MANIFF: Saturday Drama Features (Can’t Say Goodbye and Hippopotamus)
| 4th March 2018
Can’t Say Goodbye (directed by Lino Escalera) is a Spanish language family drama starring Nathalie Poza as the wild Carla. Carla works a steady city advertising job, picks up men ten in bars and uses cocaine regularly. So, when she’s forced to confront life’s realities via a phone call informing her father is seriously ill, she refuses to accept.
Can’t Say Goodbye is a grim, bleak story set in hospitals and open spaces, yet it always feels claustrophobic. There are some great performances – Juan Diego as the father is a particular standout – and some brief moments of levity, but the absolute dominance of the dark tones leaves a film that is difficult to watch at times.
The script is, however, rife with one liners which give us an insight into the characters. “I’m going to Portugal, it’s earlier there,” from Diego’s father character is a particular gem. Overall the story is a compelling and sad realist drama which is not afraid to hold back. Director Escalera should be praised for drawing the best from his talented team of actors, but the film could do with a couple more set pieces to tear away from the intensity of the dialogue heavy script.
Hippopotamus
A twisting, sadistic tale that is filled to the brim with love, terror and surprises. When Ruby awakes in a room resembling a cleaner version of the first SAW film, legs broken and memory lost, the audience expects one thing. What unfolds over the next hour and a half could not be further from that expectation.
Hippopotamus boasts incredible performances, just slightly marred by technical issues, from co-leads Ingvild Delia and Stuart Mortimer, without which this mostly single-room thriller would not be nearly as effective.
That’s not to say that director/writer Edward A Palmer does not make great achievements on his first feature length. There’s several sequences that stick in the mind, such as when a tracking shot and some clever editing creates a montage effect showing off the talent of Palmer to create an interesting looking movie on a budget with smart camerawork and interesting lighting decisions, making the film feel much more expansive than it’s one room has any right to.
Still to come from MANIFF 2018, reviews of short films from Catherine Tate and the Jonathan Rhys Meyers film Damascus Cover.