campion
From my Jane Campion ranking:

"Watching Campion's latest, I was struck by how I had missed the tactility of her cinema. While obsessing over human gestures and the empty spaces between actions, the director's filmography is also full of pictures so visually evocative you can practically feel their textures, if not smell and taste them too. The Power of the Dog stinks of sweat and manly musk, of wet rawhide, bootleg booze, and turgid cocks straining for fulfillment. It's also queer as hell, a cruel take on the revisionist western that feels like an inversion of Reichardt's First Cow. Or else, its evil twin."

6) PARALLEL MOTHERS, Pedro Almodóvar
From my Penélope Cruz FYC: 

"Since they started working together, Penélope Cruz has always been a mother figure in Pedro Almodóvar's cinema. He calls her the epitome of Spanish motherhood, resilient and sensual. It's an archetype she has represented, in some way, in all their collaborations – from 1997's Live Flesh to this year's Parallel Mothers. Indeed, their latest partnership feels like a culmination, the maximum manifestation of the auteur's ideas on motherhood. It's also the most complicated role he's ever given his current muse, an extreme of melodrama paralleled by political reflections. (…) Cruz is a miracle worker."

5) QUO VADIS, AIDA?, Jasmila Žbanić
From my International Film Oscar coverage:

"Watching all this unfold is to witness a nerve-wracking nightmare whose bloody destination is known to whoever has a passing knowledge of the Bosnian genocide. Like a master of complicated thrills, the director executes the premise to make it suspenseful, our hearts wrenched by concern over the individual characters' ultimate fates. While experiencing this galvanizing masterpiece, I wanted to scream. Scream until my throat was hoarse and bloody. Quo Vadis, Aida? illustrates the crime of inaction with painful audiovisual and emotional potency, honoring the victims and the survivors who had to live on after staring in the horribly human face of evil."

4) DRIVE MY CAR, Ryusuke Hamaguchi 
From my screenplay FYC:

"The Uncle Vanya of (Hamaguchi's) Drive My Car is a multilingual challenge, spoken in various idioms by performers who don't understand each other on stage. Still, through reading the text, through shared moments and shared spaces, the pains of rehearsal, and mutual frustrations, they reach a place of deep understanding. May we all reach that place. I know, in some way, Drive My Car helped me get closer to it."

3) BO BURNHAM: INSIDE, Bo Burnham
From my personal reflection:

"I'm not a proponent of the idea that a work of art's flaws are made void by self-awareness. An admission of error isn't, in my mind, a vaccination against critique. On that same note, I understand those who are put off by Burnham's style of expression, the referential nature of his work, and its whiffs of pretentious navel-gazing. However, even as I see those avenues of thought that might lead me to dislike Inside, I can't help but love it, finding all its broken sincerity and shattered existentialism to be moving beyond words.."

2) MEMORIA, Apichatpong Weerasethakul 
While working on similar themes to past films, the director achieves new transcendence through a meditation on temporal echoes, memory, sonic mysteries. His ability to sustain a moment is miraculous, making serenity into a magical experience whose stillness never invalidates the audiovisual audacity. In Memoria, time stops, dilutes, and distends while a strange something drones on. But, then, there's this noise, a sonic haunting that only some can hear. What is it? A memory from the future past? From the past future? It's hypnotic, transcendent cinema.

1) TITANE, Julia Ducournau
Spike Lee's Cannes jury got it right. By far, the most exhilarating movie-watching experience of the year, Titane kept throwing ideas at the viewer, forcing you to think on concepts that would soon to be twisted out of shape by the next scene. In many ways, it feels as if we're only glimpsing a part of an unholy imagination, bursting with heady concepts on gender, sex, identity, blood, and connection. And then, just when you think you've got this flick figured out, Vincent Lindon emerges with the biggest shock of all - tenderness. Through Ducournau's lensing, his titan of a man is a source of endless surprise, bruised yearning in tandem with paternal authority, macho brittleness. I'm haunted by Titane and couldn't be happier.

 

Follow me on Letterboxd if you want to keep up with what I'm watching, and check out my complete ranking of 2021 releases. Of course, it constantly changes, so don't expect consistency with this piece. That being said, what do you think of this top 10, and how does it differ from your own?

Comments

[Peggy Sue]

Magdalena Kolesnik is fabulous in Sweat. She should have been nominated for the European Award at least.

[NATHANIEL R]

This is the very first i'm hearing of SWEAT. will have to look it up. it remains crazy how many movies there are in the world. so many that even if you pay close attention you will always be taken off guard at least a couple of times each top ten list / awards season.

[Jésus Alonso]

Inside, Parallel Mothers and The Power of the Dog are also in my top 10 already... but I have still so many films to see... so far I've seen only around 70 2021 offerings...

[thevoid99]

So far, Titane is my #1 film of 2021. It is FUCKED UP but I love it.

[eurocheese]

You have three of my top ten (and Spencer would be a fourth), Flee fell just outside and I didn't count Bo Burnham's Inside, but it probably would have landed there as well if I included it. Titane wasn't going to be the Academy's thing - though I'd certainly take an insane Director surprise nomination! - but man, Lindon absolutely broke my heart. Great read, and it makes me want to track down the films I haven't seen.

[Dan H]

I just put QUO VADIS, AIDA? at the top of my queue. Thanks for the reminder about it.

[Kris]

I have seen the whole TOP10... A couple of these already in 2020... I somehow happened to watch 655 films in 2021 and on your TOP10 there are 3 in my TOP50 - The power of the dog and Drive my car... and the highest - in my TOP20 is "Prayers for the stolen" - it's going to grab one of the best international film oscar nominee spots! :)
Titane and Memoria were not my cup of tea (not at all) :)