Parky At the Pictures (29/8/2025)

(Reviews of Measures For a Funeral; Little Trouble Girls; and In the Nguyen Kitchen)

MEASURES FOR A FUNERAL.

Deragh Campbell has played Audrey Benac in six of Canadian director Sofia Bohdanowicz's films. In Never Eat Alone, she was the granddaughter of elderly widow Joan Benac, who strives to track down the man with whom she had acted in a television drama in the 1950s. When the pair co-directed MS Slavic 7 (2019), Audrey seeks to discover the truth behind some letters written by her poet great-grandmother and Polish novelist, Józef Wittlin. She returned in the short, Point and Line to Place (2020), to seek solace in the works of Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky after a close friend dies.

In 2022's A Woman Escapes, Audrey goes to Paris to attend to the home of a recently deceased friend and embarks upon a video relationship with film-makers residing in Istanbul and Toronto, who were played by co-directors, Burak Çevik and Blake Williams. Now, in Measures For a Funeral - an expansion of the 2018 short, Veslemøy's Song - Audrey leaves her dying mother in Toronto and heads to Europe to learn more about Kathleen Parlow, the violinist who had once tutored her grandfather.

Audrey Benac is researching the life of Kathleen Parlow and Inès (Eve Duranceau), her supervisor at the Glenn Gould School of Music, is concerned that she is spending too much time on amassing information and not getting down to writing her thesis. Her focus is deflected by her mother, Elizabeth (Julia Beyer), who is dying of cancer and wants Audrey to cremate her along with the violin that she had been bequeathed by her father. He had been Parlow's student and Elizabeth is bitter that both he and her husband had devoted more time to their music than her.

Breaking up with her boyfriend, Audrey travels to London, where she goes to the British Library. Archivist Andrea Zarza (Rosa-Johan Uddoh) has found her a wax cylinder of Parlow playing that was recorded by Thomas Alva Edison soon after she had played at a charity concert for the survivors of the 1912 Titanic tragedy. While taping the recording, Audrey begins to cry, as Andrea's words about the crackles providing a link over time strike home, as the sound of the violin that she has brought with her brings her closer to her grandfather.

Together with her friend, Melanie (Melanie Scheiner), Audrey travels to Meldreth in Cambridgeshire. Joan Gane (Eileen Davies) from the local history society gives them a guided tour of the house, but Audrey slips away to explore on her own, as we hear Parlow (Mary Margaret O'Hara) describe how an admirer had bought her a 1735 Guarnerius del Gesù violin that enabled her to play so well. Melanie chides Audrey for being rude to Joan and they wander around the village, as Audrey records the ambient sound. Suddenly, she runs away and returns to their lodging to check on the violin, which her mother wants cremated with her.

When they meet in the pub for dinner, Melanie gives Audrey a lecture about her erratic behaviour. She explains that she is finding it hard to deal with her dying mother's anger and has to stay away from her, even though this makes her feel guilty. Melanie tells her that she is entitled to live on her own terms and suggests that she reinforces her connection with Parlow by staging a performance of a lost concerto that had been written for her by the Norwegian composer, Johan Halvorsen.

Journeying alone to Oslo, Audrey goes to the conservatory to see Elise (Maria Dueñas) practicing with her tutor, Mischa (Maxim Gaudette). He is less convinced of the concerto's merits and warns Audrey that it will take time and money to produce a full orchestral score to have the piece played in Canada for the first time. We hear Parlow recalling how the composer had been bowled over by her 17 year-old self and had consulted her while writing a work that would show off her remarkable technique. Elisa is also gifted and Audrey admires her commitment to her art.

After lunch, Mischa informs Audrey that Halvorsen had burnt his own copy of the manuscript because he felt it was worthless. But she insists that even flawed works deserve to be heard because they reflect the personality of the composer. He asks about the violin she always carries with her and reveals not only that it was made by Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri in Cremona, but that it had also belonged to Kathleen Parlow. Audrey realises that this is why her mother wants the violin to be cremated because her father had given it to her husband not her because he was the better musician. Elizabeth had never enjoyed playing and knew her limitations, but she had always blamed becoming a mother for her career petering out.

On receiving a message that her mother has died, Audrey thinks she sees a ghost in her room. She takes the violin out of its case and cries because she doesn't want to follow Elizabeth's last request. The next day, she finds Elisa and asks her about her commitment to music and is moved (and slightly envious) by her dedication to an art that shapes her life. Watching an old interview with Parlow on her laptop, Audrey realises that she had held the same views about making music being a vocation that took precedence over everything else, including love and marriage.

An emotional Audrey takes her seat at the Maison Symphonique de Montréal, as Elisa plays Opus 28 with the Orchestre Métropolitain under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Her performance is virtuosic, Mischa looks on. Cutaways show Audrey at the crematorium, but it still comes as a surprise when we see a pegbox in the flames of a consuming fire. It's not said whether Audrey has honoured her mother or not and we learn nothing about the status of her thesis, but it's impossible not to feel a sense of shock and outrage at the destruction of such a valuable instrument as we hear the music that it had first produced over a century before. However, we should also remember that Halvorsen had torched his score.

Once again making Audrey Benac feel impenetrably inscrutable and inhibitedly indecisive, Deragh Campbell excels in this latest collaboration with a director who seemingly has no intention of doing things the conventional way. Sofia Bohdanowicz's elliptical storytelling style is intricate, involving, and demanding, as she weaves together voiceovers, off-screen incidents, longueurs, and moments of intense drama, affecting melancholy, and disarming humour.

Resisting making anything too plain, Bohdanowicz also has a habit of placing the camera in unexpected places, with the result that she catches characters off guard and brings a quizzical alertness to her city views. Nikolay Michaylov's widescreen digital images are deftly edited by Pablo Alvarez-Mesa to achieve a hypnotic rhythm that is entirely at one with Campbell's portrayal of a well-meaning, but insecure woman who keeps finding herself in situations in which she often appears to be floundering before she finds a way to move on.

Drawing on the Parlow papers that she had found in the Edward Johnson Music Library, Bohdanowicz not only revives the reputation of a prodigy who had dazzled Europe before the outbreak of the Great War, but she also explores the sacrifices that musicians have to make in order to succeed and the strain that this places on their relationships. There's even a #MeToo undercurrent in the presentation of the bonds between Parlow and Halverson and Elisa and Mischa, as well as between Elizabeth and her father and husband.

Boldly ending with an almost complete performance of the `lost' concerto (which actually runs for around 22 minutes), Bohdanowicz reminds us how much past achievement becomes irrevocably forgotten. Her film is never an easy watch, with its idiosyncratic speech patterns, penchant for niche knowledge, and its fetishistic reverence for the archive documents that are repeatedly being duplicated, as if to emphasise the cyclical nature of history and human life. But Campbell is completely on co-scenarist Bohdanowicz's wavelength and one can only hope that we shall see more of Audrey in the future.

LITTLE TROUBLE GIRLS.

Director Urška Djukić has been building quite a reputation with her shorts, with Bon Appeit, La Vie! (2016) and The Right One (2019) being followed by the animated Granny's Sexual Life (2021), which was co-directed by Emilie Pigeard and won a César and a European Film Award. Now, the Slovenian makes a highly impressive feature bow with Little Trouble Girls.

Still settling into a new school, 16 year-old Lucia (Jara Sofija Ostan) is taken up by fellow choir member, Ana-Maria (Mina Švajger). She is slightly older and has her own little coterie comprised of Klara (Popovic Stasa) and Ursula (Strle Mateja), who all laugh at Bojan the choirmaster (Sasa Tabakovic) behind his back. However, the choir is considered cool, especially as it is about to go to Cividale del Friuli in Italy for a three-day rehearsal at the Ursuline convent. Lucia's mother, Helena (Nataša Burger), is reluctant for her to go and chides her in the car home for wearing the lipstick that Lucia had told Ana-Maria had come from her aunt in Paris.

Unable to sleep because of recurring thoughts of all the sounds she had picked up in the rehearsal room, Lucia joins her mother on the sofa to eat ice cream. As her father snores on the sofa, Lucia can feel her mother getting embarrassed at a sex scene on the TV and she eventually changes the channel. On the coach to the convent, Ana-Maria defends Lucia when Klara teases her for not having had her first period. She also sticks up for her when Klara and Ursula notice her staring at an olive tree in the garden when they unpack in their shared room and Lucia feels she can trust her new big sister.

Workmen are renovating the convent, although they snapped the hand off a statue of Mary and Lucia (who is a good Catholic girl) feels sorry for her. She gets ticked off by Bojan when she fiddles around with her new concert outfit and he reminds her that everyone has to be in complete harmony for the choir to work. He's in a bad mood, however, as the builders are making such a racket, although Ana-Maria has spotted a handsome lad and steals his t-shirt after she watches him drying off. Lucia is shocked, as they flee the scene and goes along with Ana-Maria's contention that their sin will be forgiven if they eat a sour grape.

After lights out, the girls play spin the bottle and Lucia quickly realises that she is much more innocent than her roommates. When she insists on a dare, Ana-Maria tells her to kiss the prettiest girl in the convent and she's surprised when Lucia leads a torchlit procession to the chapel so that she can kiss the damaged Marian statue.

The next day, one of the nuns takes a party to the river for a swim. Klara spots the workmen bathing and fetches Ana-Maria and Lucia. The see Niko (Lotos Sparovec) with his shirt off and the mischievous Ana-Maria catches the rapt expressio the younger girl's face and coaxes her into a chaste kiss that becomes more passionate. Realising that Niko is peeping at them through the trees, they run back to the group.

That night, Lucia keeps thinking of the kiss, but she gets caught standing beside the sleeping Ana-Maria's bunk and claims she was trying to stop her snoring. Next day, while helping Sister Magda (Sasa Pavcek) put up a curtain, Lucia impulsively asks how she manages to stay celibate. She explains that God's touch is more lasting and meaningful than a human embrace and Lucia is touched by what she says. So, when Ana-Maria mocks her and tries to kiss Lucia again to release some happy chemicals, she pulls away and is accused of acting like the Virgin Mary.

Too hot to sleep and troubled by the memory of Ana-Maria tracing her finger over her palm, Lucia goes for a wander. She sees the nuns on a prayer walk in the garden and hears Bojan playing Bach in the music room. He invites her to sit and asks what's on her mind. When she claims that Ana-Maria is in love with her, Bojan assures her that she's not like that and suggests that Lucia keeps her focus on her singing. However, she spots him talking to Ana-Maria, Klara, and Ursula before the rehearsal and Lucia is mortified when Bojan openly criticises her voice in front of the others.

Hurt by Ana-Maria snubbing her, Lucia goes to the river to watch Niko swim. From behind a tree, she takes a photograph of his nude body before venturing out to return the t-shirt. He stands close to her and Lucia feels so overwhelmed that she rushes back to the convent to masturbate in a toilet stall. The camera fixes on her throat as the sensation builds and rises up to her lips after she orgasms. However, the moment is ruined when she hears giggling from the next door cubicle and she hurries back to the choir, as if nothing has happened.

Feeling as though everyone is staring at her as she walks along, Lucia sees Ana-Maria showing Klara and Ursula the photo of Niko that she had sent her. They congratulate her on being wild, but she knows she's no longer in the inner circle. Moreover, Bojan is merciless towards her in the rehearsal and orders her to leaves after belittling her by picking fault while making her sing alone.

Fighting tears, Lucia wanders into the town and stands on the Devil's Bridge towering over the river. She clambers into a cave and, hearing voices, she enters an underground chapel, where the nuns are singing in white habits. Images flash through her mind of them singing on the bank, as she floats fully clothed in the water. But she clearly resists the temptation to harm herself and the film ends with her wearing roller skates and eating the juicy black grapes that she has bought from a market stall, as a sign that she has forgiven herself, even if no one else has.

In the 1920s, the Soviet film theorist Lev Kuleshov demonstrated how meaning could be manufactured by juxtaposing the image of an impassive actor's face with items associated with common feelings or sensations. By remaining expressionless for much of this engrossing feature, Jara Sofija Ostan gives a Kuleshovian performance, as the audience is forced to interpret her reaction to the moments of awkwardness, curiosity, inclusivity, desire, confusion, humiliation, and shame that beset her character during an excruciating rite of passage.

To a degree, the story co-scripted by Maria Bohr loses its way in the final third, as it feels like a contrivance that the introverted Lucia would confide something so contentious to a man she barely knows, especially as he has already been mean to her during rehearsals. The river reverie also feels convoluted, as the sense of place feels shaky after the convent confinement and the same goes for the final scene, as it's impossible to tell where Lucia is eating her grapes (either at home or in Cividale) to the sound of Sonic Youth's `Little Trouble Girl' and what has transpired since Bojan's unprofessional outburst. Yet, these loose ends only add to the intrigue and appeal of a drama that refuses to offer any easy answers, as the purity of the girls singing an array of folk songs and hymns is replaced by the temptations and trepidations of juvenescence - while, in the background lingers the direly indelible warning inherent in the disgust that Helena feels at the sight of her snoring spouse.

Urška Djukić's eye for an image is enviable and she's superbly served by cinematographer Lev Predan Kowarski. However, her use of sound is also inspired, from the opening montage of yawns, chews, hair twirls, and sighs concocted by sound designer Julij Zornik to suggest Lucia's skittish alertness. As stated above, Vlado Gojun's editing is equally astute in conveying the impassive, inquisitive, but vulnerable Lucia's responses to the sights and sounds around here. But, while her allusive insight into adolescent girlhood has drawn comparisons with Céline Sciamma, Djukić provides a unique assessment of the way teenagers behave in isolation, in pairs, and in groups and it's this appreciation of Lucia and Ana-Maria's different levels of maturity that makes this so authentic and valuable.

IN THE NGUYEN KITCHEN.

Having made his name as a writer by co-scripting Koya Kamura's Winter in Sokcho (2024), French-Vietnamese actor Stéphane Ly-Cuong makes his directorial debut with In the Nguyen Kitchen, a distinctive blend of music and cuisine that offers a compelling insight into a little-seen aspect of Parisian society.

In her dreams, Yvonne (Clotilde Chevalier) wakes to find herself at the centre of a Jacques Demyesque musical staged in an movie-set neighbourhood. However, in reality, she is rejected for shows about Joan of Arc, Marie Antoinette, and St Bernadette because there were no Asian faces in France at the time. When boring boyfriend, Thibault (Jeremy Lewin) tells her to give up on her dream, Yvonne leaves him and heads for the childhood bedroom in Torcy above La Baie d'Along, the restaurant run by her mother (Anh Tran-Nghia) and aunt (Marie-Thérèse Priou).

Over breakfast, Ma echoes Thibault by saying she would never have crossed shark-infested waters as a refugee had she known her daughter would want so sing in musical theatre. Yvonne defends herself, but knows singing in supermarkets to promote spring rolls isn't the role of a lifetime. And the same goes for the children's shows she puts on with her friend, Cornelius Lemercier (Gaël Kamilindi), who is known as Koko.

His pianist, Gus (Pierre Cachia), is playing for the auditions of Around the World With Casanova, which is being produced by Philippe Vernon (Thomas Jolly). Yvonne sets her heart on the part of Lotus Flower and Koko suggests she sings his song about life being a musical. She feels good after rehearsing it, but lands with a bump when Ma orders her to help out in the kitchen and rubbishes her banh cuon, which every self-respecting Vietnamese husband would expect.

Despite getting a waiting-room earful from her accepts anything rival, Fu Fen (Leanna Chea), Yvonne is pleased with the audition, as Vernon is enthusiastic about her voice and energy. She is also pleased that auntie's doctor son, Georges (Christophe Tek), has returned from Vietnam, as he's a big fan of everything she does, even commercials. The mother try to matchmake them, as they sing along to a Truc Dao song. But Yvonne is only interested in preparing for a dance audition and puts herself through hell at a class run by Angela (Camille Japy).

She keeps boasting about her past career, but Vernon is more interested in Yvonne when she comes to the audition and improvises a solo spot. She is taken aback when he asks about her favourite places in the old country and Ma has little sympathy with her because she has never visited or picked up more than the linguistic basics. When Koko comes to help make egg rolls, Ma ticks off Yvonne for considering herself French when she lives on home cooking.

Having discussed the fact that Georges is gay before the concert, Yvonne enjoys seeing Truc Dao (Linh-Dan Pham) perform. But Ma sees her younger self dancing with her true love and there's great poignancy in the reminder that the old were young once and lived what are now fond memories. Yet when she hears that Yvonne has got a call back, she curses her husband for not having been stricter with her and forced her into a proper job rather than letting her make a fool of herself in public. When Ma goes for a nap, Yvonne checks up on her and she claims there is no cure for an ungrateful daughter.

Having got into the final five despite arguing back with Vernon after he has the hopefuls shuffle like geishas and refers to generic Asian types, Yvonne looks for a copy of Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan to prepare a speech for the next audition. As she scours the shelves, she finds boxes of keepsakes that her mother has kept about her education and her career. Ma dismisses her when she tries to apologise for snapping at her and tells her that she should listen more and speak less.

Bearing these thoughts in mind when Vernon asks her to improvise a speech in Vietnamese, Yvonne draws on Ma's stock grumbles and phrases she has heard around the restaurant to sing an impassioned number that moves the producer and Angela (who has also done Brecht, of course). As she leaves after being told she's in the final selection, the camera operator winks at her because he recognised that she had strung together the only Viet words she knows.

Yvonne asks Koko to help her rehearse, but they argue because he realises that Vernon's view of Asia is patronising and that Yvonne will sell her soul if she takes the part. She barks back that he is too scared to finish his magnum opus and insists it takes courage to put herself on the line. Ma is proud of her for being up against Fu Fan and tells her a story about a prince who ignored the older brothers who went in search of exotic ingredients to please his father by using local produce to cook him a dish fit for king. But it's the sight of Pa (Châu Belle Dinh) encouraging her in an old home movie that makes up Yvonne's mind.

On stage in a plush theatre, Fu Fan gives it her all in a kimono and impresses Vernon, although he can't wait to see Yvonne. She argues with Fu Wan in the wings about being prepared to sell out in order to keep working by playing lowlife Chinese girls in crime shows when her roots are Cambodian. Snapping back, she accuses Yvonne of trying to pass for white. But, when she goes on stage, Yvonne realises that she can't betray her heritage and her parents and she walks away without singing and with her pride intact.

Dropping in to apologise to Koko, they agree to tell their own stories in their future shows. At the restaurant, Yvonne tells Ma that she did what she had to do and she nods with a smile. She asks her daughter to sing on the repaired karaoke machine and Yvonnne chooses a ballad about being yourself while remembering where you came from, which she delivers while standing in front of a projection of the limestone karsts of Ha Long Bay.

As the credits roll, Yvonne performs at the restaurant, with Ma serving food, Koko manning the sound deck, and all the other characters bopping along to the disco beat. It's a suitable ending to a film that questions and celebrates the different facets that go into shaping a country's history and culture. Ly-Cuong (who cameos as the emcee at the Truc Dao concert) also explores clichés about Asian parenting, as well as assimilation, cultural appropriation, and the ignorance surrounding the Global North/South divide. Despite the whole Casanova musial conceit being somewhat contrived, the points are made with a wit and precision that underlines their trenchancy without detracting from the overall deceptive lightness of touch.

While this owes much to Ly-Cuong's measured direction, it's the charismatic Clotilde Chevalier who guides the picture through its tonal shifts, as Yvonne comes to understand herself, her mother, and milieu she is trying to crack. Canadian Korean actress Sandra Oh was once famously told by an agent that she had no roles coming up that would suit her profile and Chevalier channels Yvonne's anger after she is similarly dismissed. A veteran of Ly-Cuong's stage show, Cabaret Jaune Citronhe, she sings and dances splendidly and also proves a dab hand at both pathos and comedy, although Anh Tran-Nghia and Leanna Chea also amuse as the quicker-tongued Ma and Fu Fen. It's also something of a coup to have cast Thomas Jolly, who was the artistic director of the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2024 Paris Olympics, as a director/producer pushing antiquatedly quaint ideas about the world in the 18th century and today.

The songs composed by Clovis Schneider and Thuy-Nhân Dao with lyrics by Ly-Cuong and Christine Khandjian are clever and catchy, while Caroline Long Nguyên's production design is exceptional in contrasting La Baie d'Along and Koko's bijou theatre with the increasingly grand audition spaces that Yvonne visits in her journey towards self-realisation. More might have been made of Yvonne's bi-racial relationship with a dullard who works for a stairlift company and whether he ever met Ma. But Ly-Cuong judges the mix of dreams, reality, satire, politics, nostalgia, and theatircality to a tee, with the highlight being Ma and Pa's achingly beautiful slow dance, which will prompt many viewers to ponder the love story involving their own parents.