By Peg Aloi

A selkie romance, a dubious life coach, and three couples in crisis: love takes some strange turns at this year’s Woodstock Film Festival.

This year, the Woodstock Film Festival turned 27. Longtime director and co-founder Meira Blaustein, who has led the festival for 25 years, is retiring; filmmaker Jessica Edwards will succeed her. Nestled in the Hudson Valley, this small village is an easy jaunt from most major cities by train or bus, and mid-October’s brilliant foliage gives the festival a glorious backdrop. If you’re driving, allow plenty of time to find parking—and watch for deer, which roam freely through town as well as the surrounding woods.

I could attend in person for only a couple of days this year. Fortunately, the festival’s resourceful PR folks try to provide press screeners whenever available. Screenings take place at several Woodstock venues—including the Bearsville Theatre, home to documentaries during the festival and great live music year-round—as well as theaters in Saugerties, Rosendale, and Kingston.

A scene from Washed Up with Carys Glynne, Anna Ivankovic, and Anna Lidell. Photo: WFF

One of my festival favorites was Isabel Daly’s Washed Up, a low-budget charmer set in Cornwall that won the Best Ultra Indie award. Part quirky romance, part coming-of-age tale, this sweetly funny film opens with a haunting traditional song sung in Cornish, casting the spell for the folklore-infused story to come. A brief prologue hints at heartbreak: “This is how it begins, this is how it ends, and this is everything else.”

Morwenna (Anna Ivankovic), an artist fresh from a breakup with her girlfriend, scrapes by selling weed and running errands for a local artist-in-residence. Since her grandfather’s death, she can no longer afford to maintain her childhood home. Her realtor cousin puts the seaside cottage on the market, anticipating a quick sale in the rapidly gentrifying town.

Into this uncertainty breezes Inga (Carys Glynne, who co-wrote the script with Issy Brett), a traveler whose assertiveness and carefree ways offer an alluring distraction. Banished from the cottage during showings, Morwenna draws fanicful sketches on the beach and gets to know Inga, whose two traveling companions—her siblings—leave her to her own devices while scolding her behavior. Morwenna is smitten; Inga makes it clear that she will come and go as she pleases.

That freedom turns out to be more than a matter of temperament. Inga is a selkie, a mythical creature who moves between human and seal form and must regularly return to the sea, transforming with the aid of her fur coat. When the coat goes missing, stranding her on land, the lovers’ relationship begins to shift—as does Inga herself.

Anxious about her future, Morwenna turns to Crystal (a very funny Anna Lidell), an earnest but ineffectual psychic. A rejection letter from her intended art school compounds her uncertainty, and she remains torn over selling the family home. Her dream of a life with Inga becomes entwined with her longing to hold on to the beautiful coastal town of her childhood. This gentle, unconventional romance is as much about letting go as it is about coming together

Eugene Cordero and Tony Shalhoub in a scene from Jim Issa’s Bolio. Photo: WFF

Jim Issa’s Bolio puts a twisted spin on the buddy film. Dale Bolio (Eugene Cordero), a middle school shop teacher, is in a depressive slump over his impending divorce. His wife (Tawny Newsome) is kind but has to keep reminding him that their marriage is over, while his co-workers range from sympathetic to obnoxious and juvenile. Enter Chuck (Gabriel Hogan), an arrogant, self-proclaimed life coach who talks Dale into letting him crash at his house in exchange for professional advice. That a life coach needs to couch-surf apparently raises no red flags for Dale, though Chuck’s sinister intentions soon become clear. The cast is strong; Tony Shalhoub and Brooke Adams supply fun cameos, and the plot takes some intriguing turns. But Bolio never quite worked for me: the screenplay, co-written by Issa, Annie Humphrey, and Rob Poynter, strains for laughs, its characters tip into caricature, and its increasingly implausible plot is hard to take seriously.

Tracee Ellis Ross and Ken Leung in Blow the Horn. Photo: WFF

Blow the Horn is an artfully-directed, well-acted chamber piece set almost entirely in a spacious New York City loft. Three couples arrive for a group appointment with their couples therapist, only to discover that the therapist won’t be joining them, and has left instructions for them to run their own session, openly discussing their problems. Several want to bolt, but the group eventually agrees to follow the therapist’s unconventional suggestion. Their various troubles include: concealed struggles that threaten a shared future; a longtime marriage worn down by familiarity and boredom; and a husband whose controlling behavior leaves his wife feeling unsafe.

The ensuing exchanges are engaging and suspenseful, the dialogue sharp and authentic. But a late plot twist jolted me out of a story whose intimacy and realism had, up until then, held me fast. It felt somewhat contrived, and yet the actors carry it off surprisingly well. Director Nacho Arenas, who co-wrote the screenplay with Matias del Federico, adapting del Federico’s stage play, makes the most of the confined setting. Also, the entire ensemble is outstanding: Lake Bell (Harley Quinn, In a World…), Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish), Ken Leung (Industry), Joshua Boone (A Jazzman’s Blues), Dallas Roberts (Dallas Buyers Club), and Wrenn Schmidt (For All Mankind).

Peg Aloi is a former film critic for the Boston Phoenix and member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Critics Choice Awards, and the Alliance for Women Film Journalists. She taught film studies in Boston for over a decade. She has written on film, TV, and culture for web publications like Time, Vice, Polygon, Bustle, Dread Central, Mic, Orlando Weekly, Refinery29, and Bloody Disgusting. Her blog “The Witching Hour” can be found on substack.