VIFF 2020, pt. 3: You Can't Go Home Again
Twilight's Kiss The loveliest film at this year's festival, and one of the loveliest, period in an awfully long time, is Ray Yeung's romantic portrait of two Hong Kong seniors, a taxi driver with a wife and adult children and a retired divorcé whose son has convinced him to convert to Christianity. The former secretly cruises for furtive encounters with other men; the latter is more integrated into Hong Kong's community of gay older men, though he is careful to keep this important part of his life and identity concealed from his family. What is initially a chance encounter develops into something far more meaningful and impactful for both men. Yet, as their relationship progresses and deepens, even the sweetness and joy of shared moments are strained with the weight of secrecy and regret. As a swooning, circumstantially doomed, romance, there are some echoes here of In the Mood for Love, another great Hong Kong film––but Yeung's love story, of two men in the autumn of their lives, is a very different one. The social and personal factors that constrain the full flowering of their relationship are markedly different, too. And, in contrast to Wong Kar-wai's eye-poppingly stylish '60s Hong Kong, Yeung's representation of the contemporary city feels more lived-in and open. The elegant period elements in Wong's tightly constructed film converge in on his lovers, and seem to exist for them and their ephemeral moment of connection. In Twilight's Kiss, Yeung's couple are just people living ordinary lives surrounded by many others doing the same. Their relationship adds an intense charge of feeling that is theirs alone. The world around them keeps going on at its normal rate and rhythm, as other people, including their families and friends (all presented as complex, interesting individuals, none of them mere foils for or accessories to the lead characters), have other experiences, feelings, and relationships.
Hammamet The consistently superb Pierfrancesco Favino gives another astonishing performance, here as notorious Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi. Gianni Amelio's film focuses primarily on the final years of Craxi's life, after he had fled Italy for the titular town in Tunisia to avoid facing trial on corruption charges. This abbreviated biographical scope allows for an unhurried rhythm and long, patient scenes centering on extended dialogues between Craxi and his visitors. As in Suburra and Bellocchio's The Traitor, Favino is considerably stronger than the rest of the movie playing out around him, but given Amelio's near-constant focus on Craxi –– a kind of disgraced lion-in-winter figure –- Favino's tour de force performance very nearly is the film, together with some stunning scenic backdrops on both sides of the Mediterranean.
John Ware Reclaimed This passion project of novelist/playwright/documentarian Cheryl Foggo illuminates a thoroughly interesting and significant chapter of Canadian – or really, North American – history that deserves to be better known: that of an African-American man who, after the U.S. Civil War, ventured to Canada and became a successful and prominent Prairie rancher. For Foggo, her brother, and other African-Canadians she interviews, Ware's legacy is distinctly personal. With a good historian's resourcefulness and tenacity, Foggo endeavours to push past the vague legend of "Alberta's Black Cowboy," to learn more about Ware, his family, community, and social context, and to share widely what she discovers so as to dispel the notion that Canada, and particularly Western Canada, is lacking in Black History.
My Mexican Bretzel Like, say, Tarnation, Stories We Tell, and Dawson City: Frozen Time –– films that seemingly share little in common –– Nuria Giménez's found-footage montage (for lack of a more precise definition; it's borderline sui generis) is a remarkably clever piece of storytelling assembled out of fragmentary shards of the past; moments richly evocative and mundane stitched together as a kind of diaristic narrative. It's as much a "documentary" as F for Fake, but Giménez plays it much straighter than Welles, and the cumulative effect of her film is genuinely haunting, whatever its other claims to "authenticity." If nothing else, this is another illustrative reminder of just how irrelevant the conventional binary of "documentary" and "fiction" has become – if it wasn't already so back in Welles's heyday.
Moving On Yoon Dan-bi's quietly excellent family drama is one of the great surprises of this year's festival. Yoon and her wonderfully naturalistic cast capture in such subtle and exacting detail the dynamics within a family, whether in group dinners and celebrations or in small, one-on-one moments between, say, an aunt and her niece or an adult brother and sister both going through tough times. There is a rather obvious impulse to situate Moving On within the illustrious and extensive tradition of the Asian family drama, from Ozu to Hou to Koreeda (all three auteurs are mentioned in the festival catalogue blurb!). However, the movie that most immediately came to mind for me was You Can Count on Me. In its tenderness, warmth, humour, and real empathy, so many scenes in Yoon's film recalled that indelible last scene in Lonergan's, with Laura Linney's Sammy saying a reluctant goodbye-for-now to Mark Ruffalo's Terry (neither actor has been better before or since). Moving On's final moments are no less poignant, though they're so much sadder because it's goodbye-for-good, and in more ways than one.
Mickey on the Road It's a bit of a shame, really, that I happened to watch Lu Mian Mian's entirely solid and occasionally inspired film right after seeing Moving On. Mickey on the Road –– a road-trip drama/comedy about two young women who travel together from Taiwan to Guangzhou, though for different reasons –– is probably not overly melodramatic or excessively aesthetically showy, yet it seemed to be both after the masterful subtlety of Yoon's film. And while Lu's work is, at times, quite funny, its laughs felt somewhat forced and too self-consciously quirky compared to the wholly organic humour of Moving On. That is to say, it's not Mickey on the Road's fault that I'm exceptionally smitten with Moving On (even more so after a follow-up viewing, post-Mickey). To be sure, Lu's movie has plenty to recommend it, including a pair of charismatic lead performances and some really rich and fascinating insights about cultural differences between Taiwan and the southern (Cantonese) Mainland. But watching some dozen and a half movies over just a couple weeks' time ultimately, emphatically underscores the differences that separate great films from good ones. Where Mickey on the Road feels through and through like a promising feature debut, Moving On is a first feature that is almost unbelievably assured and mature.
