Camil wakes up one night without a penis. The nightmare continues when his partner also disappears after meeting a former lover. Camil sets out to find her and - wearing female clothes - joins a secret community dedicated to fertility, somewhere near a lake. And what he finds there will prove even more disturbing than his recent misadventures...
Double Happiness, Ссавці
Germany
Berlinale
Czechia
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
Ukraine
Odesa International Film Festival
Romania
Czechia
Germany
Romania
Ukraine
I had planned to watch more female filmmakers this year, but instead my first Berlinale film was made by some bitter dude who hates that women are getting empowered.
I knew that almost nobody was going to like this as much as I did, it’s the kind of thing that nails several distinct aspects of my taste but is possibly only semi-coherent otherwise. So I am not surprised to see the bad ratings and hear about walkouts, but I am surprised to see that people understood this as some kind of men’s rights statement about how men have been emasculated by feminism. I read it as a satire of precisely that attitude! And more generally as an attempted subversion of rigidly binary thinking about gender, which the film treats as very flexible and performative, though the humor has some biologically reductionist tendencies which may undermine some of what it’s doing in that regard.
more of a series of shots than a narrative but boy were those shots juicy! much too foggy and ironic to pin down, i remain confounded how so many people read an anti-feminist statement into this when even the director (who turned up in a sort of closeted footballer chic get-up?) said it was his 82nd viewing and he still kept interpreting it anew, not to mention the main male caharcter clearly not being some misunderstood hero here. form-wise really committed to the wide wide nature and group shots that go on forever and ever which could be tedious but was also poked fun at successfully within the movie a couple of times and at its best made for aforementioned…
Andrew Tate discovers the alpha female club. Explains why it was a Romanian film.
Lots of nice folk horror imagery in this one. Unfortunately that's not the tone or story, it's one of those kinda abstract vignette things of mainly long static shots (with the occasional zoom in) loosely following a dude infiltrating a women's cult thing. I dunno. Not for me.
Mammalia is not a bland, generic movie - it has a unique feel and aesthetic to it.
That being said, many scenes went on too long for me. I applaud the directorial decision but it just wasn’t for me.
Also it was very difficult to relate to any of the characters as they felt more allegorical than real. The passive and emotionally stoic protagonist reminded me of a Kafka character.
I respect the artistic vision and the Crew Q&A after the showing at the Berlinale was great and incredibly insightful!
For example:
It took roughly seven years from the first idea to the final release of the movie, the plot having changed countless times and the director deliberately allowing the…
Berlinale 1 - Press Screening
Forum
This is the theatrical equivalent of an 18-year-old dude showing up to his first day of film school at Emerson College wearing an A24 sweatshirt.
