Fantastic Fest Report: A Spanish Fairy Tale, a Twisting Brit Tenant, an American Mystery, and a Germ

In case you're wondering, Fantastic Fest's subtitle is: "8 days of horror sci-fi fantasy Asian cult and freaking amazing cinema!" Though my viewing schedule through the first six days leaned heavily on the horror part of the equation, Wednesday took a turn toward the fantasy and 'freaking amazing' side.

Pan's Labyrinth (official site with trailer)
Lie Still (FF info page and trailer | official site)
Firefly (FF info page and trailer)
A Quiet Love (Die Blaue Grenze) (FF info page and trailer | official German site)

You're all heard or read about Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, both from hard-core genre sites and the slightly more mainstream arthouse elite, and it's already been reviewed three times here at ScreenAnarchy (by Todd, Kurt, and Opus, not to mention the various news items in our archives).

All I can really add to the discussion is how it played on the penultimate night of the festival, to an eager sold-out house, prefaced by Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News reenacting an e-mail from del Toro to substitute for a personal appearance (the director ran out of time to do the special "welcome" video clip that had been planned). Come to think of it, I can only honestly report how I reacted to it. In a word: stunned.

As with The Host, it was not quite what I expected. The fantasy and fairy tale elements were more richly detailed and fleshed-out, and the grounding in harsh reality (Spanish Civil War, 1944) more unsettling, than I had anticipated. By the conclusion I found myself profoundly moved, as much as anything because del Toro's blood, sweat, and tears are clearly evident in every frame of film.

Pan's Labyrinth is something that I want to chew on, to fully digest -- and probably to see again -- before I can completely reconcile myself with the material and what del Toro has achieved.

Taking a far different approach but still in the same vein of playing with your head, writer/director Sean Hogan freely reimagines Roman Polanski's The Tenant in his quiet psychological horror think-piece Lie Still.

That description is not to imply that Lie Still lacks visceral impact. Probably you'll find your head begin to buzz when certain unseemly things happen to John (Stuart Laing in a very strong performance), the newest tenant in a smallish building that nonetheless has few occupants. The landlord (Robert Blythe) seems pleasant enough, though an older lady cusses him out one morning and generally acts quite rudely toward him.

John seems to have recently left behind some troubles, though that's not touched upon except through a couple of visits from his ex-girlfriend. Not much time passes before odd things start happening, and John feels trapped by circumstances, unable to afford the cost of moving out, but paying a price anyway as the old neighbor lady continues to harangue him, and his tiny black and white TV begins picking up disturbing images.

Hogan wrote a tight script -- in the post-screening Q & A he said the first draft was only 55 pages, for a film that ended up running 80 minutes -- and makes the most of what must have been a tiny budget. Without flashing breasts or schematic, gory kill scenes, Hogan swam against the horror tide with Lie Still and came away with a very suggestive, distinctive picture.

Not to mention at least two scenes that made me jump. Look for this one on DVD.

It was a fine way to conclude seven straight nights of midnight screenings. Earlier in the day, I found myself liking Firefly more and more as the story develops. Which is ironic, because the script is what other people have criticized.

Another low-budget, shot-on-video feature, Firefly was filmed on location in Minnesota and Wisconsin, with a surfeit of snow and icy landscapes. Initially it plays like a goofy comedy, as a filmmaker shows his latest amateur (oops, non-professional) magnum opus to his friends at a party. The party seems like any other in the dead of winter, until one of the guests drives away and is abducted and assaulted by masked men in robes.

That hairpin turn into a dramatic mystery will lose some viewers, and truthfully the filmmakers lose the thread of the story from time to time, buried under an avalanche of willful obscurity. Yet there are nuggets of naked emotional honesty that shine through, and I enjoyed the interplay between the characters and their storylines, as well as the resolution. In sum, very promising work.

Within the realm of fantastic films, those that edge gently over the line from the mainstream are sometimes difficult to appraise. So it was for me and A Quiet Love, from Germany and Denmark. Should it be considered simply as a romantic love story, or should the subtle supernatural touches and fantasy elements count for something extra?

To begin with, the film is handsomely-mounted and looks superb in 35mm. To borrow from the program notes: "Set near the Germany/Denmark border, a place where the living and the dead intermingle, two very different love stories unfold." We follow along as Momme (Antoine Monot, Jr.) suffers the loss of his father and tries to deal with his grief. With his moon-shaped face and hollow eyes, he cuts an appealingly sad figure in town.

His appearance alone elicits interest from Lene (Beate Bille), a woman visiting from Denmark who has also suffered the loss of her parents. Their romance is nipped in the bud the same night they meet, and Lene returns to the Danish side of the border. They continue dreaming of each other, longing to be together, even as they interact with their dead relatives and cope with life. Meanwhile, police Kommissar Poulsen (Dominique Horwitz) moves into a new home and meets his neighbor, Frau Marx (the great Hanna Schygulla). Their romance is a bit harder to fathom, because Poulsen is a prickly, somewhat pathetic man who tries too hard, and Frau Marx appears too graceful and dignified for him.

The dead look the same as the living, and there are few guideposts to clearly signal where the story is heading, all of which help make A Quiet Love tremendously appealing for the right audience. Without dragging my own personal, currently anti-romantic feelings too far into view, I am not the right audience for this film -- I could admire parts of it, but it never took flight into the the realm of magical realism that others have described (and a number of people highly recommended this film to me).

Putting my feelings aside, considering how many people have responded very positively to A Quiet Love, it really should be on DVD somewhere where a larger audience can see it.