TIFF 2024: Day Five
Back home and ready for more.
My last three in-person reviews are filed and I’m back home and ready for more screeners (as long as they’re still active).
It was an interesting final day on the ground with RELAY and THE ASSESSMENT both proving to be flawed yet effective works. I was hoping one might “wow” me to finally get a Top Ten contender out of this year’s festival, but it looks like I will have to wait for that distinction until I catch-up with all the bigger titles I missed.
The one thing I didn’t expect on the return drive was a tornado warning blaring onto our cellphone screens while on the QEW. Especially since we had just gone through Hamilton and the alert was for St. Catherines and Niagara Falls: our next two destinations. We diverted to the Lewiston/Queenston bridge in case, but the warning ended pretty soon after it arrived.
Now that would have been a new TIFF experience.
REVIEWS:
THE PARTY’S OVER
[Fin de fiesta]
(World Premiere - September 9th - Spain - Spanish/French)
This isn’t your usual refugee film. Not because the Spaniard (Sonia Barba’s Carmina) who finds nineteen-year-old Senegalese refugee Bilal (Edith Martínez Val) hiding in her tool shed decides to protect him, but because of her motivations for why. We already know at this point that the woman is messy—living in this giant estate all alone and drinking with much younger guests until all hours of the night without any responsibilities to worry about the next day. So, we assume her fascination with Bilal and her ever-growing possessiveness is simply a product of eccentricity. It’s only when his requests to leave for France are met with increasingly hostile refusals that the good Samaritan act fades to expose a much scarier truth.
Elena Manrique’s THE PARTY’S OVER would make a nice double feature selection alongside Jordan Peele’s GET OUT as a result because it doesn’t seem Carmina will ever let Bilal go. The house is right across the street from the Civil Guard. Carmina’s housekeeper Lupe (Beatriz Arjona) is married to one of their officers. And Bilal is locked inside the shed every afternoon for his own “safety.” This seeming blessing from God wherein the thought that the chaos of sailing ashore and running from the police led him to a sanctuary governed by a benevolent soul quickly proves little more than a prison ruled by a tyrant who wants a plaything to keep her company whenever a wealthier choice isn’t already coming.
The longer this arrangement goes, the clearer it is that Carmina’s modes of protection are less about Bilal’s freedom and more about her property. Because that’s how she begins to treat her new guest. No phone access in case the police are spying (or Bilal gets a hold of someone to come retrieve him). No computer access either and just daring to even know Carmina owns a computer is deemed a betrayal of trust. And when Bilal actually does dare to call his host out, Carmina will not back down since there’s one thing she refuses to abide: disrespect. This rich European woman descended from the family that once owned this entire town will not be questioned. Her word means something and she’ll feel zero remorse wielding it.
At least not in that specific moment. And maybe not the next day either. Once she sobers up and remembers how very alone she is beyond the people she pays and the “friends” she supplies with a safe haven for debauchery, she’ll either apologize or merely act as though nothing happened. Because, as I said, Carmina is very, very messy. She can’t hold her substances as well as she did in her youth (if she could then) and those around her are growing tired of the work it takes to keep her satisfied. That’s the beauty of Bilal as someone with nowhere to go. Whenever she needs someone to fill the silences, she can let him out to keep her company. Or, once circumstances change, entertain her.
Because they will change in more ways than one. Lupe will inevitably find her too and the fallout won’t be minimal even if it might not be exactly what you suspect. Lies and secrets are revealed to alter the dynamic in better ways on paper and worse ways in practice. Add Carmina’s impending annual birthday party to the equation and the potential for everything exploding in her face becomes too high to prevent. All the drugs and alcohol mixed with people who prove to either shoulder as much of a colonizer mindset as she does or be full-blown racists means Pandora’s Box is destined to open with no sign of Hope amongst the carnage. Because despite truly caring beneath her possessiveness, Carmina can’t help while unconscious.
It’s a wild ride that travels to some dark places even if Manrique is satisfied with ensuring her audience understands the horror that lies in the circumstances is enough to fear without forcing things into miserablism. I appreciate the choice because we’re too often inundated with such extreme nihilistic displays of violence that we become numb to the reality that the psychological warfare and legitimate feeling of being unsafe are unacceptable and worthy of empathy too. Bilal is a character the others look at like an object to dress, corrupt, judge, and throw away when bored. The switch they flip from that initial allure to a sense of superiority that emboldens them to do whatever they want is nightmare enough.
And in many respects, THE PARTY’S OVER knows this to the point where it deftly pivots its focus away from Bilal and firmly onto Carmina. Martínez Val is very good as the former, but Barba is the real draw once we realize how pathetic Carmina is when stripped of the power she believes she holds from birthright. She becomes the helpless one not because we feel sad for her, but because she has no one to truly care about who she is beyond what she can provide. Bilal eventually has Lupe. And Carmina too albeit through less than pure motives. But Carmina herself? All she can be guaranteed to receive from anyone else is laughter … and an outstretched hand asking to be paid.
- 7/10
RIFF RAFF
(World Premiere - September 9th - USA - English)
There are a few surprise guests for New Year’s as Rocco (Lewis Pullman), his pregnant girlfriend Marina (Emanuela Postacchini), and his mother Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge) show up unannounced at Vincent’s (Ed Harris) door. It’s been eighteen years since he’s seen any of them courtesy of choosing to walk away from his previous life to start anew with Sandy (Gabrielle Union) and her son DJ (Miles J. Harvey). To watch Vincent and the soon-to-be Dartmouth freshman interact, it’s like he’s always been a present and attentive father. To catch one glimpse of Rocco and Ruth is to know that’s definitely not true.
Written by John Pollono and directed by Dito Montiel, RIFF RAFF doesn’t really have much going for it besides that easy contrast. Sure, there’s the dramatic catalyst that gets them all under the same roof via two heavies with an obvious grudge (Bill Murray’s Lefty and Pete Davidson’s Lonnie), but they serve as more comic relief than narrative thrust. We know they’ll eventually find their way to this Yarmouth vacation home too and that they’ll end up trying to kill someone (if not everyone), but the real question is whether Vincent will be able to protect the son he gave up on like he does the one he adopted.
The journey has its moments courtesy of some very funny performances from Coolidge and Davidson, but the whole is kind of a mess. From the bad dialogue (Rocco saying he knew he loved Marina when she proved she could “pick a lock in five seconds” and said lock is just handcuffs) to sitcom level humor (Ruth is very horny), it’s tough to fully invest in anything that’s happening. It also doesn’t help when most of the necessary exposition comes from shoe-horned flashbacks as though this ham-fisted story structure is a gag … or worse, cool. And don’t get me started on a climax’s bullets proving to be flesh wounds unless five more follow it.
It feels like Pollono wanted a full-blown comical farce and Montiel didn’t get the joke because everything is way too absurd to be delivered so seriously. The whole thing is narrated by DJ as though it’s THE WONDER YEARS too—with an aw shucks, I’m-a-teen-smarter-and-less-fun-than-you vibe that really makes you think it’s going somewhere it never does. But boy is that cast great. They almost make-up for the other glaring shortcomings to at least ensure you leave the theater with a smirk while shaking your head at its missed potential.
The lesson: assholes are funny and you can never have too many guns when eye-for-an-eye bullshit is written into your DNA.
- 5/10
TODAY’S SCHEDULE (TENTATIVE):
THE QUIET ONES, d. Frederik Louis Hviid
THE MOUNTAIN, d. Rachel House