Note: This is a review of an earlier cut of The Forbidden Room that screened at Sundance and Berlin. It has since been cut down by approximately ten minutes.

For Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson, film isn’t just a thing people make. It’s a living thing. A universe existing right next to ours, where time and space collapse into a giant stew of celluloid and pixels. There’s no describing The Forbidden Room, Guy Maddin’s latest film which he co-directed with Johnson. I can merely state facts about it, but to actually attempt to describe the experience of watching it? That’s a fool’s errand because the only way to know about The Forbidden Room is to experience it for yourself. Is it Guy Maddin’s best work to date? Probably. Is it a masterpiece? Definitely. Maddin, who’s known for having a progressive and spiritual perspective towards cinema, has made what might be the purest representation of his mindset on film to date.

How did The Forbidden Room get here? You could say it all started back at the invention of film itself (for dramatic purposes), or five years ago (for practical purposes). Maddin created an installation called Hauntings that had him researching abandoned projects by master filmmakers and re-creating scenes from these “lost” films. Eventually, Maddin’s interests turned from the figurative to the literal; he began looking (with Johnson) into real films that are forever lost, either destroyed or unintentionally abandoned. After researching these films, Maddin began remaking them, recruiting a cast of big, international arthouse names (Charlotte Rampling, Mathieu Amalric, Roy Dupuis, Ariane Labed, Udo Kier, Geraldine Chaplin, Maria de Medeiros and lots more) to come in and “channel” the spirits of these lost films, acting them out in a series of short film remakes. How do you remake something you haven’t seen? Watch The Forbidden Room and find out.

So what is The Forbidden Room about? Rather than go for an episodic structure, Maddin and Johnson link every story together through a nesting doll structure that goes so deep it makes a film like Inception look like a pop-up book. It all starts with an old man in a bathrobe (Louis Negin, who winds up in almost every “remake” in some sort of role) giving advice on how to take a bath. The camera then goes under the bath water, where it reveals a submarine full of trapped men. Their captain is missing, their cargo of blasting jelly can explode at any minute, and their oxygen supply is low, requiring them to suck on pancakes to try and get oxygen from the air pockets. Suddenly, a lumberjack (Dupuis) finds his way onto the submarine, and when the men ask how he got there, the film flashes back to tell his story: while chopping trees in the forest, he decides to rescue the beautiful Margot (Clara Furey) from The Red Wolves, described as “the most feared forest bandits in all of Holstein-Schleswig.” The lumberjack goes off to rescue Margot who then has a dream where she’s an amnesiac bar singer, a bar where an indescribable singer performs a song about a man (Kier) obsessed with grabbing asses, which transitions into a dreaming volcano, and then a newspaper article within the volcano’s dream, and then the inside of an x-ray of a pelvis, and then…

The amount of transitions, digressions and leveling up and down within storylines just goes on and on, to the point where trying to make heads or tails of anything loses its meaning. Everything co-exists and stands alone. High art and low art combine into one. Dreams, memories, fantasies and nightmares weave in and out of each other. Maddin and Johnson put the bulk of their efforts into the post-production process, taking the digitally shot footage and dousing it with every possible imperfection or antiquated method from both analog and digital eras: two-strip Technicolor, warped stock, burn marks, title cards, data moshing, colour dyes, and whatever else they could pull out from this cinematic stew they conjured up. And through all of this madness, Maddin and Johnson have created an exhaustive and hilarious masterwork. The sort of film where a hysterical title card like “The skull-faced man and his gang of Skeletal Insurance Defrauders” gets lost in the shuffle of the seemingly endless ideas thrown on-screen from start to end. It’s a film that has endless rewatch value because it’s impossible to remember every detail from it. It’s one of the most perfect collections of imperfections ever made. It is, quite simply, The Forbidden Room.

Originally published as part of our coverage for the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Bird People begins with a montage of people coming and going on subway trains throughout Paris. It’s a bit of an odd start until the perspective changes: suddenly everyone’s thoughts on the train can he heard, the camera profiling each person in a train car before settling on hotel maid Audrey (Anaïs Demoustier). It’s a delightfully executed sequence, mainly due to its unexpected shift from observational filmmaking to something more fantastical. And it’s not the only surprise Bird People has in store.

In a lengthy prologue, Bird People introduces its two central characters before splitting off into two parts. The first part dedicates itself to Gary Newman (Josh Charles), a Silicon Valley businessman staying at the same hotel Audrey works at. After a day of boring business meetings, Gary makes a sudden decision to throw his entire life away. He resigns from his job, telling his wife (Radha Mitchell) he’s leaving her, opting to stay in Europe and start over. The film’s primary location, a Hilton hotel standing next to an airport runway, gives insight into why Gary wants to abandon everything. It feels detached from the world, surrounded by paved runways and people transitioning from one place to another. Director Pascale Ferran puts a heavy emphasis on themes of loneliness and alienation in Gary’s story, something that runs throughout the second half but in a lesser capacity (more on that later).

Rather than use Gary’s decision as a launching pad for the narrative Ferran, along with co-writer Guillaume Bréaud, dwell entirely on the ramifications of Gary’s actions. Despite Gary expressing his desire to break free from his suffocating lifestyle, he never leaves the hotel, instead fielding calls from his co-workers and lawyer as he sorts out the logistics of resigning and selling off several assets. This culminates in a 15 minute sequence where Gary and his wife argue over their marriage. Ferran and Bréaud’s detail-oriented approach, along with Josh Charles’ excellent performance, make Gary’s story a compelling drama about the difficulties of starting a new life.

But when the story’s second part kicks in, swinging the focus back on to Audrey, Bird People makes a significant shift. Discussing what happens would ruin the fun in watching such an audacious, baffling reveal. It’s better to leave it at this: Audrey spends her days cleaning hotel rooms bored out of her mind until something significant occurs. In this way, Audrey and Gary’s stories are the same; both experience something major in their lives, and both have to do with their desires to experience some sort of freedom from their mundane existence. It’s just that Audrey’s story goes down such a surprising path, a sort of magical realism on a larger scale than the opening, it raises the film to a whole other level.

Ferran’s direction takes on another life once Audrey’s story kicks in, and the results are incredible. The camera, mostly locked down in Gary’s storyline, begins roaming all over the place, whether it’s swooping aerial shots or low, canted angles. The hints of eccentricity early on, including the aforementioned train scene and the sparing use of a narrator (Mathieu Amalric), end up taking over every frame. Add to that some incredibly subtle and impressive use of CGI, and suddenly Bird People feels like it’s free of constraints that weren’t at first evident. It’s delightful, go-for-broke filmmaking, a ballsy cinematic choice making the film one of 2014’s more unique viewing experiences.

And while Anaïs Demoustier doesn’t have the opportunity to show off the same dramatic chops as her co-star, she does a fantastic job making Audrey into a likable, fully realized character. A lengthy 130 minute running time, along with a disappointing final scene, put a small damper on things, but there’s no denying how powerfully delightful the film’s sea change feels. Through such a bold stroke of originality, Bird People highlights the boundless opportunities makes available through storytelling.

What starts off as mildly interesting ends up being nauseatingly dull in Mathieu Amalric‘s The Blue Room. Julien (Amalric) is a married man, with one daughter, who was something of a player back in the old days. When one of the women he somehow skipped over shows up in his life again, Esther (Stephanie Cleau), the two begin an 11-month affair. But when Esther’s rich husband Nicolas ends up dead, the two are immediately suspected of the possible crime, even though the husband’s health was poor and his death didn’t shock any of the doctors. Did they do it? What happened to Julien’s wife? What’s all the mystery about? These are the questions Amalric is desperately asking with lavish music, pseudo-psychadelic camera angles, visually appealing colors, and little symbolic trinkets in the forms of bees and red towels. Regrettably, the only question you’ll end up asking yourself is “Who cares?” The lack of character development leaves you feeling detached from just about everyone, which means that the film’s sole flag bearer is the suspense and the mystery. Once that gets derailed you’re left with a half-measured attempt at some kind of Lynchian perspective of the obsessed female, a notion with a pungently misogynist stink to it. Avoid.

Roman Polanski adapts a Tony Award-winning play about an actress (Emmanuelle Seigner) who erotically woos over a director (Mathieu Amalric) for a lead role in his new play. Venus In Fur made its debut In Competition at Cannes last year to mixed reactions, but then again just about anything involving Polanski nowadays tends to do that. Check out the trailer for this foreign comedy that is poised to divide audiences.

Venus In Fur will play in theaters on June 20th.

Watch Venus In Fur trailer

Partway through The Grand Budapest Hotel, there’s an argument between Dmitri (Adrien Brody, looking brilliantly evil) and his deceased mother’s lawyer (Jeff Goldblum). The lawyer refuses to hand the dead woman’s fortune over to her son as the details of her murder haven’t been cleared up. Dmitri angrily leaves, and his henchman (Willem Dafoe) casually tosses the lawyer’s cat out of a window on his way out. It’s a cruel act, and a funny visual gag, until the lawyer peers out his window and the camera cuts to his cat’s splattered body below.

Writer/director Wes Anderson uses these shock moments of sudden violence more than once throughout the film. The dead woman (Tilda Swinton, unrecognizable with pounds of old age makeup) is Madame D., an old rich countess who frequented the titular hotel. Located in the mountains of the Republic of Zubrowka, a made up European nation, the hotel is a gorgeous and highly popular establishment. Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) is the hotel’s concierge, a charming man who was also taking Madame D. to bed during her visits (one of Gustave’s many duties as concierge included sexually satisfying the rich old ladies who visited). When it’s revealed that she put Gustave in her will as the recipient of a priceless painting, Madame D.’s family frames him for her murder.

Gustave receives help from Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), a young lobby boy that Gustave has taken a shine to. The story, taking place in 1932 during some unnamed war ravaging the country, is narrated to us by an older Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) in the 1960s. He’s telling his tale to a young author (Jude Law) over dinner at the hotel, now well past its glory days. Law narrates the 1960s segments, which are actually from a novel being read to viewers in the 1980s by (presumably) a now much-older author (Tom Wilkinson). The nesting-doll structure may seem frivolous, but Wes Anderson’s films thrive on frivolity.

The multi-layered narrative also establishes Anderson’s attempts to comment on memory and nostalgia. Moustafa’s story in the 1930s, shot gorgeously in 1.33:1, is stylistically Anderson’s best work to date. The set design, meticulous framing, whip pans, quick zooms, and use of animation and miniatures, among Anderson’s other visual trademarks, operate at a level that more than matches his story’s large scale. Anderson and cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman are clearly having a field day, and it shows. The charming style also shows Moustafa’s nostalgia for this period of his life, as if these “good ol’ days” represent something that’s never to return.

Anderson is aware of how dangerous this way of looking at the past with rose-coloured glasses is, which is why he throws in scenes like the one with Goldblum’s cat. He is purposely breaking the spell his film casts, reminding viewers that the time period was still a tumultuous one. The hotel is not so much a shining example of long-lost civility and politeness as it is an escape from the harsh realities of wartime and poverty. These two worlds of fantasy and reality eventually come together, but through Anderson’s lens the stylistic flourishes still remain. The final scene of the ‘30s timeline, also the bleakest part of Moustafa’s story, switches to black and white, showing how Anderson still finds a way to fill his heavier moments with aesthetic quirks.

While Anderson’s toying with memory and nostalgia is interesting, it fails to make any impact to the film overall. The handling of violence makes for an awkward juxtaposition, one that’s more admirable in its intent than execution (I never thought I’d say this, but Anderson should take some tips from Quentin Tarantino in this area). The war going on in the film’s background is wiped of any details, save for some vague allusions to the SS. The obscuring of these elements only muddy the water, and the dense plotting of Anderson’s screenplay make his thematic points get swallowed up by the film’s aesthetics.

Not that the aesthetics are a bad thing; The Grand Budapest Hotel is still a treat to watch. Fiennes is perfect as Gustave, and Anderson’s script is filled with plenty of hilarious moments. The massive ensemble, where seemingly every role is filled with a well-known actor (supporting cast includes Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Saorise Ronan, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson just to name a few), work together perfectly. While The Grand Budapest Hotel works well, it only does up to a certain point. What the film amounts to is nothing more than a well-done and admirable piece of fluff.

The Grand Budapest Hotel trailer

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a French film based on a true story of an Elle magazine editor that suffers a massive stroke at the age of 43. One of the most terrifying situations I can imagine is one where no one can hear your voice as you remain helplessly frozen, unable to move. This nightmare was a reality for Jean-Dominique Bauby.

Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) wakes up on a hospital bed where he was in coma for three weeks after suffering a major stroke. The doctors are thrilled he finally awakes but quickly realize that he is unable to speak. He thinks he is talking aloud but it is only his thoughts he is hearing, not actual audible words.

The doctor’s figure out that he is well aware of his surroundings and that he can hear everything. He is paralyzed from head to toe (they call this locked-in syndrome) except he can move his eye. So they come up with a way that he can communicate by the use of blinking his eye. This is obviously extremely useful but the “blink once for yes, twice for no” method is also very limited to simple yes or no responses.

But that is hardly communicating, it is more like just responding. So they try reciting letters of the alphabet one by one and wait for him to respond with a blink so he can begin to form sentences. The film does a great job showing just how frustratingly slow and difficult this is to do. A simple sentence could take ten minutes to decipher.

One of the first sentences we see him complete with his speech therapist is, “I want death”. His speech therapist Henriette (Marie-Josée Croze) finds it disrespectful and scolds him saying that even though she has not been with him long that she wants nothing more than to help him out. Bauby is not in a position to feel sorry for himself with how much learning he has to do if he wants to remain semi-functional.

Before the stroke he had a contract with a publisher to write a book which he is still determined to fulfill. His original idea was to re-write “The Count of Monte Crisco” but opts to write an autobiography instead. Dictating a book using series of blinks is a very daunting task but not impossible as he proves.

His father, who is 92, is in a similar situation as him. He is trapped inside his apartment much like Jean is trapped inside his own body. They are both not able to function without the help of others but it is a tragedy that Jean’s occurred so early in life.

He fears that his life is slowly crumbling down around him, which is represented by shots of icebergs breaking apart. Although he is paralyzed with movement his imagination runs wild. He visions butterflies floating around which is a metaphor for his life before the stroke. Now he is trapped inside his body like a driver in a dive bell sinking to the bottom of the ocean helplessly.

For the first half of the film, most of it is shot with Bauby’s point of view, often things are not quite all the way in focus. The narration consists of the thoughts from his head. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski does an excellent job of making us feel like we are inside Bauby so that we can feel his frustrations and limitations. Kaminski won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography for his work (the film also went on to win Best Director at the 2008 awards).

Playing the lead of Jean-Dominique Bauby, Mathieu Amalric had his work cut out for him. He had to play two vastly different characters, one that is young and wild and one that is completely without movement. Stripped of his once confident and wealthy playboy personality he is forced to swallow his pride.

The story of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly itself is pretty amazing and heroic. But everything is pretty much laid out on the table within the first ten minutes of the film. That being said, since it is based on real-life events, there is not much more you can add to make a more complete story than what actually happened. The resolution is that the hero is able to complete the near impossible task of writing a book with his eyes but I felt the climax to be almost nonexistent. That is a tragedy in of itself.