INDIELISBOA 2009 : mopup
italics = extracts from catalogue descriptions
ALICIA IN THE LAND
“… follows a thirteen-year-old girl from the Quechua tribe as she makes a 180km journey on foot. From her village in southern Bolivia, Alicia sets off in search of work in northern Chile, in the tourist town of San Pedro de Atacama.”
Minimalist cinema, neither documentary nor fiction, that takes very simple elements and just about keeps us watching as a girl walks, walks, walks. The lack of narrative or plot forces us into close scrutiny of the protagonist and her environment – crucially, the latter is varied, often quite spectacular, with flora and fauna as well as more epic manifestations of Gaia en route. Alicia walks through heat, wet, snowfields, occasionally interacts with others, crosses a border from one country into a next.
Why is she walking so far on foot? How much time is passing? What are the legal consequences of her border-crossing? Some basic answers are provided in the closing title-cards, but really this is a hymn to survival and determination in tough surroundings. The director, occasionally deploying music on the soundtrack, also sticks to his chosen itinerary, quite uncompromisingly providing the raw material for what some may be able to turn into their own voyage of discovery.
THE APPRENTICE
“Mathieu, 15 years old, a student at an agricultural high school in France, works part time on Paul’s farm, a small-size dairy-farm on the plateaux of the Haut-Doubs region bordering Switzerland.”
— So, who is The Apprentice here? Is it Mathieu, the farm-boy, or is it perhaps the unseen, never-acknowledged filmmaker, quietly learning the documentary ropes with this very lightly fictionalised (certain sequences seem to have been either staged or re-staged for the cameras’ benefit) study of a quotidian, rural vie moderne? Of course, it’s both of them.
And just as the future of French (EU?) farming, we come to realise, partly depends on whether or not non-academic lads like Mathieu opt to go into this particular line of work – and it’s by no means a fait accompli – there’s also a certain school of old-style detached, observational cinema which also might well be in danger of dying out.
With moments of elegiac lyricism amid the muck-and-beasties of the farmyard – there’s an unexpectedly brutal bit of everyday slaughter early on – we gradually get to know this kid, a fairly ordinary, decent-seeming sort even if some of his antics verge on delinquency.
Indeed, the director’s main achievement is perhaps to get over the inevitable self-consciousness of the teenager – exacerbated in this instance by the fact that Mathieu’s voice is audibly wavering towards its imminent, slightly belated hormonal break.
CRITIC
“70 critics and filmmakers discuss cinema from the age-old conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic.”
— Quart-into-pintpot feel about this watchable but quite superficial talkfest in which various journalists and directors hold forth about film criticism. It looks as if most of it was shot “on the hoof” at the biggest European film-festivals, with many contributors evidently grabbed on their way to or from screenings (nearly all the directors are identified with the name of what was, at the time of editing, their most recent release, which makes for some inadvertent humour: e.g. ‘Tom Tykwer — Heaven‘)
There’s much more about the basic philosophy of criticism than its history or practice, very little about the critics’ changing role (or what that might become in the internet/digital-dominated future), and only the briefest mentions of acknowledged masters of the field (Paul Kael is name-checked en passant; Andre Bazin doesn’t even get that.)
Punctuated with some mildly diverting but ultimately rather pointless brief clips from silent films (there are no extracts from any of the movies that are actually discussed), it’s a nippily-edited skip through a subject that deserves more considered treatment. And it’s heavily reliant on the insight and articulacy of its individual interviewees – among whom Deborah Young, formerly of Variety and now with The Hollywood Reporter (and thus – full disclosure! – a colleague of the present writer), provides best value.
FILM IS. A GIRL & A GUN
“Using images ‘from the first four and a half decades of cinematography’, taken from 11 archives around the world, Gustav Deutsch has constructed a musical ‘film drama in five acts.'”
— As usual, archive-plundering Deutsch comes up with some moments of genuine magic – excerpts of bizarre, long-lost footage which, thanks to his editing and music choices, take on an unintended majesty and transcendence. But such grace-notes, and the evident amount of sheer effort that must have gone into this project, can’t stop it from fairly quickly descending into pretentious, portentous banality.
It’s structured in five parts, each of them inspired and heralded by classical quotations, rapidly moving away from the nifty premise suggested by the title (i.e. to reveal the seldom-acknowledged violence and carnality of much early cinema) in favour of a loopy creation-mythos encompassing the origins of the universe and of mankind. Weighty stuff indeed, but passing from the awe-inspiringly audacious to the off-puttingly tedious long before section five finally rolls around.
HELP GONE MAD
“Kind and lazy Jenyz comes to Moscow from a small village in Belarus to find work. An incident unexpectedly separates him from his companions leaving him alone without money and documents. He has no friends or relatives in this big and hostile city and is about to end up homeless. But then a miracle happens: a strange old man takes the homeless Jenya to his flat and lets him stay with him.”
— A sort Last of the Winter Vodka, though it’s likely that the main influences were more fancily literary – the central relationship between an eccentric oldster and a schlubby younger bloke (the latter a narcoleptic rube from the back of beyond) is a little bit Beckett, a little bit Quijote/Sancho Panza, an odd-couple double-act capering around the grim streets of modern-day Moskva.
Their droll interactions and misadventures range from the amusing to the hilarious, though they’re related at such a torpid pace that the film sprawls into leisureliness, loses focus, and becomes a bit of an overlong slog on the way to a jarringly downbeat finale. Performances are never less than persuasive, but there’s plenty of time to ponder various tonal uncertainties and incongruities in this blend of the comic, the tragic and the anti-authoritarian. Check out A.Balabanov’s 1980s period-piece Cargo 200 for a more pungent – and even darker – vision of Russky dysfunctions.
LIFE AT A DISTANCE
“‘Life at a Distance’ is the title of Haruki’s unfinished novel. Yoshido is preparing a film of the same name based on his deceased friend’s manuscript. When Martin meets Haruki’s ghost near the forest that borders the house he doesn’t yet know that he’ll become the main character in this distant life.”
— Mid-length feature is a delicate little bubble of a movie – fleeting, insubstantial, buoyed along on wafts of whimsy. An examination of the creative process in a delightfully secluded corner of the countryside, it occasionally tiptoes towards an exquisitely Gallic pretentiousness but is saved by the refined exotica of its Japanese elements (“a firefly lights up another dead firefly”) and by a certain strain of dopey humour.
The latter is most evident in the brief but utterly disarming appearances by human-size, walking, talking teddy-bears – from Slovenia, it would seem. A beguiling combination of the morbidly, philosophically serious and the utterly absurd – all presented in classical, poised cinematography and bravely straight-faced performances – Life at a Distance won’t please all tastes, but shows evidence of an original and quietly promising film-making and scriptwriting sensibility.
PRINCE OF BROADWAY
“… is the story of Lucky, an illegal immigrant from Ghana, and Levon, an Armenian-Lebanese immigrant, whose lives converge in the underbelly of New York’s wholesale fashion district. Lucky’s world is suddenly turned upside down when a child is thrust into his life by a woman who insists the toddler is his son.”
— I caught this quite agreeably rough-edged indie comedy-drama at a very late-night screening, and so wasn’t in the most alert or attentive of moods. That said, I won’t be busting a gut to catch it at a more conducive hour – it struck me as essentially an opportunistically ‘urban’ riff on the ancient bachelor-and-baby routine, whereby an irresponsible lummox is shoved up a steep learning-curve of maturity.
It looks like it was shot “for real” on the streets of Manhattan – actors interacting with seemingly authentic passers-by – and this, along with the snappy editing, does provide a certain lively charm to distract from the predictable basic story. Main problem is that the script’s focus is split between the genially charismatic, chatterbox Lucky and the rather less diverting Levon, whose tricky lovelife forms the main subplot. The finale, meanwhile, wraps up what’s been a likeably messy tale in disappointingly pat fashion.
SUDEN
“Mauricio Kagel, one of the great composers of the second half of the 20th century, returns to Buenos Aires for the first time in more than 40 years to participate in a festival in his honor.”
— As so often happens with documentaries on radical innovators, the director’s own safe-hands style is in incongruous contrast to the envelope-pushing audacity of his subject. Kagel’s music is evidently nothing if not confrontational and provocative – the man himself is, as one might expect, the essence of chummy professionalism, sage bonhomie and, when dealing with colleagues and students, common-sense practicality. Indeed, this brisk hour-long movie is as much about the creative process as a collaborative coming-together of ideas and expertise, as it is a celebration of one particular individual.
The nimble camerawork and sharp editing catches all manner of delightful detail, including the entranced, appreciative faces of the audiences who assemble to see and hear Kagel perform. And hour in the maestro’s company is decidedly pleasant even for those who know little and care less about avant-garde music – for aficionados, it offers privileged, extended access that they may reckon frustratingly brief. In any case, the last shot is lovely.
Neil Young
15th July, 2009
Alicia in the Land : [6/10] : Alicia en el pais : Chile 2008 : Esteban LARRAIN : 86m : seen at Cinema City Classic, Alvalade, 29/4
The Apprentice : [6/10] : L’apprenti : France 2008 : Samuel COLLARDEY : 82m : Alvalade, 2/5
Critic : [6/10] : Critico : Brazil 2008 : Kleber Mendonça Filho : 82m : Alvalade, 28/4
FILM IST. a girl & a gun : [4/10] : aka FILM IS. a girl & a gun : Austria 2009 : Gustav DEUTSCH : 93m : Alvalade, 2/5
Help Gone Mad : [5/10] : Sumashedshaya pomoch : Russia 2009 : Boris KHLEBNIKOV : 118m : Londres, 30/4
Life at a Distance : [6/10] : La vie lointaine : France 2008 : Sébastien BETBEDER : 54m : Londres, 29/4 (in programme Emerging Cinema 5)
Prince of Broadway : [5+/10] : USA 2008 : Sean BAKER : 100m : Londres, 28/4
sûden : [6/10] : Argentina 2008 : Gastón SOLNICKI : 67m : Londres, 3/5
all films seen at IndieLisboa Film Festival, Lisbon, Portugal (April/May 2009) – public screenings (complimentary tickets). Timings from festival-catalogue unless otherwise stated.
INDIELISBOA 2009 INDEX-PAGE