Love Lies Bleeding

UK/US | 2024 | Directed by Rose Glass

Logline: A gym manager falls for a bodybuilder passing through town, but her own family’s dark history gets in the way of the romance.

Following up a debut feature as powerful, striking, and original as Saint Maud is a tough act to follow, but Rose Glass gives it a damn good shot. Love Lies Bleeding plays with the tropes and conventions of neo-noir, and, for the most part, deftly handles the genre’s most effective elements. Yet while Saint Maud was a richly detailed, atmospheric study of madness and obsession with a singular perspective, an extraordinary character arc, and a powerhouse ending, Love Lies Bleeding plays most of its cards straight, toys with familiarity, infused with a sly blend of retro and modern sensibilities (it’s soon apparent the movie is set in the 80s, but with today’s fashion it could easily be now), only pulling the rug in the last ten minutes, but boy, that carpet is yanked hard.  

Kristen Stewart, in a role she no doubt relished, plays Lou, a reclusive, chain-smoking - though she really wants to quit - manager of a shitty New Mexico warehouse gym on the outskirts of town. Big wall slogans remind its members that pain is weakness leaving the body. It’s here that Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a hardbody with her sights set on a Las Vegas body-building competition, swings by. She’s been living rough, and enduring compromising positions for rides. Running from the past and chasing one’s dreams can be a dirty business, and for Jackie, it’s about to get a whole lot dirtier.

Lou and Jackie hit off immediately. But Jackie has already taken a job at the local firing range, much to Lou’s chagrin, since it’s her psycho dad (Ed Harris in ridiculous hair extensions and chewing the scenery like tobacco) who runs it, and her sister’s scumbag husband, JJ (Dave Franco), who got Jackie the gig. Older sis Beth (Jena Malone) has long suffered physical abuse at the hands of JJ, but is trapped in a pathetic, co-dependent relationship, blind (almost literally due the beatings!) to the loveless marriage. Lou’s had enough of what she’s seen. Straw’s about to break the camel’s back.

Glass co-wrote the screenplay with Weronika Tofilska, an ex-pat Polish filmmaker who studied at Krzysztof Kieslowki’s film school, and directed a segment on a 2015 straight-to-video anthology A Moment of Horror, of which Glass also directed a segment. The visual stylistics Glass employs are reminiscent of Nicholas Winding Refn, but overall the movie is more like the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple, John Dahl’s Red Rock West, and Oliver Stone’s U-Turn, where flawed, but likeable characters quickly get out of their depths trying to fix themselves an exit, and the faster they try to dig their way out, the deeper they slide in, and the more dirt they pull in around themselves.

Love Lies Bleeding is an enthralling, entertaining movie, that while offering nothing that original in terms of plotting, still feels fresh with its use of sourced music (the sexually-fluid, electro-funk of Nona Hendryx’s “Transformation” and Gina X Performance’s “Nice Mover” feature early in the piece) and Clint Mansell’s excellent score. The characters are well-etched, all of them beautifully performed, especially Stewart and O’Brian in the central roles. Anna Baryshkinov’s small part as filthy, lost soul Daisy is a scene-stealing hoot, yet it’s a shame to see Jena Malone in such a tiny, almost thankless role.

For almost the entire movie Glass has fashioned a pumped-up, straight-down-the-barrel, erotically-charged crime caper, but suddenly, as the audience anticipates an explosive confrontation in the movie’s last ten minutes, the entire tone of the movie is turned on its head, with a radical shift into fantasy and finally in the movie’s last scene petering out into overt black comedy (although an absurdist sense of humour is prevalent throughout). It feels as though Glass and Tofilska didn’t quite know how to end the story and chose to wrap it up in a hasty, extravagant folly with a deadpan epilogue tagged on the end.

The sudden shift is a bold, deliberately metaphorical injection that will no doubt frustrate many viewers, but if you’re prepared to embrace it, then perhaps it can be interpreted as some kind of transgressive liberation, but it didn’t deliver the kind of thrilling, violent dénouement I was anticipating. Still, even if the ending wasn’t quite what I wanted – and I doubt anyone will be able anticipate it - Love Lies Bleeding is a sweaty, fun lil’ thriller, and a terrific sophomore feature for Glass.

Love Lies Bleeding is released THEATRICALLY by VVS FILMS in Australia nationwide, March 14th

You'll Never Find Me

2023 | Australia | Directed by Josiah Allen & Indianna Bell

Logline: During a violent thunderstorm a man living alone in an isolated caravan park is visited by a mysterious young woman seeking shelter, and as the night wears on, the tension between them mounts.

Every once in a while, an Aussie horror film comes along, seemingly out of nowhere, that blasts the cobwebs apart, heralding a bold and striking new talent. In the past year or so there’s been not just one of these films, but several, and, most curiously, they’ve all been helmed by a directing duo; Hannah Barlow & Kane Senes with Sissy, Danny & Michael Philippou with Talk to Me, Colin & Cameron Cairnes with Late Night with the Devil, and Josiah Allen & Indianna Bell with You’ll Never Find Me.

In Allen and Bell’s brooding, psychological chamber piece, the narrative is centred squarely upon the suspenseful interaction between Patrick (Brendan Rock), a man living a lonely existence in his surprisingly spacious caravan home in a remote part of a trailer park, and the lone woman (Jordan Cowan) who arrives at his doorstep, on an especially dark and stormy night, banging furiously, soaking wet from the thunderous rain, desperate for respite.  

Patrick invites her inside, but remains guarded, as the young woman, whose name we never learn, is reluctant to spread all her cards on the caravan table, and the details of her situation keep shifting. Patrick offers the woman a shower, dry clothing, a whisky to warm the prickly cockles of her heart. But she too is wary, as she begins to dig away at the man’s psyche with pointed questions, each one probing a little deeper, as both keep their invisible shields in place, attempting to prize out the other’s intent.

Bell’s screenplay steadily ratchets up the tension, as the two players dig further in the agenda dirt, dialogue spiked, scratching at a truth that won’t reveal itself easily. But one can feel that the exposed truth, however buried, won’t be pretty, and there’ll be tears before dawn, before bedtime even.

You’ll Never Find Me (a clever play on words by movie’s end) is a two-hander in a single location, so there’s always the concern that the film may become claustrophobic, fall prey to stagey theatrics, however, You’ll Never Find Me’s greatest strength is the terrific interplay. Cowan, whose background, unsurprisingly, is in theatre commands the screen. But the look and sound of the movie is really impressive; cinematographer and camera operator Maxx Corkindale, composer Darren Lim, sound designer Duncan Campbell and sound editor Lachlan Harris, all these rich elements, and the close-up performances, provide the film with serious atmospheric, cinematic chops.

But it’s the film’s central conceit, revealing itself in the movie’s final quarter, that threatens to bring this horror house of cards crashing down. The seesawing of intrigue and suspicion has Patrick and his female visitor appearing genuinely uneasy, then cocky and assured, but the explanation for the mysteriously tenebrous perspectives may prove too contrived for some.

I didn’t see the denouement coming as early as perhaps some viewers might, so the rug-pull did surprise me, but I wasn’t entirely sold. It’s definitely not the most original ending, we’ve had this type of wool pulled over our eyes before, but Allen and Bell’s stylish study in fear and suspicion – of psychological ruin – is such a visually dynamic, compelling, and dramatic treat, that despite its nightmarish trappings, it still succeeds in spades. Make sure you see this on the big screen.

You’ll Never Find Me is released by Umbrella Entertainment in select Australian cinemas from March 14.

Resurrection

2022 | US | Directed by Andrew Semans

Logline: A successful, single mother, with a daughter about to leave home, is horrified to discover a man from her distant past has returned to haunt her. 

Writer/director Andrew Semans’ screenplay was one of the most popular unproduced scripts in the international movie industry’s “Black List” of 2019. Ten years after his first feature, Nancy, Please, Resurrection features one of the best performances of the year from Rebecca Hall, a decidedly creepy turn from veteran character actor Tim Roth, and great work from up-and-coming Grace Kaufman. 

Margaret (Rebecca Hall) is a businesswoman, living a strict routine in upstate NY. She has a teenage daughter, Abbie (Grace Kaufman), about to head to college, and she is having an affair with one of her married co-workers, Peter (Michael Esper). But her controlled and composed life is about to come crumbling down, when at a conference she spots David (Tim Roth), the man who ruined her life twenty years earlier, and whom she had thought she’d successfully escaped.

But the wounds of trauma have a nasty habit of re-opening, and Margaret has a hell of a wound, about to have salt poured into it. 

After an initial panic attack, Margaret goes into protective overdrive, keeping a close watch on her daughter, who immediately notices something is very odd, and definitely wrong. Peter also becomes aware of Margaret’s increasingly erratic behaviour when she initiates urgent sex in the workplace. But worse still, Margaret begins to have nightmares about the trauma she experienced as a young woman, which involved the horrendous psychological and physical abuse David inflicted on her, and their infant baby, caught in the middle. 

Resurrection is, essentially, a psychological thriller that plays on the subjective experience of its protagonist, a woman plagued by the trauma of her past and the escalating deterioration of her mental health as she struggles to cope with its effects on her present life. The narrative becomes increasingly less reliable as Margaret’s reality disintegrates, as memory, reality, and fantasy collide in the final act. 

If one is prepared to suspend belief Resurrection works very well, with Seman in expert control of his central character’s emotional trajectory. Rebecca Hall remains at the top of her game delivering a tour-de-force performance of a woman losing her mind, hanging on by her fingernails as the monster from her past emerges from the darkness of the past she had hoped would remain in the shadows. But how much of Margaret’s perceived reality is actually happening? It’s possible much of what Margaret thinks is happening, after she first sees David, is in her mind. 

Grief is a devastating emotion, especially that of losing a child, and Margaret’s palpable fear of losing her daughter to the man who stole their child, yet claims to still have him close, is a truly nightmarish scenario. Hall delivers a powerful, riveting monologue to her young co-worker Gwen (Angela Wong Carbone), whom had been seeking personal guidance from her boss, in a scene that will no doubt earn Hall an Oscar nomination. 

Resurrection is a tenebrous and elusive tale, and yet another delve into the damaged mind, which we’ve been seeing a lot of in these pandemic times. It’s a disquieting and tense film about abuse, primarily psychological and emotional, and how the ramifications of trauma can still be triggered and ruinous many years after the fact. A tale that spills into full-blown horror in its final stage, after Margaret bravely faces David, who has had the upper hand since the start. It is the very end that will polarise viewers, but it’s an ending that makes sense, even darkly satisfies, if you accept the throes of death. 

Resurrection is released on digital platforms in Australia from Wednesday, November 30th. 

Violation

2020 | Canada | Directed by Dusty Mancinelli & Madeleine Sims-Fewer

Logline: A troubled woman on the edge of divorce returns home to her sister after years apart. But when her trust is betrayed, she embarks on a vengeful crusade.

There’s a saying, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” In the debut feature collaboration between Mancinelli and Sims-Fewer, who have both made several short films together, they shove revenge into a freezer and listen to it scream. This is a tale of psychosis and vengeance for steely horrorphiles of the slow-burn embrace. It is a drama that will sear your sensibilities, and grind your humanity to a fine powder and scattered to the wind. If you’ve seen Tim Roth’s The War Zone, you’ll appreciate the kind of harrowing journey you’re in for.

Miriam (Sims-Fewer) and her husband Caleb (Obi Abili) are headed to her sister and hubbie’s country retreat, after a lengthy time apart for the siblings. But there is big trouble in little paradise, as it becomes immediately apparent that this married couple have drifted apart and communication has broken down. The relevance of intimacy and confidence is paramount, and the spiralling reverberations of loneliness and rejection will tighten like long screws into a coffin lid. 

Sex and death are part and parcel with the rape-revenge sub-genre. Here the co-writing directors have taken familiar elements and torn them asunder. There will be no normal justice, no grim satisfaction, only abject horror - physical and psychological - and a dark, tunnelling despair. Quite simply put, Violation is one of the heaviest, most uncompromising films I have seen in a long time. On the surface this makes it a difficult recommendation. It’s a very intimate, complex film, full of visual symbolism and punctuated by surreal inserts.

Lars Von Trier’s polarising Antichrist comes to mind; the use of flora and fauna in juxtaposition to the grotesquerie that will hit you like a hammer, the rural, tranquil setting, the lingering creatures, the disintegration of the mind, the betrayal and the studied rage just below the surface. 

Miriam has a dysfunctional relationship with her younger sister, Greta (Anna Maguire), whom she feels has always treated her unjustly. There is love between them, but it is damaged, needs repair, if that can be made, and neither seems like they want to do the restoration work. Greta’s husband, Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe), is happy to be a bridge between them, while Caleb glowers and maintains a petulance. 

A campfire drinking session leaves Miriam and Dylan alone, where drunken truths are innocently exposed, and in the wee hours misbehaviour is taken advantage of, and friendship is abused. The consequences of which will be devastating. 

Violation’s mise-en-scene, with Andrea Boccodoro’s seething score, and Adam Crosby’s tenebrous cinematography is a truly stunning combination. Frequent use of extreme closeup, creating a disturbingly sensual experience - even, controversially, during the rape sequence - which is contrasted with the matter-of-fact graphic presentation of the male nudity - a key contrast to any other rape-revenge movie before it - and the horrendously realistic violence, featuring some of the most impressive practical gore effects I’ve seen in years. 

Miriam has emotional baggage, yet her psychological state of mind slides without brakes into full-blown psychosis, as she goes about her methodical dispatch. It’s enough to make you gag, and Miriam throws up very authentically as her character - and the actor - becomes overwhelmed by the horrendous nature of her self-imposed task. This is a disquieting, tour-de-force sequence.

Mancinelli and Sims-Fewer make the decision to cut up the narrative, so that the events happen in a non-linear way. This is confusing at first, frustratingly so, but I later appreciated how it reflected the fragmented state of Miriam’s irreparably damaged psyche. Yes, her body has been violated, but it is her mind and trust that has been torn apart. And, so, she retaliates in the only way she sees fit, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, or thereabouts. There is a terrible beauty to this nightmare.

Miriam seemingly tries to mend some of her shattered self and the broken bond with her sister. She relates a nightmare to Greta, as if to help clarify (to herself) her heinous retribution. Greta has struggled to comprehend her sister’s increasingly bizarre behaviour, and she warily offers an olive branch of affection, telling her sister she loves her.

Miriam needs more than a hug and reassurance. She was a woman on the edge of the abyss, staring across like a deer in the headlights, and she was pushed into the void, her flailing arms pulling down with her whoever was closest. She was violated, and so she must slay. Greta was close by, but not in reach, she will remain in her own shadow, her loss shrouded, as her sister inexorably crumbles.

Violation is definitely not for those easily upset, or squeamish, indeed you have been warned. If you can deal with its structure and languid pace, this film packs a seriously impressive wallop, and it ends, frayed and ruinous, memorable like only the most powerful and unforgiving horror movies can be. 

Come True

2020 | Canada | Directed by Anthony Scott Burns

Logline: A teenage runaway, suffering from night terrors, takes part in a clinical sleep study, only to find her psychological condition deteriorate, and her waking reality become increasingly fragile. 

Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone) is a very troubled young woman. She is loathe to stay at home, having had fallen out with her mother, possibly involving abuse of some kind. She spends her nights either quietly crashing on her best friend’s bedroom floor, or, more regularly, on the lonely park slide, under the curious moonlight. At high school she suffers terribly, falling asleep in class, prodded by teasing classmates. It doesn’t help that fragments of her bad dreams riddle her daytime. 

She spots the chance to participate in an experimental sleep study taking place in a nearby clinic. This appeals to Sarah, killing two birds with one stone, a chance to sleep in a warm, safe bed, and perhaps get to the root of her oneiric affliction. The clinicians don’t quite reveal what their study is for, but Jeremy (Landon Liboiron), who is supervising the work, under the direction of Dr. Meyer (Christopher Heatherington), finds Sarah and her nightmares more than a little interesting. 

We’ve all wondered about the possibility of seeing our dreams in our waking state, the concept of being able to visually record what our dreams are, not just seismic graphs indicating our REM patterns. Well, director Burns, along with his co-screenwriter, Daniel Weisenburger, do just that, biting off an enormously ambitious chunk of Jungian pie, as they tackle the power of dreams and the fragility of the conscious and unconscious mind. 

Come True is a rare creature (beast?) in the world of mainstream genre flicks, a science fiction-horror hybrid that doesn’t suffer fools gladly, providing a seemingly linear narrative that soon fractures and branches off into multiple avenues of interpretation. If David Cronenberg made a teenage romance, it might be like this. Actually, no, because that does a disservice to Cronenberg who would never make a teenage romance. It’s also part of the problem Come True has; a romantic sub-plot that threatens to capsize the far more interesting elements of Sarah and her wayward psyche, but, thankfully, not enough to scuttle it.

The sex side of her life is an important element though, not that it weighs heavily, but it becomes increasingly relevant. There is indication that Sarah’s emotional and psychological issues stem from something that could be sexual abuse. It is not made explicit, in terms of sub-plot, but it is hinted at. Her initial resistance Jeremy’s interest in her, more than just a patient, will eventually become the final hurdle to understanding her Persona, Animus, Anima, Shadow, and Self. These are Carl Jung’s widely recognised theories of the relationship between your unconscious mind and the conscious world around you. 

While the movie uses these Jungian specifics as chapter titles through the movie, it refuses to let them dictate how the audience should interpret, understand, or even accept, the narrative that is unfolding. It’s as if the movie’s narrative thread is as susceptible to inner and outer influence as the human mind is to memory and desire. Sarah is a pawn to and warrior for her own strengths and weaknesses. 

Despite a very modest budget (and, apparently, a tiny crew) the movie is stunningly shot - with an emphasis on cool blue hues - by director Burns, who also collaborates as a composer (under the alias Pilotpriest) with fellow electronic musician Electric Youth, delivering a terrifically moody, synth-washed score, reminding a little of Disasterpeace’s atmospheric work on It Follows. Burns is also responsible for the elaborate nightmare design and visual effects work, also very impressive. 

Come True is definitely not for all tastes. Those wanting easy answers, rounded corners, and full-stop endings will find the movie obscure, frustrating, and pretentious. Those who appreciate ambiguity and symbolism, who crave the richness of dream logic when applied to cinema narrative, combined with powerful performance - Julia Sarah Stone is quite remarkable in the central role - will find Come True as a kind of elixir. 

An elixir, though tainted, no less nightmare velvet and exotic in flavour than in the movie’s final ten minutes, when expectations are torn asunder, and inner cosmic dread comes true.

Come True will be released in on Digital, March 17 in Australia and New Zealand by Lightbulb Film Distribution. Available on iTunes, Google Play and Sony Playstation.

The Trouble with Being Born

Austria/Germany | 2020 | Directed by Sandra Wollner

Logline: An android, used by a man and then an old woman, both dealing with loss, finds itself becoming lost and confused by its own programmed memories.

Elli (Lena Watson) is a ten-year-old girl living with her father (Dominik Warta) in an idyllic, secluded country home. She muses by the pool with memories of days past. It’s soon apparent that the mother is long gone, and the father is most likely a divorcee with full custody. But there is something wrong with this picture, something very uneasy.

The father sees Elli floating face down in the pool. “Not again,” he mutters, swiftly pulling the unresponsive girl from the water. In the living room, the girl is propped up on the sofa, and the man is fiddling with a small console or smart phone. Elli comes to life. The man has successfully rescued/re-booted her. She is an android.

We soon understand that Elli is a facsimile of his daughter, who vanished ten years earlier. Later in the movie the father is visited by the ghost memory of his daughter, as she would now look, aged twenty (Jane McKinnon), but in the present the father is dealing with an ingrained loneliness, a kind of soulless existence. He has programmed the android with select memories, and as such, Elli goes through the motions, familiar routines, the most disturbing of which is a heavily implied (but never shown) sexual relationship with the middle-aged man. 

The concept of incest alone is confronting, but is compounded by the robot’s physical resemblance to his young daughter. The behaviour is further muddied by having the robot girl unperturbed by the sexual relationship, simply treating it matter-of-factly, “We swam all day, and were up all night.” The quicksand of morality in a high-tech world.

But more chillingly, director Wollner and her co-writer Roderick Warich present this adult behaviour with such a detached and cold perspective, it suggests that pedophilia in this near future existence has become even more insidious (accepted??). Is Wollner implying that trying to eradicate such sexual aberration will be impossible, but with sex robots the problem can be diverted with minimal damage to human life? There are many difficult questions posed in this dark (both literally and figuratively) drama. 

Ostensibly the movie is concerned with the themes of memory, identity, and loneliness, but having read that the director originally had the daughter/android character as a twenty-year-old, but then decided to change the age to ten, makes for difficult accommodation. In what must be a precedent, the young actor, Lena Watson, took on a stage name and had two silicone masks and wigs to disguise her true identity. The two nude scenes - one in particular will leave a lasting impression, due to its graphic depiction of the cleaning routine of owning a sex doll (android) - were achieved by filming the young actor in a bikini and then using CGI. Apparently the young actor’s parents and the girl loved working with the director. This only plants more questions in my mind, but I digress.

There is a strong dream-like atmosphere to the movie, Lynchian in its creepiness. I’m reminded of the starkness and desolation of Ulrich Seidl and Stanley Kubrick’s films, the slow-burn tendrils of Andrei Tarkovsky, and the tenebrous mood of Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. The medium-format cinematography is superb, although some of the exterior night scenes are almost impenetrably dark. 

The Trouble with Being Born is a challenging journey through fabricated truths, unreliable memoirs, and the deep scars of loss and guilt. It deals with a fractured, corrupted psychology, and it refuses to piece all the parts of the jigsaw. I feel The Trouble with Being Alive a more apt title. Elli’s identity is transmogrified, living one life - one gender - and then transplanted into another (later in the movie she becomes separated from her father/owner, and finds her/himself in the possession of an elderly woman), her perception of what is right and what is wrong does not exist, she struggles, but can’t comprehend, her programming and processing acting as both cushion and captive high fence. The memories of her father’s and, later, of the old woman who adopts her are ghosts in the machine, slowly dissolving her manufactured psyche, her fabricated morality.

The Trouble with Being Born is a deeply, dangerously provocative movie. Beautifully made, it is subversive, transgressive, even. Powerful, thought-provoking stuff for those prepared to unplug their knee-jerk sensibilities.

The Trouble with Being Born screens as part of Revelation - Perth International Film Festival , Thursday, December 10th, 6.30pm, Friday, December 11th, 8.40pm, and Sunday, December 13th, 3pm, Luna Leederville. For more information and tickets click here. 

Anonymous Animals

Les Animaux Anonymes | 2020| France | Directed by Baptiste Rouveure

Logline: Humans are being hunted and held captive like animals by humanoid figures with animal heads. 

In the space of just an hour writer/director Rouveure presents a chilling portrait of the predatory relationship between humans and animals reversed for allegorical purposes. If the tables were turned for the hunter and the hunted, this is how the grotesque scenario would take shape in our nightmares, and it makes for a deeply unsettling experience. 

It is the rugged beauty of the French countryside, but it could be anywhere in the world. A man is chained to a roadside tree. A car passes, its driver obscured, then turns and pulls up near the man. A figure gets out. It is a not a human, but is acting like one. The trapped man has fear lodged in his eyes. He is put in the back of the small van and taken to a farm where he is treated like an animal. Fed scraps, chained up, and awaiting his fate, pitted against another human for his captors’ amusement. 

The farm is run by beasts. To be precise, they have the bodies of humans, but the heads of farmyard animals; a horse, a bull, some dogs, a reindeer, a ram, even a bear. These “humanimals” don’t talk, they only grunt and bark and snort and salivate. The human captives don’t speak either. The entire film is free of dialogue, and by doing so, heightens the oneiric atmosphere. 

This is very much like a bad dream. 

Very little actually happens, the film is devoid of a conventional plot, instead structured with a series of short scenes, fading in and out, vignettes linked by the concept of the tables turned. Is this a horror movie of Mother Nature’s revenge? Is this a darkly comical satire of humankind’s cruelest attributes? Is this an artfully constructed reverse psychology study of the exploitation of animals by humans? Or maybe it’s a strange and surreal PETA-endorsed infomercial?! 

Beautifully captured in rich, dark hues by cinematographers Kevin Brunet and Emmanuel Dauchy, the repeated contrast of the tranquility of the landscape and the flora, with the cold and empty textures and spaces of the human built machinery and enclosures. There is a dark poetry at work, a tension slowly mounting, reaching its most powerful - albeit fleeting - moment in the closing images. Repetition comes full circle, the true monster revealed. 

As a statement Anonymous Animals is slow-burn and yet succinct. It is horror movie as emphatic creature. As viscerally restrained and suggestive as it is morally disquieting and pointed. Its greatest strength is that it plays out like some kind of subconscious alternate reality, likely to linger in your mind for days, food for thought, if you’ll pardon the pun. Indeed, you haven’t seen anything quite like this. 

Anonymous Animals screens as part of the inaugural Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival, accompanied by four short films, 8.45pm, Friday, November 20th, at Actors Centre Australia, Leichhardt. For more information and tickets click here. 

Possessor

2020 | UK/Canada | Directed by Brandon Cronenberg

Logline: An assassin working for a secret organisation that uses elaborate mind control finds herself in a dire situation after a job goes awry. 

The mind is a terrible thing to waste. 

Brandon Cronenberg’s second feature is a shocking work of art, a rupture and a rapture of ultraviolence, unlike anything you’ve seen in recent years. The most confronting depiction of cruelty since Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible, and in many ways, much of Possessor reminds me of the stylistics and tone of European extreme cinema. I can’t think of any other North American mainstream release as graphically nightmarish as Brandon Cronenberg’s assault on the senses, and I applaud him for his audaciousness. This is the most refreshing experience - in the most traumatic way - I’ve had in the cinema in years, apart from Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!

Tasya (Andrea Riseborough) works for an unnamed clandestine organisation that specialises in highly elaborate assassinations for high-paying clients. Using futuristic technology that enables them to implant a neural network device into an abducted host’s brain, the victim is then surreptitiously planted back into their normal lives. They awake under the control of the secret organisation’s trained operative who is lying remote and prone with a hi-tech helmet, but now controlling the every move of the host, who can now easily infiltrate the world of the intended victim and carry out their assigned assassination. 

In the movie’s opening scenes we witness a woman named Holly (Gabrielle Graham) carrying out an assassination, as she viciously stabs a wealthy attorney to death, then struggles to commit suicide using a gun she was carrying, ending up shot to death by police. This is our introduction to the world of Tasya the assassin, and her boss, Girder (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who subsequently takes Tasya through a debriefing in order to maintain her psyche is intact. The next job, involving a host, Tate (Christopher Abbott), his fiancée Ava (Tuppence Middleton), and her very rich magnate father, John Parse (Sean Bean), is an important one, and it’s crucial that Tasya is in top form. 

It’s obvious as the narrative of Possessor unfolds that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. Brandon Cronenberg is fascinated by many of the same themes and elements that occupy his father’s films; the use and misuse of advanced technology, mysterious companies and/or clinics, psychosexual obsession, disease, affliction, and the corruption of the body, and the mutation and permutations of mechanics and organics, the architecture of nihilism and human frailty.

Brandon has revealed that Possessor was partly inspired by a non-fiction book from the 70s on mind control via radio command, and how behaviour, especially aggression and hostility, can be aggravated, manipulated, transmogrified. He also took elements from an earlier short he made, titled Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You, which focused on a woman with a psychiatric brain implant reliving dreams, but experiencing confusion and apprehension. 

Possessor operates like a kind of fever dream. There are more questions than answers, but, much like the cinema world of David Lynch, the hows and whys are less important than the heres and nows. This is a psychological journey, a most tenebrous and ghastly experience, made exhilarating and utterly compelling in the most visceral, horrific way. The viewer is forced to experience much of the disconnect and cerebral breakdown as the host/possessor sees it. Cronenberg achieves this through the use of incredibly graphic and realistic special effects makeup and stylised in-camera optical effects. The results are truly outstanding. 

Karim Hussain’s cinematography is brilliant, some of the most innovative techniques I’ve seen in a long time. Equally, special makeup effects designer, Dan Martin, has delivered some of the most imaginative and shocking body horror. These two need to win awards for their work. Seriously. But, credit must go to Cronenberg for having the savvy on how to direct these elements so that they achieve maximum effect on screen. Which they do, in spades. 

Uniformly superb performances from the whole cast, some familiar faces, and others less so. More terrific music from the talented Jim Williams, who scored Raw, Beast, and Kill List, amongst others. Cronenberg surrounds himself with the best in the business, and the results are plain to see. 

But Possessor is not an easy recommendation. The sheer level of realistic violence will be too much for most. Even I found some of it truly grimacing, and I’m a hardened horrorphile. I’m sure the biggest criticism will be over the premise and why would they go to such expensive lengths to assassinate when they could simply hire a skilled patsy? Why is everything so seemingly complicated? Christopher Nolan’s Inception comes to mind. But Possessor runs deeper than that, more concerned with the existential concepts of what makes and unmakes us as humans and the dilemma and fragmentation of guilt. 

Taking inspiration from his father’s virtual reality game thriller eXistenZ and the techno-horror of Shinya Tsukamoto’s nightmarish Tetsuo: Iron Man and Body Hammer movies, Possessor ends up a tragic tale of human error in a world of increasing corporate possession and manipulation - data mining and AI - reflecting the darkest mirror of society.  

It’s a mindrape about the primal senses; rage and the libido, but also about memory, empathy, and rejection. It implants itself as a firm favourite of the year, of the new millennium, even. Get involved. If you dare. 

We're Not Here To Fuck Spiders

Australia | 2020 | Directed by Josh Reed

Logline: A crystal meth dealer and his motley crew are planning a potentially lucrative home invasion unaware that their squat has been rigged with hidden cameras watching their every move. 

We’ve all seen scungey low-lives backstabbing each other, jumping from the saucepan into the fire. We’ve all seen the spiralling descent of junkies splashed across the screen in all their hideous squalor. But you’ve never seen anything quite like the razor sharp portrait of hell that is Sydneysider Josh Reed’s “found noir”. 

Anton (Lindsay Farris) is a dealer of crystal meth - ice to the locals. He lives in a two-storey house somewhere in the suburban sprawl of South Sydney, in the blistering heat of a fetid summer, where the cockroaches crawl across your itchy face at night. He shares the filthy premises with Effs (Stephanie King), his shackled girlfriend, and a ragtag bunch of meth-head losers, Pincer (Anthony Tuafa), Bezza (Stef Smith), and Ahmed (Fayssal Bazzi), and not forgetting all the bikies and snakes that stomp and slither in and out of the house to get what they want. 

Little does Anton know, but across the road the house is being scrutinised by Jimmy (Max Brown), who has managed to secretly plant a bunch of tiny cameras all over the house, in order to capture the evidence he needs to blackmail. As Anton and his cohorts put together a home invasion mission, with the help of a corrupt cop, Det. Sgt. Godfrey (John Cordukes), the cameras record all the duplicity, all the rage, all the kray kray … If you think shit gonna hit the fan, you ain’t seen nuthin’. Tears before bedtime? These bastards never sleep. Prepare to have your arse kicked into the middle of next week. 

We’re Not Here to Fuck Spiders is presented like a found footage movie. The film’s opening credits reveal that in early 2018 thousands of hours of secretly filmed footage were dumped, anonymously, onto the internet, and this is the edited assembly that details the events that lead to the home invasion and the subsequent betrayals and violent consequences. The movie unfolds utilising multiple camera POVs, sometimes all nine at once, in a grid, sometimes focusing on just one or two camera perspectives. 

The editing/camera choices create a narrative, adding tension, creating momentary, fractured respite. The perspective from the house across the road reveals Jimmy’s actions through reflection in the window and mirrors into a locked-off camera set-up aimed at the drug den. The home invasion, when it finally happens, is viewed through the head-rigged camera of one of the assailants. The realism and volatility is palpable. The threat of violence hangs in the air like a noxious gas.

Much kudos to director Reed, who is credited as writer, but in reality, used only a story outline and in-depth characterisations, allowing his talented cast to improvise over an intense four-day shoot. The results are shocking and compelling. The performances of Farris and King are especially notable for their authentic and courageous depictions of abuser and victim, they both demand acting trophies in their pool rooms. 

It’s a hard film to recommend to those unused to such harsh depictions - be prepared for an especially shocking and graphic moment of how-the-fuck-did-they-just-do-that violence - indeed it is a very confronting and demanding viewing experience, but recommend it I must. Essential viewing for contemporary horror fans, and those that admire unorthodox methods. This is a nightmare like the urban disease and decay of Bad Lieutenant, with shards of Dogs in Space moral destitution and chaos. We’re Not Here to Fuck Spiders is as blunt a declaration as its title suggests. A vicious, ruinous slap in the face of humanity, right here, right now. Keep your eyes peeled. 

Relic

Australia/US | 2020 | Directed by Natalie Erika James

Logline: A daughter, mother, and grandmother are haunted by an insidious manifestation of dementia that consumes their family's home.

Kay (Emily Mortimer) and her adult daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) arrive at the old family home where mother Edna (Robyn Nevin) had been living on her own. Until she vanished. The house is unkempt, in a state of slow decay, with the elderly woman’s Post-It notes scattered throughout, reminding her what needs doing. Dementia has seized the house, and all who reside within cannot escape its insidious clutches, one way or another. 

Edna inexplicably returns a few days later, but she’s far from herself, becoming increasingly erratic in her behaviour, even volatile. Daughter and granddaughter struggle to deal with the situation, at once happy that she’s back, but deeply concerned about her mental health, not to mention their own, as a dark presence within the house becomes more oppressive, affecting their own reality, leading them deeper into the labyrinthine paths of unhinged perception. 

Australian director and co-writer James delivers a stunning debut feature, having made a few shorts, and it is her direction, both mise-en-scene and the performances of her small central cast, that really stand out. The nightmarish atmosphere is palpable, especially in the movie’s second half as Sam becomes trapped within the (super)natural confines of the house. There is a terrific chemistry between the three women, and the age dynamic works brilliantly also (even though Mortimer is only fifteen years older than Heathcote in real life). 

It’s a slow-burner, but it emanates strong from the start, the dark embers smouldering, blackening everything they touch. It’s a very deliberate metaphor movie, like The Babadook, but it doesn’t pull its punch like Jennifer Kent’s movie, it doesn’t suddenly pull the rug either. The clues are there throughout, lurking in the shadows, slithering under the bed. It also doesn’t cheapen its fright impact with jump scares, whilst remaining profoundly unnerving. Think Hereditary, think The Witch, think It Follows. 

Relic is one of those rare crossover horror movies. I hate the term “elevated horror”, but this is a movie that keeps much of the nightmarish essence of a great horror movie - one for the True Believers - whilst providing intrigue and appeal to those that normally wouldn’t watch a horror movie. Of course, it will polarise as well, as movies of this ilk do. Many so-called horror fans will probably find it anaemic and uneventful, others will criticise it for trying to be clever. 

The symbolic nuances, the depth of character, the strong score from Brian Reitzell, the deliberately washed-out cinematography from Charlie Saroff, they all add to the movie’s overall atmosphere, the element so integral to horror, and one that the best horror directors understand is absolutely paramount. If an atmosphere is powerful enough, it informs the narrative, permeates all themes, it lingers in the cracks of the mind, just enough to keep scratching away at your psyche, and forms that oneirdynia serpent devouring its own tail, as the edges of your sight begin to fail.

The Temptation of St. Tony

Püha Tõnu Kiusamine | Estonia/Finland/Sweden | 2009 | Directed by Veiko Õunpuu

Logline: A mid-level manager finds himself inexorably drawn across a lonely landscape, through a series of nightmarish incidents that test his morality and twist his perspective on love, life and death.

Probably the strangest, most enigmatic movie I’ve seen in many moons. At once a labyrinthine, yet desolate odyssey, and the most beautiful and grotesque cinematic oneirdynia since Eraserhead. Shot in magnificent monochrome, the narrative begins in classic, quirky Eastern-European style with a funeral on a bleak shoreline to the sound of traditional Estonian gypsy music. Suddenly a car swerves alongside the procession, bouncing wildly across the rocks and crashes upside down into the surf. The coffin-carriers barely blink an eyelid.

Tony (Taavi Eelmaa), dressed immaculately in black shirt and light overcoat with a head of dark wiry curls and a permanent expression of slighted bewilderment, arrives back home from the funeral of his father, in his flash, loaned Bentley. A black comedy of manners spills out over the dinner wake organized by his sullen wife (Tiina Tauraite), who is apparently having an affair with an actor acquaintance (Hendrik Toompere Jr.). Tony seeks solace in befriending a raven-haired young beauty, Nadezhda (Ravshana Kurkova), whose father Tony has been forced to fire.

Eventually both Tony and Nasezhda become trapped in the perverse and bizarre machinations of The Golden Age, a cabaret-style nightclub housed in the ruins of a concrete warehouse, MCed by the jester-like Count Dionysos Korzybski (Denis Lavant) and hosted by the beastly, furred Herr Meister (Sten Ljunggren).

Yes, The Temptation of St. Tony is a powerful and outlandish descent into the existential nightmare of a post-modern Dante’s Inferno. A tour-de-force of sound and image, with a masterful emotive minimal score from Ulo Krigul, the film equivalent of tasting black pudding sinking into a bowl of blood-red borscht; exotic and carnal, pungent and, most definitely acquired.

Imagine if you will, Andrei Tarkovsky and David Lynch swilling vodka and munching on a confit human leg, discussing moral irony and apocalyptic symbolism, while the flickering surrealist moments of a Luis Bunuel film is projected like an icy moving image installation in the background. There is much to be beguiled about, and much to create quiet confusion, as director Õunpuu deliberately provides no easy answers, only eerie tableaux and steely contemplation.

The vulnerable soul of man is bared, but remains sheathed in a dreamlike fabric that is stretched and torn, devoured and almost regurgitated. Yet, like a sharp twig digging into the base of your spine at a picnic, there’s a sense of icky humour that rears its lamp black head like an inquisitive eel from a murky pond.  

The Temptation of St. Tony is a truly original piece of cinema; indulgent and provocative like the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky, but muses and toys with bittersweet fragments like Ingmar Bergman. Director Õunpuu is a riddle unto himself, providing the viewer with severed hands in a swampy creek and the good man forced to bury his murdered dog in a shallow snow grave. The consumption of his fragile lover’s flesh is the salted icing on the open wound of his psyche. Let the darkest of humanity lie with sleeping dogs.

Acolytes

Australia | 2008 | Directed by Jon Hewitt

Logline: Three mischievous teenagers decide to blackmail a suspected serial killer, but their plans go dangerously awry.

Set amidst the gorgeous Queensland forest and juxtaposed with a sprawling suburbia, Acolytes is a murderous tale of deceit and betrayal, blackmail and revenge, and like all tales of this ilk, Murphy’s Law will extend its long insidious arm and cruelly snap your fingers … ‘cos it can.

Three wayward teenagers, Sebastian Gregory (Mark), Joshua Payne (James) and Hannah Mangan-Lawrence (Chasely), play the schemers who become involved in the lives of two very dangerous men; Gary Parker (Michael Dorman), an aggressive sociopath who bullied and violated them during puberty, and Ian Wright (Joel Edgerton), a psychopathic serial killer living in a disquieting existence with his deaf wife and kid. They will all collide with tragic, but surprising results.

Right from the get-go Acolytes looks and sounds impressive, with its vivid cinematography, tight, dynamic editing, and a spare, but very deliberate use of sound and music. The score seems almost non-existent, while the use of rock songs is a tightly calibrated decision. The sound design is creepy and very effective. Hewitt has carved out a very stylish psychological horror, with a strong visceral edge, and he elicits solid performances from his young cast, but an especially memorable one from Mangan-Lawrence.

The volatile relationship between the three teenagers - a triangle of sexual tension, macho competition, and unrequited crush - adds serious fuel to the fire, while the presence of bogan Parker, armed with his black Valiant and black crossbow, and the mustachioed Wright, a figure in the guise of dull ordinariness, is a brilliant juxtaposition of evils. 

It’s a most dangerous and deadly game where the rules keep changing, the playground keeps shifting, the narrative keeps twisting, back and forth. Acolytes is one of the best Australian horror-thrillers from the past twenty years, and one that, criminally so, few people know about. 

Cold Souls

USA | 2009 | Directed by Sophie Barthes

Logline: After a neurotic actor discovers an unorthodox solution to his mid-life crisis he becomes embroiled in a bizarre existential predicament.

The premise alone of this debut feature was enough to pique my egocentric interest big-time. New Yorker Sophie Barthes has fashioned a deliciously black comedy streaked with the kind of existential angst and metaphysical self-discovery that would give Charlie Kaufman a hard-on, if you’ll pardon my vulgarity.

In fact there are many similarities to the movies penned by Kaufman, (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synechdoche, New York), no doubt Barthes was heavily influenced, but still manages to create a unique and inspired story. Being John Malkovich deals with the psyche of an actor, with the eponymous actor in a cameo, whilst in Cold Souls Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti, an actor struggling with the best way to portray the particularly difficult eponymous role in the Russian play Uncle Vanya.

Eternal Sunshine is about memory, identity and love, while Cold Souls deals with identity (but on a more unconscious level), other people’s residual, fragmented memories, and the love, or more specifically the acceptance of self. Synechdoche, New York is about everything, but in particular the resignation of the fragility of the human condition, which Cold Souls also tackles.

Perhaps Sophie Barthes is Charlie Kaufman’s female inversion? In any case, she has a keen ear for wry, astute, and poignant dialogue, and a great eye too; the visual narrative is striking. The juxtaposed locations of New York City and St. Petersberg are strangely similar, both trapped in the icy cold tendrils of winter, a metaphor for the science fiction concept of the soul storage process.

This is a dark and curious movie though despite the obvious humour of its lead character, which is actually a real person (although surely Giamatti is playing up a little). Nina (Dina Korzun) is employed to transport Russian souls to America for top dollar. She steals Giamatti’s soul because her demanding boss wants a Yankee actor’s soul for his petulant model-cum-actor girlfriend Sveta (Katheryn Winnick). Nina portrays a more unsettling side to the story. As a “mule” she is subject to the accumulation of fragmented residuals of other people’s souls, apparently very dangerous to the wellbeing of the mind.

Emily Watson plays Giamatti’s confused wife Claire who is astounded when Giamatti admits to her that he de-souled himself, and now they’ve misplaced it; “It’s a total nightmare!” he says in exasperation. Indeed it would be. Adding insult to injury, that missing soul looks like a chickpea (each soul once removed takes on the appearance of something earthly tangible). The always-reliable David Strathairn plays Dr. Flinstein, the soul storage company head, while Lauren Ambrose plays his enthusiastic assistant, Stephanie. 

Cold Souls balances the precarious edge of morose comedy and soulful enlightenment; a superb achievement for a first feature, and a brilliant modern fable for these troubled, spiritually bereft times.

Metropolis

Germany | 1927 | Directed by Fritz Lang

Logline: In a future, starkly divided city, the son of the city’s chief civil engineer falls in love with a woman who foresees the arrival of a champion for the people. 

Not just the crowning achievement for German silent cinema, but simply an extraordinary, astonishing movie (which cost in modern terms around $200 million and used 37,000 extras!) Dozens of filmmakers have been influenced by Metropolis, as it was the first movie to focus on the troubled infrastructure of a futuristic society, and the socio-political issues inherent. 

Essentially it is a tale about love and power, and the abuse of both of them. The wealthy city-planners and the poor construction workers, the division between them, and the struggle for identified unity in the year 2026: “The mediator between the head and the hand is the heart”. A working class prophet predicts the coming of a saviour who will unite the two classes. 

With a screenplay by Thea von Harbou, who wrote the original novel, Fritz Lang employed an exceptional production design and art direction team, and broke new ground with the amazing special effects (many of which look like elaborate post-production optical effects, but were actually achieved in-camera), and the clever use of miniature models.

Indeed it is the look of Metropolis which is so memorable, in particular the cityscapes and the famous machine-woman (which George Lucas shamelessly purloined for C-3P0). There is a beautiful visual poetry to Fritz Lang’s mise-en-scene. Like all silent films the narrative has to rely on a vivid visual narrative, and Lang composes his story with a powerful command, such as the workers trudging forward toward the elevators to take them down to the underground factories, as the exhausted workers trudge out of the elevators in parallel.

While the imagery makes you gasp in wonder, it is the key performances that bristle with that expressionistic charisma you don’t find in modern cinema. Brigitte Helm, who plays the dual roles, delivers a maniacal performance as the evil android Maria and she is something to behold, infused with a dark sexual energy, her arms held like witch’s talons, her eyes glistening with conviction.

Metropolis is a landmark, progressive movie. It may have suffered over the years, having the negatives of many of its original scenes lost, being released in various truncated and altered versions. There was a colourised version set to the music of Georgio Morodor released in 1984, which I’ve never seen. Queen even borrowed its iconic imagery in their video clip to “Radio Ga Ga”.

The score on my beautifully restored special edition is the original music composed by Gottfried Huppertz that was played live at the movie’s premiere. It’s stunningly emotive and wonderfully modern for its time. However, listening to certain sections, especially during Maria’s (unintentionally hilarious) “Erotic Dance”, I couldn’t help but notice how similar John Williams’ famous score for Star Wars sounded. A coincidence? I doubt it. 

If you’ve never seen a silent movie, the German Expressionism movement is the place to start, and Metropolis is essential viewing. 

The Wave

Die Welle | Germany | 2008 | Directed by Dennis Gansel

Logline: When a high school teacher uses an unorthodox social experiment to demonstrate autocracy to his class, the students embrace the order of unity with a fervor that soon spirals out of control.

Mr. Wegner’s (Jurgen Vogel) students are a little arrogant. When he mentions fascism they roll their eyes muttering about the boring Nazi regime. It’s school’s project week so Wegner concocts what he foresees will be a clever class experiment to invigorate the students: have them all create an order (The Wave) with its own uniform, original salute, and a united purpose. Most of the students quickly adopt the concept, especially troubled, militant-loving Tim (Frederick Lau). However Karo (Jennifer Ulrich) refuses to become involved and as she watches The Wave build she sets about organising a resistance… but it’s too late.

This is drama as demonstration and it succeeds in its disquieting task with maximum efficiency. It’s not the most cinematic in visual terms, more like a movie-for-television, but the performances are uniformly excellent, the central themes intrinsically fascinating, the narrative compelling. I loved the simple, but brilliant salute.

As The Wave’s crest begins to form, and violence begins to erupt, there is tragedy on the horizon, with damaging truths spilling forth, initially masked by the students. Even on a micro scale, a dictatorship is powerful and volatile. It is irony at its most devastating, the only question is, who will surface from the tsunami unscathed? The abrupt ending leaves an expression of shock and horror like salt on an open wound. 

I read the novel by Todd Strassers (written under the pseudonym Morton Rhue) when I was a teenager and found it utterly compelling. It was based on a true incident that happened in an American high school in California in 1967. The book was subsequently developed into a short teleplay in 1981. It’s unusual for an American production to be remade by foreigners (usually vice versa), but The Wave is a superb movie.

I was reminded of another razor-sharp, socio-political film, The Edukators, also from Germany. It, too, dealt with power and conformity, chaos and disorder, using irony and tragedy to nail home the futility of its characters’ rebellious behaviour. In this precarious climate of social media minefields and “influencers”, of fascist diatribes from disturbed leaders and the insidious spread of hatred and fear mongering, The Wave could never be more immediate, more pertinent, or more accurate. It is essential viewing.  

Bagdad Cafe

West Germany/USA | 1987 | Directed by Percy Adlon

Logline: When a German tourist is abandoned near a Californian desert café motel she brings with her disruption and joy to all the staff, guests and patrons.

A film festival favourite when it was first released, Bagdad Cafe (originally titled Out Of Rosenheim) is the quintessential 80s arthouse comedy; a quirky character study of eccentricities, idiosyncrasies, and sly observations of Americana from the viewpoint of a Bavarian husband and wife filmmaking team, Percy and Eleonare Adlon. They co-wrote the script, she produced, and he directed). 

Ostensibly a light-hearted drama, it melds German fastidiousness with American casual asides, with amusing and endearing insight. There are touches of surrealism as the movie drifts like the tumbleweed, feeling both meandering and succinct in strangely equal measure. Yes it feels dated, but there is something timeless to this dusty gem that glimmers in the sun like a desert rose. 

The cast is a delight: Marianne Sagebrecht as Jasmin Munchgstettner, who’s “out of Rosenheim”, CCH Pounder as Brenda-at-the-end-of-her-tether, Jack Palance as ex-Hollywood scenic artist Rudi Cox, Darron Flagg as Brenda’s Bach-loving son Sal, Monica Calhoun as Brenda’s precocious daughter Phyllis, Christine Kaufmann as sultry resident tattooist Debby, and Apesanahkwat as plaited Native American Indian Sheriff Arnie, and of course, not forgetting the Sidewinder Cafe that became Bagdad Cafe for the movie (and subsequently changed its name to cash in on the film’s enormous success).

Director Adlon and cinematographer Bernd Heinl use Dutch tilts, filters and close-ups like they’re going on out of fashion. The movie’s rich palette gorgeously reflects the array of colourful characters. But it’s all centered around Ms. Jasmin and the effect she has on everything around her, especially after she starts to dabble with the magic set she finds in Brenda’s cluttered office. It’s not just the coffee maker/thermos her husband left by the side of the road that made its way into Bagdad Cafe and provided everyone with a much-needed pick-me-up, Jasmin is the true zest the café craved.

The melancholy theme song, Calling You, by Bob Telson and sung by Jevetta Steele, wafts like the thick aroma of Arabica coffee, on a hot dry wind from Vegas to nowhere. It was nominated for an Academy Award. Also of note is the use of Bach’s sublime C-Major Prelude from the Well Tempered Claviar.

Bagdad Cafe is an unassuming tale that quietly stirs the soul and lingers in the mind long after the burnt orange sun sets behind that little cafe just around the bend. Get yourself some of that boomerang magic and sweet, deep crema, it’ll brighten up your day. “I … am calling you … Can’t you hear me?”

La Dolce Vita

Italy | 1960 | Directed by Federico Fellini

Logline: A listless playboy journalist drifts in and around Rome over the course of several days and nights following celebrities and dealing with the breakdown of his marriage.

While not the masterstroke of cinema 8½ is, La Dolce Vita, which translates as The Sweet Life, is a bittersweet portrait of sensual ennui and the pursuit of happiness, an ironic spin on the cult of celebrity, the passion for attention, the importance of being in between. This is Fellini’s ode to the jaded affluence of existence, the existentialism of narcissism. Or perhaps it’s simply a love affair with the city of Rome.

Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) is the film’s centerpiece. He is in virtually every scene of the three-hour movie. There is virtually no plot, only a series of vignettes, observations on relationships and the mechanics of social interaction, laced with cynicism, both subjective and objective. The corruption of the adulthood juxtaposed against the purity of youth, glimpsed, but never grasped. La Dolce Vita is a curious creature.

The most striking element of La Dolce Vita is not the subject matter, but the aesthetics. It is a superb-looking movie, from the opening images of a large Christ statue being transported via helicopter across the skyline of Rome to the final image of Marcello being led away along a beach having failed to understand what young Paola (Valeria Ciangottini) was gesticulating from across the inlet (she was asking him about his novel which was indicated by her pretending to type). It is Paola’s innocent charm that has eluded Marcello, and the irony is that her personality is what Marcello craves, yet he can’t see the forest for the trees.

Surrounding him are the elaborate fabrications, the false machinations, the fibs and lies, the disguises and the garden paths, that contribute to the big picture that is Marcello’s world of conceit. He is strung along by the aloof charm of Maddalena (Anouk Aimee), he is briefly infatuated with the voluptuous allure of American movie star Sylvia (Anita Ekberg), he is hounded and howled at by his insecure wife Emma (Yvonne Furneaux), and he is haunted by the jaded perspective of life and family of friend Steiner (Alain Cuny).

There are dozens and dozens of other peripheral characters, some with substantial speaking parts, and countless others as featured extras (watch for a young Nico), in fact there are over one hundred roles that are listed as uncredited on IMDb. Receiving due recognition within a Fellini movie is a rare thing, c’est la vie.

Fellini’s pre-occupation with the role of male identity, his relationship with the female kind, and an underlying sense of misanthropy is prevalent through many of his films, but none so acutely as in La Dolce Vita. The character of Paparazzo (Walter Santesso), the keen-as-mustard celebrity photographer, has resulted in a household word: paparazzi (the plural term). The word translates roughly as “sparrow” (in one Italian dialect, whilst in another it means “annoying fly”). Fellini felt the photographers that scurry around celebrities reminded him of hopping sparrows. Of course, they can also be interpreted as annoying flies.

La Dolce Vita is exhausting, but there are more than enough moments within its meandering narrative pseudo-arc that make it such an intriguing excursion. As I mentioned, it’s about aesthetics, and Fellini has such elegant and glamorous taste in design and form, from architecture to cars, from sculpture to women, at the risk of siding with his objectification, it’s hard to resist his immaculate eye.

Dreams Of A Life

UK | 2011 | Directed by Carol Morley

Logline: A documentary that attempts to find the truths behind the mysterious life and death of Joyce Vincent, a woman who perished in her bedsit and wasn’t discovered for three years.

Filmmaker Carol Morley (the younger sister of veteran English music journalist Paul Morley) has made an extraordinary documentary; an account of a lost soul, a celebration of a life, a lament for the loss of communication, an indictment on the breakdown of modern society, where someone like Joyce Vincent can vanish and no one notices. Of course people go missing everyday, thousands do, and many of them are never found, but Joyce’s story feels different. 

In 2006 housing estate officials broke into a bedsit above a busy London street where Joyce Vincent lived. She owed two-and-half thousand pounds in rent. They found her skeleton lying against her sofa, the television still on. She had been dead for nearly three years. She was 38 years old. 

Carol Morley read about the discovery in one of the daily newspapers. It provoked morbid fascination, but it was a story that demanded to be told. Morley delved deeper and deeper into the shadows of Joyce Vincent’s life, her investigation becoming obsessive. There had been few details, not even a photograph of Joyce, in the newspaper, so Morley had a banner and photo put on the sides of buses that said in large letters “Did you know Joyce Carol Vincent?”

Eventually Joyce’s past began to emerge; in particular an unassuming ex-boyfriend, Martin, who described her as a vivacious, attractive, intelligent woman of Caribbean descent, who always dressed immaculately and was often the centre of attention. But this radiant exterior masked a dark interior, a woman who had come from a broken family, who harboured secrets.

The bigger picture Dreams of a Life paints is one of extreme loneliness, of being isolated and truly alone. Despite Joyce’s seemingly middle-class upbringing, her ability to meld effortlessly into whatever social situation required, her charm and exotic allure, her smart wiles, in the last few years of her life, things changed irrevocably. It seems her relationships took a turn for the worse, and she had ended up in a tiny bedsit with an apparent abdominal ailment.

Did she succumb to her illness? The rank odour of death was blamed on rubbish bins directly below the flat. Why had it taken so long for the housing estate to deal with her outstanding rent? Why on earth was the television still on? Had depression overwhelmed her? Pathology could not determine a cause of death. There are only acquaintances’ and colleagues’ memories, yet it is most curious and troubling that her three sisters refused to be involved with the documentary, not even supplying Morley with any photographs, and the two most recent boyfriends never came forward during Carol’s personal inquest.

The doco recreates Joyce’s last hours, as speculated by the filmmaker, with actor Zawe Ashton portraying Joyce, without dialogue. At once an utterly compelling, but contentious look at how no one really knows anything about anyone, how all relationships are ultimately superficial. It is also a damning indictment at how modern civilisation is crumbling, how, with savage irony, in the age of a communication revolution (keeping in mind Joyce died before online social networking exploded) someone as “memorable” as Joyce Carol Vincent can slip between the tracks and her disappearance not noticed for years.

Regardless of the darker, less penetrable corners of this mystery, Dreams of a Life burns deep into the soul, haunting and overwhelmingly sad, but superbly realised documentary filmmaking.

The Unknown Woman

La Sconosciuta | Italy | 2006 | Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore

Logline: A determined woman begins working for a wealthy family, befriending the young daughter in her mission to uncover a sad and shocking truth.

Irena (Xenia Rappoport), a Ukranian woman, arrives in the Italian city of Velarchi. Soon enough she finds work in an apartment building as a maid to an affluent family, and then as their nanny she befriends the young and fragile daughter Tea (Clara Dossena). But Irena is plagued by haunting and brutal flashbacks, and the past soon catches up with her.

Piece by piece the enigma of Irena’s harrowing former life becomes clearer, as the jumps between flashback and the present tense reveal sections of her ghastly experiences at the hands of a vicious black market pimp, who profits from selling beautiful babies to wealthy couples who cannot bear their own. Irena has been driven to obsession through desperation and yearning. 

Tornatore is a masterful storyteller, and, like his brilliant mystery jigsaw thriller A Pure Formality, he melds the sensual with the visceral, a vivid expressionist. Co-scripted with Massimo De Rita, it is a Hitchcockian tale barbed with cruelty and sorrow, yet draped with moments of exquisite tenderness and beauty. A dark and mysterious mother’s journey made fascinating by the clever balance of tactile and ephemeral elements.

From the enigmatic opening scene where Irena is naked and masked alongside several other young women, being scrutinised by an unknown selector, through to the end of Irena’s duplicitous and dangerous quest, this is confronting and powerful cinema, with a fittingly dramatic and emotional score courtesy of Ennio Morricone. 

The original Italian title refers to a stranger, someone incognito. For its American cinema release it was initially slapped with the misleading The Other Woman, later adjusted for its home release to more closely resemble the original. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the 2008 Academy Awards and won numerous European awards.

Rappoport and Dossener are extraordinary, both delivering brave and compelling performances. Also of note is Michele Placido as Mold, Irena’s nemesis. But much of my admiration is for the elaborate fabrication of the tale, the carefully constructed narrative, the alarming lengths Irena will go to; from the strange relationship she forges with young Tea, the tenacity of her mission, to the horror of her revenge, and painful life choices and final revelation.   

Ultimately, The Unknown Woman is a story of grief, endurance, and the burning beacon of hope. Life’s bitter twists proving perseverance is a tunnel to inner peace. It’s a movie with a tenuous grasp on integrity, but consummately made. 

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

USA | 2008 | Directed by Alex Gibney

Logline: A savage journey into the heart of legendary gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s passionate search for the American Dream.

From the Hell’s Angels to the streets of San Francisco, from the campaign trail of ‘68 to running for sheriff of Aspen, forging a drug-addled simpatico with artist Ralph Steadman at the Kentucky Derby, becoming Raoul Duke with Oscar Acosta as Dr. Gonzo in the desert with a saltshaker half full of cocaine, and subverting acid culture with more weird and twisted nights than you can shake a bottle-of-bourbon-a-day at, then breaking down on Paradise Boulevard, craving a perpetual running crisis to energise the writing mojo, relishing the fear and loathing on the campaign trail of 72, where the buffalo roam, and where writers become rock stars …

Having breakfast at 5pm, swimming in Zaire hotel pools giving Cassius Clay tickets away instead of rumblin’ in the jungle, then nursing ridicule and Woody Creek hangovers from a failed Rolling Stone article, rooting big for Jimmy Carter, then taking potshots in the snow with his twenty-two loaded guns, a prisoner of his own notoriety, whilst there’s two many bimbo tramps on the side, spells divorce from his wife (he was married?!, they all ask), sleeping on Jimmy Buffett’s sofa, racking up a $9000 phone bill, only lawyers, guns and money can get him out of this mess, but he always knew how he’d go out … and he did, one bright clear day with his second wife and adult son in the next room … BANG!

Whew.

Alex Gibney made the highly acclaimed documentaries Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and more recently Taxi to the Darkside. He knows a thing or two about constructing the facts to fit the content and arranging the content to highlight the facts … and the fiction. Hunter S. Thompson never let a good fabrication get in the way of the truth, but the truth would always prevail. Gonzo tells a riveting history of the man who straddled journalism and Americana as if it were a jeep on safari, with one hand brandishing a cocked pistol and the other clutching a margarita cocktail. Running alongside the jeep are the evil politicians and wayward celebrities desperate to have a piece of Hunter the hunter, or is it that Hunter just wants a piece of them?

If you’re keen for a bit o’ bittersweet American “folklore”, the legendary Dr. Thompson will slip you the pill. His medicine is the subversive kind and Gibney captures the irreverent and brash side of the doctor’s cult of personality – and those who indulged him and with him – with lashings of pure unadulterated style. Johnny Depp provides the narration beautifully. And in case you’re curious, the term “gonzo journalism” was lifted from an anarchic blues riff by James Booker.

Gonzo is prescribed socio-political mixology.