Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. After visiting with an old friend called sleep I am finally in my right mind to wrap out my Fantastic Fest coverage. I missed the first few days of the fest due to some junket travel, but I did my best to make up for it and knocked out a bunch of my must-sees. I've already reviewed Green Room and Bone Tomahawk and eyeballing my catch up list the two titles that stood out to me as “next-up” material were Too Late and Victoria.
Both use popular filmmaking technique “the oner” to tell their story and both stories happen to be centered around criminal activity.
Let's start with Too Late.
I thought I was going to miss this one because it screened while I was wrapping up my travel. Thankfully it was really popular amongst the Fantastic Fest crowd so it got an encore screening and yours truly got to sit down and watch it unfold in glorious 35mm.
Director Dennis Hauck is dead set on his film never screening in anything but 35mm, which could mean that it doesn't ever really get out there. In this day and age most cinemas have booted their 35mm projectors and replaced them with digital, so that limits his market which also, I assume, limits their ability to be picked up by a distributor.
Knowing all this beforehand I made it a priority to see this one because who knows if I'd get the chance to catch it later if Hauck sticks to his guns. Plus it's John Hawkes as a hard-boiled gumshoe, so naturally I was in no matter what.
Hauck shot on 35mm and decided to do one take per reel (which means the film was done in roughly 5 single 18-20 minute takes) and I would bet that's why he is so passionate to only exhibit in this format. With the reel changes, even when done correctly, there's a noticeable transition and he shot for those transitions to be underlined by them being some of the only cuts in the film.
Because let's be honest here... digital projection has caught up with traditional film projection. And I say this as a film collector who still thinks films shot (well) on 35mm look better than most digital. There's nothing like seeing a 35mm print projected bright and loud, but even someone like me who owns close to 30 features, thousands of trailers and has a deep nostalgia for the soundtrack pops and emulsion scratches and dirt and cigarette burns thinks this dude is crazy if he's really going to hold out for a 35mm only distribution deal.
While I enjoyed a great deal of Too Late I ultimately felt it was more an exercise than a good movie. There's some clever use of split screen in the opening reel that I wish we had seen more of, but the gimmick of a film comprised primarily of long single takes comes at the sacrifice of pacing and performance. Especially at the beginning.
The first reel is rough. It opens with Rider Strong as a drug dealer walking through the hills of LA spouting off faux Tarantino dialogue about movies and I thought I was in hell. By the time John Hawkes becomes the focus things level out a bit and I was along for the ride, but the beginning sets up a scared girl (Crystal Reed) reaching out to a PI she met once a while back and kicks off the non-linear story we follow for the rest of the movie.
Between the out of order storytelling, hip self-aware noir-ish dialogue and cast (which includes Robert Forster, Jeff Fahey and Sydney Poitier) this movie is really, really, really trying to be a Tarantino movie. Remember the wave of Pulp Fiction rip-offs that came out in the mid-'90s? This feels like it'd be at home there.
But I can't entirely write off the movie because John Hawkes is so much fun to watch, especially in a role like this, and when the one-take gimmick works it's mesmerizing. There's a sequence where Hawkes meets Reed for the first time and they have a sweet night out. It's simple, but focused 100% on character. It's not about tension or surprise or misdirection... and because it's so straight forward I felt it was the most impressive of the sections.
I should also point out Dichen Lachman, who plays possibly the most complex character in the film: a rapid dialogue shooting femme fatale who has a love/hate relationship with Hawkes' Sampson. She's always fantastic in the movie and I think she could be a huge star with the right role. She's definitely someone I hope to see in more movies going forward.
There are twists and turns and revelations, surprise violence, a ridiculous amount of nudity and some great performances, but I can't help but feel that if Hauck set out to tell this story with these same (great) actors and do it like a real movie and not an experiment that he could have made a substantially better film.
If you get a chance to see the movie, stick with it past the awful and stilted opening. If you do you'll be rewarded with some great John Hawkes work and fun gritty LA noir.
Now let's talk a little about Victoria.
Sometimes when you're at a film festival you end up seeing movies you know very little about purely because that's how the schedule works out. I had a movie in the slot before Victoria and one in the slot afterwards and kind of just picked Victoria at random because it meant I wouldn't have any downtime that day. And it turned out to be one of my favorites of the fest.
The reason I paired these two movies for review is that both use long takes as a storytelling method. While Too Late breaks it up by reel, Victoria is one lone sustained take from beginning to end. I'm sure there are hidden cuts here and there, but I didn't notice them so if they are indeed there they've been concealed pretty well.
Victoria is set in Berlin, but is mostly done in English, which is the common language between the title character, a Spanish girl played by Laia Costa and her new friends, a loveable group of drunk German dudes. They meet outside a nightclub one evening and have a bit of an adventure together.
You can describe this film as Before Sunrise with 100% more armed robbery. It's kind of a sweet love story, but it's more in the vein of Bonnie & Clyde than I was expecting. I mean, it was a Fantastic Fest movie so when this group of drunken Berliners started flirting with this tiny, almost Amelie-level adorable Spanish girl I was nervous for her. It's not uncommon for rape to rear its head in Fantastic Fest films and so I was suspicious of them from the start.
Turns out I had reason to, but not because they were rapey folks. No, they are good dudes and one in particular has a legit crush on the lead, but they are wrapped up in some criminal activity that is slowly revealed as the night wears on.
The performances are all natural and relaxed and fun so when the shit hits the fan and the tension is turned up you care about everybody in the group.
There's a good 5-10 minutes you could lose and not miss, but overall the trade-off you get by having one uninterrupted take is worth the little bit of dead space. It really makes you feel like you're a silent partner in this group, hanging out as things are fun, happy, sad and ultimately dangerous.
Costa and Frederick Lau are both fantastic in the lead roles. Costa in particular plays a huge range in the film. She's quick on her feet and we get to see that applied in a variety of different ways... some involving her budding love story with Lau and some involving guns, cash and pursuing police.
Victoria is the goods, folks. Really, really enjoyed this one. Hopefully you guys can catch it at some point.
Still more to come, including my thoughts on Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa, the absolutely bonkers High-Rise starring Tom Hiddleston and even more bizarro flicks!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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