Heartland: For the Birds
For tickets and showtimes, please click here.
When I see a film at Heartland, I always have a specific hope when I sit down and watch it. As much as I enjoy seeing films like “IT” or “Blade Runner 2049” in theaters, I’ve always wanted Heartland to introduce me to a film that I love yet would never be given a chance to see otherwise. The festival gets so many films from around the world (and even smaller American projects) that I know there’s bound to be a film in their lineup that I’ll end up loving and wishing I could buy and add to my collection. Unfortunately, despite seeing some really good stuff these last few years, I’ve yet to see something I have fallen for. That is...until I saw this film. That’s right, folks: out of all the films coming to the festival this year, the one that won me over was a romance film from South Africa.
“For the Birds” (also known as “Vir die Voëls”) is a romance about a stubborn, independent woman living in 70’s South Africa. Her name is Irma and when the film first meets her, she’s having second thoughts about her wedding day...while she’s up at the altar with her fiance. This leads her to acknowledge the audience, guessing we’d all like to know how she got to this point in her life. This leads the film to travel back in time to Irma’s childhood and from then on, we’re watching her life pan out. We see her childhood, teenage years, and her growing yet apprehensive romance with her best friend’s brother Sampie de Klerk. This leads to comedic antics, sad moments, moments of clarity, and a life-changing decision that Irma doesn’t know she can handle just yet.
The way the film handles the story is smooth, engaging, and emotional. Normally, protagonists breaking the fourth wall can be hit or miss with me. However, thanks to Simoné Nortmann’s spunky and phenomenal performance as Irma, the fourth wall break perfectly fits the character. Speaking of performances, I loved pretty much everyone in the film. The standouts were definitely the two leads though: Simoné Nortmann and Francois Jacobs. Jacobs brings Sampie to life in a way that makes you love him almost immediately. There’s even one scene in the film where Jacobs discusses a dream with Nortmann and it’s so engaging that you totally understand why the camera didn’t cut away from him. They were so good that I would be so happy to see them break into more mainstream projects in the near future.
In terms of other things the film gets right, the cinematography is engaging and slick, the production design of 60’s and 70’s South Africa is so good that you never need a date shoved in your face, and the comedy was incredibly on-point. Despite having a language barrier between me and the film’s use of Afrikaans, the actor’s comedic timing always hit the mark and the writing never fell flat to me personally. If I didn’t have a few technical nitpicks about the film (odd sound mixing in places and an unnecessary frame rate change/possible motion blur in one scene), I would consider this film perfect on a technical level.
Speaking of nitpicks, another one that I have involves certain weaknesses in the narrative. The film overall does a killer job at taking romance cliches (the unnecessary Act 2 fight, not truly saying what they mean, etc.) and using them in a beneficial way for our main leads and their blooming relationship. That being said though, there are still a few moments that feel like cheap ways to push those cliches into the film. There is even one moment where you discover the cause of Irma’s father’s horrible parenting (and it could’ve been really interesting!) yet it was never brought up again. Again, these are nitpicks that don’t keep the film from being great. They just stop it from being perfect in my eyes.
In the end, this is a film you definitely need to see at Heartland this year. It’s the first romance film in years that has not only made me laugh but genuinely care about the main characters, their romance, and even the secondary characters surrounding them. It’s the perfect date movie that definitely has me interested in seeing where the director Quentin Krog, Simoné Nortmann, and Francois Jacobs go from here. Let this South African film show you the best of what Heartland Film Festival has to offer.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5uGD5mfsBM]