A documentary about Noh and a feature film set in Kabukicho at the Hong Kong International Film Festival (Film reviews)

  

There still are (a few) films having their world premiere

at the Hong Kong International Film Festival

 

A HKIFF photographer taking photos of The Path of Soul's

director, Cheuk Cheung (and interpreter Joanna Lee?)

 

The Path of Soul (Hong Kong-Japan, 2026) 

- Cheuk Cheung, director 

- Part of the HKIFF's Reality Bites program 

 

In the wake of Japanese films being pulled from a culinary-themed film program organized by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department this past December, some of us film fans wondered and worried as to whether there would be any Japanese offerings at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival.  The answer, we found, is that there are some in the program but just a handful.  And there would have been even fewer if not for this Hong Kong-Japan co-production helmed by Hong Kong filmmaker Cheuk Cheung.  

 

Best known for his trilogy of Chinese opera documentaries (including My Way (Hong Kong, 2012) and Bamboo Theatre (Hong Kong, 2019)), Cheuk Cheung's latest film looks at the Japan's Noh theatre.  Multiple years in the making (with footage going all the way back to 2017), The Path of Soul focuses on Hikaru Uzawa and Hisa Uzawa, two female Noh performers who also happen to be a mother-daughter pair.     

 

Although it's mentioned in this illuminating work that 15% of Noh performers are female, director Cheuk mentioned during the post-screening Q&A session -- which, by the way was wonderful for all the questions being good and the answers detailed and really interesting! -- that many people, including Japanese folks, still don't realise that there are (professional) female Noh performers.  Something else that's pointed out in the The Path of Soul is that females were only admitted into the Noh theatre world after the Second World War.  Not long in the grand scheme of things then, in view of this Japanese theatre art having been performed since the 14th century!

 

Inevitably then, The Path of Soul spends time discussing the challenges that both the senior Hisa Uzawa and junior Hikaru Uzawa face as a consequence of their being female in a traditionally male world.  At the same time though, the viewer gets the sense that females in the world of Noh are becoming normalised by way of footage showing the Uzawas not only performing but also teaching Noh to young girls along with boys and men as well as women who all seem perfectly happy to obey their instruction.  And their spouses looking to support them in their endeavors too.

 

During the Q&A, Cheuk revealed that he knows some Japanese but also worked with an interpreter when filming, and conducting interviews that were filmed and screened as part of, this absorbing offering.  He also revealed that he and Hikaru Uzawa are good friends.  Which helps to explain how open the Uzawas were with him.  Though, interestingly, he also mentioned that he felt that the best interview he had with Hikaru Uzawa was one in which she spoke with her eyes closed during it!

 

My rating for this film: 7.0 

 

Meets the World (Japan, 2025) 

- Daigo Matsui, director 

- Starring: Hana Sugisaki, Kotona Minami, Rihito Itagaki, Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Yu Aoi

- Part of the HKIFF's Fantastic Beats program 

 

This ensemble film is an adaptation of a 2022 novel by Hitomi Kanehara, a writer who has explored serious, gritty subjects like pedophilia and self harm, and whose own life trajectory has been pretty dramatic and unconventional.  (Among other things, the daughter of an academic dropped out of school when she was just 11 years old and left home at age 15!)  

 

Having not read it (this not least because it's not been translated into English), I don't know if the novel version of Meets the World is serious and gritty.  But I can tell you that the film is far less so than might be expected, considering that its characters include a woman who works in hostess club and men who work in the male equivalent, one who has been spending time in a psychiatric facility and also ones who have spent significant portions of their lives contemplating suicide. 

 

Sometimes, this can work in its favour: in that, it's novel and actually pleasant to watch unlikely friendships form between Yukari (played by Hana Sugisaki), a 27-year-old bank worker who's also never had a boyfriend (thanks probably in part to her being super-immersed in yaoi fandom), and cool bar hostess Rai (portrayed by Kotona Minami) and her (sexually) sophisticated Kabukicho-based friendship circle, which include extrovert nightclub host Asahi (essayed by Rihito Itagaki), bar owner Oshin (played by Kiyohiko Shibukawa) and the charismatically melancholy Yuki (Yu Aoi playing against type). 

 

At other times though, it can feel like director Daigo Matsui is airbrushing elements that would add depth and logic to character story arcs and general proceedings.  This particularly so in the latter part of Meets the World when certain dramatic turns seem to come from out of the blue and throw the film for a loop.  This even more so when these "developments" are left unresolved and unexplained.

 

All in all, Meets the World works best when its characters are happy.  And innocent.  With my favourite moments and scenes in this emotionally all over the place movie being those where Yukari reveals and revels in her being a super fan of a manga that very amusingly has characters who are yakiniku (grilled meat) menu items that come in the form of handsome gay men!  

 

With regards to films that feature fans of yaoi: I must say I prefer BL Metamorphosis (Japan, 2022).  And with regards to cinematic adaptations of novels: it really would not be fair to compare this to Our Little Sister (Japan, 2015) -- because pretty much every movie is not as good as that.  But yes, well, I can't help thinking that if Hirokazu Kore-eda had directed this film, it most definitely would have been a far better offering than this promising-but-ultimately-rather-disappointing one from Daigo Matsui!

 

My rating for this film: 6.0       

Two very different documentaries viewed at the 2026 Hong Kong International Film Festival (Film reviews)

  

Advertising for the 50th Hong Kong 

International Film Festival seen around town

 

Ghost Elephants (USA, 2025)

- Werner Herzog, director-scriptwriter 

- Part of the HKIFF's The Masters program 

 

Some years ago, I was talking to a film programmer about what films are fine to be viewed on a small screen and what needs to be seen on a big one.  At the time, I thought that documentaries and domestic dramas didn't lose as much when viewed on home video than blockbuster epics.  He begged to differ, stating that all films have are best seen on a big screen since that's where they were made to be screened by filmmakers.

 

Over the years, I came to his way of thinking.  And particularly appreciate it when I get to view a film on the truly big screen at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre's 1,734-seater Grand Theatre -- as was the case with Werner Herzog's documentary about the epic journey undertaken in search of an elusive herd of elephants in Angola's hauntingly beautiful as well as ecologically very important Bié (aka Central) Plateau.

 

As is expected of a work by Herzog, Ghost Elephants is not a conventional documentary.  (Though having said this, as a friend noted, it is one of the veteran German auteur's more conventional offerings.)  This particularly so in his injecting and emphasising mystical elements -- by way of the San people (popularly referred to as "Bushmen") whose tracking skills can seem close to supernatural and also a local king's recounting of an ancestral legend involving an elephant that shed its skin -- to his documentation of what's effectively a scientific expedition led by zoologist-conservationist Dr Steve Boyes in search of what could well be currently the largest land animals on the planet and maybe even a previously undocumented elephant sub-species.

 

Something that can be endearing about Herzog is how so much seems to fascinate him.  In Ghost Elephants, it's not just the titular subjects but those who go in search of it, and the peoples of the foreign land that he encounters along the way.  And while the sight of the elephants are hard to ignore when they appear on screen, the Bié plateau along with other views of the African landscape are exquisitely filmed too, and come across as characters in their own right with parts to play in the story being told.

 

Speaking of story: along with the documentation of a magnificent scientific obsession (on the part of Steve Boyes) and the wonders of nature, Ghost Elephants also tell of humans' inhumanity in the treatment of Mother Nature; pointing out that casualties of Angola's so-called "civil war" included wildlife as well humans, and showing archival footage of a 1960s-era elephant hunt that involved shooting at them from a helicopter.  

 

Which has me thinking it's a curious, and lamentable, omission on Herzog's part that he didn't mention in the documentary that the Bié plateau was, as per the Wikipedia entry on it, "deeply affected by slavery, with estimates of as much as half the local population being enslaved in the mid-1800s".  Perhaps it will be the subject of a follow-up work from the filmmaker?  Though, to judge from what one sees in the film, the chances are higher that he will return to Africa to make a work focused on the San people, who he confessed out loud in Ghost Elephants to finding it hard to not over-romanticise!

 

My rating for the film: 7.0 

 

Do You Love Me (Lebanon-France-Germany, 2025) 

- Lana Daher, director and co-scriptwriter (along with Qutaiba Barhamji)

- Part of the HKIFF's Reality Bites program 

 

In the first few minutes of her documentary, Lebanese filmmaker Lana Daher explictly informs the audience of Do You Love Me that this work will not show events taking place in chronological order and that the effect may be disorientating -- but if so, it's on purpose.  What she didn't state in the work itself -- but I think should be clear by way of a look at the offering's title -- is that this also is a film that works best if the viewer engages with it emotionally as well as intellectually.

 

Clearly a labour of love by someone who loves Lebanon, Do You Love Me presents a history of a nation with no national archive by selecting from, and splicing, images and sounds from more than 20,000 hours of audiovisual footage spanning some 70 years.  Seven years in the making, this 75 minute work incorporates news and feature film clips, TV programmes, home videos, personal photographs in an initially dizzying and altogether ingenious way.

 

Through the eyes, ears and work of Lebanese people of various ethnicities, religions, ages and so on, we see the country's complexity, beauty, problems, horrors and humanity.  Viewers are treated to scenes of everyday life, scenes of violence, and even scenes of violence that, tragically, have become everyday.  (And yes, I am aware of what's happening to, and in, Lebanon currently.  Which makes it all the more important that Do You Love Me was made, and bittersweet to view.)

 

Like it does in the country of some 5 million people, Beirut -- where approximately half of the people live -- looms large in the film.  Director Daher does not hide that this city that's the 16th largest in the Arab world is socioculturally divided along religious lines but also shows both the Christian and Muslim sides, in joyous as well as unhappy scenes, and always with humanity.

 

Although it effectively begins with scenes of the sea, it's the sense of humanity that overwhelmingly courses through Do You Love Me.  Mesmerising and increasingly hypnotic, the choices of visuals and music are masterful.  And while I admittedly came away from this work still not knowing enough of Lebanon to love it, I must say that I do feel that I learnt enough to respect the people of Lebanon and feel that they deserve better, including more peaceful and good times than they are currently facing as well as have faced over the years and decades.  

 

My rating for this film: 8.0.    

My 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival-ing kicks off with "Woman and Child" (Iran-France-Germany, 2025)! (Film review)

 

My tickets for the 50th Hong Kong International Film Festival!

 

Woman and Child (Iran-France-Germany, 2025)

- Saeed Roustaee, director and co-scriptwriter (with Azad Jafarian)

- Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi, Soha Niasti, Maziar Seyedi, Fereshteh Sadr Orafaee, Hassan Pourshirazi, Sinan Mohebi

- Part of the HKIFF's Global Vision program 

 

A confession: I did not originally plan to attend a Hong Kong International Film Festival screening of Woman and Child.  Rather, a booking error resulted in my coming by a ticket.  But after seeing that it was directed by the same helmer as Leila's Brothers  (Iran, 2022), which I had viewed -- and got much out of -- at a previous edition of the HKIFF, I decided that the mistake might be a blessing in disguise.

 

Made after Saeed Roustaee had served a six-month prison sentence and a filmmaking ban imposed on him by the Iranian government -- for entering Leila's Brothers in the Cannes Film Festival! -- had been lifted, Woman and Child was made with the approval of the same regime.  Something that I find interesting since this drama centering on a widow with two children who lives with her mother and sister is one that yet another Iranian film that doesn't seem to sugercoat the lives of Iranian people, and their everyday struggles.

 

Mahnaz (portrayed by Parinaz Izadyar) is a hospital nurse who is being romantically pursued by a freelance ambulance driver named Hamid (who comes in the form of Saeed Roustaee film regular, Payman Maadi).  Although Hamid's pressuring her to get married to him causes some stress, Mahnaz seems to harbour genuine affections for him.  And, also, rather inexplicably, her son, Aliyah (played by Sinan Mohebi), who's the most annoying child I've seen in a film since Tan Chui Mui's Barbarian Invasion (Malaysia-Hong Kong-Mainland China, 2021)'s Yu Zhou.

 

So part of me was happy to see him being taken out of the picture fairly early into the movie.  And somewhat inexplicable to me that this development could leave Mahnaz so incredibly distraught that she literally faints at one point in the film.  And, also, becomes not only so emotionally numbed as well as upset that she neglects her much less annoying daughter, Neda (played by Arshida Dorostkar) as well as her own self and others: because, contrary to the title of the film, there's more than one child in the picture.

 

As the reviewer for Variety complained, "none of [Mahnaz's] actions makes the slightest sense". While I agree with that assessment, I'm less in agreement that it's not completely understandable.  Because, well, humans can be incredibly illogical, especially with regards to human relations and when powerful emotions are triggered.  Which certainly is in the case in Woman and Child. (Incidentally, I think that if the title hadn't already been taken, "Woman on a Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" might have been a good one for this movie!) 

 

How you feel about this will undoubtedly affect your overall assessment of this offering that, for me, was involving and actually pretty emotionally gripping throughout.  In addition, I felt that Mahnaz's multi-dimensional interactions with her mother (portrayed by Fereshteh Sadre Orafaee) and younger sister Mehri (played by Soha Niasti) that alternately help to relieve and heal but at other times further threaten to drive her over the edge are fascinating to behold.  

 

More than by the way, I think Woman and Child would have been a better film overall if it had focused more on the females in it as the males are, for the most part, its least watchable characters.  At the same time, the scenes in Aliyah's (all boys) school and the vocational school next door are also very well conceived and shot indeed.  So maybe it's more that the work would have been better served with less of Aliyah and Hamid in the picture; just as Mahnaz would have been better served with less of them in her life!

 

My rating for the film: 8.0  

Montages of a Modern Motherhood is replete with scenes of a modern mother's trials and tribulations (Film review)

 

Advertising for three Hong Kong movies (including Montages

of a Modern Motherhood) at Golden Scene Cinema in late 2024 

 

Montages of a Modern Motherhood (Hong Kong, 2024)

- Oliver Chan Siu-kuen, director-scriptwriter

- Starring: Hedwig Tam, Lo Chun-yip, Janis Pang, Patra Au, Fung So-po, Tai Bo

 

After viewing her (and yes, Oliver Chan is a woman!) bravura first feature film, Still Human (2018), I've been looking forward to seeing Oliver Chan's follow up cinematic effort and didn't think I'd have to wait seven years to do so.  This especially after she announced in July 2019 that she had a "new project" for the second half of the year -- only for it to be revealed that the "project" in question was a baby!

 

If the first months of her being a new mother had any semblance at all to that of the protagonist of Montages of a Modern Motherhood, it'd help explain why it took so long for her second film to come about however.  Though it's also worth pointing out that this drama about the trials and tribulations of a new mother also did have its world premiere back in October 2024 (at the Busan International Film Festival) and screened at other film festivals in Tokyo, Taiwan and Hong Kong before finally starting its theatrical run in its home city late last month.

 

Based on its fest circuit demand (and its Hong Kong International Film Festival screenings having sold out very quickly), it thus might come as a surprise to learn that the offering has brought in a paltry HK$2.3 million in the first two weeks of its general cinematic release.  But after viewing this 111 minute long work  myself, I understand.  In short: it's a good, well-made film that does deserve an audience -- but it's not an easy watch at all; this not least because the baby in the movie cries A LOT, and loudly too, in it!

 

Despite the efforts of baby Ching's mother, Suk-jing (Hedwig Tam in what looks to have been a very demanding role), the infant is not a happy being.  Was it because she wasn't adequately fed?  If so, it clearly was not for want for trying on the part of the mother -- as Suk-jing tried ever so hard to pump milk out of her breasts and, also, produce the mother's milk she knows is better for babies than the powdered milk that her mother-in-law (Pang Hang-ying) sought to replace it with.   

 

Was it because, as the wise woman (a sympathetic turn from Fung So-po) that Suk-jing enlisted to help her look after Ching, suggested, a baby reflects the feelings of the mother, so that "happy mother, happy baby" -- and thus "unhappy mother, unhappy baby"?  For it is true that there appeared to be very few happy moments in Suk-jing's time as a mother (and thus, also, Montages of a Modern Motherhood itself); with her living situation (as part of a three-generational household along with her husband Wai (played by Lo Chun-yip) and, also, her in-laws) making things worse rather than actually helping -- and her own beloved mother (essayed by Patra Au) living two hours away and thus being less able to help out than either woman would have liked.

 

Oliver Chan has said that Montages of a Modern Motherhood is intended "not only a heartfelt tribute to new mothers but also an effort to help men and families better understand the struggles women face postpartum — fostering greater empathy, support, and involvement".  If so, I think she could have done a better job; not because her film did not sympathetically or adequately show how a new mother can feel unsupported and in need of help -- but because it did so in such a way that it might put everyone -- male as well as female -- viewing it off having any kids of their own! 

 

"Anyone in the late stages of pregnancy might do well to avoid Montages of a Modern Motherhood" began the Hollywood Reporter review of this drama!  And a man walked out midway through the screening that I attended!  That man, I am going to assume, will either never want to a baby in his home after viewing the film -- or, if he already has one was thinking "I've already heard my share of crying babies in my life; I don't need (so much) more while watching a movie!" 

My rating for the film: 7.5

Stranger Eyes is on the strange side! (Film review)

  

Seen on the screen before the final 2025 Hong Kong

International Film Festival screening I attended 

 

Stranger Eyes (Singapore-Taiwan-France-USA, 2024)

- Yeo Siew Hua, director-scriptwriter

- Starring: Wu Chien Ho, Lee Kang Sheng, Anicca Panna, Pete Teo

- Part of the HKIFF's Cinephile Paradise program 

 

While the Hong Kong International Film Festival was in progress, two friends and I discussed our fest picks. Upon hearing that Stranger Eyes was among my selections, one of them jokingly asked me, "Are you sure?  Lee Kang Sheng's in it!"  Whereby I pointed out that although he's been in a number of films I've disliked (including Goodbye, Dragon Inn and I Don't Want To Sleep Alone), all of them had been directed by Tsai Ming Liang -- unlike this one!

 

Post viewing this Yeo Siew Hua directorial effort, however, I must say that I get the sense that Tsai Ming Liang is a filmmaker that this work's helmer admires though; and not just because of the Singaporean director-scriptwriter having got Tsai Ming Liang's favourite actor to appear in his movies.  Among other things, the slow and methodical pacing appears to be influenced by Tsai Ming Liang too; and ditto re the film's improvisational style, which lends it a quirkiness and unpredictability that seems rather, if I were to culturally stereotype, un-Singaporean!

 

Despite being a multi-national co-production, Stranger Eyes' setting is entirely in Singapore though.  Also recognisably Singaporean are elements such as the film's focus being on individuals who live in apartments -- one group in a three-generational household, the other in a two-generational one.   

 

Initially, Stranger Eyes centers on the former.  Junyang (played by Wu Chien Ho) and Peiying (portrayed by Annica Panna), their baby and his mother (who comes in the form of the un-grandmotherly appearing Vera Chen) live together in an apartment.  Or, rather, did -- as baby Bo has disappeared.  One moment, she was at a playground with Junyang.  Then, when his attention was focused elsewhere, she seemingly vanished from sight.      

In an apartment in a block facing their apartment live supermarket manager Wu (portrayed by Lee Kang Sheng) and his elderly mother.  Unbeknownst to Junyang and Peiying, their paths have crossed with Wu -- who, it turns out, has been effectively surveilling them at work and from his home; in part because he is fascinated by Peiying, seemingly in part out of boredom and, also, because it's easy enough to do!      

For reasons that never seem to have been made clear, Wu decides to drop off DVDs of recordings of his surveillance "work" at the home of Junyang, Peiying and co.  Whereupon the young couple -- and Officer Zheng (played by Malaysian actor-singer-composer Pete Teo), the cop investigating the disappearance of baby Bo -- get to suspecting that Wu may have kidnapped their young child.  

A strange psychological thriller-drama, not least in that much of the psychological dispositions and quirks of everyone concerned seems to be left to interpretation, Stranger Eyes was most interesting to me in terms of showing the surveillance devices and opportunities to observe others that various people, police but also civilians, neighbours and strangers have at their disposal in today's world.  Videos taken on phones and surveillance cameras are utilized but we also see how, and how much of themselves, people reveal on social media and such.  And how people can stay anonymous in crowds or when in uniform or just carrying out the kind of work and duties so routine that folks barely notice the person doing them.

 

Ironically, even while the people in Stranger Eyes are shown doing things, we actually don't hear them speaking, never mind actually qualitatively conversing, all that much.  So is the message of the movie that we can see but still not understand others around us, including those we live in close proximity to?  Maybe.  For the director -- rather frustratingly to my mind -- appears to have sought to keep his cards close to his chest as well as not wear his heart on his sleeve! 

 

My rating for this film: 6.5

The Woman of Wrath angers more than the eponymous woman seems angry for much of it! (Film review)

The tickets I bought for the 2025 Hong Kong International Film Festival 

 

The Woman of Wrath (Taiwan, 1984)

- Tseng Chuang Hsiang, director

- Starring: Pat Ha, Pai Ying, Chen Shu Fang 

- Part of the HKIFF's Chinese-language Restored Classics program 

 

This 1984 film adaptation of Taiwanse feminist writer Li Ang's The Butcher's Wife is said to be a classic of Taiwanese New Cinema.  I must confess to not knowing about this movie though until I read that a restored version of it would be screened at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival along with works that I am familiar with and rate highly, including Patrick Tam's My Heart is That Eternal Rose (Hong Kong, 1989) and Johnnie To's PTU (Hong Kong, 2003).

 

Starring two familiar names and faces in Pat Ha (who I've seen and loved in offerings like On the Run (Hong Kong, 1988)) and Pai Ying (who I had seen just one day earlier in The System (Hong Kong, 1979)!), I figured that I'd at least get guaranteed an acting masterclass.  And I think I did; what with these two thespians who I've seen in multiple roles play against type as they took on the roles of a much put upon female and a barbaric lout of a man in The Woman of Wrath!

 

Before they are seen in the film though, the audience is "treated" to scenes that set the tone for this harrowing drama in which rape and the general horrors of living in an unsophisticated patriarchal society prominently figures.  A young girl witnesses her mother, a widow who looked to be starving, allowing a man to have sex with her in return for food.  (Talk about a stark illustration about the "food for sex" theory I learnt about in biological anthropology classes at college!)  Then, when a male relative bursts into the room to confront -- and berate -- rather than rescue her, she decides out of shame -- or is it anger and desperation? -- to violently take her own life.

 

That young girl -- who I could easily imagine having become permanently traumatized by witnessing those scenes -- grows to young adulthood and is played by Pat Ha.  Just in time for Ah Shih, as she is called, to be married -- and sold? -- off by her uncle, whose family she had been living with, to a man living in another village a boat ride away.

 

Chiang Shui (portrayed by Pai Ying) is a butcher.  Literally.  And yes, the audience is shown graphic scenes of him and his fellow butchers at work.  (It's worth noting that The Woman of Wrath was previously shown with eight scenes cut that this restored version reinserts into the work.)  He also is shown visiting a prostitute -- a scene that turns out to be the film's tenderest; what with him treating the prostitute with the kind of humanity, not just affection, that he doesn't for anyone else, including the young woman he took as his wife.

 

Chiang Shui's disregard, dislike even, for Ah Shih looks to have begun on their first night together, when she doesn't respond well to his sexual overtures; not surprisingly given that she appears to not have known anything about sex and had not been ignored and not even given anything to eat in between her entering his home and his deciding to bed her after a big dinner and many drinks with his friends.  He does seem to like very much to make her scream and squeal while they are having sex (that is, when he is raping her), the way that a pig screams and squeals as it is being killed by him and his fellow butchers.  

 

Ironically, Ah Shih's loud screams are interpreted by other villagers as ones of enjoyment during sex and she is castigated as a sex maniac by village gossips.  (More than incidentally, many of the womenfolk in the village also come across as envious of her position as the wife of a butcher since their assumption is that she gets to eat lots of meat, unlike them.) 

 

The terrible treatment of Ah Shih goes on for what can seem like an eternity even though the film is less than 2 hours long.  Ditto the wait to see Ah Shih unleash her thoroughly justified wrath.  The fact of the matter though is that The Woman is Wrath is poorly named.  Honestly, I think The Terribly Abused Woman would have been a better title for this painful watch of a work that, if truth be told, I have zero plans of re-watching ever again!

 

My rating for this film: 5.5   

An American Pastorale is far more American nightmare than dream (Film screening)

TV journalist turned documentary filmmaker Auberi Edler

listening to questions at the post-screening Q&A   

 

An American Pastorale (France, 2024)

- Auberi Edler, director, scriptwriter and cinematographer

- Part of the HKIFF's Documentary Competition program 

 

Back in the 19th century, French diplomat-historian Alexis de Tocqueville published Democracy in America after spending 10 months in the United States of America.  Now in the 21st century, French TV journalist turned documentary filmmaker Auberi Edler spent around that amount of time in a small conservative American town (actually, technically, borough) and has produced An American Pastorale, a documentary that could be said to show how democracy in America dies.

 

In March 2023, a year long electoral campaign began to elect the school board of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania (as opposed to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the setting for Cameron Crowe's 2005 romantic comedy, Elizabethtown!).  As Republican and Democrat candidates went from door to door canvasing voters, Auberi Edler's camera was there to follow and record them.

 

Non-interventionist, offering neither narration nor commentary, Auberi Edler quietly captured on camera how a schoolboard election devolves into culture wars whose strands included book censorship, gun control and the undue influence of organized religion (and, in Elizabethtown, one evangelical church in particular) in people's lives and general politics.  In school classrooms, churches, private homes and pretty much elsewhere in between, people of various political stripes -- all of whom are uniformly white in terms of their ethnicity though (note: I've checked and Elizabethtown really does have very few non-white residents) -- are filmed revealing their private as well as public thoughts and in so doing, reveal so much about themselves, their hometown and their country.

 

An American Pastorale had its world premiere -- shortly after the American Presidential Election last year but before Donald Trump returned to the White House -- at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (where Auberi Edler came away with the Best Director prize).  At the time of my writing this review, it has yet to be screened in the USA.  (Indeed, it was only a few days ago that the North American distribution rights for it were sold.)  

 

Based on its title, one might have thought that the natural/target audience for this documentary would be Americans.  But an American friend who saw it (here in Hong Kong) told me it had made her cringe and another friend, upon my telling her about the film, told me she didn't think she could stomach viewing it; this particular because she actually personally knew someone from Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania!

 

Despite not being an American myself, I understand.  An American Pastorale is not an easy watch for those who don't like seeing bigotry triumph, thanks in part to how ineffectual, even downright lame and weak, the opposition to far-right white nationalism in Christian clothing was (and is).  Put another way: pretty much everyone seen in this quietly devastating cinema vérité-style documentary -- by a filmmaker who knows very well that, often, it's best to just let a person incriminate themself -- does not come off looking good.  And their country too!

 

Those who know me know that I absolutely hate people talking in cinemas.  But I have to confess: I found myself commenting aloud about, and in response to, certain statements and declarations made, seemingly seriously, by Elizabethtown residents -- and recorded for posterity in the documentary -- that just came across as so crazily asinine!  (As an example, a gun lover talked about the possibility of Hamas going over to attack this rural American community!)      

On a positive note: it's an incredible achievement on the part of Auberi Edler that she managed to get the people in the documentary to seemingly forget that her camera was trained on them, and their every word being recorded.  To be sure, some of them did appear to be performing for the camera -- as well as an audience of their peers -- some of the time.  But more fool them, for thinking that they would be made to look good in this thoroughly thought-provoking work which, actually, lays waste to whatever myths and delusions of grandeur that Americans would ever have about themselves and their country, for the world to see!

 

My rating for this film: 8.5