Vancouver International Film Festival 2014 wrapped up a wonderful 10 days of cinematic innovation this Friday. The festival brought out the dormant cinephile in every Vancouverite. The range of films this year was definitely not your everyday fare. Choosing a film to go to was the hardest decision of all. There were so many choices and so many venues. Here is a taste of some of the most eclectic movies I saw this year.
We Both Go Down Together
A Canadian venture! And all shorts nonetheless. Could it get more creative and offbeat than this? The feature did not disappoint. Each short was poignant and touched on a specific nuanced human emotion. Hole got the most applause. It tells the story of a disabled man’s quest for sexual satisfaction. Withering Heights is a visually rich tale about a woman who begins to physically shrink into nothingness. French Canada finds representation in the hilarious and modern recanting of the various stages following a breakup in Love is a Bitch. Hard Card takes the most risk by telling the story of an aggressive geriatric, in bleak rural Canada, who plots to rig a Bingo game by blackmailing the senior centre’s Bingo host. All the shorts come together quite well even though they tackle a variety of subjects, settings and moods. As a representation of the future of Canadian cinema, We Both Go Down Together is a promising snapshot. I did however find the lack of diversity a little troubling even when the names in the credits appeared multicultural. Multiculturalism is Canada’s trump card and one hopes it will get used more by these filmmakers in their future projects.
Clouds of Sils Maria
A movie starring Juliette Binoche has to be the number one item on anyone’s film festival to-do list. Binoche plays a middle-aged actress, Maria, making a comeback to the theatre in a play where she is set to play an older character, as opposed to the younger character she played in her youth. This is a great how things are done in Hollywood movie. You learn about agents, the role of the media and what it is that Personal Assistants actually do (help with memorizing lines apparently is one such surprising activity). The Personal Assistant to Binoche’s actress is the surprise of the decade- Kristen Stewart as Valentine. Valentine is cool, androgynous and sans all the pretense that Maria is brimming with. The chemistry between Maria and Valentine is warm like the kindling fire in their temporary home in the Alps. Maria is consumed with herself and Valentine’s job is to indulge Maria until she absolutely, just can’t. Enter into the mix Chloe Grace Moretz as the bitchy Lindsay Lohan-esque, young it actress, Jo-Ann, who challenges Maria’s ideas of popularity and pride. From the opening scene of the movie where Valentine is scheduling appointments for Maria in the shuddering corridor of a train hurtling through the Alps, director Oliver Assayas throws at us scenes that appear fresh and new. Clouds of Sils Maria is a character study of three very different women with entangled careers, at various stages of success and age. With beautiful cinematography and a screenplay that takes it’s time, like the treacle-like cloud that Maria and Valentine go seeking, Clouds of Sils Maria is both visually and emotionally rich.
Welcome To Me
It will be difficult to talk objectively about this film because I loved it very, very much. Kristen Wiig is Alice Klieg, an eccentric young woman with a Borderline-Personality Disorder who goes through her sterilized life with a fanny pack and socks under sandals. That is, until she wins 86 million dollars in the lottery. In the press conference her local news, she mentions “using masturbation as a sedative” and gets promptly cut off. That is the kind of humor you can expect from Welcome to Me. It is Kristen Wiig at her most awkward and self-unaware best. Wanting to tell her self-proclaimed unique life story, she throws money at an infomercial production company and forces them to film a talk show around her. What ensues is a chaos of narcissism that swallows her friends and family whole. As she becomes more and more self-indulgent her shows escalate in ridiculousness. Welcome To Me is a hilarious and insightful take on today’s self-promotion culture. It draws attention to how Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, selfies and blogs have got a huge chunk of the human population to believe they are worthy of celebrity status attention without having any spectacular qualities. Welcome To Me is a wonderful film.
Maps To The Stars
Julianne Moore is the self-doubting middle-aged actress this time around in David Cronenberg’s portrait of the social underbelly of stardom. Mia Wasikowska plays Agatha, an outsider who gets a job as Moore’s personal assistant. Agatha has burn scars from a fire accident as a child and brings to Hollywood a brand of reality and vulnerability that it is not ready for. We see a bratty child-star in Evan Bird who resembles a young Justin Timberlake slash Shia Labeouf slash Justin Bieber. He is the epitome of mean and makes you wonder whether the slew of young Disney stars in the spotlight today are actually little devils in disguise, since they have to be tough to live the lives that they do. Maps To the Stars is ruthless. The Hollywood characters are selfish and cruel to the point of incredulity. Agatha is the neutral that makes their evil shades pop. We gradually learn that she too has a dark hidden connection to Hollywood. Cronenberg’s film is a bleak representation of Hollywood and questions the unjust deification of average mortals it is responsible for. It tackles Hollywood’s false façade of Zen, generosity and kindness, to reveal a tier of society that is shallow and detrimentally insecure.
-Prachi Kamble
(Printed with the permission of Fame Blog Canada where it was initially published).