Under new management, the Locarno Festival reconciles film art with genre cinema.
With the cinema, the Locarno Film Festival disappeared from the map for a year. Now it is back with the 74th edition impressively, and the expectations were high: Even in Cannes, many visitors had hoped in vain for a mountain of hoarded film treasures that had only been waiting for the end of the lockdowns. But where should all the good films suddenly come from, even if the cinema was in crisis even before the pandemic?
Locarno, too, suddenly couldn’t draw on unlimited resources, but it used the new start to reorient itself – after all, its former program director Carlo Chatrian had been lost to the Berlinale. The new artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro scratches the dogma established over the years of a strict separation between radical film art in the competitions and more popular formats on the piazza. Of course, this can only succeed if something is done artistically at these limits. And indeed: there has been no winning film like the genre pastiche “Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash” by the Indonesian Edwin in many years.
The sympathetic little boy in the center suffers from an erectile dysfunction that does not get better because everyone around him knows about it. This gives his exaggerated macho behavior a touch of tragedy, which in turn makes the female bodyguard of an enemy gangster curious. They work each other off in a ravishingly chaotic karate interlude, and this is just the first taste of Edwin’s refreshing game of gender roles and genre conventions. It’s as light-handed as in Hong Kong cinema in the 90s.
The actress Ladya Cheryl, who is playing in one of Edwin’s films for the third time, does not simply adapt male role models for an action heroine. It gives the film its very own color, and the love story that instantly unfolds between the characters inspires this otherwise fast-paced, anarchic action film. Not only Tarantino would be enthusiastic. The sense of simplicity is also compelling. This is how the film takes place in the 80s, but all Edwin needs for the flair of the decade is a little scene like the one in which the protagonist casually repairs a tangled audio cassette.
Co-produced by Fatih Akin, this surprising and well-deserved “Golden Leopard” also stands for the internationality of part of the German film industry. The Cologne-based world distributor Match Factory, which is featured here in the opening credits, now supplies almost all major competitions.
Indulge in minimalism
German filmmakers, on the other hand, were hardly present at the most important Swiss festival. All the more impressive is the contribution by the Hamburg film artist Nicolaas Schmidt. “First Time [The Time for All but Sunset – Violet]” is his longest work to date at 50 minutes. In the mood for the nostalgic “found footage” of a Coca-Cola commercial from the 80s, one experiences the enchanting paradox of indulgent minimalism.
The external event is a Hamburg train journey into the city on the U3, but as in the early days of the cinema, it is about the aesthetic excess beyond the “entrance of a train”: Sun rays lead to an abstract sequence like light on closed eyes. While the nameless young protagonists in their compartment drink a sip of Coke from time to time, the filmmaker feeds us with delicious pink evening skies. It is also an excursus on the taboo of an exuberant aestheticism, which art likes to put under suspicion of kitsch. And yet you are reminded of a time when people still talked about experimental film, but combined a thirst for adventure and traveling into the unknown.
The Romanian director Adina Pintilie compared Schmidt’s film, which she gave an honorable mention as a juror, with works by Chantal Akerman and Straub-Huillet, as well as Lutz Mommartz, who five decades ago stretched a view from the train window into the endless. Such medium-length films like to fall between the chairs at festivals, in the land of watchmakers, of course, film time is still appreciated.
Suddenly theater
This also applies to the Chinese three-hour film, which won the special prize of the jury. Also known as a painter of delicate fantastic realism, Qiu Jiongjiong achieved an overwhelming epic with “A New Old Play”: This history of Chinese theater in the 20th century takes its theme as an occasion for constant renewal. It is precisely the theatrical aspect that renews the film language here – for example when the characters suddenly transform into a lively shadow theater.
It wasn’t all gold that shone – Abel Ferrara, who nonetheless received the director’s award, disappointed with his only sketchily realized pandemic dystopia “Zero and Ones” – but a lot. The festival remained true to itself with the demanding choice of the protagonist of its retrospective. It was for Alberto Lattuada, one of the fathers of neorealism. Lattuada’s real theme, however, was aestheticism, especially in its celebration of youthful feminine beauty. With “Stay as you are” he made a significant contribution to Nastassja Kinski’s fame. Only a few of his films can still be seen outside of archives, which makes it all the more important to discuss this director again right now – in the context of a new awareness of the often problematic way popular cinema deals with gender roles.
