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TIFF16 REVIEW: Souvenir [2016]

2016/09/082016/12/05 Jared Mobarak

“Like ABBA but not so famous” It starts with bubbles. So many bubbles rising slowly in liquid as the opening credits in script font flash onscreen. And when the camera finally pans out to see what it’s been that’s mesmerized us so? A glass of water with an Alka-Seltzer dropped in, of course. This is the humor director Bavo Defurne and his co-writers Jacques Boon and Yves Verbraeken infuse throughout their outside-the-box romance Souvenir. As it is the woman about to drink this concoction is hardly special: she lives alone,…

REVIEW: No Home Movie [2016]

2016/08/08 Jared Mobarak

“When I see you like that I want to squeeze you in my arms” I didn’t want Chantal Akerman‘s last film No Home Movie to be the first of hers I watched, but circumstances didn’t comply. The personal documentary’s brief history is intriguing with critical consensus seeming to be skew towards failure before her suicide (some talk posing its mixed response at Locarno as a possible cause) and success afterwards. I don’t know if her death impacted people’s interpretations, but I can see why it could. On this side of…

REVIEW: La belle saison [Summertime] [2015]

2016/07/132016/07/20 Jared Mobarak

“Loneliness is a terrible thing” While a romance on its surface, Catherine Corsini‘s La belle saison [Summertime] is really about freedom. The central relationship between Delphine (Izïa Higelin) and Carole (Cécile De France) pushes them to discover their personal identities removed from any union. The former is a farm girl yearning to break from the conservative mentality a future in the country dictates while the latter’s anti-bourgeois feminist Parisian cohabits with a long-term boyfriend equally political and militantly idealistic as she. They’ve each cut trails through the rigid social norms…

REVIEW: Les demoiselles de Rochefort [The Young Girls of Rochefort] [1967]

2016/06/032016/06/04 Jared Mobarak

“The illusion of love is only love unseen” The fair is in town and love is in the air. Welcome to Rochefort—a little seaside navy town in France full of sumptuously bright colors and plenty of light-footed citizens ready to dance accompaniment for anyone willing to belt their hearts out in song. It’s a harbinger of unrequited love, lost love, and dreamers seeking an ideal they aren’t sure reality possesses. Tourists come and go, laughter is shared, and natives seem to always gravitate back after adventures abroad. The city beckoned…

REVIEW: Avril et le monde truqué [April and the Extraordinary World] [2015]

2016/03/232016/03/24 Jared Mobarak

“All scientists must serve the empire!” Most writing on Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci‘s Avril et le monde truqué [April and the Extraordinary World] speaks as though they’ve adapted one of revered Frenchman Jacques Tardi‘s graphic novels. This isn’t quite the case. What they’ve actually done is bring his unique “universe” to life with help from previous collaborator Benjamin Legrand (writer of Tardi’s Tueur de cafards) instead. Legrand and Ekinci crafted this alternate steampunk version of Paris as something inspired by the artist’s work rather than born from it. Tardi…

REVIEW: Panique au village [A Town Called Panic] [2009]

2016/01/22 Jared Mobarak

“Your car is completely broken” Based on the animated series of the same name, Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar‘s feature length Panique au village [A Town Called Panic] is a far cry from short five-minute skits. With that said, it’s easy to see how it was born from such a format considering the irreverent humor running rampant through its comedy of errors connected by the thinnest layer of glue. This is how they travel from a celebratory night of birthday festivities for Horse (Patar) to the undersea theft of brick…

REVIEW: Les plages d’Agnès [The Beaches of Agnès] [2008]

2015/11/042015/11/05 Jared Mobarak

“I feel pain everywhere” I think it should be a new rule that documentaries about filmmakers can only be made if the subject him/herself directs. How could you not want this enforced after watching Agnès Varda‘s Les plages d’Agnès [The Beaches of Agnès]? It surely helps that the Frenchwoman is candid, funny, and fearless when it comes to combining whatever she has into one cohesive whole. As she says: her movies are puzzles with many disparate pieces strewn about that find themselves coming together in the end. If some footage…

REVIEW: Sans toit ni loi [Vagabond] [1985]

2015/10/212015/10/22 Jared Mobarak

“Champagne on the road’s better” When I saw Sans toit ni loi [Vagabond] for the first time as a twenty-year old in college, I did so believing its titular nomad Mona Bergeron (Sandrine Bonnaire) was the focal point. This was a mistake. I was bored—frustrated that I was forced to care about someone who obviously wanted to be alone and on the road. She’s resentful, temperamental, and above all else ungrateful when the kindness shown dries up. It’s not, “Thank you for the time we’ve spent together and the warmth…

REVIEW: Respire [Breathe] [2014]

2015/10/202017/11/21 Jared Mobarak

“Passion is harmful when it becomes excessive” There’s a lot of mirroring happening in Mélanie Laurent‘s sophomore film behind the camera Respire [Breathe]. Thinking it heavy-handed wouldn’t be impossible, but I’m not sure the story can be told otherwise. Granted, a philosophical discussion in class about passion foreshadowing events to come just as a biology video bears resemblance to current state of affairs around two-thirds in could have been excised. But the similarities between Charlie (Joséphine Japy) and her mother Vanessa (Isabelle Carré) cannot. We need to see Mom’s codependence…

REVIEW: Mur murs [1982]

2015/10/072015/10/08 Jared Mobarak

“That’s part of the beauty. It’s going to change.” What’s there to do while you’re in Los Angeles? Shoot a couple films, of course. That’s exactly what French auteur Agnès Varda decided to do in 1981 with her fictional narrative Documenteur and documentary Mur murs. The latter proves a very down and dirty point and shoot piece, immortalizing the myriad murals around Los Angeles as well as the artists behind them. This is important too since so many have been covered in graffiti, knocked down, or hidden by new construction.…

TIFF15 REVIEW: Peur de rien [Parisienne] [2016]

2015/09/272015/09/27 Jared Mobarak

“For now everything is ugly” Many deflect from it, but a writer/director’s intent can change the viewer’s outlook on his/her film. Danielle Arbid‘s fictional coming-of-age drama about a college-aged immigrant from Lebanon to France (Manal Issa‘s Lina) is one containing many new acquaintances able to help her find the freedom she covets but never found back home. It can prove convenient because of this since she never truly hits rock bottom like many in her situation do. Instead there’s always a guardian angel watching out for her—sometimes manipulated and sometimes…