Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Every film festival has a different vibe. The best of them reflect the attitudes and tastes of their community, whether it's the higher art of stuff like Sundance or the keep it weird vibe of Fantastic Fest. But no matter which festival you go to, be it Cannes, TIFF, Telluride or any fest in between there's always one question you're guaranteed to hear multiple times a day. “What are your favorites so far?”
That question is asked more and more as the festival goes on. Time is precious at fests and people count on word of mouth to pick their movies.
Now that I've gotten some sleep and had time to think back on the fest I have picked my favorites of the fest. These three movies I'm reviewing below are the ones that gobsmacked me and have stuck in my brain the most out of the 20-something films I saw in the last week.
I've already reviewed other favorites, like It Follows, John Wick and The Babadook (out of Sundance), but these three happen to be my favorites of all the insanity that is Fantastic Fest.
How amazing is that poster? If I had seen that poster beforehand I would have made Shrew's Nest one of my top must sees of the fest, but as it happened the only image I saw of the movie was something like this:
That could have been from any kind of movie, although knowing the gleefully macabre sense of humor of the Fantastic Fest programmers I should have known better. Plus I'm a dummy for missing that Alex de la Iglesia produced the movie, which should have been all I would have need to know to schedule this one.
At its core the movie is about insanity breaking up a family. Set in 1950 Spain, the story focuses on Montse and her younger sister as a big change is on the horizon. Montse is agoraphobic and can't leave their apartment. She runs a seamstress shop from her home with the help of her little sister (only ever referred to within the story as “The Girl”). Montse pretty much relies on her sister for everything, so the prospect of her turning 18 and starting her own life is pretty much the scariest damned thing she could think of outside of stepping foot outside her front door.
This added stress fully cracks Montse's already a damaged psyche and she drifts further and further from reality. Her poor, innocent little sister struggles with her conflicting feelings of both love for and terror of her sister.
It's a low budget film set almost entirely in one location that doesn't feel constricted. I don't know how directors Juanfer Andres and Esteban Roel managed that, but they did. It's intentionally claustrophobic, but never suffocating. If I were to guess, I'd say part of their secret formula was casting the film perfectly. Macarena Gomez is a revelation as Montse. I'm not very familiar with her career, but at the Q&A Roel said she's famous for being a comedic actress. Jaw meet floor.
Montse is fascinating because she's not just Kathy Bates in Misery crazy, but a tortured soul losing her fight with a well earned creeping mental break. Gomez plays her so sympathetically that when she does go nuts it's even more terrifying than if she had just started out crazy.
I thought I knew where the movie was going until their handsome upstairs neighbor falls down the stairs and Montse decides to pull him into the apartment. He is the tipping point, either leading to her salvation or doom. Since you've seen the above poster I'm sure you've guessed which path she ended up going down.
Shrew's Nest was a wonderful surprise, one of the highlights of a film festival packed to the gills with great genre offerings. I can't recommend seeking this one out enough.
Force Majeure was one of the buzzy movies out of TIFF. I heard generally good things, but the only specific knowledge I had going in was a bit of description I heard from my pal Drew McWeeny. He called it the best episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm that never got made and boy howdy is that an apt description.
Basically you have a movie focused on a bored family going through the motions of life. A husband, a wife and their two young kids are on a ski trip and just trying to be pleasant to each other. There's no spark and any excitement you would imagine could be generated by a fancy, expensive trip to a beautiful snowy mountaintop is muted at best.
And then the avalanche happens.
While eating at an open air restaurant the family witnesses one of the controlled avalanches. Except this avalanche doesn't seem to stop as it comes closer and closer to the resort. As people start panicking snap decisions are made. Mom instinctively throws herself over her kids and dad takes his iPhone and runs.
The avalanche stops short of the resort and everybody nervously laughs off the close call, including dad when he returns to the table.
What's amazing about this set up is that writer/director Ruben Ostlund doesn't address the cowardice right away. Mom is clearly upset, but doesn't talk about it and Dad is more than happy to forget about the incident. Even though they don't speak about it that moment hangs over the rest of the movie. They go from just running through the motions of a content family to having that unspoken moment fester and grow and feed all the dark thoughts they've been having.
When it finally does come up it's in front of a pair of friends who visit for dinner and it doesn't just come up, it explodes out. This is where the Curb Your Enthusiasm comparison comes into play. The moment goes from darkly funny to awkward and uncomfortable and then back to hilarious because of how uncomfortable it is.
The movie goes from good to near brilliant when the situation not only has an impact on our main family, but also on the visiting couple. Their hypothetical discussion on what they would do in a similar situation starts fracturing their relationship as well. It's almost a virus story in that way. Our main family infects a perfectly happy couple with their own insecurities.
Force Majeure varies between laugh out loud funny to emotionally raw drama to what the fuck out of left field humor and does so in such a way that you're never quite sure where you're going to get hit from next. I saw this one early in the fest and it has stuck with me even after seeing some crazy shit.
Definitely seek this one out if you want to see people squirm and have really uncomfortable conversations with your own significant others afterwards.
The Tribe was the best directed movie of Fantastic Fest, hands down. No contest. Director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky had no choice but to visually tell this story since it is set almost wholly within a deaf boarding school. No main character speaks in the movie. Everybody communicates via sign language. If you told me in advance of the festival that one of my favorites would have been a 2 ½ hour long dialogue-free foreign film about deaf teenagers I woulda called you crazy-pants, but damn it if The Tribe didn't knock me on my butt.
Slaboshpitsky pulls off some some amazing shots in this thing. There are multiple long takes, including the final shot of the movie, that are so precise and perfect that I couldn't help but stare in awe at the sheer craft of the visual storytelling in this movie. The big K-word jumped to mind multiple times as I was watching this film. Kubrickian describes this movie very well. It's a little cold, but it's brutal in its honesty and exquisite in its craftmanship.
The main character is a teen who arrives at a deaf boarding school, which is less a school and more an introduction into a sleazy life of crime. We only get one scene in a classroom teaching geography and the rest of the movie is about the different gangs of deaf mute kids. Some steal, some pimp out whores, some smuggle stuff into the country. There's a hierarchy at work and our lead becomes entangled in it.
In the middle of all this awful stuff is a love story that develops between the lead guy and one of the girls he pimps out to truckers. They're the naked people you see in the picture above. He's falling in love and she's just playing around. Naturally, no good can come of this union and when it starts to spiral out of control things get really fucked up.
It's hard to explain how this movie could be so engaging without any dialogue, but I got more stressed out watching two deaf people arguing with furious sign language and rapid arm pats to get the other person's attention than I would if they were screaming at each other.
There's also a strange people-watching element at play, especially at the beginning. Since there are no subtitles our cues as an audience are all in the body language of the those interacting and the framing of the scene.
You'd think that a movie without dialogue would be kind of a silent film, but it isn't at all. The ambient noise is a character in and of itself and the sharp inhales and exhales of the people signing to each other shows us the intent of their expression just as much as a spoken word could.
The Tribe is a wholly different movie-going experience that doesn't come off as arty-farty bullshit. I hate calling it important, but it kind of is. I'm fascinated by this new artist in the world and can't wait to see what Miroslav Slaboshpitsky does next. Will he go English language and try to work within the studio system or will he keep on making different, weird Ukrainian films? I guess we'll see in the coming years.
The Tribe, Shrew's Nest and Force Majeure were among my favorites of the fest. Got a few more words to put down on some of the other solid titles I saw this year, so keep an eye out for that in the coming days!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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