In the Mouth

In the Mouth, the sophomore feature from Cory Santilli (Saul at Night, 2019) is everything from a film noir to a prison escape thriller to a surreal buddy comedy to a sentimental drama. It follows the hermetic Merl (Colin Burgess), a young man who refuses to go outside after a giant clone of his own head appears in his front lawn, intermittently announcing its presence in ominous, guttural moans. When Larry (Paul Rothery), whose noir-tinged escape from prison makes up the film’s striking cold open, shows up at Merl’s house in answer to his “roommate wanted” ad, Merl is confronted with forces that might finally allow him to confront his fears.

Santilli is clearly a fan of David Lynch, and the film wears that appreciation on its sleeve. The prison escape cold open gives way to Merl’s bedroom in typical Lynchian style; a rapid, handheld push into Merl’s sleeping face, accompanied by a loud whoosh. If the reference leans a little bit into replication, it’s certainly effective. Where Lynch’s Mullholland Dr., for example, suggests the duality of a Los Angeles that plays host both to dreams and the waking nightmares that live inside them, so too does In the Mouth posit that an entirely new world can quite literally be found inside yourself.

Lynchian influences aside, the intense, isolating shadows of the black-and-white photography and the camera’s canted angles all illustrate Merl’s instability without much unnecessary fanfare. The film possesses genuine confidence in its point of view, where being unmoored is part of the fabric of the film, rather than made up of tacked-on flourishes. What fanfare there is, like the giant clone of Merl’s head in the yard, is done practically, eschewing whatever cheap cgi effects a film of this budget might afford for something more real – essentially placing a filmed image of Burgess’s head in the frame that moves exactly as Merl moves. The cumulative effect of all this is direct and impactful, a world that is at once suggested to be something not of our own, but with a tactility, unfortunately for someone like Merl, that’s all too real.

Merl lives in a lonely, self-contained world of his own making. Terrified of going outside, he tries, sometimes pitifully, to live a normal life within the confines of his home. But after three months his landlord is hounding him for unpaid rent. Desperately in need of rent money, Merl accepts Larry, who just needs a place to hide out, into his house, though the constant news coverage of Larry’s prison escape puts him under constant fear that Merl might find him out. Little does Larry know that Merl is so lost inside his own troubled world that he never puts two and two together.

In their early days together, Merl’s eccentricities and Larry’s shadiness bounce off each other in a familiar, odd couple-esque comic register, the byproduct of which reveals a deeper sense of longing for companionship in the former, and a softer side in the latter. A very sweet scene, for example, shows Merl looking through binoculars inside the house as he instructs Larry which apples to pick from the orchard next door. But the idyll Merl and Larry seem to establish for themselves in the first two days of their cohabitation, of course, can’t survive. The news is still reporting on Larry’s escape, and when it seems like Merl might have a flash of recognition, Larry knows he has to do something. He tells his associates, who visit the house to bring him his share of the job they pulled and check on him, that Merl has set up cameras all around the house in fear of the escaped convict. Their instruction: put Merl “on ice.”

For his part, Burgess and Santilli portray Merl with the utmost sincerity; never belittling or making light of his anxieties, however unformed or vague they appear to be, which is a refreshing choice for a film whose increasingly desperate stakes and violent consequences could easily exploit such treatment. The giant head in Merl’s front yard might be a blunt metaphor for his personal problems, but as both a narrative and thematic device Santilli is able to get good mileage out of it. Having reached the brink of utter self-destruction, Merl can finally see that his means of healing, rather than of repression, are literally waiting for him in his front yard. The sheer strangeness of the sight of Merl walking into his own gaping mouth is enough for a few laughs, as is the film’s quite literally ascendent final sequence, but through Burgess’ portrayal, it bears the sincere inflection necessary to pull off its emotional punch. — CHRIS CASSINGHAM

Coroner to the Stars

Stardom is a morbid enterprise, and the life of its luminaries always has a tacit alliance with their expiration date. Often, fame intensifies upon death, as the deceased has no way to speak for or against their mythologization, usually against the backdrop of tragedy. Because the modern star was born in Los Angeles, and because of the tendency for their deaths to receive such lurid, scandalous attention, it follows that the city’s morticians and forensics experts undertake a larger-than-life mission themselves, profiling and putting to rest secrets of the flesh never before placed under such scrutiny. Placing one such person under a similar spotlight, Ben Hethcoat and Keita Ideno’s debut documentary feature illuminates the life and times of Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi, Los Angeles’ erstwhile Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner from 1967 to 1982, and the subject of no little controversy himself.

Having largely receded from public consciousness, Noguchi nonetheless remained in the service long after his eventual demotion; in the wake of an especially contentious ruling involving the demise of actress Natalie Wood, the charges against the coroner amounted to such acts as moonlighting and the disclosure of sensitive information. This was not his first time: after his autopsy of Robert F. Kennedy, when Noguchi had proposed that the fatal shot had come not from Kennedy’s assassin but possibly as friendly fire, his attempt to seek funding for his understaffed department was rebuffed by Lindon Hollinger, the then-chief administrative officer, who instead levied accusations of incompetence and mismanagement. These episodes, framed as instantiations of Japanese-American discrimination, constitute the organizing principle around which Hethcoat and Ideno’s narrative coalesces. Noguchi’s own background as an immigrant who passed over an internship with Johns Hopkins in favor of one at L.A.’s Orange County General Hospital; his marriage to his nurse Hisako, who was herself interned at a relocation camp during World War II; and his political influence, not least in the Japanese United in the Search for Truth (JUST) lobby formed to protest his charges — these, by and large, are faithfully recounted in Coroner to the Stars.

The film’s titular moniker was first adopted during Noguchi’s time, and in some ways still refers uniquely to him; having presided over the post-mortems of Marilyn Monroe, Sharon Tate, William Holden, and such other celebrities, Noguchi drew admiration for what many saw as his cool-headedness, just as he did ire. Charged with sensationalizing his reports — no less by Frank Sinatra — and shaped perhaps by his own popular persona as reflected in Jack Klugman’s eponymous character from the medical drama Quincy, M.E., Noguchi strove, whether actively or subconsciously, to resist the distinct but related stereotypes bestowed on him. Neither the “perpetual foreigner,” with his eminence in America’s medical field, nor the “model minority,” evinced through years of quiet but firm confrontation with his adversaries, the good doctor purports to “tell it like it is” in a business flecked with the impulse to do otherwise. The same might not be said of Coroner to the Stars, whose hagiographic leanings veer into an occasionally boilerplate treatment of its protagonist, particularly in its somewhat self-righteous portrayal of Noguchi’s persona. Then again, with the 98-year-old as its living, breathing subject, the film’s recourse to testimony does seem, on the whole, riveting enough. — MORRIS YANG

Lockjaw

It’s a sign of great writing when you can identify everything you love and hate about a character, but can’t decide whether you love or hate them. In Sabrina Greco’s directorial debut, Lockjaw, Rayna (Blu Hunt) bears the burden of these ambiguities as an impulsive young woman facing two realities: that her shame, insecurities, and personal failings are much easier to read than she thinks; and that, for more reason than one, she isn’t capable of processing them herself.

We meet Rayna at the drunken end of a long night out. She promises her friends, Mitch and Noah (Colin Burgess and Kevin Grossman, respectively), that she’s fine to drive home. They protest, but not very forcefully, and when she sees an opportunity, Rayna bolts for her car, gets inside, and drives away, though the inevitable crash is only heard off-screen. Six weeks later, Rayna and Mitch, now her boyfriend, are on the verge of their first night out since her accident, and she bears a conspicuous legacy of her mistake in a broken jaw, now wired shut. The ensuing 77 minutes track the events of their long misadventure, an odyssey-in-miniature during which they reunite with Noah, having drifted apart since the accident; meet, and insinuate themselves into the lives of, Robert and Cleo (Nick Corirossi and Ally Davis), a mentalist and performance artist, respectively, the former of whose performance they attend early in the night; and fight over the status of their relationship, particularly as it involves Annabelle (Sally Sum), a young woman bafflingly eager to befriend Rayna.

Rayna’s first encounter with Robert, the mentalist, introduces him as an observer, through whom the audience gets its clearest picture of Rayna’s contradictions and shame. Before his act he walks around the venue surreptitiously taking pictures of audience members. It’s too late to do anything when Rayna realizes Robert has taken a picture of her, and soon enough she finds herself a part of his act, shifting uncomfortably and then bolting for the door when he inquires a little too deeply as to why she refuses to answer his questions. Later, after Rayna essentially invites herself and Mitch over to Robert and Cleo’s home, her actions become not only more reckless, but their motivations increasingly transparent, though Robert, dangerously and thrillingly, is the only one to see them, and he makes it his personal mission to get to the bottom of Rayna’s peculiar behavior.

For her part, Hunt is an extremely game performer, and she takes on her character’s physical limitations with real commitment. Of course, Rayna’s locked jaw is a metaphor for her shame, but it’s also a social calling card that makes her a magnet for the attention, however gawky and insensitive, she desperately craves. It affords this potentially obvious symbol with real thematic staying power. Not just psychologically loaded, it infuses the film with a palpable, visceral discomfort, the shared feeling between herself and the viewer of constant struggle against either her own impulse to speak or against the physical restraints themselves. That we don’t know for sure which one she’s fighting against in any given moment, and that Rayna can’t express herself, is the film’s biggest strength. 

Perhaps paradoxically, in light of her crippling insecurities, Rayna rarely puts on airs. At once rude, needy, standoffish, and pitiful, her lack of classifiability is what makes her so frustrating to the people around her. While Robert can point out the fact that she’s hiding something, he never knows what it is or why, until he does some investigation. Even Mitch and Noah, increasingly weary of Rayna’s impulsive behavior and obstinance — she defiantly paints on one of Cleo’s costumes and refuses, or, perhaps, in a Buñuelian way, is unable, to leave the house after it’s made clear she’s not welcome anymore — can’t seem to shake her from their concerns and sympathies; they really like her, despite Rayna’s best efforts to antagonize them.

For all of the reasons the film is rewarding, however, it’s also a slog. One could ungenerously suggest the film’s drawn-out narrative, made up entirely of moments of character development rather than plot, would be better suited to a short film; and it’s hard to disagree. Greco renders what should be banal social situations into the most painfully awkward versions of themselves, and makes the viewer internalize them. It immerses you in the craggy, unsavory world of its protagonist’s mind, and very rarely lets you up for air.

Respite comes, mercifully, in moments of Rayna’s burgeoning self-awareness and acceptance of guilt. Perhaps accepting that Rayna, either deliberately or subconsciously, refuses to leave their house, Cleo finally seems willing to meet her on a human-to-human level. Offering Rayna a drink, which she’s been refusing the whole night given what it compels her to do, she accepts, seeing no real point in holding back anymore. Pressed for some insight, Rayna admits to Cleo exactly what happened the night of the accident. Unable to verbalize it, however, she types her recollection of the events into her phone, and has the text to voice function read aloud. Siri’s cool, robotic inflections, devoid of affectation, actually infuse the scene with a perverse kind of profundity. In the silence between these two people, essentially enemies for the duration of their relationship, what better way to express painful feelings than through a robot that can iron them flat. — CHRIS CASSINGHAM

Alice-Heart

Alice-Heart optimistically envisions a world in which an aspiring writer’s dream of financial security through her art is still achievable — if unlikely. Combined with its black-and-white photography and consciously naturalistic dialogue, the film is a throwback to another era, a time (perhaps the last) when filmmakers could come together with a group of friends and make a movie that could launch a sustainable filmmaking career. It happened to a number of American filmmakers from an urban, intellectual milieu similar to the ones responsible for Alice-Heart; Greta Gerwig is one of those filmmakers, the closest of whose films Alice-Heart resembles, Frances Ha, expresses a lot of the same anxieties about a young woman’s personal independence and artistic identity.

If there is one question driving Alice-Heart, both the film itself and it’s titular character, it is: How do you know when you’ve lived enough life that it’s worth writing about? In this question the film recalls a more recent film about the role of lived experience as fuel for creativity, Christian Petzold’s Afire. The answer here, however, if there is one, is packaged within a familiar coming-of-age story. College senior and aspiring writer Alice-Heart (Lissa Carandang-Sweeney) dreams of entering the real world as soon as possible, though her eagerness bites her in the ass when, in the film’s opening scene, she calls her unreasonably grouchy young professor (among his demands: no computers, everything handwritten, preferably in cursive) an asshole, and finds herself kicked out of the last class she needs both to graduate and for her mom to continue paying her rent.

As in most coming-of-age stories, Alice-Heart’s personal misfortunes foreground her personal shortcomings, and the film is at its best when it surrounds her with supporting characters whose heightened qualities throw her foibles into sharp relief. Besides her grouchy professor (Gabriel Elmore), Alice-Heart’s wealthy classmate, Joan (Kelsey O’Keefe), is gratingly bubbly and sociable, and her ex-boyfriend (Adam McAlonie) is an idiot with a cruel streak. The most grounded supporting character in the film is Tony (Tony McCall), her new photographer neighbor who, despite his confident, creative output, is also figuring out his own life.

Not to be outdone by financial or academic woes, Alice-Heart’s relationship with her boyfriend takes an immediate nosedive when he admits to being in love with a girl he met in Rome the previous semester. Unable to pay rent and emotionally floundering amidst the realization that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, what she wants, or how to be alone, Alice-Heart accepts Tony’s offer and moves into his spare room.

Though Alice-Heart now has two potential romantic partners to contend with (she briefly, but unsuccessfully, reunites with her ex), mercifully the film is not actually about which boy she will choose to be with, but about what version of independence she will choose for herself. Where Tony may have hang-ups about a past relationship, he at least embodies confidence in one’s creative output, which we come to understand is fueled by having lived through a few things worth grappling with. Alice-Heart’s creative confidence comes after dealing with the repercussions of her actions, the most important of which involves Joan and the mean professor. The result, importantly, is that while the seemingly one-dimensional supporting characters have changed, it’s only because Alice-Heart’s sharp, if occasionally misguided, judgment of them has softened, allowing their impression on us to deepen.

If there is something missing from Alice-Heart it’s that it doesn’t pay all that much attention to the act of writing. Because the act of living is given pride of place in the hierarchy of creative output, there is little detail to be gleaned here about the labor involved, and thus a conspicuous gap of thematic development. A brief, subway-set sequence at the beginning, showing a glimpse of the personal writing Alice-Heart hopes will help her break into the industry (though, based on the first sentence and a half, we see she has a lot of work to do), is mirrored by one other at the end, but that is all we see of Alice-Heart at work. Her professor (post-reconciliation) describes her final thesis as well-defined, with flawed characters and a detailed sense of place — all things that effectively describe the film. Though having to take this assessment of Alice-Heart’s writing for granted, the impression the film makes is that the act of living on its own is enough to fuel the creative process. For a film as charming, thoughtful, and ably performed as this, it’s a little bit of a shame we don’t come to know Alice-Heart’s life through her own words. — CHRIS CASSINGHAM

Foul Evil Deeds

For theists, the problem of evil has presented a nagging counterpoint to unchallenged belief in God, though sometimes it is precisely the challenge of proving that bolsters the act of believing and allots evil its due place in the order of things. For atheists, or those in-between, the question takes on a more matter-of-fact slant. Evil exists, it is everywhere, and it is undesirable, sure, but also inevitable. Psychology and innately biological traits influence one’s tendencies and proclivities, but social life — and the moral language that issues from it — provides the ultimate arbiter of our capacity to comprehend and reject ethical norms of right and wrong. So say the constructivists at least, and their legitimacy stems from the fact that, irrespective of whether ethical norms are metaphysically universal, their adoption is by and large anything but.

In Richard Hunter’s provocatively-titled first feature, Foul Evil Deeds, moral relativism over the question of evil is taken to the limit. We’re witness to a gamut of disparate, everyday lives, strung together in a multi-person narrative set in modern Britain and shot through the grainy lens of mini-DV. Most belong to archetypes of contemporary capitalism: a vicar and his wife living under suburban routine; an ex-con out on parole and cleaning toilets for a living; three male youths hanging out after, or during, school hours; an immigrant family; a lone accountant; a wealthy lawyer and his son. With the exception of the immigrant family, they are all white; other than the lawyer, they all appear to inhabit the same lower-to-middle class world. There is, in essence, nothing special about our sample size, in the same way that there is nothing special about the evil they do.

But the term evil is a stretch here. Foul Evil Deeds plays like a riff on Michael Haneke, whose clammy themes and clinical editing tend to culminate in a broader thesis against bourgeois rot. In Hunter’s case, however, the narrative arcs of his different characters never quite intersect, even as their shared existence under an impersonal contemporary landscape is made plausible by the camera’s steady indifference. The vicar shares a dead bedroom with his wife; he’s got a porn problem, while she’s plagued by maggot trouble. The cleaner’s case worker, a hijabi no less, refuses with “the same condescending face” his request to see his children. The immigrant father, working at a laundromat, inappropriately touches his co-worker while giving the latter a massage. Throughout most of the film, the tension threatens to boil over into something unspeakable, awaiting a trigger or sign, or simply the inevitability of latent evil manifesting in taut, metallic form.

Disappointingly, the film lacks the conviction of its form, settling for superficial illustrations of human desire and boredom that can’t quite be categorized as evil or, indeed, even foul. Provocation comes to a head when confronted with simple banality, of which Foul Evil Deeds indulges plenty in. In a way, it works better as sociological cross-section than philosophical rumination, insofar as the subconscious wants and obscured inner lives of everyday Joes are brought under closer scrutiny. That being said, closer doesn’t equate keener: with neither further background to lend the film’s characters greater verisimilitude nor an authorial imprint upon its ethical canvas, Hunter’s intentional amoralism quickly reveals insipid apathy beneath. Just as the main promotional still, of vicar and wife grinning eerily, is nothing more than a trick of the editing table, so is context everything. — MORRIS YANG

Gamma Rays

Coming-of-age movies are a dime a dozen, at this point practically an entire sub-genre of Sundance-approved indie calling cards. Which is perhaps why Henry Bernadet’s Gamma Rays feels so refreshing  — a quiet, remarkably assured drama about youth in present-day Montreal that feels unencumbered by cliche or the demands of a mainstream distributor looking for a sleeper hit. There’s an unaffected naturalism on display here, from the stellar, non-professional cast to the unfussy, straightforward cinematography (credited to a trio of photographers: Natan Foisy, Philippe St-Gelais, and Philémon Crête) that stands in stark contrast to what comes out of Park City these days. 

Gamma Rays begins with a trivia contest between two school groups, and from there, the narrative splinters into a series of character studies that follows a diffuse set of teens. Their stories run parallel to each other, occasionally intersecting in both small and large ways.  Fatima (Chaimaa Zineddine Elidris) works at a grocery store and is trying to go straight but has a tenuous relationship with a local drug dealer. Her best friend is Naïma (Oceane Garcon-Gravel), who tries her best to support Fatima and help her stay out of trouble. Then there’s Abdel (Yassine Jabrane), a sneakerhead who must welcome his older cousin Omar (Hani Laroum) for an extended visit, while Toussaint (Chris Kanyembuga) is a quiet introvert who has a crush on his trivia teammate Sanna (Amaternur Khan). 

The film patiently flits around and follows each character in turn, observing them as they go about their days and hang out with friends, go to parties or work, and argue with their parents. Everyone here is a first- or second-generation immigrant, and the various nationalities on display make up much of the film’s distinct flavor, as well as imbue the proceedings with an undercurrent of racial tensions that occasionally threaten to boil over. In execution, then, Gamma Rays operates as a city symphony of sorts, with Bernadet allowing ample time for digressions and little bits of business that have nothing to do with narrative but add welcome color, little documentary-like asides that all add up to a sort of mosaic. Here the movie might stop cold for a few minutes so a young man can perform a rap, while there  is footage of a kid doing parkour over and around various landmarks. 

But eventually, Bernadet must allow for some sort of narrative focus to take over, even if one wishes he simply kept up with the casual, anything-goes approach to story. Abdel and Omar have a falling out, which leads to a desperate nighttime search, while Fatima must grapple with the violence she carries around inside herself. Toussaint, meanwhile, makes a penpal, but then drives them away with his insecurities. Thankfully, however, despite the intrusion of overt dramatic incident, Bernard doesn’t force faux epiphanies onto anyone. Gamma Rays ultimately ends as quietly as it began, with people living their lives and trying to make sense of the world around them. What else is there? — DANIEL GORMAN

Banr

The title of Erica Xia-Hou’s stirring if conspicuous first feature is not a misprint: “banr,” translated and truncated from the Mandarin term for “partner,” serves as endearment, as shorthand, and as an informal address for a relationship often compartmentalized by societal expectations. But there is a solemn aspect to this truncation, too, of a signifier standing in for a time when names and memories no longer hold as they used to — we cut short the phrase to affirm its monosyllabic wholeness. Does its use, then, stem from learned, incremental affection or from a natural and visceral desperation, a term to preserve the dying mind against time? The bittersweet realization one tends to have is that we do both, with care and habit slowly coalescing into one in a partnership of commitment and devotion that ends in spite of them.

Banr depicts an old married couple struggling with health issues and a steadily deteriorating way of life. Zhang Jianjun (Li Sui), a veteran, is sole caregiver for his wife Liu Ximei (Li Baoqing), whose Alzheimer’s has burrowed into her and creepingly divested her of lucid, intentional agency. Their daughter, Yunyun (played by Xia-Hou), visits frequently but has a hectic working schedule, and her pleas for her father to enroll her mother in a care home fall on deaf ears. Jianjun is ridden with anxiety and an overwhelming sense of responsibility for his beloved, and when he’s not shopping for groceries in town or preparing meals at home, he has to tend unwaveringly to his wife. Ximei, formerly a teacher, soon becomes unable to recognize her family, or even to find her bearings — she wanders off when unsupervised, throws tantrums at her hapless husband, and places fruit inside the washing machine. Shown initially to be lucid, though aging, she even recounts the story of another woman with Alzheimer’s: “She’s the kind that momentarily understands,” she says, “but in an instant, she’s gone again.”

This crippling transience — this fleeting and tenuous grasp on reality so characteristic of the aging and senile — forms the central chord of Banr, and its intense depictions of caregiving’s woes help underscore the film’s unerring pathos. Xia-Hou, adopting a non-linear lens, foregrounds her narrative around Ximei’s declining health, flitting about time periods and locations and engineering a powerful feeling of dislocation in the process. Yet a persistent weakness (or tradeoff) ensuing from this concerns the depth of her characters: because they are defined primarily by their sickness, they sometimes are rendered more sympathetic than they are lived. Given the film’s unflinching focus on its hapless, agonizing couple grappling with inevitable decline, comparisons with such works as Michael Haneke’s Amour and Gaspar Noé’s Vortex will no doubt appear. But Banr opts for relatively few flourishes, preferring a more vérité and diaristic approach. Much could be said about its simplistic sequences, which walk the tightrope between realism and sentimental weight. But the sentiment they echo is irreproachably, achingly real. — MORRIS YANG