Director: Kailey Wolf
Writers: Kailey Wolf & Michelle Twarowska
Cast: Michelle Twarowska, Monika Dawidziuk, Maja Wampuszyc, Edward Furs
Running time: 17mins
Sometimes Indy Film Library receives seasonal updates from a filmmaker. Artists like Victoria Warmerdam or Andreas van Riet have sent us each of their films over regular intervals, allowing us to chart their progress, and analyse their evolution as directors relatively consistently.
Kailey Wolf has taken a different approach – but is no less welcome in her return to the IFL inbox. It feels like a lifetime since Castro Davis’ first submission, with A Disagreement About Flies sent in early 2021 – with much of the world still in lockdown. But this gap in the timeline also flags up the points of contrast all the more starkly, allowing us to see areas she has pushed herself to new levels, alongside comforting signs of continuity. I was recently back in England for an emergency: at the end of that trip, I met up with some old friends for the first time in far too long, and it was a similarly gratifying experience.
Looking at The Last Goodbye after revisiting A Disagreement About Flies, Wolf’s fingerprints are all over it. A fraught central relationship defined by futile attempts not to address the elephant in the room. A strange, almost supernatural presence of animals bringing points of tension or conflict to a head. A wry injection of absurdity into a deadly-serious scenario, in a way that feels earned and authentic – because even at the darkest of times, life can still be ridiculous too.
But added to that over the five years since production ended on Flies, Wolf has added a robust visual style to proceedings. Pip White’s evocative cinematography overlaps and cross-examines every composition of actors and environments; perfectly highlighting the strange, fragmented familial picture we are being inserted into, as Basia (Michelle Twarowska) struggles to find her voice at her grandmother’s funeral. Attempting to address her Polish Catholic family at the church, Basia finds herself unable to speak, stumbling over her words as her domineering mother Marzena (Maja Wampuszyc) glowers up at her.
The scene is emblematic for a wider issue at the heart of their relationship. Masia’s fumbling of her speech is not really about an inability to pay tribute to her grandmother, or a fear of that particular occasion – but of an inability to present her true self to her family.
In her submission notes, Wolf notes that she “didn’t want to make a coming-out story” here; and she hasn’t. Basia might be in denial about it, but her sexuality is out – an open secret treated by the family as something to hide, if they cannot ‘fix’ it. At every turn, the imposing Marzena seeks to engineer ways to do either or both – inviting Basia’s oafish ex-boyfriend (Edward Furs) to try and set them up at a funeral, or when all else fails, engaging in some good, old fashioned emotional blackmail – while the increasingly distressed Basia sinks further into herself.
For all the power of the family unit has always held in this mission to berate and bully ‘loved ones’ into repression, however, their grip begins to slip the moment Iga (Monika Dawidziuk) arrives on the scene. Basia has recently been on a “good date” with the funeral director, who offers her a place of refuge amid the storm – and an opportunity to find her true voice. The amount of time they have together is limited, after all this is a short only 17 minutes in length, but in those brief interactions, it speaks to the supreme abilities of both actors that they manage to traverse such an array of tension, anguish and tenderness. It also highlights the skill with which editor Anisha Acharya has helped Wolf to piece this story together with – as however much needs to be crammed into this story, every scene and interaction still feels like it has enough space to breathe.
Returning to the story, even with the supportive presence of Iga, nobody can free Basia but Basia. So, she still tries her best to live up to her mother’s expectations – desperately fighting to inhibit her identity. But Wolf is determined to underline the fact she is fighting against nature itself in doing so. Here come the animals!
This time, Basia is hounded by every omen of bad luck and death imaginable. A black cat scurries between her feet. A bird flings itself against a stain-glass window, just as she denies her feelings for Iga. Also beautifully framed by White’s cinematography, crosses fall from walls, mirrors shatter. I didn’t spot one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she walked under a ladder at some point. As every conceivable signifier forces its way into Basia’s periphery, it becomes tragically, comedically absurd. Comedic, in the sense that we’ve all behaved in a certain way, doomed to failure, missing or ignoring a million warnings – before looking back and wondering ‘What the hell was I thinking? How did I not see the signs?’ Tragic in the sense we know why Basia is trying to ignore them – and what the consequences will be if she succeeds.
Talk during the burial repeatedly returns to a superstition that because the family did not bury their grandmother before the new week, she will take a second soul with her to the other side. This might be literal, or it might be figurative, but either way it is clear who this second fated individual is. Basia is faced with a choice – and the realisation that while we might all ‘die’, some deaths are better than others.
Having recently found the time to sit down to the remarkable I Saw the TV Glow, I was reminded of the harrowing realisation of Owen (Justice Smith), “What if I really was someone else? Someone beautiful and powerful. Someone buried alive and suffocating to death.” The Last Goodbye errs much more on the positive side of that film’s message “There is still time” – in a way which some might argue pulls its punches considering the horrifically real air of repression flowing through the rest of it. But, I would counter, not every story featuring LGBT+ characters should have to end in tragedy for you to find it believable – and if absurdity and fun can be present in the worst of times, so can the possibility for a better future.
One last note on that front. The Last Goodbye does fit into a trend of films on IFL recently, placing adult children at conflict with parental figures clinging to power. Those films present uncompromising, complex pictures of their relationships, without wanting to present the parents as outright villains – just humans who have been hurt, and now project that pain in their actions. Wolf notes that similarly she did not want to present Marzena as a villain – though there are limits to that, and the story is very much pushing up against them.
While we might not be in control of our lives, or our feelings, we do get to choose how we interpret and learn from the events we are subjected to, and how they inform our future relationships. There are people who are exploited, who rail against exploiters rather than seek to become them. There are many people who are subjected to abuse, and at least try to do better, be kinder, than those who came before them. They are the only reason society ever progressed to, or will progress from, the stage it finds itself in. In the final moments, Basia sets herself apart as one of those people – counterposed to her mother. And while that does not make Marzena a ‘villain’, it still makes her a choice to be avoided.
One of the things I occasionally catch sight of myself doing in this job, which I don’t like about myself, is I try to find reasons not to give something full marks. At most, here I could say the makeup for a head-injury was not particularly effective. But what on Earth would I be doing if I really valued such minutiae in the grand scheme of things. This is a well-paced, witty and impactful piece of storytelling – and co-writer Michelle Twarowska (not many people can write for themselves so effectively) and Wolf deserve huge plaudits for the script that everything else was built around. It might take another five years to see what Wolf does next, but even if it takes ten, it would be a privilege if she thinks of Indy Film Library again. Even if that never happens, this has been a happy reunion, like catching up with an old friend, seeing how they are still themselves, but also how they have grown.