It Is Cine Europa Time in Compostela

November means Cine Europa in Santiago de Compostela. It is a festival that features some of the most exciting international offerings from the festival circuit, including the 3 biggies, Cannes, Venice, and Berlin, and boasts new offerings from modern auteurs like Asghar Farhadi, Gaspar Noé, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, François Ozon, Mia Hansen-Løve, and Terence Davies. Cine Europa lasts a little over 2 weeks where Galcian residents get to enjoy the new treasures of current cinema in the two main theatres, the impressively elegant Teatro Principal and el Salón Teatro, plus the Auditorium of Galicia, home of the Philharmonic of Galicia, and the two local art cinemas, Numax and Multicines Compostela. This year was the first year in the festival’s 35 year history that an official jury was appointed to award the best films on offer. Unfortunately I was unable to see any of the selected winners from the official jury, young jury, or even the public, such was the amazing variety of unmissable films on display. The winners include the Iranian drama Hit the Road (Official Jury best film), the Chinese gay themed drama Money Boys (Young Jury best film, Official Jury best director), and the All-star French film Lost Illusions (Public Winner). Despite not getting to see those bestowed with trophies, I saw a plethora of exciting and diverse films from different corners of the world and across different genres. If only Cine Europa lasted all year round. 

A Hero - Asghar Farhadi, Iran

The most internationally recognized Iranian director since Abbas Kiarostami strikes again with a brilliantly, unsettling cringeworthy melodrama like only he can make. The Palme d’Or and multiple Oscar winning director creates another incredibly layered screenplay to display the multifaceted complexity of the human condition, our social interactions, and how our words and actions contradict themselves into creating impossible situations where what is true and false and right and wrong is almost hopelessly inexplicable through words. While the characters explain themselves time and time again, burying themselves further and further into a dire labyrinth that exists in some clouded hemisphere between reality and fiction, the audience realises that no matter how good our protagonist is, or how honest his intentions, there is no getting himself out of his downward spiralling fate brought on, ironically, by a good deed turned into a headless monster. The film tells the story of Rahim, played with a beaming smile and irresistibly likeable performance by Amir Jadidi. Rahim is in prison for failing to repay a debt he owes to his ex-wife’s brother. When his girlfriend finds a purse full of gold coins they believe they can finally get his debtor to release him by selling the gold and giving him the profits. However, when the gold is not worth as much as they thought it was, and Rahim’s conscience is troubled by the act, so instead, when Rahim is on release for a couple days, he decides to put up signs around the city to see if they can return the purse to its owner. When the supposed owner calls him at the prison and the warden and prison staff hear about his ‘extraordinary’ action given a man in his situation they turn it into an opportunity to turn him into a public hero. At the beginning Rahim is thought to be a true idol, but a couple white lies paired with contrasting opinions on his character posted on social media slowly turn public opinion against him in an ugly fashion. The title seems honest at times, sarcastic at others, and sometimes we wonder if there really is any hero in the story at all. By the end of the film Rahim has several opportunities to be A Hero, and by the time the credits roll we realize that each person, based on their own perspective and their own truth will decide whether he is or not. Perhaps it is not the opinion of the faceless world that matters, but that of those who are most important to you. 

You Will Die at 20 - Amjad Abu Alala, Sudan

The one week festival that takes place before Cine Europa, Cine Amal, takes a look at international Arabic cinema, and a standout of the selection this year is You Will Die at 20, the first film selected by Sudan for the best foreign film Oscar. And what a first film it is. Amjad Abu Alala promises great things for the future of Sudanese filmmaking. His visionary film tells of a boy, Muzamil, who is cursed to die at the age of 20 when a mystic predicts his death because a freak accident coincides with the exact moment his mother takes him to a temple to receive the mystic’s blessing. His mother, a staunch believer spends the rest of the boy’s life in mourning, counting each passing day on a clay wall until the boy’s foretold death day. The film is a striking critique not only of spiritualism in Sudan, but of religion everywhere, of believers who take everything they are told at face value, without hesitating for a second the possibility of another outcome. Instead of making the most of Muzamil’s expected few years on Earth, his mother, depressed by the very sight of him, has him tirelessly and joylessly prepare for the afterlife, sending him to school to learn, not to read, but to memorize the sacred texts of the Quran. Muzamil does not even understand what he is chanting, and this is key. He is rewarded for being the first boy in the village to have memorized the entire text, but would be unable to explain its lessons, analyze, or critique it. As his mother thoughtlessly believes in the mystics' words, Muzamil is taught to follow the religious path laid out for him without thinking about what he is doing. In solely spending his life in preparation for his death, the film could be titled ‘Death until 20,’ as the boy is unable to take pleasure in the pleasures and experiences of boyhood. The film takes place in a rural village, cut off from industrialized society, and Abu Alala makes clear that the majority of the people in the village do not know what lies beyond it. It is shot with beautiful dreamlike wonder, capturing Muzamil’s state of purgatory between life and death with mysterious spendor. 

The Worst Person in the World  - Joachim Trier, Norway

A big hit at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, acclaimed Norwegian director Joachim Trier breathes new life into the intellectual romantic dramedy. The film has hints of Woody Allan, Noah Baumbach, (500) Days of Summer, and Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, and is a wonderfully imaginative and playful, yet very real feeling look into the deeply private and personal relationships of Julie, a young woman played by breakout star and Cannes award winning Best Actress, Renate Reinsve. Trier tells the story of 2 of Julie’s relationships in intimate detail in 12 Chapters, a Prologue, and an Epilogue. Throughout these chapters Julie falls in and out of love, flirts, has sex, tries to find a way to contribute to the world, battles with the psychological parental demons, and even is forced to deal with death. Though the three protagonists, Julie, her famous comic drawing boyfriend, Aksel, and the lovable giant who walks in a coffee shop, Eivind, are impossibly sexy and filmed with a kind of glossy movie world sheen, we see our own lives and decisions mirrored in those that Julie confronts, no matter how superficially they resemble each other. That is the magic of a film that feels as honest as Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, that we feel represented and understood even if we are nothing like the protagonists. The film’s themes are so universal and timely, and so bravely and genuinely depicted that we identify ourselves with it immediately. Visually the film has a David Fincher-like crisp, clear, digital aesthetic, though the subject matter is much less dark and violent. The literary telling of the film mixed with a couple of fantastical scenes, one where time stops and another that depicts a drug trip, give the film an enjoyable, inventive flow. It is very much a romantic dramedy about our times that questions female sexuality, Me Too, and the digital generation’s desire to find their place in a world that is so fast moving and that offers so many options that it is difficult for us to know when or if we should stop where we are, or if there is something better just around the corner. Who is The Worst Person in the World? Perhaps it is no one, but a feeling we all have, on the one hand for simply existing and participating in a capitalist world that is slowly destroying itself, and for letting people down on our own path to self discovery and self fulfillment. 

Drive my Car - Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan

Drive my Car is an extremely mysterious, slow burning, 3 hour Japanese drama about human relations and our inability to ever entirely know and understand others or make ourselves known and understood by even our most intimate relations. It may test some viewer’s patience, but I found its subtle mysteries and secrets utterly fascinating and continue trying to work them out days after having seen the film. It reminds me of Andrew Haigh’s brilliant 45 Years, where a couple, even after decades of marriage, still has worries and doubts about the success and happiness of their partnership. Is it all an act, or is it real? The film begins with the silhouette of a naked woman in bed telling an erotic tale to her lover who lies half asleep next to her. We see her male partner, but she is displayed to us as an enigmatic shadow, sexy, interesting, and unreadable. The couple are Yusuke, a theater actor and director and his wife, Oto, a television screenwriter. Oto will remain a riddle for the rest of the film as Yusuke’s thoughts, troubled with guilt, jealousy, and curiosity also dwell restlessly on her. The film focuses lengthy sections of the film on Yusuke’s production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Surely the film will be more rewarding for those who are familiar with the play, and for those who are not, like myself, these sections can drag on a bit long despite the clever interlayering of dialogue scenes from the play that seem to be talking specifically about the off stage action in the characters’ personal lives. This is an age-old tactic used from All About Eve to The Clouds of Sils Maria. It is not exactly innovative, but it is used to effect. Two other important characters in the film are Yusuke’s driver Misaki, a young woman from a lower class background, and Koji, a famous and attractive yet impulsive and aggressive young actor. Yusuke and these two characters form a triangle of troubled souls struggling to live with their demons of the past and present. They all carry a guilt with them, and commit an unforgivable act either intentionally or accidentally, and art is the method by which they look to deal with their bad conscience. The power of art is movingly portrayed in Yusuke’s play, which is given a kind of universal humanistic ability as he casts actors from different backgrounds and languages to interpret the characters simultaneously in Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and even, in one of the most touching performances, Korean sign language. This tactic is reminiscent of the production of Italian films of the 1960s where directors like Fellini and Leone would cast international actors to play their parts in their various languages, but here, Yusuke embraces the power of these original languages instead of dubbing over them. It is a film that is full of images and allegories, the most striking of which is surely the car from the title. A classic little car whose vibrant red color draws our eye to it in every shot in which it appears. 

Compartment No. 6 - Juho Kuosmanen, Finland

I saw Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s last film, The Happiest Day in the Life of Ollie Maki at the international film festival in Gijón 5 years ago and left the cinema with a similar feeling of an upbeat love of life. Ollie Maki is a sweet period piece told in black and white of a Finnish boxer, much different from the tormented heroes of Raging Bull, The Fighter, or even Rocky. Here Kuosamen takes us to the past again, this time to the age before cell phones or digital cameras, as a Finnish student, Laura, records her journey through Russia with a video camera. She is sharing a flat with her partner Irina, a beautiful woman from Moscow, who may love Laura in her own way, but whose life is so full that the attachment Laura feels for her is not reciprocated in the least. Irina books a trip for her and Laura to see some petroglyphs in the north of Russia, a journey that will take them 2 days by overnight train to reach. However, when Irina cancels, Laura decides to go anyway, as Irina’s friends tell her, because to understand who we are now, it is imperative to know where we come from. Though perhaps true in some way, this statement sounds unbelievably pretentious to the audience when stated, a sentiment shared by Laura’s travel companion, the young, drunk, innocently handsome Vadim. Laura’s first impression of Vadim is of a belligerent, bald, uncultured, and possibly dangerous young man. He boards the train with a bottle of vodka and proceeds to make inappropriate comments even asking her if she is selling her ‘goods’ in Russia. Laura cannot get past the idea that Vadim has taken Irina’s place, but once she determines to get through the journey anyway, they both develop an unexpected bond thanks to the hours of conversation they are forced to have due to the lack of ipods, netflix, and cell phones. It is another poignant portrait of human relations and love by Kuosmanen who shoots the film in very close shots with a handheld camera. We feel the greasy, unwashed hair of Laura and smell the alcohol on Vadim’s breath. In one particularly painful scene, Laura wakes up from a hangover and the camera is there, right in her face to capture the pain as she opens her eyes, squinting from the snow white light, she dizzyingly stands up with a start and proceeds to stumble, half asleep, to run and catch her train. It is the most realistic depiction of a hangover I have ever seen. The end of Laura’s trip does not turn out at all as she expected. She seeks out to search for the random scratches in rocks as Vadim would confusedly say, but ends up with something much more profound. And yes, she does find proof that art as a way of human communication is something that humankind has done since the beginning of its existence that continues to be just as profound today. 

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn - Radu Jude, Romania

The most structurally experimental film I saw at the festival is without a doubt Radu Jude’s Golden Bear winning analysis of modern Romania in her provocate and outlandish, from the opening to closing frame, to the very title, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. The film opens with the Loony Porn promised in the title, an explicit, amateur adult porn film made at home by the protagonist, Emi, and her husband. The video sets the rest of the film in action, as it is accidently made public. Emi is a high school teacher and the release of her private sex tape turns her profesional and social relations upside down. The film is then told in three parts. In the first we follow Emi and she does her shopping and talks on her cell phone through Bucharest, yet the camera, in a realist, documentary style way, using zooms and handheld tracking shots, is much more interested in what surrounds Emi, than Emi herself. It is a slow section, especially compared to the jaw dropping opening act. Jude gives the audience a tour of the Romanian capital city, and instead of showing us the most impressive national monuments, she focuses her attention on what is most present, and, unfortunately, most unattractive. The city, like all Western cities, has become so overrun by capitalism and advertising that seemingly our entire environment is either for sale, or trying to convince us to buy something. The camera occasionally loses interest in Emi entirely and instead stops to contemplate a ruined building or boxes of plastic Barbi dolls wrapped and packaged in even more shiny plastic. The second section of the film leaves the plot completely behind to give us a montage of definitions from politics to history to sex. The definitions are clever, intriguing, and comical and give international viewers a sense of context of the socio-political state of Romania and how it got to where it is today. The third section is a bizarre artificial theatrical performance of Emi’s meeting at the school with her students’ parents. Here Emi is forced to deflect and respond to a barrage of ignorant, sexist, xenophonic, and just plain stupid remarks from all forms of society, from parents representing everything from the church to the military. The last section uses bright neon lights to amplify the nonsensical tone of the monogogues and conversations. Shot during the pandemic, the use of masks by the characters gives the film a shocking sense of actuality, as well as a humoristic touch as people constantly yell at eachother for wearing it incorrectly, and certain characters’ decision to wear masks depicting rainbows, quotes, and smiley faces make it impossible to take anything they say seriously. The final scenes give the viewers a selection of options for the ending of the film. What Jude gives us is not a film that tells a story, but a film that provokes the audience in its various parts and incites critical thinking. It is more of a comedic manifesto, created to generate conversation and discussion among friends after having watched it, something it does extremely well.

L’Événement - Audrey Diwan, France

This year's Golden Lion winner is a stressful, intense abortion drama set in 1963 France. Reminiscent of previous dramas like Vera Drake or 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, the film is a stark account of what life was like for women in European countries before abortion was legalized. Here our protagonist is Anne, an intelligent student studying literature in university who dares to have sexual encounters while her friends only joke and dream about them. Or do they? The sexual lives of women are shrouded in secrecy, as is the possibility to do away with an unwanted pregnancy, and when Anne determinely states she will not willingly becoming a mother, she is greeted by judgement, fear, and silence by both male and female friends alike. The cruel and humiliating process of an unplanned pregnancy and Anne’s subsequent attempts at getting an abortion are methodically and excrutiantingly laid out as she deals with doctors who scowl and lie to her, friends who abandon her, and men who try to take advantage of her since, ‘it can’t happen again.’ She is also constantly reminded of her legal situation, that even if she overcomes the challenges of finding someone to abort her fetus and manages to survive the dangerous underground operation, the doctor that treats her if and when she has to go to the hospital as a result of the abortion, could send her to jail for it. The film very intensely follows Anne in handheld footage, often in extreme closeup hanging just over her shoulder and in front of her face. Diwan forces the viewer to take in every second of Anne’s pain, frustration, and perseverance. She never shies away from showing the audience the brutal truth, and in one particularly seat squirmingly realistic moment, a member of the audience I watched it with fainted upon exiting the auditorium mid scene. L’Ëvénement may not be something we have never seen before, but in a world where populous conservative parties are threatening Western democracies, and where women’s rights continue to be in danger in various countries all over the world, the film is a stark reminder that the right to abort is not something that should be taken for granted, and that the world has a long way to go to preserve these rights and make sure they are available to women throughout the world. 

La Caja - Lorenzo Vigas, México

Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas’s film focuses on a young man, Hatzín, who is sent by his grandmother to recollect a box, the eponymous ‘Caja’ of the title, that contains the remains of his deceased father. However, after signing to take the box Hatzín believes he sees his father, alive and well, as the bus he is riding home in stops at a stop light. He decides to return the box of his deceased parent, and insteads dedicates himself to winning the affections of this reincarnated one. Mario, the man he takes to be his father, is a large Tony Soprano-like figure both physically and in character, a large imposing figure who attracts all those around him with his charisma, but who we later find out, is capable of doing anything to anyone for his own benefit. The film explores the lawlessness of Mexico where certain people are subjected to terrible working conditions and where standing up to those in power could be fatal. It is also a dramatic yet convincing depiction of how, from a young age, young men buy into this immoral system where those who commit immoral acts go unpunished and the only losers seem to be the weak. The film is a slow, silent, unrepentant view of rural Mexico with two protagonists who may be unlikeable, but whose actions feel unfortunately real and believable. Father figures seem hard to come by in a country scarred by violence and disorder, and, in the end, perhaps a dead father is a better role model than a crooked one.

Querelle - Rainer Werner Fassbender, Germany

The only classic film I saw at this year’s festival was Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film Querelle, released after he tragically died of a drug overdose at the age of 37. Despite his young age, Fassbender made more films in his short life than the majority of filmmakers make in a 50 year long career. One of the best German directors in history, and as controversial and intriguing as always, Fassbender’s last film lives up to his larger than life reputation. A beautifully colorful artificial intellectual film that borders on gay porn shot with an eternally burning bright yellow orange sunset in the horizon, the film tells the story of Querelle, an irresistibly sexy sailor played by Brad Davis. Based on Jean Ganet’s novel by the same name, the film is told with overtly philosophical narration, title cards, and monologues that talk explicitly about repression, rejection, sex, discovery, murder, guilt, and morality. The plot centers around Querelle’s sexual and homicidal discoveries as he kills a fellow sailor and experiements with men in the local bar of a port town. The owner of the bar is played by aged screen legend Jeanne Moreau who gets to excitingly sink her teeth into some real vulgar and absurd dialogue. Fassbender’s technical expertise is remarkable as his camera dollies, tracks, and sways through the constructed sets of the beautifully false port streets, allies, and dark corner ways, and through Moreau’s fabulous sexed up bar. Perhaps the film is too high brow for its own good, but Fassbender’s direction, and the absolutely revolutionary direct, unashamed depiction of gay male sex make the film as unique and essential as any of his other more accomplished outings. As the film ends one cannot escape a sense of pure overwhelming sorrow at the loss of such a daring and accomplished talent who gave us so much, but who surely had more things to say than his short time on earth allowed him to.