Showing posts with label FNC 2014. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FNC 2014. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 January 2015
THE FILM CORNER CANADIAN FILM AWARDS 2014 - The very best in Canadian Cinema - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas
Saturday, 20 December 2014
Greg Klymkiw, presents the The Film Corner Awards (TFCA) in this the year of Our Lord 2014 - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas
THE FILM CORNER AWARDS (TFCA) 2014,
AS SELECTED BY THE REV. GREG KLYMKIW
This will be the first in a series of year-end Film Corner round-ups of cinema in 2014. Below, you will find the citations of excellence from me, Greg Klymkiw, in the form of my annual The Film Corner Awards (TFCA) for 2014. The most interesting observation is that ALL of these films were first screened within the context of major international film festivals which is further proof of their importance in presenting audiences with the very best that cinema has to offer whilst most mainstream exhibition chains are more interested in presenting refuse on multi-screens of the most ephemeral kind. All the citations here came from films unleashed at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014), the Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TADFF 2014), Hot Docs 2014, Montreal's 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival and the 2014 Montreal Nouveau Cinema Festival (FNC 2014). In Canada, only two of the films cited have been released theatrically within the hardly-visionary, downright lazy mega-plex chain Cineplex Entertainment and even those films are being allowed to play on a limited number of screens in an even-more limited number of cities while ludicrous numbers of awful movies are draining screen time at the aforementioned chain's big boxes. It's not as if all the films the chain allows to hog screens are doing numbers to justify this combination of piggishness and laziness. Keep your eyes open, though. The films cited here are all astounding BIG-SCREEN experiences, which will hopefully find BIG-SCREEN exhibition before being relegated to less-than-ideal home entertainment venues. And now, here goes, The Film Corner Awards (TFCA 2014) as selected by your most Reverend Greg Klymkiw. Included are brief quotes from my original reviews and links to the full-length reviews from the past year (just click on the title).
American cinema, more than anything, has always exemplified the American Dream. Almost in response to this, director David Zellner with his co-writer brother Nathan, have created Kumiko The Treasure Hunter, one of the most haunting, tragic and profoundly moving explorations of mental illness within the context of dashed hopes and dreams offered by the magic of movies and the wide-open expanse of a country teeming with opportunity and riches.
Best Feature Film
Kumiko The Treasure Hunter
Tuesday, 7 October 2014
Klymkiw Reviews 3 short films U can't miss at FNC (Festival international du nouveau cinéma de Montréal) - AVEC LE TEMPS (aka BEFORE I GO), MYNARSKI DEATH PLUMMET, THE WEATHERMAN AND THE SHADOWBOXER
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| WHITE LIGHT OF SNOW LIGHT OF NATURAL WORLD LIGHT OF FLASH FRAME LIGHT OF FLASH FRAME SHADOW LIGHT OF SPIRIT |
aka Before I Go (2014)
Dir. Mark Morgenstern
Review By Greg Klymkiw
Mark Morgenstern's exquisite new film reminds us of the oft-neglected poetic qualities of cinema. Avec le temps/Before I Go also happens to be a real film. It's "real" in that it was actually shot on real film. Its beauty and importance lies in the evocation of the greatest narrative of all - life, death and the seasonal journey of every beat of our lives. Like a short end, life is like a series of leftover bits, seemingly unused and discarded, yet there to be used and to comprise the whole of our existence. Like a flash frame, life is also adorned with those mistakes of perception that are very real, but are so fleeting that we might only be aware of them in times of either repose, reflection and/or death. Like Tom Berner, life only has meaning when we give selflessly to the passion which drives us and, in turn, drives those who receive the benefit of gifts given by those with no other agenda other than to do what has to be done in order to make life richer.
A "short end" is unexposed motion picture negative that is left over at the end of a film roll when the next take cannot be achieved with the amount of stock actually left on the roll. Over the course of shooting any film, especially a series of shorts or a single feature, there can be enough "short ends" to make a whole new film out of. A "flash frame" occurs when the camera is stopped while the gate is still open, leaving a blank frame of extremely overexposed stock. Even better is when the camera takes a few pubic hairs to get up to speed before cranking and allows a frame or two of "flashes", which are, essentially, blasted out frames which include picture. A "Tom Berner" is a man who made independent film a reality for several generations of artists. On the surface, he was a lab rep at Toronto's Film House and Deluxe, but beneath the layers of flesh, he was the spirit of cinema in Canada during a time when it needed him most. It still needs him, but he retired in 2001 and passed away in 2004.
Those whose lives were touched by his, will hopefully be able to infuse others with their own touches of self-sacrificing devotion to the art of film. If cinema is not consecration, it's nothing.
Avec le temps/Before I Go begins with the image of nature resting under a fluffy blanket of snow. The film moves into an interior where faceless shadows appear furtively amidst objects of both beauty and decay. The film has quite literally been constructed with short ends. With occasional flashes of fleeting frames the movie ultimately leaves us with the words "for Tom Berner" on its final frames before the end title credits.
Throughout Morgenstern's haunting, yet joyous and yes, occasionally and alternately creepy film is the light of day through the windows. The light changes as do the seasons - from darkness into light. Ultimately, we're left with the whiteness we began with. No longer is it the chilly scenes of winter, but the warmth and spirit of life itself, which is, ultimately death - a new stage in the journey of existence. A montage of flash frames and extremely short ends (shots), blow our mind during the film's climax, like Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey Stargate sequence, albeit with neo-realist dollops, which lead to and leave us with the dedication to the late Tom Berner, enveloped, of course, by light.
We're reminded of two other key moments in cinema.
1. Clarence, the guardian angel's words to George Bailey in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life:
"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives.
When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"
2. Most evocatively, Morgenstern's film reminds us of Gabriel's voice-over at the conclusion of John Huston's immortal film adaptation of James Joyce's short story The Dead:
"One by one, we're all becoming shades. Better to pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. . . Think of all those who ever were, back to the start of time. And me, transient as they, flickering out as well into their grey world. Like everything around me, this solid world itself which they reared and lived in, is dwindling and dissolving. Snow is falling. . . Falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living, and the dead."
Avec le temps/Before I Go is 12 minutes long. Morgenstern evokes a lifetime in that 12 minutes. It's proof positive of cinema's gifts and how they must not be squandered, but used to their absolute fullest.
THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars
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| Canada's Great War Hero, Andrew Mynarski VC, Shooting Star of Selfless Sacrifice, a man of Bronze. |
Dir. Matthew Rankin
Starring: Alek Rzeszowski, Annie St-Pierre, Robert Vilar, Louis Negin
Review By Greg Klymkiw
The true promise, the very future of the great Dominion of Canada and La Belle Province lies beneath the soil of France and Belgium. Between World Wars I and II, Canada lost close to 2% of its population, the vast majority of whom were the country's youngest and brightest from the ages of 16 to 30. Canadian lads bravely served on the front lines, well ahead of the glory-grabbing Americans, the Yankee Doodle mop-up crew that dandily sauntered overseas after all the hard work was paid for by the blood spilled upon European soil by the very heart and soul of Canada's future and that of so many other countries not bearing the Red, White and Blue emblem of puffery. As a matter of fact, any of the best and bravest in Canada came from Winnipeg and if you had to pick only one hero of the Great Wars from anywhere in the country, Andrew Mynarski, a gunner in the famed Moose Squadron, would be the one, the only. He is the subject of Matthew Rankin's perfect gem of a film, the one, the only genuine cinematic work of art to detail the valiant sacrifice, the one, the only, the unforgettable Mynarski Death Plummet.
THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars
Read the full review HERE
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| A maze begins in childhood & never ends. |
Dir. Randall Okita
Review By Greg Klymkiw
One of Canada's national filmmaking treasures, Randall Okita (Portrait as a Random Act of Violence), takes the very simple story of two brothers and charts how a tragic event in childhood placed them on very different, yet equally haunted (and haunting) paths.
Fusing live action that ranges from noir-like, shadowy, rain-splattered locales to the strange, colourful (yet antiseptically so) world of busy, high-tech, yet empty reportage, mixing it up with reversal-stock-like home movie footage, binding it altogether in a kind of cinematic mixmaster with eye popping animation and we're offered-up a simple tale that provides a myriad of levels to tantalize, intrigue and finally, catch us totally off-guard and wind us on a staggering emotional level.
Winner of the Toronto International Film Festival's 2014 Grand Prize for Best Canadian Short Film.
THE FILM CORNER RATING:
**** 4-Stars
Read the full review HERE
For further information visit the FNC - Festival international du nouveau cinéma de Montréal website HERE
Monday, 6 October 2014
Klymkiw reviews 3 Classics presented as retrospective screenings at the 2014 (FNC) Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal. Samuel Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE, Ken Russell's CRIMES OF PASSION, King Hu's DRAGON INN
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| From D-Day to the Liberation of the Death Camps, LEE MARVIN leads an all-star cast in SAMUEL FULLER'S autobiographical masterpiece of WORLD WAR II. |
Dir. Samuel Fuller
Starring: Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Bobby Di Cicco, Kelly Ward, Siegfried Rauch, Stéphane Audran
Review By Greg Klymkiw
Samuel Fuller made films that pulsated with the stuff of life and yet, at the same time, crackled with the pulpy, hard-boiled crispness of paperback potboilers and tabloid news rags. The guy was a true original and his 1980 classic The Big Red One practically reeks with the stench of death.
It's one of the great war movies of all time and is quite possibly one of the few explorations of men in battle to benefit from an exquisite amalgam of both the terrible truths it conveys and Fuller's terse, almost machine-gun-like style of presentation. Fuller, of course brought the life experience of being an investigative reporter to bear upon all his films, but he also infused them with his horrific exposure to the senseless waste of humanity during his years as an infantryman in the legendary Big Red One of the title.
Fuller himself was present at D-Day and made it to the liberation of Nazi Death Camps. He knew what it was like to be in battle and he especially understood both male camaraderie and the sickening heartache of encountering the remnants of massive genocide. He put all of this into The Big Red One.
Though he approved a much shorter version of the picture for theatrical release, he always regretted not holding out for his lengthier version. Thanks to a shooting script, detailed notes and the dogged persistence of film critic Richard Schickel, we're now able to experience a version of the film that's much closer to what Fuller intended.
It's one corker of a war movie - touching, exciting, wildly humorous and finally, deeply moving. With gruff Lee Marvin leading the charge, Robert Carradine as a cigar-chomping Fuller surrogate and a post-Star Wars Mark Hamill, we're told the tale of several survivors through a harrowing tour of duty. Bodies blow to bits, blood splashes liberally, tanks creak over raw terrain and finally, we experience the charred remains in Nazi Death Ovens.
Fuller hands us one episode after another that evokes the horror of war. Lee Marvin, especially, gives the performance of a lifetime. Seeing him befriend a starving child-survivor of the Death Camp is proof positive of Marvin's versatility.
It might also be the only time Lee Marvin will have you in tears.
NOTE: Samuel Fuller's daughter Samantha, who played a war orphan in The Big Red One, will be present at the FNC screening to introduce the film and engage in a question and answer session.
THE FILM CORNER RATING:
***** - Five Stars
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| I WILL KILL YOU! I WILL SAVE YOU! HARLOT! |
Dir. Ken Russell
Starring: Kathleen Turner, Anthony Perkins
Review By Greg Klymkiw
This is a rare opportunity to see Ken Russell's deliciously scary, funny and perverse thriller in 35mm, thanks to screenwriter Barry Sandler's collection at the Academy Film Archive. (Sandler will also be present for the screening.) It's sometimes hard to believe certain films are as old as they are. Crimes of Passion turns 30-years-of-age and it feels as insanely cutting-edge and over-the-top as it did when I first saw it first-run. FNC will be screening the rare director’s cut which has been available on DVD, but I can assure you, there's nothing like seeing its grotesque colours and glorious grain on actual film. You'll be able to thrill to Kathleen Turner's sexually-explicit, no-holds-barred performance as a repressed housewife who transforms herself by night into the ultra-hote-babe China Blue.
This alluring, albeit low-track street hooker, engages in all manner of aggressive sexual gymnastics as an addictive, though empty antidote to frigidity. Matching Turner's brilliant, outrageous performance is everyone's favourite Psycho Anthony Perkins as a demented preacher malevolently stalking her. He will save China Blue, even if he has to eventually snuff her out. She has another stalker, though. He wants to love her. Oh, what's a $50-per-trick hooker supposed to do? Decisions. Decisions.
THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** - Four Stars
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| Beware of sneaky, sword-wielding EUNUCHS!!! |
Dir. King Hu
Starring: Bai Ying, Miao Tien, Han Ying-chieh, Shih Chun, Cho Kin, Hsieh Han
Review By Greg Klymkiw
In the middle of nowhere lies the last outpost before the border, a godforsaken hellhole called the Dragon Gate Inn. This is where political exiles are banished to during the Ming Dynasty of ancient China. When the cruel Emperor executes one of his officials, the unfortunate's family are booted out of town and sent packing to the ends of the earth. Sadly, exile isn't their only problem since the big bad ruler has sent a nasty eunuch to spy on them and eventually effect their deathly eradication from the planet. Like some mad kung-fu spaghetti western, a whole passel of deadly killers descend upon the Inn and we're treated to intrigue and action. King Hu was one of the grand masters of cinema and his masterpiece Dragon Inn was recently afforded a gorgeous 4K digital restoration - all the better to take in the sumptuous vistas, cleverly composed (and designed) interiors and the astounding choreography and direction of some of the most stirring sword fights and hand-to-hand combat ever wrought within martial arts movies. Hu's frame is always lively, his moves masterful and his sense of spatial geography always dead-on. Here you'll have the opportunity to witness a director at the peak of his considerable powers, working in tandem with ace choreographer and action helmer Han Ying-chieh. Between the two of them, Dragon Inn is one of the most thriller martial arts pictures of all time - one which influenced Tsui Hark, John Woo, Jacky Chan, Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou and yes, Quentin Tarantino. It's a classic in all respects. Best of all, it feels like it could have been made yesterday.
The skill and technique on display has not dated one single, solitary bit and you'll constantly be catching your breath, doing double takes and needing to pinch yourself to make sure you're not dreaming. And even though it feels as modern as all get-out in terms of its movie-making sophistication and savvy, the fact truly remains that they actually don't make 'em like this anymore.
THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** - 4-Stars
For further information visit the FNC - Festival international du nouveau cinéma de Montréal website HERE. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER THE AFOREMENTIONED FILMS FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW, AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.
Thursday, 2 October 2014
5 Preview Capsule Reviews of the 43rd Edition of FNC - Festival Du Nouveau Cinema (2014) - By Greg Klymkiw
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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
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.
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