GIFF day 10: Jauja, Exit, Butter on the Latch

Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, Argentina, 2014)

In discussion of film, as in so many artforms, money is often the enemy. Boo on Hollywood, capitalist purveyor of superficial entertainment. Yay on those artists on the fringes, using small crews and cheap practices to make much more daring, personal art. People like Lav Diaz, who can make eight hours of black-and-white film in a year, or Pedro Costa, who portrayed the poor people of Fontainhas with digital camera and a small crew. Or like Lisandro Alonso from Argentina, who's film Los Muertos was just a depiction of a man travelling from jail to where he used to live. That one, the only Alonso I have seen, was great and beautiful, using amateur actors, natural light, nature photography. This one is a bit more professional, with Viggo Mortenson playing the main role, and the film being a historical drama with costumes and guns and stuff. It still retains a sense of the austere, of the amateurish, of the personal and daring. I felt like it spoke to me very personally. Which, at least at times, was awful.

Mortensen portrays Dinesen, a Danish soldier who is emigrating to Argentina with his teenage daughter. Mortensen is a great actor, and carries himself with a natural strenght that fits the role very well, but he's still awful: He simply can't speak Danish. Almost every linereading of his is a pain to get through. And Viillbjørk Malling Agger is pretty awful as his daughter, Ingeborg, as well. She is supposed to be a young dreaming girl who don't know what she's doing, but she always seems like a young actress who don't know what she's doing. It's horrible. Here's the thing though: I'm absolutely certain that they are in no way worse than the Spanish-speaking actors in this film – or the amateaurs filling the screen in films by Diaz or Costa – but it's just so extremely clear to me when they speak Danish, how awful their linereadings are. It's a really interesting experience, because people don't make films like this in Danish, so I've never been subjected to it before.

And then there is the flipside. As with so many of this kind of film, the story in Jauja is skeletal and allusive. And many of these allusions point to Danish history and culture. I don't want to spoil it, but connoisseurs of Danish literary history will know about the famous nineteenth soldier Dinesen, and who his daughter turned out to be. Not that the story matches up with their lives. Ingeborg runs off with a young Argentinian soldier, and Dinesen takes off after her. Into the wilderness everybody goes, the young couple being followed by crazy deserter Zuluanga, Zuluanga in turn followed by Dinesen, and Dinesen being shadowed by the indigenuous people of the Patagonia. The only thing that doesn't move into the wilderness is official Argentina itself, as they all have to go to an official ball... All these elements are portrayed in the most simple way, along with sealions, rocks and streams, ending up like a poem or one of those famous paintings by Brueghel. Or, as I think is the point of the film, like one of the short stories by the famous Danish writer who's father was named Dinesen. In that way, the film becomes about European culture contrasted with what lies outside, the interactions between those places, in a way that is all the more interesting for me as a Dane, knowing the life stories that the film never includes. It was a singular experience, both awful and intriguing at the same time.

Exit (Hsiang Chienn, Taiwan, 2014)

I watched this film because the program claimed that it 'smelled like Tsai Ming-liang'. It made me wonder what on earth that could mean. Because, in a way it's very true. A Taiwanese film about lonely people trying to connect, delivered without much language, and with a focus on the architecture they live in, that seems very much like Tsai's films like The Hole or Vive l'Amour. But the style wasn't Tsai'ian at all. Tsai films with a steady camera, calmly observing. Almost every shot in this film was handheld and slightly shaking, filled with closeups. Here's the thing: Tsai's films are great because his chosen style is amazing to transmit his chosen themes. So working through the same themes in a different style? It means the film says kinda the same things, just in a less effective way.

So the film removes the style from Tsai, which is the most important part of Tsai, then substitutes it with the style most common from American indie, a style that I really don't like. The story for the film is also kinda seen before. A middle aged woman, living alone in an appartment in Taipei, both her husband and her daughter having moved elsewhere to make more money. She dreams of dancing tango, and takes care of her ailing mother, who is in the hospital. In the hospital, she notices a man in the bed across her mother, who has clearly been in a horrible accident, and now can no longer hear, and has bandages over his eyes. The tender way she begins to take care of him is pretty sweet, but also nothing out of the ordinary.

And yet. I didn't think much of the narrative, and I dismissed the style. And yet I kinda like the film? I guess I have to admit it does do something with style – since as the film is pretty close to being plotless, that can't really be what spoke to me. I have to admit, that a film with as little dialogue as this, that manages to keep interest, is doing something right. The architecture IS beautifully used. There is a dream sequence that is beautifully done, perhaps even more effective for how much it stands out from the rest of the film. The ending of the film includes some shots held for a veeeeery long time, which I always like. And even if 'the lonely woman' is a trope in this kind of cinema of modern ennui, I don't think I've ever seen this particular middleaged woman before. This kind of film doesn't normally deal with menopause. And I can't recall another film where maxipads played such a big symbolical role...

Butter on the Latch (Josephine Decker, USA, 2014)

Watch this trailer to the end!

Another Josephine Decker! Thou Wast Mild and Lovely was one of the biggest surprises from the festival, so I was quite excited to see this one, her debut feature. It's not quite as good. In a way, it's the same style, a mix of indie-tropes, visuel poesy, and glimpses of horror, but the indietrope drawn on at the start of Butter on the Latch is one of my most hated of all the tropes. I hate when a young debuting film director, wherever they come from, debuts with a story of how young smart creative people in their own town live. Some of it can be really good – Hi, Lena Dunham! - but no matter how great it is, it loses a couple of points in my book. This film begins in New York, with young smart New Yorkers, yapping and yapping about theater plays and nightlife. Mixed with glimpses of something better, but it still started the film at a disadvantage.

Then the film luckily moves to somewhere more unique. A Balkan-music workshop in the Californian woods. Now, I say that is unique, in a way it's as hipster as can be. But it's still visually and aurally unique. At that point, the film finds the same kind of poetry that it found on a farm in Kentucky in ...Lovely. I don't really like the improvised dialogue scenes, they're good for what they are, they're just too indie once again. And I'm not a big fan of horror-tropes either. But Decker simply has a visual style, that is so extremely promising. She builds up a scary scene with quick cutting and weird angles, and then at it's conclusion switches to calm steady shot >< reverse shot, and the effect is even more unnerving. There's an absolutely fabulous sequence, set to Morton Feldman's Three Voices, of women dancing in the woods, where at one point a woman does something with her eyes which is one of the freakiest things I've ever seen. And again, I like that there is a female perspective on everything, with the relationship between friends Sarah and Isolde being the core of the film.

If you have the time, check out at least the start of this beautiful piece of music. American film is way too bad at drawing on modern American classical composers like Feldman, or Steve Reich or John Adams. It's always Philip Glass.

Most of all: Even if this film is weaker than the other, I'm just really really happy to have a favorite new American filmmaker. I joked some time ago, that my favorite American films of the last few years were Frozen and The LEGO Movie, and even though that isn't entirely true – I like some documentaries – it's not far off either. With American film, it's hard to be neutral. Even among arthouse, the country is so overrepresented in the cinemas and on critics list, that when the country's output only make up like 10-20% of what I consider my favorite films, it seems snobbish, perhaps even radical. I like American film quite a bit. I'm okay with Linklater and Wes Andersson, but I rarely adore what they do. Every now and then I like a weird film like Shane Carruth's Upstream Color, or Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess. I like old masters like Terrance Malick or James Benning. I don't need to pick favorites among my favorite French films each year, if something great comes along, I take. it. But all over the film-sphere, it's American this, American that. And I frankly like that there is a new American voice, whom I'm invested in, that I really want to see succeed, and is really excited about following through further feature film escapades. Feels good. Firmly on Team Decker.