seen Thursday 7th December:

CLIMATES
[5/10] : Iklilmer : Turkey 2006 : Nuri Bilge CEYLAN : 100m
A disappointingly tepid follow-up to his justifiably well-received 2002 international breaktrough Uzak, Climates sees director-writer-producer Ceylan also now stepping in front of the camera to take up leading-man duties. Such a move often leaves film-makers open to accusations of egotism and narcissism, and Ceylan doesn't quite do enough to get himself off the hook - the results ending up uncomfortably close to his pal Zeki Demirkubuz's similarly self-regarding Waiting Room.
   Ceylan gives himself no shortage of soulful close-ups in the tricky central role of Isa, a fortysomething academic who, as the film begins, is in the process of breaking up with his long-term partner (wife?) Bahar (Ceylan's own spouse, Ebru Ceylan). In double-quick time, the greyingly virile Isa (Ceylan looks a bit like a wirier version of Fred Ward) has found 'consolation` in the arms of his sometime girlfriend Serap (Nazan Kirimlis) - but as the weeks pass, he finds himself drawn back to the woman he realises is his one true love...
   As if casting himself as his film's randy protagonist didn't saddle him with enough of a problem, Ceylan is also asking for trouble by tackling such familiar thematic terrain. Marital discord has long been a favourite topic of arthouse directors, and anyone venturing down this particular route must find a way to ring new variations on the old  material. Ceylan doesn't really manage to pull that off either, resorting to long, wordless sequences in which either Isa or Bahar stare frowningly into the middle-distance, mutely wrestling with their emotional turmoil, often with the accompaniment of moaning wind or distant thunder on the soundtrack.
   As the title indicates, Ceylan's concern is with the turbulent emotional 'weather` experienced by mature people as they fall in and out of love (and back in again): with the added complication of what seems to be a rather mid-life crisis on Isa's part - he's struggling to complete his long-overdue thesis, is coming under gentle pressure from his mother to settle down and have children, etc etc.
   When in doubt, Ceylan has his characters contemplate the bruised, stormy skies that hang over their heads - and in the second half revisits something akin to the snowy wintriness which helped make Uzak so refreshing and distinctive. Second time around, however, Ceylan merely feels like he's recycling his own 'greatest hits.` And by the end of what feels like a rather long movie, we haven't really come to much care about any of the characters and their relationships, and instead may decide that Ceylan has taken perhaps a little too much notice of his Uzak reviews and has tried to come up with what he thinks critics, awards juries and film-festival programmers will fall for. The ticket-buying public, however, may prove much harder to win over this time.

THE FAMILY FRIEND
[7/10] : L'Amico di famiglia : Italy 2006 : Paolo SORRENTINO : 110m
Confirming the ample promise of 2004's The Consequences of Love, Sorrentino puts on a bravura directorial display with the bracingly misanthropic Family Friend - just a shame he isn't quite so startlingly accomplished on the scriptwriting front. This claustrophobic tale of Geremia (Giacomo Rizzo) an aged, scuttling, ferociously cynical small-town tailor-cum-moneylender, unfolds in episodic, disconcertingly uneven fashion - but the twisty plot is primarily an excuse for Sorrentino to show off his visual flair, his swooping camerawork, his eye for composition and his ear for a well-chosen soundtrack: the deployment of Antony & the Johnsons' soulful My Lady Story over the opening titles accurately signals that we're in very stylish hands indeed.
   The film is also a notably fine showcase for stage-veteran Rizzo, a rather Charles Bukowski-ish-looking chap who's effortlessly, sleazily convincing as the heartlessly scheming Geremia - 'the Gold-Hearted,` an epithet which is rather more ambiguous than it may first sound. Rizzo doesn`t quite manage to steal the whole picture, however: in what develops into a rather unlikely love-story, he must share the limelight with the shapely bride-to-be Rosalba (Laura Chiatti). Her patsy-like parents foolishly borrow money from loan-shark Geremia to fund the wedding, but Rosalba who isn't taken in for a millisecond by the old shyster`s genial demeanour. Though physically opposites, the pair soon recognise each other as soul-mates in their icy, manipulative cynicism - but for Geremia, mixing passion with business turns out to have very unfortunate consequences...
   While Sorrentino the writer gets himself into a bit of a knot with a final act of cross and double-cross, he's saved time and again by the eye-popping flourishes of Sorrentino the director: his brash brilliance may remind viewers of American directors of similar age such as Richard Kelly and Paul Thomas Anderson. Indeed, the whole film is a bit like the rapid-fire, show-offy prologue to Anderson's Magnolia - and it's more than gratifying to come across another serious-minded, progidiously talented director who doesn't automatically equate artistry with a slow pace, Sorrentino instead drawing his energy from his characters' innate, mephitic, irrepressibly lively foulness: a virtuouso of vice, if that isn't a contradiction in terms.

PINGPONG
[6/10] :  Germany 2006 : Matthias LUTHARDT : 89m
The severe dysfunction of an outwardly-successful bourgeois family is the subject-matter of Pingpong, a nicely-observed but somewhat overextended four-hander from Dutch-born, German-educated first-time director/co-writer Luthardt. His script, co-written with Meike Hauck, focuses on the sudden arrival of moody teen Stefan (Falk Rockstroh) at the comfortable, detached, suburban home of his uncle Paul (Sebastien Urzendowsky) and aunt Anna (Marion Mitterhammer), soon after the suicide of Stefan's father (stepfather?) Frank.
   The lad's appearance unsettles Paul and Anna's volatile son Robert (Clemens Berg), who's preparing for an all-important piano audition; the outsized family dog Schumann (Arko) proves rather more amenable to Stefan's sudden "intrusion." What then unfolds is a delicate kind of power-play, as Stefan struggles to contain his hormones - and a blossoming attraction towards Anna - while Paul is away for a couple of days due to work commitments, and Robert copes (or rather fails to cope) with parental pressures.
   Constantly hovering on the brink of black comedy, Pingpong instead develops into psychological drama concentrated on its three main characters. The threat of violence is seldom far away, as we move towards what's heavily signposted as a violent, perhaps even murderous finale. The predictability of the final act is perhaps the film's major demerit: Luthardt spends so long lingering on the repair of the family's sunken garden pool, so long on various shenanigans involving Schumann, that only the most dimwitted of viewers will fail to spot the calamitous (and, on reflection, somewhat implausible) denouement which brings garden-feature and pet together.
   By this stage we're messily enmeshed in the complex emotional currents running between Anna, Robert and Stefan: a rather histrionically overheated, closed-circuit motivated more by scriptwriting necessity than believably character-development. There's probably material here for a tense, taut, hour-long TV movie: as it is, longueurs set in well before the cathartic denouement, making for a well-acted film which shows distinct signs of promise, though perhaps still one or two rewrites off being the proper, satisfying deal.

Neil Young



nb : all timings are from film-festival catalogue.

Climates and The Family Friend seen at Kinomaja (press shows); Pingpong shown at Vene Teater ('Russian Theatre') (public show - complimentary ticket)