After more than a year and a half without a physical festival presence, the Independent Film Festival Boston (or IFFBoston) returns to Cambridge’s Brattle Theatre for a five-day edition of their normally-annual Fall Focus event. This is, of course, cause for celebration, but it’s made even better by the fact that this year’s line-up is one of the best we’ve seen over the course of our years attending the fest. Let us count the ways: You have new films from Wes Anderson, Sean Baker, Celine Sciamma Mike Mills, and Pedro Almodovar; there are award-winners from the lines of Berlin, Toronto, and Venice; screen-stealing performances from the likes of Kristen Stewart and Tilda Swinton; and you can laugh your ass off at the misadventures of Bobcat Goldthwait and Dana Gould, who will be in attendance at the festival for a Q&A. It’s enough to make a cinephile dissolve into a puddle of celluloid and sweat.
Before we start, a quick reminder: The Brattle requires either proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a recent negative test (taken at most 72 hours before the screening), so please have one of those on hand. And don’t be an asshole about it.
The French Dispatch
Wes Anderson’s lovely tribute to the New Yorker icons that influenced his writing and thinking as well as the French artists who helped develop his style kicks off the festival in a proper fashion. After the passing of their founder-and-editor, the staff of The French Dispatch, a subsection of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, decides to curate a selection of pieces that best honor their fallen leader’s ethos. It’s an awesome little anthology film, full of Anderson’s typical charming whimsy and gorgeous visuals, and we can’t think of a better way to inaugurate the Festival’s return to cinemas. Good luck getting tickets, though: apparently, it’s already sold out.
Wednesday, October 20 at 7:30 p.m. // Tickets
Red Rocket
Did anybody have “Simon Rex gets a whole bunch of Oscar buzz” on their 2021 bingo card? Well, we most definitely didn’t but, after catching Sean Baker’s excellent new film Red Rocket at NYFF a few weeks ago, we’re believing the hype (full review coming after the IFFBoston showing!). The former MTV VJ plays a shit-out-of-luck porn star who returns from L.A. to the small town in Texas that he grew up in to try and rebuild his life with his estranged wife and her mother, only to discover what he believes to be his ticket back into show business: a teenaged beauty working the counter at the local donut shop. Baker’s lush and gorgeous 35mm cinematography only enhances the crazy events on display — no one can quite capture urban decrepitude in all of its inglorious splendor like Baker — and Rex’s performance is one for the ages.
Thursday, October 21 @ 7:30 p.m. // Tickets
Spencer
You could call Pablo Larrain’s Spencer a spiritual sequel to his other quite successful portrait of emotional elite ennui, but we imagine that this particular film has more than enough distance from that one — say, an ocean’s worth of difference, if you will. Kristen Stewart has received rave after rave for her performance as Princess Diana in a film that eschews the typical trappings of the biopic to get to something deeper and meatier, as the Princess navigates a difficult Christmas with the Royal Family after her husband’s indiscretions have become public knowledge. Annulus Horribilus, indeed. We’re hyped to see this one, and, of course, you’re hyped to see this one: Hyped enough, in fact, that tickets are already sold out. Let’s hope you’re one of the lucky ones who have one already booked.
Friday, October 22 @ 6:30 p.m. // Tickets
Belfast
Kenneth Branagh’s beautiful greyscale tribute to his childhood home already took home the People’s Choice Award at this year’s TIFF, which means that it’s already on the way to a bevy of Oscar nominations and (most likely) a whole bunch of backlash, but we’re still endlessly curious about this one. Featuring a stacked cast including Jamie Dornan, Judi Dench, and Ciaran Hinds, Belfast looks like it’ll appropriately fall into the category of “modern artful nostalgia piece” as established by Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma. If nothing else, it looks beautiful and it’s only 97 minutes long. What do you have to lose?
Friday, October 22 @ 9:15 p.m. // Tickets
Memoria
Perhaps the most bizarre cinema-culture controversy of 2021, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria demands to be seen in a theater. Well, literally: distributor Neon is embarking on a never-ending roadshow of this film, about a woman (Tilda Swinton) who hears a bizarre noise while traveling through South America and can’t seem to get it out of her head, where it will play a single theater for a week before heading to another theater for a week, and so on and so on ad infinitum. Weerasethakul, director of the Palme-winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives has crafted a one-of-a-kind cinematic experience, and it’s a delight that IFFBoston can satisfy the curiosity of those interested in the film thanks to its release strategy even before it begins a Boston engagement, because who the hell knows when that will happen? We’re probably behind Boise but before Butte on the list.
Saturday, October 23 @ 12:30 p.m. // Tickets
Happening
Winner of the top prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Audrey Diwan’s Happening documents the trials and tribulations of a young university student in ’60s France as she deals with an unplanned pregnancy. For whatever reason, we haven’t heard too much about this one, but the enthusiastic praise out of Venice and other festivals has us quite excited to see what exactly this one has in store for us. Plus, that festival has a super esoteric and heterodox strategy when it comes to giving their awards — one only need to look at the fact that they gave fucking Joker the same honor back in 2019 — which makes it all the more fascinating and attractive in our eyes.
Saturday, October 23 @ 3:45 p.m. // Tickets
The Worst Person in the World
Say what you will about the final films in trilogies, but every once in a while you’ll get something special rather than disappointing. Such is the case with Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, which wraps up his trilogy of films that began with Reprise and continued with Oslo, August 31. The ravenous praise that this film, about a young woman whose mercurial ways and flakey habits define her existence and lead her into interesting situations, has received since it premiered back at Cannes is astounding, and we highly recommend revisiting whatever of Trier’s that you can before heading out to see it. Just don’t confuse him with Lars, because you might be in for an unexpectedly rough night.
Saturday, October 23 @ 6:15 p.m. // Tickets
Joy Ride
You know who’s funny? Bobcat Goldthwait and Dana Gould. Do you know what’s even funnier? Trapping these two comedians and semi-nemesis in a car together and forcing them to traverse the South, whose highways and byways they crawl along as they talk about comedy and life and the universe and everything in between — including the near-fatal car accident they got into the last time they tried to do this. Anything that these two do is guaranteed to be gut-busting, and what’s better is that both of them will be in attendance to make jokes and ridicule you at the Q&A. Bring good questions, leave your tomatoes at home.
Saturday, October 23 @ 9:15 p.m. // Tickets
Petite Maman
Look, we know that we weren’t the biggest fans of Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman back when we saw it earlier this year at TIFF, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t love it. This short fable is about a young girl who discovers, upon walking through the forest near her home, that she’s traveled back in time and that her new best friend that she’s met in the woods is, in fact, her mother as a young girl. If you liked Portrait of a Lady on Fire or Girlhood, you’ll probably have a ball and a half with this one, and you’ll most likely want to bring tissues, especially if you decide to stick around for the second feature. You’ll want some crepes, too.
Sunday, October 24 @ 2:30 p.m. // Tickets
C’mon C’mon
Mike Mills’ tender-hearted tale of the close relationship that forms between an uncle (Joaquin Phoenix) and his nephew (Woody Norman) after circumstances force them to travel the U.S. together is one of the loveliest films that you’ll see this year. We raved about it after we saw a screening at NYFF, and it’s sure to delight those who loved Beginners or 20th Century Women. You’ll be surprised by how quickly your cynicism fades away and how enchanted you’ll be by this lovely little picture, which is sure to get nominated for dozens of awards or whatever. So, in between crying jags, you can brag to your buddies about how you got to see this early.
Sunday, October 24 @ 5 p.m. // Tickets
Parallel Mothers
The closing night selection for the festival is also one of the most interesting, featuring a reunion between iconic Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and Penelope Cruz, whose work in this film it seems that people cannot stop talking about no matter how hard they may try. Sure, it may be one of those films where fate connects folks in bizarre ways — curse you, Innarutu for poisoning this well — but we’re thinking that Almodovar’s spin on things, in which two women from disparate backgrounds are brought together during a stay at a hospital’s maternity ward and how the relationship that forms between them changes them, is sure to be pretty compelling. We’ll be sad when this one ends: probably because the film will make us upset in some way, but also because another fantastic Fall weekend at the Brattle has come to an end.
Sunday, October 24 @ 8 p.m. // Tickets