Else
Director Thibault Emin
100 mins
With Else, we are thrown into a madcap and unexplained vision of Paris. After a one-night-stand, Anx (Matthieu Sampeur) sees a news report of a disease that is rapidly spreading in the city. As a lockdown is enforced and everything in the world quickly begins to succumb to this force that melds everything together (flesh melting into rock melting into cloth melting into anything and everything it touches), the wild and uninhibited girl from the night before comes over to spend lockdown with him. As the infection begins to turn the entire world into a singular entity, the two new lovers try to hold on as long as they can.
The title of the film portends much of what the film will encompass: try-hard, empty, and devoid of anything of depth. The word “else” is useless by itself, unable to stand on it’s own merit without another word giving it stature. The film Else is an empty and inept arthouse Cronenberg, a faint reminiscent of Titane, a film that mistakes high concept with emotional depth. Else, so far, has been the worst film of the festival so far, and I doubt that any film will come close to surpassing that mantel.
I can love arthouse horror. I don’t need everything to make sense, or for the plot to exist outside of metaphor. But those metaphors need to be well thought and emotionally resonant, and the design of the film has to rise to the challenge of replacing the narrative demands. Else does neither of these, as it is completely emotionally void, mistaking wandering monologues with poetry and looking and feeling incredibly cheap in it’s effects and design. The characters, what could be drawn from them in this underwritten and under considered script, are incredibly unlikable and one note, lacking any interiority or compelling reason for us to care about whether they live or die.
This film truly has nothing to offer. It’s production design is amateurish and laughable in it’s “creature” creations. It’s script tries incredibly hard to squeeze emotional resonance and anguished philosophy out of complete nonsense. It’s computer graphics, melding the world together throughout, or laughably out-of-date, reminiscent of a 2000s screensaver. Few films have had me begging for end credits as much as this one. A film that I honestly wish I had walked out of. What a waste of time and effort.
Presence
Director Steven Soderbergh
85 mins
In this latter stage of Steven Soderbergh’s career, one must approach his films with a more open mind than one might provide to other mainstream directors. While it is not impossible to be an auteur and work within the mainstream, Soderbergh has etched out a career unlike any of his counterparts. Each film not only comes with it’s narrative hook, but with a creative or structural technique that is complete unique to the film as well. Much like Ang Lee and Robert Zemeckis, Soderbergh is interested in stretching the bounds of the format using modern technology and unique perspectives. So with his supernatural drama Presence, we must look at both the narrative and the structural elements to fully grasp what Soderbergh is attempting the convey.
Looking at the the narrative of the film, we follow a family as they move into a new home. The mother Rebecca and father Chris (Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan) are in a poor place in their marriage, with Rebecca covertly doing something illegal in order to benefit their son Tyler (Eddy Maday). While Rebecca doits endlessly on her star son, she is much colder to daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), with her being much closer with her father. Chloe is showing signs of depression and rebellion, and Chris is worried for her after the death of two friends due to drug overdoses. This dynamic of mother and son versus father and daughter is complicated further when Chloe becomes convinced their new home is haunted by one of her late friends. As the family tensions grow, an overbearing sense of doom descends on the home.
While this isn’t a particularly stunning narrative, it’s in the construction of the film that Soderbergh really pushes the art. The film is told entirely from the perspective of the spirit. Everything we see is from the eyes of the ghost, and this allows us the tension of knowing there is a spirit when the investigation begins. This also allows us access to the most intimate moments with the family without it ever seeming gratuitous or unearned, as the perspective the ghost gives us is imbued with a sadness from the very beginning. As we drift throughout the house we feel the confusion of the specter, the melancholy that drives every action. We in affect become this character, with the camera being an active participant in the actions on screen, at times fulfilling the desires of the audience and at others lying in wait, letting the story play out.
The combination of the narrative and this structural design does make moments of the film really powerful. Anytime the camera becomes this character, and that the audience really feels like an active voyeur on the lives of this family are great, and one could easily draw the line between the phantom hand of the audience in the works of a director of crowd pleasers such as Soderbergh. But on a narrative level the film is a massive let down, with obvious cliche trappings and generally uninteresting and uninspired characters. The end revelations are not shocking as much as whimpering, and we leave the theatre hoping that someone else takes this idea of perspective and uses it for a script that is worth the effort. An interesting, if ultimately ineffective, idea.
Democracy Noir
Director Connie Field
116 mins
Charting the rise of far right dictator Viktor Orban throughout his rise to power since 2010, Democracy Noir follows three women as they fight against his regime from within Hungary. Tracing all the tactics Orban has used to secure his position as the head of state, the film highlights not only the corruption he has partaken in but the infection he seems to represent in the spreading of malicious right wing propaganda. Highlighting his near universal control of the Hungarian media, his gutting of the medical facilities, and his thievery of millions of dollars from the working class, the film paints a picture of a titan who has proven all but impossible to topple. But, if you are like me and already particularly well versed in the harm presented by Orban and various right wing figures across the globe, you may wonder what this film has to offer you. Unfortunately, that would be practically nothing.
An incredibly surface level film in it’s criticisms of Orban (of which there are hundreds), there is little to no surprises or revelations to be found in this film. Everything presented by director Connie Fields is already publicly available and quite well known to anyone with their finger on the pulse of world politics. Even if one enters the film with little to no knowledge of the current situation in Hungary, the film fails to present the information in a compelling way, and all that we learn is so obvious and familiar that it almost feels insulting to present it as a “gotcha” style documentary. As the political trappings of Viktor Orban has been copied by right wing politicians across the globe, his tactics and beliefs are so widespread that any audience will already recognize how and why he has attracted and kept such power. There simply aren’t any moments of catharsis of revelation within this film.
Additionally Fields is unable to wring any emotional catharsis or compelling narrative from the three women she centers the documentary around. None of them of a trajectory throughout the years they have stood against Orban, none of them have had their lives thrown into true upheaval because of their activism. While one, a journalist, did lose her job at one point, this is quickly brushed over and forgotten in the grand scheme of the film. Either Fields is completely incapable of recognizing and capturing moments of true emotion from our central figures, or they simply aren’t the strongest people to have centered the documentary around. Add to this Fields’ dull, lifeless organization of the film, presented in the most unimaginative nature a modern documentary can be, and I can’t help but think about how I’ve seen the exact points presented in the film better from small YouTube documentary teams.
It’s difficult to say this is a film not worth seeing. I agree with the political point-of-view of the director and the subjects, and truly believe that Orban represents a massive threat to democracy across the globe. But this documentary completely fails to capture his influence on global politics, completely fails to answer why he is a conman and why those who support him are being duped. It’s a smug film that wants a pat on the back for simply saying it thinks bad things are bad and good things are good, without ever providing proper context or diving into the dirty underbelly of politics. Ineffective, one-note, and surface level in every regard.