If you have ever been on the receiving end of a sports massage and been left thinking “That really fucking hurt, but I feel better for it.” Then you can probably hazard a guess at the inspiration for Meredith Alloway’s horror short Deep Tissue.
Deep Tissue features Peter Vack, a Robert Pattinson/Steve Harrington mashup, as the unnamed man who pays a visit to an unnamed woman played by Alloway herself. She explores the awkwardness and embarrassment, covered by false bravado, stemming from the uncertainty around how the encounter is supposed to play out.
Deep Tissue is body-horror with a whimsical side. It is standalone, but could have fit as one storyline within a larger series of vignettes, with strong echoes of Miranda July–particularly with regard to clumsy interaction between strangers and the potential for violent acts (see July’s The Future, 2011; Me and You and Everyone we Know, 2005).
Alloway displays an interest in the relationship between pleasure and pain, and horror within daylight/ordinary activities. Another of her films, Ride, is set in a nightmarish spin class.
Final Girls Berlin Film Festival showcases horror cinema that’s directed, written, or produced by women and non-binary filmmakers. We are committed to creating space for female voices and visions, whether monstrous, heroic or some messy combination of the two, in the horror genre. We’ve seen more than enough representations of women as beautified victims and constructions of male fantasies or anxieties, and are working towards the primacy of women as subjects and storytellers in horror.
By Fergus Henderson. Sometimes there are certain films that are just indefinably right for certain points in a person’s life. For a certain type of film nerd at the beginning of their journey in film, Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s A Paris Education represents the kind of French film you want to live inside. This imaginary film ingénue might find an uneasy proxy in the film’s lead character Etienne (Andranic Manet), a mopey film student struggling with both his work and his love-life.
The pleasures of a film like A Paris Education lie in its unapologetic self-indulgence. In its ponderous pace, its simple black and white photography, its knowing tone. Everyone is smoking and having long, aggressively French conversations about sex and protest and art and friendship. People speak with the total idealism of inexperience. There is a charismatic, sententious mentor named Mathias (Corentin Fila) that proves dangerously -and seductively – influential. Someone, arguing in favour of cheating, explains that “transparency is a fascist illusion.” What’s not to love?
Civeyrac, decades into his career, is telling this story looking backwards. He must surely have been that film nerd, able now to recall with exacting clarity both the romance and the foolishness of such a time in his life. To any similar film obsessive, years into their tenure, A Paris Education could prove queasy viewing. There is regret and shame at the arrogance and selfishness on display. Etienne must be put through the ringer in order to see clearly.
A Paris Education, like its French forebearers The Dreamersand Regular Lovers, explores the conflict between of art and real life – and especially action and passivity. Civeyrac uses ennui-stricken Etienne as a person for whom life happens to. People educate him, enliven him, dress him down and build him up. All the while, he remains blank.
He does not act, only reacts, whether to the arrogant spiel of enigmatic Mathias, or to the castigations of the (bewilderingly frequent) women he becomes involved with. He is too self-involved to realise that his life is happening and that he is impacting it. He is a lead character in the didactic, Antonioni sense, a glibly ineffectual creation.
Luckily for us, and for Etienne, the stakes are smaller than the political future of France represented in either of the above films. A Paris Education is simply about a film student learning to take some small measure of responsibility for himself. Watching him letting everyone down and cheating on his patient girlfriend Lucie (Diane Rouxel) in order to get there, however, does prove frustrating.
Here is the film’s issue: the camera may be canny enough to focus on people’s reactions to Etienne’s actions (the critical eye) but it still never strays far enough from him for us to truly explore any of the other characters. We only ever see just a tiny bit more than the lead, which leaves the main plot threads essentially unexplored. Civeyrac, having allowed himself a generous run-time, is surely doing this intentionally. How little Etienne knows of the people in his life, the film mourns. How much life happens beyond his limited reach.
Brooding wannabe-iconoclast Mathias sneaks around the film’s narrative like a spectre, as does activist/roommate Annabelle (Sophie Verbeeck, resisting her own narrative’s side-lining), teasing the narrative along. If Civeyrac had extended the film to three hours (a wish no film goer makes lightly) and allowed us more meaningful glimpses into his side characters’ lives, A Paris Education might be a much stronger film.
Still, despite its self-imposed limitations (and the strong whiff of sexism throughout), it does somehow achieve a modest greatness. The cast gamely deliver their delightfully po-faced dialogue with conviction, and for two hours and change I was taken back to that ever-receding moment in time when all that mattered was cinema. A sweet, sad feeling, worth experiencing.
Exam is a short film about a teenage girl living in Iran who faces a difficult decision when she is forced to make a delivery of cocaine. Part of the problem is that she still goes to school and has an art exam later that day, so as well as the pressures from school she is also being forced to doing illegal activities by her father and expected to deal with it all by herself.
As the story continues and she goes to school, tensions mount as her teachers are suspicious of her activities, however due to some quick thinking she is able to deal with the situation as if she has been dealing with this kind of thing her entire life.
The lead actress does a great job, showing fear and also
showing that this may not be the first time she’s had to deal with a situation
such as this. She manages to do so with the calmness of a person forced to deal
with something that is well beyond her years and when it comes down to the
wire, the scene plays out keeping the audience on edge as to whether she will
have to face the consequences of her actions.
The situation may seem outlandish considering the extreme
strictness of the school and the situation that the main character finds
herself. However, writer/director Sonia Hadad takes her inspiration from some
real and personal experiences and manages to blend them together creating an
atmosphere of an impossible situation from all sides that still manages to feel
real despite the supposedly unique situation.
Tackling a subject that feels so grounded and simultaneously so unique could be so easily overlooked as fantastical, but that is what makes Exam such an interesting story. Before viewing Hadad’s short film, most of audiences may never have heard of such a thing happening, let alone ever considered that this kind of thing may even be happening for real.
As long as there are filmmakers given a voice to tell their stories and being able to say things that other filmmakers would shy away from, then perhaps the world will be more aware of things even if they don’t affect them directly.
One Against The House is a heist movie that manages to hold the audience till the end. The basic plot summary – “A gambler is forced to pull off a heist to cover his friend’s debt”, is interesting enough to get the viewer engaged, and the director, Michael Fredianelli, manages to keep this going till the end of the movie. Despite being an indie movie, the superb cinematography, allied with some stunning locations, rarely make it seem like a budget flick.
The
cast generally do a very good job. Derek Crowe pulls off the lead role well,
with a vulnerable, bumbling charm about him that draws the audience towards
him. Erik Jorn Sundquist is menacing enough as the main villain, but maybe at
times being a little too dramatic for one’s liking. However, Michael Nose’s
performance is probably the best of the lot; subtle enough to allow the
audience to take a liking to him before he is revealed as somewhat of an
antagonist as well.
The
movie itself feels slightly rushed at times, and there could have been some
more exposition provided in a few scenes. The editing certainly could have been
better, and the viewer is left with the feeling that some scenes have been left
out in the editing process when they would have done a good job of stitching
the narrative together, especially when most of the movie has a slow,
well-thought-out pace that allows the story to progress organically and
logically. There’s a palpable sense of tension throughout the movie, which,
while standard for movies in this genre, is still impressive considering the
budget and size of the project. It points towards the quality of the writing
and screenplay by Fredianelli.
The central theme of the movie comes out extremely well, with the audience seeing how the protagonist gets progressively hooked onto gambling and risk-taking. It shows how it is not too long of a road for someone to go from wanting to play casino games to fearing for his life. It is a chilling look at what gambling addiction can do to someone’s life if it is allowed to dictate terms, and the cinematography adds to this central theme to make it an enjoyable watch.
The protagonist’s journey towards degeneracy is extremely well-captured, going from just a night out with a friend to having to take hostages in order to pay off said friend’s gambling debt. Additionally, the plot does not progress as expected; there are a couple of surprises thrown in which add to the ride.
It
is a cautionary tale, but at the same time, the audience is invested in the
characters and their eventual fate, which again shows the quality of the
writing team as well as the actors who brought the roles to life. One Against The House is a surprisingly
enjoyable movie, especially given the budget range and genre, and is probably
one of the better indie movies in recent months.
Hulu’s High Fidelity is yet another retelling of a classic film from many years ago. The film in question is the 2000 film of the same name directed by Stephen Frears. However, this new television adaptation developed by Veronica West and Sarah Kucserka not only aims to change things up storywise a little bit, but aims to give its viewers a deeper connection to its main characters.
That is definitely an added bonus for television shows. There is so much more room for character development in a series than there is in a movie. A movie only has about two hours or so to get you deeply invested and wrapped up in the protagonists, whereas a television season has multiple episodes and multiple hours to get you to care. And High Fidelity really gets you to care about its characters.
Zoë Kravitz portrays lead character Rob, a young woman living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn that really loves music. She has created specific playlists on her phone to listen to for certain moods she is feeling. Some of these playlists are even inspired by past relationships she has been in, and she listens to them as a way of coping with the breakups. Not only that, but she owns a record shop in the city too, where her friends Clyde (Jake Lacy) and Cherise (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) work as well.
Kravitz is an actress that has immense range and has proven herself to be one of the most promising talents of the past decade. She is usually great in everything she is in, but this is without a doubt her best performance to date. As Rob, she delivers an emotionally nuanced and powerful performance. She is a character that you feel sympathy for, laugh with, and just get to know throughout the course of the season. Seeing her day to day life was not only a riveting experience, but a greatly comedic one too.
But perhaps the best comedic actor in the series is Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Cherise. There are so many moments with her that will make you doubled over in laughter. She says some downright hilarious things that were not only so surprising, but so well delivered in terms of comedic timing.
Naturally, with a show like this that is so fueled and inspired by music, you would probably expect it to have a killer soundtrack, and it surely does. You will often hear a couple of songs each episode playing in the background during certain scenes, and every single song choice was phenomenal.
The writing on display throughout the entire show is also superb. It is incredibly strong, often moving, and profoundly insightful. Although episodes three and four drag significantly due to not a lot happening in terms of story progression or character development, the rest of the show manages to be a remarkable achievement.
High Fidelity is a remarkably strong effort that contains a stellar performance from Zoë Kravitz and a deeply comedic and emotional script.
