From Betty Blue to The Witches
October 2024 at the Movies
While still recovering from the onslaught of films watched at VIFF near the beginning of the month, I was still able to take in plenty of cinema this month. While not doing more normal appreciation of the horror genre (as one is want to do come Halloween) this month still featured many great films. This month, at the movies…
Betty Blue
A luxurious if simple love story from France, Betty Blue follows an unambitious handyman as he falls head-over-heels in love with a young, free-spirited wonder named Betty. While they make love every night and lead the veneer of domestic bliss during the day almost immediately after meeting each other, Betty’s mental stability ebbs and flows as the couple traverse through various quiet communities in France. Through director Jean-Jacques Beineix’s luscious use of colours and quiet camera work, the love story is equally memorizing and haunting, if not one that typically surprises.
The chemistry between leads Jean-Hugues Anglade and Beatrice Dalle is absolutely simmering. Exotic and tender, the film simply would not work with anyone else in these roles. Dalle is particularly remarkable for a first time performer, her sultry looks completely selling how a simple man could completely realign his life for her. The mania of the love they express is powerful and romantic and, ultimately, deranged, and I do wish Betty was more of a complete character instead of a fascination. Still, the sun-drenched love scenes and the spiral make this one that will stay with you for awhile.
Streaming: The Criterion Channel, Apple TV
Lost Highway
One of the more densely layered of David Lynch’s works (which is saying a lot), Lost Highway follows two parallel yet inherently interconnected stories. One follows a jazz saxophonist as he and his wife are haunted be a mysterious man who seems to be breaking into their home and video taping them in their sleep. The other follows a young mechanic as he becomes intertwined with the lover of a local crime boss. Through an overlapping cascade of time and place, our two characters Fred (Bill Pullman) and Pete (Balthazar Getty) are one and the same, replacing each other in their parallel stories and living as each other at various moments. This is also evident in the women of their affection and scorn, as Fred’s wife and Pete’s lover and both played by Patricia Arquette in a dual role that still bleed into each other, like freshly splattered paint dripping down an already finished canvas.
Much like many of Lynch’s films, Lost Highway weaves violence and sexuality together into a sick and sour portrait of failed romance and bitter broken hearts. While it lacks some of the more bravura camp performances you’d find in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, the film is still excellently performed. Patricia Arquette stands out as both the battered, confused housewife and the femme fatale, a sensual and vulnerable performance that stands as one of the best in her career. Robert Loggia is great as a controlling, viscous gangster, and Robert Blake has become synonymous with his role as the terrifying and unsettling Mystery Man. A film I did not fully understand, but one that demands I take a second look.
Streaming: The Criterion Channel, Apple TV
My Dinner With Andre
A film that stretches and intertwines the arts of film and theatre, My Dinner With Andre is a strange and engaging film. Following Wallace Shawn as he plays a fictionalized version of himself meeting up with an old friend (Andre Gregory playing a fictionalized version of himself) for dinner, the film is almost exclusively a dialogue between these two friends. Shawn has settled into a life of low-class comfort, happiest in the moments spent with his beloved girlfriend and trying his best to make it in the word of art. Andre, on the other hand, is a world traveler and spiritual adventurist, trying to draw as much meaning and worth out of a world he sees as quickly losing it’s shine. The two friends talk for hours straight, trading stories and ideals, never rising to anger or even annoyance, at times drifting from the conversations to internal inspect their lives, at other times eagerly engaging with each other, all within a single location over the course of a single dinner.
This film is like falling asleep in a warm bath and awakening when it’s become chill, like expressing all your hopes and desires to a friend but doing so with such frivolity that even if they disengage from you you’ll accept it with a shrug. A film about who we are now and who we used to be, and how those two deeply different people can still be the same person. Director Louis Malle (a personal favourite) doesn’t do anything flashy or innovative, allowing the script by Shawn and Gregory as well as their performances to carry the film entirely. A wonderfully singular piece of filmmaking, one unlike anything you’ll probably ever see again.
Streaming: The Criterion Channel, Apple TV
A Quiet Place: Day One
A prequel that has no intention of explaining anything you see in the initial installments is a big swing, and one I can greatly appreciate. With A Quiet Place: Day One it was almost necessary if the filmmakers were to move this franchise forward. After the somewhat diminished returns of A Quiet Place: Part II, the franchise switches directors to Michael Sarnoski (who wowed a few years back with his debut Pig) and changes settings, moving from the rural backroads of the heartland to the loudest city on Earth, New York City. Following Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a terminal cancer patient, as she decides to traverse the city instead of escaping. She’s joined by her faithful cat and a young man Eric (Joseph Quinn) as the try to silently navigate their ways through the desolate New York streets.
One thing that I felt was lacking in the follow-up to A Quiet Place was a central heart, and that heart is brought back her significantly. Nyong’o is fantastic as always as the dying poet who has given up on everything, and Sarnoski does great work in focusing on the smaller moments with her, whether it’s when she’s alone or when she’s reconnecting with the few people left in her life. The film would almost certainly work better with less action sequences, as the concept of a horror creature who hunts by sound quickly devolves into repetitive and uninteresting chase sequences. But the characters of Samira and Eric are so perfectly lovely and hurt and realized that their moments of peace experienced together makes this a worthy entrance in the franchise.
Streaming: Paramount +, Apple TV, Club Illico, FlixFling, Cineplex, Amazon Prime, Microsoft
Rumours
As political tensions seem to increase more every day across all levels of government, political satire and films of a political nature struggle greatly to keep up with the never ending stream of information. In Rumours, directors Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, and Evan Johnson attempt to slow the conversation down and focus on broad themes of global alliances. Following the world leaders at the G7 meeting as bizarre and inexplicable events occur after they isolate themselves from the world, the film is an artsy and ethereal exploration of modern political tensions and the failures of the Western world. Or at least, I think that’s what they were trying to critique? Maybe it was something else, as this film is unintelligible slop in almost all aspects.
Few films this year have so blatantly failed as much as Rumours has. They waste a fantastic cast who are all trying their best to make since of the terrible script and unfocused thematic branches, from Cate Blanchett as the German chancellor to Charles Dance as the American president (who inexplicably retains his British accent). The film is mostly childish in it’s humor, juvenile and stupid in it’s political talking points. You are likely to get more insightful political rhetoric from a first year university student. Insipid, boring, and outright frustrating in it’s inability to make anything interesting happen with it’s great premise. A bitter disappointment.
Saturday Night
Telling the story of the chaotic 90 minutes before the first ever airing of Saturday Night Live, I think I am the perfect person to really enjoy Saturday Night, as I hold no love nor nostalgia for the comedy institution. While others could easily see this as a naval gazing vanity project, with weak imitations of beloved comedy figures, I came into the film with little to none of this baggage. While I did have to get over some uncanny valley performances of actors I do know such as Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase and Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, for the most part this film existed solely as a race against the clock comedy. Following Lorne Michaels (Gabrielle LaBelle) as he juggles egotistical actors, uncooperative crew, dismissive executives, and the future of his marriage on this single evening, the film complete sells the importance of this moment, if not for the world of comedy, for the world of Lorne Michaels.
This pressure cooker, how-will-they-pull-this-off element is easily what makes the film work. While there are fine performances across the cast, LaBelle’s confident, centered, and unwavering central performance acts as a lighthouse in stormy night that is this cornerstone of entertainment. Cooper Hoffman is great as the straight man executive who is fighting for the show but is still unable to understand what the show really is, and the cast in general give solid (if not the most comedic) performances. I was surprised that the film focuses more on the drama and the relationships of the cast and crew, leaving the funny moments to when they must prove the concept of the show. And while some of these dramatic beats are never fully played out or given the breathing room they need (and some are given a little to much play) overall the film does an excellent job in convincing us that this night changed television and comedy forever.
Smile 2
The first Smile came out in 2022 and, while well crafted, did lean incredibly hard into the trend of having horror as a conduit to discussing mental health and traumatic experiences. Two years later director Parker Finn returns with a much more steady hand and firm grasp on what he wishes to express with the world of Smile. Following a pop star as she attempts to deal with sobriety and a return tour after an accident the year prior killed her boyfriend and severely injured her, we are quickly and easily brought back into the tense, terrifying world Finn has created. Never certain what’s real and what’s imaginary, the film tightens a vice on our heart as Naomi Scott’s Skye Riley slowly loses her grasp on reality.
While this does in some ways feel like a cut-and-paste copy of the first film, the things that worked in that film work even better here and the things that didn’t work there are much smoother and focused in the sequel. Naomi Scott is fantastic as the strung-out, teetering-on-the-edge pop star, with her paranoia about being famous feeding further into the fear of the Smile demon. Finn continues to show he’s an expert at setting up and paying off jump squares, with none of them feeling cheap or unearned. And while I have some major qualms with the ending, I can look past these do to the power of the central performance, and the potential that the ending is setting up. A great entry to a burgeoning horror franchise.
Streaming: Cineplex
The Substance
A bombastic, overly glossy camp body horror romp, The Substance will stand as one of 2024’s more outlandish films if nothing else. Following a past her prime movie star Elisabeth (Demi Moore) as she seeks a mysterious product called The Substance in an effort to recapture her youth, the film is not shy about it’s themes nor the blood and bile that overflow from the screen. Director Coralie Fargeat creates a fish-eyed bizarro version of our world, one that is grotesque and absurd while still being familiar. In this world everyone is cranked up to it’s maximum, from the sexual absurdity of the work out class (and her eventual replacement Sue) teaches, to the leering and revolting studio executive (Dennis Quaid), everything here is surface level and obvious in the most fun and abrasive ways.
While this eventually leads to some incredibly disturbing and insanely gory scenes as the body horror elements become overtake more and more of the film, it does leave some parts of the film feeling uneven or dull. The film lays out it’s themes plainly and quickly, and never delves much deeper than it’s rather obvious and superficial ideas. This makes the latter half of the film feel undercooked, as while it does become much more outlandish overall, it loses any sense of thematic resonance. And while it stays incredibly entertaining as a blood and guts monster flick in the third act, it feels like it loses focus of it’s social critique. An incredibly fun horror film that could have been even better had it dug deeper.
Streaming: MUBI, Amazon Prime
A Traveler’s Needs
A slow, cautious, and curious effort from South Korean Hong Sang-soo, A Traveler’s Needs is a film that is hard to explain. It takes place in our world, with people we’d find familiar and situations we’ve experienced, but with a hint of perplexity that underlines every action. We follow a French woman living in South Korea as she teaches locals in the French language. As she doesn’t know Korean, the woman Iris (Isabelle Huppert) and her various students communicate in English, a language known of them are completely comfortable with. Iris herself isn’t even a teacher, choosing to teach French in a new, unconventional, and unproven manner, relying on the language to seep into the person by relating it to personal moments and deeply felt emotions. All this is told through Sang-soo’s mostly motionless, almost voyeuristic camera, the film plays as an intimate exploration of worldly connections.
While this description is accurate, I would also highlight that the film is not without it’s humor, as humor is a universal connector itself. The film uses repetition and absurdity to highlight the comedy of the everyday, and Isabelle Huppert is at times hilarious as the aloof and peculiar Frenchwoman. The film is mostly an exploration of language, how we are all searching for the proper words, and how even the most innocent of conversations and situations can be both interpreted as more adult or more emotional than they are meant to be. The film is excellent at showing the complexity of connection while never stumbling into miscommunication as farce. There are no social misunderstandings here, no overt fish-out-of-water moments, instead relying on smaller moments of character to amplify it’s themes of one word having two meanings. A delightful and intrepid film.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Having just finished watching the original Twin Peaks series (more on that to be written on soon enough), returning to the small Pacific Northwest community was one I was looking forward to. Choosing to have the film be a prequel to the series, following Laura Palmer in the final week of her life, was one I was not expecting, and the brutality and suffering that is shown in this film is one I don’t think people can prepare for. While this is still a David Lynch film and not a French extremist horror flick, it doesn’t delve into the literal blood and guts of horror, instead showing it’s spiral into hell through the acts the teenage Laura Palmer is forced to go through, only to ultimately be murdered in the closing moments of the film. An amazing, powerful, and pitch black descent into the abyss, and another masterpiece in Lynch’s canon.
The performance of Sheryl Lee is one of the most heart-wrenching ever put to screen. Laura Palmer is a desperate, vulnerable girl with absolutely no one to turn to. Even the people show thinks she can trust betray her in the most vile and disgusting of ways, causing her to spiral further and further. She tries to reclaim herself in drugs and sex work, only to lose herself further. She tries to seek solace in family only to be betrayed in the most disturbing of ways. Even her friends are people who only use her, only see her in singular ways instead of the multi-dimensional person she is. The complexities of this wonderful girl are lost in the eyes of the uncaring, and so her life is taken after everything else has been robbed from her. All of this told through the unique, disturbing, perplexing frames of David Lynch, makes for one of the most harrowing films ever made.
Streaming: The Criterion Channel, Apple TV
Wild at Heart
My ongoing deep dive into the films of David Lynch (with apologies to Spike Lee, I’ll return to you soon enough) has lead me to his Cannes award winning Wild at Heart. A grotesque send-off to the road film, Wild at Heart follows young couple Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lulu (Laura Dern) after they break Sailor’s parole and take off to California. Lulu’s overbearing mother Marietta (Diane Ladd) sends a private investigator and a killer after them in the hopes of bringing Lulu back to her. As they are pursued, the afterglow of their love begins to be infected by the darkness and violence they encounter, and Sailor and Lulu’s future is shrouded in uncertainty.
Out of all the films I’ve seen this month I look forward to revisiting this one the most, not because of my love for it, but because it didn’t hit me square in the gut. While other Lynch films tend to immediately grab me and not let me go, such as Blue Velvet and the aforementioned Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Wild at Heart left me on the outside looking in. While Cage and Dern are incredible, with insane chemistry (enhanced greatly by the intimacy of Lynch’s camera), and the violence is as shocking and brutal as Lynch’s other work, there was a deeper sense of unsettling that was lacking here. It contains certain Lynchian signatures but not enough to make this a child of only his mind. A good to great film that could easily rise in opinion on revisit.
The Witches
The pairing of Roald Dahl and Nicolas Roeg is one that may seem initially perplexing, but quickly becomes brilliant upon further investigation. Dahl is a children’s author with a love of the macabre and unsettling, unwilling to coddle or compromise his idea of what children should be reading. And while none of Roeg’s work could ever be confused as child friendly, there is an unsettling intrigue into the ideas and morals of man that go hand-in-hand with Dahl. From Walkabout to The Man Who Fell to Earth, Roeg has always explored morality and taken broad views on what it means to be civilized. In this adaptation of Dahl’s The Witches, while the morality is much more clear cut in terms of good and evil, Roeg’s eye for the absurd and ghoulish make for a well done adaptation.
Following a young recently orphaned boy as he and his grandmother go on holiday only to discover that the hotel is invested with witches, the film is mostly marvelous in it’s fantastic and gross use of practical special effects. The head witch (played deliciously by Anjelica Houston) is a disgusting creation, a dying bird-like figure that will certainly frighten younger viewers. Scenes where various characters are transmorphing into mice (something the witches plan to do to every child in Britain) are filmed with a disturbing, frenetic energy that shows Roeg understand how to draw the horror out of the film without making it unbearable for younger audiences. And while the children actors are, as many child actors tend to be, tedious and bad, it’s something one can overlook if showing this to slightly older children as a perfect Halloween treat.