Mustache (2023 | USA | 83 minutes | Imran J. Khan)
Ilyas (Atharva Verma) is a typical middle-schooler, hoping to be just invisible enough that bullies will ignore him and he can get through the trash fire we call puberty mostly unscathed. Couple problems, he goes to a private Muslim school so everyone knows everyone else (no hiding) and he has a dark mustache creeping in way ahead of time (definitely no hiding). Despite being as good a kid at school and at home as possible, he manages to get himself into trouble; his parents’ answer to his troubles: public school. While he didn’t find the quiet mediocrity that his parents were hoping for, he did start to find himself… and maybe a little trouble in the process. A coming of age story that mixes in a dash of religion, actual self-discovery and young love, Mustache was one of the best feature films I’ve seen so far this year. I hope it gets some momentum at the very least among reviewers if not in the theaters.
Mustache premiered in person at the SXSW Film Festival.
With Love and a Major Organ (2023 | Canada | 92 minutes | Kim Albright)
Anabel (Anna Maguire) is an optimist through and through. Despite an increasingly distant mother, a job that offers nothing in the way of personal satisfaction or growth and friends annoyed at her wacky and positive nature, she desperately tries to find a ray of sunshine amidst the cloudy day. After opening herself up to a stranger in whom she hopes to find love and acceptance, a simple, yet devastating rejection is the last straw. She literally (with a quirky metaphor-like sucking sound) rips her heart out and offers it to the very person that brought her to this point.
On the other side of the coin George (Hamza Haq) has never known much of an emotional tether to anything much less love or the desire to feel it. After receiving a heart in the mail, he takes it into himself and sees the world through a brand new and nearly overwhelming lens.
In the end, each realizes what they’d been missing and found a kinship in each other that perhaps will or perhaps won’t grow into something more later… but each has irrevocably changed the other.
This was a lovely story about how we should follow our hearts and no matter how painful it might be to be rejected, lose someone we love or be alone, the emotional highs we experience are worth the lows we need to endure. The story is easy enough to follow but occasionally the metaphors are a little heavy-handed. The adorable cast and quirky, Wes Anderson-esque feel make it well worth while.
With Love and a Major Organ premiered in person at the SXSW Film Festival.