Sex, holiness and melancholy – Newspaper Kommersant No. 176 (7377) of 09/23/2022

At the international film festival in San Sebastian, which will end on Saturday, the main part of the competitive programs is shown. Summing up the preliminary results Andrey Plakhov.

The films of the main competition can be conditionally divided into two categories: the first is designed to provoke and test the audience’s threshold of moral tolerance, the second is responsible for the current agenda. Sometimes, however, the actual turns out to be archaic, and provocations do not really work. There is also a third category: it could include films about senile dementia or about how parents experience the loss of a child, but both of them do not set special artistic goals and do not need a separate discussion.

Under other circumstances, “The Winter Boy” by Christophe Honore or “Il boemo” (“Czech”) by Petr Vaclav could have sounded scandalous. The famous French director dedicates the first picture to a largely autobiographical search for sexual identity, which even includes an attempt by a minor hero to become prostitutes. The second film is a non-canonical biopic of the 18th-century composer Josef Mysliveček, an older contemporary and friend of Mozart, whom the Italians called il boemo (“bohemian”, that is, Czech) and whose career unfolded in Venice, Naples and Rome. However, instead of the historical appearance of all these cities, the filmmakers offer mainly to admire the costumes, wigs and erotic libertinage. But although the last part turned out to be a clear overkill, the festival audience perceived the “Czech” (and before that “The Winter Boy”) with academic reverence and did not feel shocked at all.

It was especially surprising to observe the respectful reaction of the audience to “Pornomelancholia” by the Argentinean Manuel Abramovich. This is an introspective portrait of a certain Lalo Santos, yesterday’s provincial, who at first struggles in a factory, but soon discovers that there is a more effective way to make money and become famous. The mustachioed, rather caricatured macho becomes a sex influencer on Twitter and contracts to film a gay porn film in which he portrays the leader of the Mexican revolution, Emiliano Zapata, hazing with another famous revolutionary, Pancho Villa. This is the funniest part of Pornomelancholia; the rest, despite the erect penises flashing in the frame every now and then, looks like an industrial routine – almost like the bolts and gears of a factory mechanism. It is not surprising that the hero, who also had time to catch HIV, falls into apathy and depression. So it would be difficult to fit this movie under an article about gay propaganda even in Russia.

As the festival moves towards the finale, several live films of various denominations have appeared in it, which may well be of interest to the jury. This is “Motherhood” by Pilar Palomero: this is the name of a shelter for young mothers on the outskirts of Barcelona; the main character is only fourteen. These are the Colombian “Kings of the World” by Laura Moreau – about homeless teenagers trying in vain to find their promised land. This is the Portuguese “Great Yarmouth: Preliminary Figures” by Marco Martins. In the latter, the outstanding role of actress Beatrice Batarda attracts: she plays a Portuguese recruiting her compatriots for a British poultry farm. Hellish work in the streams of blood and shit, disenfranchised immigrants reduced to the level of turkey meat – and against this gloomy background is the equally gloomy struggle of an aging woman for the crumbs of happiness that she is trying to get from the same factory workers. In its own way, a modernized film version of the novels by Emile Zola and other authors of the “natural school”.

The most original and dramaturgically flawless film of the competition was The Rite of Spring by the Spaniard Fernando Franco. The plot of a romantic relationship between a chemistry student and a young man suffering from cerebral palsy did not bode well, but the director managed to give it a sparkle of wit and a bold paradox, prompting even to recall the Buñuel traditions. The provincial heroine from a religious family is trying to gain a foothold in Madrid, but does not want to take the banal path of marriage. Rejecting quite handsome guys, she struggles with her virginity with the help of products from a sex shop and is hired as a sexual assistant to a pretty paraplegic. But the finale unexpectedly turns the life of the holy virgin of modern times in an unexpected direction, and Stravinsky’s ballet plays its role in this turn.

In addition to the main one, there is another important competition in San Sebastian: it is called “New Directors”. The film Grand Marine, the full-length directorial debut of actress Dinara Drukarova, was shown with great audience success. The film was made in co-production of France, Russia, Belgium and Iceland. Producers include Marianne Slot, who worked with Lars von Trier, and Sergei Selyanov. Very difficult shooting of fishing everyday life is so conscientious and reliable that it gives a documentary character to the game plot.

This is a movie with a clearly readable author’s intonation: the main character Lily is played by Drukarova herself. After a series of predictable setbacks in life, Lily is hired to work on a fishing boat. A small but strong “woman with a past” in the men’s team, in the brutal fishing in the northern seas. Harsh nature, difficulties of adaptation, romance of the sea and melancholy of life. Bloodied fish darting about in nets, flying, and sometimes deadly falling seagulls. Love and tenderness that must be suppressed in oneself for the sake of something that has no exact name, that looms like a vague dream, like the Bering Sea.