SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT (Johan Grimonprez, 2024, Belgium, 150 minutes)
In 1960, the same year the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained its independence from colonial rule and joined the United Nations, thanks largely to newly-elected Premier Patrice Lumumba, Louis Armstrong brought New Orleans-style jazz to the country. Starting in 1956, the US State Department had been flying jazz ambassadors around the world in order to promote diplomacy. That was the claim, at any rate.
If the Congolese appreciated what Louis and his band were putting down, Russian Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev failed to see the appeal of jazz, which he found cacophonous--he went so far as to compare it to gastrointestinal distress. More significantly, though, Belgium wasn't prepared to let the Congo go without a fight--not with all its uranium and other valuable resources--and just after Independence Day on June 30, 1960, when everyone should have been celebrating, things got ugly.
There's nothing quite as volatile as the combination of white supremacy and greed, and the UN and the US, especially the wealthy industrialist sector, sided with Belgium over the people of the Congo, who had democratically elected Lumumba. Systematically, the premier and select associates were ostracized, neutralized, replaced--and eventually killed.
When Louis learned that his concert was arranged as a distraction by anti-Lumumba forces, rather than the goodwill gesture he had been promised, he was so incensed he threatened to renounce his US citizenship and move to Ghana, one of several nations that supported Congolese independence.
Khrushchev, another Congolese supporter, may have been wrong about jazz, but he wasn't wrong about colonialism and imperialism (which makes Putin's recent actions vis-a-vis the Ukraine seem uglier than ever).
Using archival footage combined with interviews and readings and on-screen extracts from several non-fiction texts about the era, including Andrée Blouin's 1983 memoir My Country, Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria, Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez examines the politics of Belgium, the Congo, Russia, Ghana, Guinea, Cuba, and the US to show why a coup d'etat took place–and how jazz was involved.
The African and American music in the film, from Louis, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, and others can't be beat. If the leaders of the Western world abandoned the Congo in its hour of need, the jazz world, combined with literary luminaries like Maya Angelou, did everything they could to call out the injustice and show their support.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Grimonprez's highest-profile documentary to date,is one of the year's finest—and fiercest—documentaries.
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat opens at Northwest Film Forum on Wed, Dec 4. Images from Kino Lorber (Congo speechwriter/chief of protocol Andrée Blouin) and ABC (Louis Armstrong / Getty Images: Universal Images Group). Kino Lorber releases the film on home video on Jan 7, 2025.
I had heard, anecdotally, that Pamela Anderson is better than Gia Coppola's film, but I beg to differ (the script was written by Kate Gersten of Mozart in the Jungle and The Good Place).
That equation oversells Anderson's acting abilities, which are just fine, and undersells Coppola's directing abilities, which don't exactly fall short.
At its worst, Coppola's third feature, after 2013's Palo Alto and 2020's Mainstream, feels a little unfinished, and Anderson's self-sabotaging showgirl character, Shelly--and not her performance--is frustrating and occasionally off-putting. Then again, she landed the role in the wake of her well received turn as vaudevillian entertainer-turned murderer Roxie in the 2022 Broadway revival of Chicago. It's a segue that makes perfect sense, even if Shelly is no murderer.
Blade Runner 2049's Dave Bautista, who plays the producer of the Razzle Dazzle revue in which Shelly has plied her trade since the 1980s, is particularly strong in a restrained performance. The former wrestler could have been just another muscleman actor/comedian, but Bautista shows up in roles, like Eddie, where musculature doesn't matter. Love that about him.
Anderson, quite good in a role tailor-made for her talents, receives backing from a solid supporting cast, especially Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song, and Billie Lourd--Lourd and Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays a former showgirl with frosted tips, previously worked together in Ryan Murphy's horror comedy Scream Queens--though the writing around Lourd's bitter college student, Shelly's estranged daughter Hannah, seems a little unfocused at times.
It may seem impolitic to say about a venture both female-made and female-centered, but I felt that Bautista, virtually unrecognizable in Kurt Russell hair and salt-and-pepper beard, was the MVP.
In a different film that could've proven destabilizing, but not this one. He gives Coppola's heightened scenario the down-to-earth ballast it needs; if only Shelly appreciated this decent man more, but then she has a shallow view of men, possibly because they've often had a shallow view of her.
There's no body horror, but still...I wasn't expecting the parallels with Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and, especially, Coralie Fargeat's The Substance. At times, Shelly makes Demi Moore's fading TV star Elisabeth Sparkle seem downright stable, not least since Elisabeth is a more isolated character.
Shelly, by contrast, has people in her life who try to help, but she's convinced her beauty and--very modest--talent will see her through, except she's in her late-50s competing against women in their teens, like Shipka's 19-year-old Jodie, or in their 20s, like most of the other performers (Curtis's Annette works as a cocktail waitress).
It's a minor matter and doesn't harm the film, but I was amused by Coppola's inclusion of not one, but two Rooney songs. Then again, Rooney member Robert Schwartzman, Gia's cousin, produced the film, and his brother and bandmate, Jason Schwartzman, has a small role as a director.
It's the power ballads, though, like Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," that truly define the film--and Anderson's Shelly, who isn't exactly living in the present. She's an '80s lady living in a postmillennial world.
I always suspected that Pamela Anderson was capable of more than the one-dimensional roles she's played to date, both on and off the screen, and she proves it in The Last Showgirl. I wouldn't say she surprised me or surpassed my expectations, but then: I expected her to be good, and she is.
The Last Showgirl opens at Los Angeles's AMC Century City on Fri, Dec 13, for one (Oscar-qualifying) week only; nationwide on Fri, Jan 10, 2025.
Fargo filmmaker and animator Toby Jones directs a straight-faced gentleman named AJ Thompson (a real-life IT guy) in the absurdist story of a regular schmo with a perfect life who faces the sudden loss of that perfection.
First, it's the dog park, which the mayor (Crystal Cossette Knight) turns into a blog park, even though everybody know blogging isn't really a thing anymore–except for me and the bloggers in the film.
Then, his best friends, a married couple, move away, and it's just AJ and his dad (Greg Carlson), who is also his boss, and chihuahuas Diddy and Biff, who no longer have a dog park in which to run around and do their business, so this complacent fellow has to get creative, and so he does, as does the filmmaker.
As producer Ben Hanson said at the second screening, the funny business, which involves literal-minded wordplay and goofy props, moves so quickly that if one gag doesn't make you laugh, the next should do the trick.
I met both gentlemen the following evening, and we chatted about the closing sequence, which involved shooting in 40°F weather. That's unreal to me, and I grew up in Alaska. Fun film, nice guys, and the audience had a blast with their loopy tale of an ordinary guy who fights City Hall--and wins.
ANNA COMES HOME
(Amber Suzor, USA, 2024, 95 minutes)
I was on the screening panel for Cucalorus this year, and Anna Came Home was one of the films I ranked the highest. I was thrilled when it made the cut, because this is a five-day festival, and they can't program everything.
When Alex, the programming director, asked if I would like to moderate any of the films, I requested those that I had already seen and recommended, and that's how I ended up chatting with producers Jennifer Downes and Frederic Winkler at the screening. I wish writer/director Amber Suzor could have been there, but Jennifer answered my questions in detail.
Amber, 26, wasn't able to make it, because she recently had a baby with actor Mason Webber, now her husband, who plays the easygoing Louie in the film.
Anna is a remarkably assured debut, set in leafy Marin County, about a Berkeley student going through an early-life crisis (I'm not familiar with Marin, but my dad worked at Berkeley, so that part resonated with me).
If it isn't a cringe comedy, there are moments of intense cringe, which Jennifer said were inspired by things Amber, 24 when she made the film, experienced in her younger years--the audience gasped at one particularly humiliating moment.
Isabella Newman, who Amber met at NYU, is perfection in the tricky title role, and Bella's own parents play Anna's parents--Amber's father, Olivier, also has a small role–which adds to the verisimilitude.
DUINO
(Juan Pablo Di Pace, Andrés Pepe Estrada, Argentina, 2024, 107 minutes)
I have mixed feelings about this film, though I enjoyed it for the most part. It's a gay love story in which no one ever says the word gay, and one character never even acknowledges an attraction to men.
It's an open question, however, whether the film is too coy for it's own good, whether it's meant to reflect Argentina's discomfort with homosexuality, or whether it's simply intended to depict a very particular kind of relationship involving a high-strung Swiss teenager and a low-key Argentinian who meet at an international arts school on Italy's Adriatic Coast and fall in love, except there's no sex, and not even a kiss.
Matias (Santiago Madrussan, very good) is mad about Alexander (Oscar Morgan), who is prone to dark moods, and might even be bipolar.
The feelings are mutual, except the upper-class Alex either isn't gay or hasn't acknowledged it to himself the way closeted, middle-class Matias has.
The framing story, in which the Argentinian makes a film about the relationship, isn't as compelling as the more emotionally-involving sequences that take place in 1997, but it's also necessary, since the project allows Matias to let go of the feelings of frustration and regret that have haunted him ever since.
Di Pace, who co-directed and appears as the older Matias, never definitely answers the question of Alex's sexual orientation, and if you accept the film on its narratively ambiguous terms, he doesn't have to, because the film is more about Matias' development than his.
FAMILIAR TOUCH
(Sarah Friedland, USA, 2024,
90 minutes)
Choreographer and filmmaker Sarah Friedland's directorial debut is among the three Cucalorus films I saw twice, along with Anna Comes Home and Rowdy Friends; first at home on the small screen as part of the screening process and then on the big screen with the filmmakers in attendance.
All three, which don't have much in common–though Anna Comes Home also takes place in California–played like gangbusters the second time around, and that's always a good sign in terms of their future prospects.
That said, Familiar Touch may be a harder sell. It shouldn't be, not least since it's a brilliant film and the audience--including Color Book filmmaker David Fortune--responded with enthusiasm, but some people won't want to see a film about an octogenarian with Alzheimer's disease, no matter how rapturous the praise. I'm not suggesting that it won't continue to attract admirers as it appears on more screens, though, because it definitely will.
I spoke with cinematographer Gabe Elder, both on and off the stage, and he hopes that Kathleen Chalfant, an award-winning theater actress (Angels in America, Wit), gets all the credit she deserves for her delicately-shaded performance. He found her a joy to work with. When I mentioned her husband, photographer and Style Wars filmmaker Henry Chalfant, Gabe had praise for him, too, saying that Henry was brought to tears by his wife's performance both of the times he saw it at the Venice Film Festival.
For me, Familiar Touch really hit home, because my mom was diagnosed with dementia in 2019, and the following year she moved to an assisted living facility, just as Kathleen's Ruth does in the film, but it's an impressive achievement beyond any personal resonances, bolstered by an elegant screenplay, authentic locations, sensitive direction, and Gabe's intimate cinematography.
It's also absolutely not depressing, but nor does it offer any false uplift. No one ever recovers from Alzheimer's, but writer/director Sarah Friedland, in concert with Kathleen Chalfant and the excellent supporting cast, finds moments of humor and tenderness where you least expect them.
As David Milch writes in his memoir, Life's Work, "There's nothing to be done. The disease must simply progress. The reverend has to live through the changes. Everyone around him has to live into their inability to do anything to change the outcome." Ironically, Milch was writing about a character on Deadwood with an inoperable brain tumor, Ray McKinnon's Rev. Smith, but in 2019, Milch would also be diagnosed with dementia.
Familiar Touch may be the finest film I've seen on the subject, and there's been a lot of competition as Americans are living longer and cognitive decline among seniors has become more prevalent. In its avoidance of melodrama and heavy-handedness, it bears comparison with Sarah Polley's 2006 Alice Munro adaptation Away From Her and Natalie Erika James' uniquely touching 2020 horror film The Relic–and that's a pretty high bar.
Gabe wasn't able to go into much detail since nothing has been announced yet, but at the screening he mentioned that the film secured distribution prior to the festival and will be more widely available in the coming months.
I saw other films at Cucalorus, including Ick, It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This, Operation Taco Gary's, Universal Language, Welcome to Jay, and the nine animated "Bluepoint Shorts" films, but ran out of time to write about them all. I'll update this post as the features make their way to Seattle.
Beyond the films and filmmakers, Cucalorus is about the town of Wilmington, so shout-out to filmgoers Pat, Fran, and John O'Callahan, a restoration specialist who lucked into a part on The Righteous Gemstones, which films in Charleston, thanks to Tallulah, his 19-year old daughter, who submitted a head shot on his behalf.
I enjoyed chatting with all three before and after screenings. Thegracious Rocky Horror Picture Show enthusiast working the counter at Mexican diner Capricho was also a firm favorite. Nothing unites East and West, South and North quite like Tim Curry.
12/9/2024: Music Box Films will be releasing Familiar Touch in 2025.
Images: Horror Revolution (AJ Thompson), IMDb (Bella Newman), Frameline (Santiago Madrussan and Oscar Morgan), Wikipedia (Kathleen Chalfant).
COLOR BOOK (David Fritz Fortune, USA, 2024, 115 minutes)
Every once in a great while I'll see a festival selection so accomplished that afterward I'll find myself shifting from elation to doubt. Instead of trusting my instincts, I'll wonder if it was really that good or if I was just caught up in the festival haze that makes everything seem better than it will in the cold light of day outside a homey venue like Jengo's Playhouse. Cucalorus, after all, is about good vibes.
I've had a few days to think about it--and to see other films--and Atlanta filmmaker David Fortune's directorial debut, Color Book, is just that good.
The film started out as Us, a 2022 black and white short funded by Netflix. At the Q&A with poet and community organizer Omari Fox, Fortune said that after he wrapped the short, he wasn't finished with the two characters and their relationship, and wanted to develop the premise in more depth.
Color Book focuses on a day in the life of a suddenly-widowed father and his 11-year-old son who has Down syndrome, but we get to know them better in the feature, which was recast in a way that lifts the film from good to great, and not because there was anything wrong with the original cast.
In the short, a father teaches his son how to play baseball and in the feature, a father tries to get his son to a baseball game, but Lucky (A Thousand and One's Will Catlett) finds himself facing every kind of obstacle in trying to do a simple kindness for Mason (newcomer Jeremiah Daniels).
Lucky is a regular guy, and not a hero, and yet it becomes a kind of hero's quest. While watching the film, I found myself so invested in the world Fortune constructed that I didn't think about other films, which is the ideal situation. Not until it was over did I realize that the story, bolstered by the black and white stock, plays a bit like 1948's Bicycle Thieves.
Fortune didn't mention it as an inspiration, but he has created a work of lyrical neo-realism as sure as the pioneering Vittorio De Sica; one specific to the post-millennial United States, particularly the South, rather than postwar Italy.
The sense of place is as strong as the development of the characters, including the people they meet along the way.
It is, in other words, a love letter to Atlanta, specifically Black Atlanta. Fortune doesn't glamorize his city, but everyone Lucky and Mason meet is Black. When they act in ways that threaten to derail Lucky's quest–let alone his very guardianship--it isn't out of meanness or spite. They're trying to do the right thing as they see it, just as he is, but during one unguarded moment on the train, he closes his eyes for some much-needed rest only to open them and find Mason gone.
I won't say much more, but even if you think you know how Fortune is going resolve things, he directs the sequence as masterfully as the most nerve-wracking thriller, but without the aid of rapid-fire cuts or a booming score.
Though the film isn't slow per se, the director creates several opportunities for audiences to breathe. In that sense, I was reminded of Barry Jenkins's Oscar-winning Midnight; a different film in many respects, except for the focus on Black manhood, but Fortune also provides space for contemplation with brief abstract sequences--the way Lucky might see movement out of the corner of his eyes--and closeups on objects invested with meaning, like the beads Mason used to string into necklaces with his mom.
Dialogue is there as it needs to be, but never as exposition. Catlett, therefore, has to do a lot with his face and his body, and he has a very expressive face.
He reminds me, in some ways, of actor/director Vondie Curtis-Hall, and I mean that as a compliment. Catlett always shows what's going on, and the reasons are never hard to discern, but Lucky offers no explanations, and nor are they necessary. Form follows function since he's a soft-spoken man, except when he's angry, and he never says any more than he needs to.
If Lucky's sense of humor is in short supply, he isn't without one, and he does enjoy moments of joy, like in a tooth-brushing scene with his truculent son, but then he's in mourning, even if he never says so. The trick for both actor and director was to make him into someone we would want to spend time with rather than someone for whom we feel pity or someone with an aura so dark that it becomes off-putting, no matter how understandable.
Lucky hasn't just lost his wife–and Mason hasn't just lost his mother–but he has to figure out how to be a single father, and that isn't something for which happily married people plan, especially when the loss is unexpected.
Securing transportation is at the crux of Lucky's quest. With no workable vehicle, he meets with an under-the-table dealer who has two cars on offer, a beater for $1,500 and another in better repair, but for $2,400. Plus, the latter isn’t available at the moment, and Lucky has a baseball game to get to in a limited span of time, so he goes for the beater, which results in one of the film's lovelier moments: a father driving his son while Roy Ayers' 1976 vibraphone-saturated single "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" wraps the duo in its warm embrace. Dabney Morris's subtle score, as a whole, blends in well with the mood of the film, in addition to the song's jazz-inflected flavor.
Somewhat off-topic, but when I think about Roy Ayers, I think about his son, Nabil Ayers, a former Seattle citizen and music industry player, who was largely estranged from his father while growing up, and wrote about it in his 2022 memoir, Everybody Loves the Sunshine. Knowing that backstory makes the song more meaningful, whether intentional or otherwise. With all due respect to the jazz-funk pioneer, Lucky is not that father. He's present.
Color Book, as a whole, is both surprising and not. I wasn't surprised when the beater breaks down; it's also one of the few times Lucky gets angry. Not in an abusive way, but the anger that he releases isn't just because he wasted $1,500 and might not get to the ballpark on time, but because he lost his wife. You can see from the look on his face, especially whenever he turns away from Mason, the fear and anger lying beneath the surface.
Around this point Fortune reveals how Tameeka died, and it connects with what he has already shown in ways I didn't anticipate. Previously, he had included a sequence in which her friends remember her at the grave site, so he allows us to get to know her more through their thoughts and remembrances than through Lucky's, and we learn that her giving, affectionate nature was a blessing to all her knew her, and not just to her immediate family.
The ending is also unexpected, not so much because of the game, but because of a dinner Lucky and Mason share in a diner. Beyond the beads, which we see Tameeka and Mason stringing together in the prologue, other totems for father and son include waffles, which they make in the opening sequence; white balloons, which they bring to her grave; and Mason’s crayons and coloring book, which gives the film its title. Two of these things converge at the diner as Lucky and Mason put their worries aside for an hour to enjoy a good meal and the company of a warm-hearted waitress who provides, temporarily, the mothering the men have been missing.
I haven't mentioned it until now, but Color Book never uses the term Down syndrome. We know what we know; Fortune doesn't need to spell it out.
He doesn't define Mason by his characteristics but by his character; who he is as a unique individual, rather than the representative of a genetic condition, and it's how his father sees him: as a person and not as a problem.
The people they meet also accept Mason for who he is; conflict arises at the Marta station when it appears that Lucky isn't an adequate father–or might not be the boy's father at all.
At the Q&A, Fortune says he spent time with the families of children with Down syndrome. He put in the work, and he found a fine foil for Will Catlett in Jeremiah Daniels, who at times missed his sister as much as his character misses his mom.
If Catlett has to act, which he does beautifully, Daniels had to be in the moment with him at all times. I wouldn't say that that isn't acting, but Fortune directed him in a different way, and let him have moments to himself when he needed them, no matter how much it stressed the rapidly-shrinking budget--in a sense, he guided more than directed the boy.
On the surface, Color Book is built around a simple premise. Anyone could follow the story line, but the complicating factors make it a richer, more resonant experience, and without Fortune's sure hand it could have veered into sentimentality or worse. It's a love letter to Atlanta, to fathers (single or otherwise), to children with (and without) disabilities getting the love and care they need, and for Black people everywhere looking out for each other--in ways the government and white society have frequently failed to do--but it isn't a problem picture any more than Mason is a problem child.
The film doesn't currently have distribution, but I have faith it will find a good home before too long. There are important films–films that can literally change lives–and then there are entertaining or moving films, but these things don't always come together as well as they could. Color Book covers all three bases.
For all the praise due Fortune and his collaborators, including DP Nikolaus Summerer, the film come down to the relationship between actor and director, and not just to actor and actor, and Will Catlett's performance is so lived-in at every turn that I was reminded of the great Black films to which this one bears comparison: Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man with Ivan Dixon and Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep with Henry Gayle Sanders.
Times have changed since the 1960s and 1970s, and Fortune's film is more technically adept--Killer of Sheep started out as a student film, after all--even as he made it on a very modest budget. I mean no disrespect to the fine filmmakers that came before him, but it's a noticeable difference.
What matters most is that he has made a film that's just as powerful.
I rarely describe anything as perfect, especially anything as subjective as film, but Color Book is as close as I can imagine. It works on every level, and it's as uplifting as it is heartbreaking. Only time will tell for sure, but I believe David Fortune has made a classic–and possibly even a masterpiece.
I'll add the trailer as soon as it becomes available. Fortunately, it's easy to catch up with David Fortune's short, which you can find above. I'll also update as more opportunities to see the film arise, especially in Seattle.
Images from The Atlanta Voice (Will Catlett and Jeremiah Daniels / photo credit: Nikolaus Summerer), Netflix (Jarvis W. George and Dylan Fox in Us), Mubi (Lamberto Maggiorani and Enzo Staiola in Bicycle Thieves), the IMDb (Mahershala Ali and Alex Hibbert in Moonlight and Catlett and Daniels), and the Tribeca Film Festival (Lucky in an unguarded moment).
I attended Cucalorus, the adventurous independent film festival in Wilmington, NC, for the first time in 2023, and had a great time, but didn’t make a decision then and there to attend the following year, but when I realized 2024 represented their 30th anniversary, I knew I had to, and so here I am, 2,972.9 miles away from Seattle.
If I appreciate an organization or an event, and they're celebrating a major milestone, I can't resist recognizing or celebrating with them in some way.
To that end, Northwest Film Forum will be celebrating their 30th anniversary in 2025 (I'm on the board). It's hard to keep an arts non-profit going for that long, and this was definitely a rebuilding year for NWFF, so kudos to both organizations for staying hyper-focused and sufficiently passionate about personal projects from a diverse array of voices to withstand the headwinds of the pandemic, the streaming revolution, and other obstacles.
MESSY (Alexi Wasser, USA, 2024, 90 minutes)
The first film I saw was Alexi Wasser's Messy, the opening night selection. Wasser, 43, who worked as an actor in Los Angeles for over 20 years, moved to New York in the wake of the pandemic, got involved with a series of highly problematic men, and made a sex comedy about her experiences. She was on hand to introduce and answer questions about the film.
In her directorial debut, Wasser's Stella ends up working on an essay about her experiences for editor Mario Cantone, so art imitates life twice over.
Considering that she was operating on a tiny budget, Wasser managed to cajole a number of notable comedic actors to appear in the film beyond Cantone--who fully engages with the madcap spirit of the thing--including Thomas Middleditch, Adam Goldberg, and Ione Skye. I would imagine that they all worked for scale, so I appreciate their willingness to lend a hand, and they're all quite game.
Unlike, say, Luca Guadagnino's Challengers, which I just watched the night before, Messy isn't timid about sexuality and nudity (you only see Josh O'Connor's backside in the former). The talk is quite frank, and Wasser is frequently quite nude. The film could've used a little male nudity, though I feel that way about many films; especially sex comedies and erotic thrillers.
I'm not alone. As Zola filmmaker Janicza Bravo explained during a conversation with Wasser for Interview, "I just have a rule that if you're going to show me ladies, I want to see boys... I want nude parity because a man's chest is not a woman's breast, right? So I want nude parity."
Messy is currently seeking distribution, and I'm certain it will find it--an opening night berth at Cucalorus can't hurt. Comedies, independent or otherwise, are a tough sell for me, but this one has a lot of laughs and the audience had a fine time and asked a lot of questions. Some viewers are sure to find the self-absorbed Stella a bit much–she's "messy," after all–but Wasser is a very engaging performer with a facility for rapid-fire dialogue.
Her inspirations were all over the map, and if you like any of these films or TV shows, Messy might be up your alley: Sex and the City, episode 1.3 of Horace and Pete for the Laurie Metcalf monologue, since she begins her film the same way–she apologized for citing a Louis CK production–An Unmarried Woman, Party Girl with Parker Posey, and Richard Brooks' 1977 Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
The latter was definitely a surprise, since it’s a cautionary tale about a woman (Diane Keaton) seeking male companionship in all the wrong places–I read Judith Rossner’s 1975 potboiler in junior high–but like Theresa, Stella does end up sleeping with several of the men she meets in bars, so I get it.
Cucalorus runs from Nov 20-25, 2024; most screenings at Thalian Hall, Thalian Black (on the upper level), and Jengo's Playhouse, with a variety of colorful happenings taking place around downtown Wilmington. As these films start making the rounds and/or hit streaming, I'll update this post.
"The summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old."
--Eve Batiste
Before she made her 1997 directorial debut with Eve's Bayou, Kasi Lemmons had worked as an actor for nearly 30 years. She appeared in national commercials, top-rated television programs, like Murder, She Wrote, and in over a dozen studio pictures, including cult hits, like Vampire's Kiss, Spike Lee joints, like the HBCU musical School Daze, and John Woo action extravaganzas, like Hard Target with Jean-Claude van Damme.
Her talent, charisma, and fresh-faced good looks made her a natural, and she could have continued down that path, but she wanted to direct, and when she was ready, she made the pivot. She's never looked back since–Lemmons even married an actor, Chicago Hope's Vondie Curtis-Hall, who has also directed feature films, like 1997's Gridlock'd with Tupac Shakur.
At her peak as a performer, she appeared in two movies that would become immortal; inspiring sequels, prequels, remakes, hours of impassioned --and sometimes heated--discussion, and in one case, an Academy Award for Best Picture: Jonathan Demme's 1991 psychological horror thriller Silence of the Lambs and Bernard Rose's 1992 supernatural horror chiller Candyman.
Right: Lemmons in Candyman
She's very good in both, but there's a catch. She plays the best friend of leads Jodie Foster and Virginia Madsen--both great--and there's nothing wrong with that; in fact, it was a step in the right direction, though Nia DaCosta's 2021 Candyman sequel took things even further, since it was produced, directed, and populated by Black talent, including the late, great Tony Todd. If the original Candyman started out as white take on a Black legend; now it was an all-Black production.
In each of the original films, though, Lemmons' characters are doomed. They support their friends, but their proximity to the central malevolence extracts a fatal cost, which encourages the protagonists to commit even harder to solving the mysteries driving the narratives and setting things right. Along the way, though, Lemmons' unlucky friends get forgotten.
It wasn't racist per se–if anything, Demme was known for his sensitivity to race–but it was par for the course. Black actors in genre pictures up until fairly recently were always the first to die.
I have no idea if these sorts of roles encouraged Lemmons to tell Black stories, let alone Black stories centered around women, but I can't imagine that they didn't play a part.
Left: Lemmons in Silence of the Lambs;as beautifully shot by Tak Fujimoto
And that's exactly what she did in Eve's Bayou, a supernatural-tinged melodrama, set in 1962, about a successful Louisiana family coming apart at the seams--Lemmons filmed on location and it shows. Unheralded Hustle and Flow cinematographer Amy Vincent brings out the beauty in every unique face and every haunted space, but without overly-prettifying anything. About meeting Vincent for the first time, Lemmons told American Cinematographer's Brooke Comer, "There was a spark right away."
Lemmons presents the story from the perspective of 10-year-old Eve (Jurnee Smollett, most recently of Justin Kurzel's The Order), a spirited girl who loves her beautiful mother, Roz (an elegant Lynn Whitfield), and venerates her handsome father, Louis (an especially excellent Samuel L. Jackson, who also produced), the town doctor. And incorrigible ladies man.
The movie begins with a house party where the alcohol flows freely, the ladies are dressed to the nines, and everyone is feeling fine, but two things happen that will threaten to split this proud Creole family apart: Aunt Mozelle Delacroix (a warm, earthy, radiant Debbi Morgan) will lose her third husband (sax player and composer Branford Marsalis) in an accident and Eve will fall asleep in the garage only to wake up to an alarming sight: her father doing things he shouldn't with town flirt Matty Mereaux (Lisa Nicole Carson), who is married to the hotheaded Lenny (Roger Guenveur Smith).
Right: Jurnee Smollett as Eve
There were already signs of trouble.
At the party, Louis makes a show of sharing a dance with Cisely (a very fine Meagan Good), his eldest daughter. From the look on Eve's face, it's clear that she isn't just disappointed, but that she knows her more conventionally attractive and emotionally compliant sister is daddy's favorite. In fact, everybody does. Like Mozelle and her younger brother, Poe (Jurnee's brother, Jake Smollett), Eve has curly red hair, whereas Roz and Cisely have the straight, shiny hair associated with the moneyed classes.
When Eve tells Cisely what she witnessed, Cisely refuses to believe her, and even tries to convince her that she misinterpreted the situation. While her deceitful father and willfully naïve sister continue to disappoint Eve, leaving her level-headed mother in the middle, she grows closer to Mozelle, who understands her frustration. She's loved and accepted by her family to be sure, but also considered cursed since she can't have children and has lost three husbands in a row–her rival calls her a black widow–and viewed with suspicion by some townsfolk, because she has the gift of second sight.
Lemmons takes Mozelle's visions seriously–depicting them as B&W impressions of things otherwise un-seeable–not least because she's never wrong, even as she laments that she's "blind to my own life." Clients pay their money, describe the mysteries eating away at them, and walk away with answers, some of which were what they were hoping not to hear.
Left: Meagan Good and Smollett at the pivotal party
Mozelle's no fuss, no muss approach to clairvoyance stands in opposition to voodoo practitioner Elzora (a thoroughly deglamorized Diahann Carroll, having the time of her life), an older woman who runs a market stall, lives in a rickety shack by the swamp, and traffics in cat bones and other eccentricities. She and Mozelle view each other with suspicion, but her humor, pragmatism, and unflappability provides another port in the storm of Eve's young life.
All of these conflicts build upon each other until things come to a head and someone else ends up dead. Evie and Cisely learn some hard truths about their family, and even about themselves, and they finally reunite at the end.
At its best, melodrama is about eliciting an emotional response, and not about recreating reality. Even if you don't believe that second sight is real, Mozelle is undeniably perceptive. A self-described psychic counselor, she listens attentively, empathizes with those who seek her counsel, including her wayward brother, and genuinely wants to help. For all her immaturity–she's only 10 years old after all–Eve shares similar traits. As Mozelle tells her confused niece, "All I know is most people's lives are a great disappointment to them and no one leaves this earth without feeling terrible pain. And if there is no divine explanation at the end of it all, well... that's sad."
Right: Samuel L. Jackson in snack mode
Granted, Jurnee Smollett's performance is rough around the edges--though her side-eye was already on point. Meagan Good wasn't much older, but she was already a more polished performer; it doesn't really matter, since Eve isn't a polished kid, though her excitability contrasts with the adult actors, who bring more shading to their performances, even as their characters can be just as immature in ways less forgivable in grown men and women.
Eve's Bayou isn't autobiographical, though Lemmons drew from her own background for some of the details. Eve's powers of observation, her willingness to speak her mind–no matter the cost–and her critical thinking skills are valuable qualities for actors and directors alike, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that she was a lot like Eve in her younger years.
By building on these thoughts and memories of a different time, she crafted a lovely film filled with beautifully-lit, elegantly-dressed people amidst atmospheric locations, and it's a magical one, too, in ways both literal and figurative, since Lemmons takes the supernatural as seriously as she takes the feelings of a child. Like Julie Dash's 1991 Daughters of the Dust, she offers a vision of Black life light years away from the male-directed movies of the time, and their emphasis on guns, drugs, masculine posturing, and decorative women, and that's no knock on John Singleton, but some of the lesser lights that emerged in the wake of 1991's Boyz N the Hood.
Lemmons would go on to tell other Black stories, including 2013 Langston Hughes adaptation Black Nativity, in addition to biopics about notable figures, like radio host Petey Greene (a perfectly-cast Don Cheadle) in 2007's Talk to Me, abolitionist Harriet Tubman in 2019's Oscar-nominated Harriet with Wicked star Cynthia Erivo, and pop phenom Whitney Houston in 2022's I Wanna Dance with Somebody, but Eve's Bayou remains her most celebrated work to date.
In 1997, Roger Ebert named it the best film of the year. In 2018, the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry, ensuring its preservation, and in 2022, The Criterion Collection brought out a 4K restoration--including both theatrical and director's cuts--and yet the film, which made back its cost nearly five times over, received zero Oscar nominations. Go figure.
Though it definitely stands alone, in some ways it serves as an answer or sister film to Charles Burnett's 1990 To Sleep with Anger with a perceptive, take-no-prisoners Mary Alice and a dangerously seductive Danny Glover as a Southern gentleman just as mired in the bad old ways of the past as Samuel L. Jackson's Louis Batiste. They try to fool, manipulate, and control women, but their days are numbered. In Eve's Bayou, the future is truly female.
Since 1998, when she released her directorial debut Milk, a short film, UK filmmaker Andrea Arnold has been exploring the lives of women; usually young, but not always, and often grappling with forces beyond their control.
If they were comfortably middle class, they might go to the police or hire an attorney, but those options aren't easily available to them, and nor have they been brought up to believe that authority figures are their friends.
More often than not, her protagonists have to figure things out on their own. In 2006's Glasgow-set Red Road, for instance, Kate Dickie's CCTV security operator Jackie has her own unique way of dealing with a sexual predator.
Like newcomer Katie Jarvis (below), who went toe-to-toe with Michael Fassbinder in 2006's Fish Tank, newcomer Nykiya Adams holds her own with Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski in Bird, Arnold's fifth narrative feature.
As with Sasha Lane's runaway Star in 2016's American Honey, 12-year-old Bailey is also biracial, though this is never a plot point or complication, just one of a few characteristics that sets her apart from the rest of her community.
Unlike the other women in her orbit, Bailey also avoids girly accouterments in favor of neutral-colored hoodies and track pants, though she does learn to love black eyeliner, which adds goth flare to her practical, utilitarian affect.
In a sign that she sees the world like a filmmaker, Bailey whiles away the time capturing iPhone video of butterflies, crows, seagulls, and horses—any living creature that captures her attention. (Robbie Ryan, Arnold's gifted cinematographer, shot the film, and presumably the video footage, too.)
Bailey is a child of divorce and her tattoo-covered father, Keoghan's boisterous Bug, is more overgrown kid than adult, especially when he zips around the aptly-named Gravesend in Kent on an e-scooter while shouting along to Fontaines D.C.'s "Too Real" (a possible nod to his Irish roots).
She's Black, he's white, and they live in a graffiti-filled squat where his noisy friends come and go.
Her mother, Peyton (Jasmine Jobson), shares a home with Kite (James Nelson-Joyce), an abusive ogre who would frighten Bailey away altogether if she weren't so protective of her younger siblings.
Early in the proceedings, Bug announces he's getting married to Kayleigh (Frankie Box), a single mother with a toddler, and asks Bailey to wear a tacky pink catsuit to the wedding. She's horrified.
Knowing that it will piss off her father, she encourages her stepbrother Hunter's girlfriend, Moon, to take an electric razor to her hair (Jason Buda plays Hunter). She ends up looking a little like punk singer Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex–hardly the worst thing in the world–though no one is too happy about it.
In the days before the wedding–even though Bug has only known Kayleigh for a few months–Bailey does warm up to her a bit, especially when she comes to the girl's rescue with supplies after she gets her first period.
One morning, after falling asleep in a field, Bailey meets Rogowski's Bird, an androgynous foreigner of unknown origin in an embroidered sweater and pleated skirt. She gives him directions, and he goes on his way, but then curiosity gets the best of her, and she follows him to a council estate. It turns out he's looking for long-lost relatives, so she resolves to help him.
Bailey feels a kinship, though he's an odd duck. With no place to stay, he hangs out on the roof of the estate where Bailey can see him through her window. It's where he grew up, even if no one remembers his family.
Though Bird resembles a human being, his predilection for rooftop hangouts and preternatural stillness aligns him with birds, which aligns the film, probably unintentionally, with Alan Parker's Birdy, Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, and possibly even Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud, all films centered on men who think they're birds, wish they were birds, or have an avian alter ego.
To aid in Bird's quest, Bailey brings him to meet Peyton, who grew up in the same housing project and might remember his people. What they find is deeply disquieting–more to the sensitive man than to the unflappable kid.
There's Dave, a little yapping dog in the front yard, three stoners crashed out in front of the TV set, three small children wandering around unsupervised, and Peyton and Skate sleeping the day away upstairs.
When they awaken, Skate yells and yells for a cup of tea–Bailey's sister, Peena, brings him one–before threatening to kill Dave, calling Bird a freak, and telling Bailey her new haircut makes her look ugly. If you've seen Arnold's potent 2001 short Dog (below), this scenario may feel familiar.
A bad time is had by all, though Bailey and her new friend manage to extract some useful information from the groggy, drug-addled Peyton before Skate, who threatens to expose himself, inflicts any more damage. The two visitors won't be so lucky next time around.
Bailey then sets a plan in motion designed to help Bird, her mother, and her siblings--and remove Skate from their lives. The plan includes a trip to the beach with the kids and a visit to a hardened middle-aged man (played by Sleaford Mods' Jason Williamson), who may or may not be related to Bird.
Then, Bailey finds that 14-year-old Moon is pregnant, the same age as Bug and Peyton when they had her. If her father swears he has no regrets, it's clear that her mother does, not least since she abandoned her first child.
Just when it seems as if things can't get much worse, Arnold shifts into magical realist mode. In light of her work to date, it might seem as if it comes from out of nowhere, except she dropped hints along the way, most significantly when a crow does Bailey a crucial favor involving Moon and Hunter who end up in their own real-life Romeo and Juliet scenario when her middle-class parents forbid Moon from seeing her working-class boyfriend.
After establishing a vérité tone, with Robbie Ryan's tactile attention to earth, sea, and sky, the shift to another realm doesn't quite work. From the title of the film to the name of Rogowski's traveler to the numerous shots of seagulls and crows through various viewfinders, it's just too on the nose. To Arnold's credit, it–I won't say what "it" is–is mostly a practical effect with what looks like a CGI flourish at the end.
After that, she returns to reality, except not. There are details that seem real, but based on everything the director has depicted, these things and events probably don't exist and aren't really happening. It's like Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher, which ends with what feels like the culmination of a young man's fantasy. Arnold rights the ship with this move into trickier, more ambiguous, less showy territory.
Though she follows in the footsteps of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh in her empathy for underprivileged Britons, she’s from a different generation and background, and her films often feature the kinds of pop songs her characters would enjoy, and that's more true than ever of Bird, which lends it a buoyancy not always found in the works of her predecessors, though if I wanted to make a direct connection, I would say that Loach's deceptively simple, deeply moving Kes might have served as a possible inspiration.
But back to the soundtrack, which includes an original score from the reclusive William Bevan, aka Burial, alongside tracks from the Verve, Coldplay, and Sleaford Mods.
Bailey jokes that her father is turning into a guy who likes "dad" music, and he doesn't reject the tag--he embraces it.
These aren't people who are trying to be cool; they lean into whatever makes them feel good, for better or for ill–for Peyton, alas, it's drugs, but it's fun to watch Bug shouting along to his favorite songs, touching to see him use others, like Blur's "The Universal," to convey sentiments he can't quite express, and amusing to watch his entire posse go ham on Sleaford Mods' "Jolly Fucker" like a reverse Terrence Davies where unity comes not from the poetic ballads of yore, but profane screeds about "elitist hippies" and "arrogant cunts."
I run hot and cold when it comes to Barry Keoghan, who pushes too hard with some performances–the same ones other critics tend to praise, like his off-kilter outcasts in Yorgos Lanthimos's The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Emerald Fennell's Saltburn, and even Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, but he's in the zone here as an affectionate, immature, get-rich-quick-with-stupid-schemes guy who knows how to have fun, but not how to run a household.
Franz Rogowski, on the other hand, does what he can with a construct that never feels quite real, though that may have been Arnold's intention.
Bird provides the support Bailey needs when she needs it, and almost plays like an older version of herself.
The German actor, a true one-of-a-kind, has done his finest work for Christian Petzold and, especially, Sebastian Meise in gloriously queer 2002 drama The Great Freedom, which is sexier from top to bottom–pun intended–than Ira Sachs' widely praised and comparatively timid Passages.
That leaves Nykiya Adams: the best reason to see the film. Andrea Arnold has a knack for casting and eliciting mesmerizing performances from inexperienced actors, except they're not really inexperienced in terms of the lives they--and their characters--have led. Like Katie Jarvis and Sasha Gray before her, Adams breathes life into a young woman to whom she could probably relate, guided by a director who knows how to showcase her gifts and ensure that she's never overpowered by her more recognizable costars.
Adams never pushes too hard; she just becomes Bailey, lives her life, tries to lift her loved ones up in the process, and quietly breaks your heart.
MUBI releases Bird exclusively in New York theaters on Nov 8 and nationwide on Nov 15. Seattle preview screening on Nov 14 at Regal Thornton Place. Bird video and stills courtesy of MUBI. All others: The Guardian (Nykiya Adams and Barry Keoghan / Holly Horner/PR), Aemi (Dog), and Le Rayon Vert Cinéma (David Bradley with his kestrel in Kes).
Coverage of the Seattle International Film Festival and year-round art house programming in the Pacific Northwest.
Kathy Fennessy is President of the Seattle Film Critics Society, a Northwest Film Forum board member, and a Tomatometer-approved critic. She writes or has written for Amazon, Minneapolis's City Pages, Resonance, Rock and Roll Globe, Seattle Sound, and The Stranger.
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