We will list/highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that have reopened, and list streaming/online screenings below.
Check the venues’ websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place.
📽️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS
Music Box Theatre
Heidi Ewing’s I CARRY YOU WITH ME (US/Mexico)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Representing the fiction feature debut of documentarian Heidi Ewing (JESUS CAMP, DETROPIA), I CARRY YOU WITH ME functions as a poignant example of two identity-themed narrative modes: the immigrant drama and the LGBTQ romance. It’s also a bittersweet memory piece, in which formative experiences of home, family, and childhood trauma percolate to the surface in the present, revealing psychic residues that never completely fade. In present-day New York City, middle-aged Iván is flooded by such recollections, sending us back in time and place to Puebla, Mexico, in 1994. There, a young-adult Iván (Armando Espitia) works as a lowly dishwasher, a position he’s overqualified for as a graduate of a culinary school. Things aren’t much rosier in his personal life, as he struggles to spend time with his young son from a previous failed marriage. A spark of hope comes to the forlorn bachelor in the form of Gerardo (Christian Vázquez), who eyes Iván from across the dance floor of a gay nightclub, tracing him with a laser pointer that will come to symbolize more than just the arrow of Cupid. The closeted Iván is enlivened by the out Gerardo; neither, however, is accepted by their families, whose culturally masculinist, homophobic attitudes are sketched in flashbacks to both men’s childhoods. When Iván decides to cross the border to realize his dream as a chef in the United States, it marks the beginning of a long and arduous journey of displacement, exile, and yearning between the fated lovers. With its nonlinear structure, I CARRY YOU WITH ME has obvious poetic aims, and often reaches them in sequences of airy, Malickian sensuousness. At other times, it can feel weighed down by prosaic exposition, while the perpetually dusky color palette doesn’t always befit its fluctuating affective landscape. Perhaps this is Ewing still finding her footing in narrative filmmaking. Where the film excels is in its attunement to the multiple overlapping targets that follow queer people and immigrants, and in its dramatization of the geographic and mental indeterminacy that often attends sociopolitical marginalization. The film’s real-world resonance becomes apparent in a third-act recontextualization I won’t spoil here. Suffice it to say, I CARRY YOU WITH ME ends like a celebration, not an elegy. (2020, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
François Ozon’s SUMMER OF 85 (France)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
The summer fling is a staple of coming-of-age narratives, showing up in everything from SUMMER OF ’42 to CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and the works of Éric Rohmer. With SUMMER OF 85, François Ozon adds his own take to the mix; while it doesn’t reinvent the proverbial wheel, it more than stands apart thanks to the director’s sizzling eroticism, macabre wit, and emphatically queer sensibility, all on ravishing display in a Highsmith-esque suspense tale that should please fans of Ozon’s earlier, hotly hormonal thrillers. Sidestepping expectations from the start, SUMMER OF 85 opens with a grim prologue before sending us out to a more familiar scene of pop-scored, sunny coastal France (The Cure, naturally, provides Ozon’s music cue of choice). What we are about to see, 16-year-old Alex (Félix Lefebvre) warns us while in police custody, is the story of a corpse. Relating his indelible summer from the present day, the boy goes on to detail his intense romance with the 18-and-one-month-old David (Benjamin Voisin), who rescued him after his boat capsized one fateful day. David, whom we’re told will end up as the corpse, is a shimmering, quixotic Adonis, mischievous and mysterious, prone to reckless motorcycling and brazen games of seduction. Obviously, this can’t end well. But Ozon, viscerally capturing the heady rush of first love and the reality disavowing, ego-dissolving spell of infatuation, has us as bewitched as Alex. It helps that SUMMER OF 85 is itself a delectably crafted play of sensuous surfaces, from the lapis lazuli waters sparkling through Hichame Alaouié’s 16mm lensing, to the jean jackets, poofy hair, and poster-limned bedroom walls of its beachside mid-80s milieu. In a centerpiece sequence, Ozon sets a montage of Alex and David’s cresting passions to Rod Stewart’s elating “Sailing,” and for more than a moment, we can feel ourselves floating. It’s a picture of idealized, frictionless, naive love, the kind that can exist before reality has to make its harsh intrusion. In the movies, thankfully, it can last a little longer. (2020, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Also showing at the Music Box Theatre is Jaco Bouwer’s 2021 South African film GAIA (96 min, DCP Digital) and Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s 2021 documentary TRUMAN & TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION (81 min, DCP Digital). Check Venue website for showtimes.
Comfort Film
Chicago Film Society presents: Project Yourself! Greatest Hits
Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave. – Outdoor Screening) – Wednesday, 8pm [Free Admission]
Comfort Film and the Chicago Film Society present Project Yourself! Greatest Hits (various filmmakers, approx. 120 min, 16mm). “Throughout the pandemic,” says the Comfort Film website, “the Chicago Film Society has been lending 16mm projectors and a random assortment of uncatalogued film in an effort to work through several shelves of donated material. This program presents some of the greatest and most unusual discoveries from this experiment including television outtakes, commercials and trailer reels, educational films, cartoons, and some things which are unclassifiable. Come early to make your own 16mm animation loop.”
Rooftop Cinema @ Analog
Ena Sendijarevic’s TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE (Bosnia-Herzegovinia/Netherlands)
Analog Rooftop Cinema at Borelli's Pizzeria (2124 W. Lawrence Ave.) – Saturday, 9pm
The life of Alma (Sara Luna Zoric), the protagonist of TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE, reflects that of the film’s director, both Bosnian immigrants to the Netherlands. While her film lifts inspiration from ‘70s and ‘80s road movies, especially STRANGER THAN PARADISE, Bosnia is not an ordinary European country, and the road trip her characters pursue reflects its tragedies. Alma returns to Bosnia to see her sick father in the hospital. She meets up with her cousin Emir (Ernad Prjnavorac), who smuggles black market goods into Bosnia, and his friend Denis (Lazar Dragojevic), to whom she’s attracted, for the trip. The opening scenes bring out her isolation and boredom. Sitting at home watching an astronaut tap dance on the moon, she’s moved to get up and dance herself. But the return to Bosnia brings out an attraction to the rather macho, even sexist and homophobic, Emir and Denis. TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE is steeped in a dry wit more concerned with quirk, absurdism and irony than jokes. Sendijarevic’s a confident stylist. The early scenes set in the Netherlands are decorated with pastel colors. Shot in Academy ratio, TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE consistently makes unusual framing choices. A sex scene is shown through the heads and necks of a gyrating couple, with their mirrored reflection looming almost as large. The camera turns upside down during a trip to the dance floor. The film doesn’t quite break Alma’s haze of detachment and ennui or find a new voice apart from its own influences, but it hints at her slowly finding her own way. (2019, 91 min) [Steve Erickson]
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Tickets cost $20 cash, which includes a drink. TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE is also available to rent virtually through Facets Cinémathèque here and the Music Box Theatre here.
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Also screening at Analog: Paul Negoescu’s 2016 Romanian comedy TWO LOTTERY TICKETS, on Friday at 9pm.
The Logan Theatre, Landmark's Century Centre Cinema and Various Multiplexes
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s SUMMER OF SOUL (US/Documentary)
See Venue websites for showtimes
Attended by 300,000 people, the Harlem Cultural Festival was a free concert series held in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) in the summer of 1969. Performers at the event included Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, Sly and the Family Stone, and Nina Simone. A celebration of Black music and history, the concert series and its cultural magnitude has been largely undiscussed, overshadowed by music festivals like Woodstock—which was held that same summer, one hundred miles away. The series was fully filmed, but footage remained unseen for years. Using that footage, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, in the musician’s debut feature film, directs SUMMER OF SOUL—subtitled …Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised—as part documentary and part concert film. Full performances are combined with interviews of attendees and musicians and archival material detailing the political and social climate in America at the time. Describing the specificity of Harlem as a community and the significance of the event to those participating, SUMMER OF SOUL grounds the vibrant and beautifully shot concert footage in robust context. It lets the variety of acts and musical genres and styles primarily be articulated in the outstanding stage performances and the reactions from the audience in the park. An early and incredibly effective moment in the documentary shows singer Marilyn McCoo of the 5th Dimension becoming emotional as she watches herself performing on the Harlem Cultural Festival stage; she so well expresses the significance of Black musicians playing music for a Black audience, a theme that runs throughout. SUMMER OF SOUL is an important reframing of the history of American 60s counterculture, a jubilant celebration, and a great reminder that music is not always just a reflection of challenging times but can also itself be revolutionary. (2021, 117 min, Digital Projection) [Megan Fariello]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Seth McClellan’s OTHERS BEFORE SELF: VOICES FROM THE TIBETAN CHILDREN’S VILLAGE (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Due to the outreach efforts and charisma of His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet, the world has learned of and largely sympathized with the plight of the Tibetan people, whose land was seized some 60 years ago by the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese outlawed the country’s language, culture, and religion, and continue to oppress, torture, and kill Tibetans. To keep Tibetan traditions and hope alive, the Dalai Lama established the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) in the Himalayan mountains of India. OTHERS BEFORE SELF offers a brief, but complete portrait of the TCV, where teachers act like parents for the children separated from their families in Tibet and the children learn English and take classes in Tibetan language and culture. Most importantly, the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism—compassion, love, others before self—are passed on to them in the hope that they will eschew bitterness as they grow up and move out into the world. The residents of the TCV, even some of the youngest, speak for themselves and their feelings about the Chinese government (not the people), which they see as greedy and selfish. They give voice to their hope, or lack thereof, of being able to see Tibet, most for the first time, and reclaim it for the Tibetan people. In showing a group of children working together and developing their minds and hearts, McClellan has painted an effective portrait of how we could create a more peaceful, pleasant world community. The cynic/realist in me thinks we’re doomed, but the dreamer in me was inspired by this moving, beautifully filmed documentary. (2021, 55 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Zaida Bergroth’s TOVE (Finland)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Coming-of-age stories are normally thought of as involving teenagers who learn the realities of adult life. In fact, we all come of age again and again as we pass through new phases of our lives. The unique coming-of-age tale director Zaida Bergroth tells in the biopic TOVE covers roughly 10 years in the life of Tove Jansson, a Finnish artist best known for her fanciful Moomin children’s books. Tove (Alma Pöysti) is 30 years old when the narrative begins in 1944. She is living at her parents’ home in Helsinki, trying to emerge as a serious artist from the long shadow of her censorious father, sculptor Viktor Jansson (Robert Enckell). When she fails to win a competitive grant to study abroad, she moves out on her own and begins her journey of self-discovery. The troll illustrations that eventually become the Moomins are introduced as mere doodles to help Tove unblock her more serious artistic impulses. It takes the encouragement of Vivica Bandler (Krista Kosonen), an upper-class theatre director with whom Tove falls deeply in love, to recognize their worth. Pöysti is engaging as the high-spirited Tove, infusing a fairly conventional biopic with energy and complexity. She is well supported by her fellow actors, particularly Kosonen. Linda Wassberg’s cinematography is warm and lush, befitting a story of creative and romantic passion. The costumes, art direction, and soundtrack laced with 1940s swing music evoke the exuberance of the post-WWII era and a certain go-for-broke attitude that Pöysti grows into. I particularly like a scene inside a lesbian club in Paris that is a riot of liberated women enjoying being themselves. TOVE offers a sumptuous and fully fleshed world that is a pleasure to visit. (2020, 103 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Roy Andersson’s ABOUT ENDLESSNESS (Sweden)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here and the Music Box Theatre here
Swedish writer-director Roy Andersson trades almost exclusively in tableau-like shots that suggest the offscreen space goes on forever—in this regard, all of his features beginning with SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000) could be called ABOUT ENDLESSNESS. Andersson’s style is by now immediately recognizable; as Nick Pinkerton summed it up in a November 2020 article for Sight & Sound: “It comprises a string of vignettes, almost all playing out in a single take, viewed by a locked-down camera with a static frame that holds its human subjects in the philosophical distance of a deep-focus long shot… The skies in his Stockholm are overcast or pale; the light in the city is weak and milky; and the walls are bare in the city’s seedy cafés and offices and flats. Grays and off-whites proliferate, and the palette is desaturated, as though colors have lost their will to live in this cold climate.” For those who appreciate his aesthetic or his dry, Scandinavian wit, Andersson’s approach is endlessly compelling. Each shot feels like a little world unto itself (too bad Chicagoans can’t see this on a big screen); the director strews details all around the frames, creates expansive backgrounds, and brings each scene to a pointed observation reminiscent of a fable or parable. ABOUT ENDLESSNESS (for which Andersson won the Best Director prize at the Venice Film Festival) feels especially parable-like in its focus on big philosophical questions. The movie runs just 76 minutes but has the air of an epic, since Andersson seldom strays from considerations of what it means to live, love, believe, act morally, kill, grieve, and die. Most of the scenes are narrated by an omniscient figure who flatly delivers pithy descriptions of the onscreen action (e.g., “I once saw a man who wanted to surprise his wife with a nice dinner…”), which renders them, alternately, universal and almost comically simple. Indeed, the straight-ahead, presentational style is a reliable source of deadpan humor; even the recurring character of the preacher who’s lost his faith comes across as a little funny when seen from such an exaggerated distance. Andersson’s style can be devastating too, as in the scene of a man who instantly regrets carrying out an honor killing; and it can be majestic, as in a scene occurring roughly halfway into ABOUT ENDLESSNESS that finds three young women improvising a dance in front of an outdoor cafe in late afternoon. A director prone to using miniatures to create the illusion of outsize spaces, Andersson is very good at reminding us how small—which is to say, precious—humanity is in light of eternity. (2019, 76 min) [Ben Sachs]
Jafar Panahi’s CRIMSON GOLD (Iran)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
Abbas Kiarostami receives screenplay credit on Jafar Panahi’s fourth feature, CRIMSON GOLD, and one of the many compelling things about the film is how it plays like an inversion of Kiarostami’s TASTE OF CHERRY. That film told the story of one man’s efforts to find someone to bury him after he commits suicide; the hero’s quest, which confirms his connection to other people, is ultimately life-affirming in spite of its morbid nature. CRIMSON GOLD opens with a botched robbery that ends with the hero’s suicide, then flashes back to show the days leading up to that event; it’s a despairing journey that builds upon Panahi’s depiction of modern-day Tehran as an unforgiving hellhole that he introduced in THE CIRCLE. As in TASTE OF CHERRY, the hero’s progress is marked by three encounters, though here, the hero doesn’t initiate them. Hossain is a pizza delivery man, and the people he meets on his deliveries tend to regard him from the start as a social inferior. (Compare this with the gratitude with which the strangers regard Mr. Badii when he offers them rides in his SUV.) Each encounter reminds Hossain of his powerlessness within Iranian society, though, ironically, each one hinges on a moment of camaraderie. In the first, Hossain recognizes his customer as a military buddy from the Iran-Iraq War; the old acquaintance, embarrassed to see Hossain reduced to delivering pizzas, leaves Hossain with kind words and a handsome tip. The delivery man is unable to complete his second delivery, as the apartment building he’s supposed to enter has been surrounded by a police tactical unit, which waits in ambush for people leaving a party with illegal drinking and dancing on the second floor. The officer in charge of the unit berates Hossain for trying to enter the building, but forbids him from leaving the scene, since he could find a phone somewhere and warn the partygoers about their impending arrest. Hossain has a poignant conversation with a teenage soldier before deciding to share his undelivered pizzas with policemen lying in wait. The third key encounter of CRIMSON GOLD takes place in the high-rise condo of a rich man whose apartment has just been vacated by two female guests. Feeling spurned and lonely, the rich man invites Hossain in for dinner. He’s much nicer to Hossain than the wealthy jewelry store owner who’d condescended to him in an earlier scene; still, the apparent randomness of the rich man’s kindness—which Hossain clearly recognizes—speaks to the great, and likely insurmountable, social divide between him and Hossain. Like Kiarostami’s decision to place the hero’s death at the start of the movie, the scene in the high-rise makes Hossain’s act of desperation seem inevitable. Heightening the film’s morbid air is the ghostlike lead performance by Hossain Emadeddin, an actual pizza delivery man and an actual paranoid schizophrenic. Emaddedin’s deadpan under-reaction to practically everything borders on comical, yet it also reflects the inability of isolated, working-poor individuals to impact the system that degrades them. (2003, 96 min) [Ben Sachs]
Cathy Yan’s DEAD PIGS (China)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
Writing for MUBI about the influences on her debut feature, DEAD PIGS, writer-director Cathy Yan cited two films—Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE and Paul Thomas Anderson’s MAGNOLIA—and several contemporary photographers. These influences play out clearly in DEAD PIGS, an ambitious, multi-character narrative that’s rich in striking imagery. Like NASHVILLE and MAGNOLIA, the movie is as much about its setting (in this case, rapidly evolving Shanghai and its outskirts) as it is about the characters, and both are portrayed with a mix of sympathy and cynicism. Yan’s storytelling feels more closely aligned with Anderson’s than Altman’s: DEAD PIGS is not a hazy hang-out movie where the characters cross paths by chance (if at all), but rather a fully orchestrated affair in which people come together by destiny and grand fictional devices. Yan’s narrative machinations don’t become obvious for a while; for its first 20 or 30 minutes, DEAD PIGS hums along on the energy of the gliding camerawork and hyped-up cross-cutting, both of which convey a sense of constant activity befitting the ever-changing environment. The film largely takes place in two settings, old neighborhoods on the brink of demolition and the modern skyscrapers taking their place. Embodying the first of those settings is Candy Wang, a beauty parlor owner who refuses to leave the two-story home she was raised in, despite the fact that every other homeowner on her block has sold their property to a large-scale development firm, which has already razed all the other buildings before the movie starts. (Yan based the character on a real-life woman who helped start China’s “nailhouse” phenomenon of homeowners who refuse to leave their homes when developers attempt to demolish them.) Representing the new Shanghai is Sean, an American architect embarking on a career with the firm that wants to buy Candy’s house. A naive westerner who sees China’s wild capitalist dog race as an opportunity to make it big, Sean resembles the hero of John Maringouin’s gonzo independent production GHOSTBOX COWBOY (which premiered the same year as this), though DEAD PIGS never becomes a nightmare like Maringouin’s film does. The closest it gets is in the hideous spectacle of the title. Throughout the story, Shanghai is plagued by a disease that kills pigs by the thousands; the region’s poor pig farmers abandon the corpses in the rivers, and the image serves as a metaphor for the displaced victims of China’s avalanche-like urbanization. (2018, 122 min) [Ben Sachs]
Teona Strugar Mitevska’s GOD EXISTS, HER NAME IS PETRUNYA (North Macedonia)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
“It’s 2018, but it still feels like the Dark Ages in Macedonia,” says TV reporter Slavica (Labina Mitevska, sister of the film’s director). Slavica and her cameraman, Bojkan (Xhevdet Jashari), are in the small town of Štip to cover an unusual story—a woman named Petrunya (Zorica Nusheva) joined in a religious competition meant only for men and recovered the sought-after lucky cross tossed in the river by the town priest (Suad Begovski-Suhi). The townspeople, especially the young men who believe that Petrunya stole the cross from them, are scandalized and demand that she give it back or face dire consequences. But Petrunya broke no civil law, and the police who hold her for questioning aren’t quite sure what to do with her. The situation set up by Mitevska, who co-wrote the intelligent and perceptive screenplay with Elma Tataragic, examines the persistence of patriarchy in the modern world. Petrunya is a 32-year-old, overweight woman who lives with her supportive, but ineffectual father (Petar Mircevski) and her mother (Violeta Sapkovska), who seems to both hate Petrunya and want to keep her tied to her apron strings. A college graduate with a degree in history who has never had a job, Petrunya is humiliated when she applies for work with the manager of a garment factory (Mario Knezović). The entire set-up, with the manager sitting in a glass-walled office in the middle of a room full of women working at sewing machines, is masculine control writ large. Nusheva brings to life all of Petrunya’s frustration with her dead-end circumstances, her anger at her belittling mother, and her confusion about how to change her life—a confusion that impelled her to jump into the water to find the cross without even thinking. I had flashbacks to Jan. 6 watching the angry young men of the village mass at the police station and break through the glass door to visit their displeasure on Petrunya. They are the cross she and the other women in the film have had to bear their whole lives—one Petrunya finally realizes she doesn’t have to shoulder anymore. Inventively shot by DP Virginie Saint-Martin, the film tips into humor during the interview segments, with Slavica answering her own questions and airing her feminist viewpoint. It is during one of these interviews that we come to understand the film’s title. One of the townsmen says he doesn’t understand what the fuss is about. “What if god is a woman?” he says. What if, indeed. (2019, 100 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Jeanne Leblanc’s LES NÔTRES (Canada)
Available to rent through Facets Cinématheque here
Ripping the lid off a small town to reveal its depraved underbelly has long been a strategy for social criticism, but this had lost its sting around the time AMERICAN BEAUTY won the Best Picture Oscar. Yet Jeanne Leblanc’s film goes much deeper, generating a bleak tone that presents sexual abuse as horrible but banal. The streets of Sainte-Adeline, Quebec, are almost parodically broad, green and sunny. But the town is haunted by an industrial accident which killed 13-year-old Magalie’s (Emilie Bierre) father. After she passes out during a dance rehearsal at school, a doctor’s examination reveals that she’s in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her mother (Marianne Farley) and much of the town suspect that Magalie’s best friend Manu (Leon Diasco Pellettier) is the father. She receives harassing texts on her phone. But she has actually been groomed to believe she can consent to sex with Manu’s father Jean-Marc (Paul Doucet), the town’s mayor. Leblanc’s direction keeps its distance from the actors, framing them in medium shot. LES NÔTRES runs on barely suppressed tension, giving the audience more information than the characters. For a narrative which could have set out to shock or turn into melodrama, it’s actually fairly hushed. (On the soundtrack, crickets constantly chirp, melting into Marie-Heléne L. Delorme’s dark score.) Some images would fit perfectly in IT FOLLOWS, and LES NÔTRES suggests a horror film about a girl’s coming of age with all the metaphor and allegory stripped away. Bierre brings the character to life while preserving her inner mystery. The final shot, in which Magalie stares blankly at the camera, suggests the difficult life ahead of her while retaining the film’s reticence to speak too loudly. (2020, 103 min) [Steve Erickson]
Hong Sang-soo’s THE POWER OF KANGWON PROVINCE (South Korea)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Hong Sang-soo’s second feature is in some ways his first. It’s the first he scripted himself, and it introduces themes and motifs he would continue to explore in numerous subsequent movies. Like VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS (2000), TALE OF CINEMA (2005), and RIGHT NOW WRONG THEN (2015), the narrative is divided into two parts, which allows the South Korean writer-director to revel in doublings and opposites—two of those key Hongian motifs. One set of opposites is city and country; the story is split between Seoul and a vacation area in the titular Kangwon Province, a mountainous region in South Korea’s northeast. Hong loves to consider characters when they’re on vacation or else away from home—see WOMAN ON THE BEACH (2006), NIGHT AND DAY (2008), IN ANOTHER COUNTRY (2012), and HOTEL BY THE RIVER (2018). It’s likely because a change of scenery inspires people to shed their inhibitions and say or do things they might not in their ordinary lives. (It’s also likely that Hong’s thematically obsessed with drunkenness for the same reason.) The first half of THE POWER OF KANGWON PROVINCE follows a 22-year-old college student named Ji-sook (Oh Yun-hong), who indulges in reckless behavior while on vacation at the mountain resort, entering into a fling with an older, married police officer (Kim Yoo-sook). The affair escalates even after Ji-sook returns to college in Seoul (the power of Kangwon Province having followed her back); but when she goes back to see him weeks later, their chemistry vanishes, and she ends the relationship. In the second half of the film, Hong picks up with unemployed college professor Sang-kwon (Baek Jong-hak), who vacations with a male friend at the same Kangwon Province resort from earlier. As Hong spins variations on scenes from the film’s first half, it gradually becomes apparent that Sang-kwon—another older, married man—has been having an affair with Ji-sook as well. And so, the film becomes, in part, a study of inadvisable (and predictably disastrous) romantic relationships, yet another theme that would recur regularly in the director’s films. Where Hong’s work after TALE OF CINEMA became sunnier, at least on the surface, POWER OF KANGWON PROVINCE is still bleak and discomforting in the manner of his early period. The graphic sex scenes are deliberately unpleasant, and the camera is often at an alienating position vis-à-vis the action, like from far away or at a skewed angle. Such modernist tactics feel in keeping with the 1990s work of other major arthouse figures like Amos Gitai, Edward Yang, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, or Tsai Ming-liang. (On the other hand, the lovesick policeman seems to have stepped out of a Wong Kar-wai movie.) Yet Hong’s distinctive wry humor, which was evident from his directorial debut, THE DAY A PIG FELL INTO THE WELL (1996), makes the film look less like a product of its era than of the director’s timeless imagination. KANGWON PROVINCE features early iterations of at least two of Hong’s favorite character types: one, the charismatic yet amoral and self-destructive middle-aged man; and two, the beautiful, yet neurotic young woman unsure of what to do with her power over men. These characters may thrive in contemporary South Korean settings, but, as always with this gifted portraitist, anyone who’s spent time in the worlds of higher learning or the arts will see someone they’ve known in the onscreen behavior. (1998, 110 min) [Ben Sachs]
Suzanne Lindon’s SPRING BLOSSOM (France)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
Suzanne Lindon was just 20 years old when SPRING BLOSSOM (which she wrote, directed, and starred in) received its virtual premiere at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, making her one of the youngest filmmakers—if not the youngest—to have a film in competition there. It is very much a young person’s movie, for better and for worse. On the one hand, Lindon conveys youthful feelings of vulnerability, restlessness, and self-involvement with striking accuracy; on the other, the film sometimes comes off as simple and naive, and Lindon’s tendency to place herself at the front and center of the scene makes the film’s self-regarding perspective indistinguishable from the one it depicts. SPRING BLOSSOM doesn’t approach the level of narcissism that Vincent Gallo reached with THE BROWN BUNNY, but it seems to come from a similar place, as Lindon demands viewers watch herself as she watches herself. Underscoring the personal nature of the project, Lindon plays a character named Suzanne. A seemingly well-adjusted 16-year-old Paris high school student, Suzanne is tired of her routine: she’s introduced surrounded by friends, their conversation muffled into background noise, as she finds herself unable to engage with them with much interest. One afternoon, Suzanne notices an actor outside a theater where the play he’s in is being performed. She becomes smitten with the older man (whom, we later learn, is 35), and gradually works her way into an acquaintance with him, setting up “accidental” meetings until he decides to invite her to a cafe on his own. Viewers dreading the story of an illicit sexual relationship will be pleasantly surprised to find that Lindon keeps the budding romance chaste, focusing on Suzanne’s growing confidence rather than her sexual awakening. Raphael, the actor, may come off as something of a cipher (the film never establishes convincingly why he’d welcome the romantic attention of a high school student), but Arnaud Valois at least succeeds in making him not seem like a creep. Lindon parts with realism in a few unexpected sequences where the characters break out in choreographed movements (it would be an overstatement to call it dancing), putting their ineffable feelings into moving images. The technique, like most of SPRING BLOSSOM, walks such a thin line between charm and preciousness that it will probably take another few films before Lindon falls decisively on one side or the other. That’s just fine—she certainly has time. (2020, 74 min) [Ben Sachs]
Melvin Van Peebles’ THE STORY OF A THREE-DAY PASS (France)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
THE STORY OF A THREE-DAY PASS, the first feature by influential independent Melvin Van Peebles, inspires comparisons with Jean-Luc Godard’s BREATHLESS with its intercontinental romance and jazzy montage, but a more fitting point-of-reference may be the films of William Klein, another American expatriate working in France when this was made. Like Klein, Van Peebles shifts frequently between naturalism and cartoonish exaggeration, and he exhibits a chic visual sensibility throughout. (The black-and-white cinematography is by Michel Kelber, whose long filmography includes Jean Renoir’s FRENCH CANCAN and Nicholas Ray’s BITTER VICTORY.) The three-day pass in question belongs to Turner, a Black American soldier who’s stationed in France. The white superior officer who grants the leave makes clear that he’s doing so to reward Turner for his obsequious behavior; in fact, he promises Turner a promotion when he gets back. The protagonist has mixed feelings about all this, and Van Peebles dramatizes the character’s ambivalence through scenes where he talks to another version of himself in the bathroom mirror, the mirror-image raising doubts and even calling his double an Uncle Tom. Turner manages to put his concerns aside when he leaves his base for Paris, enjoying himself first as a tourist and then as a paramour, entering into a romance with a white Frenchwoman named Miriam. Van Peebles presents their relationship in a freewheeling, Nouvelle Vague-like style, though the aesthetic doesn’t distract from the obstacles they face in finding happiness. Everywhere the couple goes, they’re met with dirty looks, insidious questions, and even physical confrontations; things reach their worst when Turner runs into some suspicious fellow (white) soldiers when he and Miriam are on the beach. The impediments to interracial romance are portrayed, alternately, as scary and comic. In one of the more inspired visuals, Van Peebles cuts from the couple’s first time in bed to a shot of Miriam being surrounded by a group of Africans in traditional tribal garb. This sort of bold imagery points ahead to Van Peebles’ incendiary classic SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG (1971), the film with which the writer-director would cement his reputation. (1967, 88 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Mohammad Rasoulof’s THERE IS NO EVIL (Iran/Germany/Czech Republic)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
Mohammad Rasoulof wrote and directed this suspenseful, wise anthology about Iran’s death penalty and its impact on concepts of sacrifice, duty, and denial. The lengthy film contains four diverse stories: a portrait of a family man’s domestic life builds to an ending I mustn’t spoil; a young conscript, under duress, faces his state-mandated turn at executing a prisoner; an engaged couple is reunited in time for the woman’s birthday, but the fiancé, on leave from the army, stumbles upon a terrible realization about something he’s done; a dying man welcomes his niece, a student in Germany, for a visit, but harbors a secret he shudders to tell. From tale to tale, Rasoulof dramatizes decisive moments and the life trajectories resulting therefrom. See this for its nuanced look at saying No to injustice, which suggests the tragedies, but also the compensating rewards, of such a choice. For his efforts, Rasoulof has been sentenced by the authorities to one year in prison for “propaganda against the system.” (2020, 150 min) [Scott Pfeiffer]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
Chicago International Film Festival Summer Screenings
Summer Screenings is a free weekly film series that celebrates sports and games from around the world. This week’s selection is Jason Branagan’s 2020 Irish film BREAKING ICE (70 min). More info here.
Facets Cinémathèque
Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo’s 2020 screwball thriller SLOW MACHINE (2020) and Grégory Montel’s 2019 French comedy PERFUMES are available to rent through July 8. More info here.
Gene Siskel Film Center
The D’Innocenzo Brothers’ 2020 Italian film BAD TALES (98 min), Chicago-based filmmaker Jack C. Newell’s 2021 film MONUMENTS (94 min), and the shorts program Who Will Start Another Fire (130 min), with films by directors from various backgrounds, are all available to rent through July 8.
Óskar Páll Sveinsson’s 2020 Icelandic adventure documentary AGAINST THE CURRENT (87 min) and Max Basch and Malia Scharf’s 2020 documentary KENNY SCHARF: WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (77 min), about the East Village artist, are available to rent through July 29. More info on all screenings here.
Music Box Theatre
Patrick Forbes’ 2021 true crime documentary THE PHANTOM (82 min) and Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s 2021 documentary TRUMAN & TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION (81 min) are both available to rent beginning this week. Check the Music Box website for hold-over titles and the Music Box Garden Series line-up.
Video Data Bank
VDB presents the online series Protest (1970-2020), with work by Adrian Garcia Gomez, Linda Montano, Tony Cokes, Videofreex, and Sabine Gruffat, here.
CINE-LIST: July 2 - July 8, 2021
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Steve Erickson, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Scott Pfeiffer