NYFF Dispatch 3: We’re Halfway There
On this weekend's protests and premieres, including Queer, The Room Next Door, and The Friend
We’ve reached the midpoint of this year’s New York Film Festival, which was marked by Friday night’s US premiere of The Room Next Door. The film was shown to the press that morning, with interest in Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature so high that quite a few people were turned away after reaching capacity. On a lunch break between screenings, I practically bumped into Tilda Swinton and John Turturro as they headed into one of the Lincoln Center’s cafés. There were a few autograph hounds, but the actors were gracious enough to make a few signatures.
Even though the festival itself has another week to go, Friday marked the end of most of the NYFF press & industry screenings. There are no more triple or quadruple feature gauntlets in the Walter Reade Theater. Many of the critics and curators who flew in from out of town left this weekend. Even though I still have a handful of movies to see, Friday’s double bill of The Room Next Door and Queer felt like the end of summer camp, if summer camp involved watching a bunch of artsy movies. I estimate there are about 400 people with press or industry accreditations. Faces became familiar, and friends were made while waiting in line. As I transition back into living life as a person who isn’t spending hours in a cinema every day, I wonder if it is possible to have two post festival depressions: the one for the press festival, then the one for the public.
While many films at the festival break the boundaries of cinema, disruption was not limited to the silver screen. There were two separate protests this weekend. At a screening of Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, representatives from Extinction Rebellion warned attendees that there is “no film on a dead planet.” The movie was paused as the protesters were escorted out of the theater, and resumed without further incident.
During a Q&A for The Room Next Door, pro-Palestinian activists began denouncing the festival’s association with Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is alleged to facilitate illegal settlements in the West Bank. (An open letter from NYFF filmmakers goes into detail.) Reportedly, some audience members screamed incredibly nasty things, but per a video shared on Twitter, Almodóvar invited a protester to deliver her message on stage and offered his microphone. While that was not allowed to happen, the talent on stage made space for the protester to speak from the stands. Tilda Swinton defended the right for protestors to make people uncomfortable, tying it to the film’s themes: “we are all in the room next door to Syria, to Beirut, to Gaza….” Almodóvar called on “all the strong powers who can veto in the UN to put an end to [the situation in Gaza], because unfortunately a movie is never enough.”
Something tells me that the Lincoln Center will not be sharing video of that Q&A.
Criterion Closet Update
Yesterday I checked in on the queue situation for the mobile Criterion Closet, and it was just as long as last weekend! Inside the closet, you get to film a three-minute video of yourself selecting some movies, the opportunity to purchase the Blu-Rays at a discount, and a nifty tote bag. Around 3:30 PM, someone at the front of the line told me he had been there since 9:15 AM. But he made it in!
I spotted Peter Becker, the president of the Criterion Collection, hyping up the folks in the back of the line. He let people know that the line was moving faster, since the nicer weather meant less “outerwear management,” and thanked everyone for being there. He found it “very special and very moving” to see so many people wanting to engage with Criterion. As a home video business, there aren’t many opportunities to do so. One gentle heckler asked “when are you gonna put out a 4K of Brazil?”
Becker was tailed by a journalist and photographer for the New York Times, so there’s gonna be an article about the closet pretty soon. But Buttered Popcorn is here to deliver an early scoop 😅
Anyways, here are remarks on the movies that premiered at the festival this weekend! Some heavy hitters and hot takes!
Queer
Opens November 27 in limited release.
Over the opening credits, we hear Sinéad O’Connor sing a cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies.” “What else should I say? Everyone is gay,” could be an appropriate thesis statement for Luca Guadagnino’s period drama, an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' novel Queer. The next anachronistic needle drop, during which Daniel Craig’s wandering expat first lays eyes on the man who will emotionally ruin his life, is “Come as You Are.” Is this a stealth Nirvana jukebox movie? I wondered, but there’s only one other track from the band on the soundtrack.
Set in the years immediately following World War II across various Latin locales (but entirely, and obviously, filmed at Cinecittà Studios in Rome), Queer follows the exploits of Bill Lee (Craig). He drifts through Mexico City in a haze of heroin and hookups as he searches for yagé, a drug rumored to enable telepathy. Eventually, he enters a tortured relationship with Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), a preppy young veteran so clean-cut I thought for a moment he would turn out to be an undercover CIA agent.
Burroughs’ novel was famously published in unfinished form, and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes fills in the gaps to fully realize the narrative. I have not read the book, and speaking with fellow attendees, it seems many of us unfamiliar with Burroughs’ work found this movie to be borderline incoherent and uninteresting. It’s less of an adaptation of a novel than an analysis of it. The film doesn’t stand on its own, lacking the intensity of Happy Together or the immersive vibes of Stars at Noon, to name other tortured romances about expatriates in Latin America. I eventually felt the same existential malaise as Bill: What am I doing here?
The score, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, is wonderful. There’s a clarinet-driven theme that sounds very lovely and sweet and functions as a sort of love theme. But a percussive rattle, something like the sound of an express subway racing past you, disjoints the music. Even in a bad movie, these guys never miss.
Guadagnino’s prior movie, the sensational Challengers, is a sexy movie without any actual sex. Queer is the inverse, with unapologetically explicit moments of physical intimacy, but there’s no sensuality. To be fair, the hollowness of Bill’s encounters is sort of the point. If you want to see Daniel Craig down bad, you’ll get plenty of that, and there are some striking images, particularly during a psychedelic pas de deux between Bill and Eugene in the Peruvian jungle. But you’ll also get plenty of indulgent nonsense. There’s a brief shot toward the end of the movie showing a snake eating its own tail. It is a tell from Guadagnino: his movie is eating its own ass.
★★☆☆☆
Drinking the movie: as one may expect, there is a lot of tequila, mezcal, and beer consumed. At one point, Daniel Craig is seen drinking a martini, and one has to wonder whether it was shaken or stirred.
The Room Next Door
Opens December 20 in limited release.
It took fifty years for Pedro Almodóvar to make his first English-language feature film, and it is a very good one. Based on a novel by Sigrid Nunez, this affecting drama that touches on coming to terms with mortality (timeless!) and making sense of the impending climate catastrophe (timely!). The Spanish director has long since moved on from the exuberant, campy style of his best-known work. But the classic Almodóvar hallmarks remain: female protagonists, immaculately designed homes, an Alberto Iglesias score, the color red.
Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton make for a formidable pair, as old friends brought back together after a strange request. John Turturro shows up for about ten minutes to flirt with Moore and rant about the climate crisis, which is super fun. The delivery of dialogue can feel rather stilted, but Spanish-speaking friends of mine have said that Almodóvar’s movies in his native language are similar.
Swinton wears many great outfits, but I particularly need the sweater she wears during an all-night movie marathon. She and Moore watch Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances, Max Ophüls’ Letter from an Unknown Woman, and John Huston’s adaptation of The Dead. That James Joyce story is quoted multiple times in the movie. Reading or watching it could be good prep for The Room Next Door.
If you’ve seen this movie, you’re probably wondering if it’s possible to stay in the beautiful, brutalist upstate home that Moore and Swinton rent for a month. Unfortunately, Casa Szoke is an hour outside of Madrid, and appears to be a private residence. It is much easier to visit the film’s Manhattan locations. The very first scene is at the Rizzoli bookstore next to Madison Square Park, and one scene was filmed in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall, a tribute from Almodóvar to NYFF.
★★★★☆
The Friend
Currently seeking distribution.
The lesser of the two Sigrid Nunez adaptations to play at NYFF this year. Naomi Watts stars as Iris, the best friend (and former lover) of Bill Murray’s Walter, a successful author and womanizer who commits suicide early in the film. His beloved Great Dane, Apollo is bequeathed/forced on Iris, and in her cutely cramped West Village apartment, woman and dog help each other grieve their deceased beloved. The more complex themes of the original novel are collapsed into rote sentimentality. Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s movie is pretty solid most of the time, though very basic in terms of direction. But the film collapses in its last quarter, and two-hour length becomes interminable. It’s one of those “writers writing about writers” movies that makes all the characters come off as annoying. But their lifestyle is enviable, with everyone living in a luxury high-rise, a rent-controlled apartment in a prime part of downtown, of a Brooklyn Heights brownstone. This would have been a solid Nancy Meyers movie!
Stereophonic heads will recognize Sarah Pidgeon, who has a significant supporting role in this film as Walter’s adult daughter and Iris’ confidant. She and Watts have great chemistry; there were multiple times where I thought they were going to kiss.
★★½☆☆
On Friday, I ran into Bing, the canine actor who plays Apollo. Best celeb sighting of the fest! The Friend is kind of a bad movie, but Bing is a very good boy. (There was a New Yorker piece a few months ago about this film’s animal trainer, if you want to know more about that.)
This post was getting very long so I split it up into two. More movie takes below:
