The Melbourne International Film Festival is currently in full swing – and will be for the next week. With so many films to choose from, it can be a daunting exercise to know what to seek out. Luckily, our intrepid reviewer, Greg King, has been dashing between venues and missing sleep to take in as much of MIFF 2016 as possible. Here are some of his reviews from the 2016 line-up.
Sunset Song The latest film from revered British director Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives) is an epic adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gilbert’s beloved novel. Sunset Song tells the powerful and moving coming of age story of Chris Guthrie (played here by model/singer Agyness Deyn) in the early part of the 20th century. Raised on a farm in the Scottish hills, Chris lived in a house with her mother, older brother Will (Jack Greenlees), and her tyrannical, emotionally abusive and selfish father (Peter Mullan). We follow her journey from innocence to heartbreak as World War One intrudes and brings about drastic changes in the role of women as well as destroying the hopes of the future generation. Davies brings a harsh and gritty realism to the material, which shares some of his familiar themes and motifs – repression, longing, and a woman caught up in rapidly changing times. The film also has a surprisingly strong feminist slant to it. The series of tragedies that befall this hard working farming family will remind many of the Oscar winning classic How Green Was My Valley. It would be a hard heart indeed that fails to be moved by the film’s final few minutes that delivers a potent anti-war message – haunting music plays as the camera travels through grey, muddy battlefields, and then a lone piper plays.
Newcomer Deyn has a natural screen presence, and gives a soulful performance as the strong willed heroine, giving her a slightly contemporary feel. The role of the brutal patriarch is familiar territory for Mullan, but with an excellent and powerful performance he manages to bring some subtle nuances to the character and make him a more sympathetic and three dimensional character. The film has been gorgeously shot by cinematographer Michael McDonough, who brings an almost poetic sensibility to the material. McDonough uses the widescreen effectively for some sweeping exterior shots that will remind audiences of Terrence Malick’s visually stunning Days of Heaven, while the interiors have been shot using natural lighting that enhances their claustrophobic and oppressive nature. And Davies is a classical filmmaker who uses long steady takes rather than the kinetic style of fast editing and hand held cameras.
Evolution Coming a decade after her debut film Innocence, Evolution is the second feature from Lucille Hadzihalilovic, and it is a beguiling and enigmatic mix of unnerving low key sci-fi and Cronenberg-like body horror. The film is set on a strangely desolate rocky volcanic island inhabited by a group of 10 year old boys and their mothers. There are no men to be seen. But there is also something drearily similar about the way the boys are all dressed, and the mothers wear similar looking dresses and have a hard expression. It is immediately clear that there is something a little sinister about this island. The boys are regularly taken to a clinic with its dull institutional green walls, where they are subjected to bizarre medical experiments. Our central character here is Nicholas (Max Brebant in his film debut), a curious youngster who begins to question his strange environment. But Stella (Roxane Duran), a nurse at the clinic, is sympathetic and takes a liking to Nicholas. Hadzihalilovic creates an unsettling and vaguely disturbing atmosphere here and establishes an air of slowly mounting dread. Cinematographer Manuel Dacosse (The ABCs Of Death) has created some beautiful and eerie images, and there is some gorgeous undersea cinematography. The sparse production design adds to the menacing atmosphere. Like the recent Under The Skin though Evolution is an enigmatic and dark movie that is not instantly accessible for a mainstream audience, but it will intrigue some viewers attuned to Hadzihalilovic’s offbeat sensibility.
Paris 05:59 Bold and confronting, Paris 05:59 is not a film for everyone’s tastes. Theo and Hugo meet at the red-lit basement of a Paris gay club and have sex. A connection has developed between the pair, and they leave and wander the streets of Paris in the early hours of the morning. Hugo (played by Francois Nambat, from The Missionaries) is HIV positive, and Theo (Geoffrey Couet, in his feature film debut) admits that his condom broke. There is some frank discussion of the likely consequences and a quick visit to the emergency room of the nearby hospital for some medical advice before they continue their nocturnal journey through the streets of Paris. They talk about their lives, their fears, living with HIV, and about the prospect of a relationship. Take out the graphic, explicit twenty minute orgy/sex scene (with apparently genuine on-screen sex) that opens the dialogue-driven film and this could well be a Gallic gay variation of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. It also has thematic comparisons with Andrew Haigh’s Weekend.
The film unfolds almost in real time, and there is a digital clock overlaid scenes as a reminder of the time passing. Paris 05:59 (aka Theo And Hugo) is essentially a two hander as we follow Theo and Hugo, although there are a few other peripheral characters they interact with during their meandering journey. Couet and Nambat make for a charismatic and handsome couple, and the time spent in their company is pleasant enough. The dialogue is casual and natural and often banal, giving it a sense of veracity. Directors and regular collaborators Olivier Du Castel (a former sound editor) Jacques Martineau (the gay themed romance The Adventures Of Felix) and cinematographer Manuel Marmier make good use of the Paris streetscapes.
The Devil’s Candy A variation on the home invasion thriller, The Devil’s Candy is the sophomore feature from Australian director Sean Byrne (2010’s The Loved Ones). A film about parenthood, murder, madness, possession and heavy metal music, it is best described as The Amityville Horror meets Metallica. Jesse Hellman (Ethan Embry) is an artist who moves his family into a large farmhouse in rural Texas where he has more freedom to continue his work. And the house comes with a dark history, as the psychotic Ray Smilie (Pruitt Taylor Vince, from Heavy, etc) killed his parents. Both deaths were ruled accidental and the house was put on the market. But soon after, Ray knocks at the door, and wants back in his house. Ray becomes obsessed with Jesse’s goth metalhead daughter Zooey (Kiara Glasco, from David Cronenberg’s Maps To The Stars). Meanwhile Jesse is haunted by the same bizarre voices that drove Ray to kill his parents and he becomes obsessed with a somewhat dark themed painting. Ray is a nasty piece of work, and a killer of children. Vince is perfectly cast as Ray, with his lumbering gait, his untidy red jumpsuit, his empty gaze and intimidating manner he brings this hulking manchild to life. Embry is largely cast against type here, and with his beard and long hair vaguely resembles a Jesus-like figure, which complements the more religious undertones of the film. Glasco is also very good as the Zooey and brings a feisty quality to her performance. As he demonstrated with his first film, Byrne is adept at gradually building up the suspense and uneasy atmosphere before unleashing a rather violent climax. He suffuses the home invasion tropes with a touch of the supernatural. However, the horror here is a bit more restrained and less graphic than the torture porn of The Loved Ones. The discordant aural soundtrack provided by Sunn O)))) adds to the gradual air of uneasiness. Hopefully it’s not another six years before Byrne makes another film.
I am not a Serial Killer This gripping low budget drama mixes coming of age themes with outright horror tropes. John Wayne Cleaver (played by Max Records, from Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are) is a troubled adolescent, a misfit with a fascination with death and serial killers. His work at the family funeral parlour feeds this fascination. He has been diagnosed as a sociopath, but he is able to keep his dark homicidal urges at bay through regular therapy sessions. That is until a vicious serial killer begins harvesting the organs of victims. John discovers that his elderly cantankerous neighbour Mr Crowley (Back To The Future‘s Christopher Lloyd at his creepiest) is the killer, but in trying to catch him he puts himself and his family and few friends firmly in the crosshairs.
The film is based on Dan Wells’ best-selling YA novel from 2009 and has an unusually darker sensibility for a piece of teen fiction. The director is Billy O’Brien (Isolation), who has a strong visual style and creates an unsettling atmosphere and slowly mounting air of dread. The body count rises and the film grows darker in tone. Like The Town That Dreaded Sundown and David Lynch’s bizarre Blue Velvet, this creepy thriller strips away the veneer of small town America and finds something nasty and sinister just below the surface. Robbie Ryan has shot in 16mm, which adds to the gritty visual style, and his cold cinematography captures the subtle menace of this small town and its harsh wintry vistas. The film boasts some solid performances. Records is well cast here as the obsessed teen, while Lloyd brings subtle nuances to his performance. Perfect fodder for late night screenings and could possibly become something of a cult film.
Killing Ground A weekend camping trip to the beach turns into a battle for survival in this taut thriller from Australian writer/director Damien Power. Ian (Ian Meadow) and Samantha (Harriet Dyer) head off for a camping trip in the hopes that the time together away from the city will allow them time to heal their relationship. When they arrive at the remote camping ground they find another tent erected, but it looks abandoned. Then Ian and Sam stumble across an abandoned child and discover a murder scene. They become hunted by a pair of psychopathic hunters (Aaron Pedersen) and Aaron Glenane. This is the debut feature film for Power, a short film maker whose Peekaboo screened at the St Kilda Film Festival a couple of years ago. The initial inspiration for the film came from a vision Power had of an orange tent in the middle of nowhere, but it has taken him a decade to flesh out the concept and bring it to the screen. Power cites films like Straw Dogs and Michael Haneke’s Funny Games as influences on the film, although this is not quite as compelling nor as unsettling with its depiction of violence. The film has been nicely shot on location at Macquarie Fields, outside of Sydney, by Simon Chapman (The Devil’s Candy). Power brings some tension to the frantic chase through the bushland. Power uses a nonlinear narrative style that moves back and forth, slowly revealing the fate of the first family, which adds a frisson of tension to the material. Cast against type Pedersen is quite menacing here, while Glenane (Deadline Gallipoli) is quite scary as Chook, the small town psychopath.
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television