MIFF Notes #7: Hard Paint, Donbass, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, Transit

As a consumer of art, it is impossible to be completely objective. Watching, like everything we do, is filtered through our own unique perspective which combine with the work to create a new experience. As a reviewer, one of my main responsibilities is to divorce my background from my viewing to approach a work with fresh eyes, and then explain, to the best of my ability, an objective view of it's merits. However, that's not always possible as I discovered on my sixth and seventh days at the festival.

It began with an accidentally queer themed day. As a gay man who adores movies, I've been open on this blog regarding my views about the power and potential of queer cinema. I also must admit to having a certain bias towards films that tell queer stories, willing to forgive more readily than I would a 'straight' movie. After the Good Manners guilty pleasure, I was in the mood for more international gay joy.

My first, South African film The Harvesters (B) was not that, its homoeroticism so subtle, it falls to the margins of the story. Janno, a teenage boy from a strict religious family, develops a complex relationship with Pieter, an impoverished, angry boy his parents adopted from the city. It's a film about masculinity and religious devotion, but I couldn't shake the feeling that there was more going on beneath the surface.

The Harvesters (2018), via The Hollywood Reporter

Prominent queer film theorist Vito Russo (The Celluloid Closet) has written about the ways gay men search for themselves in cinema, especially mainstream movies which don't generally have room for us. We become treasure hunters, searching for the subtlest clues which may hint at a deeper, queerer theme. Despite the movies becoming more openly gay since that was written during the 80s, that impulse still remains. So, as I watched The Harvesters, I found myself playing one of my favourite cinema games; "is it gay or am I just reading too much into this? Because that really seems gay". It's a game gay audiences are very familiar with.

The relationship between Janno and Pieter is so angry, passionate and palpably tender that the tension just keeps building, until it has to be resolved. It feels like they'll kill one another, or kiss. What happens is a lot more interesting and complicated than that, with an almost Persona-esque role reversal, but the lingering homoeroticism remains. The Harvesters is an interesting examination of family and masculinity, but ultimately what I'll remember this film for is that it made me feel like a good old-fashioned gay, looking for potential romance in every tiny gesture.

Speaking of queer cinema throwbacks, my next film was Jennie Livingston's iconic 1990 documentary, Paris Is Burning, about the New York drag ball scene. I've seen it many, many times and written a lot about it as part of my university studies, but it was great to see it on the big screen. I love it very deeply for reasons too complicated to properly address in this small space (especially with my sleep deprived brain), but it acts as a fascinating counterpoint to RuPaul's Drag Race and Pose.

Paris Is Burning (1990), via pride.com

For the queens of Drag Race, drag is a very different game than that of these queens. For them, drag isn't just about looking fierce (although, yass), it's about fitting into a dangerously homophobic society. It was not about Instagram followers or a cash prize, it was a survival technique, made up in gorgeous dresses. Paris Is Burning's greatness lies in the way it acknowledges this, yet still feels joyous. I doubt I will ever see a better examination of the way race, class, gender and sexuality interact.

Paris Is Burning was a nice break for my movie fried brain, but also acted as a fitting prologue to my next film, the undisputed crown jewel of my MIFF experience so far. Brazilian film Hard Paint (A) follows Pedro, an isolated gay man who comes alive while web camming using his distinctive neon paint. When he discovers another man, Leo, is using the same gimmick, his lonely world will be broken open. Going into Hard Paint, I expected a queer thriller. What it is instead is something much more. This is the most personally affecting queer film I've seen since Holding The Man shredded my heart to pieces. I will try to stop this review from being a fawning tribute to its beauty, but no guarantees.

Hard Paint (2018), via Hollywood Reporter

From the story to the acting to the cinematography, Hard Paint is a masterful tackling of a taboo topic with grace and empathy. Pedro's alienation is sad, especially compared to his stunning openness when on camera. Already that's complicating a simple dichotomy, but it's when Leo arrives on the scene that the film, and Pedro, become infused with life. He's such a kind, patient and open character albeit one with his own pain. He reminded me of Looking's Richie. Or my own partner. I too am deeply introverted at the best of times, and sometimes need my own Leo to help open up. In one scene, he tries to get Pedro to dance, a moment so relatable, I winced. Or when he introduces him to his friends, I felt Pedro's rising panic, so visceral was that tension.

Other queer films have been great, but what feels unique about Hard Paint is the way it depicts nudity and sex. One of my pet peeves about gay films is that they often feel safely sexless (looking at you, otherwise exceptional Call Me By Your Name), and I was prepared to get grumpy about it, especially in a film which is about a kind of sex work. Instead, this is the most honest and sexually explicit gay film I've ever seen. Pedro and Leo spend large amounts of the film naked, but what's really interesting is the way the film manages to portray the difference between their performed eroticism for their audience and their own private intimacy.

Their performances are visually stunning, neon-infused feasts for the senses, erotic in a very artistic way. The most memorable of these happens early and it's the best scene of the year so far. Leo dances on his own, seductively writhing with neon pink painted eyes and lips. It's shockingly sexy and, when paired with Tei Shi's 'Bassically', it made me gasp out loud, never having seen anything quite so stunning before.

Each of the neon camming scenes are vivid and erotic, but their sexiness is nothing compared to the astonishing sex scene. It plays out with no music or fancy lighting, just two guys making love in a way completely alien to the usual depiction of gay sex. It's a remarkable sequence, nakedly honest, deeply passionate, exceptionally hot and, dare I say, even a bit relatable. And then there's the treatment of nudity. So much penis has rarely been seen on the big screen and never with the naturalism of this film.

But it's openness about sex is not even the best thing about Hard Paint. What makes this film so memorable and touching is the insightful way it explains what it's like to live as a gay man in a homophobic society. Pedro can barely go outside for five minutes, so terrified is he of strangers staring at him and realising he's gay. That's a very relatable fear and it strikes a poignant cord, as does the moment Leo tells Pedro a story that takes a devastatingly personal turn. Hard Paint movingly examines what it is to be gay, the joys and the challenges, in a way that is visually stunning and emotionally true. I doubt I will have such a profoundly personal experience at the cinema this year. Films this rare and perfect (even in their imperfections) don't come around very often.

I left the city that day on a cloud. Day seven saw me fall off that cloud and then get rained on. I found myself in a mid-MIFF slump, as a series of still great but less personally effecting films knocked my enthusiasm down a little. It began with Ukrainian film Donbass (B+), a savage reflection of the conflicts within the titular region. I must admit to not knowing the specifics of the Ukraine-Russian history and conflict, and MIFF is not the best time to learn. Thankfully, I saw this with a very intelligent and well-educated friend who has kindly shared me some articles contextualising it and the director's aims.

Donbass (2018), via Unifrance

Told in thirteen interconnected vignettes, it features many memorable scenes, such as a bonkers bureaucratic car robbery or a darkly cyclic beginning and end. The most controversial scene is inarhusbly an extended, brutal attack on a man strapped to a pole that has been described by one twitter user as the most confronting scene of the festival (they obviously didn't see Gaspar Noe's Climax but we'll get into that next time). Director Sergei Loznitsa is making an important (and very timely critique) of the corruption of power and the abuse of propaganda. Donbass has stayed with me over the last few days, and I've come to respect, if not love, it's thematic depth.

With less than twenty minutes between films, my brain was probably not in the right head-space for my next film, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (A-). The documentary is beautifully understated, matching the Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence composer's kind, gentle soul. In between lengthy clips of his musical performances, Sakamoto shares his views of Tarkovsky, 9/11, the nature of the climate change and more.

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017), via Hollywood Reporter

The cumulative effect is a soothing documentary that feels hopeful despite the composer's cancer diagnosis. Far more than just another talking heads documentary, Coda is an almost perfect film, a gentle contemplative plea for us to find the beauty in life's simpler things. A relaxing joy.

Less joyful is Christian Petzold's follow-up to Barbara and Phoenix, the German-French drama Transit (C-). Having loved his previous films, I had my hopes high, and it backfired. When one goes in with no expectations, it's easy to be pleasantly surprised. However, if you go in expecting another masterwork, you're bound to be disappointed. As I watched Transit, I got lost and grumpy as though my faith in the director had been misplaced. It follows Georg who gets stuck waiting in Marseilles while trying to escape fascism in America. However, instead of setting the story in the 1940s, Petzold films in modern day France. While I've seen a lot over the last few days that has attempted to justify this choice (one person described it "as if Casablanca was remade by ghosts"), it's distracting. For a while, I was convinced that I'd been so out of the global politics loop that camps had sprung up again and I hadn't even heard. Then, I wondered if soccer posters and Photoshop existed during the war. It pulls you out of the story and worse, it gives the impression that Petzold doesn't trust us to get his key point: fascism is coming back in a big, scary way.

Transit (2018), via Christian Schultz

That's not the only way Transit talks down to its audience. It employs an odd framing device that results in almost wall to wall narration. If there's anything I've learned from studying creative writing and film-making it's that narration almost never works well. Unless the narrator has a specific characterisation or clear thematic purpose (Jane the Virgin's Latin Lover being a great example), it can feel like laziness, telling rather than showing us. So, we spend large swathes of the film watching people converse before the narrator cuts in halfway through to explain what is being said, why and what Georg thinks about it. It's a lazy use of narration and it feels like a crutch. This is especially frustrating as the last scene of Petzold's previous film, Phoenix, is one of the finest, subtlest examples of visual storytelling that I know of. I have more gripes about this film, but I seem to be in the minority here. Maybe I was just too tired to fully appreciate it (although I doubt that).

Moving swiftly on, my last film of the day was also the only MIFF film I'm viewing that will finish after midnight. To see it, I had to sleep on a friend's hard floor which angered my already aching back and ruined my sleep cycle for the next few days (but more on my physical and mental exhaustion in my next dispatch). I have wondered several times whether the horror anthology, The Field Guide To Evil (C+) was worth it. The answer? Probably not.

The Field Guide To Evil (2018), via Bloody-Disgusting

By their very design, anthology films are a mixed bag, with great segments bumping up against weaker ones. This film, which asks several famous horror directors from around the world to adapt folk tales, has an unfortunate ratio, with only one excellent story and many very average ones. The best segment is also the last, titled "The Cobbler's Lot" and is directed by Peter Strickland. His previous film, the unforgettable The Duke Of Burgundy, was an ingenious, heavily stylised look at relationships and is one of my favourite films, so I was desperate to see whatever he came up with next. Thankfully, the segment didn't disappoint.

"The Cobbler's Lot" is like a silent film in colour, blended with the dreamy artificiality of Twilight Of The Ice Nymphs and the dark fairytale beauty of The Storyteller, but with the eroticism and stylistic flourish of Kenneth Anger. Its painterly compositions look stunning in muted, grainy film stock colour, while the story combines fantasy logic with that of a giallo or a particularly arty 70s porno. That Strickland manages to combine such disparate influences into something so beautiful is to be treasured. On it's own, it's goddamned genius.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film's stories are less successful. The Indian-set colonial story (directed by Ashim Ahluwalia, Miss Lovely) features crisp black-and-white cinematography and an eerie story, but it doesn't linger long in the memory. The directors of Goodnight Mommy, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, open the film with an Austrian tale of sinning lesbians, but it relies on cheap jump scares. Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska (The Lure, Fugue) turns in a haunting story that ultimately feels too slight to be fully effective, while a Greek story about a goblin (directed by Yannis Veslemes, Norway) has some gorgeous shots but doesn't really do anything interesting with them. Apart from Strickland's short, the most memorable is definitely the American short, "Beware The Melonheads", by Calvin Reeder (The Oregonian, The Rambler). Its truly awful in a way that had the entire theatre howling with laughter, but without much knowledge of the filmmaker I can't tell if that's intentional or not. Ultimately, The Field Guide To Evil is a very flat horror anthology. It might be best just to wait for the Strickland short to find it's way online rather than wasting your time on such a mediocre collection.

Spirits Of The Air, Gremlins Of The Clouds (1989), via FilmInk

Finally, I also watched the Australian film Spirits Of The Air, Gremlins Of The Clouds from 1989. It was a stunning restoration of a visually gorgeous film, but I've come to the realisation that MIFF is not really the best place to watch classic films. With their different rhythms, they seem to require a different head space to fully engage with. Therefore, I will withhold sharing my thoughts on this until I get a chance to see it again. Thankfully, it's coming to DVD on the 5th of September, so I'll be reviewing it a little later in the year.

In my next dispatch, I'll be discussing Gaspar Noe's intense Climax, the aptly named Cold War, Iranian film Dressage, Grey Gardens follow-up That Summer, and a couple of other documentaries. I'll also be grappling with my complex feelings about the experimental film [CENSORED] and the disastrous discussion that followed!