Like anyone or anything just beginning to recover from the metaphoric or literal ravages of a global pandemic, the 2022 iteration of the Seattle International Film Festival, felt like it was in the midst of adjusting to a new normal. The SIFF 2022 theatrical screenings, understandably, weren’t as full as in previous years (a blessing for COVID-phobic moviegoers, probably not so much so for SIFF). But it wasn’t for want of some phenomenal content.
Maybe it was the condensed nature of the festival (which began April 14 and concluded with the Closing Night Gala last Sunday, April 24). Maybe good fortune smiled on my picks. Or maybe it just reflected the savvy and sharp curation by SIFF’s programmers. Whatever the reason, nearly everything I saw turned out to be good to stellar.
Below please find some capsule reviews from my corner of SIFF 2022.
The Olive Trees of Justice (1962 | France | 81 minutes | James Blue)
Portland expat James Blue’s sole narrative feature film details a young man’s visit to his dying vintner father amidst the latter portion of the Algerian War. Blue racked up most of his film experience making documentaries, and he literally shot the movie on the sly while the war raged, sidestepping peril by claiming to be filming a documentary about Algerian vineyards and wines. And if the movie’s quiet, subtly moving central storyline doesn’t exactly offer anything revelatory, Blue’s unique blend of vérité immediacy, lyrical beauty, and emotional honesty does. Films like this tend to blossom with repeat viewings, so the fact I’m really aching to see this again, soon, says a lot.
Piggy (2022 | Spain | 90 minutes | Carlota Perdita)
More and more, modern genre cinema’s demonstrated how much depth and craft can be extracted from a high-concept premise. So it goes with Carlota Perdita’s excellent thriller about Sara, a bullied, overweight rural teenager who sees her incalculably cruel mean-girl tormentors abducted by a quiet, menacing possible serial killer. If it sounds like one note tediously struck, rest assured it ain’t. Laura Galán won my personal Golden SunBreak Best Actress Award for lending welcome complexity to the lead: Sara’s deeply sympathetic, but with a streak of menace threading through her demeanor—a duality that lends an exhilarating sense of unpredictability to whether or not she’s going to do what polite society deems is the right thing. Perdita navigates that moral shell game—and the tension—with perfect pitch and the visceral punch of a genre master in the making.
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