Seth and Kristian go to VIFF 2021: Part I
It’s that time of year again, folks. Happening in its current form annually since 1982, The Vancouver Internation Film Festival has returned for its 40th year. The second-largest film festival in Canada, coming in behind Toronto, and among the five largest in North America in total films shown, this year’s festival features “over 110 feature films” and “75+ shorts” as well as dozens of talks and Q&As. The festival began on October 1st and will run until the 11th.
I attended the festival for the first time in 2019 where I saw a terrific line-up of films including Parasite, The Lighthouse, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. After missing the entirely online festival in 2020, I am thrilled to be back and attending screenings in person for 2021. Thankfully this year, I didn’t have to brave the festival alone. I was accompanied by my partner Kristian, who did attend the virtual festival last year, who saw four of the movies with me.
I’m seeing seven films over the course of two weekends hence splitting the article into two halves. Weekend one? Three exciting features from North America. My festival experience begins opening night with the vampire drama Kicking Blood. It continues through Saturday and Sunday with the surrealist sci-fi Strawberry Mansion before switching gears in the Canadian jazz drama Learn to Swim with four more exciting films yet to come next week.
Without further ado, the Skytrain doors close, as I begin my journey to downtown Vancouver . . .
KICKING BLOOD
“I’m going to suck your blood and get high as f--k.”
Friday, October 1. It’s the first night of the festival and Kristian and I make our way to the Rio Theatre, the home of VIFF’s “Altered States” (link) series, an exciting group of “Genre-bending features that defy traditional classification and demand that you play by their warped rules.” The film is a screening of Kicking Blood, a Canadian vampire addiction metaphor romance-drama-comedy. It’s directed by Vancouverite and New Pornographers musician Blaine Thurier and was shot in the exotic Sudbury, Ontario.
Kicking Blood is a strange, confusing film. It has some brilliant and intriguing core ideas about addiction and recovery, but it’s ultimately unable to find its identity. It struggles in tone and pacing ending up being neither horrifying, romantic, nor funny. Set in the present day, Anna (Alanna Bale), a vampire with an addiction to hallucinogenic qualities of human blood, encounters Robbie (Luke Bilyk), a man seeking to overcome his struggles through alcoholism. It’s a fantastical parable using the vampires’ reliance on blood to the effects of drugs alcohol. It’s a wonderful idea but the film is incredibly hollow.
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| Post-screening Q&A with Kicking Blood director Blaine Thurier and stars Alanna Bale and Luke Bilyk. |
Shot early in 2021 amid Ontario’s winter COVID-19 lockdown, the film feels very empty. The streets and buildings are devoid of people. There are hardly any cars on the street. While they may exemplify the ideas of isolation and loneliness that the film deals with, the production ultimately feels awkward. The clubbing scene has no people in the club — what the hell? The set of Anna’s apartment is built in something along the lines of a black box theatre, but the apartment ends up feeling confusing and lacks a definitive place and shape. The costuming of the characters, especially the vampires, is underwhelming and underdeveloped. The constraints of the production and the seams of the budget show in the ugliest of ways.
The film is also missing a lot of the most iconic vampire elements which don’t work in its favour. The vampires lack fangs and there’s little blood. Thurier, in the post-film Q&A, defended the choice saying that those elements “weren’t interesting,” but the result is a film that is too sanitized and clean about an unclean subject and unclean monsters.
Kicking Blood is not a horrible movie. The performances of Bale and Bilyk are worth noting as strong upsides to the project. There are moments of strong direction and interesting creative choices. Yet, Kicking Blood just doesn’t have the emotional weight to stand out. Interesting ideas abound but the underdeveloped script with no clear tone and uninteresting production elements are the curse that this film can’t overcome.
Score: 2.5
STRAWBERRY MANSION
“I wanted someone to share my dreams with.”
It’s Saturday. After an unfortunate misadventure in West Vancouver involving a confused location resulting in me missing a screening of what would have been my eighth film, Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Kristian and I made our way back to the Rio for our second film from the festival. Although there was, unfortunately, no Q&A after the screening, we both immensely enjoyed the film. Also hailing from the “Altered States” series, Strawberry Mansion was Kristian’s most anticipated film of the festival and one that I was the most curious about. It certainly lived to all expectations of the film.
Strawberry Mansion is strange in the best possible way. Whereas Kicking Blood was confusing and strange because of its errors, Strawberry Mansion is meticulously intentional and embraces the limitations of its budget to make something special. Set in the retro-future of 2035, the movie is about James (Kentucker Audley), a dream tax auditor, and the strange relationship that he develops with Bella (Penny Fuller and Grace Glowicki), the woman he is sent to audit. As their connection grows, the narrative takes a turn into the subconscious of both James and Bella.
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| No Q&A at this film, but we did get a nice photo of ourselves. |
The production design and the strange narrative elements of Strawberry Mansion are the clear highlights. The film’s low budget is perfectly complementary to the design of the world. It’s shot with grainy, low-fi film stock of sci-fi B-movies of days gone by. The visual effects are made up of practical models cartoonishly imposed on the live-action elements. The strange creatures are made of paper mache and clunky masks and puppeteering. There’s a frogman that plays the jazz saxophone and a turtle named sugar baby. Dreams are stored on VHS. There is a strange, blue demon that arises out of the water. A nuclear submarine is pirated by a crew of rats. There are advertisements injected into our dreams. And the monsters are always seeking to kill us.
The film is embedded with the DNA of the great works of surrealism making a fantasia of nightmares and dreams. It’s unsettling in the way of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. It’s made of strange, dark images that cause a fierce reaction of terror and unease. Yet, the film is wickedly funny and profoundly charming. The story is wildly entertaining. The characters are delightful. It’s a film that relies on contrasting its influences to make something remarkable.
Strawberry Mansion is a capital “w” Weird movie. It’s of the same ilk as Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House (1977) and takes notes from the likes of David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky. If you like movies that are willing to make extreme creative choices at the risk of isolating their audiences, this is a movie for you. Strawberry Mansion is a disorientating fever dream, but you emerge on the other side having experienced something unlike anything before.
Score: 4.5
LEARN TO SWIM
“You ever feel like you can’t hold onto things?”
On Sunday night, Kristian and I find our way to the VIFF Centre for our third and final film of the weekend. We found our friend, Isaac, who had been working at the festival recording the various Q&As. I hadn’t yet been to the VIFF Centre and was greatly impressed by its extensive recent renovation, but that’s hardly relevant to the story. The film for the night was Thyrone Tommy’s musical drama and debut feature Learn to Swim. The film belongs to VIFF’s “True North” program, a group of films dedicated to celebrating the “creativity and craft demonstrated by Canadian storytellers.” And this film certainly is Canadian.
The film follows Dezi (Thomas Antony Olajide), a jazz saxophonist, who meets Selma (Emma Ferreira), a talented singer in the hours after their first gig together. Moving fluidly backwards and forwards through time, Learn to Swim documents their passionate tumultuous relationship and the stresses their industry places upon them. The film is experimental, original, and vibrant. Gorgeous photography, lighting, and soundscapes make the film feel exciting and unique boosted by two incredible lead performances.
Learn to Swim is an unapologetically Toronto story with the film being shot in and directly about the contemporary jazz scene within Canada’s largest city. 416 phone numbers, references to Kingston, Barrie, and Hamilton, and shots of “Yours to Discover” pepper the film throughout giving it a strong sense of place and belonging. Tommy’s dedication to his sense of belonging is found in the music itself as Learn to Swim’s lush, moving score is co-composed by Chester Hansen and Leland Whitty, members of Toronto-based jazz group BADBADNOTGOOD.
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| Post-screening Q&A with Learn to Swim director Thyrone Tommy and star Thomas Antony Olajide. |
The cinematography work of Nick Haight is another major component of why this film works so well. The film is shot in a boxy 1.33:1 aspect ratio with strong use of extreme shallow focus throughout. It’s both constrained and liberating as the photography paints a more intimate view of the characters. Learn to Swim is also coloured with a rich, deep, nuanced lighting design. Scenes are lit in soft, earthy yellows and greens and pale blues. It’s one of the most visually intriguing films I’ve seen all year.
Music, specifically Toronto jazz music, is at the heart of Learn to Swim. The film seems to operate like the jazz music that the characters play. It’s loose and dynamic. It seems content to do its own thing. The linear ebb and flow of the narrative structure dances like idle notes in one of Dezi’s sax pieces. It may some scatter-brained to some but clear and cohesive to others.
Learn to Swim slow, seductive, and sensual and takes great pride in what it is. Olajide and Ferreira are wonderful onscreen together and their chemistry is both destructive and magical. I could continue to wax on about the score, but it is a work of art best heard than described. It’s a beautiful film that I will be thinking about for a long time.
Score: 4
As Kristian and I stepped out of the VIFF Centre, our first weekend of VIFF 2021 came to a close. It’s been an exciting experience at the festival so far. The Q&As following Kicking Blood and Learn to Swim were surprising but added a wonderful touch to the fest. Tyrone Tommy was particularly well-spoken and had some excellent words for up-and-coming Canadian creatives. It’s been chaotic, energetic, and filled with too much movie theatre popcorn.
Looking ahead to next week, I’m checking out French awards-darling Bye Bye Morons, Jane Campion’s new western The Power of the Dog, Joachim Trier’s Olso-set The Worst Person in the World, and Senegalese thriller Saloum. It seems like the best is still yet to come.
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