The (Corpse) Bride! / Your Miroirs Staring Back at Me
“Dead Lover,” “Miroirs No. 3,” and Oscars betting performance.
Now that the Academy Awards have been handed out, we can now turn the page on the 2025 movie year. (Almost: I still haven’t published my own list of the best movies of last year! But I’m almost done putting that together.) The end of Oscars season always sees an onslaught of arthouse releases, and I’ve got quick word on a couple of them below. Both are very very different but happen to center on the unexpected bonds that form within the depths of grief.
I got 18 out of 24 of my predictions correct, with my biggest hit being in Documentary Feature and biggest miss coming from Live Action Short. Owing to a tie, there were two winners in that category and I still managed to pick a loser!
I had 24 of my friends over on Sunday for a watch party, and I placed first in our ballot competition despite not getting the most winners correct. This is because I used a cool Oscars pool website that weighted your score based on Kalshi’s prediction odds1.
While I did not bet any real money on the Academy Awards this year, my friend Jason did. (We spoke about Oscars gambling earlier this year.) He agreed to share the end result of his bets (ahem, “predictions”).
Action: $8,000
Implied odds: 53%
Accuracy: 7 of 12 categories
Return: $14,000
Profit: $6,000 (75%)
Compared to last year he did better on profit but worse on accuracy. Jason placed last-minute bets on Stellan Skarsgård and Teyana Taylor, a bad move in retrospect. The sole reason he turned a profit was a prescient bet on Sinners winning Cinematography2, but with a 75% overall return, I don’t think he can be too upset.
I asked Jason what he learned from this year’s outcomes:
There’s no value to betting early aside from grossly mispriced categories (like F1 in Sound). Next year I am going to wait until at most one month beforehand instead of two months. The information gained between then is too valuable and people still don’t really bet well.
I also think the changes to the voting rules, where Academy members must affirm they saw every film in a given category, makes copycatting the results of precursor awards like SAG more prevalent—we saw that with acting, so momentum becomes even more important.
He also gave me this nugget:
My mad man of a friend trusts me too much and put $1,000 down on Sentimental Value winning International Film and Sinners in Cinematography. Safe to say he’s happy. But he’s a fiend. During the show, he wanted to put all the winnings back on Sinners for Best Picture and I had to tell him not to.
Dead Lover
Opens March 20 in NY at IFC Center, March 26 in Los Angeles, and more markets in April.
A couple days ago I watched Wuthering Heights. Not the one from Emerald Fennell, which I saw opening weekend and feel no particular desire to revisit. Rather, it was a Japanese adaptation from 1988, directed by Yoshishige Yoshida. What sets this version apart from the dozens of other Wutherings is that it pushes the source material’s psychosexual subtext to previously unseen extremities. The novel has an infamous scene where Heathcliff digs up Catherine’s grave and gazes at her still-intact face. (This comes from the second half of the book, which is omitted from almost every adaptation.) But this movie goes further: fully insane, he takes the coffin home with him and plans to fulfill his carnal desires with her corpse. It becomes his undoing.
The protagonist of Dead Lover, an unnamed Gravedigger, is similarly desperate to once again be with her, ahem, dead lover. Fortunately, she need not stoop to full-on necrophilia. Taking after a different classic of Gothic literature (that also got a new Hollywood adaptation starring Jacob Elordi), she attempts to resurrect him through a series of alchemic experiments.
That’s a lot of effort to exert on a man, but there’s a good reason. On account of her profession, Gravedigger has such a foul odor that no one wants to be near her. This really dampens her romantic prospects, until one day she meets someone who is turned on by her smell. Thus begins a passionate love affair, one that cruelly ends when the Lover perishes in a shipwreck. All that’s left of him is a severed finger, which Gravedigger manages to re-animate with the help of reptile blood. You can do a lot with one finger, but she resolves to give him a full body. Needless to say, the consequences are unintended.
Dead Lover is the sophomore feature from Grace Glowicki, who wrote, directed, and starred. In front of the camera, she gives her Gravedigger a frantic energy and a spirited Cockney accent, seemingly inspired by Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd and/or Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Behind the camera, she gives her film an utterly distinct aesthetic sensibility. The sets were constructed on a black box soundstage; with characters lit by spotlights against a pitch dark background, everyone and everything is enshrouded in a permanent nightfall. The grainy cinematography (shot by Rhayne Vermette on 16mm film stock) evokes both DIY experimentalism and German expressionism, while prog pop compositions from U.S. Girls amp up the gonzo mood. Further adding to the homespun nature of the project, every member of the four-person cast, with the exception of Glowicki, inhabits multiple roles. Handmade and heartfelt, Dead Lover is a cult curio about love, loss, and the unlikely connections made in the bleakest of moments.
Tasting Notes
Attendees at this weekend’s Q&A events in New York (or next weekend in LA) will be treated to special “Stink-o-Vision” presentations of Dead Lover. They’ll get a scratch-and-sniff card to use throughout the movie. Having watched this at home, I missed out on that olfactory experience. Perhaps I could have re-created Gravedigger’s stench by slicing a durian fruit or popping open a tin of surströmming, that infamous Swedish pickled herring, and then pressing my face into a bed of dirt.
There are certain foods known for having off-putting smells, and certain people who are more sensitive to them than others. I have a friend who can’t be in the same room as blue cheese. But to paraphrase viral academic Ally Louks, there is a politics to smell. The scent of kimchi is revolting to some. For others, it’s culture3.
Further Reading: Marissa Goldman interviewed Glowicki about this movie for Nothing Bogus, a Substack devoted to independent filmmaking. And on page 24 of 4R Press’s Shocking Summer zine (PDF), you can find a conversation about Dead Lover between Skinny Wicky and Relby Raw, which I assume are pseudonyms.
Miroirs No. 3
Opens March 20 in NY & LA. Adapted from previously published NYFF coverage.
After surviving a deadly car crash with barely a scratch, conservatory student Laura (Paula Beer) convalesces in the isolated home of Betty (Barbara Auer), who witnessed the accident. The crash killed Laura’s boyfriend, but if she’s grieving, she doesn’t make it known. An encounter with Betty’s estranged husband and son reveals that they too are also dealing with loss in their own strange way.
At this point, enough critics have pushed back on an initial dismissal that this new film from Christian Petzold is a minor work. It’s now considered to be at least medium tier. The title provides the key of how to view this film: as one movement in a larger series. (Though this is Paula Beer’s fourth time starring in a Petzold movie, not the third, and to be fair, the Ravel composition that gives this film its title was written in F# minor.) Miroirs No. 3 does feel a lot like a short story: it’s diversionary and fleet, but satisfying just the same. Features a typically German sense of humor, as dry as the rieslings consumed at the dinner table.
Tasting Notes: Laura’s specialty in the kitchen are Königsberger Dumplings, and the family makes a plum cake using fruit plucked by the river. It was made with yeast dough but Betty’s son prefers shortcrust pastry.
How’s this for movie marketing: This weekend sees the release of two NYFF selections: Miroirs No. 3 and Dry Leaf. Screenslate is hosting a “cinema showdown” between the two filmmakers: a friendly football (soccer) match on the West Side of Manhattan. It goes down tomorrow (March 21) and is open to the public.
That Documentary Feature prediction and an early commitment to Sean Penn shot me to the top.
My takeaway: don’t prioritize statistics over narrative.
Pun not intended, for once.