The 74th edition of the Melbourne International Film Festival kicks off this weekend with another typically dizzying array of films from practically every country on the planet, in practically any form you can imagine, including features, shorts and VR experiences, comprised of both recent festival winners, and classic releases to honour the careers of those who came before (including dearly departed Sydney filmmaker Sarah Watt).
There’s no good way to thematically encapsulate such a geyser of artistic quality that will run for 18 days (if you include tomorrow’s opening night showing of Wicker as one of those days), but here at ReelGood we have a tradition of watching two of the offerings beforehand as a sort of preview. And it isn’t the best or most significant options we select, it’s just what we can get our hands on.
This year, we can at least relate those two titles to each other, somewhat. Both Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire and Chandler Levack’s Mile End Kicks are time warps to our past and its looks and sounds, whether that’s Indianapolis of 1977 in the former case, or Montreal of 2011 for the latter. And you even get a bit of a 1970s vibe from the way the characters in Montreal of 2011, part of Montreal’s indie rock scene, have styled themselves.
Going chronologically, Dead Man’s Wire considers the real-life case of Tony Kiritsis, played here by chameleon Bill Skarsgard. In February of 1977, the wronged Mr. Kiritsis arrives at the offices of Meridian Mortgage, fronted by millionaire M.L. Hall (Al Pacino), who has made his career off the backs of poor people like Tony – and who is lucky enough to be in Florida on this particular day.
So instead of his actual target, Tony takes the younger Hall, Richard (Dacre Montgomery), as a hostage in a plan to extract $5 million, an apology, and freedom from prosecution from the company and the team of law enforcement officers that assembles around the building. Tony believes he was due profit from the Halls for a land development, and it’s driven him off the deep end. He’s got a shotgun pointed at Richard’s head and it’s wired to the hostage as a dead man’s switch, meaning that any attempt to take out Tony will also take out Richard.
Van Sant is perhaps too far on the side of mere recreation here, but it’s quite an impeccable recreation. Because the idea was for much of this to play out on live TV via the rolling news cameras, the veteran director has given us all sorts of grainy footage that you could swear was really excavated from the vaults of an Indianapolis new station. Even the appearance of Cary Elwes as a detective would not be enough to disabuse you of that notion, because he’s looking a bit the chameleon himself with dark hair and a shaggy beard.
Dead Man’s Wire has a general sense of relevance, of course, in a world where shameless hucksters and other dubious businessmen are increasing the wealth gap that is threatening to tear society asunder. However, it’s not exactly the first film to consider these themes, with this film even feeling like a fairly direct echo of a much lesser film, Jodie Foster’s 2016 film Money Monster. Of course, there’s good evidence that Foster’s film was itself inspired by Tony Kiritsis’ story. Dead Man’s Wire doesn’t have anything to say that you haven’t already heard said, but what it does say, it says well.
Mile End Kicks, on the other hand, is new in a couple of intriguing ways, despite being set 15 years ago. We don’t often get movies that consider the specific moment in indie rock history that’s captured here, or really, any moment in indie rock history – though one of the films we previewed for the 2025 edition of MIFF, Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, purports to do that as well. What’s more, we get even fewer films set in Montreal – remember, you say it “MUNtreal” – so Levack’s film benefits from a high level of specificity right from the start.
Barbie Ferreira plays Grace Pine, a 22-year-old music critic working in Toronto. Her apparent self-actualisation is undercut by the fact that her boss, Jeff (Jay Baruchel), has compelled her into a sexual relationship as a sort of quid pro quo. Eager to spread her wings, she moves for the summer to Montreal, where she moves in with a French-speaking roommate, Madeleine (Juliette Gariepy). Here she intends to write a book on the cultural impact of Alanis Morissette’s album Jagged Little Pill, and has secured a book deal that entails an advance of the princely sum of $500.
Grace’s plans come under threat when she meets a band called Bone Patrol, and begins ambiguous romantic entanglements with two of its members, Archie (Devon Bostick) and Chevy (Stanley Simons). It becomes clear how young Barbie is when she fails to develop any plan to pay Madeleine her rent and when writer’s block prevents her from having anything of use to show her publisher.
Ferreira really shines in the lead role, her most prominent to date after just a handful of features in her five years on the scene. She really embodies the contradictions that comprise Grace, as she’s inspired by the pop feminism of Morissette and eager to make a name for herself in an indie rock marketplace dominated by snobbish men, but she also uses her sexuality in a way that is frequently self-defeating. Of course, we understand why she does this, as Ferreira is no indie rock waif, and women of a certain body type frequently grapple with the buried shame of not conforming to society’s impossible appearance standards for women.
Mile End Kicks is a really good hang, frequently lightly funny while also never straying for long from its darker themes. It feels true in presenting Grace with a spectrum of potential romantic partners who all seem, in a way, to be a variation on the same guy, a guy whose very involvement in this scenes suggests a sort of pre-approved progressive sense of enlightenment. But as you might expect with any spectrum, only one of them is actually worth her time – if she can only figure out which one.
These and 384 other titles of some variety or other – no, that’s not a misprint – will all be upon us starting tomorrow.
Dead Man’s Wire has screenings this Saturday at the Astor, next Thursday at Kino, the following Wednesday at Hoyts and Friday the 21st at Village Crown. Mile End Kicks debuts next Wednesday at Hoyts, followed by another Hoyts showing on Tuesday the 18th and a final performance Thursday the 20th at Village Crown. Tickets for all MIFF events can be purchased here.