It’s almost here. The 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, make that VIFF from here on, starts Thursday and until Oct 11 shows more films than anyone can possibly take in. About 150 features, and that many again shorts and documentaries. Film buffs are busy planning out how to squeeze all they want to see into their schedule. (Not possible, by the way). Or just trying to decide on a few to catch.
There are two main approaches. You could go for the big buzz titles, most of which will be back soon, but you can see them early. Films like Marriage Story, said to be an Oscar contender, The Laundromat, Just Mercy,The Lighthouse, Jojo Rabbit, the most celebrated film at the Toronto fest. Most play only once here and many only late in the day. Do you really want to start Terrence Malick’s new one, A Hidden Life, at 8:45 in the evening? It’s almost three hours long.
The other way is to look for gems that may take a long time to come back, maybe never. It takes real research to find these, studying the word from other festivals or even better, from people standing in line with you.
I use a combination of both tactics in these recommendations today, and in future columns. And I only review films I’ve already seen. Like these ….
Parasite
Guest of Honour
Adam
The Realm
Babysplitters
Human Nature
PARASITE: Of all the VIFF films I’ve watched so far, this is my favorite because it includes so much. It’s a comedy (initially), a social commentary about class differences (all throughout), a delightful story about a clever deception and finally, after a sudden twist, a ghost and a horror story with some bloody action. Surprisingly it all fits together and doesn’t feel contrived. But as a caustic view of modern society anywhere, not only in South Korea where it’s from, it provokes and entertains. The Cannes film festival gave it the top award this year and Korea is sending it to the Academy Awards.
Basically, we’ve got two families to watch, one poor, the other nouveau riche. A son from the first gets a job tutoring a daughter of the second and sets in motion a scheme to get a job there for every member of his family. Some of that is easy while the machinations to replace the housekeeper and the driver are more complex and very funny. The rich family is clueless and self-absorbed; the poor ones are feeling so pleased with themselves that they imagine they can take over the whole house. Then the housekeeper shows up. She says she forgot something and the film finds an underside to the story. Deft directing and co-screenwriting by Bong Joon Ho makes it all work tremendously well. You’ll remember him from his other hits, The Host, Snowpiercer and Mother. (Plays Fri late, Sun afternoon and late Sun Oct 6).
ADAM: A first feature and it’s one of the most emotionally heartfelt films at the festival. The predicament is familiar. An unmarried woman who becomes pregnant is an outcast in Muslim society, in Morocco in this case. What writer-director Maryam Touzani does with that situation is remarkable and very moving. The film is now her country’s official submission to the Academy Awards.
Country girl Samia (Nisrin Erradi) wanders Casablanca visibly pregnant looking for work and is eventually invited in, just for one night, by a woman who had been just as curt with her as the others. She’s a home-business baker named Abla, played by Lubna Azabal who you think you’ve seen somewhere before. You have, in the great Quebec film, Incendies (2010) and even a Ridley Scott film in Hollywood. Here she’s dignified, gruff and judgemental but gradually warms to the poor girl who it turns out can make a great pastry that the locals clamor to buy. The film is wonderful in showing the friendship that grows between the women and then the dilemma they have to face. The baby will be a bastard, a horrendous stigma. But what to do? There’s compassion and poignancy in this superior film. (Fri afternoon and Wed Oct 2 evening)
GUEST OF HONOUR: Atom Egoyan bounces back from a few weak years, draws us in once again with his typically tangled storytelling and then leaves us more than a little confused about what was going on. It starts breezy and turns dour and as the festival’s opening gala film doesn’t feel like a set-up for a fun party. It’s a psychological drama about guilt and looking for redemption that would work better if we had a better idea of what these people feel so guilty about.
David Thewlis, as a restaurant health inspector, is at the centre, though only in flashbacks. His daughter (Laysla De Oliveira) tells his story to a priest (Luke Wilson) who needs something to say about him at his funeral. He, and we, learn that he was a nit-picker and a menacing bureaucrat, casually corrupt and haunted by events in his past. That’s where it gets complicated. His daughter was in jail, blaming both herself and him. “What’s wrong with you?” he asks her. “You are, dad.” She had been a teacher, got involved with a student, was betrayed by a jealous bus driver and somehow prompted her dad to get ever more intimidating with the owners of the family-run restaurants he visited and threatened to shut down. How these things are connected is obscure. But while the overview is vague, individual scenes are highly engrossing because of strong acting and precise direction. (Thurs and Mon evening at the Centre). 3 out of 5
THE REALM: I can’t imagine the European Union policy wonks in Brussels are too happy about this film. It shows one their members, Spain, a top recipient of both scolding and financial aid, as being run by exceedingly corrupt politicians. The money sent there gets skimmed off and mixed into fraudulent schemes, money laundering and, in this story, a crooked re-zoning and development project. The film tells its story with a pulsating urgency that’s as exciting as anything Hollywood puts out. In fact it was a big winner at Spain’s top movie awards, The Goyas.
Antonio de la Torre (best actor at the Goyas) plays a rising star in the political hierarchy but when a scandal threatens to burst open because of a leaked tape, his colleagues turn on him and try to put all the blame on him. He won’t take it though and becomes a whistleblower and thereby a threat to the whole cabal, locally and right up to the national level. The film delivers a variety of expertly crafted scenes, a lot of tension, paranoia, speedy pursuits, a comically-ironic sequence when he interrupts a teen girl’s clandestine party to find evidence and a final scene that says exactly what the film intends. It blasts both the perpetrators and the news media owners who bury the truth. Committed and entertaining filmmaking from director Rodrigo Sorogoyen. (Thurs late and Sat afternoon)
BABYSPLITTERS: Here’s a super comedy, completely of the time, yet polite enough to ditch the obscenities and let people talk like real people … and about real concerns. Starting a family is the subject here. He’s not ready, she’s feeling her biological clock pressuring her. Bigger problem: they can’t conceive (low egg and sperm counts or something). Artificial insemination is expensive and a rather hip doctor suggests a “new alternative.” It requires a couple of friends to help. The guy, a hearty gym rat, will impregnate her while his wife will be understanding about it and all four will share raising the baby.
Doesn’t quite work out that way. The impregnating sequence is very funny, brilliantly directed and paced. Her husband is fretting in the other room; jealousy can’t be eliminated just like that. Later there are disagreements about gender preferences, names and should they all live together. Earlier parenting matters included misbehaving kids, a whole flock of them attacking with water guns in the back yard, and a mother’s belief in “Collaborative Constructive Permissive Parenting.” It’s incisive commentary directed by Sam Friedlander and starring four sharp actors: Danny Pudi and Emily Chang as one couple and Maiara Walsh and Eddie Alfano as the other. It’s a small but perceptive film. (It plays Fri late and Wed afternoon)
HUMAN NATURE: This documentary is both bracing and informative. Much so, in both respects. It burrows into the brave new world that’s coming and the bad experiences that have already been perpetrated in its name. Genetic engineering, it points out, has taken a momentous leap forward and now promises great advances. Eliminating inherited disease? Who wouldn’t want the young boy featured early on to be rid of his sickle cell anemia? Designer babies? That’s more problematic isn’t it? Would every parent want a blonde, slim, highly intelligent child?
The film asks them all, states the pros and cons (some with references back to the eugenics movement and its perversion by the Nazis) and in its best sections gives us a clearly understood explanation of the science. Animation is used to very good effect to show it. Gene splicing was not an option until a breakthrough called CRISPER and a “programmable protein” called CAS9 (both well defined in the film) opened every possibility. How about soldiers who don’t feel pain? There’s lots to think about and presented with rigor in this film. (Fri and Sat morning and Thurs Oct 10 evening)