☀️ THE 39TH CHICAGO LATINO FILM FESTIVAL
One of the best in the city, the annual Chicago Latino Film Festival continues through Sunday at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema (2828 N. Clark St.) in Lakeview. Below are reviews for select titles playing this week. For more information, including the complete schedule and details about the short films accompanying each feature, visit the festival website here.
Paz Encina's EAMI (Paraguay/Experimental)
Friday, 8:15pm and Sunday, 4pm
The Chaco region of western Paraguay has long been home to the indigenous Ayoreo-Totobiegosode people, but now these tribes are being chased off their land due to deforestation. EAMI is director Paz Encina’s lament for this unfortunate historical development, which she made in cooperation with a number of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode. The film is neither a narrative feature nor a documentary, though it contains aspects of both. Deliberately lacking in contextual information for viewers unfamiliar with the subject matter, the film is an immersive experience into the sights and sounds of the Chaco environment. It centers on an indigenous girl named Eami who must summon wisdom beyond her years in order to make sense of having to leave the only home she’s ever known. Per the filmmaker’s notes, eami means both “forest” and “world” in the Ayoreo language, and this provides a clue to Encina’s larger meanings. It’s a helpful clue, as the experience of watching EAMI is more sensual than cerebral—it’s a movie where the appearance of footsteps on white sand and the sounds of wind rustling through trees are just as important as the impact these sensations make on humans. Through the integration of tribal creation myths on the soundtrack and various dignified faces in the decoupage, Encina creates a portrait of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode as a people for whom individual identity is generally subsumed by tradition and respect for the natural world. It’s rare to see a film about indigenous people that attempts to recreate their perspective as opposed to being simply about their perspective. EAMI brings a much-needed empathy to the ethnographic form, and it produces some striking imagery in the process. (2022, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Jose Gomez De Vargas and Julietta Rodriguez’s JUPÍA (Dominican Republic)
Saturday, 3:30pm
Jupía, shape-shifting, earthbound spirits that figure in the cosmology of the Indigenous Taíno peoples of the Greater Antilles, are at the center of the mysterious drama JUPÍA, from director Jose Gomez De Vargas and first-time director Julietta Rodriquez. According to Taíno legend, jupía exist largely on their own, eating guava and clinging to the places they frequented when alive. But they can be invoked by the living for various purposes. When police detective Tomás García (David Maler) seeks answers to the disappearance of his daughter, he encounters the troubled and cancer-riddled head of a nursing home (Karina Noble) who is using the power of the Taíno creator goddess Atabey, personified as a nurse by Rodriguez herself, to return her dead daughter, now one of the jupía, through supernatural means. Gomez De Vargas and Rodriguez deliberately evoke the atmosphere and musical motifs of horror films to suggest the horrifying consequences of trying to reverse the flow of life and death. At the same time, they form part of the growing popular and scholarly movement to revivify the traditional wisdom and culture of the Taíno, a people once thought extinct. For those unfamiliar with this culture, JUPÍA may seem opaque. Those with curiosity and an interest in this hidden civilization will find the lush and luminous cinematography of Pedro Juan López and the intuitive energy of the performances intriguing. Screens with the short Uruguayan film KATMANDÚ by director Ana Clara Rodríguez, who is scheduled to appear in person. (2022, 79 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Gonçalo Galvão Teles’ NOTHING EVER HAPPENED (Portugal)
Saturday, 5:30pm and Sunday, 6:15pm
NOTHING EVER HAPPENED considers the effects of economic depression on an average lower-middle-class family, and it’s about as bleak as you can imagine. Middle-aged Jorge (Felipe Duarte) has been unemployed for so long that he’s practically given up hope on finding another job. His wife Lena (Ana Moreira), who works at a job for which she’s overqualified, resents him and barely tries to cover up the affair she’s having with her boss. Their teenage son Pedro (Bernardo Lobo Faria) regularly cuts class with his two friends, with whom he’s engaged in a ménage à trois, to engage in self-destructive behavior. When the film begins, Jorge brings his elderly father, Antonio (Rui Morisson), from a rural community to live with his family in Lisbon. Antonio’s presence makes little impact on the depressed trio, who are so wrapped up in their personal crises that they barely acknowledge him. He manages to make some semi-successful efforts at communication with Pedro, who’s sensitive and intelligent but overcome by the feeling that there’s no future for him or his friends. A terrible tragedy occurs about halfway into NOTHING EVER HAPPENED, and it forces the principal characters to reflect on how they’ve been living and take steps toward change. Yet Gonçalo Galvão Teles, directing a script he wrote with Luís Felipe Rocha, suggests the society the characters inhabit is so broken that there exist few opportunities for them to change in any meaningful way. That’s a stark conclusion to reach, but the film gets there with a lot of nuance; the whole cast is strong, and the dark cinematography brings to mind numerous dramas directed by Clint Eastwood. (2022, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Valentina Maurel’s I HAVE ELECTRIC DREAMS (Costa Rica)
Saturday, 6:15pm
Valentina Maurel grew up in Costa Rica but studied filmmaking in Paris and Brussels, so it makes sense that her debut feature, I HAVE ELECTRIC DREAMS, feels as much like a European film as South American one. The seemingly formless way that Maurel presents complicated, potentially off-putting behavior recalls Maurice Pialat and his many followers, while her nonjudgmental depiction of delinquent adolescents evokes a subgenre of French realism that’s at least as old as THE 400 BLOWS (1959). I HAVE ELECTRIC DREAMS is still very much a product of South American culture in its unhurried pacing, tropical ambience, and the way Maurel effortlessly integrates poetry into the narrative. Grounded in two astonishing lead performances (both of which won prizes at the Locarno Film Festival), it covers several months in the lives of Eva, a rebellious 16-year-old, and her ne’er-do-well father, with whom she’s been wanting to live since her parents divorced. Both father and daughter have issues controlling their anger, which occasionally erupts in flares of physical violence directed toward themselves or people around them. This violence (which seems to be passed down from one generation to another, like in Frank Borzage’s MOONRISE [1948]) clearly caused the breakup of the parents’ marriage, yet Eva still adores her father and resents her mother; it’s implied that her affinity with her dad stems from how intimately she understands his problem. She spends more time with him after he gets taken in by an old bohemian friend, and both men are terrible influences on her; in little time, she comes to experiment with drinking, drugs, and sex. Her progression may be familiar from other dramas about at-risk teens, but what distinguishes I HAVE ELECTRIC DREAMS is that the main characters really can’t control their behavior; seeing them get undermined by their worst impulses is practically horrific. Maurel generates a sense of dread that becomes more pronounced the better we know the characters—and given that she shows them in a state of unvarnished sympathy so often (which her exceptional cast seems to have little problem realizing), the movie becomes quite dreadful indeed. (2022, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Laura Baumeister’s DAUGHTER OF RAGE (Nicaragua)
Saturday, 8:15pm
Per Variety, Laura Baumeister’s DAUGHTER OF RAGE is “the first fiction feature shot by a female Nicaraguan-born director”; another source, the Tribeca Film Institute, noted during the film’s development that it would “be the first feature to be shot in Nicaragua by a Nicaraguan born female director.” Regardless of whether or not it being shot in the country is a differentiator, it’s nevertheless an assured first feature from an emerging talent. Set partially at La Chureca, the largest landfill in Central America, the film follows 11-year-old María (Ara Alejandra Medal) after she and her mother are compelled to leave their home on the edges of the dump when María accidentally poisons the purebred puppies her mother had been hoping to sell. They typically make a living selling items foraged from the dump, representative of the approximately 500 families who in real life do just that. But the focus of Baumeister’s film isn’t this particular aspect of Nicaragua’s socio-economic makeup; rather, it’s more akin to something like René Clément’s FORBIDDEN GAMES (1952) in how it assumes a child’s perspective of oppressive circumstances, dwelling not in the nitty-gritty details of María’s misfortune but instead the ways she makes sense of the unfathomable. This becomes more pronounced after her mother drops her off at a recycling center where she’s made to work for her keep, albeit with a relatively amiable family structure in place among the plant owners and the kids who illegally work there. She meets a young boy, Tadeo (Carlos Gutierrez), with whom she has an innocent enchantment (similar to FORBIDDEN GAMES). Though it has a linear narrative structure the film eventually becomes looser in how it approaches a denouement, forgoing a logical conclusion for one steeped in María’s quixotic prowess. Sadly, what she imagines isn’t the stuff of innocent childhood fantasy. Baumeister has said she’s influenced by Lucrecia Martel and Jane Campion (specifically THE PIANO, which also explores an unconventional mother-daughter dynamic), and that comes through in how the film handles María’s unique hardships. Baumeister eschews sentimentality for a rawer—but still somehow tender—evocation of life’s sad realities, while incorporating an outrightly fantastical element via effectuations of the mother character having found new life in the form of a chimera. (2022, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Rodgrigo Arnaz’s LIFE IN SILENCE (Mexico)
Saturday, 8:30pm and Sunday, 8:45pm
The fact that there's more than a hint of operatic melodrama in a film about the struggles of an aging musician should surprise no one. Fran, a journeyman, workaday trumpeter, is a single father raising a severely autistic son. After abandoning them both when Samuel was still an infant, Mariana suddenly reappears in their life over a decade later with the news that she has a terminal medical condition... and some life-changing secrets. What could easily double as the over-the-top, hamfisted plot of a telenovela is instead played with a sympathetic warmth that shows the filmmaker's compassion. The choice to film this on 16mm only shows how writer/director Arnaz really wanted a warmth to come through in all aspects. The mostly cool jazz soundtrack only adds to this. Quite the impressively realized debut feature. (2022, 124 mins, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Apichatpong Weerasethakul x 3
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Apichatpong Weerasethakul's TROPICAL MALADY (Thailand)
Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Monday, 6pm [Free Admission]
Having almost single-handedly brought Thai film to the eyes of the world, yet working with little support from the once-moribund Thai film industry, and even facing open hostility from Thai authorities and censors, Weerasethakul has assembled an almost unique methodology, bringing together elements of a folky, naturalistic, aleatory cinema with extreme formalist structuring and stylization—though in both modes evincing a deep concern for stillness, landscape, and gesture. MALADY features a two-part structure, much like AW's most rapturous and creepy masterpiece-to-date, SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (2006), and much as in SYNDROMES, the two parts of MALADY tell more or less the same story, albeit with vastly different styles and emphases. The opening section begins the story of a burgeoning romance between an elusive young provincial man and a soldier stationed in his village, while the second plays out the soldier's pursuit of his recalcitrant object of desire as a minimalist folktale: a quest for a fierce, shape-changing tiger-shaman through a mythical landscape peopled with spirits. Essential work, and essential viewing. Weerasehtakul in person (2004, 118 min, 35mm) [Jeremy M. Davies]
Blessings of Cinema: Short Films with Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Experimental)
Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Tuesday, 6pm [Free Admission]
In addition to his better-known feature film work, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has created dozens of short films that make up the bulk of his filmography, at least running-time-wise. But outside of the occasional screening at Onion City or elsewhere, we rarely get a chance to see these shorter films, which can elucidate Weerasethakul's visual or narrative tactics or allow him to be more playful or offbeat. So take advantage of this chance to see a whole program of short and mid-length work (with Weerasethakul in person for a conversation and Q&A) while he's in town over the next couple weeks. THE ANTHEM (2006) is a lively film that is intended to bless "the theater and the approaching feature for each screening." It's bifurcated with a static shot of women discussing bad marriages, recent flooding, and the process of blessing a CD that makes a hard shift to a camera whipping around a studio space bustling with onscreen action and behind-the-scenes winks. MOBILE MEN (2008) is a beguiling, off-handed little camera-dance between two men vamping and riffing in the back of a truck, and an occasionally onscreen Weerasethakul framing and reframing the men and the rumbling environment. Next is a collaboration with fellow filmmaker Pimpaka Towira, WORLDLY DESIRES (2005), which is a longer piece clocking in around three-quarters of an hour. It alternates multiple times between night and day, narrative and documentary, behind-the-scenes meta-breakdowns and aloof musical numbers in the near-dark. A LETTER TO UNCLE BOONMEE (Primitive project) (2009) is a sort-of precursor to the similarly-named feature film, shot on the same set but with beautiful personal voiceover expanding on the meaning of the land, its history, and its familial connections. Finally, BLUE (2018) is a gorgeous dreamlike sketch combining changing theatrical backdrops, fiery superimpositions, and assured stillness. It's the most inscrutable of the bunch and shows an artist obviously operating with total confidence to follow his bliss. (2005-2018, 82 min total, 35mm and digital) [Josh B Mabe]
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s MEMORIA (International)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Thursday, 6pm [SOLD OUT]
I generally don’t like to talk about presentation and distribution when reviewing films because it’s generally a secondary, or even tertiary, aspect of the film that merits no discussion. Yet I feel that here these things not only need to be addressed, but they're so crucial to MEMORIA that they need to be mentioned at the top. For those who don't know, this film was originally released as a kind-of roadshow museum piece. The plan was for MEMORIA to have a single print circulate through the US as a “never-ending” release; it would be available to see at only one city at a time. This idea was met with both intrigue and ridicule, though I would fully recommend that people see this in the theater—after all, the entire distribution system is intended to create a viewing experience that's unique to each screening. At the same time, there's a cynical side to me that wonders whether the whole thing was a P.T. Barnum-esque grift to get eyes on the kind of slow cinema that 99% of moviegoers wouldn't usually care about. After only two January stops on its “never-ending release,” the distributor, Neon, pulled the plug on this high art concept and decided in April that MEMORIA would have a standard multi-city, multi-screen release. Was this a kowtow to public perception of elitism? A tacit admission of failure? Or simply the re-evaluation of the desire to get MEMORIA in front of as many eyes as possible? I can’t say and won’t speculate. All this being said, I’ll let people decide for themselves what they think of the plan and simply move on to the film itself as a story, not as artifact or performance. In MEMORIA, we have Weerasethakul’s methodically meditative take on slow cinema that's so much warmer than many other filmmakers in this style. Tilda Swinton, naturally, gives a spectacular performance. As a Scottish emigre living in Colombia, Swinton's Jessica finds herself slowly questioning her sanity; it seems that she is the only person who can hear a loud, booming sound. In an attempt to explain the sound, she calls on a sound engineer, Hernán, to artificially recreate it. The two manage to approximate it, but when Jessica goes to see Hernán afterward, no one at the sound lab seems to have heard of him. Between this and her straining relationship with her sister, Jessica leaves the city for the countryside where she meets a quiet fisherman that also happens to be named Hernán. From there, things get weird. For such a slowly paced film, Weerasethakul took a giant risk taken by making so much of it sound-based. With Jessica’s mystery boom being the engine of the story, much of MEMORIA revolves purely around sound, or the lack thereof. As in such movies as THE CONVERSATION (1974) and SOUND OF METAL (2019), sound plays a character itself. There are more than a few scenes where sound is practically the only thing that moves. The frame will be stock-still, actors looking almost artificially frozen, and the sound design carries the story. It’s a simple idea but executed brilliantly. With this in mind, I can see why the distributor wanted to have this be approached as a heightened theatrical experience. The wind, the sound of memories, birdsong—all these things begin to overwhelm you as the movie progresses. Eventually, all you really have left is sound and you have no choice but to give in fully to it. It really is a beautiful thing. MEMORIA commands submission to one’s ears in a way that film rarely does. People talk about the immersive quality of action films, as if the average person has ever found themselves anywhere near an actual explosion, as opposed to a film like that draws you in so totally with your senses, seducing the eyes and ears as opposed to pummeling them relentlessly. You’ll find yourself lured in without recognizing that it happened. To find yourself in a dark room, slowly getting lost in another world is what any good movie should do. And this film does it far better than most. Knowing the story of this film, and the weird hype it’s created, it’s so satisfying to see that MEMORIA lives up to all its accolades. Weerasethakul in person. PLEASE NOTE that this screening is sold out. (2021, 136 min, 35mm) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Jack and Olga Chambers’ THE HART OF LONDON (Canada/Experimental)
Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave,) – Wednesday, 8pm [Free Admission]
Stan Brakhage once named THE HART OF LONDON as one of the five greatest films ever made, and it’s easy to see why. The only feature-length movie signed by painter and filmmaker Jack Chambers, it exemplifies a certain mode of experimental cinema often associated with Brakhage: intuitive, propulsive, epiphanic. It’s a collage-like work that incorporates newsreels from the 1950s (with an emphasis on footage of natural disasters) along with material that Jack and Olga Chambers shot in Spain and their hometown of London, Ontario. The filmmakers often superimpose one shot over another or cut rapidly between different shots; the effect is overwhelming, but the elaborate decoupage is also invigorating in its rhythm and pace. Though it would be reductive to offer a summary of its content, THE HART OF LONDON is broadly concerned with the life cycle, alternating images of death with images of birth and vitality. The latter are often represented by the titular animals (proud quadrupeds seen roaming the outskirts of the city), though one sees life everywhere in the film, particularly during a sequence of child birth as visceral in its impact as Brakhage’s classic short WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING (1959). The specter of death also hangs over THE HART OF LONDON, as Jack Chambers was diagnosed with leukemia about a year before the film was completed; clearly, he and his wife were using their art to work through feelings about his mortality. These feelings don’t overburden the film, however, as no particular subject or mood predominates. As in numerous works by Marc Chagall, the spectator is invited to consider the whole of existence in one fell swoop—you don’t watch the film so much as you immerse yourself in it. (1970, 79 min, 16mm) [Ben Sachs]
Andrei Konchalovsky's RUNAWAY TRAIN (US)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm
When the Chicago Film Society screened TOKYO DRIFTER (1966) at the Music Box Theatre last month, they showed a trailer for this upcoming presentation of RUNAWAY TRAIN. The second the Cannon Films logo hit the screen there was a burst of laughter in the theatre. And it bummed me out a bit. Now, I get it. Cannon Films is infamous for being the king of '80s B-grade schlock cinema, making the progressively regressive DEATH WISH sequels and cashing in on the breakdancing craze with BREAKIN' (1984) and BREAKING 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (1984). We can also thank them for Chuck Norris and Jean Claude Van Damme. So yeah, the Cannon Films logo does merit a bit of wry, ironic laughter. But Cannon also made the incendiary (and disturbingly still relevant) socio-political thriller JOE (1970), STREET SMART (1987)—both of which received Oscar noms—and Godard's KING LEAR (1987). It's in this latter category of genuinely quality film that RUNAWAY TRAIN firmly sits. Based on an unproduced script by Akira Kurosawa and directed by Tarkovsky collaborator Andrei Konchalovsky, this is one of the rare actioners with substance. The conceit is simple: a notorious criminal (Jon Voight) teams up with another inmate (Eric Roberts) to bust out of an Alaskan prison. They escape by hopping on a freight train, only to have it go out of control when the conductor dies. You gotta respect a film that 100% delivers on its title. What you get here is fully realized acting (Voight and Roberts were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively) placed in a world where everything is out of control. These men, who have had nothing, are willing to die if it means they die free. And perhaps death is the freedom they've always been after. While this feels like a quintessential Sunday afternoon dad film, the touches of existential dread place it on a completely different level. Visually, it's astounding. Konchalovsky manages to give us wide-open landscape shots, while still maintaining the claustrophobia of prison life. And then there are the action sequences. Every time I watch them, I end up asking myself, "How the hell did they film that?" I'm so glad that the Chicago Film Society is screening this, because this is a movie that deserves the big screen. Whether you want to watch it as a prison break action spectacle or an existential battle of inner man vs the outside world, that's up to you. It's great either way. Preceded by Dave Fleischer's 1940 Popeye cartoon ONION PACIFIC (6 min, 16mm). (1985, 110 min, 35mm) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Gregory La Cava's MY MAN GODFREY (US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
Is there a more quintessential—or contentious—screwball comedy than MY MAN GODFREY? Gregory La Cava's Fifth Avenue farce has been the locus classicus of the genre since an anonymous Variety scrivener off-handedly coined the phrase in a GODFREY review, observing “Lombard has played screwball dames before, but none so screwy as this one." Within two years, the same trade paper would lament "the apparently unending string of screwball comedies." Almost as soon as GODFREY was recognized as a landmark, critics began wagging fingers at the film and its spawn. In 1940, Otis Ferguson cited GODFREY's arrival as the moment when "the discovery of the word 'screwball' by those who had to have some words to say helped build the thesis of an absolutely new style in comedy," before according pride of place to the earlier SING AND LIKE IT, "consistently funnier and more screwball as well." William K. Everson's 1994 screwball survey, American Bedlam, likewise acknowledged GODFREY's place in the canon, with the caveat that the film is "lunatic rather than charming, and in addition to being unreal is totally dishonest." So what is it about this madcap reveille that sets people off and sends them running to the nearest trash heap? There's no arguing with the performances—William Powell’s effortless suavity is the perfect counterpoint to Lombard's antic, giggly effusion, and Mischa Auer's gigolo remains an absurd specimen of primate masculinity. These three, plus matriarch Alice Brady, were each nominated at the 1937 Academy Awards, marking GODFREY as the first film to receive a quartet of acting nominations—in the year that the supporting categories were introduced, no less—but the less-heralded turns from Gail Patrick and Eugene Pallette are equally accomplished. Patrick takes a crude sketch of a cruel character and imbues her with enough interiority to render her climactic question—"What good did you find in me, if any?"—exquisitely deserved and heart-stoppingly earnest. At the decade's start, Pallette was still a somewhat generic second fiddle of comic relief, an embarrassed man scurrying around the lady's locker room in FOLLOW THRU; by MY MAN GODFREY, he had settled into his artistic groove and his highest purpose, embodying the put-upon patriarch with sandpaper vocal cords. Pallette gets the film's most famous quip—"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people"—and perfects its delivery with an even, unenunciated reading that lets it land with selfless aplomb. La Cava excels at filling an empty room with the right kind of people, and the film's handful of crowd scenes are marvels of camera movement and antic, maximal composition. So far, so good. But the crux of GODFREY is its gossamer social veneer, a Depression-era update of the eternal story of a princess slumming outside the palace walls. Opening amidst the shantytowns of Sutton Place and gradually revealing that its titular hobo is a Harvard man on a sociological vision quest, MY MAN GODFREY isn't just a questionable work of social realism, but something like the business end of a broken bottle. The "forgotten men" are phonies, the Depression is a bunch of hot air, and prosperity is just around the corner—just level the slums and salt the earth with nightclubs. In retrospect, MY MAN GODFREY was clearly a way station for screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, who began as a socialist and Marx Brothers scenarist, but would soon fink for HUAC, provide seed money for The National Review, and pen right-wing diatribes for syndication from his Southern California mansion. "If them cops would stick to their own racket and leave honest guys alone," opines one of Powell's hobo buddies, "we'd get somewhere in this country without a lot of this relief and all that stuff." Amen, brother? Screening as part of the Carole Lombard x3 series. (1936, 94 min, 35mm) [K.A. Westphal]
Claire Denis' BEAU TRAVAIL (France)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm
Claire Denis's BEAU TRAVAIL is a film of sweltering, oppressive heat; a sun-drenched rendering of Melville's Billy Budd that unfurls across the deserts of Djibouti, where a troop of French legionnaires perform a dance of drills and exercises as daily ritual. The men are soldiers, athletes, and the embodiment of physical perfection, and Denis venerates their physique with framing that recalls Leni Riefenstahl's ode to human beauty, OLYMPIA (1938). Day in and day out, they adhere to a strictly choreographed routine, their mechanized motions made downright hypnotic by the operatic overtones of Benjamin Britten. At the center of this tightly wound fever dream is Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant), whose own unflappable façade begins to crack upon the arrival of a new legionnaire, whose inherent beauty and goodness marks him as an object of obsession. It's here that the film's stifling (yet eloquent) discipline begins to clash with deeply repressed desire, and Galoup sets events in motion that will bring about his own undoing. Most notable is the unshakable denouement, where one tragic soldier at the end of his rope at last finds his ideal form of expression. Suddenly, Galoup is dancing a very different dance, and as the periodic flashes of local nightlife foreshadow, salvation may just lie in the universal escape of pop music. Screening as part of Doc’s Friday series, “Sight & Sound: The Greatest?” (1999, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Kelly Reichardt's SHOWING UP (US)
AMC River East 21 (322 E. Illinois St.) – See Venue website for showtimes
Far away from posh corporate fairs and Insta glamor lifestyle-influenced meta-worlds, our globe is dotted with pocket communities of painters, sculptors, and multimedia artists quietly going about the esoteric, sometimes inchoate business of making art day to day. It is one such alcove—set in director Reichardt's home town of Portland, Oregon—that is the focus of her eighth feature. Throughout her 30-year career Reichardt has consistently avoided the peak-valley conventions of traditional narrative film. Her work is often described as quiet, but I think that shortchanges its slow-burn intensity. Just because her characters avoid cliché conflict points doesn't mean they lack passion or anger. In fact, by often underplaying moments that might be treated as cataclysmic in a Hollywood picture, Reichardt imbues real human friction with a much longer echo. She has a knack for staging low-key, seemingly mundane scenes that linger in the mind. Lizzy (Michelle Williams), a frustrated put-upon sculptor is waging stealth passive-aggressive war against Jo (Hong Chau), her more successful, extroverted colleague/landlord/frenemy. She complains about being without hot water to take a shower and cares for the injured pigeon Jo "discovered" in the yard after Lizzy's cat nearly ate it. She watches enviously as Jo gets accolades for her work, takes men home, has parties, and generally lives the embodied, actualized life Lizzy can't even bring herself to dream of. Williams anchors the film with a performance seemingly inspired by the lumpy, not-quite-formed figures Portland artist Cynthia Lahti has provided to stand in for Lizzy's work. Wearing only earth-toned outfits designed not to reveal a thing about the wearer, her hair a mousey brown, Lizzy is a vague peripheral being who nevertheless hints at depths. She's not the typical movie hero and her challenges are not usual movie problems. The thing Reichardt's film nails most precisely is how ill-suited artists are to deal adequately with quotidian problems but how gracefully they can let intractable differences roll off their backs. Mental illness is treated as a possible mark of genius rather than a symptom to be corrected, and baffling behavior of every kind is accepted with bemused humor. The final scene of Jo and Lizzy wandering away from Lizzy's art opening, trying to track the once-injured pigeon who's flown away is graceful, funny, and a little melancholy all at once. A perfect coda to a movie that celebrates the value of detours and left turns. (2022, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]
David Cronenberg's RABID (Canada)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9:30pm
One of the highest grossing independent Canadian films of all time, RABID shot underground Toronto filmmaker David Cronenberg into the stratosphere of career possibilities. It played an essential role in garnering Cronenberg attention and credit among audiences and studios. His previous film, SHIVERS (1975), faced controversy to the extent that the director was evicted from his apartment and had great difficulty funding future projects, as his work was dismissed as too violent and overly sexual. Despite the challenges, SHIVERS was a box office hit, and its record was equaled, if not broken, by its successor. When it came time to finance RABID, the Canadian Film Development Corporation quietly funded the entire project. Cronenberg recounts wanting to submit the film to Cannes but knowing that hundreds of films just like it got submitted and were either rejected or never gained any enthusiasm from international audiences. To avoid this fate, the production knew they needed to attach a big name to the picture. Executive producer Ivan Reitman heard rumors that Marilyn Chambers, one of the biggest porn icons of the 1970s, wanted to act in "legitimate films," to which Cronenberg replied, "I’m glad someone would consider my films legitimate." Having not seen any of her work, the director agreed to audition Chambers and was moved by her audition and work ethic. Willing to work at a lower fee, she got the role and she signed onto the picture (her only non-adult film) immediately. With RABID, it feels like there is someone behind the camera saying, "I don’t have a lot at my disposal but I’m going to be bold and tell the best story I know how to right now." The then-33-year-old director would pause in the middle of shooting to tell his producers his own script didn’t make any sense: "A woman with a stinger in her armpit? It feels ridiculous to say out loud." To counter, RABID was made at a larger scale than his previous work. Not only did he take over the streets of Montreal to photograph military vehicles, but he took his time to light his actors as beautifully as he pleased. From the opening push-in for Chambers’ closeup on the motorcycle until the end, where garbage men are throwing bodies in trucks, it’s his first film to display a new flare of cinematic sensibility. Screening as part of Doc’s Thursday II series, “Skin Under Skin: A Retrospective of David Cronenberg.” (1977, 91 mins, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]
Kristoffer Borgli's SICK OF MYSELF (Norway)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
This film might have the highest amount of severe facial injuries I've ever seen. Definitely for a comedy. And I'm fully here for it. Rashes, swelling, head wounds, open wounds, hair falling out. As in THE FLY (1986), we get to sit and be entertained by someone literally falling apart. But in this case, we laugh at the horror because this person is doing it to themselves and they're kind of a piece of shit anyway. Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and Thomas (Eirik Sæther) are an awful couple. They're petty, cruel, jealous, spiteful. Downright contemptuous of each other. It isn't even clear if they actually like each other. So when Thomas’s art career takes off, Signe can’t stand that he’s the center of attention. After realizing that sympathy and pity are the easiest ways to get it herself, she gets her hands on a drug that's known for having the side effect of severe skin disease. Enter pitch-black comedy body horror. Right now we’re starting to see the social media commentary/satire coagulate into a legitimate genre. The thing is, though, most of these films center the medium as the hero or villain. SICK OF MYSELF gets to the root of it all—good old-fashioned vanity. Instead of focusing on social media and the effects of its use, here we see why people love it like a drug in the first place. This is narcissism in the world of self-branding, at a time when concepts previously left to states and corporations, such as optics, are considered by teenagers every time they communicate. Right now infamy is the same as fame. So in having the main character slowly kill themselves for attention, Borgli brings what is usually left to subtext to a grotesquely visual level. We all feel like we’re slowly killing ourselves everytime we scroll, like, or share. Like we are willingly destroying ourselves so someone who we may, or may not, know—possibly even a robot—gives us just the tiniest crumb of attention. It's nice to be able to laugh at this extreme, yet recognizable, version of ourselves—in all our rotting, self-absorbed, slowly suicidal glory. SICK OF MYSELF is as funny as it is disgusting. Gross times deserve gross movies. (2022, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Michael Glover Smith’s RELATIVE (US)
The New 400 Theater – Sunday, 3pm
In his writing on movies, both here at Cine-File and elsewhere, Michael Glover Smith has advanced an acute understanding of how the framing of performers in narrative cinema can underscore the emotions they express and how camera movement (or, put another way, the re-framing of performers in time) can develop viewers’ relationships to onscreen characters. Smith’s features as writer-director seem to grow directly out of his insights in this area—deceptively “dialogue-driven,” they express their greatest eloquence not with words but with mise-en-scène. It matters in RELATIVE whether the principal characters are together in the same shot or whether they’ve been individuated by close ups; it matters whether we can distinguish who’s in the background of a shot or whether those characters have been obscured. These things matter because the film is ultimately about the competing forces of community and individuality that shape our identities in 21st-century life and how we navigate between them almost constantly. The action in RELATIVE covers a few days before, during, and after a young man’s college graduation party on Chicago’s far north side, a celebration that draws his two older sisters from out of state and his older brother (a divorced Iraq War veteran who’s been slowly self-destructing for the past four years) out of seclusion in their parents’ basement. Smith gracefully interweaves the lives of all four siblings, their liberal Baby Boomer parents, and a handful of other characters as they come together amiably and unhurriedly, employing the time-honored scenario of the big family gathering to consider how many of us live at the dawn of the 2020s. Not surprisingly, the internet factors into things (though thankfully not too much); so too do food co-ops, queer-straight alliances, and the social normalization of weed. Yet Smith has more on his mind than enumerating aspects of the zeitgeist; RELATIVE is also concerned with the legacy of the Baby Boom generation and, more generally, how each generation honors the previous one while taking a seemingly opposite approach to life. Yasujiro Ozu is an obvious reference point for this sort of laidback family portrait, though I was reminded more of critic-turned-filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier’s A SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY (1984) in the low-key sociological thrust of the drama and of the first episode of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s recently rediscovered miniseries EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY (1972-’73) in the polyphony of the extended graduation party sequence. For all its international flavor, however, RELATIVE is a local production first and foremost, reflecting its maker’s deep affection for the neighborhoods he calls home. Followed by a Q&A with Smith and cast members Emily Lape and Elizabeth Stam. At 5pm, Smith will lead interested audience members on an (optional) walking tour of some of the film's most prominent Rogers Park locations. (2022, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Rebecca Zlotowski’s OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN (France)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
The French are so good—and so consistent—at making understated dramas about middle-class discontentment that they probably have a name for this subgenre. Claude Sautet’s run of masterpieces from the 1970s may be the high-water mark for whatever it’s called, though there have been excellent entries from directors as diverse as Bertrand Tavernier, André Téchiné, François Ozon, and Mia Hansen-Løve. (Claude Chabrol, who blended the subgenre with elements of the suspense thriller, worked in a category all his own.) It seems like a difficult type of movie to pull off: if you get too cynical or angry about middle-class hypocrisy, you may end up with trite moralizing; but if you’re too accepting of your characters and their worldview, you may end up with something soft and complacent. As such, writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski walks a fine line in OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN. This semicomic movie, about a 40-ish divorcée who first realizes she wants to be a mother, doesn’t really question the logic behind typical bourgeois aspirations; however, it feels realistic in its depiction of the challenges that keep the bourgeoisie from realizing their dreams. The heroine, Rachel, is a high-school teacher who falls in love with Ali, a car designer who’s also divorced. He shares custody of his five-year-old daughter, Leila, and as romance develops between the two protagonists, so does Rachel fall for Leila and, in the process, discover that she longs for the “banal” goals of settling down and raising children. As proven by Justine Triet’s SIBYL (2019) and Paul Verhoeven’s BENDETTA (2021), Virginie Efira excels at playing headstrong women who are more than a little neurotic, and she delivers another smart and compelling performance as Rachel; she makes you reflect on what it means to be happy along with her. Zlotowski, for her part, delineates the hurdles to Rachel’s happiness in a manner that’s neither too obvious nor obscure. One recognizes a certain self-sabotaging quality in the heroine but also the impact of things beyond her control, like the unpredictable nature of interpersonal relationships, the demands of a high-stress career, and plain old bad luck. Life gives us plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied. (2022, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Jerzy Skolimowski's EO (Poland/UK/Italy)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 4pm and 8pm
In 2022, Steven Spielberg retrofitted JAWS for IMAX theaters, transforming a classic film into a towering, visceral experience. One might say that Jerzy Skolimowski did the same thing that year with Robert Bresson’s AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (1966); his quasi-remake EO (a prizewinner at Cannes) is a big screen experience par excellence, with large-scale imagery and booming sound design that make you feel the titular donkey’s suffering in your bones. Some might balk at Skolimowski’s decision to put his spin on Bresson’s allegorical masterpiece—which is beyond question one of the greatest films ever made—yet such an audacious move is in keeping with this major artist, who first came to prominence in the early 1960s as an acclaimed poet and a figurehead of Poland’s postwar youth culture. The director’s ‘60s work remains astounding in its freewheeling energy and inspired visual metaphors (it’s worth noting that, after Bresson, he was one of the European filmmakers that Cahiers du cinéma championed the most in that decade); this period culminated with the blunt social critique of his 1967 production HANDS UP!, which was so incendiary that it more or less got him exiled from his native country (moreover, he wasn’t able to complete the film until 1981). After that, Skolimowski made movies in several other countries (including the US) before returning to Poland in the 1990s. The handful of films he’s made since then feel less indebted to his work as poet than his work as a painter, which has occupied much of his time in the past several decades. Indeed, EO contains an abundance of striking images, and these drive the film more than the loose narrative, which follows a donkey in his travails after he leaves the circus where he’s performed. The animal’s misfortunes mirror those of contemporary Europe; the most upsetting episode is probably the one that concerns the violent activity of a thuggish group of modern-day nationalists. A late episode in the film with guest star Isabelle Huppert works in some anticlerical sentiment that feels more akin to Buñuel than Bresson, while the final episode approaches the apocalyptic feelings of Bresson’s last two features, THE DEVIL, PROBABLY (1977) and L’ARGENT (1983). It’s a grim work, to be sure, yet Skolimowski’s immersive camerawork alleviates the proceedings, reminding us (as Bresson did) how miraculous the cinematic form can be. Screening as part of Doc’s Saturday series, “Dóc: New Releases.” (2022, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING
⚫ Asian Pop-Up Cinema
The extensive Asian Pop-Up Cinema series continues its sixteenth season. Their in-person and virtual offerings are too many to list; visit here for more information.
⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Jane Schoenbrun’s 2018 film A SELF-INDUCED HALLUCINATION (72 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday, 7pm, followed by a live virtual Q&A with Schoenbrun.
Margaret Brown’s 2022 documentary DESCENDANT (109 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 5pm, followed by a talkback with Brown, co-producer Kern Jackson and professor Kate Masur. More information on all screenings here.
⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation now playing at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, known as we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video, which has a runtime of approximately 48 min, will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station. The video will run day and night through mid-March next year. More info here.
⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
The Chicago Filmmakers meet-up event for Chicago film students takes place on Saturday at 5:30pm. More info here.
⚫ Doc Films
Alfonso Cuarón’s 2018 film ROMA (135 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday, 4pm, as part of the Three Amigos series.
Spike Jonze’s 1999 film BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (113 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday, 7pm, as part of the Decisive Moment: Photographers Turned Filmmakers series.
Delphine Seyrig’s 1981 French film SOIS BELLE ET TAIS-TOI! (110 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Delphine Seyrig, More Than a Muse series.
Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 film PACIFIC RIM (131 min, 3D DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7:30pm, as part of the Three Amigos, Doc’s Thursday I series. Note that the screening will take place at the Logan Center Room 201. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ FACETS Cinema
John Waters’ 1994 comedy SERIAL MOM (93 min, Digital Projection) screens on Thursday at 9pm, following FACETS Film Trivia at 7pm, critic, programmer and Cine-File contributor Raphael Jose Martinez and local programmer Mike Vanderbilt. More info here.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Helena Wittmann’s 2022 film HUMAN FLOWERS OF FLESH (106 min, DCP Digital) opens this week. Wittmann will be in attendance for the Saturday, 7pm, for a post-screening Q&A. See Venue website for all showtimes.
Also opening is Aviva Kempner and Ben West’s 2022 documentary IMAGINING THE INDIAN: THE FIGHT AGAINST NATIVE AMERICAN MASCOTING (95 min, DCP Digital). Kempner and West will be in attendance for the Friday, 7pm, for a post-screening Q&A. See Venue website for all showtimes.
Samuel-Ali Mirpoorian’s 2022 documentary GREENER PASTURES (82 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday, 7:30pm, as part of the Midwest Film Festival. Note that the night kicks off at 6:30pm with a networking reception, followed by the screening and Q&A, then capped with an afterparty at Emerald Loop Bar & Grill.
Gisela Rosario Ramos’ 2021 film PERFUME DE GARDENIAS (97 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 6pm, as part of SAIC professor Daniel R. Quiles’ Gore Capitalism lecture series. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Ari Aster’s 2023 film BEAU IS AFRAID (179 min, DCP Digital) opens this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
The 2023 Sound of Silent Film Festival takes place on Wednesday at 7:30pm. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Sinema Obscura
Sinema Obscura returns to the lounge at the Logan Theatre. The event will showcase independent film, art, and music. More info here.
⚫ South Side Home Movie Project
South Side Community Archiving Now takes place on Saturday at the Green Line Performing Arts Center (329 East Garfield Boulevard). It starts with a buffet brunch with DJ Rae Chardonnay at 11am, then a round table discussion with representatives from various archiving organizations at noon, moderated by Adrienne Brown. More info here.
⚫ Sweet Void Cinema
Find information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here.
⚫ X-Rated Chicago
The monthly film and lecture series X-Rated Chicago returns on Friday at 8pm. Screening are the films CHORUS CALL (1978) and THE JADE PUSSYCAT (1977), which screened at the Admiral on April 21, 1978. DM for information on Instagram here.
CINE-LIST: April 21 - April 27, 2023
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Jeremy M. Davies, Ray Ebarb, Marilyn Ferdinand, Tristan Johnson, Josh B Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Dmitry Samarov, K.A. Westphal