TIFF 2010: BAD FAITH Review
Mona has a few issues with reality. Freshly moved away from Denmark to Sweden in a new job and a new apartment she is aloof with her co-workers and lacks the energy to fully commit to unpacking her stuff. Instead, fascinated with the late night hours in Stockholm and news of a serial killer on the news define her daily and nightly rhythms. Bad Faith, for lack of a better descriptor, is a thriller. It is also film to test the expectations and suspension of disbelief of all but the hardiest audiences. Kristian Petri builds his world and its rules in a way that indeed had half of my audience shuffling towards the door by the 30 minute mark. But sink into that world, one of voyeurism and obsession, and Bad Faith is a rewarding mood piece. Desire trumps logic, mood trumps plot. I would like to say that the film is as if Michael Haneke directed Rear Window, but I fear that may both oversell the film and be a bit disingenuous to both the film and its director. But is a good starting point to understand how familiar and antagonistic the film can be.
The story follows Mona as she more or less shirks her job, and goes on after hours amateur sleuthing to find out if her suspicions of the 'Bayonet Killer' is a man she witnessed in an act of random violence by chance upon her wandering away from a cocktail party. She goes to the police, but of course, why would they believe her. She takes the newspaper artists renderings and fills in the details to match her suspect. In the meantime, she meets fellow night-time wanderer Frank in a neighborhood church and coffee shop. Is he stalking her while she stalks the serial killer? Is Mona the killer in a waking dream? Yes all of those possibilities are thrown on the table, as the film pretty much assumes you have seen all these types of twisty films, from The Machinist to Repulsion to The Vanishing. And for some time, it focuses on the relationship of Mona and Frank that seem to flirt (and eventually fuck) based on their own mysteriousness and ambiguity. Mona keeps a sketch of the killer modified to look like Frank as well. Eventually, Frank becomes her accomplice to track down her suspect while Mona goes weapons shopping and gets braver in her stalking eventually breaking into the fellows house.
Shot by Hoyte Van Hoytea, the man behind the meticulously cold look of Let The Right One in, Bad Faith gorgeously renders Stockholm's unsavory locales*, from open air parking garages to marinas to freight yards to be dark and alluring at night, and bright and mundane during the day. Make no mistake though, Mona as played by Sonja Richter is unhinged and unlikable (and all the sexier for it) 24/7; she is a sleep walker, possibly living a stark but detailed dream that eschews Lynchian surrealism or mutliplex jump-scares. She is fleeing some past drama (cat lovers beware how this is symbolized on screen in flashback) but is as much of a blank slate as either of the two Gerrys in Gus Van Sant's first film in his own sleep-walker trilogy. Bad Faith is surely enough to polarize its audiences in the same fashion. In the end, it won me over as a solid 'sink into the murk' collections of signs and wonders.
*Bonus points for re-inventing the 'crazy killer graffiti' (I won't say whose place) onto the slats of a venetian blind; hadn't seen that before.
