This year’s Locarno Film Festival hasn’t had enough buzz or outreach compared to the recent ones. It is unfortunate because it is lenient toward giving more opportunities to rising or less-recognized directors rather than the big hitters of independent cinema. It may have to do with the program’s quality, with the focus being shifted onto the Piazza Grande and the fascinating retrospective (and celebration) of the 100 years of Columbia Pictures. But there were still plenty of features in the Concorso Internazionale that I would think of plenty of and would love to discuss. In this capsule review piece, I will discuss three multilayered pictures to screen in this year’s Locarno competition.
By the Stream (수유천) (Directed by. Hong Sang-soo)
The first film in this capsule review piece of the Concorso Internazionale at Locarno is the second film by Hong Sang-soo to premiere at a festival this year, By the Stream (수유천). The hard-working and minimalist Korean filmmaker has always had an interesting way of directing, often creating features that might look or feel similar to previous ones. Yet, in their crux, the stories are different in many ways. Once you dive in, you begin to notice how richly detailed each character and their respective relationships are–showing the viewer that while his style has remained the same, Hong Sang-soo’s works are complex in their fine lining. His latest work, By the Stream, is no exception.
Hong Sang-soo crosses through more composite waters by offering a cultural critique of gender roles, interpersonal boundaries, and the creation of art. Filled with many scenes of characters having some meals, drinking, and smoking their occasional cigarette (as usual in Hong Sang-soo’s filmography), By the Stream follows Jeon-im (Kim Min-hee, who won the Best Actress award at the festival), a lecturer at an all women’s university who is trying to solve a situation with some of her students about a skit competition in which all departments must participate. She is short of students; three no longer attend the university because they dated the student director. In dire need of help, Jeo-nom calls up her retired actor uncle, Chu Si-eon (Kwon Hae-hyo).
Chu Si-eon is eager to help out; it gives him a place on a stage in which he isn’t permitted anymore, as he made some rude comments about a more famous actor and got “blacklisted”. He has his hopes up about helping and writing this skit. He is doing what makes him happiest: creating art and showcasing it to the world. Meanwhile, Jeon-im is an artist of her own, yet one who is more reclusive about her tapestry sketches and weavings. Chu and Jeon-im converse about many things, like art and the situation’s politics. However, the element that Hong Sang-soo highlights is the beauty and admiration for the creation of art, whether it is a play (which we end up seeing later in the narrative) or a fabric.
How Hong Sang-soo approaches this theme reminds me of Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up. Both films show an artist’s struggle while making art and honor them by showing the elaborateness of the creative process. There’s a cinematic contradiction of some sort, as the Korean filmmaker keeps everything simplistic–everything kept up to its most limited version–on a visual level. But its subtext–where art is the gateway for us to analyze our own struggles and contemplations, whether we consume or produce it–is so multilayered that it gives the images produced by Sang-soo a more substantial feel. Writing film reviews isn’t deemed the most palatable form of creating art. But it sure is a way of self-expression, so I felt very moved by what Hong Sang-soo is doing in one half of By the Stream.
Grade: B+
Moon (Mond) (Directed by. Kurdwin Ayub)
The second film in this capsule review piece is Moon (Mond) by Kurdwin Ayub, which won the Special Jury Prize. The Vienna-based Kurdish filmmaker has spent most of her directorial career crafting stories about young girls and their respective rebellious acts that pave the way for their liberation. Her debut feature, Sonne, touched upon this theme while tackling immigrant life and religious identity as well. Ayub could not put all of this together cohesively. However, the project was authentic through the performances that showed glimpses of Ayub being an actors’ director more than a visually expressionistic one. Even though some instances show a bit of flair, it ultimately feels like a forced attempt to create a “vibe” or sensation.
All these, good and bad, return to her latest work, Moon. You can see how Ayub still has plenty of room to grow as a storyteller, but she is getting better at her craft with each project. The film follows a former kickboxer named Sarah (Florentina Holzinger), who is having difficulty making ends meet as a trainer to young girls wanting to learn self-defense. Sarah does not know what else to do monetary-wise; she is at the point where she will accept the first offer that pops into her inbox. This is why Sarah unquestioningly agrees with the proposal of a wealthy family’s heir to train his three adolescent sisters in Jordan–heading to another country with a different set of politics that rid women of their rights.
The girls Sarah tries to train are not even paying attention to her techniques. She wants to motivate them and teach them about self-defense. However, they prefer to hang out at the mall with Sarah and ask her to use her phone for some time on social media. What’s interesting about Moon is the double realization that the lead character has during these situations, which subjugates the film to form a thriller-like atmosphere. Sarah sees the girls as more attentive to their trainer’s freedom than her kickboxing assets. In addition, she notices that they are held hostage by their family and society. Sarah is now trapped in this situation and is becoming a prisoner of a nearly inescapable jail.
The girls are hostages of a society that takes away their liberties, freedom of expression, and, in the most harsh of situations, their sense of self. Hopelessness is reflected in their demeanor when not within Sarah’s eye. Their minds slowly succumb to the realization that they might never have a life of free will, unlike the woman who “trains” them. You are fascinated by this dynamic and the injustices of that type of society until Ayub starts to rely on Sarah’s superiority in her freedom so much that it dissipates her film’s effectiveness tonally and thematically. In the beginning, this relationship between the characters adds a sense of mystery and uneasiness that lurks in the house of the heir and the streets of Jordan. But, as the narrative develops, it becomes a convenience in more ways than one.
Grade: C
The Sparrow in the Chimney (Der Spatz im Kamin) (Directed by. Ramon Zürcher)
The third and final in this capsule review piece is the best film I saw at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, The Sparrow in the Chimney (Der Spatz im Kamin) by Ramon Zürcher, which ended up empty-handed during the festival’s awards. But it makes sense due to its distancing storytelling and darkly comedic sensibilities, which I admire. The Zürchers (Ramon and Silvan Zürcher) are very poetic and crafty filmmakers who later rely on simplistic visual aesthetics to place them into a web of mysterious character dynamics. The titles of their films alone (The Strange Little Cat, The Girl and the Spider) show how they can hint at some kind of enigma forged through the Zürchers’ intricate observations about connection and liberation.
Their latest work, The Sparrow in the Chimney, is (coincidentally tying with the placement in this piece) the third and final addition to this “Animal” truly that is vastly fascinating, as the brothers, with Ramon working solo on the director’s chair and Silvan opting for the producer role, use an array of techniques that makes this film feel like a departure from what they have done previously. The Sparrow in the Chimney is set on a sunny day meant for celebration yet ends in psychological cataclysm, with edges of subdued violence smeared sporadically like a nice spread. There are two families, two sisters distanced by an experience with their mother that has scarred them until this very day: Karen (Maren Eggert) and Julie (Britta Hammelstein). The two live distanced yet similar lives with their respective husbands and children.
Think of them as polar opposites tied by the same trauma. Karen is colder and holds onto the ancestral home; meanwhile, Julie is more of an extrovert in comparison and lives far away to avoid all of the bad memories from her childhood at all costs. When Julie pops up with her family to celebrate the birthday of Karen’s husband, Markus (Andreas Döhler), tension between the two families arises. Secrets are revealed; people are brutally open to one another. The coldness of Karen’s behavior elicits an entry for the breaking point and rebirth of this bond held hostage by the tragedy in that same house many years ago. The “partygoers” are suffocated dually by the memorabilia of the past and the beautiful yet mystifying nature surrounding their ancestral grounds.
This inability to free themselves from what scarred them manipulates how the day will pan out; an inferno of bottled angst, worries, and insecurities is produced. Through various icy and darkly comedic dialogue, as well as subdued horror elements that are scattered in the atmosphere, Zürcher talks about the beauty and trepidation of human relationships–what happens when toxicity, created by broken power relations and enriched desolation, starts to consume the tie that binds this family. The animal motif presented in The Sparrow in the Chimney relates to how these characters break the mottled roles of fathers, mothers, and children to let in their inner animal nature, in which they become wild, untamable beasts on the hunt. What are they hunting? The weak spirit and sentimentality that one has been torn down by unwarranted cruelty and increased tension.
You begin to feel uncomfortable as this family starts to lose their humanity and tend to the rule of the animal kingdom. Their defiant nature prevents them from healing until everything has broken apart. I perceived through this scenario the jealousy and the desire for the sisters to be loved, which their mother rid them of. This is why the birthday celebration escalates into something unrepairable. However, it paves the way for understanding between the two of them. After many years of bottling up all of their family-related woes, they are now free of the chokehold of trauma and our dark memories. Unlike the other features, Zürcher tends to be more experimental when approaching this problematic family dynamic. Yet, he still maintains that humanist essence that makes this whole ordeal feel more personal and potent.
Grade: A-
