Brief thoughts on A BALCONY IN LIMOGES (UN BALCON À LIMOGES) (2025) Locarno 2025

 

Two women who went to high school together, one a strait laced and the other a free spirit living on the edge of society come together again when one seeks to help the other.

Small gem of a film is a charming little tale (running just over an hour) that shines thanks to its great cast and tight script. This film gets bonus points for running just long enough to tell its story with nothing extra.

I was delighted by this film because it didn't do what I expected. I fully expect this to show up at other festivals and series in the next year.

Recommended

Mosquitos (2025) Locarno 2025

This is a pointer for MOSQUITOS.  I’m not going to do a full-on review because the film did not click with me in a way that makes me think it’s purely a matter of personal taste and not quality of the film.

The film is the story of a young girl who moves to Italy with her free spirted mother. There she meets two sisters who about her age and the trio form a protective bond.

Shot mostly in a square 1:1 aspect ratio this is a film that is extremely deliberate in its presentation and its telling. You can feel the hands of directors Valentina and Nicole Bertani all over it. They are micromanaging every aspect of the film. It’s too much for my tastes and nothing ever felt real to me.  And while I don’t care for micromanaged films, I know a lot of people who are and so I’m going to leave the choice to see the film or not up to you.

A pointer toward Silent Light (2007) Locarno 2025

This is a restorartion of a film Barry Jenkins has called the greatest film of the 21st century.

Opening and closing with long tracking shots- the opening is of the sun rising, the closing is of it setting this the medatative look at an affair in a devout Mennonite community. 

This is a very deliberate film. It moves at the speed of life. Actually more accurately it moves at it's own speed of life. Events play out in real time only to have us realize that months have passed. It's a film that places us in a unique place and time. 

While I like this film, I don't love it.  I find that as much as the film strives to reflect real life, I find that the fingerprints of the director a bit too visible. Things play out as in life until they don't. The magic realism doesn't click.

On the other hand many people love this film like Barry Jenkins and it's on numerous greatest films ever made lists. 

If you've never seen it, give it a try.

EXILE (2025) Locarno 2025

 

Mehdi Hmili’s EXILE is manna from heaven for a cinema junkie. A staggeringly beautiful moody art house revenge tale that is also a portrait of a man on the edge which creates a one-of-a-kind mental space for the viewer.  This unexpected cinematic gem is one of the great finds of the year.

The plot of the film has man looking to get revenge for a friend who was killed when an industrial oven used for melting down scrap metal exploded. The explosion wrecked the plant, “melted” his friend, and put a piece of rebar in his head. The company said it was the dead friend’s fault, but he knows that isn’t right.

From the first frame of a seeming alien industrial planet tinted amber on to the near perfect final shot EXILE rocks.  The mix of sound and image is near perfect, with Hmili working overtime to make sure that we aren’t just seeing and hearing what’s happening but feeling it. The use of color is truly amazing. I could feel physical changes in my body as the tinted images adjusted occasionally to either partial tints or all real-life colors. Our moods change. The sound scape and music enhance that to the nth degree. We are no longer here but in the world on screen.

As much as I frequently dislike feeling a director’s hands all over a film, Hmili’s work doesn’t bother me.  It works because he doesn’t feel like a conductor, but instead it feels like he we are sitting with a friend in a café and he is spinning a story, and he’s really getting into it, pulling down the blinds and moving the dishes on the table. Hmili is directing the story but spinning it out like the great storytellers do.

I suspect some will chafe at the deliberate pacing, but it’s a key ingredient. We need to be in a certain head space. Much of this film set in a languid world away from the fast-paced world, the movie is paced to match where we are.

EXILE floored me. This is filmmaking at its finest.  I need another go on a really big screen, and I’m certain I will get another chance soon at one of the other big festivals around the globe. Films this good are bound to get noticed.

An absolute must see.

Sweetheart (2025) Locarno 2025

I will complain about slow films. If the story doesn’t grab us enough to go with the pacing, or if the pacing doesn’t pay off with a worthy ending, I will speak out.  I speak out because there are times when the slow pace of films will work magic and create a sense of life and will be used to build to an ending that makes you actually feel something wonderful. I say this because I just saw SWEETHEART a slowly paced film about a grandmother and her grandson.

The film is the story of a mother who sends her young son off to stay with his stern grandmother. She is very old school Italian; he is a modern kid with a cellphone. Of course they clash. As he tries to deal with the older woman, he is also trying to make friends with the kids his age, in particular a cute girl.

Moving at the speed of life SWEETHEART slowly works its magic. It’s a film that takes its time building characters. While in the early stages of the film we may want things to move a bit faster, there is a point where we settle in and go with it. We enjoy that we have time with the people on screen. We are not so much observing but hanging out with them. And by taking things at a slower pace the story doesn’t have to take short cuts to show us how people feel or are. We see it before us.  We really see the characters open up in looks and motions. We get true visual clues to the characters and aren’t required to have people say how or who they are.

Did I say this cast rocks. This is the sort of film where they should get an ensemble award. They aren’t actors but people.

This film is absolute magic.

If you are willing to let a film move at its own speed, especially when it pays off with a genuine emotive ending, see SWEETHEART

BALEARIC (2025) Locarno 2025

A seeming two part film. Four teens go into a house where the owners away to use their pool and end up trapped by three black dogs. Down the road a bunch of older rich people find they can not go into the water despite it being a brutally hot day. They are completely oblivious to an encroaching wild fire.

Destined for the art house BALEARIC is going to work best for those who like films that are striving to be deep and meaningful. Full of magical realism with a heavy allegorical bent the film is very much the work of filmmakers who are trying to make a point. They want us to consider the societal implications of what we are seeing. The trouble is that what the film seems to be saying isn't particularly deep and it has a hard time sustaining the brief 75 minute run time. Even th effort to tie the two parts together with the final image never really clicks.

I was disappointed.

The Cowboy(2025) Locarno 2025

 

Ten years in the life of a young man named Crowley who at age 11 wanted to be a cowboy. However as he grows up life changes his mind.

If you ever were curious about the life of the people who want to be a cowboy or girl this film will give you a clue. Actually the reality is that while the notion of being a cowboy hangs over the film, the truth is that the film is look at the way that life beats the crap out of those who dream and those who love them. In this  case Crowley loved his older brother who taught him how to be cowboy only to have him pass away.

This is a beautiful little film. It clearl shows how the life changes us whether we want to or not. It is similar to an number of recen.t films that cover one subject over a decade or more.  It frequently echoes some of the work of Frederick Wiseman. I quite like it and I suspect that the film will have a long life at festivals.

Worth a look.

The Fin (2025) Locarno 2025

This film floored me.  I was not expected to be transported to a dystopian world I had never been to before. This film is an amazing achievement.

Set is a post war world, where North Korea and South Korea are one and where there was a horrible environmental tragedy that has left the world polluted. Suijin is over seeing some Omegas, human mutants with three toes and fins, who are being used as slave/cheap labor. The Omegas mutations look like the effects of Thalidomide. The Omegas also have the ability to kill with their voices. She finds that an Omega named Mia is hiding out in a fishing store. As she investigates, she finds that the official government story is not what she has been told.

I loved this film. I loved that the world the film creates feels real. It feels well thought out or is thought out enough that outside of everyone looking dirty, it feels real. My saying this means something since I have seen several films this year set in their own worlds, and they collapsed because the worlds didn't make sense.

This is a film that feels oppressive. While it's far and away and several tomorrow away the film's examination of how people relate to the government feels of the moment. Also of the moment is the examination of class and of the outsider ("the immigrant").  This is film that is very much an unapologetic social commentary.

The visual elements of the film are both gorgeous and depressing. This is a world we don't want to visit and one we don't want to leave. The film making that makes this real it top of the line with everyone using whatever they can to make it work and make it real.

I know, I'm babbling. Forgive me. This is the wort of film where I want to grab each and every one of you and drag you to a theater to see this. 

Just go- this is amazing.

A pointer toward the restoration of Anno Uno (1974) Locarno 2025

This is the story of Alcide DeGasperi who was one of the leaders of Italy in the post WW2 world. The film is DeGasperi's struggle to move the country away from facism and toward Democracy as told by Roberto Rossellini.

The minds behind the Locarno film festival are behind the restoration of this film. They want to show the world what it takes to come back from fascism. 50 years on this is a timely film.

How you are going to react to the film will depend upon how you feel about Rossellini's later films.  This was the time when he was making a series of TV documentaries about great people and great events. They were focused on the reality of events on a human level and not grand spectacle. The result is there is a lot of talk and not great moments. ANNO UNO is in that vein.  This is a lot of talk and moments that aren't always the glorious ones.

While I like many of Rossellin's films, I find his later films to be too static for my tastes. I find what he found interesting not so interesting. While I admire what this film is doing I personally never was engaged.

While this film didn't work for me, Rossellini's film from the period delight many people (there are numerous releases from the Criterion Collection). If you are a fan of Rossellini's later films, make an effort to see it.

Legend of The Happy Worker (2025) Locarno 2025

Right before I saw this film I ran across a listing of unproduced David Lynch projects and this film was on it. Lynch didn't think he could get it to work and so executive produced the film for Duwayne Dunham who was Lynch's editor. 

This is  an absurd fairy tale about a utopian community where a guy named Joe ends up in position of power.

I am not going to guess whether you like this or not. You will either love its wacky sense of reality and sense of humor or you won't. Its a mannered film with everyone leaning into the silliness and the positive attitude. 

I liked the film I didn't love it. The problem for me is that the film chipper/vaudvillian tone didn't completely work for me. The insistance of keeping the theatrical dialog and delivery of the source play with the real world setting didn't work for me. Its a daring choice, but it doesn't work and creates a distance and the wrong  sense of unreality.

If you are a David Lynch completeist or someone who doesn't want a typical Hollywood film give this film a shot.