White Nights of Film

 

While the Fantasy Filmfest White Nights are still on at this very moment I am writing this blog post, and I would actually really like to be there and watch the last two films in the program, I feel like with three movies in two days I am all set and done with the White Nights for this year, but up and ready for the upcoming film festivals.

Yesterday we went to see Les Chambres Rouges (Red Rooms) which was the last showing late at night. In the lobby we met Eli from the Final Girls Berlin who was distributing the cute flyers for their festival which will take place in two weeks, and as much as I like the Fantasy Filmfest, that is the real place I want to be. So it was good to see her being a busy bee and preparing for it.

As it is a tradition for the Fantasy Filmfest directors to give a little speech about their respective works before the showing, the director of Les Chambres Rouges, Pascal Plante, explained a little bit his intentions and the circumstances under which the idea of the movie was conceived. The Canadian production (I previously wrongly assumed it's a French movie, though it is French-Canadian still) revolves around the court case of the murderer Chevalier who is accused of kidnapping and brutally killing three teenage girls, raping and mutilating their bodies all the while filming his deeds into snuff movies which were then sold in the dark web. These movies will later be played in the court room as evidence and cause many people to faint and be carried out of the room by paramedics. Our main girl is Kelly Ann (Juliette Gariépy), who is a hacker, a model, a professional poker player and a fan of the macabre attending the court sessions out of curiosity. Clémentine (Laurie Babin) is another young woman who attends the sessions, but her motivations couldn't be any more different. As a highly emotional person she relates to an idealized image of Chevalier which has nothing to do with reality and firmly claims his innocence (the murderer on the videos wears a mask so there's a very little possibility Chevalier is not the killer). The two young women become friends of sorts and start watching the case together, even though their different natures will cause them to go different ways during the course of the court, and in the case of Kelly Ann, even utterly dangerous ways.

Before I will go into what this movie did to me on a mental level, I want to praise the acting in general, as the two lead actresses mastered their debut roles wonderfully. Maxwell McCabe-Lokos perfectly conveyed a multitude of emotions and impressions for a guy who, throughout the whole movie, sat unmoving in a glass chamber. I loved the pictures too, it was a beautiful movie.

This was an interesting one as prior to the picture the director stated that the inspiration of this movie are the people who consume violent fiction, like horror and true crime, and by that, he means us. Kelly Ann stands directly for the fascination with the macabre, the curiosity about evil, and even though she does nothing but "watch" in the truest sense of the word throughout the whole movie, the object of her fascination has rubbed off on her as she has serious potential to morbidity and weirdness, which the course of events will push her into.

I have stopped trying to justify to people why I read and watch what I read and watch, which I see on a purely conceptual level, even though I can't deny that despite its conceptuality I get a certain thrill out of darker sides of things. I watched this movie with my sister who, as a mother to my niece who is a teenager herself, certainly watched the movie differently than I did, more emotionally involved.

In Les Chambres Rouges, Kelly Ann faces hostility and even discrimination for her interests, people blame her for being interested in contemplating a killer out of sheer curiosity while Clémentine is seen as someone confused, someone to feel sorry for. Today I have been discussing with a friend about the probability or improbability thereof, as she argued that our society does not condemn consumers of for instance true crime like that at all. I can't really say, but I understood Kelly Ann on some level. That she redeems herself at the end of the movie also demonstrates that only because we consume horror does not mean that real horrors leave us cold. I would even claim the contrary.

This is an outcome which moved me at this juncture because I have been recently attacked at an Ubahn station by a drunken jerk after one of my midnight movie outings in the past weeks. I have been able to save myself from the situation and run away very quickly, so I guess I am a fine final girl, but it left me in a sort of hesitance and even fear to be outside late at night. I know I shouldn't, and I know I will pull myself together and get a grip eventually, but it does affect you, even though I still am and will be watching horror. I may take some measures for self-defense, that's it. What I'm trying to say is that if you have this interest, it doesn't necessarily give evidence of your character or make you emotionally cold or unemphatic. I guess the director wanted to give us a push to meditate about these subjects and it worked for me.

My second movie was Quentin Dupieux' Daaaaaali! which was delightfully surreal in presenting a fictional interview with the surrealist painter, or many attempts at an interview which irrationally lead to the making of a movie directed by the maestro himself. Irrational, surreal, hilarious are all buzzwords that describe this film well. I sincerely hope that it will be shown in regular cinemas because it has to be seen by as many people as possible. I probably laughed enough for the next whole week, and it was a laugh that I didn't know I needed so desperately. Merci Monsieur Dupieux.

And finally Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever, a Danish horror flick by Ole Bornedal who was even present in person, but didn't make much sense in his interview on stage. I would place Nightwatch into the thriller genre, and although formulaic and unoriginal in its plot, it was still a good enough film which doesn't really touch on a substantial level, but offers beautiful pictures and atmosphere. I just don't understand a director who comes to promote his horror film and the first thing he says is he doesn't enjoy horror films and trashes horror movies in his speech... He then went on to explain that he has been wrongly accused of nepotism for casting his own daughter in his movie and that he took his time for the making of this sequel (the original Nightwatch has been released thirty years ago) because of the importance of developing characters. Anyway.

I kind of lament the missed opportunity to watch When Evil Lurks, an Argentinian horror film directed by Demián Rugna, but hopefully I'll find another opportunity.

Have a great week!