Several days late but not several dollars short, please see below for a machine-gun rundown of everything else I saw at SIFF 2022.
Inu-Oh (2021 | Japan | 97 minutes | Masaaki Yuasa)
For its first 20 minutes or so, highly-regarded director Masaaki Yuasa’s latest anime feels destined to be a masterpiece. It affectingly follows the title character, a masked outcast who blossoms as a dancer in collaboration with a blind Biwa player, against the backdrop of 14th century Japan. Then Yuasa decides to turbocharge this faultlessly-pitched folktale with a rock and roll attitude.
There’s merit, and a welcome attempt at shaking up the traditionalism of Japanese Nogaku dance theater, at play here. But that gear-shift blunts the characterizations, the intricately-crafted imagery gives way to numbingly repetitive rock visuals, and the glossy but unmemorable pop songs occupying most of those interludes do diddly to convey a real sense of rebelliousness. Simultaneously an awe-inspiring work of art, and an irritating near-miss, in equal measure.
I’ll Show You Mine (2022 | USA | 102 minutes | Megan Griffiths)
There are myriad reasons for Megan Griffiths being one of this region’s most respected filmmakers, but her unerring eye for characterization and human interaction stands at the top of the list. That gift emerges time and again in Griffiths’ newest, a two-person drama in which author Priya (Poorna Jagannathan) interviews pansexual ex-model Nick (Casey Thomas Brown) for a forthcoming book. You know a director’s doing something right—and in Griffiths’ case, playing to their greatest strengths—when they craft a legitimately absorbing, layered, funny, and fiercely honest piece of work out of two people talking to one another, mostly in the same damn room, for almost two hours. It helps that she’s hit pay dirt in a big way with her leads, both of whom do first-rate work. Don’t miss Chris’s interview with Griffiths for more insights.
Juju Stories (2021 | Nigeria | 84 minutes | Abba T. Makama, CJ ‘Fiery’ Obasi, Michael Omonua)
This scrappy Nigerian anthology of folktale-based fantasy vignettes shows its seams in a big way, both in its budgetary limitations and in the uneven acting. But the entire film’s peopled with striking, beautiful faces, and it retains the distinctive flavor of its homeland. There’s also a real sense of the traditional being reworked in an exhilarating fashion that fairly leaps from the screen.
Dual (2022 | USA | 95 minutes | Riley Stearns)
Riley Stearns takes on a shopworn sci-fi conceit (the consequences of cloning technology), and infuses it with deadpan Kurt Vonnegut-level wit, a surprising level of suspense, and choice performances by Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul.
Flux Gourmet (2022 | United Kingdom | 111 minutes | Peter Strickland)
Peter Strickland hasn’t just made his best movie in Flux Gourmet. In one fell swoop, he’s winningly satirized his own tendency to infuse genre tropes with arthouse experimentation, enveloped it in an obscenely tasty surrealist visual palette, and crafted a comedy so funny and perfectly realized that it stands a real chance of making its architect a cult icon on the order of Peter Greenaway, John Waters, or Stanley Kubrick. No movie’s perfect, but the ratio of goal to accomplishment here comes so gloriously, wonderfully close I’m inclined to kick the hyperbole in high gear—and not just with the star rating.
Daughter of a Lost Bird (2021 | USA | 66 minutes | Brooke Pepion Swaney)
Kendra Mylnechuk Potter dwells between two worlds: She’s an adoptee who’s comfortably assimilated into mainstream society, and also part-indigenous, descended from the Lummi tribe. Documentarian Brooke Pepion Swaney tells Potter’s story with concision and compassion, and there’s considerable emotional pull in Potter’s reunion with her resilient, charismatic birth mom, April Kowalski. The end result’s never less than involving, and Swaney’s got such an aptitude for probing the conflict between conformity and embracing heritage, she could (and should) helm an amazing documentary series exploring other stories similar to Potter’s.
The House of the Snails (2021 | Spain | 104 minutes | Macarena Astorga)
No one wanted to love Macarena Astorga’s polished and often well-crafted folk horror film more than I did. But while Astorga’s got an arresting visual sense, and her feature film’s bolstered by a formidable, subtly immersive sound mix, the perfunctory characterizations—and twists that telegraph themselves from a couple of miles away—keep things squarely in the realm of just-OK’ness.
Execution in Autumn (1972 | Taiwan | 99 minutes | Hsing Lee)
This Taiwanese melodrama about a condemned man awaiting his execution marked yet another great archival selection for SIFF 2022. Sumptuously mounted on lavish, gorgeous period sets, it’s as elegant in its loveliness as it is deliciously, ripely dramatic: Director Hsing Lee seems to be splitting the difference between Douglas Sirk and the Shaw Brothers, and it works brilliantly.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021 | USA | 89 minutes | Dean Fleischer-Camp)
One of the most anticipated films (and one of the biggest theatrical draws) of SIFF 2022, this unerringly charming stop-motion animated feature has already been roundtabled by us in a big way. But it bears mentioning that its surprising emotional depth and honesty, and its readiness to look heavy issues square in the eye while still remaining funny and enchanting, put it in a rarefied class, alongside legit classics like Bambi and The Iron Giant.
Flux Gourmet opens at SIFF Cinema on June 24; Marcel the Shell With Shoes On will also be released by A24 on June 24
Dual will be released by RDJE; Daughter of a Lost Bird by Women Make Movies; Inu-Oh by gKids; House of Snails by Filmax International.
Keep up with us during the Seattle International Film Festival on Twitter (@thesunbreak) and follow all of our ongoing coverage via our SIFF 2022 Index and our SIFF 2022 posts