Indie Spirit Revue: "Janet Planet"

by Nick Taylor

I was pleasantly surprised by Janet Planet after hearing months of ecstatic reviews following its festival premiere before it got wide distribution. So often, when we get films from lauded theatre directors or playwrights, there's usually a built-in leeway for those artists not playing with cinema as fully or successfully as they might. But Annie Baker has no such timidity, and the assurance behind Janet Planet's audiovisual richness would be extraordinary for any director. The fact that she translates her idiosyncrasies with dialogue and character is an added bonus - how often do we get so lucky?...

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NYFF '24: "bluish" paints post-COVID malaise in many shades

by Nick Taylor

A quick note of appreciation: I am so excited to have received press accreditation to digitally cover this year’s New York Film Festival. This is pretty amazing! Even if I’m sitting at home, nestling with my man and our cats for a good movie rather than sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Payal Kapadia and Mati Diop, this is a version of a dream fulfilled. Honestly, being able to appreciate a film festival without being separated from the kids might even be the preferable option? Much to consider.

But enough about me! Instead let’s talk about bluish, the very first film I watched as part of this NYFF coverage. Directed by Milena Czernovsky and Lilith Kraxner, bluish follows two unnamed young women played by Leonie Bramberger and Natasha Goncharova, navigating life in an Austrian metropolis that should feel more lively than it is. The city and the protagonists are stumbling through a post-lockdown balance of intimacy and isolation. There’s still noise and color and motion, but it all feels so fragile now, so much harder to participate in. bluish is a sad film, but it’s also one of the most evocative portraits of trying to reintegrate into society and full personhood in the wake of COVID (which is still happening, by the way!!) I’ve seen yet...

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NYFF '24: Portuguese pastoral poetry in "Fire of Wind"

by Cláudio Alves

The first thing one notices about Marta Mateus' feature debut, Fire of Wind, is its striking look. A vineyard extends as far as the eye can see and the camera gobbles up every detail, crisp and razor-sharp in that way digital filmmaking so often is. The visual style is almost aggressive in how much texture it seeks to pack into every shot, a spin on haptic cinema that ensures the spectator considers each line in the grapevine and the rustle of plump windswept leaf. You can almost count the blades of dry grass below, far into the distance, as there's no artful shallow focus here, no anamorphic distortion or other trendy affectations of the cinematic image. It looks like little else out there – not even the films of Fire of Wind producer Pedro Costa...

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TIFF '24: A Dozen Capsules and Final Farewells

by Cláudio Alves

PERFUMED WITH MINT was one of many gems in TIFF's Wavelengths section.

At long last, let's close this seemingly unending TIFF coverage, so that The Film Experience can move on to some NYFF reviews, maybe even some peeks into the Lisbon festival scene. Still, before bidding Toronto adieu, a dozen titles need assessment, even if it's through a cornucopia of capsule reviews, plus a personal top ten to close things off properly. Spread out through five different festival sections and four continents, these twelve final films span from the experimental to the conventional, from dreamy stylization to dry dreary realism. There are beautiful sights to appreciate and performances, too, including a pair of wildly different characterizations from Chilean actress Paulina García. 

To open the belated farewell, I propose a look at my favorite TIFF section – Wavelengths. Within its radical offerings, one can find pictures that look like none other, such unique visions as Muhammad Hamdy's Perfumed with Mint and Jessica Sarah Rinland's Collective Monologue…

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TIFF '24: "Mistress Dispeller" pours ice water over heated marital melodrama

by Cláudio Alves

Elizabeth Lo's latest documentary has one hell of a premise. In modern-day China, a middle-class, middle-aged couple is going through a commonplace crisis we've seen portrayed in cinema a thousand times before. Mr. Li is having an affair with a younger woman, becoming increasingly distant from his spouse. Faced with heartbreak, Mrs. Li won't take the situation with the resigned acquiescence of a long-suffering wife. She categorically refuses to. And here's where Mistress Dispeller takes an odd turn, for the jilted spouse hires the titular professional, Wang Zhenxi, who specializes in the dissolution of such affairs.

Infiltrating the family as a distant relative, the mistress dispeller spends months investigating and reconstructing a broken bond. And somehow, Lo's camera is always there to watch it unfold…

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