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| We all know what Uncle Teo in Amarcord wants! What do YOU want? |
In my own journey through life as a filmmaker, producer, promoter, repertory cinema programmer and writer, I've always maintained a natural "fuck you" attitude to everything I've ever done. To me, "Fuck you" is everything, is lifeblood and lifeblood is what I keep seeing on display every fall in Montreal.
Though I am hesitant to ascribe every element of the "fuck you" aesthetic to FNC, one thing I have always admired about its programming is the festival's decided "fuck you" to the Status Quo. In that sense, I shall dispense with the trappings of English Canadian politeness, I will shed the shackles of hesitancy and I will declare that, YES, the FNC embodies the "fuck you" qualities that are vital to the celebration and even survival of cinema.
I love the mainstream as much as the next fellow, but junk food does not enrich my body and soul - I WANT NOURISHMENT! NOURISHMENT, goddamnit! This, I declare with the same vigour as Uncle Teo does from the top of a tree in Fellini's Amarcord:
"Voglio una donna!"
"Я хочу жінку!"
"איך ווילן אַ פרוי !"
"Je veux une femme!"
"I want a woman!"
YES! I am ROCK HARD and I WANT A WOMAN and THE WOMAN'S NAME is CINEMA!!!
This, I feel is achievable with the likes of FNC's Executive Director Nicolas Gerard Deltruc, the honourable Messrs Chamberlan and Eipidès, plus the formidable team of programmers scouring the globe of tantalizing "fuck you" delights. And I must admit, with all passion, that this upcoming edition of FNC has me salivating with even greater richness and bounty than my Neo-Mastiff when she's presented with a lovely, choice cut of steak. So if you, like I, seek cinema that is going to consistently nail your feet to the floor, clasp your eyes ever-open to the big screen, cold-cock you in the mug with a mighty roundhouse and send your sorry ass to the floor whilst bellowing a hearty, blessed "fuck you", then there is no need to look further than FNC.
Running October 8-19, 2014, the festival is erupting with delights and I hope to cover a few choice morsels for you amidst FNC's bevy of premieres and retrospectives. In the meantime, I present to you 5 movies I've seen earlier which make their debuts in the great nation of Quebec - 5 movies you cannot afford to miss! Below are capsule summaries, my ratings and links to the full reviews published earlier. In the meantime, though, do consider a move to Montreal, or at least a visit, to sample the very best in 'fuck you" cinema!
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| A true indie filmmaker will wipe the asshole of his leading man. On the set of his latest work, GARBANZO GAS, the story of a cow in a motel. |
Dir. Adam Rifkin
Starring: Giuseppe Andrews
Review By Greg Klymkiw
Giuseppe Andrews makes Ed Wood and early John Waters look completely mainstream, but like them, he's a true original. Nobody, but nobody will ever make films like Andrews who makes movies with his own brand of joy, obsession and artistic aplomb. To say it's infectious is an understatement. A doff of my hat in Adam Rifkin's direction for taking time away from his prolific family-movie screenwriting career (Small Soldiers, Underdog) to craft this wild, wooly and supremely entertaining documentary on Andrews. Giuseppe appeared as a kld in Rifkin's own Detroit Rock City as well as playing bits in Pleasantville, American History X, Independence Day, Never Been Kissed and the first two Cabin Fever movies. As steady acting gigs got fewer and far-betweener, Giuseppe's real claim to fame came as a filmmaker, directing over 30 micro-budgeted underground films. Andrews is a fringe-player of the highest order. Out of his fevered imagination, he crafts work that captures a very desperate, real and sad truth about America's fringes as the country descends even deeper into a kind of Third World divide twixt rich and poor. Through Rifkin's lens we see America according to Andrews, a country rife with abject poverty, alcoholism, exploitation, cruelty and violence. Trailer parks and cheap motels provide the visual backdrop by which Andrews etches his original portraits of depravity (but always tinged with humanity).
FILM CORNER RATING: **** READ THE FULL REVIEW FROM MY HOT DOCS 2014 COVERAGE HERE
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| A daughter whose child can never be hers. A mother whose daughter is everything. A woman who comes between them. A baby that binds all 3 for eternity. |
Dir. Albert Shin
Script: Shin & Pearl Ball-Harding
Prods. Igor Drljaca, Yoon Hyun Chan
Starring: Yoon Da Kyung, Ahn Ji Hye, Kil Hae Yeon, Kim Sung Cheol, Kim Chang Hwan, Kim Kyung Ik
Review By Greg Klymkiw
Now and again, I find myself seeing a movie that feels so perfect, so lacking in anything resembling a single false note and so affecting on every level that I'm compelled to constantly pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. In Her Place is a dream, but most decidedly of the dream-come-true variety. This is exactly the sort of film that restores my faith in the poetic properties of cinema and how the simplest of tales, at their surface, allow its artists to dig deep and yield the treasures inherent in the picture's soul. When a film is imbued with an inner spirit as this one is, you know you're watching something that hasn't been machine-tooled strictly for ephemeral needs. In Her Place is a film about yearning, love and the extraordinary tears and magic that are borne out of the company and shared experience of women. And, it is exquisite.
A childless couple nearing the early stages of middle-age, cut a private deal to adopt outside the purview of an official agency, which, they're convinced, will be the ideal no-muss-no-fuss arrangement. The Wife (Yoon Da-kyung), having been previously afflicted with serious health issues, especially wants the world to think she's the biological birth-mother of the adopted newborn. Staying on an isolated farm, her hosts are The Mother (Kil Hae-yeon), widowed and forced to run the sprawling acreage on her own and her daughter, a shy, pregnant teenage Girl (Ahn Ji-hye). For a substantial sum, this financially needy rural family agrees to give up the baby to the well-to-do couple from the big city. Alas, complications slowly surface and threaten to scuttle an otherwise perfect plan.
In Her Place so quietly rips our hearts to shreds. We are included in the emotional journeys of a daughter whose child can never be hers, a mother whose daughter is everything to her but comes to this realization when it's too late and a woman who has come between them because her own desire to love and nurture is so strong and true. Finally, it's all about a baby - a new life that binds all three women for what will be an eternity. This is a great picture. See it.
THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** READ THE FULL REVIEW FROM MY TIFF 2014 COVERAGE HERE
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| IT is transmitted sexually. IT follows. IT kills. |
Dir. David Robert Mitchell
Starring: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe
Review By Greg Klymkiw
Jay (Maika Monroe) lives in a 'burb o' Detroit and when she goes on a date with a hot hunk, she's so charmed, she hops into the back seat of his car, tosses off her panties and lets him deliver one right royal solid boning. Alas, she's afflicted with a horrific curse and the only way to get rid of IT is to pass IT on through sexual intercourse. The stud who drills her offers Jay a bit of solace when he says that IT should be no problem for her to pass on since, she's a girl and most red-blooded males will want to nail her.
Once she convinces her friends that she's cursed, they all make like Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo to get to the bottom of this mystery. Delightfully enough, the notion of passing on the curse sexually allows for some added boinkage in addition to the carnage and shock-til-you-jump jolts. And, of course, the movie gives us IT.
Though the movie doesn't quite go into the sickeningly, darkly hilarious territory of David Cronenberg's Shivers or Rabid (both involving sexually transmitted horror), It Follows is a solidly directed shocker with plenty of homages to John Carpenter's output from the late 70s to early 80s. Most of all, it has what any horror movie needs - babes, root-slipping and killing.
THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** READ THE FULL REVIEW FROM MY TIFF 2014 COVERAGE HERE
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| A 200-minute Bruno Dumont COMEDY (!!!) focusing on the lives of rural inbreds (what else?). |
Dir. Bruno Dumont
Starring: Alane Delhaye, Lucy Caron, Bernard Pruvost, Philippe Jore
Review By Greg Klymkiw
Focusing upon the pug-ugly title character and his friendship with a pretty little girl, one gets a sense of how mundane their lives are in the tiny one-horse village they live in and their antics are not without amusement value. Dumont's social observations seem less heavy-handed than usual and I daresay he's crafted a pretty darn successful outing this time round. The boy and girl, in addition to a few local kids, happen upon the strange sight of a murder scene being investigated by the local police chief (an Inspector Clouseau-like idiot). The murder victims have been hacked up and their body parts appear to be shoved deep into the assholes of dead cows. Quinquin, strictly through his boredom and powers of observation proves to be an unwitting partner in the investigation.
The movie is often knee-slappingly hilarious and its stately pace (200 minutes worth) takes on a kind of clever deadpan. The performances of the kids are delightfully natural and the adults are all suitably bumbling or ignorant.
THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** READ THE FULL REVIEW FROM MY TIFF 2014 COVERAGE HERE
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| Russia's continued oppression of Ukraine batters the most vulnerable victims. |
Dir. Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
Starring: Yana Novikova, Grigoriy Fesenko, Rosa Babiy, Alexander Dsiadevich, Yaroslav Biletskiy, Ivan Tishko, Alexander Sidelnikov
Set in a special boarding school, writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, paints an evocative portrait of students living within a tribal societal structure (literally as per the title) where adult supervision is minimal at best and even culpable in the desecration of youth. Living in an insular world, carved out by years of developing survival skills in this institutional environment, the kids have a long-established criminal gang culture and they engage in all manner of nefarious activities including, but not limited to thieving, black marketeering and pimping. Slaboshpytskiy's mise-en-scène includes long, superbly composed shots and a stately, but never dull pace. This allows the film's audience to contemplate - in tandem with the narrative's forward movement - both the almost matter-of-fact horrors its young protagonists accept, live with and even excel at while also getting a profound sense of the ebbs and flows of life in this drab, dingy institutional setting. In a sense, the movie evokes life as it seems to unfold.
The violence is often brutal and the film never shies away from explicit sexual frankness. We watch the beautiful teenage girls being pimped out at overnight truck stops, engaging in degrading acts of wham-bam without protection, perpetrated against their various orifices by truckers who shell out cash for the privilege of doing so. As well, the same girls are cum-receptacles for their fellow male students.
THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** READ THE FULL REVIEW FROM MY TIFF 2014 COVERAGE HERE
FNC runs October 8-19, 2014 in Montreal. Visit the website for more details HERE
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