MAMI 2024: Day One (19th Oct 2024) - Kneecap, The Room Next Door, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, Émilia Pérez

My first day of attending the MAMI 2024 fest was spent at the old-skool Regal cinema in Colaba.

Kneecap (Zambia) [dir. Rich Peppiat]

My first movie of the fest, this tale of two delinquent youths and a language teacher with a mid-life crisis forming the titular Irish hip-hop band was a heartily welcomed crowd-pleaser - think The Full Monty meets Gully Boy with a healthy dash of Trainspotting. The surprising thing for me was to learn that it's based on an actual band and the members (Moglai Bap, Mo Chara and DJ Provai) play themselves. Michael Fassbender does an starry supporting part as an Irish rebel and father of one of the Kneecap-ers. It's very pat and cute, hinting at but never hitting any truly dark spots, but the movie acknowledges that in its cheeky intro referencing the stereotype of films about Belfast.

The Room Next Door (USA) [dir. Pedro Almodvar]

Death has been a recurring companion in Pedro Almodvar's films. In his English-language debut, it occupies center-stage. Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore are former colleagues and deep friends who just happened to have not met in years. Tilda is a war correspondent who discovers that she has grade III cancer. She is also estranged from her only child. She decides that she will not undergo further treatment and proposes to go to a secluded retreat where she will use an illegally procured euthanasia pill. She begs Julianne to be her 'room next  door' companion for these last days. Unlike Bergman's merciless incision into death in Cries and Whispers, Almodvar finds humor in Tilda's preparations for her suicide - her worries about forgetting to carry the pill, her instructions to Julianne about how she is to 'discover' and report her demise. There is an easy camaraderie between the veteran actresses that papers over the script's sketchiness about the closeness of their bond. John Turturro makes an appearance as a former lover to these women that has become a climate change pessimist - he's frankly an irritating guy, prating about the destruction of the planet while obviously practicing a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption.

On the whole this was a decent bleakly humorous drama, spoiled only by the epilogue in which Swinton, as per some unwritten clause in her contract, makes a second appearance as the estranged daughter, drawing attention to herself at the cost of the narrative.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Zambia) (dir. Rungano Nyoni]

Writer-director Nyoni impressed me with her previous feature I'm Not a Witch (IANAW), a bleak, biting satire on the treatment of witchcraft-accused in Zambia. In Guinea Fowl, She once again explores the exploitation of women by traditional society. Shula (Susan Chardy), a modern self-assured woman working an international job (we see her doing a Zoom conference with colleagues across nationalities) is returning from a party when she sees a man lying dead on the road, who happens to be her uncle. This eventually leads to the family holding a customary funeral for the dead man. In the course of the ritual, which we see primarily as an exercise in the women feeding and serving the menfolk, a picture of the uncle as a serial abuser is revealed and suppressed traumas emerge. Watching it, I was reminded of Mira Nair's (IMO) overhyped Monsoon Wedding. But where Nair was content to have a pat resolution to a serious crime, Nyoni has a more open-ended, but also more openly angry protest against the patriarchal system that defends male oppressors and parasites (Shula's father keeps mooching money off her). It also helps that in Chardy (whose character name Shula is the same as IANAW's protagonist), she has a lead performance that screams star potential. I can't wait to see what these ladies do next.

Emilia Perez (Mexico) [dir. Jacques Audiard]

Emilia Perez is the crazy genre-bender a younger Almodvar might have made, if he was friends with Roberto Rodriguez. Described as a 'musical crime comedy', the movie opens with skilled legal understudy Rita Mora (Zoe Saldana, not hidden under prosthetics or motion-capped like in her major franchise movies) being hired by gangster 'Manitas', an intimidating presence with his large frame, grotesque silver-capped teeth and propensity for violence. Not to defend him in court, no, but to find a skilled surgeon for the sex change operation he desires. You see, our Manitas wants to become a woman and fake his death to move to a new life. Lured by the lucre, Rita fulfills his task, and also arranges to send away his wife and children  to Europe during the process, ostensibly for their safety.

Cue a few years later, Rita meets the charismatic Emilia Perez, who reveals herself as the former Manitas. Emilia wishes to renew their acquaintance for the purpose of bringing her family back to Mexico. Posing as 'Aunt Emilia', Perez welcomes the family with open arms. They're more hesitant, though: the kids miss skiing in Switzerland, and wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) is in a relationship. Emilia has changed in other ways too: she becomes a celebrity social worker, using her laundered funds to make a foundation to locate missing people feared to have been killed in gang encounters. Perez even develops an attraction to one of her clients (Adriana Paz). But when Jessi announces her intention to re-marry and move away with the kids, Emilia snaps and all hell breaks loose.

Emilia Perez's narrative is presented in brilliant opera fashion, its choreographed song and dance routines wonderfully melding the romantic melodrama aspects with the crime backdrop. Saldana seems to be having a lot more fun than in her superhero Hollywood outings, but the film's biggest star is of course Karla Sofia Gascon in the title role. The film mirrors elements of the actor's life and she plays both Manitas and Emilia superbly. Yes, it's melodramatic and calls for some significant suspension of disbelief, but embraces its kitsch with a sincerity that triumphs over all else. Viva Emilia!