NYFF 63: "Peter Hujar's Day" ponders portraiture

by Cláudio Alves

The subject of many recent retrospectives, republishing projects, biographical and speculative analyses, Peter Hujar was among the queer creatives who, in the second half of the 20th century, helped define what we understand as the New York art scene. A portrait photographer, his oeuvre can be considered in dialogue with that of Mapplethorpe and Wojnarowicz, among others. And like those men, he died young, a victim of the AIDS crisis. Almost thirteen years before that end, Hujar sat down with his friend, Linda Rosenkrantz, and recalled the previous day in detail, allowing himself to be recorded for a work she was developing. Her book was never realized, but in 2019, a typewritten record of Hujar's testimony showed up in the Morgan Library archives.

Director Ira Sachs read the published transcripts while filming Passages, getting the idea to dramatize the material. The result is Peter Hujar's Day, a conversation piece where Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall breathe life into what remains of that long afternoon shared between two portraitists…

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TIFF 50: A star is born in "The Little Sister"

by Cláudio Alves

Like The Sun Rises on Us All in Venice, The Little Sister suffered quite a bit of backlash after its lead actress won Cannes' highest honor. And like Xin Zhilei, Nadia Melliti is an eminently deserving victor, unfairly maligned by the online badmouthing and stan nonsense that reached a boiling point as Jennifer Lawrence left the Croisette empty-handed. Indeed, hers is one of the year's most captivating performances, a complex and tender portrait that feels all the more special when one remembers this was Melliti's debut. As she did in previous efforts behind the camera, Hafsia Herzi has proven herself prodigious at directing actors, turning The Little Sister into a must-watch for anyone who values such artistry and the wonders of character-based drama…

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TIFF 50: Lucía Aleñar Iglesias wins the FIPRESCI Prize for "Forastera"

by Cláudio Alves

Light has character. In Lucía Aleñar Iglesias's feature debut, Forastera, it also has a soul, manifesting spirits intangible and far away. Through variable brightness and mysterious movements, it bridges times and places, the here and there, our commonplace existence and something that might not be the beyond but is closer to such abstractions than to matters of the flesh. You can feel it in your bones, even before a sage old woman looks at a flickering light and describes its inconsistency as proof of ghosts roaming around the house. It's right there, at the film's start, when Iglesias sets her camera on two sisters sunbathing during their Mallorcan vacation.

The eldest shares the tall tale of a dolphin sighting, daring the other girl to doubt her. As they talk, clouds pass over and the temperature of the tableau shifts from warmth to cold grey and back again. They flicker like the faint impression of a candle flame, a picture of serenity volatized. More than just its subject, the frame itself feels animated by an impossible life…

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TIFF 50: Musical mayhem in "The Testament of Ann Lee"

by Cláudio Alves

Why do we make musicals? What compels us to sing and dance our emotions, our spirits, our many meanings? Is it the communion of making yourself heard and seen by others? Is it the need to be witnessed? Does it have anything to do with a search for what lies beyond our everyday lives, an exuberant gesture reaching toward transcendence? It could be all of these possibilities at once or none whatsoever. Perhaps it's the same thing that compelled the Quakers to shake. By telling the story of Ann Lee, the founding mother of the Shaker sect, Mona Fastvold draws parallels between the two, studying, testing, and preaching the form of the musical, much like some might proselytize the Bible's teachings. 

The result is a movie musical like few others, a complicated mess of ideas and wild impulses, animated by a spirit unbound, unafraid to alienate or risk ridicule. The Testament of Ann Lee is, without a doubt, one of the most fascinating films of the fall festival season and, since experiencing it at TIFF 50, I haven't been able to stop thinking about what Fastvold wrought…

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TIFF 50: “Couture” reflects on fashion, bodies and mortality

by Cláudio Alves

In Alice Winocour's Couture, Angeline Jolie enters the film in a rush, already late and running. She plays Maxine Walker, an American director famous for her work in horror, who has been recently hired by one of those legendary French fashion houses to create a short film that will play alongside their new haute couture collection at Paris Fashion Week. She's there to work with the highest budget of her career, pumping out a vampire fantasy in a couple of days as the rest of the French capital prepares for the runway shows. At the top of the world, she's still struggling, burdened by doubts from higher-ups, a stifling schedule, and confusing calls from physicians back home. Those last ones are so insistent that she ends up leaving the shoot for an emergency appointment…

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