The Thirty-Third Annual Portland
International Film Festival
And so it begins again: my near-total immersion into marathon filmgoing thanks to the Northwest Film Center's annual Film Fest, showcasing cinema from all around the world, over a hundred and fifteen titles from forty-one different countries for seventeen straight days and nights. Yummy. Last year I was able to see a bunch of the press screenings before the Festival began, but because I had taken a bunch of days off already in January plus had a houseguest for a week when they started the screenings I was only able to see one movie ahead of time. Therefore my total will not get into the fifties this year as it did in February of 2009. I'll have to settle for forty-some.
My reviews should start late tonight, assuming I'm not too exhausted to give it a go. The final day of screenings is Sunday the 28th.
I do love this town.
__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Awesome, I love this time of year. Between reading all of these reviews you do and looking up films from all the various, sundry lists that come out this time of year. And then the Oscars? If I love it then you must like, really love it.
So you're only planning on seeing about 40 or so this year? Sissy.
Got any flicks in mind that you're looking forward too?
__________________ We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...
This makes the fourth feature by Audiard I've seen (Read My Lips, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Self-Made Hero) and he continues to be one of the best of his generation working in France. It follows a young man named Malik (Tahar Rahim), who as the movie opens is a nineteen-year-old criminal of mixed-Arab heritage who is entering the main prison system for the first time, to serve a five-year sentence. He has had numerous run-ins with the law before, but that was as a juvenile. Now he's thrust into the darker and more dangerous world of true prison. Within days of his processing he is singled out by the Corsican mobsters who run the prison to assassinate another new inmate. Given no choice he goes through with the bloody task, which gets him in with the Corsicans, led by the elder César Luciani (Niels Arestrup). This gets him a level of protection, but because of his racial heritage he is never fully accepted. But that heritage allows him to venture into the other two main factions in the prison, the Gypsies and The Arabs. Through some dumb luck, a bit of premonition and just plain stubborn perseverance he manages not only to survive but thrive, and when he starts getting day-pass furloughs he also begins making a name for himself as a criminal on the outside.
A Prophet is sort of a mix between Midnight Express and Carlito's Way, but what makes it interesting aside from the good central performances are not its genre elements (though they work) rather the examination of the shifting culture in France, as the Islamic influx over the decades has made them now the dominant population in the criminal justice system and if you remember back to the publicity of the 2005 riots this is an aspect of France that isn't examined very often, certainly not in their cinema or fiction. Overall it's a strong movie (though not at the level of Read My Lips) with an ambitious and important subtext.
GRADE: A-
Frygtelig Lykkelig - Terribly Happy Henrik Ruben Genz, Denmark
An odd, dark little flick that is sort of Blue Velvet or Blood Simple by way of Aki Kaurismäki. Jakob Cedergren stars as Robert Hansen, a cop from Copenhagen who has been reassigned to a remote speck of a town in the middle of nowhere. As the opening narration explains one of the areas defining legends, the fields are below the water table, so that when the heavy rains come it forms a muddy bog where man and beast have been known to disappear. Officer Hansen finds the locals are intensely weird, secretive, and not very welcoming to outsiders. Almost immediately he meets Ingerlise (Lene Maria Christensen), who is routinely beaten by her husband Jørgen (Kim Bodnia) in his alcoholic rages, a practice everybody in town seems to be well aware of and does nothing to stop. But that's about par for the course when it comes to this town. As Hansen and Ingerlise become closer, a confrontation with Jørgen seems inevitable. But when things go very wrong very fast, the cop finds himself in worse trouble than he imagined.
It sort of plays like a twisted Bad Day at Black Rock, except that the new stranger coming to town has almost as many skeletons and secrets as the messed-up townies. It builds to a rather satisfying conclusion, so I have to say this Noirish dark comedy-ish concoction works, though it never reaches the level of Kaurismäki, Jarmusch or The Coen Brothers that it aspires.
Yeah, I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last night as well, but won't have time to finish a proper write-up until tonight. Plus I'm seeing five more things today.
Män som Hatar Kvinnor - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Niels Arden Oplev, Sweden
First let me say no, I haven't read the books. Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a mystery/thriller that has become a true international sensation, a best-seller all over the world. The movie adaptation was inevitable (and an Americanized re-make is already in the pre-production stages). As director Niels Oplev, who was in attendance Friday night at the screening, explained, these books are, "the biggest phenomenon to come out of Sweden since ABBA." He then threatened to break out into "Fernando", but unlike the creepy characters in this story he actually took mercy on us.
A few narrative strands eventually blend into one. First we meet Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a crusading reporter with a great career who is being sued for libel and such by a rich industrialist he had written a damning exposé on, only to find out after publishing it that his sources all vanished and the documents were forgeries. He was set-up, but he has been convicted, sentenced to some fines and three months in jail, but mostly it has damaged his credibility and caused him to lose interest in writing. We also meet Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a young, diminutive but tough girl with a punk affect who is a fantastic investigator herself, though not as a reporter. She is a hacker and snoop extraordinaire, and her most recent target has been Blomkvist as the large company she works for has hired her to follow him.
Turns out she's been hired by Henrik Vanger, the head of The Vanger Group, which is a bunch of companies and industries that have made its family incredibly wealthy for generations. Most of the family live on a private island, in a series of mansions and cabins. Blomkvist is called there and asked to see if he can solve a mystery that is nearly forty years old: back in the late 1960s Henrik Vanger's favorite niece Harriet, sixteen-years-old, disappeared one day, and the Police and everybody else presume she was killed, though her body was never found. Because the Vanger's island only has a single bridge as access and that bridge was closed by an unrelated car accident that day, they know whatever happened to Harriet happened on the island and must have involved a family member or members. But in all these many decades Henrik has never been able to even eliminate anybody as a suspect, much less accuse one of his kin. Blomkvist agrees to see if he can find some new information and stays on the island to begin his investigation, sifting through the past.
Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander's stories intersect because she knows he was set-up and has become interested in him from afar, even though her job has ended. And so she keeps checking his computer for updates on what he's doing: she has hacked into his laptop weeks ago and can still view it remotely. When she see's a clue that is stumping him but she has deciphered, she can't help herself and contacts him with the information. Thus begins their unusual collaboration, and eventually she joins him on the island to help sort through the decades-old clues.
I won't get into any more of the plot beyond that except to say that it is kitchen sink mystery and thriller. At one point or another it throws in virtually every style and situation from the genre, from Agatha Christie to Thomas Harris and just about everything in between. But while the work of Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers are referenced, the overall tone and the level of brutality in the story are definitely not of the cozy variety...at all. The toughest scene is a rape that happens in the first half, and while I suppose it's necessary to show the state of mind of the character it really is pretty disturbing for a movie that is "just" an entertainment. Not that I have a delicate sensibility, I got through it fine, but you should probably be forewarned of what you're in for ahead of time. Perhaps the original Swedish title of the book and movie will do the trick: the title "Män som Hatar Kvinnor" translates as "Men That Hate Women". So, buckle up for some depravity.
As a pulpy, potbolier of a thriller with a good core whodunit? that keeps you guessing, it is quite a fun ride with some edge of your seat sequences, and the two leads are well cast with excellent chemistry on screen. It is a long movie, clocking in at two and a half hours. Given the complexity of the mystery and the time taken to develop the main pair of characters before they even get to the island of grisly secrets, I'd say it is mostly warranted, and from what the audience and director were saying the movie is fairly faithful to the popular book, more so than many adaptations. It does have a bit of a Return of the King finale with about six or seven endings, and the final shot owes much more to the movie version of The Silence of the Lambs, as Oplev happily admitted. But if you crave a dark, twisty bit of cinematic suspense, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is definitely a satisfying ride.
GRADE: B+
درباره الی - About Elly Asghar Farhadi, Iran
What starts as almost a comedy about an extended-family on vacation turns into a bit of a mystery and an examination of the consequence of hidden motivations and white lies. A group of middle-class friends, some with their young children in tow, are heading to the Caspian Sea on a three-day holiday. Everybody is in good spirits, even though when they get there the villa they hoped to use is occupied. But they are given a back-up option, another villa that is in bad repair and dirty but if they are willing to clean it themselves and camp out on the floors of the empty rooms they are welcome to it...and it is right on the sea. The friends agree to rough it, as the fun of being together will sustain them. There is one new face to the group on this trip: Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti). She is the friend of one of the women, Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani), and they only met because she is her daughter's kindergarten teacher. Sepideh's real and not-so-secret motive for inviting Elly is that the other un-married member of their party is Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), who has returned from Germany where he has recently divorced his wife. Sepideh hopes to do some match-making and get these two attractive people together. They all joke about it openly in the group, in a playful way, but Elly seems curiously withdrawn at times and will walk off without saying a word to check her cellphone.
Everything seems to be going along well, including some budding chemistry between Elly and Ahmed, until tragedy strikes. While a couple of the young children are playing with a kite on the shore, one of the boys goes into the surf after it. Elly had been watching the children by herself, and so the little girl runs back to the house for help. The men spring into action and manage to pull the boy to safety, even though the tide had already swept him far from shore. Just when they have all felt the relief of saving the child they realize Elly is missing. Did she go into the sea first? Did she somehow walk away and leave for home? There is a mixture of anger, confusion and panic as they try to piece together what happened. They also try to figure out exactly who Elly was, and lies that Sepideh has been telling make a horrible situation worse.
There is definitely a cultural element here about the supposed rules single women must abide by in Iran, but even without that stuff it works as a nightmare dilemma of a holiday gone wrong.
GRADE: B
Pranzo di Ferragosto - Mid-August Lunch Gianni Di Gregorio, Italy
A gentle and low-key comedy that surprisingly is the directorial debut of the screenwriter who is responsible for last year's very good but very bleak Gomorrah, Gianni Di Gregorio. Gianni also stars as Giovanni, a man in his '60s who is looking after his mother, who is in her nineties. Just before the big summer Italian holiday Pranzo di Ferragosto his landlord comes to him with a problem...and a solution. Giovanni is very far behind on his rent payments, but the landlord will forgive the debt completely if he'll do him one favor: take in his mother as well, just for the weekend, so that the landlord can go away for the holiday. Giovanni isn't especially keen on the idea, especially as his own mother can be moody and set in her ways, but in order to clear the debt he agrees. When the houseguest arrives the next day it turns out his troubles are doubled: the woman's aunt is in tow, too. Then comes yet another knock on the door: it is the town's doctor, and he too would be willing to forgive their debts from outstanding bills if Giovanni will watch his mother, too. Before he knows it Gianni is dealing with four elderly women who he doesn't know and don't know each other, quickly trying to learn their quirks and needs as they share a small space for a weekend.
After the set-up of too many unwanted houseguests, nothing much "happens" in the movie, it is simply a comedy of manners and clashing personalities. It's all very pleasant, if unambitious. And it is one of those movies that makes you quite hungry, as Giovanni prepares meal after meal for his captive and often contentious audience. But nothing horrible happens, and there isn't even the tension that something tragic may occur, it's just a nice movie about a guy stuck in an awkward situation with some old broads.
GRADE: B-
좋은 놈, 나쁜 놈, 이상한 놈 - The Good, the Bad, the Weird Kim Ji-Woon, South Korea
If you haven't heard of this international hit yet, it is a Korean actioner set in '30s Manchuria using Leone's Spaghetti Westerns plus Hong Kong action as its template. It is an unabashed homage with plenty of fast-paced action and adventure as a bunch of people with guns all try and get their hands on an old map that supposedly leads to buried treasure. Chief among the pursuers are Jung Woo-sung as the Eastwood archetype, Lee Byung-hun doing the Lee Van Cleef bit, and most welcome is Song Kang-ho as the comical bandit. Dozens and dozens of others join the fray, but mostly so that they can be gunned down and blown up. As a stylized ride of cinematic slam-bangery it is loaded with well-shot sequences and for me worked much better than other such 21st Century exercises like Sukiyaki Western Django or Tears of the Black Tiger, though that being said it doesn't ever find another level and become a worthy addition to the ranks of the films it so lovingly references. Besides the well-choreographed action the main selling point is its humor and the performance of Song Kang-ho, who may be recognizable even to the more casual purveyor of Asian cinema from Bong Joon-ho's clever monster movie Gwoemul - The Host.
I don't know what else there is to say? Check out the trailer, and if you think you would enjoy two hours and ten minutes of such non-stop action without much plot to hang it on, track it down as soon as possible, if not sooner. But if you're looking for the heir to Leone and Corbucci, this ain't it.
Ah, February. Valentine's Day, Black History Month, the icy death grip of winter...and once again Holden goes to the Portland International Film Festival and, in the process, obtains enough rep points to choke our servers.
Digging it so far, particularly your summation of The Good, the Bad, the Weird, which I'm looking forward to. Keep up the great work.
That doesn't come close to catching me up, as I've got four other movies and a shorts program still to write-up, plus I'll be adding three more to that total today. I meant to catch up last night, but I misremembered the Sunday closing time of the garage where my car was parked so wound up walking home the five miles or so at 10:00PM in the misting rain, and the only thing I wanted to do when I finally got home was get some dry clothes on and down a couple quick beers.
And I forgot to link to it in the first post, but HERE is the list of all the films playing at the Festival this year, though I'll only get to about forty-two of them.
*and no, I'm not identifiable in the above picture. I don't even know if I'm in that shot, but in that theater (the Whitsell at the Portland Art Museum) I almost always sit in the back four rows, so even if I was there for this snapshot you wouldn't be able to pick me out.
Thanks for all the effort, it is much appreciated as you may already know. I'm sure I'll get plenty of good recommendations from this, like every year...
Música en Espera - Music on Hold
Hernán Golfrid, Argentina
I don't suspect I'll be breaking any news when I contend that the Romantic Comedy is in a sorry frickin' state when it comes to mainstream American cinema. Anybody who has suffered through the likes of The Ugly Truth, 27 Dresses, Love Happens, What Happens in Vegas, Did You Hear About the Morgans, etc. knows firsthand how tired and completely devoid of even an ounce of charm or fun they are. It's not just that they are formulaic, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, it's that they aren't even trying anymore.
Happily you can still find a fantastic RomCom every once in a while, even if you have to turn to world cinema. Music on Hold begins as the story of Ezequiel Font (Diego Peretti), a movie composer who finds himself blocked just as his director has put a deadline of only a handful of days before he'll have to replace Ezequial. Running out of money as well as time, in the middle of stressing out about his professional predicament he also has to deal with loan officers at the bank, as he's getting to close to losing his home if he can't come up with some cash. But luck strikes! As he's being transferred from phone to phone at the bank, one of the pieces he hears as the hold music is absolutely PERFECT. He doesn't recognize it, but if he hears it again maybe he can use it as a basis for his own theme? The problem is when he calls back it's a different music. He goes to the bank itself to see if he can find it by picking up physical phones. He starts with the woman he was holding for when he heard the music.
She is Paula Otero (Natalia Oreiro), climbing her way up the ladder at work but currently very pregnant. The boyfriend that impregnated her left months ago, leaving her to do it all on her own...which is fine except that she has been delaying telling her parents about that particular bit of info. They live in Spain, so over the phone in Argentina it has been relatively easy to keep up the deception that she still has that committed lover in her life. In a bit of genre contrivance that only happens in the movies, just as Ezequial is in her office trying to locate the mystery tune, her mother (Norma Aleandro) walks in to surprise her and in a moment of desperation she claims that Ezequial is her boyfriend...much to Ezequial's surprise and confusion. Ultimately he agrees to keep up with the deception for a day or two if she'll help him find the music and finish his movie theme. Hilarity ensues.
But I mean that: hilarity actually ensues. The premise may be as old as the hills, but the execution and the chemistry of the stars are just plain wonderful and kept me laughing even though everybody over the age of eight knows exactly where the story is heading. Getting there is the fun part. Some classic bits of bedroom farce, and even some little elements that are clever and hilarious (like the director's cellphone ring). It's the kind of movie that puts a smile on your face. Lightweight and some well-worn territory, but it has that magical ingredient that makes it all work. Best Romantic Comedy I've seen in the last couple of years, for sure.
Great reviews Holden, I'm enjoying reading them.
Agree with you about The Good The Bad and the Weird being better than Sukiyaki Western Django and Tears of the Black Tiger, I thought it was more fun too.
Learning from Light: The Vision of I.M. Pei Bo Landin & Sterling Van Wagenen, U.S.A.
Documentary about the design and construction of The Museum of Islamic Art, in Doha, Qatar and not about Pei's long and enormous career. Whether you're an architect or have never even heard of I.M. Pei, this doc is very straightforward and not terribly interesting, too often coming off like a promotional video you'd see for sale at the gift shop but without anything very revealing about Pei or his process. Pei is a living legend, to be sure, and now in his nineties this will likely be the last major project he designs and sees through construction, and it is a beauty. But except for a few fleeting moments where his personality bubbles to the surface, this piece either doesn't know what questions to ask in order to get him to open up more or refused to ask them. It's pleasant enough, but about as deep as a bucket without giving much more info than you can find on Wikipedia. And the narrator was distractingly cheesy, more the kind of voice that would tell you to be alert and careful on the airport's people-mover walkway. You can't get more average than this, which is a shame given the inherent interest of the subject. But if you aren't going to be in Qatar anytime soon, there are some loving glamour shots of the spectacular museum.
GRADE: C
For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism Gerald Peary, U.S.
This documentary is mostly a missed opportunity, too. Longtime Boston-area film critic Peary had a relatively untapped subject when he decided to examine the history of film criticism in America from the turn of the last century to the internet age. But unfortunately most of the material is given pretty brief examination (narrated by actress Patricia Clarkson). He does have a lot of ground to cover, but if you want to give yourself a crash course I'd suggest The Library of America's American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now, edited by Phillip Lopate, which was released a few years ago and will give you a better idea of the scope and history of the journalistic artform. Peary has interviews with many of the living big names in the industry, from Andrew Sarris and Roger Ebert (recorded back when Roger could still speak) to Rex Reed, Richard Schickel, Stanley Kauffmann and Molly Haskell and a myriad of voices from today's surviving print critics...plus Harry Knowles, too. If the doc had a different focus, it may have turned into something more captivating or useful.
For example, it might have been more of a true oral history with the critics giving much more of their own personal experiences and thoughts on their peers as well as the pioneers that came before them, since that material as it exists is among the film's best. For proof of what that might have been, the funniest story, by far, is a little thing Ebert relays from his early days on the paper, with a great and telling punchline...but it is an afterthought that plays during the end credits. The era of Sarris vs. Kael is given a good deal of attention, but I think a full, complete documentary could be made just on them and the 1970s New York scene alone, so what is there left me wanting much more. If there was more of a detailed look at the future of film criticism in the age of blogs and chatboards or if all of these professional critics he gathered had all talked in depth about how the changing technologies are effecting criticism and the film industry as a whole, there may well be more fertile ground there. But alas. Gerald Peary was in attendance at the screening on Sunday, and based on the mention in the doc plus his talk afterwards I'd say he could have made an interesting concentrated piece on Boston's film scene from the 1960s onward. As is, For the Love of Movies sprints through the history of its subject but too quickly to recommend to anybody other than a hardcore film nerd, and even then only mildly.
GRADE: C+
Janala - The Window Buddhadeb Dasgupta, India
Tale of a young couple whose future is jeopardized by a random act of kindness that spins out of control. Meera (Swastika Mukherjee) works for American Airlines at a call center while her boyfriend Bimal (Shankar Chakraborty) works at a small retirement home for men. She is a couple months pregnant and they intend to marry, but they don't have much money, barely scraping together enough to do much more than pay the rent at Meera's apartment. On a trip out of town Bimal winds up making an unscheduled stop to the small rural town where he went to school as a boy. Though still open, he finds the school is in horrible disrepair, and even though it is a holiday the old groundskeeper is still the same and Bimal shares some of his fondest childhood memories as they walk the dilapidated grounds. After hearing another classmate, much more successful than him, has recently returned and made a sizeable donation, Bimal tries to think of something he could do, some gesture. He remembers a beautiful and relatively ornate window he used to gaze out of in one of the classrooms and decides to commission a replacement, for which he will take full responsibility and incur all costs. It turns out to be more expensive than he imagined to have such a piece constructed and delivered, over 20,000 rupee, but he decides to do it anyway.
Once he returns a couple weeks later with the beautiful gift, it turns out he can't get rid of it. Local politics and clashing personalities on the schoolboard end with the refusal of the expensive window. They suggest the local health clinic, but when they get there they find out there are almost daily mini-riots there from family members angered over the deaths of loved ones, so they know it won't be safe there. And Bimal hasn't yet told Meera of this plan or how much he's spending, so when she finds the money gone from their bank account she is furious. There is also a subplot with a roaming thief and an odd turn in the third act about a pregnant trapeze artist being forced to have an abortion by the evil carnival owner. The last third of the picture is really out of left field and not very satisfying as a narrative, though it all could have been saved with one simple final shot (somebody should have the director and producer call me for a reshoot). There are some nice elements and moments with two charming actors in the lead, but ultimately this one doesn't add up to much.
GRADE: C
The Protektor Marek Najbrt, Czech Republic
This one is a stylized tale of a married couple dealing with the Nazi occupation of Prague, and while at times it seems it is going to veer off into some inventive fantasy in the end it doesn't go far enough, leaving a good movie but not a great one. Marek Daniel stars as Emil Vrbata, who works in radio, though off-the-air, in late 1930s Czechoslovakia. His wife Hana (Jana Plodková) is an up and coming film actress about to have her big breakthrough role. But then the Nazis march in and everything changes. Hana is Jewish, as are most of her colleagues in the film biz, so they are immediately shut down and her movie remains unfinished. Emil is not Jewish, so when the dissenters at the radio station are rounded up and taken away, he winds up as the on-air Czech voice of the Nazis, first with mostly benign obedience but as time goes on he's asked to be more overtly involved with their propaganda. His public position does afford him and by extension his wife some level of comfort, even with her heritage. But as the War in Europe rages on things get less and less safe for Hana, and Emil finds himself increasingly disgusted by his job.
There are some really nice sequences, stylized dreams or even drug trips (Hana has secretly taken up with the rebellious young man who runs the projector at the nearby movie theatre, and eventually they start using Opium), and a turn in the plot has Emil cast as a possible assassin and revolutionary. But these elements, while strong and striking, remain subplots, and instead of the fantasy becoming dominant it recedes for a standard Nazi-era tale. There is an amazing movie in the margins, and enough of it comes to the fore to recommend it...but with a different focus this might have turned into some kind of darkly comic outrageous masterpiece.
GRADE: B-
Μικρό έγκλημα - Small Crime Christos Georgiou, Greece/Cyprus
This one is a charming romantic comedy with just a dash of dark humor. Aris Servetalis stars as Leonidas, a young and ambitious police officer assigned to a very small, very sleepy island somewhere off the coast of Greece in the Aegean Sea. It is picturesque, but Leonidas rarely stops to enjoy the beauty, he just wants a transfer to a big city where the real action is. One morning one of the residents, Zaharias (Antonis Katsaris), turns up dead at the bottom of a high cliff below town, having fallen to his death. But was it an accident? Was it suicide? Was he pushed? Leonidas' boss, the only other policeman on the island, and everybody else in town from the mayor to the gossiping woman at the café, seem content to let it go as an accident and nothing more, but Leonidas can't help but be excited and intrigued by the possibility that he is investigating an actual crime. Ahead of the funeral the one resident who has left for the mainland and enjoyed much success returns. Angeliki (Vicky Papadopoulou) is an award-winning host of a TV morning show, and even though her mother refuses to this day to talk about it she has always assumed that the dead man, Zaharias, is her birth father. She is very willing to assist Leonidas in his Quixotic mystery.
There are some almost Preston Sturges-like turns of comedy, with the interactions with the townspeople and especially as Leonidas imagines the various scenarios that might have led to Zaharis' fall. The quickly brewing romance between Servetalis and Papadopoulou is sexy and fun, and it all builds to a nice finale. Sweet, well-made little movie.
GRADE: B
Home Ursula Meier, France/Switzerland
Home starts as a sort of wacky slice-of-life as we meet a family that lives in a unique spot: a little house that is just feet away from a finished but completely unused stretch of highway, a secluded hideaway all their own. Apparently they've been there for at least a decade, with father Michel (Olivier Gourmet), mother Marthe (Isabelle Huppert) and their three children Judith (Adélaïde Leroux) who is a sexy young woman, Marion (Madeleine Budd) a bookish teen, and Julien (Kacey Mottet Klein) a scrawny pre-teen boy. They are unusually close, even bathing together and playing games in their little bit of rural Oasis. But that is all threatened when after all these years it seems the highway is finally going to be opened. Their personal playground is about to become full of unwanted, noisy, polluting neighbors whizzing by at sixty miles an hour. They try to adapt to this new encroaching hazard, but the more they have to deal with the outside world it becomes increasingly evident why they wound up in such a remote locale in the first place.
What starts as an amusing comedy about a family of oddballs takes a turn in the second half to much darker material, more akin to Todd Haynes' Safe (1995). The creeping paranoia and insanity continues to build, and as you wait for somebody to turn out to be the sane one in the bunch you begin to realize that they are all frickin' nuts. The contrast between the light eccentricity of the first part of the movie giving way to the dark tension of the second half is a tricky transition of tone, and one I don't think is completely successful. But there's no doubt that it makes for a memorable movie. Writer/director Ursula Meier, making her feature debut after some well received shorts over the years, is definitely a cinematic voice to pay attention to.
Now this is what a documentary should be. The Zaballeen are a Coptic Christian community who live on the outskirts of Cairo, the largest metropolis in the Middle East and Africa. For generations the city has depended on independent garbage collectors to keep the streets clean, and though the Zaballeen receive some small compensation from the residents they make most of their living by recycling the trash. They pick it up all over the city, then take it back home for sorting. It is an unusual but effective system, and the Zaballeen look on it as a calling more than a job. However, in 2003 the city decided to hire modern, foreign-owned large garbage companies to collect and sort the city's trash, and so the Zaballeen way is disappearing. The movie follows three young boys, ages sixteen to nineteen, over a few years. The boys, Adham, Osama and Nabil, are charming and hopeful, and their dreams and interactions are universal. What the movie has to say about Globalization and modernization are interesting, but it is the human drama of these three young men that is so compelling.
GRADE: A-
Буги на костях - Hipsters Valeriy Todorovskiy, Russia
A joyous concoction, a Musical fantasy set in 1955 Moscow that is sort of Footloose by way of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Anton Shagin stars as Mels, a young card-carrying Soviet who is part of a roaming task force that hunts down the young rebellious citizens who dare to express themselves through the freedom of jazz and the underground community of boogie-loving individuals that dance and love their nights away. In a society where "sneezing too loudly" is grounds for arrest and the saxophone is considered a concealed weapon, these self-described Hipsters who style themselves in loud colors with gravity-defying hairdos that they imagine are all the rage in America are doing more than the usual teenage pushing back against authority, they are risking detention and arrest! When Mels has a run-in with one of the Hipsters, a beauty who goes by Polly (Oksana Akinshina), he finds himself quickly throwing off the metaphorical shackles for the thrill of the beat and the allure of love. The king of these swingin' misfits is Fred (Maksim Matveev), the son of a diplomat with more access to music and cool than most, and like a pusher he shares it with anybody who is willing. Soon Mels has dropped the S from his name and is learning to make the forbidden music, as well as wooing Polly.
This could have been helplessly cheesy, or like the Nazis meets Jazz misfire Swing Kids (1993) might have committed the sin of taking itself too seriously, but this is a Musical fantasy with a big M, where the characters break out into rapturous song, and the heavily stylized look and direction are perfect. You won't learn one "real" thing about Stalin's Russia of the period or what the fear or repression really means, but you will be tapping your toe and smiling.
Set in 1955 Warsaw, Sabina Jankowska (Agata Buzek) is a mousy spindle of a woman working at the Ministry of Culture in the poetry publishing department. She is monstrously shy and seems awkward in just about any situation, be it social or professional. Though thirty she is unmarried and shares a small apartment with her Mother and Grandmother (Krystyna Janda & Anna Polony). Her boss is a bit of a pig and her co-workers unsympathetic, but her life is about to become exciting. First her brother, a painter, refuses to turn in a gold American coin after the Soviet government demands all foreign currency be given to them, so she takes to hiding it in a place where surely nobody will look: she swallows it, and after it works its way through her system she swallows it again and again and again, so that it is only free of her insides for a few minutes every few days. Already nervous about this odd plan, her life really goes topsy-turvy when she meets Bronislaw (Marcin Dorocinski).
While being accosted by a couple rowdy drunks on her walk home one night, out from the shadows emerges a tall, fit, dashing man in a trench coat who promptly socks one of the scoundrels in the face and saves Sabina. Bronislaw, with his rugged good looks, square jaw, calm demeanor and athletic build, is like some Matinée Idol come to life, and just about the direct opposite of the gawky, modest, homely Sabina. He starts to romance her, despite their obvious differences...but who is this man, really?
This is a weird little movie with an odd style that is closest to Guy Maddin in tone and texture. Shot in black and white save for some interspersed sequence of the present day in color, it starts as a cold presentation of the repressive bad old days, makes a bit of a slide towards a period romantic melodrama, then really goes off its rails (in a good way) and becomes something out of Graham Greene with Hitchcockian suspense overtones about disposing of a body. The tone and pace stay very low-key, even with the more outrageous elements, which lends itself to some wonderful dark comedy. To a Pole it may well have something to say about the indomitable common spirit or the perseverance of women under Stalin with references to the Warsaw Uprising and the city as it stands today in the 21st century, but to a cinemaniac it's just weird enough and just clever enough to work as a movie above and beyond its historical and metaphorical subtext.
Very far behind on my write-ups, but hopefully I'll at least start to play catch up tonight. I've got reviews coming for Fish Tank, Nora's Will, Passenger Side, Letter to the King, Everyone Else, The Shock Corridor, Waking Sleeping Beauty and Police, Adjective. Plus a shorts program I haven't gotten around to describing yet. And there'll be four more on that list after today: Moomin Midsummer Madness, John Rabe, Reykjavik-Rotterdam and A Town Called Panic.
Coming into the home stretch now. Just one week left!
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