Two films focusing on life in small communities beset by institutions larger than them and disinterested in their pain.

We are back to CIFF to highlight two films—Evil Does Not Exist and Limbo—about small communities struggling in the face of greed and government indifference.

Limbo

Limbo, a tightly focused work from Indigenous Australian writer-director Ivan Sen, fuses the trappings of a traditional noir thriller with an examination of Australia’s appalling historical treatment of the Indigenous people. 

A nearly-unrecognizable Simon Baker stars as Travis Hurley, a one-time drug squad officer. His heroin addiction evidently renders him embarrassment enough that the force exiles him to the middle of nowhere, the South Australian town of Umoona. It’s a place seemingly consisting entirely of long-abandoned opal mines. Even Hurley’s hotel seems built from the ruins of a work site. His assignment is to look into the cold case of a local Indigenous woman who disappeared 20 years earlier. 

At the time, the police barely investigated the case, content to pin it on some—any—Indigenous man. However, Hurley is determined to make something of his investigation. He’s driven to bring some measure of justice to the dead woman and her family and meaning to his own wrecked life.

The notion of a cop with a checkered past seeking redemption by obsessively diving into a long written-off case is not the most blazingly original concept. However, what Limbo lacks in originality, it makes up for in pure craftsmanship. The director makes the procedural narrative compelling by unflinchingly exploring the legal system’s abuses of the Indigenous people. In certain ways, Sen’s movie plays like an interesting companion piece to Killers of the Flower Moon. Baker’s strong performance, which dodges most cliches to make Hurley real, further bolsters the feature. Limbo is a dark and grim movie, certainly, but it has a quiet power that lingers after it concludes.

Evil Does Not Exist

The ending of Evil Does Not Exist, the eagerly awaited new film from Hamaguchi Ryusake also lingers, albeit mostly out of confusion. The film, his first since the award-winning 2021 hit Drive My Car, unfolds in Mizubiki Village. A remote community in the countryside, developers have begun eying it as a vacation spot for the wealthy.

When a company announces plans for a glamping site in the nearby forest, community members turn up at a town meeting to inform the low-level reps (Kosaka Ryuji and Shibutani Ayaka) of all the ecological and economic damage the poorly planned development will cause. Led by Takumi, a local handy- and outdoorsman living with his daughter, Hana (Nishikawa Ryo), the locals prove convincing. However, when the reps return to report the information, the company will not relent. Instead, their superiors send them back in the hopes of winning Takuma’s (Omika Hitoshi) support. There, the film makes a major shift best left unmentioned.

As a fan of Drive My Car and Hamaguchi’s earlier film, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, I eagerly anticipated Evil Does Not Exist. Unfortunately, I must confess to some degree of frustration with it. Formally, the film is fascinating as the filmmaker underscores the area’s natural beauty with a quiet sense of unease. It serves to bring a certain tension to even the most seemingly innocuous of scenes. He also subverts our expectations by making the company reps reasonably sympathetic people. They recognize their superiors dealt them a bad hand and genuinely relay the community’s concerns. The extended town hall sequence, the film’s highlight, amply highlights this. It acts as a wonderful bit of social observation showcasing the townspeople and their varying concerns without ever getting bogged down in cliche or melodramatic histrionics.

[The end] is certainly a bold and unexpected move, I suppose, but an ultimately unsatisfying one that leaves viewers with far more questions than answers.

However, the film begins to falter as it nears its conclusion. The narrative takes a big turn, culminating in a finale so random and oblique some viewers may come away unsure what they have just seen and what it means. It is certainly a bold and unexpected move, I suppose, but an ultimately unsatisfying one that leaves viewers with far more questions than answers. Usually, I like films that leave things open to multiple interpretations. However, in this case, the effect is more frustrating than edifying. This is not to say that Evil Does Not Exist is not worth watching—even a minor Hamaguchi effort like this has its pleasures. Still, in the wake of the genuinely wonderful Wheels of Fortune and Fantasy and Drive My Car, it cannot help but feel like a bit of a disappointment by comparison.