(1990)
Dir - Nietzchka Keene
Overall: MEH
Though stylistically enchanting, filmmaker Nietzchka Keene's full-length debut The Juniper Tree indulges in its low-key, poetic looseness too much to cast a lingering spell. Also serving as the acting debut for Björk Guðmundsdóttir, it was shot on location in Southern Iceland, utilizing both the Reynisdrangar sea stacks and Seljalandsfoss waterfall for some of its exotic visuals. The film was not properly shown until four years after it was made, going back into obscurity for several decades until it resurfaced in a restored version at the AFI Fest in 2018, fourteen years after Keene's death from pancreatic cancer. Borrowing both the title and select elements from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, its five person cast, minimal presentation, and vast scenery give it an isolated aesthetic that is enhanced by the black and white photography that roots it far in the past. The story is rudimentary and concerns two sisters, one of whom bewitches a widower to take them in while the other has fantastical conversations with her mute mother who was recently stoned and drowned. Its themes are never properly established if it indeed presents any besides that of loneliness and desperation bringing on flights of fancy, but it is atmospherically lovely enough to assist those who are patient with what it may offer on repeated viewings.
(1993)
Dir - Tracey Moffatt
Overall: MEH
The only theatrically released full-length from Tracey Moffatt and ergo the first feature from an Australian Aboriginal woman, beDevil is a confounding mess of a movie that can equally strike frustration and fascination from the audience. An anthology film that is not made clear as being such until a ways in, each story deals with local ghost fables from Moffatt's childhood and the director appears as a fictionalized version of herself in the second segment. One of the handful of things that makes the movie so unique is also one of its most head-scratching missteps in that it is partially presented as a documentary, though this is abandoned more and more as things go on. Characters speak into the camera as if they are interviewed, with seemingly inconsequential shots interrupting them, followed by both current reenactments and flashbacks, (or at least that is a guess that one can make as to what is going on). Shot both on location in Charleville and Bribie Island, Queensland as well as on sets that present a stylized and barren desert landscape, it is a lovely yet completely disjointed affair that gets in over its head with its challenging aesthetic and tone. Part whimsical comedy, part art film, part atmospheric horror, part mockumentary, and all nearly incomprehensible, it at least deserves acknowledgement for being unique.
(1995)
Dir - Marc Caro/Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Overall: GOOD
A marvel of inventiveness if not a marvel in universally coherent storytelling, The City of Lost Children, (La Cité des enfants perdus), finds the filmmaking duo of Marco Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet presenting a warped, steampunk aesthetic that plays out like a Terry Gilliam-tinged fairytale. Daniel Emilfork and Ron Pearlman, (the latter speaking French no less), are ideally cast as a diabolical mad scientist of sorts and a childlike strongman retrospectively, both in a dystopian world full of orphans, clones, cycloptic thugs, and computer-generated insects that inflict rage, amongst other things. The camera movements are ceaselessly engrossing, capturing spectacularly detailed, rust-colored sets that have a wonderfully old-timey/futuristic/out of place look that hardly presents anything that is happening in our own tangible world. It is thematically murky at times, with most of the children coming off as more learned due to their prey-like existing from being at the whim of Emilfork who is trying to kidnap them to steal their dreams, (as well as a set of conjoined twins that use the kids for thievery). The adults on the other hand are more emotionally infantile or even dim-witted, which could signify any number of things in such an equally whimsical and draconian landscape. Style over substance perhaps, but it never becomes too flamboyant to lose its momentum.
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