| for Tribune : Tallinn report / 'Ghosts' |
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| Wednesday, 03 January 2007 | |
The following two articles were written for the next issue of Tribune magazine... BALTIC EXCHANGES : an exclusive report from the Tallinn Film Festival, Estonia Over the course of its ten renewals, Estonia's Tallinn Film Festival - officially known as the "Black Nights Tallinn Film Festival" - has quickly developed into the Baltic States' major annual cinema-related event. It should be remembered, however, that the region's only other movie-jamboree of similar size - the "Arsenals" festival in Latvian capital Riga - only takes place every other year. And while Andrei Tarkovsky filmed much of his 1979 classic Stalker in Tallinn's grimmer suburbs, little Estonia is a country which has seldom attracted the attention of the world's cineastes since regaining independence in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Directors such as Arvo Iho and Peeter Simm are, so far, "prophets" with honour only in their own country - and it's a matter of some national annoyance that what remains by far Estonia's best-known film is the tart, noirish thriller Darkness In Tallinn: an international co-production mainly made by Finns. Helsinki lies less than an hour via jetfoil over the water from Tallinn, of course, and - with the two nations sharing broadly similar languages - Finland and Estonia have had close ties stretching back through Soviet times and beyond. So it's perhaps fitting that one of the major finds of the 10th Tallinn Film Festival should be a Finnish title: Aki Louhimies' razor-sharp comedy-drama Man Exposed, in which a hard-rocking young priest finds himself rising up the ecclesiastical job-ladder with dizzying speed. His ambitions encouraged by his wife (who also happens to be a cleric), our hero finds that professional success comes at a hefty personal price - and thus the film has a relevance and topicality far beyond the narrow strictures of the cloth. Samuli Edelmann rightly carried off the festival's Best Actor prize for his skilfully nuanced performance in the central role: Man Exposed managed the rare feat of dazzling the critics, jury and public (it finished a very close joint-third in the audience award), and looks set to cement Louhimies' status as Finland's great hope to at least partially emulate the international success of Aki Kaurismaki. With Ingmar Bergman now seemingly having retired for good, Kaurismaki has only one real rival for the title of the Nordic countries' leading auteur: Danish prankster-extraordinaire Lars Von Trier (and is it merely coincidence that neither are, strictly-speaking, Scandinavians?) Von Trier's latest provocation proved one of the big popular hits in Tallinn: this success perhaps unsurprising, as The Boss of It All turns out to be Von Trier's loosest, most accessible, most unpretentious films in years - perhaps ever. An agreeably daft workplace comedy not a million miles away from The Office, it's about a devious - though superficially pleasant - chief executive who hates to make tough decisions, so creates a fictional company-boss persona behind which to hide. Trouble is, when the company is put up for sale, "the boss of it all" must appear to sign the relevant documents. The real boss thus hires an actor to play the "part", but this turns out to be an ill-advised move when the chosen thespian quickly reveals himself as a mass of neuroses, pretentious acting theories and method histrionics. Intermittently hilarious and never less than drolly engaging, The Boss of It All isn't entirely free of Von Trier's trademark gimmickry - it was supposedly shot using a form of computerised cinematography known as 'Automavision," resulting in jerky editing and some off-kilter framing - but works just fine as a breezy, satirical comedy with an intriguingly serious and topical subtext. Rather less palatable - but more audaciously bracing - fare was provided by Paolo Sorrentino's The Family Friend, which attracted a dizzyingly wide range of responses when it premiered at Cannes back in May. The editor of one major, respected film magazine was so offended by the film that he forbade all mention of it within his pages other than the most fleeting of dismissals. And this tale of a scabrously Machiavellian small-town loan-shark is such a dark, misanthropic affair that it emphatically won't be to all tastes. That said, such is Sorrentino's striking mastery of sound and vision that, even when we're repelled by the antics of his characters, we're utterly enthralled by the experience of observing them. His astonishing talent (glimpses of which were evident in his last release, chilly chamber-piece The Consequences of Love) is evident from the opening titles: slow-motion images scored, Paul Thomas Anderson style, to Antony & the Johnson's powerfully haunting track 'My Lady Story.' And Sorrentino also deserves praise for crafting such a once-in-a-lifetime Shakespearean showcase for veteran stage-actor Giacomo Rizzo as the scuttling loan-shark, who looks rather like a stunted, near-deformed cousin of legendary underworld author Charles Bukowski. The film opens in the UK and February, and demands the attention of anyone keen to see what a bold young talent (Sorrentino is scarcely 30) can currently do with the cinematic medium. Coming out around the same time is Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Climates, the follow-up to his justifiably much-admired Uzak from 2004. Ceylan now casts himself in the lead role of a lovelorn fortysomething academic drifting in and out of a relationship with a journalist (played by Ceylan's own wife Ebru). But whereas Uzak (aka Distant) was the brilliantly poised work of a potential master, Climates bogs down into over-familiar arthouse-cinema posturings, with dislikeable characters alternating between moody silences and supposedly lacerating arguments. There's always a market for this kind of overwrought fare, of course - which is a pity, when our screens would be much better served playing host to the likes of David Marques's little gem Isolated, a no-budget three-hander about young blokes hanging out in and around a Mediterranean villa. This low-key, unashamedly talky, freewheelingly comic picture has charmed its way around the film-festival circuit for the past year or so without ever really attracting much in the way of headlines: a shame, as this is just the kind of offbeat, economic, beautifully-crafted little enterprise which film-festivals are supposed to bring to wider attention. One to catch on DVD in a little while then or, if you're very lucky, on a cinema screen somewhere near you. Neil Young ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ghosts UK 2006 Starring : Ai Qin Lin, Zhan Yu Director : Nick Broomfield UK release : 12th January, 2007 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TOILING for minuscule pay in the fields surrounding her home in the Chinese province of Fujian, Ai Qin (Ai Qin Lin) struggles to feed her infant son Bebe. Increasingly desperate, she hears of a way to make what for her seems like very big money: leave her family behind, make a long, hazardous trip to Europe, and find work in Britain as an "illegal." Arriving some months later in the UK, she finds herself under the supervision of the gruffly amiable Mr Lin (scenestealer Zhan Yu) - whose position is that which British audiences have come to know by the epithet 'gangmaster.' This term entered common currency with terrible speed in 2004, when 23 Chinese cockle-pickers were drowned by the rapidly-rising tides of Morecambe Bay. And Ghosts is a lightly fictionalised, mildly-dramatised account of the events leading up to that particular tragedy - an event which revealed that there were many thousands of illegal workers in the UK with minimal protection and even more minimal pay. It's what esteemed documentarian Broomfield has called "a modern form of slavery," and there's no mistaking the outraged indignation which has motivated him to make a film (his first 'narrative' feature since 1989's ill-fated Diamond Skulls) on this sadly-topical subject. Broomfield's approach is intimate, direct, largely no-nonsense - though he does throw in some occasional directorial "flourishes" (mildly distorted fish-eye lens in one scene; speeded-up camerawork in another) which feel incongruous and ill-advised. The film works best when it eschews such tricks, most notably during the harrowing climax at Morecambe Bay. By this stage we're very much in the shoes of Ai Qin and co, helpless victims of political and economic systems far beyond their control or understanding. But for all its merits, Ghosts seldom surprises us, or shows us anything we didn't already know or suspect - either about the specifics of the cocklepicking incident, or about the wider issues. While an engaging watch, it has the feel of a project mucg better suited to the small screen than the large: indeed, the picture was funded by Channel 4, where it will presumably play soon after obtaining publicity via brief arthouse exposure. Neil Young original review from London Film Festival is available here
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