Today, we have two foreign films that highlight precisely what is so right about World Cinema today; and why the global film community have been having a bumper year.
The Worst Person In the World (Norway) - This is the Joachim Trier film that gave lead actress Renate Reinsve the Best Actress distinction at Cannes last year, it’s a mercurial display of acting talent as Renate takes on the role of Julie, a young career woman, who acts like she knows exactly what she wants as an independent modern female, while not having a clue at all. What’s rewarding in her portrayal is how she’s simultaneously both in this romance/drama/comedy that sees Trier pull out one charming, beguiling sequence after another. In feel, it’s like a music-less Norwegian version of La La Land, where relationships, values and ideals both intertwine and clash, as Julie navigates through her own sea of Love... and Lust.
In terms of structure, the film is divided into 12 chapters, with a prologue and epilogue. Through this structure, the psyche of Julie is gradually revealed, at various stages of her life and relationships. Working at a bookstore, she first ends up as the younger woman of a renowned cartoon artist, and we’re given a glimpse of what living with a creative version can be like, the problems compounded by the disparity in age and temperament. There’s a beautifully constructed fantasy sequence when Julie gets bored with her relationship with Axsel and starts a flirtation with a young man she meets when she gatecrashes a wedding reception. There’s a light touch to Trier’s handling of the material, even when something serious and weighty is being said. It’s the modern day European rom-com, and I enjoyed this immensely.
The Wheel of Fortune & Fantasy (Japan) - Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi has to be one of the hottest names in World Cinema at the moment. His Drive My Car won Best Screenplay at Cannes, and won Best Film at the New York Film Critics last month. It’s heavily tipped to be sweeping Best Foreign Film categories in the coming awards season. With a running time of 2 hours, 59 minutes, it’s a measured, languidly paced film that bewitches, but can be a bit of a challenge to watch in one sitting. Here then is Hamaguchi’s other 2021 film, one that’s just as celebrated, as it won the Grand Jury Prize in Berlin 2021, and clocks in at a little over two hours. It’s an anthology film composed of three stories, and it’s easy to see why Hamaguchi is being feted.
The three stories revolve around ordinary, everyday people, musing on love, on ambition, on friendship and the deep, complex web of relationships we create, and make our moments of social interaction. In the first, a fashion model takes a cab ride with the stylist/friend, and their moments of sharing and bonding become one fraught with suspicion and resentment, as the stylist talks about a potential boyfriend, who the model suspects may be her ex-. The second concerns a student out to honey trap his professor who had shown him no mercy even when the professor was in the right. It’s all very human, very real, but there’s great writing and directing etched into every scene. It’s effective story-telling, compelling cinema - a taste of what Hamaguchi similarly accomplishes in Drive My Car.