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“The nuns will likely wrap karaoke at 7:30.”
It’s certainly one of the cooler emails to receive while you’re scheduling your itinerary at a film festival. The TV series Mrs. Davis, which premieres next month on Peacock, was one of many series launching promotional stunts in Austin during the SXSW festival.
The show, from co-creators Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez, had its premiere in Texas, and, while reviews are embargoed, let me say that it is gonzo, timely, and definitely one to watch. It is absolutely the best TV series that I have ever watched about a nun who wants to take down an AI robot that the world has started to treat like God, all while fighting Nazis in her search for the literal Holy Grail.
Should I have needed extra convincing to watch outside of that outrageous logline, the nuns were out in full force in Austin. They were eating barbecue. They were handing out donuts. They were at the record store. And, yes, a mini convent took the stage at Darwin’s Piano Bar, performing karaoke for thrilled and slightly bewildered patrons. “I heard one is going to be in a canoe,” Hernandez told me while I interviewed her and Lindelof at the festival. “I need to see that.”
Both the show and these stunts encapsulated what truly felt like the spirit of this year’s SXSW. After several COVID-impacted years—while in-person last year, the festival felt muted—everything seemed bigger, from the crowd to the stacked lineup. There also seemed to be a cravenness for going wild, which was also reflected in the major projects that premiered there. We came to see nuns running amok, and we came to enjoy it.
SXSW premieres are fun because they’re so loose. The movies are great, but they’re also, often, sillier and more crowd-pleasing than the fare that’s usually associated with film festivals like Sundance, Cannes, or Toronto. SXSW is where Bridesmaids, Trainwreck, and Spy debuted. Last year, the Bodies Bodies Bodies premiere nearly catapulted the roof off the Paramount Theater.
It’s not every festival that would launch a movie in which a Chinese-American immigrant who must save humankind by traveling through multiple universes that involve racoons that sit on people’s heads, butt plugs, and hot dog fingers. But there was something fitting about watching Everything Everywhere All at Once win Best Picture at the Oscars while at the festival where it premiered, kicking off a run that proved how much of an appetite there is for audacious content that challenges the conventions of filmmaking and what “great” cinema might be.
While I’d never say never, I don’t think the big releases at this year’s SXSW will end up on any Oscars lineup. But they overwhelmingly represented an arguably more important mission: Having fun at the movies, together and in-person. The new Dungeons & Dragons movie launched this year’s festival. And you know what? People enjoyed it! It was fun! Fun is finally back.
That’s certainly true of Bottoms, a movie that lives up to its cheeky (heh) title. It stars Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri as queer high schoolers who are unpopular not because of their sexuality, but because they are untalented and unattractive. In order to impress their crushes, they start a fight club at school—excuse me, a female-empowering self-defense group (it’s a fight club)—that escalates in bloody ways that are as nonsensical as they are a blast. The movie is absurd, very funny, and—here’s that word again—fun!
Often at the festival, I was reminded of how important the communal movie-watching experience is. The premiere screening of Down Low was a riot. The movie stars Lukas Gage as a masseur who gives a happy ending to a newly out client, played by Zachary Quinto, that turns into a bonkers murder coverup. At one point, Simon Rex shows up as a crack-smoking necrophiliac. It is wild. I truly can’t imagine having watched the movie alone on my couch through some streaming service. The experience of an audience guffawing in disbelief—the collective what?!?—is as crucial as the movie itself.
Being able to be in the audience for the premiere of a movie like Problemista just felt… special. The film is written and directed by Julio Torres, who also stars in it with Tilda Swinton. The movie is like being invited to set up camp inside of Torres’ brain, where absurdity and profundity tangle into a beautiful knot. Torres is a former Saturday Night Live writer and the mastermind of the HBO comedy Los Espookys. His is a very modern, off-kilter, and observationally shrewd kind of humor. In Problemista, he applies that perspective to a story about loss, moving on, and the horrific nature of citizenship issues in the United States—all themes that are as grounded and relatable as the film is ludicrous.
It’s not just Mrs. Davis that had a buzzy TV premiere. The new series Swarm also launched at the festival. It’s a show about a pop star’s superfan whose obsession turns lethal. It’s definitely not (as in 100 percent is) inspired by the Beyoncé fan army, the Beyhive. (Get it, swarm, like a swarm of bees?) The show is from Donald Glover, who is taking big, provocative swings here, to the point that my first question was “how is this legal?” So congrats to him—and his lawyer—on what will surely be one of the most talked-about shows of the year.
The food-and-travel docuseries Restaurants at the End of the World also had its premiere in Austin, where its host, Top Chef-winner Kristen Kish, has her restaurant, Arlo Grey. The series has Kish traveling to extreme locales to learn how chefs there source and prepare their food. To celebrate its launch, Kish hosted a dinner at Arlo Grey. It was a fitting bookend to my SXSW experience. While no nuns took the microphone, suffice it to say that the meal was its own religious experience.
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