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domino harvey wrote: Sat Jan 09, 2021 9:57 pm This year’s lineup announced, includes Enorme from Cahiers Top 10. Will run Jan 15 - Feb 15 and likely will be free again if you have Amazon Prime

EDIT Here’s the lineup as a Letterboxd list

The festival is live and indeed free again on Amazon Prime for US viewers

EDIT I'm only seeing the features up on Amazon, not the shorts so far

Some of them are on the BFI Player in the UK (at least, the BFI Player channel on Amazon Prime - I understand there are a few differences between the two).

The ones locked out of US viewing this year are Filles de joie / Working Girls, Josep, Orpheus (the Cocteau one, so no big deal), Madame (looks like it already has a US distributor and is available to rent from them for a cost), and the VR video Odyssey 1.4.9 (....why would this be excluded?). Filles was the only one from that selection I was looking forward to, at least...

I can't wait to watch Desplechin's La vie des morts in what appears to be a nice restored transfer!

Three animated shorts and one of the VR wastes of time down (EDIT now reordered to reflect the order I liked them, as in last year's outings):

O28 reminded me a bit of Boss Baby, not just in similar animation styles but also because it should be terrible but I somehow found it rather amusing regardless. These are some very silly cartoon logic action scenes, but, like, why not? Might as well use the medium to do things you can't really do elsewhere. Also big LOLs at the punchline.

Maestro is now somehow the second "animals singing opera" animated short in a row from this festival, but I liked it a lot more than the one last year, maybe because the CGI animals maintain a degree of "realism" in their performance that I found charming, if still pretty thin beyond the initial concept that, as established, isn't even fresh!

Le monde de Dalia is a perfectly fine children's fantasy that never does anything unexpected but is pleasant enough as a distraction.

...as for the VR whatsit Recoding Entropia, literally whatever. Like, textbook definition of whatever. Whatever.

Enorme is one of the most miserable failures I've seen in some time. There are plenty of opportunities for dark and absurdist humor, and many scenes seem to be going for such moods theoretically, but the delivery consistently misfires in a series of half-measures and diffident confusion. The actors can't carry the tones that are demanded to transform the delicate material into a success, but the blame rests squarely on the filmmaker who avoids risks to confidently stand by whatever "vision" existed once. She opts to play it all very light and safe, causing more than a few double-takes as the meanspirited/selfish manipulations causing such harm and dissonance in the relationship aren't acknowledged in any form that may indicate forethought beyond seeing each camera shot (yes, even within a given scene, what a scattered mess) as an individualized unfunny impulse-driven skit. And that's the biggest problem, that this film just isn't funny- and it's trying very hard to be, especially Cohen who acts like a YT amateur trying to make it as a bombastic comedian by standing out like a cartoon in each well-dry frame. The early shaman bit had all the right pieces for laughs including a decent enough setup of dialogue, but every line fizzled and died even when they were objectively inspired, and that's by far the best part of this shitshow. The surreal turn the film takes at the halfway mark makes it even worse, as Letourneur repetitiously doubles and triples down on her first-act fumbling, cutting away from an expression, gesture, or gag when there's a chance it could go somewhere interesting, and lingering far too long on Cohen blundering like an idiot in a sustained one-note joke of gender-norm reversal in almost every scene where he behaves that way (which is basically all of them). Oh and the long-gestating ending that intends to serve as a sobering moment for Cohen feels entirely unearned and keeps with the sloppy energy of a film that has no idea what it wants to be. I feel awful for Marina Foïs, who seems built as an ironic character within her circumstances in the form of a stoic, serene model, but instead just flounders like a dead fish as a victim who isn't treated as such by the film's tone, making this all the more offensive. I think Letourneur is attempting to strike this disturbing vibe in a subtle way, but in a film of constant missteps who's to tell. I hated this movie.

Saturnism is the lousiest VR "film" yet from these events. It takes everything I hated about the "explore famous paintings through superfluous VR immersion" of last year's entries and amps it up to 1000. Who hasn't wanted to hear the gruesome antics of Saturn Devouring His Son and see the extra oozy blood drip out of the infant before being eaten themselves by the God? If this didn't exist, it'd be what I'd invent as a joke example of the worst possible outcome of this kind of thing. One of the most remarkably bad ideas ever to come to fruition.

Anyone continuing with this year’s set? Watched Adolescents and thought it was quite excellent as an Up series inspired documentary that focuses on the relationship of two middle school girls. At times it plays like a fiction film and overall is a great use of the medium to tell a simple story of modern youth.

Felicità (Bruno Merle)
Cute but inconsequential indie unfolding over 24 hours as a family of small time criminals do their thing while their young daughter looks on. Pio Marmai not only plays a very similar character to his part in En liberte!, but this film even rips off one of that movie's jokes and positions it as one of its defining running gags-- le oof! Nevertheless, liked this for its simple charms, particularly the first act or so, but more than anything I was amused by how the subtitlers left one of the more inexplicable elements unexplained for non-French speakers by not translating a billboard seen at a crucial time/place in the narrative. Also, if you don't know who OrelSan is, one key scene will be even more bizarre than it already is! Like any countless number of movies that played on IFC back when that was a movie channel, this will soon disappear into the winds, but there are worse ways to spend 81 minutes

Adolescentes has been nominated for Best Film at the Cesars

Deservingly so too.

This year's roster will be unveiled on the 5th and will begin streaming on the 14th

domino harvey wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 3:55 am This year's roster will be unveiled on the 5th and will begin streaming on the 14th

Lineup announced

I've heard lots of good things about À l'abordage, nice to see it in the lineup. Only other one I've heard of is Médecin de nuit (and the Lover of course)

Are they running these on Amazon again?

I can't imagine they wouldn't- the newsletter says they are partnered with over 70 platforms, though I'm not sure if they've ever announced this before the festival actually begins. I feel like we usually just see which ones are up on Amazon on the day-of, and there's always one or two strange omissions

therewillbeblus wrote: Wed Jan 05, 2022 9:17 pm

domino harvey wrote: Tue Jan 04, 2022 3:55 am This year's roster will be unveiled on the 5th and will begin streaming on the 14th

Lineup announced

The Monopoly of Violence is a good, intelligent documentary in which various French people respond to large-scale projections of covert smartphone footage of the Gilets Jaunes protests. The (rather smart) gimmick is that the talking heads are 'cast' against one another and their identities / roles in the events depicted are not revealed until the end of the film, so we get to evaluate them on the strength of their discourse alone.

Four features and three shorts are unavailable to US audiences this time. I'm also not seeing any of these on Amazon Prime for free

YouTube has the shorts in a playlist here, though they are being staggered daily

Not all of the films included in the above playlist are available in the states! Here's my thoughts on all the animated shorts I was able to watch, in the order that I liked them

Oeil pour oeil Not just the best animated short I've seen presented in three years of following this festival, but the best film period I've seen programmed by the festival. This is just five solid minutes of constant laughs as an eyepatched-pirate repeatedly tries to reach a hidden treasure. Not a promising premise, but the movie has a great rhythm and the use of video gameplay aspects is oddly charming and takes some of the rough edges off of the cartoonish but grim narrative. But most importantly, it made me laugh loudly almost non-stop, and I don't think a short like this could ask for anything more.

Horacio And on the flipside we have here a very serious, not for kids tale of a numbed man who indifferently murders someone in his backyard. We follow his time in prison and release as the film winds us up for an inevitable but no less chilling ending. This, funnily enough, may be the second-best animated film I've seen in this festival over the last three years, and both of these top-ranked shorts really embody a concise economy and purpose for existing that many of the other shorts (and animated shorts in general) seem to lack.

Hold Me Tight Weird and dark peek at two enfants sauvage having trippy sex in the woods. So, also not for kids! I liked the black backgrounds/color palette and while the sexie goth imagery is a bit like something I'd expect to see drawn on the margins of a Trapper Keeper, the short has a good pulse and flowing bridging of images.

Astralium A kid builds a mini ocean on the shore which of course gets swept away by the actual ocean. Not particularly interesting, okay music in the first half. Mostly forgettable.

Mido et les instrumeaux Warbling human is exiled from a bunch of fun loving musical animals, only to find his way back in. I hated the animation style for this and found it a chore to watch, but ultimately like Astralium it's more mediocre than terrible.

Agreed on the order for those five shorts, though I hated Mido et les instrumeaux (the one opportunity for saving grace occurs when he bumps into an inanimate object after rejection, and for a brief moment I wondered whether the film would meditate for a lucid instant on that raw feeling of being beaten down with lows only to have the smallest straw break the back, but no).

Despite the serious content of Horacio, I thought its greatest strength was in balancing dark comedy with sincere existential vacuity. The film operates like a more intimate version of Camus’ The Stranger and is also more willing to engage with the absurdist humor without drawing attention to this intention, which might have usurped the necessary gravity allotted elsewhere. This is the kind of film that’s incredibly hard to pull off: equal parts devastating and quietly hilarious. Ultimately I admired it more than I loved it, but it still succeeds at being both impressive and enjoyable.

Yes, there is a morbid humor running throughout. I love the payoff of the guitar playing in Horacio

Spoiler

With the reporter hating his song! Also liked the shot of him in the library, immediately followed by the narrator letting us know that he didn’t learn anything while incarcerated— a nice upending of conventional prison narratives

domino harvey wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 9:11 pm I love the payoff of the guitar playing in Horacio

Spoiler

With the reporter hating his song! Also liked the shot of him in the library, immediately followed by the narrator letting us know that he didn’t learn anything while incarcerated— a nice upending of conventional prison narratives

Those were both great

Spoiler

The guitar bit works better than it normally would because we can hear the rusty guitar-strumming ourselves, and for a moment I wondered whether or not we're being derailed from reality into the lead's skewed numbed state, but no- we are hearing what the journalist hears! The way he relays 'not learning anything' struck me as far more tragic than comic, perhaps the most painful part of the film for me- this guy just wants to glean something, but his antisocial personality of apathy towards everything blocks him at every impasse. If he can't feel emotion, any philosophical value will do- but he can't even get a shred of meaning from his distressing circumstances!

swo17 wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 9:14 pm Official link to watch Oeil pour Oeil outside of the festival (sans subs, but they're probably unnecessary)

Yep, no subs are needed

swo17 wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 9:14 pm Official link to watch Oeil pour Oeil outside of the festival (sans subs, but they're probably unnecessary)

They are unnecessary- I turned them off of the one up on YT on both watches because it was just closed-captioning and distracted from the visual feast