Five of the best films from the 74^th Locarno Film Festival

Under the lead of new fes­ti­val direc­tor Giona A Naz­zaro, this year’s Locarno Film Fes­ti­val seems to have had a gen­er­al­ly mixed recep­tion from those on the ground in Switzer­land. Some long-time atten­dees have been par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal of the 74^th edition’s heav­ier incor­po­ra­tion of genre film­mak­ing in the pro­gramme, in the con­text of a fes­ti­val gen­er­al­ly laud­ed for pre­mier­ing some of the hard­est-to-clas­si­fy films around. That said, Locarno has hard­ly turned into Fan­tas­tic Fest, and many of those genre films were far from for­mu­la­ic filler. Here are five fea­ture high­lights from this year’s edition.

The debut fea­ture of writer/​director Rob Jab­baz, a Cana­di­an expat work­ing in Tai­wan, The Sad­ness has pro­voked fes­ti­vals that ordi­nar­i­ly don’t both­er with con­tent warn­ings to explic­it­ly change tack. For many rea­sons – includ­ing upset­ting scenes of sex­u­al vio­lence and mur­dered chil­dren – it’s absolute­ly war­rant­ed. In con­trast to how Covid-19 has so far been unable to get a foothold on the coun­try, The Sad­ness presents some­thing of an alter­nate Tai­wan. After a year of light­ly ​“com­bat­ing” a pan­dem­ic with rel­a­tive­ly benign symp­toms and no report­ed deaths, one day the virus sud­den­ly mutates.

Now, those infect­ed enter a rabid state that’s akin to a hybrid of 28 Days Later’s Rage Virus and the Dea­dites of The Evil Dead. Beings inflict unspeak­able vio­lence upon any unin­fect­ed they encounter, while retain­ing mem­o­ries and speech and often sport­ing a shit-eat­ing grin like Sam Raimi’s cre­ations. The Sad­ness also recalls the Evil Dead series in its inven­tive direc­tion and the sheer quan­ti­ty of large­ly prac­ti­cal gore; though this is a most­ly seri­ous affair with a lot of anger on its mind.

This mys­te­ri­ous virus height­ens repressed urges in the human brain. As such, while swip­ing at con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and politi­cis­ing pub­lic health, the film also takes aim at what might be labelled ​‘incel ide­ol­o­gy’, with one male char­ac­ter, whose reject­ed advances lead to a misog­y­nist rant just pri­or to infec­tion, turn­ing into an avatar for tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty, pur­su­ing the female lead across town with only vio­la­tion on his mind. Suf­fice to say, this is a mem­o­rably bleak horror.

Fol­low­ing a group of teenage friends over the course of a care­free sum­mer, tragedy strikes ear­ly on in Émi­lie Aussel’s debut fea­ture when one char­ac­ter dis­ap­pears in the water dur­ing a late-night swim. Rather than explor­ing what hap­pened, how­ev­er, this unhasty 72-minute dra­ma explores how grief doesn’t fol­low a for­mu­la. Trau­ma cuts the group deep, but the state of the lost girl’s best friend, in par­tic­u­lar, is one of iner­tia rather than a steady flow of tears.

Inter­spersed with that character’s par­tic­u­lar jour­ney are var­i­ous straight-to-cam­era address­es from sup­port­ing play­ers, in which they vocalise the lin­ger­ing effects of a loss that haunts them. Cumu­la­tive­ly, the film is an astute explo­ration of the con­trast­ing emo­tions at play with­in every per­son touched by the loss of a sin­gle human life.

Anoth­er notable hor­ror effort was the oth­er­world­ly She Will, recip­i­ent of the festival’s Best First Fea­ture prize. The direc­to­r­i­al debut of Fran­co-British mul­ti­me­dia artist Char­lotte Col­bert, the film makes par­tic­u­lar­ly evoca­tive use of the Scot­tish High­lands. To reduc­tive­ly com­pare it to oth­er recent films, it’s like if some­one put Saint Maud, Cen­sor and A Cure for Well­ness in a blender, with a dash of folk horror.

Alice Krige plays an age­ing movie star who got her break aged 13 as the lead of a film from a cel­e­brat­ed auteur who may have abused his pow­er. The direc­tor is played by Mal­colm McDow­ell in a smart bit of cast­ing, giv­en the num­ber of leg­endary if con­tro­ver­sial film­mak­ers he has worked with. Fol­low­ing a dou­ble mas­tec­to­my, Krige’s Veron­i­ca seeks respite at a rur­al heal­ing retreat in the com­pa­ny of young Amer­i­can nurse Desi (rel­a­tive new­com­er Kota Eberhardt).

There, in woods where numer­ous women were burned alive for per­ceived witch­craft, Veron­i­ca finds her­self able to dish out revenge via her dreams, pro­ject­ing her­self across time and space to plague the abu­sive man who both gave her a career while also tak­ing so much.

A wor­thy win­ner of the Best Actress award in the Film­mak­ers of the Present com­pe­ti­tion, Sab­ri­na Sarabi’s sec­ond fea­ture is above all else a show­case for the mag­net­ic Sask­ia Rosendahl, like­ly still best known for her teenage lead role in Cate Shortland’s Lore. She’s present in almost every scene of this slow-burn dra­ma, as a spir­i­tu­al­ly and sex­u­al­ly frus­trat­ed young woman suf­fo­cat­ing in rur­al farm life with her boyfriend and his dis­ap­prov­ing fam­i­ly. Sara­bi upends roman­ti­cised views of coun­try­side liv­ing, while also not sen­sa­tion­al­is­ing detours into adul­ter­ous romps and cru­el lash­ings out just to shake off disillusionment.

Although shot before the pan­dem­ic, the struc­ture and con­ceit of Pawel Lozinski’s com­pelling doc­u­men­tary (appar­ent­ly des­tined for HBO Max) cer­tain­ly evokes lock­down liv­ing in imagery, if not nec­es­sar­i­ly in what it’s (the­o­ret­i­cal­ly) about. Over more than two years, the direc­tor had a cam­era and a shot­gun micro­phone set up from his first-floor War­saw apart­ment bal­cony, fac­ing a side­walk. The film is assem­bled from his attempts at con­vers­ing with passers-by, ask­ing them ques­tions about what they do, whether they could be the ​‘hero’ of his film, and what they think is life’s meaning.

Reac­tions range from play­ful amuse­ment to sus­pi­cion to melan­choly, as some strangers open up about what they’ve been keep­ing inside with sur­pris­ing and mov­ing can­dour. Around 80 of the rough­ly 1000 inter­vie­wees make the final cut and some of those fea­tured become fre­quent ​‘stars’; one man recent­ly out of prison, burnt out by his prospects, seems to almost con­scious­ly try to ​‘bump into’ Lozin­s­ki to have some­one lis­ten to him. By the end, the com­pos­ite por­trait of con­tem­po­rary liv­ing feels quite magical.