film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Hugues Porquier

  • Chubby: Review

    Chubby: Review

    Chubby: Review. By Hugues Porquier.

    Chubby is a short film by Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer. It premiered on October 2, 2019 at the Vancour International Film Festival where it was nominated for the “Best Canadian Short”.

    In others festivals Chubby won  “Special Mention” at the Loudoun Arts Film Festival, “Silver Dragon” at the Krakow Film Festival and “Canadian Film Fest Special Jury Award” at the Canadian Film Fes as well as numerous nominations.

    In this 21-minutes film, two time lines intertwine. 

    In the first one we follow Jude, a 10 year old girl (played by Maya Harman) and her uncle Noah (played by Jesse LaVercombe). 

    During the first moments of the film, we can think we are dealing with a completely banal relationship between an uncle and his niece. 

    But we quickly understand that the hold that Noah is developing on Jude is terrible and inappropriate.

    As the minutes go by, an unhealthy atmosphere emerges from the conversation between them. They will start a game of dare that will bring the unthinkable.

    In the second time line, which takes place some time later, we are immersed in a Christmas family dinner, the meal is being prepared and we wait for Noah’s arrival. 

    In this part, Jude will act in a very dangerous way towards a young boy of her family. During a so-called game, she will try to suffocate him with a plastic bag. This scene, which lasts only a few seconds, seems endless and is really disturbing.

    Following this attempt to suffocate, the tension rises gradually between the different members of the family. 

    The direction of Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer works very well and makes the film look very realistic. Which, to be honest, is a good point for the film but a bad one for the viewer. Whether it’s during the game of dare or during the choking of the little one, the scenes are really heavy to watch and scary.

    But the realistic aspect of this film is also induced by the incredible performance of Maya Harman, who despite her young age knew how to perfectly interpret such a sensitive subject. Jesse LaVercombe’s performance is also impressive, indeed, it can’t be easy to put oneself in the shoes of such a character. 

    This film makes us realize that danger can come from anywhere, even from an uncle, who is quite young and seems to be appreciated by the whole family. It also emphasizes the victim’s difficulty in speaking about it. And the guilt that overwhelms them when they have to put words on these horrors. 

    Chubby is frighteningly realistic, the film tackles a very sensitive subject in a very incisive and thoughtful way. 

  • Choir Girl: Review

    Choir Girl: Review

    Choir Girl: Review. By Hugues Porquier.

    “Choir Girl” is John Fraser’s first feature film released in Australia in December 2019. In this movie, entirely in black and white, we follow Eugene (played by Peter Flaherty), a photographer who lives with his sick father and leads a mediocre life. 

    He photographs the dark corners of Melbourne in the hope of getting a shot that could bring him fame and change his life.  Between drugs, prostitution and corruption, Melbourne is a goldmine for the photographer who seeks to capture the plight of people forgotten by society.

    After several refusals from magazines to publish his pictures, Eugene’s life will change completely with an encounter.  In the first part of the film, Eugene’s distress is palpable. The mediocre life in which he is locked up gives us shivers down our spines. He seems to be rejected by society, lonely, his sick father as only friend. Moreover, the dark and quite oppressive atmosphere works really well. 

    But the film takes a completely different direction when he meets Josephine (played by Sarah Timm). Josephine is a 15-year-old immigrant sex-worker who is a victim of a prostitution network led by Daddy (played by Jack Campbell). At first, Eugene will try to save Josephine. He wants to get her out of this awful network.

    At this point the film seems to begin to develop the birth of a father-daughter relationship, which could be very interesting, between a man who has always been alone and a young girl abandoned by everyone. Instead, we witness a very common history of mafia guys, but with bad guys who are not scary at all and whom we don’t believe in. 

    The film also moves towards a rather strange relationship between Eugene and Josephine, which is very badly written, quite disturbing and seems awkwardly inspired by “Lolita”. The main problem is that the characters are not credible, whether in their writing or in the interpretation of the actors. Mafia guys and journalists are just clichés, not original at all. 

    The actors do not succeed in convincing us of the opposite. The only suitable performance is the one from Sarah Timm.  This lack of credibility leads to the fact that the stakes don’t work, we don’t believe in this story and the fate of the characters doesn’t matter. 

    So the really dark and captivating universe presented in the first part is inevitably ruined by this fumbling development of the characters.  The photography is embellished by superb black and white images, which is the real strength of the film. We feel that the director has really made an effort on this aspect, trying to make an homage to photography through his film and through the character of Eugene.

    “Choir Girl” by John Fraser is a clumsy attempt to take us into a world that seemed very interesting and inspiring but which is very badly exploited.

  • Patrick: Review

    Patrick: Review

    By Hugues Porquier.

    “Patrick” is a film by Tim Mielants, mainly known for his work on Peaky Blinders season 3. Accustomed to the TV shows format, “Patrick” is Tim Mielants’ first feature film. It had its world premiere at the 54th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where it competed for the Crystal Globe, winning the Best Director Award for Mielants.

    The film follows Patrick (played by Kevin Janssens), a 38 years old man who lives and works as a handyman in a nudist camp owned by his parents. His mother is blind and his father is getting too old to run the camp properly. Patrick looks like a child in the body of an adult. He looks completely innocent, naïve and he seems to be more gifted for practical work than for intellectual exercises.

    His work as a handyman has allowed him to develop a passion for his tools and a taste to create objects such as chairs, dressers and bookcases. But the sudden death of his father, patriarch and respected figure, will upset the balance of the nudist camp. However Patrick does not seem to be really affected by his father’s death.

    Something much more important has just happened to him, he lost one of his hammers. From that moment, we witness a story that goes from drama to comedy and vice versa. We follow Patrick in his quest to find his precious hammer. From now on, his whole life seems dedicated to this task.

    This quest allows us to discover several characters from the camp, each member of the camp quickly becomes a potential suspect for Patrick. These successive appearances give a good rhythm to the movie, which, in spite of some beautiful shots, seems quite slow in the first part. However, side stories around some characters does not seem really useful.

    We could take for example the character of Liliane. The film begins her presentation but never finishes it, so we can’t really understand her choices and her behaviour. During his investigation, Patrick will be victim of the sneakiness of the camp members who abuse his apparent naivety and his desire to find his hammer.

    Some want to take the lead of the camp like Herman and others just want to have free stays in exchange of information about his hammer. He will also meet a young and kind woman, Nathalie (played by Hannah Hoekstra). As Patrick, she is also victim of her innocence. She has been fooled by Dustin Apollo (played by Jemaine Clement), a music star.

    Nathalie sees in Patrick a sensitive man, who has a mad talent for the creation of furniture. She will try to make him realize that he can aspire to a much better life. The hammer will finally be found. It has been used to commit a murder in Brussels.

    Patrick will be logically accused of this crime before being quickly cleared. But the most important thing for Patrick is that he will never get his hammer back. At this moment, he seems to fully realize that his life will never be the same again due to his father’s death and the fact that his mother has decided to live somewhere else.

    He is facing an existential dilemma, between taking over his father’s work and going to live a new life with Nathalie. The use of nudity in this movie is questionable. It doesn’t bring anything special except for some scenes which feed the comic aspect of the movie.

    This film portrays a man endowed with a limitless innocence, who does not seem to have the weapons to live in a society such as ours, and who will have to go through a difficult transition, full of changes and unforeseen events. In spite of some script-writing weaknesses and a slight lack of rhythm « Patrick » is still a very convincing first feature film from Tim Mielants.

  • Wrath: Review

    Wrath: Review

    By Hugues Porquier.

    “Wrath” is a short movie, conceived, written and photographed in two months during the quarantine in Michigan, USA in March 2020. Co-directed by Meg Case and her partner Brad Porter, this movie takes us into the intimacy of Emily (played by Meg Case), a young woman who spends her quarantine alone in her apartment.

    Throughout the film, we witness to the deterioration of Emily’s mental state as the days go by.  We follow her in her daily life, in her habits, as close as possible to her intimacy. 

    We bathe in a warm apartment, full of green plants and very sunny. A place that may seem quite suitable for living in quarantine. But this daily life will gradually be upset by the appearance of hallucinations and anxiety attacks due to a growing paranoia. 

    A paranoia fed by loneliness, fear of the outside world and Covid-19. Through this fear of the virus, we find, more globally, the fear of death. This fear will be fed by the successive appearance of several dead animals but also by the presence of worms, often product of hallucinations, which can symbolise decomposition.

    These feelings of loneliness, anguish and paranoia will be very rightly interpreted by Meg Case who will allow us to fully live the movie. Throughout the film, the different music and sound editing perfectly suits these feelings, especially the anguish. One reproach can be made, it’s a slight lack of rhythm, which can easily be explained by the near absence of dialogue. Fortunately, a dynamic editing allows to keep some rhythm.

    The photographs and shots are very aesthetic. The shades of color, ranging from a simple natural light to the dewy light from the LED used for the plants allow us to immerse ourselves in this story of a disturbing realism but also quite magical. A few years ago, a situation like this one, including a global virus and a global quarantine, could have seemed imagined by an overly imaginative mind. 

    https://vimeo.com/476261101

    Today, it’s this promiscuity with reality which is one of the greatest strengths of the movie.  All over the world, a majority of the population has experienced this situation of quarantine. A situation that is often strongly linked with a feeling of loneliness, confinement and anxiety about a new situation that is not yet well understood and whose outcome is still uncertain. 

    It’s a very strange short movie that can create the desire to be more creative and active during this second wave of quarantine.

  • Visual Acoustics: The Modernism Of Julius Shulman – Review

    Visual Acoustics: The Modernism Of Julius Shulman – Review

    Visual Acoustics: The Modernism Of Julius Shulman – Review. By Hugues Porquier.

    Total discovery for some, vibrant tribute for others, “Visual Acoustics, The Modernism of Julius Shulman” (2008) directed By Eric Bricker, retraces the history and career of Julius Shulman.  Specialized in the modernism of the south of California and more precisely of Los Angeles, Julius Shulman, born in 1910 and who died in 2009, is still today the most influential architectural photographer who ever lived on this planet.

    He was mainly known for his photographs of mansions built by renowned architects and containing elements of nature such as mountains, trees or water.  In this documentary, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, we discover the work of Julius Shulman, but also the man he was. 

    Through the various testimonies of his family and friends, but also through Julius Shulman himself. Shulman seems to be a smiling man, who laughs easily. He is a real enthusiast and a nature lover. The trigger for his career came from his meeting, in 1936, with Richard Neutra, an architect who was looking for a photographer to document his work and with whom he worked until his death in 1970.  This meeting allowed him to work with many other very influential architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner or Albert Frey.

    Through the life of a man of that influence, who lived almost a century, the documentary also linger on modernism in architecture thanks to Shulman’s photographic archives. The documentary looks back on historical aspects such as the emergence of modernism, which is the idea that says that form follows function, the form of a building should be related to the function it’s supposed to have. 

    The film also offers an exploration of his iconic Case Study House photos, and some of the photographs for which he is famous. It allows us to look at stunning photographs of Los Angeles or Palms Springs. In the end of the 1950s, thanks to the architectural press, such as “House and garden” or “Modern Home”, he will be able to develop his influence on the American public and to present an innovative lifestyle to the world. 

    Shulman’s work may seem complex to fully understand. This is why there is interventions from professionals such as Tom Ford, Ed Ruscha, Dante Spinotti or Frank Gehry who help us to have a better comprehension of Julius’ talent.  They allow us to grasp the aestheticism and the vision of the world that Shulman presents to the world through his work. 

    Julius Shulman defines the way we look at modernism. His whole life has been devoted to documenting and illustrating the evolution of build environment in architectural form. 

    This entertaining and educational documentary allows us to discover an architectural movement but also a genius of photography.