Slamdance Virtual 2023 Field Report 1: Where the Road Leads & Stars in the Ordinary Universe

 Eight American dollars.

 That's all it costs for a virtual pass at Slamdance this year. Much like the last couple of years, Slamdance continues to be the steal of the year in all of cinema. How many movies do you need to watch to justify that price? One? The virtual pass at its Park City bigger sister festival is three hundred dollars for a measly ten screenings. That's 37 times more expensive than the Slamdance virtual pass. If I disliked every last film I see at virtual Slamdance, I'd still feel like it was easily worth the price of admission.

 It will be hard for the festival to match last year's virtual Slamdance in terms of film quality. The trifecta of The Civil Dead, Hannah Ha Ha, and Therapy Dogs went blow for blow with the top end of any of the other festivals in the world last year. And I'm not comparing to other indie festivals, Slamdance '22 honestly outshone the TIFFs, Venices, and Cannes level majors last year. It wouldn't be fair to expect this year's lineup to hit big in the same way, last year was one of those special years where everything fell into place. Especially considering that the amount of streamable narrative features that I can see in Canada is down to seven from upwards of thirteen or so last year. But even a much thinner virtual pass is still undeniably worth its asking price, nothing matches it.

Where The Road Leads

 Set on a blisteringly hot morning, Where the Road Leads is about the rare occurrence of a tourist visiting a remote isolated Serbian village long past its heyday. Baking in the summer heat without any relief thanks to an unexplained power outage. The town is populated with the last remnants of a population that is far more used to people leaving than people arriving. The new visitor is clearly the most dramatic cause célèbre this town has seen in some time. For some, the visitor's arrival puts to rest a lifetime of questions about a long lost brother, others react with skepticism about his intentions and one young woman sees the new guest as their first chance to escape a home that offers little prospects of a future beyond tea leaves reading.

 It's not a situation unique to rural Serbia, you can find future ghost towns like this here in North America and the rest of the world. The film captures the despondency of these places so well. Not just in the physical decay of the place itself but in how that imprints on the people who live there. The generational tension here is where this film works best. The films spotlights the frictions between the young adults entrapped by a lack of a future, children too young to even have a sense of what is or is not coming for them and an older generation who's just happy enough with their old traditions and routines. Tensions have been bubbling here for some time and the catalyst of a new arrival is enough to bring these to a quiet boil.

 Unfortunately, Where the Road Leads' issue lies in that it's actually structured non-linearly, starting mere moments before the visitor's ambush and murder. The film then steps backwards in time a couple sequences at a time. First with a look at the morning leading up to the murder and then later by jumping back to the day before to grant an even more clear picture of how events came to a head. The structure allows the film to slowly introduce the various factions of the town outside of the context of the plot, introducing the audience to them as characters before they become potential conspiracy pieces.

 But this framing encourages the audience to take the wrong approach in watching the film. Instead of watching an ensemble story about a town and a population in its death throes, the audience is watching the film as a more straightforward whodunnit to figure out what exactly is going on. Expecting each step backwards in time to bring a new twist on the understanding isn't rewarded here. There is no mystery here, each time the payoffs to the non-linearity are pretty much the most likely option. Starting and finishing the story at a mid-point doesn't bring any greater understanding of the characters or events a more traditional approach couldn't accomplish. In fact there are several scenes early in the film that would be more effective if we had a more straight-forward perspective on the events that preceded them. The themes of this narrative are overshadowed by the story's basic structure choices, which just feels like a fumbled oppurtunity in the end.

Stars in the Ordinary Universe

 I'm essentially allergic to anthology films, I pretty much never like them. I tend to far prefer a movie where all the parts are contributing to a single larger whole. And while I do understand that these films are typically tied together on a thematic level, I almost always walk away from them wishing they had just expanded my preferred episode into a feature all of its own. A personal bias sure, but a preference is a preference.

 Luckily for me, the South Korean anthology film Stars in the Ordinary Universe from director Bowon Kim has enough connective tissue between its three stories to read more as a cross-cutting ensemble comedy rather than a more typical anthology film. The film goes through a whole song and dance with animated pixelated episode bumpers showing how each episode supposedly takes place on a separate version of earth in a multiverse but the episodes quickly start referencing and calling back to each other in increasingly comedic ways. Ultimately making it more of a goofy city film than a metaphysical world hopper.

 Like most episodic films, some episodes are stronger than others. In the case of Stars in the Ordinary Universe, the strong opening and final episodes carry the weight of the film for the longer and weaker middle chapter. It's not terrible, but its cheesy melodrama humor does get tired when compared to the surrealist laughs of the opener and high concept efficient sketch that wraps up the film without overstaying its welcome. The variety in comedy styles between the three episodes goes a long way in keeping the film from exhausting any particular well of humour. If you find the film is losing you in the middle I'd suggest you at least stick around to see the last episode, at 71 minutes the film isn't terribly long to begin with and is never too far from the next good bit. That is as long as you're up for some humour about the philosophy of knowledge and learning.