Park City, Utah – It’s been nine months since the Sundance Film Festival She announced that she was exploring Possibility of building a new home starting in 2027. For some long-time attendees, the idea of relocation hits like a snowball in the back of the neck. Mastering Park City is like learning to juggle: the curve is steep, but you move nimbly once you know whether to wait for a shuttle or walk, and where to find the best legroom is at the Library Center Theater and the grocery store sushi bar next to the Holiday Village Cinema is actually… Very good. Will Sundance fans have to start over in Cincinnati?
Maybe it’s just premature homesickness, but the first few films I’ve seen this year have shared the theme of being a stranger in a strange land. Take Evan Twohy’s “Bubble & Squeak,” in which American newlyweds Declan (Hamish Patel) and Delores (Sarah Goldberg) travel to a fictional formerly war-torn country for a cheap honeymoon. This country once forced its citizens to live on cabbage. Today, the vegetable is banned and the penalty for smuggling cabbage is public execution. But Delores has stuffed more than a dozen leafy heads down her pants because she simply doesn’t feel obligated to respect another culture’s rules.
Himesh Patel and Sarah Goldberg in “Bubble & Squeak.”
(Sundance Institute)
Her insolence forces the pair to flee from a customs officer (Steven Yeun) and his boss, Shazpur (Matt Berry), who is locally famous for chopping off the fingertips of criminals. They have a zero tolerance policy on cabbage. On the other hand, the public must be more receptive. If you took a shot of vodka every time someone said cabbage, you’d be hospitalized by the end of the first trimester. At one point, Declan and Delores tell their entire love story in vegetarian form. It’s my favorite scene of anything at this festival so far.
Twohy’s arch tone could make this comedy seem like “midsummer” Minus the shock. But as the couple attempts to escape across the border, fault lines open in this budding marriage, especially when Dave Franco shows up as a fellow escapee disguised as a bear. The natives are colorful and silly, but that’s the point of the movie Disaster tourism. (I will take this attack as someone who once visited some of the sights at Chernobyl and came home with a souvenir T-shirt.)
Meanwhile, Justin Lin returns to Sundance with “Last Days,” his real-life travel drama turned tragic tale. In 2018, 26-year-old American John Allen Chau died when he illegally sailed from Port Blair, India, to the restricted North Sentinel Islands. He wanted to bring the Bible to a remote island tribe. They were unimpressed. Zhao (Sky Yang) has been described as a martyr, a hero, and a madman. You hear all three opinions before the end of the opening credits.
Sky Yang in the movie “Last Days”.
(Tanasak “Top” Ponlam/Sundance Institute)
Lin began his career at Sundance 2002 with the independent heist film “Better luck tomorrow” He then went on to direct five successful films from the Fast & Furious series. This film splits the difference clumsily: its little narrative engine can’t keep up with the visual extravagance. “Last Days” hardly deals with religion or piety. Instead, it plays out as a globe-trotting action film about a kid who doesn’t realize he’s in trouble. When Chow befriends two thrill-seeking Christians (Toby Wallace and Ciara Bravo) in Kurdistan, the tone is less “The Passion of the Christ” and more “Point Break.” His backpacking adventures are depicted with an astonishing charm that both makes and breaks the film. We realize that the goal is to mourn an ideal person whose life has ended. Instead, we leave admiring all the wonderful places he has been.
“Rabbit Trap,” Bryn Chainey’s confident debut, is about London couple Darcy and Daphne (Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen), who move to rural Wales to record an experimental noise album. (It’s the 1970s and the cover of Daphne’s latest album is painted like Ziggy Stardust.) The pair are inspired by the sonic sounds of this other Earth: swooping flocks of birds, crushing moss, drops of water falling on an ancient stone wall. Then a creepy figure (Jade Croot) appears at their door holding a freshly killed rabbit. These fans of the city will learn to respect the local legends.
I’ve seen “Rabbit Trap” twice now, and both times I was immersed in the vibrations of each scene. The craftsmanship is top notch. However, if you asked me to explain how all the scenes fit together in the story, I would remain silent, just as Darcy does every night during his bad dreams. But I would call it the most optimistic culture clash film I’ve seen at Sundance so far. These strangers did not come to insult and evade, nor to invade and transform. Instead, they learn to sing the local language in beautiful fairy tale hymns.
Dev Patel in the movie “Rabbit Trap.”
(Andreas Johansson/Sundance Institute)
Katarina Chu’s “Bunnylovr” also hinges on a gifted bunny. (Is there a wizard somewhere out here in the snow pulling them out of his hat?) The donor is a Pennsylvania man (Austin Amelio) who has a fetish for furry animals; The recipient is a bankrupt New York City Camera girl Her name is Rebecca (Cho) who is so focused on pleasing him that she is disconnected from her own needs. When her online sponsor asks her to hang the rabbit by the ears while he enjoys himself, she doesn’t have the courage to refuse. (Be careful: you will hear the rabbit screaming.)
However, even though Rebecca is confused and mysterious, Zhu makes the character feel tangible. The first feature director has succeeded in creating a sculpture out of fog. Rachel Sinnott, who plays Rebecca’s bossy best friend, moans that being intimate with her is impossible. However, we care about Rebecca – even when she decides to meet her rabbit-loving fan in person and we want to reach out on screen and grab her. Ha By ears.
This same scene happens again in Rachel Fleit’s documentary “Sugar Babies,” when a girl wanders into the woods to meet a paying stranger. The film follows the teenager over several years as she flirts with men online to cover her college fees. Intelligent and shamelessly manipulative, Autumn graduated high school at 16—and she’s no dummy. In her heavy, glamorous language, she calls herself a “sugar baby without sugar,” who vows to avoid any IRL dates until she’s 25. In the end, she breaks her own rule.
Autumn Johnson, left, and Lillian McCurdy in Sugar Babies.
(Joseph Jakob and Jakob Jakob/Sundance Institute)
The film feels like it’s listening to a chronically online young TikToker talking about her big plans to get that money and get out of Louisiana, where the minimum wage has been at $7.25 since she was in elementary school. Sadly, Autumn’s struggle to leave the city has become Sisyphean. Cell phones have given her a way to connect to the outside world – but how will she get there?
Technological disconnect is the vibe at this year’s festival, both on screen and on the ground. There are three fewer Park City theaters in use than in 2020 as Sundance continues to offer attendees the stay-at-home option to stream movies online. Participating people in their pajamas can get an extra kick by playing by pressing Albert Burney’s “OBEX,” a black-and-white art house film. It’s the kind of movie that contains a random shot of a chicken.
Albert Bernie in the movie “OBEX”.
(Pete Oss/Sundance Institute)
“OBEX” revolves around a recognizable modern type: a screen geek named Connor (Bernie). The twist is that the film is set in 1987 where Connor gets away with ASCII art and sings Gary Numan karaoke on a Macintosh 128K. One day, in a game about a soul-devouring demon, the demon appears to suck Sandy, Connor’s adorable idiot, into the screen. As Connor enters the game to save his dog and his isolated world expands, the film itself tends toward modesty. Still, I admired her imagination as she navigated between people and pixels, and shuddered when Connor tweeted, “Maybe one day we’ll all live in computers — even dogs.”
Certainly computers. Maybe even in Cincinnati, if only for a week to watch independent films.
