SF Film Festival 2024
The San Francisco Film festival gets smaller every year. It's now down
to five days, plus a few more "encore" days. I watched four of the films
in this year's line up, one documentary and three fictional.
Porcelain War
Janet Planet
Dìdi
Thelma
Porcelain War is a is a much more hopeful film about the war in
Ukraine than the recent Oscar winning 20 Days in Mariupol, and
possibly the most beautiful film you can imagine being made inside
a country at war about the people trying to keep on with their
lives there. After the film, both co-directors Brendan Bellomo and Slava
Leontyev, plus cinematographer Andrey Stefanov (and little dog Frodo[*]),
were there to talk about how the production was done. Bellomo had
previously met these people and was planning a film about their art
before war broke out. Then they changed the subject matter. Because of
the deep involvement in the war by two artists, and the working
relationship with a third artist, this is a lovely film about art in
wartime with some slightly awkward cuts to artists waging war.
Four out of four bombs dropped by a whimsically painted DJI drone.
[*] No questions were directed to Frodo and he did not speak on his own.
Janet Planet is a film about an 11-year-old girl one summer in 1991.
Her mom is divorced and has a series of relationships that constitute
the major chapters of the film. It's from A24 and a first time movie
director and follows in the footsteps of A24 giving a chance to first
time directors to tell stories of girls (eg, Greta Gerwig's _Lady
Bird_). This would fail a gender reversed Bechdel Test, if that sort of
thing bothers you. What bothered me about the film was just how slow
it is. At one point, near a major plot event, we see some blintzs get
put in a microwave and cooked for 30 seconds. The camera just stays
there immobile watching the food cook. I can see the message there:
1991, home alone in the woods, no friends, no video games, no
cellphone, no cable TV: life is slow and you watch your food cook. It's
not an thing kids today (and there were a lot of under 30s in the
audience) really know. But it is a little tedious. Afterwards, over the
next few days, I did find myself thinking a lot about the film, but boy
was it slow to watch.
Two out of four frozen blintzes.
Dìdi makes an interesting contrast to Janet Planet. This is about a
boy one spring and summer in 2008, at the end of 8th grade up to the
first few days in high school, in Freemont, California. His dad works
in Taiwan, and he lives with mother, his paternal grandmother (Nai Nai),
and his older sister, about to head off to dental school. The boy goes
by different names with different people, "Dìdi" ("younger brother") to
his family, "Wang Wang" to some of his friends, "Chris" to others. He is
trying hard to fit in and become more popular, definitely falling into
the tag along friend in his social groups, and having some rough times
getting along with his family. And so the movie follows his failings and
growth at that time when socialization was in person, on Myspace, on
Facebook, on Youtube, and on text messages by flip phone.
Three out of four hasty Google searches.
Thelma is a delightful film that manages to deftly juggle the concerns
of seniors (Thelma is 93 and played by a 94 year old actress) and a
loving hommage to Mission: Impossible. It starts with Thelma
discussing Tom Cruise doing all his own stunts while they watch a clip
from MI Fallout, which is meta-relevant in that June Squibb (long a
supporting actress, now in her first starring role) did "many" of her
stunts for Thelma. "Stunts" in the Hollywood union rules sense of
stunts, at least, and not really challenging for the able-bodied. The
story concerns a common scam that targets seniors, and Thelma's quest to
recover her lost money after falling for it.
Three out of four hearing aids.
Links for other movies mentioned:
20 Days in Mariupol
Lady Bird
Mission: Impossible - Fallout
qz thoughts