Belatedly got round to doing my top ten of the year, which you can read here. Wanted to highlight Piaffe especially, as it's the only film on the list without a proper release yet — as well as one of the most exciting debuts I've seen in ages.
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In the debut feature from visual artist Ann Oren, introverted protagonist Eva (Simone Bucio) is roped into working as a foley artist on a commercial for a dubious mood stabiliser; her…
Young dad Calum (Paul Mescal) is tucking his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) into bed; they’ve just arrived at a Brit-crammed Turkish holiday resort, and Sophie is presumably knackered. As she lies asleep in the foreground, he sneaks out for late-night cigarette on the balcony. In one long, slow shot, the camera closes in on Calum, his back to us. He lights up, takes a few drags, and then begins to sway dreamily from side to side. Is he practicing…
Tati’s prescient portrait of a superficial, homogeneous world of mannequin people that only comedy — boisterous, anarchic comedy — is able to inject some life back into. Most of all, made me think of Fredric Jameson’s writing about the “bewildering new world space of late or multinational capital” — “bewildering” being the operative word with regard to Monsieur Hulot’s experience of the various non-places he stumbles between. The spaces in this film are often baffling, literally impossible to orient oneself…
Naturally, some of the short tales work better than others — the one about a boy who believes himself to be a walrus exemplifies Rafman’s phobic approach to bodies and their capacity for transformation — but even when Rafman’s musings on internet and identity are at their laziest the accompanying AI-generated chaos keeps things compulsively watchable. When the episodes do work, they are both wickedly funny and oddly moving; especially brilliant is the paranoid man who mistakes his wife’s affection for that of an FBI agent.
Bill Nighy: You see, son, all the men in our family have the ability to time travel.
Domhnall Gleeson: What? What about the women??
Bill Nighy: *chuckling softly* oh no son, that would give them narrative agency! Anyway have fun using your powers to get away with being a total arsehole, stalking and manipulating women while you craft yourself a perfect life formed on the basis of exploitation and lies!!
The best I can say for Belle is that the film’s emotional beats are clearly hugely felt by the filmmakers, and in moments this can’t help but be infectious. And there’s a staggering sense of depth to the opening images that crops up in a few other scenes and makes for some spectacular imagery. But this doesn’t cohere into anything resembling a compelling narrative — especially when the film, in a bizarre detour, sets up this mystery around the identity…
