| ROTTERDAM Film Festival part FIVE (2nd Feb) ‘Detour,’ ‘Panorama Ephemera,’ ‘The Sky Turns,’ etc |
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| Sunday, 27 February 2005 | |
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official site : www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com 4 [2?/10] Panorama Ephemera [7/10] The Sky Turns [7/10] They Came Back [4+/10] Detour [8/10] 4 : [2?/10] : Russia 2004 : Ilya KHRZHANOVSKY : 126 mins Moscow, the present day. Three strangers are drinking in a late-night bar. They start talking, and spin what sound like extravagant lies about themselves: one man (Yuri Laguta) professes to work as part of a huge, secret cloning programme; another (Konstantin Murzenko) claims that his business is to provide the Kremlin with bottled water. He has some stories to tell about President Putin's drinking habits, and those of his wife. The third drinker is a young woman (Mariia Vovchenko) who, we discover, is a prostitute. She learns that one of her fellow call-girls has killed herself, and travels to the girl's home-village where the local women have arranged a funeral. This is followed by a wake that soon degenerates into a raucous, vodka-fuelled party. The Rotterdam Film Festival's Tiger Competition for first and second features awards three equal first prizes - in 2005 they went to Mercedes Alvarez's The Sky Turns (see below); Daniele Gaglianone's Changing Destiny, which I didn't catch; and Ilya Khrzhanovsky's debut 4. I too would have presented Khrzkanovsky and his scriptwriter Vladimir Sorokin with something special at the end of the festival: my personal Wooden Spoon for what was comfortably the worst of the 38 features of which I saw all or part. I made a point of exiting the public screening I attended about ten minutes before the end, and when I saw Khrzhanovsky standing outside chatting to his producer (I recognised them because they'd introduced the film) I very nearly went across and gave him what used to be called ‘a piece of my mind,' or at the very least reprimanded him with something along the lines of "Shame on you." If I'd done so, however, I would undoubtedly have ended up getting dragged into a long discussion - and my next film (see below) was scheduled to start in a few minutes. Why did 4 get ‘my goat' to such a degree? I found it offensive and exploitative - and the more it went on, the more offensive and exploitative it became, to an extent which I eventually found unbearable. Remaining in my seat would have implied a degree of approval or complicity which I was very keen to avoid. It's my sincere hope that 4 does not obtain much more worldwide exposure: but I fear that the Tiger Award will lead to an extended tour of the planet's film festivals, and perhaps even commercial distribution in some territories. There's all kinds of rubbish clogging up our cinema screens, of course, but even so we can do without films which misuse and betray the potential of celluloid as much as 4. The film also has the added hype-element of being "controversial": apparently it has been banned in Russia because of its unflattering presentation of the country, but I'd suspect that the libellous comments about Mrs Putina are the real cause of the censors' ire. In retrospect, the problems begin with what seems like a bravura opening: stray dogs lazing on a city street are rudely roused from their slumbers. It's an impressive and audacious coup de cinema that jolts you out of your seat - but also indicative of a callousness which will come increasingly to the fore as the film goes on. The extended bar-conversation is impressively well-written, however - so much so that 4 holds our attention even when Khrzhanovsky indulges in some punishing long, sub-Bela Tarr sequences where the camera follows the main character on her long trek to the rural village where her friend's funeral is taking place. But at this point 4 really starts to lose its way: the copious dialogue spoken elderly babushkas is almost entirely unsubtitled, as if they were speaking a different language to Mariia Vovchenko's character and her young colleagues (played by Irina Vovchenko and Svetlana Vovchenko, presumably Mariia's sisters). It's also disconcerting how the camera (three cinematographers are credited) lingers on the old women's craggy, wrinkled faces - juxtaposing them with the nubile beauty of the visiting prostitutes, who are all conspicuous knockouts in the Anna Kournikova mould (just like all of the prostitutes we see in the film). The camera gets mighty close and personal when the ladies of the night strip off for a relaxing spell in the sauna - to the audible delight of the two young Dutch lads sitting alongside me. This is dodgy enough - as Danny Peary once remarked about another movie, I wouldn't trust whoever cast this picture - but things get even worse when the vodka/moonshine starts to flow and the old women become rapidly inebriated. These are clearly not professional actresses, and their drunkenness is clearly genuine in what is a horribly, gratuitously over-extended sequence. I reached my breaking-point when the babushkas start stripping off and generally playing up to the camera - even sloshing booze over each other's exposed breasts. The film's let's-laugh-at-the-yokels attitude stinks to high heaven, and the galling thing is that Khrzhanovsky seems to think he's somehow illustrating his society's problems by rubbing our noses into this kind of misery-for-misery's-sake horseshit. On reflection, in a way he does illustrate the problems: because Mother Russia really is in dire straits if a know-nothing, smug, film-school-educated pseudo-intellectual like Khrzhanovsky is being hailed as any kind of serious artist. It pains me no end to have to say it, but I'm definitely with Czar Vladimir on this one. Neil Young 27th February, 2005 (seen at Pathe cinema - public show - very late walkout) click here for other films rated 2/10 and 1/10 in the dreaded ‘Diorama of Dishonor' PANORAMA EPHEMERA : [7/10] : USA 2004 : Rick PRELINGER : 90 mins After the offensive cod-artistic dreck of 4 (see above), I was in urgent need of cheering up - and Panorama Ephemera proved just the tonic. Prelinger's skilfully-edited collage of American film clips relies mainly on corny public-information warnings (copious cheap laughs here at bad actors acting badly) and newsreel shorts (disasters, labour conflicts, The Milkman Votes, etc). Bracketed by amusing sequences (from 1949's Unconscious Motivation) in which white-bread couple Claire and Don undergo hypnosis, they span a six-decade period from 1923 (a Berkeley fire) to 1978, when we see hilariously deadpan domestic superheroine ‘Guardiana' informing accident-prone youngsters how they can remain "Aware - Alert - Alive." The resulting grab-bag may not be the most penetrating analysis of mid-20th-century US society and politics you'll ever see (we're several notches below, say, Thom Andersen's more focussed Los Angeles Plays Itself) but it's certainly one of the most entertaining and surprising. At times these clips feel like dispatches from a lost, alien world - watch for the surreal image of a crawling police-truncheon, and goggle at the 185-word-per-minute typing exhibition. Elsewhere the subject-matter remains bracingly topical (big business vs. organised labour) especially seen through the prism of George W Bush's second term: "and ultimately... war abroad!" While Prelinger's juxtapositions make some serious (if fairly trite) points, he never goes overboard with his unashamedly liberal-leftist analysis and incorporates plentiful laugh-out-loud moments, such as a government spokesman's calm assurance that the effects of post-nuke radiation will vanish "after one and a half minutes." The "infernal turtle" bit is, meanwhile, a priceless five-star showstopper worth the price of admission* on its own - even if the underlying intent of the film from which it derives (Fears of Children) is commendably serious. Prelinger's half-hearted stabs at a more highbrow kind of experimentalism come off less well, however: the picture is littered with silent squibs that seem chiefly intended to baffle, as when footage of Roosevelt's re-election is followed by images of processed carrots being sorted on a production-line. But Prelinger doesn't take his eye off the ball for long, and on the whole his assemblage hits the spot much more often than it misses. Full credit, meanwhile, for the full credits - which list in careful detail the exact origin and date of all the clips, some of which turn out to come from unexpectedly exalted, impeccably avant-garde sources... Neil Young 27th February, 2005 (seen at Cinerama cinema - press show) *In keeping with Prelinger's anti-corporate principles, Panorama Ephemera can apparently be downloaded free, gratis and for nothing at www.prelinger.com THE SKY TURNS : [7/10] : El cielo gira : Spain 2004 : Mercedes ALVAREZ : 115 min Muchas gracias - or rather dank u wel - to the Dutch lady sitting next to me in the Pathe, who woke me up about half an hour into slow-paced documentary The Sky Turns. And a sincere perdon - or rather het spijt me - to anyone else in the audience who might have been disturbed by what was reportedly my somewhat loud snoring. I can only apologise - I'd been in Rotterdam for four days, had seen all or part of 20 films, and "festival fatigue" had started to become a factor. Having disgraced myself so audibly in public, once I'd woken up my system became flooded with adrenaline - I spent the remainder of the movie paying in a rapt, energised state, paying close attention to the screen. And at the end, I was ebullient in my applause. Because The Sky Turns, for all its slow stretches, is a very solid documentary - emphatically deserving of the Tiger Award it received at Rotterdam's closing ceremony (a shame, however, that Alvarez had to share the limelight with the despicable Ilya Khrzhanovsky of 4 - see above). It's several cuts above the likes of Il Dono, Havana Suite - recent, ill-judged attempts at similar material which have thankfully so far yet to break out of the film-festival circuit. The 38-year-old Alvarez was born in La Aldea, a village in a particularly undiscovered corner of Spain roughly halfway between Madrid and San Sebastian - my guidebook describes the province, whose capital is Soria, as "incredibly empty, one of the most sparsely populated in Spain." Alvarez goes further - in her narration, she describes the region as the emptiest in the whole of Europe. La Aldea has most definitely seen better times: Alvarez was herself the last child to be born there, and the population is now down to a little over a dozen elderly folk. The pace of life in and around La Aldea is, unsurprisingly, glacial - and Alvarez records it with careful patience. We hear comments from the villagers, mostly in the form of conversation between themselves, and while this is to some extent clearly staged (or rather re-staged) for the benefit of Alvarez's camera, the technique doesn't come across as fake, rather as a form of sanctioned eavesdropping. And the subjects discussed by the (miked-up?) villagers are often far from parochial. Listening to a pair of old codgers critiquing "El Bush" as air-force jets zoom overhead (presumably sent Iraq-ward by the ill-fated Aznar government) isn't exactly a ‘Michael Moore' moment, but Alvarez gets her point across nevertheless. The warmth of the film-maker towards her subject - marbled, perhaps, with guilt at having left La Aldea behind - is evident, and she records the seemingly barren landscape with a sensitivity which brings out the subtletly of the terrain. You'd be tempted to call it a painter's eye - except the film includes an actual landscape artist in Pello Azketa, who we see completing the last in a series of paintings inspired by La Aldea in sequences which recall Victor Erice's peerless Quince Tree Sun. Alvarez isn't anywhere near Erice's level yet, of course - at times The Sky Turns really does feel like "watching paint dry", even when we're not actually watching paint dry. But a stiff black coffee (or can of Red Bull) beforehand should get you through: stay awake, and you'll be rewarded by a film of humour, poignancy and considerable skill. And, yes, you will see the sky turn - albeit somewhat slowly... Neil Young 27th February, 2005 (seen at Pathe cinema - public show) THEY CAME BACK : [4+/10] : Les revenants : France 2004 : Robin CAMPILLO : 110 mins Slovenia's Jurij Meden is among the sharper cineastes on the European film-festival circuit - and because of his recommendation I'm going to give They Came Back a second chance**. I lasted two reels (40 mins) in Rotterdam before making for the exit: I'd been assured by another critic that the first half-hour was easily the best in this realistic, very low-key French variant on the ‘zombie' genre which examines what would actually happen if a large number of dead folk suddenly returned to life. Shaun des morts it most emphatically is not: writer-director Campillo's sober technique and socio-political concerns owing more to the likes of Robert Guedigian or Ken Loach than George Romero or Sam Raimi. My notes: Promising "high concept" premise, though from the first, it doesn't make much sense in terms of the execution. Do the dead somehow symbolise refugees? They have some ‘classic zombie' traits (slow walk) but not others: we're prevented from going with the picture's flow because of the nagging questions that keep coming up. How? Why? Who? The dead that walk do so in a two-hour "flood" which stops as abruptly as it begins. Why? How? Campillo avoids any horror trappings: a certain Cronenbergian cool detachmen prevails. Rational handling of an irrational concept. "Holes" in the story demand some kind of allegorical reading. Classily done, but Campillo flubs the basic plot stuff. Council meetings and debates: "They're slow, dim." 70 million of them all over France? All over the world?? Allegory: future excess of aged people? Aphasic, with motor functions unharmed. Scientific narration. But film itself is also somewhat aphasic: looks fine on the surface, but something is missing within. In France, even a ‘zombie film' ends up boiling down to workplace discontents! Underpowered, as if Campillo is himself something of a "revenant"... Their body temperature 5 degrees lower. Appropriates certain horror conventions and ideas, concomitants, but doesn't accord them much respect, instead uses them as unsuitable vehicle for half-baked ideas. After 40 minutes, I departed. I did not come back. Seems I spoke too soon... Neil Young 27th February, 2005 (seen at Cinerama cinema - press show - walkout) ** Since posting this review I've received an e-mail from ANOTHER eminent critic whose taste I respect. He reckons my dismissal is "Wrong, wrong and thrice wrong. In my humble opinion, it is one of the most intelligent and challenging genre movies for many a year. Low-key, admittedly, and not always as sure-footed as one would like - especially in the later stages - but always emotionally involving and at times very distressing."
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