Art Smitten

The first half of the Melbourne International Film Festival has flown by, and I've already seen some great films like Cosmos, Paterson and The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki. Among the films I've seen, though, there's been a fantastic selection of horror films, and I thought I'd spotlight four of them: three narrative features, all by first-time filmmakers, and a documentary.

First up, The Eyes of My Mother. An American film, but with occasional Portuguese dialogue, it's one of the first films I got to see and it's still stayed with me. One day, a little girl witnesses some terrible violence in her home; an intruder shows up but is subsequently overpowered, and from that moment that violence seeps through to her brain as she grows up and her life spirals into chilling psychopathic behaviour. Shot in black-and-white, there's a wistful, melancholy, poetic tone enshrouding the on-screen horror. With echoes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the film delves into some very dark places, both explicit and not. But despite the disturbing and violent developments the film manages to retain a beautiful, almost meditative atmosphere, and our sympathy for the central character never leaves even though she's doing awful, awful things. I mean, all she wants is a family... in a way...
A very promising debut by filmmaker Nicolas Pesce. Maybe hug a loved one after this.

Next up, there's Baskin. Another highly disturbing horror film, this time from Turkey, written and directed by Can Evrenol. A group of police officers receive a distress call in a remote building and head over to investigate. Once there they discover some truly hellish stuff. The film's got lots of graphic gore and screaming, with a shudderingly creepy main villain. The visuals are striking and colourful and the score is particularly vivid. Unfortunately, there's not much of anything else. The pacing is uneven and I didn't really find myself being invested in any of the characters, so despite several really interesting and horrifying sequences it all in all made for unengaging viewing. Some great ideas in this, but not entirely well-executed.

Moving slightly east again we have Under the Shadow, by Babak Anvari, set in Iran in the 1980s, after the Iranian revolution and during the Iran-Iraq conflicts. It centres on a woman and her husband and young daughter living in an apartment block in Tehran. Not only is there the constant threat of missile attacks but some strange, nightmarish things start to occur, and when the father is called away to military service the mother and daughter are left to deal with the supernatural dread that plagues them. Under the Shadow does a fantastic job of channeling serious political and parental fears into a deliciously slow-burning terror, the tension building and building, holding you captive until it explodes in the final ten to fifteen minutes, unleashing full-scale horror. All throughout it stays gripping, then right at the end it starts ripping. Excellently shot with some unsettling camera movements and production design that captures the period as well as the evil closing in. Probably my favourite of the three.

Finally, I saw Fear Itself, a documentary on horror films written and directed by Charlie Lyne. Or rather, it's not so much a documentary as a cine-essay, a stream of thoughts on horror films and the way that they relate to real human fears and anxieties. Impressive in scope and mesmerising in equal measure, the film itself is essentially a collage, in that it consists entirely of edited-together footage from existing horror films, and hypnotic narration over the top that takes you on an engrossing journey through humanity's darkness. The range of films chosen is admirable, encompassing a vast range of horror cinema from across the world and throughout history, even using some films that aren't traditionally considered horror films but which have certain elements that illustrate the points that the filmmaker is trying to make about horror films, which in turn ties back to the points he makes about humanity. And the exploration of the themes is engrossing, thoughtful and at times quite personal. It's transfixing and thought-provoking and highly recommended not just for horror fans but for anyone interested in the depths of the human soul.

And that's all the horror films at the festival that I've been able to see so far, but there's more to come! A few I'm looking forward to are Killing Ground and The Devil's Candy, both by Australian directors, as well as The Lure and The Love Witch, which from what I've heard are very very weird, and I can't wait.

There's still another week left of the festival, so get out there and start shitting your pants in terror. I'll be in the cinema with you, toilet paper in hand.

Till next time, see you there...

Written by Ben Volchok

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234 years after Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's novel Les liaisons
dangereuses was published, and 31 years after the premier production
of its stage adaptation by Christopher Hampton, this new production
from Little Ones Theatre comes to Melbourne as a fresh and lively
piece of contemporary theatre. Those who've studied the novel will
certainly appreciate how director Stephen Nicolazzo has captured the
sardonic spirit of the French aristocracy, while newcomers will surely
be enticed into discovering more about it all. Most importantly
though, this sojourn amongst the affairs of the French court has a
meanly entertaining story to tell and the courage to tell it like it
was.

It was a world where wit and amoral intellect was the currency of the
day, ruled by those whose minds were as nimble as their bodies and
even more adept at vigorous intercourse, but whose hearts were held in
as tightly as their bladders. Amazingly, Nicolazzo, and indeed his
nearly all-female cast, are daring enough to match the intensity of
the vocal sparring with raunchy nude scenes of masochistic intimacy,
sights that are capable of shocking today's audiences as much as the
sounds of blasphemy would have shocked 18th century audiences. He
introduces his audience to this arena with an onslaught of ridiculous
wigs, pasty white faces, exaggerated mannerisms, opulent set design
from Eugyeene Teh and a robot-like match of Four in a Row. Here the
original Connect Four is spruced up with some video game sound
effects, just as the rest of the play is peppered with interludes of
modern pop music.

While it's certainly been done before, and not always well, the songs
are well chosen to illustrate a battle between the two finest players
in the great game of courtship. Representing men, we have the
seductive Vicomte de Valmont (Zoe Boesen), and on the side of women we
have the decadent Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Alexandra Uldrich).
The two of them look to be evenly matched in cunning, arrogance and
education. They court each other for pride and amusement, just as they
carry on affairs with countless others as a form of recreation and
competition. Their relationship is the classic on-and-off mix of love
and hate, of devotion and indifference.
Both actors are outstanding as these familiar archetypes that, through
the immediacy of live theatre, are given new life. Boesen is as
convincing as she needs to be in the part of a man. It turns out to be
quite an inspired casting choice, seeing as many of the
characteristics that are now considered feminine would have been
regarded as masculine in the French salons. On the other hand, the
Vicomte's valet, Azolan, is played by Tom Dent, who towers over Boesen
as something of a gentle giant at first, before the Vicomte comes to
realise how much he underestimated him. As the Marquise, Aldrich
somehow manages to switch between, comical, despicable, likeable and
moving with the speed of a lighting change. Her endlessly expressive
face, richly intoned voice and slick movements make her a consistently
fascinating character to watch, even when the main scene is happening
elsewhere.

The Vicomte's latest challenge, to court the devoutly Catholic and
chronically morose Cécile de Volanges (Brigid Gallacher), forms the
crux of a narrative that exposes the naiveties of both characters. The
Vicomte believes that his heart can be contained again after it has
been let loose, that you can control love and prevent love from
controlling you. A parodic performance of Felix Jaehn's 'Ain't Nobody
(Loves me better)' succinctly captures the Vicomte's delusions about
these two of the many women in his life. While his twisted love for
the Marquise is sold successfully by Hampton's writing and by Aldrich
and Boesen's peformances, the love he eventually comes to feel for
Cécile is not given enough time or breathing space to feel real,
and certainly not enough to surmount the trite baggage that this plot
line has garnered over the centuries. Fortunately, the Marquise's
hard-learned lesson that emotions cannot always be suppressed for the
sake of the game is a much more convincing character arc. A playful
karaoke of Whitney Houston's 'I'm Every Woman' is similarly effective
at signaling the universality of the Marquise's doomed attempt to
fight with, and not against, the sexism of her world, to win at a game
that has always been rigged against her gender instead of seeking to
change the rules.

The only music that doesn't quite fit is the funk tune that plays over
a certain duel scene, one that felt like it was meant to be the
climax, but ended up being a slow build-up to a fierce contest that
never eventuates. One of the most common problems with many
tragicomedies, is that they often make promises they can't keep.
However, thanks to the talent of the creative team, and the strong
establishment of its setting and main characters, Dangerous Liaisons
delivers on most of the comedic payoffs it spends time developing in
its first act, and remembers to set up most of the dramatic payoffs it
launches itself into during the second act.

Written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

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Not-so-Raging Bull, Juho Kuosmanen's boxing biopic pulls the gentlest punches it can in telling the story of amateur boxer Olli Mäki, hailing from a small town in Finland and aspiring to not much more. It's warm and personable, and its deliberate type of simplicity is one that more filmmakers should aim for.

Affectionately put together, the film has a fantastic grainy black-and-white 16mm aesthetic that perfectly matches its subject. You're immediately drawn into its world when the lovely title music kicks in but, cleverly, that is just about the only non-diegetic use of music in the film. Script, camera, style, editing and mood carry the film on their own.

The narrative focus is always on Olli, and the boxing is always a background, echoing the way he feels about his chosen sport; his heart is never truly in his training until the motivation comes from Raija (the woman he falls in love with). He never wants to be a professional - even his fighting nickname is quite plain: "The Baker of Kokkola". He's in love and that's all he needs.

In English, the title is The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, and it's signalled fairly early on that this his happiness stems not from his future boxing match but from love; the title is introduced, after all, when Olli and Raija are on their way to a wedding. But in Finnish, the title is noticeably shorter, and indeed on further investigation, I found out that its Finnish title - Hymyilevä Mies - translates quite simply to "Smiling Man". Bless.

Olli Mäki is less of an underdog and more of an underachiever. And this film about his happiest day is an unexpected delight. Truly a nice and nicely-made film.

Written by Ben Volchok

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First-time filmmakers seem to either stumble on their feet or find those feet immediately and use them to run away with a superb debut. Such is the case with Bi Gan, a poet-turned-director whose Kaili Blues is a simply staggering first feature.

The plot - in short, an uncle searching for a nephew - is central to the understanding of the film and yet absolutely irrelevant. It's a tale of repentance and guilt, of soul-searching and memory... all themes explored through the plot, for sure, but it's the mood and the technical audacity that drive this one home.

Poetic and hypnotic, the power of this film comes from its deceptive simplicity; it washes over you so easily that its depth and the contents themselves can too easily fall by the wayside. The whole film is a sort of daze and watching it in the uncertain hours of the night I wasn’t sure if I didn't dream it all. But to simply call it a dream would be to discredit the details and quirks - and the effort - of all those involved in putting this together.

No review of this film would be complete without mentioning the 40-odd-minute take, crafted beautifully in such a way that it's barely noticeable and yet right there staring you in the face the whole time. The camerawork in general is to be commended (by Tianxing Wang, another first-timer) but reaches a whole other level in this sequence. There's moments of stillness, moments of movement; one notable movement is when the camera takes a "shortcut" through some buildings as the scooter it had previously been following rides around and catches up with the camera a few seconds later.

I don't think I've caught up with it, though. This will definitely need some further processing. Really highly recommended.

Written by Ben Volchok

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When I read the book [Witold Gombrowicz’s Cosmos] in preparation for watching the film I was struck by the singular oddness of the writing (albeit a translation) both in style and in content. There were moments when the sheer incessancy of the intricate madness lost me but I battled through and ended up being wholly won over.

Three things in particular struck me: the emphasis on the mundane, the staunch surrealism and the never-quite-referencing of the encompassing void of the eponymous cosmos. It’s vivid and evocative in its deliberately obfuscatory pseudo-dullness - and knowing it was adapted by Andrzej Žuławski, the master of surreal existential mania, made me even more curious to see how it would be turned into a film.

Safe to say my trust in Žuławski’s mastery - based, I must admit, on only two films as of yet (Possession (1981) and The Devil (1972)) - was fully validated. It fulfils the major criteria of successful adaptations - that is, hitting most of the same beats and details of the source and capturing its spiritual essence - and then adds its own specific touches. And what a source! And what touches!

The film most definitely channels the mundane mania (or… mundania?) of the book but also tops it off with incredible incredulities of its own. All the dead animals are there, the perverse language play is there (made all the more impressive for being translated from Polish to French as well as English in the subtitles), the unrepressable emotional tension, the focus on hands, the frightening absurdity… but there’s also extra discussions of film and literature (including a cheeky self-deprecating namedrop of one of Žuławski’s own films) and the dives into the writing process, as well as a wicked satisfyingly unsatisfying ending.

Žuławski’s Cosmos (without forgetting Gombrowicz’s book - he named the main character after himself, by the way) speaks to my adoration and desire of the profoundly inconsequential, the horror of everyday surrealism, the incomprehensible chaos of minutiae… our mouths are a dark cavern and so is space, we are told. Am I totally out of it or is that a huge insignificant revelation of stupid genius?

Hours after seeing this at the cinema my head was still spinning. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Spinning with the ridiculous, glorious intensity of life’s tedium and the tedium of life’s ridiculous, glorious intensity. Spinning with how much we know and how little we understand. Spinning with the unnecessariness and the importance of existence. It makes at once perfect sense and no sense at all.

The contradictions here are on purpose. I mean, the cosmos is everything, and the cosmos is nothing. And we are all the cosmos…

Written by Ben Volchok

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Jerzy Skolimowski's career is defined by a healthy disregard for conventional filmmaking. He has always been a punk of the highest order. And it's with total delight that I report that this pedigree is on full display in 11 Minutes.

From the beginning, we know we are in the hands of an unhinged master. The menacing pre-titles scrapbook of low-res footage from laptop, phone and security cameras clearly signals his anarchic intent. And it also signals the genre we are being propelled into: the multi-character storyline.

Essentially, the film is just that: a glimpse into the lives of several characters over the eleven minutes of the film's title past 5 o'clock, some of which intersect over the course of the narrative and all of which intersect at the end. The short time span means we never get a full impression of who these characters are, but we accept that we were never really meant to. Plus there's more than enough in there to give a rough sense of who they are, and it's surprising how much can actually happen in eleven minutes.

Crammed with pounding music and brazen, in-your-face camerawork, the freewheeling style of this film has annoyed and frustrated many of my fellow cinemagoers, to say the least. And it's not hard to see why; Skolimowski almost tries deliberately to throw us off at every step, like a bucking bronco with an ongoing glitch. But it's worth persevering and holding on. Because the reward you get is the utter juggernaut of an ending that's been lying in wait the whole time.

The ending, like every one of Skolimowski's endings that I've seen so far, is a shocking slap to the face. It’s the culmination of all of the events that take place in the film, the swirling final movement of the strangely melodic cacophony. For the whole film we have been riding on rollercoasters whose screws have been steadily rattling, until they bring us crashing off the rails right at the end of the track. And then the final breathtaking zoom out, telling us that this was only eleven minutes in the lives of only a handful of characters: look at how much else could be and has been going on.

Cue open eyes, open mouths and stopping heart. Holy crap.

Proof that you don't have to get soft when you get old, 11 Minutes is another notch firmly whammed into the belt of a continually unrepentant filmmaker. Just wow.

Written by Ben Volchok

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Red Stitch continues their environmentalist theme for the season in Extinction, written by the powerhouse creative talent Hannie Rayson and directed by the critically acclaimed Nadia Tass.

On the International Union for Conservation of Nature and natural resources red list (IUCN), Australia is classed as having 35 of its discovered species extinct. The fraught task of resolving this issue, beneath the ever present spectre of national and international environmental strife, is the primary concern of the performance.

Harry Jewel, played by Colin Lane, is a mining magnate turned mild environmental altruist after hitting and killing an endangered quoll in his four wheel drive. He is the political foil for Andy Dixon-Brown, played by Brett Cousins, a practical yet idealistic man and practising veterinarian who holds the natural world sacrosanct, and is suffering from a terminal illness akin to Parkinson's.

Dix, played by Natasha Herbert, is the director of the CAPE institute and Andy's 50 year old sister. She leans pragmatically towards Harry Jewell's camp, and is passionate about establishing an objective, statistics based approach to the rescue of endangered species - essentially, that if the species numbers drop below 5000, then they're not worth the expense, financially and to the detriment of other species who might still have a chance.  Piper, played by Ngaire Dawn Fair, a  conservation biologist, is her opposite number, the sexy young idealist, who firmly and energetically believes everything can be saved, from her cancerous 12 year old dog Beast to the terminally endangered tiger quoll.

Whether or not the fact of Australian eco-apocalypse is high on your list of immediate concerns, this play is going to put your value system under pressure. In the hour and a half, you will be forced to take a stance somewhere on the slippery, uneven ground of environmental politics, and the moral nuances of the current Australian environmental crisis. The cast tackle many obstacles in their struggle to come to terms with how best to address the situation of a changing country, a changing world, which seems to be gathering momentum on its plummet toward an environmental apocalypse.

Yet this is play is flawed. I do not believe that it conquered the classic perils of the polemic political play, awkwardly failing to be compelling, engaging and subtle as it is so keenly self aware of its own highly political agenda. It felt as if the dramatic relationships between the four characters had been loosely cobbled together to forge a thin veil for what is really just a tedious outlining of all the different arguments currently dominating the environmental debate. 

The characters attempted to convince us of their humanity - mainly via loose plotlines focusing on the shifting sexual (read 'human') dynamics between the group - before switching comfortably back into parroting some lukewarm political sentiments that, delivered with no lack of passion or pathos from the actors. For me, this marriage of the general arguments surrounding the issue of environmentalism and the earnest, chest-beating noble-oratory aphoristic style of the dialogue did not make compelling theatre.

Which is unfortunate, as the cast is not short of talent. Colin Lane showed some classic comedic timing, of which there really should have been more - there are plenty of jokes scattered around the play, and some good, funny, horribly awkward situations. Although the humour of the play is poorly executed, but it is still there, and I could appreciate what was trying to be achieved.

However for some reason there seems to be a total lack of chemistry between them - the relationships that are put at stake in the performance never matter to the audience, because they are never made to matter. Their ostensibly significant motivations of family or love are just thrown in by name and barebones behavioural reference, without ever proving to the audience that these relationships are valuable.

Furthermore, the set is fraught with a multimedia program that starts as an interesting novelty and is halfway abandoned by the mid section, that became more distraction than enhancement. I was disappointed, as the beginning of the play uses music, sound effects and film in a way I found highly moving - the script says it all: 'Introduce the sound of the quoll’s heartbeat softly. This underscores the action to the end of the scene'. There was a profound silence in the audience as the heartbeat that had been present for the last ten minutes, the heartbeat we had all wanted to continue, halted as the lethal injection was given to the badly wounded quoll.

The final scene of the play, where Piper finally confronts Andy, I found a confusing mess, both in clichéd language and melodramatic behaviour, to a degree worthy of The Bold and the Beautiful, not helped by a soppy pop-score playing over the projection of a quoll scurrying around in the bush, thus restoring balance and hope to the universe.

This play attempts to do so much and in my opinion, therein lies it's problem. There is no steady theme, there is no likeable character. Everyone is flawed and nobody is redeemed. The penultimate scene of the play had audience members around me sighing, or even laughing, at a scene not meant to be funny, it was so unconvincing.

And frankly, I don't know exactly where to lay the blame, where everything went so wrong. Was it the writer delivering clichéd dialogue, normative, predictable plotlines and a thematic fiasco? Did the director micromanage the actors into robots? Have the actors failed the script?

Either way - decide for yourself.  Extinction is showing at the Arts Centre every day until the 13th of August. Head over to artscentremelbourne.com.au for more information and bookings.

Written by Jim Thomas

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Jump First, Ask Later is an urban choreographic portrait of the streets of Fairfield in Western Sydney, the most culturally diverse region Australia. The show features 5 young street dancers moving between their stories and dance sequences.

Right from the beginning their physical strength and agility is striking and compelling to watch. The opening sequence is a warm up, but unlike any I’ve every seen – it becomes immediately clear that these are very physically strong and talented performers.

The audience was a mix of adults and children and you could see right from the beginning that everyone was amazed by the sheer psychical ability of the performers.

After the warm up, the show settles into its narrative, which is told through casual ‘street’ like conversations between the performers and is based off their real experiences.

While I assume the performers don’t have much acting experience (the conversational moments at times feel a little wooden), they are fundamentally likable  stage characters and the conversations have a raw charm.

All the performers are from immigrant backgrounds, and we learn in snapshots the struggles their parents had in coming the Australia, and the subsequent struggles these 5 performers had finding their place within Australia.  The narrative portrays parkour as a kind of saviour for these young dancers, providing them each with community, purpose, and joy.

While the stories are interesting, they pail in comparison to the dance segments themselves. I’m not sure whether I wanted more from the narrative, or whether the dance segments were so fantastic that the conversational moments just couldn’t speak with the same beauty.

The stage came alive with movement and backflips, beautiful synchronised moments and jaw dropping asks of physical strength and agility. There was a wonderful sense of fluidity, light and shade in the movement – at times the stage was bursting with colour, only to then be parred back to much quieter moments.

Jump First, Ask Later was wonderful – both in it’s artful weaving of narrative and dance, and in the sheer joy the performers got out of their practice, and we the audience got out it in turn.

Although performances at the Arts Centre Melbourne have concluded, Force Majeure will be bringing their production to the Sydney Opera House. Information can be found at their website.

Written by Beth Gibson.

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Hosts Beth and Adalya are joined in the studio by Rory Kelly, actor in Red Stitch Theatre's production of Trevor. 

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Jim Thomas speaks to artist, Sebastian Kainey, about his works showing in the Future Works exhibition at the Brunswick Street Gallery. 

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