Unruly women: a strong and strange contingent of female-helmed films stands out at VIFF
Small Body, Be Still, and Clara Sola focus on unforgettable female characters
Small Body
STRANGE, OBSESSED, marginalized, and unwilling to be confined: several striking films at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival follow female characters that are as extraordinary and unruly as they are unusual.
They’re part of a strong and unprecedented showing of women directors from here and around the world at this year’s fest.
Think female protagonists who refuse to be constricted by society, whether they’re grieving mothers or miracle workers, and whether they’re living on the edge of the Central American jungle or confined to the lace- and fern-bedecked parlours of 1885 Victoria, BC.
Here are a few of Stir’s favourites so far:
Small Body
(Italy/France/Slovenia
Screens October 4 at 4:15 pm and October 10 at 6:30 pm at The Cinematheque and via VIFF Connect from October 1 to 11.
Director Laura Samani moulds what feels like an entrancing ancient fairy tale undercut with the real threats women faced a century ago in Europe. On a remote sea island off Italy, a woman gives birth to a stillborn daughter in a thatch-roof shack. As if that’s not traumatic enough, Catholic superstition holds that the child’s soul will wander the eternal darkness in limbo. Refusing to accept that fate and ripped with grief, Agata (Celeste Cescutti) sets out alone on a row boat for land, and the mountains where she’s heard there’s a church that can bring the baby back to life long enough to baptize her. But it’s a perilous, arduous journey—one with roving bands of thieves and predators who will want to take everything from her, from her hair to her milk. Her only chance for protection is Lynx—the transfixing Ondina Quadri—a mysterious boy whose intentions may or may not be above-board. Odd in the most engrossing way, a cruel world edged with enchantment and shot in coldly beautiful saturated colours. By the end, it will move you in ways that will catch you off-guard.
Be Still echoes the way real-life surrealist photographer Hannah Maynard would montage images.
Be Still
Canada
Screens at 6:30 pm on October 6 and at 4:30 pm on October 8 at Vancity Theatre, and via VIFF Connect from October 1 to 11.
Director Elizabeth Lasebnik channels the dreamlike style of her subject, Hannah Maynard, a late-19th-century, Victoria, BC-based pioneer in surreal photography. The film conjures a haunting mood in (mostly) black-and-white, sometimes echoing the way the artist would montage images through double, triple, and quadruple exposures on her plate camera. Early in the film, as Maynard immerses herself, fully clothed, in a clawfoot tub, she also sits at a dressing table, observing her other self through the reflection of a mirror. That’s the way time, space, and memory melt together in this gorgeously wrought yet restrained work, where a grief-stricken Maynard might address a ghost or suddenly watch herself in conversation with her long-suffering husband (Vancouver actor Daniel Arnold). Piercey Dalton centres it all in a note-perfect performance of an artist who burns from the inside, forced to button herself into conforming to Victorian expectations—even if her high-necked black dress stinks of darkroom chemicals. An artful, spellbinding portrait as unorthodox as Maynard herself.
Clara Sola inhabits a lush Costa Rican setting.
Clara Sola
Sweden, Costa Rica, Belgium, Germany
Screens October 1 at 8:30 pm at Vancity Theatre and October 4 at 3:15 pm at the Hollywood Theatre, and via VIFF Connect from October 1 to 11.
And now for the most offbeat of a group of refreshingly offbeat films. In her feature debut, Nathalie Álvarez Mesen tells the story of a childlike 40-year-old mystic, exploited for her healing powers in a village perched on the edge of a teeming Costa Rican jungle. Whether she’s developmentally challenged is left as ambiguous as whether she can cure the blind and sick—or bring various bugs, horses, or other creatures back to life on her farm by the forest. What’s more important is that she is alone and marginalized, disabled by a curvature of the spine that her hyper-religious mother refuses to have surgically fixed; it would appear that it adds to her mystique with the locals. When a handsome, sensitive young labourer comes to work at her farm, it awakens both Clara’s sexuality and her drive for independence—and brings her into confrontation with her mother. The climax? Her niece’s gaudy quinceañera party, a perfect contrast to the natural world where Clara may feel least alone.
Wendy Chinchilla Araya hands in a riveting performance in a sensitive role that could have easily gone off the rails. Provocative, atmospheric, and probably one of the best films ever set in the Central American nation.
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