(The Intruder, Mysterious Skin, Late Bloomer)
On Friday, I ditched planned screenings of Grizzly Man and The Lusty Men to employ a game of tennis or two (and make use of a rare fine day), since I’ve literally been sitting on my ass all week and eating nothing but cheap takeout and box office candy. That’s festival binging for you. But physical exercise aside, the festival’s had its fair share of vigorous, heart racing activity too – enough to suggest that, given the right choices, cinema-going can stand as something of a workout on its own.

The real ace of the festival to date, Claire Denis’ The Intruder was beguiling, erogenous art élevé, and the first film to knock my block off in ages. It restores the 19th century narrative, so I’m told, but essentially just runs amok via a tangential farscape of glorious widescreen imagery and intercontinental wilderness. Plowing vaguely ahead with its elliptical man-gone-bush-gone-global-gone-Survivor account of a search for a long lost son and a brand new heart, it’s, well, fucking beautiful to plagiarise sentiments echoed already on this blog. It barely makes sense in the traditions of formal script doctoring, but the fact that it doesn’t, makes sense – if that makes any sense. It probably doesn’t, but who needs exposition and character development and logic when films are as elusive, bestial and impossibly brilliant as this? Don’t ask me why, but it works. It just does.

If The Intruder gave my cinematic g-spot a long overdue workout, Mysterious Skin made we want to tuck it away, cross my legs and basically just shield myself from anything and everything to do with Neil and Brian. These boys, if you aren’t yet aware, are victims of child abuse – five horrendous hours spent with their Little League coach that frankly doesn’t need elaborating on. The film takes care of that in its own assured, cautiously matured way – a responsible change from a director more known for stuff like cutting the genitals off some dude with a hedge trimmer. Gregg Araki also steers well clear of lynching the offender in question – if you’ve seen L.I.E, you’ll know how badly that worked out – and the context here is more about acknowledging/accepting/dealing with what took place, and not at all about budging us towards some sort of karmic retribution where the bad guy gets his comeuppance. It’s a tough, tough 99 minutes, and takes some determination to get through (particularly, anything involving 8-year-olds, and a horrific rape scene late in the piece). But it’s also restrained, sensitive and revelatory for both Araki and the viewer alike.

Meanwhile, Go Shibata’s electric monochrome indie, Late Bloomer, can be considered the liveliest entry of the 2005 festival. It’s an unbridled, frantic look at a disabled man-turned-serial killer that recalls the industrial zing and carnivorous aesthetic of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Influenced by Taxi Driver and Graveyard of Honor (the Kinji Fukasaku classic) in equal parts, he comes across as a filmmaker on a cusp of doing Bigger Things, but in the interim is content to ply his unrestrained forte in the underground scene. During coffee with Shibata beforehand, I find out Nobuhiro Yamashita (No One’s Ark, a personal favourite) and Kazuyoshi Kumakiri (Kichiku) are two of his good mates, while directing Japanese hardcore “AV” supplements his income. His next project, apparently, is a sci-fi porno. Let’s hope he returns to New Zealand again with that film in tow.—TW