Good MIFFternoon

I've seen nine films before this year at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). Never before yesterday had I seen one in the afternoon.

And that's about the most interesting thing I have to say about the experience of my first MIFF movie of 2016, Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman (or Le Client, from its Cannes poster. And incidentally, it's weird that the French translation is Le Client -- isn't the client usually the person the salesman sells to? In other words, the opposite of a salesman?).

That doesn't mean I don't have anything interesting to say about the movie itself. It's just that in years past, I've managed to construct these posts about MIFF as some kind of anecdote related to the experience, in addition to some words on what I thought of the movie.

Yesterday, nothing anecdote-worthy happened. I showed up on time for the 4 o'clock show. I left after the movie ended. I admired the gorgeous interior of The Comedy Theatre on Exhibition Street in the meantime. Oh, and I ran into the former director of HRAFF, the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival, on the way out. I worked with him last year in selecting films for that festival. I guess that's sort of interesting.

But let's just say that with nine more films on my MIFF schedule this year, I've got plenty of other opportunities for good anecdotes.

And since I'm reviewing eight of the ten films I see for ReelGood, I won't go into much detail about my thoughts on these films in the body of the post, unless it's something that's tangential to my review. In the case of my review for The Salesman, the review sums it up pretty well. I've written it already, but it being Sunday morning, it hasn't posted yet. You'll be able to find it in its usual spot linked to the right when it does post. (And if you don't want to wait for that -- I liked it, but it's the weakest of three Farhadi movies that I've seen.)

And tonight: Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women. This is one I won't be reviewing for ReelGood, so expect a more thorough writeup tomorrow.