Sound On Sight » Podcast – International Cinema

Tribeca 2011: ‘She Monkeys’ is One of The Best Films of the Year

Christopher Clemente — Thu, 12 May 2011 08:24:21 +0000

She Monkeys

Directed by Lisa Aschan

Sweden, 2011

Written by Lisa Aschan & Josefine Adolfsson

Director Lisa Aschan propels into the limelight with a debut film that is light on dialogue and action, yet delivers a mighty punch with its story and atmosphere. She Monkeys tells the story of fifteen year old Emma as she lands a competitive spot on an equestrian acrobatic team. As she is taken under the wing of her older peer Cassandra, obsession and desire takes control as both girls fight for the top position. In the vein of such films as Single White Female, The Roommate, and most recently Black Swan, Aschan does an extraordinary job in creating a horrific film without being over-the-top terrifying. Consistently slow paced, She Monkeys rides the line of suspense without giving the audience the satisfaction of a scare.

She Monkeys is fundamentally a horror film at its core, yet it’s also much more. It’s a drama due to the relationships that formulate between the girls, and that of Emma and her father. It’s a coming-of-age film due to the undertones of sexual tension that are emitted between the two girls, and even that of Emma’s eight-year-old sister who is also confronting the difficult beginnings of sexuality and womanhood. She Monkeys has every right to also be called a sports film since the audience is engrossed in the realm of horse riding and all the training that the young women have to endure until the very end. No matter which genre the film fits into, She Monkeys never loses focus, acting as tightly wound in plot as the characters are disciplined.

Cinematographer Linda Wassberg amps up the atmosphere: shadows, natural darkness, and narrow scope are used to emphasize the claustrophobia of the girl’s lives. Ashan hangs the camera in all the right places to portray just the right amount of unease and unsettledness. Whether it be Emma petting her dog in the corner of her damasked-papered room, overlooking the two girls nonchalantly playing with Emma’s father’s shotgun, or witnessing eight-year-old Sara dance in a leopard-skinned bikini in front of her babysitting cousin; the audience has no choice but to soak in the awkwardness and insanity of what Ashan has to subtly offer the screen. Accompanied by the dreary score of Sami Sanpakkila, the film certainly has a slow and gloomy pulse, yet never overstays its welcome.

What makes She Monkeys particularly special is its compelling subplot. By definition, a subplot is used to support the main conflict, acting as a filler to play out the central story. Subplots are sometimes referred to as the “B story” or “C story”, but for She Monkeys and the coming-of-age story of little Sara, subplot is clearly an A+ story. Rising star Isabella Lindquist gives a remarkably complex performance beyond her years. From her idealization of being an equestrian competitor like her sister, to the smashing of her wooden horse doll after being let down from her romanticized cousin; we follow Sara’s journey alongside Cassandra and Emma; she’s offered the same depth of characterization.

After debuting at Tribeca Film Festival this year and receiving the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature, She Monkeys is much deserving of all the recognition it is getting and by far is one of the best films of the year. Not much can get better than a film offering strong performances, a storyline that spans genres, and subplots as compelling as its main conflict.

Christopher Clemente

Sound On Sight Radio #237: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives/Le Quattro Volte

Ricky — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 05:54:14 +0000

The Festival du Nouveau Cinéma wrapped up this weekend, and we’ve asked occasional contributor Eduardo Lucatero – whose Preludio screened at the fest – to come in and talk shop with us. Besides general fest talk, we’ll be taking on two of the more unique entires at this year’s fest: Michelangelo Frammartino’s four-part exploration of nature, life, death, and goats, entitled Le Quattro Volte, and Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul’s Uncle Bonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which triumphed over more conventional arthouse fare to nap this year’s Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival.

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Playlist:

The Love Language – Heart to Tell / Brittany’s Back / Cedars

Playlist:

Sound On Sight Radio #225: The Vanishing / Wings Of Desires / Open Your Eyes

Ricky — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:20:07 +0000

Hey, remember back during the World Cup when we announced that really cool movie competition modeled after it? Well, it’s high time we got to the winners, which here represent the top three teams at this year’s championship. In Germany’s corner, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, from 1987; representing the Netherlands, we have the 1988 thriller Spoorloos, better known as The Vanishing; and for the victorious Spain we have Alejandro Amenabar’s Abre Los Ojos, aka Open Your Eyes, which was famously remade by Cameron Crowe into Vanilla Sky.

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Playlist:

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – From Her to Eternity
Deadly Snakes – Closed Casket
The Bluetones – Sleazy Bed Track

Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes)

Sound On Sight Radio #220: The Very Best Of Asian Cinema

Ricky — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 06:08:39 +0000

Castaway On The Moon

The Clone Returns Home

Three of the most interesting films of the last 12 months are probably not coming to a theater near you. They’re highlights from the last two Fantasia Film Festivals’ Asian programs, and you might need to do a bit of hunting to track them down. Two are Japanese – the rock n’ rooll tall tale Fish Story and the ethereal sci-fi epic The Clone Returns Home – and the other, a peculiar and beguiling comedy called Castaway on the Moon, hails from South Korea.

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Playlist:

Score excerpts from each film
The Walkmen – Stranded
Comet Gain – If I Had a Soul
The Velvet Underground – That’s the Story of My Life

Fish Story

Sordid Cinema Podcast #14: Fantasia 2010: Serbian Mayhem

Simon Howell — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:31:51 +0000

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The Serbian spotlight at this year’s Fantasia Film Fest is not for the squeamish. Actually, in the case of two of its films, it might not be fit for viewing by conscious beings – making it perfect fare for the deranged cousin of Sound on Sight we like to call Sordid Cinema. The two films in question: Life and Death of a Porno Gang, a mock-doc chronicling just what the title implies, and particularly the film actually titled A Serbian Film, a similarly inclined but considerably more gruesome take on sex, pornography, death, and moral degradation. On a somewhat lighter note, though reflecting some of the same themes, is the hormonally charged fairy tale Tears for Sale. Fair warning: this hour may describe a number of base and cruel acts. Moreso than usual.

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Playlist:

A Serbian Film – Theme
Beogradski Sindikat – Various Tracks
Goran Bregovic – The Bellybutton of the World

Sound On Sight Radio #190: Claire Denis / Academy Awards

Ricky — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:36:51 +0000

Claire Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum turned out to be 2009′s biggest movie – in film snob circles, that is. Since we’ve already discussed that film, Rick, Simon and special guest Olivier Creurer tackle three of Denis’ other acclaimed features – Beau Travail, Trouble Every Day, and L’Intrus – with varying degrees of success. And of course, some trophies of some kind were handed out this past weekend, so we might have occasion to talk about that too.

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Sound On Sight Radio #189: Fish Tank / All About My Mother

Ricky — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:11:05 +0000

Our Pedro Almodovar spotlight concludes with his 1997 breakout hit All About My Mother, which endeared the Spanish filmmaker to a wide international audience. We’ll also be talking about Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, which recently took home the BAFTA for Best British Feature, bating out such heavyweights as An Education. Special guest Eduardo Lucatero, freshly returned from the Berlin Film Festival, joins us.

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Sound On Sight Radio #187: Revanche / Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown

Ricky — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:29:25 +0000

Our focus on European cinema continues with part three, in which we finally get around to Revanche, the Austrian film nominated for Best Foreign Feature at the Oscars last year, which has gotten a swanky DVD release courtesy of Janus Films and the Criterion Collection just this past week. Additionally, with the help of returning guest Detroit Burns, we’ll continue our month-long spotlight on Pedro Almodovar by taking a look at his raucous 1988 feature, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

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Sound On Sight Radio #185: Un Prophète / Talk To Her

Ricky — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:44:06 +0000

We continue our spotlight on international cinema with one of last year’s most widely praised features, Jacques Audiard’s epic crime/prison drama “A Prophet,” which makes its Montreal debut this week, and is up for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Feature. We also continue our look at Pedro Almodovar’s filmography with what may be his most celebrated release of the ‘aughts, Talk to Her. Special guest Detroit Burns returns for round two.

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Sound On Sight Radio #183: The White Ribbon / Broken Embraces

Ricky — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:55:12 +0000

This week on Sound on Sight, we kick off our first Director Showcase, in which we’ll discuss one filmmaker’s work, one film at a time, over a month. This time out, Spain’s Pedro Almodovar, that purveyor of cinema buff porn and layered melodrama, has his number up, and we’ll be starting off on his latest picture, Broken Embraces, which has been dividing critics since its Cannes premiere. One film that’s seen more or less unanimous praise since Cannes, however – including the Palme D’or and now an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film – is Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, his two-and-a-half-hour, black-and-white allegory chronicling the possible origins of Nazi Germany. We’ve enlisted the help of returning guest Derek Gladu to help us sort out all this European jive.

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Sound on Sight Radio #180: Overlooked in ’09

Simon Howell — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:41:24 +0000

Thanks to the Hollywood Foreign Press, awards season is officially underway, and that means the fine art of movie-geek prognostication can begin in earnest. Of course, a whole lot of well-received films will never see the inside of a ballot box, so besides taking some time to discuss the Golden Globes (and other pressing business), Al, Mariko and Simon also look back at two of them – Big Fan, the directorial debut of writer of last year’s acclaimed The Wrestler, and a peculiar Argentinian export by the name of The Headless Woman.

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Sound On Sight Radio #106 – Jean Luc Godard

Ricky — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:58:21 +0000

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In the 1960s, French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard helmed over 20 feature-length films (depending on whether or not you count films made by “collective”), with many of them now hailed as classics by elitist cineastes everywhere. Today on Sound on Sight, we attempt to dig into Godard’s massive filmography by looking at three of the films that defined his work in the first half of that decade: 1960′s fast-paced romantic thriller “Breathless,” 1963′s self-reflexive “Contempt.” and 1965′s dizzying “Pierrot le Fou,” which starred his then-wife, Anna Karina.

Sound On Sight Radio #95 – Tom Tykwer

Ricky — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:48:10 +0000

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His name is Tom Tykwer (“tik-ver”), and you might not know it, but you already know who he is. If you only saw five foreign films back in the 90s, it’s quite likely that one of them was Run Lola Run, his second feature, a hyper-stylized, tripartite romp filled with bright colors, rapid-fire action and a surprisingly light touch. Its accessibility made it a breakout success, cementing the German filmmaker as a force to be reckoned with on the international stage. He defied expectation by following up the short, sharp Lola with the long, meditative The Princess and the Warrior (both of which starred Franka Potente.) Those two films – as well as his 1997 breakout, Winter Sleepers – form a loose trilogy based around the concept of “blind chance.” If that sounds like a Kieslowskian concept, then perhaps it’s appropriate the Tykwer’s fourth film was Heaven, which was meant to be the first installment in a trilogy of films based around Dante’s conceptions of the afterlife to be directed by the Polish master himself. Tykwer went even more ambitious after that, creating an extremely divisive (and expensive) adaptation of Patric Suskin’s cult novel Perfume. This week, however, he took his first leap into the realm of full-blown Hollywood filmmaking with the suspense thriller The International, starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. How does he fare when he doesn’t get to include any montages? You’ll find out on this episode of Sound on Sight.

Naked Lunch Radio #79 – Gomorrah / Hunger

Ricky — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:53:02 +0000

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In episode 79 we will review the film Hunger starring Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who led the 1981 Irish hunger strike and participated in the no wash protest (led by Brendan “The Dark” Hughes) in which Republican prisoners tried to win political status. It dramatises events in the Maze prison in the six weeks prior to Sands’ death.

In the second half of the show we will discuss Gomorrah the 2008 hyperlink crime film directed by Matteo Garrone, based on the book by Roberto Saviano.

Naked Lunch Radio #78 – Danny Boyle special

Ricky — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:50:31 +0000

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One of Britain’s most celebrated breakthrough talents of the ’90s, director and producer Danny Boyle made his name with his acclaimed 1996 adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. An angry, funny and groundbreaking film about a group of heroin addicts that took a non-judgmental approach to drug use, the film won equal parts praise and controversy, as well as lasting fame for its director. Since than Danny Boyle has tackled many genres – be it the sci fi thriller Sunshine or the George Romero inspired 28 Days Later and lets not forget his first film, my personal favorite - a Hitchcockian thriller Shallow Grave. Only today we’ll be spending our time talking about his lighter side of the spectrum. With Christmas approaching, we will take a look back at his X-mas / family film Millions but not before reviewing his latest film Slumdog Millionaire.