SIFF 2016, day five: Ashes to ashes

(Pictured: “The Brand New Testament”)

Yesterday was the busiest I’ve had thus far at the Seattle International Film Festival: From 3 to 11:30 p.m., I was in and out of the theater, leaving films and then immediately hopping in line for the next one. The three movies I saw – a religious comedy, a road trip buddy film and a serial killer thriller – were wildly different from one another, but death defined all of them. Let’s start with the best of the bunch.

“The Brand New Testament” – If “Amélie” and “Dogma” were in a head-on collision with one another, you might end up with something resembling this gleefully sacrilegious but deeply human Belgian comedy.

Nominated for best foreign language film at last year’s Golden Globes, Jaco Van Dormael’s “The Brand New Testament” is set in a world where God (Benoît Poelvoorde, the killer in “Man Bites Dog”) is an alcoholic, abusive putz who only created humanity to watch it suffer. He may have been responsible for the universe, but His most treasured creations are the everyday annoyances that plague us: The line that moves fastest is the one you’re not in, for instance, and toast that always lands jam-side down. He takes credit for headaches, too.

God’s wife and two children have come to resent Him (His oldest son – you may have heard of Him – left home years ago), and His young daughter Ea (Pili Groyne) decides to make the world a more interesting place. She first notifies everyone in the world of their exact date of death, and then, with the help of a half-literate vagrant, she goes about collecting six everyday people to bring the total number of documented apostles to 18.

With its near-constant voiceover narration, its ever-growing cast of quirky supporting characters (including the legendary Catherine Deneuve as a bored housewife who falls in love with a gorilla) and a visual style that vacillates between lush and colorful to grubby and ashen, its style is perhaps too similar to the distinctive work of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It’s often hilarious and always surprising, and it’s perceptive about human nature and insightful about what would actually happen if our mortalities were suddenly made concrete.

“Burn Burn Burn” – Making its U.S. debut at SIFF, “Burn Burn Burn” is one of those indie comedies about miserable millennials who take a fabled road trip and Find Themselves Along the Way. Our protagonists are jaded 20-somethings Seph (Laura Carmichael of “Downton Abbey”) and Alex (Chloe Pirrie), old friends whose personal and professional lives are in shambles. Their buddy Dan (Jack Farthing) has just died of pancreatic cancer, and he leaves behind a video requesting they scatter his ashes (conveniently stored in a Tupperware container) in four specific locations.

Like a slightly less maudlin version of “P.S. I Love You,” Seph and Alex embark on a journey through the British countryside, with Dan’s acerbic, self-effacing videos guiding them. Of course, they encounter some eccentrics along the way, including a hippy-dippy cult and a flamboyant Airbnb host, and (of course) they fight and make up and confide in one another and bond.

Some of the film’s emotional moments land, most notably a tender, out-of-nowhere subplot in which Seph and Alex help an older woman escape her abusive husband. Others are aggressively on-the-nose: One involves Alex, who’s coerced into helping a local theater rehearse its Passion play, confessing a deep, dark secret to Seph while literally strapped to a cross.

“Burn Burn Burn,” which gets its title from a passage in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” is the first film from director Chanya Button. She clearly has a way with actors – Carmichael and Pirrie are quite good in familiar roles, and Farthing is effective as a voice of reason from beyond the grave – but the script offers nothing new, covering the same dramatic ground as every soul-searching road trip movie you’ve ever seen.

“Creepy” – In this grisly, slow-moving Japanese mystery from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (“Cure,” “Pulse”), a former cop working as a professor of criminal psychology is lured back to a cold case he once investigated. A family went missing six years prior; though their young daughter was left behind, no trace of them has ever been found. The cop and his wife, meanwhile, have moved into a new neighborhood, and he becomes convinced that the strange, timid man in the house next door isn’t who he says he is.

“Creepy” is built upon a decent setup, which recalls Hitchcock’s “Psycho” with its Bernard Herrmann-esque musical score and a plot point involving a bedridden woman who is spoken of but never seen. What isn’t as strong is the story, which requires too many ridiculous coincidences and characters behaving foolishly to keep it in motion. Kurosawa is a master of atmosphere and tone, but this plot has too many holes in it.

Tomorrow: My last day at SIFF includes a long-forgotten Argentinian noir and a coming-of-age comedy from New Zealand.