VIFF: Kinky sex, Colonialism and Signage

Maybe it was because I was still suffering from the hangover from the Poetry is Dead magazine launch the night before, but when the plot of Leap Year went the direction of "naked with a butcher knife" it had me searching for the exit sign. Sometimes I think the marketing people at the festival should go with “VIFF: some things you can’t un-see”. Yeesh.

The plot of the film is simple. A woman lives in a small apartment. She is crossing off the days on her calendar, counting down until February 29^th. She is a writer, who works from home and spends the rest of her time talking to family on the phone, lying about how her life is full of love and friendship. In the evenings, she goes to bars and seduces men, bringing them home for chilling, emotionless sex. She finally meets her match, though, in the form of a moustached sadist who systematically degrades her then brings her cold beer and asks her about her life. What made this film challenging was the total lack of emotion. You feel nothing for any of the characters. And why is it that watching someone perform the most mundane tasks (cleaning the fridge, eating dinner, typing) so incredibly depressing? Perhaps it’s because the passage of time becomes all the more apparent.

In the evening, I saw two short films. The first was The Indian Boundary Line, in which the filmmaker Thomas Comerford follows the Indian Boundary line between the United States and Indian territory (now Rogers Ave in Chicago), which came about due to a treaty signed in 1816. This film was beautiful: but in a haunting way. The camera follows the road, stopping in parks and other urban spaces along the way. There is something strange about seeing urban spaces devoid of people. Swings in a playground without any children, fields without baseball, it gave me the feeling of 4pm on a Sunday afternoon – a kind of non-time between important events, a time for quiet, and if you’re not careful, a time for despair.

The second of short, and my favorite film of the day, was Get Out of the Car by Thom Andersen. This film also tracks urban spaces, but this time in the form of old signs in Los Angeles. I’ve always loved old signs. It was like this film was made for me. Old billboards, signs attached to chain link fences, graffiti, and many, many murals of Jesus. Again, the sadness crept it. Here’s the decay, here’s all the ephemera of capitalism stripped down, forgotten. Buy this, buy that, it will only rot and rust, just like the signs that advertise it. Also, have I lived in Vancouver too long or is there something grim about sunshine? The California glare makes me want to hide in a closet. It’s so relentless! The soundtrack of this film was great too, lots of old 60s tunes. Wonderful.