I was originally scheduled for a MIFF double feature on Wednesday night, but that was before I became a soccer fan.
Actually, I was originally originally only scheduled for one movie, Alice Englert's Bad Behaviour, playing at 6 p.m. at the Comedy Theatre, after I finished my workday in the city. I had actually planned to make it a double feature, but with the second movie being a regular movie in theaters -- remember those?
But then it became clear that my originally scheduled MIFF double feature to close the festival on Saturday night was going to create a conflict at home, so I switched the second Saturday night movie -- sorry, Mercy Road -- to a second MIFF movie on Wednesday night, the African film Banel & Adama.
But then a funny thing happened: I started to like soccer.
I won't go into detail here on my whole history with soccer. But I played for a number of years as a kid, not because I particularly liked it but because it's what every kid in my town did. I was never any good and by the time I was in junior high, it was ancient history.
I wasn't a fan of professional or world cup soccer then, and I've never become one as an adult. But then, about six months ago, my younger son got super into the sport. That didn't change my opinion of watching professionals play, but I did start a semi-regular routine of playing soccer with my son in the back yard, taking turns playing goalie on our small net.
Then the women's world cup started, hosted in our very country. There was a chance we'd have taken my son to some games played here in Melbourne, but he opted against it, since he's not so sure how he feels about big crowds and loud noises. But we watched the Australian women, the Matildas, in the group stage at home, and I started to get some of the spectator appeal of the sport.
And then the Matildas kept winning.
When they dispatched France in a thrilling game over the weekend that was decided after an unfathomable 20 penalty kicks, I realized the next game -- the game that could punch their ticket to the championship -- was the same time as my MIFF double feature.
Given that I had actually grown to love this team, I knew Banel & Adama was out. For another $1 transaction fee, I could shift this ticket again -- and as it turned out, the very same movie in the very same venue worked as a replacement on Friday after work.
I decided to still go to Bad Behaviour, since it would get out just before 8, and if I hightailed it home -- which I did thanks to Uber -- I wouldn't miss that much of the first half, and would be able to join my family as they sat nervously on the couch watching.
Turns out, I would have been better off skipping both movies.
After a yummy Chinese dinner -- a little tradition I like to do when I have time after work before a movie -- I made it up to the Comedy Theatre 20 minutes before the movie was set to start. They were already letting people in, so I didn't even have to/get to participate in the MIFF tradition of standing and waiting outside the theater. And since the movie was only probably three-quarters sold, I got a seat of my choosing, on an aisle so I could survive some of the normal discomfort of their terrible seats.
Even in my position of relative comfort by Comedy Theatre standards, I found this a pretty torturous experience.
The movie was made in New Zealand, and the director, a Kiwi, is also one of the film's stars. The bigger stars, though, are Jennifer Connelly and Ben Whishaw, she a former child actress who is now an awful mother, he a wellness guru. Her portion of the film takes place at a wellness retreat in Oregon, while her daughter's portion -- that's the director -- is set in New Zealand, where the daughter is working on an effects heavy fantasy film that is probably meant to make us think of Lord of the Rings.
Before I get into the actual problems with the film, I want to mention one thing that bothered me, which was that they used Kiwi actors in the Oregon scenes. One, a big Maori guy, was at least doing an American accent. The other may have actually leaned into her native accent, if anything. I know there are some casting realities when you are making a movie in New Zealand and pretending it is set somewhere else, but I just couldn't get past the idea that a Kiwi was working at the front desk of a wellness retreat in Oregon.
The actual problem with the film, though, is that the characters are unsympathetic and the spoofing a wellness retreat did not land with me at all. Maybe I need to have actually been to one of those things to get it, but that shouldn't be a prerequisite for laughing. Movies are all about introducing us to scenarios we are not familiar with and still enabling us to understand them and get what is funny and/or tragic about them, Bad Behaviour containing a bit of both.
But I just wasn't laughing like the people around me -- so maybe it was a me issue. I sat there stone-faced for most of the movie. Plus I kept having logistics questions about the plot. It isn't spoiling anything to say that the daughter gets dismissed from the movie after an incident where she is accidentally punched out by a fellow actor and tumbles down a hill. It wasn't clear to me why this incident, in which she was a victim, led to her being fired from the movie, and Bad Behaviour just doesn't hold itself accountable to explaining such things.
We are supposed to be seeing these toxic people who have become what they are because of past trauma, but we don't get enough of the past trauma to understand them or to justify any of their behavior. (Sorry, behaviour.) I found the movie mean, but also not clever, and ultimately a waste of my time.
The director was present at the screening -- maybe that's why the audience was offering so many guffaws, because she seemed really nice -- but more interesting to me was the other special guest, who introduced the director at the beginning. This person was none other than the chief editor at Letterboxd, the site I use to track my films and give them star ratings.
She told us that when she first saw this film at Sundance in January, she went right to her site and "smashed five stars" for the movie. That immediately gave me expectations for the film -- expectations that the film was destined to sorely disappoint. In the Uber ride home, I "smashed" 1.5 stars for the movie. Woof.
I didn't miss any of the scoring in the Matildas game, but my arrival about 30 minutes in was bad luck for the team, apparently. Only a minute or two after I'd sat down, England scored its first goal -- first of an eventual three. And even non-soccer fans currently reading this probably know that three goals is pretty difficult for any team to overcome.
The Matildas gave it their best shot. Star player Sam Kerr had an amazing goal from way out midway through the second half, temporarily tying the game. But England answered less than five minutes later and added a goal in the final ten minutes of regulation to slam the door on this loveable upstart team from Australia who was never meant to get this far.
And weirdly, after a full adult life of shrugging my shoulders about soccer, I am now counting the days until the next world cup four years from now.
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