the good, the bad and everything in between - My time at the 70th Sydney Film Festival.

I’ve been covering the Sydney Film Festival for around 5 years now and since 2018 I’ve experienced various iterations of the festival. In 2019 I worked with the European Film Promotion who bring the annual Europe! Voices of Women in Film program to the festival every year. I got to pre-screen some of the films and interview the directors which was an awesome experience. On the flip side, I reviewed the films from the comfort of my own couch in 2020 when the festival went completely online due to the global pandemic. It’s always been a chaotic but fun week and some of my favourite films I actually discovered from attending their screenings at the festival.

All of my previous reviews are up on the blog under Sydney Film Festival so feel free to check some of them out.

Now it’s probably not as big as Cannes or Sundance but the Sydney Film Festival is a crucial industry event for the Australian film industry in particular. It provides a lot of networking opportunities and publicity for locally made films but also includes a wide selection of movies from around the world. I often make a point of only seeing films directed by women or at least the majority and the festival has been pretty good in recent years with keeping the gender equality of its film directors close to a 50/50 split. In fact this year they were spotlighting the work of Jane Campion in particular who is a New Zealand/Australian film director who most notably won best director for her film Power of the Dog at the Oscars 2022. The festival did a whole retrospective of her work and there was even an interview session with her that I unfortunately missed out on tickets for because they sold out incredibly fast.

But now onto the films.

THUNDER Directed by Carmen Jaquier (Video 3:30)

This cinematic art film was Carmen Jaquier’s debut feature and was shot in the Swiss Alps providing an instantly aesthetic and beautiful backdrop to the film. In my first thoughts over on Instagram, I mentioned that the film was definitely more of an art piece than a typical story-based narrative film which wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I could appreciate the visual mastery of it all. Set in a Swiss village in the early 1900s, Elisabet, 17, returns home from the convent after learning of her sister Innocence’s mysterious death. When she happens upon her sister’s hidden diary, she discovers that faith and desire can sometimes be intertwined.

The themes of religion and desire are explored boldly through the explicit poetry of Innocence’s diary (and yes, the irony of her name is not lost on the audience) and the intimate close-ups that the film uses liberally. Cinematographer Marine Atlan captures this world of teenage sexual exploration through closeups of faces, lips, skin, and touch but you never see any explicit acts occur on screen. There is also a good use of light and shade with dark scenes utilising the most minimal of light so you can only just make out what is happening in the scene almost as if a metaphor for what is bubbling within a previously chaste Elizabet.

Ultimately for me, Thunder felt like a coming-of-age story but told in the landscape and sensibility of 1900s Europe. For example, during the film one of Elisabet’s younger sisters starts her period for the first time and is sent to church by their mother to give Hail Mary’s to apologise for this. In the world of the film, puberty is seen as sinful so of course the hormones that teenagers start to develop that peak their sexual interest would be considered sinful too. Showcasing desire as a religious experience with God and less as a sin through both her sister's and Elizabet’s experiences was an interesting topic for a film. In this way it worked well as an art piece, but as I said earlier it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I felt it laboured in pace a little and some of Elizabet’s inner monologue got a little too philosophical for me, but I think that just comes down to the types of films I enjoy watching. Overall, it was an interesting and visually stunning experience of a film and whilst I wouldn’t seek it out again it was certainly an intellectual challenge that I appreciated much more in retrospect.

BAND Directed by Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir (Video 6:18)

Band directed by Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir is a completely different tone to Thunder and yet still functions like a piece of art. Where Thunder was a classical renascence painting Band is a pop art installation from the 1960s. Band follows a three-piece post-performance punk band in their last-ditch effort to make it big. Performing in small venues to dwindling crowds their music is an experimental techno and their performances are an art form in and of themselves.

Confusingly the film is actually a documentary, yet it plays very much like a narrative film so if the director wasn’t there at the end for a Q&A to confirm that what we’d just watched was in fact real I might have questioned the reality of what I just saw a bit more. However, Alfrun explained during the shooting of the documentary certain real-life moments were reenacted multiple times for the cameras to capture a new angle or capture better sound so the reality of the film could still be questioned. Regardless of this, there are lots of moments of relatability for artists in this film and in particular women artists. Their journey explores motherhood, feminism, and stability versus creativity. One of the main struggles they face is when they engage the help of a male producer to heighten the quality of their music. The Post-Performance Blues Band (PPBB) were previously an all-female band and this addition sends them spiralling into a debate about what their identity is as a band and as artists. In the Q&A Director Alfrun, who is also part of the band herself, explained that they actually received more funding for the film about the struggling band rather than financial support for the band itself which was an interesting commentary in and of itself.

Band is a documentary, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. If it’s playing somewhere near you I would recommend going and checking it out. It’s quirky and has a very unique tone plus says so much about what it’s like being a female artist in the world today.

THE QUIET MIGRATION by Malene Choi (Video 8:40)

Malene Choi’s The Quiet Migration explores the inner struggles of dislocation experienced by Carl, a Korean adoptee living in Denmark, through the use of a metaphoric space rock that lands suddenly from the sky in the opening shot of the film. Carl has grown up with his Danish parents learning how to run their dairy farm to one day take it over but now old enough to start questioning what he wants for himself Carl realises how different he is from everyone else and begins to experience an identity crisis that slowly disintegrates his relationship with his adopted mother and father.

If Thunder wasn’t afraid of a close-up The Quiet Migration is not afraid of the wide shot. The pastoral landscape gave way for many a wide pan yet one thing I noticed about the panning shots in this film is that they always went right to left, tracking backwards. That is until the very last shot when the pan moves forwards from left to right. Perhaps signalling a shifted perspective. There are also quite a few symmetrical shots and the characteristically European held wides where the entire scene took place in a single frame.

There are a few things clashing in this film. It’s tone, its genre, the soundtrack, and the cultures within the story of the film. At first, this was jarring for me and left me wondering what I had just seen and whether I liked it but then I realised that the film itself was a representation of the feelings experienced by Carl and ultimately Director Malene Choi who has created a film about her own life. Those feelings of knowing something yet having a part of yourself that you don’t fully understand and how to reconcile with that.

PAST LIVES Directed by Celine Song (Video 10:42)

I don’t mean to hype it up more than people already are, but I would be lying if I didn’t say this was my favourite film from the festival by a long way. Charming, beautifully written, expertly acted, and shot effortlessly yet with so much thought; Past Lives is a masterpiece in many ways. Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora's family emigrates from South Korea. Decades later, they reunite in New York for one fateful week as they confront destiny, love and the choices that make a life.

The story had all the elements to fall into romance movie cliches yet it was such a mature story with a realistic representation of love and relationships. The characters were believable and in particular Nora who was such an independent and empowered woman who was constantly making her own choices and refusing to be influenced by the wants of others. I was chatting about it with my partner after the movie and we were saying, in relation to my recent Bechdel test video, this movie wouldn’t pass the test despite how strong Nora was as a character. It got us into a bit of a discussion regarding the Bechdel test and how it often discounts any film that explores female/male relationships. Yet this was a perfect dive into the cliché of love at first sight and destiny that turned all the tropes on their head in a beautiful way that left me tearing up at the end.

There was a lot of use of windows and reflections in the cinematography which I think represented the distance that exist between Nora and Hae sung. That they can see each other on the other side of the glass yet with never really be able to touch. They can be part of each other’s lives but not in the way maybe they thought they would.

I would highly recommend everyone go see this movie as it has such a profound message to say about the state of modern relationships.

FAMILY TIME by Tia Kouva (Video 12:48)

This messy dark comedy from director Tia Kouva is chaotic and relatable in many ways. Set in the wintery rural landscape of Finland Family Time follows an annual family Christmas get-together that sees the usual tensions rise as the event slowly falls into disarray. Using single locked-off shots for every scene allows for the strength of the film to shine which is the way activity is layered over the single takes. Conversations happen on and off screen, family members move in and out of frame in the background and foreground, and you never really know what to focus on. There’s so much happening at any one moment that the true chaotic nature of a family get-together is captured in its reality.

I really need to take my hat off to the actors because these scenes were just one take and went on for 10-15mins sometimes. It never felt stilted or laborious and flowed so naturally from moment to moment like a real family. The dialogue is written in a way that places focus mainly on subtext. At face value, the conversations are dull small talk and polite conversation yet what is truly being said under the surface allows the audience to gather information about the relationships everyone has with each other.

My only criticism would be after the Christmas gathering is finished there is still about half a movie left yet my interest really backed off. I think this might be because Family Time is an extension on a short film Tia Kouva directed back in 2018 so the parts after the cabin Christmas feel slightly tacked on. We leave the confines of the claustrophobic Christmas gathering and head back to everybody’s regular day-to-day lives and whilst this explores the family dynamics everybody has separate from one another it does slow down the film quite a lot and I felt maybe some of these moments should have been shaved off to reduce the nearly 2 hour run time closer to 90mins.

Surprisingly this film made me contemplate my own mortality. I wasn’t sure if this was the goal of the film but I think just watching life play out of screen made me begin to question my own life, my own family, and subsequently how little time we all really have together.

BAD BEHAVIOUR Directed by Alice Englert (Video 16:32)

I was excited about this one when I read the description as it pitched itself as a black comedy set in New Zealand that explored the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship and given my love of NZ comedy, I was curious to see what Bad Behaviour would bring. The debut feature from director, writer, and actor Alice Englert started out strong with a cynical tone and an interesting premise but the momentum built up from the opening of the film backs off quickly after a certain climatic incident occurs and it’s from this moment on that I began wondering why the film was still going as it appeared to have run out of things to say.

The film follows Lucy as she attempts to seek enlightenment at a silent retreat led by spiritual leader Elon whilst there, she also navigates the turbulent relationship with her stunt performer daughter, Dylan. Pitched as an exploration of the mother-daughter dynamic I think a fault of the film is including both mother and daughter without giving their experiences equal weight. The film feels very heavily focused on mother Lucy which makes any of the moments we spend with daughter Dylan feel pointless as it leads to nothing and doesn’t add to the eventual moment the two are brought together. I felt the script was overwritten and at times continued to retread ground that had been covered previously and the entire retreat segments felt overly wanky, which I thought was part of the comedy at first, but then realised that maybe this was the director trying to say something meaningful.

A lot of the scattered energy of the film made way more sense during the Q&A with Alice Englert after the screening. I teased that there was a spicy question asked in my first thoughts over on my Instagram stories and indeed two brave filmmakers in the front row of the theatre pipped up about what they described as the elephant in the room. If you’re not aware Alice Englert is actually Jane Campion’s daughter and given the SFF this year was celebrating the work of Campion they insinuated that perhaps Bad Behaviour’s presence at the festival might’ve had something to do with nepotism. As two young women finishing film school they wanted to know if there was any hope for them as they had no film industry connections, unlike Alice.

Alice explained she’d had to deal with comparison to her mother and had come across her own selection of assholes in the industry hinting that there will always be difficult people in your way no matter who you are, then switched into a kind of motivational speech that received a round of applause from the audience. I don’t think the ladies got the answer they wanted, and it brought up an interesting topic for discussion surrounding the ‘women support women’ movement. How do we navigate the competition of the industry and its “who you know” structure? It’s a topic for an entire post in itself but I just thought it was interesting to hear the audible gasp of the audience when the women asked their question and it only highlighted for me how high and mighty the film industry can think itself. Also, the disparity between film viewers and filmmakers.

Overall Bad Behaviour was a bit lost. It had moments of hilarity and Jenifer Connelly and Alice Englert gave stellar performances but I think the film’s message and point got buried in the writing and what we ended up with was an unbalanced mess.

Masterpieces, Messes, & Nepotism | Sydney Film Festival 2023