Following, in alphabetical order, are reviews of selected films screening through Thursday, October 16 (though repeat screenings after that date are also noted). For reviews of films screening Friday, October 17, through Thursday, October 24, come back next week to read the second part of our festival coverage.
Read our reviews of films screening during the festival’s second week.
A half century of CIFF milestones, from Scorsese’s debut to Lee Daniels’s achievement award
Read our reviews of 15 revival films screening at CIFF.
FOR MORE Call 312-332-3456 or go to chicagofilmfestival.com. –J.R. Jones
Force Majeure If Michael Haneke were recruited to direct an American sitcom pilot, the results might look something like this Swedish feature, about an upper-middle-class family vacationing unhappily in the French Alps. Like Haneke, writer-director Ruben Östlund (Play) employs eerily controlled long takes to conjure an air of doom around his characters, yet beneath the commanding surfaces lie some rather basic observations about marriage, parenting, and social conformism. For a comedy about emotional pain, this is neither discomforting nor terribly funny, and the satire of bourgeois complacency doesn’t cut very deep. A few sequences, though, are potent enough to hint at the squirm-inducing provocation this might have been, namely an awkward double date between the spouses and another vacationing couple that mutates into a long, passive-aggressive debate. In English and subtitled Swedish. —Ben Sachs R, 118 min. Fri 10/10, 8:15 PM, and Sun 10/12, 5:30 PM.
The Kindergarten Teacher Nadav Lapid’s second feature is smarter and more unsettling than his first, Policeman (2011), but as in the earlier film, Lapid tends to dilute his provocative ideas with art-movie cliches. The title character is a middle-aged woman suffering from a familiar case of urban malaise; shaken out of her torpor by a student who composes beautiful poetry with the ease of a master, she becomes obsessed with the boy, eventually going mad in her quest to convince the world of his genius. The film oscillates between a lament for the devaluation of poetry in contemporary life and a muted psychological horror movie (the boy’s talent is so uncanny that at times he seems demonically possessed). As a dramatist Lapid can be too oblique for his own good, and his story runs off the rails in the last half hour, yet he generates plenty of food for thought. In Hebrew with subtitles. —Ben Sachs 115 min. Tue 10/14, 1 PM; Mon 10/20, 9 PM; and Wed 10/22, 8 PM.
Still The devilish Aiden Gillen—a familiar face in the UK, but best known here for recurring roles on HBO’s The Wire and Game of Thrones—gives a sensitive performance as a low-rent photographer in North London still grieving over the hit-and-run death of his teenage son a year earlier. His glancing friendship with a schoolboy whose brother has just been killed in a gang altercation invites mounting harassment from the young punks who committed the crime, yet the photographer’s feelings for his dead son inhibit him from taking action against the boys. This debut feature from writer-director Simon Blake shows great promise, though it’s rather an odd bird, veering between intelligent, insightful chamber drama and Death Wish histrionics (the climax is especially overheated). Amanda Mealing contributes a fine performance as the hero’s estranged wife; her scenes with Gillen are the movie’s high point. –J.R. Jones 96 min. Blake and producer Colette Delaney-Smith attend the screening. Sat 10/11, 5:30 PM; Sun 10/12, 5:15 PM; and Wed 10/15, 2:30 PM.
The Young Kieslowski The title character arrives for his freshman year at Caltech, anxiety over his virginity overwhelming everything else in his life including his mother’s potentially terminal lung cancer; after losing his cherry with a fellow first-timer, she winds up pregnant—with twins! This indie drama is like Knocked Up without the jokes, social insight, or storytelling skill; writer-director Kerem Sanga has a tin ear for dialogue, poor instincts behind a camera, and no originality. I spent most of the running time wondering how capable indie vets like James Le Gros, Melora Walters, and Joshua Malina ended up in this. —Tal Rosenberg 94 min. Sanga and producer Seth Caplan attend the Thursday screening, joined by actress Haley Lu Richardson at the Friday screening. Mon 10/13, 3:30 PM; Thu 10/16, 8:30 PM; and Fri 10/17, 5 PM.
