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TIFF19 REVIEW: Antigone [2019]

2019/09/012020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

My heart says to help my brother. A lot of people die during Sophocles‘ Antigone. The death of Oedipus puts his sons Eteocles and Polynices on the throne, their deaths spark their titular sister to fight for the latter’s right to be buried, and her eventual suicide leads to more dead bodies as only a Greek tragedy could allow. While Canadian director Sophie Deraspe loosely adapts his play to tell her tale of North America’s immigration ills (through the specific lens of Montreal, Quebec), she leaves the killing behind. There’s…

REVIEW: Un couteau dans le coeur [Knife+Heart] [2018]

2019/08/032020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

She’s playing with real life. Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis) has ruined her love. What she’s done to push Loïs (Kate Moran) away is unknown, but her desperation ensures we know she was dumped and not the dumper. Whatever happened hasn’t soured their relationship completely, however. Loïs still cares enough about Anne as a person and especially as an artist to remain editor on her cheaply produced gay porn films utilizing the same loyal troupe of actors—her eye forever lingering on Anne’s smile whenever it’s caught on-camera before François (Bertrand Mandico)…

REVIEW: Les îles [Islands] [2018]

2019/08/022020/03/25 Jared Mobarak

Tell me you want me. Winner of the Queer Palm at Cannes 2017 for short film, Yann Gonzalez‘s Les îles [Islands] delivers eroticism in many forms. From one scene of intimacy to the next, he lets his camera follow characters into the throes of sex before pulling out to show how one’s pleasures are another’s performance. A man (Alphonse Maîtrepierre) and woman (Mathilde Mennetrier) in bed are ruled by lust and ultimately revealed to be a horror trope of innocence lost for a monster (Romain Merle) to interrupt. His skin-less…

REVIEW: Doubles vies [Non-Fiction] [2019]

2019/05/292020/03/27 Jared Mobarak

An infinite minority. You know when you go to a get-together and the conversation inevitably turns to current affairs for which everyone has a fringe understanding? So rather than provide true opinions, they simply start regurgitating what they’ve read on the subject. Most times their content doesn’t even come from a primary source because we’ve conditioned ourselves to blindly trust media outlets that paraphrase, parse, and filter through their own personalized political agenda. Fact therefore becomes a stepping-stone towards editorial and that editorial suddenly becomes a stand-in for the facts.…

REVIEW: Climax [2018]

2019/03/182020/03/29 Jared Mobarak

Anything. What would you do for the chance to work with the illustrious choreographer Selva (Sofia Boutella) and her DJ Daddy (Kiddy Smile)? According to the group of young dancers they interviewed: “Anything.” Some are coy when asking for context to the question with a smile and others are quick to pretty much say they’d kill a person if asked. So off they all go to a remote school during winter to rehearse a routine with which they plan to set New York and London stages ablaze. And with an…

REVIEW: Fauve [2018]

2019/01/242020/03/30 Jared Mobarak

First one to laugh is dead. Youthful thoughts of immortality have a way of getting children into trouble as well as teaching them lessons able to scar them for life. For Tyler (Félix Grenier) and Benjamin (Alexandre Perreault) it’s a seemingly innocent game of one-upmanship wherein an indefinable state of superiority earns each a point on their way to a winning total of six. So if one feigns an injury and the other is gullible (read compassionate) enough to help, the trickster adds to his total. If one is in…

REVIEW: Marguerite [2017]

2019/01/222020/03/30 Jared Mobarak

I won’t live forever, you know. Stereotyping is proven real when an elderly Marguerite (Béatrice Picard) asks her nurse Rachel (Sandrine Bisson) if the person she was talking to on the phone was her boyfriend only to hear, “My girlfriend” instead. The woman’s face drops in surprise with an, “Oh” before finding a smile and the kindness to ask her name. We wonder if things will now change between them, assuming a senior citizen wearing a crucifix might not “approve” of such behavior. How will Marguerite react the next time…

TIFF REVIEW: Duelles [Mothers’ Instinct] [2019]

2018/09/072020/04/02 Jared Mobarak

Forgive me. Director Olivier Masset-Depasse lets us know exactly what to expect out of Duelles [Mothers’ Instinct] from the start, introducing an idyllic bourgeois home with all the sensory cues to foreshadow melodramatic suspense. Alice Brunelle (Veerle Baetens) peers out her window as neighbor Céline Geniot (Anne Coesens) leaves, rushing out once the car pulls away. She enters the woman’s adjoining home with a set of keys to clandestinely move through and close the curtains. We assume the worst: an affair. The music manipulates this suspenseful thought, the camera in-close…

TIFF REVIEW: Les filles du soleil [Girls of the Sun] [2018]

2018/09/062020/04/02 Jared Mobarak

Women, life, liberty. It’s just like America to document ISIS as a fight we must combat—like the saviors we are. There’s a reason for this from our perspective, but our jingoistic thought process does detract from what’s occurring on the ground. People are engaged in a war that they have no way to avoid. They’ve been displaced from their homes by a terrorist regime that has murdered them, raped them, and indoctrinated their youth into joining the cause. So our hero complex has devastating effects insofar as erasing the victims…

TIFF18 REVIEW: Jessica Forever [2018]

2018/09/022020/10/02 Jared Mobarak

Why wouldn’t you come with us? Redemption is a tricky concept. Can you be redeemed without forgiveness from those you wronged? Are our actions in the aftermath enough to achieve some semblance of peace if they show we’ve learned through remorse? Everyone has a different opinion on the matter whether victim, loved one, stranger, or corporation. Rehabilitation only goes so far when you find yourself free without any opportunities to prove to yourself that change was worth the trouble. There’s a reason so many criminals find themselves right back in…

TIFF18 REVIEW: Les salopes ou le sucre naturel de la peau [Les Salopes or the Naturally Wanton Pleasure of Skin] [2018]

2018/08/252020/04/02 Jared Mobarak

In the end there are only human experiments. Can skin tell the difference between love and desire? It’s an intriguing question Marie-Claire (Brigitte Poupart) can’t help but want to answer as a dermatology professor and lover of sex if only to supply a reprieve from the usual carcinoma studies her doctorate students tediously gravitate towards. She knows the young woman who presents it (Charlotte Aubin‘s Sofia) is up to the challenge scholastically, but unsure experimentally. So Marie-Claire takes it upon herself to collect samples of her own cells before and…