Every year we look forward to the film festival with a high level of anticipation. The film festival is, to borrow a movie phrase, "like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get." This year had its fill of good, bad, and really bad movies. We both left at least one movie early -- a first for me. Here's the wrap up of what we saw and our thoughts on each movie:
Mi Pais Imaginario / My Imaginary Country: A fantastic documentary about the recent revolution (I don't think that is too big a word) in Chile. Amazing footage of the street battles between protestors and police, including interviews with people who took part. The movie includes discussion about the framing of the country's new Constitution, but ends before the recent vote to reject that Constitution. At the 2019 Festival, we saw a movie from Argentina called The Green Wave/ Let it Be Law about the fight for abortion rights there. That movie ended with the rejection of the proposed abortion law, but the fight continued and it has subsequently passed. It will be interesting to watch how things progress now in Chile.
En Los Margenes / On the Fringe: A very depressing movie about the financial strain on the lower classes in Spain, particularly surrounding the topic of evictions. The plot moves at an almost frentic pace over the course of a single day (with the final scene taking place the next morning) presenting the intersecting lives of people in dire financial straits and those trying to help them.
Runner: A movie that has gotten a lot of buzz at various film festivals, but I found it increadibly slow. It is clear what the movie is designed to do, but with little dialogue, I did not enjoy it at all. Shana was smart to give this one a pass.
Avec Amour et Acharnement / Both Sides of the Blade: A French movie starring Juliette Bincoche as a woman involved in a love triangle. She lies to her partner and as expected that doesn't go well. Not worth recommending and Jeff made a good choice not to see it.
El Caso Padillo (The Padilla Affair): A very interesting documentary about Cuban poet Herberto Padilla who after being held by the secret police of Cuba and (maybe?) tortured engaged in a night of "self-criticism" before his colleagues in the writers' guild in which he praised the Cuban Revolution and accused several other writers of holding anti-revolutionary thoughts. The recently found footage of his speech represents the bulk of the movie and makes for a very intense evening that will seem familiar to anyone who has read Orwell's 1984. A documentary well worth seeing.
Don't Worry Darling: One of the few mainstream American movies we saw at this festival. It is the kind of movie you want to see without knowing anything about the plot, so we will just say "go see it". We both enjoyed it.
Gran Marin: Shana saw this film about a woman wanting to work on a fishing boat. It was in the New Directors section, and the director also starred in it. The film showed how she just wanted to work hard and be treated like everyone else. Ultimately she earned her co-workers respect. Overall it was not compelling.
L'Innocent: directed by and starring French director/actor Louis Garrell. Last year, we saw his movie The Crusade about children selling their parents' possessions to raise funds to fight the climate crisis. This film did not include social commentary, but it was a very entertaining love story/heist movie that I really liked (Shana liked it less, but did enjoy it). There are several brilliant set pieces, and the movie is worth seeking out even though you will have to read subtitles.
Tax Me If You Can: A documentary with very good information about how wealthy individuals and large corporations avoid taxes while politicians pretend to do something about it. But, as a movie, not very interesting or engaging. We felt it could have been done better.
La Huella: Our culinary movie this year, about a restaurant opened twenty years ago on a (then) pretty deserted beach in Uruguay. The movie told the story of how three friends opened this restaurant and showed a number of fantastic dishes that they serve, but it really seemed like an extended episode of Chef's Table, which is not a compliment for a cinematic documentary.
The "dinner" that we attended afterward was a big dissapointment because it turned out not to be a dinner, but rather a drinks and hor d'oeuvres event, which seemed like a bit of a bait and switch to us. We have to admit that the food was delicious, but not having a place to sit and enjoy it after paying for what we thought was a dinner did put a damper on the evening.
La Consagracion de la Primavera / Rite of Spring: Shana went to this story of a young woman who has come to Madrid to attend university and is having a tough time finding her way. She meets and befriends a young man with cerebal palsy and even attends to his sexual needs. Oddly the director claimed the movie was about the disabled community's need for sexual fulfillment, but she thought the movie was her story, not his. And it wasn't that interesting in the end.
Kings of the World / Los Reyes del Mundo: A movie about five kids who live on the streets of Medellin, Columbia travelling to reclaim land stolen from the grandparents of one of them. The grandson's legal claim has been accepted after years of trying, but of course it is not that easy. Basically, it is a story of five boys who want a shot at a good life, but, while some people help them in their travels, the world is definitely not going to give them a fair shot. Very depressing but well-done film, it ultimately won the award for best film in the Official Selection section of the festival.
Something You Said Last Night: A story of a Canadian-Italian family on vacation. The debut long film from its Canadian director, the movie is being hailed as a big step for transgender people (the main character, one of the daughters, is trans). While I thought the performances were good overall, the family is so annoying, that it is somewhat difficult to watch this movie.
Mutzenbacher: Well-known Austrian filmaker Ruth Beckermann takes the 1906 erotic novel Josefine Mutzenbacher or The Story of a Viennese Whore as a jumping-off point by publishing a casting call for men to audition for a movie version of the novel. The documentary consists of them reading and discussing portions of the book to examine male erotic fantasy. It was strangly cringe-worthy (the source material contains very controversial scenes of child sexual behavior) and boring at the same time. I didn't stay for long.
El Amor en su Lugar / Love Gets a Room: Set in 1942 in the Warsaw ghetto, the movie is a based around an actual play called Love Gets a Room that was witten by a Polish Jew, and performed for four weeks in the ghetto prior to the beginning of deportations. The movie itself is fiction and, for me, surprisingly unaffecting, despite the subject matter. Shana liked it more than I did, for it's clever use of a play within a movie setting.
Walk Up: A Korean movie set in a single building where the passage of (an undefined amount of) time occurs whenever the characters exit the building. The dialogue was strangely stilted -- maybe a Korean thing, but we have seen other Korean movies, including Parasite, that did not have thiss issue -- and the characters were not very engaging. Shana left early, and I stayed to the end, but am not sure why.
El Sostre Groc/The Yellow Ceiling: A fantastic documentary from Isabel Coixet, one of Spain's best directors, examines the sexual abuse of young women that took place at the Lleida Theater School. The documentary does an amazing job explaining how the primary perpetrator, a teacher and later director of the school, was able to both abuse his young, female students while carrying on affairs with a number of teachers. As is often true in cases like this, everyone knew, but no one did anything until years later when a number of the girls (now women) got together to denounce the perpetrator (still the director of the school). It is possible this documentary will not come to the US, but if you have a chance, see it. We were fortunate to see Coixet introduce the film with several of the brave women whose story she told so well.
La Amiga de mi Amiga/Girlfriends and Girlfriends: Really no way to describe this movie other than as a small group of lesbians jumping into and out of the each others' beds. The dialogue was boring and we have nothing really good to say about this movie. Not terrible, but not good either.
Tori et Lokita: Very (!) depressing movie about two young African migrants attempting to make it in Belgium. As with Los Reyes del Mundo (above), the end result was pretty clear from the beginning. The young actors (one in her teens, the other a boy of about 10-years-old making his acting debut) provided very good performances, but it is a difficult-to-watch movie despite being very well done.
Marlowe: Good cast led by Liam Neeson in a somewhat pointless film noir. We agreed that there is nothing wrong with the movie, but there is also nothing to really recommend it other than beautiful 1930's cars, clothing, etc. Overall, it was just fine.
You Have to Come and See It/ Tienes que Venga a Verlo: A very short (64 minutes) movie that is made shorter by an opening sequence of watching the characters listen to live music for over five minutes. The movie was trying to say something about the world and the environment, but it was not at all clear, and basically ended up as a boring and pointless movie. Trust us, you DON'T have to come and see it.
Suprise Movie -- Blonde: Each year the festival sells tickets to a "surprise" movie and this year we bought tickets. A few days into the festival they announced the movie would be Blonde, the new Marilyn Monroe biopic starring Anna de Armas. Initially we figured it would be a nice way to end the festival, but an hour or so before the movie we looked and saw that the movie is 2 hours and 46 minutes long. After seeing 18 and 16 movies previously, we had not bandwitdth left for such a lengthy movie and just skipped it.
So, that is it for another edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival. Hopefully, you will be able to see some of the (better) movies that we were able to see.
Hasta pronto,
Jeff and Shana
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