By Julian Wood
The 63rd Sydney Film Festival has just wrapped. This is not a particularly memorable number, but anything over 60 feels pretty old these days. Your humble columnist has been going to this event for a while, and so I should take this opportunity to reflect on a couple of highlights and some personal favourites.
From its origins in the university culture of film societies (and with the shaping stewardship of the likes of David Stratton), The Sydney Film Festival has now grown to being very much a part of the international film calendar. The festival continues to attract big names, although there are, alas, a small number of festival guest no-shows which perhaps demonstrates that whilst Sydney is an arts city, ITS geographic location still persuades talent to bow down to the “tyranny of distance.”
That notwithstanding, the festival shows over 500 films in its eleven-day duration, including many Australian and international premieres. The current director, Nashen Moodley, has settled into his role, and consistently produces a world class selection. He is ably supported by deputy director, Jenny Neighbour, who is an expert in documentary. Docos used to be the “poor relation” of feature films, but they have long since outgrown that inferiority complex, and savvy festival goers make sure to get across the best ones in the programme. The current leadership have also continued The Sydney Film Prize. This section always attracts a range of directors and high profile films.
This year’s winner was Aquarius, the fascinating story of an elderly widow who holds out against the cynicism and corporate plundering of the new elites. It boasts a fine, dignified, and vital performance from the veteran South American actress, Sonia Braga (Kiss Of The Spiderwoman). The film was very well-attended at the festival, partly because cineastes wanted to see a further film from the young Brazilian director, Kleber Mendonca Filho, whose intriguing 2012 film, Neighboring Sounds, covered similar territory, dealing with the rise of the walled-in elites in the midst of an ultra-divided society. Whilst far from being a perfect film, and not the only contender for the prize, it was a worthy recipient.
The Sydney Film Festival also cannily looks to other world festivals, and tries to grab their best films. Experienced festival goers keep a spare stash of tickets to make sure that they catch the late acquisitions, which are slotted into the programme as late entries, and often come direct from The Cannes Film Festival, which runs from May 11-22 – just a month before The Sydney Film Festival kicks off. One of these was the extraordinary German feature, Toni Erdmann. Many commentators at Cannes felt that it was worthy of the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, and some professed to be baffled by the jury missing the chance to encourage its hugely talented young female director, Maren Ade. Toni Erdmann is a memorable mixture of the mundane and the luminous. Firstly, it takes one big risk by running for three hours. Given that it seems on the surface a fairly rambling account of German business culture, this might seem excessive. All one can say is that it is easily the “fastest” three-hour film that you will ever see. It is so engrossing that when the end credits roll, you find yourself saying, “Is it the end already?”
The heroine is Ines (Sandra Muller). She is a single career woman working in the high pressure world of management consulting. Referencing firms like KPMG and Ernst & Young, the film shows how the grossly overpaid and predatory “consultants” go around asset-stripping large companies (mostly by shedding their workforces) under the guise of helping them to make even bigger profits. The stratospheric salaries and the sheer adrenaline of operating at that level has kept Ines going, but, deep down, she knows that she is servicing the sick side of globalised capitalism. Ines’ dad, Winfried (an equally great performance from Peter Simonischek), is a natural anarchist. He is a bit lost himself, but he has decided to shed the bullshit and really live to the full at last. He realises that when you come to die, you won’t actually say in regret, “I wish that I had spent more time in the office.”
Winfried makes up an alias called Toni Erdmann, and gate-crashes his daughter’s life and workplaces to poignant and often hilarious effect. Slowly the father and daughter re-calibrate their relationship. Their bonding gives us one of the great moments in recent cinema. It’s hard to overpraise such a heartfelt film that hits so many contemporary targets. It is also saying something quite profound but goes at it by being so wonderfully naturalistic. It is a highlight not just of the festival, but of contemporary European cinema.
As they say in the industry, there is more product than screen (partly because the blockbusters take several screens when they release). This, combined with the death of repertory or real arthouse cinemas (in Sydney at least), means that a lot of films that played at The Sydney Film Festival will never get a theatrical release. Apparently, a distributor has picked up Toni Erdmann. Let us hope that they find the courage, and the wherewithal, to release it, because it is better than most things that you will see in many a moon.
