New Releases: Concrete Valley (Antoine Bourges, 2022), Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine, 2024)
Still adjusting back to life in Seattle, but thought I’d chime in on a few new releases I’ve seen over the past month. I watched both of these a few weeks ago, so my memory isn’t perfect, but both have stuck with me and are well worth seeking out.
Concrete Valley (Antoine Bourges, 2022):
Antoine Bourges’ Concrete Valley is one of those films where monotone characters speak in stilted rhythms and always seem to misunderstand each other. So in other words, it was right up my alley. Bourges’ primary innovation is that he uses this recognizable mode of festival filmmaking as a metaphor for the immigrant experience, showing how the linguistic and spatial alienation of a Syrian family in Canada cascades throughout every aspect of their personal lives.
Relatively unfamiliar with the English language and unable to perform their chosen professions in their new home, Rashid and his wife Farah spend the Concrete Valley’s runtime individually attempting to form connections with their local community. Rashid, who was a doctor in his native country, treats and forms an ambiguously romantic connection with a neighbor, while former-actress Farah navigates her position as a store clerk and joins community service groups. Narratively structured as a series of minor disappointments that gradually accrue emotional intensity, Concrete Valley projects the couple’s dislocation as physical discomfort through claustrophobic interiors and skewed shot-reverse shot compositions that imply characters having one-sided conversations. That latter technique suggests the influence of early Schanelec, and her films of lost young women drifting across European cities. The thematic connection is intuitive, and is a good comparison for the intimate, semi-opaque domestic tragedy Bourges is aiming for. Ultimately, I’m most taken by the confidence of Concrete Valley’s minor-key presentation, which perfectly embodies its characters’ private, granular struggle.
Concrete Valley is available on VOD.
Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine, 2024):
I was one of those Aggro Dr1ft skeptics who thought Korine’s risible narrative undercut whatever formal interest developed through with his thermal-imagery approach. Frankly, the swaggering, dick-thrusting, ass-shaking events of Aggro Dr1ft gave it a posturing machismo that I flat out rejected. Since Korine decided to name his production company EDGLRD, I should’ve expected nothing less.
I appreciated Baby Invasion, Korine’s take on streamer culture, much more. It’s not just that this is a more cohesive film. In its wider aesthetic range, which encompasses the meditative thermal imagery of Dr1ft, Baby Invasion actually runs through most of the previous film’s “points” (the commodification of aesthetics, the artificial haze of the AI era) in just a few sequences, placing them along a continuum that includes first person shooter footage and the visual language of early internet memes.
This assessment makes both Aggro Dr1ft and Baby Invasion sound a lot more ponderous than they actually are. These are still obviously the work of a galaxy-brained troll and play as such. Set within a GTA-style video game, Baby Invasion follows 4 characters as they raid mansions and murder their inhabitants, all while an AI agent conceals their identities via a baby-face filter. Along the way, a chatroom feverishly comments on the side as in-game accomplishments fill the screen and side-quests find the characters traversing between the game and “real life”. There’s an inherent politics to the aesthetics, which could be described as brain-rot Alan Clarke, but Korine seems mostly interested in the overstimulating visual language of a post-pandemic America that needs Subway Surfers playing alongside their news in order to pay attention. This uncritical veneer is a feature, producing an seemingly unfiltered stream of visual vomit that’s as nihilistic as it is original.
Baby Invasion is available on VOD.