BFI Flare: Queens of Drama (Alexis Langlois, 2024)

Filmed over the course of five weeks in Brussels, Alexis Langlois' feature debut Queens of Drama is a reflection on the dualistic nature of fame and the often rocky journey artists undergo in their pursuit of success.  This Belgian co-production has already screened at several film festivals, including London and Gent, and it plays at BFI Flare on Wednesday.  Often more odious than melodious, this shrill musical drama follows Mimi Madamour (Louiza Aura) and Billie Kohler (Gio Ventura), two young women who audition for a cutthroat singing reality TV series that bears more than a passing resemblance to The Voice.

Mimi is selected in the competition and goes on to enjoy a glittering pop career, one largely built on anodyne smash hit "Don't Touch", while Billie is rejected by the show but carves out a name for herself in the underground punk scene.  Langlois weaves a star-crossed romance between these contrasting characters, who make a connection (of sorts) during their brief time together on the TV show.  Also looming large in the story is Mylène Farmer-esque pop star Magalie Charmer (Asia Argento), whose stint at the apex of mainstream music serves as a blueprint for Mimi, who seeks to emulate this stalwart performer's success and longevity.

Despite the very different paths taken by Mimi and Billie, they don't lose track of each other, and the film charts the peaks and troughs of their careers and relationship; a song is never too far away as Langlois attempts to prop up a sagging narrative with musical interludes fashioned by the likes of Yelle, Pierre Desprats, and Louise BSX.  Ultimately, Queens of Drama buckles under the weight of its near two-hour running time, which is padded out by highly repetitive sequences, many of which feature onetime Eurovision contestant Bilal Hassani, who gets way too much screen time as tiresome stan Steevyshady.

Hassani commandeers the film's opening scene in a manner that might sink the hearts of many viewers who, like me, wrongly conclude that they'll have to endure 114 minutes of his grating character; mercifully, Steevy soon makes way for the two protagonists, with the role subsequently functioning more or less as that of a Greek chorus.  Queens of Drama isn't all bad—game newcomers Ventura and Aura both deliver brave, committed performances, and the film is nearly always visually interesting, largely on account of its Day-Glo colour palette—but at least half an hour of it should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

53rd IFF Rotterdam (25/1/24–4/2/24)

Jonathan Ogilvie’s spirited Head South will open the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) on Thursday 25 January, with the festival running until Sunday 4 February. New Zealand filmmaker Ogilvie returns to IFFR with his semi-autobiographical film, a small-town coming-of-age comedy where a private schoolboy becomes desperately enamoured with all things post-punk in 1979 Christchurch. Ogilvie's last film Lone Wolf screened in the festival’s Big Screen Competition in 2021. Vanja Kaludjercic, IFFR Festival Director: "With Head South, Jonathan Ogilvie returns to the festival with an unpredictable coming-of-age story that delights in its shifting tone. Ogilvie is the kind of filmmaker we cherish at IFFR: those for whom the art is, above all, an adventure of discovery".

A star cast voices Ishan Shukla’s dystopian sci-fi animation Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust, which has its world premiere at IFFR 2024 in the Bright Future programme of feature debuts. The paper bag-wearing citizens of the film’s ultra-regulated society attribute their voices to actors including Golshifteh Farahani and Asia Argento, as well as filmmakers Gaspar Noé and Lav Diaz. So Unreal is the latest film from genre-expanding filmmaker Amanda Kramer following a Focus programme at IFFR 2022, and screens in Harbour where it has its European premiere, as does Elegies, the latest by Hong Kong cinema legend Ann Hu. IFFR 2024 also welcomes Egypt’s 2024 Oscars submission Voy! Voy! Voy! by Omar Hilal, screening in the Limelight programme of festival favourites and international award-winners.

In the lead up to the festival, audiences across the Netherlands can get a taste of the programme with the IFFR Preview Tour. More than 35 cinemas have currently committed to hosting a screening of a film from the Limelight programme in the week before the festival, in cities including Arnhem, Groningen, Maastricht and 's-Hertogenbosch. The 41st edition of IFFR’s co-production market CineMart begins on Sunday 28 January, with Spotlight presentations by project teams returning this year on Monday 29 January. On Tuesday 30, the second edition of the Pro Darkroom presents a curated selection of work-in-progress screenings, and is followed by the IFFR Pro Awards in the evening. Talent programmes, including the Rotterdam Lab, also return to the festival.

Source/images: IFFR

watchAUT: Eismayer / I Am the Tigress / Vera / The Fox

Following on from Saturday's look at some of the titles screening at this year's watchAUT Austrian Film Festival—which runs from Thursday to Sunday at London's Ciné Lumière, with tickets available here—today we'll run through the remainder of the festival's offerings, beginning with David Wagner's army tale Eismayer.  Wagner's film scooped the International Film Critics' Week Grand Prize at the most recent edition of the Venice Film Festival, and it boasts a fine performance from Gerhard Liebmann as the title character, a closeted drill sergeant who falls for one of his recruits.  Eismayer is a harsh, feared ruler of his men, with his pop-eyed ranting both masking his secret and signalling someone who's seen Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket a few too many times.  While both the film and its main character feel slightly overfamiliar, this is an involving, highly watchable tale, one that presents a credible depiction of military life as it relays the true story of an unlikely romance. 

Documentary I Am the Tigress follows bodybuilder Tischa Thomas as she prepares to leave New York for a competition in Bucharest.  The event marks Thomas' first time outside of the US, and directors Philipp Fussenegger and Dino Osmanović probe deep into the life of this mother and grandmother, in the process creating a portrait that is often as uncomfortable as it is intimate.  Much of the film's running time is devoted to the relationship between Thomas and her coach/friend/factotum Edward, and the late scene between these two on a Florida beach is nothing if not surprising.  Shot over a two-and-a-half-year period, I Am the Tigress has much to say about gender and identity, and Thomas is shown being verbally abused by a stranger on account of her appearance; while watching this unpleasant sequence, it is dispiriting to consider the likelihood that the ignoramus criticising the bodybuilder's physique would have similarly objected back when Thomas weighed 300lbs.  Fussenegger and Osmanović's judiciously edited film is by no means an easy watch, but it's certainly compelling.

Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel's slippery docudrama Vera tracks its title character as she ambles through life in the shadow of her late father, spaghetti western icon Giuliano Gemma.  Following a minor road accident involving 8-year-old Manu, Vera befriends the boy's single father, which at first seems a more rewarding venture than hanging out with her self-absorbed boyfriend, a wannabe filmmaker whose interest in Vera is seemingly fuelled by her money and connections; at one point, he begs her to contact Monica Belluci about starring in his latest project.  Vera's rapport with the young Manu affords her a rare opportunity to talk with someone who doesn't view her as merely the daughter of a celebrity; she also spends time with a few other people, including her sister Giuliana, and a scene with Asia Argento serves to highlight the injustice of being defined by a famous parent (to further confuse matters, Vera appeared in Argento's directorial debut and a couple of films by Asia's father Dario).  Shot on grainy 16mm, Vera is both an affecting portrait of a somewhat lost soul and an intelligent meditation on the complications of secondhand fame.

Hot on the heels of Adrian Goiginger's sophomore feature Above the World comes his third film, The Fox.  Based on the life of the director's great-grandfather, The Fox follows the tale of young Austrian Franz Streitberger, who enlists in the army just a couple of years before the commencement of WW2; upon the annexation of his homeland, Franz is drafted into the Wehrmacht and is deployed in France as German troops tighten their noose on the Allied forces.  Yet despite the war that rages around him, Franz has a major distraction in the form of an orphaned fox cub he's rescued from a forest.  Keeping this arrangement a secret from most of his fellow soldiers, Franz goes to great lengths—including insubordination—to look after the animal, and the two form a deep bond.  The Fox unleashes a devastating one-two in its final reel, and it's difficult to say which of these blows hits hardest.  This is a real gem of a film, and a terrific choice to open this year's watchAUT; although another German-language war movie is currently grabbing all the headlines, the quietly shattering The Fox fully deserves a similarly wide audience.

Darren Arnold

Images: Golden Girls Film / sixpackfilm / Be For Films / Lotus Film

watchAUT: Frau im Mond / Rubikon / Matter Out of Place

For its second edition, watchAUT Austrian Film Festival showcases some of the best new cinema and a silent-era classic from—you guessed it—Austria.  The first watchAUT, which took place in late 2019 at London's Picturehouse Central, included such prestigious titles as Marie Kreutzer's The Ground Beneath My Feet and Jessica Hausner's Little Joe.  For watchAUT 2023, the festival shifts to another London venue, South Kensington's Ciné Lumière, where it runs from Thursday to Sunday (click here for tickets).  Among the titles on offer are David Wagner's military tale Eismayer, bodybuilding documentary I Am the Tigress, and Adrian Goiginger's WW2 movie The Fox, the latter of which opens the festival on Thursday evening.  The 2023 lineup is rounded out by Asia Argento-starrer Vera, environmental documentary Matter Out of Place, and two science fiction films made nearly a century apart.   

The earlier of these SF films, Fritz Lang's Frau im Mond, serves as the festival's closing film, and this year's watchAUT provides a rare opportunity to see Lang's final silent movie in its full-length version with live piano accompaniment.  Based on the eponymous novel by the director's wife Thea von Harbou (who also wrote the script), this 1929 space exploration epic is still a remarkable work, and its prescience is quite breathtaking; that the film contains the first ever countdown to a rocket launch is nothing short of incredible.  While the acting in silent films can often be rather broad, Frau im Mond features some fine performances, with the best turn coming from German star Willy Fritsch as the entrepreneur who acts as the catalyst for the lunar mission.  Variously known as Woman in the Moon and Girl in the Moon, this near three-hour spectacle is not without its lulls, but its inclusion here is most welcome—especially considering how the film has long taken a back seat to Lang and von Harbou's other science fiction masterpiece, Metropolis. 

Sticking with the space theme, Leni Lauritsch's debut feature Rubikon is a thoughtful sci-fi movie which takes place in a time when the earth has been polluted beyond all habitability.  Virtually all of Lauritsch's claustrophobic film takes place inside the space station of the title, where a soldier, a scientist and a geneticist attempt to find consensus on a critical issue: should they head back to earth in the hope of helping any survivors, or remain in the safety of their fully self-reliant environment?  It's a decent premise, and the film has its share of tense moments; while it's perhaps a bit too long for what is essentially a three-hander centring on one core argument, Rubikon is an inventive and generally engaging affair, and Lauritsch and her crew work wonders with the €3 million budget.  There are times when the movie recalls William Eubank's haunting 2011 film Love, another microbudgeted science fiction effort that tends towards the cerebral.  While Rubikon contains more than a passing nod to green issues, environmental concerns are front and centre in another festival selection: Nikolaus Geyrhalter's Matter Out of Place.

Geyrhalter's impressive documentary opens with one of the most arresting sequences in recent cinema: a digger scoops away at a small section of green field, and it isn't long before the topsoil gives way to a jumble of barely-degraded landfill, including glass, plastic, tyres, and even a scrap of newspaper on which the type is still legible.  None of this makes for a pretty sight, but the real horror comes from learning that they stopped burying waste here in the 1970s, which is when a nearby incinerator was built.  After this dialogue-heavy opening—two observers comment on the various items that are unearthed—Matter Out of Place is a largely wordless affair until it gets to its final sequence, which records the painstaking cleanup operation at Nevada's Burning Man festival, an event which coined the phrase that lends the film its title.  Between these bookends, Geyrhalter's film goes on a globetrotting odyssey as it documents the ways in which different countries deal with waste collection and disposal.  It's an engrossing film, one in which the director's stunning cinematography stands at odds with the detritus on show.

Darren Arnold

Images: Eureka Video / Playmaker / NGF