I took an unusual approach on the first day of the festival proper, by skipping the opening film. Word on 360, Fernando Mierelles’ opener, was weak out of Toronto, and I don’t like his films at the best of times. So, I struck out for the fringes again, seeing some more offbeat stuff. I should also say that I saw the first of these films as a screener last night rather than at a screening today, but it was too late to include in yesterday’s round up.
SHE MONKEYS (Lisa Aschan)
Well, this has to go down as one of the big disappointments of the festival so far, even if it is far from the worst film on show. I try not to put any stock in (or even know about) what other critics are saying before I see a film, but when they started comparing She Monkeys – in terms of quality as well as subject matter – to Water Lilies and Fucking Amal, both among my Top 100 films, I couldn’t help but get excited for it.
The film is about sixteen year old Emma (Mathilda Paradeiser), who is a new recruit to an equestrian gymnastic team, her disturbingly precocious seven year old sister Sara (Isabella Lindquist) and Cassandra (Linda Molin), a slightly older teammate who falls for Emma. For the first forty minutes or so it proceeds much as you’d expect; Emma and Cassandra become close, there’s a little sexual tension, and they play a rather cruel trick on a local boy they meet at the swimming pool. Meanwhile Sara, told by an overconcerned pool attendant that she needs to cover up, asks her Father to buy her a bikini. It’s in the second half that each story takes a more challenging turn and that, for me, the film lurches off the rails.
The young cast is good, and Lisa Aschan and cinematographer Linda Wassberg have made a beautifully composed film (it comes together particularly well in a silent scene at the pool as Cassandra flirts with Emma by practising her gymnastics in her bikini). The problem is simply that I stopped believing the writing in the second half. It’s most pronounced with Sara, I mean, I’ve heard of precocious kids, and I understand that at seven kids have questions about sex, but the way Sara’s plot is written would strain credulity – and feel uncomfortable – with an eleven year old child.
While Lisa Aschan has to be commended for taking a different path from the likes of Fucking Amal in how she treats the progress of the film’s lesbian relationship, the path she does choose never convinced me. Emma is perhaps distant in the first part of the film, but there’s never any real indication or reason for the way her character goes in the second half, even if it leads to a few scenes that are effectively chilly and disturbing in and of themselves, to me it never made sense as a whole piece. It’s frustrating not to be able to say more about this, but I would have to head into spoiler territory to do so.
She Monkeys has great parts, but never feels cohesive, and that’s a shame, because there is the kernel of a very fine film here.
2.5 / 5
WE HAVE A POPE (Nanni Moretti)
You know, I often complain that I’ve seen all the movies on offer before, because there is so little new under the sun, but I definitely haven’t seen another knockabout comedy about a Papal election in crisis, kudos, Nanni Moretti.
When a new Pope (Michel Picolli) is chosen all seems to go to plan until, just before he is to greet the faithful, the new pontiff lets out a scream, and says he doesn’t feel he can do the job. This leads first to a psychoanalyst (director Moretti) being called to discover the problem, and subsequently to the Pope leaving the confines of the Vatican to spend time in Rome, all while bosses at the Vatican try to keep the fact that he’s missing from press, public and assembled cardinals.
We Have a Pope is an endearing film. It doesn’t dig into the politics of the election process (a slight missed opportunity, as there is scope for some sharp satire there) nor really deeply into the reasons the new pontiff runs away, but what it does manage to do is present a very amusingly irreverent look at something that tends only to be addressed either in the hushed, uncritical, tones of believers or the derisory voices of atheists.
There are many memorable scenes, and Moretti mines laughs from the smallest things (the rustling of papers during the voting, for example). For me the real standout moments are the Pope’s first meeting with the psychoanalyst, continually interrupted for questions of what the analyst can and can’t ask, and conducted in front of 107 cardinals and an extended set piece in which the cardinals are distracted from the Pope’s absence with a volleyball tournament.
It flags a touch in the last twenty minutes or so, as the need to wrap up the plot takes the place of the laughs, but otherwise this is highly entertaining fare, even if it could have been a bit more biting.
3.5 / 5
LOUISE WIMMER (Cyril Mennegun)
Corinne Massiero gives a small but outstanding performance in this brief, low key, drama. Massiero plays Louise, she’s about 50, and when we first meet her she’s working a marginal job as a hotel maid, living out of her car (which is always on the edge of breakdown) and having to sell old possession and steal food and fuel to survive. There is no context to begin with, but a smart screenplay by director Mennegun fills in some detail as we go along, not in big dramatic revelations, but just by showing us the pieces of Lousie’s life; the ex-husband, the grown daughter, as the drift into her orbit.
Corinne Massiero makes Louise someone we’re interested in learning about; she’s sympathetic without needing to shamelessly tug at our heartstrings (something also reflected in the direction, which, two brief scenes towards the end apart, is starkly realistic rather than played up to manipulate us), her matter of fact, lived in performance is the centre of the film and it always draws you in. Louise Wimmer isn’t the most eventful of films (though it does, eventually, move towards a defined goal; an apartment for Louise), rather it’s a slice of life, and a scrupulously convincing one at that, indeed, were it not for the several sex scenes you could believe much of this as a documentary about a life lived on the margins. Intelligent, moving, and extremely well acted, this is worth finding 80 minutes for.
4 / 5
