At the 41st annual Miami Film Festival, Thelma starring June Squibb, the late Richard Roundtree, and Parker Posey kicked off the weeklong party. While it is not a major festival for the studio films, it does open itself to a number of independent and foreign films that do not reach the major film festival market. Of course, it is a very Miami festival with local films and documentaries, but opening itself to more notable films in the past, including The Good Boss, Crip Camp, Dogville, Black Book, and Wild Tales makes it more attractive for a North American debut. Here are three capsule reviews from the festival this year.
Auction (France)
Working for a world famous auction house in Paris, Andre (Alex Lutz) is given the honor to sell off a rare painting considered lost but now found. When the painting appears in the hands of a young French factory worker (Arcadi Radeff) and is found to be authentic, it stirs off a battle for the upper hand in attaining the painting through deceptive methods. Andre’s intern (Louise Chevillote) has her own mysterious past and isn’t sure if she can be trusted while his co-worker (Nora Hamzawi) is also his ex-wife. With ramifications everywhere, he must control the deal by staking his whole reputation and not letting a once-in-a-lifetime artwork fall through their grasp.
Writer/director Pascal Bonizer (co-writer of Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta) puts out the politics of art with not enough intrigue to carry the story through to the end, even though Lutz and company give solid performances. While art dealing is a highly profitable business that symbolizes status and power, Bonizer fails to really put up on his own canvas the variables that move the chess pieces on claiming history. It is too weak as it is for a story which could’ve gone on longer with a stronger backbone and clearcut views from all who have a hand in the loot made from paint.
Grade: C
Close Your Eyes (Spain)
Actor Julio Arenas (Jose Coronado) suddenly disappears from a film set virtually without a trace and is now presumed dead. Twenty years later, his friend and the film’s director, Miguel, (Manolo Solo) gets invited to a program series looking into the story and sets off on his own search. Contacting Julio’s daughter, his ex-lover, and the film’s editor, Miguel struggles to trace Julio’s possible whereabouts until an unexpected tip from an unlikely place changes everything.
Fifty years after his sensational debut, The Spirit Of The Beehive, director Victor Erice makes his return thirty years after his last full-length feature. It may have debuted last year at Cannes (and was shortlisted to be Spain’s representative for the Oscar but lost to Society Of The Snow), but Erice’s return is worth the wait. It is a slowburner, building up the past moments with Miguel’s current state until his sudden discovery, allowing him to finish the movie he started all those years ago. Solo, Coronado, and company each give a piece of their memory in their characters leading up to an emotional conclusion within the power of a single gaze printed on film.
Grade: A-
Queen Of Bones (Canada/USA)
In Depression-era Oregon, a widowed, religious father (Martin Freeman) and his two teenage children (Julia Butters and Jacob Tremblay) live in isolation in the woods. When the children find a book about witchcraft belonging to their dead mother, they start to have questions about her death, who allegedly died after giving birth to them. The two begin to look into it themselves, following the clues and dangerously getting close to the truth while trying to avoid the wrath of their father. It is the family secret that seeks to come out.
Director Robert Burdeau (Stockholm) taps into the folk horror genre with carefulness, not trying to overdo the supernatural nature of it all. But, it feels too safe and does push for a more terrifying mood and to go in depth with the story. It is two-dimensional when this Gothic story of foreign folklore should easily have been more developed and more connected to the main source within the story to make it even more creepier. The quality reminded me of the 90s Nickelodeon show, Are You Afraid Of The Dark? It just felt somewhat juvenile, not willing to take risks and push those boundaries.
Grade: C
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