April's Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) is much more genre-oriented than the larger September festival, and in turn also has fewer showings on fewer screens. As a result, there were not nearly as many significant festival hits, although there were a handful of major headliners. This year, I went as far as to buy the Festival Pass, which allowed me to see a wide range of movies, including some minor local pictures. Here, I will quickly discuss the films I saw, starting with the six I viewed on weekdays.
CUFF proudly styles itself as the weirder Calgary film festival, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the opening film, An Evening with Beverly Buff Linn, from Jim Hoskings of The Greasy Strangler fame. I'm not familiar with that notorious earlier film, but if it's anything like this new one, I"m not sure I want to be. Beverly Buff Linn is ostensibly a comedy, revolving around Lulu Danger (Aubrey Plaza) escaping from her husband to a local hotel, where she's promised the titular evening with Beverly Buff Linn (Craig Robinson), an unexplained performance scheduled for that evening. On the sidelines are Lulu's husband Shane (Emile Hirsch), who has stolen a rival's money, Colin (Jemaine Clement), who gets sidetracked after being hired to retrieve that money, and Rodney (Matt Berry), Beverly's ambiguous "partner."
Hoskings certainly has a style, and from all evidence he has deliberately set out to disgust. His film's aesthetic is deliberately hideous and several of its performances consist overwhelmingly of obnoxious mugging. Combined, these create a peculiarly unconvincing atmosphere, like a cheap online sketch extended to 90 minutes, and while the story is intermittently surprising, the film's efforts to offend are much more often simply predictable and unfunny. Hirsch is instantly grating, reducing his performance to a collection of overdone tics, whereas Robinson is directed to simply grunt loudly for the vast majority of the running time. Nonetheless, Plaza, Berry, and Clement get by much better. and when the film starts to unveil its surprising sentimental core, its largely due to their work that it almost feels satisfying.
Alas, elsewhere they're reduced to caricatures, and while Beverly Buff Linn's occasionally finds moments of genuine inspiration, much more often its attempts at absurdity are merely tired and irritating. This is a movie which not once but twice attempts to mine laughs from an extended scene of someone coughing, and while there's apparently an audience for that, the appeal is completely lost on me. Beverly Buff Linn is commendable for being so committed to its oddness, and nobody would ever call it forgettable, but Hoskings's puerile sensibility far too rarely approaches genuine creativity. (4/10)
While I did not make it to many films from the local scene, I did see Michael Peterson's competent slasher movie Knuckleball, which mostly stands out for a relatively clever premise and for a starring role from Michael Ironside. Peterson had apparently been popular with festival-goers who saw his 2011 comedy Lloyd the Conqueror, but all the same, his might be the single most minor film I saw this week. Positioning itself as a darker riff on Home Alone, the film tells the story of young Henry (Luca Villacis) being temporarily left alone with his grandfather (Michael Ironside), only to be left alone when the latter passes away in his sleep. Worse still, he has forgotten his phone charger, a severe blizzard ensues, and Henry's only other human company is the unhinged Dixon (Munro Chambers), whose impure intentions quickly become clear.
Knuckleball doesn't explicitly explain Dixon's behaviour, but between Chambers's eccentric performance and frequent hallucination scenes, it implies mental illness to be the cause, and attempts to further justify this through some childhood abuse are kept vague. This is emblematic of the film as a whole, which is reasonably tense and competently crafted, but ultimately eschews the more interesting aspects of its story in favour of generic thrills. A lot of backstory is implied, not only through Dixon but also through cutaways to Henry's increasingly worried parents, but it's neither entirely cogent nor especially fresh, and instead, the film works best at its most simple. Peterson does a solid job of establishing mood, with a chilly visual style giving texture to the severe weather, but for all of its sturdy thrills, the film doesn't linger long in memory. (6/10)
Among the biggest names at the festival was Lynne Ramsay's Cannes hit You Were Never Really Here, screened only a few days before it properly opened in Calgary cinemas. Ramsay is not a prolific filmmaker, as this is her fourth feature in over 20 years, and her first since 2011's We Need to Talk About Kevin. This new film revolves around a traumatized veteran named Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) tracking down a senator's missing daughter, only to uncover a sprawling conspiracy which he gets far too close to for comfort. Interspersed with the main story are distorted flashbacks to Joe's military days, as well as his strained efforts to fit into normal society.
Ultimately, it's in the attempts at thematic depth where You Were Never Really Here falters. Its approach to trauma is frequently heavy-handed, bringing in flashbacks at key plot moments and featuring numerous scenes of Joe simply staring blankly out the window, occasionally muttering "what am I doing?" to himself. Nonetheless, this does flow into the film's riveting aesthetic abstractions, and once the plot is set in motion Ramsay's film is thrillingly disorienting, filled with gruesome, extremely stylized violence and an engagingly twisty narrative. The opening scenes establish a tight flow, and while the aforementioned attempts to depict trauma ultimately weigh it down, they're only brief diversions from the film's exciting momentum, and a wealth of narrative and aesthetic surprises ultimately lead the film further and further to total abstraction.
All of this is anchored around a terrific performance from Phoenix, who convincingly displays Joe's wide range of emotions, from his sweet relationship with his mother to his trauma to his aggression in the film's most intense scenes. You Were Never Really Here is too blunt as a character study to fully support this performance, but it's another aesthetic thrill in a movie full of them. Also deserving mention is the typically excellent Jonny Greenwood score, which fittingly alternates between jarring discordance and pulsating rhythms, contributing as much as the visuals and performances to the film's peculiar tone. Few films at this level of abstraction are also this exciting. (8/10)
Also terrific is Coralie Fargeat's brutal Revenge, which won the jury prize. Although it bears the trappings of a rape-revenge film, the film's narrative has much more to do with survival, although it still contains multiple instances of the titular act. In the film, Jen (Matilda Lutz) is enjoying her time as the mistress of married man Richard (Kevin Janssens) when his hunting buddies show up and rape her. Richard attempts to buy her silence, and when his attempts fail, he pushes her off a ledge. Unbeknownst to him, she survived the attempt, and is dead set on coming out the last person standing.
Revenge is not a particularly novel narrative, largely just stringing exciting set pieces together in a loose, thematically unified narrative, but it does stand out as an especially well-made example of its genre. It's a sleazy, campy film, but it uses both of those traits to its advantage, offering up a generous helping of gore and an often sadistic sense of humour. More importantly, while the film still does objectify its star at times, it recontextualizes that objectification into sex-positivity. Essentially, this is a film about men's feelings of entitlement to women's bodies, and when Jen strikes down her assailants, she's also shooting down toxic masculinity, and possibly even taking vengeance on decades of exploitation by the genre. At times it's perhaps a little too indulgent in its own sleaze, but much more often it's put in an appropriate context.
More importantly, Revenge is satisfyingly brutal and surprisingly gorgeous, taking full advantage of a desert setting to emphasize not only for the sake of beautiful vistas but also to build tension in an arid, forbidding environment. Even beyond the modest inversion of the male gaze she employs, Fargeat just demonstrates great skill at creating tension, and each encounter is at turns gripping, gruesome, and darkly funny. The film is stylish, suspenseful, and highly entertaining: for grindhouse fans, it's essential, but even those not already inclined towards the genre may find a lot to like, although those sensitive to violence, gore, or rape may want to stay away. Look for it when it comes out on the streaming service Shudder later this year. (8/10)
Less exciting is TV writer Rebecca Addelman's indie marital drama Paper Year, which has a lot of surface charm but struggles under the weight of a meandering, trite infidelity plotline. Despite being unable to afford a proper wedding, newlyweds Dan (Avan Jogia) and Franny (Eve Hewson) are enthusiastic about their first year together, especially now that they've finally attained new jobs. Dan is a dog-walker who found a gig house-sitting for a low-tier movie star, whereas Franny found employment writing for a game show. However, both quickly find themselves tempted by extramarital romance with their employers, Dan with the aforementioned movie-star and Franny with head writer Noah (Hamish Linklater).
Ultimately, Franny's side of the story gets more focus, whereas Dan's affair remains a lot more ephemeral. That difference is one of the more intriguing thematic concerns of Paper Year, which consistently regards the intangible myths of relationships, with a notable eye to critiquing the concept of monogamy. Unfortunately, many of these ideas remain in the background of a fairly basic doomed-marriage setup, with many scenes of Franny and Dan's relationship growing more tense contrasted with just as many scenes of Dan appearing bored and Franny's growing affair with Noah. The story maintains a modest degree of momentum, but often lingers on small, naturalistic encounters, which while frequently endearing never quite achieve the psychological complexity which was perhaps intended.
Addelman had previously worked on successful comedy series such as New Girl and Netflix's Love, and the frequently hilarious dialogue is a large part of the film's appeal. Jogia and Hewson have a lot of chemistry with each other as well as with their respective alternative partners, and the performances all feel nuanced and authentic, which is further emphasized by the consistently believable dialogue. Addelman shows many gifts as a director, but it's when the tone goes serious that the charms dissipate, and the inevitable fallout of Dan and Franny's marriage feels leaden and overly familiar. At the very least, however, the ending is suitably heartbreaking, and I'm very interested to see what Addelman does next. The film will enter limited release this summer, and air on CBC soon afterwards. (6/10)
Finally, Let the Corpses Tan is the latest from the notorious directing team of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, known for Amer and The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears. Having built a reputation for their peculiarly abstract approach to genre filmmaking, the duo has been a mainstay of the festival circuit for some time, and their latest is a jagged, unpredictable fracturing of a simple crime shootout film, à la if Free Fire were an experimental art film. Following a wide cast of characters, the film ensues on the isolated hilltop retreat of an artist couple as a gang of thieves arrives with 250kg of gold in tow.
As is expected in this sort of film, double-crossings lead to chaos, which in this case leads to numerous gorgeously abstracted, consistently surprising images. Indeed, the entire substance of the film lies in its eye-catching style, which is consistently stunning to an extent that extolling the film's virtues would ultimately devolve into describing all of the stunning, genuinely strange images on offer here. Discomforting extreme close-ups, looming shadows, and propulsive gunshots are all given incredible texture, and those are just the most common motifs. Several events are repeated from numerous perspectives, with a linear progression maintained through the use of onscreen timestamps; at one point, the same time stamp repeats somewhere around five different times, each time proceeding to show another character's reaction to the incident in question. If nothing else, Let the Corpses Tan is a feast for the senses.
Few of the characters are especially compelling, however, and aside from a few perverse twists of setting, the actual narrative is fairly standard. The exception is Luce, an inhabitant of the hilltop complex, whose motivations for isolation finally gain some novelty in the final half hour. Essentially, the film is only as interesting as its stylistic flourishes, and any time it stops to let people talk it immediately becomes dull until the next bizarre image. As with the duo's prior works, Let the Corpses Tan is destined to be a cult film, with relatively little appeal to the mainstream, but if you can simply let the astonishing style wash over you, there's a lot of fun to be had. (7/10)
Stay tuned for Part 2.
Thank you to my Patreon supporters:
Todd Throndson
VioletWisp
Your donations are greatly appreciated.
Support me on Patreon!
CUFF proudly styles itself as the weirder Calgary film festival, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the opening film, An Evening with Beverly Buff Linn, from Jim Hoskings of The Greasy Strangler fame. I'm not familiar with that notorious earlier film, but if it's anything like this new one, I"m not sure I want to be. Beverly Buff Linn is ostensibly a comedy, revolving around Lulu Danger (Aubrey Plaza) escaping from her husband to a local hotel, where she's promised the titular evening with Beverly Buff Linn (Craig Robinson), an unexplained performance scheduled for that evening. On the sidelines are Lulu's husband Shane (Emile Hirsch), who has stolen a rival's money, Colin (Jemaine Clement), who gets sidetracked after being hired to retrieve that money, and Rodney (Matt Berry), Beverly's ambiguous "partner."
Hoskings certainly has a style, and from all evidence he has deliberately set out to disgust. His film's aesthetic is deliberately hideous and several of its performances consist overwhelmingly of obnoxious mugging. Combined, these create a peculiarly unconvincing atmosphere, like a cheap online sketch extended to 90 minutes, and while the story is intermittently surprising, the film's efforts to offend are much more often simply predictable and unfunny. Hirsch is instantly grating, reducing his performance to a collection of overdone tics, whereas Robinson is directed to simply grunt loudly for the vast majority of the running time. Nonetheless, Plaza, Berry, and Clement get by much better. and when the film starts to unveil its surprising sentimental core, its largely due to their work that it almost feels satisfying.
Alas, elsewhere they're reduced to caricatures, and while Beverly Buff Linn's occasionally finds moments of genuine inspiration, much more often its attempts at absurdity are merely tired and irritating. This is a movie which not once but twice attempts to mine laughs from an extended scene of someone coughing, and while there's apparently an audience for that, the appeal is completely lost on me. Beverly Buff Linn is commendable for being so committed to its oddness, and nobody would ever call it forgettable, but Hoskings's puerile sensibility far too rarely approaches genuine creativity. (4/10)
While I did not make it to many films from the local scene, I did see Michael Peterson's competent slasher movie Knuckleball, which mostly stands out for a relatively clever premise and for a starring role from Michael Ironside. Peterson had apparently been popular with festival-goers who saw his 2011 comedy Lloyd the Conqueror, but all the same, his might be the single most minor film I saw this week. Positioning itself as a darker riff on Home Alone, the film tells the story of young Henry (Luca Villacis) being temporarily left alone with his grandfather (Michael Ironside), only to be left alone when the latter passes away in his sleep. Worse still, he has forgotten his phone charger, a severe blizzard ensues, and Henry's only other human company is the unhinged Dixon (Munro Chambers), whose impure intentions quickly become clear.
Knuckleball doesn't explicitly explain Dixon's behaviour, but between Chambers's eccentric performance and frequent hallucination scenes, it implies mental illness to be the cause, and attempts to further justify this through some childhood abuse are kept vague. This is emblematic of the film as a whole, which is reasonably tense and competently crafted, but ultimately eschews the more interesting aspects of its story in favour of generic thrills. A lot of backstory is implied, not only through Dixon but also through cutaways to Henry's increasingly worried parents, but it's neither entirely cogent nor especially fresh, and instead, the film works best at its most simple. Peterson does a solid job of establishing mood, with a chilly visual style giving texture to the severe weather, but for all of its sturdy thrills, the film doesn't linger long in memory. (6/10)
Among the biggest names at the festival was Lynne Ramsay's Cannes hit You Were Never Really Here, screened only a few days before it properly opened in Calgary cinemas. Ramsay is not a prolific filmmaker, as this is her fourth feature in over 20 years, and her first since 2011's We Need to Talk About Kevin. This new film revolves around a traumatized veteran named Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) tracking down a senator's missing daughter, only to uncover a sprawling conspiracy which he gets far too close to for comfort. Interspersed with the main story are distorted flashbacks to Joe's military days, as well as his strained efforts to fit into normal society.
Ultimately, it's in the attempts at thematic depth where You Were Never Really Here falters. Its approach to trauma is frequently heavy-handed, bringing in flashbacks at key plot moments and featuring numerous scenes of Joe simply staring blankly out the window, occasionally muttering "what am I doing?" to himself. Nonetheless, this does flow into the film's riveting aesthetic abstractions, and once the plot is set in motion Ramsay's film is thrillingly disorienting, filled with gruesome, extremely stylized violence and an engagingly twisty narrative. The opening scenes establish a tight flow, and while the aforementioned attempts to depict trauma ultimately weigh it down, they're only brief diversions from the film's exciting momentum, and a wealth of narrative and aesthetic surprises ultimately lead the film further and further to total abstraction.
All of this is anchored around a terrific performance from Phoenix, who convincingly displays Joe's wide range of emotions, from his sweet relationship with his mother to his trauma to his aggression in the film's most intense scenes. You Were Never Really Here is too blunt as a character study to fully support this performance, but it's another aesthetic thrill in a movie full of them. Also deserving mention is the typically excellent Jonny Greenwood score, which fittingly alternates between jarring discordance and pulsating rhythms, contributing as much as the visuals and performances to the film's peculiar tone. Few films at this level of abstraction are also this exciting. (8/10)
Also terrific is Coralie Fargeat's brutal Revenge, which won the jury prize. Although it bears the trappings of a rape-revenge film, the film's narrative has much more to do with survival, although it still contains multiple instances of the titular act. In the film, Jen (Matilda Lutz) is enjoying her time as the mistress of married man Richard (Kevin Janssens) when his hunting buddies show up and rape her. Richard attempts to buy her silence, and when his attempts fail, he pushes her off a ledge. Unbeknownst to him, she survived the attempt, and is dead set on coming out the last person standing.
Revenge is not a particularly novel narrative, largely just stringing exciting set pieces together in a loose, thematically unified narrative, but it does stand out as an especially well-made example of its genre. It's a sleazy, campy film, but it uses both of those traits to its advantage, offering up a generous helping of gore and an often sadistic sense of humour. More importantly, while the film still does objectify its star at times, it recontextualizes that objectification into sex-positivity. Essentially, this is a film about men's feelings of entitlement to women's bodies, and when Jen strikes down her assailants, she's also shooting down toxic masculinity, and possibly even taking vengeance on decades of exploitation by the genre. At times it's perhaps a little too indulgent in its own sleaze, but much more often it's put in an appropriate context.
More importantly, Revenge is satisfyingly brutal and surprisingly gorgeous, taking full advantage of a desert setting to emphasize not only for the sake of beautiful vistas but also to build tension in an arid, forbidding environment. Even beyond the modest inversion of the male gaze she employs, Fargeat just demonstrates great skill at creating tension, and each encounter is at turns gripping, gruesome, and darkly funny. The film is stylish, suspenseful, and highly entertaining: for grindhouse fans, it's essential, but even those not already inclined towards the genre may find a lot to like, although those sensitive to violence, gore, or rape may want to stay away. Look for it when it comes out on the streaming service Shudder later this year. (8/10)
Less exciting is TV writer Rebecca Addelman's indie marital drama Paper Year, which has a lot of surface charm but struggles under the weight of a meandering, trite infidelity plotline. Despite being unable to afford a proper wedding, newlyweds Dan (Avan Jogia) and Franny (Eve Hewson) are enthusiastic about their first year together, especially now that they've finally attained new jobs. Dan is a dog-walker who found a gig house-sitting for a low-tier movie star, whereas Franny found employment writing for a game show. However, both quickly find themselves tempted by extramarital romance with their employers, Dan with the aforementioned movie-star and Franny with head writer Noah (Hamish Linklater).
Ultimately, Franny's side of the story gets more focus, whereas Dan's affair remains a lot more ephemeral. That difference is one of the more intriguing thematic concerns of Paper Year, which consistently regards the intangible myths of relationships, with a notable eye to critiquing the concept of monogamy. Unfortunately, many of these ideas remain in the background of a fairly basic doomed-marriage setup, with many scenes of Franny and Dan's relationship growing more tense contrasted with just as many scenes of Dan appearing bored and Franny's growing affair with Noah. The story maintains a modest degree of momentum, but often lingers on small, naturalistic encounters, which while frequently endearing never quite achieve the psychological complexity which was perhaps intended.
Addelman had previously worked on successful comedy series such as New Girl and Netflix's Love, and the frequently hilarious dialogue is a large part of the film's appeal. Jogia and Hewson have a lot of chemistry with each other as well as with their respective alternative partners, and the performances all feel nuanced and authentic, which is further emphasized by the consistently believable dialogue. Addelman shows many gifts as a director, but it's when the tone goes serious that the charms dissipate, and the inevitable fallout of Dan and Franny's marriage feels leaden and overly familiar. At the very least, however, the ending is suitably heartbreaking, and I'm very interested to see what Addelman does next. The film will enter limited release this summer, and air on CBC soon afterwards. (6/10)
Finally, Let the Corpses Tan is the latest from the notorious directing team of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, known for Amer and The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears. Having built a reputation for their peculiarly abstract approach to genre filmmaking, the duo has been a mainstay of the festival circuit for some time, and their latest is a jagged, unpredictable fracturing of a simple crime shootout film, à la if Free Fire were an experimental art film. Following a wide cast of characters, the film ensues on the isolated hilltop retreat of an artist couple as a gang of thieves arrives with 250kg of gold in tow.
As is expected in this sort of film, double-crossings lead to chaos, which in this case leads to numerous gorgeously abstracted, consistently surprising images. Indeed, the entire substance of the film lies in its eye-catching style, which is consistently stunning to an extent that extolling the film's virtues would ultimately devolve into describing all of the stunning, genuinely strange images on offer here. Discomforting extreme close-ups, looming shadows, and propulsive gunshots are all given incredible texture, and those are just the most common motifs. Several events are repeated from numerous perspectives, with a linear progression maintained through the use of onscreen timestamps; at one point, the same time stamp repeats somewhere around five different times, each time proceeding to show another character's reaction to the incident in question. If nothing else, Let the Corpses Tan is a feast for the senses.
Few of the characters are especially compelling, however, and aside from a few perverse twists of setting, the actual narrative is fairly standard. The exception is Luce, an inhabitant of the hilltop complex, whose motivations for isolation finally gain some novelty in the final half hour. Essentially, the film is only as interesting as its stylistic flourishes, and any time it stops to let people talk it immediately becomes dull until the next bizarre image. As with the duo's prior works, Let the Corpses Tan is destined to be a cult film, with relatively little appeal to the mainstream, but if you can simply let the astonishing style wash over you, there's a lot of fun to be had. (7/10)
Stay tuned for Part 2.
Thank you to my Patreon supporters:
Todd Throndson
VioletWisp
Your donations are greatly appreciated.
Support me on Patreon!
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