A depressed kennel owner falls in love with a phone technician in Quebecois comedy Peak Everything, the rare fest film with crossover appeal.
Peak Everything. Love and Climate Change.
Category: Festivals
Reviews and dispatches exploring the best new cinema premiering around the world.
I Only Rest in the Storm. A Complicated Neo-Colonial Picture.
I Only Rest in the Storm is an epic exploration of the relationship between Africa and the West that fiendishly complicates stereotypical portrayals.
Love Letters. Look Who’s Writing Too.
The pitfalls of lesbian parenting as well as the messy realities of modern-day relationships are expertly navigated in Critics’ Week film Love Letters.
A Useful Ghost’s House of Haunted Hoovers
Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s debut feature A Useful Ghost is a remarkably profound — and silly — reverie on love, loss and assimilation.
Le Brutaliste
The construction of the Grande Arche de la Défense is recreated in loving detail in Stéphane Demoustier’s crowdpleasing, yet underwhelming The Great Arch.
Kika’s Dominatrix Service
BDSM and domination is used as a metaphor for the human condition in Alexe Poukine’s Kika, a deeply heartfelt tale about overcoming grief.
Her Will Be Done is Feverish, Ugly and Hard to Shake
With echoes of Wake in Fright and Carrie, Julia Kowalski’s Her Will Be Done is a provocative, satisfying body horror that lingers long in the memory.
The Girl in The Snow Cleverly Belies Its Classical Aesthetic
Multiple layers of ambiguity characterise Louise Hémon’s debut feature, a fascinating turn-of-the-century tale about the snowy road to enlightenment.
Drifting Laurent. Mirth Behind the Melancholy.
French dramedy Drifting Laurent is a slow and seemingly aimless film that provides oodles of charm in its depiction of an mid-season alpine resort.
Death Does Not Exist Traipses Aimlessly Through the Forest
A fine animation style is wasted by a deadeningly boring script in Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s surrealist eco-thriller Death Does Not Exist.