Knife+Heart (2019)

(original title: Un couteau dans le cœur)

Directed by Yann Gonzalez

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“She saw so many gay flicks, she thought she was a fag.”

Yann Gonzalez is a French director known for his feature film You And The Night (2013) but mostly because of his many other short films. He is especially well regarded in the LGBTQ+ community for his preference on themes regarding sexuality and gender politics. Having won many prizes and nominations in important festivals like Cannes Film Festival, he is one of those directors to be watching out for if you are interested in art-house films of the new era. However, we feel on Camera Coverage that this new feature from Gonzalez is pretty much a mess, it is not without some singular scenes that are incredible, but it is indeed a bit of a mess.

The film follows Anne (Vanessa Paradis), a gay pornography film director, in her quest of filming her new feature that seems to be more bold and adventurous than her previous. This brings us close to the character and her relationship dynamics with her film editor Löis (Kate Moran) and her dealing with alcohol addiction. From the start we know that the film has as a main plot a giallo-esque story, with a serial killer that seems to be targeting the actors from Anne’s films. The connecion between the killer and the actors is left uknown until the end of the film, where we are bombarded with a traditional plot-twist from the great classics of the genre.

Vanessa Paradis as Anne

The film plays along the lines of what we may consider the supernatural giallo, especially in its first two acts. The relationship between Anne’s vision of her new picture and the killings is meant to be perceived, but sadly, with its ending, we are left hanging in the understanding of this relationship. Throughout her journey we are faced with many surrealist images that are traditional in these giallo films and Italian horror films of the 1960s and 1970s, but they seem to add little to the unravel of our characters quest. It is clear that there are many diagetic layers on Knife+Heart, but after seeing it and thought of it for a week I still feel that they are not only disconnected, but they are sadly disconnected, as most of them are individually incredible and contain a lot of contrasting and formally complex ideas working on a deep semiotic level. The insistence on creating a traditional giallo in structure does not work in the film as much as it does visually, and it lefts the viewer confused, frustrated and cheated.

Vanessa Paradis is one of the actors in later years that we feel, as lovers of photography in general, that has one of the most unique faces. The characterization of every character in the film, especially her’s, is incredibly stylized and works well comparing to the other aspects of the film. The whole visual aspect of the film is undeniably great. It works as a cool throwback to the films of the genre, but it works as a singular piece as well, despite its insistence on weird black and white thermal images when depicting dream sequences. However, even at the technical level (image and sound) Knife+Heart is not the best throwback to the giallo, particularly if we consider the incredible films that made reference to the genre we have seen in the last few years (like Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and Amer (2009) ).

One of the dream sequences

Falling short on others to describe the film, it feels disapointing. The director has achieved greatness with some of his short films (notably Les îles (2017) ), but this time he completely misses the target. Despite arguably being one of the films that are a throwback to the afforementioned genres that more truly incorporates not only the visual aesthetics but the structure of the giallo, it fails on creating a compelling experience by being too overwhelming and obtuse with its symbols and parallels. I feel that some of this may be due to how random some of the events in the film are, and the discrepancy of vibes in it. The play of the director regarding the meta aspect of the film (the films inside the film; the dreams inside the film; the dreams that are the film; the relationship between director and editor, etc) is interesting, as are the mirror images it tries to make with its individual scenes. Sadly it does not keep up with its promises (especially its depiction of the theme of obsessive and corrosive love) and mostly is an insatisfying experience, that while being really extreme and poignant in the depiction of a community and a genre of filmmaking that is really underapreciated and not valued as it should, it leaves the spectator feeling that it is a mere exercise in shock value and pretentiousness.

3.5 out of 10

The Ballad of Narayama (1983)

Directed by Shôei Imamura

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“Our ancestors have gone to the summit for hundreds of years as we do now. 25 years from now I will go there too.”

Created by arguably one of Cannes Film Festival favorite directors Shôhei Imamura (with 5 times Palme D’Or nominations and 3 wins, including on this particular film) this work of his moves the viewer with its whimsical characters that can quickly twist the mood of the film from a light family comedy to a shocking, grotesque depiction of the life in a 19th century Japanese village. The socially poignant Japanese director does not miss his selected target with The Ballad of Narayama, but even surpasses his signature social cinema and elevates the story to a state of fable that despite not being as stylized as the 1958 version of the film, is way more cinematic and even accessible to the Western audience.

Imamura created complex dynamics introducing the viewer to really well-developed characters in a warm family environment and juxtapose this familiar warmth with the rough systems and values that guide village life. The film follows the life of a family in which every member has some unsolved problem. The main plot point of the film is that the old matriarch of the family Orin (played delightfully by Sumiko Sakamoto) is getting old, and there is a tradition in the village of ubasute. Being her the main stabilizer of the family, the film follows her solving her family’s problems while preparing, without the family’s approval, her departure to the mountain.

Sumiko Sakamoto

When asked about the story Imamura joked he initially thought about starting the film with a family taking their old grandma to a nursing home up a hill in modern Japan and then showing up the title screen saying The Ballad of Narayama. This says a lot about the intentions of the director when creating the film and presenting yet again this particular story. This work goes a step further than other films that go for this type of commentary. It ends up being way more shocking in, for example, a scene on justice against a family that stole from another family’s house, than in the film’s inevitable ending. It goes beyond its original source material (being it the 1958 film or the novella) and does it in a well accomplished manner, in which apparently scenic shots of animals (rats eating snakes and snakes eating rats, for example) and the environments say a lot more about the plot itself than its charming characters may initially transmit. Having this said, pretty much everything, from the music to the framing, works diagetically in Imamura’s film. And more than that, everything stands individually as a great element to the film. As any of his films, The Ballad of Narayama is visually striking, even more so than something like Vengeance is Mine (1979). It has a visual finesse of some of his most iconic later work like The Eel (1997), another one of our favourites from Imamura that could have easily made the list.

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Despite being better known for his 1960s films, Imamura is a director that we will probably have to revisit another time on Camera Coverage, as for his later work goes above and beyond, in our humble opinions, than what he had previously worked on. In a world where directors like Ken Russell work political cinema and are tremendously poignant in the cinematic conversion of their ideas, we have Shôhei Imamura that is way less known in the West but goes above and beyond any of his political statements and manages to touch much more fundamental problems of the human existence. Even if he was adapting a novella or even adapting the 1958 version of the film, he managed to put as much of his signature social grit and social realism as poetic and lyrical value, all rounded up with an extent use of cinema’s potential. This is how you do an adaptation of a book. This is how you do a remake.

Diamantino (2019)

Directed by Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt

“They call me the Michael Angelo of the pitch”

Diamantino marks the debut of Gabriel Abrantes (with the partnership of Daniel Schmidt) into the world of full featured films. Abrantes has a long list of short films in his bag, such as A Brief History of Princess X (2016) or A History of Mutual Respect (2010). In his films he tries to ally a philosophical and critical stance to thematic such as history, gender and sexuality politics and the power of Art. With this long feature, Abrantes and Schmidt try to ally all these themes with an absurdist and at the same time comedic approach to serious and problematic contemporary problems. Almost a year after its Cannes debut, it finally showed up on Portuguese cinemas.

The plot follows Diamantino Matamouros (Carloto Cotta), the biggest football star in the world, who resembles an uncanny similarity to Cristiano Ronaldo. Either by the physical appearance or his narration of the events with a Madeira island accent (subtitled even to Portuguese audiences, although he is speaking Portuguese, something that may only be appreciated by the native speakers of the language) the resemblance is something that clearly pops on the viewer. Despite that, it’s not a direct reference and the character serves mainly as a caricature for nowadays biggest stars. He is a revered figured, almost like a god, astonishingly rich and with a personality ingrained with vanity and at the same time a tremendous ignorance for the events of the world. The very first scene, where we see him play in a sold-out stadium in the World Cup alongside with giant puppies in a pink cloudy haze, marks the surrealistic tone of the film. This scenario created in his head is the mechanism necessary to make him excel in what does best. Diamantino’s vanity and obsession with image and performance is not critiqued but instead he is presented as a deeply naïve and almost childish character. With the unexpected appearance of a refugee boat near his yacht, he completely loses all his ability to enter in that mental state represented by the pink haze and loses all his football skills. He goes from hero to zero, in a statement of the vapid celebratory status that rules our society, where one mistake is enough to fall from grace.

The surreal place that Diamantino goes when he plays

Shocked by the migrant reality, he decides to adopt a Mozambican refugee boy, who is actually a female agent in disguise to discover possible financial frauds. Placed in an alternative timeline, Portugal is a neofascist country. One of the best aspects is the placement of small but very perspicuous clues that evoke the country’s forty-year dictatorship. It compares the creation of a glorious past with its big symbols with the new symbols created by today’s society in order to give a sense of national identity. The plot derives then into an almost espionage type of film. The despotic government convinces our lead character into a cloning process to make an entire football team full of skilful players like him in order to regain the glory lost in the World Cup final. This potentially deadly procedure would end up giving him breasts, something that deeply embarrasses him. The laughs of the audience to this scene maybe are a refection the director wants to make in relation to transphobia but unfortunately fails short to give any deep impact on the viewer.

The film’s first half results in an interesting critique of nowadays culture and politics. The long dictatorship (from 1926 to 1974) marked generations with a propaganda machine that created myths to justify a sense of identity. Despite a few decades passed since 1974, the mindset of the contemporary Portuguese people in some ways still rely in those myths of grandeur in a way of self-identity. Diamantino’s sisters (Anabela Moreira/ Margarida Moreira) also make an interesting point with their greed for their brothers’ money. With their sly personality, they are willing to sacrifice his own brother if needed. Alongside the positive points made before, Cotta’s performance is also a big highlight in the film, creating a deeply interesting character.

Diamantino and his “adoptive son”

The problem with the film relies essentially on pace. Past the first half of the film the repetition of the more poignant (or funny) aspects start to wear off and lose some of the charm. In a way, it reminds me of Capitão Falcão (2015) a Portuguese film that deals with similar political themes with also a comedic approach. The premises are smart and offer new ideas that deserve his praise, especially in dealing with ghosts of the past in a more cheerful that can help more easily engrain the audience in a political reflation without a more acute sense of guilt. The problem is that it is unable to deliver a more powerful second half without recycling most of the content used before. Worst than that, it finishes with a disappointing and cliché ending. Maybe Diamantino would be better if it was a short film, as it would be a more cohesive and well-rounded experience, instead of the constant repetition of tropes.

5 out of 10

Gräns (2019)

(eng: Border)

Directed by Ali Abbasi

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“I don’t see the point of evil.”

Inspired on a novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist (better known for Let The Right One In), Border is one of the films to have a lot of controversy and high regard last year. To it was awarded the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes, and it even managed to swiftly get a nomination to the Oscar for Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling. The controversy is mainly due to the sexual nature of its themes. It is an undeniably shocking film. The usage its shock value is, however, very pertinent. As Let The Right One In (2008), the transformation of Lindqvist’s story into film works brilliantly, combining the already poignant themes present in the words and visually expanding them, something that is even more noticeable in Border, mainly due to the irreverence and shamelessness of the film’s imagery.

The film follows Tina (Eva Melander), a security officer working on border control, and he daily routine. She is not blessed by standards of Western beauty and has a menacing look that works well with her magical power of being able to smell people’s feelings. She lives an unhappy marriage and has no friends other than her mentally-ill father. There are two big changes in her life when she smells a memory card on a passenger’s phone that is full of snuff films and child pornography and on another scene sees a guy that is oddly similar to her and confuses her special sensibilities. These changes lead to two inner plots in the film that consist on one side a detective thriller-like film and on the other a romantic story that leads to Tina’s discovery of her true identity.

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Border is a story of fluid bodies and souls trapped in an ordered world. Tina and Vore (Eero Milonoff) are figurations of chaos inside an organized Western society. However, if we consider the sexual nature of the film we quickly understand that there is a political edge to this chaos. Combined with the ideas of social isolation, foreignness and family issues we understand that the new dynamic presented by these two special characters is an amalgamation of every otherness that exists in our contemporary world. So far so great. The problem with the film is that while presenting brilliant ideas, it overly complicates them and by the end it leaves an undesirable odd feeling to the viewer. Of course this ending can be read as an anarchic solution to the aforementioned themes, or even as a following to the mythology presented half-way into the story, but never does it feel as smooth as expected. Comparing it to something like the ending of Do The Right Thing (1989), for instance, it feels really off considering the way the plot devices work beforehand.

Technically it is a decent film. It never does something that is not expected from an ultra-realist style film. Sometimes the camera seems to be too shaky, and even nauseating at times. In other scenes, the fast movements of the camera and all the shakiness contribute greatly to the inner beauty of the film. The original soundtrack is very enchanting and is really on the same page with the tone of the film. The make-up effects are pristine, as is Melander’s performance. I would say Eero Milonoff’s performance is never up to par with Melander’s, and sometimes is not even really good at all. But then again, that is never a big problem (even if combined with the shaky camera aspect of the film) if we face it with the originality and boldness of all the other decisions surrounding it.

One of the great visual moments in Gräns

The reason I was not a big fan of Let The Right One In (2008) is probably the reason I am actually a big fan of Border. It is a consciously awkward film, one that is aiming specifically at shocking the viewer in order to get its ideas out there. Most of the times this technique does not work, but with Border it does, as it is probably the perfect figurative film of the many lost souls in our monotonous society. Even though it is not perfect, particularly the thrilleresque subplot, Border works a lot better than expected. This review tried to say as little as possible about the singular elements of the film because in order for it to work it is mandatory to watch it with little knowledge about what is so special about it. It released in Portugal last week despite having been distributed in the rest of the world earlier this year. Still, try and watch it on stream or DVD, because if you don’t, you will be missing what is probably the most excruciatingly, cringeworthy and at the same time beautiful sex scene of the last few years (and for that alone it deserves ½ a point).

6.5 out of 10