The RiverRun International Film Festival is a regional event based in Winston-Salem, NC and is one of the premier film festivals in the southeastern United States. The 20th annual RiverRun was held April 19–29, 2018.
Something that has become noticeable in my coverage of this festival is that there are extremely obvious parallels coming up in the programmed films. Perhaps this is an inevitable consequence of how film festivals work in general; with so many films, there’s bound to be a couple that feel connected on a thematic level. But what might be interpreted as redundancy to some is, in fact, something else entirely and infinitely more useful: a possibility to see how the same basic idea unfolds from a multitude of perspectives.
Because as the famous saying goes, it’s not what a story is about, it’s how it is about it. And the films Moss and Severina approach the trope of the femme fatale with two very different takes.
SEVERINA
Speaking of stories is as good a place as any to start with Severina, a film that is very much about books and stories and the dangers of our own self-inflicted fictions.
Severina tells the tale of R (Javier Drolas), a bookstore owner and aspiring writer who finds himself bewitched by Ana (Carla Quevedo), an enigmatic waif who has a none-too-subtle shoplifting habit. Instantly bewitched in the way of all such protagonists, he indulges her proclivities, merely watching from a distance as she robs him. Then, as inevitability dictates, mere watching isn’t good enough, and he must follow his terrible instincts wherever they follow…which, as it very quickly becomes clear, is nowhere good.
It seems somehow wrong to call Severina a noir, though by description alone it has all the markings of the genre. There’s a muted, deadpan quality to the proceedings, something that grounds the story in a realistic (if curiously desolate) reality. If anything, it’s actually more of an absurdist romantic drama, as the increasingly odd twists and turns are accepted by both the characters and the filmmakers at face value.
But such a tale is only as good as its romantic leads, which is why the bulk of the film’s effectiveness comes from the performance of Carla Quevedo as Ana.
It’s difficult to tell if Quevedo gives a deeply weird performance, or if she gives a very good performance as a very odd character. Or if the distinction even matters in the first place. But with her twitchy, mannered physicality and powerfully expressive face, she pulls off a very impressive feat: she draws you in and holds you at bay simultaneously. As the film goes on, and she seems increasingly helpless before her own nature, it becomes impossible to predict what she will do next. The only thing that seems certain is that whatever it is, it will inevitably cause more problems than it solves.
Drolas, for his part, manages not to get blown off the screen by Quevedo’s powerhouse performance. That’s not nothing. But his character of R suffers from “obsessive irrational protagonist syndrome,” a common affliction where the performer lacks the proper charisma to overcome the frustrating nature of watching him singlemindedly dig himself into deeper and deeper trouble. It doesn’t ruin the movie by any means, but there are moments where the viewer very much wants to shake some sense into our hero.
Luckily, what Drolas lacks in empathy inducing charm is made up for by the wry performances of his supporting cast, including a blisteringly droll Alejandro Awada as Ahmed, a rival bookstore owner who is all too familiar with Ana’s antics. And Alfredo Castro makes the most of his brief time in the small but vital role of Otto, whose relationship to Ana is a matter of some concern to both R and the audience.
But in the end, the success of Severina rests mainly on the shoulders of Carla Quevedo and her phenomenal inversion of the femme fatale archetype. All on her own, she makes this a movie well worth seeking out.
MOSS
As openhearted and affectionate an example of Southern gothic as I’ve ever seen, Daniel Peddles’ Moss folds its tale of doomed desire into a lyrical stew of art, ethnography, naturism, and drug-fueled cosmic awareness. The film takes its title from its protagonist, the not-a-boy, not-yet-a-man Moss, who as we meet him is celebrating his eighteenth birthday. Not even remotely interested in anything like a plot, the film just follows him and the people around him as they go about living their lives. And in the process, we as an audience are drawn in to another world, one welcoming, beautiful, and strange, all at the same time.
After paying a visit to his highly metaphorical pet owl, Moss rows his boat up the river to deliver much needed medicine to his grandma, taking time along the way to chew chaw, make peanut butter sandwiches on hamburger buns, drop in on his (only?) friend Blaze (a magnetic Dorian Cobb) on his floating makeshift house/raft so they can smoke lots and lots of weed.
There’s a lot of early David Gordon Green in this film’s DNA, it has to be said. And the related sense of found object quirk might be a bit much for some (the constant watching of VHS nature documentaries is a bit much, though on the other hand I do award extra points for the presence of a stray copy of the 1990 Nicolas Cage film Firebirds…). But there’s such a sense of benevolence to the people and the events that it’s easy to forgive it its occasionally labored eccentricities.
On his journey, Moss befriends Mary (Christine Marzano), a nomadic older woman camping out on a beach. Besides sharing the same name as Moss’ late mother (who died giving birth to him), she seems by far the most likely candidate to take from Moss his much lamented virginity. They frolic in the sand, take mushrooms, and bond, though it’s clearer to us than our deeply smitten hero that Mary is running from something, and the sadness she only reveals in fleeting, hidden moments might have darker implications that he simply doesn’t have the wisdom to realize.
It is here that elements of the noir come in, as our instincts make us increasingly wary of Mary’s true intentions and of Mosses’ childlike naivety; for all his bulk, he seems stuck in an unending youth that makes him an easy mark for the first worldly woman to so much as bat her eyes at him.
It would, perhaps, be a spoiler to say how that aspect of the film shakes out, but suffice to say it while the film plays at some thriller elements very, very late in the game, the film is far too generous of spirit to not allow the characters their dignity and, ultimately, their flawed humanity.
Hopes are dashed and tragedies are inevitable, but in the end, we find a way to endure.
Of course, it’s not about that final destination, anyway, but the journey; this is a movie that takes such deep pleasure in tiny moments of living: the careful preparation of a bowl of breakfast cereal and soda; the step-by-step process of Moss shooting a fish to use its eye in a trap to catch a mouse to feed his owl; his artist father (Billy Ray Suggs) wrapping a birthday present.
Even a scene of Blaze riding his bike to and from the general store feels like an act of transcendence through the floating lens of cinematographer Juri Beythien’s camera.
Moss is a slight film, but in its slightness it still contains depths of feeling and is utterly bursting with life and a sense of community that feels ever so alien and yet so inviting. The world it creates is a wonderful place to spend 80 minutes, and it’s well worth checking out if you get the chance.
