Week One of the 31st annual Vancouver International Film Festival is but a fond memory. Although VanRamblings is having something of an odd Festival (you don’t want to know), in respect of what is most important about the Festival — films films and more films — for the true cinéastes among us, Week One of VIFF2012 has proved nothing less than glorious.
Every VIFF patron with whom I’ve spoken this past week has their favourite film (in fact, a great many favourite films). Most individual patron film choices are both idiosyncratic and subjective. And it was always thus.
As for VanRamblings, here are our first-week VIFF favourites in 2012 …
- Any Day Now. The at all times most wondrous film at VIFF 2012, with terrific central performances by Alan Cumming and Garett Dillahunt — not to mention the single most expansive cast of Hollywood character actor royalty VanRamblings has ever witnessed on screen.
- When The Night: One of our very favourite films screening at VIFF2012, Cristina Comencini’s newest film (her 2005 incest drama, Don’t Tell, earned a foreign language Oscar nomination) ranks among the most accomplished dramas screening at VIFF 2012. Set in Macugnaga, a small mountain town in Italy’s northwest corner and the holiday destination of privileged middle-class mother Marina (Claudia Pandolfi) and her toddler son Marco, and Manfred (Filippo Timi), their brooding antisocial host, this Brontë-esque tale of ill-fated, star-crossed love grabs you from the outset, and just won’t let go.
- Thursday Till Sunday. One of the many, many memory mood sense pictures screening at VIFF this year (which means that for the filmmaker, plot and dynamic narrative is not necessarily as important a consideration as is the sensual evocation of character), Thursday Till Sunday is our favourite Latin American film in 2012, which is really saying something when in 2012 Latin American films are among the strongest films screening at VIFF. A subtle, observant and oh so moving drama about the disintegration of a marriage, as seen through the melancholy experience of their 11-year-old daughter, Lucía. Heartbreaking and at all times a compelling watch. With Bárbara Álvarez’s lambent cinematography, and accomplished work by first-time director Dominga Sotomayor, Thursday Till Sunday ranks as one of our resonant and redolent picks for VIFF 2012…
We are equally over the moon about the incredibly engrossing and moving Brazilian documentary, Bay of All Saints. We loved Teddy Bear, the low-key Danish drama about an enormous and painfully shy bodybuilder whose need for connection leads him to Thailand, where he hopes to find a bride. No Job for a Woman: The Women Who Fought to Report WWII, and Nuala are numbers 2 and 3, after Bay of All Saints, in our doc category.
The Hunt is our favourite ‘big’ picture this year, an accomplished and wrenching drama created by The Celebration’s Thomas Vinterberg. Rebelle (War Witch), Canada’s Best Foreign Language 2012 Oscar nominee, just knocked our socks off when we saw it last Sunday. Aquí y Allá, Mexico’s award winning examination of migrant labour, proved a moving experience from beginning to end, as did the Uruguayan family drama, La Demora.
The kitchen-sink father-daughter drama, Off-White Lies, was a winner in our books. Sean Baker’s Starlet came out of nowhere, and knocked our socks off, this provocative downbeat filmic insight into the porn industry, with its poignant yet contentious May-December relationship drama central to the film’s narrative, ranks high on our ‘best of’ list. On the recommendation of friends, we took in a screening of In Another Country, and man oh man are we glad we did. A sort of Korean Rashomon revolving around the always lovely and provocative Isabelle Huppert, this filmic curiousity involved us from beginning to end. Did we mention that we loved Love in the Medina, a sensuous Moroccan tale about forbidden love?
And that we loved: The Flat, the revelatory Holocaust investigative documentary; or that the Senegalese kora doc, Griot, had us wanting to pick up our old kit bag and move to Senegal, now … right now. Otelo Burning, the anti-apartheid drama, and The Sound of the Bandoneón are certainly high on our list of favourite VIFF non-fiction films.
And boy oh boy, were we blown away by Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love, one of the most inventive, accomplished, surprising, humane and completely unexpected films at VIFF (that ending is a stunner!). And, we’re certainly glad we took in a screening of Violeta Went to Heaven, Andrés Wood’s (Machuca) story about Chilean activist-singer, Violeta Parra, widely considered to be the mother of Latin American folk music.
We’ve already written about how over the moon we are over the at all times brilliant Neighbouring Sounds, and Tabu, Miguel Gomes’ stunning fever dream of a film, the two most accomplished films at VIFF2012, both of which we just loved.
Egg and Stone (Grade: A): An absolutely remarkable début for writer-director Huang Ji, this winner of the Tiger Award at this year’s International Film Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands, represents the most auspicious début by an Asian filmmaker at VIFF 2012. The narrative offers a powerful indictment of male sexual privilege (throughout the film, one could see the uncle as nothing less than a monster), an almost wordless, beautifully realized mood sense piece. Autobiographical, part of what will become a trilogy on the subject of the movement of young Chinese women towards empowerment. The D&C scene had me on the floor; one of the most wrenching choices by a filmmaker as cinematic material, ever. With a central performance by newcomer Yao Honggui that simply burns with intensity.
