Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #213: The Final Quarter (2019).

 

Champion indigenous Australian rules footballer Adam Goodes' public battle against racism after a 2013 incident in which a 13-year-old girl racially vilified him during a game inspired two high-profile documentaries last year: The Australian Dream and this one, The Final Quarter.

You may recall in February I rated the former as my #2 movie of 2019 and so, when I finally got see the latter this week I couldn't help, as hard as I tried not to, to compare it with that. But while I've no doubt the makers of this one had great intentions, and director Ian Darling has said (to his credit) he strove to not take sides with it, I'm afraid it's very easy to see why The Australian Dream, and not this, became so acclaimed and honoured. Because where that was balanced but assertive and with a strongly emphasised historical coverage woven into it, this one felt quite timid and even shallow to me. Maybe it's because subtlety often connects with me less, but I simply found that approach unsuitable to make for a powerful and motivating treatment of a subject as difficult and important as race relations.

Again, I am certain Darling and his collaborators meant well with The Final Quarter. But because of how they went about examining this very hot-button topic, it never emotionally (or even artistically) connected with me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #212: Amelie (2001).

 

Our guide through contemporary Paris is young waitress Amelie Poulain (Audrey Tautou). Born in 1974, she grows up with eccentric parents who home-school her and she develops an active and mischievous imagination to combat her loneliness. After losing her mother at age 8, making her already introverted father yet more withdrawn, she stays there until she moves out at 18 and then lets her imagination run wild and elects to stay single. Then in 1997, startled upon learning of Princess Diana's death, she accidentally finds a box of childhood keepsakes which a boy who inhabited her apartment decades earlier hid there in a hole in one of the walls. Mystified, she now resolves to locate its owner to return it to him, convinced that doing so will make them both happy and decides, if she's correct, she will commit her life to doing random good deeds for others.

I declined to see this for 19 years because for all that time I admittedly assumed it was just another conventional, sickly-sweet rom-com (and having been a 13-year-old boy in 2001 obviously didn't help), but on a whim I watched it on TV on Wednesday night and I was sure as shit wrong because it charmed my socks off. It is adorable, affecting, funny and very whimsical. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (with what rightly became his best-known work) and his co-writer Guillaume Laurant take us on a picaresque, existential and spontaneous romantic adventure with a heroine who, while some will understandably find her infuriating in her rather meddlesome ways, I found hugely engaging and refreshing because she defies every genre stereotype, much like the narrative she propels. In her breakthrough role, Tautou is utterly beguiling, deftly showing an unfailing but sincere and adequately controlled sweetness and innocence with flawless comic timing, and her co-stars all support her competently. It's also breathtakingly designed and visualised; unsurprisingly three of its five Oscar nominations were in technical categories (Art Direction, Cinematography and Sound; it was also nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and Original Screenplay).

So it's safe to say you can colour me judgmental and disproven here. Because Amelie is absolutely enchanting from beginning to end.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #211: The Nightingale (2018).

 

It's 1825; Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania). Irishwoman Clare Carroll (Aisling Franciosi) works as a servant for the local colonial forces whose leader, Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), forces her to sing for him, which she reluctantly does. Then, after Clare rejects his unwanted sexual advances, he forcibly rapes her, after which, having now intercepted her fleeing husband Aiden (Michael Sheasby) and their newborn daughter, Hawkins murders these two and has his forces gang-rape Clare, knocking her unconscious. When she wakes the next morning and can garner no help from the authorities, Clare meets and recruits young Aboriginal tracker Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), who's suffered himself at the barrells of the white forces' guns. Clare and Billy initially dislike and distrust each other, but slowly learn how much they have in common as they travel across some picturesque but dark and threatening countryside to settle the score with Hawkins and his cohorts.

The Nightingale is writer-director Jennifer Kent's stunning follow-up to the sensational 2014 horror The Babadook but if you enjoyed that one, heed my advice: do not go into this one expecting a rehash of that. This marks such a shift from that for Kent that it's hard to believe they're from the same filmmaker. And if you're like me, this one will test your patience. However, stick with it and your patience will be rewarded, I promise you. Somewhat like a more violent version of The Piano set in colonial Australia, The Nightingale is a slow, aloof but increasingly brutal and ultimately very moving study of what life in early Australia may have been like for those at the bottom of its pit. Franciosi is an astonishing discovery, filling Clare with a ferocious authority and magnetism and a heartbreaking desperation and grief. Ganambarr is another strikingly effective new face, and he gives an earthy backbone to what could otherwise have been just an indigenous sidekick role. Claflin makes an adequately menacing villain filled with misogyny and racism, and Damon Herriman once again proves his dramatic mettle as Hawkins' boorish sergeant Ruse.

Not to be outdone, the set and costume design (two critical ingredients for any period piece) are sumptuous, Jed Kurzel's music fits the setting and themes all like a glove, and Radek Ladczuk's cinematography captures the natural Tasmanian landscapes in all their almost Gothic beauty. It's easy for me to see why The Nightingale won six 2018 AACTA Awards, including Best Film.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #210: Duel (1971).

 

In this directorial debut by a 24-year-old Steven Spielberg, David Mann (Dennis Weaver) is a middle-aged delivery driver traversing a highway along the Southern Pacific coast on a business trip. Upon entering the Mojave Desert he encounters a fuel track and, pressed for time, decides to overtake it. Bad idea. A very bad idea, actually. Because whoever's behind the wheel of this truck - and we never see them - instantly takes that as a declaration of war, and they then kick the truck into top gear. Now David must do a high-speed chase battle with one increasingly pissed-off leadfoot trucker.

1971's Duel premiered as part of US television network ABC's Movie of the Week series, which ran from 1969 to 1975, and then had a theatrical run in 1983 with the inclusion of several scenes filmed after its broadcast. With a budget of just $450 000, Steven Spielberg made his feature debut count. Working from Richard Matheson's adaptation of his own story, Duel is unusually grim for Spielberg and the plot is indeed rather thin, but I was nonetheless riveted with Weaver the entire way down every road the story took him down. None of Steven's now-iconic and familiar collaborators (composer John Williams, editor Michael Kahn and cinematographers Allen Daviau and Janusz Kaminski) worked on this but with all due respect to them, that makes no difference.

Inevitably, it has some glaringly dated elements (most obviously the vehicles and payphones Mann uses en route), but the action is so confidently and rollickingly handled that you'd think a director twice his age had made it. Duel has been called the best made-for-TV film ever, and it helped to set its young director on his own road - to a legendary filmmaking career.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #209: Seven Stages to Achieve Eternal Bliss by Passing Through the Gateway Chosen by the Holy Storsh (2018).

 

Advertising agency worker Claire (Kate Micucci) and her birdhouse-maker boyfriend Paul (Sam Huntington) have moved to Los Angeles and are overjoyed when they find an ideal apartment for a steal. They take it and settle right in, but of course they should've figured the rent was so cheap for a reason. It turns out that not long ago, the previous tenant, a cult leader named Storsh (Taika Waititi), committed a ritualistic suicide in the bathtub, with his spirit still pervading the apartment and his followers out to break in and copy him. Now, unable to afford other lodgings, Claire and Paul must contend with all the chaos and death, as well as the demands of a maligned but invasive cop (Dan Harmon) who's determined to sell his semi-autobiographical screenplay.

If it wasn't already obvious (but I'm sure it was), Seven Stages to Achieve Eternal Bliss by Passing Through the Gateway Chosen by the Holy Storsh is a genuinely bizarre and offbeat indie black comedy but make no mistake, it is also hysterically funny and intentionally, unabashedly ridiculous. Writers Christopher and Clayton Hewitson and Justin Jones have concocted a relentlessly warped but very insightful and witty narrative, and Canadian director Vivieno Caldinelli expresses in every scene a shared enthusiasm for it. Wisely, though, he resists invoking unorthodox visual techniques and instead lets the scenario's deliberate outlandishness reveal itself. All the cast raise a laugh, but Huntington is hilarious especially in Paul's more tormented moments, Micucci holds her own as his subtle foil and Waititi here feels like Storsh was just tailor-made for him.

As I said it is very strange (and rather dark), but if that's how you prefer your comedies, these Seven Stages may just bring Eternal Bliss indeed.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #208: Down Under (2016).

 

Sydney, 2005, just after the Cronulla race riots. Jason (Damon Herriman) is recruiting foot soldiers in the Sutherland Shire of New South Wales for a resistance against against Middle Eastern retaliation for the riots. He enlists the help of Shit-Stick (Alexander England), a rental store employee who's been failing to teach Evan (Chris Bunton), his out-of-town cousin with Down syndrome, to drive, and Ditch (Justin Rozniak), a Ned Kelly obsessive whose head is covered in bandages from a new tattoo. Meanwhile, over in the suburb of Lakemba, Nick (Rahel Romahn) pulls Hassim (Lincoln Younes) away from his studies to join him on a road trip with devout Muslim Ibrahim (Michael Denkha) and loose-cannon rapper D-Mac (Fayssal Bazzi) to indeed wage retaliation.

This low-budget effort by writer-director Abe Forsythe, originally an Australian TV actor, is like Romper Stomper meets Two Hands; it has the former's focus on modern Australian race relations, with the latter's crime comedy tone. That's a very risky mix, but in impartially comparing and satirising both groups the result works thoroughly. Forsythe never takes sides, showing both gangs as increasingly bumbling and trigger-happy but never judging either one's motivations for waging war on each other, either. 

Forsythe's direction and plotting are energetic and lucid and his dialogue completely authentic for both groups, and he coaxes natural turns from all his cast, Romahn and Younes being especially effective. Alongside its message about racism it also makes a blunt statement about ableism, too, with how Evan's crew basically use him as a puppet to keep them out of trouble. I was 17 when the Cronulla riots occurred and sent a ripple effect across Australia, and this movie gets its era, which unfortunately may as well still be here, down to a fever pitch. Just as Men at Work sang in their classic song of the same name, in Down Under, you better run, you better take cover. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #207: Crazy Beautiful You (2015).

 

Jackie (Kathryn Bernardo) is a 19-year-old tearaway, much to her separated parents' frustration. Interested only in photography and planning to leave for New York City, she's incarcerated one night for crashing her car during a drag race. That's when her father sends her away to live with her mother Leah (Lorna Tolentino) on a medical mission camp in rural Philippines. Upon arriving there, however, Jackie naturally makes several escape attempts and during one of them, on a car trip through the country, she encounters Kiko (Daniel Padilla), the feisty teenage son of the local mayor, who Leah secretly hired to escort her daughter on the trip and then to a hotel where Leah's waiting for her. Once Jackie learns of this, obviously she's upset enough to make another escape attempt, but fate and romance may just keep her in town. Kiko, meanwhile, has his own familial issues to confront and solve.

Filipino director Mae Cruz-Alviar made this and then the exercise in overkill that was Everyday I Love You both in 2015, yet they're so different in quality and tone that I don't think you'd initially realise it unless you had prior knowledge. Crazy Beautiful You is hardly flawless, or ground-breaking, but it's a tolerably charismatic and vibrant teen romance with beautiful locations and adequately layered characters who are all played naturally. The love story is rather cliched, but countering that effectively is the plotline interspersing it about Kiko's involvement in the camp's activities and his efforts to keep his family together, which does offer an intriguing snapshot into contemporary rural Filipino life and as a Westerner, that's obviously something I'm unfamiliar with. Overall, Crazy Beautiful You is no masterwork or game-changer, but it certainly has its charms. 7/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #206: Eagle vs. Shark (2007).

 

Before he took us on a Hunt for the Wilderpeople, dabbled in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Thor: Ragnarok and then won an Oscar for last year's instant classic Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi made his feature debut in 2007 with this absolutely delightful and refreshingly strange rom-com about two oddballs. Lily (Loren Horsley, who co-developed the story with Waititi) is a quiet, mousy cashier at local burger joint Meaty Boy where she one day serves Jarrod (Jemaine Clement), for whom she instantly has the hots. She's soon given the axe, but then invited (or rather, given an invitation to pass on, which she doesn't) to his annual "Dress as your favourite animal" party where we learn he's a video game store employee with social skills even more lacking than hers. But Jarrod is impressed with Lily's shark costume (he wears an eagle one) and especially with her savant-level gaming skills. No sooner than that do they get it on that night, and then she meets his equally bizarre relatives, before they take a road trip, with her film fanatic brother Damon (Joel Tobeck), to his hometown to confront his former school bully Eric (Dave Fane) for long-awaited revenge.

As I watched Eagle vs. Shark I felt like it was made solely for me, and not just because Jarrod and I share a first name (for starters). It's never stated, but Lily and Jarrod quite clearly both have Asperger's and they realistically reflect how that can vary between the genders (although it doesn't necessarily reinforce stereotypes there) and in terms of Aspies' subjective attitudes. She secretly writes music and loves being physically wrapped up, he has almost no filter and no regard for others' interests unless they're also his, and both talk in quite flat tones and often struggle with maintaining conversation. But in each other they find kindred spirits, and Waititi, Horsley and Clement all sincerely and successfully try to draw us into their very limited and unusual bubbles, with none of them ever passing judgment. The added touch of animated interludes with a slowly rotting apple (beginning after Jarrod throws a rotten one out of the car on their trip) very profoundly reflects their up-and-down relationship, as does a climactic use of a slow cover of David Bowie's Let's Dance. 

It's not quite as great as Hunt for the Wilderpeople or particularly Jojo Rabbit, but Eagle vs. Shark is nonetheless a thoroughly charming and imaginative debut (and yes, Waititi makes a cameo - two, actually) and it confidently features the subversive, satirical dramedy approach that's become his narrative trademark.  A gem.