Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: FEAST [International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021 - Virtual]
Abstraction and the blur of metaphor and philosophy have strong connotations with the structure of "Feast" [Tiger Competition]. Writer/Director Tim Leyendekker creates an interesting mix of still life, abstraction, Rorschach and documentary, all rolled into one. With the subject matter, which examines in its own specific way the case of three HIV positive men infected others during gay sex parties in the Netherlands by injecting them with their blood after drugging many of them with GHB. It is an extreme turn for an already, would-be volatile situation. But what Leyendekker does very interestingly is deconstruct the ideas in a way, not with explanation but with science (in a way) and philosophical motivation. Petr, one of the persons who apparently did the act and went to jail has a very interesting notion of what the blood means and how the virus in turn connected all of the people who came to these parties (which he helped organize). His explanation is obviously disturbingly skewed in most ways but the logic of his approach, he says, reflects a beauty of some sort. That is why the immediate counter of a female scientist talking about the beauty of a virus and how "they" are beautiful in that some learn to co-exist with their host and be symbiotic. First she is talking about plants and then about humans. And that changes the idea of the story in a way.
Even one time in Leyendekker's questions to Petr, he actually changes the narrative (if only slightly). This changes a lot of things somewhat because it brings into question the reliability narrator and who is real and who isn't which is a really dynamic way of storytelling. At one point, a group of observers is watching another group of men in a controlled situation talk about the element of connection. This could have been from transcripts but it is about the inherent act of the actors as performance. This is then juxtaposed with still bodies motionless somewhere that brings to mind image between a "Twin Peaks" metaphor and a Goethe. It is again fascinating because it uses that idea of being yet where no one reacts so who does "I" become (which is also a Plato reference). The last shot does this impeccably because it shows time not as a constant but as stopgap. Even the almost Rorschach backgrounds that are peppered through a good part of the film with interviews playing over them allow for different interpretations beyond the word. The idea is what does the mind see...it is up to each viewer whether it be blood cells, moving bodies or something else. Being his first full length feature, the movie is built in a series of vignettes with different cinematographers for each one, almost like short subjects. But what Leyendekker has created with "Feast" is a new approach to documentary in a way while subverting the notion of the real and its motivation. B+
By Tim Wassberg
