Our third round-up of films from Glasgow Film Festival takes in films from the Czech Republic, Chile, and Turkey. Their narratives are equally varied as we get murderous couples, anti-colonialist resistance through witchcraft, and a particularly fraught day in the life of a lawyer.
We’ll forever be fascinated by true crime stories, particularly when they’re depicted at an international remove (it might not be so compelling to watch, say, Fred and Rose West carry out their atrocities onscreen). Czech filmmaker Petr Hátle has boldly chosen to stay close to home with Mr. and Mrs. Stodola (Czech Republic, Slovakia/ 2023/ 107 mins), based on the crimes of Jaroslav and Dana Stodola (Jan Hájek and Lucie Žáčková), who targeted the elderly around the small village they lived with Jaroslav’s mother in the early 2000s. Sadly, the decision to make the film about such subject matter is the boldest choice in the whole project.
Hátle’s film rather falls between two stools. He chooses not to show the murders in any real details, preferring to depict the planning and the aftermath. Yet neither does he delve into the psychology of the couple in any compelling way. The performances keep it watchable, particularly Žáčková as the manipulative, mercurial Dana, but it lacks real bite. Compared to something like Justin Kurzel‘s Snowtown, or Ben Young‘s Hounds of Love, which are unflinching and relentless in their treatment of true-life cases, Mr. and Mrs. Stodola feels toothless and a little squeamish. 2/5
Christopher Murray’s ultra-restrained anti-colonial fable Sorcery (Mexico, German, Chile/ 2023/ 100 mins) is a witchy coming of age tale anchored by a performance of extraordinary control by young Valentina Véliz Caileo. She plays Rosa Raín, a Christian convert on the Chilean island of Chiloé in 1880. When her father is killed by two dogs belonging to her German settler employer, Stefan (Sebastian Hülk) in an act of vengeance, she takes up with gruff indigenous Indian Mateo (Daniel Antivilo) who turns out to lead a resistance group against the colonisers. Their chief weapon against the settlers; native magic, to which Rosa proves herself adept.
Sorcery is pure atmosphere, for better or worse. Those expecting a straight, cathartic revenge story may feel short changed. Everything about Murray’s film is so grounded as to be as rooted to the soil as the Huilliche indians. María Secco‘s earthy cinematography is occasionally desaturated to the point of seeming black and white. The magical practices are almost mundane, an extension of the natural world rather than something distinct from it. It takes a while to attune to the film’s slow rhythms, and there is little in the way of justice for the wronged Rosa. For this philosophically-minded fable there is something greater to be gained. But there is beauty amid the palpable outrage, and Valentina Véliz Caileo gives an immensely compelling and subtle performance. 3/5
Courtroom dramas tend to be narrative driven, but a few films lately have taken the format in a more intimate direction. Saint Omer focused not so much on a legal definition of guilt as on the motivations behind a young mother’s crime. Now Hesitation Wound (Selman Nacar/ Turkey, France, Romania, Spain/ 2023/ 84 mins) centres on one day in the professional and personal life of Canan (Tülin Özen, acting with the tension of someone perpetually in that split second before a rollercoaster drops), as she enters the final day of the murder trial of her client (Oğulcan Arman Uslu) while tussling with her sister (Gulcin Kultur Sahin) over the decision to turn off the life support of their mother who has been diagnosed as brain dead.
In its own quiet way, Hesitation Wound is an exercise in pure stress, stuffed into the tightest of runtime like a malevolent jack in the box. A relentless character study that speaks volumes of Canan’s personality and values through the context of a fraught 24 hours, it’s all contained in the clenched jaw, clipped speech, and frequent ulcerous winces of the exceptional Özen. As a snapshot of a fraught day in a life that, it’s implied, rarely approaches stasis, it’s immaculately handled by Selman Nacar, but narratively there’s just a hint of frustration that some of the threads of Canan’s professional life remain unresolved. But that is clearly the point. 4/5
All films screened as part of Glasgow Film Festival