Dispatches from the 2023 Virginia Film Festival: Day 1
Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the 2023 Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, Virginia as a member of the press. It’s the second time I’ve been invited to cover a film festival—I was unable to attend this year’s Chicago International Film Festival, but hope to be invited again next year. I also watched a virtual screening of All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
The festival began on Wednesday, October 25th and went through Sunday, the 29th. Because Film’s Cool and my freelance writing are more of a side project to my full-time job as a communications professional, I was only able to attend the last two days. Bradley Cooper’s sophomore effort Maestro, first-time director Cord Jefferson’s debut American Fiction, and U.S. premier of Oscar-nominated director Ava DeVernay’s Origin headlined the festival’s first 3 days—all movies I’m excited to see and review before the year ends.
Halloween weekend was the perfect time to hold an event like this. In addition to the eager festival goers buzzing with excitement from entering or exiting theaters, families gathered around Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall for early evening trick-or-treating. There were also plenty of UVA Football fans packing the mall’s bars to cheer on the Cavs as they took on the University of Miami and students going to and from day parties. It was my first time in Charlottesville as an adult so I’m not sure how the town is at other parts of the year, but fall there was gorgeous.
I also want to point out how different festival audiences are from the average filmgoing crowd. It was a breath of fresh air. Unless it’s a press screening, movies like these rarely play to larger audiences that opt instead to see blockbuster films at their local megaplexes. The smaller budget indie films I attend rarely if ever get more than 10 people for a showing on a given night. Between UVA students, locals, and movie lovers, each screening I attended was either sold out or close to it. And they were as engaged if not more than I was.
In total, I saw 6 movies: Perfect Days, From You, Fallen Leaves, and The Holdovers on Saturday, and Monster and May December on Sunday. I will break my reviews into two parts to keep the length of the posts at short as possible, starting with Saturday.
#32: Perfect Days (Neon) directed by Wim Wenders - N/A
I underestimated the time I needed to get up and out of the house to make the 2.5 hour trek from D.C. to Charlottesville so I got to Culbreth Theatre, one of UVA’s performing arts theaters, 45 minutes into the showing. But it didn’t take long for Perfect Days, a Japanese film from German director Wim Wenders, to capture my full attention.
The movie follows Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho, Memoirs of a Geisha), a public-use toilet cleaner who spends his days following an easygoing, patterned structure. He does his job, he goes to the sento (bath house), he visits his favorite restaurant, and gets the film photography he takes developed. On the surface, Hirayama seems to be enjoying his peaceful and lonesome existence. The truth, however, is a bit more complex.
Hirayama yearns deeply for connection in every aspect of his life: while on the job, he strikes up a game of tic-tac-toe with a stranger who shares his need for attachment and finds comfort in the cat-and-mouse game of annoyance with his coworker; he is envious of the friendship of the two older men he frequently sees at the sento; he crushes on the hostess of the restaurant and strikes up a brief friendship with her ex-husband; and finally, a surprise visit from his estranged niece completely upends the facade of his idyllic existence. Her presence reveals much of why Hirayama lives the way he does.
Perfect Days is a quiet and reflective movie, a trait that I love about many of the Japanese films I’ve seen in recent years like Drive My Car, one of my favorite films in 2021, and Shoplifters, which I reviewed earlier this year in the Film’s Cool Firsts series. Because he spends so much time alone, the brunt of Yakusho’s acting comes through his facial expressions—you can tell when he’s happy and when he’s longing for something more.
Contemporary conversations around male loneliness center the experience of American men, often those whose issues are largely of their own making. Wenders’ film captures the pure essence of the male loneliness dilemma from the perspective of the “Far East,” and does so in a way that resonates with me. Life moves by in the blink of an eye. Self-isolation in response to grief is an understandable reaction to trauma, but it can never remedy the root cause. Hirayama’s experience highlights this in an unbelievably moving way.
The Nina Simone “Feeling Good” needle drop to end the film nearly broke me.
Perfect Days is now playing in select theaters and will be released widely in 2024.
#33: From You directed by Shin Dongmin - ★★½
My second screening of the day and festival, From You, was back in the main hub in the Downtown Mall area. I took an electric bike that took me past the fraternity and sorority houses filled with students in Halloween costumes pregaming the school’s football game.
The film was part of the festival’s Korean Cinema spotlight series and was introduced by Hyeyon Moon, a UVA film professor. Moon pointed out that Dongmin’s movie is part-drama, part-animation, and part-documentary split into 3 chapters that share somewhat of a connection.
From You is a movie unlike any I’ve ever seen before. The first chapter follows Minju, a fashion design major preparing for her graduation exhibition. The second follows Seungju, an aspiring actress preparing for an audition. And the final chapter brings us alongside Hyejung and Dongmin as they visit their hometown rural village. The entire film was in black and white and took on a slow and contemplative pace, centered around conversations.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis who popularized the Oedipus complex, would be proud of the films Dongmin makes. Both so far have dealt heavily with the psychological pressures exerted on himself by his mother, to be successful and also deeper down, to replace the absence of his father and her husband. The incestuous desire bled throughout the final chapter of the film, which informed the second.
While I could not fully connect with the movie as a whole, parts of each three chapters had their bright spots. The connection between the three was also not as clear to me until now writing the review. From You is imperfect but shows a filmmaker who is willing to dig deep into the ugliest parts of the human psyche, even at his own expense.
#34: Fallen Leaves (B-Plan Distribution/Pandora Film) directed by Aki Kaurismäki - ★★½
By the time my third screening started back at the Culbreth Theatre, I was two coffees, one Red Bull, a delicious meal from Citizen Burger Bar, assorted candy, and approximately 9 hours into my day. I tried my best to remain as alert as possible but I struggled.
Fallen Leaves, from beloved Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, follows Ansa (Alma Pöysti), and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen)—two lonely, working class strangers trying to find meaning and happiness in what has been a miserable existence. We first find Ansa getting fired from her job at a grocery store for taking home the food that was slated to be tossed out. Simultaneously, Holappa has his own occupational troubles, often drinking on the job. They meet one night at a karaoke bar and despite their sorrows and deep sadness, attempt to strike up a lasting romantic connection.
I was unfamiliar with Kaurismäki’s work, so I did not know what to expect. The film has a dry-witted humor that was difficult to relate with. I did not find Vatanen’s portrayal of an alcoholic to be compelling at all. Pöysti, on the other hand, delivers in every scene she appears in. I almost wish the film was singularly focused Ansa with Holappa as just a part of her story.
Admittedly, I was alone in feeling this way in the screening. The great crowd the folks at the Virginia Film Festival cultivated thoroughly enjoyed Fallen Leaves, which makes me want to give it another chance. I think pairing it with another Kaurismäki film would only help me get a better grasp of what he’s trying to accomplish. But even with my skepticism of the movie’s quality, I can say it was refreshing to see a film about the working class experience that did not feel like it was a version of Hollywood trying to make beautiful people ugly.
Fallen Leaves is out in select theaters next weekend.
#35: The Holdovers (Focus Features) directed by Alexander Payne ★★★½
After Fallen Leaves I had a good amount of time to spare in between it and my final screening of the day so I took a leisurely walk through the UVA campus. The Rotunda, the centerpiece of campus designed in the 19th century by Thomas Jefferson, had Halloween-inspired graphics being projected on it. I also walked through more frat houses as students prepared for the Halloween party festivities the night was sure to bring. Then I made my way back to the Downtown Mall area to head to The Paramount Theater, the marquee festival screening location.
Prior to the start of the movie, the winners of the Virginia Film Office’s Screenwriting Competition were announced, placing the winners into the pantheon of awardees alongside the likes of Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul).
The final movie of the night, The Holdovers, is the 8th feature film from heralded American filmmaker Alexander Payne; he’s known for Election, Sideways, The Descendants, and Nebraska. His latest film, reuniting with Paul Giamatti (Billions) for the first time in 19 years, follows the trio of Giamatti as Paul Hunham, Dominic Sessa as Angus Tully, and Da'Vine Joy Randolph (Only Murders in the Building) as Mary Lamb who are being punished by the universe via a winter break stay on the campus of a boarding school. The film, set in the 1970s, captures the essence of the world of Northeast preparatory schools.
Hunham is a curmudgeon, the anti-John Keating from Dead Poets Society, dealing with loneliness in a similar way to Hirayama—sticking to the familiar. Tully is a know-it-all pissing off his less intelligent classmates and being abandoned by his mother as she navigates her new marriage. And last but not least, Lamb is a Vilomah (a mother who lost their child) attempting to cope with the deep grief. Initially a doomed partnership, the three become somewhat of a family in the absence of what they each lack in that department for different reasons.
I’m a big fan of Payne’s work; the four films I listed above I consider to be nearly perfect. This one I enjoyed but I felt was ultimately predictable. From the beginning it was clear that the three lead acts would eventually come together and at least one, if not all, would no longer be at the school when the new semester started.
The brightest spot in the film was Randolph’s performance. She clearly has the comedic chops to keep up with Giamatti and Payne’s script, but what I did not expect was the dramatic depth she provided the film. There’s a scene in the middle of the movie where after a couple drinks at a Christmas party, she breaks her silent solace into a more visceral sadness that was powerful. The movie’s real blind spot was the lack of depth in her experience as a Black woman at the almost exclusively white environment of the boarding school and in the Black enclave of Roxbury. In the final act of the movie, she essentially disappears, focusing instead on the foibles of Hunhum and Tully. It was clear to me she was the heart of the movie, it was not as clear to Payne.
Even still, I thought The Holdovers was a funny comedy and solid film. The protagonists did not change much, there was no grand lesson. It’s just a movie about people figuring out how to live and deal with the hands of life they were dealt.
The Holdovers is out in theaters everywhere now.
Part two will be coming out Monday!