AFI Fest doesn’t give me as much to recap in between the big galas. It’s pretty much a showcase of the main events, and in between some catchup on other festival favorites. Brian covered many of those for me already, and I also used the opportunity to see Mandela and Her, and big screen showings of classics like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and After Hours, both of which held up well, no surprise. I also saw Blue Ruin for a second time! Here are some thoughts on the remaining films I discovered at the American Film Institute’s film festival this year.
Child’s Pose
If you’ve followed my reviews for a long time, you know that I have a particular affinity for movies about grief. I find it really healthy and powerful to deal with feelings of loss and tragedy in a dramatic way, as long as it’s a constructive exploration, not a blatant tear jerker. Child’s Pose, from Romania, is a good one.
Neli (Luminita Gheorghiu)’s son Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache) kills a child in a speeding accident. Trying to both keep him out of jail, and teach him a little bit of character, Neli spends the film rehashing the accident, making deals with witnesses, visiting the family of the child and dealing with her own son’s ambivalence to the crime.
The pace is a little too deliberate, perhaps trying too hard to mimic the pace of real life grief (damn, it takes forever), but the slow burn makes those “wow” moments all the more powerful. Different characters go over the details of the accident over and over again, but when we notice a nuanced difference in one person’s story, it dawns on us that this wasn’t just an unfortunate circumstance of fate.
And they talk about the child’s funeral and his parents have a good cry, so it’s all a good grief fest if, like me, you relish in cinematically confronting our inevitable mortality. With a lack of Nicole Kidman, Stephen Daldry, Inarritu or non blockbuster Marc Forster movies this year, look for Child’s Pose at a theater near you.
The Date
This short film preceded The Strange Little Cat (see below) and delivered far more on the feature’s promise of felines. The Date is about a date between two cats and it is both adorable and sharp. I hope it gets a chance to be seen by both cat lovers and those who would appreciate an ironic take on a rom-com.
Gabrielle
Gabrielle is a valuable drama about people with developmental disorders trying to live autonomous adult lives. What was the last movie about this, 1999’s The Other Sister? We could stand to have more of these.
Gabrielle (Gabrielle Marion-Rivard) has Williams Syndrome and sings in a choir with other developmentally challenged people. She asks her sister Sophie (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin) to let her live alone and it’s as much of a struggle for Sophie to let Gabrielle go.
The film is honest about the troubles Gabrielle has with the basics of looking after herself, so it’s not an idealized portrait. You’ve also got to imagine that if she’s had a caretaker for over 20 years, she’s having to jump into things we all got a head start on learning. She has a romantic and sexual side too, but that causes more problems for the adult caretakers who don’t approve.
This is a solid drama about how we can take better care of the differently abled and give them the dignity every person deserves. It’s probably for the best that writer/director Louise Archambault doesn’t end the film with any major conclusions. It’s just the next step in Gabrielle’s life, and perhaps an open ending.
The Last Emperor 3D
The 3D conversion of the 1987 Best Picture Oscar winner is very subtle and clear. You can see the depth to the rows of people inside the Forbidden City, or the detention camp, and it doesn’t look ViewMaster-y. You can still see the film grain, and there is only a tiny bit of ghosting, mainly on the opening titles. The only way The Last Emperor could look better is if you didn’t have to watch it in 3D at all!
This was my first time seeing the film and anyone can still marvel at how well made it is. Capturing locations in China rare for an American film remains a wonder, and the amount of practical production design is greatly appreciated now that filmmakers (or more likely studio financiers) think they can CGI all the backgrounds as if we can’t tell.
The movie itself feels a bit like standard biopic to me, hit the key dates and show the growth of Pu Yi (Richard Vuu, Tsou Tijger, Tao Wu, John Lone) as he grows up with power, takes it for granted, then adjusts to losing it under Japanese rule. That’s a valid story, but there was a moment where I felt like “this is the part where Dewey Cox reflects on his whole life.”
The Strange Little Cat
I watched this movie just because it was about a cat, and the cat is hardly in it. There are maybe five shots of the cat walking around the house doing something, or observing. The rest is this German family doing laundry, smoking, having breakfast, doing homework, watching the neighbors, just doing nothing all day.
This is the worst kind of film festival movie, a collection of inane events passing as art. Yes, real families don’t have eventful lives, and that doesn’t make them boring, but filming it does. The little girl screams, the mom criticizes, a kid flies a remote controlled helicopter a few times. A game of Connect Four is the film’s most exciting sequence, because at least there’s some narrative drive to that.
I’m really only including this so that when I put it on my Worst Films of 2013 list it will make sense. I don’t think any of you are in danger of actually seeing it. I don’t think this German language movie about a day in the life of a family at home is going to get a U.S. release. At least the preceding short The Date was more of a cat movie than the one with cat in the actual title.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
