Events
SDIFF 2024 presents ‘Nightbitch’: Howl like you mean it!
A woman who put her career on hold to become a first-time stay-at-home-Mom finds her smaller world taking an almost supernatural turn.
This is an odd one ya’ll. The film is touted as a body-horror dark comedy but struggles to find a role, a category, a niche that it fits into neatly and properly that can tell a potential viewer why they want to watch this movie. This is actually perfect for Nightbitch anyway, for our nameless protagonist Mother is also struggling with literally everything – being a first-time mother to a rambunctious baby boy, contending with an also-nameless husband (Scoot McNairy) whose job keeps him away more than half the time, regretting the fact that she gave up a career as an artist for motherhood, oh and also, noticing strange changes happening to her body. Make sure your diaper bag is stocked and let’s dive into this!
So our new Mom (Amy Adams) just hates the stuff that other moms seem to find enjoyable, most especially the story-and-singing time held at their local library, full of mostly other moms and their loud children, dutifully singing along mindlessly to that repetitive garbage that makes one want to rip their own ears off. Mom is stuck in the repeat of minutiae involved in caring for a baby, all alone too, and laments finding herself becoming more and more bestial and less and less super-mom who can do everything. At one point this thought of less-than-human starts becoming literal, as Mom starts experiencing things like a proto-tail and extra hair that’s damn too close to fur for comfort. But what can one do, other than endure and continue on? Our Mom decides to actually lean into the beast nature of things and see where it takes her!
The nameless husband that Scoot McNairy plays, a man who is so milquetoast and bland and unhelpful that he might as well be a cardboard cutout, lends himself to a trend of similar characters McNairy has played elsewhere. We get the feeling that he is simply there to give Mom a target to lash out against, as she accuses him of helping her set aside her adult dreams of artistry in favor of family, even as he fires lamely back that that was what she told him she wanted. He fails to put up any struggle when Mom tells him she wants a separation, and we can almost see him shrink further in Mom’s eyes when that doesn’t happen, for her feral new nature is spoiling for a fight, or multiple fights. A good old-fashioned screaming and throwing things match could lead to some epic make-up sex, or at the very least actually clear the air between our nameless parents, but no. They argue they cry, they separate, and of course, Mom takes the baby, graciously allowing Dad to come to visit and take the baby for outings. But hope for reconciliation is pretty non-existent.
Our Mom may have decided to lean into the strangeness of her bodily changes, her being chased around by follower canines that may or may not be the bestial natures of her fellow mothers, even the very basic nature of what it means to be a mother, but only up to a certain point. As much fun as it is to shed her human envelope and run in her fur at night might be, a tiny completely helpless human will still be waiting at home for her to come back to feed and take care of him. This crushing responsibility versus the very real freedom of being a beast is one of the many contradictions lacing the film, and perhaps the most prevalent, due to the simmering resentment Mom feels at being both freed and constrained in literally the same breath.
There isn’t so much an end to the film, more like Mom finally resigns herself to be completely changed from who she was before she became ‘Mom’, but still grasping at some shred of self left that doesn’t necessarily stem entirely from her child. Entirely contradictory but in a sympathetic-to-motherhood kind of way, Nightbitch asks the audience to remember that while ‘Mom’ maybe her new all-encompassing title forever, she did and does still have a name, and dreams to realize, too.
Events
SDAFF 2024 presents ‘Dead Talents Society’: I hate this world!
So our Rookie (Gingle Wang) hasn’t been dead terribly long as other ghosts would describe it, and isn’t terribly familiar with the big business that the haunting and urban legend celebrity ghosts perpetuate. When the offerings at a ghost’s grave or shrine begin tapering off and especially if they stop, for any reason or none at all, the ghost in question has 30 days to either obtain an official haunting license or glitch out of existence, basically forever. And for some reason, our Rookie isn’t ready to do that just yet.
The rivalry between the two main celebrities of our ghostly world, Catherine (Sandrine Pinna) and her haunted hotel versus Jessica (Eleven Yao) and her horde of fakes, is just like the smiling poison you’ll see between live celebs on any reality TV show today. Catherine has her tried and true methods that work most of the time, while Jessica seems intent on trying out a bunch of new methods to take her haunting mythos worldwide, though neither of our lady poltergeists are impressing the Chairghost (Di-yang Huang) terribly much at the moment. And our Rookie is trying rather desperately to follow in either of their footsteps, inevitably resulting in hilarious if not pathetic shenanigans.
Like any rookie out hunting a job, our Rookie attends a ghostly seminar and performs miserably, but she manages to meet Catherine’s self-proclaimed manager Makoto (Chen Bolin), and gets taken back to the hotel for some professional haunting lessons from the legend herself. Spectral hijinks ensue, as Catherine and Makoto try so very hard to find a talent, a haunting niche, something that can give our Rookie recognition in the ghost world so she doesn’t go poof forever!
The problem is, is that our Rookie just doesn’t seem to be good at, well, anything. Like any ghost, she actually has unfinished business and that’s why she’s still stuck on this earthly plane, but the how and why of her death, and the very real rage and sorrow she still feels because of it, is something we the living can actually all relate to as well. As she dutifully dons schoolgirl garb and Jack Skellington makeup to repeat her chosen phrase, “I hate this world!”, our Rookie is building her own urban legend to rival even Catherine and Jessica, but even in this she feels herself a fraud. Makoto and the others helped her basically put this whole thing together, and while it might save her spectral butt from glitching out, it doesn’t address her personal grievances, which is kinda the whole point of ghosts.
The leading ghosts are about to compete in a ghost-off for the Golden Ghost Awards, its all being dead-broadcast amongst the dead talents society and the competition is totally fierce, yo! But even as she gamely tries to continue the urban legend she began with help, our Rookie finds herself realizing that she doesn’t have to be declared special or hugely popular, to deserve to continue to exist. No, her death wasn’t fair at all, and to make our Rookie continue to struggle for acceptance, recognition, and to be seen in the afterlife, isn’t fair at all either. No wonder that even in the beginning, our Rookie had decided to use, “I hate this world!” as her catchphrase.
Full of heart and sympathy for the struggles of recognition that both the living and the dead can totally understand, Dead Talents Society boasts plenty of jump scares and ghostly gore but from an adorably jaded behind-the-scenes point of view!
Events
SDAFF 2024 presents ‘Little Red Sweet’: Fighting these bitter tears
The legacy of a family-owned sweet soup shop in the back alleyways of Hong Kong begins showing strains when the mom holding everything together suffers a stroke.
So May (Stephy Tang) is the elder daughter of the family, and dreams of escaping the life chained to the kitchen she was never allowed into anyway, by becoming a flight attendant. Her father (Simon Yam), highly traditional and stubborn, eternally critical and curmudgeonly, merely seems to suffer his and his family’s existence, relying almost solely on the running of their dessert soup shop as his legacy to the world. Her brother (Jeffrey Ngai) has his head immersed in video games and modern sensibilities, despite being catered to inside the house by his mom and when she’s not around, expecting his sister to do the same. The only sweetness in a rather sour family existence is a mom (Mimi Kung), who is the matriarch of the house in every sense of the word, good-naturedly running after her adult children even as they try to run away from this tiny slice of their parent’s life, and making amends, apologies, and even excuses for her grouch of a husband as they run the dessert soup shop they opened together many years ago. This means everything falls apart when Mom suffers a sudden stroke and lands in the hospital.
May would like nothing more than to escape to another country with her flight attendant job, but her brother has completely shut down with mom in the hospital, refusing to even answer the phone when dad repeatedly calls demanding bro come in and help with the shop, and dad can’t do everything the shop requires alone either. Hiding her pain, May turns in her flight attendant credentials and tries to go help with the shop, attempting to learn and recreate the recipes that made her family’s shop famous, which earns her nothing but more censure from Dad. In the grand old tradition of Asian families not actually talking to each other about their traumas, dad long ago decided he would never insist his firstborn child would be stuck working in the shop and doing nothing else, but never bothered to tell her that, or why.
Things instantly go from bad to remarkably worse when Mom sadly passes away, and though Dad did kind of get to say goodbye to her, no one in the family is equipped to deal with the gaping hole Mom left when she crossed over. The unfeeling government is buying up all the small businesses in the neighborhood for development and the Mays family’s shop is the last holdout, so whatever legacy Mom left behind in the shop is in danger too. Dad’s gone from harsh disapproving words to almost constant beleaguered silence, and Bro has stuck his head firmly in his headphones and sorrowful silence too. Only May is left to try and save the family dessert soup shop, and frankly, whats left of her family, from total collapse.
And May tries, oh she tries so hard. Despite being a newcomer to her situation, a traveling writer (Kevin Kam-Yin Chu) who decides to take May up on her statement that her family’s red bean dessert soup is the best and right way to make such a thing and eventually ends up becoming May’s beau and shop helper too, May feels quite alone in her struggles. She takes dad to look at other locations for the shop, which of course earns her more censure; May tries to enlist her brother to help in some real way only to be told he doesn’t want to fight fate and modernization; and dear old traditional dad seems resigned to let the shop just freaking close rather than putting up any kind of real struggle. We understand everyone misses Mom in helpless, hopeless sorrow, but the bleak acceptance almost right up to the very end of the film is really depressing.
Surprisingly, the film ends on a sweeter note than one might expect, given the bitterness of a great deal of the film. An acknowledged staple of many Asian cultures is that this is how a family expresses their love, their legacy, and their dreams for their children – with excellent food. And while Little Red Sweet has many other tastes running through its story, things do come full circle in a quietly loving and yes, very sweet way.
Events
SDAFF 2024 presents ‘All We Imagine As Light’: A beacon in the darkness
In the lonely, crowded city of Mumbai, a pair of female Nurse roommates struggle with repressed desires, societal expectations, and the eternal weight of reality that crushes human dreams.
So Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha) are Nurses who work at the same hospital, more often than not having to deal with obstetrics (the baby stuff) and female-centric healthcare in a far-too-large populace that doesn’t seem to care about their women, or children. Prabha is prim and mildly older, admonishing the younger trainee Nurses to get over their complaints about the stink of afterbirth as soon as possible, where younger free-spirited Anu is willing to risk getting arrested for giving birth control pills surreptitiously to a desperate young mother with too many children already.
Prabha has in theory a husband who, almost immediately after tying the knot, took off to Germany for a job, and of course she hasn’t heard from him in more than a year. When her husband sends her the gift of an expensive rice cooker, Prabha’s apparent numbness to the whole situation cracks open and she finds herself inundated with feelings again – abandonment and sadness of course, but also at the very least resentment in the holding pattern she’s stuck in, and a desire to be free, to decide what Prabha wants, even among the debilitating responsibilities of the day-to-day existence she leads with Anu. It doesn’t help that the hospital boasts a good man, the good Dr. Manoj (Azees Nedumangad) in fact, who’s been gently trying to court Prabha for some time now.
And then there’s Anu and her sneaking around to try and find good places to be intimate with her boyfriend Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). Which would be charming and sweet, except that Shiaz happens to be Muslim and even in the cosmopolitan slums of Mumbai, it’s still the Hindu parents who decide whom their children may be with, and marry. Anu knows perfectly well that her parents would never approve of Shiaz and so their need to find hidden doorways, alcoves, and even make-outs in the pouring rain are mildly tinged with the danger of getting caught. Rumors are starting to wing around the hospital too, and Prabha is made aware of the situation by gossiping busybodies, much to her silent disapproval. After trying to help her friend Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), who was being forced out of her tiny apartment by the unfeeling legal system, nothing comes of it and Parvaty decides to leave Mumbai and take a small moving vacation to a beach town nearbyish, Prabha hatches a plan to try and divert Anu from her potentially disastrous actions.
Ostensibly to help Parvaty with her life-changing move, both Prabha and Anu take a mini-vacation to the beach town, and there is a lovely moment when Prabha discovers some ancient-but-still-good alcohol among Prabha’s things and the three of them get tipply and dance. Immersed in her own loneliness, Prabha fails to realize Anu snuck Shiaz to meet her at the seaside town until she witnesses it with her own eyes, and Anu is far too concerned with finally closing escrow as it were with Shiaz to realize she’s been caught anyway.