While I, as a Melbourne-based writer, eagerly wait for MIFF to roll back around in August, an opportunity to travel to Sydney arose just in time to catch the final days of the Sydney Film Festival to scratch my never-ending festival itch.
In four days I was able to see 10 films of varying quality worth reporting on, so I have emptied the notebook out of my thoughts on a great selection of films from the festival. I have avoided discussing plots too much here as hopefully, most of these films arrive by year’s end for people to catch.
Past Lives (Celine Song, 2023)
The pick of the festival and best film I’ve seen in 2023, Past Lives is a simple but evocative story told with a subtle precision that will stay with you through multiple lifetimes. Joining the lineage of cinematic depictions of romantic longing that define some of the greatest works in the medium, Casablanca (1942), In the Mood for Love (2000), and Before Sunset (2004), debut feature director and writer Celine Song set the bar incredible high for her debut that she overcomes with an assured ease.
Following an invisible tether of 12-year increments, we accompany Nora (an incredible, awards-worthy Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (a revelatory Teo Yoo), two deeply linked childhood friends that reconnect online a decade after Nora’s parents emigrate to Canada. The film is best experienced the less you know, especially its final act, so I shall leave the breakdown there for now but will return when it opens wide on August 31st.
Past Lives is an extraordinarily shot film by Song and cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, who also shot the incredible Small Axe (2020) series. This is the best looking film since Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), with its lingering pans and still images that would be enough to crown Song’s debut feature as a major achievement on its own. But it’s the deeply layered script, self-referential in the way our own stories are, that allows it to bloom into a uniquely moving experience.
With a Casablanca-level final act that had a sold-out audience on the verge of bursting from their seat and skin, Song has gifted us with a script and film of deeply personal experience that never feels alienating. The most personal is always the most universal, and Past Lives is a tremendous achievement that must be seen in theatres. Romantic dramas may be out of vogue as a theatrical genre, but I implore you to seek this one out with a crowd as soon as possible.
Shortcomings (Randall Park, 2023)
A stronger comedy than romance, Randall Park’s debut feature Shortcomings, adapted from the screenwriter Adrian Tomine’s 2007 comic of the same name, is an uneven but enjoyable coming-of-age story centring a difficult protagonist, indie theatre manager Ben, played by Justin H. Min. The film is a provocative comedy centring on Bay Area millennials trying to work out the stagnation of their lives and relationships that is deeply influenced by Judd Apatow comedies, buoyed by its bright characters that have a horrible case of foot-in-their-mouth.
With a terrific comedy ensemble including Sherry Cola, Ally Maki, Sonoya Mizuno, and Timothy Simons, Shortcomings doesn’t attempt to reinvent the rom-com wheel, but its acidic dialogue and loquacious characters lead to many hysterical moments and an overall enjoyable watch.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Daniel Goldhaber, 2022)
A work of pure tension and electricity, Goldhaber has made a powerhouse feature for an emerging generation brought up in a world of climate fatalism. Based on the acclaimed nonfiction book of the same name, Goldhaber and co-writers Jordan Sjol and lead actress Ariela Barer (Xochitl) bring the genre formalism of heist and caper cinema to a subject matter that is too often weighed down by its own importance.
Due to the time restraints of filmmaking, it is rare for a film to feel pressingly of the moments, which makes Pipeline an even more impressive achievement. The film operates almost as a forbidden, micro-budget indie that works so effectively in films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Blair Witch Project (1999), allowing the tension and drama to feel rooted in desperate reality that makes for an irresistible watch.
Pipeline excels through its terrific ensemble of well realised modern Gen Z characters in Sasha Lane, Lukas Gage, Forrest Goodluck, Jayme Lawson, Jake Weary, Kristine Froseth, and Marcus Scribner. All the performers are just obscure enough to allow the film to maintain the air of unexpectedness and panic that heightens every shaky hand and nervous breath that will have you clawing at your seat for 90 minutes.
Sand (Visakesa Chandrasekaram, 2023)
Stronger in intent and theme than execution, using local crews and first-time actors, Sand evocatively places you in a difficult moment in Sri Lankan history. As a survivor of a decades-spanning civil war, Rudran (played wonderfully on debut by Sivakumar Lingeswaran) must pick up the pieces of his life, including moving back home to live with his soothsayer mother (Kamala Sri Mohan Kumar), standing trial for his slowly explained role in the war, going through therapy for his wartime injuries, and seeking out a lost love Vaani (Thurkka Magendran).
There is a wall of plot to scale in this quiet and meditative 101-minute feature that makes for an often unengaging watch, perhaps by design as we feel the immeasurable weight that the war has left upon the shoulders of survivors like Rudran. Nonetheless, Chandrasekaram has crafted a vital film that lacks polish but oozes authenticity, about an overlooked part of world history, grounding it in the life of one character to illustrate the complexity of the moment.
Afire (Christian Petzold, 2023)
Not the only comedic film on this trip to centre on a self-absorbed artist played by a German actor who cannot help their destructive tendencies from impacting those around them, but is certainly the only film that sits inside the bucket of a climate parable.
A film relatable to anyone who has ever used their work as a shield against the world, the great Christian Petzold’s newest feature, Afire, centres on young novelist Leon (Thomas Schubert) who travels to his artist friend Felix’s (Langston Uibel) family home on the coast of the Baltic Sea to finish his new novel. When they arrive at the holiday home, they learn that Felix’s mother has rented out a room to the mysterious Nadja (the terrific Paula Beer), an unwelcome distraction of the world that Leon was hoping to escape. Compounding this, there is an encroaching wildfire from the west that doesn’t appear to phase the characters, even as it spreads ever closer to their door.
Petzold often works in myth and wider thematic ideas that drift into his films as suggestive poems, with Afire centring on love, passion, and an unique climate metaphor that manages to ground itself in these young people working out their lives in a rapidly changing world.
The unique filmmaker’s first true comedy, Afire is an oddly engaging film with unique and difficult characters, similar in ways to his 2020 mythological mermaid feature Undine (also with an incredible Beer performance). Petzold never allows an audience to stay on solid ground, matching the uncertainty his characters constantly feel, which makes for a compelling experience even if you find the characters unlikable.
L’Immensità (Emanuele Crialese, 2022)
A story that follows similar tracks to others before it, but told with an aching honesty and specificity, will always transcend into feeling bold and unique. L’Immensità (2022), a coming-of-age trans story set in 1970s Italy, inspired by the real life experiences of writer and director Emanuele Crialese, who came out as trans at the premiere of the film at the Venice film festival, is a beautifully shot and treated film that is at both grounded in its location, while also levitating above it as a reflective piece of filmmaking.
The brilliant duo of performances from Luana Giuliani and Penélope Cruz as Andrew and his mother Clara excel in this slight but potent domestic story. Cruz, clearly taking inspiration from Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence (1974), is the all enrapturing sunlight of the film, illuminating an immense warmth that is equally difficult to live alongside as Andrew is trying to find footing in an uncertain world.
With several madcap dance sequences taken from Italian television musical moments, L’Immensità never feels weighed down by its bleakest moments, allowing the film to flow freely into its uncertain future as the credits roll.
Passages (Ira Sachs, 2023)
A sardonic tale of romantic messiness depicted with a raw honesty that bleeds into tenderness in this perfectly cast love triangle. Starring three terrific actors in Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, and Adèle Exarchopoulos, Sachs’ Passages is a fascinating and comedic film that keeps you on uneven ground throughout.
With a combination of complicated and withholding characters shown in what feels like the fraught final stages of a relationship between Rogowski’s Tomas and Whishaw’s Martin, as well as a collection of honest sex scenes that feel so rare in modern cinema, Passages is a wholly unique experience in modern romantic storytelling that while lacking sentimentality, never lacks tenderness.
Monster (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2023)
Returning in quick succession off the back of the divisive but personally beloved Broker (2022), the master humanist filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda has crafted a complexly woven, if only slightly contrived Rashomon-styled story on empathy in an increasingly uncaring world.
The first film without a screenwriting credit since his powerfully assured debut Maborosi (1995), working with Japanese TV writer Yûji Sakamoto, Monster follows similar trends and themes to some of the revered filmmaker’s best work, notably Nobody Knows (2004) and Shoplifters (2018), while still feeling unique in the auteur’s wider canon of family and child-based dramas.
The film plays out in three distinct phases, beginning with single mother Saori (Sakura Ando), who is trying to get to the bottom of her son Minato’s (Sōya Kurokawa) bruises and erratic behaviour who blames his homeroom teacher Hori (Eita Nagayama). Explaining more will break the spell Sakamoto and Kore-eda cast across the film, which impeccably places you within each phase, commanding a genuine shock whenever a new moment expunges all previous notions we had of events and characters. What allows the film to excel is how these revelations are shown with compassion and care, never a trick for an audience to feel twisted around like a winding road thriller, even though the film is oftentimes thrilling. With a balanced score by the late master Ryuichi Sakamoto (using mostly older recordings with a few new compositions) as his final final work that he would’ve loved. I cannot wait to watch this again with the full scope of experience in mind.
Reality (Tina Satter, 2023)
Reality is the guiding principle of this film which was clearly a more effective work of experimental theatre, filmmaker and playwright Tina Satter brought Reality (originally titled Is This a Room) to the stage in 2019, to rave reviews, and is now being adapted for a wider audience. A compelling story playing out in mostly real-time, using only the dialogue from the audio recordings of the real encounter the day the FBI arrives at the door of NSA translator Reality Winner’s (played by Sydney Sweeney) small Augusta rental, Reality plays out as a thrilling interrogation even if you know details of the story.
The dialogue’s clunkiness and awkwardness heightens the reality (impossible for that word not to be tip of the tongue throughout the film) of the situation, even if it oftentimes lessens the cinematic quality of the film itself. The moviemaking flourishes are isolated to the moments of redaction from the file that are purposely jarring that begin as an engagingly disorienting experience, but by its 10th roll around becomes tedious.
The terrific central performance by Sweeney and the minimalist filmmaking and set design choices by Satter allow Reality to commit to its goals of highlighting the real events of that day in exacting detail, while giving the audience an evocative theatre experience.
Cobweb (Kim Jee-woon, 2023)
The newest entry from Korean cult filmmaker Kim Jee-woon, Cobweb (2023) may be the most bizarrely hilarious film of the year. Set in the heavily regulated world of 1970s Korean cinema, Cobweb stars Song Kang-ho as director Kim, an obsessive filmmaker that has to desperately attempt to convince his crew, actors, and producers to reshoot two more days of his newest film Cobweb, to make it a true masterpiece. If that synopsis ignites the receptors in your cinephilic brain, this is the film for you.
With its biting satire and melodramatic comedy that bleeds over from the film-within-a-film to the film itself, Cobweb is closer to Robert Altman’s The Player (1992) than The Disaster Artist (2017) – there is an incredible moment where the melodramatic music starts to be used on the crew that shifts the whole film’s perspective. This overtly indulgent film is both an investigation into this important time in the evolution of Korean cinema that is so vital to the medium now and a hilariously over-the-top comedy about the ludicrous nature of the film industry that will have you falling out of your seat.
Rating Frames 