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Princess Raccoon; 17th October 1961 [Nuit Noir...]; Ski Jumping Pairs; Song of Songs;
A Summer Day
PRINCESS RACCOON [5?/10]
Rotterdam walkout report
I bailed out of Princess Raccoon at halfway - which meant easing my way past several patrons who were clearly loving every minute of this deliberately rickety and artifical-looking opera/pantomime/fairytale romance set during an indeterminate point in Japanese history (Christian iconography abounds; Portuguese courtiers are present). Zhang Ziyi stars as 'Princess Tanuki', some kind of forest-spirit who falls in love with a human prince. Along the way, tireless octogenarian Suzuki (previously responsible for 2001's Pistol Opera, and best known for sixties cult-classics Branded To Kill and Tokyo Drifter) tries out various different types of musical number - including a very leaden form of rap 'duet'.
Though more consistent than Kudo Kankuro's Yaji & Kita (also showing at IFFR 06) Princess Raccoon boasts rather fewer moments of genuine hilarity, imagination invention - both films falling some way short of Miike Takashi's The Great Yokai War in terms of coherence, energy and accessibility. The way Urasawa Yoshio's script delves into his nation's past and folklore may make non-aficionados yearn for explanatory footnotes, as the subtitles ("Yakuemon of crackle-snap forest," etc) aren't much help: indeed, I could see why a fellow critic reckoned the picture makes more sense if the viewer actually disregards the subtitles altogether. Part of the joy of cinema is encountering different, exotic ideas and stories - but this was an instance where the 'cultural divide' had become an insurmountably high hurdle to negotiate.
Octogenarian Suzuki is seemingly aiming for a sensual, non-rational, plotless kind of cinematic experience. Fair enough: but to achieve this he opts for a forced, whimsical jollity - a strained, rib-poking whimsy that's passable on a moment-to-moment basis but seems threadbare stretched to feature length. Colourful but frustratingly inert, opulent but tacky-looking, Princess Raccoon is a conglomeration of 'bits': some inspired, some bafflingly clunky. All in all, from what I saw, probably not a bad film, as such. But I felt confident that I could put the second hour to better use: food, sunlight, walking, beer...
17TH OCTOBER, 1961 [5?/10] Nuit noir, 17 Octobre 1961
Rotterdam walkout report
Though unheralded beforehand, the film advertised as Nuit noir, 17 Octobre 1961 led the IFFR '06 audience-award voting for several days - ultimately finishing runner-up behind Eden. On screen the title is simply 17 Octobre 1961: based on a script by Patrick Rotman, Francois-Olivier Rousseau and director Tasma, this is a Bloody Sunday-style, looslely fictionalised dramatisation of events during one night in Paris 44 years ago when dozens of Algerians were killed by the French police. The film traces the lead-up to this atrocity, showing how the police's strongarm tactics were responsible for radicalising the immigrants thus (a topical comment, this) "driving them into the arms of the FLN [Algerian independence movement]."
The events of October 1961 forms a crucial element in the backstory of Michael Haneke's Cache - and the Haneke-tribute strand at Rotterdam '06 is presumably how 17 Octobre came to be in the schedules. From what I saw (half an hour) there's little to justify inclusion on artistic grounds: very conventional TV-drama fare, shot on video, and featuring an intrusive, unsubtle thrillerish score and a rather lax attention to period detail. As is usual in small-screen dramas, we're shown the home-lives of one sympathetic individual on each side - including one of the very few 'good cops' on view (the majority being violent, fascistic 'pigs').
This bon flic (Thierry Fortineau) has recently become a father, and announces to his wife that he is going to resign. This means working out a three-month period of notice which (da-da-daaaaa) includes the fatal date of October 17th. Only the most inattentive or inexperienced viewer will be unable to 'join the dots' after this particular piece of information is doled out. The 1961 massacre is clearly a subject that deserves exposure, which it now seems to be obtaining thanks to Cache's widespread success. But, Tasma's film felt out of place at a film-festival supposedly showcasing the cutting edge of cinema - though the Rotterdam public, of course, clearly begged to differ...
SKI JUMPING PAIRS [5/10] Ski Jumping Pairs - Road to Torino 2006
There's a sparkling 30-35 minute extended short lurking within Ski Jumping Pairs, an intermittently chucklesome but ultimately slightly wearing faux-sporting-documentary feature (Peterka via Interkosmos, perhaps?) The cumbersomeness of the enterprise - and way in which writer-directors Mashima and Kobayashi strain for laughs - is indicated by the English translation of the film's subtitle as Road to Torino Olympigs 2006, that cutesy neologism 'Olympigs' (used throughout the film) presumably coined to avoid infringing IOC copyright (see also Johnnie To's Fulltime Killer for similar, though more amusing, litigation-phobic contortions.)
The reference to Torino '06 is misleading, because whereas most sports documentaries focus on individuals or teams preparing for a specific event, Ski Jumping Pairs is rather about the evolution of the event itself. In the end, we don't much care who wins the (fictional) Torino gold: the point is the discipline's recognition as a 'proper' sport, barely a decade after a crackpot Japanese scientist decided to make skis that could accommodate an extra person. While there are laughs in the early and middle stretches as the 'early days' are chronicled (to the accompaniment of suitably cheesy/bouncy muzak), the comic hit-rate isn't anywhere near the level of satires from, say, Christopher Guest: the appearance of characters named after Norman Bates and the Kaurismaeki (sic) brothers, for example, may elicit more groans than giggles.
Things do take off a little when we finally reach Turin/Torino - and though the directors' goofy humour doesn't ultimately fly very high or far, there are several inspired visual-gag moments (executed, for understandable reasons, via brazenly video-game-ish CGI) as the competitors pull off wildly elaborate and acrobatic moves ('Totem-pole,' 'Bermuda Triangle,' 'Titanic,' 'Jesus') to the delight of unseen sportscasters. One-joke stuff, of course, but Ski Jumping Pairs is executed with an eager-to-please puppyish amiability that means viewers may feel churlish for dwelling on its manifold shortcomings. A pity, then, that the preponderance of 'down-time' in between laughs unfortunately invites (and sometimes compels) them do do so. Bronze at best.
SONG OF SONGS [5/10]
"This family suffers," someone very accurately remarks near the end of Song of Songs, a solemn and sombre - some might say po-faced - tale of domestic dysfunction in north London's Jewish community. Writer-director Appignanesi's feature debut is impressively and ambitiously serious - but his melodramatic plot ultimately isn't sufficiently robust to carry the weight of his hefty ideas.
Ruth (Natalie Press) and her slightly-older brother David (Joel Chalfen). Ruth (Natalie Press) has just returned from an extended visit to Israel and appears to be devout in her Judaism; her slightly older brother, schoolteacher David (Joel Chalfen) left the faith years before ("it's like the punishments are more interesting than the rewards," he muses) and has been estranged from his sister and mother (Julia Swift) for a number of years. When the latter becomes seriously ill, she asks Ruth to bring David 'home'. After much negotiation, the hyper-articulate, ultra-critical, bitterly antagonistic David agrees - but sets his own, exacting terms...
Much of David's arch negativity infects Song of Songs, a dunnish affair whose visual obscurity makes even Lawrence Dunmore's tenebrous Libertine look overlit. There's something deliberately forbidding and off-putting about film's atmosphere - Appignanesi and cinematographer Nanu Segal's muted visual style naggingly recalling both the Dardenne brothers and Philippe Grandrieux's La vie nouvelle. Our alienation is heightened by the fact that the dialogue's Hebrew passages aren't subtitled - indeed, familiarity with Jewish culture and scripture (the 'heresy of Aher,' etc) is a definite plus, as Appignanesi's screenplay (co-written by Jay Basu) relies heavily on quotations, allusions, readings, lectures. Too heavily: for much of its length Song of Songs feels more like a thesis or intellectual exercise than a living, breathing story - and when those tamped-down emotions are unleashed in the second half, the effect feels more histrionic (violence) and meretricious (incest) than organic. By this stage, Ruth and David have formed an unhealthily intense closed circuit of their own - one which we're unable, and indeed unwilling, to penetrate.
A SUMMER DAY [7/10]
La vie de Jesus meets Plein soleil - or does it? - in A Summer Day, the blandly-titled but impressively intricate and thought-provoking feature debut by Guerin. The writer-director hails from the town of La Roche Sur Yon, capital of the Vendee departement which abuts the Bay of Biscay on France's western coast - but his film, while set and shot there, has a landlocked, claustrophobic air.
The focus is firmly on 17-year-old Sebastien (Baptiste Bertin, impressive), who lives and, now that school has finished, also works with his garage-mechanic father (Philippe Fretun), a widower. He's long been best friends with the cockily self-assured Mickael (Theo Frilet), who comes from a well-to-do family. The pair are intermittently pally with Francis (Brice Hillairet), keen-to-please son of the harrassed local mayor Maurice (Jean-Francois Stevenin). All three are clearly still in the transition between youth and adulthood - dealing with issues of identity and sexuality as they consider their futures. But when one of them dies - in what initially seems like a freak accident - the repercussions extend beyond the bereaved family, and into the community...
Guerin's script - co-written with Agnes Feuvre - skilfully plays with viewer expectations: the fatal accident/incident, to which we're alerted in the opening scene, comes much earlier than we anticipate. There are enough thriller-genre elements that, as the police investigation begins - and, this being a French film, local government comes under suspicion - we instinctively start looking for 'clues:' examining motive, opportunity, lines of possible cause and effect, manifestations of guilty conscience (and as we know from Hitchcock, mens rea can come from circumstances and thoughts as well as deeds.)
Anyone familiar with Plein soleil (or indeed The Talented Mr Ripley) may meanwhile recognise Dickie Greenleaf in golden-boy, sailing-crazy Mickael... so does this make Sebastien an ambitiously Machiavellian, social-climbing 'Ripley'? The way he quickly insinuates himself into Mickael's family - via his mother (Catherine Mouchet) points in this direction. Or is he some kind of 'avenger' (he's but pointedly framed beside a Batman Begins poster at one moment)? Or simply a mixed-up kid who, confronted with boundaries of 'proper' behaviour, can't resist probing and exceeding them (as in the troubling, fascinating final shot*)?
In the end, no conclusive answers are given - and this may frustrate some. But part of the pleasure of A Summer Day is that Guerin leaves so much to subjective interpretation. Information is parcelled out parsimoniously, but we've always plenty to chew on as the film's slowburning atmospherics - aided by the strong performances, plus Mathieu Pansard's camerawork and Sebastien Schuller's electic score - carry us along, even through a couple of brief but repetitive dream sequences. This apart, the film is executed with likeable, low-key skill, reminding us that, as the football coach remarks in the film's very first scene, "Good players don't need flashy gear." Though the two towns are very far apart, we're really quite close to Bailleul, setting for Bruno Dumont's ambiguity-charged chronicle of post-adolescent small-town passions, La vie de Jesus, whose title actively encouraged viewers to delve deep in search of subtext. A Summer Day, despite its less-alluring label, demands - and repays - similar scrutiny.
Neil Young
25th/26th February, 2005
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PRINCESS RACCOON [5?/10] : Operetta tanukigoten : Japan 2005 : SUZIKI Seijun (1923) : c113m feature (35mm)
partially seen (walkout at 60m) at Venster, 28.1.06 (press show; section Kings & Aces)
17TH OCTOBER, 1961 [5?/10] : Nuit noir, 17 octobre 1961 : France 2005 : Alain TASMA : c106m feature (video)
partially seen (walkout at 30m) at Cinerama, 1.2.06 (press show; section Time & Tide)
SKI JUMPING PAIRS [5/10] : Ski Jumping Pairs - Road to Torino Olympigs 2006 aka Ski Jumping Pairs - Road to Torino 2006 : Japan 2005 : RIICHIRO Mashima & KOBAYASHI Masaki : 81 (timed) feature (35mm)
seen at Cinerama, 1.2.06 (press show; section Time & Tide)
SONG OF SONGS [5/10] : UK 2005 : Josh APPIGNANESI : 82m (timed) feature (35mm)
seen at De Doelen, 28.1.06 (press show; section Tiger Awards Competition)
A SUMMER DAY [7/10] : Un jour d'ete : France 2006 : Franck GUERIN (1972) : 92m (timed) feature (35mm)
seen at De Doelen, 29.1.06 (press show; section Tiger Awards Competition)
More details on these titles - and all others shown at the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival - can be found at the IFFR official site
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A full alphabetical index of all films seen at IFFR 2006 can be found HERE
*
Getting too close
Is something to do
Fascinating pastime it is too
Leatherface, 'Fat, Earthy Flirt' (LP Minx, 1993)
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