I went to a screening of this at BAMPFA immediately following The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser, both with Werner Herzog in attendance. Herzog introduced the film talking about how the perspective shifts throughout the film, first from Graham Dorrington to Marc Anthony Yhap, and then from Yhap to his rooster for one of the final scenes. He also said that the idea for the film was presented to him by one of his sons, who originally wanted to make the…
I saw this at another BAMPFA screening where Herzog was in attendance, this time as part of a months-long retrospective that they're having of his filmography. He introduced the film talking about Bruno Schleinstein's upbringing in asylums from the age of 3-23, and the depth of his performance.
He discovered Bruno by watching a program on street performers. Bruno was a featured performer who would play accordion on the streets, and Herzog felt an instant connection with Bruno.
Bruno was…
I was very much on board with this film and didn't understand the lukewarm reaction to it until the last 20 minutes, and then everything came into focus for me. Up until that point I thought that this was just a strong as anything else that Julia Ducournau had made, but it really fumbles the ball right at the end. The three leads are all exceptional and it's a beautiful film that uses body horror as a metaphor for disease, which is something that I am always going to be into. I just wish that it had stuck the landing.
Despite its relatively short run time, Jubilation Street at times feels like a slog to get through. There are definitely Great moments of drama throughout, but there are also entire scenes that feel meaningless in the grand scheme of the narrative. It also doesn't help that it's in in dire need of a restoration, with some night time scenes being almost impossible to comprehend who is saying what.
There's nothing I can say about this film that I'm sure someone else here hasn't said better. It's funny that the last film that my wife and I saw in theaters before our son was born was a vampire movie (Nosferatu), and the first one we saw in theaters after he was born was a vampire movie.
