Artwork by Chris Bilheimer
I felt the lack of sleep I got after day one of the fest in my bones every single minute of day two. Because of it, I made a decision that will cause me to break the promise I made to you only 72 hours ago. I’m out on the midnight (or near midnight) screenings going forward. Threeish hours of sleep a night is simply not enough for me to function. Abandoning any plan or part of a plan always makes me feel a bit like a failure, but then I remembered something. This is supposed to be fun, damn it! Plus, no one is paying me to do this, hence no one is telling me what to do, hence I can make this experience anything I want it to be.
I saw five movies – three features and two shorts – on day two. After writing and publishing the post for day one, grabbing a shower, and heading back to Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, I was immediately treated to my favorite film of the fest so far.
My first screening was at 11:45am for Give Me Pity!, a bonkers exploration of ambition run amok and a crumbling psyche set against some wonderfully executed nostalgia. Sissy St. Claire is a triple threat talent who is finally hosting her own TV variety special. She’s “made it,” as she and the featured number Sissy sings both proclaim again and again. But, has she? The (not so) tiny kernel of doubt within Sissy’s secret heart of hearts begins to tear at the performer’s mental state as her coveted TV special gets underway.
The easiest way to describe Sissy St. Claire’s persona and the style of her special is to conjure images of Bette Midler’s early TV work, or a Barbra Streisand holiday TV extravaganza. Sissy’s special consists of a progressively more bizarre set of musical numbers and comedy sketches that amplifies her talent and popularity. The climax of the picture includes nothing short of ego death as Sissy battles her inner demons of inadequacy and self-hatred.
The idea of a performer reaching the pinnacle of stardom and fame with a primetime broadcast network TV variety show special is receding from memory and seems quaint by today’s standards. Writer/director Amanda Kramer and her cinematographer, Patrick Meade Jones, capture the milieu with a Beyoncé-concert number of costume changes and unknowable amounts of sequins. Kramer’s aesthetic is a meticulously crafted sense of the not-too-distant past. Give Me Pity! and its smeary, aged visuals look like it could have been taken from an old VHS tape recording.
That look and feel are enhanced as Sissy’s mental state begins to degrade, transforming the experience of her special into something akin to an LSD-fueled fever dream. Actor Sophie von Haselberg carries every second of Give Me Pity!’s 80-minute runtime.
There are other performers within the variety special conceit. Actor Cricket Arrison fills several of these roles, but shines in one standout sequence as a friend of Sissy’s who does impeccable impressions. (Arrison was in attendance, and related a tidbit about how the idea for Give Me Pity! was born at a previous Fantastic Fest.) But Haselberg is on screen for every minute and her comedic timing and unhinged manner once Sissy really starts to fall apart are both outstanding. She is also completely transformed for each sequence of the special. Give her all the awards, please.
Give Me Pity! will not be to everyone’s taste, but it was exactly the sort of freak-out I treasure. The weird, psychedelic trip that Kramer and Haselberg conjure is by turns funny, bizarre, and hallucinatory. This is a movie I likely would never have stumbled across had it not been for Fantastic Fest.
I had about an hour to collect myself as best I could in the wake of Give Me Pity! During that time, I decided to bail on my late-afternoon screening, so I could meet up with a friend – Hi, Susan! – for dinner after the 2:30 screening of Year of the Shark. Part homage to the most famous shark movie of all time, Jaws, part satire, and part horror, Year of the Shark is a French film from twin-brother directing team Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma.
Imagine if Chief Brody from Jaws were at the end of his career and also a woman, which means facing even more resistance to the character’s cries of shark. That’s the situation Maja Bordenave – played by French cinema star Marina Foïs – faces when a killer shark enters the formerly tranquil seaside town of La Pointe, where she has worked tirelessly for decades to protect the town’s citizens.
The best thing about Year of the Shark is the myriad ideas it tackles. The shark has relocated from its usual territory because of climate change. (There was a moment while watching the film when I realized that it and Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle share some identical preoccupations, albeit with very different levels of success in their execution.) The Boukherma brothers layer in a reactionary, right-wing response to Maja when she successfully catches the shark but follows protocol in planning to release it back into the middle of the ocean because it’s an endangered species. It’s a thread that is underdeveloped, meant to spark a plot point – the Twitter mob calls for violence against Maja, forcing her and her husband, Thierry, to flee for safety.
The film is also a meditation on obsession to duty and the job. The strongest character development happens when we realize that Maja considers herself above the politics of the situation. Her only concern is the safety of the citizens she is sworn to protect and every decision she makes flows from that concern. Year of the Shark is a satire that walks a razor’s edge of becoming a full-blown farce. Knowing it’s influences, there are several Jaws references tucked away in the movie, the most prominent being the inclusion of “we’re going to need a bigger boat.”
The Boukherma brothers were in attendance and their Q&A was led by a Fantastic Fest programmer who made a bet with a coworker that if she was ever able to get a shark movie into the fest, she would present it in a shark costume. Although it was clearly a pain in the ass – which she verbalized during the Q&A – she made good on the bet.
The Boukherma brothers with a Fantastic Fest presenter in the middle of a shark attack. (photo by the author)
I got a bit of a second wind after dinner, in time for one of the most anticipated screenings of the festival. The Menu is a black-comedy horror film starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes and directed by Mark Mylod, best known for helming six episodes of Game of Thrones and 13 episodes of Succession.
Taylor-Joy plays Margo, companion to Tyler, an insufferable one-percenter – played to priggish perfection by Nicholas Hoult – who is obsessed with all things culinary. Tyler and a collection of other obnoxiously wealthy guests have paid $1250 each for the pleasure of dining at Hawthorne, an exclusive restaurant located on a remote island.
Hawthorne is the pinnacle achievement of the enigmatic and exacting Chef Slowik, played by Fiennes with extreme menace and black humor in equal measure. Hawthorne is not a typical restaurant, but a culinary canvas, where each course is treated as conceptual art. (The best line of the movie comes with the pouring of wine, which the sommelier describes as having “a hint of longing and regret.”)
If you’re hoping for a savage sendup of the obnoxious and obscenely wealthy guests, you’ll be disappointed. The group is mostly a collection of ciphers, albeit ones played by the likes of talented actors like John Leguizamo as an actor at the sunset of his career, Janet McTeer as a full-of-herself food critic, and Paul Adelstein as Janet’s pompous editor, among others. The real horror on offer in The Menu is what these vainglorious customers have done to the service industry staff who wait on them, Chef Slowik not the least among them. It’s nothing short of a form of insanity, culminating in a horrific final art concept that the guests have no interest in experiencing.
To use a culinary idiom, The Menu is a lot of sizzle with not much steak, but the blackly funny comedy justifies the price of admission. One of the best sequences comes with a course of the meal that consists of items typically eaten spread over bread, but without the bread. Chef Slowik explains that because bread has historically been eaten as a staple by the poor and underprivileged, it will not be served to these uber-affluent guests. When several of the guests complain, asking for bread, they are denied with no further discussion.
There are also a few twists within the story that I won’t reveal here, but they do add a note of surprise to the overall effect of the movie.
Despite being underwhelmed by The Menu itself, the Fantastic Fest crew provided us with a little treat, serving everyone in the theater with a deconstructed s’more, a reference to one of the best gags in the movie.
(photo by the author)
Having canceled my ticket to one of the midnight screenings, so some other festival-goer could grab my seat, I walked bleary-eyed back to my car. I’m recharged and ready to tackle day three with a renewed sense of vigor.
Onward!