This was our first in-person MIFF in three years. It was nice to be back – at the Forum, ACMI, Hoyts, Kino and the Capitol. Although I found it exhausting! Don’t know if that’s because I’m older or just out of practice. We saw 40 films all up – 39 in the cinema and one (our very last, The Pawn Shop) on-line. I have to force myself not to get hung up on how many films I see – I once saw 60! In fact we missed a lot that we’d signed up for because I was too tired. MIFF has moved from five star rankings to out of 10 – I prefer the old 5 star system, but I fell into line with the festival curators. The bits in italics are the tweets sent contemporaneously with the screening. I get super critical at the festival while seeing so many great films. Essentially anything with a score over 5 is worth seeing if it emerges in the cinemas. Links to blogs about the rest of the films I saw are below. Anyway here are my 10⭐️ films – of which there are 8.
10⭐️ Boy From Heaven
Tightly controlled thriller, exposing corruption, exploring faith, wonderful performances and ultimately deeply moving. This is by Taril Saleh who’s earlier film The Nile Hilton Incident I had loved at an earlier MIFF. It also starred the same actor, Fares Fares (wonderful name) as another hero / anti-hero, Colonel Ibrahim. An ambiguous role apparent from his first appearance – he looks nothing like a colonel. Tawfeek Barhom as the boy Adam was also fantastic – which mattered as he was in nearly every scene. Adam is the boy, innocent, devout which may explain the heaven in the film’s title. Or maybe that refers to where we first meet him – in the tiny rural hamlet, far away from Cairo, where lives with his fisherman father. He gets a scholarship to attend the prestigious Al-Azhar university in Cairo. Where he is promptly nick-named by his bunk-mate Sardine – appropriate as finds himself tightly packed into an enclosed world of intrigue and corruption. In a voice-over at the start we are told that this Sunni institution has always resisted State control. When a new Grand Imam needs to be chosen an opportunity arises to change that. Who can our boy trust? He doesn’t know and neither do we – which of the professors (the sheikhs) is honest, which of the students and what about the colonel? Not a superfluous word spoken, the story unfolds at breakneck speed and you are completely caught up in the web of intrigue circling the boy and finally the colonel himself. All the while getting an education about different Islamic beliefs especially in a final scene between the honest ‘blind shiekh) and the boy. Beautiful and moving – I cried (always a sign I’ve enjoyed the movie). The trailer is here. And I found this terrific review after seeing the film here.
10⭐️ Hit the Road Wonderful film. Available to stream so get onto it. Filmed almost entirely inside a car, family of four taking older brother on a journey no-one wants. Suppressed anxiety & anguish interspersed with antics of younger brother. This was being shown in cinemas and via streaming at MIFF. We saw it at the cinema. Writer and director, Panah Panahi is the son of the director Panahi who has recently been imprisoned in Iran. We’ve seen lots of his father’s work but this is his first film and it’s quite wonderful. Mother, father, two sons on a road trip. The older boy is fleeing the country because he’s in trouble with the authorities but there are plenty of laughs to be had. A lame dad joke every time the car is started. Dad – played by Mohammad Hassan Madjooni who we’ve seen previously at MIFF in The Pig, has a broken leg, about which Mother is unsympathetic, if not downright sceptical. I felt I’d seen the actress Pantea Panahiha in other films but couldn’t find any. All of the performances are terrific – this is a real family, inter-acting like all families do, aggravation, hostility interspersed with expressions of love and affection and overall repressed concern for the older boy. There’s also a sick dog in the car – that dad should have taken to the vet. There’s lots of physical humour as they arrange themselves in the claustrophobic confines of the car. The younger boy is irrepressible. He doesn’t know the nature of the trip and the adults are careful he remains ignorant. He provides lots of laugh out loud moments. These family relationships are all beautifully understated, but very present. As they get nearer to their destination, the urgency and danger involved in the trip come to the fore. Tension builds, you feel the desolation of older son, father and in particular mother. The final parting is beautifully realised. There is also plenty of beautiful scenery as they make their way though what is at times a spectacular landscape. Quite wonderful. The trailer is here.
10⭐️Triangle of Sadness Not as biting as his previous films but still great. Let’s talk about money – who gets it & what they do with it. And who cleans up the mess. Filthy rich on a yacht served by staff exhorted to say ‘yes’ to all demands. Still biting but fun. So as tweeted, not quite as cutting as Rubn Östlund’s The Square which was scathing about contemporary culture and terrific. But still a terrific film. We start observing the every day humiliation of male models – being observed as though they are pieces of meat. We discover one of the tricks of the advertising trade – smile if modelling cheap clothes/ articles, pout if they’re expensive. Smile / pout, smile / pout the woman hiring barks, and our hero / anti-hero does just that. He’s instructed to lose his triangle of sadness – the triangle between eye-brows and bridge of the nose. I don’t know that he does by film’s end. After the models there’s an excruciating scene between lovers about who should pay the bill – it goes on and on! So that’s the theme – money, who has it and what they do with it. We are in the company of the filthy rich – and filthy they do become. So the audience can laugh at them, but I’m not sure that there’s any message in there for those with less. Although my love of fine dining gets mocked. The set-up when it comes is a familiar trope of tables being turned. It’s all well done, great performances from everyone and lots of fun to be had. Great ending. The trailer is here. And if you want a professional review there’s one on this site, where I choose the films I want to see, here.
10⭐️ The Quiet Girl Gives viewers the Irish trinity – feckless fathers, stoic women and gossiping neighbours. Secrets and lies quietly observed – a child’s eye view of her world. Beautifully done. This is in Irish so there are sub-titles, which helps the likes of me, being hearing impaired. But I don’t think it’s critical to the story and suspect Finton O’Toole, whose history of Ireland, the wonderful We Don’t Know Ourselves, I’ve just read might think it a faux nationalism. It’s based on the novella Foster by Claire Keegan which was originally a New Yorker story. I’ll check it out. It’s a very beautiful film, the first made by the director com Bairéad who also wrote the screenplay. The title is apt, the young Cáit is indeed very quiet. At home she seeks hiding places away from her sisters and parents. The feckless father and stoic mother are hers. She is sent away from home in the lead up to her mother giving birth to another baby – to add to the family’s poverty no doubt. Like Cáit you wonder if this is abandonment or release. It takes a while to find out. All of the performances are wonderful but Catherine Clinch as the quiet girl is stunning. She doesn’t say much but you know exactly what she’s thinking. Amazing. It’s coming out commercially soon I think. Strongly recommended. The trailer is here.
10⭐️ Leila’s Brothers Three and a half hours passes in a blink as we are immersed in the trials of this Iranian family. The evils of poverty exposed and they are held captive by their upbringing and traditions. Wonderful film. I was astonished at how quickly the time passed and would have been happy to see more of this family – in all it’s hopelessness! Leila is beautiful – in looks as well as personality. She is the moral centre of the film; played by Taraneh Alidoossti who I’ve seen in director Saeed Roustayi’s other films About Elly and The Salesman. Whilst she knows what should be done to lift her brothers out of poverty, and a way of escaping her allotted role of caregiver to both them and their parents, she has absolutely no power to do anything. Her mother and father’s attitudes toward her are terrible – and illuminating about the role of women in Iran. The parents are awful, especially the father. Although the wonder of the film, is that at times you sympathise with the bastard! The brothers are all terrific showing us their very different personalities and situations. I liked seeing another familiar actor from Roustayi’s films ( Payman Maadi – who I’ve seen in A Separation, Melbourne, Tales, About Elly) play a different role. He’s normally the dignified fellow seeking a virtuous resolution to a moral quandary. Here he is a louche, gay, deadbeat not able to take a trick. Another of the film’s achievements is to engender sympathy for each of the brothers and have us see their point of view, even when we are rooting for Leila. Along with the family you get a sense of Iranian society – daily life seems so hard! In this story, the sanctions imposed by the West have an impact on the family. There’s a funny line about Trumps tweets – the father being told about the impact of one, asks his sons, What’s a tweet? Is it some sort of bomb? Well, in a way the answer is yes! I couldn’t find an English sub-titled trailer but a French one is here. And a more detailed review on my regular movie review site is here.
10⭐️ Fire Of Love Amazing footage of volcanoes as we follow the work / obsession of a married couple who are volcanologists. They come across as committed not crazy as they get up as close as they can to craters and lava flows. This is a very female influenced / impacted movie – in a good way. The director is a woman, Sara Dosa and she contributed along with Jocelyn Chaput to the narration which is delivered by Miranda July. That narration is poetic but by no means out of kilter with the imagery. You learn a lot while following Katia and Maurice Kraft, two French vulcanologists as they explore – often perilously closely – different volcanic eruptions. For instance we discover that of the two different sorts of volcanoes – red ones spewing out red hot lave and grey ones billowing out ash and rocks – the latter are the killers. As indeed one such killed this extraordinary couple. They were quite well known and you know from the outset they die on one of their expeditions. Which gives and edge to their musings on how they would like to die. They are / were serious scientists intent on ensuring authorities dealing with volcanic eruptions took the necessary measures to protect their populations. We see an example of this not occurring. Although there is now an example closer to home with the New Zealand White Island eruption in 2019. They should have heeded the warnings of experts – who always know when a volcanoe is likely to erupt. Forty seven were on that island and twenty two people died and another twenty five received horrific injuries. Terrible. There are incredible images in this movie and we also see the couple at home and doing public interviews explaining their work. The ending is moving. The trailer is here. Werner Herzog has also done a film about this couple called The Fire Within: Requiem. It coincides with the Dosa documentary and hasn’t received as much publicity. I haven’t seen it, but I want to. It focuses on the images and has wonderful accompanying music according to the trailer which is here.
10⭐️ Diary For My Children Wonderful. In black & white – beautiful shots abounding. Terrific performances from all. A teenager rebels in 1947 Soviet controlled Hungary as Stalin’s grip tightens. Flashbacks reveal happier times. This is directed by the Hungarian director Márta Mészáros whose films were being shown as part of the regular retrospective section of the festival. Her latest film Aurora Borealis: Északi fény was made in 2017. This won the 1984 Cannes Grand Prix. I loved everything about it. The IMDb overview tells us that Juli has lost her parents to Stalin’s purges and is being returned to her native Hungary from Russia at the film’s opening. This wasn’t particularly clear to me when we meet her on an aeroplane travelling with a woman she dislikes and an elderly man who is later referred to as her grandfather. He and she are met by a stern woman who it turns out is a government official. Flashbacks show Juli’s father being taken by police and her mother dying. Bucolic days with them recur in Juli’s dreams. We see her rebelling against her aunt and finally against all authorities. Beautifully shot in black and white and great performances. Especially from Zsuzsa Czinkóczi as Juli and Jan Nowicki as the man who befriends her and who is ultimately arrested. Makes me want to see her other movies, especially Adoption from 1975 which was also on at MIFF this year. The trailer is here.
10⭐️ The Heiresses Wonderful. The Obsession for a child leads to betrayal and bitterness. Beautiful performances all round but the young Isabel Huppert transcends. A tragic ending. Another film by Márta Mészáros, this time from 1980. Its original title was The Inheritance (Örökség) which I think suits the story better, I wonder why it was changed. Another film also for Jan Nowicki – so handsome! He is Äkos, husband of the wealthy Sylvia a woman desperate, but unable to have a child. Äkos is reluctant at first, to go along with Sylvia’s suggestion that her friend Iréne, played by a very young and beautiful Isabelle Huppert, be a surrogate. No IVF in those days so he has to do the deed in person. The inevitable happens and the two of them fall in love. It’s set in 1936 and all the period detail is here. Sumptuous houses and clothes on both men and women; his the uniform of the old Hungarian militia. Beautiful landscapes through the seasons. All very beautiful. But as we know the world is heading for disaster. Äkos is a keen home movie maker and also a member of the Hungarian polo team and brings back footage from the 1936 Olympics and we see other footage of Hitler. Iréne is Jewish and when the time comes Sylvia takes her revenge. on the two lovers she has thrown together. Very moving. The trailer is here.
My blog about my Eight Star films is here, Seven Star films here and Six Stars here.
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