by Helen Barlow
The big early winner was Fair Play, which was picked up by Netflix for US$20 million after a heated bidding war. Now Apple Original Films has secured global rights to Flora and Son in a deal believed to be in the US$20 million range.
Fair Play
Phoebe Dynevor, the break-out star of the first series of Bridgerton, plays a financial analyst who is the leading light in her hedge fund office. She is secretly in a relationship with another analyst, played by Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), who is unhappy that his career is on a downer while hers continues to soar. All hell breaks loose not only in their relationship, but in the office. The feature debut of Chloe Domont, who has worked on television series (most prominently Ballers), this taut psychological thriller is very much a #MeToo story for our times.
Cat Person
Emilia Jones, star of the 2022 best picture Oscar winner, CODA, plays Margot, a 20-year-old student working in a movie theatre where she meets an older man, Robert, who is played by Nicholas Braun. Robert proves as nerdy as Braun’s character in Succession and here bravely plays a character who is clumsy in bed. When Margot struggles to break off the relationship, her meddling best friend is none too subtle in sending a text on Margot’s phone. As in Fair Play, the situation gets out of hand.
Fairyland
Emilia Jones also stars in this San Francisco real life story set during Haight-Ashbury’s heyday, which has all the hallmarks of a film by Sofia Coppola, its producer. Based on Alysia Abbott’s autobiographical novel, the film marks the directing debut of writer-director Andrew Durham. It follows Alysia’s upbringing with her gay writer/poet father, Steve Abbott (the always great Scoot McNairy), surrounded by gay men who form an unconventional family. Australia’s Cody Fern (give this handsome actor from American Horror Story more roles please!) plays the love of her father’s life, and Adam Lambert another boyfriend. It’s my favourite of the Sundance films I have seen. Very heart-warming. Hopefully the film sheds a light on Steve Abbott’s writing, which was integral to the era.
Cassandro
This film again is biographical and tells the story of a gay man, though working in a very different field, competing as an exotico in the hugely popular Mexican sport of lucha libre wrestling, where he becomes an international celebrity. Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal sports Cassandro’s blonde hair, wears outrageous costumes and is up for anything in the ring and out of it.
Divinity
Steven Soderbergh’s smaller films are often oddities and Divinity, where he produces and Eddie Alcazar writes and directs, is no exception. Shot in glorious black and white and set in a future world aided by the Divinity serum, which allows immortality in exchange for fertility, the film stars Stephen Dorff as the son of the serum’s creator, and now in charge. When two aliens descend to capture him and the drug, other forces are at work to stop them, while a sex worker also gets in the way. We think we’ve seen it all in cinema, but we have never seen anything like this, let alone Dorff as a burly monster.
Flora and Son
After Once and Sing Street, Irish filmmaker John Carney continues a musical theme with this story of a single Dublin mum (Eve Hewson), who after contacting an online guitar teacher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in Los Angeles, discovers music as a transformative force. The film marks a star-making performance from Hewson, daughter of U2’s Bono, who is both tender and feisty as well as very smart in her portrayal.
The Deepest Breath
A documentary that Australian sport and nature lovers will adore. Irish filmmaker Laura McGann follows champion freedivers, training and competing, and delivers an edge-of-the seat thriller as divers try for a new world record with the help of an expert safety diver. Not just exploring the world of extreme sport in the silent depths of the ocean, we watch as two of the divers form a deep emotional bond.
