The 2023 Chicago International Film Festival kicked off last week, with thousands of industry professionals and movie enthusiasts flocking to watch highlights of films premiering earlier in the festival circuit. Many prominent upcoming films continued their journey along the circuit, with Chicago presenting an opportunity for many to see films that will go on to be the award-winning and critically acclaimed films of the year. Among the films presented, “The Boy and the Heron,” “The Taste of Things,” “Fallen Leaves” and “Monster” are worth looking out for as they are released in the next few months.
“The Boy and the Heron”
Originally titled “How Do You Live?,” the newest film from Studio Ghibli marks the first return of the virtuosic Hayao Miyazaki (director of childhood favorites like “Spirited Away) since “The Wind Rises” in 2013, after which he announced his retirement. He returns with yet another swan song which will hit American theaters on Dec. 8, 2023, with the English dub cast including Christian Bale, Robert Pattinson, Gemma Chan, Dave Bautista, Karen Fukuhara and Willem Defoe.
The film, rather than being an adaptation of the book of the same name, unfolds along the semi-autobiographical premise of a young boy handling the death of his mother during World War II. Unlike his earlier works, which garnered acclaim for their childlike wonder and low-stakes plots, this feature follows the slower pace and somewhat more mature subject matter of his last feature. Miyazaki shows once again that nobody is animating or making stories quite like him. While each frame of masterful animation is what viewers have come to expect, the movie manages to surprise and delight in a multitude of ways, calling to mind sweeping epics like “2001: A Space Odyssey” through its patience and scope. The fantasy adventure boasts perhaps some of Miyazaki’s most beautiful images and environments yet, as well as a good deal more humor than one might expect (one can only imagine where Bautista and Defoe can go with this). Yet this adventure is anything but lighthearted; it is intense and moving in its tightly but ambitiously constructed exploration of grief that will leave viewers both devastated and inspired. In a year of beautiful and inventive animation, the masterpiece that is “The Boy and the Heron” demands its place on the podium.
“The Taste of Things”
Sensual cinema tends to depict indulgences as sinful pleasures, but director Tran Anh Hung sees humanity and its indulgences as divine. This historical romantic culinary drama, which made headlines after being submitted as France’s submission for the Oscars International Film category over the expected “Anatomy of a Fall,” competed for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, taking home the award for best director. Starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel, “The Taste of Things” follows the relationship between a restaurant owner and his chef after their long career together in the late 1800s.
Hung expressed the tangibility of this relationship in the culinary environment during an interview following the screening.
“You don’t miss it,” said Hung. Viewers don’t miss anything. So textured is this scintillating romance that viewers can smell the aromatic steam and feel the evening sun on their faces. These fleeting moments of sensuality leap out of the screen to make the viewer feel both the labor and love of these moments, bringing the romance to life. As the film embarks on the slow and intimate journey through a relationship, spending just as much time on the actors actually cooking food as it does with the plot, viewers begin to understand what love is to these people. Every slice of the knife and every bite makes viewers’ hearts flutter and their stomachs growl. Like every beautiful love story, this one breaks the heart and makes it sing, and all while joining the ranks of the greatest culinary movies like “Tampopo” and “Babette’s Feast.”
“Fallen Leaves”
Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki is a Cannes Film Festival sweetheart and one of the few from that select set of people who manages to consistently be funny. The consistently wry and short-winded director does this once again with his new understated and idiosyncratically deadpan romantic comedy. Imbued with the energy of a parable but the plot of a melodrama, the film is simple and uncomplicated, yet relatable as it explores the budding romance between two lonely working-class individuals. The lonely hearts at the center of the story are accompanied by a quirky supporting cast of close friends that are as hilarious and singular as one can hope for in any contemporary romance. In under ninety minutes, this movie gives viewers a goofy, nearly cartoonish tale that is touching, lifting and hilarious and reminds you that, even when the world seems gray (in every meaning of the word), a little bit of good company is all you need.
“Monster”
Taking no time off at all, Japanese legend Hirokazu Kore-eda hits the theaters again with his follow up to last year’s “Broker.” While it fails to reach the emotional highs and critical acclaim of his last two features, Kore-eda continues to prove that almost nobody understands children like him. In a winding tale that switches between different perspectives of a bullying narrative, from the kid being bullied to even the perpetrators of the act themselves, Kore-eda’s Cannes winning screenplay delves into the depths of several characters in a way not unlike Asghar Farhadi, giving them all they are due and hoping to appear understanding above all else. Complex setpieces and narrative foot-stomps intricately link together to create an emotional payoff alongside moments of affective clarity, dancing in and around a seemingly looming tragedy only to end with hope in the viewer’s heart and tears in their eyes. While it is one of his weaker efforts, it is a high bar for someone as brilliant as Kore-eda.