Boston Baltic Film Festival Dispatch #2: Neon Spring, Tree of Eternal Life

The Boston Baltic Film Festival runs from Friday, 3/3 through Sunday, 3/5 at the Emerson Paramount Center, and through 3/19 virtually. Click here for the schedule and ticket info, and watch the site for Joshua Polanski’s continuing coverage!

Neon Spring

Neon Spring is the perfect title for Matīss Kaža’s latest young adult apocalypse. Keenly skeptical of all things ephemeral, Laine (Marija Luīze Meļķe) is a bystander in her own changing and unstable life. Her life slowly unravels as she flirts with the dubstep and neon-lit Riga rave scene, and although no one forces her into the scene, she very clearly doesn’t want to be there. Romances come and go; parents fail in their responsibilities; and her brother, Budzis (Timotejs Pelle Kalnins), whom she cares deeply for, has some growing pains of his own. Laine and her perpetually slumped shoulders stand out in a rave scene typically defined by hedonistic stimuli. Fortunately for Laine, and undermining the meteorological skills of Punxsutawney Phil, winter doesn’t last forever.

Laine’s world is littered with literal and metaphorical noise. She can’t unplug from the world around her, nor can she manage to remove her earbuds. It’s in this context that, in the film’s best but most tragic scene, noise portends as an omen for pending ignominy. At a shitty excuse for a party, as Laine is drugged out and socializing while illegally in a stranger’s home, a non-diegetic digital hum (or noise) lays over the verisimilar sound. Something sounds wrong. The unwelcome cricket-like backdrop makes the viewer uneasy without really knowing why. Avoiding spoilers, it’s enough to say the sonic world stops making sense long before the film’s images reveal the horrible reason why. It’s my favorite use of sound design in a 2022 film.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.

Tree of Eternal Love

Hitting a completely different set of emotions is Meel Paliale’s Tree of Eternal Love, a dry-humor Estonian road comedy. Martin Kiik (Urmet Piiling), an aspiring painter making his living as a car mechanic, decides to cut down the self-titled “tree of eternal love” in his hometown that represents his relationship with his now ex-girlfriend. Dragging his filmmaker best friend Eerik Pihlak (Herman Pihlak) along with him, Kiik makes no concessions in his self-appointed mythical journey.

And the jokes come precisely from Kiik’s unwillingness to make concessions. The road trip he’s imagined, with its perfectly romantic destruction of an ending, is precisely the way in which it must happen—any other options spell disappointment. But…he doesn’t exactly think of everything one should for such a trip, including the bare minimum of bringing gas money. 

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.