Trash Humpers

For those not familiar with Harmony Korine, he is a indie hipster icon, director and creator of extraordinarily bizarre characters. He has a knack for inventing interesting and fucked up scenarios and derranged humans that inhabit them, and exploiting them in his films, which unfortunately sometimes leads to a bit of film wank.

In Trash Humpers, we follow four seemingly elderly and incredibly deranged vagrants as they traipse across the great suburban sprawl of america, humping trash cans, trees and mailboxes. Along the way they encounter different suburbanites, fellow weirdos, and take up residence in their houses. The whole thing is shot on VHS handy cam, which is both one of the films highlights as well as it’s downfall. I can imagine that if it had’ve been filmed a little more “Traditionally” it would’ve been more accessible to certain crowds, but as it’s never really been used before in the world of the feature film, I found it quite interesting.

Unfortunately though, the film never really goes anywhere. It plods along, stringing together a series of home movies of these deranged old people, as they hump whatever they can, and boss other weirdos around into doing things for them, like eating soap covered pancakes. There are some great ideas in the film, but that’s not really enough to sustain it.

It’s almost as if Korine’s just slapped it together as quickly as he could, cause he needed to make a quick buck. (NOTE: Apparently this is the case after all…Mister Lonely drove Korines production company to bankruptcy so he needed to create something asap to break even).

Like I said, some entertaining aspects, interestingly bizarre characters, but really not enough to carry the viewers attention for an hour and fifteen minutes.

TWO AND A HALF STARS

Enter the Void

Before I even begin to dissect this film, let me just say, that I loved it. It is by far the best film I saw at MIFF this year, and probably the best film I’ve seen in the last 5 years. In terms of creativity, visual imagery and overall brilliance, this film is it.

Gaspar Noe – infamous for Irreversible (his previous film which features intense rape scenes) brings to the screen, this inventive and visually stunning tale of Oscar, a drug dealer living in Tokyo with his sister Linda, who is a stripper.

From the moment the film starts, you are thrown into the chaotic and frenetic world of the film. The credits which run for approximately 2 minutes, is a bombardment of the cast and crews names in an assortment of flashing neon signs. It really makes you feel as if you are stuck in Tokyo on drugs and it’s really intensely overwhelming, but a brilliant device to introduce us to this world that Noe is trying to create for his audience. The last bit of the credits, we see the word ENTER before the film starts.

The film is all shot from Oscar’s point of view (another amazing device for this film) and next we see him smoking DMT in his small Tokyo apartment. What follows next is about 15 minutes of intense visual hallucinations which are remarkably spot on. Colours and shapes morph into one another and take various forms, before Oscars phone rings and he is snapped back to reality. He’s been summoned to a club to do a deal. Oscars mentor, Alex shows up at his apartment, Oscar tries to disguise the fact his tripping out, Alex and Oscar leave to go to the club together. What’s most brilliant about these scenes is that the dialogue seemingly makes little sense in some parts, Alex goes off on a tangent about the afterlife and reincarnation, and Oscar struggles to keep up. There’s a shot where they walk down an external stairwell that seemingly goes forever, reminiscent of nights out where you walk through the city and have conversations with anyone, which the next day you remember maybe about 20% of.

Oscar arrives at the club, turns out it was hoax, a drug bust takes place, and he ends up getting shot. This is all in the first maybe 45 minutes of the film. The next 2 hours and 15 minutes is dedicated to Noe’s idea of what happens to us when we die and in the afterlife. Oscar and Linda make a pact after their parents died (horrendously in a car crash which is repeatedly depicted in several intense flash backs) when they were younger, that if anything ever happened to the other, they would never leave them. So Oscar watches over Linda, along with his other companions, we see Oscar’s memories, flashbacks and such all the while he floats about Tokyo like an invisible spirit.

What I liked most about the later scenes of the film is that is exactly what my dreams are like. You float about go from one place to another, one minute you’re doing a day to day thing, next your in a memory from 5 years ago. Noe weaves together all the hallucinations and memories and observations from Oscars point of view expertly.

If anything, the film does drag on in some parts, and I felt that Noe did throw some aspects in there to purposefully be controversial. There is a rather drawn out scene in which Linda has an abortion, but having said that I guess what he was trying to achieve is the sense of when you’re tripping out, horrific things seem a thousand times more horrific and it’s all your senses can hone in on…maybe? But there was also a little bit too much of the soul entity soaring over Tokyo and it could’ve maybe been about half an hour shorter. There have been reviews saying that it’s barely unwatchable and awful and drawn on too long, and I agree, to a degree, but I would not say the film is terrible, by no means. The sheer creativity and imagery of the film is groundbreaking.

The performances were generally pretty good, the only time you see Oscars face is when he looks in the mirror, or when he leaves his body after being shot (to which he quips “Don’t worry, it’s just the drugs, you’re not dead, you’re just tripping”). The stand out performance comes from Emily Alyn Lind who plays the young Linda. In one of the flashbacks to their childhood, when Oscar and Linda’s parents died in a car crash, with the two kids in the backseat, Lind sits there, screaming and crying her heart out in the most gut wrenchingly intense scene. Her mothers heard splattered open in front of her. It’s remarkable that a girl of maybe 8 or 9 is able to do a scene like that, but it also makes you think how do they manage to get that kind of reaction from her?

The films setting of Tokyo is perfect as well, as I said earlier, the opening credits with the Neon lights really puts you in the setting, it’s a motif that is carried throughout the film. One of Oscars friends makes a UV city, which he spends some time soaring about once he’s dead as well. The last thing we see before the end credits roll, are the words THE VOID.

I don’t really know if this has been a helpful review, I’ve kind of just brain farted my thoughts out, because Enter the Void certainly did things to my brain that confused me for a few days after. I guess the best way to sum it up, is by saying it's like being on acid for 3 hours. So if you know what that's like, then you'll possibly see the merit of the film...

All that's left for me to say is go see this film. You might hate it, you might love it, regardless, you should see it. Everyone needs to see this film. It’s one of those films.

FOUR AND A HALF STARS

I Killed My Mother

French Canadian writer, director and former child star, Xavier Dolan makes his debut at MIFF with his first feature, I Killed My Mother (J'ai tué ma mère). Dolan has described the film as semi-autobiographical and is based on the events of his late teens and mainly his tumultuous relationship with his mother.

Dolan plays Hubert, a 16 year old boy living in suburban Montreal with his mother, whom he can’t stand. Even the way she eats her breakfast irritates Hubert. They argue constantly, in the car on the way to school, at home at the dinner table, any chance Hubert can get to be a spoilt brat towards his mother, he takes it. Which is what, I think, confused me most about this film.

Dolan wrote, directed and starred in the film, which is the true story of his relationship with his mother, his feelings towards her and the way he was raised. So why has he portrayed himself as such a little shit? Is this what he actually set out to do? Is he aware of how he is coming across? If that was his intention, then I take my hat off to him.

Hubert’s mother, Chantal is actually a very sympathetic character. A single mother whose only joys are watching TV, playing solitaire and going to the tanning salon with her garish tracksuit wearing gal pal, you do feel quite sorry for Chantal and the life she leads. When Chantal try’s to engage in conversation with her son, she is told what a bad mother she is. I’m not pretending I haven’t at times been frustrated with my mother, and as Hubert aptly points out in one of his asides to the camera, every human has felt that at one point, if it was only for a moment or for a whole year, but the way Hubert carries on and treats Chantal is so incredibly frustrating. Throughout the film there is a sense of Dolan trying to portray himself as being the victim, that it was his mother’s fault that he was so horrid to her, which is never actually portrayed in the film. There is seemingly no motive to why he is a rude snarling shit apart from hormones. Which I get, because hey, as a teenager, I was exactly the same to my mother.

So I guess that’s my main problem with this film, it was not clearly defined for me what Dolan was trying to depict with this film. Being part autobiographical also apparently gives you an excuse to big note yourself. I found I Killed My Mother, in parts, to be very self indulgent. There is a scene where Hubert’s art teacher commends him for a painting he is working on and there’s a quip by his boyfriend about how brilliant an artist he is, yet we never see the painting. Its like, don’t big note yourself in the script, then not show the audience. There’s a painful scene of Hubert and his boyfriend Antonin painting an office in the style of Jackson Pollock. A lot of slow motion shots of paint splattering against a wall and dripping down as Hubert and Antonin proceed to have sex on the office floor. The paint dripping down the wall may as well have been Dolans jizz dripping down his audiences face, because he’s basically just wanked off in front of everyone. The other annoying, self indulgent scene occurs when Hubert goes out to a club, again, the slow motion is used and a sweet vaguely twee song accompanies it, in comparison to the stark strobe lights of the club. It was just slightly out of place in terms of the narrative and was a little “Look at me; I’m so arty and trendy hipster”.

Having said all this however, there are some beautiful moments of the film, that I did really enjoy. Dolan really expresses a knack for witty dialogue within his script. There is an utterly amazing scene where Chantal has a complete nervous break down on the phone to the principal of Hubert’s boarding school. The rant which goes for a steady 5 minutes is Chantal letting out all the pent up frustration and abuse laden upon her by her ungrateful son, and is beautifully realised. There is also a witty scene, where Hubert having taken drugs for the first time, goes home to tell his Mum how much he loves her.



I also enjoyed the fact that not a massive deal was made about Hubert’s coming out to his mother, or her realisation that her son was in fact homosexual. Like other coming of age films, it would be depicted as some sort of inner struggle, but Dolan portrays Hubert as having already accepted it and it does not cause large waves within his tiny fish pond, which I think is a really admiral approach to the old inner turmoil of coming out story line.

Dolan does use Slow Motion a lot in the film, as annoying as the aforementioned moments were, there are some beautiful ones too; Hubert running from Chantal in the school corridors, a shop window smashing. He also at the beginning used quick cuts of signature items to establish character or setting; several shots of James Dean posters establish Antonins bedroom etc. These to me were all Dolan’s directorial motifs, which I expect to see in future films.

Being his first film, I find myself forcing myself to not be too critical. Dolan was 19 when he made the film, and is still finding his feet, developing his trademark style, but there’s no doubt about it, the boy has talent. He can write a fairly decent script, which has wit and emotion, all though he could develop his characters a little more. He has good technique with directing, although is a little self indulgent and a lot of his scenes were far too dark (which I guess was cause he may not have had access to proper lighting…but still). The acting is good, mainly on Anne Dorval's portrayal of Chantal (Dorval is so incredibly remeniscent of Annette Benning). However, I am still not 100% sure on how I feel about the film. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it. All I know is that I’m interested to see what else this trendy French Canadian babe (I forgot to mention he is a bit of a babe...) can produce next.

THREE STARS.

The Family Jams

The Family Jams is Kevin Barkers foray into the private lives of Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Vetiver as they set off on their 2004 tour of America. Although labeled as a documentary, the film is more a collection of private home movies, a collection of raw footage as the three (relatively unknown at the time) artists travel about the states. If you approach this film not expecting to find out some in depth truths about the artists, and have an appreciation for just watching behind the scenes footage and gaining a sneak peek into the artists’ lives on the road, then you will most likely enjoy it.

I guess that is one of the films downfalls, there is not that much to engage the viewer. Although I did find it interesting in parts, there was something lacking. Barker does try to weave the thread of family ties through the film, opening the documentary with the tale of his grandmothers 100th birthday in Hawaii, but then sort of abandoning that idea all together. There is drama on the road; one of Joanna Newsoms child hood friends passes away, causing her to abandon the tour for a few shows. Devendra Banhart has some sort of uncomfortable situation with his possibly estranged father (this was not really explained very clearly). It’s almost as if Barker is inviting us to look at his musician friends lives, but not intruding too much, which raises the question, why even bother in the first place?

The film does lack drive in points, only once does Barker reveal what part of America they are playing in, which would've been a tool to help the film along, tracking the groups progress as they travel across the country... There is a cameo from Antony of Antony and the Johnsons which was good to see, he’s such a humbled musician and quite funny too. There are some intimate moments when the bands are relaxing in their hotel room and Newsom does a performance of the song she’s working on, which is the stunning Cosmia from Ys. The footage then cuts to the group doing a drunken rendition of Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. This was possibly one of my favourite moments of the film, as it really shows the musicians as what they are, just ordinary people, on tour, with a bunch of friends. And I guess that is what Barker is attempting to depict in this home movie collection/documentary. How this group of friends is more like a family…But somehow he didn’t string this idea through strongly enough.

THREE STARS