THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO (Diego
Céspedes, Chile, 2025)
L’HOMME À LA VALISE (Chantal Akerman, Belgium,
1983)
MIRRORS No.3 (Christian Petzold, Germany, 2025)
PRIME MINISTER (Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe, 2025)
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| The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (Matías Catalan, Tamara Cortés) |
This year, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo won the Camera d’Or
at Cannes. A first feature from writer-director Diego Céspedes, it’s a
coming-of-age tale of Lidia (Tamara Cortés), a 12-year-old orphan who
lives among a drag queen community in an isolated, destitute mining
town in Chile’s Acatama Desert.
The transvestites run the local canteen (bar) where miners regularly
congregate to watch them perform. They find Lidia’s ‘mother’
Flamingo (Matías Catalán) particularly charismatic.
It’s 1982 and early days in the AIDS epidemic. Lidia is told there’s a
plague in the town, transmitted through the eyes - or the gazes - of
male and female lovers.
This mix of a misunderstood, deadly gay disease; homophobic miners
who can’t help being attracted to drag queens; and an exuberant,
unapologetic, queer ‘family’ community who dominate and disgust the
town, are the social tensions threatening to explode.
Céspedes (a guest at MIFF) creates a wholly believable world, greatly
aided by the actors, Angello Faccini’s atmospheric cinematography, the
arresting production design, and an impressive musical score from
Florencia Di Concilio.
It wobbles at times, unsure of some abrupt transitions from violence to
compassion and family empathy, but it’s an undeniably impressive first
feature.
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| L’homme à la valise (Jeffrey Kime and Chantel Akerman at a wordless breakfast) |
L’Homme à la valise was part of a Cinémathèque-like collection of 24
shorts and features from Chantel Akerman, and here, the writer-
director-actor returns to the domestic, daily-life-at-home scenario of
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, to make
this 61-minute, near wordless, knockabout comedy.
Playing herself, Akerman is trying to write a screenplay, but is
constantly disturbed and interrupted by Henri (Jeffrey Kime), a guest
in her small apartment. It’s Sartre’s “Hell is other people”, whether
she’s barricading herself in her bedroom, or banging senselessly on her
typewriter, or rustling paper to make Henri think she’s working, or
getting up earlier and earlier to avoid him at breakfast. Akerman gets
to channel Charlie Chaplin for an hour, and she does it with the same
effective drollery of the master.
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| Mirrors No.3 (Paula Beer) |
often more confusing than anything that happens in the film.
“Mellifluous”, “mysterious”, “enigmatic” have been used to describe a
film other reviewers consider too thin in plot to survive its 86-minute
length.
It’s true the tonal and abrupt narrative changes of much of Petzold’s
earlier work are muted here, in this story of a woman who survives a
car crash, is then taken in by a lonely woman, only to find herself
replacing her host’s dead daughter. Once again, Paula Beer is icily
charismatic playing the central character, and scarce as Petzold’s plot
may be, his restrained and clear-eyed direction is, as usual, gripping.
Prime Minister is a very serviceable documentary account of Jacinda
Ardern’s time as the New Zealand PM, making excellent use of Clarke
Gayford’s professionally shot home movie footage. This intimacy gives
a fresh view into Ardern’s well-known achievements, and her well-
known struggles, but for this viewer it’s worth the price of admission
to see the New Zealand TV footage of the protests outside Parliament
demonstrating against her handling of Covid and the economy. Protests
that eventually prompted her resignation. There are very disturbing
similarities with the QAnon nutters who attacked the Capital in the
USA.
Dame Jacinda Ardern has been living in Cambridge, Boston for the past
two years.
