CIFF 2024 In Review: Hard Truths, Vulcanizadora, The Rule of Jenny Pen

Our CIFF 2024 coverage kicks off with three harrowing films of varying devastation.

With the 60th Chicago International Film Festival in full swing, DoomRocket is here to highlight its choicest selections. In review: Mike Leigh's Hard Truths, Joel Potrykus's Vulcanizadora, and James Ashcroft's The Rule of Jenny Pen.

HARD TRUTHS [United Kingdom]

Mike Leigh's Hard Truths packs a wallop, especially for those putting off a cathartic and cleansing cry. What a bombshell to drop on audiences as the holidays rear their hydra's heads (its limited US theatrical engagement begins December 6), when family beefs stir and alcohol is imbibed a bit too hungrily to keep them at bay. And what a character to guide us through such emotional turmoil: meet Pansy, played with acerbic charge by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, a housewife whose internal frustrations over the perceived shortcomings of her family (say nothing of the world in general) are brought to the fore with thermonuclear devastation, leaving the detritus of hurt feelings, bitterness, anger, and regret in her wake. 

Leigh's film leans into the bluntness of its title, exploring the bone-deep agonies that turn homes into silent mausoleums and relationships into tightrope walks. It's a return to the director's more formally subdued but no less potent kitchen sink dramas, a tough if otherwise lovely watch made miraculous by his renewed collaboration with Jean-Baptiste, who leads the film's ensemble — commands, really — with mesmerizing power. The serene domestic setting, shot with vivid natural light and given an autumnal chill by Leigh's essential DoP Dick Pope, is pleasing, which creates a compelling contrast to the dark cloud that seems to always hover over Pansy. 

The film follows Pansy and her younger sister, Chantelle (a wonderful Michele Austin), as they approach the fifth anniversary of their mother's death. Chantelle, a hairdresser with two successful daughters, is content with her lot as a middle-aged single mom. Pansy, meanwhile, is kept in a state of perpetual fury and despair, frantically wiping unseen filth from her immaculate home while looming over her husband Curtley (David Webber), a hard-working if half-awake plumber, and her son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), who, at 22, has failed to launch despite his zeal for airplanes. But we must be kind to Moses; his inertia seems more a byproduct of his mother's ceaseless criticisms than any disinterest in the world outside his cluttered, womb-like bedroom. After Pansy's fourth or fifth tirade, his maudlin expressions become understandable.

Hard Truths doesn't flinch from Pansy's inner darkness, and while Leigh's exploration of her undiagnosed depression — a gargantuan elephant in the room that tramples over everyone, even poor strangers who blunder into its path — is comically alive in its first few moments, his unblinking gaze, coupled with Jean-Baptiste's towering performance, soon turns Pansy's misadventures into a grueling experience. When she finally confronts all the hurt she's been lugging around for decades, Leigh keeps any sense of catharsis at bay. Perhaps wisely, perhaps destructively, any resolution or understanding found in Hard Truths comes after the celebrated English director's beautifully fraught movie is over, withheld for the moment after we, his rapt audience, have confronted a few hard truths of our own.

9 / 10

Hard Truths premieres at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival on Thursday, October 24 at AMC NEWCITY 14. It enters limited release on December 6.

Written and directed by Mike Leigh.
Cinematography by Dick Pope.
Starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber, Tuwaine Barrett, Ani Nelson, Sophia Brown, and Jonathan Livingstone.
Produced by Georgina Lowe.

Rated R for a few barbed British "foocks" and generous sips of prosecco.

VULCANIZADORA [United States]

A dork and a felon go into the woods. One has an entire Radio Shack on his back, and the other is fashioning some damn thing out of metal and insinuating dark stuff as he does it. A bit later, they begin whaling on trees with sticks and setting off Black Snakes in the brush, and, for a time, their camping trip feels like watching a pure-as-Faygo version of Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy, only with far more potato chips and impromptu renditions of Godsmack. 

But as Vulcanizadora is directed by Joel Potrykus, the Michigan-born filmmaker of Buzzard and Relaxer, two films known for their bleak, low-fi approach to encroaching middle-aged slackery, before long, the strange and unsettling truth about this oddball vacation comes into sharp relief. Let's just say Derek and Marty aren't out here just to whack at defenseless trees.  

If it sounds like I'm being glib, let me clarify: I admire Joel Potrykus and fully endorse his latest, possibly greatest, descent into slugabed hell. Vulcanizadora (so named for reasons that become clear within its first hour) is a small-budgeted, high-minded exploration of despair and the many awful things that manifest in the lives of the people around us as a result. (And a frequently haunting and upsetting one, at that.) It took me a minute to calibrate to Potrykus's performance as Derek, whose wild goatee made him look like what happened when James Hetfield went through the Brundle machine with Professor Frink. But as his manic interactions with Marty (Joshua Burge) deepened, Derek had me reflecting on my own impending middle age, the wrong turns I've made that dog my steps to this day, and the vague fears I hold concerning the immediate future. And still, I had a great time with this.

Vulcanizadora can play rough. Potrykus coats his film with black matte doom but gilds it with stirring themes of purpose and personal responsibility amid a desolate and unfeeling Michigan backdrop. (Something that I, a former Ypsilantian, felt down to my marrow: WRIF soundtrack, lost afternoons watching Cheaters — rarely have I seen a movie so tethered to a specific moment and place from my life.) He places the responsibility of conveying these themes, if not through words than through deeds, on Burge, his frequent collaborator, who is an arresting presence and has one of the best movie faces around. Potrykus wisely lets Burge's eyes do much of the talking for his film, which frees up Vulcanizadora to patiently shift into its ultimate form: a disquieting, illuminating, unforgettable shock-drama both burdened by and set free from the cruel awareness of futility.

9 / 10

Vulcanizadora screens at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival on Saturday, October 19 at AMC NEWCITY 14.

Written, edited, and directed by Joel Potrykus.
Cinematography by Adam J. Minnick.
Starring Joshua Burge and Joel Potrykus. 
Produced by Ashley Potrykus, Hannah Dweck, Theodore Schafer, and Matt Grady. 

Unrated. Plenty of profane monkeyshines and one disturbing moment of violence.

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN [New Zealand]

As far as wars of attrition fought on the shores of advancing age are concerned, James Ashcroft's The Rule of Jenny Pen is an exceptionally demented piece of psychological warfare. Its battle is waged between two retirement home residents, Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush), a former judge of formidable if prickly intelligence, and Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), whose clouded eyes glint with malice at first sight of a challenge, be it from Stefan or his faded rugby star roommate Tony (George Henare). In this home, Dave is the honcho.

At first, this feels like a battle over turf. Stefan, convalescing from a paralyzing stroke, believes his stay is temporary, while Dave seems to have been there forever. He perceives this indomitable newcomer as a challenge to his seat, while Stefan, accustomed to bellowing his indignation at criminals and their hapless victims alike, sees this wily oddball as a pampered bully who can and will be put in his place. However, as Jenny Pen rambles through its cracked labyrinth of canted angles, nightmare medical imagery, and giallo-red curtains, it becomes clear that Stefan has brought sense and justice to a place ruled by none of these things, but rather a small therapy puppet Dave calls Jenny Pen.

To even suggest the extent of Jenny Pen's rule over this oddly understaffed facility would spoil a few genuine surprises (and more than a few well-calibrated shocks). Ashcroft, who co-wrote this unsettling bit of business with Eli Kent based on a short story by New Zealand author Owen Marshall, deploys his leading men as faded generals marshaling along the line that demarcates sense and depravity in an arena where age is but a countdown and dignity hangs by a precious thread. While the film's strange patchwork of mystery and horror leaves behind some frustratingly loose strings, it frays the nerves well enough, and there's a visceral charge in watching two respected titans have at each other in deliriously unflattering ways. If old age is indeed a shipwreck, then The Rule of Jenny Pen is the treacherous rocks upon which Rush and Lithgow throw themselves with gleeful abandon.

7.5 / 10

The Rule of Jenny Pen premieres at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival on Friday, October 25 at AMC NEWCITY 14. It drops on Shudder in 2025.

Directed by James Ashcroft.
Written by Eli Kent and James Ashcroft.
Cinematography by Matt Henley.
Starring John Lithgow, Geoffrey Rush, and George Henare.
Produced by Catherine Fitzgerald and Orlando Stewart.

Unrated. Contains *ahem* inventive forms of elder abuse and various spent bodily fluids.

Our CIFF 2024 coverage continues later this week.