We were at the Paris International Fantastic Film Festival, PIFFF for short, and we saw some very good films there. Back on 5 of them.
From December 4 to 10, the grandiose Max Linder cinema in Paris hosted le Paris International Fantastic Film Festival. This year, largely sponsored by the Shadowz platform, it offered a competition of French and foreign short films, a selection ranging from documentary to minimalist comedy bordering on the absurd (the author of these lines will not soon forget the lunar projection of Ebony and Ivory), as well as a feature film competition made up of first or second films.
Once again, Ecran Large was there. We had already devoted articles to the frenzied Ick by Joseph Kahn, with a pretty Daniela Forever by Nacho Vigalondo, as well as the creepy Cuckoo by Tilman Singer. But these are far from being our only favorites from this edition. Here are 5.
U Are the Universe
We had already defended him during his appearance at the Utopiales de Nantes, where he left with the public prize. Well it had exactly the same success at the PIFFF, winner of the Œil d'or (awarded by the public), as well as the Ciné+ Frisson prize (which a priori guarantees it a French broadcast), at the end of a competition it seems fierce. It must be said that the selection this year was indeed of quality. But how can you compete with such a film? designed to ride at festivals ?
Car U are the universe, it is also an impressive story of perseveranceattracting sympathy almost instantly. Its director, Pavlo Ostrikov, is Ukrainian. He therefore had to carry out his science fiction film in such difficult conditions that he never met one of his two main performers in person!
Its ambition is all the more remarkable as the feature film tells the story of two humans who will do everything to find each other, while the world has literally been obliterated by war. A pitch that might seem a little silly, but which in reality launches a bittersweet comedy that is certainly imperfect, but disarmingly sincere. And of course, the emotionally devastating finale finishes its demonstration in style…and still guarantees him a number of rewards.
Dead Talents Society
When Monstres & Cie encounter Beetlejuice. This is how it was presented Dead Talents Societyand it's the best crossover we could hope for. The creativity (not to mention the madness) of Taiwanese cinema no longer needs to be demonstrated, and John C. Hsu's film is part of it through a devastating concept, tinged with a highly modern societal concern.
Even in the world of the dead, you have to earn your place in a capitalistic system where competition is king. To avoid disappearing once loved ones have forgotten them, ghosts can haunt the living, and become the next big urban legend shared in the media. In addition to gently making fun of influencers' pseudo-horrific videos, Dead Talents Society embodies with great tenderness the fear of a celebrity in racing style tendency Twilight Boulevard.
Faced with liberal cinema universes, obsessed with success and success stories, John C. Hsu's film is a bittersweet ode to simple liveswho do not need a life goal to find meaning in it. This thought, which does a lot of good, especially has the merit of catching us as a traitor, and of moving us in the middle of the funnier and burlesque sequences of the feature film. But it is precisely these breaks in tone that make it so unique.
Desert Road
We are starting to know about time loop films, but Desert Road stands out from its first minutes with its hypnotic setting, a lost road in the American West from which only an old factory and a gas station emerge. It is this horizon that confronts a young woman (who will never be named, but brilliantly played by Kristine Froseth), even though hers seems to have become blocked. Back from California because of a photography career that isn't taking off, there she is stuck on this eternal road after a car accident.
We guess that the film by Shannon Triplett (among other things, producer of Godzilla by Gareth Edwards) will use his process to allow his heroine to rebuild herself, while playing with the puzzle dimension of her plot. It's all the brilliance of Desert Roadwhere a woman's logical distrust of a hostile outside world composed only of a few men gradually transforms into dizzying introspection. A bit like in Dead Talents Societyit is about the heavy weight of our contemporary societies on the “value” of our lives, and on the dissatisfaction of having no impact on others.
From this existential dizziness, Shannon Triplett handles tones with great finesse, between the horrific impulses of her narration, humor and raw emotion. The feature film owes a lot to the magnetic talent of Kristine Froseth, as well as the evolution of a moving story, where the character realizes that her space-time blockage has had concrete consequences on other lives. What she must correct is not only her own path, but that of those who gravitated around her supposed solitude.
Escape from the 21st Century
In 1999, three teenagers who fell into toxic water obtained the ability to travel in time, or more precisely to project themselves into their future body, in 2019. Clearly, we feel that the Daniels' all-out montage on Everything Everywhere All At Once made babies. Between his drastic changes in ratio and photography, and the implementation of animated passages into the mix, Escape From the 21st Century wants to be aggressive with its science fiction conceptbut nevertheless manages to maintain an astonishing clarity, even in its delirious detours.
Permanently inventive, whether in humor, action or drama, Yang Li's film propels us into a real cocktail of unbridled pop culture, where the carefree adolescence confronts a future not very radiant and with the disenchantment that comes with old age. The whole thing could be content to grab the viewer by the collar and shake them, but the filmmaker never forgets the guideline of these crossed destinies, in search of meaning and emancipation in the face of the tragedy that awaits them.
Escape From the 21st Century has already been compared quite a bit to the stylistic bulimia of Edgar Wright, and it is true that his frenzy is intended to be just as stimulating. And like the director of Scott Pilgrim, he always keeps in sight the little beating heart of his scenariovigorously filming this youth who discovers the pangs of adulthood, without giving up.
The Rule of Jenny Pen
The Rule of Jenny Pen was thrown out of competition. However, this is the second feature film by its director James Ashcroft. Perhaps this qualification comes from its casting, more than prestigious. Geoffrey Rush plays a former judge placed in a retirement home, who he finds is under the control of an old sociopath played by John Lithgow. A violent confrontation then begins, deliberately borrowing heavily from the prison genre, because the film obviously attacks the social treatment of old age.
It goes without saying that the actors are absolutely exceptional and this duel is particularly devious, attacking our nerves with undeniable effectiveness. But the great strength of the feature film, is that he is not satisfied with this themeand links it to others in a fairly organic way. Ashcroft being New Zealander, he also depicts a segregation which still infuses “good society”, to the point of exhausting national heroes.
And above all, he never dodges the multiple questions surrounding old age and places his spectator in a rare place in cinema: that of a character who gradually becomes aware of his senility at a moment when he is fighting precisely to survive. A pure horror film coupled with a thrilling human dramaof which one wonders how he did not have more reasoning, especially in Hollywood. Maybe some stories are more interesting than others…
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