| FESTIVAL FARE : 'Black Brush' / 'Drum Bun' / 'The City of the Sun' |
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 Roland Vranik's Black Brush [7/10] Director Vranik was Tarr's assistant on Werckmeister Harmonies - not that you'd ever guess it (thankfully) from this youthful, brisk, deadpan comedy in the Kaurismaki/Jarmusch/Aaltra vein. Alternative title - "Fiddlers on the Roof": four Budapest early-20s stoner/slackers (why is it always four in such pics?)do odd jobs for a semi-mysterious, seldom-seen boss (though Charlie's Angels this emphatically ain't) - most of the time they're cleaning and fixing chimneys, though they're not exactly 'sweeps' in the Dick Van Dyke mode. Instead, spend most of their time avoiding anything resembling hard labour and coming up with ill-advised get-rich-quickish schemes, in between what the British censor might label "mild drug use." Thus their behaviour isn't exactly straight-arrow: a typical escapade involves a drug-excreting goat (don't ask) who chews up a winning lottery ticket. To obtain said ticket our heroes semi-steal another goat from a Hare Krishna-type commune, which they swap for the ticket-eater. Latter ends up messily slaughtered - though the knife (a Samurai sword, no less) 'goes in' off screen, and there's a reassuring note in the end credits that no animals were harmed in the making of the pic. Film is too easy-going and genial for us to really think otherwise - although distinctive, laid-back tone is consistently downbeat, dead-beat, just plain Beat (sometimes as in Beatific - several characters are religious and/or philosophical). Ambling script isn't always easy to follow, but that's not a problem: very nicely played by a cast who seem to get what director Vranik is after. Vranik co-wrote the screenplay with his cinematographer Poharnok Gergely, who is MVP here: widescreen black-and-white visuals are consistently on-the-money (he also shot Hukkle, so clearly knows his 'shit'). Doffed caps also to Kalotas Csaba and Vranik Krisztian's edgy, low-key electronica score. Black Brush cleaned up at home, and deserves to do at least as well overseas as the (slightly overrated) Kontroll, Hungary's last too-cool-for-school arthouse export. Robert Ralston's Drum Bun [7/10] Wild und wacky shaggy-dog comedy - always at least drolly amusing, often flat-out hilarious - from Swiss director of Scots descent (UK citizen, apparently), set and filmed in the Transylvanian end of Romania, with main characters a harrassed youngish German businessman and a volatile/endearing Hungarian couple. German businessman is played by Colin Firth-ish Felix Thiessen, who is credited along with Ralston with the film's "idea": apparently there was no script, and so perhaps they followed the Wim Wenders format for road movies and instead used an itinerary. Story is latest variant in yuppie-nightmare genre initiated and still typified by Scorsese's After Hours. Except here it is freighted with topical themes about European Union integration, i.e. getting to know the neighbours better, even if you don't especially want to. Also oddly similar to Liev Schreiber's recent Everything Is Illuminated (except Drum Bun - whose suitably daft-sounding title is Romanian phrase meaning 'bon voyage' - doesn't take itself anything like as seriously). Both pictures feature a suit-and-tie-wearing vegetarian English-speaker, on a frustration-packed quest in Eastern Europe involving a deceased family member. Anglophone 'gent' ends up sharing a car with folk who are initially suspicious/prickly but who rapidly thaw... Here our hero Martin (Theissen) is "helped" by feuding pair Imre (Palffy Tibor) and Agnes (Biro Kriszta, outstanding) - though in the process Martin manages to injure both of Imre's hands in separate car-door accidents (cue delicious social embarrassment/unease/obligation). This, and the fact that Martin is trying to recover his dead father's body, means we spend rather a lot of time inside Romanian medical institutions - presented as unflatteringly as in a rather more acclaimed current festival favourite, The Death of Mr Lazarescu. Very different movies, of course, but Drum Bun is half the length, tells us as much about human nature, and has rather more laughs. Jauntily unpretentious crowdpleaser - filmed on suitably wobbly hand-held DV - is a quite familiar culture-shock/fish-out-of-water story, but zips along with such breezy, larkish momentum it's virtually impossible to resist... and also nimbly sidesteps any suggestion of patronising the 'locals'. Spirals beyond plausibility fairly early in the game, but, ach, what the heck... Martin Sulik's The City of the Sun [6/10] There have been surprisingly few Czech-Slovak co-productions since the demise of Czechoslovakia, and City of the Sun has made the biggest international splash: has gone down well at festivals in Europe and beyond. Such events are always keen on Ken Loachish tales of post-industrial pluck/misery: City balances the laughs and tears with surprising sharpness that lifts it out of the Full Monty subgenre. Sulik chronicles aftermath of an acrimonious Ostrava factory closure: follows four (why is it always four?!?!?) pals who come up with various schemes to make ends meet. Moving furniture seems a viable possibility - until their van is nicked in semi-absurd circumstamces. On paper it's familiar stuff - title and set-up recall overrated Spanish variant, Mondays in the Sun. But there's some real, edgy darkness here - one of the 'working class heroes' (the movie's subtitle in English-language promotional materials) is Tomas (Ivan Martinka), an unsympathetic, loutish young bloke who looks like a very young, shaggy-permed Sterling Hayden and who unexpectedly declines into violent psychosis in the picture's second half. It isn't all doom and gloom, of course - plenty of laughs along the way, though nothing especially sidesplitting, and the blokes' situation is fundamentally serious. Title, incidentally, should really be 'City of Sun': it's headline in escapist travel-mag we see one of the disaffected Ostravans reading. Strong suit is the script (co-written with Alice Nellis - who, though she doesn't sound it - is Czech - and Marek Lescak): tough, accurate and focussed, with the tang of real speech. That said, the trampoline-tastic coda sits a little uneasily with the grit of what's gone before; Martin Strba's cinematography is often zoom-happy and clodhopping; worst of all, Vladimir Godar's repetitive scuzzy-bluesy score threatens to undo all the picture's good work pretty much single-handed. Now there's somebody who should seek alternative employment... Neil Young 4th January, 2005 BLACK BRUSH : [7/10] : Fekete kefe : Hungary 2005 : VRANIK Roland : 78 mins (timed) : recent film festivals include Chicago, Vancouver, Hungarian Film Week (Budapest). DRUM BUN : [7/10] : aka Bon Voyage aka Gute Reise aka Drum Bun - jo utat! : Switzerland (Swi/Ger/Hun) 2004 : Robert RALSTON : 73 mins (timed) : recent festivals include Hof, Solothurn, 'Berlin & Beyond' (San Francisco). THE CITY OF THE SUN : [6/10] : Slunecni stat aka Slnecny stat aka City of the Sun : Czech Repulblic / Slovakia 2005 : Martin SULIK : 95 mins (timed) : recent film festivals include London, Karlovy Vary, Marrakech. All seen at home in Sunderland (UK), January 2006: Black Brush on VHS, 4th (with thanks to Vajda Katalin)  Drum Bun on DVD, 2nd (with thanks to Robert Ralston) The City of the Sun on DVD, 2nd (with thanks to Ivana Kosulicova) |
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