Barrio Triste (dir. Stillz)
While Barrio Triste is indeed a found footage film on paper, it’s something much more surreal than the form typically allows. In fact, most people I’ve talked to about it didn’t even think to categorize it in the subgenre until I brought it up. But even with headier ambitions than the shrieky horror movies to which the form is typically applied, this bizarre curiosity is indeed framed in the lens of a camera that is itself part of the story. The film opens in the streets just outside of Medellin, Colombia, where a news reporter is doing a segment on the recent appearance of strange lights in the skies over the city. Before he can get to the meat of his broadcast, a group of teens assaults him and steals his camera. What follows is a frank, intense look into the lives of these angry and lost young men.
Robberies, assaults, vandalism — you name it and our ragtag group of protagonists get into it, but as their evening on tape progresses, the film starts to stretch reality a bit, calling back to the words of the reporter in the opening scene. That said, this isn’t an alien invasion movie by any stretch. Instead it is a portrait of a chaotic life; a life where nothing is ordinary, and thus the extraordinary is as accepted and expected as anything else.
Noted photographer Stillz captures Colombia with the mid-contrast sheen of early digital filmmaking in the vein of 28 Days Later, Collatteral, or the tonally similar Baise Moi — a style that I have an affinity for. Here, it’s applied to mesh a dreamlike haze with gritty realism, which captures the immediacy of life on the extreme margins of human existence. It’s on these margins, however, where the biggest questions of life may be answered.
This was my favorite movie of the festival, but it’s not one I’d recommend to anyone on account of how specific it is to my own idiosyncratic tastes. I’ll put it this way: the crowd was in stunned silence as this came to an end, but when a credit appeared touting Harmony Korine as the producer, a collective utterance of “ohhhhhhh, okay” occurred.
Reflection in a Dead Diamond (dir. Héléne Cattet & Bruno Forzani)
I counted no fewer than ten walkouts during this film, which, while understandable given its inherently screwy nature, feels insane to me. Simultaneously a riff on Danger Diabolik, In Like Flint, and the opening credits of every Bond movie, this parade of images, sounds, and directorial flourishes is considerably more straightforward than Cattet and Forzani’s previous films. I don’t know if I’d necessarily call it accessible, but if you choose to be an active viewer, it’s really not too hard to follow.
What I would call it is “aggressively stylish.” So much so that I’d say the style is downright weaponized. The imagery is all familiar, but here its synthesized into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts … if you’re willing to let it in. God, I sound like such a film snob.
BUT IF THE SHOE FITS…
The film follows super spy John Diman at two different points in his life. In the present day he’s an older man living out his retirement days in a luxurious riviera hotel, where he finds himself drawn to his new neighbor. When said neighbor disappears he begins to ruminate on his past, where he lived all of your favorite tropes from the Roger Moore era of Bond. Back in the day, he squared off against Serpentik, a leather-clad, motorcycle-driving assassin who had a gadget suited for every task (including boots with reinforced heels that can stab enemies to death). Diman and Serpentik had the standard “we’re enemies but we are also horny for one another” spy relationship, and as such, the assassin is multiple layers of “the one that got away.”
Could Serpentik be behind the present day mystery?
Cattet and Forzani display masterful technique in populating every inch of every frame with detail without letting it slide into visual gobbledygook. Every detail down to the most minuscule reads as a choice, which is ultimately what keeps the plot on the rails as it enters a bold and clever meta-territory involving a film adaptation of Diman’s adventures (which we may or may not be watching unfold in real time). This one gets a lot of mileage by leaning on the audience’s awareness of genre tropes, if not the specific titles it’s aping, and those who can get their receptors to match its pace will get as much enjoyment as those who choose to just vibe out and let the film wash over them.
There will also be plenty of viewers who hate it, and trust me when I say that I get it.
