Fantastic Fest Report Part 2: BETWEEN WORLDS & DACHRA

Between Worlds (Maria Pulera)

As if 2018 wasn’t weird enough, it now appears Nicolas Cage has become his own batshit genre. Maria Pulera’s sophomore feature, Between Worlds, is nothing new for Cage at this point. From last year’s Mom and Dad, the recently released Mandy, Cage has seamlessly taken up the persona of the disgruntled, middle-aged man with a monosyllabic name going through a violently surreal breakdown. But that’s far from a bad thing in itself. Say what you will about Cage’s choice of films, the man brings an undeniable and infectious commitment to his characters. And Between Worlds, unbalanced as it is, is no exception in that regard.

In line with the tropes we’ve come to expect of Cage’s late filmography, the film centers on a down-on-his-luck alcoholic truck driver who also happens to be a widower who tries to help people when he sees something’s off. On the particular night on which the film opens, Joe is checking out a magazine at a gas station when he hears the distinct sound of gagging. He storms into the bathroom to find a large man brutally choking a middle-aged woman, Julie (Franka Potente). Naturally, he beats up the man and rescues the woman, who – surprise – chastises him for interrupting the choking. After an exposition dump in Joe’s truck en route to the hospital where the woman is heading, she explains that she once almost-drowned in a lake and the experience caused her to transcend her body and communicate with dead spirits. Furthermore, she can leave her body again, so long as someone chokes her. Things only gets weirder from there.

Though Between Worlds has all the makings of a train wreck, what with the unhinged acting (Penelope Mitchell’s Billie somehow rivals Cage) and head scratching plot, the final product is much more mixed. The film is by all means bizarre from the start, but its disparate elements do mesh together, even if clumsily and only for a hot second. It doesn’t take long to notice how Pulera completely refuses to conform to any normative elements of narrative, genre or even dialogue. Characters say the strangest things at the most awkward moments. The sound design undercuts tense scenes with sonic comedy, and vice versa. Everyone is hopelessly spaced out in this film, or they feel present in the most counterintuitive of ways.

And yet, I would be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy the vast majority of Between Worlds. For at least the first half, I genuinely had no idea what to expect. On the one hand, the dialogue is profoundly corny, but on the other, it is so consistent in its oddness that it soon starts to feel natural for these particular group of weirdos. In a scene towards the end of the first act, Joe is helping Julie’s injured daughter, Billie, get into her bed. Without the faintest hint of irony, he says: “The more you rest, the more you’ll heal. The more you heal, the better you’ll feel.” It’s such a peculiar choice of words – let’s not even start with the rhyming – but it works coming out of Cage’s over-the-top persona. I don’t believe that any person in real life would say that, but I believe Joe would.

That said, I wouldn’t describe Between Worlds as a so-bad-it’s-good film, á la cult classics like The Room, for example. For starters, the filmmaking here is, by and large, at least competent. The plot, though truly strange, still follows a traditional and clear three-act structure. Its weirdness is not so unique as to constitute its own selling point. At its best, it feels like a well-funded student film, in the sense that it brings a youthful, endearing spirit of subversion that reveals the depth to which Pulera appreciates this medium and genuinely wants to leave a mark on it.

But amusing as Between Worlds is, it ultimately feels unfocused, at once trying too much, and also not committing thoroughly to any of its elements. Though Joe takes the most screen time, there’s nothing really at the center of the story. It tries to be a mother-daughter tale as much as it tries to be one about redemption and overcoming grief, not to mention that it’s trying to wrap both in a comic sheet of sexual, supernatural thrills. It’s fun for a while, but the novelty wears out fast, and it goes downhill faster after an asinine and predictable ‘twist.’ Between Worlds may not be the finest receptacle for Cage’s insanity, but it does feature a sex scene in which he reads, mid-intercourse, from an erotic book titled Memories by Nicolas Cage. Make of that what you will.

Dachra (Abdelhamid Bouchnak)

Arab, and especially Tunisian, cinema is anything but a stranger to excellence. Though Arab films often don’t get the international attention they deserve, there is no shortage of gems, whether known or hidden, out there across the decades and styles. That said, Arab cinema has tended to suffer from a dearth in genre films, thanks to both censorship and Hollywood market saturation. As though local political challenges weren’t enough, genre filmmakers in the Arab world (and much of the world actually) have to deal with competition from big-budget American films whose budgets are impossible to match. Of course, this has never stopped genre films from being made in the region, it just means that they have often been marginalized, underappreciated and under-watched. It is precisely for these reasons that Abdelhamid Bouchnak’s debut Dachra stands out as a triumph

From its terrifying cold opening to its grisly ending, Dachra announces the arrival of a bold new voice in international genre cinema, one that refuses the constraints and expectations that are often placed on films from the region. At face value, the plot will seem familiar to audiences familiar with American horror films. A trio of best friends, Yassmine (Yassmine Dimassi), Bilel (Bilel Slatina), and Walid (Aziz Jabli) are journalism students in Tunis and they’re desperately looking for an exciting story for their documentary assignment when Bilel tells them of a creepy story he’d once heard about a woman who was found naked with her throat slit by a highway. Though miraculously still alive, she seemingly lost her mind and was institutionalized in an asylum where she became notorious for biting the ears off of nurses. The crew can’t resist the bizarreness of the story, so they go to investigate, a fateful mistake that leads them to an isolated village deep in the woods where everything goes terribly wrong.

Besides the phenomenal performances and the film’s and the stellar filmmaking (especially when considering its shoestring budget), Dachra’s success is due in large part to its ability to use devices and motifs conventional of American horror cinema, while grounding them in a Tunisian and Muslim setting. Since horror, and particularly supernatural horror) is often rooted in cultural and religious identity, it’s vital that Bouchnak chose to build his story from fears and superstitions that are specific to his own background and experience. It’s a fresh approach to horror that will resonate with anyone who appreciates the genre, but it works particularly well who for those of us who grew up with similar conceptions of fear and the supernatural.

Moreover, the film works because it is not remotely interested in presenting any kind of overarching or essentializing narrative of either Tunisia or Islam. So many Arab films of this last decade, especially those who hit the international festival market, have relied lazily on the tropes, both old and new, about Arab societies and identities, particularly when it comes to the Arab Spring. But Bouchnak outwardly rejects this, going so far as to even poke fun of such cinema at the beginning of the film, when the students’ professor specifically instructs them to not bring him anything that is remotely related to 2011. “Last year I had 20 films about the revolution,” he complains, “and they all looked the same.”

In this way, Dachra acts as a rallying cry for Tunisian and Arab filmmakers to reject conformity to narrow definitions of Arab filmmaking, and to opt instead for exclusive and exciting stories that unpretentiously speak to what they are personally drawn to around them. It is slightly problematic that the film has a unsubstantiated “based on true events” tagline, but nonetheless it challenges audiences, whether or not they are familiar with Arab cinema, to confront their limited expectations of it.

In terms of craft, it is beyond impressive that a film made on such a low budget looks and sounds this good. This is primarily due to Bouchnak’s coy camera and editing choices. Films without hefty funding tend to not have easy access to the most convincing special effects or the snazziest fight choreographers, but the best filmmakers always find a way to get the shot right without leaving the viewer unsatisfied. The ways Bouchnak shoots and cuts around these challenges is, for the most part, not even that noticeable, and even when it is, it’s far more inspiring than it is distracting.

The film’s pacing is another crucial contributor to its excellence. Bouchnak has a sharp sense of buildup, knowing precisely when to tease, when to stretch, and when to let all hell break loose. He spreads jump-scares throughout the run time, making sure to rely on them only after an unbearable tension has been accumulated. Similarly, his use of violence and gore is concentrated in particular sequences so as not to reduce blood to a mere shock factor. By the time the credits roll, the viewer feels shaken, but not overwhelmed.