Raindance 2024: Sting Like a Bee

It is now almost twenty years since Leone Balduzzi—better known by the mononym Leone—made his short film Splendida Giornata, and in the intervening years he's directed several other shorts including French Toast and Tram Stories.  The sometimes large gaps between his films can be accounted for by both Leone's prolific work as a photographer and his role as the publisher of C41 magazine.  With Sting Like a Bee, Balduzzi steps behind the camera for his first feature as director; this assured debut, which was filmed in Leone's native Italy, is one of the selections for this year's Raindance Film Festival, where it has been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature award.  

Sting Like a Bee unfolds in and around Leone's hometown of San Salvo, a southern Italian resort on the Adriatic coast.  The film's opening stretch focuses on the Piaggio Ape, that distinctive three-wheeled light commercial vehicle favoured by many Italian youths; in Italy, you only need a moped licence—available to those aged 14 and over—to drive one.  The Ape ("bee") is basically a scooter with a cab, and it's the slightly younger sibling of Piaggio's ever-popular Vespa ("wasp"), with both models having remained in continuous production since the mid-late 1940s—a period when, with the economy having tanked on account of WW2, Italians were in need of cheap transport options.  

Apes aren't so cheap nowadays, and the youths featured in Sting Like a Bee spend much time and money on all kinds of after-market modifications for their prized vehicles.  As Leone goes about interviewing a selection of San Salvo's Ape enthusiasts, Sting Like a Bee feels very much like a garden variety documentary—albeit a highly engaging one.  But once the film has settled down into familiar territory, a very different picture emerges, one in which the director sets about casting some of these Ape-mad teens in a film centring on first love.  Thus, Sting Like a Bee morphs into a hybrid work where these young adults attempt to navigate the choppy, uncharted waters of dating and romance.  

In a sense, the film's slippery blend of reality and fiction recalls Ben Petrie's The Heirloom—another Raindance 2024 title—in that there are times when it isn't clear if what we are watching is scripted or simply documented.  Parallels can also be drawn between Leone's film and Gaspar Noé's Lux Æterna: each work was commissioned as a piece of branded content—Piaggio sponsored Sting Like a Bee, while Noé received funding from Yves Saint Laurent—before it veered off into very different territory from what its financer had expected.  This charming, engrossing film plays on Thursday, when it is showing at the Genesis cinema; the screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Leone.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope

Raindance 2024: The Heirloom

Having had its world premiere at this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam—where it took its place alongside the likes of Jonathan Glazer's Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's horror The Soul Eater, Kaouther Ben Hania's documentary Four Daughters, and Sean Durkin's biopic The Iron Claw—Ben Petrie's The Heirloom plays at the Raindance Film Festival tomorrow, when it screens at London's Prince Charles Cinema.  In terms of the festival's prizes, The Heirloom has been nominated in the same categories as Dorka Vermes' Árni, with both films up for Best Debut Director, Best Performance in a Debut, and the Discovery Award for Best Debut Feature.    

Prior to The Heirloom, Ben Petrie had made half a dozen shorts, the most recent of which is also the best known: Her Friend Adam (see trailer below).  Heavily reliant on a DIY aesthetic, Petrie's feature debut feels like a very natural progression from his short film work.  In The Heirloom, the director himself stars as Eric, a filmmaker labouring over a script he started some years earlier.  As in Her Friend Adam, the writer-director's real-life partner Grace Glowicki plays Petrie's character's companion, and as Eric toils over his screenplay, Glowicki's Allie is desperate to get a rescue dog.  Eric has some misgivings about such an endeavour but eventually agrees, and the wheels are set in motion.

With lockdown looming, the race is on to secure a dog before the pandemic makes such a transaction impossible, and Allie and Eric arrange to rehome Milly, a whippet from the Dominican Republic.  Given the restrictions that are in place on account of COVID, Allie and Eric need to collect Milly directly from the airport; cue a vaguely threatening nocturnal scene in which the couple meet their new pet on the wintry tarmac.  Once this tense sequence passes, Milly is taken to Eric and Allie's home and, as you might expect, it takes some time for her to get used to these new surroundings.  Milly is a sweet girl, but one lacking in confidence, and Allie and Eric work steadily to integrate the dog into their lives. 

As Milly becomes established in the couple's home, Eric—who now firmly states his desire to achieve a work-life balance—abandons his moribund screenplay in favour of making a film about the couple's relationship with their pet.  From this point on, The Heirloom turns into a most slippery metafiction, one in which we're never entirely sure if what we're watching is simply the film, or the film within that film.  There are a few clues here and there—a stray boom mic, multiple takes of Allie reacting to Milly urinating on the floor, the diegetic noise of a drone engine as it films an overhead shot—but it says much about Ben Petrie's filmmaking that The Heirloom works so fluidly.  The screening will be followed by a Q&A.

Darren Arnold

Images: IFFR

Raindance 2024: Árni

Dorka Vermes' debut feature Árni has already enjoyed outings at both the Hong Kong International Film Festival and La Biennale (the film was developed by Venice's Biennale College Cinema initiative), and it continues to play the fest circuit with a screening at this year's Raindance Film Festival.  As of now, Raindance has been moved from its traditional autumn berth in the festival calendar, and the 2024 edition will occupy a midsummer slot, running June 19–28; shifting the festival away from the crowded autumn season seems a sensible move, although Raindance 2024 is very much a pilot edition as far as its timing is concerned.  A ticket for Wednesday's UK premiere of Árni includes a nice extra in the form of a Q&A session with the film's director.

Vermes, who previously directed the short films Anyák napja and Alba Vulva, has made a remarkably assured film in Árni , in which the lead role is played by the excellent Péter Turi—an actor who provided the inspiration for both the title character and film.  Turi's Árni is a handyman at a travelling circus, and he appears to be the only non-family member in the setup.  The circus itself is a truly joyless spectacle, one populated by forlorn animals and grim-faced humans, and Árni appears to have more in common with the creatures he cares for than the family circle he sits on the fringes of.  Árni is a hard worker: in addition to looking after the circus' animals, he is tasked with various other jobs such as putting up advertising boards and recruiting local manpower to help erect the big top.   

While Árni says very little, it's clear that he's a much deeper thinker than most of his colleagues, who are content to party the night away once the day's business has been concluded (it doesn't take very long to tot up the daily sales of souvenir pictures and bags of popcorn).  But Árni's quotidian drudge is interrupted by the arrival of a python, who the family have ordered for the circus' reptile show segment; the snake is way bigger than expected, and as such the owners of the circus are wary of incorporating it into their act.  Yet Árni forms a bond with the reptile, whose presence seems to unnerve many of the other workers.  The film's final stretch sees it take a sharp left turn as it moves into an extended trance-like sequence in which Árni, for once, takes centre stage in his work milieu.   

I'm not sure if this closing passage is entirely successful but, for the most part, Árni is a highly compelling work.  Wednesday's screening of the film takes place at the Curzon Soho—one of five London venues being used for this year's festival (the others being the Genesis, Prince Charles and Curzon Mayfair cinemas, with the industry hub based at Wonderville on Haymarket).  Made under the auspices of none other than Béla Tarr (Werckmeister Harmonies, The Turin Horse), who, seven years ago, was the subject of an exhibition and retrospective at Amsterdam's EYE Filmmuseum, Árni is nominated for several awards at this year's Raindance: Best Debut Director, Best Performance in a Debut, and the Discovery Award for Best Debut Feature.  Don't bet against it winning at least one of these prizes.  

Darren Arnold

Images: Proton Cinema