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.
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.
Tótem will 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.).
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 Utopia will 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.)
Periscope In The Bathtub 