“Vortex”
As the advent of streaming has dramatically affected how and where we watch movies, where and when they are ingested is increasingly a factor in widespread reception (look at the contrast of reactions to those who saw “Barbarian” in theaters with a crowd versus those who popped it on HBO and were underwhelmed). Moreso than perhaps any other theatrical experience this year (sorry, ‘Avatar’), Gaspar Noé’s masterful “Vortex” might be next to impossible to watch at home on your laptop. Filmed in split-screen, the intimate scope and ultimate power of the artistic provocateur’s treatise on dementia engulfs you completely, and the question of where to look is never an issue due to the filmmaking competence. Starring giallo maestro Dario Argento (a stroke of casting genius) as an aging author and Françoise Lebrun as his wife, the Argentina-born auteur constructs an austere work that veers very close to slow cinema at times. As we follow the elderly couple through their living conditions and shopping habits, Noé continually utilizes his double-screen gimmick in unexpected ways. Occasionally the cameras crisscross in space; other times, the frames are placed right beside themselves, a play on the two-shot, as if a sliver of the frame has been cut out of the composition. The impact of these choices has to be felt on as large a screen as possible; describing them just can’t do the potency of the film justice, much like the experience of his 2019 experiment, “Lux Æterna” – AB (Our Review)
“Return to Seoul”
A sensational year-end surprise for those who were unaware of the film at Cannes (where it screened under the title: “All The People I’ll Never Be”), Cambodia’s International Feature Film entry for the 95th Oscars, “Return to Seoul,” follows French adoptee, Freddie (an outstanding Park Ji-Min), returning to South Korea in search of her biological parents. Not brought up speaking her native tongue, she befriends a local hotel worker (Guka Han) who provides translation assistance, often softening potential conversational blows via generous interpreting. It’s instantly clear to the audience that her father (Oh Kwang-rok) is a lonely and broken man who has lived a life full of regrets. Consumed by the shame of giving his daughter away, after practically begging her to stay drunkenly, his behavior towards Freddie turns stalker-ish when she firmly informs him that she has no plans to move to Korea. Boldly elliptical towards the tail end, writer/director Davy Chou’s film jumps forward in time, intricately examining how being headstrong can lead to heartache when potential relationships become entangled in a painful past, most especially when the form of loving reciprocity we’re searching for isn’t returned in kind. – AB [Our Review]
“Corsage”
Writer/director Marie Kreutzer’s extricating look at Empress Elisabeth of Austria, “Corsage” – starring the exceptional Vicky Krieps – looks deep into the heart and desires of a woman who has been alienated from herself through suffocation of body and mind. Much like “Spencer” in its specific time setting, the film follows the Austrian matriarch after her 40th birthday, in which an enormous chocolate cake is presented to the Empress, topped with a sculptural visage of herself. But all she truly wishes is to be seen and loved for who she is, trapped in a loveless marriage and dodging gossip left and right. She’s the kind of woman who so loathes being stared at for her regal beauty that she values safety in darkness, finding freedom in hobbies such as fencing, horseback riding, or drawing naughty flip-page cartoons. Another ephemeral moment of liberty arises when an early innovator of an unknown science we now know as the “motion picture” offers her a chance to “Say whatever [she] want[s]” thanks to the fact that sound isn’t a factor yet when staring into the camera. Elisabeth can scream all her ills to the high heavens and fear no repercussions. Unsurprisingly, Krieps is positively stellar in the role, combating accusations of “lunacism” and laughing in the face of a false life others wish her to lead. – AB [Our Review]
“No Bears”
We adored Panah Panahi’s “Hit the Road” when it made festival rounds in 2021, and we might have jumped the gun in including it on some of our Best Of lists at the end of last year. At the time, it was celebrated that one of Iran’s most seminal filmmakers had a son who possessed a similar ethereal yet realist affection as a film artist. But, after already making guerilla-style films for years, banned from working in Iran, director Jafar Panahi was arrested in July 2022 and sentenced to six years in prison. He plays himself in his latest film, “No Bears,” a film that may be “only a movie” (much like Abbas Kiarostami’s “Taste of Cherry”) but the meta-playfulness – much of which plays as light and humorous for much of the picture – takes on a new kind of inevitable power, one made all the more dour by real-life political circumstances. As Panahi’s “character” works to shoot his latest film in Turkey without crossing the border, he winds up in a local village feud due to unseen alleged footage he may have captured, involving a pair of secret young lovers and an entitled romantic rival. Invisibly shifting from a tone of comedic cordiality when interacting with his bumbling but well-meaning host (Vahid Mobaseri, who amusing sometimes leaves Panahi’s camera recording all the time when given a chance to shoot some footage) to a hostile cacophony of courtship squabbles, “No Bears” captures emotional truth through the unknown potential of possibility, something Panahi clearly sees as an artistic responsibility, crafting a film forcing his own directorial self to come to grips with the tragic dangers of the medium that have since put him behind bars. – AB [Our Review]
“Flux Gourmet”
“Let food be thy medicine.” Peter Strickland is a motherf*cking maestro of reverie. With a dash of Yorgos Lanthimos and a pinch of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the “In Fabric” director has dementedly concocted a scatological and sensorial orgy set in a world where “sonic caterers” stage public gastroscopies as if written by Euripides. “Flux Gourmet” and its Dionysian revelry are about as comedically and expressively imaginative as movies get. Starring Gwendoline Christie as a Lewis Carrol-like creative matriarch who has just settled on a new musical cooking trio to take up residency in her posh artistic palace. A man called Stones (Makis Papadimitriou) chronicles their daily activities and interviews the “band” members, also acting as the film’s deadpan narrator — the Dossier accounting his own gastrointestinal struggles alongside the group’s practice performances and petty indignities. Featuring a delectable soundscape among a stew of aesthetically transportive elements all around, “Flux Gourmet” is the rare kind of film that can open via earnest, expressive descriptions of flatulence as “trapped wind” and end with characters slinking around in Selina Kyle cosplay attire to recover stolen musical equipment housed in a birdcage. You’ll let out a gut-bellying laugh one minute and have your jaw on the floor due to a radically different feeling the next. Strickland’s just got the special sauce. – AB [Our Review]
