Capsule Review Roundup for the 2024 Robin and Valerie International Film Festival
September 17th, 2024 | Robin
A Ken and Robin Consume Media Special Feature
The 3rd Annual Robin and Valerie film festival has come to an end, as all virtual self-customized film festivals must. Here is my full capsule review round-up of all 45 titles we watched from the well-organized comfort of our couch on a variety of streaming platforms. Check your local version of JustWatch to see which of these are available in your region and on what platform. The Open Vault pick, the recent restoration of 1952’s Never Open That Door, is on BluRay from Flicker Alley but not yet on streaming.
Titles appear in order of preference but with most of them receiving a Recommended rating there’s not really much difference between them. I’d probably list them in a different order a month from now.
The Pinnacle
Are You Lonesome Tonight? (China, Shipei Wen, 2021) After running a man over, a redemption-seeking air conditioner repairman (Eddie Peng) contrives to meet his widow (Sylvia Chang), making a startling discovery about the case. Neo-noir thriller with an almost tangible feeling for the characters’ hot, humid environment and a bag full of narrative surprises.
The Promised Land (Denmark, Nikolaj Arcel, 2023) Stubbornly determined veteran 18th century officer (Mads Mikkelsen) vies for a noble title by promising to successfully cultivate the Jutland heath, gathering misfit allies and enraging a sniveling, murderous rival landowner (Simon Bennebjerg.) Thematically a western, but also in its emotional performances, narrative sweep, and depiction of landscape as divine antagonist, a drink from the well of David Lean.
La Chimera (Italy, Alice Rohrwacher, 2023) Washed-out archaeologist with dowsing powers (Josh O’Connor) returns from prison to his old stomping grounds to reunite with his lost love’s mother (Isabella Rossellini) and his merry band of artifact looters. Beguiling, mythically resonant hangout movie.
The Blue Caftan (Morocco, Maryam Touzani, 2023) For the sake of his steely, ill wife (Lubna Azabal), a maker of exquisite handmade garments (Saleh Bakri) suppresses his attraction for his handsome new apprentice (Ayoub Missioui.) Sad, life-affirming drama painstakingly assembled from small, true moments.
Recommended
The Quiet Girl (Ireland, Colm Bairéad, 2022) A young girl, neglected in her own chaotic household, thrives when sent to live for a summer at her mom’s cousin’s dairy farm. Idyllic character drama builds to an intensely poetic conclusion.
Saint Omer (France, Alice Diop, 2022,4) Author (Kayije Kagame) covering the infanticide trial of a Senegalese philosophy student (Guslagie Malanda) finds uncomfortable resonances with her own life. Observational courtroom drama about the mystery of motivation uses its reporter character not as a narrative device but as a source of emotional connection.
Scarlet (France, Pietro Marcello, 2022) Girl grows from infant to young adult (Juliette Jouan) in an interwar French village whose churlish residents treat her talented woodworker father (Raphaël Thiéry) as an outcast. Lyrical, novelistic drama shows the difference between sincerity and sentimentality.
Subtraction (Iran, Mani Haghighi, 2022) Tehran couple (Taraneh Alidoosti, Navid Mohammadzadeh) discovers that they have exact duplicates, also married to one another. Realist tale of the uncanny offers a brilliantly fresh take on the doppelgänger motif, with culture-specific complications enhancing the suspense.
Love Life (Japan, Koji Fukada, 2022) A woman and her new husband’s grief over the death of her six year old son is complicated by the reappearance of her now homeless ex. Surprising turns give breadth to this moving, emotionally complex naturalistic drama.
Monster (Japan, Hirokazu Kore-Eda, 2023) A fifth grader’s odd behavior leads a determined mom (Sakura Andô) to accuse his teacher (Eita Nagayama) of verbal and physical abuse, but multiple perspectives reveal a different story. Puzzle drama expresses a deep empathy.
Tiger Stripes (Indonesia, Amanda Nell Eu, 2023) Hassled at school for being a little bit high-spirited, a girl who is the first in her cohort to get her period begins to turn into a tjindaku, the local version of the weretiger. Transforms from a naturalistic feminist coming of age drama into witty teen body horror.
Before, Now & Then (Indonesia, Kamila Andini, 2022) Wife (Happy Salma) of a wealthy philanderer (Arswendy Bening Swara) strives to keep up appearances as her previous life, shattered by war, reasserts itself. Sinuous, compellingly acted drama parallels repressed domestic truths with the forgetting of the Suharto regime’s 65-66 mass killings.
Walk Up (South Korea, Hong Sang-soo, 2022) Abrupt time jumps between scenes set in the same building reveal the shifting relationships between a successful, neurotic filmmaker, his daughter, a couple of girlfriends, and a neglected admirer. Formally disorienting, satirical character piece unnervingly suggests that people can change, but only to find new ways to disappoint, or be disappointed by, others.
The Souvenir Part II (UK, Joanna Hogg, 2021) Film student (Honor Swinton Byrne) turns her grief over her ex-boyfriend’s suicide into her graduate project. Autobiographical drama captures the uncertainty of young adulthood and gaining one’s footing in a creative career with Hogg’s knack for finding evanescent magic in everyday moments.
The Beast (France, Bertrand Bonello, 2023,4) To qualify for a job in an eerily serene AI future, a woman (Léa Seydoux) is sent back into past lives in 1910 and 2014 to purify her past traumas, both involving her relationships with a man (George MacKay.) Reality-shifting dystopian amour fou movie inspired by a Henry James novella.
The Teachers’ Lounge (Germany, İlker Çatak, 2023) Suspecting that a colleague is behind a series of petty thefts, a high school math teacher (Leonie Benesch) sets a trap, plunging the institution into chaos. Edited and scored like a thriller, wicked but played absolutely straight, this nerve-wracking bureaucratic morality tale incisively examines what happens when de-escalation is never an option.
Ponniyin Selvan Part 1 (India, Mani Ratnam, 2022) Flirtatious prince of a defunct kingdom (Vikram) acts as messenger to protect the Chola empire’s royal family from threats both external and internal, including the stratagems of a wily queen (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.) Massively mounted historical adventure epic with swashbuckling, scheming, costumes, battle sequences on land and sea and well-integrated musical numbers.
Exhuma (South Korea, Jang Jae-hyun, 2024) Hired to lift a curse afflicting a rich family, a team led by a mercenary geomancer (Choi Min-Sik) and a blunt shaman (Kim Go-eun) removes their grandfather’s coffin from his inauspicious grave, digging up more than they expected. Investigative folk horror flick packed with scares, curveballs, and fun character moments.
Never Open That Door (Argentina, Carlos Hugo Christensen, 1952) Rich family’s dutiful scion tries to protect his sister, a compulsive gambler, from a blackmailer; a blind woman who has longed for the return of her prodigal son discovers that he is a murderous armed robber bent on performing another job. In this diptych of Cornell Woolrich adaptations, the first is a stylish exercise in simple irony and the longer second part is truly brilliant, with a nail-biting extended sequence of suspenseful pure cinema.
Mami Wata (Nigeria, C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi, 2023) The adopted daughter (Evelyne Ily Juhen) of an untouched village’s intermediary to the sea goddess struggles to protect it from the encroach of corrupt modernity. Impassioned allegorical drama shot in a striking digital black and white that transforms the actor’s patterned costumes into stark graphic elements.
Holy Spider (Denmark, Ali Abassi, 2022) Risk-taking reporter defies authorities in the holy Iranian city of Mashhad as she tracks a serial killer preying on women in the sex trade. Gritty crime procedural where the social and political context throws additional obstacles into the manhunt and its aftermath.
Peter von Kant (France, François Ozon, 2022) In a typical act of romantic self-destruction, 70s filmmaker Peter von Kant (Denis Ménochet) courts a handsome young man with a tragic past (Khalil Ben Gharbia) by promising to make him a star. Billed as a remake of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, to which it bears the sole resemblance of being set in an apartment, this is actually a rueful and funny highly theatrical chamber biopic of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Isabelle Adjani plays Hanna Schygulla and Hanna Schygulla plays Fassbinder’s mother, who at one point has an impassioned speech defending Isabelle Adjani as Hanna Schygulla.
Amanda (Italy, Carolina Cavalli, 2022) Back in the family manor after an unsuccessful sojourn in Paris, an abrasive slacker (Benedetta Porcaroli) campaigns to reconnect with her alleged childhood bestie (Galatéa Bellugi), now a recluse. Offbeat comedy revives the deadpan stream of 90s indie cinema from a woman’s point of view.
The Beasts (Spain, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, 2022) In rural Galicia, a dispute between an educated French couple (Marina Foïs, Denis Ménochet) who have moved to the area to start second careers as small-scale organic farmers and poor neighbors who want them to sell out to wind farm developers turns increasingly dangerous. Tense social drama of uncompromising people in an uncompromising landscape.
Fallen Leaves (Finland, Aki Kaurismaki, 2023) Alcoholic factory worker and glum grocery cashier encounter grim obstacles on the road to love. Melancholy deadpan (but I said Aki Kaurismaki already) rom com counterpointed by news reports of Russian attacks on Ukraine.
Afire (Germany, Christian Petzold, 2023) As doom looms in the background, a writer staying at a summer house to flail at his sophomore novel (Thomas Schubert) lets his insecurities get the better of him, especially around an unexpected fellow guest (Paula Beer.) Rohmeresque dramedy of emotional self-sabotage in the shadow of disaster.
The Sparring Partner (Hong Kong, Ho Cheuk-Tin, 2022) A psychopathic loser (Yeung Wai Leung) and his questionably functionable roommate (Mak Pui Tung) go on trial for his parents, gruesome murders. Told in fragmented chronology and with quasi-surreal visual devices, this true crime docudrama probes the impossibility of reliably knowing the facts of a case or the motivations of its participants.
Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Romania, Radu Jude, 2023) Exhausted PA (Ilinca Manolache) fights brutal Bucharest traffic working on a worker safety video for a performatively concerned foreign manufacturer. Satirical portrait of a nation working itself with to death underpinned by such formal interventions as the heroine’s scabrous bro culture parody TikToks, extended drop-ins from an earlier, Ceaușescu-era film, and a run time that feels like an extra overtime shift.
The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future (Chile, Francisca Alegría, 2023) Controlling doctor (Leonor Varela) takes her kids back to the family dairy farm after her father suffers a health episode triggered by an encounter with her mother (Mia Maestro), whose suicide occurred decades ago. Eco-themed family drama places well-drawn characters in a magic realist situation.
Cliff Walkers (China, Zhang Yimou, 2021) Communist commandos paratroop into occupied Harbin to perform a mission, unaware that they’ve been betrayed to the puppet government’s secret police. Snowy period espionage action-thriller where nearly every character is engaged in at least a double game.
The Sales Girl (Mongolia, Janchivdorj Sengedorj, 2021) When she subs for a classmate as a sex shop clerk, an unassuming physics student (Bayarjargal Bayartsetseg) bonds with the owner (Oidovjamts Enkhtuul), a former ballet star with lessons to impart on lust, life and loss. Straight from Ulaanbaatar, it’s a quirky, embracing indie comedy-drama with touches of Aki Kaurismaki deadpan.
The Breaking Ice (China, Anthony Chen, 2023) Visiting snowy Yanji for a wedding, a depressed finance worker (Liu Haoran) bonds with two other twenty-somethings, a walled-off tour guide (Zhou Dongyu) and the directionless restaurant employee (Qu Chuxiao) who shares his attraction to her. The love triangle becomes a minor chord and opportunities for cheap melodrama are set aside in a lovely, melancholy drama of connection and reawakening.
The Innocent (France, Louis Garrel, 2022) Shut-down aquarium docent (Louis Garrel) keeps his guard up when his actress mother (Anouk Grinberg) marries yet another ex-con. Smartly written, character-driven suspense comedy alludes to Hitchcock and De Palma.
Baby Assassins: 2 Babies (Japan, Yugo Sakamoto, 2023) Adorably flaky teen girl killers (Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa) get suspended from the Assassins Guild and are targeted by wannabes. This upgrade from the original boasts funnier off-kilter comedy, better fights and a more consistent tone.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Canada, Ariane Louis-Seize, 2024) In a world where vampires live secretly among humans in family units and have their own dentists and psychologists, reluctant bloodsucker Sasha (Sara Montpetit) finds a willing victim in depressed, put-upon high schooler Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard.) Droll horror rom com with nods to quintessential touchstones of Quebecois culture.
Dry Ground Burning (Brazil, Adirley Queirós & Joana Pimenta, 2023) In a Ceilândia favela a gasoline trafficker, her half-sister and all-female gang fend off a police crackdown. Epic-length slice of life drama with non-professional uses diagetic music sequences to widen the characters’ emotional expression.
Shin Ultraman (Japan, Shinji Higuchi & Ikki Todoroki, 2022) A specialist team of government kaiju-fighters grapples with geopolitical repercussions when a giant alien humanoid arrives on Earth to battle the terrifying creatures. Applies a satiric edge to the venerable franchise while still delivering the tokusatsu goods.
The Hole in the Fence (Mexico, Joaquin del Paso, 2021) At survival camp, leaders of a religious order teach young adolescent boys the essential quality they’ll need as sons of the ruling elite—cruelty. Brutal allegorical drama argues that things go Lord of the Flies not when adults are absent, but when they’re present and calling the shots.
The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout (UK, William Nunez, 2023) Documentary chronicles the production of the notoriously laughable, Howard Hughes-instigated 1956 Genghis Khan biopic, shot downwind from Nevada a-bomb tests many link to the cancer deaths of stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorhead, Pedro Armendariz and director Dick Powell. Grounds a real life story with a central metaphor too on-the-nose for fiction by also focusing on the huge number of non-celebrity fallout exposure victims.
Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman (China, Bingjia Yang, 2022) Gruff bounty hunter Blind Cheng steps outside the rules to pursue the well-connected criminal who ordered a wedding massacre. Beautifully photographed, straightahead period martial arts flick.
Mars One (Brazil, Gabriel Martins, 2023) Working class mom (Rejane Faria) and dad (Carlos Francisco) take it hard when their college student daughter (Camilla Damião) announces plans to move in with her girlfriend and their younger son (Cícero Lucas) dreams of setting aside his football talents for a career in space science. Affirming, socially conscious family drama.
Lumberjack the Monster (Japan, Takashi Miike, 2023) Murderous lawyer (Kazuya Kamenashi) tries to figure out why a masked serial killer attacked him, as an obsessive profiler (Nanao) hunts them both. Thriller novel adaptation pays off after getting the complicated plot out of the way, with Miike in his relatively normal mainstream mode.
Good
Cobweb (South Korea, Kim Jee-woon, 2024.5) Convinced they will turn his latest project into a masterpiece and overturn his reputation as a perennial second-rater, an obsessive director (Song Kang-ho) connives his way to an unauthorized reshoot hidden from 70s censors. Broad soundstage satire offers a jaundiced take on creative ambition and is presumably funnier if you really know the Korean film industry.
Okay
Venicephrenia (Spain, Álex de la Iglesia, 2022) A group of partying Spaniards are targeted by murderous anti-tourism conspiracy in Venice. Topical neo-giallo with script structure issues that prevent de la Iglesia from sustaining his usual momentum.
Unidentified Objects (US, Juan Felipe Zuleta, 2023) Needing cash, an aggrieved gay Little Person agrees to accompany an uninhibited UFO abductee on a road trip to her alien rendezvous point. Attacks its American indie movie stock elements with energy and great seriousness.
