New York Film Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

BERTRAND BONELLO: ZOMBI CHILD (2019)


LOUISE LABEQUE AND WISLANDA LOUIMAT (FAR RIGHT) IN ZOMBI CHILD

Voodoo comes to Paris

If you said Betrand Bonello's films are beautiful, sexy, and provocative you would not be wrong. This new, officially fifth feature (I've still not seen his first one, the 2008 On War), has those elements. Its imagery, full of deep contrasts, can only be described as lush. Its intertwined narrative is puzzling as well.

We're taken right away to Haiti and plunged into the world of voodoo and zombies. Ground powder from the cut-up body of a blowfish is dropped, unbeknownst to him, into a man's shoes. Walking in them, he soon falters and falls. Later, he's aroused from death to the half-alive state of a zombie - and pushed into a numb, helpless labor in the hell of a a sugar cane field with other victims of the same cruel enchantment. In time however something arouses him to enough life to escape.

Some of the Haitian sequences center around a moonlit cemetery whose large tombs seem airy and haunted and astonishingly grand for what we know as the poorest country in the hemisphere.

From the thumping, vibrant ceremonies of Haitian voodoo (Bonello's command of music is always fresh and astonishing as his images are lush and beautiful) we're rushed to the grandest private boarding school you've ever seen, housed in vast stone government buildings. This noble domaine was established by Napoleon Bonaparte on the edge of Paris, in Saint Denis, for the education of children of recipients of the Legion of Honor. It really exists, and attendance there is still on an honorary basis.

Zombi Child oscillates between girls in this very posh Parisian school and people in Haiti. But these are not wholly separate places. A story about a Haitian grandfather (the zombie victim, granted a second life) and his descendants links the two strains. It turns out one of those descendants, Mélissa (Wislanda Louimat), is a new student at the school. A white schoolgirl, Fanny (the dreamy Louise Labeque), who's Mélissa's friend and sponsors her for membership in a sorority, while increasingly possessed by a perhaps imaginary love, also bridges the gap. For the sorority admission Mélissa confesses the family secret of a zombi and voodoo knowledge in her background.

Thierry Méranger of Cahiers du Cinéma calls this screenplay "eminently Bonellian in its double orientation," its "interplay of echoes" between "radically different" worlds designed to "stimulate the spectator's reflection." Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times bluntly declares that it's meant to "interrogate the bitter legacy of French colonialism."

But how so? And if so, this could be a tricky proposition. On NPR Andrew Lapin was partly admiring of how "cerebral and slippery" the film is, but suggests that since voodoo and zombies are all most white people "already know" about Haitian culture, a director coming from Haiti's former colonizing nation (France) must do "a lot of legwork to use these elements successfully in a "fable" where "the real horror is colonialism." The posh school comes from Napoleon, who coopted the French revolution, and class scenes include a history professor lecturing on this and how "liberalism obscures liberty."

I'm more inclined to agree with Glenn Kenny's more delicately worded praise in his short New York Times review of the film where he asserts that the movie’s inconclusiveness is the source of its appeal. Zombi Child, he says, is fueled by insinuation and fascination. The fascination, the potent power, of the occult, that's what Haiti has that the first wold lacks.

One moment made me authentically jump, but Bonello isn't offering a conventional horror movie. He's more interested in making his hints of voodoo's power and attraction, even for the white lovelorn schoolgirl, seem as convincing as his voodoo ceremonies, both abroad and back in Haiti, feel thoroughly attractive, or scary, and real. These are some of the best voodoo scenes in a movie. This still may seem like a concoction to you. Its enchantments were more those of the luxuriant imagery, the flowing camerawork, the delicious use of moon- and candle-light, the beautiful people, of whatever color. This is world-class filmmaking even if it's not Bonello's best work.

Bonello stages things, gets his actors to live them completely, then steps back and lets it happen. Glenn Kenny says his "hallmark" is his "dreamy detachment." My first look at that was the 2011 House of Tolerence (L'Apollonide - mémoires de la maison close), which I saw in Paris, a languorous immersion in a turn-of-the-century Parisian brothel, intoxicating, sexy, slightly repugnant. Next came his most ambitious project, Saint Laurent(2014), focused on a very druggy period in the designer's career and a final moment of decline. He has said this became a kind of matching panel for Apollonide. (You'll find that in an excellent long Q&A after the NYFF screening.) Saint Laurent's "forbidden" (unsanctioned) picture of the fashion house is as intoxicating, vibrant, and cloying as the maison close, with its opium, champagne, disfigurement and syphilis. No one can say Gaspard Ulliel wasn't totally immersed in his performance. Nocturama (2016) takes a group of wild young people who stage a terrorist act in Paris, who seem to run aground in a posh department store at the end, Bonello again getting intense action going and then seeming to leave it to its own devices, foundering. Those who saw the result as "shallow cynicism" (like A.O. Scott) missed how exciting and powerful it was. (Mike D'Angelo didn't.)

Zombi Child is exciting at times too. But despite its gorgeous imagery and sound, its back and forth dialectic seems more artificial and calculating than Bonello's previous films.

Zombi Child, mins., debuted at Cannes Directors Fortnight May 2019, included in 13 other international festivals, including Toronto and New York. It released theatrically in France Jun. 12, 2020 (AlloCiné press rating 3.7m 75%) and in the US Jan. 24, 2020 (Metascore 75%). Now available in "virtual theater" through Film Movement (Mar. 23-May 1, 2020), which benefits the theater of your choice. https://www.filmmovement.com/zombi-child

[Chris Knipp]

OLIVIER ASSAYAS: WASP NETWORK (2019)


GAEL GARCÍA BERNAL AND PENELOPE CRUZ IN WASP NETWORK

Spies nearby

The is a movie about the Cuban spies sent to Miami to combat anti-Castro Cuban-American groups, and their capture. They are part of what the Cubans called La Red Avispa (The Wasp Network). The screenplay is based on the book The Last Soldiers of the Cold War by Fernando Morais, and it's mainly from the Wasp, Cuban point of view, not the FBI point of view. Unlike the disastrous Seberg, no time is spent looking over the shoulders of G-men, nor will this story give any pleasure to right wing Miami Cubans. But it won't delight leftists much either, or champions of the Cuban Five. The issues of why one might leave Cuba and why one might choose not to are treated only superficially. There's no analysis of US behavior toward Cuba since the revolution.

On the plus side, the film is made in an impeccable, clear style (with one big qualification: see below) and there's an excellent cast with as leads Edgar Ramirez (of the director's riveting miniseries Carlos), Penelope Cruz (Almodóvar's muse), Walter Moura (Escobar in the Netflix series "Narcos"), Ana de Armas (an up-and-comer who's actually Cuban but lives in Hollywood now), and Gael García Bernal (he of course is Mexican, Moura is Brazilian originally, and Ramirez is Venezuelan). They're all terrific, and other cast members shine. Even a baby is so amazing I thought she must be the actress' real baby.

Nothing really makes sense for the first hour. We don't get the whole picture, and we never do, really. We focus on René Gonzalez (Édgar Ramirez), a Puerto Rican-born pilot living in Castro’s Cuba and fed up with it, or the brutal embargo against Castro by the US and resulting shortage of essential goods and services, who suddenly steals a little plane and flies it to Miami, leaving behind his wife Olga and young daughter. Olga is deeply shocked and disappointed to learn her husband is a traitor. He has left without a word to her. Born in Chicago, he was already a US citizen and adapts easily, celebrated as an anti-Castro figure.

We also follow another guy, Juan Pablo Roque (Wagner Moura) who escapes Havana by donning snorkel gear and swimming to Guantanamo, not only a physical challenge but riskier because prison guards almost shoot him dead when he comes out of the water. Roque and Gonzalez are a big contrast. René is modest, content with small earnings, and starts flying for a group that rescues Cuban defectors arriving by water. Juan Pablo immediately woos and marries the beautiful Ana Marguerita Martinez (Ana de Armas) and, as revealed by an $8,000 Rolex, is earning big bucks but won't tell Ana how. This was the first time I'd seen Wagner Moura, an impressively sly actor who as Glenn Kenny says, "can shift from boyish to sinister in the space of a single frame" - and that's not the half of it.

This is interesting enough to keep us occupied but it's not till an hour into the movie, with a flashback to four years earlier focused on Cuban Gerardo Hernandez (Garcia Bernal) that we start to understand something of what is going on. We learn about the CANF and Luis Posada Carriles (Tony Plana), and a young man's single-handed effort to plant enough bombs to undermine the entire Cuban tourist business. This late-arriving exposition for me had a deflating and confounding effect. There were still many good scenes to follow. Unfortunately despite them, and the good acting, there is so much exposition it's hard to get close to any of the individual characters or relationships.

At the moment I'm an enthusiastic follower of the FX series "The Americans." It teaches us that in matters of espionage, it's good to have a firm notion of where the main characters - in that case "Phillip" and "Elizabeth" - place their real, virtually unshakable loyalties, before moving on. Another example of which I'm a longtime fan is the spy novels of John le Carré. You may not be sure who's loyal, but you always know who's working for British Intelligence, even in the latest novel the remarkable le Carré, who at 88, has just produced (Agent Running in the Field - for which he's performed the audio version, and no one does that better). To be too long unclear about these basics in spydom is fatal.

It's said that Assayas had a lot of trouble making Wasp Network, which has scenes shot in Cuba in it. At least the effort doesn't show. We get a glimpse of Clinton (this happened when he was President) and Fidel, who, in a hushed voice, emphatically, asserts his confidence that the Red Avispa was doing the right thing and that the Americans should see that. Whose side do you take?

Wasp Network, 123 mins., debuted at Venice and showed at about ten other international festivals including Toronto, New York, London and Rio. It was released on Netflix Jun. 19, 2019, and that applies to many countries (13 listed on IMDb). Metascore 54%.

[Chris Knipp]

AMEI WALLACH: TAKING VENICE (2023)


ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG AT THE TIME OF THE 1964 BIENNALE

Art as a Cold War pawn

Artist Robert Rauschenberg, one of the most famous American cultural figures of the Sixties through the Eighties, became very rich and died on his own island, Captiva, in 2008 at the age of 82. The documentary Taking Venice was created to determine whether, as has long been rumored, in the 1964 Venice Biennale the Americans laid a "fix" in to insure that Rauschenberg would win the Golden Lion at the top 32nd Biennale and make America look culturally ascendant. Early on Rauschenberg is seen in a clip speculating that if he hadn't won this, his subsequent career might have been better. Is that true? What would the difference have been?

Director Amei Wallach has assembled the conventional roster of talking heads intercut with archival footage by way of illustration, and jazzes up the. mix with a loud score. She is concerned to sensationalizes her topic, which forms a part of the history of the Cold War.

One moment goes in another more humane direction: a passage describing the relationship of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Johns, by the way, is still living, so he has been working for many more years than Rauschenberg, and produced work, primarily prints, paintings, and encaustics whose subtlety and complexity has outlived Rauschenberg's exciting, big flashy screnprint paintings incorporating images of baseball players and JFK, and his Combines, inspired by his junk collecting in the streets right around the studio, where he lived. Rauschenberg and Johns were both lovers and collaborators, and we hear their voices describing something of how this remarkable intimate creative partnership functioned at this key moment in American art.

Taking Venice largely however presents modern art history not as personal record but socio-political scandal. The film shows the Biennale Rauschenberg exhibition and talks about how striking and original it was. But the subtleties of what his work was like and where he stood in the work of the period that is so poorly described by calling it "Pop Art" is secondary to the politics and the manipulations.

However, there is one story that provides an alternative: Wallach necessarily describes other artists featured in the US pavillion at Venice. That pavilion was a Palladian villa designed in 1930, and, we learn, was built by "a consortium of New York galleries": in other words, alone among major countries at the art Biennale, America didn't provide the funding and it had to be private. Then, the US government functioned like a gangster, not an art patron, pulling strings crudely to see to it that the new augmented pavilion, with a large annex on the Canal Grande occupying the former US embassy building, made a big splash.

Yes, this is significant. The spotlighting of the US Pavilion of the Biennale in 1964 represents a belated recognition of the passing of the mantle of modern art from France to the U - though this had already happened in the actual art world with the New York abstract expressionists of the Fifties. The 1964 pavilion included John Chamberlain, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella.

It's extraordinary to learn - details can be found in Wikipedia's article, American Pavilion - about how US gallries and museums struggled to manage and finance the pavilion , Grand Central Art Galleries in the Thirties, then in the Fifties MoMA, MOMA, with the exhibitions managed by MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Baltimore Museum of Art. MoMA withdrew in 1964 and the US Information Agency - the country's governmental cultural propaganda outlet - took over till the pavilion was sold to the Guggenheim Foundation. On the one hand, one doesn't want government running art. On the other hand one does want government to subsidize art, as some countries, such as Germany and Switzerland, have done generously, while among rich countries, the US has been unusually stingy toward the arts. "What's in it for us?" US pols seem to ask. In the case of Biennale 1964, they appears to have found something. Voice are heard here announcing that Venice, with its prize, was an "Olympics of art."

In any case, raising funds to put on shows at the Biennale is an essential and increasingly challenging aspect of putting on shows at the Biennale, and it has risen from the equivalent of $702,000 for Rauschenberg in 1964 to from $4 million to $7 million for recent US Biennale exhibitions - for individual artists. It costs a lot to make a splash in the art world.nowadays.

How, or whether, the US "fixed" Rauschenberg's grand prize win at Venice 1964 is a bit vague. However, there's a story, "Have you heard it?" asks the friendly Christo, that Leo Castelli, whose ex-wife Ileana Sonnabend was a sort of Europeanartpost for American art, put in a word to get the influential, charming art figure Sam Hunter to be named as the first Yank on the seven-person jury. There is plenty of detail about the jury's squabbles. A big issue was simply that they thought they couldn't award Rauschenberg because his work was shown at the embassy annex and not at the "giardini," the main Biennale location.

An interlude - this film's left turns are its most interesting parts - reviews Rauschenberg's education at Black Mountain College, where he met Marce Cunningham and John Cage, two other key players in the then gay mafia of burgeoning American art, and Rauschenberg, Cunningham and Cage collaborated later. In fact, Merce brought his company to 1964 Venice with a production designed by Rauschenberg put on at La the historic Fenice for a cheering and booing overflow audience, right before the jury made its decision, and that impressed the jury.

They voted for Rauschenberg, but the objection of his work not being shown at the Biennale "giardini" grounds remained. So the Americans hired a barge and shipped a lot of Rauschenberg's work fr"om the former embassy to an impromptu annex in freont of the US rotunda. The film recreates" this barge move. The gimmick worked: Rauschenberg got the grand prize, and was embraced and carried throughPiazza San Marco, becoming another American Cold War pawn like Van Cliburn in thev Fifties.

Main speakers in the film are a shades-wearing Alice Denney, head of the 1964 Biennale team, a Washington insider (her hsband was a government cultural honcho and she was a longtime friend of the Kennedys), who worked with Alan Solomon, and the dealer Leo Castelli bo manipulate Rauschenberg's win. interviewed the leader of the 1964 Biennale team, Alice Denney, a Washington insider, who worked with the curator Alan Solomon and the art dealer Leo Castelli to bring Rauschenberg to victory.

There is something very flashy and bold abut Rauschenberg and if you acknowledge, as this moment did, that New York had taken the banner from Paris, it seems right that he should have won this highly publicized honor among a group of outstanding American artists also included. But the manipulation still feels uncomfortable, and Rauschenberg's comment that it might have been better if he hadn't won confirms this somehow.

1964 was a banner year. Most people won't even have heard of most of the artists of the past two decades of Biennale US pavilions. The 1964 ones were household words, or were to become that. (This says something about the art world more than about the Biennale.) So even if this film has a bias that diminishes the value of its content on art and isn't even especially impressive at that, if you're interested in contemporary art history, especially during the Sixties, you'll want to take a look at it. (The filmmaker is a longtime chief art critic of Newsday and has made a film about Louise Bourgeois.)

Taking Venice, debuted at DOC NYC Nov. 10, 2023 and has shown at other festivals, at least at Sarasota Apr. 2024. Produced byZeitgeist Films, it opens theatrically at New York's IFC Center May 17, 2024, and at Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles May 24

[Chris Knipp]

JASON GOLDMAN: ROWDY GIRL (2023)


RENEE AND FRIEND IN ROWDY GIRL

What eating meat means

Rowdy Girl is a ranch named after a favorite cow by a unique lady, former Texas cattle rancher Renee King-Sonnen, who with her husband Tommy Sonnen, has gone vegan. Their Texas ranch now no longer sells livestock off to be slaughtered and instead has been made a refuge for animals, including cattle, horses, chickens and goats, which they treat like pets, or even family members. More than that, Renee does outreach, raises money for others to follow, and to convert their farms, using them to house rescued animals in the transition stage. A big chicken farm that used to raise 35,000 chickens in factory-concentration camp conditions, is being converted to raise mushrooms. Renee has created the Rancher Advocacy Program to help out with the expenses of these conversions.

This engaging little documentary film will draw you in with the warmth of its approach, and the personalities of the animals, whom we learn to see as akin to people, and to the dynamic personality and twangy accent of Renee. She is up front about everything: this is how she can be a model for others and set a template for herself. She freely acknowledges that she is in recovery: she was addicted to alcohol for years, addiction being a common way of numbing oneself to doing what one can't really condone. She also acknowledges that becoming a vegan and rejecting their previous life was a slow and painful process. She and others she talks to acknowledge the PTSD they feel from the horrors they have seen in a system that involved factory farm cruelty leading to wholesale slaughter. Renee sees herself as not only rescuing animals but rescuing ranchers.

I'd just eaten a sausage dinner when I started watching Rowdy Girl, and already a few mintues in I came to regret that. This is a movie that really makes you think. For thousands of years man has raised animals to eat them. If that isn't healthy for us or for the planet we should stop doing it. None of this comes off as preachy because it's Renee talking, not to the camera but to other farmers who are enthusiastic about what she represents and are following in that direction as Renee is visibly loving and affectionate toward the animals we see her and Tommy live so comfortably with.

A lot of the time is involved with those conversations. But the heart of the little film is seeing the animals up close, photographed as they are treated by their handlers, with the same loving care that goes to the humans. Rowdy Girl is the first cow that opened Renee’s eyes to a sense of animals as sentient beings. She sings to cows - and they like it. A memorable moment is the arrival of calf with a rancher who recounts staying up all night with him after he was born, seeming nearly lifeless. Try not to him as adorable; he and Renee do. Various farm fowl come and go, like independent-minded pets, looking colorful and sleek. Another moment to dwell on is when Renee calls to horses across a wide open space and two of them appear and come running, and she greets and pets and talks to them.

This isn't going toward keeping farm animals as suburban pets. What it's about is recognizing that raising them to be killed and eaten is cruelty to animals, pure and simple, and there are ways to reverse the practice. Renee says when we eat a chicken or a steak we have "hired a hitman" to do it, a wizard behind the curtain whom we just don't happen to see. There are many other cruel practices leading up to slaughter of animals: horrendous overcrowding, separation of baby chicks and baby calves from their mothers right after birth to be raised en masse. But when you think about it, when you eat your fee range eggs or chickens or beef, eat your free range butter or drink your free range organic milk, animals were raised in nice conditions only to cruelly exploit them at the end. There's no "nice" way to raise animals for our food. Renee and friends who've gone a similar way talk about how being vegan is "connecting the dots." She connects those further and says it leads to rejecting other ways they've been raised - rejecting racism.

I'm having trouble with the egg and dairy part. They form a central part of my present diet, and they seem safe from the cannibalistic image of eating meat. But they're part of the animal-exploitation system nonetheless, I guess.

All this isn't raised by Rowdy Girl. It doesn't weigh us down with arguments and discussions. It doesn't consider statistics or chronicle this movement beyond this place. It's about a few individual journeys that makes waves influencing others. Most of the people we meet have already made up their minds and converted to plant diet, as far as we can tell. But the value of the film is that it makes them and their animal friends come to life so vividly, and lets us sense, through Renee, how important this issue is and how we're all ingrained and culturally conditioned and how coming to terms with this issue isn't easy.

Rowdy Girl, 72 mins., debuted at Toronto (Hot Docs) Apr.. 29, 2023, showing also at the Hamptons, Tacoma, New Haven and Seoul Animal Film Festival. produced by Moby, it opens at DCTV in New York May 31, 2024, Laemmle Monica, L.A. Jun. 7, 2024; special screening Laemmle Noho Jun., 7:30pm, followed by Q&A with Moby, Jason Goldman, and Renee King-Sonnen.

[Chris Knipp]

HILA MEDALIA: MOURNING IN LOD (2023)

Eleven years ago I reviewed Dancing in Jaffa, a documentary about a dance class that brought together Arabs and Jews. Here she gets closer to the belly of the beast of Arab-Israeli conflict, following the fates of three families that are inextricably intertwined in a vicious cycle of violence in the city of Lod, Israel, where Israelis and Palestinians live side by side.

Made in partnership with MTV Documentary Films, “Mourning in Lod” revisits a painful chapter from May 2021, during the previous conflict between Israel and Hamas. As the terror group fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, domestic unrest between Jewish and Arab Israelis erupted in Lod.

In a February, 2024 article, "Film about deadly 2021 Arab-Jewish riots gives insight into post-Oct. 7 life in Israel, "The Times of Israel discusses Israel filmmaker Medalia's skill at getting close to Arabs and Jews alike in areas of tension as illustrated in the current film, and earlier ones.


MTV Documentary Films and Paramount+ will release the film in theaters in NY and LA on April 19 and*it will be available to stream on Paramount+ on May 17.

[Chris Knipp]

WES BALL: KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES(2023)


PETER MACON, OWEN TEAGUE, FREYA ALLAN IN KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

Defeat of Planet of the Apes

This new entry into the "Planet of the Apes" franchise is intermittently engaging, lively, and full of grand scenes. But it's a misfire. Both the filmmaking and the writing are lacking in that je ne sais quoi that made the originals gripping and hypnotic. Besides which this too-long film takes too much time getting started, and then at the end doesn't really go anywhere.

The whole power of the ape world is lessened for a simple reason: rather uninteresting humans - just one, really - have been allowed to take over. The concept is that over many, many generations - the time line is necessarily vague - dominance has shifted back and forth. Something went wrong. A magic pill, or whatever, that was supposed to make humans smarter made them dumber, literally mute, and apes smarter. The whole idea is a confusion. This was nonetheless the original "Planet of the Apes" concept that goes back to the Pierre Boulle novel and its original 1968 film. But that had Charlton Heston. You didn't necessarily like him, but he was powerful, the essence of charismatic human hubris. Kingdom lacks a big human star.

What actually happens this time is a diminution. A handful of apes link up with a shapely Netflix star from Britain, Freya Allan, known here as Mae. This is an uninteresting, vague character and a mediocre actress. How disappointing when she took over the action and broke into an ill-defined ruined industrial-scientific complex to capture a thingy she brings to another pretty woman to - well, no use trying to explain, but it doesn't do the apes any good, or us.

The notable element here is that Caesar, the perpetual ape dictator-prototype (though played by someone new this time called Kevin Durand, not Andy Serkis anymore) gets a chance to conduct a real Hitlerian grand rally. If only the sequence could have been t night, and lighted and photographed in the style of Leni Riefenstahl, it might have been something. Unfortunately Caesar gets overthrown afterward too easily. It seemed quite implausible that he'd suddenly have no supporters left at all. But the last part of this movie just seems clumsy and confused.

The old "Planet of the Apes" movies, some of them anyway, were magical, so full of drama and giant personalities. Maybe we should just be talking about the new technology. Of course: CGI and performance capture, which no doubt have been improved on even further here. But they were already well developed at least a decade ago with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. So we would just be talking about little technical tweaks. What counts most is the story, the acting and the dialogue.

Even though a couple of recent ones were good, the heyday of "Planet of the Apes" was the Seventies: 1968, 1970, 1971, and 1971 were the original films when it was all fresh and exciting even if it was a bit spun-out and they were uheven. That was when we cared. Nothing more recent, starting when Tim Burton's 2001 redo came out., has had quite the original frisson. Burton had a notable cast including Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Paul Giamatti, Estella Warren and Kris Kristofferson. (Burton's "Planet" do ranked at the bottom though on a Vulture ranking list of all ten films that came out last week.) Matt Reeves' 2014 Dawn of Planet of the Apes, by the way, had the longtime player of Caesar, the grandiose ape leader, Andy Sirkis, along with the charismatic child actor Kodi Smit-McPhee, who was then 18, and Gary Oldman and Ken Russell.

If we talk about money, $90 million to $170 million have been spent on the five twenty-first-century "Planet of the Apes" movies, and a relative pittance on the early ones - even allowing for how much more the dollar was worth back then. But ultimately though in science, fiction making us believe in the created world is all-important, it's not about the money. It's about the story and the human values.

Rupert Wyatt's 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes was pretty fine stuff, great cast (though the "human" roles were underused), great story, with lively, risk-taking acting from James Franco. Critics preferred Matt Reeves's 2014 Dawn of Planet of the Apes, which was more grand and grim and had fancier CGI. So it goes: it seems this franchise brings out people's worst taste. But this new entry in the franchise, with its muddled storyline and unnecessary length, still ranks worse with the critics than Rise of.... And they're so right.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Aapes, 145 mins., debuted in many countries May 8, 9, and 10, 2024. Screened for this review May 14 at Hilltop Century, Richmond, CA. Metacritic rating 66%.

[Chris Knipp]

LIU JIAN: ART COLLEGE 1994 艺术学院 (2023)


ZHANG ZIAJUN (DONG ZIJIAN AND RABBIT/DAI ZHIFEI (CHIZI) IN ART COLLEGE 1994

Animation evokes a Nineties Chinese art school populated by slackers

The academic world is notoriously tough material for fiction. That goes as well for art school, as shown by Liu Jian's 2D animation on the subject. As Leslie Felperin truly says in her Biennale Hollywood Reporter review, this film shows "a knack for evoking the rhythms" of "dorm-room debates." But such debates go over material you got tired of a long time ago. Thus Jessica Kiang's Variety review types Art School 1994 as "amiable but overlong." Wendy Ide points out in her Berlin Screen Daily review, the Nineties were a time of "seismic change" in China. This film is a quiet echo of that. Its slacker poses and trying on of radical attitudes could not have happened otherwise. At this point, however, they may be of interest mainly to ciné-sinologists, or western art school grads of a certain age who don't mind reading subtitles of the talky student debates.

Liu JIan is a specialist in animation who previously made Piercing, about the financial crisis (2010) and Have a Nice Day about an attempted theft (2017); I reviewed the latter, finding its appeal, and its action, a bit wan. But appeal there was, and is here, both for visuals and content.

Those three top reviewers from leading trade journals covered the new film and it showed at the Berlinale for reasons, one of which is the involvement of two of China's major directors, Jia Zhangke and Bi Gan, to play voice roles here.

It's the young men, mostly long-haired, often with unlit cigarettes in their mouths, some with little mustaches, who do most of the debating. Working on a painting or sculpture (or piece of conceptual art) isn't much more cinematic than working at a writing desk, but we do see studios. Traditional ones are compared with oil painting ones: they smell cleaner. Gouache painting is disrecommended: it can run if it gets wet. Acrylic is spoken well of: it's permanent. A couple of guys are working on an big painting, and another one slashes it. Whether painting is even valid anymore is considered.

There is an older guy who never got admitted to the school but hangs out at it all the time. He is debunked, but later turns out to become successful - one of several illustrations that actually going to art school isn't what makes you into an artist, any more than writing school makes you into a writer. What it is, is a place to hang out and be cool (or nihilistic). Or it's a way to find a girlfriend or boyfriend (and one girl trashes another for planning on marrying a dull, safe boy - and she runs away). Most importantly, from the art point of view (apart from learning techniques and media and being provided with materials and studios to work in), it's a way to meet people. To this end, some students wind up being dealers or curators, and galleries come looking for emerging talent.

Dorm bull sessions are carried on by these long-haired young men with dead cigarettes in their mouths. Does making money matter? Is traditional art the way to go? They often long for travel to the West. Sometimes they simply wonder if art matters - or is the only thing that speaks to the soul - or if anything matters. They cite Sartre, "Madame Bovary's Lover" [sic], Van Gogh's sunflowers, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and many other mainstays of western culture. There is almost an equal number of young women, several studying singing.

What's special here is the "seismic change" - that China is coming alive and opening up to the West at this moment. It's also a time when getting someone a new Walkman was a big deal and computers and cellphones aren't seen. The internet was just getting ready to explode. People just talk here. These art students are aware of western art and artists but not directly in touch with them. It varies: Zhang Xiaojun (Dong Zijian) is keenly aware of Kurt Cobain, who's just died, his best friend Rabbit/Dai Zhifei (Chizi), less so. The school, as represented in Professor Feng (Wang Hongwei), is not ready to embrace the adoption of anything outside traditional Chinese art.

There are conflicts about pairings in the women's dorm and glimmerings of attractions on both sides, but little happens other than a chaste date. There are breakthroughs of understanding, moments of intellectual (and maybe aesthetic) excitement, doubtless plans made for the future. But nothing decisive happens. This is about being in art school, and Liu has already shown in Have a Nice Day that he isn't much into decisive plot action. It's all about the talk and the atmosphere. Maybe that evokes Éric Rohmer, more likely Richard Linklater, as Felperin suggests, or maybe not. Pleasant but underwhelming.

Art College 1994 艺术学院, 118 mins., debuted Feb. 24, 2023 at Berlin in competition, showing also at Vienna, Sydney, China and Melbourne. Originally screened for this review as part of the Jul. 14-30, 2023 New York Asian Film Festival. Now distributed by Deknalog, it opens Friday, April 26, 2024 at Metrograph-in-Theater and on VOD via Metrograph-at-Home, as part of Liu Jian x 2 alongside the director's Berlinale debut feature animation Have a nice Day.

The entire cast/voice list is as follows:
Rabbit/Dai Zhifei (Chizi), Zhang Ziajun (Dong Zijian), Lin Weiguo (Bai Ke), Xie Caixia (Li Jiajia), Zhao Youcai (Huang Bo), Shou Ma/Ma Yongfu (Renke), Angel (Ziao Yu), Gao Hong (Papi), Hao Lili (Zhou Dongyu), Xiao Mei (Bu Guanjin), Li Baichuan (Xu Zhiyuan), Curator (Peng Lei), Chubster/Luo Hao (Bi Gan), Hu Tianming (Wang Hongwei), The Owner of Tape Store (Shen Lihui), Wu Yingjun (Da Peng), Professor Feng (Wang Hongwei), Afro Hair Chubster (Zeng Hongyu), Afro Hair SKinny (Liu Jian), Section Chief (Zhang Dasheng), Chen Zianyu (Huang Lu), Gu YongQing (Jia Zhangke), Student A (Duan Qi), Student B (Yang Cheng), Student C (Zhang Chenlu), Boss Lady (Fanf Jun), Er Ge (Duan Lian), Guo Sixiang (Kevin Tsai, 'Taiwan, China), A De (Du Haibin), Bar Girl (Hu Wenxin), Zhang Daydong (Zhang Zixian), Young Man A (Xu Lei), Young Man B (Guo Xiaoruo).