Daaaaaalí! [2023]

 Daaaaaalí!, one of two films that Quentin Dupieux made in 2023 – the stunning cultural satire Yannick being the other one – is neither a biopic of the enormously famous painter Salvador Dalí nor a homage to the maverick surrealist. Rather, it’s a quirky evocation of what he symbolized through his eccentric nature, grandiloquent persona, gigantic ego, mythical fame and distinctive artistic voice, which Dupieux – as the title joyously alludes to – captured using zany, ingenious, unpredictable and deliciously confounding absurdism that’s representative of his colourful subject. Invoking the form and tenor of Buñuel’s extraordinary surrealist satires, the film – in an oddball stroke of creative expression – has five separate actors boisterously playing Dalí (Édouard Baer, Gilles Lellouche, Jonathan Cohen, Pio Marmaï, Didier Flamand), with each in different scenarios, at different times, signifying different ages, but on occasions also interchangeably and even simultaneously. This latter aspect reminds one of Haynes’ I’m Not There where six different actors had portrayed Bob Dylan. However, unlike both Buñuel and the Haynes, its farcical bursts and formal adventurousness were an end in itself, thus making it not just funny and farcical, but also, quite unapologetically, frothy and frivolous. The movie’s most basic premise involved a naïve but diligent journalist (Anaïs Demoustier) trying to interview the mercurial artist, but her ardent efforts are repeatedly foiled for increasingly hilarious, incongruous and silly reasons, ranging from Dalí’s infuriating obsession with “caméra cinématographique” and his maddening vanity, to – in arguably the whimsical script’s most madcap component – a seemingly endless, infinitely digressive and impassively outlandish dream-within-dream recounted by an unassuming priest over a simple dinner. The nutty series of events are accompanied by an irresistible score by former Daft Punker Thomas Bangalter.

Director: Quentin Dupieux

Genre: Comedy/Surrealist Comedy

Language: French

Country: France

Poor Things [2023]

 Poor Things is possibly Lanthimos’ most unreservedly ambitious film to date – ribald, outré and gleefully grotesque – while also being situated in his distinctively weird aesthetic palettes and expressions. Adapted from Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name, it conjured a wildly imaginative blend of period setting and punk-dystopia, and thereby a mix of black humour, body horror, sci-fi fantasy, existential inquiries and feminist fable. Yet, for all its absurdist splashes, it was also ultimately an exercise in humanism and morality, and therefore bereft of the wickedly savage and deadpan nihilism that he’d pursued so far. Consequently, for all its fantastical imagery, extravaganza and provocations, it demonstrated that he’s either mellowing with age or attempting an expanded audience (or both). Set in cartoonish Victorian England – flamboyantly evoked through zany cinematography, garish backdrops and discordant scores – it’s centred on Bella (Emma Stone), who has the mind of a child in the body of a woman. This freakish contradiction is the result of the handiwork of mad scientist Godwin (Willem Defoe) – who she unironically calls “God” – as he revived a woman who’s committed suicide by transplanting an unborn child’s brain into her. Unapologetically gauche, outrageously libidinous and infinitely curious, she embarks on a wild adventure of self-learning, first with the gloriously louche Duncan (Mark Ruffalo) – their romps represented the film’s most enjoyable sections – and then as a prostitute at a Parisian brothel where she’s drawn to socialist ideas. The drab final segment and some self-consciously serious set-pieces, unfortunately, were dampeners. Excellent performances aside – Stone was particularly fearless and nuanced – the film comprised of a charming cameo by Hanna Schygulla and droll inter-species hybrids reminiscent of Sukumar Ray’s unforgettable nonsense poem ‘Khichuri’ (“Hodgepodge”).

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Genre: Sci-Fi/Black Comedy/Fantasy/Romantic Comedy/Existentialist Drama

Language: English

Country: UK

Last Summer [2023]

 Catherine Breillat proves with Last Summer that, even in her mid-70s, she hasn’t lost either her propensity or her appetite to defy norms and push the envelope in matters involving uncomfortable, unorthodox and amoral expressions of women’s private desires. Made a decade after her previous film Abuse of Weakness, this remake of the Danish film Queen of Hearts marked an intriguing overlap between prestige cinema aesthetics and dangerously salacious themes. Its central crux – viz. a forbidden affair between a middle-aged woman and her teenage stepson – might’ve been tailormade for an exercise in saucy softcore in most other filmmakers’ hands; but, not in Breillat’s, as her objective was a non-exploitative and non-judgemental dive into a queasy and murky quagmire that a problematic relationship such as this constitutes, alongside the associated elements of sexual politics and power, and made in the kind of measured, unsentimental and analytic style that’s – in absence of a suitable term – oh-so French. In the narrative’s sharpest irony, Anne (Léa Drucker) is a capable and committed attorney who represents victims of sexual abuse, which therefore underscored how transgressions can often defy easy pigeonholing. Furthermore, the way her husband Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin), with whom her marriage has long entered a stage of convenient stasis, decides to believe her over his moody and rebellious son Théo (Samuel Kircher) – when he decides to reveal the secret liaison on account of the angst he experiences upon Anne’s decision to break-off – disconcertingly presaged the devastating revelations concerning Alice Munro. The film was at its strongest in the first and last thirds, separated by a relatively staid middle section when the affair actually unfolds, and was led by a courageous turn by Drucker.

Director: Catherine Breillat

Genre: Drama/Romantic Drama/Marital Drama

Language: French

Country: France

El Conde [2023]

 In Pablo Larraín’s grisly, hyperbolic, farcical and pungently satirical horror-comedy El Conde, the despotic former Chilean dictator is both literally and metaphorically a hideously decrepit, blood-sucking and heart-chomping vampire. Made as a zany overlap between German expressionism, bawdy humour and political absurdism – and deliberately as an exercise in lowbrow grotesquerie to mark the 50^th anniversary of the 1973 coup – the film recalled two thematic tropes that’ve recurred in the filmmaker’s splendid oeuvre, viz. memories from the military dictatorship years (Tony Manero, Post Mortem, No) and unconventional stabs at biopics (Neruda, Jackie, Spencer). This oddball mix of aesthetic experimentation and narrative flippancy sees Pinochet – a French royalist who’d fought against the dissidents during the French Revolution, and finally fulfilled his lust of royal grandeur by illegally grabbing power in Chile – living a banished, ignominious existence since being kicked out of power, with his scheming wife Lucia (Catalina Guerra), and Fyodor (Alfredo Castro), his macabre White Russian butler who loved exterminating Communists. When his conniving kids get a hint of Pinochet’s suicidal tendencies – ironically, he’s more pissed at being called a thief than a murderer – they descend like a pack of vultures to seize his ill-gotten wealth. Meanwhile, a saucy Catholic nun straight out of a lurid Verhoeven slasher (Paula Luchsinger), in the guise of an accountant, arrives to track his dirty money trail and thereafter exorcize him. Shot in deliciously high-contrast B/W, filled with droll set-pieces, and imbued with a gothic and wintry atmosphere recalling earlier Scandinavian cinema, the freakish power struggle is dryly narrated – as it hilariously turns out – by the hawkish former British PM Margaret Thatcher, who isn’t just a fellow blood-sucking vampire but Pinochet’s borderline-incestuous mother too.

Director: Pablo Larrain

Genre: Black Comedy/Political Satire/Horror

Language: Spanich/English

Country: Chile

Viduthalai Part 1 [2023]

 Vetrimaaran’s blistering Tamil film Viduthalai Part 1 – it was planned as a single work, but later decided for release in two parts – delved into inflammatory political topics and fearlessly questioned mainstream narratives, over its expansive scope. The director used both popular and agitational narrative devices while depicting how those fighting for their rights are branded enemies of the state; civic and judicial boundaries are brazenly transgressed – in the name of ushering “development” and battling “militancy” – while suppressing any dissidence against the state; flagrant police brutality and custodial tortures; and the ironic scenario wherein those representing the lowest rung within the armed forces – paid pittance, denied basic conditions, and treated like non-entities by the chain of command – are made to sacrifice their lives and their humanity while waging brutal wars. The said lowest common denominator here is the newly-recruited Kumaresan (Soori), who’s joined a police unit stationed at a dense forest in order to eliminate the rebel tribal leader Perumal (Vijay Sethupathi), who’s violently opposing handing over of their lands to a mining company. The naïve protagonist, employed as a driver and factotum, immediately falls foul of the savage OC upon disobeying orders while helping a villager; this, in turn, leads to a touching romance with an orphaned tribal girl (Bhavani Sre), growing consciousness upon witnessing the bending of truths and perpetration of brutality by his colleagues, and increasing awareness of the man who the state calls a villain but respected as “teacher” by the local villagers. The film’s bravura and stunningly orchestrated 8-minute single-take opening sequence – capturing the grief, chaos and myriad activities at the site of a devastating train derailment – had set the stage for this riveting work.

Director: Vetrimaaran

Genre: Crime/Thriller/Action/War

Language: Tamil

Country: India

Four Daughters [2023]

 The line between nonfiction and narrative filmmaking – and in turn between the supposed candour of the former and the inherent artifice in the latter – was boldly blurred by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania in her stunning genre-bending documentary Four Daughters. What unfolded in her formally adventurous work – that involved gutsy deconstruction of truth, memory and complex past experiences – was ultimately a daring psychoanalytic exercise in therapy and catharsis, wherein renewed interpretations of past traumas through the prism of time are hoped to enable clarity and peace. The film’s tricky hybrid setup is established at the outset. Olfa Hamrouni’s two eldest daughters Ghofrane and Rahma disappeared in 2015 while still teenagers, in order to join ISIS; Ben Hania, in order to understand what led to their descent into lunacy and the bruise that was left in its wake, deployed two female actors to enact them, well-known actress Hend Sabri to play Olfa when things got emotionally difficult, and a male actor to play the abusive men in her life, along with Olfa and her two younger daughters Eya and Tayssir – playing themselves while recreating key stages from their shared lives – to craft this devastating tale of grief, anguish and loss. The docu comprises of underlying elements of enactment and simulation, and the manipulative possibilities therein, made it an uncomfortable watch at times, aside from being an unsettling one too. These, nevertheless, complemented its formal audacity, and the extraordinary courage that Olfa, Eya and Tayssir displayed in reliving their intensely private anecdotes. Furthermore, it’s also filled with disarming humour, deep sincerity and delicate tenderness that mellowed its darker, painful and harrowing components, and took exploitative possibilities out of the film’s framework.

Director: Kaouther Ben Hania

Genre: Documentary/Diary Film

Language: Arabic

Country: Tunisia

The Mother of All Lies [2023]

 Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir’s extraordinary documentary The Mother of All Lies, through defiant remembrances, delivered a powerful affirmation of how a rebellion can be delivered by reinstating suppressed memories and shattering the veil of silence. Furthermore, it demonstrated how an act of recollecting and articulating old trauma can heal wounds and enable reconciliations. That a tapestry that’s so fragile and complex can be weaved with such formal dare, narrative idiosyncrasy and stylistic ingenuity – with the director both orchestrating and participating in this expression of personal and collective catharsis – made this a work of singular brilliance. Its starting point is the lack of photographs of El Moudir’s family and herself on account of their prohibition by her stern and authoritarian grandmother Zahra. Hence, to circumvent this chasm, her father has recreated her childhood home in Casablanca, immediate neighbourhood and residents. This meticulously designed and exceptionally constructed miniature diorama added an absorbing sense of here-and-now to reminiscences of quirky old habits, memories both fond and disquieting, unreconciled familial fault-lines, and eventually a dark political episode. In 1981, the soaring prices of breads had been the final straw for the eruption of riots, which were violently crushed by the military, followed by attempted erasure, resulting in hundreds of deaths and bodies thereafter buried in nameless graves. The filmmaker’s neighbours – Said, who wrote protest poems; Abdallah, who was illegally jailed for many years; the mother of 12-year-old Fatima who was shot and her body disappeared, and finally memorialized decades later – shared their devastating stories, situating them in the miniature installations. Zahra, incidentally, might well have been personating a version of herself, and this potentially performative element further emphasized the work’s audacious fluidity.

Director: Asmae El Moudir

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film

Language: Arabic

Country: Morocco

Bye Bye Tiberias [2023]

 French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker Lina Soualem’s delicately strung, lyrically shaped and deeply intimate diary film Bye Bye Tiberias, like Karim Aïnouz’s similarly evocative ciné-memoir Mariner of the Mountains, is an eloquently crafted expression of the search for one’s homeland and roots, guided by memories, and driven by the longing for a lost space and time. A journey like this, therefore is as much temporal as it’s spatial, and equally emotional and physical. It’s also a moving expression of female and familial solidarity, through its remembrance of and meditations on four generations of women whose lives have been one of displacement and exile. What emerged through this deceptively intricate assemblage is a layered tapestry informed by the interconnectedness of the personal and the political. Hiam Abbass – professional movie actress, amateur poet and the filmmaker’s mother – had emigrated to France in her 20s to escape and pursue acting. Her daughter’s birth had restored the shaken ties to her family. And now, in her 60s, she agrees to recount their family saga –grandmother Um Ali who, along with her family, was forced to leave their home in Tiberias during the 1948 Nakba; granddad Hosni who died of grief; aunt Hosnieh who’d taken shelter in a refugee camp in Syria and was separated for 30 years; mom Nemat who became a teacher and raised eight kids; her father who loved recording family events on camera; her sisters who’ve lived under the occupation – and take a cathartic trip along with her daughter. This, therefore, was simultaneously a tale of violence, loss and anguish – and, in turn, a bleak reminder of the unabated persecution of the Palestinian people across generations – as one of resilience, resistance and reconciliation.

Director: Lina Soualem

Genre: Documentary/Diary Film/Essay Film

Language: French/Arabic

Country: Palestine

In Flames [2023]

 It’s perhaps neither coincidental nor surprising that in the two films from Pakistan that gained international acclaim in consecutive years – Salim Sadiq’s sublime and rapturous Joyland, and Zarrar Kahn’s eery and visceral In Flames – women’s fierce desire to exert their agency in defiance of patriarchy were incontestably manifest. The Western liberal backgrounds of both filmmakers undeniably influenced, informed and shaped their films’ feral thematic undercurrents and bold storytelling. The pervading everyday horrors of the real world – misogyny, gender violence, predatory behaviour and familial abuse – were interwoven into the film’s milieu and tapestry, and in turn counterpointed as well as triggered and even amplified the horrors emanating from the supernatural realms in this gripping work. Set in the gritty city of Karachi, a compelling mother-daughter relationship – both trying in futility come to terms with grief and trauma – foregrounded the tale. Mariam (Ramesha Nawal) is a strikingly independent-minded twenty-something girl who’s studying medicine, while her mother Fariha (Bakhtawar Mazhar) is a single woman taking care of her two kids through her job as a schoolteacher; the violent conclusion to Farah’s abusive husband when Mariam was little, meanwhile, continues to haunt both. The demise of Mariam’s maternal grandfather has suddenly placed them in a financially vulnerable position, and her slimy uncle descends like a vulture with his eyes on their modest property. The situation’s grimness is marginally allayed when Mariam gets in a tender relationship with a gentle-natured Canada-returned guy (Omar Javaid). However, when their romantic getaway to the seaside goes awry, a malignant can of worms is thrown open, taking them on a hellish spiral. Nawal and Mazhar’s competent turns aided the commendable interplay between chilling atmosphere and sharp social critique.

Director: Zarrar Kahn

Genre: Horror/Family Drama/Supernatural Drama

Language: Urdu

Country: Pakistan

Libertate (Freedom) [2023]

 Revolutions, once shorn of the allure of romanticism, can be bloody, messy and grimy affairs, and that’s the first thing that one notices in Tudor Giurgiu’s thrilling film Libertate, which takes us right into its violent, chaotic and unpredictable midst. What one also notices is the director’s audacious gambit in filming with an absurdly large ensemble cast that must’ve necessitated meticulous orchestration while rendering the madness. In a country obsessed with episodes from the Ceausescu era, the dictator’s fall from power – the only one among the “Revolutions of 1989” that experienced violence – and its immediate aftermaths, it’s certainly not easy to find new stories; Giurgiu surprisingly succeeded in that. This ironically titled work – contrary to the rousing sentiments it alludes to, the film is anything but triumphal – chronicled the brutal confrontation that ensues during Ceausescu’s overthrow, followed by a period of absurdist stalemate, in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu. Little did police officer Viorel (Alex Calangiu) know, upon leaving for work on the fateful day of the uprising, that he'd barely survive by the skin of his neck and return after months in bizarre captivity. When shots are fired into protestors by unknown assailants, a vicious pandemonium takes the city to the brink of civil war, and pits four mutually hostile factions against each other – the army, police, secret service and civilians. The army eventually seizes the upper hand, and holds more than 500 people – belonging to the latter groups, with each accusing the other of being lackeys and terrorists – in an emptied swimming pool. The narrative shifted at a breakneck pace between diverse characters, interlocking verbal clashes and psychological duels, taking the film to a bleak anti-climactic finale.

Director: Tudor Giurgiu

Genre: Thriller/Historical Thriller

Language: Romanian

Country: Romania

The Pigeon Tunnel [2023]

 A meeting between renowned American documentarian Errol Morris – his examination of the slippery nature of truth, by sifting through deceptive non-truths, has been a running theme in his filmography, and most famously touched upon in his canonized work The Thin Blue Line – and celebrated British spy novelist David Cornwell – who, through his best-selling books pseudonymously written as John le Carré, had repeatedly delved into the subversion and obfuscation of truth – was, on paper, a match made in heaven. Furthermore, Cornwell sat for this rare interview just prior to his death on Morris’ behest, thus enabling this momentous rendezvous. However, for anyone who’s read le Carré’s enticing and engrossing memoir The Pigeon Tunnel, there was unfortunately nothing new in this partial transliteration of that marvellous volume. While the book, through droll irony, had audaciously cut across through myriad fascinating anecdotes from the writer’s eventful life, Morris probed predominantly into one specific aspect only, viz. Cornwell’s complex relationship with his father Ronnie – a compulsive career conman who was perennially on the run – which remained the great unresolved equation in his life. While that served as terrific material, made all the more arresting by his sardonic and surprisingly candid articulation of that difficult chapter from his life, Morris kept stopping short of provoking new memories and revelations beyond what Cornwell had already let loose in his memoir. While, in a captivating stylistic choice, the author’s responses were juxtaposed with footage from four highly reckoned adaptations (Martin Ritt’s haunting The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and the three acclaimed BBC miniseries Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley’s People and A Perfect Spy), dramatizations and overemphasis of the title’s meaning, however, felt tepid.

Director: Errol Morris

Genre: Documentary/Biopic

Language: English

Country: UK