European Film Awards: Festival Darlings score big in the Craft Categories

Cláudio Alves

Last month, the European Film Academy announced their nominations in the above-the-line categories, with The Zone of Interest and Fallen Leaves in the lead. Now, it was a time for the winners of their craft prizes, also known as the Excellence Awards. These honors are decided by a jury of eight from a pool of selected titles, and this year, there was some double-dipping afoot. Both The Promised Land and Society of the Snow scored two prizes, while the remaining awards were divided among pictures that premiered in competition at Cannes – Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, La Chimera, and Club Zero…

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Contemporary Costume Watch: "Pain Hustlers"

by Cláudio Alves

Where does one draw the line between period and contemporary costume design? It's hard to tell, and sometimes, it depends on the intentionality behind a given sartorial choice. Some filmmakers aim to capture the specificity of time and place, even when chronological proximity would excuse some adaptations to current sensibilities. Others forego that exactitude altogether. And then there's the way even the Costume Design Guild muddies the waters. How is the early 90s style of Rent considered period in 2005, but Precious' 1987-set narrative is still contemporary in 2009? All this to say that, for this article's purpose, let's interpret Pain Hustlers' wardrobe as a work of contemporary costume design. An outstanding one at that…

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Contemporary Costume Watch: "Passages"

by Cláudio Alves

Like it happens every year, as the awards season dawns, I complain that voters should pay more attention to contemporary narratives when recognizing design achievements. In 2023, their reluctance will be especially aggravating since there's such a deep well of costuming excellence within modern contexts. Take Khadija Zeggaï in Passages, for example. 

Ira Sachs' latest feature finds Franz Rogowski playing a Paris-based German director entangled in a bisexual love triangle of his own making. As Tomas, the actor is a sartorial tease whether he's in mesh or ratty green knits, while Ben Whishaw is more modest as his artist husband, Martin. Finally, Adèle Exarchopoulos is Agathe, a teacher who dresses like a young Bardot at the height of the Nouvelle Vague - all tight fits, high hems, and lingerie as outerwear. Across the board, fashion defies heteronormative tenets, everything is unisex and sexy to the nth degree. Clothes articulate tricky character dynamics while offering editorial-worthy queer spectacle…

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Best Costume Design is all about Big Hats

by Cláudio Alves

It's always interesting to find links between otherwise disconnected pictures, whether in the context of a film festival or just the calendar year. Sometimes, the awards season can suggest interesting threads uniting films by virtue of competition-born comparison. Note that one need not be very intellectual about this, and it's always good to have some fun about the race. This year, for example, I couldn't help but notice how three of our likely nomination leaders are bedecked in exuberant millinery, with Killers of the Flower Moon taking the cake as 2023's best hat movie. Or, at the very least, 2023's most hats movie.

And, as we all know, when it comes to the Academy, "most" often trumps "best." Not that Jacqueline West is locked to win Best Costume Design for the Scorsese movie. After all, even in hat terms alone, there's stiff competition from Barbie and Oppenheimer…

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Horror Costuming: The Bride of Frankenstein

by Cláudio Alves

As promised, the Horror Costuming series is back for a new spooky season, going further into the past than ever before. So much so that one delves into what now seems cliché, lest we forget that what is commonplace today was once new. There's no better example of this than the Universal Horror monsters of Hollywood's Golden Age, when studio head designer Vera West helped crystalize looks that would become classics. Think of Dracula's tuxedoed elegance with a red-lined opera cape, the Invisible Man's bandage and sunglasses combo, and, of course, the lumbering threat of Frankenstein's Monster.

Speaking of that 1931 James Whale-directed horror classic, today's topic of choice shall be its sequel. After the first movie's massive success, Universal begged the director for a follow-up, giving him unprecedented creative control. From there, we got the Genesis of the horror (tragi)comedy, a camp extravaganza like none other – 1935's The Bride of Frankenstein…

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