Hello Contra Zoom readers. After many overdue months dealing with some issues on my end both at work and in my personal life, I am here with my recap of the films I watched at the New York Film Fest in September. While obviously a lot (though not all of these films) have already been reviewed elsewhere perhaps, I think it’s still useful to read this as a review of the entire film festival going experience as a whole. After all, one of the benefits of film festivals is being able to lock yourself away in a theater for a few hours and watch films back to back, which were often curated by programmers to have through lines and related themes throughout, as opposed to a mishmash of whatever happens to be on your backlog.
Part 2 – Asian Slice of Life + Oscars Contenders
Part 3 – Exploring Foreign Countries + The Brutalist
Day 2 – Slices of Asian Life (Sept 23)
After the weekend, I had also taken the Monday off with plans to watch four films that day – All We Imagine as Light (which had not yet been snubbed as India’s submission for Best International Feature), the two Hong Sang Soo films; By the Stream and A Traveler’s Needs, and then Palme d’Or winner Anora. As it turned out, I only ended up seeing the first three – Anora ran a bit into the evening and I made the call to use my “evening out” pass that week to see Megalopolis in IMAX instead (totally worth it).
As noted in my day 1 log – I enjoy film festivals because you often find serendipitous (or perhaps intentional on the part of the programmers) themes throughout the films you watch back to back. On this day, that theme ended up being observational, slice of life films that happened to be set in Asia. I’ll do my best to not compare these films to my favorite film from last year, Perfect Days which fits perfectly in this genre as well.
All We Imagine as Light – Dir Payal Kapadia
Final Rating: 5/5
Despite what Nicole Kidman says in those AMC commercials about watching movies with dazzling images, heartbreak feeling good, heroes being the best part of ourselves, and stories being perfect and powerful, I enjoy watching stories where none of those are true. Where you feel the weight of the human experience with all its flaws, where pain hurts, where life is messy with no clear direction, where the dirt and grime of your daily existence clings to you. Not to say that I want everything filmed like it’s your awkward uncle’s first time making a TikTok, but not necessarily glamorizing an existence to mean something more than it is. My reference here, if not Perfect Days, would be something like Frances Ha by Noah Baumbach, where Greta Gerwig tries to figure out how to live life in the mess that is New York.
In a similar way, All We Imagine as Light takes all the hustle and bustle of Mumbai as it follows the interconnected stories of three women – nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) who has a husband she barely knows living overseas; her younger roommate Anu Divya Prabha) who has a secret Muslim lover despite being Hindi; and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), the widowed cook at their hospital who must find a new life when she is evicted. While they each have their own narrative arcs over the two hours of this film, it’s not as though they are living extraordinary lives that are necessarily unique; but the way that Kapadia in her feature narrative debut is able to simultaneously have these women stand in for the lives of countless others in Mumbai while also feeling their own is a mastercraft.
Mumbai itself feels like a fourth protagonist of the film as the lights and crowds bustle both in the fore and background, with Kapadia having as much affection for it much as how Lino Brocka covers Manila in Bona (also shown at NYFF, though I saw it afterwards elsewhere) or Wong Kar-Wai with Hong Kong. For me that’s part of the charm of slice of life – while it looks like nothing is really happening on a grand scheme, it is by framing and following that “nothing” where you can derive something. And to do so without the staged nature of most narrative features that are larger than life or perfect and powerful is more impressive in its own right to me.
By the Stream and A Traveler’s Needs – Dir Hong Sang-soo
Final Rating’s: 3/5
These two films were my first time watching films by the prolific Hong Sang-soo. While waiting for the screening to start some of my seatmates in the theaters were talking how he certainly has a style of his own and how this was a good chance for me to figure out if I liked it or not. Long story short – I think I like his style, though I can also totally understand why he wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
For those not in the know, Hong’s style (at least from my experience over two films, though my seatmates said they were all pretty much like this) is very slow paced, primarily made up of extended takes primarily with naturalistic dialogue with very little camera movement. At most we get a pan back and forth and a zoom in, but we get all the awkward pauses, all the chewing and swallowing if it is over a meal, everything. Allegedly most of his films are under $100k in budget, which is how he’s able to make so many of them; with 32 directorial credits since 1996.
As far as these specific films, By the Stream follows a university art professor who asks her former actor uncle to write and direct a play for her students after some interpersonal drama amongst themselves, mirroring some drama her uncle had in his past at the university. Meanwhile, A Traveler’s Needs follows a French expat in Korea (played by the much lauded Isabelle Huppert) who has her own unique way of being a French tutor while also developing a friendship with a young local boy.
Of these I personally felt that there was perhaps a bit more depth to By the Stream as it felt almost like a meta commentary Hong was making about his own life and his own works, though A Traveler’s Needs was almost poetic in its own way and repeating structure. I also appreciate how each character felt fully realized and fleshed out and that we’re not getting the whole back story, but who obviously has a past that’s influencing their future. (This is also amusing to read that the actors only got their lines the morning of each day’s shoot, which just shows how great Hong is at getting that reality out of his actors).
I don’t honestly want to say much more than this in review of these films as frankly I’d want to see even more of Hong’s work to really comment on where they stand in relation to his other work, as it seems as though the man has themes he comes back to again and again, which dissecting in a single film feels reductive, especially for one as prolific as him. At the very least, I’d encourage you to check him out as a director if you haven’t already, if only because someone with such a unique perspective and artistic vision is noteworthy in and of itself.
—
Day 3 – Oscar Contenders (Oct 4)
After a couple of weeks back in the office (skipping the screening of films like Nickel Boys, Maria, Dahomey, and Emilia Perez since I knew they’d come to screening sooner rather than later), I set my sights on two of the biggest films of the festival that had the most buzz – The Room Next Door (with Q&R with Almodovar and the cast) and Queer. I got in line extra early since I knew there’d be a lot of demand here and I was right – the line this morning was definitely the longest I saw all festival despite getting there at 8am for the 10am screening.
Also jokingly, I could also say that the theme of today’s films were a pair of friends goes into nature to take drugs, experience death, and then fade out of view on screen.
The Room Next Door – Dir – Pedro Almodovar
Final Rating: 4/5
Frankly speaking, this review is probably a bit higher than it would be had I seen it in any other circumstance. However, there is a specific scene in the film (one quite pivotal) that takes place in the Alice Tully Hall lobby of the Lincoln Center half a block from where I was watching the film that raised the “cool” factor of watching this film there by that much. Of course, they asked Almodovar about this in the Q&A. Which also, having a Q&A session with the cast and crew also ups my perception of the film getting some
Anyway, as far as the film itself, while I can’t say I’m an Almodovar expert having seen only his two most recent features (Pain and Glory and Parallel Mothers), for his English language feature debut I thought it was interesting enough. Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton play friends who reconnect after a long time out of contact; Moore an author who is deeply afraid of death, Swinton a former war journalist who has lived around it and faces it with her own terminal cancer.
Swinton’s character chooses to end her own life in a rental house out of town and asks for Moore’s character to join her in the weeks leading up to it for company. From there we get a meditation on life, on death, on friendships and relationships, on the choices we make and why. There is a small point where supporting actor John Turturro’s character (a former lover for both of them in the past) delves into politics about what’s wrong with the world which to me felt a bit hamfisted and not quite as graceful as the rest of the screenplay. Swinton and Moore are powerhouses here, each holding their own; it kind of is a shame that they’re going to have to campaign them in separate categories because frankly I see them as both leads here. While it’s not a perfect film perhaps, it definitely in my opinion should be more in awards consideration than it currently is.
Read full review of The Room Next Door by Dakota Arsenault
Queer – Dir Luca Guadagnino
Final Rating: 2/5
I’ll come clean. I haven’t seen Challengers yet. Or Call Me By Your Name. Or Bones and All. Or Suspiria. That’s right, this is my first ever Guadagnino film. And boy what a film to get into. Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs of the same name (which I also haven’t read), the film follows William Lee, an American expat in Mexico played by Daniel Craig who develops a relationship with a younger man played by Drew Starkey. I think my unfamiliarity with both Guadagnino as a whole and also the original source material makes it hard to really judge this film as a whole. For example, I don’t know if the somewhat weaker second half (which focuses on Lee’s search for ayahuasca) is a result of Guadagnino’s direction, or the source material. Likewise, the pacing or framing he employs even in the admittedly better first half just didn’t quite jive with me, as did the screenplay.
I conceptually understand what the film is about – about desire, and loneliness, and the lengths people go in order to satisfy both, but it just didn’t click with me. I also wasn’t quite sure what to make of the ending. It felt like it was trying to do what All of Us Strangers was doing, but a lot more convolutedly and less effective.
Despite this, I can at the very least appreciate just how far Daniel Craig went into this role. Perhaps this is him playing against type as he’s been Bond in our minds for over a decade, but the internal uncertainty he exhibits here and the lack of control he really exhibits shows his acting chops. Obviously there’s the whole commitment and vulnerability in specific scenes in the film (which were frankly a lot more explicit than I was expecting, but then again not sure if that’s a Guadagnino thing or not), which is in itself admirable, but even with the smaller moments throughout, I frankly forget that this man was 007. I also got to give it up to Drew Starkey as Eugene Allerton, the object of Lee’s affection who plays his role being in control.
The following films were seen during the 2024 New York Film Festival.
