The Chicago International Film Festival begins its first weekend of screenings on Friday, October 17; here are the highlights our film critics recommend. Follow along for all our latest coverage of the festival, which runs through October 26.
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo
Diego Céspedes’ feature film debut takes place in 1982 in a mining community in the north of Chile that has seen better days. An equally run-down cabaret run by a close-knit group of transgender women (the film uses the era-appropriate term "transvestite," even though how they use the term feels like an act of reclamation and defiance) is still the only form of entertainment for the miners. But these women are now under attack: it’s the early days of the AIDS pandemic and the men superstitiously believe that they will get infected if they stare at their eyes for too long. Twelve-year-old Lidia (Tamara Cortés) has been living among these women ever since she was left at their doorstep as a baby, and it is through her eyes that we mostly see this at times violent, at times erotic and, in the end, incredibly compassionate story about prejudices and the many, surprising ways we can overcome them.
These women give as good as they get; they are defiant, tough, protective. None more so than the cabaret’s star and Lidia’s surrogate mother, Flamingo (Matías Catalán) whose romantic entanglement with Yovani (Pedro Muñoz), himself a victim of the so-called plague, ends in tragedy. Lidia wants to avenge Flamingo’s death but after finding out Yovani may have skipped town, she instead decides to find out more about this disease and the community she lives in. Lidia witnesses acts of potential violence turning into lyrical dances between the rough miners and her adoptive aunts; she falls in love with a local boy; and bears witness to a wedding. Just when you think the film is headed in one direction and you expect the worst, Céspedes pulls the rug from underneath you. In The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo he has created a world where the intolerant learn to be more tolerant, and even the loneliest of souls finds love in this arid, inhospitable land. (Alejandro Riera)
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo is screening as part of the festival’s Outlook Competition on Friday, October 17, at 7:45pm at the AMC New City and Saturday October 18, at 8:15pm at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Director Diego Céspedes is scheduled to attend both screenings.
Sirât
When a young woman goes missing at a rave party in the mountains of southern Morocco, her desperate father Luis (the great Spanish actor Sergi López, Pan’s Labyrinth) and his young son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) drive across the desert looking for her in their ill-equipped car. They meet a small group of traveling partiers who go from one party to the next and don’t much concern themselves with who is there and who suddenly isn’t, but they begin to admire Luis’s determination and bring them into the fold.
Taking home the Jury Prize and Soundtrack Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Sirât never lets us forget that there is something going on in the outside world that is slowly but surely encroaching on the party lifestyle, culminating in one unexpected tragedy after another, until the few survivors must literally traverse a perilous stretch of dirt to continue their journey. The film’s pounding soundtrack keeps this slow-burn work feeling energized and impossible to shake from your system. Part of the journey is about allowing Luis to be less selfish and afraid and more open-hearted with the kindly strangers, but there’s also something much heavier and darker looming in the corners of this intense, provocative, and ultimately surrealistic road picture. Produced by the iconic Pedro Almodóvar, Sirât is a trip not easily shaken or forgotten. (Steve Prokopy)
The film screening at the AMC NewCity on Friday, Oct. 17, at 8:15pm, and at the AMC NewCity on Saturday, Oct. 18, at noon.
The Stranger (L'Etranger)
It’s not uncommon for a filmmaker and actor to form a creative bond and partner across a number of films; there’s a new partnership brewing between one of France’s most prolific contemporary filmmakers and a rising star who continues to impress on screen, François Ozon (When Fall is Coming, The Crime is Mine and so many more) and Benjamin Voisin, who first worked with the director in 2020’s Summer of 85. The two reunite for an adaptation (by Ozon) of Albert Camus’ The Stranger, centered on a disquietingly unaffected young man, Meursault (Voisin), who, after the death of his mother, finds himself entangled with a new set of acquaintances that leads to some very poor decisions. As Meursault, Voisin is both entirely unbothered by the world around him while still evoking a deep sense of awareness. He’s capable of relationships, as displayed in his courtship of the beautiful Marie (Rebecca Marder), but as she falls more and more in love with him, we watch him pull further and further away.
He’s like this in all of his relationships, including with neighbor Raymond (Pierre Lottin); Meursault hears him arguing loudly with his mistress, and later learns that Raymond suspects her of being unfaithful, sharing that her brother and several of his friends have been following him around recently. Meursault, Marie and Raymond depart the city for a beach weekend, only to be followed by the mistress’s brother and his goons where, unsurprisingly, the men find themselves in a confrontation that leads to actions Meursault can't undo.
In stark black and white (the cinematography by Manuel Dacosse is nothing short of divine), Meursault is neither villain nor hero, savior nor martyr, all of which makes him more human in the end. Though at first his disconnection from his world seems odd at best, unsettling and haunting at worst, through Voisin’s empathetic performance and Ozon’s thoughtful approach, we soon come to understand that much more is going on underneath the man’s quiet surface. Ultimately, Ozon (through the work of Camus) asks us to investigate our own perceptions of the world around us, the people we come into contact with and how different it all might be if those perceptions shifted ever so slightly. (Lisa Trifone)
The Stranger screens Friday, Oct 17, at 8:30pm and Sunday, Oct 19, at 2:15pm at AMC Newcity.
Young Mothers
Belgian filmmaking duo Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne are known for their deeply humanistic portraits of everyday life. That approach continues in Young Mothers (Jeunes Meres), a moving portrait of young women living in a shelter at a critical moment in their lives. While it may be curious that two men in their 70s would create a film about women in their teens and early 20s experiencing a moment of transition neither filmmaker could ever know personally, the duo again assert their ability to evoke a lived experience outside of their own.
Young Mothers follows five young women at a crossroads in their lives, either heavily pregnant or with a newborn, all facing this new phase essentially alone, relationships with their partners, parents and other community members strained under the pressure of new parenthood. Each of the women lives at a women’s shelter designed to support these young mothers and their children, with caretakers, nurses, social workers and more providing resources and support they wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere. Naima (Salma Hilmi) serves as a sort of success story; Jessica (Babette Verbeek) is still pregnant; Julie (Elsa Houben) faces down a substance abuse issue; Perla (Lucie Laruelle) is lost in unhealthy illusions and Ariane (Janaina Halloy Fokan) tries to break an abusive cycle.
As is their style, the Dardennes invite us to observe these women as their lives unfold. Few things are harder than watching someone struggle when the solution seems so clear to those on the outside—though as anyone who’s lived a decade or more longer than these young women can attest, the only way out of any difficult situation is through it. With vulnerability and authenticity, each of the young actors portraying a new mother on her unique journey brings us closer to them even as we know that intimacy may ultimately cause heartbreak for us both. But this intimacy is ultimately rewarded, as Young Mothers evolves into an engrossing exploration of the human experience quite literally across generations. (Lisa Trifone)
Young Mothers screens Friday, Oct 17, at 5:45pm and Saturday, Oct 18, at 2:15pm at AMC Newcity with filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne scheduled to attend both.
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