Feature - Fantastic Film Festival Australia 2022 Program Launch/Everything Everywhere All at Once
Wanting to dip your toes into arthouse cinema, or are you a seasoned veteran looking for something that's out of this world bonkers? Look no further, because from April 21st until May 6th, Fantastic Film Festival Australia is back in town, and it's as bold and beautiful as ever. There's a French film about lesbians on an alien planet in After Blue: Dirty Paradise. Nude screenings that made national television last year are back, this time for a retrospective screening of The Full Monty. There's even a film about a rollerblading ninja from New York, called, would you believe it, New York Ninja.
Ahead of these incredible titles, including but not limited to Robert Eggers' The Northman, Japanese dance film Dreams on Fire and a 4K restoration of 1982's Possession, directing duo Daniels' sophomore sci-fi/comedy Everything Everywhere All At Once had the honour of kicking off the program launch. To set the mood for a film that truly lives up to its title, viewers were encouraged to come along to Lido Cinema in Hawthorn an hour early and join for beers and a DJ set.
Event images courtesy of Eli Robinson and Fantastic Film Festival Australia.
On arrival, ticket holders were given a complimentary beer by staff wearing googly eyes on their foreheads, and to the back of the DJ booth a Nicolas Cage cut-out stood, smiling vacantly as bassy garage beats blared from the speakers. Lido has become one of my go-to theatres since last year's Fantastic Film Fest, and I've only ever seen the foyer that full twice before: once for Titane (another premiere organised by FFFA), and once for midnight screenings of Spider-Man: No Way Home. The excitement for the new A24 flick from the directors of Swiss Army Man accompanying the program launch was like static in the air.
Image courtesy of Fantastic Film Festival Australia.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is an assault on the senses, a cinematic exercise in maximalism that channels the random humour, multiverses and existentialist themes of Rick & Morty. The film follows Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese-American woman who is alerted by an alternate universe version of her husband, Waymond, that a mysterious entity known as Jobu Topaki is searching for her. She must learn how to jump between multiverses, taking skills from the infinite other Evelyns in order to defend herself and her family.
Mrs. Wang's tepid relationship with her family proves to be the main emotional throughline, as she's still yet to accept that her daughter is gay, and early into the film learns of her husband's plan to file for a divorce. The various ways these dynamics play out in other universes is quite often played for laughs, but the film is adept in juggling humour and heart. A scene depicting a universe where life never evolved beyond rocks had me in tears of both kinds.
Multiverses are the flavour right now, especially when it comes to superheroes; Loki, the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel, along with the continuation of various Spider-verses, to the point where Everything Everywhere could feel like it's just following the trend, but its willingness to spoof genres spanning kung-fu, Bollywood and even Pixar animated films add more than enough flavour to assert that this is something that comes from a place of unabashed creativity. Where the likes of media such as Rick & Morty might be overly cynical for some viewers, this movie feels like a vibrant celebration of cinema as an art form and the humanity that unites us all.
With hotdog fingers, a sentient raccoon, and a fight scene over a trophy that looks like a buttplug, films as wild as Everything Everywhere All At Once rarely work as well as this, but when they do, it's lightning in a bottle.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once screened for the 2022 Fantastic Film Festival Australia program launch. For tickets to the festival and more info, click here.