While it is always a joy and privilege to travel for film festivals, there’s nothing quite like enjoying one from the comfort of one’s home city. That’s what makes the Chicago International Film Festival so special; for almost two weeks, the city’s artists, creatives, and cinephiles gather to watch a diverse array of films from all over the world. Festival viewing is its way of cultivating a found family, and it’s thrilling to see a familiar space rendered with novelty as people form new connections and the city fully embraces its film roots. Fittingly, three dramas that played as part of this year’s CIFF deconstruct the safety and security home provides, showing how the rhythms we’ve orchestrated are brittle and the relationship between where we are and where we’re from is always shifting and being re-negotiated.
Filmed for 15 days in Northern Illinois but taking in an unspecified town, “Okie” is a dark subversion of the “prodigal son” story and will surely be a perspicacious and revealing watch for those who have thought they’ve grown beyond the scope and needs of their hometowns and communities. It focuses on Louie (Scott Michael Foster), an acclaimed writer who returns home to gather his late father’s things. He only intends to stay for a few days, but he’s swiftly drawn back into the orbit of childhood friends and flames, notably Travis (Kevin Bigley) and Lainey (Kate Cobb, who also serves as the director). It’s a sobering and ultimately horrific tale of how our relationship with home changes as we move throughout the world and how chasing success causes us to wound and forget those who most love and care for us.
From the start, Cobb expertly showcases how Louie’s return will be anything but a warm homecoming. Louie’s literary success is built upon his stories, which are based on the people in his hometown, and he often uses their real names and life histories. While the exact nature of those stories isn’t discussed, it’s evident that he’s taken a lot of creative liberties with how he writes about his community and isn’t afraid to twist the truth to make it more exciting and profitable.
Cobb has crafted a universally relatable ambiance here, even while telling a very specific story about Louie. No matter how far away we move from home, there’s always this sense that when we come back, we can’t help but revert to old habits. Additionally, it captures how when we leave, the people we leave behind are often frozen in time; there’s awkwardness as we try to connect because we’re attempting to reconcile who they are with present with who we knew them as before. As Louie goes through the motions of his old life and catches up with people in his town, it’s as if he’s asking whether the only thing that connects him is that these were people he used to know.
Cobb’s direction imbues a sense of unsettling worry and frustration in all that’s occurring; how people are nice, but their niceties reveal a deeper frustration and discontent with how they have been depicted. Foster is also a revelation here, never straying too far away from reminding viewers that he is self-obsessed and insensitive but also deeply relatable. Especially in moments where he tries to reconnect with Travis, it’s funny to witness how his “high society” politeness clashes with the warmth and informality of those in his hometown; he thinks he’s being kind, but it only comes off as more jarring, and further underscores his isolation and separation from these people he used to know. Indeed, real life is often much more complex, nuanced, and less exciting than the movies or books we read, and the film becomes a critique of how we can all too easily ignore our past and critique it for the sake of profit. The film raises important questions about how we ought to steward the stories of those who are not our own.
I’ll fully admit that in light of Israel’s ongoing displacement and destruction of Palestine and its people, it made watching (and reviewing) “Bliss” from Israeli director Shemi Zarhin difficult to sympathize with and view. The film does not directly comment on the present violence, having been written and shot before October 7th. Tellingly, though, the film features locations, such as a community center with a swimming pool, that no longer exist as they have since been destroyed due to the conflict. Though the film itself is a drama and romance, witnessing it with this in mind feels disquieting nonetheless as it visually feels already out of date and out of touch with what’s going on at present; there’s a jarring dissonance between the tenderness and struggle it tries to depict in light of the violence that’s going on at present in these regions.
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