My Chicago International Film Festival Diary - Final Entry

My final trip to the Chicago International Film Festival started with some minor drama - suburban trains were running late due to track construction, I had lost my admission ticket to the afternoon's screening - but all was eventually resolved.  I bypassed the energizing walk along the river and took a cab, which deposited me at the front of the AMC 21 Theater in record time, and the friendly, efficient CIFF volunteer staff replaced my ticket with little fanfare.

The inconveniences were well worth the trip.  The final film on my agenda, In the Fade, may be the best of the four I saw at the festival this year.

I know Diane Kruger has been a steady presence in films and television for the last fifteen years or so. But before yesterday, if you'd asked me what she'd done, the only role I could have brought to mind was Bridget von Hammesmark, the doomed German actress in Inglorious Basterds. That all changes now; Kruger gives a stunning, ferocious performance here as a grieving, traumatized woman whose Turkish immigrant husband and young son are killed by white supremacist bombers.  She won the Best Actress prize at Cannes this year and - depending on how this film is received when it opens in the U.S. in December - she could be an Oscar nominee. (She certainly should be.)

The handful of reviews published so far for In the Fade (from other festivals where it has appeared this year) are almost universally laudatory towards Kruger, but dismissive of the film as a whole, calling it formulaic and predictable.  I can't agree, and I don't share those critics' jaded reaction to the extended courtroom scenes in the middle of the film.  I found the rhetoric employed by the bombers' defense attorney to be unnervingly evocative of the debased political discourse we've seen in our own country as late, while the prosecuting attorney's passionate plea for common sense and decency felt especially cathartic. That timely relevance made for some pretty riveting viewing.

Through those courtroom, scenes, Kruger is a powder keg of barely controlled fury and horror - you can't take your eyes off her. The actress navigates all the stages of grief, despair, trauma, vengefulness, and resignation with impressive emotional stamina.  Her character is equal parts broken-hearted and bad-ass - a tricky kind of duplicity to pull off, but Kruger dives deep to find the character's shattered soul and makes every step of her journey heartbreakingly transparent.

The denouement here is shocking and depressing as hell (and I won't give it away), but the trip there is gripping and powerful.  I give the credit equally to Kruger and her director, Faith Akin, whose earlier work I haven't seen but am determined to seek out now.

In the Fade is Germany's official submission for the 2018 foreign-language Oscar.  I still think BPM is film to beat for the trophy, but I full expect to see this one on the final list of nominees come January.