by A. Freedman, Staff Writer

Agnes (dir. Mickey Reece)

Mickey Reece is an incredibly prolific micro-budget indie film director from Oklahoma City, and Agnes may be his most buzzed about film yet. Set in Oklahoma, as all of his films are- Agnes follows the events at a convent when a young nun seems to have become suddenly possessed by a demonic spirit. An old priest with a troubled past and a young deacon are called upon to investigate. You have seen this movie before, but not quite like this. 

Agnes does for a possession story what The Vast Of Night (from PFF 2019) did for the UFO story- and not only because they each feature young character actor Jake Horowitz. There's an outsized confidence to these films compared to their budget and scope. The characters have a simmering intensity about them and inhabit a world that seems heightened. The single location helps make it feel all the more surreal and hyper focused. There are at least two scenes that are surprising enough to get your mouth agape.

Agnes takes a strange and abrupt turn somewhere in the back half, and the direction it takes may not work for every viewer. I must say that it did not work for me. I was fully on board and then suddenly felt like a rug had been pulled from underneath me. The film tries to establish a different set of stakes, but doesn't find a compelling reason to have taken this narrative departure. Nevertheless, there is the first 2/3 of the film- as engaging and enrapturing as anything else I have seen this year.

A Hero (dir. Asghar Farhadi)

Asghar Farhadi is one of the more gifted dramatist from the fertile storytelling grounds of Iran, which means he is one of the best out there. His stories usually involve regular people in Iran finding themselves with a dilemma. He could find a way to make a gripping parable involving two trains going the opposite direction at different speeds, and trying to find out at which time they will pass each other. Yet his stories particularly shine when his characters find that their dilemmas involve a system that makes everything worse. 

Rahim (Amir Jadidi) is a prisoner on a temporary release who comes across a bag of golden coins that someone left on the bus. He is in prison for an unpaid debt, so it seems all too good to be true. In a surprise twist that may come from selfish reasoning, he finds a way to "return" the bag to its rightful owner, turning him into a minor local celebrity thanks to his act of good will. This doesn't solve his problems as much as bring about more eyes and ears, with the attention of local charities, press, creditors and government. Rahim may have made poor choices, but the complications are made worse by the effects that ripple across a hyper rigid bureaucracy.

The story itself starts off small and seems perhaps even slight- but just grows from there as an act of indiscretion swallows up everyone in sight. Farhadi may have peaked with his 2011 film A Separation, but A Hero rivals it for being a jolly bad time for regular flawed humans who are just trying to survive.

Try Harder! (dir. Debbie Lum)

As someone who applied to colleges almost 20 years ago, I found the new documentary Try Harder!- which follows a group of students at a predominantly Asian American high school, trying to get into their top choice colleges- to be a complete horror story. I remember the stress and anxiety of applying to schools while living in a competitive area, and going to school with classmates who seemed to have a much greater appeal than mine. Well, now there are another one and a half billion people on the planet, things are a lot more expensive, and everything about this process is significantly worse. 

A PBS Independent Lens production, Try Harder is set at Lowell High School in San Francisco, where most of the kids have incredible grades, incredible SAT scores, and incredible talents- but their prospects are in much greater question than they may have been a decade or two earlier. The traditional markers of what it took to get into your top choice colleges have shifted dramatically, and now being the perfect student is no longer good enough. You are competing against all the other perfect students, of which there are many. The majority of the school is Asian American, and thus are most of the subjects we follow. Long held up as the "model minority," Try Harder also exposes a glass ceiling they still run up against- that many of the country's top schools still want to limit their Asian student intake, to keep their country club roots intact. "Model minority" students in one of the most educated places in the world now have to try twice as hard for half the prospects. 

There are no on-screen bad guys in Try Harder. In fact, pretty much everyone is doing their best- kids, parents and teachers alike. You get to know what it is like to grow up in a place where perfection is not the exception, but more or less the standard. It makes the viewer question the whole basic premise of college to begin with, especially when considering the future of the job market and little things like global warming. Despite its horror premise, Try Harder also makes plenty of room for humor, lightheartedness and life, as you get to know who these kids really are outside of their college applications. It's a classic "the kids are alright" kind of film, even though the world they are acquiring may not be. 

The Novice (dir. Lauren Hadaway)

This punishing debut from director Lauren Hadaway would make an excellent double feature with Try Harder- in fact, that could have easily been the title of this character study. Isabelle Fuhrman (the girl from Orphan) stars as a college freshman named Alex who will stop at seemingly nothing to be the best rower on her crew team. Labeled repeatedly as the titular "novice," she is determined to be much more than that. It is a quick but brutal journey down the rabbit hole of self destruction and the possibility of rebirth. 

Alex seems to stand apart from all of her peers when there is nothing on the surface to suggest she wouldn't fit in. She stays late after class dismissal to take tests over again. She repeats mantras she learns in crew class, tuning out relationships and the world around her. She is hyperfocused on being the best and better than everyone else- like Daniel Plainview as a queer girl in college. Since the social movements of the last decade have made the rich and privileged into social pariahs, that isn't necessarily the goal anymore. But beating everybody else never seems to go out of style, no matter what it costs you. 

Maybe it was all the rowing and the college environment, but films like The Social Network immediately popped into mind. The muted gray palette and themes of obsession also made the Fincherian feel all the more apparent. Since the explosion of social media and Silicon Valley, the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world have won handily for themselves. Yet everyone hates them just the same, if not more. They don't care though. The Novice is set in the world those people created. 

Petite Maman (dir. Celine Sciamma) 

In addition to movies that are loosely about a COVID like pandemic, get ready for tiny movies with big ideas that were shot during COVID. The need for small sets with small casts has the possibility of opening up a director to stories they might not otherwise tell. Thusly, Celine Sciamma follows up her aces Portrait Of A Lady On Fire with this absolutely delightful movie about mothers and daughters. 

Little Nelly has just lost her grandmother. She goes with her mother to clear out the old family house, when her mother unexpectedly leaves without saying goodbye. Left behind with her dad to finish the work, she ventures out in the woods behind her house to find a girl her own age building a fort. Magical adventures ensue!

Petite Maman was the perfect bookend of the festival with Memoria. Both movies invite you to slow down and experience the natural world in a different way. Both are about looking beyond the limits of our immediate reality to see if there might be something more out there. Both feature exquisite sound design that invites a calming reaction. 

Towards the end, I found myself wishing that Sciamma would go in a different direction, or explore different aspects of the material- but then again I am a man, and this is so much about the bond between a mother and a daughter that I couldn't help but not relate to all of it. That is fine, it is by design. This movie will melt a lot of hearts...and turn them into delicious pancakes. 

That does it for my coverage of the 30th Philadelphia Film Festival. Big thanks to all of the organizers and volunteers for another great year- and for a very SAFE experience in these crazy times.