Let's go to Fantastic Fest part II
closing ceremonies
This is the second half of my trip to Austin to attend the Alamo Drafthouse’s annual film festival, Fantastic Fest. You can read part one here. I neglected to include one major movie in part one: Park Chan-Wook’s Decision to Leave. I thought maybe I’d have a stronger opinion if I sat with it longer, but frankly, I don’t. I liked it fine enough. Sorry!
Day 6
I don’t know how I’m going to adjust to civilian life after this. I’ve gotten too used to watching four movies a day, letting showtimes determine when I eat and sleep. I decide to attend the shorts program kind of on a whim and am immensely glad I did. Shorts often get forgotten in the madness around features but these are almost uniformly exceptional.
Movies of Note
Wild Card (short), An extremely stylish sliver of life about old school video dating, flecked with noir and psychodrama.
A Man Trembles (short), On the heels of a financial crisis, a family confronts some strange final options.
Three Meetings of the Extraordinary Committee (short), A droll parable about bureaucracy, snake oil, and wishful thinking in a rural farming community.
Day 7
The secret screening is the new Hellraiser movie and it is authentically, viciously bad. I am not a Hellraiser maniac but I like the first one quite a bit, and this dry, completely unsensual movie bears no resemblance. It’s a generic monkey’s paw about a woman who cannot stop screaming and crying. Riveting stuff.
Movies of Note:
Leonor Will Never Die, Ferocious. A retired Filipino action filmmaker enters the world of her unfinished script. It’s gauzy and hilarious, a movie about movie-making that isn’t precious or self-congratulatory (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood/Mank subtweet) but instead focuses on the obsession and exhaustion that comes with screenwriting. The ending is particularly joyous.
The Five Devils, A young girl’s sense of smell allows her to move through time. This is the second movie I’ve seen about scent (Bones and All) this week and it’s really fascinating to see something so inherently non-cinematic represented.
Buzzkill (short), Entirely hand-drawn, hilarious, and completely gnarly.
Day 8
Everyone is worn out and you can see the audiences visibly lagging but I am more alive than ever. I love watching movies, I love going to the movie theater, I wish I could see at least three movies every day, if I were a rich person all I would want is an in-home theater and reels and reels of film.
Festival programming is an art. It’s precise work to navigate the line that separates a dried-out movie marathon from an actual multi-day cinematic experience. Fantastic Fest has been genuinely life-altering. Volunteer screening can feel like grunt work but the last week has made me a proud grunt.
I have made one (1) friend and we go to the closing party together where everyone leaves with a stack of Bong Joon-Ho blu-rays.
Movies of Note:
Au Revoir Jérôme! (short), A playful bit of psychedelic kitsch about a man becoming whole again.
Krasue (short), A handcrafted neon ghost story–pleasantly Night in the Woods adjacent.
Triangle of Sadness, The last movie of the fest. I am hooting and hollering like a cowboy with a six-shooter. It is absolutely the perfect movie to end on but it is so savage and delicious that it just makes me want to watch another movie.
Actress Dolly de Leon makes a surprise appearance and describes director Ruben Östlund as “a bit of a slave driver.” She says he regularly has them do 80-90 takes for a single sequence, which seems incredibly brutal for a movie that, pre-release, was already known for its long vomiting scenes. I have seen a couple of negative reviews of this, calling the satire obvious. And like, sure, it’s a movie about class and capitalism and power. But at this point in the festival I’m less interested in what a movie is saying but how it’s saying it.
I am so thrilled by Östlund’s long takes, particularly in two-on-two dialogue scenes—if you’ve seen Force Majeure, this scene comes to mind. I love his dialogue, how long he lets it unspool as polite arguments dissolve into pure power struggle. And I am a sucker for slapstick and I love the throwing up, even though I think it might make me retch (btw the Alamo serves food and I’m eating a soft pretzel).
Day 9
The festival is over but I planned for an extra day in Austin to see more of the city since I’ve barely left the two-mile radius of the movie theater. I get a couple more rides on the mini-scooter and visit a bookstore that refuses to give me a glass of water even though it’s 90 degrees. Blessedly, my plane leaves on time.
Oh no, I hope the bookstore that refused to give you water wasn't Bookpeople. I lived in Austin for 10 years, and still miss Bookpeople. I feel like every single person I knew in Austin had worked there at some point.