See 2 minutes and 11 seconds for Dartmouth Film foreign study program students cameo appearance at the closing night party, after the screening of Swimming with Men!!!!!!

For the closing night of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, we attended the UK premiere of Swimming with Men, a British comedy following an accountant in the midst of a mid-life crisis who ends up joining the men’s British synchronized swim team. The closing night premiere felt a lot different than opening night. It seemed a lot more formal and crowded, with more celebrities and actors on the red carpet than before. Before the film began, a variety or awards for different film categories were announced. Then the director of the movie came out, along with the actors of the film, who were all clearly excited to show their work, which would be opening in theaters the same week.

The motion picture itself was a very fun choice for the finale of a very interesting festival. Although it was much different than the film from the opening night, Puzzle, I think it was an exciting decision for the last night. The cinematography and idea were unique, original, and interesting. Everyone in the theater clearly enjoyed it, laughing throughout the whole film and giving a huge round of applause at the end.

Afterwards, we attended the closing night gala party. There was a plethora of free drinks, including the festival’s classic gin and tonic sponsored by Edinburgh Gin. The party was in the theme of Swimming with Men and there were tons of beach-type decorations everywhere. There were a lot more photographers as well; one asked us to take a picture that he staged of us playing with a beach ball. We sat in a booth while waiting for the hors d’oeurves and looked up to see the cast of the film in the VIP section directly behind us. They were interacting and chatting with all types of people at the party, which was a really interesting experience since celebrities typically keep to themselves. As a whole, this was a great way to end a long, but phenomenal, festival.

Pretend I am the director of EIFF.

For the past year, I have been programming this 12-day long film festival, and now it’s over! Am I relieved? Am I sad? Am I going to plan a long vacation to a place where no one can find me to ask my opinion on their film? Do I even have time to recover mentally, emotionally, and physically before starting to plan EIFF 2019? Not really. Before the festival started a couple weeks ago, I visited a class to talk with Dartmouth film students who are studying abroad in Edinburgh. I was asked when I typically start planning for next year’s film festival. I told them that I had actually already began thinking about and planning some logistics for EIFF 2019. How crazy is that? Before this years festival began, I was already preparing for the next one. Life of a film festival director.

Pretend I am the director of EIFF at the closing night screening of Swimming with Men.

I’m invited onto the main stage for the last time at EIFF 2018, an event I’ve spent the last year of my life directing.  I look up at the sold out theater and gasp. Wow. We did it, and it went smoothly! Well, as far as the festival goers could tell, it went smoothly. That’s my job: to ensure that the attendees happily glide through the festival without detecting any behind-the-scenes issues that are inevitably going to happen. With help, I carefully chose Swimming with Men as the closing night premiere. I assumed a lot of the audience would sit down for the festival finale not knowing what to expect from this film. Immediately, I knew I chose the right film to finish off the festival. The audience was laughing within the first few minutes of the film, and they wouldn’t stop. The film was hilarious, and every witty comment or clumsy swim routine was met with a roaring response from the audience. When the credits started rolling, the audience clapped for so long that I didn’t know if they would ever stop. There’s no better feeling than watching a sea of people exit a theater smiling and discussing their favorite moments of the film. Directing a festival takes patience, passion, and persistence, and I can’t wait to make EIFF 2019 come to life over the next year.

I walked out of the EIFF closing night screening, Swimming With Men, with a big grin on my face. I loved this movie—I was laughing through the entire thing, thought the characters were perfectly developed in a quaint, relatable way, and felt uplifted by what I saw as a quirky and unique happy ending. It felt like everyone else in the massive theater felt the same; audience laughter came in big simultaneous waves throughout the film, and the applause at the end seemed to last for ten minutes. I immediately texted my parents that they needed to see it when it came out.

Before writing this post about everything I liked about it, I did a quick google search to see if the critics agreed. I was shocked by the result: the first five articles give it not just shockingly low ratings, but have titles that are so insulting that they’re funny:

Shamelessly derivative and, worse, asks us to root for asshats: Swimming with Men reviewed

Swimming With Men review: Isn’t as funny as we want it to be

Feel-good comedy Swimming With Men works hard to stay afloat

Rob Brydon falls in the deep end with unfunny comedy on midlife blues

My first thought was, am I stupid?! How did I get through the entire movie without a negative thought towards its makers, when every single established critic who watched it seems to think it was trash?

It definitely is possible that I’m stupid, at least in the film sense. I’m not a movie buff and probably haven’t seen one fiftieth of the amount of movies these critics have.

I also wondered if the setting I was in unconsciously convinced me to like the film more. It’s not every day that you see a movie in the same theater as the director and cast, surrounded by hundreds of people who love movies and who are excited to attend the party afterwards. Maybe there was some sort of positive feedback loop happening with audience response?

However, I want to counter a few of the points these critics made. In my opinion, they don’t give the film enough credit. They split it up into lots of individual little pieces (i.e. characters, gender makeup of cast, synchronized-swimming-based plot), choose one, and either blatantly bash them for it, or choose another film that happens to have this same characteristic and criticize Swimming With Men for not measuring up. But I thought the movie was great for the sum of its parts—because of its unique recipe of lovable characters, relatability, subtle humor, quirky topic, and modesty, the entire thing was truly fun and engaging to watch the whole way through. It wasn’t flashy or unbelievable, but it doesn’t try to be.

One article criticizes it for its failure to give background on the members of the team that weren’t the main character, who were all portrayed as similarly damaged. They argue that a better understanding of each one’s past would have allowed viewers to empathize with them more, and thus feel the happy ending more intensely. I disagree, I thought it was a cool artistic choice to have the audience’s knowledge line up with each team member’s knowledge about one another (a main rule of the synchronized swim team is that you don’t talk about your problems, swimming is a time to escape from them). The film did a good job of making the characters lovable without going into their pasts—for me, it was enough to know that they had been through a lot, but still managed to give their whole hearts to what they knew was a silly activity. And each one had a distinct personality that you learn to love them for. Tom is the epitome of this. When he executed his backflip, I wanted to stand up and cheer.

Two other articles criticized the film for its male-heavy cast, and for having “relegated [its only two female characters] to love interest status rather than [showing them] as independent entities.” I thought this was a very dumb criticism, because one of the film’s strengths was its reversal of the traditional male sports team role. There was nothing macho or even athletic about these men, and they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without their strong female coach (who one of the guys happened to have a crush on). But you root for them—not despite their lack of macho-ness, but because of it, and because of the way they don’t care about it. The focus is on their high spirits and funny personalities, not their masculinity. And both of the female characters are in roles with much more power than the men.

So to anyone considering watching this movie, I’d highly recommend it! And I’d also recommend avoiding looking at reviews, those bozos don’t know what they’re talking about 🙂

This is a compilation of short reviews of my personal favorite movies at EIFF 2018.

Searching 

An innovative piece both in its format and its content.

You can see my previous review here: https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/edinburghfilmfsp/2018/07/01/searching-an-innovative-thriller-that-challenges-cinematic-apparatus/

My Friend The Polish Girl

As one of the audience members commented in the Q&A section after the screening, he came to this film with little expectation yet it ended up surprisingly intriguing throughout. I am not a big documentary fan, but I am totally enthralled by this fictional mock-documentary. It is a very stylistic work that stands out not only for its unique washed-out tones but also the integration of animation, tags and even emoji comments. You can clearly feel the power dynamic between Katie, the (fictional documentary) director, and Alicja, the subject of the documentary. Katie peers at Alicja through a ‘male gaze’, though this gaze seemingly comes from a female’s eyes (the actual directors of My Friend the Polish Girl are a male-female couple). The intimate angle and shots bring the characters to life. You are almost convinced that there are a real Katie and real Alicja somewhere in London and what you are seeing on the screen is their real life. Therefore, you can deeply connect and sympathize with the two dysfunctional characters.

An Elephant Sitting Still 

Lasting for over four hours, An Elephant Sitting Still is not an easy film to watch. The foggy town and muted visuals echo the cold and indifferent world that director Hu tries to depict. As Gus Edgar comments on Film Inquiry, this film will leave you “both emotionally and physically exhausted” by the end. What is unusual though, is that when I saw this film at EIFF, no one left the packed theater during its long screening. All seemed captivated by this one-day chronicle of four protagonists of contemporary. This is a sophisticated and beautiful debut, and unfortunately the last work, by a very talented Chinese filmmaker and novelist (who committed suicide before the film was completed). It is very honest and self-conscious work about how the director actually perceives the world.

My Name is Myeisha

A hip-hop musical adopted from the acclaimed play Dreamscape, My Name is Myeisha is not a ‘typical’ film that uses conventional narrative. It maintains the theatrical elements and style from the original play – a mixture of rap, dance, and theatrical lighting. A powerful, energetic,  and emotionally strong presentation of the 1998 police shooting of Tyisha Miller, this film offers a unique perspective on an enduring controversial political and racial issue in the United States. 

Flammable Children

A nostalgic and hilarious summer comedy that kept the whole theater laughing out loud. The production design and cinematography are phenomenal and successfully convey a playful and vintage mood of this entertaining and affectionate story in 70s Australia. 

Mug

Winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 68th Berlinale, Mug presents an absurd, yet touching story about a man who receives the first face transplant in Poland. It is another stylised work with an abundant use of soft focus and shallow depth of field. Mug presents a bitter discussion on religion, immigration, prejudice, identity, and Polish culture, and the film’s witty black humor makes these topics approachable and heartfelt to all audiences. 

Las Herederas

Another hit from the Berlinale, The Heiresses is a beautiful exploration of life, identity, desire, and love. As her partner is imprisoned, the protagonist Chela is forced to encounter unexpected changes in her previously languid life. Taking a part-time job as a personal driver for old ladies, Chela gradually steps out of the old house that she has allowed herself to be trapped inside for the past thirty years. In this process of self-exploration, Chela falls in love again with a young woman and rekindles excitement for the unexpected and life in general. This secret crush by an elder lady is so beautifully told that it retains the same fresh and tentative charm as that of a ‘first-love’ romance. 

Girls Always Happy

Girls Always Happy depicts a distant and bitter mother-daughter relationship. Its realism style reminds me of the French nouvelle vague. It feels very ‘down-to-the-earth.’ The performance, dialogue, and cinematography all appear very coarse, yet this crude style blends perfectly of the ‘raw’ personalities and daily life of the stereotypical lower-middle class in China. The female writer/director also stars as one of the two protagonists. However, while the mother’s performance is impressive, the daughter’s performance feels a bit dry and could have been better crafted. 

No.1 Chung Ying Street

A very interesting juxtaposition of the 1967 riot and the 2014 umbrella movement in Hong Kong. The 1967 riot is a rebellion to break through British control to go back to mainland China, while the latter offers disobedience against the PRC’s communist control. While this film has been criticized for the lack of positions, I personally appreciate it as a reflective rather than an argumentative piece of the history. It is ironic to see the same troop of people resist the beliefs that they have painstakingly fought for fifty years ago. The filmmaker does not offer a clear statement on which side he stands. However, I think that this lack of position is itself a position. After all, we can never judge the stage of the history that we currently live in without any prejudice. Therefore, the director chooses to offer viewpoints from both sides and let the audiences from now and the future to judge for themselves. 

When I read the blurb under the feature titled Patrick, I decided to go because I thought I would enjoy a “fun, frothy, rom-com romp,” as the EIFF 2018 catalogue described it to be. I’d seen posters for the film in the Odeon, the Filmhouse, and even displayed at bus stops all around the city. The basic premise of the movie, as I understood it, was a girl trying to keep her pet pug Patrick in a pet-free apartment building while also juggling a complicated love life.  As a dog-lover and a fan of rom-coms, it seemed to be the ideal movie. What I wasn’t expecting was a text from my fellow student and friend Spring saying that THE DOG WILL BE AT THE PREMIERE.

All of a sudden the only thing  I cared about was seeing this dog before the screening. Spring and I waited outside the Filmhouse until maybe seven minutes before the start of the screening for the Patrick actor to show up on the scene. There were 10-15 photographers also waiting behind the ropes, ready to snap shots of the dog. When the stars arrived, the photographers starting flashing away, but the only actor that had my attention was the adorable pug in one of the actresses’ arms. I had to duck down in between two photographers to get the very low-quality photo below:

After freaking out for a few minutes, Spring and I headed up to the theater where Patrick was showing. There, the stars made a brief appearance on stage so the audience could applaud them and appreciate them, and none other than Mr. Mark Adams, EIFF artistic director, facilitated a mini-interview with the director of the movie, Mandie Fletcher, who was charmingly witty and very sharp. Fletcher explained the idea behind the film, and I learned that the story was based on an actual pug named Patrick who belonged to one of the producers of the film – who knew! Of course, we got to see the star of the show, Harley, who played Patrick the pug. He was incredibly well-behaved, adorable, and donning a tartan outfit.

As for the actual film, it was almost exactly what I expected. Lighthearted, funny, full of clichés, and also sometimes cringy to the point where I could feel the other audience members cringing along with me. Nevertheless, Patrick was filled with adorable moments when Harley claimed the spotlight, and I left feeling very happy and hopeful that this might introduce a new wave of movies starring adorable animals.

This is the first 10 minutes from a 30-minute interview with the co-directors of My Friend the Polish Girl, Ewa Banaskiewicz and Mateusz Dymek.

The directing couple produced an experimental feature film which explored the isolating realities of a Polish immigrant living in London, and the voyeurism a documentary must avoid. It is a fictional piece about a documentary filmmaker exploring the life of a single subject. That subject is Alicja, a struggling actress in her 30s, an immigrant from Poland, and the sometime girlfriend of a man dying of cancer. Her hyper-sexualization, both by herself, and increasingly by the woman behind the camera reveal a dark past she has compartmentalized, but clearly affects her daily life. It is a brilliantly inventive  movie in terms of its style and a powerfully honest exploration of character, aided by the fantastic performances by Aneta Piotrowska (as Alicja) and Emma Friedman-Cohen (as Katie, the documentary filmmaker within the film.)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6987468/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Q: Where did this film first premiere?

Rotterdam, in competition.

Q: How did it do?

People liked it! We didn’t win anything, but it had a good response.

Q: Are there plans after Edinburgh?

There are but they haven’t been announced yet! It will be in a few days though! Just a few days and it will be out.

Q: Where did you first find money for this project?

In our bank accounts. (They laugh.) The budget is secret, let’s put it like that. We wrote it, well we’ve made films for many years, you know. We’ve had shorts in Cannes and Telluride. You know, I felt like we knew what we were doing and sort of what our idea was. We felt like we had the skill set to pull this off for next to nothing. So we wrote it for actors we knew. There were certain locations we knew we could get either very cheaply or for nothing. Also the style of the film is quite for low fi, so it lends itself to a cheap look, if you know what I mean.

Q: What was the first film you made?

My God! That was a long time ago. It depends on how you count them… student shorts or … I (Ewa) remember my first film. Oh no it was even before that … (Mateusz jumps in). I did a Lego animation when I was eight on a VHS camera.

Q: What Legos?

They had these… like not the Duplo and not the small ones. They had these in between ones, like Fabuland or something… They were Legos and I had a car chase, but it was sort of static and I had the trees… You know, I would move the trees behind the thing so they looked like they were moving. But then I couldn’t figure out, when the car tuns what happens to the trees. So then it sort of looked like the car was chasing the trees, and so that was my first film.

Q: So maybe a bit experimental then?

Probably, yeah. That’s where it all started. (Ewa Jumps in.) I think I did a film at university, which was probably in like 1990 one or something. Yeah, it was a long time ago, and I remember, and it was a module at university, because I went to do performing arts, and I started to do directing but it was for theater. And, I had a film module (course) and I made this little movie, you know, all on my own, like from VHS to VHS editing. Analog. And I was super nervous after it and I remember my tutor taking me aside, and saying “I think you’ve really got something”. That was the first time I felt like “I think this is something I’m really meant to do. This is a thing I can do and I’m sort of better at it than other people.” So (she laughs) we’ll see if that goes on, you know”. Yeah I think that was my first film at university. Which, I thought was so good that I sent it to a competition, and that was my only copy! Yeah, it was sort of ridiculous. (Mateus jumps back in.) I mean we’ve done sort of short-length films and mid-length films that are a half hour to forty five minutes, and they’ve gone to festivals, but we’ve done a lot of tv and radio and… (Ewa Jumps in.) Because we were based in Poland for a while they had us agreeing to do half-hour TV dramas. So we’ve done a lot and it has jus been so hard to get onto the next rung even with Cannes/Teulluride accolades, and half/mid length versions. We’ve written dozens of radio plays to produce stuff. Still, it was just so hard so for this film, we thought we were not even going to apply for money, because that would be 5 years down the drain and we just though “We’re gonna do it”.

Q: Is this your first feature?

Mhmm. Yeah.

Q So until now its been shorts and all the radio plays and all that?

Uhuh.

Q: Who do you produce the radio plays for?

BBC Radio! So we’ve worked as actors/writers for them for a long time, and with the last one, I think we had directed a few in Poland. Because we sometimes direct a few in Poland, well two only, and we’ve written a myriad here. I think we got to the stage where we felt to do it justice we had to direct them ourselves. So, we talked to the commissioning editor and he said, “Fine, but you have to set up a company.” So we set up a company and we produced it. We both produced and directed it, which we love doing. Producing is hard but it allows us the most control and lots of key decisions come through the money guy. (Mateusz jumps in.) Going back to the original question, I think we were very much inspired by American friends. Because in Europe, everything is state-funded, so you apply to the government and the film counselor, or equivalent, and you wait, and you either get it or not. So if you don’t get it, then that’s over. Whereas, obviously the U.S. doesn’t have the equivalent, and we were very much inspired by — (Ewa interjects.) Yeah, two of our friends have done features off their own back completely, and we just thought “God, that’s liberating.” I mean really, it’s been really hard but its been amazing to pursue what you want to do, and you be in charge of it and somehow getting it done. I mean that’s a great feeling. (Mateusz jumps in.) And Hard. (Ewa adds.) And hard. It’s been really hard.

Q: What was your elevator pitch to those you wanted to involve on the project?

“Do you want to be in a film?” (Both laugh) “We’re going to give you a really good part.” We kinda approached the actors even while we were writing the script, and then asked them “Would you be interested in being in something like this?” Anetta, we had over with Dan who plays Michael, her boyfriend. In real life they actually have a different relationship, but we picked them because they were friends. We told them, “If you’re up for it, we’ll write it for you. Commit now, and if not then we won’t.” She said “Yeah, ok,” and then obviously she had to read the script, but when they said “yes” then we said “Well then we’re going to write something for you”. I think that’s quite a nice thing to hear, and she’s good. I mean we knew they’d be good. She’s amazing.

You can hear the rest of the 30 minute interview here.

Swimming with Men was chosen as the film to close of the 2018 Edinburgh Film Festival. Unfortunately many reviews of the film don’t give it too much praise and try to examine it’s inability to create deep characters and how it does not have a good representation of women.

I think that this film was delightful, light and warm-hearted. I think that the characters that were presented, although not given specific backstories, were very clearly deep and complex. I could tell each character had quirks and had gone through emotional life experiences that brought them to the swim club. Although I didn’t know exactly what the younger man had done illegally, I would still chuckle every time he was getting chased by the police. I think the beauty was not knowing the specifics of their life stories but still feeling a strong sense of character from each of them.

As for the presence of women in the film, I honestly didn’t notice any issues for myself as a woman. I think the wife and the swim coach were fun characters. Granted they “only played as love interests”, I think they stood their own and were able to make a strong presence within an otherwise all-male cast. I think that critics need to let there be movies that are designed to look into the lives of men and their insecurities and struggles and not be focused mostly on the secondary female roles.