Playacting as survival. That’s the unsettling angle of Andrija Mardesic and David Kapac’s Stric (aka The Uncle). Or perhaps a more well-versed study would recognize the film as a lacerating metaphor of the inherent need for control within the crumbling Eastern bloc of the late 1980’s.
That’s where (we think) the film begins. A mother (Ivana Roscic) toils away crafting Christmas dinner. The house is sparsely decorated with a tree, but the weather outside isn’t so wintery frightful. She scolds her son (Roko Sikavica) for wearing the same clothes as yesterday, but something feels off…. as if a thirty-year-old is playacting as a fifteen-year-old.
The quiet father (Goran Bogdan) doesn’t do much to stand between the quarreling mother and son, and her attention is soon diverted back to the meal she’s preparing where even a broken dish on the floor sits there like an alien presence in this off-kilter household.
And then, the much anticipated uncle (Miki Manojlovic) arrives for the holiday and things get even stranger. We feel like it’s the late 80’s based on the clothing and furnishings in the house, but a modern cell phone ring breaks the antiquity. The conversations and actions of everyone trying to enjoy a happy family holiday are stilted and false, as if everyone is reading from a script.
From there, The Uncle devolves into a study of miserabilism where every repeated Christmas dinner reveals a sinister game of pretend malevolence as their uncle is revealed to be something completely different altogether and the fabric of the film’s veiled holiday cheer comes crashing down.
Not much on character development, The Uncle is mostly interesting for the way it parcels information obliquely. I’ve seen it mostly compared to the early films of Yorgos Lanthimos, and that’s a fair assumption as Mardesic and Kapac (who also wrote the film) probably had the Greek manipulator in mind when fashioning their own absurd take on the eastern bloc atmosphere of paranoia and deviant control wrapped up in a hermetic family setting. The only problem with this (and of Lanthimos’ cinema as well) is that there’s barely any room to breathe. If that’s your thing, then see The Uncle. For my money, I wanted a bit something more than oppressive’ miserablism’ again.
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Absurd is also an apt description for Ken’ichi Ugana’s Visitors (Complete Edition), although in a much more humorous manner than The Uncle. Based on a short film and expanded to an hour, Ugana’s gory, vomit-splattered effort feels like something the Monty Python comedy group would tackle if zombies had been a big deal for British television in the 1970’s.
First following three friends as they check on the well-being of another friend, they’re soon battling a demon infested woman who just won’t die, bobbing punches by her spinning head and screeching with horrific glee all the while.
Jump ahead 3 months later to a bar where a man is tied up on the floor at the feet of another man with a half ripped apart face. More weirdness occurs, but the bound man survives his fight and escapes with the help of one of the survivors from the first episode. But the film isn’t through just yet as it leaps ahead a full year where all the participant demons want to do is prune, garden, and have a good time in the countryside.
I’m doing an unjust job of describing the plot here, but I think Ugana’s intentions to revise the zombie genre are clear. The recipe is as follows: toss together a bit of Sam Raimi and pieces from every other zombie film and then orchestrate his own quasi comedy where the lines of humanity and demon are humorously blurred.
At only 61 minutes, I can say Visitors (Complete Edition) sure doesn’t wear out its welcome, but it also feels stunningly incomplete. Just how would the zombies assimilate themselves further into their communities? Would more roving bands of zombie killers emerge? There’s some beautifully realized deadpan humor on display, but ultimately Visitors (Complete Edition) still looks and feels like sketch comedy more than anything else.
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The most frustrating film of the festival so far lands with Pawel Borowski’s Mushrooms. Falling in line with so many other films this week with a central theme that seems to be “suspended anticipation until something really bad happens”, Mushrooms does handle this aspect well. My disdain for the film lies in its shoehorning of historical atrocities onto its finale as if there were no more shocking way to end its wandering dilemma of an old woman stumbling upon two lost young people in the woods.
Yes, mushrooms do play a large part in the film. It’s not a metaphor. These fungi are being stalked and picked with ease by an old woman (Maria Maj) when she comes across a man and woman asleep in the forest. Dressed in colonial clothing, they tell the woman they are victims of a prank gone wrong and left here by friends from a local acting troupe. The old woman decides to help them, but it’s clear neither she nor the couple are completely honest with each other, and the rest of Mushrooms surveys their distrust through a series of short vignettes as they walk….. somewhere.
The tension between the two parties is palpable, and Borowski assuredly maintains a quiet suspense throughout, but it’s in the finale that Mushrooms tumbles unconvincingly to comment on the horrors of the twentieth century. By giving a resolute explanation for everything, the film somehow feels less enthralling and, frankly, much less interesting.
Dallas Film Now. 