We root for the rootless Outsider in classical western cinema because the places the Outsider fetches up in are scary dumps of the first order – maybe a medieval grub-hole, a Wild West deadfall or some cantina full of aliens that Harrison Ford drops in on.
There’s a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer, said Graham Greene, and that ice plays a part in French director Justine Triet’s superb fourth feature, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Set in the French Alps, the film begins with successful novelist Sandra (an amazing Sandra Hüller, totally inhabiting the role) being interviewed at home by grad student Zoe (Camille Rutherford) for her dissertation. They’re drinking wine and chatting flirtatiously.
Two elderly men meet in the park while walking their dogs, and become friends. Even when friendship turns to love, the hounds tend to dominate the conversation. It’s hardly the most scintillating set-up for a play.
As Australia's greatest comedic export exits the stage, strewing gladioli, a promising contender for that title makes an entrance, trailing a dog on wheels. The dog is the titular Colin from Accounts, for the few who still haven’t tried this exceptional, refreshingly mature comedy.
It’s a dog’s life, this lockdown; if only I could meet my friends whenever I want to and roam around freely without obeying these annoying restrictions!
Jack London’s original novel was a brutal and Darwinian account of a dog's life in the Klondike during the gold rush at the end of the 19th century.
Keda’s already in trouble for not living up to his father’s expectations. And then there’s an unfortunate clash with an angry bison which sends him careering down a steep cliff face and left for dead. Welcome to Upper Paleolithic Europe. Albert Hughes’s Alpha doesn’t contain many narrative surprises; its plot involving a lost boy struggling against the odds to get back home is straightforward in the extreme.
It’s an undeniably quirky set-up: an elderly Spanish farmer who takes it upon himself to travel to America and walk – alone – the epic, 2,200-mile Trail of Tears, following the westward route taken by the Cherokee fleeing white settlers. Alone, that is, apart from his trusty sheepdog Zafrana and Andalusian donkey Gorrión.
It’s such a bizarre idea, in fact, that a travel agent whose help the old man attempts to enlist worries he’s being pranked. But what’s most successful, and memorable, about Chico Pereira’s poignant documentary – co-produced by the Scottish Documentary Institute, and winner of best doc at last year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival – is its slow, thoughtful, minimalist storytelling, and the way the director paints in farmer Manolo’s background and allows his tale to unfold with almost effortless ease. So much so, in fact, that we quickly forget about the oddness of his endeavour, and focus instead on this quiet but remarkable man (who is actually Pereira’s uncle and godfather), his relationships with his family and animals, and his understated determination.
This is no glib parable of a country boy lost in the big city
We thereby get to see Manolo’s warm interactions with his daughter Paca, who’s naturally unconvinced by this apparently preposterous idea, and a difficult medical fitness examination that concludes – not surprisingly – that 73-year-old Manolo really should be taking things easier. More importantly, we get glimpses into Manolo’s own solitary life, the solo excusions he’s been making all his life into the arid Spanish countryside – captured beautifully in the muted browns and greens of Julian Schwanitz’s photography – and his cranky relationship with his animals. Long-suffering donkey Gorrión might remain rather on the sidelines for much of the film, but makes his own stubborn determination humorously felt when confronted with crossing a precarious gangplank to a boat.
Once Manolo’s trip is underway – though it’s not immediately clear exactly where he’s headed – Pereira gently contrasts the gleaming technology of modern urban life with the homespun authenticity of the farmer’s outlook. But this is no glib parable of a country boy lost in the big city: Manolo strikes up conversations with truckers, delivers poetry with gusto in a bar, guides his unconventional trio of travellers across buzzing road intersections, and even parks them in front of a multinational corporation he hopes – unsuccessfully, it turns out – will help finance his trip.
Pereira’s film is a deceptively slight, quietly spoken tale of an old man’s slightly barmy caprices. But underneath its tender storytelling it deals with determination and resilience, with the inevitability of ageing, and with the importance of a slow contemplation of our world. It’s unavoidably narrowly focused in scope, but Donkeyote is an understated revelation.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for Donkeyote
In a small town on the Polish-Czech border where the mobile signal wanders between countries’ operators and only three inhabitants stick it out through the winter, animals are wreaking a terrible revenge. The bodies of murdered men, united in their penchant for hunting, have turned up in the forest, violently dead and rotting. Deer prints surround one corpse, beetles swarm another’s face and torso. Foxes escaped from an illegal fur farm need little motive to exact summary justice on their former jailor.
This isn't a feature about London's former docklands (although much of it was made in a studio nearby), but rather Wes Anderson's second foray into stop-motion animation (after 2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox) and a quiet hymn to two of his heroes, Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyasaki. Fittingly, it is set in Japan.