It’s that time again for my sojourn to Fantastic Fest, the annual Alamo Drafthouse week long love letter to horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world. This year’s festival runs from Sept 24-October 1, here in Austin at the South Lamar location.

As in year’s past, I begin my coverage with a multi-part/day preview.

 

Fantastic Fest Preview Day Two

 

Victoria

You say the words “the film is one shot,” and that’s enough to stop most people in their tracks and entice them to see them movie. VICTORIA, however, is much more than that one accomplishment. You can count the number of films that have legitimately pulled off this feat on one hand, and VICTORIA may be the best yet. Sebastian Schipper’s latest film is a technical achievement worthy of the highest praise, elevated by a wonderful performance from lead Laia Costa, who this year became the first Spanish actress to win the Best Actress award at the German equivalent of the Oscars (called the Lolas – which VICTORIA won five of this year, including Best Picture and Director). Costa plays the titular character, a free spirit with an infectious charm. She’s trusting, eager to meet new people, experience new things and is seemingly free of judgment. She’s capable of being both your best friend and an object of desire, and can surprise you at any moment.

The spartan twelve page “script” (more of a loose set of scenarios) is fleshed out with naturalistic improvisation by the stellar cast. Before it ramps up to the abundant third-act action, Schipper gives you ample time bond with Victoria and her new friends. By the time things starts to go south, you truly care what happens to these characters. .

VICTORIA seems destined for cult status, but it really is much larger than that. It’s a collusion of great technical skill and breathtaking emotional performance that make it one of the great discoveries of recent memory. Don’t miss it. (James Shapiro)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=4&v=tCGo-tQrvPg

 

Tikkun

God’s plan for Haim-Aaron seems to end with the ascetically devout Yeshiva student dead in the shower, killed by a slip that results in a brutal blow to the head. But his father, seeing his son’s naked corpse stretched out in the family’s living room, refuses to give up when the EMTs do, and he continues performing CPR until his son — dead for 40 minutes — somehow sputters back to life. Haim-Aaron finds himself reborn and seeing the world — once an austere prison of devotion and books and head-rocking prayer — through new eyes. Almost literally, as he discovers he no longer needs his glasses. He also finds his faith shaken, his family alien and his stifled sexual desires raging. Unable to sleep Haim-Aaron begins hitchhiking from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, where he slowly dares himself to experience the sensual and carnal pleasures of the world.

Avisha Sivan’s gorgeous black and white film walks through a surreal valley of death where talking alligators rise from toilets, boners in the shower bring Yahweh’s retribution and a father must consider fulfilling Abraham’s fatal mission for God. TIKKUN brings us into the closed-off world of the Hasidim and Sivan’s actors obliterate the line between performance and reality. Lead Aharon Treitel is an amateur actor who was once a Hasid, while Khalifa Natour, a Palestinian actor familiar from THE BAND’S VISIT, plays his rabbi father. Though it has a touch of PI and a dash of Lynch, TIKKUN stakes out a unique juncture between kitchen sink realism and uncanny supernatural weirdness. A hypnotic and transcendently disturbing examination of piety, destiny and blood sacrifice TIKKUN contains both the most beautiful and the most deeply shocking imagery you will see at Fantastic Fest. It will test your belief — or disbelief — in God. (Devin Faraci)

 

Tale of Tales

We begin in the kingdom of Longtrellis, with a queen longing for a child of her own. When a mysterious figure arrives with a way for her to become pregnant, she immediately fulfills the requirements despite warnings of grave consequences. True to his word, she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son. But another young woman involved in the ritual become pregnant as well and the two boys become inseparable friends, much to the queen’s dismay. Her desire to keep them apart will have a dire impact on all of their lives.

Not far away in the kingdom of Strongcliff, the king is busy bedding as many of his female subjects as humanly possible, sometimes two at a time. Stumbling through the castle one morning, still shaking off the cobwebs of the previous night’s adventures, he hears a beautiful voice singing in the bright sun. Drawn to the siren song, he calls to her but she flees back into her home. Never one to back down from a challenge, he knocks at her door later that evening. But she’s devised a surprise for the unsuspecting king…

And finally, in the kingdom of Highhills, the king spends most of his time obsessed with a rather odd pet. Meanwhile his daughter, Princess Violet, grows restless to marry, but the king is not yet ready to part with her. His pet’s untimely death inspires the king to concoct a bizarre tournament for the hand of his daughter. Assuming his challenge to be unsolvable, the king feels smug as suitor after suitor is turned away. But one lowly citizen may have the specific skills to foil the king’s clever plan.

Based loosely on Giambattista Basille’s book The Tale of Tales, Italian auteur and Cannes Film Festival royalty Matteo Garrone has crafted a hard-edged and darkly comic fairytale. The narrative bounces effortlessly between the three stories and the incredible cast (including Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones and John C. Reilly) all deliver fantastic performances. Not since THE PRINCESS BRIDE has such a spirited fantasy yarn been told with such gleeful charm. (Luke Mullen)

 

German Angst

German directors Jorg Buttgereit, Michal Kosakowski and Andreas Marschall have birthed this trio of ruminations on sex, fantasy and rage. Buttgereit, who found cult success with his 1987 film NEKROMANTIK, kicks things off with the first segment, FINAL GIRL. Leaning heavily on extreme closeups, Buttgereit paints a portrait of a lonely young girl going about her morning chores, particularly caring for her guinea pigs, while narrating her inner monologue for the audience. But a lone guinea pig is kept in another room, separate from the others, for some reason…

Kosakowski is responsible for the middle section, entitled MAKE A WISH. A young deaf-mute couple are enjoying a lazy day together exploring a rundown neighborhood. They enter an abandoned building where boy tells the girl the bloody but magical history of one of his family heirlooms. His story is interrupted when they’re discovered by a group of four angry extremists looking to pick a fight. The couple is helpless to fight back with their own strength, but the boy’s heirloom may hold the power to change things.

Marschall wraps things up with the final story, ALRAUNE. It takes its title from a novel based on the German folktale of a young girl born with no ability to feel love but is nonetheless obsessed with sex. Marschall’s film tells the story of a fashion photographer who finds himself searching chat rooms and the internet for women after a fight with his girlfriend. On a whim, he invites a chat partner to meet in real life. His night takes a turn when he mistakes a different girl for the one he was talking to and follows her to a mysterious club. What takes place behind the club door will haunt him long after he leaves.

Unsurprisingly given the filmmakers involved, German Angst pulls no punches. It kicks off with plenty of blood and shock and never lets up. While the first two segments are particularly brutal, it’s possibly the psychological horrors of the third segment that are the most terrifying and affecting. Beautifully filmed with impressive effects, the dark and gritty GERMAN ANGST truly gets under your skin. (Luke Mullen)

 

In Search of the Ultra-Sex

Science-fiction comedy of the XXX kind, IN SEARCH OF THE ULTRA-SEX is unlike ANY film you have EVER seen.

Somewhere above Earth, a group of astronauts watch in horror as a global pandemic fills EVERYONE on Earth with endless lust. Something must be done! As the astronauts desperately try to understand the reason behind this sudden illness, the horrifying truth is revealed: The sexual matrix of the Universe knowns as Ultra Sex has gone MISSING! Now the astronauts have one chance to discover exactly where the matrix has been taken to in order to save their beloved planet, while an endless orgy continues endlessly, threatening the sanity of all people on Earth.

Perhaps the most demented science-fiction film ever made, this is a passion project for creators Nicolas Charlet and Bruno Lavaine who, to mark the anniversary of Canal +, delved into the archives to create something quite unique.

Viewing OVER 2500 X-Rated films from 1974 to 1995, Charlet & Lavaine painstakingly assembled their own film by selecting the most inappropriate, amusing, outrageous and EXPLICIT scenes and dubbing them to fit their own carefully-constructed plot and twisted sense of humor. The end result is somewhere between the most brilliantly plotted porn film ever made and something you’d discover on a late night cable channel in an exotic and foreign land, designed to amuse and baffle in equal measure.

Filled with eye-popping scenes, fantastic jokes AND an unexpected and somewhat coherent plot, IN SEARCH OF THE ULTRA-SEX pushes the boundaries of what you think porn films can be. (Evrim Ersoy)

https://youtu.be/BNkJlS6D1CU