Toronto: Three Under the Radar Films at TIFF

A festival report on Luis Ortega's killer biopic "El Angel," the coming-of-age film "The Fireflies are Gone" & Markus Schleinzer's "Angelo."
Dan Sallitt

Angelo

Luis Ortega’s El Angel (2018), an Argentinian biopic of 70s pretty-boy serial killer Carlos Puch, establishes its baseline tone in its first scene, in which Puch (Lorenzo Ferro) plays an LP in a house he has broken into, and Ortega amplifies the song Reservoir Dogs-style as Puch dances under the credits. The film sticks with this energetic, amoral agenda, and manages it pretty well from a craft perspective; along the way it shows a fair amount of intelligence and psychological insight that sometimes coexists awkwardly with its wish to entertain. Puch hooks up with a family of thieves that includes his classmate Ramon (Chino Darin, Ricardo’s son) and enjoys his introduction to firearms so much that the family is unwittingly dragged along with him into the world of homicide. Puch tends to shoot when surprised or irritated, and afterwards isn’t overly sensitive to consequences: the character retains an odd innocence for a psychopath. Interestingly, Ortega observes several of the deaths in the film with more attention and empathy than Puch can show, though on the whole the director is happy to implicate himself in Puch’s enthusiasm. Without ever telling us anything concrete about the sex lives of Puch and his cohort, Ortega plays up Puch’s androgynous appeal and has the other male characters react appreciatively to it; and Puch’s role in the gang is inflected by an interesting passivity that evokes the movie archetype of the gun moll. None of the film’s more intriguing undertones are ever allowed to develop into themes or to challenge its commercial mandate, and there’s no indication that Ortega wanted to give us more than he did.

***

The Quebecois coming-of-age film The Fireflies Are Gone (2018) is, at the least, distinguished by the refusal of its protagonist Léo (Karelle Tremblay, very good indeed) to come of age in any usual way. The film starts with an awkward dinner scene that presents generational conflict too baldly, but finds its legs when Léo is drawn to the taciturn and significantly older Steve (Pierre-Luc Brilliant, also good), a guitar teacher living in his mother’s basement. (The film is worth seeing if only for the lovely low-key scene in which writer-director Sébastien Pilote actually addresses the issue of whether this relationship will be romantic or platonic, instead of sweeping it under the carpet.) Léo says at one point, “I’m full of hate, I’m always angry,” and although Pilote mostly keeps these emotions at a low simmer behind her winsome exterior, he commits her to nothing, gives her no aspirations, and leaves her standing resolutely apart even from the few human beings she can enjoy. A surprising number of plotless scenes exist only to show Léo withdrawn behind sunglasses, inscrutable, soothed but not transformed by Steve’s companionship. Fireflies unfortunately hits too many familiar marks as it manufactures a few crises to create a recognizable story arc. But Léo finally deviates from our last-act expectations and fades away like Lee Marvin in Point Blank, leaving her town to muddle on without her.

***

Austrian director Markus Schleinzer, whose brilliant debut Michael (2011) managed to alienate much of the film world with his matter-of-fact depiction of pedophilia, has followed up with the Toronto premiere Angelo (2018), the coldest and most remote film I can recall seeing. A young African boy (played by a succession of actors) is taken to Europe and raised by royalty as a “court Moor,” partly an accepted member of the court and partly a source of entertainment. Schleinzer tracks the boy through several phases of his life, as he is transferred to a German Kaiser (Lukas Miko), is eventually given his freedom, and arrives at old age as a music instructor. At no point do we get a glimpse of the inner Angelo: his adulthood is masked by the theatrical roles that he is trained to perform; and Schleinzer withholds Angelo’s voice during the few opportunities for insight that come along. (The Kaiser is given to tortured philosophizing that he wonders if Angelo is capable of understanding, and the viewer too can have no idea whether Angelo understands.) The narrative continues beyond the end of Angelo’s life, at which point we learn that, for better or worse, Angelo’s blankness is necessary to enable the film’s terrifyingly bleak conclusion. I can’t say I liked the film and am not even sure I admire it, but I don’t expect to forget it.

Don't miss our latest features and interviews.

Sign up for the Notebook Weekly Edit newsletter.

Tags

Festival CoverageTIFFTIFF 2018Luis OrtegaSébastien PiloteMarkus Schleinzer
0
Gelieve aanmelden om een nieuwe reactie toe te voegen.

PREVIOUS FEATURES

@mubinotebook
Notebook is a daily, international film publication. Our mission is to guide film lovers searching, lost or adrift in an overwhelming sea of content. We offer text, images, sounds and video as critical maps, passways and illuminations to the worlds of contemporary and classic film. Notebook is a MUBI publication.

Contact

If you're interested in contributing to Notebook, please see our pitching guidelines. For all other inquiries, contact the editorial team.