| for this week's Tribune : 'Heart of Fire' [5/10] and London Film Festival preview |
|
|
 Heart of Fire Director: Luigi Falorni The baffling vagaries of UK cinema distribution are once again illustrated by the curious case of German/Austrian-produced, Africa-set war-child melodrama Heart of Fire, which arrives on our screens more than a year and a half after it world-premiered at Berlin in February 2008. That's a rather pedantic use of the word "screens," by the way, as at present the film is scheduled to play solely at London's ICA (from September 25th to October 11th.) Why Heart of Fire, which chronicles the misadventures of a 10-year-old girl during the Eritrean battle for independence in 1981-2, is getting a release at all is something of a mystery. It wasn't exactly one of the critical darlings of the Berlin film-festival competition. Of the major trade-magazines, The Hollywood Reporter* was enthusiastic, but Variety sniffed at its "generically simplified script." Screen International hit the nail squarely on the head, meanwhile, noting that "older middle class arthouse audiences in particular prefer to see their hardship portrayed through the innocent eyes of children... and this subject is such a passion-stirrer that it could become a draw for publicity and celebrity support. Ham-fisted it may be, but it has all the hallmarks of a crowd-pleaser that might even go all the way to an Oscar nomination." Academy Award talk mercifully proved inaccurate - indeed, Heart of Fire made scant impact prize-wise around the film-festival circuit, in marked contrast to one of its Berlin-competition rivals: Lance Hammer's gritty US indie Ballast - which, despite a bulging haul of accolades and trophies (not to mention a brilliant Newcastle-based cinematographer, Lol Crawley) seems destined never to obtain distribution in this country. Whereas Hammer's deftly-drawn miniature of bleak rural poverty is all implication and nuance, Heart of Fire (a fiction-feature debut from the co-director of disarming drama-doc The Story of the Weeping Camel [2003]) is the cinematic equivalent of a "misery memoir" - those tales of nightmarishly tough childhoods that have proved such publishing moneyspinners in recent years. Indeed, Falorni and Gabriele Kister's script is "inspired by" a highly controversial autobiography by Eritrean-German pop-star Senait Ghebrehiwet Mehari, who recalled ("fantasised," according to her critics) how her growing-up process was cruelly accelerated after she was forced out of her idyllic Italian-run orphanage - where she'd been inspired by the Virgin Mary's fire-encircled Sacred Heart - and into the chaos of battle. Her surrogate here is Awet (Letekidan Micael) who, sporting an increasingly tattered cerise dress - its deterioration one of few subtle touches on view - finds herself caught in what's effectively a civil war within a civil war. She quickly graduates from wooden "guns" to the real thing - The Littlest Freedom-Fighter, if you like... Impeccably well-intentioned but baldly manipulative and uninspired as a drama, the picture boasts some lively performances - un-actressy newcomer Micael is a real find - but relies much too heavily on its square, near-incessant score for mood and atmosphere, and is fatally undermined by the conspicuous dubbing jarringly applied to the dialogue of several key supporting characters. (*A publication to which I myself occasionally contribute.) LONDON FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW It may not be the country's oldest or longest-running annual showcase of cinema - that's Edinburgh (1947) - but the London Film Festival, organised by the BFI and sponsored by The Times, has certainly been around for a while. October 16th 1956, to be precise - the day after Che Guevara and Fidel Castro sailed on the Granma from Mexico to Cuba. By the time the inagural LFF came to a close on October 26th, the Hungarian revolution had broken out; the UK and France were five days away from bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal; and London cinephiles had been treated to less than two dozen features, by the likes of Kurosawa, Ozu, Visconti, Wajda and (Satyajit) Ray. 53 years later, Andrzej Wajda - he of Danton, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds, Man of Marble and Man of Iron fame - is the last of that august bunch still standing. Now 83, the doyen of Polish cinema is represented at this year's 119-feature LFF (which runs from the 14th-29th October) by his latest opus Sweet Rush (Sun 25, Tue 27, Wed 28), an elegaic follow-up to his recently-distributed World War II epic Katyn, and his sixth collaboration with actress Krystyna Janda. Wajda is a long way from being the oldest director represented at LFF #54, however: that honour goes to Portugal's truly unique and evidently unstoppable Manoel de Oliveira, who turns 101 in December and is reportedly in the midst of directing what will be his 49th film. His 48th, Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl (Wed 21, Fri 23) wowed the critics at the Berlin Film Festival - "a simple and precise 64 minutes, as pure as rain water and just as lacking in pretension," murmured an approving Danny Kasman of The Auteurs. De Oliveira, perhaps best known on these shores for 2006's Bunuel tribute/sequel Belle Toujours, is our last surviving directorial link to the silent era - sound hadn't yet reached Portugal by the time he made his 1931 debut with short documentary Working on the Douro River - and it's heartening to see the LFF maintain its commitment to what aficionados term 'early cinema' in their 2009 lineup. Indeed, the big date for your diary should be Friday 23rd October: 7.30pm at the Queen Elizabeth Hall - just along from the festival hub that is the BFI South Bank (formerly National Film Theatre) - when Anthony Asquith's 1928 classic tale of "love, treachery and murder" on the tube, Underground, is unveiled via a brand-new, digitally-restored print. Tickets may appear pricey at £15, but this is in fact terrific value as a live score will be provided by the Prima Vista Social Club - comprising accompanists such as pianist Neil Brand and violinist Gunter Buchwald who are quite literally the very best in the business, anywhere in the world. Also recommended from the archives: Dirigible (Frank Capra, 1931); Far From Vietnam (various directors including Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda, Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, 1967), Hapax Legomena (Hollis Frampton, 1971-2), Jubal (Delmer Daves, 1956), Laila (George Schnee Voigt, 1929), Leave Her To Heaven (John M Stahl, 1945), The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969), Topper (Norman Z McLeod, 1937), The Touch (Ingmar Bergman, 1971) and a special programme of Vitaphone Varieties (various directors, 1928-9). Among the disorientingly vast plethora of newer titles, look out for Dogtooth (Yorgos Lanthimos, Greece), Don't Worry About Me (David Morrissey, UK), Kinatay (Brillante Mendoza, Philippines), Lebanon (Samuel Maoz, Israel), Lourdes (Jessica Hausner, Austria), Mother (Bong Joon-Ho, South Korea), A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, France), A Room and a Half (Andrei Khrzhanovsky, Russia), Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton, New Zealand), She A Chinese (Xiaolu Guo, UK), Vincere (Marco Bellocchio), White Material (Claire Denis, France) and - last but by absolutely no means least - Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or winner, The White Ribbon. [ further details : www.bfi.org.uk/lff/ ] Neil Young 15th September, 2009 written for 24th September issue of Tribune magazine HEART OF FIRE : [5/10] : Feuerherz : Germany (Ger/ity/Aut/Fr) 2008 : Luigi FALORNI : Sam MENDES : 92m (approx) : seen at Berlinale Palast, Berlin, 14th March 2008 (press show) - Berlinale (Berlin International Film Festival). [original review] |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
