reviews

VIFF 2024 Review: Paying For It

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Emily Le and Dan Beirne play a couple who try open love and go in unorthodox directions in the oddball romance Paying For It.

I first took an interest to Paying For It knowing it’s directed by Sook-Yin Lee. I had no clue of what to expect. Boy was I in for a surprise!

Chester Brown and Sonny Lee are a Toronto couple in a tough situation. They’ve had a romantic relationship together for years and do a lot together, but they haven’t had sex in a long time. Both Chester and Sonny come from two different worlds in the arts. Sonny is a video jockey on the music channel Max Music and Chester is an illustrator/author of cartoon books that detail his personal life. Sonny has a few friends at her place of work while Chester frequently meets with his work colleagues from the same writing community and has a close friendship bond with them. Sonny has a lot of success but Chester is struggling to make a name for himself. Chester is quite introverted and keeps to his circle while Sonny’s not afraid to meet new people.

Sonny recommends they try open love. Maybe they were or weren’t meant for each other and maybe they need time away to figure it out. Sonny being famous on national television has no problem finding other men. Chester on the other hand struggles. His author friends warn him jealousy will sink in pretty soon. Chester does become frustrated how Sonny is able to find many a nightly partner. It even reflects in his illustrations. Chester tries an unorthodox route advised from one of his writer friends: prostitutes. Besides, he’s given up on romantic love.

Over time, both find a lot of pleasure from what they get into but they struggle to find the one. Every other man Sonny hitches up with, he’s a great passionate lover but they’re not as fun as Chester and they don’t relate to her as well. Also at work, she learns one of her female colleagues is attracted to her. Meanwhile each prostitute and escort Chester gets involved with involves something complicating or some kind of discomfort. Many are willing to give Chester what he wants that night but most of them completely back off of any commitment. Some even have demands of their own. Despite it all, Chester is finding a quality in this he feels is missing in monogamy.

Simultaneously, both have difficulties and challenges at their own jobs. Sonny had no problem being a VJ while the alternative rock wave of the 90’s was riding high, but the wave has become a ripple and in came the tsunami of boy bands and other teenpop acts Sonny does not like introducing at all. Over time, Chester and his friends question about what’s going on with his many hook-ups and it affects the art for his latest literature. Especially since Chester hasn’t found ‘the one’ and it’s frustrating for him.

Then things change over time. Chester’s writing career and the careers of his writer-colleagues get a boost. Chester also spends the night with an escort who’s her own madam and it changes his life. Sonny, on the other hand, won’t be silent about the frustration with her job and her life, even on live TV. That eventually leads her to be dropped form Max Music. The two eventually reunite during a tragic moment. The death of her dog. It’s as they mourn together they learn they had something so special, no new love of theirs can replace that, even though they have to move on.

The film is about this complicated thing called love. I’m sure a lot of you look at the situation in your relationships and find yourselves asking why can’t we just love? Why do we have to make it complicated? This film itself is about that human fallibility of making love more complicated than it should. In this case, it’s not just creating the freedom of an open relationship but also the types of people both of them date during that time. Then there’s the mix of the two professions that are similar that they’re both in art or entertainment, but very different. Then there’s the talking with friends. The people they most trust to confide into and divulge their personal feelings. Then there are the changes in their lives. Then there are human idiocies and their attitudes. All that is what makes love more complicated than it should be.

Basically this is a story about a relationship that was doomed to end. Chester and Sonny are close, but complicated. The expired birth control should send that message. Eventually Chester and Sonny grew as different people and learned in the end, they were best as friends. Chester may have found a new love with an escort who’s her own madam but his relationship with Sonny made clear he’ll never have a closeness with another that’s the same. Sonny may have found men that were better at making love, but she learned they all made lousy partners. It was Chester who had no problem with her squirt gun or her dog or any of her other oddities. The ending gave a message I have seen often enough where two in a relationship couldn’t succeed as a couple but they could succeed as soul mates.

The film does give a lot of humor and in a lot of ways is somewhat biographical of both Brown and Lee. For those that remember MuchMusic during the 80’s and 90’s, you will remember Sook-Yin Lee as one of the VJ’s in the 1990’s. Yep, Canadian Generation Xer’s like me and early Millennials will have fond memories of her. Those of us who remember her from that and see the film will see the humor in how what’s happening in the film mirrors her own life and will laugh at the humor involved. Those who have read the book Paying For It will know that Brown and Lee were romantically linked and it detailed the complications. The film does some changes with the dates as it has the film taking place as Sonny’s career is bustling while Brown’s is struggling. In real life, Brown started his relationship with Sook-Yin in 1992, before she was signed onto MuchMusic and the relationship ended in 1996 just shortly as Sook-Yin’s MuchMusic fame took off.

This is a great alternative comedy from director Sook Yin-Lee. It is a very personal story to her and she’s able to show the comedy in it in this story she co-wrote with writer Joanne Sarazen. She’s also able to make some of the changes in chronology work for the flow of the film. There were some elements of shock in the film, but the story and settings made the shock humor work. Emily Le is great as Sonny Lee. She’s great at doing the comically side of the story as well as some of the more serious moments. She may not be Sook-Yin’s twin as far as personality goes but she knows how to do it well. Dan Beirne was also great as Chester Brown. I myself never knew Chester or read his works so I’m judging his performance for how well Dan did his role. Beirne was very good at playing an introvert engaging in a sexual activity most introverts wouldn’t normally try and it changes him. His awkward traits made the character and the story. The addition of the other supporting characters like Chester’s writer friends or Sonny’s ‘other men’ also added to the storytelling and the comedy of the film.

Paying For It isn’t just a sex comedy full of sex humor and some shock humor. It’s also quite a smart comedy about a couple that could no longer be but have a special bond. It’s even a comedy that tells about our own idiocies when it comes to love.

2023 Oscars Best Picture Review: The Zone Of Interest

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Sandra Huller plays the wife of a top Nazi in Auschwitz in the haunting The Zone Of Interest.

It would be naturally impulsive to dismiss The Zone Of Interest as ‘another Holocaust film.’ If you watch it, you will see it’s about more than just the Holocaust.

Many people will say that Holocaust films have done countless times before. Even if it is true, there are many angles one can see the Holocaust. This is a story of a different kind. There are a lot of things that will remind people of certain overlooked aspects of the Holocaust that will also disgust them further. First is the Höss’ house built just outside the walls of Auschwitz. I don’t know if there were ever houses built just outside the walls of Auschwitz, but having such in the film is very representative of the two worlds of Germany in World War II. There were the Nazis who had their day in the sun at the time and the Jews and other people Hitler deemed inferior being killed, tortured and even made slaves for the high-ranking Nazis.

Second is the Nazis lived very comfortably. What you see in the film is the Hoss family living their daily home life like a common family. You also see General Hoss following his genocidal Nazi orders and planning out methods and arrangements of the deaths of millions as your common “business as usual.” Seeing that in the film will bring back your feelings of disgust seeing people live “the good life” at the cost of human torture. Seeing how the Höss family sleeps comfortably while the sounds of gunshots and screaming coming from the behind the walls shows how close but far apart those two Germanys were. Even seeing how Hoss and the Nazis treat their genocidal plans to look like a simple day at the office shows the insensitivity at the time and how the Nazis felt that’s how it should be. Making all this destruction of a continent and the planning for genocide look like simplicity is all it’ll take to want to infuriate you.

Additional scenes include the train coming in and out of Auschwitz to drop new prisoners off, the smoke coming from the camp’s gas ovens and crematoriums, and the Höss’ ordering the prisoners they use as slaves around will add to your anger. We forget that the Nazis intended for most prisoners to be killed and a small percent to be used as slaves. Even seeing Hedwig threaten one of her servants to have her gassed will remind you of how remorseless they were.

Despite the Höss family representing the comfortable live from the torture of the War, there are signs of humanity still happening. The most notable is the two scenes of the Polish girl sneaking out and giving food for the prisoners to eat. It’s a reminder that even in the times of the worst of human activity, the values of humanity still existed. They were often hidden or done so at the risk of one’s life, but they did make themselves present at that time.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH: Another thing that will make some people made is that the film doesn’t have an ending with the Hoss’ and all the other Nazis get their day of reckoning. That’s frequently the case in Holocaust movies and that’s normally the ending we want in such a movie. Even though the ending of the Nazis getting a brutal defeat, there are signs on Rudolf that their comeuppance is looming. That the separate worlds of the Nazis living the good life and the torture at Auschwitz will collide. The first scene is when Rudolf and the children are swimming in the river. Soon they’re dirtied by the flow of bones and ash thrown from the camp into the river. Another sign comes when Rudolf gets a female prisoner to perform a favor of a fellatio on him. The third being right after Rudolf speaks to Hedwig after a phone call in Berlin and he gets sick in the empty hallways. Then as it fast forwards to the present where the cleaning women in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum clean the gas ovens and the windows of displays, that scene shows the fate Rudolf sealed for himself. A fate of an executed criminal after the war ends and a name that will live in infamy.

Top respect should go to director/writer Jonathan Glazer. The film is based on a 2014 novel of the same title. Interestingly, the novel features the first half of an unnamed Nazi meant to mirror the life of Hoss and his family. In the second half, it’s the aftermath set in 1948. Here it appears the film is based completely on the first half. Nevertheless, it is a telling tale of a Nazi and his family living a normal daily life, making his work look like a typical day at the office and a feud between him and Hedwig about his promotion to Berlin look like a common husband/wife feud. Also raising eyebrows is how it mirrored Hoss’ life well from fathering five children, the last born in 1943, his orchestration in Auschwitz and even the months he was away in Berlin. It’s obvious in doing so, Glazer wanted to send a message about how people, especially the Nazis, can live next door to the evil they’ve created and live comfortably. He does an excellent job in doing that with the story and the various camera effects.

One thing about the acting is it’s very low-key compared to most of the acting in the other Best Picture nominees. The standout of this film is the storytelling. Nevertheless, the acting in the film is still very good. Christian Friedel did a very good portrayal of Rudolf Hoss. Despite his performance not being too showy, his acting added to the storytelling. Also great is Sandra Huller as Hedwig. Although her performance pales in comparison to that of Anatomy Of A Fall, she also does a good job in making a hateful Nazi seem like an everyday person and even a common wife. She’s even able to get you thinking at times the film is more about Hedwig than about Rudolf.

The technical elements of the film also add to the story and the message to get across. The cinematography from Lukasz Zal really added to the theme of the film. He features many scenes with unorthodox imagery in the film. Most noteworthy, the scenes of the Polish girl giving prisoners food done looking like a film negative added to the statement Glazer intended to make. The music from Mica Levi helps create the atmosphere for this dark subject matter. The sound crew have to have delivered possibly the most profound contribution to the film. The mixing of sounds like the gunshots and screaming mixed with scenes of the Hoss’ living the comfortable life serve as a reminder of the hidden things that are happening.

This film has had a lot of awards buzz in 2023. It first gained notice at the Cannes Film Festival. Although Anatomy Of A Fall won, this film was a nominee and director Glazer won the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize. How about that? Two films starring Sandra Huller at the 2023 Cannes Film Fest and both were the most lauded! Interestingly, this film is the UK’s third Oscar nomination in the Best International Feature Film award. It does seem odd for the UK to even have a submission, but Jonathan Glazer being British and the film being in German, Yiddish and Polish, the UK can submit I as their entry. Those other two nominations were back in the 1990’s and were for Welsh-language films. At the time, entries had to be in a language native to the nation. Not anymore. It’s now more about the citizenship of the director. Oscar rules are interesting, aren’t they?

The Zone Of Interest is not the Holocaust film you expect it to be. It’s a film about the Holocaust which Glazer has something to say and is often told through sights and sounds.

And there you go! That’s the last of my reviews of the ten Best Pictures nominees. My blog of my predictions for the Oscar wins coming soon!