From retrospective to classics to special, here are mini-reviews of everything else Journey into Cinema saw at Berlinale 2024.
Berlinale 2024: After Hours
Category: Competition
Pepe is Dead. Long Live Pepe.
Hippos become a metaphor for Colombia, the state of humanity and the world’s capacity for cruelty in Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias’s unclassifiable Pepe.
Foreign Language: Sex, Lies and Chocolate Mushrooms
As messy as its synopsis is understated, Claire Burger’s Foreign Language is a heady mix of teenage sexuality and muddled political engagement.
Isabelle Huppert is an Agent of Chaos in A Traveler’s Needs
Isabelle Huppert is the worst French teacher of all time in Hong Sangsoo’s sly and very funny comment on Korean national anxieties.
Architecton Insists Upon Itself
Architecton has some awe-inspiring visuals, but its let down by its distracting high frame rate and suspect choice of images.
Sterben Hits the Thin Line with Ease
Funnier than most out-and-out comedies, Sterben captures the messy absurdity of life in all its glory, despite, or perhaps, because of, the sad subject matter.
Two Glasses of Wine and a Packet of Chips
Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas, 2024) is the lockdown comedy that finds little dramatic potential in its set-up, feeling like a 100-minute episode of a sitcom.
Another End. We’ve Got Black Mirror at Home.
Piero Messina’s science-fiction Another End fails to inspire interesting questions or interest the viewer visually. It’s a bust, live from Berlin Film Festival.
Too Many Cooks Spoil La Cocina
La Cocina uses its kitchen-setting as a springboard for a grand Statement on America. But it ruins the main dish by adding too many flavours.
A Different Man, Sort Of
A Different Man has all the snarky hallmarks of another A24 provocation, but it’s saved by a screenplay that somehow evokes the best of Woody Allen.