Rifkin’s Festival Ending Explained [SPOILER!]

SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!

Mort Rifkin (Wallace Shawn – Manhattan, My Dinner with Andre), a retired film studies professor, accompanies his publicist wife Sue (Gina Gershon New Amsterdam, Killer Joe) to the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. He goes not for the films, but because he’s worried that Sue’s fascination with her young buzzed-about film director client, Philippe (Louis Garrel – Little Women, An Officer and a Spy), might be more than professional. In addition, Mort hopes the change of scenery will provide a respite from his struggle to write a first novel that lives up to his impossibly exacting standards. With Mort’s relentlessly dismissive opinions of Philippe, and Sue’s sharp focus on her career as well as Philippe, their already frayed relationship becomes more strained.

Mort’s mood lightens when he meets Jo Rojas (Elena Anaya – The Skin I Live In), a kindred spirit whose marriage to tempestuous painter Paco (Sergi López – Pan’s Labyrinth) is causing her pain as well. While Mort’s personal tastes have sometimes pushed people away, Jo’s intellect and shared sensibility draw them together. While Sue spends her days with Philippe, Mort’s relationship with Jo deepens.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Rifkin’s Festival Plot Summary and Synopsis

Mort Rifkin, a snobby elderly film critic from New York, is telling his therapist about the recent developments in his life. In the recount, he’s accompanying his much younger wife Sue to a film festival in San Sebastián.

She works as a press agent for Philippe, a French director whose banal and derivative anti-war film is being universally celebrated as a masterpiece, to Mort’s chagrin. Mort quickly becomes jealous of Sue and Philippe’s relationship, which increasingly moves into open flirtation.

Mort’s inner thoughts and fears causes him to have nightmares inspired by well-known black and white cinematic classics like Citizen Kane, Breathless, Jules and Jim, Persona, The Exterminating Angel, and 8½.

While at the festival, Mort reminisces about his life and the pretentious novel that he’s been writing for decades, trying to achieve a literary relevance that eludes him.

He reflects upon his younger years when he used to teach cinema at the university and felt happy and stimulated. Meanwhile, he’s helpless to keep Sue and Philippe from spending time with each other.

Eventually, he seeks medical advice about some chest pains and meets Joanna “Jo” Rojas, a Spanish female doctor who spent some time in New York and is now unhappily married with an unfaithful, temperamental artist.

Joanna leaves a lasting impression on Mort and he repeatedly tries to engage her attention by faking health issues. Eventually, the two go on a sight-seeing drive through the surrounding country, both having a good time in the process.

On their way back to town, a flat tire forces Joanna and Mort to hitchhike back to Joanna’s home, where she discovers her husband cheating on her with one of his models. The two have a bitter fight, then Joanna takes Mort back to his hotel. Here, Sue confronts Mort about their deteriorating relationship, eventually announcing she’s leaving him to start a new life with Philippe.

The next morning, Mort calls Joanna, hoping to see her again before he has to return to New York, but she politely declines, despite harboring some affection for Mort and doubts about her own marriage’s toxicity.

Finally, Mort imagines himself playing chess with Death in a parody of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Death tells him that human life is ultimately meaningless, but doesn’t need to be empty. In a parting word of advice, Death tells Mort that he will see him again in the future, but Mort might win some extra time by making sure to exercise and to avoid processed foods.

Rifkin’s Festival Ending

As the festival reaches its closing day, Mort reflects upon his changed circumstances, pondering to go back to be a teacher, this time with a less rigid attitude towards art. Back in New York, he asks his therapist what he should do now.

Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).