By: Henry J. Fromage –
I got to try quite a few regional film festivals during the pandemic, and still get all those emails despite most having moved back fully to in-person, and I have to say few program near or better than my hometown Wisconsin Film Festival. Time to catch up on Cannes, Venice, TIFF, and even a few new discoveries.
151: The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
Joanna Arnow bursts out of the gate as a debuting writer/director/star in this super-dry, super-wry millennial malaise comedy about a young professional in New York with a pretty humdrum work and home life outside of her enjoyment of being the first part of sub/dom relationships with older men. Her sexual frankness invites comparisons to Lena Dunham, but she’s got a style all her own. Kink has never been presented so boringly… and there’s something nice about that? Two Beers.
152: Coup!
I wanted to like this class comedy/thriller set during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic a lot more than I did. A somewhat devilish interloper poses as the newly hired cook for a wealthy family whose patriarch writes scathing diatribes against the oppression of the wealthy safely from his Egg Island mansion. It’s all a little Parasite in plotting, but far broader in its humor and a bit cheaper in its execution, with some muddled politics to boot. It does end strongly, and I admire the intent. Four Beers.
153: Goodbye Julia
This superb Cannes prizewinner from last year is set across 10 eventful years of Sudanese history, in which the Arab majority and wealthier North and the African Christian and poorer South are on the precipice of splitting after half a century of civil war. A Northern woman gets a Southern man killed in a quick and upsetting sequence of events, then hires on his wife as her maid out of guilt and a desire to atone… without giving up her entire life. This is a superbly and maddeningly complex character drama that will teach you more about the culture and conflicts of Sudan than a host of newspaper articles could. Two Beers.
154: Janet Planet
This 90s-set coming of age story is about mothers and daughters and being really bad at relationships, I guess. It’s got artist commune vibes and a sense of humor that is quietly droll nearly to the point of being undetectable. I started to tell myself halfway through that this was an origin story to another somewhat hippy dippy character to whom practically nothing interesting happens- Michelle Williams’ artist from Showing Up. Four Beers.
155: Sweet Dreams
This Indonesian-set drama/thriller takes place at the turn of the 20th Century, when Dutch colonialism still reined supreme there, but is on its way out. When a plantation owner dies and his supposedly more progressive son and stepdaughter come at the behest of his wife, who has no intentions of ever leaving despite never appearing to do anything in particular there, relationships fray with the native staff and sugar factory workers. A portrait of colonial malaise and the deep-set sickness it engenders in all involved. Three Beers.
156: Dream Creep
This was a surprise precursor to Sleep, but as sleep-related horror predicated on not being sure what’s real and what’s in the characters’ heads, it’s kind of the perfect one. A man wakes up to hear his girlfriend’s voice emanating from her ear, and urging him not to wake her up or she’ll die. It goes progressively bloody and unhinged places from there. Nice programming choice. Three Beers.
157: Sleep
This Korean horror film stars the tragically late Lee Sun-kyun and Jung Yu-mi as a married and expecting couple whose lives are turned upside down when he starts sleepwalking in a rather sinister manner. Not necessarily scary so much as darkly funny and consistently disturbing, this will have you guessing who the crazy one is in short order. Three Beers.
