Melbourne 2014: The Full Program Reveals A Full-Bodied Selection of Cinema

The 63rd Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) launched its full program, consisting of 341 films, 17 program strands, 28 world premieres, 168 Australian Premieres and more than 71 local guests.

The Australian Premiere of Felony, directed by Melbourne filmmaker Matthew Saville, written by and starring Joel Edgerton alongside a ferocious turn by Tom Wilkinson will close the festival this year.

Three detectives become embroiled in a tense struggle after a tragic accident that leaves a child in a critical condition. One is guilty of a crime, one will try to cover it up, and the other attempts to expose it.

Simon Pegg's Kill Me Three Times has vanished into the aether, so instead this year's festival marks the world premiere Centrepiece Gala screening of Cut Snake, a crime thriller from director Tony Ayres (Home Song Stories). Demonstrating how one man's biggest enemy in moving forward can be himself.

Home-grown talent takes centre stage in the Australian Showcase section with three more Premiere Fund films receiving a world premiere at MIFF this year: Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, a feature documentary and not a tame exploitation effort from Mark Hartley (Not Quite Hollywood); The Legend Maker, a dramatic thriller from Ian Pringle, in which an ageing criminal needs all his cunning to survive; and My Mistress, a love story starring Emmanuelle Béart and Harrison Gilbertson.

Other Australian offerings include Fell, a film about two very different men linked by grief and remorse, from award-winning short filmmaker and MIFF Accelerator alumnus Kasimir Burgess; and Ukraine is not a Brothel, a documentary from Melbourne's Kitty Green, who captures the passions and many paradoxes of the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN.

A new program strand, I Dream of Genius: Science & Technology on Screen showcases the practical, philosophical and potential facets of science and technology in our daily lives. Web Junkie is an engrossing look inside one of China's prison-like rehabilitation camps for internet-addicted teens; Happiness, winner of Sundance's World Cinema: Documentary Award for Cinematography, follows the introduction of television into a remote Bhutan village; and the Sheffield Doc/Fest Audience Award winner, Particle Fever, tells the story of the Large Hadron Collider's discovery of the Higgs boson "God particle".

MIFF will go beyond the glossy Bollywood façade to present an authentic portrait of contemporary Indian life via the spotlight India in Flux: Living Resistance, showing audiences another side of one of the world's most rapidly developing nations, this documentary program includes: Anand Patwardhan's multi-award-winning Jai Bhim Comrade, which shines a light on a centuries-old conflict in Mumbai drawn along caste lines, where people are denied everything and forced to live in a world of scorn and prejudice.

In a sign of the times, MIFF has curated a new program Celluloid Dreams: Films Shot on Film, showcasing works that fully embrace 20th century celluloid technology to give their 21st century cinematic storytelling a unique edge. Offerings include: Happy Christmas, in which wildly prolific lo-fi auteur Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies) reunites with Anna Kendrick for a candid and wry exploration of 'adultescence'; Hard to Be a God, inspired by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's sci-fi novel of the same name, from the late enfant terrible of Russian filmmaking Alexei German; and Manakamana, a rhythmic meditation on pilgrimage in the age of mass transportation, set in central Nepal's mountains and jungles.

A Perfect Midnight: Haunted Hong Kong takes a sampling of the supernatural to present spooky cinema from our regional neighbour. Screenings include Rigor Mortis, from pop star-turned-actor-turned-filmmaker Juno Mak, who cements his predilection for extreme Asian horror with one of the first jiang-shi films (Chinese hopping vampire genre) in over 20 years; and Mr Vampire, the 1985 film from Ricky Lau, which reigns as a cult cinema must-see for fans of Hong Kong cinema, horror and comedy.

This year MIFF delivers a retrospective on Jean-Pierre Léaud co-curated with Philippa Hawker. Known as the child of the French New Wave, Léaud has a gift for physical comedy, a singular approach to dialogue, and a distinctive presence. The retrospective will include screenings of François Truffaut's classic film, The 400 Blows, a bittersweet tale of a misunderstood adolescent, which went on to become one of the cornerstones of the French New Wave.

Always one of MIFF's most popular programs, Backbeat puts sonic visions on the big screen to capture the immense power of music. John Pirozzi attempts to reclaim the unheard musical history of Cambodia, from the grips of the genocide inflicted by the Khmer Rouge, in Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll. Time is Illmatic tells the story behind the most pivotal album in the history of hip-hop: Nas' Illmatic.

Truth remains stranger than fiction in this year's bumper Documentaries program which features Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi's long-awaited documentary The 50 Year Argument. Travelling to the Congo for Virunga, director Orlando von Eiseniedel follows Belgian prince Emmanuel de Merode and his fellow rangers as they battle against the corrupt forces that threaten the national park's endangered gorillas; and Ryan White's The Case Against 8 which explores the historic case to overturn California's ban on same-sex marriage.

This year MIFF presents comedy Italian style with Commedia all'italiana. A unique opportunity to see the genre's best-known and most-loved films - in glorious 35mm projection - the program goes back to where it all began in the 1950s with Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street, a landmark of the crime caper genre starring Vittorio Gassman and Claudia Cardinale. Also screening is Pietro Germi's Divorce, Italian Style, in which Marcello Mastroianni plays a bored Sicilian baron, who hatches an outrageous plan to lure his wife into another man's arms so that he can justify shooting her.

The diversity of Australia's neighbouring filmmakers comes under the spotlight in MIFF's ever-popular regional focus Accent on Asia. From Mongolian love stories to Japanese madness and Filipino epics, the program includes two films from Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang: the Venice Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner Stray Dogs, a bittersweet reflection on the people who fall through society's cracks, and Journey to the West, an almost wordless, meditative experience.  

Night Shift, the festival's annual cinematic showdown, is an undying favourite amongst adventurous audiences that have developed a taste for blood and weirdness. There are a dozen films to choose from: Housebound, the debut feature from Gerard Johnstone, about a petty thief under house arrest who can't escape the paranormal activity of her childhood home; cult auteur and MIFF regular Sion Sono's fun-lovingly bloodthirsty Why Don't You Play in Hell?

International Panorama is the annual program of the cream of the crop of world cinema. Audiences can catch James Gray's highly anticipated The Immigrant, starring Marion Cotillard as a Polish woman newly arrived in New York, who is forced into prostitution by a charming but wicked man played by Joaquin Phoenix; Abuse of Weakness, from uncompromising director Catherine Breillart, is the feature-length film telling the tale of how the filmmaker came to give over $1 million to a convicted conman; and Appropriate Behavior, directed by and starring the newest voice in indie cinema, Desiree Akhavan, is an amusing take on a bisexual Iranian-American woman trying to find her way in modern-day Brooklyn.

Taking the art of storytelling beyond the bounds of live action, this year's Animation program features new work from and about big-name animators and animation studios, as well as anime masterworks and documentaries. Michel Gondry's Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? takes Noam Chomsky's philosophical and linguistic work, and interprets it via the director's own unique style, translating theories and ideas into tangible animations; The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, directed by award-winning filmmaker Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies), is the tale of an old bamboo cutter who discovers a tiny girl inside a bamboo stalk.

J Hurtado, , James Marsh and Pierce Conran contributed to this story.

Wetlands

Wetlands comes with a disturbing content warning. Consider that the festival already has an R rating exemption and this is very exciting news indeed. Hopefully the film is faithful to the extremely disgusting, hilarious and enlightening novel of the same name; I have never thrown up at a film festival, will this film change that?

Describing herself as "a living pussy-hygiene experiment", 18-year-old Helen is obsessed with bodily fluids, has sex with vegetables, swaps used tampons with her best friend and seduces a love interest with a story about bukkake pizza. Oh, and she really wants to reunite her divorced parents. When an anal shaving accident lands her in hospital, she sees her chance. Called the crassest, most outrageous movie at Sundance by more than one reviewer thanks to a gleefully fearless performance by Carla Juri as Helen and graphic, non-judgemental direction from David Wnendt. It's not for the squeamish.

Read J Hurtado's review of the film here.

International Panorama

Love Hotel

A documentary about the inner workings of a love hotel in Japan is far too fascinating a subject to ignore.

A space for intimacy as well as sex, love hotels are a Japanese tradition. The nation's 37,000 such hotels attract 2.8 million people per day, each seeking fulfilment or to follow their fantasies. But legal changes and the entertainment police now threaten the more adventurous establishments. In Osaka, The Angel's days are numbered, but its clientèle still flock through the doors. Love Hotel strips both bare: the struggle to keep the hotel running, and its everyday customers offering a revealing portrait of a distinctive element of Japanese culture under threat, as well as affording audiences a look at what really goes on behind closed doors.

Accent on Asia

It Follows

This indie horror made it to Cannes, it received much praise and fanfare, it sounds utterly entrancing, engaging and most importantly creepy as hell.

When her boyfriend Hugh is murdered immediately after they have sex for the first time, 19-year-old Jay realises that whatever killed him is now after her. Able to assume the appearance of Jay's family and friends, It will stop at nothing to exterminate those it targets. The only escape: to pass the curse forward is by sleeping with someone new. Legitimately unnerving, relentlessly paced and filled with knowing winks to its schlock horror forebears as well as ‘80s teen films, It Follows is a slyly subversive genre riff packed with heart-pounding thrills.

Read Jason Gorber's review of the film here.

Night Shift

Black Coal, Thin Ice

Do yourself a favour and watch the haunting, languid, expertly paced trailer of this brilliant neo-noir. Still not convinced? There is no pleasing you. Winning the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bear for Best Actor (for Liao Fan) at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival, Black Coal, Thin Ice is the new cinematic triumph from Chinese phenomenon Diao Yinan. A masterfully controlled exercise in narrative chicanery and noir atmospherics, Diao's film pays homage to the legends of the past but transforms them into something resolutely his own.

Haunted by a botched murder investigation five years earlier, former policeman Zhang has retired to a distant mining town in an attempt to drink his past away. But when bodies start turning up in a strikingly familiar fashion, Zhang sees a chance to atone for the sins of his past.

Read James Marsh's review of the film here.

Accent on Asia

Amour Fou

After being rebuffed by several women, German author Heinrich von Kleist puts his offer of a suicide love pact to the wife of a business friend. Perhaps it is her crushingly boring life or Kleist's persistence, but the peculiar idea takes a hold. Jessica Hausner's (Lourdes) complex and beautifully filmed feature views the romantic ideal of a lovers' suicide sceptically by focusing on the reality of what that means. In turn creepy, awkwardly droll and tragic, this ‘rom-com', which is loosely based on Kleist's 1811 suicide pact, slowly turns the dramatic screws through to its exquisitely staged ending.

International Panorama

A Hard Day

Suspense, amusement, black comedy, twists and turns and a ripping screen-play; this exciting film from Korea refreshed many a viewer at Cannes and is set to do the same at MIFF.

Driving home at night from his mother's funeral, homicide detective Gun-su accidentally hits and kills a man. Panicked, he decides to cover up the incident. Big mistake. What starts as a hard day turns into a fraught fortnight as he devises ever more crazy ways to cover up the event. With a script that delivers clever plot turns, black humour, maximum tension and flashes of social satire, as well as tight editing this a classy achievement for director Kim Song-hun in only his second feature.

Read Pierce Conran's review of the film here.

Accent on Asia

Mommy

Canadian master Xavier Dolan is precocious but brilliant; I have nothing but high regard for this young but wise director, it should come as no surprise then that anything new from his hands is cause for excitement.

In a near-future Quebecois suburb, Diane (Anne Dorval) is a trash-talking 50-something widow in stripper heels and sprayed-on jeans. Steve is her troubled teenage son, expelled from a care facility and into her custody over his violent, ADHD-fuelled outbursts. While mother and son attempt to negotiate their volatile but deeply heartfelt relationship, they attract the attention of Kyla, a stammering, introverted neighbour who inserts herself into the household and provides much-needed support.

Mommy is shot in a selfie-like 1:1 aspect ratio that draws viewers right to the centre of the threesome's intimate and explosive dynamic.

International Panorama

Han Gong-ju

Very grateful this film appeared in MIFF's lineup. I was saddened to miss it at Busan Film Festival and our resident Korea-phile Pierce Conran loved it to bits, and he knows a thing or two about cinema from this region to say the least.

When 13-year-old Han Gong-ju is forcibly transferred from her rural school to another far away in the city, it's clear that something dangerous hangs in her past. Welcomed into her new home and finding salvation in song, Han starts to rebuild her shattered life, but some truths can only be escaped for so long.

Fresh from breaking box-office records in Korea and award-winning festival runs, Han Gong-ju is the assured debut feature from writer and director Lee Su jin. Handling the most delicate of subject matters with rare insight and an uncommon narrative grace, this is socially conscious filmmaking of the highest order, and a remarkable feat of storytelling unafraid to visit the darkest of places.

Twitch not a good enough reference for you? How about Martin Scorsese! "Han Gong-ju is outstanding in mise-en scene, image, sound, editing and performance. I have a lot to learn from this movie and I can't wait to see Lee Su jin's next film."

Read Pierce Conran's review of the film here.

Accent on Asia

God Help the Girl

Could the feature debut musical dramedy by Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch be considered hipster bait? Yes, most definitely and in that case consider me a hipster because I am very excited for this one.

After escaping from a hospital where she's being treated for depression, Eve (Emily Browning) is lured by the bright lights of the city and the promise of pop music as redemption. Following her as she recruits neurotic, downtrodden guitarist James (Olly Alexander) and scatterbrained Cassie (Hannah Murray) to form a band, God Help the Girl is a lush and alluring romp through a dreamy Glaswegian summer full of songs, longing and laughter.

Backbeat

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness

Ghibli are great, watching Ghibli go to work, learning what makes them tick, their philosophies and beliefs; frankly the opportunity to bear witness to all that is already bringing tears to my eyes.

Studio Ghibli, the brainchild of directors Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki, has captivated audiences the world over with its dreamlike, fantastical animations. This documentary looks at how they managed such an amazing run, and what could be next for the beloved studio.

This past year, Miyazaki and Takahata have both directed their final films, with The Wind Rises and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya also playing at MIFF. As Ghibli celebrates its 30th birthday, award-winning filmmaker Mami Sunada gives us unprecedented access into their unique, fascinating world.

Animation