TIFF 2021 I'M YOUR MAN Ich bin dein Mensch: Reflections By Carol Borden

By Carol Borden

Maria Schrader I’m Your Man / Ich bin dein Mensch (Germany, 2021)

Sure, there are a lot of movies about people falling in love with androids, robots and AI, but a lot of them are about the risks and even dangers of men falling in love with robots. In Ex Machina (2014), Her (2013), and Godzilla vs Monster Zero (1965 / 1970), for example, men have learned what it is to feel a love beyond computation. And there is even The Companion (1993), in which a woman falls in love and experiences the perils of a smitten Bruce Greenwood android with full autonomy. But that doesn’t mean that there’s not room in my heart for one more.

Unlike Her, Ex Machina, The Companion and Godzilla vs Monster Zero, Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man / Ich bin dein Mensch (Germany, 2021) is mostly a romantic comedy. It just has some additional existential drama. Schrader is also an actor. You might know her from Aimeé & Jaguar (1999) or Nobody Loves Me / Keiner leibt mich (1994), but she has moved into directing and I am happy she has.

Dr. Alma Falsar (Marren Eggert) is working on breakthrough research she is about to publish on previously undiscovered poetry in cuneiform tablets at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum. The museum’s administration has offered her additional funding if she’ll participate in an experiment. She’s to spend three weeks with an android designed to be her perfect partner* and then write an evaluation that will help determine whether or not robots should be allowed to marry and have other rights in society. Of course, this funding is a “thank you gift” and not a bribe.

Alma meets Tom (Dan Stevens) at a special club designed to show off the romantic possibilities of androids--and even holograms. Tom attempts to woo her with compliments and the rhumba, but it’s not really Alma’s thing and she seems more interested in him as a robot than a potential partner. She does, however, take Tom home and set him up with his own room. And so the experiment begins.

In another film, Tom might rampage or we might discover he is more “human” than human. Another film might let Tom be hit by a streetcar for maximum pathos or to resolve the central conflicts it has set up about what it means to be happy and what it means to have a perfectly compatible partner who only wants to make you happy and give you everything you want. Another film might echo the warnings of earlier science fiction that the robots will trick us by being perfect servants and then take over. (Shades of Benito Cereno). I’m Your Man / Ich bin dein Mensch does not. But it does provide the possibility of Alma navigating her principles and concerns while also, perhaps, allowing herself to love and be loved. And I appreciate that it navigates issues of consent well--not only Alma’s but Tom’s ability to consent.

The above might make it sound like the film is not funny, but I have to say that Dan Steven’s Tom was hilarious to me. His reactions, his romantic poses, his delivery and his too much intense eye contact and initial overuse of Alma’s name were all on point. Marren Eggert’s responses to Tom are similarly hilarious. Her bewilderment, her incredulity, her absolute bafflement and exasperation at times were delightful And I enjoyed how Tom and Alma would watch each other in different ways. The film has a lovely and quiet use of the gaze. And Marren Eggert is fantastic as Alma moves towards a vulnerability that she does not want to feel and that makes her feel more alone. But Alma’s integrity and her commitment to her work and living as she thinks she should are not compromised. They are just complicated by not just her growing feelings for Tom, but by her curiosity about him. I’m Your Man is another favorite at this year’s festival and I’d gladly watch it again.

(Incidentally the Bleecker Street trailer translates Alma saying “This is the penis of my dreams” as “This is the man of my dreams.” You know better, Bleecker Street).

*A Mechanized Organism Designed Only For Marriage. I want to be more sorry about this joke than I am.

TIFF 2021 YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER: Reflections by Carol Borden

By Carol Borden 

Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother (Ireland, 2021) has it all: Irish folk horror! Fraught family dinners! Teen girl drama! Possible Lesbianism! Ostracism! Halloween/Samhain! These are things that I normally have a lot to say about, but I have to restrain myself and wait. So let’s get to some thoughts I can share now without revealing too much.

The film opens with a baby in a baby stroller on a street a night. An old woman with a limp takes the baby away and seems to put it in a ring of fire. We watch the woman’s face as it cries. And then teenager Char Delaney (Hazel Doupe) wakes up. She lives with her mother, Angela (Carolyn Bracken), and grandmother (Ingrid Craige). Angela suffers from depression. This morning, Char asks her mother to drive her to school and Angela manages to get herself out of bed and into the car, but struggles mightily when Angela asks her to go to the shops and get some food for the house after dropping her off. After a near accident with a folk horror element leaves them sitting in the car in the village green, Angela tells Char, “I can’t do this anymore.” Frustrated with her mom’s inability to, well, mom, Char leaves the car and walks the short distance to school alone. And then Angela disappears.

Char and her Uncle Aaron (Paul Reid) are worried, though Aaron tries to reassure Char. But Char’s grandmother is certain that Angela will return. And Angela does late that night, but something’s not right. It’s just hard to say what. Is it her new meds? Is it manic-depression? Is it something else? She’s manic and dancing and not careful with her own body or others. Char’s grandmother is also acting suspicious. She watches Angela and interferes with Angela’s attempts to repair her relationship with Char. And Char is alone. Her family is ostracized by the community. Her schoolmates at her local Catholic school (*cough* “Brigid” *cough*) bully her. It seems they always have abused her. This time it’s ostensibly because they worry that she’ll rat them out as they plan a bonfire for Halloween / Samhain. Except for Suzanne (Jordanne Jones) who bullies Char, but also seems kind of into her.  And what’s up with this impending school field trip to a site with pre-Christian stone carvings?  

The film has a suitable moody, Gothic look at night. In the daytime, the cinematography and blocking emphasizes Char’s isolation, especially in the lighting of her school. And the soundtrack by Die Hexen (aka, “The Witches” in German) helps maintain the mood without being obtrusive. All the performances are excellent, but I want to single out Hazel Doupe and Carolyn Bracken. As Char, Doupe does a tremendous amount of work with just her eyes, which always impresses me, as she tries in the beginning to maintain a front that everything is fine and later maintain an appearance of calm to avoid setting off cruel classmates, her family and ultimately her mother. Bracken does a remarkable job as Angela swings from bone-crushing guilt, weariness and love to manic joy to confusion at Char’s fear and, in the end, to a monstrous love.

You Are Not My Mother is one of my favorite movies of the festival this year and I am excited to write more about it in more depth after it has been more widely released.

TIFF 2021 UNCLENCHING THE FISTS: Reflections by Robert Aaron Mitchell

 

Kira Kovalenko Unclenching The Fists (Russia, 2021)

The film opens with a close up of a young woman. She stands against a wall. A sweater is pulled up covering most of her face. Her eyes are piercing towards something out of frame. “Ada!” “Ada!” “Adadza!” 

A young man approaches. He is adamant for Ada to get in his van. She refuses. It is quite an uneasy feeling not knowing this man’s intentions. Another young man shows up and chases the first away and runs up the side of the busy highway acting as though he will fight the other boy who has long driven off.

Unclenching The Fists is the second film by Kira Kovalenko. The story is set small mining town of Mizur, which sits high, in the mountains of North Ossetia between steep cliffs. The way the mountains frame the tiny town it is difficult to see beyond this tiny community. The mountains have a harsh, stultifying beauty. 

 

 

This is Ada’s story who is played by Milana Aguzarova. Adadza lives at home with her father Zaur (Alik Karaev) and brother Dakko (Khetag Bibilov). At the dinner table that night Zaur smells perfume and is adamant that Ada has worn it for somebody. She is also adamant that she just wanted to wear it. There is an unease and tension that runs through this family. Later that night Dakko invades Ada’s room and crawls into bed with her. He grasps her and refuses to let go. We are never quite sure of the well being of Ada. 

The next day Ada is at her job in a tiny store. The young man from the beginning the film Tamik (Arsen Khetagurov) shows up. Once again is adamant that Ada joins him. Once again we do not know his intentions. Tamik steals her purse. Ada gets in the van. They drive around. Bored kids throw fireworks against the side of a building. They arrive in an abandoned area and Tamik proceeds to spin the van around in circles. Ada in the back of the van is jostled around. She laughs. Tamik takes her home.

 

 

Dinner is being prepared and another man is in the apartment. He has cauliflower ears, that of a boxer. This is Ada’s other brother Akim (Soslan Khugaev). With Akim’s return home for a visit the usual tension of the family is even higher. We learn that the father is dying and get our first indication of what has happened to Ada. A massive tragedy has happened and it has impacted the bonds of this family.

The entire film hinges on the performance of  Milana Aguzarova as Adadza. As director Kira Kovalenko said during her video introduction the film, the actors in the movie are non-actors. The depth that Milana brings to her role is incredible. You can see it in her eyes in the photographs that accompany this piece. 

The men in Ada’s life care for her very much, of this there are no doubt. That being said their embraces are long and awkward. They could not protect her once before. It is as if they let go they will lose her. The decisions the father makes concerning Ada, see her trying to pull away from. The father is getting sicker and returns an item back to Ada of which she can go forth with her life. He has relinquished his hold on her. 

If there is a running theme of world cinema this year, that runs through films I have seen, than perhaps it is this, how does one cope with the heavy weight of tragedy and continue to live life. Which is at the core, a fundamental human dilemma. Ultimately the film poses the question, which is more important, security or freedom? We constantly ask this question individually and as a society. Ada now has the freedom to make this choice for herself. On the back a motorcycle speeding out of town she makes it. We may not agree with her decision but that is not our choice to make. Ada was finally given the opportunity to make hers and she answers that question for herself. 

 

 

TIFF 2021 THE ELECTRICAL LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN: Reflections by Carol Borden

 

By Carol Borden 

Will Sharpe The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain (UK, 2021)
 

Among other things, Louis Wain was an artist whose work spanned the1880s through the 1920s. In his lifetime, Louis Wain was most renowned for his drawings of cats--especially his charming and often satirical drawings of cats doing human things. (You can see a brief clip of Wain drawing a cat in a 1921 British Pathé short on YouTube). Wain began working for illustrated papers in London, depicting mostly animals at country fairs and, well, wherever other animals might appear in the news. He was the eldest of six siblings and the only male child. When his father passed away, Wain became responsible for supporting his mother and sisters. He was not suited for this task. He was eccentric and, according to the film, experienced delusions and hallucinations that became progressively more intrusive as he got older. For his part, Benedict Cumberbatch seems to have chosen to play Wain as being on the autism spectrum. Regardless of its source, the way Wain experienced and interacted with the world led to a remarkable output of art that he could not, unfortunately, benefit from because it did not occur to him to copyright it.

The Electrical Life of Lous Wain begins just as Louis is doing reasonably well but realizes he might need to bring in a more steady income after his sister Caroline (Andrea Riseborough)  hires Miss Emily Richardson (Claire Foy) as a governess for his youngest sisters. Louis is unhappy at first because the necessity of taking a steady position as a staff illustrator at Sir William Ingram’s (Toby Jones) paper interferes with his ability to pursue his other interests, especially his electrical research. But Louis resigns himself to her presence. Ultimately, he falls in love and marries Emily. Emily and Louis take in a cat, Peter. And thus Louis begins drawing cats.

The film uses a variety of charming visual techniques to draw us into Wain’s life and world. It focuses on his art and his particular method of drawing and painting. I particularly like a scene where the camera looks through a design Cumberbatch paints on glass.

I also enjoyed the segments with subtitled cats and the presence of so many amazing cats in the film. The scenes that morphed into stills recalling hand-painted photographs were a nice touch, too. I loved the design--all the prints and colors in the costuming and especially on the walls of Wain’s rooms. Taika Waiti has a nice cameo where his American accent makes him sound like Alan Cumming, at least to me. I feel like these visual elements were the strongest part of the film. The title cards at the end of the film were delightful and it’s too bad that they were not the title cards at the beginning of the film. I assume they were intended to be, but there were notes.

I wish The Electrical Life of Louis Wain had about 15% more whimsy. Just leaned into Wain’s world a little more. This could be a side effect of just having watched Neptune Frost which went hard for what it was going for. Neptune Frost does not give a fuck about what cinema is supposed to be. It’s got its business to take care of. And so my critical faculties might be distorted. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is tremendously whimsical for a more mainstream film. And I recognize the dangers of whimsy in film. I don’t think you’d want to go full Wes Anderson or Tim Burton with a film about Louis Wain, or at least with this particular screenplay about Louis Wain. Although I can see a pretty good Wain film from either filmmaker. In fact this might make an interesting pairing with Burton’s Big Eyes (2014).

But this is a biopic very much interested in letting us know about the life of Louis Wain, actual human being who had a rough time, rather than Louis Wain, eccentric character. It’s a hard balance because I can see what Sharpe finds so inspiring about Wain and his desire for the audience to feel inspired at the same time that I feel so sad for Louis Wain, a man who could not fulfill the expectations of his time, who felt a profound calling to make the world a better place,  and who experienced mental illness in terrible conditions.

TIFF 2021 SALOUM Clip #1 “Malembe”

 Hey check out this first clip the filmmakers of Saloum have just released prior to the film premiering at Midnight Madness at the Toronto International Film Festival.

SALOUM Clip #1 - "Malembe" from LACME STUDIOS on Vimeo.

TIFF 2021 YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER: Reflections by Robert Aaron Mitchell

 

The film opens with a baby stroller abandoned at the end of a dead-end street. An out of focus woman limps towards the stroller and begins pushing it. The old woman is now with the baby in the middle of the woods. A spell book is seen. The woman begins a fire. A ring of fire surrounds the baby. The baby wails. The fire gets higher. Embers fly off into the night sky. So begins writer/director Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother.

 

It is now years later. The film opens days before Samhain (Halloween). We meet Char (Hazel Doupe) a teenager who is an exceptional student who also deals with being an outcast. She is late for school and asks her Grandmother (Ingrid Craigie) for a drive. Gran cannot because of her bad foot. Char is instructed to ask her mother Angela (Carolyn Bracken). Gently opening the door to a darkened room, Char’s mom is barely awake. She agrees to drive Char to school. Char simple asks her mom to pick up some items from the store such as bread and milk. As the drive continues, things to not go well and Char has to grab the steering wheel to narrowly avoid an accident. Angela ominously says, “I can’t do this anymore.” Char makes it to school and upon retuning home finds the family car abandoned. The groceries she asked her mom to pick up are sitting in the passenger seat now several hours later. Angela has gone missing. Char takes a favorite photo of her and her mom to wander through the neighborhood to try and locate Angela.

 

Char’s family home and in particular her mother Angela is one that the rest of the neighborhood avoids and whispers about. Strange bad omens envelop this house. Kids are forbidden to hangout with Char. It also seems everyone knows or believes that they know what happens inside. Char carries the weight of being an outcast everywhere she goes. To further this she has a recognizable scar. Even when she leaves home to look for her mother holding the treasured photo of the two of them together danger waits in a back alley when a bunch of her classmates loiter around and spot Char. They encircle and confront her. Taking the treasured photo as hostage as they lay a stupid teenage demand upon Char in order to have the photograph returned.

 

A scene I was particularly drawn to was a family dinner. Char, Angela, Gran and Char’s Uncle Aaron sit around the table. Moments earlier Angela was doing well. In a grand mood, as she prepares dinner and dancing. Gran comes into the kitchen and knocks over the prepared food, thus sabotaging dinner. The Uncle not expecting a prepared meal has brought home take out. As the four family members sit around the table the weight of this family takes hold. The silences become heavier. What is said is challenged. The looks between Grandmother and mother ratchet up the tension. We the silent audience begins to make many assumptions. Throughout the story both Gran and mom both display instances of protecting Char and scaring her.

 

You Are Not Mother is very much steeped in Irish folklore. The film is anchored by the performances of Carolyn Bracken, Hazel Doupe and Ingrid Craigie. Kate Dolan guides this story with a steady directorial hand with empathy and understanding of Char’s predicament to be caught in the middle of her grandmother and mother as family history plays out or perhaps something more sinister that has happened many years before. Sometimes the horror of growing up is not knowing your place in the world and not trusting those that are entrusted to ensure your well being.

TIFF 2021 INEXORABLE: Reflections by Carol Borden

 By Carol Borden

Fabrice Du Welz’ Inexorable (Belgium / France, 2021) is part of a long tradition of films wherein an unbalanced woman insinuates herself into a man’s life and and destroys it. Except she is almost always invited and the gentleman almost always makes everything worse. In Inexorable, that man is Marcel Bellmer played by Benoît Poelvoorde (Man Bites Dog (1992)). Marcel is struggling with writer’s block after the astronomical success of his novel, Inexorable. His father-in-law recently passed away leaving an actual manor house with grounds to Marcel and Marcel’s wife Jeanne (Mélanie Doutey), who is also Marcel’s publisher. Presumably, Marcel is also not entirely confident of his ability to succeed on his own. At Jeanne’s insistence, Marcel works in his father-in-law’s home office and is not comfortable with the arrangement, but the psychology of that part of Marcel’s life is largely overshadowed by other, emergent problems. Except for a nice riff in which he is seduced by a passage from his own work. (Or is it?!) Because with this kind of films, the psychology in the psychological thriller is mostly there to justify the particular elements used in presenting the story of an invited interloping woman destroying a successful man’s life. In this case, Gloria (Alba Gaïa Bellugi) is that woman. Returning to the village where she grew up, coincidentally the very village the Bellmers own an estate in, Gloria finds the Bellmer’s dog Ulysse sitting at the end of their long driveway and brings him home to Jeanne, Paola (Anaël Snoek) their nanny/servant and the Bellmer’s distraught daughter Lucie, who have been calling for Ulysse. Jeanne invites Gloria in and then, sympathetic to Gloria’s situation, invited Gloria to stay.

This is when the classic game of cat (lady who just wants love in wrong, wrong ways and possibly vengeance) and mouse but also cat (upper middle class man desperate to cover up whatever it is he did) begins. It is a classic story and I appreciate how Du Welz (Alléluia (2014) and Message from the King (2016)) and his co-screenwriters Aurélien Molas and Joséphine Darcy-Hopkins handle this iteration. It reminds me not only of 1990s American thrillers, but also a bit of both The Housemaid, though it lacks The Housemaid’s humor, and of Parasite, though Inexorable is not as focused on class. What it is focused on is Gloria’s trap and Gloria’s utter commitment to her cause.

Inexorable also does a good job of making Jeanne and Marcel not immediately awful. Some movies with the crazy lady destroying a family will lean too hard on presenting the wife as nagging, cold or sexually unavailable in order to make the ensnared husband more sympathetic. Inexorable doesn’t. And Marcel, though a novelist struggling with writer’s block who might feel angry and emasculated in another story, is generally not terrible on his surface. You can see that story in Marcel if you want. There is evidence in the film between his father-in-law’s office and his trouble maintaining an erection at one point after Jean francophonily tells him that she loves that he smells of cigarettes. He struggles with his new book and drinks something that looks like J&B, but I do no believe it is. But Marcel tries to do the right thing at first. He sees Gloria as someone to talk to about his books. And he tells Gloria about his thoughts about writing about two Belgian fascists (“Rexists”), on of whom dies for love. But of course, these movies are about stripping away the surface and Gloria is willing to tear the surface away with her teeth if necessary. She’s willing to sacrifice a roast chicken. This woman is capable of anything. And Marcel, well, he could tell the truth but he ends up framing a dog, which wins Marcel no friends. 

 

If you are in the mood for a thriller where men are in perilous positions cinematic women are usually in--and don’t realize their peril until too late--Inexorable is a good one. It’s nicely shot and well-acted. Alba Gaïa Bellugi brings a remarkable desperate intensity to Gloria and handles her tonal shifts well. If the manor isn’t quite a character in the film, it certainly makes for a nice background to the events and a reasonable contrast the village and the hotel where Gloria starts her scheme. And Lucie has an excellent birthday performance. If only the Park’s child had a similar one perhaps tragedy could have been averted in Parasite. As for Ulysse the dog, I can’t say for sure that he survives, but I am going to assume everyone realizes he’s a good boy who has been framed.