The 59th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 11th to the 22nd. Most films will be shown at the AMC New City Theaters near North Ave and Halsted St. on Clybourn Ave (1500 N. Clybourn Ave). Some special presentations will be at the Music Box Theater (3733 N Southport Ave), and various other locations will be utilized as well – check the listing for venues and show times.
Carolina Amaral and Leonor Vasconcelos in “Living Bad.” credit: Midas Filmes
Family sagas come in all shapes and sizes; our latest family saga, notably, happens in two full-length feature films, each of which happen over the exact period of time. Bad Living (Mal Viver) and Living Bad (Viver Mal) (Portugal, 2023) is the new two-part feature from Portuguese writer/director João Canijo. I think after nine features and two documentaries we can call Canijo a seasoned veteran, even though his films are tough to see in the U.S. Blood of My Blood (Sangue do Meu Sangue) (2011) is probably his best-known film here.
Canijo’s two new films can be seen in either order; Bad Living follows three generations of women in the same family who run a small but lush hotel in Northern Portugal. Living Bad shows us the point of view of the guests staying at the hotel. Each film’s story pokes in and out of the other, but never in an outrightly intrusive or distracting way. Sara (Rita Blanco) is the owner of the hotel, handed down from her late husband. Her daughter Piedade (Anabela Moreira), the hotel manager, is imperious and humorless, and clings to her small black dog for companionship. She’s a very good manager, and performs her own duties reliably well, but doesn’t have much use for Mother or her other charges. Fellow daughter Raquel (Cleia Almeida) is a housekeeper who seems to be romantically involved with the hotel’s very good cook, Ângela (Vera Barreto) (perhaps a relative as well), but Raquel, nonetheless, has no problem occasionally hooking up with various male guests. A recent addition to the family workforce, Salomé (Madalena Almeida), recently lost her father, Piedade’s long-estranged ex-husband. Salomé doesn’t have much affection for Piedade, but Sara is pleased that Salomé chose to be with the larger family.
Madalena Almeida and Anabela Moreira in “Bad Living.” credit: Midas Filmes
Living Bad relates the stories of three groups of guests, and all three scenarios are loosely based on short August Strindberg plays. Playing With Fire, The Pelican and Motherly Love. The first episode involves Camila (Filipa Areosa), a social media influencer whose photographer boyfriend Jaime (Nuno Lopes) constantly provides her photos for Instagram posts and missives. The second gives us an alpha mother Elisa (Leonor Silveira) who, in reality, is grooming her daughter’s fiancé (Rafael Morais) for herself. The third features another forthright mother, Judite (Beatriz Batarda), coming between her daughter Júlia (Leonor Vasconcelos) and her girlfriend Alice (Carolina Amaral). For both mothers, it’s competition, control, and fear of abandonment. But besides the Strindberg templates, we’re in full-on Ingmar Bergman territory here, where repressed emotions are almost indistinguishable from held breath. Grandmas take it out on moms, who take it out on their daughters, and that’s before they have to deal with guys, who make them miserable in marriage. In the 50s and 60s, this was pretty heady stuff. These days many find it pretty tedious. But I like Canijo’s work here – it’s well structured, straightforward, and he gets terrific performances, especially from Anabela Moreira and young Madalena Almeida. It looks great, and it’s well-shot by Leonor Teles, getting evocative mileage from the hotel interiors and the massive outdoor pool area. I’m good with these slow, Freudian / John Bradshaw potboilers, especially when they don’t end well. Trust me, this’ll go on to streaming somewhere, though the big screen is best.
The 59th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 11th to the 22nd. Most films will be shown at the AMC New City Theaters near North Ave and Halsted St. on Clybourn Ave (1500 N. Clybourn Ave). Some special presentations will be at the Music Box Theater (3733 N Southport Ave), and various other locations will be utilized as well – check the listing for venues and show times.
Naíma Sentíes in “Tótem.” credit: Chicago Int’l Film Festival / Caroline Friedman
Mexico’s submission to next year’s International Feature Film Oscar is Tótem (Mexico, 2023), the second feature of director/writer/actor Lila Avilés, who made a great initial impression with 2018’s The Chambermaid. That film was the chronicle of one woman’s working day in a high-end Mexico City hotel. In contrast, Tótem takes place in a small house where a family is preparing a birthday party. The birthday boy, Tono (Tonatiuh) (Mateo Garcia Elizondo) is a young painter and married father battling debilitating cancer; he’s staying at the family’s home with his caretaker Cruz (Teresa Sánchez). Semi-retired at-home psychoanalyst father Roberto (Alberto Amador) has little if any patience for any of these people, let alone for the subsequent party, family or not. Tono’s sister Nuria (Montserrat Marañon) is working in the kitchen with her youngest daughter Esther while her other two kids are in the den texting and playing video games. His second sister Alejandra (Marisol Gasé) talks Nuria’s other two kids into cleaning while she “supervises.” She also brings in a spiritual advisor (Marisela Villarruel) to clear bad spirits in the home with handfuls of smoking herbal smudge.
While this scenario seems a bit arbitrary and structureless, the film actually opens with Tono’s wife, Lucia (Iazua Larios), and their pre-teen daughter Sol (Naíma Sentíes) making their way to the house in Lucia’s car. Lucia must drop Sol off to go to work, and Sol, through the course of the day, insinuates herself with the others in the house, wanders contently on her own, eavesdrops discreetly on the others, and generally lives her whole day in that childlike hyper-observant state that we all took for granted until we, as adults, became too sensible to take real advantage of it. Many of the day’s events, trivial or consequential, are observed by us in proximity to Sol, and things no doubt inexplicable to her tend to become inexplicable to us as well. These semi-claustrophobic family event environments are really tough to shoot and perform in, no matter what you’re trying to express, and they need to be scrupulously structured, on the page as well as on set. There are all sorts of short, good ideas being created here, but they don’t really go anywhere or result in anything. It is all a bit arbitrary and structureless. Tótem is one of those interesting failures that will accelerate the learning curve for an otherwise young, strong and talented filmmaker who needed to get this one out of her system. In the meantime, seek out the far superior The Strange Little Cat (2013) from German filmmaker Ramon Zurchur.
Tótemwill be shown on Saturday October 14th at 1:00 pm at the AMC New City #4 and Friday the 20th at 7:30 pm at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N State St.).
“Concrete Utopia.” credit: Chicago Int’l Film Festival
Just when I thought the disaster flick genre had been done to death, here come the South Koreans to prove us wrong, again. In Concrete Utopia (콘크리트 유토피아) (South Korea, 2023), Min-seong (Park Seo-joon) is a don’t-rock-the-boat civil servant, and his wife Myeong-hwa (Park Bo-young) is a conscientious and self-sacrificing nurse. Their twenty-something lives are puttering along modestly but nicely while living in one of the seemingly hundred-thousandfold apartments in (mostly) reconstructed and modernized downtown Seoul. So, of course, they and their hundreds of thousands of fellow apartment dwellers can’t possibly be prepared for the mother of all earthquakes erupting across the middle of the Korean peninsula, or great slabs of the city folding over onto themselves like outtakes from Inception. All of those monstrous apartment towers collapse in on each other like dominoes – except one. Hwang Gung Apartments, the building Min-seong and Myeong-hwa live in. Thousands of inhabitants of all of those other buildings are greedily eyeing the unspoiled Hwang Gung building from the cold and snowy outdoors. Meanwhile, the Hwang Gong folks are mobilizing to protect their food, shared security and their good luck. Kim Yeong-tak (Korean heartthrob Lee Byung-hun), who early on helped people out and put out a perilous fire, is appointed Provisional Resident Delegate, essentially their president. Will they decide to evict non-residents, or try to share what they have with them? Min-seong is appointed to the anti-crime task force, since he’s done military surface, but what will duties really be? Most films like this depend on the scale of action and destruction. and humanity finding their way through that. But, slowly but surely, Concrete Utopia slips away from the loud noises and shiny objects and becomes almost exclusively about the people – what they think their duties and responsibilities should be, to themselves, to their loved ones, and/or to the pitiful mopes they’re stuck in the same situation with. The range becomes Altruists and Ayn Randians, and all permutations in between. Things don’t outrightly devolve into savagery, a la Lord Of The Flies or *your*zombie*favorite*here*, but identities and temperaments do evolve or diminish in far more interesting ways than scary boogedy-boogedy. This will disappoint many (as well as the absence of the usual amounts of blood, gore and grotesquerie), but I think director Um Tae-hwa (this is his fourth feature) will have earned the substantial box-office action I suspect this great-time-at-the-movies will generate. Go and have fun!
Concrete Utopiawill be shown on Saturday October 14th at 7:45 pm at the AMC New City #13 and Monday the 16th at 1:00 pm at the AMC New City #13 as well. (A $15 weekday matinee.)
The 59th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 11th to the 22nd. Most films will be shown at the AMC New City Theaters near North Ave and Halsted St. on Clybourn Ave (1500 N. Clybourn Ave). Some special presentations will be at the Music Box Theater (3733 N Southport Ave), and various other locations will be utilized as well – check the listing for venues and show times.
Eya Chikhaoui, Ichrak Matar, Tayssir Chikhaoui and Nour Karoui in “Four Daughters.” credit: Chicago Int’l Film Festival.
Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania works the story-telling in-betweens in novel fashion in her new feature film Four Daughters (Les Filles d’Olfa) (بنات ألفة). Her chronicle of single mother Olfa Hamrouni, and the present and past fates of her daughters, is related as part-reenactment and part therapy-session, with director Ben Hania barely bothering with any kind of fourth wall or objectifying fictionalization. Of the four daughters, the two youngest, Eya and Tayssir, play themselves, while the two eldest are portrayed by actors – Ichrak Matar as the oldest, Ghofrane, and Nour Karoui as Rahma. The absence of the two older sisters is one of the mysterious human behavioral quandaries that the film cumulatively explores; in the meantime, we see the actors collaborating with the daughters to flush out the personalities and inner workings of their absent siblings. They talk about boys and sex, the religion they’ve been raised with, whether they prefer scarves, or hijabs or niqabs, and the music they listened to (apparently, Ghofrane had a fervent Goth phase). Less typical is Olfa’s marriage, which got off to a bad start and barely improved over the girls’ childhoods. The husband was an emotionally unavailable layabout, and another of Mom’s paramours turned out to be a junkie. Olfa is given the option of sometimes portraying herself, and sometimes having Tunisian actress Hend Sabry do it when things get too heavy. Another clever conceit is having all of the male characters – husbands, lovers and boyfriends – performed by a single actor, Majd Mastoura who does nice work with a thankless range of mopes. Olfa, Eya and Tayssir’s reliving this stuff is sometimes hilarious, more often painful, and Olfa emerges as a complex and contradictory figure, sometimes haranguing and flat-out abusive, other times fiercely loving and protective. I suspect a great many Moms might fit that description, but what effect did her love and labor have on the other four? What effect did they have on each other, while contending with misogyny and religious extremism and absent fathers? Ben Hania is generous with her subjects, always treating them with kindness and empathy while successfully drawing out both confessions and truthful portrayals. It’s an impressive film that puts a unique twist on documentary structure and style.
Four Daughters, in its U.S. premiere, screens on Thursday, October 12th at 5:00 pm at the AMC New City #5 and Friday the 13th at 2:30 pm at the AMC New City #5 as well. (A $15 weekday matinee.)
Manoj Bajpayee in “Joram. ” Credit: makhijafilm.com
A smart, complex and propulsive thriller, Joram (India, 2023) just keeps pulling away daunting layers of accumulating corruption and malice up until its abrupt ending. Roughly 8.6 per cent (104 million) of the total population of India is tribal indigenous, including the loving young couple we meet early on in our film, Dasru (veteran Manoj Bajpayee) and Vaano (Tannishtha Chatterjee). Their tribal community in Jharkhand may be isolated and somewhat primitive, but they’re tightly knit and self-sustaining. Much like American ranchers or railroads, enterprising industrial developers in India were anxious to exploit the inhabitants of these resource-rich lands to cheaply acquire mining, deforestation and agricultural rights, and when one particular iron company starts bullying Dasru’s neighbors and fellow tribespeople into selling their land and leaving, a small group of homies beats one of the more insistent exploiter/sales associates to death. Among their ranks is Dasru, who flees with Vaano that night to lose themselves in the anonymous big city of Mumbai. Five years later, they’re construction laborers and parents of a new baby girl, Joram. But that mining sales associate had a politically well-connected mother, Phulo Karma (Smita Tambe) who plays both the corporate interests and the locals against each other to her own lucrative, cold-blooded benefit. And for these last five years, she’s been avenging the death of her son on his perpetrators with the exception of the mysteriously vaporized Dasru. But one small slip-up leads to another, Dasru’s family is exposed, tragedy strikes and Dasru heads back to Jharkhand to end the vengeful cycle one way or the other.
Director Devashish Makhija, he of clearly abundant storytelling and filmmaking gifts, draws from a solid understanding of westerns, film-noir, melodrama, and I’d wager a deep appreciation of British filmmaker Carol Reed (Odd Man Out, The Third Man), as well as Alfred Hitchcock. He, no doubt, could edify me on the Indian filmmakers he draws from as well. But my primary points remain: this is a superb noir-tinged chase thriller conceived by a pro with dynamic variety and great characters we genuinely care about, including the straight-laced police inspector I haven’t even mentioned yet (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub). Superb nightime entertainment for a Thursday or Friday night. Highly recommended.
Joram, in its North American premiere, will be shown on Thursday, October 12th at 7:30 pm at AMC New City #5 and Friday the 13th at 8:15 pm. at AMC New City #5 as well.
Mads Mikkelsen in “The Promised Land.” credit: mymovies.it
Even when he’s the clear lead protagonist, canny veteran Mads Mikkelsen is very good at bringing his fellow actors along with him in the overall service of the story. And , more often than not, Mikkelsen teams up with his frequent Danish collaborators, the writer/directors Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair, Riders Of Justice) Anders Thomas Jenson (Adam’s Apples, After The Wedding, The Salvation) and Tobias Lindholm (The Hunt, Another Round). Nikolaj Arcel’s newest project with Mikkelsen, The Promised Land (Bastarden) (Denmark, 2023), may start out like some singular Danish historical saga, but at its heart, it’s a western, and a very good one.
Ludvig von Kahlen (Mikkelsen) is a retiring military officer who takes on a challenge from the king of Denmark (open to most retiring officers) to cultivate crops in Jutland, the barren main continental peninsula that makes up central and western Denmark. Succeed in cultivating Jutland, establish farming settlements thereof, and the King will make you, your family and/or business partners landowning royalty.
There is, however, incumbent landowning royalty already living nearby, and despite the King’s paperwork giving Kahlen rights and ownership of his plot of land, the bratty and oleaginous Frederik De Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg) insists it’s all his. With the capital (and the King) 200 miles away, he insists on Kahlen’s giving up ownership rights to him and paying him 50% of the crops’ income. Two of De Schinkel’s servants, Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin) and Johannes (Morten Hee Andersen) run away from his estate to Kahlen and describe his lecherous and abusive treatment of the household. Kahlen takes them in, along with a child from a band of Romani highwaymen (Melina Hagberg), and successfully employs all of them to prepare the land for planting. But as Kahlen’s prospects improve, De Schinkel can spend money flagrantly on the pliable local authorities, making his life and enterprise spitefully miserable.
There’s an OutlawJosie Wales feel to much of The Promised Land; it’s a resonant and well-structured narrative that surveys the shifts from corruption and greed to resourceful opportunism to principled determination. There’s also a colorful cast of supporting roles that Arcel is far more serious-minded about than Eastwood might have been, but the craft of each is certainly comparable. The cinematography of Rasmus Videbæk and Jette Lehmann’s production design are naturalistically evocative without being overdone. It’s a big, thrilling historical adventure that should be seen on the big screen, and I highly recommend it.
The Promised Landscreens on Saturday, October 14th at Noon and Saturday the 21st at 5:30 pm, with each screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N State St.).
“Pictures Of Ghosts.” credit: Chicago Int’l Film Festival.
Kleber Mendonça Filho has, with a number of early short films and three features, established himself as a world-class Brazilian filmmaker. His latest film is the enthralling documentary and memoir Pictures Of Ghosts (Retratos Fantasmas) (Brazil, 2023). Born and raised in Recife (in the state of Pernambuco, north of Rio de Janeiro at Brazil’s easternmost coastal port) by his beloved single mother, an historian and academic, Mendonça experimented early on with photography, video and Super 8 film, using schoolchums and neighbors as cast and extras. Like many filmmakers, he was a journalist and critic post-graduate, but always lived in the family home in Recife’s Setùbal neighborhood, surrounded by smart and creative friends and family. Both Neighboring Sounds (O Som ao Redor) (2012) and Aquarius (2016) were filmed in or near Setùbal, and this film is a terrific entryway into the depths of love and regard that Mendonça has for his experiences within that culture, and his needs to transform and share that through his films. But he has a great sense of civic anthropology as well, discerning how buildings he grew up with started out as movie theaters (always developmental landmarks for neighborhoods and kids) and were often transformed into shopping malls and/or relocated churches. His view of the slow demise of popular cinemas (and entertainments and rituals in general) is concise and heartbreaking, yet the film overall is infused with Mendonça’s industrious optimism and warm narrative company. It’s a small but quite wonderful film.
Pictures Of Ghosts will be shown on Saturday, October 14th at 2:45 pm at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N State St.) and Thursday the 19th at 2:30 pm. at AMC New City #4.
Periscope In The Bathtub 