Universal Language

The universal language is Farsi, with a little French thrown in. It’s spoken in the movie’s two settings Montreal and Winnipeg. But the audience is kept on its toes by characters who should be in one city appearing in the other.

If you’re a fan of straightforward narrative, Universal Language won’t be your cup of tea. There are a couple subplots to cling to. One a large denomination bill found by two children frozen into heavy ice. And there’s a guy from Montreal heading home to look up his mother.

More prominent is a series of odd scenes that have little to do with either of those stories. Like the Winnipeg tour guy who takes his group to a bland residential building and advises that the residents include an administrative assistant and a fax operator. Or the woman who boards a bus in Montreal headed from Winnipeg and finds the seat next to her has been purchased for a turkey. A live Turkey. Turkeys in fact have a prominent role in Universal Language. Who knows?

I thought of this as Wes Anderson in Farsi. It’s odd, eccentric and unpredictable. But it’s also fun and interesting.

(A Special Jury Prize for Cinematography was awarded to Isabelle Stochtchenko for her work in Universal Language.)

Dahomey

Twenty-six pieces of art from the African Kingdom of Dahomey are being transported from France back to Africa, to what is now the Kingdom of Benin. This is stolen art, plundered by colonialists. There’s royal statues and decorative, spiritual pieces.

The documentary starts with the process. The pieces are secured, crated and transported. They make the journey by air and then we watch as they are “freed” back in their homeland.

For me the most compelling part of the movie was the debate among students in Benin about the artifacts, but in a larger sense about colonialism. There are tears of joy as part of a people’s history is returned to them. But equally tears of rage, 26 artifacts being returned out of an estimated 7,000 that were plundered.

There is an eerie side to the movie as we hear from the statues themselves, speaking in total darkness from inside their crates, wondering, not unlike some of the students, about their identity.

The documentary is a bit slow paced but it is meaningful and provocative. I don’t think you can watch and then go see artworks in a museum that were made in colonized or indigenous lands without thinking about where those works legitimately belong.

Misericordia

The baker in a small French village dies. A former employee comes back for the funeral, which draws the appreciation of the baker’s wife and the ire of the baker’s son.  These three are joined by the village priest and a heavy-set disheveled dude named Walter.

Why are the former employee and the son jealous of each other’s relationship with Walter? Why does the son hate the former employee? What was the latter’s relationship to the baker?

All of these relationships are mysteries that unravel during the course of the movie. But not entirely. It is never completely clear who is lying and who is covering up. We also are left with questions about who is sleeping with who and are these guys gay or straight.

There are some beautiful scenes in the French countryside and some very dark bedroom scenes (not sex just uncomfortable conversations). I found it pretty suspenseful albeit a head scratcher.

-0-

MFF24 — Stories, Laughs and Truths, Pt. 2