By Travis Johnson
While it’s always a pleasure to take in the big prestige pictures at a film festival, the real treasures are often buried deeper in the firmament. These are the oddities, the obscurities, the films dealing with subject matter so outré or themes so transgressive that they haven’t got a hope of ever getting within spitting distance of a multiplex.
For many of these films, this is their only exposure to a wide(ish) audience; if you’re a festival veteran, you can probably name a good couple of dozen singular visions that never made to home release or streaming.
So, with that in mind, here are 10 picks from the Sydney Film Festival Program that have a good chance of really blowing your hair back.
Chevalier
Six men on a yacht compete. They compete over everything: singing, grammar, fitness, fish size, penis size, engaging in an ever-escalating battle of machismo. Steeped in absurdity and an ever-rowing sense of impending calamity, Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari’s savage deconstruction of masculinity is going to resonate and infuriate in equal measure.
Dark in the White Light
In Sri Lanka the lives of three men – a monk, an organ dealer and a surgeon – intertwine in subtle and surprising ways in this sublimely harrowing work which plays out like a version of Fritz Lang’s M seen through a Buddhist lens.
Evolution
The second film from Lucile Hadzihalilovic is a bizarre allegory of sexual awakening set in a world populated only by mothers and young boys. It’s a deeply unsettling, visually striking work that functions almost completely on the symbolic level, to dig deep into questions of biology and familial relations almost too uncomfortable to parse.
The Eyes of My Mother
A hellish black and white vision, this is where arthouse meets slasher flick. An alienated young girl, taught by her surgeon mother not to fear death, turns to violence and horror to assuage her loneliness. Music video director Nicolas Pesci makes an assured feature debut with this unsettling and sombre piece.
Heart of a Dog
Artist and musician Laurie Anderson offers a hypnotic meditation of love, loss, being, and the power of stories and imagination. Anderson uses her relationship with her beloved terrier as a jumping off point to delve into matters both deeply personal and absolutely universal in a work that feels more like a guided meditation than a feature film.
High Rise
Ben Wheatley (Kill List, A Field in England) adapts JG Ballard’s allegorical story of architecture, urban planning and psychopathy, putting Tom Hiddleston’s anatomist into a self-contained brutalist apartment block that swiftly and surely descends into bloody anarchy. This is a must-see.
The Lure
It’s a polish romance/horror/mermaid/vampire musical! That alone should be enough to get bums on seats for this unique work, which sees two beautiful but monstrous mermaids enter the neon world of Warsaw’s nightclub scene, where new love must compete with their insatiable need for blood.
Patchwork
This body horror schlocker sees three women sawn and sewn into one gestalt entity after a night of hard partying. The comedy horror drew raves from Toronto After Dark audiences, so Sydney gore connoisseurs should be well pleased.
Swiss Army Man
Yes, it’s the Daniel Radcliffe Farting Corpse movie, which triggered both walk outs and praise when it saw the light of day at Sundance. Paul Dano’s suicidal maroonee gets a new lease on life when Radcliffe’s gassy cadaver becomes his companion/survival tool in this offbeat existential comedy from directing duo Daniels.
Wild
In German filmmaker Nicolette Krebitz’s sensual third offering, a woman escapes from her monotonous office-bound life by embarking on an affair with a wolf she encounters in a local forest. Yes, an affair. Yes, a wolf. Wild has plenty to say about social conventions and individuality vs conformity, but it’s the transgressive erotic elements that will really set tongues wagging.
The Sydney Film Festival runs from June 8- 19, 2016. For the full program, go here.
