Well, here we are in the final days of the 34th annual Vancouver International Film Festival as VIFF regulars (also known as VIFF cinephiles) prepare for the end of this year’s glorious cinematic wonderment, awaiting the announcement as to what films are available for holdover at the Vancity Theatre following Friday’s fest end. All in due time, dear & constant reader.
In this final week there are two more must-see films to be screened over the course of the next four days — one from Lithuania, one from Iceland — both unlikely to return to our shores, tremendous films that are more than worthy of your limited time, and given your wearied state, your attention.
The Summer of Sangailé (Grade: A): Achingly beautiful and intoxicating, director Alanté Kavaïté won Best Director at Sundance earlier this year for her erotic and lyrical depiction of a young girl’s sexual awakening, an at times roiling coming of age tale that explores the wounded psychology of the main lead (a voluptuously enchanting Julija Steponaitytė, her character a provocative mix of naivete and ripe, unbridled sexuality), in one of the most dreamily tender yet near terrifying depictions of first love ever captured on screen. Gorgeously lensed, sun-kissed, alluring, intimate, affecting, memorable, beautifully universal, hypnotic and at times blazingly intense, the film’s dreamlike mood is set through music, and the rapturous soundtrack written by Jean-Benoît Dunckel, one of the lead members of Air. Skilfully melding gesture, poetry and innocence into the slow-burning emotional and physical realms of romantic love, The Summer of Sangailé emerges as one of the year’s best films, and another VIFF 2015 must-see. Final screening: Wednesday, October 7th, 6:30pm, in Cineplex’s Cinema 9.
Sparrows (Grade: A): Breathtakingly intense, Rúnar Rúnarsson’s sad, delicate Icelandic coming-of-age tale quietly observes a lanky teenage boy, Avi (Atli Oskar Fjalarsson) who we first meet singing counter-tenor in a boy’s choir in Rekjavik. When Avi’s mother is hired to supervise a research project in Africa, the boy is sent to live with his estranged father in the distant western fjords of the country, where the locals medicate the ills of a declining economy with alcohol; small town life proves anything but charming. Avi’s potential love interest, young Lara, carries the fatalism of a girl who settles for the local bully, while Kjeld, Avi’s kindly grandmother, is the exceptional figure who lives with a simple dignity. As Guy Lodge writes in his Variety review, ” this outwardly conventional coming-of-ager rewards viewers’ patience, delivering a late narrative jolt that is bound to stir heated post-screening conversation in its chilly wake.” Fortunately, the film saves a tiny dose of sentiment & redemptive humanity for the film’s final moments. Final screening: Thursday, October 8th at 2:30pm, in the Vancity Theatre.
The double bill of VIFF 2015: Wednesday afternoon you’ll want to take in a screening of VIFF 2015’s best feature film, Sylvia’s Chang’s Taiwanese stunner Murmur of the Hearts, 4:15pm in Cineplex’s Cinema 10, followed by VIFF’s best documentary, Albert Maysles’ In Transit, also in Cinema 10.
Upcoming must-sees: Son of Saul, One Million Dubliners, there’s good buzz on Zinia Flower and The Measure of a Man, I am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorced is a must-see, while there’s good buzz on The Competition, folks have been raving about Accused, and James White. Schneider vs Bax also has quite a following, as does Peruvian director Salvador del Solar’s Magallanes, which screens for a final time Tuesday at 3:30pm in Cinema 9 at Cineplex’s International Village. Lots to see as VIFF 2015 wends to a close.
