Cineskinny 4: GFF17 24-26 Feb

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N0 4 | 24 – 26 FEB

Sat 25 Feb, Cineworld, 8.30pm | Sun 26 Feb, Cineworld, 1pm

Gentle knockout The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki is about an unassuming Finnish boxer who has his nation’s hopes pinned on his success. We speak to its director, Juho Kuosmanen, a Fin who’s also carrying his country’s ambitions on his shoulders

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t’s a warm Ascension Day in Helsinki, and the city’s residents are out enjoying the clement weather. One Fin who can’t fully embrace the public holiday, however, is Juho Kuosmanen. Not only is the 37-year-old filmmaker scheduled to speak to The Skinny over lunch, also troubling him is that in

Interview: Jamie Dunn exactly two weeks time the world premiere of his first feature, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, will take place under the microscope of the world’s film community at the Cannes Film Festival.

Kuosmanen explains that the prospect of debuting at Cannes has been playing on his mind for a while: six years, to be exact. The reason being his previous short film, The Painting Sellers, won Cannes’ Cinefondation in 2010, and part of the prize is a return invite. “It was a nice situation but also a very scary one,” Kuosmanen says in a deliberate voice that’s as unhurried and gentle as his filmmaking.

“When you’re writing your first feature and know for certain it’s going to be screening in Cannes,

the pressure is quite huge.”

Not only will Olli Mäki screen in the festival, it’s been selected for the prestigious Un Certain Regard section, Cannes’ competition celebrating films – as its title suggests – with a singular point of view, with Kuosmanen up against big names like Hirokazu Kore-eda (After the Storm) and David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water).

In an unexpected twist, this weight of expectations helped Kuosmanen connect with a story he wanted to tell: that of Olli Mäki, a real life talented amateur boxer, who, in 1962, became the first Fin to compete for a world boxing championship when he was railroaded by his manager and Finnish promoters with continues…

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FRI 24 David Lynch: The Art Life

Lipstick Under My Burkha GFT, 8.15pm Four Indian women aged between 18 and 55 kick back against their nation’s patriarchy.

David Lynch: The Art Life Cineworld, 8.30pm Hang out with one of modern cinema’s master filmmakers as he discusses art, life and the experiences that have informed his singular style.

Shin Godzilla GFT, 9pm After two little-loved American remakes (Roland Emmerich’s dire 1998 effort and Gareth Edwards’ underrated stab in 2014) the rampaging atomic behemoth is back on home soil, and he’s as bad-tempered as ever. Honda’s original was a thinly veiled polemic against nuclear war; with the Fukushima catastrophe fresh in people’s minds, this walking metaphor for man’s stupidity is as potent as ever.

>> dollar/markka signs in their eyes into fighting American world champ Davey Moore.

“I felt it was very easy to relate to this guy who had this chance of a lifetime and then he fears that it’s going to turn out to be a catastrophe,” explains Kuosmanen with an endearing modesty that’s so rare in his industry. “You can see from all the newspaper headlines at the time people were hoping for him to be the next champion, and he doesn’t feel the same way.”

The Finnish film industry have high hopes for Olli Mäki – and they’re right to. In Kuosmanen’s hands, the boxing movie feels fresh again, and the result is a bittersweet knockout.

“I felt it was very easy to relate to this guy” Juho Kuosmanen Centred on the weeks leading up to the championship bout, there’s a graceful pivot by Kuosmanen that avoids the underdog sport clichés and instead focuses in on an event just on the periphery of the three ring media circus surrounding the fight: Olli (Jarkko Lahti) falling head over heels for Raija (Oona Airola), a girl he meets at a country wedding.

It’s not an ideal time to be falling in love. Olli is such a genial, easygoing chap, we suspect he didn’t have the killer instincts of a world class pugilist to begin with, but his feelings of amour really take the edge off. There’s a sense too that Olli is happy with the distraction. Not only because he genuinely adores Raija, but because the rigors of his gruelling new training regime and even more draining promotional duties (from which Kuosmanen mines some beautifully observed humour) seem to have soured the sport from which he once got great joy.

Like its eponymous character, Olli Mäki doesn’t necessarily look like a world conqueror. And it certainly doesn’t scream Un Certain Regard contender. Recent winners from this strand have included Khmer Rouge doc The Missing Picture, canines-bite-back horror White God and absurdist

confinement comedy Dogtooth. Olli Mäki’s open-hearted humanism stands out in this company like a baby labrador in a kennel of pit bulls.

Admirably, Kuosmanen didn’t try to darken the story to give it more festival caché. Instead, he embraced his unique situation.“I felt, personally, that with this setup, I could take some distance from the situation and it would be much easier to laugh at this whole thing.” This brings to mind a lyrical moment in the film in which Olli interrupts another gruelling run when he spots an abandoned kite in a tree – which he simply plucks from the branches and takes for a spin through the forest meadow to bring a moment of bliss back into his life. “I think that was my process for this film,” agrees Kuosmanen when we mention this scene, “to find the joy of filmmaking again and not think about what other people are expecting you to make.”

Olli Mäki’s humanist streak aligns the film with the work of Aki Kaurismäki, Finland’s most celebrated filmmaker, but that’s where the similarities end and Kuosmanen has been wise to keep out of the Le Havre director’s considerable shadow. “[Kaurismäki] feeds the idea of Finnish film abroad,” says Kuosmanen, who knows Kaurismäki well from the football pitch. “I love his films, I’m not blaming him, but he has this very strong style and sometimes that’s something you’re expecting about Finnish films.”

His style is impossible to copy, but it seems Kaurismäki’s independent spirit is alive and well in the younger filmmaker.

“Aki’s not communicating with the industry in Finland, he’s not teaching in the film schools, so there isn’t anything we can learn from him except that he has always done his own thing and that seems to work.”

And it’s worked for Kuosmanen too. While we’ll leave you in suspense as to whether Olli up-ends the odds and triumphs at the end of the film, Kuosmanen’s own story follows the Hollywood underdog formula. Two weeks after our interview, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki knocked out the Un Certain Regard competition and took top prize. Kuosmanen’s delightful and typically self-effacing response on accepting the award: “Thank you for your weird taste in cinema.”

R E VIE WS The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger  Director: Colin MacCabe, Christopher Roth, Bartek Dziadosz, Tilda Swinton Starring: John Berger, Tilda Swinton

“Boundary-pushing yet largely accessible... just as Berger was”

Given the passing of art historian, author, artist, and cultural critic John Berger just last month at the age of 90, it’s difficult not to view The Seasons in Quincy through an elegiac lens, and at times the film feels suitably mournful. But its peculiar structure, split into four discrete sections, results in more of a loosely experimental, impressionistic essay that celebrates aspects of Berger’s life in alpine France, the influence of his work,

Fri 24 Feb, CCA, 3.30pm Sat 25 Feb, CCA, 8.45pm

and his musings on art, memory, politics, contemporary life, and the future.

Variously directed by Colin McCabe, Christopher Roth, and Tilda Swinton (who also appears in two segments), the film is boundary-pushing yet largely accessible, artful yet plain-spoken, just as Berger was. While at times Swinton’s involvement threatens to distract from the film’s actual focus, Berger has enough natural charisma to stop the proceedings from simply devolving into The John and Tilda Show. It’s a fitting, meandering tribute to one of the most celebrated cultural figures of our time. [Michelle Devereaux]

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SAT 25

“A triumph of socially conscious filmmaking”

Aquarius 

Stockholm, My Love GFT, 3.30pm The prolific Mark Cousins follows up his glorious I Am Belfast with another ode to an urban sprawl, in this case the Swedish capital. Intriguingly, Neneh Cherry takes the starring role as an architect experiencing post-traumatic depression, which she reveals as she wanders through the city. Expect a freewheeling flight of fancy from this most passionate of filmmakers, who’s once again collaborating behind the camera with cinematography genius Christopher Doyle.

Detour GFT, 4.30pm Christopher Smith is one of our great modern genre filmmakers and in his hands this twisty neo-noir starring Tye Sheridan, Bel Powley and Emory Cohen should be a pulpy treat.

Sat 25 Feb, GFT, 5.45pm Sun 26 Feb, GFT, 10.45am

Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho Starring: Sonia Braga, Maeve Jinkings, Irhandir Santos

In his critically acclaimed debut, Neighbouring Sounds, Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho presented audiences with a multifaceted portrait of a middle-class community in Reclife. His follow-up, Aquarius, shares the same location, but centers on the struggle of one woman,

Bodkin Ras 

Clara (Sonia Braga), a 65-year-old music critic fighting to save her home from the clutches of a property developer. The focus might have narrowed, but both films share the same obsession with class and memory, with Filho once again using intelligent sound design to allude to the world outside the frame – one teeming with anxiety and political anger.

The film is constructed entirely around Braga’s performance. A sensuous blend of anger and stubbornness, Clara shows

only the faintest signs of weakness, yet the fragility that seeps through elevates this tale of individual resistance into a wider contemplation on inherited guilt and the distinction between house and home. Combining formal inventiveness with a flair for storytelling, Aquarius is a triumph of socially conscious filmmaking; a bold and electrifying film that’s grand in scope, but intimate in its execution. [Patrick Gamble]

The Princess Bride Maryhill Burgh Halls, 7pm The big screen adaptation of ‘a kissing book’ that manages to be romantic, swashbuckling and hilarious. Inconceivable!

Fri 24 Feb, GFT, 6.15pm Sat 25 Feb, CCA, 3.45pm

Starring: Sohrab Bayat, Eddie Paton, Lily Szramko

Thrusting a mysterious stranger by the name of Bodkin into the small Scottish town of Forres, Kaweh Modiri’s Bodkin Ras mixes fiction with fact in an experimental film that blurs the boundary between documentary and drama.

As Bodkin strives to assimilate himself into the tight-knit community, the locals are given time in front of the camera to describe their town while offering their reactions to the arrival of the tall, dark newcomer. Forres is a small town like a thousand others in Scotland,

immediately relatable to any native.

Gradually though, Modiri is able to peel away some layers of its familiarity to reveal the complexity and pain beneath – as a documentary shedding light on the inner drama in a place where we might assume nothing happens, Bodkin Ras is highly effective.

The fictional side of Modiri’s experiment, however, doesn’t hold its end up quite as well. Bodkin is given little to do beyond stand around looking handsomely haunted, building eventually into a clumsy finale that feels like pantomime compared to the grimly powerful stories that surround it. [Ross McIndoe]

“An experimental film that blurs the boundary between documentary and drama”

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Illustration: Raj Dhunna

Director: Kaweh Modiri

Fri 24 Feb, SWG3, 7.30pm

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SUN 26

“Secretary presents sex as the great leveller of gender”

A Right Good Spanking Inspired by GFF’s screening of Steven Shainberg’s Secretary and this month’s release of the Fifty Shades of Grey sequel, we take a look at the lessons the modern spankbuster could learn from the 2002 cult classic

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uperficially, Steven Shainberg’s 2002 film Secretary and Fifty Shades of Grey couldn’t be more alike. Both use BDSM as a prism through which they present sexual awakenings of young women at the hands (literally) of dominant men.

Men who, coincidentally, share a surname. However, beneath this veneer of similarity, the contrast between how the two films actually broach the subject of sex could not be starker.

Secretary uses BDSM’s reified power dynamics to present sex as the great leveller of gender, an empowering force that can put women on equal footing with men. Sex in Fifty Shades, on the other hand, is used as an oppressive tool forcing women to submit to men narratively as well as literally.

Sexual acts in films, Secretary argues, mustn’t happen in a vacuum. When they do, women are demeaned and robbed of their agency. Every erotic act in Secretary is refracted multiple times to show that sex, especially forceful sex, requires distinctions. Lee (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) enjoys being spanked by Edward (a particularly eldritch James Spader) while wearing a saddle and biting on a carrot, but that doesn’t mean she’ll let a man watch her urinate on a patio. Lee’s arousal and repulsion at certain BDSM practices highlight that pleasure is multifarious and subjective.

This kaleidoscopic approach extends to the ostensibly troubling nature of Lee and Edward’s relationship – that of a male employer and female employee. But Secretary tackles this issue and enforces Lee’s independence through sobering contrasts where other female characters in the film find themselves in situations that aren’t equal: a family friend sexually harassed by her boss; Edward representing another sexual harassment victim; Lee’s father shoving his wife to

The Last Seduction GFT, 10.30am Linda Fiorentino pulls off the greatest femme fatale performance since Barbara Stanwyck in this seductive neo-noir thriller from John Dahl that crackles with electric sex appeal and a ruthless wit. It might be all too much for 10.30am, in fact.

Words: Benjamin Rabinovich

the floor. It fleshes out these distinctions so that even the most visually troubling scene – where Edward first forcefully spanks Lee – is deeply contextualised. Through these refractions we understand that although she’s a submissive in the erotic acts, unlike Anastasia (Dakota Johnson) in Fifty Shades, Lee is undeniably active and Edward’s equal when it comes to initiating them.

Contrast that with Fifty Shades, where the only refraction happens when the camera wants to show Christian (Jamie Dornan) dominating Anastasia from a new angle. And he wants to dominate her, as the film helpfully elucidates, because that’s just the way he is. This lack of distinction – of context – lays bare the cognitive dissonance between the film and its female protagonist. Anastasia clearly wants a romance that includes walks in the park and sex in the missionary position; the film gives her a rapey billionaire, who wants to anally fist and whip her, and calls it love. Yes, Anastasia becomes aware of the disparity and rejects Christian, but because Fifty Shades is framed as a love story, that rejection – which is the only time Anastasia has any agency – is merely temporary. It’s not character development but a speed bump to add drama.

Where Fifty Shades abandons Anastasia’s agency to serve the story, Secretary preserves Lee’s until the very end when she, now married to Edward, looks straight into the camera.

By breaking the fourth wall – a power almost exclusively granted to men (Alfie, Alvy Singer, Ferris Bueller, Frank Underwood...) – the film demonstrates Lee’s complete control over her story. She’s directly looking at you, the viewer, daring you to accuse her of having no agency to her face. It’s a brilliant act of defiance that Fifty Shades would never allow Anastasia. The closest she gets to looking into the camera is when there’s a mirror in front of it.

Secretary’s final minutes hammer home its greatest lesson about sex in film: done wrong, it deprives women of their agency; done right, it can show that agency was the real story all along.

The Slab Boys GFT, 1.15pm Unmissable rare screening of John Byrne’s own adaptation of his landmark play centered on a trio of rock’n’roll obsessed lads from Paisley.

Byrne will be in attendance for a Q&A; he’s a brilliantly ramshackle raconteur, and sure to have plenty to say.

Mad to Be Normal GFT, 7.30pm This much-anticipated world premiere should prove a fine curtain-closer to GFF17. And David Tennant fans rejoice!

Reports are the former Doctor Who has – at long last – found a big screen role worthy of his talents in visionary psychiatrist RD Laing.

Produced by The Skinny magazine in association with the Glasgow Film Festival: Editor-in-Chief

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Editor

Jamie Dunn

Subeditor

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Designer

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Sales

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Illustration

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GFF Box Office Order tickets from the box office at www.glasgowfilm.org/festival or call: 0141 332 6535 or visit: Glasgow Film Theatre 12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB info@glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

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