MIFF 2023 Shorts Review - Auteurs Abridged
The trajectory of most director’s careers is to start with short films and then “graduate” to the feature film, but as part of MIFF’s Auteurs Abridged program, we see five established feature directors return to short form storytelling. I attended the session on Sunday the 20th of August at the Forum theatre. It was a unique, but exciting experience for me, sitting in a full theatre to watch five short films rather than a feature film. Interestingly, as the night went on all the short films became less experimental/avant-garde and more traditionally narrative-based.
Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: “Phony Wars”, dir. Jean-Luc Godard
The first short film was a posthumous release from one of the old masters of cinema, one of the fathers of the French New Wave of the 1960’s. There were points in this when I genuinely thought Godard might have been trolling from beyond the grave. A whole sold-out theatre of cinephiles made to sit through what is essentially a 20-minute (and very slow) PowerPoint presentation, showcasing clippings and notations in preparation for some sort of film project, with the occasional burst of music, dialogue, or interview excerpt. There was one moment when actual film footage started playing, and there was an air of sudden relief throughout the theatre.
But something genuinely fascinating about this piece is it offers a glimpse into the creative process of one of cinema’s great minds so late into his life, but yet so early into his process.
Where Do You Stand, Tsai Ming-Liang?, dir Tsai Ming-Liang
After the slowness of the previous Godard short, the audience erupted into applause when this short film opened with a shot of a cat rolling around on the floor.
What amounts to mainly miscellaneous shots inside of a flooded, dilapidated building; first of a chair collection, then paintings of said chair collection, then paintings of the two lead actors of Days, yet it has a melancholic, lonely feeling about it, as if being taken on a tour of a man's memories. This feeling is only confirmed with text cards (in French for some reason) that talk about Tsai Ming-Liang's experiences in the pandemic lockdown.
Daughters of Fire, dir Pedro Costa
An unbroken triptych of three women singing in front of beautifully realised volcanic backdrops, lit by flickering lights. The one on the right walks continuously, the one in the middle begins kneeling down, almost bent over in pain, and the one on the right seems to be stuck between two large structures. They begin singing the same lyrics but as time progresses they get less and less in sync with each other and start singing their own individual songs.
I'm gonna be real, I'm not sure what it all meant.
Camarera de Piso, dir. Lucrecia Martel
The first traditional narrative short film of the night, starts off as a comedic look into the day of a hotel maid during what looks to be her first day on the job. She is initially interrupted by phone calls, but her day slowly unravels as the calls get more intense. After having a breakdown in the shower of another hotel room, she wakes up as a dishevelled mess in a bathrobe, being offered a continental breakfast and a limo drive.
I was a little confused by the twist, if it was even supposed to be a twist, but the ending where she's waiting at the bus stop with the breakfast wrapped in cling wrap in her purse got a good laugh and definitely improved the whole short.
Strange Way of Life, dir. Pedro Almodóvar
This was the one everyone was here to see, Almodóvar trying his hand at the gay cowboy subgenre that’s slowly becoming a recent staple of neo-Westerns. It has that soap opera quality that Almodóvar loves to use, melodramatic acting, a story with multiple entangling relationships, and a heartbreaking backstory between two forbidden lovers. The audience applauded the credits for Almodóvar, Pascal, and Hawke, cheered even louder at the sight of Pascal’s naked ass, and laughed throughout the short even in parts that I’m sure weren’t meant to be funny. Anyone expecting to actually witness the sex scene between these two is sure to be disappointed, as we see the build-up and the aftermath for their night instead. But the rest of the story is ripe with drama, and just as it reaches the credits, it only feels like it’s at the halfway point. I found myself wanting more, and I would genuinely watch a full feature film of this.
Often short films are considered a more solitary experience than the more typical communality of feature films. They’re usually more personal, more private, so watching them in a theatre with an audience as if watching a feature film was quite a novel experience, and I do think the work on screen was engaged with a little more than if it were a feature film, even if it were on a more metatextual level rather than being fully immersed in the worlds of these shorts, which I can agree wasn’t easy given their experimental nature. Overall it was a great time seeing all these short films, and even if the films themselves weren’t always entertaining, witnessing the audience’s reactions absolutely made up for that.
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The Auteurs Abridged package screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, running in metro cinemas August 3-20 and online August 18-27.
For more info, click here.