Revelation Film Festival 2021 - Preview (plus interview with Richard Sowada)

The 2021 edition of the Revelation Perth International Film Festival was due to kick off on Thursday July 1st but sneaky Covid has put a temporary spanner in the works. At time of writing, the Perth & Peel Lockdown (catchy band name) is slated to end at 12:01am Saturday morning, July 3rd, meaning only two days will be cut from the front of the festival, possibly to be added at the end.

Most films will be screening at the Luna in Leederville, with a few down in Freo (Luna on SX) and one or two at The Backlot in West Perth. As usual, there are some interesting looking films to gorge yourself on. The theme this year is 'Distant but connected' and as festival director, Richard Sowada told us, the changing face of the world under pandemic conditions also informed the choices in this year's schedule. He talked about styles and techniques being pared back and films becoming more story-focused and intimate. Listen to the pod below for details.

Films I'm looking forward to include: Jumbo, with Noémie Merlant, about a woman who works in an amusement park; Aalto, a doco about the famous Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto; Gaia, an odd sounding South African horror film; King Rocker, a music doco about Robert Lloyd (no, me neither) hosted by the fantastic bastard, Stewart Lee; Oh, It Hertz, a doco about sound; The Last Horns of Africa, a doco about rhino-protecting superheroes; and The Monopoly of Violence, a doco about police responses to protests in France. There are so many more that I'd love to check out but sadly, I only have two eyes. Another time perhaps.

Check listings on the Rev website (linked above) and listen to the interview with Richard Sowada for his top five picks from the festival. Fingers crossed for a clean break from lockdown and see you at the cinema:)

 

The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds

The lads from the Black Maria Film Collective organised a night at the Luna cinema in Leederville for their victims to see a double bill of The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds and Night Tide (entry to follow). I'd not heard of either of these films, nor had I heard of the guy slated to talk at the end, a fella called Jimmy McDonough (he turned out to be quite a bit more entertaining than the films, but onto them soon). There was a brief recorded intro by not so infant enfant terrible, Nicolas Winding Refn, the guy responsible for curating the films through his organisation, byNWR. And then the first 'film' began.

When I say 'film', I use that word very loosely, in that Bert Williams (writer, director, producer, lead actor and occasional camera operator) used some form of cellulose to make this thing. The story, as far as I could make out, sees a tough cop (Williams) hiding in a swamp from some gang he has infiltrated. He stumbles upon an old hotel on an island (the nest of the title) and proceeds to ham his way to the end credits. It's not just him laying on the ham and it's not just ham either, it's all the pig products, fuck, it covers the meat spectrum. 

Ben joined me (I must apologise to him at this point) and he suggested that the music was the only thing that didn't stand out as utter, irredeemable trash (my words). Sure, it was funny in that it was hideous but these folk, Williams especially, presumably made this as a labour of love, with genuine intent to create something. That makes me feel a bit guilty chuckling at its paucity of quality.

In saying all this, I think it's important to see films like The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds. It was discovered recently in an old theatre and it seems to have been a bit of a 'mysterious lost film', not quite in the echelon of London After Midnight or The Mountain Eagle, but certainly talked about. And byNWR and the Black Maria Film Collective deserve their dues for unleashing things like this on the public.

DON'T see also: 

I'm reluctant to mention steamers here but going with the theme, please avoid Tommy Wiseau's The Room (2003) and Randal Kleiser's Grease (1978). Two films WORSE than the above.

Three Summers

Three Summers (or Três Verões) is a film that deals with the corruption and class-based deprivation that seems to be rife in Brazil these days. The film, directed by Sandra Kogut, positions itself in the luxury mansion and resort style grounds of a filthy rich family and takes place over three summers (clearly). The neat trick is that it removes the family from the film in short order and leaves us with the staff - cooks, grounds-keeper, maids, dogsbodies and the head caretaker, Madá, played with near-annoying verve by Regina Casé. 

Chasing up unpaid wages takes up most of their time but Madá sets about coming up with ways to make the mansion pay off. She runs boat tours of the bay (pointing out all the houses of crims - noting that if they punters can see someone at the house, they're most likely 'foreigners or football players'). The staff ransack the family clothes and heirlooms for a garage sale. The house is offered in a kind of Air BnB set-up and is even somehow rented out as a set for some cheesy looking info-tainment TV show.

The characters keep the interest (there's a nice turn by the patriarch of the family who joins Madá in her exploits) and the pace holds firm without many ebbs. It's no world beater but for a sly, caustic stab at the Brazilian establishment, Three Summers is a pretty good way to spend some film time.

Three Summers is showing at the Luna in Perth.

See also:

Walter Salles' Central Station (1998) is another fine Brazilian film, and Two Days, One Night (2014), directed by the Dardenne Brothers, deals with similar themes.

The Collini Case

Here's a tingling law-based cracker from The German Film Festival just finished here in Perth. It's peppered with European acting royalty - Rainer Bock, Heiner Lauterbach, Alexandra Maria Lara, even Franco Nero, whose imdb list of credits is so long I had to forgo the mouse wheel for the scroll bar. The lead though, is Elyas M'Barek who holds his own in this rarified air, some of his scenes with Lauterbach's Professor Mattinger are electric.

M'Barek plays a novice lawyer (Caspar Leinen) tasked with defending a geezer, Collini (Nero), who has killed a famous businessman. Coincidentally, dead bloke raised Caspar after his parents split and he tries to extract himself from the case. Mattinger, his old college prof, (more coincidence or Berlin is smaller than I remember) convinces him to tough it out and rely on the law to do its thing.

What follows starts out as a simple law case procedural, with childhood romances and nervy, early career stumblings, and soon becomes something a bit grimmer. The Collini Case picks up steam around halfway through and doesn't really pause for corners until the slightly clumsy final scene. But that didn't remove any gloss, as the moments of tension were extremely well set up, kind of rewarding the viewer for putting in the time at the start. The fact that Caspar is half Turkish, an 'other', is no coincidence (fancy that!) and the director, Marco Kreuzpaintner has turned out a film that admirably shines a light on Germany's past while reminding volk that the horrors of history aren't too far removed and maybe not everyone wants to forgive and forget.

See also:

Alexandra Maria Lara was in the fantastic Control (2007), directed by Anton Corbijn, and for a similar feel of creaky, malevolent influence, you can't do much better than Tell No One (2006), directed by Guillaume Canet. 

The Killing of Two Lovers

The Backlot in West Perth hosted the Revelation media preview night with a screening of this starkly muddy film from Robert Machoian. It follows a couple of days in the separation of David (Clayne Crawford) and Nikki (Sepideh Moafi) in a bleak, cold town near some mountains in Utah. 

The sound design is noticeable from the kick-off, with short bangs and slow drum rolls (?) hinting at something off screen, or about to happen. This may have been an attempt to discombobulate the viewer - it worked on me at any rate. It opens with a dude quietly holding a pistol at two people sleeping in a bed. He's clearly in two minds but then the toilet flushes and he scarpers. We soon see this is David, as he runs back to his Dad's house nearby. Here's an example of the functional, almost student-level cinematography that mars the film a bit for me. The camera shakily holds on his back as he runs along an empty road. All the way. It's a style that's repeated throughout, with extreme close-ups in the dark of a car or wonky, near locked-off camerawork in a grubby park. It surely shows the setting as it is, and I guess the lack of beauty, the prosaic reality is something Machoian was striving for, but I thought it cheapened the film.

The story is not without merit, it focuses on an angry man who is able to control his rage, with only a dummy torso bearing the brunt. Nikki and their four kids are never threatened (apart from the opening scene - and she was oblivious to the danger). Nikki herself comes across as the villain, set up as the driver of the separation, the one who has moved on. I wonder how this might have played if the roles were reversed. David does get a bit stalky with new bloke, Derek (Chris Coy), but it all peters out until a surprisingly tense climax involving the three triangular participants. This almost redeemed the film but ultimately, I couldn't get along with it. It's not terrible, and Roly is right that it stays with you, it just left me unimpressed.

The Killing of Two Lovers will be released in cinemas by Pivot Pictures from September 16th (Melbourne, Sydney and the ACT will release once restrictions ease) and streaming services (Fetch, Foxtel Store, Google Play, Telstra, TV Box Office and YouTube) on November 3rd.

See also:

Obviously, Asghar Farhadi's brilliant A Separation (2011), which covers similar ground, and Michael Ritchie's Fletch (1985) was partly set in Utah. But that would be the only similarity.

Perfumes

Not to be confused with Perfume: The Story of a Murderer from 2006 (based on the fine novel by Patrick Süskind), this is a charming little tale about bravery, acceptance and empathy. Oh, and smell of course. The 'nose' in the film is Anne Walberg, played with many blends by the great Emmanuelle Devos. She's a professional scent-maker, whose career at the top table has dried up (for reasons best kept under wraps) and is now hawking her nasal talents to factories trying to mask their emissions, or brand companies with bag odour issues. A chauffer, Guillaume, played by Grégory Montel, is tasked with driving her to and from these gigs and, after initial friction, a respect and a friendship develop.

It reminded me of The Intouchables, from 2011, a film widely lauded by most folk except me. As in that cliché-ridden film, Perfumes throws together two seemingly ill-matched characters and watches as they slowly wear down barriers between one another. There's a nice, platonic chemistry going on here, both Devos and Montel seem really comfortable in their roles. Guillaume has a daughter, Léa (Zelie Rixhon) that he's trying desperately to connect with, and Sergi López pops in for a sweetly awkward cameo.

Highlight: Guillaume tells Anne he used to love the smell of mown lawn. Anne tells him the grass attempts to protect itself from insects by releasing an enzyme that attracts other, bigger insects to eat the smaller ones. That smell of cut grass is 'the smell of carnage'.

I'm planning to whizz through a couple of these as I'm a bit film-jammed this month (and probably next), so I'll finish by saying for someone whose olfactory sense is perhaps my greatest sense, this film was a pleasant little aroma.

Perfumes opens on July 1st at Palace Cinemas and the Luna Cinemas.

See also:

The above-mentioned Perfume (2006), directed by Tom Tykwer (though the book is better) and probably Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman (1992) - it's Pacino with the whole 'Hoo-ahh!' shit, but the perfume angle works here.

Minamata

I first heard about Minamata disease in a book called Japan - Behind the Lines by Ben Hills. It was a bit of an eye-opener (the whole book was, actually) as I'd just returned from 2 years living in Japan and was planning on a return. Most chapters in this book shone a grubby light on the politics of looking the other way and 'keeping face' in Japanese society - things the average language student doesn't really want to talk about. The cover up and complete misanthropy of the Chisso company is explored in this new film by multi-faceted artist Andrew Levitas. Long story short, this corporate dreck dumped toxic chemicals, including mercury, into a bay in Kyushu for years, causing birth defects, illness and death. When it came to light this was happening, the bigwigs hid the facts and denied responsibility. Sadly familiar. 

This film retelling is pretty powerful stuff. The angle the filmmakers take is that of an outsider's awakening, Johnny Depp being that guy. He plays Life magazine photographer, Eugene Smith, who is convinced to go to Japan to see what's occurring. There's a bit of the old cliché of reluctance, followed by a shock that makes him agree to go. Later, there's more of the same kind of emotional 'Pushmi-pullyu', in that Smith decides to give up, only to eventually, nobly soldier on. There is a whiff of the 'white saviour' narrative here - Smith's involvement was just one aspect of the whole sorry mess. Admittedly, it was nice to see actual Japanese people, dialogue and locations in this film. There are plenty of Japan-set films that eschew this for one reason or 'tother. Hiroyuki Sanada and Minami shoulder a lot of the weight, Tadanobu Asano slides in and out ruggedly, and Bill Nighy does American, and fairly well too.

There are some nice lines for Depp, delivered in a mostly constant fugue, and Benoît Delhomme's cinematography is striking, as is Ryuichi Sakamoto's score (legend, still firing). Ultimately though, it feels a bit manipulative, a little too worthy for it's own good, despite the vital need for the story to be told. A valiant attempt, nonetheless.

See also: Another case of corporate malfeasance in Dark Waters (2019), directed by Todd Haynes, and Mike Nichols' Silkwood (1983) for more of the same fury.

Heroic Losers

Argentina’s economic problems of the early 21^st century don’t exactly sound like ripe ground for a knock-about heist film, but director, Sebastián Borensztein finds the space in this broad, yet affecting comedy drama. The title refers to a group of small town friends and neighbours, led by Ricardo Darin’s Fermin, who, in trying to offer hope to their lives, plan to revive an old factory. A quick whip around takes place and eventually about half the required funds are raised. Here is where the bank steps in. After agreeing to deposit all the money, in order to act as a guarantee against a bank loan, Argentina’s Corallito crisis hits. All US dollar accounts are frozen (with peso accounts severely restricted) and the Heroic Losers are suddenly bereft.

This preamble makes up roughly the first act and events take a shift when it comes to light that a corrupt lawyer, with the help of the bank manager, has made a US dollar withdrawal moments before the government freeze occurs. Added to this is the nugget of information that said lawyer has had an underground safe made on his land not far from the town. Initially reluctant to take part, Fermin agrees to help hatch a plan to steal back the stolen money.

Heroic Losers – La Odisea de los Giles in Argentina – is based on a novel by Eduardo Sacheri, who also wrote the book (and co-wrote the screenplay) of the Darin-starring The Secret in Their Eyes. The inequality of the country’s politics underpins the whole film, with characters dropping the names of Peron and even Bakunin throughout. This is nicely balanced by a couple of goofy members of the group, who provide most of the giggles. There’s also time for a little romance when Fermin’s son, Rodrigo (played by Darin’s real life son, Chino) meets the secretary of the dodgy lawyer while he’s ‘undercover’. The ultimate light bulb moment comes from an old VHS copy of a Peter O’Toole and Audrey Hepburn film, How to Steal a Million.

This daring robbery angle may be a reason why it’s been called an Argentinian Ocean’s 11, but that’s fairly wide of the mark in that there’s precious little gloss here. The jollity comes from the personalities of the characters and their collegiality but there’s a solemn backdrop of corruption and despair pervading each scene. Darin embodies this angst and pent up rage and he crackles as usual but there are many earthy, relaxed performances filling the frame. There’s nothing ground-breaking here and it sometimes comes off as a touch sentimental but the cast and the earnestness of the subject make for a satisfying watch.

Heroic Losers opens in Australia on June 10th.

[This review was also published on the Film Ink website - https://www.filmink.com.au/reviews/heroic-losers/]

See also:

Ricardo Darin is mint in scam flick Nine Queens (2000), directed by Fabián Bielinsky and, for another heist film, Jules Dassin's Topkapi (1964) is a hoot.