MIFF: Mid-week at Hoyts

Hoyts is a massive theater chain, not the type of venue you associate with MIFF. But for the entire time I’ve been going to MIFF, Hoyts has been involved, unlike its largest competitor, Village Cinemas. I’m a bit down on Hoyts for an additional reason than being a massive theater chain, which is that they recently stopped accepting our critics card. Even in the best of times they only allowed us to see free movies two nights a week and during the day on weekdays. But they withdrew altogether last year. Screw them.

MIFF, however, apparently remains a profitable endeavor for them. So the Hoyts at Melbourne Central is where I spent three straight screenings on Wednesday and Thursday nights, which I will tell you about now.

The first was the Sundance Audience Award winner from this year, Brittany Runs a Marathon. It’s also the second MIFF film I’ve reviewed, if you want to check that out here. It stars Jillian Bell, who I think of as appearing in a lot of Seth Rogen films, though it’s actually only one (The Night Before, which is where she came on my radar). She plays an overweight 28-year-old whose life is going down the tubes, but she tries to turn that around by first jogging, then training to run a marathon.

It’s been an unusual MIFF in terms of high-profile releases, as the Cannes Palme d’Or winner, which usually is one of the most sought-after tickets at MIFF, already opened here theatrically. That was Parasite, and it was great, and I surely would have seen it at MIFF had it been playing. Desperate for something else with awards buzz, I slotted Brittany in straight away as a must-see. The type of movie that wins at Cannes is pretty different from the type of movie that wins at Sundance, though, and this was a pretty typical Sundance winner. Which is to say, I liked it quite a bit but forced myself to be honest about its limitations, which means I knocked a potential 8 out of 10 down to a 7 out of 10 in the above review. Who knows, maybe it’s an 8. It’s good. I liked it.

I had enough time between the two ends of my double feature to go downstairs and get a pastry called a coffee pan from an Asian bakery chain I like called Pafu. That was supposed to be where I met a friend of mine, the same who attended In Fabric with me on Saturday (and will be seeing a double feature with me next Thursday). However, somehow he ended up at somewhere called Pafu on the second floor of Melbourne Central, though I’m still not sure the explanation for that and thought it best not to dig too deeply. Anyway, I bought him a coffee pan and met him in time to go into Berberian Sound Studio.

This is only the third film I’ve ever seen at MIFF that I had already seen before, and only the second that wasn’t a special screening. In 2017 I saw both of my previous instances, a performance of Fantastic Planet with a live score (which was great) and my first time seeing Strange Days on the big screen. I might’nt have prioritized Berberian, which I have already seen twice before, except that my friend is interested in giallo and this is also a film I’ve never seen before on the big screen. Besides, I’m currently mulling what will be my favorite films of the decade, and a film I’d already seen twice is certainly a candidate.

Unfortunately, on this third viewing I found myself a bit impatient with the film’s pacing, which had never been a problem for me on previous viewings. Part of that was that there were certain parts I was looking forward to, but couldn’t really remember how soon they might be coming. Part of it was also that by recommending it to my friend, I felt the urgency for the film to deliver its good bits with a certain regularity, to justify my praise of it. Fortunately, this is not an impatient viewer, and he said he really liked the film – a big improvement on our mutual impression of Peter Strickland’s new film, the aforementioned In Fabric.

This was also my second time at MIFF seeing Strickland himself. He came out beforehand at In Fabric and also did so here, as MIFF is doing a retrospective on his films this year (which is why the seven-year-old Berberian is playing). This time he stayed for a Q&A afterward, and so did I. I actually asked him a question, which was how they created that perfect scream that the character Silvia (Fatma Mohamed) delivers near the end of the film, as the image of her diminishes in the frame to just a speck. (Which was one of the moments I was impatiently awaiting.) Alas, here was a mild bit of disappointment as well – as Strickland himself said it would be before he gave his answer. It wasn’t some clever bit of sound design, it was just an extracted moment from the song “Glory Hole” by Nurse With Wound. I’ve just listened to that on YouTube and confirmed it. Oh well.

Thursday night summoned me back to Hoyts for the premiere of my wife’s film A Family, which as I said yesterday, I will not discuss in any detail in terms of its quality. Nothing at all should be read into that in terms of whether I liked it or not. Just take that at face value: I said I wouldn’t discuss whether I liked the film or not, and I still won’t.

I will say that it was fun to be involved in a world premiere, as there was a similar place where you could take pictures in front of a MIFF background as there had been at opening night of the festival, only this time it was just for her film in particular. It was also lovely to see all sorts of familiar faces from our life here in Melbourne turn out for my wife’s big night. I sat in a seat that had a “reserved” sign on it for I think the first time ever. And then stayed for the Q&A afterward, which also featured my wife and a lot of questions from people who had obviously enjoyed the movie.

Which felt really, really nice.