TIFF '23: “The Teachers’ Lounge” builds a fizzling provocation

by Cláudio Alves

Germany’s official submission for the 96th Academy Awards starts with a students’ rights violation. Between teachers and administration, headaches abound due to a series of thefts with no apparent culprit. By the time we meet them, with no solution in sight, the staff sanctions two teachers to go into a classroom and question the students. When no kid comes forward with a confession, not even after the class representatives are pressured, the educators insist on searching through their belongings. A suspicious amount of money is found in a wallet, paranoia combined with xenophobic distrust toward the child’s Turkish origins. Turns out the money was a present from his parents.

It’s an embarrassment for all, especially Carla Nowak, the teacher whose classroom got raided. New to the school and full of righteous indignation, she sets out to make a point, kickstarting a chain of events that will soon slip out of everyone’s control…

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TIFF '23: "Pictures of Ghosts" Sings a City Symphony

by Cláudio Alves

When I walk around Lisbon, I often pass by places that once were cinemas, temples of art and communion left abandoned or transformed for new commercial purposes. There's a big one that got bought by an Evangelical church years ago, its screening room turned auditorium for religious spectacle. I've witnessed some of these changes, but many had already happened by the time I found myself alone in the city. My parents' memories and souvenirs tell the stories of a metropolis I never knew, invoking ghostly cinemas I wish I had seen. Lisbon is a graveyard for a moribund culture, the moving image surviving in a few palaces that persist, raging against the dying of the light.

While watching Kleber Mendonça Filho's Pictures of Ghosts, I couldn't help but translate its reflections to my beloved Lisbon. I imagine most cinephiles will do the same for their homes. It's an identification that shouldn't betray the Brazilian master's intent, which is deeply personal. But in specificity, the universal resides...

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TIFF '23: Love! Sex!! Cinema!!!

by Cláudio Alves

"The Beast"

So far at TIFF '23, no film has more stubbornly remained in my thoughts than Bertrand Bonello's The Beast, an ambitious genre-bending experiment with shades of Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle" and incel rhetoric. You can't fault the French maverick for a lack of ideas, but I'm not sure they all coalesce. Still, it persists in the upper levels of my mind, nagging for reconsideration, spiking me with lost images I saw projected monument-like on an IMAX screen. Truthfully, I've never been as intimately acquainted with Léa Seydoux's face, and at times, she looked like a beautiful titan about to devour the audience, mayhap the whole universe.

The Beast's thoughts on love across the ages are especially fascinating in how they compare to other artists' visions of the amorous realm. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed and Fallen Leaves couldn't be more different, so let's talk all three after the jump...

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TIFF '23: "Not a Word" finds mother and son at the world's edge

by Cláudio Alves

It's always curious how shared themes and repeated motifs can spread through a film festival's program. At TIFF '23, motherhood is among the hottest topics, especially concerning the bonds and barriers between single mothers and their adolescent sons. Another more unexpected trend is how many titles enjoying their North American or World Premieres recall Todd Field's TÁR, as if that work had echoed a shape-shift sound through the art film scene. None of this means cineastes are copying each other or that festival programmers are indulging in redundancy. It's merely a thought-provoking coincidence that can lead the viewer down the road to comparison and offer new avenues of analysis. Amid the similarities, you may grow to treasure each project's specificity, their points of divergence.

Consider Hanna Antonina Wojcik-Slak's Not a Word, where a busy orchestra conductor raising her son alone is confronted with the boy's inherent unknowability…

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TIFF ’23: In “Monster,” we’re all alone and that’s beautiful

by Cláudio Alves

Part of being alive is coming to grips with some harsh truths intrinsic to the human condition. For instance, we’ll never know the other, not entirely, no matter how hard we try. Even mothers can’t hope to fully grasp their children’s interiority, each human being a galaxy unto themselves. You can either fight against that notion in fruitless despair or accept it. We’re all alone, trapped in the mystery of ourselves, but so is everyone else. Reach out, and you’ll come close to the infinite unknown. Look at it right, and you’ll see beauty beyond belief.

The cinema of Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda has long reflected on such ideas, but Monster is still a high mark of cinematic compassion in his filmography. Penned by Cannes Best Screenplay-winner Yuji Sakamoto and set to the sound of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s last score, this film broke my heart…

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