This is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. Its colour palette, location and aesthetic are exquisite. It is also enigmatic, to the point of being unsatisfying. We see a small, austere, island community of women and boys. The women are pale eyebrowed, dressed in colours of skin and earth. The boys are prepubescent, unsmiling. They live in bare, white houses amongst black sand, rock and crashing waves. There is little dialogue and no context for this odd world. Continue reading
Category Archives: MIFF
MIFF 2016 – day one
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I’m already tired but I’m here. Five hours of travel by car, bus, train and foot, passing by rain-obscured fields and suburban backyards, seeing that Franco Cozzo still lives on in Footscray. I’ve checked into my cute and quiet CBD apartment and battled the crowds of Swanston St to get to Melbourne Central for my first film. In a rush of enthusiasm, I booked a third film for tonight at 11.30pm. What was I thinking! I might skip it and go home to bed as tomorrow is a five film day. Continue reading
Sonita (2015)
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I couldn’t pass up this Iranian documentary about a young Afghan girl in Tehran, battling her family’s conservative plans to achieve her dream of being a rapper. In many ways it is like As I Open My Eyes made real. Sonita Alizadeh, like Farah in that movie, is young and idealistic, channeling her anger at the injustice she sees all around her into her song lyrics. For her it is the limitations placed on her as a young woman, destined to be married off by her Afghani family for a bride price, like so many other teenagers, and forbidden from performing. Continue reading
Under the Shadow (2016)
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I’m still thinking about this Iranian horror. It wasn’t a genre I knew about before A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night entered my life – my favourite film of last year. There are similarities between these two films, not stylistically but in their feminist subtext, although Girl delivers it much more subtly. And Under the Shadow is much more scary. I returned to my apartment afterwards and the quiet stairs and long corridors seemed disconcertingly like a carpeted version of the apartment block in the film. Continue reading
As I Open My Eyes (À peine j’ouvre les yeux) (2015)
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Farah is a young idealist, a singer fresh out of secondary school and living in Tunis with her mother while her father works away. Farah’s band sing songs of protest about the inequities and corruption of their country, songs that begin to be noticed by the authorities. The music is beautiful – a mix of contemporary and traditional, the lyrics like poetry, Farah’s keening voice a heartbreak. Slowly, we become aware of the world outside Farah’s relatively privileged, sheltered upbringing and her guilelessness begins to affect those around her. Continue reading
MIFF 2016 – only four sleeps to go
StandardYes gentle readers who live vicariously through my film viewing and reviewing exploits, the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF to close friends and lovers) is on again and I have a passport! A passport allows me to see as many films as my fragile body and mind can manage in sixteen days and this year, I have booked 70. Yep, 70. No, I haven’t aged twenty years in twelve months, I just have a new strategy – go in hard, fill up my dance card and then coast through the second week, returning tickets if I need to. That’s the plan anyway. Continue reading
The Lobster (2015)
StandardI’m going to write a lot about this film because I loved it. This is the one film I most wanted to see at MIFF but it sold out within the first few days and I missed out. I had high hopes for it as I loved Dogtooth, the previous film from this director, Yorgos Lanthimos. His films are not for everyone. They can be black and bleak and devastating but they are incisive and profoundly moving satires about our self-imposed limitations and fears. Continue reading
Winter’s Bone (2010)
StandardThis film has been on my list to watch for quite a while. The reviews were good and the Oscar-nominated lead role by a young Jennifer Lawrence had me intrigued. It is a bleached and gritty movie about the harsh realities of poverty and there is a realness to it that pulls you right into the world of Ree, a 17 year old eking out an existence in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri. You could perhaps dub this one ‘The Real Hunger Games’. Continue reading
A love letter to the Melbourne International Film Festival
StandardI love you MIFF. You have just given me a most memorable two weeks. With you I travelled the world, learned about love and sorrow, grieved for lost futures and saw the shifting diaspora of people torn away from their homes.
We became great friends, you and I. We hung out every day and I saw you at your best and at your worst. Please understand that what I am about to say in no way undermines this new and sparkling friendship, it will just make our love all the stronger. Continue reading
Where are the women?
StandardHave you heard about the Bechdel Test? It came from a comic strip in the 80s by Alison Bechdel called Dykes to Watch Out For and tests a work of fiction as to whether it has two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man. Perhaps unsurprisingly to all women who are used to seeing films predominantly about men, not many more than half of all mainstream films pass this test. Continue reading
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