Day two of AFI Fest coverage features international, avant-garde films
The American Film Institute Festival continues at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The Daily Bruin’s Sebastian Torrelio and Tony Huang attended until the festival’s close on Thursday, screening several of the biggest films being put up for audience award consideration and otherwise. On the second day of AFI Fest, Torrelio saw some interesting, more publicized films that prove the talents of this year’s acting performances, while Huang viewed a variety of films that had an avant-garde hint to them, and broke some grounds of unconventionality as well.
“Gloria”
Directed by Sebastián Lelio
Roadside Attractions
Continuing my quest to see as many foreign submissions for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar as possible, “Gloria,” Chile’s submission this year, exploits how simple filmmaking can be. In an age where so many are trying too hard to make comedy blockbusters work, director Sebastián Lelio manages to effortlessly design a stellar adult comedy with just the natural talents of his actress.
Said actress, Paulina García, plays title character Gloria, a woman who appears to be in her 50s, but has the personality of a spunky 20-year-old. Her lackluster life of romantic failure is excited by her encounter with Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández), a charming, passionate man who sparks Gloria’s interest in an adorable way. No longer does Gloria have to seek out her next potential husband at nightclubs, but that’s not to say she has the liberty of getting everything she wants out of her new man.
With a meandering plotline of humorous scenes and amusing tasks in the life of an aging Latina woman, “Gloria” is a mature comedy with enough drama and simple presentation to really work, supported heavily by its lead, who seems like she’s been doing this her whole life. Those in its target audience are sure to adore the trials and struggles of Gloria’s life away from work, a study in defying loneliness. But those outside the genre’s usual appeal will find an unusual amount of mesmerising wonder in the steadiness of Lelio’s hand.
—Sebastian Torrelio
“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”
Directed by Justin Chadwick
The Weinstein Company
At almost two and a half hours, “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” should be expected to fill up a majority of its plot with the trials and successes of one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, the first democratically elected president of a terribly divided South Africa. “Mandela,” instead, barely fills any of its plot with such requirements, portraying Mandela’s heroism in an overly simplistic way.
Starting with oddly scripted shots of young Mandela in his childhood, as a villager already destined to great things, “Mandela” ages the young leader into his formidable adult self, played with strikingly grandiose talent by Idris Elba. Mandela and his wife, Winnie (Naomie Harris), guide one another through the South African revolution, fighting through non-violence and violence alike in dramatically overrun scenes that effectively send out Mandela’s message, but not in the most straightforward, effective way.
The film continues into Mandela’s eventual imprisonment, at which point the film tones down its pace to slow, politically-oriented turns. But director Justin Chadwick never finds a settled footing in the hero’s legacy to guide him, only following the conventions of historical biopics to little suspense or surprise. It’s very fortunate for the director, then, that Elba and Harris navigate the historical figures’ timeline with a perfected grasp, giving the film enough spark to get by.
Also of note are two smaller aspects that lead “Mandela” to delicately placed success. An ending song by U2, “Ordinary Love,” is likely to receive some acclaim for the band who is no stranger to critical lauding. And more unconventional, the makeup work done for Elba’s Mandela is extraordinary, unrecognizably aging the actor into an accurate portrait of the leader by the film’s end.
—Sebastian Torrelio
“The Past”
Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Sony Pictures Classics
Director Asghar Farhadi’s last film, 2011’s “A Separation,” was a study of the human condition so simple and thrilling that very few films of recent years can even remotely compare. Farhadi’s follow-up feature, “The Past,” isn’t as compelling – a task that would be practically impossible – but Farhadi establishes himself as a directorial master, the same Academy Award-winning filmmaker who continues to weave wondrous tales in his mind.
Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) is an Iranian man who returns to his ex-wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo) to settle their divorce papers on the cusp of her newest marriage, to Samir (Tahar Rahim). With three stepchildren born to different fathers to deal with, Ahmad is caught up in re-familiarizing himself with the life he left behind for the short time he is back. A controversy regarding Samir, however, who has complications with his previous partner, makes Ahmad the controlling point of mysterious, dark circumstances regarding the family he’s leaving behind.
Farhadi, who also wrote “The Past,” could easily find his place among famous novelists or playwrights. “The Past” is extremely story-driven, never explicitly relying on its actors, but only supported by their on-point, already-acclaimed talents. It’s very fortunate, then, that Farhadi has stuck with his field, providing a gracefully assured pacing that seems near effortless. The plot, as intricately woven as it turns out to be, is brilliant, absorbing audience members into another of Farhadi’s upsettingly disturbed worlds without letting them leave until the very end – not as if they would ever want to.
—Sebastian Torrelio 
“A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness”
Directed by Ben Rivers and Ben Russell
Rouge International
A collaboration between avant-garde artists Ben Rivers and Ben Russell, “A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness” is a non-narrative feature that alternates between gorgeous naturalist vistas and intimate, oft-mundane ethnography. Although the film wanders through communes, pagan reenactments, a hermit house and a black metal concert, it’s linked by the presence of Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, a stand in for the audience and a metaphor for the individual.
As with most avant-garde works, the film is focused more on the textures of the cinematic form than it is on conventional plot concerns. Although in some ways “Spell” could be described as a documentary, its main purpose is to provide the viewer with a unique audiovisual experience, far from the traditional concerns of documentation. For those only vaguely familiar with the avant-garde scene, like myself, the experience can be at once enlightening and frustrating.
The parts of the film that are more explicitly non-narrative, like the opening “scene,” an ambient shot of dusk that gradually turns into a flat exploration of varying shades of darkness, are more revelatory than the parts of the film that involve human subjects. The hippie commune scenes are useful in establishing the theme of the movie – community and self, society and transcendence – but are curiously devoid of pictorial pleasure. The interesting black metal concert that ends the film may appeal more to metalheads, but I never found it engaging. On balance, the film does things to your mind and body that few films do, but it’s also liable to settle into some strange grooves.
—Tony Huang
“The Selfish Giant”
Directed by Cleo Barnard
Sundance Selects
Clio Barnard turned heads in 2010 for her unconventional documentary “The Arbor,” which utilized actors to read (and act) pre-recorded interviews by the subjects of the film. “The Selfish Giant,” her first fiction feature, isn’t quite as audacious, committing to the sort of kitchen-sink realism that has typified contemporary British cinema, but it’s got a certain tenacity to it that is sometimes disarming.
The film follows Arbor (Conner Chapman), a young boy with a behavioral disorder, and his unlikely best friend Swifty (Shaun Thomas) as they flunk out of school and decide to scrap for a local junkyard for money. Their families are a bit on the edge – Arbor’s brother is a drug addict, Swifty’s dad was a scrapper himself. It’s clear that the film originated from a desire to depict this sort of social milieu, where choices are few and opportunities are fewer. Especially for a boy as irritating and rambunctious as Arbor, whose antics rarely help the cause of making his family life easier, it seems the situation can only go downward.
Though it recalls 2011’s “The Kid With a Bike,” another film about a difficult child led down amoral ends, “The Selfish Giant” is decidedly less elegant, with an overdetermined energy that makes it difficult to understand or contextualize Arbor’s behavior, especially in the middle stretch of the film. Near the end, however, the film makes a remarkable rebound, with Barnard feeling more confident with her rhythms as the moral consequences of the narrative start piling up. Although perhaps a little morbid and overscripted, the drama helps the film weigh down its eccentricities and arrive at some surprising and touching moments.
—Tony Huang
“The Strange Little Cat”
Directed by Ramon Zürcher
Deutsche Film
The debut feature by German filmmaker Ramon Zürcher, “The Strange Little Cat” is an intimate, noisy film about a slightly disharmonious family. Nearly plotless except for a few small facts – the family is having a dinner together, the washing machine needs fixing – the film is near avant-garde in its fixation on small formal pleasures.
The domesticity immediately calls to mind the films of Yasujiro Ozu, and for once the comparison is somewhat apt. Much like Ozu, Zürcher zeros in on the physical proximity and emotional distance of a family situation, manipulating perception to better portray many separate minds at work. The mother, for instance, gets a monologue early on about an amusing and sad time at the movies, but nearly no one reacts to it — they’re too busy, distracted with their own minds or with milk or remote-control helicopters. Zürcher drives this point home by filming almost exclusively in medium-wide one-shots, with the other characters weaving in and out of frame, more like background noise than family.
This might sound like a depressing time, but “The Strange Little Cat” is mostly light on its feet, content to its small observations, never striving to make a point. The acting is at times a little too predetermined, going for an arthouse effect that tends to diminish complexity, but it’s mostly delightfully understated, creating a light but never lighthearted ambience that fits the modest scale of the production nicely. Moreover, the sound design gives the film a crucial sense of crowdedness, so effective that it could serve as a PSA for reducing noise pollution. It also provides most of the tension, especially in the penultimate scene, where a cat’s purr tells us all we need to know about the troubles of the household. A charming, delicate, but tough-minded creation.
—Tony Huang
“Stranger by the Lake”
Directed by Alain Guiraudie
Strand Releasing
French director Alain Guiraudie has slowly but surely become a major figure in international cinema, and his latest film, “Stranger by the Lake,” might be his most seductive feature yet. Focusing on a cruising spot near the lake where homosexual men get together for sex, the film eventually turns Hitchcockian as our main man, Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), gets involved with a dangerous, somewhat murderous lover, Michel (Christophe Paou). Eros and Thanatos meet again, and the boundary between sexual desire and morbid curiosity is blurred to non-distinction.
Supported early on by legendary French director Jean-Luc Godard, Guiraudie tends to deal with an insular society that forms its own rules and mechanisms. In “Stranger,” the cruising spot becomes a microcosm for larger society, even though a spot for gay men to pick up other gay men might seem to be a strange choice to represent society as a whole. Indeed, for Guiraudie, everything is strange – he films in a way that is elegant but somewhat disconnected, infusing his edits with a sort of violence that gives reality itself a surreal bent.
This tone can be somewhat difficult to grasp at first, but once you latch on to it it heightens the abstract pleasures of the film. The naked men on the beach, for instance, start to look almost like live sculptures, and the forest in which the men have sex gains a sinister quality that somehow never seems like disapproval. This tone helps out tremendously when things start to shade into evil: our visual information is intrusive and sudden, our grasp of space tenuous, and our understanding of the characters is ambiguous at best. And yet there is terror, and the last few scenes are as provocative as anything in the cinemas this year.
—Tony Huang
