By Alec Gehrlein ’19

I think my sense of humor is getting progressively darker as I watch more and more movies like this. Five, six years ago, I don’t know how I would have reacted to Dogman; as of right now, I love it. Matteo Garrone is back in the crime genre, ten years after his masterpiece Gomorrah. In that span of time, his films became darker, stranger and — most importantly — funnier. Garrone has brought all these sensibilities back to the genre he seems to be most comfortable with, and has produced a comedy so dark it might even keep you from laughing.

Not that it’s all blood and torture; Dogman is a seriously good movie. The film follows Marcello (Marcello Fonte), a dog groomer who deals cocaine on the side. He’s got a daughter to support, family trips to fund and a struggling business to keep afloat. All would be swell if it weren’t for Simone (Edoardo Pesce), a bullish thug whose sheer size dwarfs Marcello into submission. Simone is a coke-head who’s short on cash; Marcello is a coke-dealer who’s easily pushed around. Things inevitably erupt.

Some will probably predict where the movie goes, but the plot points don’t matter so much as how we see our characters getting there. Marcello becomes an animalistic mess by the end, and the path he takes might suffer from formula, but is totally entertaining.

Garrone’s direction is much the same as his previous films stylistically; he just makes better choices of what to show and not to show. A drifting, documentary style camera makes the violence feel realer, and the darker color palette makes it feel dirtier. Garrone places us in a seedy underworld that manages to feel totally believable despite its absurdities. It all culminates with a brilliant two-minute shot to highlight the main character’s emotional state, and is a shot I won’t forget.

These actors have clearly worked canine behavior into their performances. Simone is a pitbull: gruff, rough and jacked. He could easily pounce and leave you scarred. Marcello is a chihuahua, or even a poodle: skinny, scared, loyal to its master. He makes it a goal to become the alpha dog, which means leaving his humanity at the door and his morals with it.

9/10

By Alex Gehrlein ’19

Some days at CIFF when you’re killing time between films, you pick up the program and see what’s playing. I saw this film by chance, and am very happy I got the chance to. The Little Comrade is a presently surprising and undeniably assured feature debut from Estonian director Moonika Siimets, and well worth the time spent seeing it.

The film, set during Stalin’s vicious reign in the 1950’s, follows six year old Leelo (Helena Maria Reisner) after her mother is sent to a prison camp and her father (Tambet Tuisk) is left to raise the girl on his own. Secret police investigate the family; food and supplies run tight; tough decisions must be made. All this depressing material is seen through the eyes of our young protagonist, whose perspective keeps the film from sinking into drearier territory.

Leelo’s naturally upbeat attitude brings brief moments of levity to the film, and allows for more visually interesting filmmaking as a result. Siimets’ camera moves fluidly through the rural environment, evoking past masters like Tarkovsky or Malick, and representing the main character’s lighter temperament. Siimets’ overall direction is without a doubt the film’s strongest point, putting it a step above the many films we’ve seen use similar plot elements.

My main problems come from core issues of pacing and performance. When in the middle of a scene, the action and dialogue flow very well, engaging the viewer and relating information effectively. The transitions between scenes, however, can be a bit choppy (especially in the first half). This is probably due to the choice to compact such a large span of material into such a short run time, though to bring it out much further, I think, would lead to issues with dragging instead. I don’t think the scenes we got should have been changed, I just think their connections should have been better established.

As for the acting, the film is carried easily on Reisner’s shoulders, who often upstages the performances of her adult counterparts. Tuisk does a good job as her lovable father, but many supporting characters feel a little too hastily drawn, resulting in caricatures which ring false compared to the more natural tone other moments strike.

All in all, the film is worth seeing, and my issues are fairly minor. Moonika Siimets is someone I hope to see more from and with more resources. Whatever she does next, I plan to track down; hopefully soon.

8/10

Transit is a World War II film set in the present day… Or it could be about a wholly new war we are yet to see in the near future… Or it could just as easily be about the crisis modern day migrants face when seeking to flee their country. Any interpretation works just as well, while each adds its own set of interesting conclusions to the film’s premise. The story is made up of elements we’ve all seen before: forged passports, impersonation, deceit, a mad dash to escape the country, etc. The decision to set it outside of any definable time and place elevates the material in translation.

Based off of Anna Segher’s 1944 novel of the same name, Transit follows Georg (Franz Rogowski) as he attempts to pass himself off as a deceased writer in order to secure his escape from Marseille and safe passage into Mexico. The story never leaves his point of view, even though it is being narrated by a character within the film. Georg’s fears, anxieties and conflicting desires are shown without embellishment and without trickery. We see the man and his situation as they are, and wonder just how much further he can entangle himself.

Something about the way Petzold shoots each scene adds to the film in a way that’s difficult to define. No one shot stands out like the genius closer, and the editing isn’t flashy either. Each scene comes and goes with impeccable timing, not overstaying its welcome, and not revealing any more than the absolute minimum. If you give your full attention to Transit, you will have an emotional experience that rarely comes through in modern films, one where the film is far enough ahead of you to leave endless questions, but doles out enough clues to make you eager to do the work in catching up.

9/10

By Alex Gehrlein ’19

We open on a man in the middle of a field, wearing nothing but a speedo, conducting an orchestra. It will only get stranger from there.

Quentin Dupieux has made a name for himself in creating strange, surreal comedies with an underlying dark edge to propel them forward. If you’ve heard of any of Dupieux’s work, it is most likely Rubber, his unbelievable 2010 horror comedy about a telepathic car tire and its rampage on a small town. Aside from Rubber and Keep an Eye Out, I can’t speak to his other films, but I believe he is breaking new ground by reviving a style of filmmaking we don’t get to see much of anymore: the surrealist comedy.

The most famous surrealist filmmaker is inarguably Luis Buñuel, whose acclaimed comedies shattered what an audience could expect from a moviegoing experience, while keeping to a relatively playful tone. The direct comparisons are pretty weak from Buñuel’s films to Rubber, but the tonal similarities are still somewhat there when you look through the subversive take on genre conventions. Keep an Eye Out left me thinking of many of Buñuel’s best, from The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie to The Exterminating Angel, with its various plot twists and structural reworkings.

This is all a long way of saying that I really enjoyed what Dupieux did with the film, and felt that it resonated with the most memorable work of one of my favorite directors. I was lucky enough to watch it before the screenings at CIFF, and would highly recommend anyone thinking of going to the festival check this one out.

Keep an Eye Out is a simple film in many ways, but not so much in others. A police officer (Benoît Poelvoorde) must spend a long night interrogating an adamantly innocent suspect (Grégoire Ludig). Neither one is aware of what the other is really doing, and a sparring of the wits comes about, each player hiding a secret that would ruin their chances of winning if revealed. Most of the action takes place through some expertly crafted dialogue, which doesn’t reach for obvious jokes, but is instead funny if you read into the purpose of each line. There are no grand comedic setpieces (excluding the nearly inexplicable opening), but the laughs are earned and come frequently.

To go into detail would ruin the film. I expect the ending to be the most controversial choice Dupieux makes with the film, and that it could easily kill your enjoyment of the latter half if taken too seriously. For me it did not. There are certain flaws with the movie’s logic that are meant to confound you, meant to make you scratch your head, meant to make you ask why anyone would think to do that in a film. This is why Keep an Eye Out is so much fun: like its characters, it does not put all its cards on the table, and is willing to leave the audience asking questions.

8/10

By Alex Gehrlein ’19

Going into this film, I didn’t know exactly what I was expecting. I’d seen the trailer for weeks at the Cleveland Cinematheque, and was intrigued by the visual style the clips presented. That being said, I knew next to nothing about the plot and was a bit surprised when I saw it to find there was much more heart and depth to the film than the picturesque sci-fi shots I’d seen might imply.

Starfish is the directorial debut of A.T. White, a UK born musician turned filmmaker, whose visual flair and stylistic decisions elevate this movie above its premise. The film follows Aubrey (Virginia Gardner), a young woman who has recently lost her best friend, Grace (Christina Masterson). We start on the day of Grace’s funeral. Aubrey retreats from the ceremony to her best friend’s apartment, located above the cafe she used to run. Through quiet, calculated moments, the audience is clued in to what exactly is going on here, and who these characters are. This quieter section is when Starfish is at its strongest, giving a gripping portrayal of grief that uses symbolically loaded imagery to affect the audience. If the film had simply followed from there, keeping to the apartment and telling the story in this much subtler way, it could have been brilliant. I’m not necessarily disappointed with the direction it goes in so much as I see a film that could have meant more buried underneath.

Where it does go is still impressive though. While Aubrey mourns in the apartment, a fresh blanket of snow covers the town; the apocalypse is on. To reveal too much would be a bit unfair, as the film does do a good job of moving forward through unexpected developments in this passage, but a brief summary is probably necessary. Aubrey is sent on a quest to locate mixtapes spread all throughout the town, which are somehow related to this disaster she’s found herself in. Moments of meta-commentary come out of left field, and I can’t decide whether it’s for better or for worse; their inclusion gives the film an even deeper layer of meaning, while also bringing things to a halt for a few moments and pulling you out of the film (though from what I can gather, this might be intentional).

As a whole, Starfish is impressive. There’s more I would have liked to see, but enough there to be worth checking it out. I hope A.T. White is given more to work with the next time around, and look forward to whatever he does in the future.

7.5/10
Starfish screens at the Cleveland International Film Festival on April 5th at 2:10 PM and April 6th at 7:35 PM.