What We Saw at the 2023 New York Film Festival 2023

This year’s New York Film Festival (September 29-October 15) will definitely be one to remember. For starters, the festival’s batting average was much higher than usual. This may be attributable to 2023’s broad slate of great features, the festival’s smaller and more refined lineup, or a combination of the two. The festival’s popularity also notably spiked. Not only were there record ticket sales, many screenings were already sold out by time the public ticket selection process began.

During the festival’s two-week run, I managed to catch a bit of everything–some of my favorite movies of the year, some unexpectedly worthwhile flicks and a couple of rough disappointments.

 The Must-Sees

Frederick Wiseman’s 50th film, Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros, is a four-hour documentary exploring the comings and goings of La Maison Troisgros, a Michelin three-star, family-run restaurant in the French countryside. Like all Wiseman documentaries, the film is observational, featuring long sequences with little camera movement and minimal editing to capture the conversations between chefs, waiters and clients. Spending this much time with the chefs, their ingredient selection process and cooking methods showcases how cuisine is an art, a tool that brings people together through its delicacy and refinement. Just don’t approach this one on an empty stomach.

Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast may not be the best movie of the festival, but it’s certainly the most movie. The film is a love story between different versions of Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay), set in the years 1910, 2014 and 2044. The film’s editing style meshes these three periods, framed by the 2044 version of Gabrielle deciding whether she wants to purify her DNA and rid herself of most of her emotions. Bonello’s film is astonishing, with a script so layered that it will take multiple watches to even begin to understand how the story’s moving pieces fit together. Seydoux’s and MacKay’s performances are excellent, as the two successfully differentiate the versions of their three characters, who are distinct yet eerily similar in so many ways.

It’s not often that we get to see someone crafting their own elegy. But in Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus–a 103-minute document of the famed Japanese composer’s final performance before his untimely death in March 2023–there’s a real, constantly crushing feeling of farewell. Directed by Neo Sora, Sakamoto’s son, the film captures little more than Sakamoto sitting behind his piano, playing some of his most famous works. Sequences are heavily edited–in fact, a little too much for their own good. But, it’s hard to deny the film’s ability to let you immerse yourself in Sakamoto’s music and performance, allowing your mind to wander as you ponder art’s immortality and the reasons we find ourselves attracted to and moved by music.

Worth A Watch

Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s The Settlers is one of the most harrowing, excruciating film experiences of the year. The film follows three colonialists–one Scottish, one American and one Chilean–as they ride through the Patagonian landscape, attempting to claim more land for their employer. Along the way, they pillage all the indigenous towns they find, murdering masses of people to gain land and to exert their power. The film’s precise editing, 35mm-shot visuals and complex story effectively convey these themes, and a tight narrative switch in the film’s final act effectively shows how colonialism and nationalism are inherently tied to one another.

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures of Ghosts is a deeply emotional look at the passage of time, refracted through the closing of downtown Recife’s once-thriving, single-screen cinemas. Through archival footage and narration, the director compares cinemas to churches, highlighting how they shaped his adolescent experiences and his narrative style as a filmmaker. Regardless of the specificity of the film’s setting, the documentary is highly relatable, capturing the sadness and sorrow associated with the erasure of the single-screen theater. As Filho reasons, the former standard of movie-going can rest in our memories and in footage, but there’s not much else we can do.

One of the two Hong Sang-soo films screening at the festival, In Water is a 61-minute film that captures what the director does best, with a twist. The story: a director and two actors hang around a beach town, drinking soju, walking around and looking for inspiration for their short film project. The film is nearly entirely shot out-of-focus though, bringing a fresh and fascinating perspective to director Hong’s minimalistic settings, loose editing and little camera movement. The film’s final act also becomes a fascinating meditation on how fiction and reality influence one another, marking a delightful conclusion to an hour well spent.

Bas Devos’ Here is a film of quiet reflections, chance encounters and simple relationships. Set in Brussels, the 82-minute film follows a Romanian construction worker gearing up to leave Belgium (potentially for good) and a Chinese-Belgian bryologist trying to take inventory of all the city’s moss varieties. The film’s quiet and pensive nature allows both characters to feel fully developed through their minimal actions and simple dialogue, making their eventual connection in the film’s second half feel warranted, charming and somewhat unforgettable.

Good, But Not Great

Paul B. Preciado’s documentary, Orlando: My Political Biography is stylistically bold and refreshingly abstract. On its surface, the French film is a love letter to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, whose main, genderless character is seen as a transgender icon. At the same time, the film is a rumination on the transgender experience, as subjects discuss their difficulties within the political system, pharmaceutical system and the social world, among others. The film is very punk and sketch-like, moving between different concepts and structural styles at a furious speed. The result is a mostly beneficial, yet sometimes unfocused, experience.

The other Hong Sang-soo film, In Our Day, is a story neatly divided into two parts. Half of the film follows Sangwon (Kim Min-hee), a struggling actress, while the other half centers around Uiji (Ki Joo-bong), a poet who has recently achieved notoriety but doesn’t seem to care. These stories never intersect, and are somewhat different in tone and content. While it’s an entertaining film–featuring director Hong’s signature minimalism and soju-drinking protagonists–its thematic ambiguity holds it from making a more memorable impact.

 The Disappointments

Iconic Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar returns with Strange Way of Life, a 32-minute, Saint Laurent-funded short that is the director’s answer to Brokeback Mountain. The film, which stars Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, tells the story of two gay cowboys who spend a night together after years of separation. From the get-go, it’s clear that the film would work, and even be great, as a feature film, with enough time to explore the characters’ backstories and solidify their relationship to one another. In its current state, the nauseatingly-fast pacing and deeply uninteresting character motivations prevent a narrative from fully forming.

Martín Rejtman’s La Práctica follows Gustavo (Esteban Bigliardi), a yoga instructor who has recently separated from his wife (also a yoga instructor). As Gustavo tries to find his footing, strange events–him tearing his meniscus, meeting an old student (who he doesn’t remember) or dealing with a potential thief at the studio–stop him from focusing on his practice and moving on. The film’s wittiness, placing emphasis on repeated moments and deadpan humor, quickly becomes frustrating when it becomes obvious that the narrative is only moving in circles, without compelling themes to guide it.