My fourth blog about this year’s MIFF, my thoughts on the best Ten Star films are here, Eight Star films here and Seven Star films here. As I’ve said one gets very judgemental at a film festival and all of these films are great so don’t be put off by the six star rating. The italicised bits are my contemporaneous tweets.
6⭐️ Cathedral Interesting, observational take on how family makes us who we are. Presented as a 🎥 photo album. Beautifully shot. Strange but stays with you. This was advertised as a radical new style of film-making and initially I couldn’t really see that initially but afterwards I got it. The Cathedral of the title is the boy Jesse. He is being built by all those with whom he comes into contact. We see him grow up and via what is called in the MIFF notes meticulous montage and omniscient, anonymous voiceover see him reach adulthood. He’s an ordinary boy in an ordinary middle class American family and gradually we see the things that are having an effect on him. All in beautifully composed scenes. Great colour and composition. Family celebrations, family feuds, financial difficulties, adult insecurities all contribute to the adult. I thought it was ordinary while watching it – but it really did have an impact. Well worth a look if it comes out commercially, which I suspect is unlikely. The trailer is here.
6⭐️Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams Great to start but fell away dramatically at the end leaving more questions than answers. A remarkable man. Fantastic shoes. I wore my Ferragamo shoes to this screening.; feeling very glam.
The documentary was terrific at the start from his very poor childhood and his precociously early start making shoes for his sisters. The profession of cobbler was regarded as a very lowly one so it took some convincing for his parents to agree. It’s interesting how / why he was so passionate about it. After an apprenticeship he returned to his home village and set up shop. His brothers were in America, one in a big shoe factory in Boston and he eventually sailed to America – still in his teens. He didn’t like the factory and moved to Santa Barbara with his other brother – the film is silent on what drew his brothers to America – escaping poverty I suppose. He then got involved in the film industry making shoes for all the silent movie stars, especially but not only, the women. It was all very glam. He was so intent on making comfortable shoes for women he did a medical course concentrating on the structure of the foot. Then back to Italy because only there could he get the artisanship he needed to produce the quality shoes he wanted. Talking heads were mostly family members – he left a big one – and there is lots of archival footage of him. He was clearly very inventive. Later the film loses track when it comes to his personal life – maybe family involvement. He married a much younger woman and then died suddenly. We’re not really told the cause. There’s quite a lot of home movie footage which becomes a bit repetitive and not very informative. I checked out Wikipedia afterwards and it didn’t tell much more. His wife must have been formidable because she kept the business going and it’s still in the hands of the family. They are all so elegant! We get to see how Ferragamo shoes are made – still by artisans at every step. And get to see lots of shoes – so beautiful! The trailer is here.
6⭐️The Mountain As slow moving, methodical and evolving as its protagonist. Spectacular scenery of Mont Blanc. It’s a slow climb but quietly compelling. Can you tell Joe helped me with this tweet? This was a slow burner of a film and sort of a boy’s own adventure including finding a woman working on the mountain ready to sleep with him after a casual encounter. Really?! A fellow giving a work presentation looks out at the mountain and decides he must stay and climb it. No matter the effect on his job and his family. He doesn’t talk much and so you don’t really get to know why he is so driven. One of his brothers surmises a nervous breakdown. Mother and other brother say follow your dream. Money is no object so he buys the best gear and is sensible enough to get some instruction on how to climb. Later the movie takes a surreal turn as we see him get lost inside an avalanche which you either take in your stride or turn away from. I thought it was okay. He’s quite compelling to watch. Throughout there is wonderful scenery which alone makes the movie worth watching. I couldn’t find a trailer but an interview with the director, Thomas Salvador in French, who plays the main character and which contains some bits of the film so you get the picture is here.
6⭐️ Eight Mountains Great start, two boys making friends in the mountains. Lost its way in adulthood. Central plot points under-explained – father-son estrangement for Berio, loss of hope & withdrawal for Bruno. Another movie set in a great location – this time the Italian Alps. And another great start but with the movie losing focus later on. The childhood scenes are lovely with the boys growing friendship portrayed sympathetically. As adults they are less compelling. The narrator becomes estranged from his father for reasons that remain opaque. He, the narrator, takes on low paying jobs in bars and parties hard. Father dies and leaves his son a house in the mountains. Back we go to the original village where his friend is still living. They restore the house together. Turns out that Father and Friend have been friends, climbing the hills together. A pastime rejected by the narrator. The story meanders along from there. Our narrator travels the world and eventually publishes a book about it. Friend stays in the village making artisanal cheese, partnering and fathering a child. Adult paths diverge. Friendship can’t save Bruno. The trailer is here.
6⭐️ Decision to Leave Disappointed. Great performances, compelling story, some beautiful imagery. Upright detective obsessed and finally undone by crooked woman murder suspect. Didn’t understand the obsession, nor the riff on language differences. This is another movie, like Godland, that I was really looking forward to after reading reviews out of Cannes. But I was disappointed for the reasons set out in the tweet. I liked the detective, didn’t like the woman he was obsessed with and didn’t like to see him ruined. There was an emphasis placed on what language people were talking – Korean or Japanese – which I didn’t understand. And there were attempts at humour in the interactions between the detective and his underlings which didn’t work. All of a bit of a muddle really – but a very stylishly filmed muddle. The trailer is here.
6 ⭐️Return To Dust Beautiful story & some spectacular set pieces. Two lowly villagers forced by their families to marry. Compassion leads to love & a good but grindingly hard life. Honesty & hard work not valued in a world of avarice & ambition. I just felt this story has been told before. It was all very well done but a storyline that goes from rags to rags isn’t very endearing. Seeing how others treat the two main characters is heartbreaking. Corruption and self aggrandisement are the order of the day. It’s hard to believe that a community could be so heard-hearted and lacking in sympathy. The husband of the couple seems to have one friend who buys produce from him. We see them build themselves a house out of home-made mud bricks. This is taken from them, so they build another and this is also bull-dozed in the name of progress. Their third home is grand. We see the painstaking process of building a house in China from scratch. Finally this too is taken from the husband, the wife having died. Relatives take him to a high rise apartment: You’ll be happy here; But where will I keep my pigs and chickens? All beautifully done but heart-breaking. The trailer is here.
6⭐️ La Jauria Attempted rehabilitation of young crims at a camp in the Columbia jungle. Could have been too grim but great performance from the lead makes it mesmerising. He barely speaks but has you hoping he comes through. Worth seeing. I normally avoid grim, and this was grim. I can’t remember how I came to pick it but I’m glad I did. Jhojan Estivan anchors the film as Eliú, a young fellow seemingly drawn reluctantly into criminality although we later learn he was the instigator of the murder for which he is incarcerated. We have less sympathy for his friend El Mono who actually murdered the man – the wrong man as it turns out, to deadly effect. They are both imprisoned in a terrible rehabilitation centre in the Colombian jungle where they are treated as slave labour. The story rattles along at breakneck speed revealing the corruption of those at the top and hopelessness of those at the bottom of the heap. Terrific movie. The trailer – or an extract which is all I could find – is here.
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