The 57th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 13th to the 24th. Films will be shown at the AMC River East 21, the Music Box Theater, the Gene Siskel Film Center and the Chi-Town Movies Drive-In. Complete schedule and information is here.
A bittersweet romantic comedy far better than the sum of its parts, The Worst Person In The World (Verdens Verste Menneske) (Norway, 2021) is the fifth feature film directed by the very talented Joachim Trier, once again co-writing the screenplay with Eskil Vogt. It’s natural to be a bit suspicious of yet another slice-of-life featuring a quirky but loveable ingénue, written and directed by men. But Trier and Vogt have pulled off an extraordinarily observed character study of their protagonist, Julie (the wonderful Renate Reinsve, best actress winner at Cannes this year), and a chronicle of growing up as a millennial, faced with far too many options yet feeling a bit entitled to leave all of those options open.
Julie is turning thirty, and still hasn’t decided what she wants to be when she grows up. Medical school is a great idea until it’s not, then on to psychology, followed by photography, with a day-job at a downtown bookstore for her everyday expenses. In twelve chapters, plus a prologue and epilogue, we follow Julie’s adventures: she meets Aksel, a bit older and a successful comic/graphic artist (the superb Anders Danielson Lie), and they settle in for a while until Aksel starts warming to the idea of children. Julie, ever mischievous, crashes a wedding party and meets Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), a freer spirit who indulges Julie’s manic-pixie-dream-girl persona, and she veers off again. In both her major relationships and her day-to-day life, Julie defiantly-yet-breezily refuses to be pinned down, and is admirably resilient to the trouble she continuously creates for herself. There’s a turn, though, when she learns of a disturbing development with Aksel, and in honestly reassessing her mercurial past she finds a way to be genuinely true to herself. This is a wonderful film that constantly threatens to dip into quirky hipster soap-opera, but is saved by its smart script and the committed and engaging work of its lead performances. It’s a must-see.
The Worst Person In The World will be shown on Saturday, October 16th at 5:45 pm and Thursday the 21st at 7:45 pm. At the AMC River East 21, and opens for a regular theatrical run in the next few weeks in Chicago.
One of France’s most talented, thoughtful and challenging directors, Jacques Audiard, has transplanted some illustrated short stories of graphic artist Adrian Tomine into the milieu of Paris’ 13th arrondissement, specifically a housing and urban plaza project known as Les Olympiades. Built in the early seventies to bring young professionals into redeveloped parts of Paris, the subdivision also became a multicultural hub as well, drawing a large Chinese and Vietnamese population.
In Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades, Paris 13e) (France, 2021), we follow three characters: Émilie Wong (an engaging Lucie Zhang), Camille Germain (Makita Samba), and Nora Ligier (Noémie Merlant). Camille has answered an ad placed by Émilie for a roommate – Émilie is resistant when she learns “Camille” is a guy, but they talk for a while, describe their situations and reach an agreement. The apartment itself is owned by Émilie’s grandmother, who’s in a care facility for ALS patients. In the meantime, Émilie works in sales at a call-center, but is starting to push her luck there out of boredom.
Consenting adults that they are, things don’t stay platonic for long – Émilie has fallen hard for Camille, understandably, but Camille wants to stay uncommitted, and they reach a touchy détente while negotiating their lives otherwise. Camille is a high-school teacher who has taken sabbatical to pursue his doctorate, and has also been handed a side gig with his brother’s real-estate agency bereft of real-estate agents. Nora did real-estate in Bordeaux in what we learn was an unseemly arrangement of unpleasant length. She’s decided to come to Paris, study law at the Sorbonne and remake herself. But in a bizarre combination of circumstances, a group of male students at a large school-wide rave mistake Nora (playfully wearing a blonde wig) for a well-known video sex worker, Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth, best known as the lead singer for UK band The Savages). Constantly whispered about in classes and elsewhere, and bombarded with internet messages, Nora outrightly pays for an online session with Amber, and an unlikely (if expensive) friendship blossoms. Extracting herself from the social abuse, Nora interviews once again for a real-estate position with… Camille, and becomes his best (and only) superagent.
Consenting adults that they are, things don’t stay platonic for long… one perhaps perilous tendency of the film is to present these relationships as casually, intimately and passionately sexual, as if the lessons of HIV, safe sex and our most recent pandemic might never have happened. For Camille and Lucie, together and separately, sex is an indulgence they’re entitled to. For Nora, its more of an escape, a compensating mechanism that just doesn’t quite free her from herself, isn’t transporting. Again, as in The Worst Person In The World, we have millennials skipping across all of the options, and inventing themselves out of their own sadder-but-wiser pasts.
But as in all Audiard films, the storytelling, and the visual narrative in its service, is heavyweight. All of his films, from Read My Lips to The Beat My Heart Skipped to A Prophet to Rust And Bone to Dheepan to this one are irresistibly watchable. Here he and cinematographer Paul Guilhaume have shot Paris in gorgeous but gritty digital black & white, and his screenplay (co-adapted with Nicolas Livecchi, Léa Mysius and Céline Sciamma) is a conduit for a master class in narrative rhythm and tonal shifts. Even with a somewhat murky ending, there’s enough to admire here to warrant my very high recommendation.
Paris, 13th District will screen on Saturday, October 16th at 8:30 pm and Tuesday the 19th at 8:15 pm at the AMC River East 21, and will hopefully see a regular theatrical run soon in Chicago.
Periscope In The Bathtub 