#lila avilés

[p9fttt]

tótem (2023), dir. lila aviles

[fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors]

Lila Avilés with her director Barbie.

[gregor-samsung]

Tótem (Lila Avilés, 2023)

[tilbageidanmark]

MOVIES I WATCHED THIS WEEK #203:

6 IRANIAN FILMS (4 MORE BY JAFAR PANAHI):

🍿 "You're not a kid any more. You're nine years old!.."

I've seen about 30+ Iranian movies in the past few years, and many (by Panahi, Kiarostami, Farhadi, Forugh Farrokhzad, Mehrjui, Makhmalbaf, Etc.) were superb. But CHILDREN OF HEAVEN, my first film by Majid Majidi, is by far the best one of the lot. It was the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award, in 1998. It also had the saddest opening, two of the most convincing kid actors, and in general was one of the best films about children I know [together with Truffaut's 'L'Argent de poche' and Nils Malmros' 'Tree of knowledge'.]

Ali's family is so poor, that when he loses his little sister's only shoes, they don't dare tell their parents that, and restore to both using his one worn pair to go to school, one at a time. It's heartbreaking and absolutely marvelous. The trailer. 10/10.

🍿 My 6th feature by Jafar Panahi, was his 1995 debut film, THE WHITE BALLOON, with a screenplay by Abbas Kiarostami. 2 years before 'Children of heaven', it's very similar in topic, location, style. It too tells of a brother and sister of similar ages, who live in a similar poor neighborhood, and told in a similar kid-friendly feel. They even have a gold fish pond in their front yard, which becomes the focal point of the story. But the innocent adventures of the 7-year-old girl who tries to buy a gold fish was nearly too tense for me. Her heartbreaks and simple joys were pure and sad.

A girl, a gold fish and a snapshot of Iranian society explains how the sub-genre of Children Films enables filmmakers to deal with their theocratic society.

🍿 Panahi's THE ACCORDION (2010) is another sad story about two children, who panhandle in the streets of Tehran, playing the accordion and a tablas, trying to make some coins. Poverty, mistreatment (and abuse) of children are impossible for me to watch. A heartbreaking 9/10!

🍿 In WHERE ARE YOU, JAFAR PANAHI? he again clandestinely films himself and a friend in his car, talking about the state of cinema in Iran, as they drive to place flowers on Abbas Kiarostami’s grave.

(I think it was a 2016 initiative from from The Pompidou Center, which commissioned a bunch of directors to film similar personal essays, Tsai Ming-liang, João Pedro Rodrigues, Bertrand Bonello, Jean-Marie Straub, Etc.)

🍿 Because of Panahi's precarious political status under the repressive regime, he's been driven into filming secretive, no-budget short-form home movies on his cell phone. Like the guerrilla-style HIDDEN (2020) where he drives with his daughter and another female artist into a Kurdish village. There's a young woman there with a golden voice that the producer wants to use in a theater piece. Maybe Panahi can help convince her parents to let her do it? The mundane trip ends with a powerful shock. 8/10.

🍿 I was excited for FRIDAY MOSQUE, a 2014 experimental short by a young female Iranian, but it was nothing but a silent, black and white "meditation about spirituality". Abstract, flickering shapes of the exact type that French dadaists did 90 years earlier. 1/10. [*Female Director*]

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The devastating RED, WHITE AND BLUE was nominated for this year's Best Short Oscar, but didn't win (And it's obvious why). A young waitress in Arkansas, a struggling single mom, is barely scraping enough money together so that she can drive out of state for an emergency abortion. The horror that is America today is impossible for me to watch. And I don't have it in me to follow up on it either. Thanks No Thanks, 'Hoots', for the recommendation. 9/10. [*Female Director*]

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2 MORE BY MEXICAN DIRECTOR LILA AVILÉS:

🍿 "Shall I tell you my wish?... I wish for daddy not to die."

TÓTEM (2023), only her second feature (after the mesmerizing 'The chambermaid', which like this one was universally-acclaimed and won a bunch of awards). An inquisitive 7 year old girl (Shown Above) is watching quietly as her bustling family is preparing a last birthday party for her dying father.

I don't have it in me to see more sad stories about the indignities girls have to go through: Thank Dog, it's a natural death here, which must have been expected. And the artistic way Avilés tells the story makes it a delight, nearly a devastating joy to see: It is deeply emotional and cerebral at the same time, it's subtle, it goes in tangents without disclosing too much or explaining anything (A truckload of paintings is hauled away, a psychic lady is conducting a shamanic ritual, the girl releases garden snails in the house, so many animals wonder around, a sky lantern burst in fire...) It follows an ordinary, messy household, but in the end it comes back to the suffering daughter and her mystical father. The trailer. 9/10.

🍿 I've seen half a dozen of the Women's Tales that Italian fashion house Miu Miu had sponsored since 2011. Some were better than others: Agnès Varda's, Hiam Abbass's, Lucrecia Martel's, Lynn Ramsey's. Lila Avilés's EYE TWO TIMES MOUTH from last year was not. The "Geometric" musings about various medias (a woman who works at a modern gallery but whose real love is opera) were too artsy-fartsy.[*Female Director X 2*]

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“What about Toto Primitera? Nicola Scardaci? Iano Nicocia?…”

MAFIOSO (1962), my first black comedy with Alberto Sordi. A surprising gem that must have inspired Coppola when he worked on the first ''Godfather'. (He delightfully copied the "La porta!" moment, the McCluskey assassination, Don Vincenzo, the waiting car, the Cannolis, the shady underlings whispering, the out-of-it pretty wife... I wonder how many times he'd seen it.) Also, a Nino Rota music score. A newly cut trailer. Brilliantly quirky. 9/10.

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2 WEIRD ONES FROM BELGIAN NICOLAS KEPPENS:

🍿 EASTER EGGS is a dark, very dark animation about two super-awkward teenagers, one older than the other, and their like-hate/abusive relationship. Like toxic Beavis and Butt-Head. It's rendered in an elegant Daniel Clowes style, and in a painful, magic realistic framing. Stark Flemish emptiness where the owner of the local Chinese restaurant hang himself in his bird cage, and the boys want to catch his escaped parrots so that they can buy a mountain bike with the cash. Recommended! 9/10.

🍿 WILDBEEST is another dry, little masterpiece. A fat, middle-age, middle class Belgian couple goes on a Safari in Africa, but gets abandoned by their tour-guide, because the man shoots a wild impala the tour guide likes. It's unique, funny, unpredictable, completely original. Recommended! 10/10.

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DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT (1966), my first ridiculous film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, one of the greatest Cuban directors. A surrealist black comedy, Richard Lester meets Luis Buñuel, about a young knucklehead nephew who's trying to fight an endless Kafkaesque system. It even includes a major free-for-all raucous brawl that starts with a stolen casket and ends with a massive pie fight in a cemetery. 💯 score on Rotten Tomatoes.

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"There is someone screaming".

Re-watch ♻️: After the failure of his second feature 'Gilliap', Roy Andersson went into a 25 year self-imposed film exile, and instead made a living directing commercials. His 1991 WORLD OF GLORY was his comeback film, and introduced his new, fully-formed, now-famous artificial, stilted style. It's as bleak as a weekend spent with Rudolf Höss's real estate broker, or Hannah Arendt's shrink - World of Gory, indeed. 10/10.

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"Isn't life torture?..."

First watch: SANSHO THE BAILIFF (1954), only my second film by Kenji Mizoguchi (after 'Utamaro and His Five Women'). I did not expect the cruelty, misery and lack of mercy in this dark tale of slavery.

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3 DIFFERENT INDIAN FILMS:

🍿 Somebody at "IndieWire" pulled a list of the "100 best musicals of all time" out of their, ehm, ear, and I thought I'll take on some of the less obvious choices and the ones I haven't seen yet.

PYAASA (1957) is the highest Bollywood offering on this list (No. 5), out of 9 overall Indian suggestions. But it didn't connect with me at all; A couple of the acts, like "Johnny Walker" singing 'Sar Jo Tera Chakraye' (colorized) and 'Hum Aap Ki Ankhon Mein' were okay, but the melodramatic soap opera about a depressed and impoverished "Poet" was ridiculous and tedious.

🍿 KANDITTUND! (SEEN IT!) (2021) is a uniquely-drawn tale of a 89 old fabulist grandfather, a village fabricator of far-fetched ghost and other home-grown stories. Original style can be compared to the best of indie animations anywhere! 9/10. [*Female Director*]

🍿 Also, the 2004 Oscar-nominated short LITTLE TERRORIST, a straight-forward political fable about a little Pakistani boy who crosses the border to India, after chasing a cricket ball that was tossed across the fence.

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Re-watch ♻️: Don Herzfeldt's 3-chapter masterpiece IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY (2012) (Including EVERYTHING WILL BE OK and I AM SO PROUD OF YOU). Depressed stick-figure Billy is having trouble sleeping again and he's afraid he is losing his mind. But somehow he survives again and again - until he dies. Experimental, surreal, transcendental - and so sad. 💯 score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Also, his WORLD OF TOMORROW (2016) which by now I've seen about a dozen times, and is probably my second best movie of all time (After 'The Conversation'). "You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ♻️. 10/10.

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3 BY JAROMIL JIREŠ:

🍿 THE JOKE (1969), the last politically-overt tragicomedy of the Czech New Wave, which (like 'The Ear') was promptly banned after the Soviet invasion. Based on a novel by Milan Kundera, it's a bitter tale of revenge and payback gone wrong.

🍿 UNCLE (1959), a cute joke short about a home burglar whose plans are thwarted by a toddler in a crib. 8/10.

🍿 The experimental THE HALL OF LOST STEPS blends a narrative of two young lovers who say goodbye at a central train station together with newsreel footage from Nazi extermination camps and warnings of nuclear holocaust. It's an impressionistic montage of fears of atrocities which were pervasive in 1960.

Next: His 'Valerie' and 'The Cry'.

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THE EARLIEST TRUFFAUT / GODARD:

🍿 THE MISCHIEF MAKERS (1957) was Truffaut's first "real" film (in that his earlier short 'A visit' is lost). 5 boys all fall in love with a young woman, are jealous of her fiancé, and to show it, they harass them both. Many of his typical occupations are already preset here: A nostalgic look at preadolescence, the romantic nature of love, the visual clarity, the beauty of life in a small town. 7/10.

🍿 Truffaut and Godard directed A STORY OF WATER together, and I wish they had done more of it. It's a whimsical, light romance that was shot during the 1958 floods around Paris. 7/10. I said it before (about somebody else): How I wish that I never seen any of Truffaut's films, so that I could discover him again for the first time!

Also, a lovely 1960 Interview he gave after the success of 'Les Quatre Cents Coups'.

🍿 A FLIRTATIOUS WOMAN (1955), Godard's first short, shot in Geneva. A married young woman regrets picking up a stranger in the street. M'eh.

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WASATI (2016) is a Saudi short which is based on a true event, when a group of extremists attacked the performers at a theater in Riyadh. But from there, the story turns into different tangents, some odd, some mystical. It's nearly good.

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$1,000 A MINUTE is a daffy "comedy" from the height of the depression (1935), offering a 'Get rich fantasy' story to the struggling masses. An out-on-his-luck newspaper man is promised $10,000 if he can just blow through $720K within 12 hours. It's a very low-quality screwball farce: None of the writing, directing, acting, jokes, car chases, slapstick, romance and execution is any good. 1/10.

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THROW-BACK TO THE ADORA ART PROJECT:  

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(ALL MY FILM REVIEWS - HERE).

[davidhudson]

Happy 42nd, Lila Avilés.

Poster for Tótem (2023) by Aleks Phoenix.

[trendfilmsetter]

Mattel releases celebrity inspired Barbie dolls in celebration of its 65th anniversary featuring Shania Twain, Viola Davis, Kylie Minogue, Helen Mirren and more.

[byronthesecond]

TOTEM Lila Avilés

[oldfilmsflicker]

new-to-me #851 - Tótem

[cristalconnors]

BEST FILMS of 2023, pt. 3

Also: pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 4

10. TÓTEM, dir. Lila Avilés

9. DE HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA, dir. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel

8. JOYLAND, dir. Saim Sadiq

7. KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, dir. Martin Scorsese

6. OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN, dir. Rebecca Zlotowski

[dynamofilms]

Tótem (2023)

7/10

[p9fttt]

tótem (2023), dir. lila aviles

[byneddiedingo]

Naíma Sentíes in Tótem (Lila Avilés, 2023)

Cast: Naíma Sentíes, Montserrat Narañon, Marisol Gasé, Saori Gurza, Mateo García, Teresa Sánchez, Iazua Larios, Alberto Amador, Juan Francisco Maldonado, Marisela Villarruel, Galia Mayer, Lukas Urquijo López. Screenplay: Lila Avilés. Cinematography: Diego Tenorio. Production design: Nohemi Gonzalez. Film editing: Omar Guzmán. Music: Thomas Becka. 

I don't cry at movies, but sometimes I hold my breath in awe. I did so at the ending of Lila Avilés's extraordinarily beautiful and accomplished Tótem. I've never seen a film about a dying man so endowed with life. Everyone in Tótem knows that Tonatiuh (Mateo García) is dying, even his small daughter Sol (the enthralling Naíma Sentíes), and that the birthday party they're throwing for him will be his last. But they soldier on, filling this climactic day with brightness and love, along with some tears and some fights. Tona himself is a reluctant participant in the occasion, battling as he is with weakness and incontinence, but he's drawn into it anyway. The film could have been mawkish, but Avilés takes a documentary approach, concentrating on the noise and bustle of a house full of children and animals. The latter include a cat, several dogs, a parrot, a goldfish, some snails, and a few insects, which add the continuity of life to the tale about dying. There are funny scenes, too, one of them involving the charlatan one of Tona's sisters hires to rid the house of evil spirits, making an nuisance of herself and getting the film's biggest laugh with her curtain line. Avilés choreographs the crowd of actors of all ages well, getting fine performances from even the youngest. The cast was unknown to me, although afterward I discovered that I had recently seen Teresa Sánchez, who plays Cruz, the nurse hired to tend to Tona, in quite a different role, as the tough, determined owner of an agave plantation in Dos Estaciones (Juan Pablo González, 2022). I suspect there was quite a bit of improvisation beyond the script and a few happy accidents that got included, because it's a film that feels lived in.   

[cinemacentral666]

Midnight Family (2019) & The Chambermaid (2018)

Movies #1,057 & 1,058 • TWO FOR TUESDAY

When applicable I've decided I'm gonna do a joint review, especially on these TWO FOR TUESDAYS. In this case, I watched two Mexican movies that came out within a year of each other and there's one interesting, if not explicit parallel: where Midnight Family is a documentary that strives to feel cinematic, The Chambermaid is a drama that strives for such realness that I mistook it for a doc when it began (in the sense that all/most slow burn cinema wants to achieve this effect on some level). I enjoyed the latter a little bit more, but both are solid to good.

Nothing much at all happens in The Chambermaid, a movie about a — you guessed it — hotel maid who works at a very upscaled establishment in Mexico City. But good lord does it capture the struggle and world-crushing pain that such a gig can induce. Gabriela Cartol in the titular lead is excellent and the film, by first time feature director Lila Avilés, is presented plainly but beautifully. The contrast between the clean, elegant rooms and the cold, behind-the-scenes depths of the hotel is stark and paints a picture by itself, without any words.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¼

Midnight Family is also about a dead-end job, albeit one on a very different spectrum. It tells the story of a family who run a private ambulance business, also in Mexico City. It was an interesting parallel: seeing the street-level grime and then the metropolis from the heights of 40-story luxury. In a nutshell, that place/government is corrupt beyond belief. Probably beyond repair. We watch as they race competing emergency vehicles on route to the scene to deliver life-saving care that they struggle to get paid for. Just like the people they help, they barely have enough to get by.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¼

Both films, as different as they are, left me with the same feeling: what the HELL is wrong with us (humans)?

[barbielore]

For Women's History Month, and just ahead of International Women's Day coming up in a couple of days, Mattel have expanded their Barbie Role Models line to include eight new women.

Mattel's statement on the matter is:

Barbie is committed to shining a light on empowering role models in an effort to inspire more girls. As a part of The Barbie Dream Gap Project, we’re introducing girls to remarkable women’s stories to show them you can be anything.

As per usual these are one of a kind dolls to represent different celebrities or women who have achieved significant things in their fields. If you can't tell from the Barbie likenesses, these dolls are Helen Mirren, Maira Gomez, Viola Davis, Lila Avilés, Shania Twain, Enissa Amani, Nicole Fujita and Kylie Minogue.

Though obviously some of these women are more household names than others, and hence the news is headlined with Helen Mirren and Viola Davis, none of these women are slouches. Maira Gomez, for example, is an Amazonian influencer, and Enissa Amani is an Iranian-German comedian and activist.

I do not want to take anything away from any of the women who were chosen as Barbie Role Models, but I do wish Mattel had chosen a bit more variety in women they chose for this, as they all work essentially in the entertainment industry. However, of course, 2024's Career of the Year was Women in Film, so I hazard a guess this was a deliberate choice.

[pop-sesivo]

En 2024 vi menos películas de las que hubiese querido. Pero estoy satisfecho con las que vi en una sala de cine. Retomé mi amor por el western, del que la Filmoteca Valenciana ha proyectado clásicos cada sábado del año. Muchas de mis películas favoritas de 2024 son del año anterior, pero fue en estos últimos meses que llegaron a los cines españoles. Y todavía espero que no culmine el año sin ver al menos Heretic y Nosferatu, de las que espero mucho. Hago un resumen de mis título favoritos vistos hasta ahora: La italiana La chimera (2023): su directora, Alice Rohrwacher, crea historia y mundos únicos, difíciles de clasificar o, en todo caso, que pudiesen etiquetarse como “neorrealismo fantástico”, si es posible unir estos conceptos. Vi Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) cuatro veces en el cine; es un “cuento oral”, la construcción de un mito, el épico viaje de una heroína del desierto, una lección de cómo contar una historia. La alemana El cielo rojo (Roter Himmel, 2023) parece un filme contemplativo, en el que pasa poco (de allí que la comparen con el cine de Rohmer) pero que golpea como un gancho al hígado; tras verla, he buscado todo lo que ha hecho su director, Christian Petzold. La francesa Fuera de temporada (Hors-Saison, 2023), de Stéphane Brizé, es un milagro, una historia de amor sobre la búsqueda de sentido en la vida. Sus protagonistas, Guillaume Canet y Alba Rohrwacher, cautivan incluso sin hablar. La mexicana Tótem (2023), escrita y dirigida por Lila Avilés, se centra en una fiesta de cumpleaños vista por los ojos de una niña de siete años, rodeada por una familia disfuncional que, pese a ser muy mexicana, toca las fibras de cualquiera. Sentí al ver Anora (2024) que estaba ante una comedia de Preston Sturges, con una historia que va cuesta abajo como una bola de nieve, embistiendo todo a su paso, con enredos que crecen de tamaño y personajes secundarios que no cesan de sorprender; pero sin que nada de ello esconda la crudeza y desesperación en la que se desenvuelven todos los personajes.

[kristenswig]

Best Films of 2023

Winner

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)

Runners Up

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson) May December (Todd Haynes) La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher) Other People's Children (Rebecca Zlotowski) Past Lives (Celine Song) Pacifiction (Albert Serra) Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese) Tótem (Lila Avilés) The Killer (David Fincher)