This year, as every year, January went out in style with the annual Gothenburg Film Festival. This year, unlike most years neither I nor Mrs SC fell ill during the festival, which was a distinct bonus. For once we were sufficiently organised to take advantage of having advance membership. We managed to put in our orders for tickets the day before the general public, which meant we got tickets to all the films we’d picked without any problems.
As usual we didn’t pick the same films at the same times, but we did find one film we both wanted to see that we were able to co-ordinate enough to see together. (A gentle Irish comedy called Four Mothers.)
We also saw at least one film together on-line (Santosh.) The Festival continues what they started during the pandemic, streaming a selection of films which are available to view on a TV screen in the comfort of your own living room. But the best thing about the Festival, of course, is to be able to see as many of the films as possible on a big cinema screen.
I wimp out on only twelve films
In the end, I think we both saw about twelve films – mostly different films. That works out as approximately one each for each of the festival’s ten days. It was enough. There was a time I would have been disappointed not to have seen two or three every day, but not this time. I’m getting old. There was one guy called on stage at the Draken cinema just before the final film who claimed to have seen 40 films. He won a prize. I guess he was in his 40s or 50s. Clearly, I’m not that much of a cineast.
The first film I saw on screen was the French language SF parody L’Empire on 23rd January (at Biopalatset). (I thought it was an end-of-course, film student effort. Turns out it was by an auteur. Oh, well.) The first I saw on-line was the Australian stop motion animation Memoir of a Snail on 24th. The last on-line was the Indian police and social drama Santosh on 1st February. And the last on screen was Four Mothers at the Draken cinema on the 2nd.
It’s hard to decide which of all the films I saw was the best. Looking back now, the following are the ones that stick with me.
A graphic winter
First, the French-Korean Hiver à Sokcho, (Winter in Sokcho). This story follows Sooha, a twenty-something Korean-French woman in the rundown Korean coastal resort of Sokcho. Her life is disrupted by the appearance of a French graphic novelist, Kermand, who stays at the hotel she helps run. Lovingly filmed with striking faces and some animated sections. (The animations illustrate her feelings and are in accord with his artistic style.)
Hiver à Sokcho is a romance, but it cleverly leads you up to several romance clichés before neatly sidestepping them. Kermand does not fall in love with Sooha (though she falls, very unwillingly, for him). She never gets to make him a meal, though she tries. And she doesn’t, in the end, poison him – or herself – with a sushi made of the potentially deadly fugu fish. But she does seem to reach a kind of peace and stability for herself. Apparently the film is based on a novella of the same name. I would like to read it.
Saoirse Ronan is drunk in Orkney
Two other films stand out: Bird and The Outrun. The Outrun is a drama based on the memoir of Amy Liptrot (also The Outrun) that I read in 2016. Saoirse Ronan plays Amy (she’s called Rona in the film). A 30-something alcoholic who is attempting to stay sober by moving home from London to her parents in Orkney. When that doesn’t work out, she spends time on Papa Stour counting birds through the winter for the RSPB. As portrayal of alcoholism, it is at times harrowing. The story is told in a kind of shattered-time sequence of flashbacks interspersed with current events. It’s reflective, I suppose, of the state of mind of someone suffering from/injured by addiction. (Some reviewers clearly didn’t like this – I found it compelling.) Saoirse Ronan is very good.
The Outrun was showing at Draken – the biggest of the cinemas and the ‘home cinema’ for the festival – and it was very nearly full. I found a seat towards the side for fear of needing to go to the toilet. (The cinema was cold and the film was over 2 hours long.) I did indeed have to make a (prostate related) toilet visit somewhere in the last half hour and felt very conspicuous. But then observed a few other, older gentlemen in what I took to be a similar predicament. After that I didn’t feel quite so exceptional.
Bird kills social-realist tormentor
Bird was showing at Biopalatset in their largest theatre and was also very nearly full. This film combined social realism in the style of Mike Leigh with fantasy – very successfully I thought. Bailey is on the cusp of her teenage, but old for her years. She lives with her young father, Bug, her half-brother, Hunter, and Kaylie, Bug’s new girlfriend of 3 months standing, with Kaylie’s maybe 5 year-old daughter. They live in a squat in a rundown part of a town on the Kent coast. (Immediately more interesting just for being on the wealthy south coast.)
Bug and Kaylie are planning a wedding. To finance this Bug has invested in a toad he believes to be able to secrete hallucinogenic slime. Bailey meets a mysterious stranger – Bird – who is searching for his parents. He believes he was lost from this town when he was very young. With Bailey’s help, Bird eventually finds his father and learns that his mother (who was “crazy”) disappeared soon after he did himself.
Bird then helps Bailey. Bailey has three younger siblings who still live with their mother in another part of the run-down estate. The mother is in an abusive relationship with a violent man who may be her supplier or her pimp. Or both. In a violent scene near the end of the film, Bird transforms into a giant bird to win the fight, and flies away with the body of Bailey’s mother’s tormentor.
At the end of the film, Bailey attends Bug’s wedding, and Bird appears too, to say goodbye. For a moment, Bird and Bailey share the same coloured eyes, which resemble those of a seagull Bailey met early in the film.
Orchestral manoeuvres and banana Peaches
Looking back through my notes there are several other films I feel I could write about. Silent Trilogy, a set of three Finnish-made silent, black-and-white films shown at Stora Teatern with a live seven piece orchestra accompanying them. That stands out. Also the documentary Peaches Goes Bananas about the electro-clash Canadian/German performer Peaches. I realise now I’ve been following Peaches (at a safe distance), very nearly since her breakthrough. But I’ll let it rest here.
Just a final word to say that I didn’t pull off my usual hat-trick of a film from every continent this year. There was one cross-over film that linked Africa and China (Black Tea – pretty but not very substantial), but I ended up with nothing from South America, which was a shame. Next year I’ll do better. (Perhaps.)
My twelve films
(Links go to IMDb.)
- L’Empire – Director: Bruno Dumont – French SF parody.
- Memoir of a Snail – Director: Adam Elliot – Australian stop-motion animation but not for children.
- Peaches goes Bananas – Director: Marie Losier – Anglophone documentary about Merrill Nisker aka Peaches.
- Black Tea – Abderrahmane Sissako – Francophone African/Chinese drama – an African woman studying to become a tea sommellier in Guangzhou.
- Super Happy Forever – Director: Kohei Igarashi – Japanese drama/love story in two time lines.
- The Outrun – Director: Nora Fingsheidt – English language drama set in Orkney.
- Measures for a Funeral – Director: Sofia Bohdanowicz – Canadian drama straining to be (or not to be?) a documentary about early 20th century Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow.
- Hiver à Sokcho / Winter in Sokcho – Director: Koya Kamura – Francophone/Korean drama/romance.
- Silent Trilogy – Director Juho Kuosmanen – Finnish silent film, burlesque.
- Santosh – Director Sandhya Suri – Indian drama about a woman police officer’s experience.
- Bird – Andrea Arnold – English drama. Fantastic acting by Nykiya Adams (Bailey).
- Four Mothers – Diretor: Darren Thornton – gentle Irish comedy.
