Premiering in the Platform section at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, these two films tackle women growing up and confronting their changing feelings, whether it’s a contentious friendship in Irene Dionisio’s Italian drama IDDA, or a young girl’s newfound romantic yearnings for her childhood friend in Yoon Dan-bi’s Korean drama The World Before.
While photographing the religious procession honoring Saint Agatha in Catania, her Sicilian hometown sitting at the base of Italy’s Mount Etna volcano, for her job as a travel journalist, Adele (Tecla Insolia) meets Florian (Mati Galey), a man attempting to record holy hymns for a project, which he later tells her and her best friend Sofia (Romana Maggiora Vergano) over drinks is part of a study documenting how time transforms what we feel. At Sofia’s prodding, the camera-toting Adele reluctantly discloses the nature of her own personal project: a visual study on things that disappear. This effort to hold on to things before she loses them haunts Adele throughout Irene Dionisio’s hypnotic drama IDDA, which derives its title from the feminine name that Sicilians’ bestow upon the active volcano. We learn that two years ago, Adele’s mother passed away. And despite their joyous reunion at Catania’s airport— the pair have met up to finally fulfill a lifelong dream to hike to Mount Etna’s summit— it quickly becomes clear via Adele’s annoyed glances and frustrated outbursts and Sofia’s obvious holding back some secret from Adele every time her phone rings that their friendship is now too punctuated by unkept promises to ever be what it used to. Like the volcano, whose ever-unpredictable, elemental landscape serves as the story’s backdrop— and the bubbling lava and spurting ash of which Dionisio cuts back to throughout the film— the tension simmers between Adele and Sofia, until it finally bursts.
Some of IDDA’s segues, such as an erotic encounter with Salvatore (Giuseppe De Domenico), an old friend of Adele who lives on the mountain and who they spend the night with in a cabin after Adele summons his help following an incident, feel out of place with the rest of the film, which teases out the source of the conflict between the two women in fits and spurts (although certainly, a carnal desire for each other that they have clearly experimented with some in the past plays into that). Gergely Pohárnok’s textured cinematography, imbuing the shots of the volcano rumbling with a grainier look that differentiates them from the rest of the movie, and Matteo Marini, Gabriele Concas, and Peter Miyakawa’s mesmeric score beautifully tie Adele and Sofia to their environment, as do allusions to Saint Agatha’s and Mount Etna’s roots in womanhood and motherhood. Adele and Sofia play off each other with the ease of old friends who aren’t necessarily always likable, whether they are gigglingly teasing each other, or violently arguing. IDDA’s finale doesn’t as deftly match tone with action; it plays as oddly cold and rushed through, especially given the circumstances. But it’s a uniquely tactile portrait of female friendship and the often fleeting nature of life all the same.
As leisurely as a summer’s day, Korean writer and director Yoon Dan-bi’s sun-kissed coming-of-age drama The World Before traces a few months in the life of Jin (Sim Su-bin), a teenager who reconnects with her childhood best friend Dujae (Kim Eo-jin) when he returns to the island where they grew up for his grandmother’s funeral and stays for the season. From the get-go, their every encounter is punctuated by an awkward fusion of closeness and distance. The familiarity of two people whose lives have been intertwined for the better part of their existence lingers, but their age and changing perception of their worlds has imperceptibly altered something.
At times, The World Before’s focus drifts from Jin’s perspective, examining Dujae’s fraught home life and troubled relationship with his mother. It’s one of the film’s false steps, which also include unnecessarily repetitive motions. Scenes of Jin clandestinely gazing at Dujae from a distance, inhaling the scent of his shirts, or the pair sitting beside each other on the beach in silence, basking in the sort of companionship where words fall away, play out over and over again to little purpose, elongating the film’s runtime to a gratuitous almost two hours. The movie works best when Dan-bi frames events from Jin’s point-of-view. Aided by Su-bin’s expressive performance— she conveys everything her character is feeling with clarity, whether it’s pain crossing her face at a dismissive remark from Dujae, or smiling and biting her lip as if she is reveling in keeping a delightful secret— she clearly illustrates both the awkwardness of female adolescence, the burgeoning excitement of first love, and the hurt when that love is not reciprocated. Numerous scenes portray Dan-bi’s growing awareness of her own body and feelings changing, as she examines herself in the mirror, or is jealous of her female friend’s interest in Dujae and is possible attraction to her, or expresses discomfort at undressing to swim with Dujae— an activity they partook in frequently as children, he mentioned earlier in the film, but isn’t quite the same anymore. Dujae, in contrast to Jin, appears largely unaware that anything has changed between them; his attempt to hold on to their relationship as it was points to a reluctance to let go of the past.
Lensed by Lee Seong-eun, The World Before is lovely to look at, the camera caressing the island’s natural beauty and the characters’ faces with a fluidity that is in step with the movie’s long, observational takes. Unfortunately, there’s not much original storytelling here, and that, along with the film’s poor pacing, undermines the potency of the yearning that permeates the narrative, punctuated by longing gazes and all the feelings that remain unspoken.
Katie at the Movies 