Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Toronto’s Fall film festival season continues in December with the Jayu Human Rights film festival showing insightful documentaries on pertinent issues, along with a slam poetry competition at the Ace Hotel.

But this week, I’m looking at two new European movies that played at TIFF this year and are now in cinemas. There are trans shape-shifters in France and lonely job-seekers in Finland.

Orlando: My Political Biography

Wri/Dir: Paul B. Preciado

It’s 17th century, Elizabethan England. Orlando is a teenaged boy, a handsome courtier in the Queen’s castle. He’s also an aspiring writer, waxing lyrical on oak trees and winter frosts. He falls in love with Sasha, a blonde, Russian aristocrat. But at the age of 30, he wakes from a deep sleep transformed into a woman. Orlando’s life takes her (and him) through various guises over hundreds of years, to capitals as far away as Constantinople, until finally returning by ship to 20th century London, where they finally complete and publish their book. Such is the “biography” of Orlando in Virginia Woolf’s famous novel. So what’s different about this film?

For one thing, the entire cast is trans or non-binary, as is Preciado, the director. And the cast is huge. Each version of Orlando is played by another actor, their sex, gender and sexuality presented in a myriad of ways.  Orlando is plural in this incarnation.  Not just that, Orlando’s race, colour and language also shifts, with the actors ages ranging from small children to the elderly. Some characters wear chainmail like Joan of Arc, while others recline, luxuriantly,  in an Ottoman seraglio. The one common factor is their Elizabethan white neck ruffs, the fashion of the day.

Orlando, My Political Biography is not the first film version of the novel — far from it.  It seems to attract the most experimental and avant garde filmmakers out there.  German director Ulrike Ottinger made Freak Orlando in 1981 which entirely rejects the conventions of both narrative and art movies. English director Sally Potter (see: The Roads Not Taken, The Party,  Ginger and Rosa)’s Orlando of 1992 starred Tilda Swinton as the various Orlandos and featured Jimmy Sommerville singing up in a tree.

But this French political biography adopts Bertolt Brecht’s (and Jean-Luc Godard’s) method of deliberately alienating the audience to promote a political stand. Each Orlando introduces their scene by announcing directly to the camera their real /adopted name and personal history, followed by their Orlando passage, often reading directly from a copy of Woolf’s book. But it remains engaging because of the beauty of the photography and costumes and the sincerity of the players in the film. Settings vary from deliberately artificial backdrops to an exquisite forest and a grotesque Parisian catacomb.

The political stance is complex, and involves a rejection of the accepted binary. Some take issue with psychiatrists, surgeons and pharmacists having control of their identities and bodies. Says one young Orlando: you must hate your genitals if you want the doctor to give you hormones… but I don’t hate my genitals. Says another: I adopted a ridiculous caricature of masculinity for a year after transitioning before realizing I shouldn’t erase my personal history just because I’m trans.

Orlando, My Political Biography is equal parts intellectual lecture, political diatribe, performance art, and cinematic experiment, and, most surprisingly… it works.

Fallen Leaves

Wri/Dir: Aki Kaurismaki

It’s typical day in Helsinki, Finland. 

Ansa (Alma Pöysti), a single woman in her thirties, works at a low-paying job in a supermarket. She lives in a small apartment and subsists on frozen microwave dinners. She likes listening to relaxing music, but her bakelite radio only plays bad news from the Ukrainian war these days. She does go out occasionally to a local karaoke bar, with her best friend Liisa (Nuppu Koivu). There she encounters — but doesn’t actually meet — Holappa (Jussi Vatanen). Holappa is a depressed guy who works as a welder at a small factory. He lives in the company dorm, along with acquaintances and his best friend and confident Huotari (Janne Hyytiäinen). He handles his depression with constant drinking, which only gets him more depressed. After a few near misses they finally meet face to face. Their first date? A zombie movie at a local rep cinema. Sparks fly and they vow to meet again soon. But various unfortunate coincidences seem destined to keep these soulmates far apart. Can they ever find happiness together? Or is this a relationship that can never happen?

Fallen Leaves is a tragicomic proletarian love story par excellence. Its also a deadpan comedy, which despite it’s nearly tragic atmosphere, will have you laughing and crying all the way through. If you’ve ever seen an Aki Kaurismaki  movie before you’ll instantly recognize his style: seedy bars, bearded bikers, dark rock n roll, and a noir-ish, retro feel. Similar to Jim Jarmusch, but much funnier. It also deals with real-life issues like alcoholism and poverty. Ansa loses her job for taking home an expired cookie instead of throwing it away, while Holappa is driven close to self- destruction by his constant boozing. If you haven’t seen his movies before, Fallen Leaves is a great one to start.

Everything in this film is retro. Finland is the high-tech home of Nokia and Supercell, but in Kaurismaki’s world the characters use avocado coloured landlines,  with cel phones or video games nowhere to be seen. Computers seem relegated to internet cafes. Phone numbers are written on slips of paper, blown away with the wind. Movie theatres only play classics, and every bar is on skid row. 

At the same time, there’s always a niceness and sweetness burbling just below the surface of the humdrum futility of everyday life. Fallen Leaves is a wonderfully depressing movie with a feel-good atmosphere. I love this movie.

Fallen Leaves and Orlando My Political Biography are  both playing now at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and at other theatres across Canada — check your local listings.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.