By: Henry J. Fromage –
Day 3 of TIFF means thrills from around the world, Cannes-approved drama, and possibly the worst film I’ve seen this year.
528. Carolina Caroline
Adam Carter Rehmeier and Kyle Gallner have teamed up once before on a roadtrip through America’s decaying heartland with Dinner and America, and this time take Samara Weaving along for the ride in the story of at first low-ambition Bonnie & Clyde. Rehmeier is painting in iconography here, or the less charitable may call it cliche. Probably it’s a little bit of both, but Gallner and Weaving’s performances grow in power as the film and the scale of their crimes moves along and the going gets tougher (special shout to Kyra Sedgwick just chewing the scenery to dust as possibly the world’s worst mother). You may have seen this story before, but the way they sink their teeth into it feels new and exciting. Two Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: for each new bar or restaurant
Take a Drink: for philosophizing
Take a Drink: for small cons
Take a Drink: for bigger ones
Do a Shot: for, hey… I don’t think that qualifies as a con
529. Unidentified
Saudi Arabian filmmaker extraordinaire Haifa al-Mansour tries her hand at genre filmmaking with this tale of a true crime-obsessed police office assistant who accompanies the company commander to a crime scene when the only other woman in the office had to step away. A high school girl’s body has been found out in the desert, and she quickly finds she’s the only one willing to, or perhaps even able to (men don’t move around women’s spaces as freely as she can) give the case a proper investigation. There’s a twist (several in fact, but one in particular) that threatens to cheapen, not deepen the film, but it’s one that’ll keep you thinking it over long afterwards, and like me, you’ll likely come to appreciate the audaciousness of it. Two Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: for dual true crime/makeup tutorial videos
Take a Drink: for clues
Take a Drink: for sexism
Do a Shot: for seismic twists
530. Christy
Love her or wonder what the big deal about her is, there’s no denying Sydney Sweeney is blowing up right now, and her passion project playing 80s and 90s pioneering women’s boxing superstar Christy Martin is likely to gain her the critical acclaim (and statue talk?) to but a bow on that trajectory. She’s great here, undeniable in the ring and conflicted outside it, be it due to her same sex attraction, her violent relationships with bad news manager and eventual husband James Martin (Ben Foster is really nastying up the screen playing can’t-look-away wife-beating skeezballs this festival), or that mother she can never satisfy (Merritt Wever, also great). David Michod brings a little of that cold-blooded approach to violence that put him on the map as well. Two Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: for each boxing match
Take a Drink: for each skin-crawling stare
Take a Drink: whenever anyone has something to say about Christy’s looks or love life
Do a Shot: for arguments with Mom
531. Bayaan
This Indian crime drama is based on the true story of women who dared testify against a Holy Man who was functionally the King of the community his ashram had integrated with for decades. Like many men given unlimited power, he used it to abuse the girls in his care, but so much of the local power structure effectively reported to him that he operated with impunity. This is a somewhat conventionally and sometimes unsubtly told story of fighting for justice with so much arrayed against you, but Huma Qureshi is a steely lead investigator and the setting and details are novel. Three Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: for tea
Take a Drink: for every investigatory setback
Take a Drink: for untrustworthy police activity
Take a Drink: for discussion of forced marriage
Do a Shot:for dead witnesses
532. Sirât
Oliver Laxe’s latest is this searing post-/mid-apocalyptic drama in which a Spanish father and son searching for their missing daughter/sister at an outdoor rave in Morocco they heard she may be attending decide to follow a group of partiers further into the desert in search of an even bigger party she may be at. This is all complicated a bit by the fact that World War III appears to have started back in Europe, so as they journey further what already feels like a society at the end of the world may well prove to be that. This is like a horror film where Cruel Fate is the faceless brutalizer- I don’t know if I’ve jumped or simply stared slack-jawed at the screen in a movie like this in many a year. Two Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: for car troubles
Take a Drink: for booming speakers
Take a Drink: for drugs
Do a Shot: for nasty surprises
533. Renoir
This gem of a film comes from Japanese director Chie Hazakawa, telling a semi-autobiographical story of a young girl in the late 1980s who is coping with the normal pressures of transitioning into adulthood while also trying to come to what terms are possible about the terminal diagnosis of her hospital-ridden father. It’s a film built on vignettes and small details, where change emerges not seismically but steadily. Two Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: for crying children
Take a Drink: for dreams
Take a Drink: for stories
Take a Drink: for magic
Take a Drink: for dating service phone messages
Do a Shot: for the specter of death
534. Nuns vs. The Vatican
Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is usually reported on as a problem of pedophilia, and while that has proven to be disturbingly rampant, much less attention is paid to the adult female victims of abuse, many of them the Nuns who’ve entrusted these men with their spiritual and physical well-being. This documentary follows a brave group of women pushing back against centuries of suppression of these stories, perhaps for their abusers to see consequences for the actions, but at least to try and ensure the systems that enable it change. Two Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: for every mention of art
Take a Drink: for each new country posting
Take a Drink: for each witness
Take a Drink: for signs of cover-up
Do a Shot: for twisted fantasies
535. Steal Away
It’s not often that I get to see a genuine sixer at a major film festival. Aggro Dr1ft certainly was one, but that was always on the table for that enfant terrible (pronounce that second word as you please). Clement Virgo, on the other hand, had the excellent Brother at the festival just three years ago, but here he was clearly given an entirely unrestrained world all his own, and oh boy, does he. I feel like describing the plot and its many absurdities is to ruin it, and in many ways the biggest laugh of the film is the postscript that reveals what it was based on. This is a film as underthought as it is wrong-headed, and boy that’s a close call indeed. Six Pack.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: when white women be crazy
Take a Drink: when white women be appropriating
Take a Drink: for witchy shit
Do a Shot: for magical deer
And here’s some bonus stream of consciousness from while I watched. Context not needed:
