đȘđș THE CHICAGO EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL AT THE GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER
The Gene Siskel Film Centerâs 26th annual showcase of new films from the European Union continues this week and runs through the end of March. Below are reviews of select films with showtimes through Thursday. Check back next week for further coverage of the festival. More information and a complete schedule can be found here.
Did you miss last weekâs opening night film, HILMA? Did you see it and want to learn more? Read contributor Raphael Jose Martinezâs interview with the filmâs stars, Lena Olin and Tora Hallström, on our blog here.
Colm BairĂ©adâs THE QUIET GIRL (Ireland)
Friday, 5:30pm and Sunday, 5pm
I was a quiet child. Out of some combination of shyness, sullenness, and the preference for private experience, I preferred keeping to myself. Other formerly (or currently!) introverted viewers should be able to find some part of themselves reflected in THE QUIET GIRL, which speaks the language of childhood reticence. While I grew up in a loving family, the same cannot be said for nine-year-old CĂĄit (ethereal newcomer Catherine Clinch), who is ignored and belittled by both her parents and her gaggle of siblings. With another child on the way, her parents send her to live with a pair of middle-aged cousins on their farm. CĂĄit finds herself under the guardianship of EibhlĂn (Carrie Crowley), whose compassionate, patient, and attentive care seems alien compared to how the girl is treated by her callous mother. CĂĄitâs new, more nurturing environment is delineated by production designer Emma Lowney and cinematographer Kate McCullough through the use of warm yellows, soft sunlight, and the emerald green of the nearby woods, evoking an almost magical bucolic haven unlike the dimly-lit interiors of CĂĄitâs family home. Although sheâs showered with affection sheâs never felt before, CĂĄit canât quite shake her melancholy, especially after she discovers a secret her caretaker has been concealing from her. THE QUIET GIRL contains few surprises, and its alignment with CĂĄitâs point of view dictates its modest scope and affect. Still, BairĂ©ad finds virtue in simplicity, tenderness, and pain in placid images. His understated style and narrative minimalism lead to a finale that is all the more potent for being relatively emotionally eruptive, as reservoirs of unspoken feelings come crashing, gently but emphatically, to the surface. (2022, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Ruth Beckerman's MUTZENBACHER (Austria/Documentary)
Saturday, 2:30pm
Though pretty plain to look at, MUTZENBACHER is difficult work on a conceptual level. The film catalogs 100 men as they audition for a film adaptation of Josephine Mutzenbacher, an Austrian erotic novel attributed to Felix Saiten, author of Bambi. The 1906 book describes the sexual exploits of a girl from the ages of 5 to 13 and is generally considered to be child pornography, albeit of an uncommonly literary variety. As such, the book has a complicated reputation in German literature, being banned periodically and labeled as obscene in both Germany and Austria throughout the 20th century. Paradoxically, as appreciation for the bookâs literary merit has increased over time (due, in part, to the stately, of-its-time prose that now leads some passages of the book to read as satire) more judgment has been brought towards its sexual content, and its depiction (by an adult, male author) of a supposedly autonomous and sexually liberated child. Thus, the notion of any filmmaker adapting it would draw suspicion. That so many men answered a fairly anonymous casting call to adapt it is even more suspicious, and therein lies Ruth Beckermanâs real project. The men are the real subjects here; they filter our understanding of the text and provide a cross-section of the male sexual psyche. Though a range of ages is represented, the bulk of the subjects are middle-aged or older, and many speak with a nostalgic quality about their own sex lives. As they opine on contemporary sexuality, some say they feel sexual free-spiritedness is linked with their own ability to do what they please, and the film takes on a queasy, post-#MeToo relevance as the men complain about the nebulous ânowadays,â where prudish censorship reigns supreme, apparently. As far as the actual literature is concerned, some of the men feel the text justifies the content because of its acuity as literature. This is key for understanding Beckermanâs focus on legitimizing contexts, as the men feel an extra comfort with the material not only because it is âgreatâ literature, but because this project is being led by a woman director. On a sickly pink casting couch that calls to mind internet porn, thereâs a reversal of the gendered power dynamics. The men show up in good faith for an audition, trusting the directorâs vision, only to be ambushed by personal and literary discussion that reveals their true opinions on the text. While Beckermanâs thesis beyond setting up this sandbox isnât clear, itâs a fascinating project thatâs provocative in its deceptively relaxed context, a reflective space where viewers may find themselves asking similarly difficult questions. (2022, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
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Annika Pinskeâs TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER (Germany)
Saturday, 4:45pm
The concept of a narrative film taking place in media res has long interested me. Its definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary states simply that in media res means âin or into the middle of a narrative or plotââthis implies that thereâs narrative or plot preceding the middle and to which those outside it are not privy. Is that not like life? At any given point are we not in the midst of our own plot, the details of which only we know fully, and doesnât that apply also to everyone else? Again, it can be said that this phenomenon pertains to any ongoing narrativeâin life or media (pun intended)âbut it feels especially relevant in the case of Annika Pinskeâs debut feature, which centers on a 40-something PhD candidate in Berlin. Pinskeâs subtly philosophic vraisemblance is not about what is happening but rather that everything is happeningâthe stuff of life, past and present, that propels it forward. Little about the protagonist, Clara (Anne SchĂ€fer), is explicitly contextualized; Pinske conveys details of her life through whatâs taking place, with the viewer responsible for filling in the gaps or perhaps even accepting that they wonât be given the minute details. The writer-director succeeds in painting a holistic portrait of her unsettled heroine, touching on her affair with a student, a complicated relationship with her family (which includes a teenage daughter who lives with her father), the political nuances of her upbringing in East Germany for several years when it was the German Democratic Republic, her academic studies, and the struggles she faces with institutional sexism. The title of the film evokes the banalities she rejects; she shares her dislike of these trivialities in a tense conversation with her mother during which she expresses a desire to share more than just empty platitudes. Her mother, however, is a simple woman who still lives in rural eastern Germany and whose peers express conservative viewpoints that are at odds with Claraâs; Pinske addresses the motherâs limited perspective in a way that gives equal weight to both womenâs desires, however, and she brings similar nuance to her depiction of Claraâs relationship with her mentor, a female professor who embodies everything Clara wants but still grapples with her own existential issues. (Sandra HĂŒller appears in a memorable scene as the professorâs previous mentee, who takes her to task for shortcomings that are not explored thereafter, making it a perfect example of Pinskeâs narrative flutters.) Made with resources from the German Film and Television Academy where she studied, TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER is more than an auspicious debut. Pinske beautifully handles difficult conceptsâthe unexcogitable momentum of life, the veracity of a personâs individual philosophy in conflict with those of othersâwith a studied assuredness (likely owing to similarities in her own life) that speaks to certain inscrutable truths. (2022, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Rebecca Zlotowskiâs OTHER PEOPLEâS CHILDREN (France)
Wednesday, 6pm
The French are so goodâand so consistentâat making understated dramas about middle-class discontentment that they probably have a name for this subgenre. Claude Sautetâs run of masterpieces from the 1970s may be the high-water mark for whatever itâs called, though there have been excellent entries from directors as diverse as Bertrand Tavernier, AndrĂ© TĂ©chinĂ©, François Ozon, and Mia Hansen-LĂžve. (Claude Chabrol, who blended the subgenre with elements of the suspense thriller, worked in a category all his own.) It seems like a difficult type of movie to pull off: if you get too cynical or angry about middle-class hypocrisy, you may end up with trite moralizing; but if youâre too accepting of your characters and their worldview, you may end up with something soft and complacent. As such, writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski walks a fine line in OTHER PEOPLEâS CHILDREN. This semicomic movie, about a 40-ish divorcĂ©e who first realizes she wants to be a mother, doesnât really question the logic behind typical bourgeois aspirations; however, it feels realistic in its depiction of the challenges that keep the bourgeoisie from realizing their dreams. The heroine, Rachel, is a high-school teacher who falls in love with Ali, a car designer whoâs also divorced. He shares custody of his five-year-old daughter, Leila, and as romance develops between the two protagonists, so does Rachel fall for Leila and, in the process, discover that she longs for the âbanalâ goals of settling down and raising children. As proven by Justine Trietâs SIBYL (2019) and Paul Verhoevenâs BENDETTA (2021), Virginie Efira excels at playing headstrong women who are more than a little neurotic, and she delivers another smart and compelling performance as Rachel; she makes you reflect on what it means to be happy along with her. Zlotowski, for her part, delineates the hurdles to Rachelâs happiness in a manner thatâs neither too obvious nor obscure. One recognizes a certain self-sabotaging quality in the heroine but also the impact of things beyond her control, like the unpredictable nature of interpersonal relationships, the demands of a high-stress career, and plain old bad luck. Life gives us plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied. (2022, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Elena LopĂ©z Rieraâs EL AGUA (Spain)
Thursday, 6pm
Elena LopĂ©z Riera is a visual artist and filmmaker whose self-described artistic mission is âto transgress the boundaries between learned, transmitted and repeated notions, such as masculine and feminine, belief and skepticism, reality and fantasy, documentary and fiction, through moving images.â EL AGUA, her first feature film, dives into the daily life and folklore of her home town, Orihuela, a small town in southeastern Spain that has experienced devastating flooding of the Segura River, which flows through it, for hundreds of years. The film centers on 17-year-old Ana (Luna PamiĂ©s), who is being romanced by JosĂ© (Alberto Olmo), the son of a lemon grower (Pascual Valero) who is trying to get him to get serious about his future. Ana and her all-female family are considered cursed, though no one can say how or why, and Ana seems to believe that she destined to be claimed by the river, which is said to fall in love with a woman every so often; interviews with real women of the town reveal the well-known story of a bride who was drawn to the Segura on the day of her wedding and swallowed up by the waters. The majority of the film, which is quite documentary in nature, shows the kind of restless boredom that residents of small, economically depressed towns deal with by drinking, smoking, and fantasizing about relationships, both real and mythic. The filmâs slow pace builds to the point that we, like the Orihuelans, start to will the torrential rains to fall. (2022, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
đœïž CRUCIAL VIEWING
Short Threads with Larry Gottheim
Chicago Film Society at Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) â Friday, 8pm
Larry Gottheim returns for a second in-person screening, this time at the lovely Constellation space. Usually a venue for live music, the layout serves film screenings beautifully, with the seating in a semicircle and the screen commanding attention stretched floor to ceiling. For those that missed last week's list, Gottheim is a cherished figure in American avant-garde filmmaking, having co-founded the influential SUNY Binghamton film program and having made decadesâ worth of structural film classics. First up is BARN RUSHES (1971, 36 min, 16mm), which consists of multiple long camera takes around the titular object. As in all of his work, the fine compositions and considerations of light are the immediate source of pleasure in this film. The shots are taken at different times of day, but the movement around the space stays the same. The repeated movement and the play of foregrounded grasses allow the mind to drift around in a dazed appreciation for subtle accumulation of visual effects that slowly wow. If many of Gottheim's other films derive a lot of their power from an appreciation of unpopulated rustic settings, HARMONICA (1971, 10 min., 16mm) playfully introduces the human element in the form of a man in the backseat of a car holding a harmonica out the window to create a duet between man and space in motion. Moving away from the slow cinema of his earlier work, MNEMOSYNE MOTHER OF MUSES (1986, 16 min, 16mm) is a dynamic memory-piece full of rapid snippets of familial found footage abstracted and shaped around an audio montage of high and low art drawn from childhood pleasures and maturing musical memories. Finally, THE RED THREAD (1987, 16 min, 16mm) is another rapidly edited piece full of cryptical personal musings, using a weaver and her work as the central visual theme. As with all of Gottheim's work, beneath the visual pleasure, there is esoteric personal meaning and deep structural pleasure that rewards close viewings. [Josh B Mabe]
Seijun Suzuki's TOKYO DRIFTER (Japan)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre â Monday, 7pm
Two shapes diverge on a snowy plain. One, a shadow cast at an almost 90-degree angle. The other, a curvilinear trail of footprints. The titular character stumbles along the latter, away from the rigid darkness. This scene in TOKYO DRIFTER embodies Seijun Suzuki's last years at Nikkatsu, Japanâs oldest major movie studio, where he both shirked convention and exploited it, making films that are at once singular and familiar, all their own but still owing to a wide range of studio auteurs whose paths he was following. Something of a send-up of the "giri-ninjo" conflict, which pits duty against emotion, TOKYO DRIFTER could be as much about Suzuki as it is Tetsuya, the powder-blue-suit-clad former yakuza whose displaced loyalty proves deadly. It's debatable as to whether or not Suzuki felt any sense of obligation to Nikkatsu, but it's inarguable that he was among their most talented (and most underappreciated, at least internally) directors, just as Tetsu is regarded as the most uniquely skilled and thus most threatening yakuza. Having recently gone straight along with his father-figure boss, Tetsu finds himself back in the midst of gang warfare when another yakuza boss comes after them for some valuable real estate. Like the rest of Suzuki's films leading up to his being fired from Nikkatsu, TOKYO DRIFTER doesn't follow a linear trajectory; it often jumps ahead inexplicably, thus mimicking the attention span of someone passively engaging seemingly disposable entertainment. (Though this is a hallmark of his style, one can't help but wonder what happened on those train tracks!) This effect doesn't take away from the story so much as it adds to the general absurdity of Suzuki's quasi-surrealist landscape, which is enveloped in exaggerated genre convention. It's a veritable pop-art extravaganza, complete with James Bond flare, Vincente Minnelli-esque musical numbers, a Western-inspired saloon straight out of Pioneertown, and mordant product placement... for hair dryers. The contention between Suzuki and Nikkatsu came to a head after his 1967 film BRANDED TO KILL, which he was forced by the studio to make in black and white. Suzuki's emotive aesthetic certainly seems to outweigh whatever obligation he had to Nikkatsu, as even his monochrome films are 'colorful' in their distinction. But TOKYO DRIFTER is representative of Suzuki's individualism in all its vibrant glory, and perhaps most personally so. With an introduction by William Carroll, author of the book âSuzuki Seijun and Postwar Japanese Cinema.â (1966, 83 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
Sofia Coppola's THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (US)
Music Box Theatre â Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
Throughout her distinguished directorial career, Sofia Coppola has used her position as a Hollywood insider to examine the life of privilege and pleasure into which she was born and reveal the silly ordinariness that the envious masses rarely see. She particularly takes aim at the menchildren who donât seem to know how to handle their good fortune or the women in their lives with any great degree of self-awareness or grace. The men in her films LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003) and SOMEWHERE (2010) wear their fame and fortune variously with giddy wonderment, entitled hedonism, and wistful longing for youthâanything but maturity. But the first men on whom she trained her sights are the unreliable narrators of her directorial debut, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, which she adapted from the florid novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. In voiceover, the men recount the fateful year in high school when the five Lisbon sisters, renowned beauties in their Michigan suburb, became the stuff of legend when the youngest, 13-year-old Cecilia (Hannah Hall), killed herself. The boys become entangled with the sisters and their religious, clueless parents (James Woods and Kathleen Turner) as witnesses to Ceciliaâs demise, and then as companions the girlsâ parents reluctantly allow to take them to the homecoming dance. The predictably disastrous resultsâcause for a two-week grounding in any normal familyâbecomes life in prison for the girls. The only way out, it would appear, is suicide. Coppola tells the story with a great deal of sympathy for the boys who remain marked for life by their encounters with the Lisbons, while nonetheless revealing their ongoing delusions with wit and insight. Edward Lachmanâs lensing lends a light distancing to this mid-1970s period piece redolent of nostalgic music and corny sexual suggestiveness. Kirsten Dunst, Coppolaâs muse through several films (MARIE ANTOINETTE [2006], a cameo as herself in THE BLING RING [2013], THE BEGUILED [2017]) is first fetishized here as the most beautiful and provocative of the sisters, 14-year-old Lux. Coppolaâs slo-mo, soft-focus shots of the enticing Lux offer the image that dances through the memories of the boys, especially the one boy, Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett/Michael ParĂ©), who loved and abandoned her. I suspect that the unfortunate seducer in Coppolaâs THE BEGUILED, once again disappointing Dunst, is Trip finally getting his comeuppance. Screening as part of the Sofia Coppola March Matinees. (1999, 97 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Fritz Langâs DESTINY (Germany/Silent)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) â Sunday, 7pm
Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel both cited this early Fritz Lang feature as one of their favorite movies, and itâs hard to say what might have appealed to them more, the romantic fatalism or the grim insights into storytelling. Set âSome Time and Some Place,â it centers on a young woman who makes a deal with Death himself in an effort to save her beloved when heâs in mortal danger. Death proposes to tell her three stories; if she can save a life in one of these stories âwith love,â then he will return her lover to the land of the living. The three tales take place in a fictional Middle Eastern country, Venice, and the âChinese Empire,â with the same actors playing the the principal characters in each; in all three stories, the events quickly snowball to some life-or-death climax in which someone puts their existence on the line for a person they love. Lang had already shown signs of his personal style and themes in the first two chapters of SPIDERS, a never-completed serial begun in 1919. With DESTINY (which was originally released in Germany as DER MĂDE TOD, or âThe Weary Deathâ), Lang sowed more seeds for the great body of work that was to follow. The foreboding presence of Death heralds the coming of so many malign figures in Langâs filmography, from Dr. Mabuse (whoâd make his first onscreen appearance the next year) to Peter Lorreâs child murderer in M (1931) to the spy ring of MINISTRY OF FEAR (1944), while the stories within the story introduce a spirit of exoticism that would bear fruit in his 1959 diptych THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR and THE INDIAN TOMB. The special effects, which presage those of Langâs subsequent silent epics DIE NIEBELUNGEN (1924) and METROPOLIS (1927), impress not only with their imagination but with how carefully theyâre integrated into the storytelling. Langâs gift here is to render a folkloric world immediate and palpable, which in turn reinforces our acceptance of the stark moral vision on display. The filmâs moralism is imparted largely through Death, whom Lang and his then-spouse-and-screenwriter Thea von Harbou depict as the ultimate storyteller. Surely, there are many master directors who can relate to that association. Screening as part of Docâs Sunday series, âFacing Life, Meeting Death.â (1921, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Dan OâBannonâs THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (US)
Music Box Theatre â Tuesday, 7pm
Do you wanna party?! Itâs party time! What we have here is a cult film of impressive influence. Usually cult films find themselves an audience that clutches to them so tightly that they are nearly suffocated by the fandom and then never do much more than appeal to those diehards. Dan OâBannonâs THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD has escaped this insularity; not only has it managed to reach legitimate cult status, but it has also helped create an entire new (sub)genre of filmâthe zombie comedy. Without THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD there would be no MY BOYFRIENDâS BACK, no SHAUN OF THE DEAD, no ONE SHOT OF THE DEAD, no JUAN OF THE DEAD, etc. Just look at the worldwide influence in that short list alone; English, Japanese, and Cuban filmmakers all picking up where OâBannon left off. Most famous for co-writing ALIEN and TOTAL RECALL, RETURN was the first of only two films he had the chance to direct. Based on his own screenplay, OâBannon pits a crew of punk rockers against a graveyard full of zombies. A mysterious gas leaking from a U.S. government-marked canister infects employees and cadavers at a medical facility; the cremation of one of those newly undead contaminates the clouds overhead, creating a toxic rain that falls on a cemetery, bringing a host of zombies out of their graves. The plot is simple and direct, getting down to business right away. Played for laughs, THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD mixes humor, horror, gore, and punksploitation into a film that once dominated the home video rental market, and still lends itself perfectly to revival screenings and midnight showings. The film is a love letter to underground culture as a whole; to weirdos, freaks, and the socially awkward looking for the same. RETURN augments its cult cred with a soundtrack of equally-cult bands: The Damned, Roky Erickson, 45 Grave, T.S.O.L., The Flesh Eaters, and of course, The Cramps. Unlike George A. Romeroâs social-message zombie classics, RETURN is pure 20th-century American trash culture. And god bless OâBannon for that. Itâs a film of forever quotable lines, cheesy practical effects that you can laugh along with, and a Ramones-esque d-u-m-b nihilism that could have only been bred in the Cold War of Reaganâs â80s. This is a fun movie, plain and simple. I like it. Itâs a statement. Programmed and presented by the Abhorrent Cinema (1985, 91 min, 35mm) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
đœïž ALSO RECOMMENDED
Lee Chang-dong's BURNING (South Korea)
Gene Siskel Film Center â Tuesday, 6pm
âItâs a metaphor.â Spoken by the inexplicably wealthy, smugly superior Ben (Steven Yeun) after he equates cooking at home to making offerings to the Gods, this line, like so much of the teasingly elusive BURNING, hints that weâre in delicately self-reflexive territory in Lee Chang-dongâs latest. Itâs one of a tantalizing series of moments, mostly generated by Yeunâs perpetually smirking and vaguely otherworldly character, that draws us ever deeper into the filmâs porous reality, where our unreliable narrator Jongsuâs (Yoo Ah-in) confounded perspective makes us question the veracity of what weâre seeing. The mysteries start accruing early, when Jongsu, a barely employed, young aspiring writer, happens upon Haemi (Jeon Jong-seo), a girl from his childhood neighborhood whom he canât remember. Haemi is off to Africa, and sheâll need Jongsu to feed her cat while sheâs away, but like the phantom tangerine she pantomimes over dinner, there is no trace of the cat. For a while, anyway, Haemi seems to offer the romantic companionship Jongsu has been missing, but when she returns from Africa with Ben in tow, the rich, possibly sinister interloper unleashes in Jongsu a cascade of latent anxieties, desires, and resentments that are as socioeconomically based as they are libidinal. In the thorny, unmistakably homoerotic relationship between the sullen working-class Jongsu and the suave new-moneyed Ben, Lee articulates a dynamic underpinned equally by class antagonism and envy, by a disdain for a callous power elite as well as by the aspirations of a young generation, evident especially in eastern Asian countries such as South Korea, to assimilate the goals of global capitalism. Like Haemi, who oscillates (perhaps uneasily) between economically desperate millennial and male sexual fantasy projection, Ben is a slippery subject, a recognizable brand of entitled affluent hotshot who nevertheless appears like a kind of taunting phantasm. It is a mark of Steven Yeunâs sneaky performative prowess that he can make Ben feel like both a plausibly malicious person and a free-floating metaphor for modernity and toxic masculinity, every ingratiating grin and forced yawn an invitation to confront the banally seductive face of evil. BURNING refers, most denotatively, to Benâs avowed habit of burning down abandoned greenhouses, but what it really describes is the psychological unease that smolders in places both rural and urban, sparked by the conditions of a society pervaded by inequality and disaffection. We canât be sure if everything Jongsu thinks happens literally does. Then again: itâs a metaphor. Screening as part of professor Daniel R. Quilesâ Gore Capitalism lecture series. (2018, 148 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Alice Diop's SAINT OMER (France)
Cinema/Chicago at the Alliance Française de Chicago â Wednesday, 6:30pm
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Alice Diop (whose non-fiction work I am not familiar with) made her narrative feature debut with this complex and beautiful character study about two women of Senegalese descent living in contemporary France. Pregnant Rama (Kayije Kagame), a successful novelist and professor of literature, attends the trial ofâand becomes obsessed withâLaurence (Guslagie Malanga), a college student of limited means who stands accused of murder after abandoning her baby on a beach at night. The film, which daringly asks viewers to sympathize with a character who has committed a monstrous crime, is based on the true story of Fabienne Kamou, who was arrested for infanticide in 2013 and whose 2016 trial Diop attended. The dialogue is based in part on transcripts from Kamouâs real-life trial, which lends the extended courtroom scenes a rare verisimilitude, but what really impresses here is Diopâs mise-en-scĂšne. Diop shoots Laurence from a different camera angle during each day of the trial, although she never deviates from this angle within each individual scene, lending a near-Bressonian formal rigor to the proceedings. While the technique of shot/reverse shot editing has become synonymous with lazy filmmaking in the modern era (because of how it often removes creativity from the process of shot selection, turning dialogue scenes into simple ping-pong matches), Diop imbues this technique with a fresh relevance: she refuses to show reverse angles when viewers are most likely to expect them, a strategy that eventually pays emotionally devastating dividends during a climactic exchange of glances where one character smiles while another silently weeps. Diopâs final masterstroke is to end the film before the verdict is reached, an unusual touch that recalls the denouement of Fritz Langâs M (1931). Diop is wise enough to know that hearing a judge proclaim âGuiltyâ or âNot guiltyâ would put viewers in the position of agreeing or disagreeing with the judgment, when her real interests have lain elsewhere all along. As Jonathan Rosenbaum remarked on his website, the director has generated enough questions by the end in order âto make a verdict seem either impossible or superfluous.â With an introduction by Andrew Van Beek from the Chicago International Film Festival and a post-screening discussion led by Nick Davis from Northwestern University. (2022, 122 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
Laura Wandelâs PLAYGROUND (Belgium)
Alliance Française de Chicago â Tuesday, 6:30pm
In its most idealized version, childhood is a time of Elysian innocence, freedom from responsibility and inhibition, and unfettered permission to wonder. Of course, the reality is far more complex. Plenty of books and films have sought to represent just how painful and isolating childhood can actually be; PLAYGROUND is notable for how it depicts a state of early-life unrest primarily through audiovisual means. Across 72 terse minutes, Laura Wandel and cinematographer FrĂ©dĂ©ric Noirhomme film at childâs-eye level in tight, shallow-focus shots that never stray from seven-year-old Nora (the cherubic Maya Vanderbeque, a complete natural). The tremulous girl has just begun school, and she's initially seen in tears, clinging to her older brother Abel (GĂŒnter Duret) before the start of her first day, her distraught face lingering in screen-filling closeup. PLAYGROUND rigorously maintains this intimate physical proximity, orbiting Nora first as she struggles to acclimate to her new surroundings, and then as she grapples with how to act on the increasingly cruel bullying faced by her brother. With the exception of the kidsâ father and one caring instructor, Wandel mostly keeps the adults out of view, rendering teachers and staff as an abstracted, unaccountable excess that manifests in the nagging chorus of verbal orders emanating from offscreen. While certain elements of PLAYGROUND recall the unsentimental realism of the Dardennes or Maurice Pialat, itâs the filmâs intensely circumscribed subjective focus that makes it feel closest in aesthetic kin to LĂĄszlĂł Nemes' SON OF SAUL (2015). In this claustrophobic sensory regime, Wandel adumbrates some of the ways in which the school ecosystem and its structures of authority foster prohibitions and dysfunctions for kids, rather than possibilities. Instead of becoming a tract on institutional failings, however, PLAYGROUND keeps itself grounded in Nora's modest but urgent emotional world, reminding us that the struggles of children are not necessarily simple ones and that they deserve our every attention. Stephano Smars, Trade Commissioner of Wallonia-Belgium, will introduce the film; Paul Van Halteren, Honorary Consul of Belgium in Chicago, will lead a post-screening discussion. Admission is free, but registration is mandatory. (2021, 72 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Jerzy Skolimowski's EO (Poland/UK/Italy)
FACETS Cinema â Friday, 7pm
In 2022, Steven Spielberg retrofitted JAWS for IMAX theaters, transforming a classic film into a towering, visceral experience. One might say that Jerzy Skolimowski did the same thing that year with Robert Bressonâs AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (1966); his quasi-remake EO (a prizewinner at Cannes) is a big screen experience par excellence, with large-scale imagery and booming sound design that make you feel the titular donkeyâs suffering in your bones. Some might balk at Skolimowskiâs decision to put his spin on Bressonâs allegorical masterpieceâwhich is beyond question one of the greatest films ever madeâyet such an audacious move is in keeping with this major artist, who first came to prominence in the early 1960s as an acclaimed poet and a figurehead of Polandâs postwar youth culture. The directorâs â60s work remains astounding in its freewheeling energy and inspired visual metaphors (itâs worth noting that, after Bresson, he was one of the European filmmakers that Cahiers du cinĂ©ma championed the most in that decade); this period culminated with the blunt social critique of his 1967 production HANDS UP!, which was so incendiary that it more or less got him exiled from his native country (moreover, he wasnât able to complete the film until 1981). After that, Skolimowski made movies in several other countries (including the US) before returning to Poland in the 1990s. The handful of films heâs made since then feel less indebted to his work as poet than his work as a painter, which has occupied much of his time in the past several decades. Indeed, EO contains an abundance of striking images, and these drive the film more than the loose narrative, which follows a donkey in his travails after he leaves the circus where heâs performed. The animalâs misfortunes mirror those of contemporary Europe; the most upsetting episode is probably the one that concerns the violent activity of a thuggish group of modern-day nationalists. A late episode in the film with guest star Isabelle Huppert works in some anticlerical sentiment that feels more akin to Buñuel than Bresson, while the final episode approaches the apocalyptic feelings of Bressonâs last two features, THE DEVIL, PROBABLY (1977) and LâARGENT (1983). Itâs a grim work, to be sure, yet Skolimowskiâs immersive camerawork alleviates the proceedings, reminding us (as Bresson did) how miraculous the cinematic form can be. (2022, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Oscar-Nominated Live Action Short Films
Gene Siskel Film Center and the Music Box Theatre â See Venue websites for showtimes
One of the things that stands out about this yearâs Oscar slate for Best Live Action Short Film is its diversity, with each nominee coming from a different country and representing a specific experience of identity or culture. The highlight of the field is also the longest film nominated: Alice Rohrwacherâs LE PUPILLE. Set during Christmastime at an all-girlsâ Catholic boarding school in Fascist Italy, itâs a social-realist fable of youthful amenability shading into the stirrings of rebellion, as the girls learn the art of chipping away at the religious dogma of their head nun (played by one of the directorâs go-to actors, her sister Alba). Lambently shot on Super 16, the film is further enlivened by some whimsical formal flourishes, including hand-written intertitles, sped-up action, and freeze-frames. A more severe form of doctrinaire oppression is found in Cyrus Neshvadâs THE RED SUITCASE, about an Iranian girl sent to Luxembourg by her father for an arranged marriage she utterly dreads. Neshvad turns the film into a kind of monster movie as the girl ducks around corners and climbs into tight spaces to evade her stalking suitor; he also makes potent use of the Luxembourg airportâs large-scale fashion advertisements, their images of commodified women underscoring the plight of the protagonist. Because Oscar likes to broadcast its social conscience, another nominee, Anders Walter and Pipaluk K. JĂžrgensenâs IVALU, turns on the theme of female abuse. However, that point is not the primary focus of the film, which instead honors an Inuit girlâs abiding spiritual connection with her lost sister. Soaring wide-angle shots of the Greenland wilds makes this one a visual stunner. Thereâs another Scandinavian nominee: Eirik Tveitenâs NIGHT RIDE. In it, a woman with dwarfism forges an unexpected alliance after she spontaneously decides to commandeer a city tram on one frigid Norwegian night. The category is rounded out by Tom Berkeley and Ross Whiteâs AN IRISH GOODBYE, which makes an interesting counterpart to one of this yearâs most nominated features, THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN. Like McDonaghâs work, itâs an irreverent treatment of mortality and fraternal conflict; however, it quickly doffs its sardonic Irish edge to embrace something more earnestly life-affirming. Many will smile, and many others will feel their teeth tinglingâwhich means itâs probably going to win. (2022, Total approx. 110 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Oscar-Nominated Documentary Short Films
Gene Siskel Film Center and the Music Box Theatre â See Venue websites for showtimes
Never underestimate the sentimental appeal of cute animals. The orphaned elephant calves of Kartiki Gonsalvesâs THE ELEPHANT WHISPERERS practically come with their own soundtrack of âawwâs. They eat, bathe, and gambol about under the aegis of human guardians Bomman and Belli, who raise the abandoned pachyderms in South Indiaâs Mudumalai National Park, home to one of the worldâs largest elephant preserves. Bomman and Belli speak of the calves with religious reverence and often explicitly liken them to their kids; cutaways to the verdant landscape and its myriad other inhabitants reinforce a deep-seated spiritual connection with nature. Itâs a soothing, unchallenging film that seems mostly content with providing warm fuzzies via anthropomorphized animals. In contrast to such sentimentalism is Maxim Arbugaev and Evgenia Arbugaevaâs HAULOUT, which regards its animal subjects with a scientific remove. Set on Cape Serdtse-Kamen in Arctic Siberia, it chronicles the seasonal work of marine biologist Maxim Chakilev as he observes the areaâs walrus population and its dwindling numbers in a warming world. The sheer material magnitude of the images captured hereâincluding a reveal so profoundly surprising and spectacularly shot it will leave you slack-jawedâstarkly testifies to the reality of climate change. From the geologically epic-scaled to the personally intimate, Jay Rosenblattâs HOW DO YOU MEASURE A YEAR? charts the directorâs 17-year experiment of filming his daughter on each of her birthdays from the age of two to 18. Asking her the same series of questions every year, he condenses her physical, emotional, and intellectual maturation into 30 minutes that feel more self-indulgent and exploitative than illuminating. Similarly dubious is Joshua Seftelâs STRANGER AT THE GATE, about a white former US marine who returned home from the Middle East so instilled with Islamaphobia that he planned to blow up his local mosque. Without giving the whole story away, letâs just say it privileges the palliating narrative of a bigoted white manâs redemption over an exploration of systemic racism. Thereâs more nuance in Anne Alvergue and Debra McClutchyâs THE MARTHA MITCHELL EFFECT. Focused on the titular socialiteâs gaslighting by the Nixon administration during the Watergate scandal, it uses a range of archival footage to show Mitchell as a complicated public figure who was done dirty by both the government and the media, which discredited her as a delusional harpy. Ultimately, the film saves her from that misogynistic reputation, positioning her as a central figure in exposing the corruption of Nixon and his circle and her story as a cautionary tale of the consequences of political dissent even in so-called democratic countries. (2022, Total approx. 165 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Ayoka Chenzira's ALMA'S RAINBOW (US)
Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago) â Friday, 7:30pm (SOLD OUT)
While all Black filmmakers need more recognition, independent producer, director, and animator Ayoka Chenzira has been particularly in need of rediscovery. Visual media have been made richer by her focus on developing stories of Black life and educating the next generation of Black filmmakers, including her daughter HaJ, her collaborator on HERadventure, an online, interactive fantasy film posted on Chenziraâs website and YouTube channel. Now, Academy Film Archive, The Film Foundation, and Milestone Films have produced a 4K restoration of her only feature film, ALMAâS RAINBOW, in which a teenage girl, her mother, and her aunt all come of age in different ways. Rainbow Gold (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) is a tomboy whose hip-hop dance crew comes apart as her two male partners become more interested in chasing girls than in rehearsing. Her mother, Alma (Kim Weston-Moran), gave up her sister singing act to make a living for the two of them by opening a beauty salon in the Brooklyn home she inherited from their mother. On the tenth anniversary of the founding of Almaâs salon, her long-absent sister, Ruby (Mizan Nunes Kirby), returns. Rainbow is fascinated with her flamboyant, larger-than-life aunt and hopes to follow in her footsteps as a singer-dancer, setting up a clash between Ruby and Alma, who wants Rainbow to seek a secure future. ALMAâS RAINBOW is itself a festive rainbow of color and community, loaded with discrete scenes loaded with humor and humanity. The beauty salon (Chenzira has spent large chunks of her creative life making films about hair) is the wonderful gathering place for the neighborhood women, all of whom are deeply involved in getting the all-business Alma together with Blue (Lee Dobson), a handyman who clearly is sweet on her. Another plot point is Almaâs work for William B. Underdo III (Sydney Best), the local undertaker who funded her business and would like more than a professional relationship with her. His mint-condition classic car says so much about his character as a respectable older man who, like Alma, just needs to let his hair down. The one character who has no trouble letting loose, Ruby, provides the manic energy that shakes up the Goldsâ straitened life while revealing her almost desperate restlessness. Her flamboyant costumes contrast the darkly rich wood and traditional furnishings of Almaâs home and the funeral home where a smitten Underdo allows her to perform âBeautiful Blackness in the Sky,â a rather morbid song written by Chenzira, for her family that is a uniquely weird experience. The excellent score by Jean-Paul Bourelly mixes jazz and contemporary sounds in much the same way that cinematographer Ronald K. Gray intersperses sexy dream sequences and black-and-white memories with the bright, crisp present. In the end, all of the Gold women confront themselves and their desires for a truly satisfying multigenerational coming-of-age story. Post-screening Q&A with Chenzira moderated by Samantha N. Sheppard. (1994, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
đïž PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS â
ALSO SCREENING
⫠Alliance Française de Chicago (54 W. Chicago Ave.)
Julien Cadieuxâs 2020 Canadian film CROSSBRED (52 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 6:30pm, with an introduction by Madeleine FĂ©quiĂšre, Consul General of Canada in Chicago and a virtual Q&A after the screening with Paryse Suddith and a post-screening discussion led by Colleen Duke from the Consulate General of Canada in Chicago. Free admission, but registration is mandatory. More info here.
â« Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Sanaz Sohrabiâs 2020 essay film ONE IMAGE, TWO ACTS (44 min, Digital Projections) and Ebrahim Golestanâs 1961 short film A FIRE (25 min, DCP Digital) screen Friday, 7pm, as part of the Crude Aesthetics: Oil on Film series. Followed by a conversation between Sohrabi and Mona Damluji, Assistant Professor of Film & Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara.
Emily Branhamâs 2021 documentary BEING BEBE (93 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday at 5pm. Followed by a conversation with Emily Branham and Marshall Ngwa AKA BeBe Zahara Benet, moderated by E. Patrick Johnson (Dean of the School of Communication). More info on all screenings here.
â« Comfort Film at Comfort Station
James Spoonerâs 2003 documentary AFRO-PUNK (66 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 8pm. More info here.
â« Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Nabwana Isaac Godfrey Geoffreyâs 2010 Ugandan film WHO KILLED CAPTAIN ALEX? (64 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 7pm. More info on this special event here.
â« Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts)
The 2023 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts Symposium goes through Sunday and includes the above sold-out screening of ALMAâS RAINBOW. Note that tickets to in-person events are limited but that streaming tickets are available. More info on all screenings and events here.
â« Gene Siskel Film Center
Hlynur PĂĄlmasonâs 2022 film GODLAND (143 min, DCP Digital) and the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts continue. See Venue website for showtimes.
Jeff Hutchens and Derek Goldmanâs 2023 film REMEMBER THIS (95 min, Digital Projection), a film adaptation of a stage performance that debuted at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater last fall and starred actor David Strathairn, screens Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2pm. Special guests at each screening. More info on all screenings and events here.
â« Music Box Theatre
Davy Chouâs 2022 South Korean film RETURN TO SEOUL (115 min, DCP Digital) opens this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
RintarĂŽâs 2001 animated film METROPOLIS (108 min, 35mm) screens Friday and Saturday at midnight with a jazz-infused AMV preshow at 11:30pm.
Gaspar NoĂ©âs 2002 film IRREVERSIBLE (97 min, 35mm) screens Saturday, 9:30pm, and Thursday, 7pm. More info on all screenings and events here.
â« South Side Short Film Series
The Community Film Workshop and Reel Black Filmmakers present the annual South Side Short Film Series on Saturday, 2pm, at Harris Park (6200 S. Drexel Ave., 2nd Floor). Features short films produced by 10 filmmakers from the South Side with a post-screening Q&A to follow. More info here.
â« Sweet Void Cinema
Find information on this Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here.
CINE-LIST: March 3 - March 9, 2023
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Maxwell Courtright, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Josh B Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Glover Smith