SINGAPORE – This week, there are two films about homes that are not quite the dream properties they appear to be on the outside.
The science-fiction horror work Vivarium (M18, 98 minutes, opens July 23, 4 stars) stars Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots, both in this column a few weeks ago for the drama The Art Of Self Defense (2019). In this film, they are Tom and Gemma, an average couple looking for a starter home when they chance upon Yonder, a development the agent promises will be their "forever home".
In this icy satire of the property ladder, Yonder does turn out to be their forever home, just not in the way they expect.
Of late, Hong Kong is the place for bitter comedies about the property market. In Dream Home (2011), a woman murders her way to a progressively nicer flat; in Room With A View (2019), a family goes on a rampage when a millionaire's obnoxious billboard obstructs their view of the sea, slashing the value of their apartment.
In Vivarium, a mostly Irish production selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 2019, the tone is much less literal. Tom and Gemma find themselves in a Twilight Zone landscape of the surreal in which everyday actions yield bizarre results.
Besides revealing home ownership to be the nightmarish burden that it can be, the story asks cynical questions about consumerism and suburbia and even darker ones about parenthood. The South Korean drama Parasite (2019), winner of the Best Picture Oscar, makes a point about one social class feeding on another in a mansion on a hill. In this bleak, unsettling story, parasitism is about as real as it can be, and kept within the embrace of the family.
The Rental (NC16, 93 minutes, opens Jul 23, 2.5 stars) addresses another suburban fear: In Airbnb homes, guests are at the mercy of the owner's moral code.
What sets this apart from other cautionary tales about social media and the gig economy is style. Imagine a cabin-of-terror slasher movie that avoids tropes, such as jump scares, cute teen characters or a villain whose motive is tritely labelled "insanity".
You might end up with this movie written by American Joe Swanberg, veteran of the so-called "mumblecore" scene. It is helmed by an actor making his directorial debut, Dave Franco. Yes, that Dave Franco, who worked with Swanberg in the Netflix drama-comedy series about sex, Easy (2016 to 2019), but who is known mostly for appearing in comedies (21 Jump Street, 2012; The Disaster Artist, 2017).
Four adults from San Francisco, some flush with tech money, find a dream Airbnb rental on the coast for a weekend getaway. As the hours wear on, however, frictions in the group (Dan Stevens and Alison Brie as one couple, and Sheila Vand and Jeremy Allen White as another) gnaw at their sense of well-being. A secret discovered within the home triggers a chain of deadly events.
There is a lot to admire about a film that does away with terrible slasher tropes such as jump scares, and replacing it with naturalistic dialogue. There is a surprising amount of plot to get though for a Swanberg production, though, and Franco struggles to give the story feelings of tension and release.
For a film that wears its naturalism far more easily, look to Indonesian indie drama Humba Dreams (2019, NC16, 75 minutes, Netflix, 4 stars).
Part road trip, part coming-of-age story, it follows Martin (J.S. Khairen), a Jakarta film student who returns home to the island of Sumba, in the east of the country, to settle affairs after the death of his father.
Read More – Source
[contf] [contfnew]
