My first dud of this year’s festival.
The premise is interesting enough - Jessica Chastain is a high-powered American, all business-suits and chauffeured cars, who has taken a younger Mexican lover from the ballet academy she sponsors. Suddenly, he’s no longer a bit on the side in Mexico but has smuggled himself into the US and inserted himself into her life.
Unfortunately, I never really liked any of the characters. At some point I found myself wondering why I was watching a small story of unpleasant people being unpleasant to each other.
Documentaries are always hard to comment on really. Are you appreciating the film? Or just agreeing with the points the film made?
In Symbiosis is pretty much as right-on as it comes. We cover GM crops, pesticides, insect death, industrial fertilizers, the world bank’s debt strategy, colonial famine, soil structure, happy cows and more.
If that sounds like a lot… it is. It definitely tries to be holistic in its approach but for me that just meant it covered too many things too quickly. It was also noticeably short on answers. We had lots of stats about how bad things were but very few about how to fix it. It’s all very well some cheerful organic farmers explaining their processes but how will it feed all the people?
Interesting, thought provoking, but ultimately a little short on ideas.
Yet another astonishing Brazilian film. We’re in dystopian reality in which the elderly are taken away to ’the colony’ - from which they never return. But somehow this sidesteps all the familiar dystopian vibes and is just an incredible journey through a rural Brazil, full of interesting characters.
Just… don’t drop the goo from the blue drool snail in your eyes, okay?
The second part of the Grace Glowicki double bill is even weirder. Taking inspiration from Frankenstein and German Expressionist cinema, this is a bonkers little feature.
We join our lonely gravedigger - unable to find a lover because she just smells too much of death. The next hour and half is a bonkers journey involving fights with wolves, sea journeys, gossiping locals, growing roses, growing people (!) and, of course, some lightning-based reanimation.
It’s quite wonderful.
The first part of a Halloween Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie double bill, Honey Bunch is one of those tense horror-thrillers that does a lot with a little. A cast of barely more than 6 people. A single location (creepy old house, now eccentric rehabilitation centre, natch). Bonus points for actors playing more than one role.
The experimental-cure that’s a-bit-more-creepy-than-you-first-expect is well trodden ground, and I don’t think I’d claim Honey Bunch does anything terribly unexpected: we’ve seen most of these characters and locations before, but it does its thing with conviction and is a fun watch. Always at risk of veering into being a little campy horror (the dour nurse, the intense husband - there are touches of League of Gentlemen) but they manage to keep it surprisingly straight-faced, even as the plot gets weirder.
Bechdel pass too!