Everyone (people on Twitter) is talking about The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024), the Mubi-backed-Demi Moore-due-a-comeback-starring-body-horror-freakout-extravaganza which is either, depending on who you ask, misogynist garbage or a feminist masterpiece. I haven’t seen it yet, but one of my contributors is filing their thoughts imminently…
This might be the only buzzy movie of the festival so far, with sporadic raves coming in for certain works (Godard, Zhangke, Audiard, etc) but no consensus masterpiece — no Portrait of a Lady or Parasite or Zone of Interest — crowned yet. It makes the race for the Palme more interesting perhaps, but is somewhat disappointing for those looking for a flat-out masterwork to salivate over for 12-15 months before the movie is finally released.
Anyway, we’ve been busy in the meanwhile. Check out our latest reviews below.
Sauna Day. Intimate Masculinity on Display.
By Jared Abbott
“Make it sizzle”
Sauna Day (2024) offers a compelling counterpoint to Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (2023), a hypnotic feature-length documentary by Anna Hints exploring the intimate dynamics among women in a steamy Estonian woodland cabin. Co-directed by Tushar Prakash, Sauna Day explores the masculine side of this UNESCO-recognised tradition dating back over 800 years.
Immediately, Sauna Day engages in a dialogue with Sisterhood’s raw feminine intimacy by contrasting it with the superficial and avoidant communication among men. The film opens with a scene of five men, varying in age and physique, seated in a row, discussing mundane topics like a broken roof rather than delving into personal matters, despite their physical proximity and nudity.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!
Parsing the Puzzling Persian of Universal Language
An Iranian fable in Canadian climes, Universal Language (Matthew Rankin, 2024) both befuddles and impresses, superimposing disparate cultures in an intellectual, disorienting stew. It’s easy to appreciate on an aesthetic and cultural level. It’s harder to love on a subjective, emotional level.
It’s set in Winnipeg — modernist, alienating, snow-laden — but not as you know it. Imagine that Iranians colonised the North American nation instead of the English, and you’d have some idea of Rankin’s surrealist aesthetic. Signs are in Farsi, walnut vendors roam the streets and the vast majority of actors are from an Iranian background.
(Perhaps Canadian nationalists, if they ever sat down to watch some arthouse cinema, might be outraged to find that even Tim Horton’s — Canada’s most famous coffee and doughnuts chain — has been transformed into a Persian teahouse! Having never tasted Horton’s coffee, I can’t say if this is a genuine improvement.)
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!
The Empty Pageantry of Savanna and the Mountain
In the verdant lushness of Northern Portugal, where ancient stone villages lie in deep green valleys and you can feel the moisture popping off the screen, and where the agricultural way of life seems the same as it probably did over fifty years ago, epic and violent change is afoot. The land of Covas do Barroso is being encroached upon by the development of a nearby lithium mine by the multinational Savannah Resources.
It’s the dirty secret — and paradox — of the electric vehicle revolution. For cars to become more eco-friendly, the natural world must be excavated, stripped apart and broken down. So the people of the town stage a series of increasingly bizarre protests in Paulo Carneiro’s hybrid doc Savanna and the Mountain (2024) — a great idea for a short film perhaps, but rather enervating at feature length.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!
The Story of Souleymane. Cycling Through Limbo.
If The Story of Souleymane (Boris Lojkine, 2024) stresses anything, it’s that you should tip your delivery drivers. In cash. Not only do they make minuscule, labour-abusive wages, they might not even be registered in their own name. Some cash, however little, can mean the difference between a hostel that evening or a night in the streets; a hot meal or going it alone on an empty stomach.
For Guinean migrant Souleymane (Abou Sangare in a star-making debut), couriering under another man’s name for an exploitative cut, his thankless “job” is a matter of life and death, desperately needing those wages to pay off a black market dealer to forge his refugee papers.
Wheeling from restaurant to restaurant, apartment to apartment, dodging traffic and the police while fighting off the algorithmic whims of his faceless employer and a sense of chronic fatigue, The Story of Souleymane immerses us into the travails of our eponymous hero; caught in limbo while waiting for his asylum interview.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!
Block Pass. A Tyred Vintage.
By Jared Abbott
Every year, European festivals are inundated with coming-of-age films that include social commentary, often with varying success. Recently, I discussed Block Pass (2024), a new drama by BAFTA TV award-nominated Antoine Chevrollier, with a friend. The film follows Jojo (newcomer Amaury Foucher), a closeted gay teenager who faces backlash from his rural French motocross community, as seen through the eyes of his best friend Willy (Sayyid el Alami).
My friend’s reaction summed up the film perfectly: “Wow, that sounds so vintage.”
To fully understand her point, one would need to delve into spoilers. Suffice it to say, Block Pass leans on an outdated trope, using queer suffering to deliver a moral lesson about the dangers of toxic masculinity and homophobia.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!