Unearthed: the power of gardening

 Not 100% sure how to render the punctuation in this exhibit at the British Library but since today is the start of a two-day conference on gardens and empires, it seems timely to recount my visit to Unearthed. 

I was quite keen to see what might be included, as I have been staying away from indoor spaces since 2020, I have been starved of visual stimulation and gardening has become quite the focus for my attention since then. I attended a relaxed viewing and was indeed the first to arrive for my slot, so had the space to myself for quite some time. 

Alas, relaxed meant no open sounds, so I was unable to fully appreciate some of the installation work on show. I actually prefer sounds to pictures, so that was a shame. But there were some videos that had both captions and headphone-type devices to use so there is some good choice. 

 The selection of items puzzled me. It was so farflung, everything from Gertrude Jekyll's boots to pamphlets and some historical explanations. Presentation included the usual glass cases, plus a confusing spinning globe, some attempts at sheds and a digital screen allowing one to design one's own garden. Alas for me, you can only take away the result with a smartphone that reads QR codes. Oh, well. 

The most interesting bits to me were the mentions of guerrilla groups and squat communities connected to gardening--gardening activism, if you will. That seems to best illustrate the notion of claiming power, as opposed to being the recipient of it.

I felt coming away from the exhibit curiously underwhelmed, as if having so many gardening topics actually lessened the impact of the whole. 

What I thought might be fascinating would be to explore more fully topics like gardening and community or gardening and empire, hence my interest in the above conference, which I have only just found and so will not be attending. 

 But I am intrigued to look more into some of the groups I discovered by visiting, such as  Coco Collective, as well as learning more about land enclosures and The Diggers. 

 Unearthed: the power of gardening is at the British Library in London until 10 August. 

Various local libraries have related exhibits, such as this one at Warwickshire Library.  

The Venus Effect

 This Danish film directed and co-written by Anna Emma Haudal is billed as a lesbian rom com. Well. Not so sure about that.... 

 Taciturn Liv works at her parents garden centre and has a meet cute with hippy wild child Andrea when the latter's car breaks down and she bursts in wearing a pussy costume. 

 The first 15-20 minutes are quite intriguing as the writers weave in notions of growth and natural elements: trees, bees, plants making music. I was quite hopeful. 

 But once the two women strike up a relationship, the film falls flat. There is no sense of why these two disparate characters would get together, much less Liv cheat on her boyfriend. There are several set pieces in which characters sit down to uncomfortable meals that could be hilarious farce. But not here. It's just lots of awkwardness. It put me in mind of some of Joanna Hogg's work, with her tense silences and people putting on brave faces and being polite. I have never warmed to Hogg's work, and this felt equally stilted. Plus the two leads have no chemistry. 

The last 20 minutes pick up considerably, as we finally get a satisfying conflagration (over Christmas dinner), and Liv finally expresses some deeply held emotions after 80 minutes of being frustratingly passive. Over goes the tree. No cha cha heels, though. So, not so much rom com as low key drama.  

One thing I noticed was that the references to plant life also disappeared in the middle part and the director throws in very oddly paced cut aways to trees. A shame she didn't develop that strand as relationship and plant growth are a good match. 

Trailer

THE VENUS EFFECT is available on streaming services from 2 June.
 

The Ugly Stepsister

 Strap in for some Scandi horror, as writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt delivers a wickedly black humoured retelling of the Cinderella story, here presented as a 19th century marriage mart. 

While not as gory as I had anticipated, the film does regularly serve up truly gruesome imagery. I was expecting a rivalry between stepsisters Agnes and Elvira, but actually it becomes more of a war between Elvira and the social expectations of her to contort herself to find a husband. Her sights are firmly set on drippy poetry-writing Prince Julian and to this end she is willing to allow various body parts to be broken, reshaped and in a fingers-over-the-eyes climax, to be lopped off. 

But before all that, Elvira goes through dance and deportment lessons and in the course of this swallows a tapeworm to lose weight, as you do. As soon as this happened, I thought: this tapeworm will be making a reappearance. And, OMG, it really, really does. 

The voice of reason in all this is Elvira's little sister Alma who watches, learns and offers the sensible comment that Elvira is not right in the head. I rather expected to see more of Alma and was intrigued by her turning up in Elvira's room late in the day wearing boys' clothes. This was never explained, so maybe something was edited out. 

The power shift between Agnes and Elvira is quite interesting and the viewer may well find sympathies shifting. To my disappointment, there is very little sisterhood on show. And the mother of the two girls. My god. She really is a piece of work.

 While it was quite well done, I would have liked to see someone in this deadly game realise they are all being played and bail out. 

The Ugly Stepsister trailer

 The Ugly Stepsister is available for digital download in UK from 9 May. 

Queer East: Incidental Journey

 For my final post from Queer East, I am looking at Incidental Journey, a 2001 film from Taiwan (dir Jo-Fei Chen) and shot on 16mm. I honestly thought this was a much older film as I watched as it's quite slow and dreamy and nobody uses modern tech. 

It's quite short for a feature, running at 61 minutes, and there are long stretches without dialogue as heartbroken Ching picks up hitchhiker Hsiang in a remote location and the two then get stranded. They end up spending most of the film at the truly gorgeous home of Hsiang's friends Ji and Fu who grow their own food and live near a river. Ching and Hsiang spend a lot of their time smoking and not speaking to each other, which is how we know they must feel an attraction. Honestly, I started to get annoyed at their lack of speech. But they grow on each other over time and on us, the audience. 

Ji is the interesting character as it is clear she shares some history with Hsiang. She proves a catalyst in moving the action along a bit. 

Can't say I loved the ending, as it baffled me, but that seems almost a given for the films I have watched for this festival.

Incidental Journey trailer

Queer East continues through 18 May.

Queer East: Extremely Unique Dynamic

 This one starts off quite well and then tails off, which really should not happen as it's only 67 minutes. Playing with the concept of meta reality, Extremely Unique Dynamic features two guys living in LA who are facing a separation as one of them is moving to Canada. At first I thought they were meant to be a couple but they are actually pals and one of them is getting married. But first they want to have one weekend to have fun... and make a film. As you do. 

But these two are both frustrated entertainers. Ryan is an actor not getting booked while anxiety-ridden Danny whose raps about loving tacos somehow have not made him famous. Ryan proposes a film within a film within a film (if I have counted properly) in which they film with both a DV cam and an iPhone to record their "unique dynamic" and somehow make a film with no real plot. 

The first 10 to 15 minutes are quite funny, as we see them trying to ride every internet wave and use services like "Giggle" etc. But once they start filming themselves, it gets a bit self-indulgent and not very funny. The self awareness also feels a bit cringey at times, with Ryan's marketing speak and Danny's nerd chic wearing thin over the running time. The cameos from a YouTube personality and an actor feel random, as if the filmmakers (the actors plus a third person) had called in favours. Most oddly, the unseen fiancee's voice comes from Kelly Lynch!

With the drama hinging on whether Danny will tell Ryan he's gay, it doesn't feel like much jeopardy. The footage of Danny and Ryan's childhood antics, which largely seem like them jostling to be in front of the camera, is also not that exciting.  More back story might have helped.

This feels like it would have been a great short which has been stretched to breaking point to make feature length. 

Extremely Unique Dynamic trailer

Queer East: Rookie

 Quite the departure from my recent viewing, Rookie, a film from the Philippines directed by Samantha Lee, takes us into the world of high school volleyball as awkward new girl Ace tries to acclimatise to her new school and the hostility of the team captain, Jana. 

That these two find common ground eventually is not really in doubt but it is quite refreshing to see high school sport used as the setting for this budding romance. My hazy memories of volleyball at school are mainly centred on my inability to serve properly. But I cannot remember receiving any coaching in the sport. 

Coaching is at the heart of this film, not just from the earnest Coach Jules but her shady assistant Kel and the upholders of the mores of the school. When Jana and Ace decide to go to prom, there are issues. And the shock of the nattily attired Ace being told by a nun her outfit is not modest is too much. This girl has the soft butch look down!

The team ethos grows over time, with several of the girls providing revelations about Kel and this offers a very satisfying, if brief, revenge scene.  

The climactic competition scene goes on a bit and then leads to a rather curtailed ending. But this film will give you the feels if you found school a bit awkward and wished you had asked that cutie to prom.

Rookie trailer

Queer East: Murmur of Youth

 This is my first time reviewing some of the titles from this festival which is on now until 18 May in locations in London. 

The 1997 drama from Taiwan, Murmur of Youth, is a curious beast, stretching to 104 minutes, during which not very much happens for the first 80. Two girls, both called Ming-Lei, are shown leading their lives in and out of schools in their very different environments. One lives in a rural area with her extended family and one lives in a high rise block. Their paths finally intersect 43 minutes into the film when they start working in the same cinema. 

And then the floodgates open. They speak! They joke! They confess their crushes and bodily secrets. It is quite the jolt from the previous sedate, almost wordless pace. I did wonder at why it was in a queer festival, but then that became clear in the last 15 minutes, which was also a jolt. 

I don't really know what to make of this film. I found it quite dull for the most part, but I did have questions afterward. Also, one will have to google to find a translation of an important document toward the end. A bit of a mystery all around. 

Murmur of Youth trailer