Montreal

Montreal is a city of artists. If you’ve ever gone to a café, park, or museum in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, then you know. When I first moved here well over a decade ago, I remember thinking to myself, “Doesn’t anyone in this city go to work?” But gradually I came to realise that those people languidly sitting on terrasses sipping coffee over their open laptops, those strolling through parks on their phones, or those critically eyeing the bare walls of city buildings, are indeed working.

Peaches Does Herself could more aptly be titled Peaches Is Herself, or, simply, Peaches. Such is the level of sexualized frenzy and post-taboo theatrics that is associated with her work—Peaches Does Herself is almost a redundancy. In this her feature film debut, she does not withhold or disappoint, taking us on an “epic biographical journey through 22 original songs,” accompanied by obscene choreography following a loosely strung together narrative.

At the age of ten, there are only so many things you know how to do: play one or two sports relatively well, fumble in your romantic dealings, get into and consequently try to stay out of trouble, and steal. For Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein), stealing is his métier, and with his older sister Louise (Léa Seydoux) to support, he has little choice.

“It’s only a dream, just a memory without anywhere to stay,” Neil Young sings in his 2005 song “It’s A Dream.” The song, which appears in Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux, is analogous to the sprawling, lyrical film it appears in.

Kaspar Hauser was allegedly born in Germany in 1812 and died by stabbing in 1833. He claimed to have grown up in total isolation in a darkened cell but much of his life has been little more than conjecture; facts soon dismissed as fiction. Italian director Davide Manuli uses this story as his jumping off point in the enigmatic, experimental The Legend of Kaspar Hauser.

Memories are not always of significant moments. There are the times in between, where we are who we are, in the places we live, with the people we surround ourselves with. In Kleber Mendonca Filho’s Neighboring Sounds, a well-to-do Brazilian family that populates a city block in Recife, Brazil, eats, sleeps, stares, eavesdrops, fights, make up, and continue to live their lives.

It could always be worse, though at times, that can be hard to believe. A mother pees herself to spite her son, beds ooze maggots, a prostitute poisons a string of dogs, simply because she can. With It Looks Pretty From a Distance, co-directors and married couple, Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal, have created a quietly towering work of sheer miserabilism.