more of that

Vic + Flo Saw A Bear

I wasn't expecting to enjoy this French Canadian backwoods middle-aged-lesbians-on-probation movie quite as much as I did. It sounded like it might be irritatingly quirky, but it feels like it really happened. To me. It was in the Love strand of the festival, but don't expect a happy ending – Vic and Flo don't see a bear, but they do get caught in bear traps and die. Despite which, thanks to the magic of cinema, they still get to walk off into the distance together. And thank Heaven for that.

The Story Of My Death

I miscalculated, leaving only fifteen minutes to get from Vic + Flo on the South Bank to Story Of My Death in Leicester Square. As I hurried breathlessly through Charing Cross station I wondered if I would in fact die in transit, and, if so, whether this would be ironic. However, I didn't die, so the question didn't arise.

A question that did arise, however, was - was the film worth the effort? The answer was: not really. The signs were good, however. Casanova-meets-Dracula was the premise, and Spanish director Albert Serra was one of those splendidly unapologetic auteurs that you can't help loving, blithely stating that he never works with actors because they are 'horrible people', has never seen a genre movie, and never looks at the rushes while filming is still in progress. He also commented on the number of walk-outs his films inspire, so that the BFI representative onstage thought twice about telling everyone to 'enjoy the film'.

'Endure the film' was more like it. I found this a ponderous, visually-muddy slog through Casanova's fictionalised later years. Serra's decision to use non-professionals mostly bears fruit, but when it comes to Dracula, you should really call in the experts – this one has all the presence of a dead sheep. He isn't the worst Dracula ever (the one in Blade: Trinity trumps him) but he's definitely in my top ten. On the other hand, unfamiliarity with genre does have its advantages - I have to admit I've never seen the social embarrassment of biting someone in the neck portrayed so vividly as here. Neither have I seen anyone squeeze so much pleasure out of taking a shit as Casanova does in one scene.

But you have to wonder – he's never seen a genre movie? He should take this directing lark a bit more seriously. Or less seriously – he shot over 400 hours of footage for this, apparently. One wonders what was left on the cutting-room floor – car chases, machine-gun battles, alien invasions, another film which I might have preferred? I didn't ask. This was the only Q&A I've attended where no-one in the audience asked a question. Maybe they didn't want to encourage Serra. He was quite garrulous; the difficulty, you worried, would be getting him to shut up. He wore a jacket and tie but was surprisingly young – though maybe I only expected an older man because he was called 'Albert'. I am wrong about this film anyway - it has won a prize, it must be good. Thank God I'm not a professional.

The Strange Colour Of Your Body's Tears

If you don't know what a giallo is, have never seen The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh, anything by Dario Argento, or Amer, the debut film by the directors of this (Belgian duo Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani), you can expect to be confused by TSCOYBT. If you do know what a giallo is and have seen all of the above, you can also expect to be confused by TSCOYBT. There is a lot, as they say, to 'unpack' here. I was unpacking furiously throughout, but never got to the bottom of even one imaginary box.

But you are meant to be overwhelmed. Sensory overload is the modus operandi here: if your brain doesn't overheat, you just aren't getting it.

Giallo means yellow in Italian. Gialli were pulp paperback novels of mystery and suspense popular in Italy - they had yellow covers. The term was then applied to a number of similarly-themed films in the 60's and 70's, directed by people like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Sergio Martino. See, it all makes perfect sense.

These films were noted for their heavily-stylized scenes of violence, often against women. Amer (it means 'bitter') is a kind of abstract meditation on the giallo, recasting its elements as a kind of erotic nightmare from a female perspective. OK?

TSCOYBT was written before Amer, but only Amer's moderate success gave Cattet and Forzani the money to make it. So, as Cattet or Forzani joked at the Q&A, they are regressing, not progressing. Or maybe they're doing both at the same time. There's no plot in Amer, but there is here, though it's hard to tell whether it's important or irrelevant. A man loses his wife, who it turns out has been killed, unless she has turned into someone else - he is woken up by himself buzzing to be let into his gorgeous Art Deco flat, and when his double walks in, he kills him, or is killed by him, then is woken up by himself at the buzzer again - a woman is menaced by a man who emerges from a hatbox, and pursues her behind the wallpaper – finally, in a secret room where childhood traumas lurk, a head wound becomes a vagina, or is it the other way around? Or did that happen at all? The soundtrack boxes your ears, the colours burn your eyes, and I was either pleasurably disorientated or felt like I too was suffering from a head wound. I can't wait to see it again, if only to be sure I didn't imagine it.