From SXSW 'Glorious Summer' and 'Retirement Plan'
Attending digitally this year, I have two movies from SXSW I have seen from home without having to hassle with waiting in long lines that operate on a first-come, first serve basis. Glorious Summer is an experimental feature film dealing with the comfort that comes from being disconnected from society. The next is a short film called Retirement Plan. A melancholic examination into the plans we make when we’re not tied down to a job takes up most of our lives. How were they? It’s a mixed bag. See what I think!
GLORIOUS SUMMER
Glorious Summer is one of those films that the arthouse crowd might adore more than the general public. It's slow-moving cinema that seems to be going somewhere that ultimately leads nowhere. It's a collection of scenes that do make sense when the entire film finishes, but doesn't make sense all at the same time. Why Writer/Directors Helena Ganjalyan and Bartosz Szpak chose the scenes they did is open for interpretation. Sadly, it's not the best type of interpretation, as the movie is more confusing than moving or poignant. It's more of a collection of scenes that deal with death, imprisonment, and the comfort we have when living a sheltered life.
The movie starts with the sounds of nature set against a black screen. Birds are chirping, the wind is blowing, and a woman is breathing. It then cuts to a dead woman lying on the street. A group of two other women (nobody has names in this film) find the corpse on the road. They check her pockets and then drag her off the street. The woman's lack of surprise or sympathy when seeing the corpse is erie. It presents a slight horror element to the film in which I very loosely use the word horror.
After the opening corpse scene, the film cuts to black, with a title on the screen reading, "Your world is a house in the garden. The wall marks the borders of your place it protects. You don't ever cross that border." The book of glorious Summer, Chapter 1. The quotation is taken from a fake book made for this film. Or at least I think it is. We then cut to our protagonists, consisting of three girls who live in a beautiful estate. The place feels like a palace of bliss. Despite it being a mansion, it looks almost unfurnished and worn down. The walls are dirty as the paint on them has long chipped away. There's no television or connection to the outside world.
Aside from its final half-hour, Glorious Summer is not such a glorious watch. It's trying to be a mind-engager that leaves almost too much room for interpretation. Not everyone can make open-interpretation films that inspire the viewer to want to watch more. We can't all be David Lynch. In a film where nothing happens, it's not that enticing. I get not every film has to have a dramatic narrative, but there should be something more to go on than repeating the same point again and again.
No wonder why the film is only an hour and twenty-some minutes. Its aimless, sloppy direction conveys a story that needs more than just pretty shots, with only small moments of conflict. I'll let everyone who wants to pretend to be smarty pants tell you why they love this film, while my ineloquent butt will shout about why I didn't get it to the clouds.
Screening information for Glorious Summer can be found here https://schedule.sxsw.com/2025/films/2206333
RETIREMENT PLAN (Short)
Ah, that's right up my alley. Sad and depressing. I like sad, depressing movies because they give the audience an honest outlook on life. It can be magical if you live it to the fullest, and it can be devastatingly disappointing when you don't. Director John Kelly's Retirement Plan is a reminder of what we can miss no matter how much we plan. In the cartoon, Ray keeps listing everything he's going to do when he retires. He thinks he'll have a lot of money from his pension that he hasn't started yet. With so much optimism in Ray's planning, there's an undercurrent of pessimism that follows Ray.
How many of us really achieve what we want to? Or use our time to learn new things when we have the time to do so? Ray thinks he'll learn the piano, juggle, perform poetry, or go paragliding. In one of the film's most emotional scenes, Ray discloses he'll go paragliding. We then cut to Ray in a retirement home, using a walker to move around. As he follows up with, "I won't go paragliding." Life is a collection of disappointments.
We do have our high moments, but only a few of them reach a massive achievement. Retirement Plan has an undercurrent of irony. It plays on a somber note with what Ray's going to do when, in all probability, he'll either do half of what he says or none at all. It's all that we fantasize about when getting old. We want to have a retirement plan to allow us to relax with all the money we've saved up.
Ray is outlined as a single man who views himself as still single when he gets old. Is love part of his plan, or has he lost his wife or husband and is unable to move on with another partner? The young Domhnall Gleeson voices Ray, giving us an idea of where Ray is in life. For all we know, he's either working an insufferable office job or delivering food for DoorDash.
There's a mystery surrounding the young Ray that doesn't need to be revealed, as this is a film about unachieved goals one wishes to achieve when one has the time to do so. The seven-minute film is a melancholic journey into the mind of the average citizen who dreams of a happy retirement. But can that dream become a reality? Some things just don't work out for a lot of us. Hopefully, Ray finds that pension soon.
Screening information for Retirement Plan can be found here https://schedule.sxsw.com/2025/films/2205932
