Time rewinds as nature, in the shape of a quince reversing from rot to ripe, is the only reliable witness. Diários de Otsoga—that I only realise on writing, and not without disappointment, be the word agosto spelled backward, not the name of an exotic Portuguese location—transcends both the concept of metacinema and lockdown project. The latter, incidentally, a cinematic aberration. The fictional forming and shifting relationships among the three young protagonists, the surreal limitations and uncertainties of the epidemic, and life on set with its petty crimes such as stealing a pair of socks or a bottle of milk from the fridge, organically blend into an all but surprising solid body. Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes challenge the fears of an unprecedented time, dextrously walking the line between sheer randomness and fine dramatic improvisation to convey a poetic mix of melancholy, innocence, and joy. Interviewed at the TIFF, Gomes is brutal but right in saying that most of the films that tried to be creative within the covid constraints are not, and are boring. Shot on film, shot by people, not solo with depressive means like a mobile or a webcam, Diários de Otsoga is quite the opposite. However they did it, the result is electrifying.

If he always keeps you dreamin’
You won’t have a lonely hour.
If a day could last forever,
You might like your ivory tower.

It is a dream not all directors can afford to make their own 8½. Even though I wouldn’t say that Iñárritu fully succeeded—nor that his has really much to do with Fellini apart from the common introspective intentions—Bardo is a rather admirable attempt at exploring one own roots and frailties using cinema in its purest form. ‘I put everything that I have into Bardo,’ he revealed at the London Film Festival. ‘I have nothing more to give at this moment. I gave everything, in terms of heart, in terms of soul, in terms of attention. I didn’t want to make Bardo, I needed to make it.’ And it definitely shows. Walking on a squiggly line between reality and metaphor, present and memories, personal and national nightmares—but also brilliance and self-indulgence—Iñárritu finds in the anguished Silverio Gama the fulcrum of a fascinating, if perhaps too ambitious, embroidery of themes. An intimate journey into paternity, grief, and fame, is intersected by a tormented reflection on Mexican history, spirituality, and identity. Either way, chasing truths that are nothing but emotional. It is hard not to picture the bearded Silverio pointing a finger at Iñárritu himself, and Bardo, his first Mexican film since Amores perros, as a way to reconnect to his home country, give it voice and justice, maybe ask forgiveness for having long neglected it.
Many scenes made my jaw drop, others touched me deeply, some didn’t quite convince me. One in particular—a preposterous conversation with Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés on a pile of slaughtered bodies and a gloomy artificial sky—felt overly mannered, both in narrative and symbolic intentions. The same comment I am tempted to extend to the categorical use of wide lenses. I actually wonder if the film was shot like Birdman on a single lens, and whether this extreme choice is maybe too apparent to serve the narrative without stealing, so to speak, the show.
Altogether, I have a feeling that Iñárritu’s cinema is starting to be too visually refined, contrived, post-produced—perhaps expensive—and that this overly manipulative work on the image is only coating the creative intuitions with unnecessary cosmetics. Insofar as I’d rather watch a film that takes the risk to be called pretentious than one that doesn’t even try to take me elsewhere, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy or appreciate it. Bardo does have a great soul and each of its photograms screams to let it through, but really, I am still in love with the brutal aesthetics of Amores perros and the nerve of the early Iñárritu.
On a due wiki note, bardo, in Buddhism, is the liminal state of existence between death and rebirth. Makes more sense than it seems.

On the captain’s desk, a book that could lend its title to the film—Noam Chomsky’s How the World Works. From a near documentary first part to a clumsy Lord of the Flies, The Triangle of Sadness doesn’t add much to the trite derision of the obliviously rich, nor uses a desert island in any particularly original way. A setup, Ruben Östlund himself points out, that has been often used in literature and cinema for how it effectively reduces human interactions to a primal level, shifting the received weight of currencies, and annihilating hierarchies. But the premises are only as good as the first twenty minutes of the film. A silly interview at a casting session in a fashion photography studio, a gender squabble over a restaurant bill payment—Östlund immediately confirms to have a knack for contriving a narrative through a series of cringingly awkward moments. Like in Force Majeure and The Square, it isn’t much the social criticism that drives the story as the behaviour of people outside of their comfort zone. Except this time, his sadistic scalpel doesn’t dare as deep, or shine as much. Frustratingly, the promising vibe set by the first half soon fades away. Things start to wobble during the grotesque captain’s dinner scene and go souther once on the shore—the few brilliant passages being watered down by unremarkable jokes.
Of a similar fate seem to suffer the aesthetics. However reminiscent of The Square, there is something attractive to the stylised rarefaction of the opening. Cruise onwards, the image gets impersonally glossy and garish, the colours abusively graded. If this is supposed to be an allusion to the unreal world most of the characters are coming from or mockingly evoke cheap television shows of the likes of I’m a Celebrity, I guess I don’t find it rooted enough to buy it. Unless, I wonder retrospectively, the satire is meant to aim elsewhere, perhaps at those who are relentlessly being indoctrinated to see that world through such filters so we can desire it—us.
Although Des’ree Life brought me back to my university years giving me the exact same experience Anton Ego has when he tastes little Remy’s ratatouille, the soundtrack picks are terrible and occasionally misplaced—like the one that takes the beautiful ending scene into the credits as if to make sure, needlessly, it looks like one.

Bones and All—and grief and solitude. Behind a rugged surface and the metallic stench of blood, lies a complexity of themes so profound and layered as to give the film an almost metaphorical weight. After the screening I heard many sharing the unease of having found the story so vividly resonating despite its inhumanity. It is a very interesting point, although I am not quite sure I felt the same. I wouldn’t know how empathy could ever be disturbing. Its ravenous characters are forced into an even more excruciating kind of isolation by the unspeakable nature of their diversity but, in essence, they are just lonely souls desperate for someone to share the pain and help understand their mystery. Who, really, wouldn’t fit in this description, especially coming from a culture that is drenched with equally disquieting if less literal forms of cannibalism?
Responsible for portraying the American middle-earth in such a magnificent way is Arseni Khachaturan, a relatively emerging cinematographer that Luca Guadagnino had noticed at San Sebastian for his work on Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning. Some of the supporting performances are no less than exhilarating too. I am thinking of the lady at the bus station counter played by Marcia Dangerfield and the creepy-friendly-greasy eater that Maren and Lee camp out with for an awkward night—a hardly recognisable Michael Stuhlbarg.
Some fancy costume choices would have to be considered slightly self-indulgent but who cares, they are great—and for one thing, they heavily contribute rooting the stunning aesthetics of the film. André Holland’s stylish Barbour-like coat on a pair of large denim trousers and beautiful Timberland work boots are a good example. Timothée Chalamet’s country-psychedelic shirts collection, coming from nowhere to somehow over-characterise his brilliant Lee, is of course another. Mark Rylance’s spectacular attire feels ironically quite natural, given the eccentric personality of the character.
As a minor detail, all the same intriguing, to me at least, the film is populated by many books. I could glimpse Joyce’s Dubliners on Maren’s dad’s table, The Lord of the Rings in her hands once or twice. I got to ask Luca Guadagnino about the hidden language behind it. ‘She reads Tolkien. She is like a hobbit on a journey through a fantastic land.’ Fair enough.
So what to say—yes, some left during the screening, but many, like me, gave a heartfelt applause as the end credits started to roll and Luca Guadagnino, in an all-black outfit and Prada high-top sneakers, limping from a sprained ankle, cautiously climbed on the stage to take the deserved praises, and all.

Decision to Leave proves anyone who’s ever thought that I am a bright guy wrong. A tough blow for my parents. From vertiginous heights to fairytale snowy woods—a leap reminiscent of Oldboy—Park Chan-wook throws us into an unstoppable torrent of convolutedly connected events that less daringly treated could have fed a five-season TV series easy. And yet, whereas its remarkable intricacy got me at times frustrated, it didn’t bar the joy of being enthralled, intrigued, and touched. In this exact order.
Under the toxically dense fog that envelops both visually and metaphorically the film, lies a near-Shakespearean love story tormented by a kaleidoscope of practical obstacles and ill-fated coincidences. As many have promptly noticed, the enigmatic Seo-rae takes Park Chan-wook closer than he’s ever been to Vertigo. The very idea of a man falling from a peak might even be an unwitting homage to the title he often mentioned as an early inspiration to his career as a filmmaker. As to how he seems to insistingly disorient his oblivious audience, slowly pulling focus from the narrative to the real essence of the film, I couldn’t help finding an analogy with Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. Now, however arbitrary and boring they might be, and indeed are, the bare fact that I was tricked into drawing parallels shows that there’s a certain manneristic eclecticism to the film that is perhaps not developed enough to disappear in the narrative. On a similar note, the director himself points out in a recorded introduction that was shown before the screening how Decision to Leave has dramatic, romantic, humorous, and sad moments. As much as contemporary Korean cinema often excels at crossing styles and genres while seamlessly flowing through opposite moods, I wonder if a film really needs to always strive for the full lot. Irony is one vital thing, but maybe for once I could have lived without the silly comedy beats.
Cutting like a blade in the flash, the finale on the shore is not quite a novel idea but it’s nonetheless harrowing and quintessentially Park Chan-wook. Though what seems to have stayed with me more vividly is the scene by the pool—don’t know why, yet—and a line later in the film, another jigsaw. ‘The moment you said you loved me, your love is over. The moment your love ends, my love begins.’

While the economic boom of North Italy’s Sixties is turning most people’s stares up at the brutalist marvels of wealth and progress, a team of young speleologists goes the opposite way—south and down, chasing the mystery of an unknown abyss. While their descent slowly progresses, an old shepherd squeezes a few drops of water from a wet cloth into the mouth of a dying man. As his last breath is taken, the explorers reach the bottom of the hole. A puddle of water, and a beautiful gesture made in silence, as if the place demanded a certain religious respect—that’s the end of it.
Michelangelo Frammartino’s cinema is one of echoes and poetic connections. His sensitivity reminds me of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The clarity of his camera language is staggering as the beauty he frames—nothing, so he says, compared to that of the actual location. Discreet, perhaps neglected, like the world he portrays is one the brightest directors of our time.

Not even once I blinked,
I couldn’t miss a single frame.

I let my breathing join the sounds
of men and beasts, the noise of stones
as they get swallowed by the earth,
the electric stillness of a time
remote in summer.

My heartbeat echo
the eternal pulse of life and death,
and nature.

Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie is addictive for more than one reason, among which strikes me how subtly the entire cast embraces its peculiar sense of humour elevating the page towards unscriptable dramatic heights.
Often said throughout the film, ‘avec plaisir’ isn’t just a polite expression of delight but also an exquisite moment of unwitting irony—pleasure being, strive as it might, the one thing Buñuel’s jolly middle-class brigade constantly fails to achieve. Relentless dinner parties are interrupted by a cascade of increasingly preposterous impediments. A café in central Paris unlikely runs out of tea, coffee, and milk—but they do have water. An extramarital love affair is not consumed as the passion is chilled by the inconvenient arrival of a friend, and husband. And yet they go, tenaciously, whether running away from dubious ancestral fears or made invulnerable by their charming form or bravery. They move from house to house beautifully dressed in compact formation—unquiet, almost comical, the clicking of their heels. Lacking an author and a direction, they only know the few lines of a part they play indefinitely, which includes petty notions such as how to mix a martini, carve a turkey, or test the purity of cocaine. Like in the iconic recurring scene that sees them walk in the heat of a sunny day on a deserted countryside road, they come from nowhere, and to nowhere they march—alone.

“Cinema is an instrument of poetry, with all that that word can imply of the sense of liberation, of subversion of reality, of the threshold of the marvellous world of the subconscious, of nonconformity with the limited society that surrounds us.”
—Luis Buñuel

So for now you just call me something personal like, Jesus Christ.
I’m not Christian, I’m sorry your children died.

The screenplay for C’mon C’mon is a pretty exciting read—the draft I have, not quite the final, but close enough. The dialogues sport the witty sharpness that only comes from the pen of a writer. Some will be nuanced by a more real if less eloquent tension, once shot. The situations are perfectly relatable, often touching—the electric feel that art gives when it seems to have reached inner places we only thought we knew. Moving from the specific to the chorus and back is strangely visual on the page, where questions are posed to diverse children letting the word improv be a clue to the world their unscripted answers will unfold. One in particular scared me, took me by surprise, made me reflect on how the world will look like after I am gone—different.
Mike Mills explores hidden ties between listening, remembering, future, and control, giving us something sensory to cling to—a sound recording gear, mobile phones, classical music. Ten-year-old Woody Norman is brilliant, in fact, inspiring. His natural performance sets the bar and the style, the other actors seemingly trying to catch up and do their best to play along. The low-contrast, bright b/w feels like a great choice to bring different cities, people, and experiences under the same silvery sky. Some aerial views of LA and street photographs of NYC are particularly stunning. I would so love to visit New Orleans!
And yet I wonder if said all this is still OK to not have loved C’mon C’mon so madly—perhaps a film that relying too much on what really is a non-exceptional extraordinariness, shows how taking life to the screen straight, even with the support of unquestionable talent, is not enough to get an exceptional film.

‘They had to evacuate the grade school on Tuesday. Kids were getting headaches and eye irritations, tasting metal in their mouths. A teacher rolled on the floor and spoke foreign languages. No one knew what was wrong.’ ¹

At the end of a screening at the Soho Hotel—the beautiful scarlet seats in a room designed, perhaps carved, as a contemporary Greek theatre in a London basement—two art deco armchairs are brought on stage, the narrow space between the screen and the front row that is. Moments later, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach are sitting there, wearing right the stylish clothes one would expect, promptly delving into an amicable conversation and an insightful reflection on the act of making.
What did you mean to say, is the daunting question any artist will eventually be asked. Very candidly, they seem to share the feeling to have never written a script knowing exactly what it was about. It’s normally something you discover after two or three Q&As, they convene. Mike Nichols—further elaborating, now seriously—always had that clarity in mind. But to them, shaping ideas through words on paper is a different kind of journey that, even when adapting from a book, is still driven by raw intuitions. While their tone is full of genuine admiration for the mastery of their late common friend, I cross my legs the other way and reflect on whether that lack of conscious intent is actually the only key to retelling DeLillo’s layered maximalist novel without being constrained by the search for its meaning or the lucidity to articulate it. In this respect, Baumbach succeeds in finding his way through an exhilarating maze of ideas that could have been translated in countless different films—or no one at all—and a place that is loose enough from its source material to make any attempt at comparing the two an utter nonsense.
The first part of White Noise—from the sheer writing bravura of its introductory dissertation on the value of car crashes in American films onwards—is perky and hypnotically strange. Its distinct Eighties–Spielberg flavour, along with the garish colour of the vegetables on the table at home, in the canteen of a college, on the shelves of a dehumanised—or dehumanising—supermarket, even allows a slightly perverse nostalgic feeling, If not for the time, for its cinema. From there, things dip into darker psychotic matters, only to let us realise how these have been looming all over since the very first frame. The finale gets suddenly a little wacky, in an unexpected vintage cult fashion. But maybe it’s good, I am still considering. Maybe my bewilderment should find peace in what Noah Baumbach said towards the end of the evening about the inexplicable joy of things that happen in a story ‘just like that,’ without trying to be univocally intelligible or display an obvious narrative logic.
One last note. I always thought that films that end in a big dance choreography should be made illegal. I haven’t changed my mind, and yet I’ll admit that focusing on one single character at a time during the tragic coda not only made me laugh, but also think—all those people, like tiny coloured plastic figures in some scale model—what a fitting image to represent our manic new world. And come full circle.

1. An excerpt from Don DeLillo’s White Noise that I find spookily meaningful—no one knew what was wrong.