[ The Festival Fare pages of the Film Lounge each feature two or three movies currently or recently to be found on the world's film-festival circuit ]

Walter Stokman's Based on a True Story [6/10]
    The facts which formed the basis of Sidney Lumet's 1975 Dog Day Afternoon are explored in this Dutch documentary that will prove fascinating to fans of the movie but rather less of a must-see (or even a 'should-see') for non-aficionados. Director Stokman tracks down the surviving participants and witnesses from the 1972 New York bank-robbery which inspired Frank Pierson's Oscar-winning script.    But he faces a major problem when trying to get John Wojtowicz, the main robber and, thanks to Al Pacino's sweatily intense performance, the focus of the film, on camera. As in 1972, the egotistical Wojtowicz is motivated by cash, and comes across as a very tough negotiatior: he demands a five-figure dollar payout before he'll fully collaborate with the increasingly-exasperated Stokman.
    This forces the Dutchman into a kind of Nick Broomfield / Quest for Corvo scenario: realising early on that Wojtowicz isn't going to play ball, he acts the 'bumbling Euro film-maker' and records a series of telephone conversations with the now-aged ex-felon. These tapes are replayed in (what seems like) full, intercut with more conventional material: eyewitness testimony from the bank-tellers and cops who became involved in the robbery; modern-day interviews with Lumet (who doesn't look in the best of health) and the ever-spry Pierson; extracts from the film and its pompous trailer (which proclaims the movie to be a kind of "super-fiction"); footage of Wojtowicz's former lover, lanky transsexual Ernie (aka Liz.)
    With a couple of notable exceptions (one of which caused Wojtowicz to receive death threats when in jail), Pierson seems to have adhered surprisingly closely to the actual events - and this means that Basd on a True Story may not hold too many surprises for anyone who's seen Dog Day Afternoon. We're told that the genesis of the project was the (passing) facial resemblance between Pacino and Wojtowicz, but otherwise the most interesting stuff is the material chronicling what happened to the participants after the movie was released.
    Wojtowicz himself never seems to have got over his sense of having been 'robbed' (!) by Warner Brothers - indeed, he comes across so obnoxiously here (he has an especially annoying habit of answering his phone and pretending to be a relative, cloyingly asking "How may I serve you?") that perhaps it's best that his actual screen-time is restricted to a few seconds at a film festival, where he's seen greeting Pierson with unconvincing fondness. His comments on the robbery itself also need taking with a pinch of salt.
    Based on a True Story, though an economic and reasonably absorbing watch at seventy-odd minutes, doesn't really leave us that much the wiser about either Wojtowicz or his robbery. In this respect it's rather reminiscent of Robert Stone's 2004 documentary Guerrilla [sic] : The Taking of Patty Hearst  - another conventionally-structured chronicle of early-seventies stranger-than-fiction bank-heist criminality. In both cases, lack of access to the main protagonist proved an insurmountable object to the film-makers - Stokman at least deserves credit for making a palatable (if forgettable) dish from the unpromisingly meagre ingredients available.
   
Arash T Riahi's The Souvenirs of Mr X [5/10]
    The flea-market purchase of some old 8mm home movies is the starting-point for this amiable but ultimately twee documentary about Austrian amateur film-making. Director Riahi - who appears on camera quite a lot - tries to find out the identity of the 'auteur' behind these brief records of the late seventies and early eighties, which include tourist travelogues of Mallorca and the like.
    Riahi's sleuthing leads him to Vienna's small but passionate band of 8mm devotees who meet regularly in a city-centre 'clubhouse'. And this brings Riahi into contact with cantankerous veteran hobbyfilmmacher Walter Spindler, who takes part in an annual national contest where his efforts are graded by a tough panel of judges. Along the way the Riahi's 'quest' for 'Mr X' falls by the wayside somewhat - until a chance discovery late in the day appears set to solve the enigma once and for all...
    Riahi closes proceedings with commentary from the film-contest judges which (although this isn't explicitly spelled out) seem to refer to The Souvenirs of Mr X itself. These judges reckon the movie is too long, too diffuse, that it jumps about from subject to subject; is technically accomplished but ultimately unsatisfactory. Well, indeed - incorporating such self-criticism doesn't mean that Riahi has somehow innoculated himself against further critical brickbats, especially when the closing credits are accompanied by a strident pop-number of his own composition in which we're repeatedly told that "film is great!"
    Of course, to some extent Riahi is being ironic with such cheesy touches - he's affectionately sending up the often-clumsy work by the amateur film-makers such as 'Mr X', with his cutesy animated 'chapter headings' and bouncy score. But whatever else their faults, Mr X and company were forced, due to the length of 8mm reels, into brevity: at feature length, Riahi's movie overstays its welcome by a good half-hour. And he never convinces us that his 'quest' is being pursued for its own merits, rather than because it might provide quirky material for an opportunistic documentary-maker.
    To fill out feature length, Riahi might have been better off subject-hopping with rather more speed and urgency: from Mr X to the club to Spindler... and then further, proceeding on an anything-goes, map-less journey into untapped areas of uncharted oddness. As it is, we get rather too much of the club and of Spindler, especially the latter's grumbling about the judges' decisions. Even from their brisk analysis of Souvenirs, however, it's clear that this panel's judgement isn't to be dismissed lightly - and Riahi will hopefully have the sense to pay more heed than his elderly, stick-in-the-mud new pal...

Mispal Attila's Paths of Light [4?/10]
    Further proof that it's nigh-on impossible to make an interesting movie set in the vapid world of high fashion, Paths of Light is a clunkily 'stylish' but half-baked drama about a coke-sniffing, volatile model in Budapest. Named Csilla, she's played in suitably haughty style by leggy brunette Anna Maria Cseh - who in real life was apparently "the face of Thierry Mugler's perfume 'Angel'." Cseh's froideur is impenetrable: even when she accidentally sets fire to her lengthy train during a catwalk prowl, she gets away with it by barely battling a well-maintained eyelash.
    This makes her a less than engaging protagonist, of course, and it doesn't help that writer-director Mispal (who co-wrote the script with Ernese Babette Solti and the late Sandor Tar) opts for the kind of gimmicky dual-timeframe structure that's seemingly in vogue (!) among contemporary Hungarian film-makers, viz. Who the Hell's Bonnie and Clyde.
    We see Csilla traumatised in hospital, injured and disfigured after some unspecified accident/incident, intercut with scenes leading up to the crucial event in which she struggles to keep body and soul together.  In the latter sequences, Csilla is stalked/aided by a taciturn older man who's clearly meant to be some kind of 'guardian angel' figure. Perhaps the two have some mysterious connection?
    Well, perhaps and perhaps not. But there isn't enough going on here - in terms of direction, acting, editing, cinematography, writing or score - to make us especially bothered one way or the other. Indeed, viewers may be forgiven if they feel themselves being lapped over by waves of Csilla's jaded ennui. C S Leigh's Process shows how this kind of stuff can and should be done - but in Mispal's hands, it's just so frightfully last year...

Neil Young
8th January, 2006


BASED ON A TRUE STORY : [6/10] : Netherlands 2005 : Walter STOKMAN : 75 mins (timed) : film festivals include London and Berlin.

THE SOUVENIRS OF MR X : [5/10] : Die souvenirs des Herrn X : Austria (Aus/Ger) 2004 : Arash T. RIAHI : 99 mins (timed) : film festivals include Karlovy Vary and Tribeca.

PATHS OF LIGHT : [4?/10] : A Feny osvenyei : Hungary 2005 : MISPAL Attila : 89 mins (unverified) : recent film festivals include Lodz and 'Hungarian Film Week' (Budapest).

All seen on at home in Sunderland (UK), 7th January 2006.
Based on a True Story on DVD (with thanks to Sydney Neter)
The Souvenirs of Mr X on DVD (with thanks to Arash T Riahi)
Paths of Light on VHS [watched 30 mins] (with thanks to Katalin Vajda)


other 'Festival Fare' coverage includes:
part 1 : Working Man's Death, Mutual Appreciation, What Iva Recorded...
part 2 : Buzz, Go For Zucker!
part 3 : People of Saladillo, The Hours Go By, Is It Really So Strange?
part 4 : The Wind Blows Round, The Day Bobby Ewing Died
part 5 : Black Brush, Drum Bun, The City of the Sun
part 6 : Lost, How To Eat Your Watermelon...., Going Through Splat
part 7 : Comets, Reel Paradise, Fallen