Eat_yourself

Scary Mother is a film about how an authors writing process begins to unravel her daily life. Manana, a wife and mother of three, begins to distance herself from her family as she's writing a conclusion to what seems to be her most personal fiction novel to date. When the plot of her novel is revealed to her family they seem to think it is too close to reality and is in fact a scathing attack on their domestic life together. Manana then begins to relate to and resemble the protagonist of her novel and finds herself wanting to leave her family in order to finish the book. She begins ranting about myths, and we never really know if she is serious or not, or just trying to put herself in her characters shoes.

The plot of the film itself doesn't really deviate much from this concept up until the end of the film. Obviously because of this, its not a film for everyone, however, if it sounds like your cup of tea, I'd recommend it.

The strengths in Scary Mother are abundant. The cinematography is stellar, presenting a bleak world with occasional bursts of color, something which I've seen many other films attempt but fail. Going hand in hand with this is some dark, dreary and moody set designs. A lot of shots you can visualize working well as a painting or something plucked from a Lynch film. The sound design pays a lot of attention to detail and really helps in having a hypnotizing effect on the audience. Draping these aspects of the film over its unconventional plot gives an uncertain blend. At points I was expecting it to become a thriller or horror, but it never really floats into those genres, just toys with them.

Surprisingly I found this film reminding me a lot of Antonioni's Red Desert, a psychological drama that focuses strongly on atmosphere. A film not really rooted in any sort of strong or conventional plot or genre. Similar to Red Desert, it contains a 'red room' which stands out against the desaturated colors seen in the majority of the film.

Lots of unanswered questions here when the film ends. The last scene contained a lot of information which was probably too much to decipher upon first viewing. I don't understand exactly what was going on. This is not a criticism however, because now I have an urge to see the film again. This seems to be a film that will reveal itself over time. I thoroughly enjoy it.

I saw this film at the Perth Revelation film festival without knowing much about it beforehand. It is probably also helpful to know before you watch it is that this film contains no dialog at all.

Archeo was an extremely impressive film - but only in some ways. The story basically follows three characters wondering around and trying to survive in a desolate landscape. A woman, a man, and a boy, it's unclear what their relationship is as they interact very strangely, but perhaps they could be a sort of family.

The standout aspect of this film is definitely it's visual style. The cinematography is flawless and really well done. It is set in a post-apocalyptic barren world, and it manages to pull it off very impressively. The cinematography sometimes reminded me of Tarkovsky the way the charterers move around as if their part of a visual painting - for example there is a great scene where water flows very slowly through the cracks of a dried up mud surface animating the whole image while 'the woman' rubs her face and hand through it as if she's painting it. The atmosphere is very low key European-long shot type of style, it's quite dark and relentless, making us feel like voyeurs into this strange world.

But don't expect much of a storyline happening here. I had to think about what frustrated me about this film, and it's simply the lack of progression. Between the start and end of the film, not much has actually happened. Between the three characters we barely have learned anything about them, and they haven't really been through anything interesting or even something to warrant a feature film about. The shots were also lacking progression. I'm a huge fan of long shots but the main problem here is that nothing much happens in the context of these long shots, everything is established in the first few seconds of the shot and the rest is just frustrating because nothing else happens, which means your waiting several minutes for the shot to finish because most of the time nothing else is going to happen, but you really have to watch the film to understand what I mean.

Overall this film is original, and I would recommend it. Everything works on a technical level - the editing, cinematography, music, acting, style, concept - all great work to be proud of. I just wish the storyline was a bit less mundane, especially for such a high-concept film.

***Spoilers below***

I got the idea this film was based sometime in the future, due to the clothes looking factory-made, there is also what I though was the wing of a plane towards the end. Perhaps this film takes place after society has fallen apart and humans have reverted back to our Darwinian instincts, a world where language is no longer used. Perhaps living like this way might be so far removed from modern day humans but it also seems to bring them closer and work as a part of nature.