Welcome to the 10th annual Fantastic Fest film festival here in Austin, Texas. This is my daily recap which over the next week will primarily recap the film experiences I have has as well as touch on the mental and physical status of the Festival-going folk, myself included. My entertainment is guaranteed but please, pray for my well being. Let chaos reign!
EVERLYSalma Hayek plays Everly, the live in lover/escort of a Japanese Gangster. After trying to narc him out to the police to escape this seedy life, she becomes trapped in his apartment as he unleashes neighboring working girls, assassins, and crazy Yakuza types in an attempt to kill her. Everly fights off each wave of attacks, determined to survive and be reunited with her daughter for Christmas. The best analogy I can use to describe the film is Die Hard meets WWE’s Royal Rumble. Yes, this film is a slice of awesome fun.
The plot is no more complex than that. In addition to the fun and varied action sequences, emotional stakes are injected with Everly’s mother and daughter becoming drawn into proceedings, first over the phone and later in person. The camera never leaves the room Everly is trapped in, and the director uses this restriction to inventive effects. It’s pretty creative at times. This is reflected in much of the action also. Everly shows a resourcefulness and logic in her dealing with the bad guys (and dogs) that is pretty refreshing. Violence and narrative unfolds as the film develops; it embraces the ridiculousness of its concept from the start and maintains it throughout. It’s violent, but never takes it too seriously.
At times it feels like a video game: escalating enemies, bigger boss characters, but tempered with personal moments that tie things together. Hayek drives the movie along well; I’d never imagined her in such a kick ass role but she gives a solid sense of believability. She nails the emotional beats too. It treads a fine line between fun and absurd, and it veers into a Takashi Miike movie at one point, an example of how the film shakes things up often and keeps things engaging.
Some of the dialogue is stilted or cheesy at times and it does veer into the sentimental, but that’s pretty much expected from a film of this type. There is a rather seedier undertone to the film, though. It becomes apparent this apartment is one of many in the building housing a number of “whores” (the film’s word not mine) of which Everly is the favored one of the big boss. It also is made evident that shortly before the opening of the film, the titular character was essentially subjected to rape. This reframes the film in a more uneasy light, contrasting sharply with the violence and over the top nature throughout. It is not a subtext you need to look deeply for and seems an odd layer to add to the film. Some may overlook it, others will not, I think.
Overall Everly is a blast and, being nestled amongst some weightier fare during this festival, a very welcome one at that. But it has to be asked if there was a better way to frame the premise of the film and to give us a strong female character without the regressive sexual angle. A seemingly common issue in cinema these days.
SECRET SCREENING — GOODNIGHT MOMMYEach year Fantastic Fest treats goers with it’s “Secret Screenings”; years past have included Green Inferno (still not out), Looper, Cloud Atlas (with Wachowskis in attendance) and Child of God — blockbuster to art-house far and everything in between. This year we sadly only got one film surprise, but it was something special: Ich Seh Ich Seh, known on these shores as Goodnight Mommy, a film Fantastic Fest founder Tim League picked after seeing at TIFF with the provision that his wife will never watch it.
Elias and Lukas are twin boys enjoying their summer together. Their father is conspicuous in his absence; their mother seems curt and distant, recovering from a recent bout of plastic surgery. She imposes new strict rules for behavior to aid her recovery. Her cold detached nature and refusal to speak to Lukas after some incident between them fuels the boys’ imagination. What if this, is not really their mother? As their distrust of her grows so does their intent to find out the truth.
Some of the twists in the tale are pretty obvious from the start, but this is a film that goes for uncertainty and unease. The mystery of what is going on is cranked up throughout the film expertly. The mother is seen, hidden in the dark, bandaged and unrecognizable, watching, often secluding herself away. A game occurs near the beginning where Mommy cannot even identify herself, so how are the boys meant to? As a mirror, the twin boys seem to have a perverse dark nature to them, wearing their own masks; even simple acts such as making a crossbow seem layered with darker intent, while what they do with a dead cat speaks to disturbed minds.
The cranked up tension is incredibly well paced, as is the narrative. Goodnight Mommy is nightmarish in the Haneke vein and grounded in a grim reality with bleak humor smattered in to ease some tension, largely from supporting characters. This is a film driven by three gripping performances exploring how loss can twist and pervert love and perception. Intense, disturbing, and gripping viewing.
The programmers of this year’s Fantastic Fest seem intent on driving me towards abstinence or a vasectomy…
STILL LIFESometimes a film comes to festivals a little rough around the edges. This is something that can be overlooked if there is a interesting vision or idea unfolding; however, Still Life is a film that feels very rough around the edges and yet offers nothing new or or interesting. More than that, it was a film that made me angry at its very existence. Set against the backdrop of the Argentinian cattle and beef industry, Jazmin is a journalist (we know this because she tells everyone so) who, while compiling interviews on a growing vegetarian movement in the area, is interested in the disappearance of a local woman whose father owns the local meat packing plant. As she tries to piece together evidence, garnered from illegally breaking into peoples houses and making wild speculative leaps, she finds a number of murders all seemingly connected to the local meat industry. Her meddling places her (thankfully) in the sights of the killer.
The storytelling is awful, the script diabolical, and the acting utterly without redemption. Some slasher movies still work in spite of this, as some tension and a few over the top gory scenes can do wonders; but no, there is nothing to salvage this abysmal effort. It’s technically amateurish, with disjointed editing, laughable camera work, and plain ugly visuals. The films careers wildly from feeling like a cheap Latin American soap opera, to detective murder mystery, to Evil Dead homage (not as good as it sounds), to amateurish slasher, and finishes it off with a heavy handed smattering of footage from slaughterhouses.
A ill-made, vegetarian propaganda vehicle that offended my senses and sensibilities and made me relish every last bite of the steak wrap I ordered during the film. Utterly terrible.
