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Theoretically, the official section of a festival exists so that we can see better what is better. And that, without a doubt, is the best. For all. But, and in the same way that political programs were invented to hide what politicians really think, competitions, when the time comes, may cover up what really matters. And this one is already worse. It is necessary to cut down a few trees to see what that is about the forest, said Bolsonaro. Sunday, for example, was the day for 'The nest' (El nido), the Italian opera Roberto De Feo, and 'The room', another debut of the French Christian Volckman, but in the long with flesh and blood actors (before he made an animated film). Distractions
Let's say that the two films meet what is required of a debutant. One, the last one cited, turns Tarkovski's 'Stalker' into a story with just grace; and the other, the Italian, insists with great pomposity in the apocalypse disguised as a gothic tale. Volckman imagines a house with a room capable of fulfilling any desire. That made the coveted Zone in the Russian classic. And you know, so dangerous is the man who craves something he can't have like the one who has absolutely everything. The first kills the desire and the second kills for wanting something. Let's say that the movie is driven without a twist for a puzzle that would need much more. Of course, the final turn, very bright. The case of Italian is only more boring. Formal rigor conceals with difficulty a moral that, in truth, is telegraphed too soon. Of course, the brilliance of the love story between teenagers placed in the middle of all relieves, comforts and, finally, saves the film.
But, let's not get lost, what counts is at the bottom. Deep down. To watch 'Bliss', by Joe Begos, Sitges' devilish program gives three options. Two have already passed and the two began beyond 1 in the morning. The movie was inside two night marathons. There is a third chance, and also after midnight. Three cheers for the programmer. This man is given 'Citizen Kane' and puts it at six in the morning. You have to suffer to see the best is your philosophy.
We knew of the existence of Begos by 'Almost Human' and 'Mental Power', two pieces of retro air that demonstrated a glorious immaturity completely free from prejudices. They wanted each other out of pure condescension and despised each other, for the same reason , for a misunderstood sense of piety. Then, the other one of Begos in this festival, 'VFW'; that it could well be read as a missing link between the gender without regard and the unbridled mastery of his latest work.
'VFW' stands for veteran soldiers of war and the title of this joyful 'western' retrofuturist who copies the manners of 'Rio Grande', Hawks, with the same ease that makes the calligraphy of 'Rescue in New York 'by Carpenter. In a death row, a group of poor old men, alcoholics, evicts and former Vietnam fighters are seen against a horde of junkies. There's no more. It is not necessary either. Brilliant until exhaustion.
LIQUID PISCODELIA
And so on until 'Bliss'. This time it is a vampire tale as close to Panos Cosmatos as Claire Denis. Dirty, bloody, obsessive, schizophrenic and fundamentally electric. Suddenly, the director finds the exact place and the right way to treat his nervousness. And his undoubted talent . Between 'giallo' and abstraction, between terror and melodrama, Begos is right to make a hypnotic fable about art, the power of creation and the simple emptiness. As in 'Mandy' it is about liquid cinema, a psychedelic feast of blood, adrenaline, oil painting and even semen. It was Lady Macbeth who maintained that every time the man acts a liquid spills. Well, that. And also stain.
Something similar, as for the occult, could be said of 'Koko-di Koko-da'. But only similar. This one could be seen at a decent hour: eight in the morning. Actually, Johannes Nyholm's film was as endorsed at least as Robert Eggers's 'The Lighthouse', after his glorious passage from festival to festival. Maybe not so much. What the Swedish director proposes to present in San Sebastián 'The giant' (won the jury prize in 2016) is a kind of 'The exterminating angel' of Buñuel with the fairytale structure. Sounds weird and it is.
As the music box that serves as inspiration and McGuffin, the film revolves around the same situation over and over again. A couple permanently mourning the death of their daughter, goes camping. They will be chased by a recurring nightmare in the middle of the forest from which they try to escape again and again. And there is no way because it is impossible to run away from such an unbearable pain. Nyholm manages to place the viewer on the edge of its particular precipice. And it does so as original as it is deep. At the same time serious and inconsequential. As if it were a whispered babysitter in the ear. And here, for now, we leave it.
That said, 'Bliss' and 'Koko-di Koko-da'. You need to cut a few forests, but in the end there is a tree. Or vice versa.
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