Next up in De Sève without guests was The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, which has odd in playing late afternoon at the midpoint of the festival and at night on the second-to-last day, when the schedule is usually night then matinee a couple days later. Good for flexibility.
I must admit: I zoned out during his movie, so it's a good thing I fell behind enough to see it on the next Monday before writing a review. I was going to see it then in any case, but I'd opted to skip the big Adams Family movie across the way because my experience with their stuff was that it was a fun novelty once, but diminishing returns thereafter. That movie won the Cheval Noir, but I don't regret the decision to zone out during the trippy mystical sci-fi versus the gifted-amateur horror movie.
Huh, no shorts on Thursday the 24th? Unusual! Friday would be The Serpent's Skin, I Live Here Now, Forbidden City, and New Group. Yesterday (the last day!), I was able to run from Burning to A Chinese Ghost Story III, then finished with Holy Night: Demon Hunters, >Fixed, and Tanoman: Expo Explosions.
Redux Redux
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival, laser DCP)
Redux Redux is the sort of genre movie that I arguably go to film festivals looking to discover: Quality, lean sci-fi action that makes sure to deliver the goods right away and then keeps up an impressively steady pace all the way through. It twists and world-builds a bit, but keeps its eye on the prize.
It opens provocatively, with Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus) murdering a man (Jeremy Holm) in ways designed to make him suffer, before the last one goes awry and has her leading the police on a desperate chase before she can return to her hotel room, where she has what looks like a steampunk coffin. It's a machine for jumping between realities, and she's been doing that for some time, taking out every iteration of the serial killer that killed her daughter and 11 other girls. This time, though, something is different - she arrives just in time to find a 13th victim, Mia (Stella Marcus), still alive, and the street-smart orphan wants a piece of this revenge even before discovering Irene's secret.
Michaela McManus Irene gives off some Sarah Connor vibes as her universe-hopping avenger, but a lot of the fun comes when Stella Marcus enters the picture and the movie transforms into something snappier and perhaps more entertaining without lowering the stakes or the melancholy. McManus's Irene is plenty capable as the film's antihero, but one of the things that comes across even during the opening badass imagery is that she's tired; not in a way that seems to have her sluggish or unable to meet a challenge, but questions about the point of all this are starting to kick around in her head. Marcus, meanwhile, is playing Mia as someone who was already a smart-ass teen and this is all turbocharging it. The neat trick is that McManus never makes Irene seem like she's regarding Mia as a new daughter, but that she has had a teenage daughter and knows what she's dealing with enough to parry and appear to relent.
The film in general manages to be very funny without abandoning a grim plot; the universe-hoping often means that narrow escapes are followed by awkward entrances, and filmmakers Kevin & Matthew McManus find ways to ease into heavy situations by finding the absurd in Irene's encounters with new-but-not-so-new people and places. It's never a thing that gives the viewer whiplash, but greases the wheels and reminds the audience that there is this spark of humanity left in Irene and Mia despite her self-imposed missions of revenge.
The whole thing moves, too, offering up quick action that finds new ways to challenge Irene even though the audience is well aware of the escape hatch, doubling down and adding mythology in a way that doesn't distract or diminish what had come before. The finale circles back around to the start but also shows how Irene has expanded her intentions.
It's nice work without being overly flashy, a lot like the original Terminator: A simple but striking sci-fi premise that lends itself to human-scale action and elevated through strong execution.
La Virgen de la Tosquera (The Virgin of the Quarry Lake)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival, laser DCP)
The Virgin of the Quarry Lake is described as adapting two stories in a collection by Mariana Enriquez, and I kind of wonder how it branches out from this: Up and down the line of Natalia's life? Following side characters? Thematic similarities? And, most curiously, is there more magic compared to the hints we see here, because its placement is pretty convenient but not nearly as cringe-inducingly so as other tales of this type can be.
Natalia (Dolores Oliverio) is a teenager, or just out of school but not yet looking to leave the home of her grandmother Rita (Luisa Merelas), where she's been since her mother left for Spain; it's not like there's a lot of opportunity in turn-of-the-millennium Buenos Aires. She's probably the prettiest girl in the neighborhood, the one everybody presumes will end up with handsome Diego (Agustín Sosa), at least until Silvia (Fernanda Echeverría) enters the picture. Silvia's not quite so pretty as Nati, but she's a bit older and more experienced, with tales of traveling extensively to Mexico and Europe, and it threatens to bring out the worst in Nati.
Everyone is primed to blow in this movie from the opening scene where a neighbor beats an unhoused person almost to death, especially at somebody who might be considered an outsider, and you don't really need the addition of apparent witchcraft to make that point; the abandoned shopping cart lurks in more shots than one expect, a reminder of the potential for evil that exists in everyone and an omen of worse to come. Indeed, for all that the fantastic elements seems to be a settling point, I kind of wondered if it figured more into the other stories from the adapted collection. It winds up a bit of an unarmed big finale though little more than a series of potentially-coincidental metaphors throughout.
The slow-ish burn getting there is good stuff, at least, as the strain on Nati builds and she finds it easier to be selfish. The filmmakers are well able to be empathetic even as it becomes clear that Nati is not a particularly good person, especially during a particularly brutal phone call where Dolores Oliverio's face reveals stunned surprise that someone could do this to her but also the genuine hurt of her first stabbing heartbreak. It is, we see, somewhat easy to think well of Nati because of her circumstances, and even understand as this young and angry girl does not necessarily respond maturely, but how does one cope when she doesn't always grow in the right direction.
Oliverio is great in the role, transmuting adolescent naivete to cool rage before the audience's eyes, retaining enough of what makes Nati the cool girl people flock to that it's hard to let go even when she's probably passing points of no return. The folks around her are pretty good, too, most notably Luisa Merelas as Rita, whose kindness seems to hold the neighborhood together but which has its practical limits. Agustin Sosa plays Diego as a sort of handsome cipher, possibly worth Nati's obsession but vague enough to emphasize that this isn't the point. Fernanda Echeverría intrigues as Silvia, coming off as someone who puffs themselves up and flaunts their good fortune at first but seeming more mature and well-rounded as one starts to question Nati's perspective.
The filmmakers do an impressive job of immersing this group in what feels like a very specific time and place. Folks around the world will probably grin at the precision of how they ground it in time with fashion, music, and how internet communication is just beginning to be a major part of teenagers' lives, but the rolling power outages, water shortages, and other infrastructure issues will undoubtedly strike a chord with Argentinians who lived through it. Even the quarry lake of the title, a beautiful oasis, requires leaving the city and walking from the last bus stop, and it's apparently haunted, both by the people who died digging it and the idea that there was once going to be a town where people could live a comfortable middle-class life there.
That's where the shocking finale happens, and while I'm normally not exactly fond of the way it plays out, there's no denying that the final line and the way it seems to set things into place are effectively delivered. I don't so much wonder what happened to these girls next, if that's where the book goes, but I sure felt the process of getting there.
Ana Kiri
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2025 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia Festival: Les Fantastiques Week-Ends du Cinéma Québéçois, laser DCP)
I was wearing a watch during this screening, so I'm kicking myself for not doing a quick check to see how literally this movie is split down the middle for me when the time jump happened. Sure, things had been going well enough not to be tracking elapsed time, and you can't exactly know in the moment that this is when things are going to go downhill, but in retrospect, I certainly couldn't help but wonder.
It starts with how Anna (Catherine Brunet) and her brother Vincent (Maxime de Cotreet) had been on their own since childhood, and though Anna loves him fiercely, she recognizes that he's been buying into his gangster persona too much of late despite their group - Anna, Vincent, his girlfriend Cindy (Charlotte Aubin), and best friend Mirko (JadeHassouné) mostly being small-time crooks at best. And now, Vincent's gotten ambitious - the bowling alley they just knocked over was a stash house for crime boss Micky (Kar Graboshas). Anna loses her diary while fleeing Micky's bar, and it winds up in the hands of French Literature lecturer Phillippe (Fayolle Jean), who is impressed enough to offer Anna a scholarship. She initially refuses, but then realizes it would be a good way to break away from a life that's turned dangerous.
I really loved the grungy crime vibes of the first half, full of Anna's sarcastic self-aware narration, inevitable betrayals, and plenty of colorful small-timers and losers. It just looks and feels right, and even when Anna winds up catching Philippe's interest and visiting his office, there's this nifty tension of how she doesn't feel like she belongs there, whether this is worth sticking her head up for, and what happens when she steps back outside this university building. It's great heist-fallout stuff, and the way the action, Anna's narration, and the scribbled notes that show up on-screen like a telestrator reinforce and contradict each other makes the simple story feel dense and emphasizes just how many directions Anna's mind is being pulled in.
The second half, where Anna is in school and developing her diary into a novel, never quite comes together compared to the first. The filmmakers introduce a bunch of new characters it does little with and their take on the literary world feels broader than their take on crime tropes. The audience isn't given time to acclimate to Anna's new situation before her old life tears its head. And the ending... Oof. The potential is frustrating; there's little exploration over whether Anna fits into this world or not, or the idea that one can hide out in the same city they "fled" by changing social status and associations; working-class neighborhoods and academia can be a block apart and never mingle.
Also, I don't know whether this is a compliment or not, but when we first see Anna's new boyfriend using a laptop, I wondered how he had one because it seemed like this movie took place in 1983 or the like until that point, a pay-phone era crime flick rather than a smartphone-era one.
Catherine Brunet is plenty watchable as Anna regardless; she and the filmmakers do a fine job of capturing a woman who is a little too smart for the life of a small-time crook but too much of that world to truly fit into the art & lit crowd she finds herself in. There are some fun other characters around her - Charlotte Aubin's Cindy plays like a the sort of wannabe femme fatale that wears high heels to go bowling, and Nincolas Michone's Zhao is seemingly trying to work his way up to management of the bar where he sells drugs - though Maxime de Cotret gets a bit caught in between as Vincent, not quite charismatic enough to be as full of himself as he is, even considering that he's not entirely getting away with it..
There's half a good movie here, and half a movie with an interesting idea but not nearly the same execution.
Transcending Dimensions
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival, laser DCP)
Seen 28 July 2025 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia Festival, laser DCP)
I ran out of gas during my first screening of transcending Dimensions - running the psychedelic movie at 10m works for an audience that rolls out of bed at 2pm rather than 7am - and came out feeling as though I'd missed a lot. The second time through, at a more civilized noon, I think that maybe I didn't miss quite so much as I thought the first time but was maybe just too tired to absorb it. It's actually more straightforward than the trippiness would indicate.
It opens with Ryosuke (Yosuke Kubozuka), a sort of monk, sitting in nature, pondering; but soon it is visiting a retreat run my Master Ajari Hanzo (Chihara Jr.), who wears the robes but has a sadistic streak. He dares one visitor, Yazu (Masahiro Higashide), to cut off his finger because no knowledge comes without sacrifice; another, Teppei (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), sees where this going and tries to leave. Another, Shinno (Ryuhei Matsuda), is a hitman there at the behest of Nonoka (Haruku Imo), the monk Ryosuke was her boyfriend and disappeared here, so she wants Hanzo dead. But is Rosuke in the forest, at the end of the universe, or someplace stranger?
As all this goes on, the extent to which Transcending Dimensions just looks and sounds cool should not be overlooked. A lot of attention will be paid to the scenes in order space or the mirrored rooms, but it looks generally spiffy whether what's on screen is kaleidoscopic CGI or wide-open nature. The jazzy soundtrack with the diegetic sound of monks blowing on conch shells is excellent, and the sound design is terrific as well, whether it's ordinary but enveloping or built in such a way as to imply heightened senses and awareness of every time Ryosuke's staff raps on a stone.
What's maybe most surprising is the extent to which the assassin is perhaps the sanest, most centered character of the whole lot. While the monks and masters appear to spend their entire lives chasing enlightenment, he comes off as a guy who might actually be living outside of his job, separate from conventional morality but having instincts about how things connect. Enlightenment, the film suggests, is not a particularly important goal on its own; the process has not made Matter Hanzo a better man, and Ryosuke, meditating until the end of the world, will not contribute much to it. The cast is impressive playing this out, from Chihara Jr.'s gleeful sadism to Yosuke Kubozuka's earnest disconnection, with Kiyohiko Shibukawa's frustration hilarious and Haruka Imo eventually giving Nonoka perspective that is both human and ethereal.
Having that at the film's center probably makes it somewhat easier to tell a story when it's not quite so important to communicate something grandiose and spiritual. Transcending Dimensions has plenty of strange turns, unreliable narrators, sidetracks, and subtle revelations, but filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda is good at using the time to let a joke or shock breathe so that the rest of the film can sink in as well, meaning that stitching it all together is more straightforward than you might thing.
Anyway, I'm very glad that the schedule worked out so I could see it with the director Q&A and the "what did I just watch?" sensation the first time, and give it a second chance a few days later when my brain was operating normally. It is, perhaps, how this sort of movie is best experienced.
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