Two films that are very different were part of the festival at VIFF this year.
FLUXX (2024, USA)
A thriller set in Hollywood where a woman wakes clothed in the bath and is set on a puzzle to save her husband’s life.
Although it perhaps tries to do too much, this really brings some original ideas to the screen but gets bogged down in the more revealing aspects of why this couple’s marriage broke down.
The music used throughout really adds atmoipshere while the cinematography (by Kieran Murphy) gives everything a futuristic gloss.
It’s a film that plays with your expectations and offers an unsettling experience as Vada (Shelley Hennig) tries to work out exactly what is going on. Sadly it just becomes another tale of a star spat out by the Hollywood machine.
Written by Keyaunte Mayfield and Brendan Gabriel Murphy and directed by Murphy, this thriller sits firmly on the fence with regard to its leading character.
It teases horror tropes alongside more conventional melodrama, which means it might not catch an audience who would go for both.
The men in Vada’s life are not particularly endearing. Calvin (Tyrese Gibson) is a coercive controller, Trevor (Shiloh Fernandez) is a bit of whiner.
Vada, seen in both her reality and her roles, remains complex and out of reach, and ultimately, I’m not sure why we would care.
**.5
Black Dog (2024, China)
This is not a film I would have sought out, but I’m happy to report it is definitely well worth watching.
It’s set just before the Beijing Olympics of 2008. A group of men are recruited to rid the city of stray dogs by rounding them up and killing them (this action is off-screen but canine lovers may still be upset by these scenes).
One of the men rescues a black dog from certain death and develops a bond with him. Together with this man’s romantic involvement with a woman he meets, the plot of Black Dog is about facing adversity and triumphing over cruelty.
This man has just been released from prison, and is subjected to abuse from his townsfolk. So, he is as much an outcast and unwanted as the black dog who slowly starts to trust and protect him.
Although I found the white subtitles on this screener hard to read at times, it is easy to follow the story without really understanding the intricacies of what’s going on.
****