SCALES (SAYIDAT AL BAHR)

Stars: Basima Hajjar, Ashraf Barhoum, Yagoub Al Farhan, Fatima Al Taei, Haifa Al-Agha and Rida Ismail.
Director/writer: Shahad Ameen

AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE: November 21, 2020 at the Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival.

WINNER: Best Film, 30th Singapore International Film Festival’s Silver Screen Awards; November 30, 2019.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Recalling Niki Caro’s Whale Rider in its melding of tribal mythologies and patriarchal defiance, Shahad Ameen’s Scales is an altogether darker fantasy work marked distinctive by its potent social relevance and chilling imagination. Set against a monochromatic dystopian landscape on the rocky foreshores of a dead sea, where the ‘sea maidens’ of lore survive on the villagers’ offerings of young girls, the Saudi director’s debut feature (a reimagining of the concept she introduced in her 2013 short, Eye & Mermaid) is fairy-tale horror of the highest order.

The sacrifice of young women (disturbingly portrayed in the film’s opening frames) is believed by the village elders to ensure bountiful fishing and enduring prosperity. When young father Muthana (Yagoub Al Farhan) defies the tradition, saving his baby daughter Hayat from the creature’s webbed claw, it is believed he brings ill fortune to his people and a lifetime of derisive shame to his child. Twelve years later, Hayat (the remarkable Basima Hajjar, 15 at the time of shooting) spends her days fending of bullies, staying clear of bitter elder Amer (Ashraf Barhoum) and trying to find a niche for herself somewhere between the responsibilities of the boys her age and the dark destiny facing the girls.

When her bitter mother Aisha (Fatima Al Taei) gives birth to a boy, her fate seems sealed; at the next full moon, she will be led to the water’s edge and given to the sea maidens. However, she survives and is re-evaluated by the men folk when she drags a creature from the deep to her village square.

There is sly humour at work surrounding the relationship between the mermaids and the men in Ameen’s otherwise steely, serious narrative. The elders fear the wrath of the women of the deep but govern ruthlessly women of their own kind. The dichotomy of this suggests their beliefs, based on age-old traditions, are confused and kind of ridiculous. In a broader context, the villager’s relationship with the ocean creatures represents how false beliefs and a society’s adherence to outdated dogma can eventually tear a community apart.

Hayat scratches at dry skin on her feet, skin that turns to scales when she gets them wet; the physical change that 12 year-old girls experience is central to Hayat’s complexity. The young woman (whose name means ‘life’ in Arabic) fights for her survival with a determination that slowly dawns on her and with the fierceness that the men fear in her underwater sisters. Like Paikea, portrayed by Oscar-nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes in Caro’s adaptation of Witi Ihimaera’s Maori fable, Hayat is a truly modern heroine of understated resilience and, quite literally, the future of her people.

As pure genre cinema, Scales lands some truly mesmerising scenes, not least of which is the terrifying moment a mermaid, dragged from the sea, crawls toward Hayat across a ship’s deck. DOP João Ribeiro proves a master of the black-&-white mood and composition, both on land and at sea; shot on the jagged, majestic coast of Oman, Scales is a gorgeous looking film. The final moments, drenched in the hope that a new and prosperous future lays ahead, are wondrous frames of film.

Representing one of the strongest feature debuts to ever emerge from the region, Shahad Ameen announces herself as that most special of filmmakers - a storyteller that can work timely subtext and scathing commentary into a great work of fantasy.

WORKING WOMAN

Stars: Liron Ben-Shlush, Menashe Noy, Oshri Cohen, Irit Sheleg, Dorit Lev-Ari, Gilles Ben-David and Corinne Hayat.
Writers: Sharon Azulay Eyal, Michal Vinik, Michal Aviad.
Director: Michal Aviad.

Rating:★ ★ ★ ★ ½

As immediate and urgent as any film in recent memory, Michal Aviad’s Working Woman addresses the importance of the #MeToo movement in its understated but scathing depiction of sexual harassment and patriarchal dominance. As Orna, the 30-something wife and mother whose return to professional life becomes a soul crushing daily struggle with inappropriate workplace behavior, Liron Ben-Shlush superbly portrays the anxiety and heartbreak of the victimized as well as the dignity and determination to face down an attacker she must work alongside.

Orna’s commitment to family sees her re-enter the corporate sales world. While husband Ofer (Oshri Cohen) struggles with his start-up restaurant, Orna finds an ally in her new employer Benny (Menashe Noy), a strong-willed, self-made 50-something real-estate executive, the kind of alpha-male boss who greets male underlings with boisterous good cheer while simply nodding towards his female workers. Benny increases Orna’s responsibilities and rewards her with travel and bonuses, but he has sinister motives; when alone after hours, he first tries to kiss her, then intimidates her with childish bullying.

The strong sense of self-worth Orna derives from her work is undermined by Benny’s manipulative cunning, but she learns to live with the imbalanced dynamic for the sake of her family. The isolation afforded by a work trip to Paris leads to Benny’s most ruthlessly predatory attack (staged with a shocking frankness) and proves the final straw for Orna, professionally and psychologically. However, she must now face judgment from Ofer, who reacts with selfish petulance when told of the assaults, as well as the very real prospect of being shunned in her industry.

The piercing humanistic precision that Michal Aviad honed with her decades as one of the world’s finest documentarians serves her well on Working Woman. The role that feminism and female representation play in forging a path for understanding and justice for all humans have been central to her work. Jenny & Jenny (1997) examined the lives of working class teenagers; Dimona Twist (2016) recounted the shocking experience of North-African women in 1950s Israel; Ever Shot Anyone? (1995) and The Women Next Door (1992) profiled women bound to the military life; and, Invisible (2011) examined rape from the survivor’s perspective.

There is a stark truthfulness to the drama and staging that recalls the best of The Dardennes Brothers and Thomas Vinterberg. The clarity with which Aviad presents Orna’s dilemma, striking a deeply personal chord in her leading lady’s performance while still capturing the universality of the experience, requires rare storytelling skill.

Recently honoured with the prestigious Ophir Award, Israel’s highest acting honour, for her complex ‘modern everywoman’ heroine, Liron Ben-Shlush is a soaring talent; there is not a false note in her interpretation of an abuse survivor rising above her pain. Her anguished silences turn to roars of defiance; Orna’s final confrontation with Benny, as understated but rewarding as all before it, plays on-screen as a rapturous taking-down of her gender’s arch nemesis. For the countless women faced with workplace discrimination and sexual misconduct every day, it may be the movie moment of 2019.

DOGS DON'T WEAR PANTS (Koirat eivät käytä housuja)

Stars: Krista Kosonen, Pekka Strang, Ilona Huhta, Oona Airola, Jani Volanen, Ester Geislerová and Ellen Karppo.
Writers: Juhana Lumme and Jukka-Pekka Valkeapää.
Director: Jukka-Pekka Valkeapää

WORLD PREMIERE: May 21st at Théâtre Croisette; Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Director's Fortnight), Festival de Cannes 2019.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

FESTIVAL DE CANNES 2019: A widowed cardiologist mends his broken heart with a dominatrix seeking her own like-minded connection in Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, J.-P. Valkeapää darkly funny, surprisingly sweet, occasionally challenging take on grief, emotional redemption and the recuperative qualities of a golden shower. Finding a sliver of lovely memory while on the verge of one’s own mortality is the starting point for the Finnish director’s leather-&-buckles love story; it is a film that talks tough and plays hard but has at its core, a message of acceptance and joyful release.

The idyllic married life of Juha (Pekka Strang) is torn asunder as he naps; in a dreamlike prologue, his wife (Ester Geislerová) drowns at their lakeside home while their small daughter Elli (Ellen Karppo) watches on. In trying to rescue his tangled wife, he has a moment of spiritual connection with her soul, nearly drowning himself in the act. Ten years later, Juha is still consumed by grief; he finds comfort in his lonely daily routine, which includes his own form of self-abuse using his late wife’s underwear and perfume, while barely registering the existence of teenage Elli (Ilona Huhta).   

As his daughter gets her first body piercing (with his blessing, in his presence), Juha wanders into a backroom BDSM chamber, an act of accidental trespassing that sees him choked into semi-consciousness by parlour mistress Mona (Krista Kosonen). Her attack energises his senses; a subsequent visit, in which he is humiliated and stripped bare (hence the title), leads to consensual asphysixiation, an act that triggers in him the moment when he last saw his wife’s life force. Juha grows dependent upon Mona’s skills, while failing to register the bond that his willingness for pain and degradation is generating in her.

Which all sounds potentially soul crushing to an audience, yet manages to play out in the hands of bad-boy auteur Valkeapää with classically deadpan Finnish humour and an increasing sense of warm emotion. Even a pivotal third-act moment involving teeth and pliers (as awful, but also a lot funnier, than it sounds) is in the service of his character’s re-emergence into a world of human connectivity.

Pekka Strang walks once again on the fringe of Euro-sexuality, having starred in the equally chafing leather-clad opus Tom of Finland (2017); as Juha, he plays desperation and absolution with equal conviction. Krista Kosonen, as Mona, provides a great deal of character shading even when Valkeapää’s script (co-penned by Juhana Lumme) leaves her backstory ambiguous. As the dominatrix whose understanding of pain alters the decade-long depression of a grieving widower, major star Kosonen (Blade Runner 2049, 2017; Miami, 2017) leaves no pressure point unexplored in her on-screen interactions with Strang. While the dungeon scenes are daring and confronting (and the film’s final sequence, set in a BDSM niteclub, entirely forthright about life in this realm), Valkeapää avoids leering over the perverse by remaining bound to his themes of redemption and understanding.

Herein lies the difference between this Finnish spin on sexual deviance and the decidedly more puritanical Hollywood versions of bondage living. In Adrian Lyne’s 9½ Weeks (1986), walking on the darker side of sexuality led to the damaging and ultimate destruction of ‘true romance’; in the recent Fifty Shades of Gray trilogy, a room of whips and chains came to represent a shallow, lesser version of human connection. In Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, the darker and more painful the exploration shared by Juha and Mona, the more a fuller understanding of each other’s emotional needs began to form. What could be more romantic than the strengthening of that bond, by whatever means?

LITIGANTE (THE DEFENDANT)

Stars: Carolina Sanín, Leticia Gómez, Antonio Martínez, Vladimir Durán and Alejandra Sarria.
Writers: Franco Lolli, Marie Amachoukeli and Virginie Legeay.
Director: Franco Lolli.

OPENING NIGHT: 58^th Semaine de la Critique, Festival de Cannes 2019.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The emotional extremes we bear witness to in the face of impending mortality and the generational flow of familial love provide the existential framework for director Franco Lolli’s elegant, often profound and deeply resonant sophomore feature, Litigante (The Defendant). Having travelled to Cannes in 2014 with his debut Gente de bien, the Colombian director’s return to the Semaine de la Critique is an understated triumph.

Fronted by two superb actresses crafting vivid portrayals of old and new matriarchy, Lolli constructs a mother/daughter dynamic not dissimilar to that utilised by James L. Brooks for his Oscar-winner Terms of Endearment (1983). Unlike that relatively upbeat slice of well-to-do white American melodrama, however, Litigante presents a middle-class Colombian family in a downward spiral of tension, grief, black humour and barely restrained conflict. This is a home that runs deep with resentment and unfulfilled expectations, despite maintaining a façade of tolerant warmth and stable intellectualism.

With co-scripters Marie Amachoukeli and Virginie Legeay, Lolli provides layers of rich humanity for his key protagonist, 40-ish lawyer and single mother Silvia (Carolina Sanín); introduced as a passive observer, she sits by her mother Leticia (Leticia Gómez) as the elderly woman reacts with defiance to the news that the cancer that has been in remission for a year has returned. Refusing an extended hospital stay and invasive treatment, Leticia decides to see out her final days in the family home, not entirely aware of the burden it will place on her family (which has been patriarch-free for many years).

As Bogota’s Deputy Legal Secretary of Public Works, Silvia is implicated in corruption charges brought against her boss – another man absent for most of the film (as are several influential males in this female-centric story). Silvia must fend for herself in a heated radio interview conducted by journalist Abel (Vladimir Durán). An unlikely romance develops, but theirs is a love destined for difficulty as the obstinate and ailing Leticia weighs in on his suitability as Silvia’s prospective partner.

Carolina Sanín is wholly wonderful as Silvia, every ounce of pain she withholds and frustration she endures etched on the lines that seem to take shape on her face over the course of the narrative. As the title suggests, she is under constant scrutiny, forced to defend herself from a judicial system out to prosecute her office or a mother questioning her entirely reasonable life choices. The personification of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Sanín is a true contemporary female heroine; stoic and determined to face her hardships, focused on others above herself and unwavering in her commitment to family, regardless of how challenging and tenuous that link may sometimes appear to be.   

All of life’s distractions, and the narrative’s subplots, fade away as Leticia’s health deteriorates; Silvia, her young son Antonio (Antonio Martínez, a natural screen performer) and 20-something sister ‘Majo’ (Alejandra Sarria) experience firsthand the daily pain and dwindling life energy of their once vibrant mother. So to does the audience, in scenes of aching tenderness and sharply focused emotionality; the astonishingly transformative performance by Leticia Gómez is even more remarkable given that the actress is the real-life mother of the director as well as the inspiration for the story, having been cared for by her son while recovering from a cancer bout.

The final frames of Franco Lolli’s Litigante speak to the cyclical nature of the parental bond, acknowledging that Silvia knows she is next in line for a similar decline and that Antonio, blissfully unaware as he presently is, will step into the carer’s role. It is a beautiful, universal, heartbreaking observation from a filmmaker fully invested in his story and characters.

SALT BRIDGE

Stars: Rajeev Khandelwal, Chelsie Preston Crayford, Usha Jadhav, Kaushik Das, Shoorjo Dasgupta, Adam Grant and Mayur Kamble.
Writers: Abhijit Deonath and Shvetal Vyas Pare.
Director: Abhijit Deonath.

Rating: ★★★½

Examining the Indian immigrant experience from a fresh and personal perspective, director Abhijit Deonath melds traditional male role-model expectations with contemporary relationship melodrama to largely winning affect in his debut feature, Salt Bridge. Shot entirely in Australia, with Sydney and Canberra locales doubling as the fictional township of the title, the long-in-production independent project will play well with diaspora populations, who all-too-rarely get to see their transplanted lives in a thoughtful big-screen narrative.

Most recently, of course, Garth Davies’ hit Lion (2016) cast an eye over the Indian expat existence; central to Deonath’s plot are the shared themes of memory and reconciliation with the past (though far less overtly stated here). The director introduces his protagonist, thirty-something medical researcher Basant (Rajeev Khandelwal) staring longingly from a train window, his mind revisiting a moment long ago that still consumes him. Khandelwal is terrific, exuding the soulful sensitivity of a man burdened with a dark past, yet every inch the classic Indian leading-man type (his brooding pout recalling Hollywood actor Jason Patric in his prime).

With his equally-photogenic wife Lipi (Usha Jadhav) and listless teen son Riju (Shoorjo Dasgupta) counting on him to fulfill his potential and provide for their new Australian suburban life, Basant decides to take driving lessons with instructor Madhurima (Chelsie Preston Crayford). Also immersed in the migrant life (she’s a New Zealander, married to an Indian), the pair soon bond in the most charming and innocent of ways. One of N.Z.’s most accomplished young actresses, Crayford (What We Do In The Shadows, 2014; Eagle vs Shark, 2007) and her leading man share a lovely chemistry, ensuring their developing platonic friendship is entirely believable.

Soon, their friends and then the wider Indian society take an interest in the new besties, assuming the most salacious, and Basant finds himself outcast from his community, his family and, regrettably, Madhurima. Having posed the question ‘Can a man and woman just be friends?’, Deonath dissects the issue within the broader context of the modern male’s role in Indian culture. His script (penned with the assistance of Shvetal Vyas Pare) succinctly embraces the hot-button topic of toxic masculinity and India’s patriarchal traditions, but does so through the filter of western cultural influence. If the story structure and momentum occasionally stumbles (most notably, a confusing sequence in the wake of a near-tragedy at the film’s midway point), Deonath’s skill with character and dialogue more than compensates.

Deonath drives home his gender subtext by focussing Basant’s research work on mitochondria, the power generator of any complex living cell, the existence of which is maternally inherited. The nods to modern science extend all the way to the film’s title – a ‘salt bridge’ occurs in proteins, creating a bond between oppositely charged residues that are sufficiently close to each other to experience electrostatic attraction; it is a deft, if slightly highbrow way, of defining the relationship between Basant and Madhurima.

Salt Bridge is a commercially savvy undertaking as well, including an explosively colourful Holi celebration and some neat dance moves, although it is far too influenced by its western setting to go ‘full Bollywood’. Australian viewers will be bemused by the people-free (and very green) parklands, empty highways, pristine cityscapes and autumnal suburban streets that provide the backdrop for the drama; it is a perception of life on these shores that plays well overseas, but is a bit of a stretch to those of us caught in the metropolitan crush of everyday life.

All tech aspects exceed any budgetary constraints, with the film looking lived-in and real while still seeming professionally polished in every respect. Especially noteworthy is Miguel Gallagher’s camerawork, whose eye for finding beauty is even on-song when framing the not-always inspirationally picturesque national capital.

LETO (SUMMER)

Stars: Teo Yoo, Irina Starshenbaum, Roma Zver, Filipp Avdeev, Alexandr Gorchilin, Alexander Kuznetsov, Nikita Efremov, Julia Aug, Elena Koreneva, Lia Akhedzhakova, Anton Adasinskyi and Vasiliy Mikhailov.
Writers: Kirill Serebrennikov, Michael Idov and Lily Idova.
Director: Kirill Serebrennikov

Reviewed at the 2018 Russian Resurrection Film Festival, Sydney; named the festival’s Best New Russian Film, 2018.

Rating: ★★★★★ 

Evoking memories of a pre-Perestroika Russia where the youthful masses were unified and energised in their defiance of authority by the driving beats of a post-punk early-80s Leningrad music scene, Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto is a free-wheeling, free-spirited, bittersweet remembrance of the people and passion that defined the decade for many young Soviets.

A pure celebration of driven talent and the transformative power of music, the latest from the provocative director of The Student (2016) proves a stirring ode to the subversive. Whether deconstructing the staid conventions of the ‘musical biopic’ or symbolically reacting against the Kremlin’s suppression of socially-conscious art, Serebrennikov and co-writers Michael Idov and Lily Idova have crafted a thrilling, relevant and deeply moving work despite, or perhaps because of, a narrow narrative focus.

The film follows three key figures in the thriving if heavily policed Leningrad music scene – the lead singer of hard-edged rock band Zoopark, Mike Naumenko (real-life rocker Roma Zver); his wife and muse, Natalya (the wonderful Irina Starshenbaum); and, charismatic singer-songwriter Viktor Tsoï (the striking German-born, Korean-based Teo Yoo). All became iconic figures in Russian pop culture - Tsoï would front the group Kino and pen the battle cry of the Perestroika movement,  ‘Khochu peremen (I Want Change)’; Serebrennikov’s film, named after Zoopark’s biggest hit, is loosely based upon Natalya’s best-selling memoir.

Their interactions don’t amount to searing drama. Mike recognizes Viktor’s talent and wants to share in his growth as a musician; Natalya, like anyone in Viktor’s realm, finds herself attracted to him; Mike sees out his wife’s attraction to Viktor, openly encouraging her to not deny natural feelings. The men write songs; Natalya balances a rock-wife lifestyle with a mother’s responsibilities; the trio, with some eccentric band mates in tow and the authorities watching their every move, strive to create, be seen, build a life together.

However, framed within DOP Vladislav Opelyants’ gorgeous monochromatic widescreen lens and exuding their enigmatic ‘rock star’ charisma in all its compelling glory, the audience investment in the intertwining lives and burgeoning creativity of the trio is profound. Most affecting is Starshenbaum as Natalya; the actress (bearing a remarkable resemblance to American star Mary Elizabeth Winstead) conveys both a strength and sensitivity that makes her central role as an inspiration for those around her entirely believable. Natalya’s own longing and determined path, when it emerges from beneath the self-absorbed creative destinies of the men in her life, proves deeply moving.

Dramatic impetus aside, the film is at its most engaging when it embraces its musical influences (notably Bowie, Blondie, T-Rex, though many are referenced). Defining songs of the period are reworked as musical numbers, at the indulgence of the characters and often sung by random strangers who drift in, then out of frame. Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’ becomes a fierce, fantastic number set on a train carriage; Iggy Pop’s ‘The Passenger’ is belted out by bus commuters as Viktor and Natalya take in the city. A great sequence, set to Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes, sees Michael envision classic album covers of the day brought to life by his friends and family in splashes of Super-8 colour footage.

There is a sprawling sense of time and place to Leto, which blows out the running to over two hours, yet there is not a frame of the film one would want to see excised. The anti-establishment themes and love-conquers-all story beats inherent to the rock/pop biopic genre have been previously explored in Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991), Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000) and Anton Corbijn’s Control (2007), but rarely with such heartfelt melancholy, pained romanticism and evocative rendering of time and place.

The sly subversion that gives the film its bite has come at a price; Kirill Serebrennikov has been under house arrest since August 2017 for his perceived anti-Putin stance (the director could not attend the film’s Cannes premiere in May). While the authorities endeavor to stifle his political voice, his art and skill as a great movie storyteller speaks very loudly on his behalf.

ANIMAL WORLD

Stars: Li Yifeng, Michael Douglas, Zhou Dongyu, Cao Bingkun and Wang Ge.
Writer: Han Yan, based on the comic by Nobuyuki Fukumoto.
Director: Han Yan

Rating: 2/5

It is inconceivable that anyone might be pining for a film set in the bowels of a floating warehouse where dozens of desperate sweaty lowlifes take on a maths nerd in a high-stakes game of paper-rock-scissors, but here we are. Here, also, is Hollywood royalty Michael Douglas, who will most likely stay hidden behind the pile of cash he earned to play broad villainy when Animal World pops up in any career re-appraisal.

A Chinese-backed adaptation of Nobuyuki Fukumoto’s manga classic Ultimate Survivor Kaiji, writer/director Han Yan’s latest is a garish, cumbersome, piecemeal film. At different moments, it is a revved-up fantasy actioner, a grimy dystopian-world survival story, a lecture in statistical odds, and a big-screen spin on poker-machine graphics; it strives yet strains to be a convincing mash-up of Snowpiercer, Rainman and The Hunger Games. It fails on all fronts save some technical prowess, resulting in an aggressively pointless 140 minutes of misdirection and incoherence.

A likable Li Yifeng plays down-on-his-luck arcade-clown Zheng Kaisi, a morose figure falling worryingly behind on hospital payments that keep his comatose mother in care. During those moments when life deals him a bum hand, Kaisi disappears into a complex fantasy realm, the ‘Animal World’, where his clown character is a ninja-style assassin who can lay waste an entire train carriage of CGI-generated monsters. His psychic bond to the clown visage dates back to a childhood moment when his family home was raided and his father removed…all while a cartoon clown dispatched evildoers on the television.

With no means to cover hospital costs and having been swindled out of his family’s property assets by backstabbing childhood friend Li Jun (Cao Bingkun), Kaisi is left with no options when Douglas’ silver-haired, cold-blooded boss-man comes calling. He is soon aboard a sort of steam-punk freighter/industrialized cruise ship called ‘Destiny’, one of dozens of men who must collect brass stars and offload cards in a game-show-meets-Vegas version of paper-rock-scissors.

Conceptually, there exists the potential for a twisty, heist-like narrative energy as Kaisi’s beautiful mind starts working the different angles that will win him the ultimate goal – freedom from Destiny and a debt-free existence. But director Yan employs low-rent graphics to explain Kaisi’s in-depth analysis of how to beat the house; the 80-minute mid-section of Animal World is a series of interminable and utterly confounding sequences in which the cards that symbolize the three game options dance about cinematographer Max Da-Yung Wang’s otherwise handsomely filled widescreen.  

The heavily circulated trailer for the film promised a pulsating action-fantasy epic, with lashings of Deadpool-type irreverence, that never materialises. The train-carriage monster slaughter (which recalls better moments from the Men in Black films) and an admittedly terrific car chase all take place in the head of the protagonist; they represent nothing more than showy CGI bluster. Not for the first time but perhaps never quite so egregiously, a trailer has ‘buried the lead’ – Animal World is the Paper-Rock-and-Scissors wannabe-blockbuster that absolutely no one ever asked for. That unofficial fourth option the desperate PRS player calls upon– dynamite – would have come in handy.

TRAUMA

Stars: Catalina Martin, Macarena Carrere, Ximena del Solar, Dominga Bofill, Daniel Antivilo, Eduardo Paxeco, Felipe Ríos and Claudio Riveros.
Writer/Director: Lucio A. Rojas.

AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE: Screening Friday, September 14 at the SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL.

Warning: Some content may offend or distress.

Rating: 4.5/5

The most horrifically violent period in Chile’s political history casts a very dark shadow over the current war between the sexes in the perfectly prescient and appropriately titled Trauma. Taking as its entry point a stomach-churning sequence destined for frame-by-frame breakdown by censorship bodies around the world, writer-director Lucio A. Rojas’ blistering vision embraces the unthinkable reality of Pinochet’s torture-chamber hell and how his homeland still suffers under the legacy of the brutally soul-crushing dictatorship.

Assured of cinematic infamy, the prologue is set in the mid 1970s, at the height of the neo-fascist’s military reign. A seasoned torturer (Alejandro Trejo) is in the midst of committing unspeakable atrocities upon a woman, his ultimate dehumanizing act being the introduction of her teenage son, Juan. There are ties that bind the three participants, a bond thematically linked to Rojas’ exploration of family discord and systemic violence in traditionally male-centric domesticity.

The narrative moves to Santiago, 2011 and introduces Rojas’ protagonists (by way of some equally graphic Sapphic love, reinforcing the material’s  ‘sex and violence’ genre credentials), four twenty-somethings destined for a rural getaway. Andrea (Catalina Martin, a fierce central figure in her own right) is tightly wound, slightly more mature than her travel mates, and rather too good at the ‘passive/aggressive big-sister’ persona, leading to some familial tension with her sister Camila (Macarena Carrere) and Camila’s girlfriend, the free-spirited Julia (Ximena del Solar); the sister’s cousin Magdalena (Dominga Bofill) is younger still, sweet but adventurous.

There is a familiarity to this Act 1 set-up that horror fans will recognize. The girls reveal aspects of themselves on the long drive, further defining their character traits; the region is so remote, Andrea forgets where her uncle’s retreat actually is; the group stop for directions at ‘Gloria’s Tavern’ (suspiciously lacking a ‘Gloria’), the creepy locals acting as both sexist bullies and a warning sign that the girl’s don’t decipher. Intercut with these scenes are moments in the life of the now adult Juan (Daniel Antivilo, reuniting with the director after their 2015 collaboration, Sendero), a local ‘identity’ who lives with his adult son Mario (Felipe Ríos) in a ‘house of horrors’ directly linked to the pre-credit sequence.

The girl’s first night in the cabin is a boozy one, marred by issues they had hoped to work through on the trip. Julia unwinds with a striptease, which Rojas and his ace DOP Sebastián Ballek shoot in a leery, overtly-sexualized manner that initially seems to betray the care he has taken in creating these complex female characters. When it is revealed, however, that Juan and Mario have been watching the dance, Rojas turns the ‘male gaze’ in which he has indulged back on the viewer; in a deceptively clever piece of deconstruction, the director has coerced his audience into being at one with the psychopathic villain.

The centerpiece of Trauma is the home invasion sequence that follows, a passage of visceral film imagery and design that will be too immersive for even some seasoned horror buffs. Although it is all but impossible to decipher as the unfettered sexual, physical and psychological abuse unfolds, the passage serves to spin Rojas’ film into the realm of gender-based conflict; the family of women, however flawed they may be in their own ways, are now unified and at war with traditional familial patriarchy, in which toxic masculinity, sexualized violence and generational abuse has festered.    

The group tracks the men to their maze-like home, and Trauma becomes a series of gruesome encounters and tense near-misses in the darkness. The narrative continues to deliver as a bloody horror film, but the subtext that enriched the first hour makes way for well-staged, heavily stylized ‘final girl’ genre tropes in Act 3. Nevertheless, Rojas contemplates his themes and shoots his action in a manner that demands that his work be closely watched in years to come; he is one of the new wave of exciting Latin American horror filmmakers, amongst them Javier Attridge (Wekufe The Origin of Evil, 2017), Jorge Olguin (Gritos del Bosque, 2017) and Samuel Galli (Mal Nosso, 2017).

It is hard to envision a denouement to Trauma that inspires hope, so steeped as it is in ‘sins of the father’ and ‘scars of history’ symbolism. But that is precisely what Rojas affords his cinematic world and, by association, his country. The final images suggest that the time for rebirth is now and that faith be placed in a maternal nurturing of a new national spirit. For a film so consumed by painful memories, the most potent act of killing that Trauma imagines is the one that leaves the ghosts of the past behind for good.

WARNING: TRAILER CONTAINS IMAGES THAT MAY DISTRESS AND OFFEND.

THE CANNIBAL CLUB

Stars: Ana Luiza Rios, Tavinho Teixera, Ze Maria, Pedro Domingues, Rodrigo Capistrano and Galba Noguera.
Writer/Director: Guto Parente.

Reviewed at Pathé 4 Cinema, Sunday January 28 as part of the Rotterdämmerung section at the 2018 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)

Rating: 4/5

A South American genre film about cannibalism lands world cinema’s sharpest counter punch to wealthy global privilege in auteur Guto Parente’s seventh and arguably best feature, The Cannibal Club. Set against the golden sun and sparkling sand of the gated-community and private-beach life of upscale Brazil, the prolific 34 year-old filmmaker envisions a modern but no less decadent and disturbed version of Caligula’s court, with added people-eating.

Parente takes aim at the culture of the grotesquely well-off, one that affords them the luxury of having the poor to exploit. In the case of Otavio (Tavinho Teixera) and his young trophy wife Gilda (Ana Luiza Rios), this extends to the hiring, slaughtering and devouring of servants who come to their coastal mansion in the hope of steady work. In a frankly remarkable opening salvo of images both sexually frank and gruesomely detailed, the stereotypical ‘pool boy’ flirts with a willing Gilda, only to be disposed of mid-coitus by Otavio, fileted and served as the evening meal.

When Gilda witnesses the most influential flesh-eater of them all, cold-blooded capitalist/nationalist powerbroker Borges (Pedro Domingues) in a particularly compromising situation, she and Otavio soon find that their cocktail-sipping peers will willingly turn against their own kind to protect their lofty, self-entitled secret status. Parente’s rich are not the endowment-to-the-arts kind of charity patrons that western media often venerates; the wealthy of Brazil are lecherous, murderous pack animals who turn on the compromised, fearful that any weakness threatens their existence.

When not indulging in his own pleasures of the flesh, Otavio partakes of some ‘men’s only’ business as part of the titular soirée, who gather to witness acts that reinforce just how prevalent and heartless the exploitation of the poor underclass has truly become. Parente’s other prime target is the innately pathetic nature of rich society’s Alpha Male, who posture and rankle but mostly shrivel and cower when the patriarchy is threatened. In Ana Luiza Rios’ fearless performance as Gilda, the director identifies the feminine archetype that must navigate the duality of their existence; at once, feigning compliance to fragile male egos while always charting their own destiny, however bloodstained and immoral it may be.    

The Cannibal Club courses with a savagely scornful humour; if few moments prove laugh-out-loud hilarious (the general mood is too unrelentingly tense and often unpleasant for mirthful outbursts), Parente has nevertheless crafted a sly, stylish skewering of affluent disconnect. If the rich feeding wilfully off the working class is not exactly a unique notion, the theme has rarely been handled with such dark-hearted gleeful menace or strident intellect.

BENDING THE ARC

Featuring: Dr. Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, Ophelia Dahl, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, Dr. Joia Mukherjee, St. Ker Francois, Adeline Mercon, Meliquiades Huauya Ore.
Screenwriter: Cori Shepherd Stern
Directors: Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos.

Reviewed January 23 at the Jetty Memorial Theatre, Coffs Harbour as part of the 2018 Screenwave International Film Festival.

Rating: 4.5/5

A 30-year campaign to provide poor nations with the means by which to save their populations from fatal contagions makes for an enriching, enraging and deeply emotional profile in Bending the Arc. Deriving its metaphoric title from the words of abolitionist and great reformer Theodore Parker (“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one…from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice”), the directing team of Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos have crafted a story of social heroism, fierce spiritual triumph and driven scientific determination.

The core of the documentary is the friendship that bonds Dr Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl (daughter of Raold) and Dr Jim Yong Kim. In the early 1980s, idealistic twenty-somethings Farmer and Dahl found themselves in Haiti, surrounded by dire poverty and a population still stricken with the archaic but deadly scourge of tuberculosis. The pair set out to alter the sad destiny of a small group of Haitians and, with Dr Kim joining their crusade, established a medical centre that drew 100,000s of frail villagers, some perilously close to death.

The movement grew into Partners in Health, a not-for-profit medical research charity whose aim is to establish educational facilities and hospital grade infrastructure in the poorest of regions. Secondary to this aim but no less rousing on-screen drama is the stoushes that the trio and their dedicated volunteers pick with Big Pharma and the rich healthcare systems of Western society, the dark overlords of which refuse to consider the health of poor populations worthy of consideration, let alone investment.

The directing duo’s lightness of touch creates a compelling narrative momentum (kudos to writer Cori Shepherd Stern’s solid structure) while clearly detailing the mountains the movement needed to climb to make real their goals. Utilising interstitial time-and-place cards, Bending the Arc charts initiatives that have combatted drug-resistant tuberculosis in Peru, the AIDS plague in Africa, the aftermath of the Rwandan civil war and the terror of the early days of the Sierra Leone Ebola outbreak. In addition to these grand scale undertakings, Davidson and Kos evoke the deeply emotional journey of all involved by tracking the route to recovery of patients who we meet at death’s door (the plight of MDR-TB sufferer Meliquiades and his reuniting with Dr Kim reduced your critic to heavy man-sobs).

Given the current administration’s callously racist disregard for the so-called ‘sh*thole countries’ that feature in Bending the Arc, the documentary takes on a volatile humanism-vs. -corporatism urgency that would most likely not have been on the filmmaker’s minds when the film wrapped just ahead of its premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; it never preaches or takes a political stance, yet reveals the bastardry, greed and short-sightedness of the western medical-industrial establishment.

In the last half-century, the dedication and drive to make better the lives of those with whom we share this global community has never been more desperately needed; the epic struggles and grand achievements of the Partners in Health teams has remained truly heroic (none more so than the community health officials, charged with day-to-day administration in some of the most poverty- and illness-stricken corners of the planet). Bending the Arc, through its core ‘All Humans are Humans’ mantra, celebrates the soaring, empathic personalities that will continue to rebuild international society over the next half-century.

Donations to PARTNERS IN HEALTH can made via the organisation's official website.