Volume 112: Fuga / La vraie familie
The Voice of Energy Vol. 112
I hardly realized that it had been quite so long since I've written one of these. I was a little too embarrassed to check because I knew it had been a minute. But, in my defense, it's what had to happen thanks to a surprisingly heavy workload and life-load that kept me from being able to sit down and catch up with some screeners and some writing. I'm back now, though, with a pair of reviews for you of films that tell very different stories about mothers. Read on and I'll catch you at the end.
Fuga (dir. Agnieszka Smoczynska)
Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska made an international splash in 2016 as The Lure, her horror / musical riff on The Little Mermaid made the festival rounds and had a successful theatrical run the next year. With the hype surrounding that film and her latest effort, The Silent Twins, it’s a wonder that it took distributors this long to bring Smocynska’s 2018 feature Fuga into wider circulation.
The delay could simply be a reaction to the middling reviews and poor box office receipts in America for The Silent Twins. Or it could have everything to do with its challenging, deeply feminist storyline. Even the most open-minded of art house regulars may have a hard time with a film that opens with its main character Alicja (Gabriela Muskala, who also wrote the film’s script) emerging from a subway tunnel, climbing onto the platform and crouching down to pee in full view of the midday commuters.
What we come to learn is that Alicja is in the titular fugue state, the result of a traumatic accident that left her without any memory of who she is or where she came from. She becomes something of a cause celebre after being arrested and thrown into the care of a psychiatrist. He puts Alicja on TV hoping someone will recognize her. Soon enough, she’s back home, trying to come to terms with the life she doesn’t remember leaving behind. That includes her given name Kinga, a doting husband (Lukasz Simlat), a young son, and a job as a schoolteacher.
The transition back into this seemingly normal life is not an easy one. Kinga / Alicja is far brasher and ill-tempered than before. She struggles with the day-to-day routine of family life even as she makes some good faith efforts to be the wife / mother / friend she once was. In spite of that, her chief concern seems to be getting a new ID card under her new name.
It may seem like a tiny bit of plastic, but in Kinga’s mind, it’s a passepartout that will allow her to escape the drudgery is now being forced to endure. The roles that Alicja has fulfilled without little friction now feel uncomfortable against her skin and Muskala reflects that in her stiff, jerking body language and disquieted facial expressions. She occasionally softens, but never fully gives into what is seemingly being demanded of her.
Free of pat moments or histrionic drama, the measured pace and naturalistic performances by everyone on screen adds to the considerable weight that grows more unbearable for Alicja. Smoczynska and Muskala push viewers to question their own expectations about how the film should play out. Do we root for Alicja to come to her senses and return to being Kinga, or do we hope that she stays on her present course and seeks out something else? And if we lean one way or the other, why do we feel that way? The questions that the filmmakers are asking in Fuga aren’t easily answered, nor do they dare try to. But it’s precisely that ambiguity that helps this film achieve greatness. (in select theaters now)
La vraie famille (dir. Fabien Gorgeart)
Unlike Alicja, Anna (Mélanie Thierry), the matriarch of the boisterous loving family at the center of Fabien Gorgeart’s latest film La vraie familie (awkwardly titled for American home video / VOD release as A Family For 1640 Days), loves being a mother. It’s perhaps the most defining role of her life, and she takes to it with her whole heart and soul.
With her equally doting husband Driss (Lyès Salem), Anna looks after three kids: her two birth children and Simon (Gabriel Pavie), a foster child. Simon was brought into the home when he was barely one following the death of his mother. His father Eddy (Félix Moati), reeling from the death of his wife, was unable to care for the youngster. Five years later, Eddy has petitioned the state to have Simon returned to him, a long process that involves regular visits that are slowly ramped up to ease the transition. The process is not a particularly easy one. Simon has only ever known Anna as “Mom” and has a difficult time getting used to this relative stranger. Anna and Eddy tangle over Simon’s, leading her to make some dubious choices that she blindly thinks are the best thing for the child.
The emotional stakes of La vraie familie are already high but the documentary-like feel of the film serves to make every moment that much more fraught and devastating. As with Fuga, no one seems to be acting. The verbal fights that Anna gets into with her oldest son are written with an ear toward colloquial language, making them brutal to hear unfold. So, too, is the ache and fury about this situation that comes out of Thierry throughout. Anna is a bundle of sparking emotions throughout, wrestling as she does with an awful reality that she unwittingly put in motion. Thierry embodies this inner tension fully. Every ounce of love Anna has for Simon is visible to an almost discomforting degree.
Gorgeart apparently knows these emotions all too well, as the film was based on a similar situation that went on among his own family. That could be why he keeps his direction so lean and straightforward. Outside of a couple of unnecessary moments of showiness and a slightly overbearing score, La vraie familie is otherwise straightforward and fuss-free. Anything more added to the mix would have diluted the film’s empathetic heart and deadened its overall power. (available on home video and through VOD services)
Outside of the newsletter, I've been plenty busy writing with stuff popping up in actual print publications like Maggot Brain and Hi-Fructose, and getting back into the swim of things at Paste where I'm now a regular contributor again. That said, even with the work I've got to do this month, I'll do my best to stay on top of the newsletter from here on out. You've stuck with me this long and I don't want to let anyone down.
Artwork for this edition of The Voice of Energy is by the late Etel Adnan whose work will be on display at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen's K20 Gallery in Düsseldorf through July 16.
This newsletter was written on the unceded land where once stood the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area.