Silly stunt men, homicidal hipsters and goofy gags

>> A look at Fantasia’s final week

by MALCOLM FRASER,
MATTHEW HAYS,
JEFFREY MALECKI
and MARK SLUTSKY

The 4th Life

Here’s one of those strange, otherworldly finds hungry audiences only ever seem able to track down at Fantasia. Made by Montreal director François Miron, The 4th Life is set in a desolate future, one marked by terrorism and an increasingly alienated populace, a bit like the Britain in Children of Men. Two women find themselves in love, but both are tortured by far-off memories of their twisted pasts. Miron really gets into the gal-on-gal love scenes (clearly het-porn influenced) and the fantasy elements are intriguing. The 4th Life is admirable for its bucking of narrative conventions—there’s nothing linear about the way this tale is told. (MH)

The Devil Dared Me To

A wacky, violent and pleasingly crude (if definitely sloppy and not to everyone’s tastes) comedy from New Zealand. Chris Stapp and Matt Heath are the dudes behind Back of the Y Masterpiece Television, a controversial cult hit in their native land, and they spun this flick out of their small-box success. Trading on the possibly fictional New Zealand daredevil culture, the movie has Stapp as an aspiring stuntman and heir to a long line of crazy risk-takers who all lost their lives in service to their art; he apprentices himself to Heath’s character, a cocky and more successful performer, and all sorts of gory antics are the result. You can’t really say too much about this as a work of filmic art, but it’s likely to entertain Fantasia crowds nonetheless. (MS)

Beijing Bubbles

German directors Susanne Messmer and George Lindt bring us this charming and fascinating look at the underground rock scene in Beijing. Like in just about any other city, the music is mostly warmed-over retro-rock, generic post-punk, or sketchy singer-songwriter fare, and the musicians are vaguely rebellious slackers who put as much effort into fashion and prodigious consumption of cigarettes and booze as they do towards their music. But in the context of contemporary China, the titanic state that’s jettisoned the economic equality of communism while retaining the harsh suppression of dissent, the rockers’ dedication to the lifestyle is somehow inspiring. The film is ultra-low-budget—I’ve seen home videos with higher production values—but worth seeing for anyone interested in Chinese culture beyond its image in the mainstream media. (MF)

The Girl Next Door

Based on Jack Ketchum’s gruesome story, this film tells the horrific story (apparently based on a true incident) of a young boy who witnesses his neighbour’s cruel abuse and eventual torture of a pubescent girl. Set in the ’50s, the lady of this particular household clearly has some “issues” with young girls, and decides to take it out on some poor innocent thing who has the misfortune of having to live in the house. Director Gregory Wilson knows how to build tension, something he does very well in The Girl Next Door, but even a hardened horror buff like me has to wonder about an audience that would get off on watching a girl be tied up and mutilated for close to two hours. This feels less like a horror or suspense movie than a snuff movie, recalling another Fantasia entry, S&Man. (MH)

Murder Party

A group of Brooklyn hipsters ties up a helpless traffic cop and plot his murder as part of a grant-baiting art installation in this satirical thriller, a low-budget send-up of the pretensions of the New York art scene. For the most part, Murder Party’s production values are decidedly thrifty, but after a chintzy opening sequence that ceases to matter, the movie becomes a very funny and bloody comedy. The shots don’t always hit their mark (it’s easy to overdo it when lampooning a culture that can be such an easy target), but Murder Party is at times hilarious, and it has a made-on-a-shoestring charm that’s quite winning, as well as some surprisingly slick Steadicam work for a film that cost so little. (MS)

Always

A stylized and cartoonish representation of postwar Japan, as seen through a handful of charming and eccentric residents in a small, incidental neighbourhood in Tokyo. Both a blessing and a shortfall, the film merely hints at the great social changes afoot, and it never labours the political point, content to dwell in its own fantasy. The characters, never fully clean of their animated sheen, gradually win you over until you are fully caught up in their tribulations, and the scenes of the neighbourhood’s first TV and the characters’ inexplicable but predictable returns are thoroughly uplifting. Always is ultimately too precious to run more than two hours long, and it constantly hovers about the realm of the fuzzy and unreal, but this is part of its great charm. (JM)

The City of Violence

Seoul detective Tae-su (Jung Doo-hong) goes back to his hometown, the small but developing city of Onsung, for the funeral of his childhood friend Wang-jae (Ahn Kil-Kang). It soon turns out that his old gang have all gone on to become actual gangsters, and Pil-ho (Lee Beom-su) is making a play for the big time by getting involved with a crooked construction deal for a casino. Jung unofficially investigates the murder, and gets pulled into the city’s underbelly (which includes the best thematically-costumed street gangs this side of The Warriors). The proliferation of goofy gags, melodramatic flourishes and occasionally god-awful music, along with highly questionable subtitling, may turn off some viewers, but writer/director Ryoo Seung-wan has a stylish touch, especially with the snappy, inventive editing. (MF)

Fantasia runs through Monday, July 23.
See www.fantasiafest.com
for showtimes and more info.