KINO OTOK III : Izola Film Festival, Slovenia
reviews by Neil Young (titles as given in official catalogue)

PART ONE
Who Is Bozo Texino? (9/10) / Picture of Light (5/10) / Cycling Chronicle (7/10) / Monoblock (4?/10) / Full or Empty (6/10)

PART TWO
Longing (6/10) / Bab'Aziz (6/10) / Worldly Desires (7/10) / The Immortal (6/10)

PART THREE (below)
Live-in Maid (7/10)
Grbavica (6/10)   [UK release title : Esma's Secret]
Delicate Crime (4?/10)
A Short Film About the Indio Nacional, or The Prolonged Suffering of Filipinos (6?/10)

OVERVIEW for TRIBUNE magazine

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seen Tuesday 30th May at Kino Culturni Dom (Izola, Slovenia)


LIVE-IN MAID [7/10]
   Engagingly dry comedy is eked out of fundamentally sad - perhaps even tragic - circumstances in Live-in Maid, the latest of the long line of films to examine Argentina's early-nineties economic woes. This financial catastrophe (see also Nine Queens, Lost Embrace, etc etc) is the backdrop for a keenly-observed, sensitively-acted character study of two (ostensibly) very different women who have developed a semi-symbiotic relationship over the course of three decades.
   It's late autumn 2001, and well-heeled, sixtyish businesswoman Beatrice - aka Bebe (Latin American screen-legend Norma Aleandro) - finds herself short of money for the first time in her life. This has a direct effect on the economic fortunes of her faithful live-in housekeeper Dora (movie newcomer Norma Argentina), who's been employed by the family for 28 years. Dora reluctantly tenders her resignation - but the pair rapidly realise that the bonds that have developed between them are not so easily severed...
   Like the recent Argentinian/Uruguayan co-production Whisky, Live-In Maid (the Spanish-language title translates as 'Bed Inside,' a phrase which takes on wry resonance in the final shot) is a tale of brittle, proud people well into middle-age who must dealing with uncomfortably changing circumstances - told as much by gestures, looks, silences and omissions as it is via dialogue.
   Employing hand-held camerawork, director Jorge Gaggero's no-nonsense style basically allows his two stars to get on with things - a wise choice, as both actresses convincingly inhabit their roles so that we fully believe they've spent so many years in (carefully delineated) domestic proximity.

GRBAVICA [6/10]     UK release title : Esma's Secret
   Winner of the Golden Bear at this year's Berlin Film Festival, Grbavica examines the painful recent history of the former Yugoslavia in solid - if unremarkable - style. It's the story of a fortyish mother and her teenage daughter in Sarajevo, and the terrible secret which the former has always withheld from the latter. It's withheld from the audience also until very late in the day, though there are plenty of hints and clues along the way - one could take offence at such a serious subject being dealt with in such a fashion, with everything building up to and hinging on the moment when the daughter demands to be told the truth.
   That she does so while wielding a loaded gun (rather handily confiscated from her on-off boyfriend) is also a melodramatic step too far, but writer-director Jasmila Zbanic deserves credit for making both main characters far from entirely sympathetic, and for taking us through the key moments in the development of their relationship without undue verbiage or sentimentality. Indeed, as with the mother's relationship with a sympathetic gangster/bouncer sort, perhaps Zbanic goes a touch too far in the direction of economy, her brisk no-nonsense approach leaving us with the impression that a couple of extra scenes wouldn't have gone amiss. 

DELICATE CRIME [4?/10] - walkout after approx 60 mins
   A razor-tongued theatre critic finds himself propelled by amour fou into an full-blown mid-life existential crisis in Delicate Crime, an offputtingly arch and talky psychological drama from Brazil. The screenplay's structure is audacious and (initially) arresting: we see scenes from the plays which the critic is critiquing, then see him crafting his articles (it's handy that this involves reading the pieces aloud), then see episodes from his tortuous private life.
   He comes unstuck when he develops an infatuation with a one-legged, vampish young woman who is also the muse of a highly-rated painter: after a heated exchange at the (barely-glimpsed) painter's atelier, the critic forces his attentions on the model. But is this, as she alleges, an incident of rape - or something rather more complex?
   Reality, representation, artifice and art blur into each other in the clunkiest of ways throughout Delicate Crime, and unless the viewer is clued up on the various dramatists whose work is "sampled" they may find themselves as bewildered as the egomaniacal critic. The fact that the latter protagonist is a verbose egotist scarcely helps matters, and isn't long before the whiff of pretension quickly becomes a stench.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT THE INDIO NACIONAL, OR THE PROLONGED SUFFERING OF FILIPINOS  [6?/10]
   Structural originality, technical mastery and formal innovation (or rather re-novation) compensate - just about - for the dramatic inertia which afflicts the somewhat misleadingly-titled Short Film About the Indio Nacional (perhaps writer-director Raya Martin has in mind the extreme running lengths of his compatriot Lav Diaz's features). From the title on, a knowledge of Philipine society, ethnography, politics and history is a major boost to understanding what's going on - as is the patience to bear with Martin's penchant for protracted takes.
   This fondness is apparent from the prologue, filmed on video and with synch sound, in which a young woman in what looks (and sounds) like a jungle tent struuggles with insomnia. An older man sleeping alongside her in the tent (father? husband? other) is eventually roused and he tells her a rambling, fable-like story which quickly brings him to tears.
   It's only at the conclusion of this tale the film proper (finally) begins - told in the style of a 1920s silent movie, complete with (beautifully calligraphed) intertitles which describe the "action" in rather exhaustive detail. This, the main substance of Martin's Film, is a fragmentary chronicle of village life focussing on an orphaned bellringer. Moments of magic abound, even if the cumulative effect is gnawingly soporific.