VTIFF Program-Guide 2024 - Flipbook - Page 10
FILMS A TO Z
FH: FILM HOUSE | BB: BLACK BOX THEATER | SR: SCREENING ROOM • All at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center, Burlington
ARMAND
Directed by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel
Norway, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden | 2024 | Fiction | 117 min | Norwegian w/
subtitles
THE BALCONETTES (LES FEMMES AU BALCON)
Directed by Noemie Merlant
France | 2024 | Fiction | 105 min | French w/subtitles
Sponsored by: Erika Senft Miller and John Miller
SHOWTIMES
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23 | 1:30 PM | FH
SHOWTIMES
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24 | 9 PM | FH
Something has happened between six-year-old Armand and his schoolmate Jon. The
parents are called to the school for a meeting—including a chilly Renate Reinsve (The
Worst Person in the World) as Armand’s mother, a famous actress. But what actually
happened? Was it just a children’s game or something much more serious? Who should
we believe? And what exactly is the nature of the relationship between the parents?
Armand is a work of misdirection that has a strange elemental power, with unforgettable
sequences and a delicious sense of menace. It takes the logical next step beyond, say,
Anatomy of a Fall, and adds a dose of surrealism, letting the fabric of reality come
undone. Just when you think Armand has painted itself into a corner, and that the
ratcheting debate at the center of the film has reached an impasse, the floor drops out
and it mutates into something else entirely. First-time writer-director Halfdan Ullmann
Tøndel, grandson of Liv Ullman and Ingmar Bergman, won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes
(Best First Film) for this slippery and maddening film, an essential work of post-truth
cinema, where objective facts are debatable, consequences are negotiable, and the
combatant most adept at mind games wins. ~OO
This wildly irreverent comedy/horror provocation was written by director/actress Noemie
Merlant and Celine Sciamma, who last worked together on the excellent Portrait of a
Lady on Fire, with Sciamma directing and Merlant starring. The two films share a theme
of female self-reliance, but...not much else. Raunchy, violent, hilarious, gory, fun,
supernatural, disturbing, sexual, and subversive as hell, The Balconettes is a genre
mash-up that shifts tones so often and so wildly that you may suffer cinematic whiplash.
Merlant’s film has the feel of early Almodóvar with its melodramatic plot, intense female
bonding, wild plot shifts, and a mission to provoke, mostly for the fun of it. During a
blistering Marseilles heatwave, three women accept an invitation from the cute guy on
the balcony across the way. They go over for a drink. Utter mayhem ensues. There are
ghosts, corpses, gynecological exams, murder, assault, fart jokes, and pretty much
everything else. The women must bond together to find a way through all this patriarchyinduced madness. As one member of the VTIFF Programming Committee said, “It isn’t
so much that the film rejects the male gaze; it refuses to acknowledge that it even
exists.” ~SM
BIRD
Directed by Andrea Arnold
UK | 2024 | Fiction | 119 min | English
Sponsored by: Brian Ortelere and Gretchen Santamour
SHOWTIMES
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19 | 7 PM | FH
When we last heard from writer-director Andrea Arnold—Academy Award winner,
three-time Jury Prize awardee at Cannes, and one of the most celebrated auteurs in the
world—she was taking a detour to document the life cycle of a cow in cinéma vérité
style. Bird marks her triumphant return to narrative feature film and synthesizes a
number of points from across her two-decade career. Starring two of the hottest indie
darlings of the moment—Franz Rogowski (Passages, Transit) and Barry Keoghan (The
Banshees of Inisherin, Saltburn)—Arnold returns to her childhood stomping grounds of
Kent to tell the story of 12-year-old Bailey, who lives with her brother Hunter and her
scammer father Bug in a rundown squat. Continuing her exploration of disenfranchised
young women struggling through family dysfunction and squalid settings tinged with
violence, Arnold tells coming-of-age stories like no one else—rough-hewn,
impressionistic, gritty, and disarmingly sensitive. A worthy continuation of Arnold’s
dirtbag-chic opus American Honey, Bird is both beautiful and unflinching. ~OO
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VTIFF.ORG | VERMONT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024
