A Film a Week - Donkey Days

 previously published on Cineuropa

Family dynamics are always tricky to negotiate, so it should come as no surprise that the relations between family members are often at the centre of the literary and cinematic works. This is certainly the case with Donkey Days, the sophomore feature written and directed by Rosanne Pel, so far best known for her Toronto-premiered debut, Light as Feathers (2018), in which she examined how an abusive relationship between a teenager and his mother can spill over to the outside world. Donkey Days has premiered in the main competition of Locarno.

This time, we have two adult sisters, Anna (Jil Krammer, in her first screen role) and Charlotte (German actress Susanne Wolff, recently glimpsed in Köln ’75), who have always fought for their mother’s attention. The mum, Ines (veteran actress Hildegard Schmahl), is quite a piece of work herself. At first, one might think that she is trying to balance out the dynamics between her daughters, but she actually fuels their rivalry. The question is whether she does so willingly, for the sake of manipulation, or unwittingly, simply by making questionable choices.

The sisters have adopted different coping mechanisms to deal with the mother. While schoolteacher Anna reacts impulsively, through sulking and childish tantrums, Charlotte tries to present herself as a highly organised person. Their tactics, however, take different tolls on their lives, since Anna manages to sabotage the relationship with her partner Noe (Amke Wegner), and Charlotte always comes across as cold and distant. Ines’s advancing age and her secrets, which Anna and Charlotte come to discover, such as a “mystery urn” and her love of donkeys, present new challenges for them and their already troubled relationship.

The structure of the movie, in which the first two-thirds of the running time can be seen as a prolonged exposition, does not make watching Donkey Days a very pleasant experience. However, it places the viewers directly into the minds of the sisters, particularly Anna, and makes them feel the emotional turmoil the two have to grapple with when dealing with their mother. Viewers may also get a bit lost and confused owing to the fact that, at least during the exposition part, the plot might (or might not) be presented chronologically, while the filmmaker also introduces a kind of “alternative reality” where the sisters meet their mother as a young person of about their age. The sense of unnerving disorientation is further underlined by the use of unsteady, handheld camerawork with numerous horizontal pans by cinematographer Aafke Beernink as well as by Xander Nijsten’s seemingly rough editing, while the atonal music score by Ella van der Woude also plays a part.

The actresses and their work are among the chief saving graces of the movie. Hildegard Schmahl has a strong, commanding screen presence, while the chemistry between Susanne Wolff and Jil Krammer is palpable. The latter is also paired well with another non-professional, Amke Wegner, and thanks to Rosanne Pel’s work with them, their lack of formal experience never shows. As a bonus, Carla Juri shines in a few flashbacks as the young Ines.

In the end, Donkey Days is less about the story and making some kind of point than it is about the vibe. This kind of approach could be classed as risky, but it is obvious that this time, it is a deliberate choice, and it consequently bears a strong auteur-driven hallmark.

A Film a Week - Alpha.

 previously published on Cineuropa

There is nothing that can derail a person from the safe, straight tracks of a carefully built, ordinary life like the sudden arrival of a family member. Parents can press the buttons of their adult children in the worst possible ways. Even distance, whether physical or psychological, does not make things any easier: children are programmed to be triggered by their folks. This is the case with the fourth film written and directed by Jan-Willem van Ewijk, Alpha., which has just premiered in the Giornate degli Autori sidebar of Venice.

Rein (Reinout Scholten van Aschat, from 2011’s The Heineken Kidnapping) is a Dutchman who has moved to the Alps, where he works as a snowboarding instructor and spends his free time mostly meditating. The idyll of his existence is about to be shattered when his recently widowed father, Gijs (legend of Dutch film, TV and stage Gijs Scholten van Aschat), first calls to announce his visit and then appears in front of the building where Rein lives. Make no mistake, Gijs is not a harmless, jovial Toni Erdmann-esque old man, but a former star actor who seeks dominance over his son and knows exactly how to push his buttons.

The game of push-and-pull between the two is probably fuelled by jealousy and unresolved conflicts from the past, and they certainly have form in this regard. Gijs seeks and gets the attention of Rein’s friends, even his sort-of girlfriend Laura (Pia Amofa), prompting Rein to pull daredevil stunts or to try to teach his father a lesson by competing with him on his home turf – the snow. However, those in-house power games can prove to be dangerous, since one can overestimate one’s own strength, and the mountain itself can be treacherous…

The filmmaker certainly knows what he is trying to communicate and has the means at his disposal to do so eloquently. Even the 4:3 aspect ratio, which has become a bit of a gimmick recently, makes sense here: the boxiness of the picture is a reflection of the protagonist’s boxed-in state of mind, meaning the beautiful and ominous peaks with which the filmmaker opens and closes the film become secondary. Van Ewijk also uses Douwe Hennink’s cinematography deftly to portray the relationship of the central father-son duo and the changes in it without unnecessary explanations first by establishing, and then by shortening the distance, and the same goes for the use of Ella van der Woude’s score, from the drone on wind instruments to the silly, fairground-like organ theme and back.

However, the canniest trick he pulls is the casting of the real-life father and son, who have different sensibilities. It does not just open up a meta level for connoisseurs of the Dutch acting scene to enjoy, looking for “Easter eggs”, but it also paves the way for improvisation based on genuine triggering and authentic reactions that cannot be scripted easily. Needless to say, both Reinout and Gijs van Aschat relish the opportunity for this interplay and make the best of it, although in a non-flashy manner.

Alpha. is not without its faults, especially regarding the development and the timing of the plot twists, but it is definitely worth seeing for the director’s, the actors’ and the crew’s commendable work. It is one of those seemingly small movies to which wider audiences might relate.

A Film a Week - Sweet Dreams

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

As Leo Tolstoy wrote, all happy families are alike, while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The rich cry, too and there is something universal about the rivalries between the loved and the unloved wives, sons and heirs, regardless of their social status. So, why would the family of the sugar plantation owners in the Dutch East Indies in Ena Sendijarević’s sophomore feature Sweet Dreams be any different? The film has just world-premiered at Locarno, where we also caught it.

Somewhere in Indonesia in the early 1900s, Jan (Hans Dagelet) owns the plantation and the sugar processing plant and rules it with the iron fist. He is no softer even at home, where he commands over his seemingly blasée European wife Agathe (Renée Soutendijk) and his Indonesian housekeeper-lover-concubine Siti (Hayati Azis), while the two battle one another, each using the means at their disposal. The only person he has the soft spot for is his and Siti’s son Karel, to whom he hand-makes the toys and whom he teaches to hunt.

Jan’s death would make a tectonic shift in the household dynamics. Agathe summons her and Jan’s son Cornelis (Florian Myjer), whom they left behind in The Netherlands, with the mix of promises (that there will be enough money once the plantation and the factory is sold) and threats (that she would otherwise cancel his allowance). So he comes with his needy heavily pregnant wife Josefien (Lisa Zweerman) only to find out that Jan has left everything to “his only legitimate” son Karel. Luckily to the colonial family, Karel and Siti have no knowledge about it. While the factory workers are striking to get their wages and the plantation workers lead by the carriage driver Reza (Muhammad Khan), who is desperately in love with Siti, are planning the sabotage and the escape, the “game of thrones” in the house begin…

The Dutch filmmaker of the Bosnian origins Ena Sendijarević embraces her both sides to the fullest in Sweet Dreams. Her sense for visuals and for framing is quite Western, structured and polished, while her writing is full of the deadpan humour and unapologetic funny menace towards her characters (especially, but not exclusively does from the ranks of the colonists and landowners) and their family bickering, and therefore a dead giveaway for her Balkans roots. For the great portion of the film, up until the filmmaker feels the urge to make a strong and symbolically potent anti-colonial point, it works beautifully, so Sweet Dreams can be compared to Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite whose structure of chapters it also adopts.

Sendijarević is not the only to be praised here, although it is her vision and her task to make it come true. In that regard, she gets a lot of help from her carefully selected and diversified cast. Under her guidance, the actors seize the opportunity to play the precisely written characters with a certain theatrical gusto which highlights the absurdity of the situation the characters are in. It could be argued that the characters are almost the caricatures of one trait each (for Jan, it is brutality, for Agathe – lazyness, for Cornelis – envy, for Josefien – the sense of entitlement, for Reza – stupidity), making Siti the only person of certain integrity and Karel the only one with a clean heart, but the same simplicity works well both for the actors to do the miniatures and the film as a whole.

The technical values are also quite good, especially in the visual department. The narrow aspect ratio (which is a sort of a trend in cinema lately) here serves the purpose in the counter-intuitive way, signalling both the lavishness and the confinement of the colonial lifestyle. It is further underlined with the strong lighting, and the contrasting colours from bright reds to dreary browns of Emo Weemhoff’s lensing and the sense of decadent beauty of Myrte Beltman’s production design.

Up until the very end of the film, Sweet Dreams plays out like one of the highlights of this year’s festival circuit. In the end, Sendijarević sort of drops the ball and submits to certain conventions and trends that rule over the mainstream art house cinema, but she nevertheless demonstrates that she has a strong and unique voice.

A Film a Week - I Don't Wanna Dance

 previously published on Cineuropa

Every happy teen looks the same, and every unhappy teen is unhappy in their own unique way. Well, this fake Tolstoy quote does not stand in the case of Flynn von Kleist’s film I Don’t Wanna Dance, screening at the 19^th Zagreb Film Festival in the Plus programme, aimed at teenage audiences.

Working from a script written by Jeroen Scholten van Aschat, von Kleist tries to tell a true story based on the life of the film’s producer and main star Yfendo van Praag. A lot of fiction interventions were eventually added into the mix, and the real dancing rising star of The Netherlands became a regular troubled teen named Joe. It is worth noting that van Aschat and von Kleist previously envisioned and executed the short film named Crow’s Nest (2018), which could be regarded as a study for the feature, since it is based on the same premise and features some of the same characters and actors.

We meet our protagonist while he is involved in a very physical fight on the playground, broken up only by the arrival of the police and Joe’s arrest. He is lucky to be just 15 years old: he isn’t tried as an adult, but processed by his regular social worker Frouwkje (Lilith Vermeulen). Joe and his younger brother Ricardo (Eliyah de Randamie) live at their aunt’s and uncle’s place ever since their mother left them, but Frouwkje has some exciting news for them: their mum is coming back and they have to go and live with her. For Joe, it also means that he has to attend the dance classes he is enrolled in at the local community centre.

At first, everything seems fine and dandy: the mother Daphne (Romana Vrede in her first major film role after thirty smaller film and TV roles in her 20-year-long career) now has a job and she has prepared the apartment for the boys to move in, although Joe still struggles with the concepts of focus, trust and authority. But soon enough, it turns out that Daphne is far from being done with her self-destructive habits (such as smoking marijuana and going on benders at nearby coffee shops). Joe, despite his impulsive nature, does his best to maintain some sense of order in the house. The sudden, unannounced visits by his elder wannabe-gangster brother Roy (Daniël Kolf) do not help, but maybe the dance classes under the mentorship of Julian (Sean William Bogaers), the sense of camaraderie with the rest of the troupe and his love interest Roxan (charming newcomer Chardonnay Vermeer) could lead Joe towards the right path.

The story of Joe’s (or, for that matter Yfendo van Praag’s) troubled teenage years is a fairly standard one that is here told in a rather typical manner, with an emphasis on the message it delivers to viewers. Given that the target audience consists of teens, it is fairly understandable that I Don’t Wanna Dance feels a bit like an after-school special about the necessity of responsibility and the harm that even the lightest and most legal of drugs do to the family. On the other hand, there are elements of genuine interest in the film. The mix of a dance star, in a rare film role, with some lesser-known Dutch professional actors and newcomers yields results that are realistic enough, despite occasionally heavy-handed dialogue, and the hand-held camerawork by Tim Kerbosch on the less glamorous locations of Amsterdam’s outskirts actually serves to make I Don’t Wanna Dance a watchable, albeit forgettable film.