Universal Language – making the familiar unfamiliar with this dry absurdist comedy (Queen’s Film Theatre on Thursday 31 October as part of Belfast Film Festival) #BFF24

Could there be two more different films to screen on the opening night of 2024 Belfast Film Festival. If you haven’t already sold a kidney to secure a ticket for Aislinn Clarke’s gala screening of Fréwaka in Cineworld, then check out Universal Language at the Queen’s Film Theatre.

Winnipeg is in a dual language region of Canada. But English has been replaced by Farsi (Persian) which now sits alongside French. No explanation is forthcoming, this just is the way things are, and you’ll smile when you spot the Tim Hortons sign. Matthew Rankin’s film delves into the lives of handful of people who are searching for meaning and money in the sub-zero winter environs.

The landscape is a concrete jungle, decorated with snow, and littered with wild turkeys that gobble their way into a surprising number of scenes. The cinematography favours wide shots, though also plays with form and aggressively cuts one conversation between two completely opposing angles.

Two children spot a 500 Piel bank note frozen into the snow-covered lake. Later we’ll discover that the revolutionary figure Piel – after which the currency was named – cared little about money. His grave lies trapped on a traffic island in the middle of a busy dual carriageway. It’s all these little details, once woven together, that create the sense of the location, and the sense that all is not quite as you’d expect in this corner of Canada.

The children hope that the money could be used to buy new glasses for a classmate who lost his to an angry turkey. Their vexed and impatient teacher is refusing to teach anyone in the class until this one child’s ability to read the blackboard is restored. At the back of the classroom, another student is dressed as Groucho Marx. The absurdist nature of this film is well established by this point!

Matthew Rankin favours deadpan humour over obvious laughs: drole, doleful and very dry. Prepare to sit back and endure a trip through Winnipeg’s historic Beige District. The action is glacial, so there’s plenty of time to ponder how an unfamiliar language changes the feel of a normally recognisable Canadian cityscape. And time to realise how even the subtle transplantation of a small number of cultural norms from the Middle East to North America totally turn things on their head, and yet maybe not as much as first expected.

Universal Language is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre on Thursday 31 October as part of Belfast Film Festival. The festival runs until next Saturday with plenty of treats in its programme.

 

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