SORRY WE MISSED YOU

2019; directed by Ken Loach; written by Paul Laverty; 100 mins

It’s both wonderful and sad that Ken Loach‘s work has taken on a new, reinvigorated, popular oomph. He started the decade slightly wobbly with Route Irish but has gone from strength to strength, culminating in his second Palme d’Or win for I, Daniel Blake which really made a splash on the public consciousness, certainly in Britain if not around the world. Whilst Sorry We Missed You hasn’t taken off quite so much at the box office, it’s every bit as great a slice of filmmaking (perhaps even a little better).

UNDER THE SUN OF SATAN

1987; directed by Maurice Pialat; adapted by Maurice Pialat and Sylvie Pialat; 98 mins

It’s really baffling that Under the Sun of Satan was so disliked by critics when it first came out because it’s everything they would love. Existence, bleak landscapes, religion, misery, crises of an interior sort and a good old suicide to keep everyone suitably unhappy. Nope. Only recently has it received positive notices and after having a second go, I largely agree.

STRANGER BY THE LAKE

2013; written and directed by Alain Guiraudie; 100 mins

A gay, French, arthouse, crime, thriller-but-not-exactly. Before I say this next thing, believe me, there is no covert judgement from me as my knowledge of gay cinema is limited and I cannot, in all good conscience, pretend that it isn’t in part because of an ever-decreasing but extant, shameful “Jesus! It’ll turn me gay!” attitude. However! If you only see one gay movie in your life – make it Stranger by the Lake! What a fucking awesome movie! One of the best of the decade, easily.

HIGH LIFE

2018; directed by Claire Denis; written by Claire Denis & Jean-Pol Fargeau and Geoff Cox; 113 mins

Well, Star Trek – this ain’t! The magnificent Claire Denis gives us a Ken Loach movie in space. A mouldy, grubby prison movie that features almost every human excretion there is: sweat, blood, piss, spunk, even breast milk is in there. Not quite by the bucketload but as near as dammit. High Life is a smashing together of the political and the existential as disaffected, transient criminal kids are sent off towards the infinity of black holes. Of course, thinking about it afterwards, there are a ton of undercurrents, connections and subsequent theses which reveal themselves. More than I can sensibly unpack here but whilst I don’t think it’s Denis’s best, it really is something else.

NZIFF ’19: PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

2019; written and directed by Céline Sciamma; 120 mins

Another period drama! They’re coming back into fashion for a million reasons, using the stuffy, buttoned-down past to reflect, condone or condemn modern attitudes. So, what’s new? Well, right now, it feels like there is a need to rake back over the genre and right wrongs of the past, both in real life and in narrative. Now comes Céline Sciamma, one of the most exciting voices of modern cinema, to add her spin. What we get is a film about love, work, looking and feeling which, whilst not the masterpiece I’d hoped for after 2014’s perfect Girlhood, is easily one of the best and most interesting films of the decade.

NZIFF ’19: VARDA BY AGNÈS

2019; directed by Agnès Varda; 115 mins

Sadly the last film by Agnès Varda, who it seemed had regained some popular momentum in her last couple of years but then, from this, she looked like she hadn’t much concern for the vicissitudes of fame. Or indeed for the expectations of one her age. How many OAP filmmakers do you see interviewing stars whilst sat on a track in a muddy field in the pissing rain? She even managed to beat Herzog for a weirder interview.

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE

2018; directed by Terry Gilliam; adapted by Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni; 132 mins

So soon after seeing 8½, how fitting to finally see Fellini acolyte, Terry Gilliam‘s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. A film so many of us thought would never see the light of day. A film that is three decades in the making and that I’ve been hanging out for for at least 13 of those years. A film that has become something much more akin to 8½ in it’s final result than it appeared to be from it’s doomed 2000 iteration. It’s still a tale of time travel and idealistic chivalry v modern cynicism but more nuanced in its argument and all the better for it.

TRANSIT

2018; adapted and directed by Christian Petzold; 101 mins

Now that’s wot I call a head scratcher! Writer/director Christian Petzold seems to be enamoured with these noir-ish narratives of shifting identities and fractured relationships but here, he’s gone one step – maybe two steps – further. In noir, you’re usually trying to keep up with the small group of desperate souls and nasty bastards all vying for one selfish goal through the medium of someone who’s mostly ahead of the game. In Transit, an update of Anna Segher’s 1942 novel about Jews escaping France, you have a small group of desperate souls and nasty bastards all vying for a common goal, to get out of the country and nobody knows what the Hell is going on.

THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC

1962; adapted and directed by Robert Bresson; 62 mins

Robert Bresson is one of the canonical filmmakers. An artist whose work defined the word ‘arthouse’ and who actively expunged any and all emotion from his work to create almost purely intellectual essays. If the viewer is to find emotion it is through the filmmaker’s spirituality, revealed via his stripped back exposés of pain and suffering. The idea, I think, being that through a clinical screening of his protagonists’ plight, we may consider and meditate upon the nature of lives led in bondage, both mentally and physically, and from thence our emotions are engaged.

TROUBLE EVERY DAY

2001; directed by Claire Denis; written by Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau; 101 mins

The question around this movie seems to be: is it horror or not? A very good recent review of this by Lindsay Pugh says it’s horror but working outside genre conventions. I don’t agree with her that it feels more like “a tone poem or installation piece” than a proper film. It definitely feels like a cinematic story and very definitely a horror film but it is very easy to see why the critics at Cannes didn’t go for it. Twats.