26th Philadelphia Film Festival, Days 3 and 4: Animals and art.

The third day of the festival — my second since I didn't attend opening night — was only a hair better than day two. My screenings for both days were equally awful. That's not to say that everything shown that day was bad, I just didn't choose correctly.

My day started off with this year's Golden Bear winner "On Body and Soul," a Hungarian film about two slaughterhouse workers who find a connection because of the synchronous dreams they share. Both young, baby-faced Maria and the older Endre dream that they are deer in a snow-covered forest and have the exact same dream each night. The two socially-awkward individuals become simple acquaintances over their nighttime visuals and we delve slowly into their eccentricities and personalities in this delicate feature.

I didn't love, or hate this film, but it was certainly the best I saw at the festival thus far. I appreciated seeing the extremely docile Maria overcome her social anxieties in dealing with her emotions from Endre and the world. She's so deadpan and monotonous we can't help but laugh at her intricacies, as if she was born a 20-something with no knowledge of commingling with society. She and Endre had a charming friendship, and at one point very bloody, but has enough heart to last through this rather bland showing.

Next up was "Bloody Milk," a film so flat it could only be French. A farmer is worrying about a spreading disease that kills livestock and his herd of cattle are slowly falling prey to it. That's it. It wasn't interesting or engaging or anywhere near the "neo-noir" aesthetic some dipshit programmer introduced the film to be. If you wanna watch cows die for 90 minutes, this film is for you.

Knitting passes the time in the movie, but reading
fills the time in between films.

Finally, and regrettably, was "BPM (Beats Per Minute)" a movie so bad and so contrived that if it
weren't for a socially topical issue, people would write it off. "BPM" is about the Paris branch of the AIDS awareness group called ACT UP. Or, maybe it's about a young gay couple where one is afflicted with the illness. This tale of the early-'90s attention brought to this "gay" disease is so bifurcated in what it wants to be: a real sense of the early social demonstrations to bring awareness to HIV/AIDS or to focus on a couple who has to grapple with one of them who is about to die from it. After "The Normal Heart" and "Angels in America", "BPM" seems decades too late and too tired and formulaic to seem groundbreaking or needed today. Like "Detroit" released this summer, both films are low-hanging fruit geared toward a certain demographic while serving as unrelinquishing social pandering to everyone else.

Even worse, one of the last lines in the film says so much about the stereotypes people may have about the gay lifestyle that it made me hate everyone in "BPM". To me it perpetuated any stretched out ideas people still have about LGBT people. Granted, I fully believe that what the two characters ended up doing in the end would seem plausible. You can go shit in your hat for what that symbolic act meant.

That first Friday and Saturday of screenings was incredibly underwhelming for me. How could everything I pick be so boring and uninteresting? Nothing was resonating with me and I was almost ready to pack it in and not see anything else. (OK, that's a lie and we know it).

But I knew Sunday would turn everything around.

I was most looking forward to "Faces Places" by Agnès Varda and JR, and so was everyone else as it was the first packed house I saw (minus opening and centerpiece films). The synopsis showed a mindful exercise in just letting life take you where it may and being richer for the experience. Like Varda says at one point in the film, chance is her assistant. Varda and JR tour the French countryside looking for interesting faces to take pictures of and places to put large sheet prints of those pictures up. And let me tell you, whether they're eyes on the side of a tanker or fish on a water tower, these huge photos are so gorgeous and compliment any space.

I was so immersed in this cross-generational, cross-cultural documentary and I loved every moment.
"Faces Places" teaches you that art and love is everywhere. It could be the tender moments of companionship on the beach or even watching your friend get a shot in their eye. Life is about exploring and every part of it should be beautiful. Even though there's an over 50-year age gap between Varda and JR one could only wish to have the loving friendship those two have, and to bring joy to other people because of it.

Lines form outside of the Rita East for "BPM (Beats per Minute)". It's not uncommon to see such sights of people waiting around during the festival.

Next up was another documentary, this time looking at the most elaborate fireworks displays you have ever seen. "Brimstone and Glory" is a mostly silent piece looking at the extremely dangerous practice of creating building-height firework "castles" and decorative bulls during two special holidays in Tultepec, Mexico. "Faces Places" may have shown us the beauty of life, but this film finds beauty in danger and what a gorgeous way to show us. At a breathtaking 67 minutes we see the first-hand experiences of setting up thousands of explosives to dazzle audiences, and even some of the injuries sustained in such work. It flows with ease from one spectacle to the next and envelopes us in a rhythmic score and beautiful images. This is definitely not your Facebook fireworks video from the 4th of July.

The day had been surrounded by artful features; everyday beauty in "Faces Places" and sparks of joy painting the night sky in "Brimstone and Glory". It's certainly been a feast for the eyes by this point. What better way to end it with even more art!?

"The Square" is the Palme d'Or-winning film about the pretentiousness of modern art and the museum personnel who try to understand it. It's not as biting and cutthroat as Ruben Östlund's "Force Majeure" but I certainly enjoyed this satirical look at the meaning of what art is and how much speech we are entitled to. I wasn't sure of this film until about the two-hour mark when a scene peels back the layers of what we all can express as people and in art. For most of the film it played as pretentiously, unrestrained and convoluted as what can be deemed art, but I think that was the point. Satirization of a subject needs to be just as silly and over-the-top as the subject itself and "The Square" proves it.

Sunday really picked my spirits up, it was what I needed. Have I ever attended a perfect film festival here in the past few years? No, I haven't, and I can't say I should expect it. These festivals are all about exploring different regions and ideas so even if they seem ridiculous, e.g., "Bloody Milk", you still saw something interesting. There's nothing new under the sun, but it may be new to you.

Festival ballot ratings:

"Faces Place"- Excellent
"Brimstone and Glory"- Excellent
"The Square"- Very Good
"On Body and Soul"- Good
"Bloody Milk"- Fair/Poor
"BPM (Beats Per Minute)"- POOR
"A Ciambra"- Fair

"A Sort of Family- Fair/Poor

"Gemini"- POOR

Here's a look at new dishcloths I made!

These were made on day 3. The far left was a carryover from day 2.

Day four dishcloths. I made the blue on during "Faces Places" and the other during "The Square". I knew I was running low on yarn so I didn't get anything done in "Brimstone and Glory". The blue/purple dishcloth would have been finished had I not ran out of yarn.