by Jarrod Jones. The 23rd annual Whistler Film Festival, based in Whistler, British Columbia, highlights films from all over the world — but especially Canada. DoomRocket is here with short-burst reviews of a few of its selections. In review: Robert Morin’s Wild Feast; Jeremy Lutter’s Zoe.mp4.
Canadian readers can join The Whistler Film Festival for online screenings December 4-17. For more information, click this.
WILD FEAST
[NOTE: I’ve been directed to an article that details Robert Morin’s approach to filming the rotting carcass featured in Wild Feast. This was information that was not originally made available when I first saw the film and wrote this review. Here it is for your perusal; the review will be left as originally written. — JJ]
I’ll admit, kicking off coverage of a Canadian film festival with a film about a moose might be too on the nose. Yet here I am talking about Robert Morin’s Wild Feast (Festin boréal) anyway, a 75-minute docu-drama that follows the last moments of a real-life moose in the deep Québécois forest as he’s pursued by a hunter. We view this majestic creature living his gentle, quiet moose life until a yellow-fletched arrow pierces his right flank. The moose makes a frantic dash across a river to his final resting place, where we watch him quietly breathe his last. Nature then takes its course, as nature will.
I said Wild Feast is a docu-drama instead of calling it a documentary. Morin works tiny stories into these long, lingering shots of the moose’s corpse (by cinematographer Thomas Leblanc Murray, who deserves mention for his stunningly intimate nature photography). It’s subtle, and the film’s dreamlike sequences of decomposition, with all its attendant visitors (bugs, carrion, foxes, wolves, and one mightily territorial bear), make it easy to gloss over the technique at play. He employs POV shots from the moose’s perspective as he approaches the river, and later, a similar shot involves a turtle going for a swim and a snack. There’s a minor turf war over this beastly banquet between that bear and an inquisitive little critter at one point. Ravens squabble around the antlers. Feasts are rarely this rowdy. Or this tranquil.
Morin wants us to consider the chaos of nature, our place in it, and the way the planet keeps spinning regardless of what happens on it. (The film appears to have been shot over at least half a year, though that’s speculation on my part.) His film’s synopsis suggests it offers a life lesson at a time “when the glorious paradises offered by religions tend to feel less and less credible.” I don’t know about all that, though watching this projected on a huge screen (as opposed to my laptop) might inspire at least a few existential musings about humanity’s part in nature’s visceral and beautiful cycle. That just speaks to the wondrous (and horrifying) things the filmmaker has to show us.
Yet, even as Morin’s cameras captured the astonishing results of a long winter over the body of a once-living animal, a thought nagged at me: Did this moose need to actually die to tell this story? As the director behind such provocative works as May God Bless America, Windigo, and Infiltration (made in 2017, his last work before this), Morin is no stranger to playing rough. Here, he plays the hunter who shot the arrow, which feels excessive. Maybe with Wild Feast, Morin is exploring his place in this great cycle and the harsh consequences of living among such splendor in the only way he knows how.
5/10
Written and directed by Robert Morin.
Cinematography by Thomas Leblanc Murray.
Starring Solomon Wawatie and Robert Morin.
Produced by Cédric Bourdeau, Louis Laverdière, and Stephane Tanguay.
Unrated. Contains one on-camera death of a moose and the subsequent slow decay.
ZOE.mp4
Walk through any Target and try to miss those ridiculous coffee mugs and throw pillows with drippy inspirational dreck printed on them. “Live, Laugh, Love,” “Be Strong + Courageous.” Who actually buys this junk? Possibly Alina (Emily Tennant), the suburban single mom/”altruistic” serial killer of Zoe.mp4. Alina isn’t your typical serial killer — or mom! (It’s hard to balance work and family, you know?) But once you listen to her go on (and on) about her personal philosophies, you get the impression she believes she’s living her best life. All she wants is for her victims to do the same!
So here comes Zoe.mp4, the latest from Vancouver director Jeremy Lutter, who, wonderfully enough, pitched his first film at Whistler Film Festival years ago. It’s a two-character chamber melodrama wherein lessons are learned and twists come suddenly and often predictably. Alina stalks Zoe (Julia Sarah Stone), a young architect who lives a distracted existence with her fiance Matt (Osric Chau), yet to find the joie de vivre Alina enjoys so well. So Alina, who seemingly chooses their victims by how harried they look at coffee shops, snatches Zoe and puts her through grueling questions to understand why Zoe isn’t adulting the way Alina thinks she should. One of these questions, which feels like a goofball shortcut employed by the screenwriters (Jesse Boyko and Ryan Bright) to show us how truly crackers Alina is, goes: “If God was a vegetable, what would he be?”
I had a hard time with Zoe.mp4. It’s one of those overwritten and overproduced genre jobs (why, oh, why was this shot in the Scope ratio???) where the performances become the centerpiece of the film simply by there being so little production value to go around. (Seriously, why wasn’t this a found-footage movie? It’s right there in the title!) Luckily, Lutter chose to cast Stone and Tennant, who bounce off each other in waves of combativeness and empathy that feel in agreement with this story’s mercurial diatribes — even if Lutter often shoots and edits them into visual chaos. Tennant puts her big eyes to work during these monologues, hardly blinking as she rants out variations of “You laugh at me because I’m different; I laugh at you because you’re all the same.” Pumpkin Spice Dexter.
And spare a thought for Stone, the gifted actor who spends much of the movie strapped to a chair and must have wept actual buckets of tears during this film’s production. Stone’s face grows increasingly red, streaked with the remnants of mascara running from her eyes as her character pleads for her life and furiously rejects Alina’s sanctimony. If the movie is compelling at all, it’s due to the commitment Stone and Tennant put into their verbal combat. If only the film around them was just as dedicated to making the best version of itself.
5.5/10
Directed by Jeremy Lutter.
Written by Jesse Boyko and Ryan Bright.
Cinematography by Daniel Carruthers.
Starring Julia Sarah Stone, Emily Tennant, Osric Chau, Dejan Loyola, and Jillian Walchuck.
Produced by Jesse Boyko, Ryan Bright, Lawrence Davidson, Dan Krieger, Jeremy Lutter, and Rob Neilson.
Unrated. Contains some stabby bits and several wordy allusions to abuse.
Canadian readers can join The Whistler Film Festival for online screenings December 4-17. For more information, click this.
Our WFF 2023 coverage continues this week.
More DoomRocket Reviews:
Arrow Video’s 4K upgrade lets Barbarella shimmer in the way it was always meant to
Out of Style is a love letter to (and written in) street fashion
The Iron-Fisted Monk and The Prodigal Son are Sammo Hung at his kung fu best
