| ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL 2007 : belated, very rough briefing-notes |
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| Monday, 09 April 2007 | |
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first up... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE LAST WINTER USA/Iceland 2006 : Larry FESSENDEN : 101m : [6/10] Agreeably loopy, topical/opportunistic, claustrophobic, Arctic-set eco-thriller feels like an extended homage to John Carpenter: starts off as The Thing, goes a bit Prince of Darkness (and/or Ghosts of Mars), finally ends up In the Mouth of Madness. "Energy independence" is the mantra. Reassuringly gruff presence of Ron Perlman as representative of skeptical, scornful ("hand-wringing greenies") right wing: nefarious 'North Industries.' Camerawork is mobile, swoopy. Nina Simone on soundtrack. What is the true cost of oil? "Deep shit, man - put me straight to sleep!" Haunted outpost? Fessenden's fondness for subliminal-fast editing montages again evident (cf his Wendigo). Pivots on drilling-well sunk in April 1986. Arctic crows, angular bulky black against the whiteness. In search of "Tomorrow's Energy - Today!" Fessenden's fondness for rushing clouds, distorted closeups. Evidence of haunting accumulates. Mounting ominousness. Romantic complications intrude. Thawing permafrost yields long-dead "organic material". The erratic biosphere. Some kind of wind-born ghost? Much gong - but for how much dinner? Native-American woman on hand to dispense advice: "a familiar friend actin' strangely." The ghosts are from the oil (nice touch). Cabin fever starting to set in. Horror muzak proves counterproductive to mounting chills. So much gong, but can Fessenden deliver dinner? "There's something out there!" Good-looking film, shot on 35mm. Haunted-house in unusual setting. Volatilte character cracks up under pressure > flees nude into the subzero landscape ... possession? Some kind of dark, swooping thingy in the sky - picking them off? Group is isolated: "radio's dead." Paranoia - with the planet's fate hanging in the balance? "A dark spirit... sometimes called a Wendigo" (can't beat self-referential nods). "Atmosphere of abnormality" prevailing. Repetitive standoffs - Fessenden playing for time, constricted by budget? Hydrogen sulphide a "sour gas". Atmospherics skilfully maintained, but eventually push must come to shove. One by one, they succumb... Subliminal-flashy editing provides shock-jolts. Puts The Thing into ecological perspective (graphic visuals after a plane crash - Fessenden's cameo). Unseen terrors - on a low budget (cf Swedish variant The Unknown). Increasingly dire straits, boils down to LeGros and Perlman (cf Dreyfuss and Shaw from Jaws). Vengeance of Gaia! Fort Crow. Self-control of characters gives way in extremis situations - sensible earth-mother Native American woman exits. The horrors of whiteout (cf Moby-Dick). The local and its connection to the global. Scott of the Antarctic, succumbing to the whiteness. The hostility of the environment. A campfire borealis. Nature: indifferent, or actively malevolent? Body count rapidly mounts. The big reveal [spoiler!] : wind-spirit? Santa's (Satan's?) reindeer? A giant elk spirit? Plural? Communal loss-of-marbles after the climactic FX reveal. Ecopocalypse: now. seen 1st Feb at Cinerama (public show) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOW SCROLL DOWN FOR... American Combatant --- The Autumn (1974) --- Bog of Beasts --- Dog Days Dream --- Dong --- Kinshasa Palace --- M (2006) --- Manufactured Landscapes --- Nightmare Detective --- Strawberry Shortcakes --- Syndromes and a Century --- 12:08 East of Bucharest --- The Unpolished ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [longer/neater reviews will be posted if/when films obtain UK release, and will be findable by clicking on the highlighted title above] reviewed elsewhere on the site: A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints INLAND EMPIRE also online IFFR 2007 roundup essay for Tribune magazine AMERICAN COMBATANT USA 2006 : Charles LIBIN : 92m : [4/10] Would-be-artsy paranoid-conspiracy drama/thriller has ambitious structure and an engagingly bonkers tone, but is let down by a general shoddiness of approach and ends up coming across as off-puttingly opportunistic. Director/writer/star Libin takes scenes from one of his earlier projects - on this evidence a cheesy, (mostly) badly-acted, straight-to-video-style 80s low-budget actioner - and uses them as padding/backstory for a present-day tale of cover-up, collusion and subterfuge. Focus is on a mentally-unstable, dishevelled, mid-crackup, ex-CIA whistlebower desperate to reveal government perfidy. This whiskey-gulping former fed hires a student film-maker to follow him around with a video-camera, and the film consists of the resulting "footage", alternating with 'flashbacks' to a tense siege in a Manhattan apartment in 1987, the whole thing punctuated by some jagged, moodily-impressionistic 8mm interludes. American Combatant is mildly intriguing as a Limey-ish concept, stilted and awkward in its sloppily-edited execution. We get great long stretches of the (mostly laughable) 80s stuff when briefer glimpses would have sufficed; the increasingly-berserk plot features so many twists and turns it's almost impossible to follow (none of the chronology fits together); 9/11 connections, when finally revealed, come off as crassly exploitative in this context. John Zorn supposedly contributed the score, but his incongruously classy efforts are only discernible at the very end. Film isn't without its agreeably bizarre moments, but its two stylistic 'halves' never really come together or look like complementing each other - like its hero, it's an intriguing failure, but is emphatically a failure nonetheless. seen 30 Jan at Venster (press show) THE AUTUMN Osen aka Autumn : USSR 1974 : Andrei SMIRNOV : 93m : [5/10] Scenes from a breakup. It's October, a village in the middle of nowhere: a greeny-grey world of wood and leaves. Larisa (29, rueful, pale beauty) and Oleg (32, looks older, bespectacled, bearish/intellectual type) have been conducting a long-running affair which is now coming to an end; they escape into the countryside (train-ride) in bid to rescue their relationship. Film focusses on two couples: one holidaying from the city (Leningrad), one local: their hosts. Talk of adultery in calm surroundings of river and lakeside. Mists and mellowness: discontents emerge; love does not always equal happiness, they discover. Contrast is drawn between loving and "living in kindness". Passing of days is announced via intertitles ('Day 1', etc). Strings-heavy score emphasises lyrical aspects of potentially-bleak subject-matter. Nature is all around: birds, cat, dog. Amid the conversations, wordless stretches (nothing at all seems to be said on 'Day 4'). Sex-scene: camera moves to window and beyond - dogs in the rain (best scene in film - again, wordless). But chat soon drags proceedings down again: script can't quite get balance right between dialogue and wordlessness. Their attraction is primarily physical: an amour fou? But it can't be successfully verbalised/analysed - indeed, is actually rather dull to hear about. The local couple: not so much talk, they're all about fertility and pregnancy. Fluid movements of the camerawork is a plus - when static, framing/composition is less effective. Even slow zooms work well. Performances from central pair just a touch mannered, theatrical (emphasised by the talkiness.) Unexpectedly bustling scene in village hostelry is a welcome relief: by now we realise that this twosome aren't such enthralling company. Extended single shot in the 'pub' feels like a poem on the Russian people (angelic-sounding choir on soundtrack adds to the mood). The week ends with the first snow of winter ('Day 8 - the Last One') - the turn of the seasons. Back to Leningrad, a coda: roofs of the city. Score finally turns jazzy-loud, a nice touch. Overall: easy to admire, but ultimately somewhat inconsequential and underwhelming. seen 2nd Feb at Lantaren (public show) BOG OF BEASTS Baixio das bestas : Brazil 2006 : Claudio ASSIS : 82m : [6/10] Aggressively confrontational depiction of (rural) life as hell - director defies audience to look away / walk out. "So much immorality and filth in the world." TV as idiot-box in corner of room. Countryside (not far from Recife) is setting for intersection of characters. Serious tone, classy camerawork. "Hey pissers! I've found the minge eaters!" - so announces the satyr-like, debauched/depraved local Lord of Misrule. Porn footage glimpsed as local lads congregate to drink in abandoned cinema. Petrobras filling station is seen (Petrobras is one of the film's funding-bodies). Pubescent teen put on display by savagely brutal grandfather/father (result of incest, of course). Digging a cesspool: stench is the "rottenness of the world." 16-year-old virgin in peril. "Come on, slags!" roars the scruffy Lord of Misrule, bad-influence Everardo (played with sleazy over-articulate relish by City of God's M.Nachtergaele). "I want arse! I want arse! Where's the butter?!" Prostitutes are exploited, downtrodden (literally, as anti-hero seeks satisfaction through arbitrary violence.) Editing explicitly parallels exploitation of the prostitutes with that of local sugar-cane workers. Their stoic silence as they're driven to work. Remnants of innocence remain amid the rampant corruption and evil (the latter's noisy avatars a bunch of spoiled/indulged young men). Insects are trapped in a large glass jar: metaphors abound. Air of impending cataclysm. Ranting, crazy old misanthrope: "This is the monoculture of cock and cunt!" Drunken, violent boors on the rampage, explicitly identified with the landowning class ("The poor don't die easy... Poverty is like cancer!") Anti-hero Everardo confides in the audience, breaking the fourth wall: "In the cinema, you can do whatever you like"; blows smoke into camera-lens (i.e., our faces). Shoves his grimy hand up a prostitute, sniffs it: "My God! It's so hot." Camera observes with a haughty detachment; compositions and transitions show flair. Everardo is clearly a nutcase, but is articulate, book-reader (trainee for Pasolini's Salo?) In search of shock and extremity: Brazilian Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, complete with gruelling climactic rape-with-wooden-stave (presented in 'tasteful' shadowshow). Positive aspects of modern Brazil are thin on ground, but include Recife dance-troupe glimpsed from time to time. Explicitly post-industrial: events unfold in shadow of abandoned sugar-mill. Film-makers' attitude to characters and their behaviour is somewhat ambiguous, but clearly crucial. Nocturnal cesspool-digging. Debauchery. A field on fire becomes a vision of hell. Drunken nihilism in control. Human relations are based on exploitation and insult, though the atmosphere is surprisingly party-like. seen 3rd Feb at Pathe (public show) DOG DAYS DREAM Hayabusa : Japan 2006 : ICHII Masahide : 73m : [7/10] Summer heat: young couple in cramped bungalow-style house. Head in fridge to cool off. He's spoilt : opening scene shows girlfriend brushing his teeth while he lies in bed. Shades of The Soup, One Morning. Slightly oddball couple. He wears white Y-fronts, has a slightly zombified air. Her drudgery. Existential quest... for air-conditioning! Guitar score is a plus. Quirky, detached, drollery is order of the day. She's houseproud (cleans mat by putting sellotape on fingers). Nice eye for unusual locations (they find top-class air-conditioning in deserted library.) His job: collecting paper for recycling. Tone appeals. Japanese generation of 'Free-Timers'. Subtitles appear all over the screen (nice touch). He's afflicted by lazyitis. Unobtrusive digital-video framing intrigues. Once again, he's woken up with teeth-brushing: workshy youth, Japan 2006. But the wife also has her slackerish moments. Plastic wedding-ring. Pachinko booths. The more slobby he gets, the more she waits on him - hand, foot and finger. He quits job, announces "Just holding those heavy things makes me want to die." Peak of drollery comes in scene at Korean restaurant where wife works: wolfs down raw meat to make a wry point after fall-out with boss. She's sacked - couple now cash-strapped. The "worm" turns: she beats him with frying-pan. Increasingly comic: momentum building. Spartan flat, dents in wall. Nimble handling of transitions between internal and external material. Could be interpreted as making light of domestic violence/abuse, but executed with sufficiently light touch to avoid causing offence. Crackup: she gives up the ghost. Flat rapidly descends into squalor. She withdraws; he's forced into activity. "She's telling me to work under this recession... There's no point!" Squalor deepens. Hobo to hero: "Your misery's contagious!" Bloke resolves to get his woman the air-conditioner they both dream about. Fate's twists. Cyclical, repetitions. Daftness of their demented behaviour. Strong finale wraps it up in economic running-time. Song over end-credits is only partially translated, but we get the gist: cracked romance, "I will be a falcon..." seen 30th Jan at Venster (press show) DONG aka East : China 2006 : JIA Zhang-Ke : 66m : [6/10] Hills of rubble, mountains beyond. The presence of water. Dogs bark, boats pass. It's a documentary, but the presence of the camera is never acknowledged. Semi-"staged" scenes - or recreated for the benefit of the camera? Scenes are staged by painter Dong, and also by film-maker Jia. Three Gorges: nature is modified. "From a great distance..." "Control is not a problem..." "Strict limits of form..." "I let my body go with the flow..." "Vitality of life, even within a tragic environment..." The artist at work: physical grace and movement within space. He takes up martial arts to defend himself - because of his mistrust of China's flawed legal systems. Physicality of Dong and his subjects is emphasised at every stage. Artist at work: East Asian parallel to The Quince Tree Sun? Amid the horns of demolition: creation is taking place. We see the micro, the macro and the wider political picture: an alignment of artistic prisms. A corpse is carried out (the workers wear hard hats, soft shoes). Jia's stately approach. Participants seem conscious in front of camera. Artist at work: stages in the creative process. Ruminative, reflective... at a ferry, a white car is left behind when the boat pulls away. A dog is seen. Verdant, underpopulated surroundings. "How dangerous!" / "What's dangerous about it?" This Dong is clearly no mere 'appendage' to Jia's Still Life (the two are companion-pieces). Not all of the dialogue is subtitled - why? Unsubtitled hubbub when Dong visits the family of the deceased worker; nobody acknowledges the camera. We see his work: big, multipanel canvases. Second half: Thailand. Most of the Thai talk is unsubtitled: why? "I can only comprehend the human face." Thai subject-matter is indoor: female models. More of a torpid feel here. Artist as subject. Much less dialogue subtitled in this second half: why? Bangkok travelogue, February 2006. Focus drifts; indoor canvases; folk asleep in the studio. Dong's preference is for work which is "incomplete or slightly ruined in appearance." But how does this fit with Jia's two mismatched "halves"? From the Three Gorges to Thailand: why? Faces and scenes. The work is all. "A certain feel" is sought. Historial perspective is crucial. Physicality is the continued preoccupation. Jia's appealing nosiness: follows one of the models around after she exits the studio (even she doesn't acknowledge the presence of the camera) in an extended shot. Flooding of Three Gorges is glimpsed on Thai TV. Focus shifts from Dong to his model. Bangkok dialogue is largely unsubtitled: why? These are "relatively peaceful times." Painting is, according to Dong, "more trouble than down-to-earth jobs" - a thing of pain and frustration. "No restraints, no parameters, no standard criterion." Jia seems to take this as an excuse to serve up a selection of stuff. Dong's Gauguinish canvases are examined. The idea that art can effect change is, according to Dong, "laughable." Final scene: accompanies Dong through crowded market. Camera is acknowledged by passers-by, some of whom hide their faces to avoid being filmed. A blind beggar/troubadour sings as he walks through the market. We follow him, but his song is not translated. Why? seen 3rd Feb at Pathe (public show) KINSHASA PALACE Congo/France 2006 : Zeka LAPLAINE : 73m : [6/10] Narrator (coyly never quite fully visible): in the shadow of his father, in the shadow of Mobutu. Family history traced from the 1960s > 1970s > 2000s. In search of the enigmatic 'Max': disappearance of narrator's brother: "A mystery that maybe wasn't one." Mix of fiction and documentary (and the blurry line keeps shifting as we listen/watch). The trail runs via Lisbon, Paris and Kinshasa. The father is interviewed, his face dark, the buildings behind him brightly visible through the picture-window of his apartment (shades and shadows of Colossal Youth?) Film-as-family-therapy: vague air of home video, except with professional-style music and voiceover. The father's ongoing disgruntlement. How Zaire became Congo. "A small problem with Mobutu." Personal and political history intertwine (cf Tarkovsky's Mirror). The speaker's face is continually, coyly withheld from us. Family ruptures; the return to Congo. Narrator hasn't spoken to his father in 15 years, his mother in 20. Europe: solitary existence; Africa: communal. We hear both sides when phone conversations take place - how? Atmosphere of Kinshasa life is pungently evoked: contrast between European and African ways: the two perspectives on events. The narrator is the investigator, in search of the missing brother Max (the narrator is defined by Max's absence), in the web of an extended, mixed-race family. Very handy that so much of the past has been filmed (cf Capturing the Friedmans). Family ties, we realise, proved too constricting for Max and led to his departure. Importance to narrator of keeping track of his family: kino-therapie. The many deaths during the French heatwave: "old, abandoned" people dying alone. Tearful memories. Rather a lot of family history nimbly packed into these 73 minutes. Max, like his country, "born" in 1959/1960: independence and freedom. Washing dirty linen in public? Or catharsis? "Abandoning a child isn't right." The Kinshasa Palace is (very casually) revealed as the name of an old cinema. Narrator's face almost visible. Brussels reunion: ruminative traveller. Juddering video-images - but who's filming? Documentary, but to what extent staged for the camera? ... Mysteries of cinema / mysteries of family. seen 1st Feb at Venster (press show) M Japan 2006 : HIROKI Ryuichi : 110m : [6/10] Double-life of demure housewife. Saoko ('Satoko'?): a male fantasy? Infidelity... hidden camera... explicit online photographs... 50,000 Yen. Parallel story: Minoru - infatuated (patsy?) Noirish, solid, explores psychological subtexts: discontents of Japan's affluent middle classes. Internet a pernicious presence. Prostitution : shades of Belle de Jour (Saoko seeks 'work' while child is at school). News-deliverer Minoru's violent tendencies become apparent: is this going to be The paperboy always rings twice? 'M' = Masochism? Minoru? Murder? All three. Motivations aren't financial (characters merely in search of 'spending-money'). Saoko refers to her husband as 'Papa'. Noir fatalism (as indicated by opening voice-over informing us that we're seeing a tale of murder). Adult material. Her degradations. Violent gangster-pimp disapproves of small-time private entrepreneur. Script plays tricks with the timeline. Saoko is repeatedly roughed-up / brutalised / traumatised. Focus is on her Masochoism. Her flashback: greentinted childhood memories of key, traumatic event. Neo-noir is the goal - smacks of Fraudy, Freudy noir... multiple murders. Rather a lot of coincidences as the plot unfolds into a moral/noirish fable, though approach is generally realistic. The husband fades out of events, somewhat. Moral drift of Japanese society (a history of violence). Abrupt shift into Clockwork Orange territory: young louts in garish masks, with rape/murder in mind. Why would a restaurateur let in such a masked gang? Minoru's slide into perdition... Misogynistic titillation? But the sexual violence shown is clearly not supposed to be a good thing. Saoko and Minoru's downward spirals fatally intersect. Pic is suitably hard going. "I killed my mother yesterday" (scene presented as if a delusion, but it's apparently real.) Saoko keeps calling her lovers "Daddy" etc. Atmosphere is simultaneously cool and steamy. The travails of our heroine, in protracted scenes (executed with something of a Lars Von Trier relish?) Her desire to restage the crucial, "primal" scene. Nebulous backstory, again featuring multiple murders - hard to keep track of it all. Freudians will have a field-day analysing her motivations, but plot becomes increasingly schematic in its fatalism. Tough, explicit material just falls short of porn. "A woman in tribulation," indeed. seen 31st Jan at Cinerama (press show) MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES Canada 2006 : Jennifer BAICHWAL : 83m : [6/10] Bravura opening: eight-minutes-long tracking shot through factory, in which camera's (lateral) angle changes to observe the workers - who peer inquisitively into the lens as it passes. A world of work: horizontal and vertical lines. But what's being made? Voiceover comes in, as if for a natural-history documentary on TV: "the new landscape... industrial landscape as a way of defining who we are... This big machine that started rolling" - industry! As the minutes click by, we ponder the intricate choreography of this shot: how was a way cleared for the camera equipment? Was it moving on tracks? Artist at work: photographer Burtynsky. Artist at work: film-maker Baichwal (cf Jia's Dong). Burtynsky is interested in "the largest industrial incursions" but he reserves moral judgement - concentrates on neutrality as he records man's impact on the landscape. The Chinese plant (cf A Decent Factory) - how much is staged/re-staged for Burtynsky's benefit: to what extent does he manipulate the people in front of his lens. His fondness for diptychs. People become (mute) elements of the landscape, vaguely automaton-like (cf Working Man's Death). Her eye / his eye. From Mao to the Great Leap Forward to the detritus of the electronics industry ("it's quite something!") Beauty in the toxic heavy metals of pollution. (O tempora, o mores) - Burtynsky finds aesthetic interest in grim material. Presents his photographs for us to look at in a kind of slide-show - shimmery electronica soundtrack. What's the pay at this factory? Union representation? 'Sentai Electrical' - but in which city/ "Professionalism is our principle" - their motto. Baichwal's unquestioning presentation of Burtynsky (she's clearly a major fan) parallels his unquestioning presentation of the factory. A smooth corporate spokeswoman says her piece, goes unchallenged. His work (for which he's clearly extremely well paid) among the factory-employees' work (for which we can presume they receive a pittance.) Is China now in any way a left-wing country? Questions unanswered, unasked (what would James Benning do with similar subject-matter?) Shipbreaking in Bangladesh - as seen in Working Man's Death. Recorded by Burtynsky's camera in bleachy-grey monochrome. What is his artistic/practical process? Is his subject-matter the photographer or what he photographs? What moral considerations are there here? Who pays for his trips? He acknowledges that the labour he records is "very, very low-paid work" - but figures would be useful. An aesthetics of misery and exploitation? Sobering, oppressive giganticism... ecological considerations. Talk of "peak oil". "Don't shoot, guys". "Garbage... still it appears beautiful in his pictures" - a terrible beauty. Complex issues: Three Gorges. Is he complicit in this chain of exploitation? Are we? Irony: in his work, issues of distance and scale are crucial factors. "Thirty yuan a day? Oh." / "It's just work - it's all for our country." In his photographs, he avoids close-ups. "It's a very broad view - it's hard to see the details Scope of film becomes increasingly diffuse as it goes on.." Post-Mao: 30% agrarian, 70% urban. 20-year plans for Shanghai's future: "unprecedented urbanisation." Into the future... "Life quality has been improved," says an unidentified speaker. Banal juxtaposition of bourgeois businesswoman's pad with old-style hutong. Shanghai: "beaten up... broken bones." Portentous doomy music on the soundtrack. China as mystery/enigma. His work is avowedly "non-politicised." Ultimately, the focus isn't satisfactorily on either him or his subjects. seen 1st Feb at Cinerama (press show) NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE Akumu tantei : Japan 2006 : TSUKAMOTO Shinya : 106m : [5/10] "Oh, young people these days!" ... "Killing yourself is scary." ... "You need a sense of humour to get through this." ... 21st-century Japanese take on Joe Ruben's pulpy minor-classic Dreamscape? Hyperactive camerawork. Focus is on high-heel-wearing bribery-department female cop ('the princess'). Over-the-top music, clammy blue palette, dreams of suicide. Dario Argento-ish stylistic overload... Hi-jinks and shenanigans with the phone (as usual in Japanese horrors). Killer is known as "zero". Deliberately overcooked montages. As with Argento, Tsukamoto casts himself as the killer. "This case might require extraordinary measures!" Gory-grisly - but comic too. The 'princess' is, unfortunately, somewhat wooden. Russet tints, oblique references to Christianity. Panting, spooked cop - shares psychic dream-entering talent with the killer: is it a gift, or a curse?! ("I hate it," he confesses.) #Feels like I'm living in someone else's dream# (Pennywise, Homesickness). Rapid Eye Movements indicate the deep dream state (recycles many familiar ideas from films about sleep/dreams.) In a nightmare, anyting goes... lurid excess... but surely Tsukamoto's own nightmares are bit more exciting than these hallucinatory visions? Invisible psycho on the rampage. Strong idea, shaky execution: stylistic excess to compensate for script deficiencies? A bit of a mishmash. Palette dominated by russets and cobalts. "Oh, I just felt you." One-note performances. Killer 'zero' clearly intended as a cross between H.Lecter and F.Krueger. "In this concrete jungle, you just lost your primal pleasure to live." Repetitive stuff: overcooked performances, repeated montages and images. Achieves a kind of nebulous dread with his hyped-up camerawork. "I'll get him in my dream - please find him in the real world!" Suicide pact, reliant on phone highjinks. Cosmic nihilism, undermined by talkiness. Increasingly confusing and messy. Dick's Ubik comes to mind, but probably wasn't in Tsukamoto's. Tsukamoto's creepy, mainly voice-only performance is a major plus (phone taunting). Tsukamoto's impressive, sinister acrobatics! Typically outre: "this world is nothing but a phony void! Zero's philosophy: "everything is meaningless!" Increasingly demented cacophony, but it's really only so-so stuff... Anything goes - in practice. In reality, the dreams are pretty tame affairs. Her double-performance doesn't convince. Film is fundamentally commercially-oriented genre material, with some outre moments (see Silent Hill, his own Haze). A missed opportunity? Comic aspects fade into background as focus shifts to interlocking traumas (childhood's impact on adult mind... MirrorMask?) Film bogs down in dream sequences (oneiric stuff seldom works well in film: tennis with the net down). Cosmic, Brakhagey, back-to-sperm montage. Alternate title: I don't want to dream alone. Dreamscape it ain't. Predictable coda twist. Adds up to....? Passable, but could and should have been much wilder. seen 1st Feb at Cinerama (press show) STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKES Sutoroberi Shotokekusu : Japan 2006 : YAZAKI Hitoshi : 127m : [5/10] Modern working girls: their apartments. "Without real jobs." One works at 'Escort agency'. No soundtrack music. "Is 'hope' all sold out?" someone asks. Meteorite shrine : worrying levels of quirkiness. In search of love, ponderously. Film is somewhat underlit. Flat-mates: their ennui observed. Atomised lives of 20-something women. Lifeless inertia. We watch an illustrator at work. Urban anomie: slooooow. Score is present, but very sparingly used. Lively Satoko a welcome presence. Illustrator illustrates: a portrait "of God." Lovelorn, superstitious girls. Attractive camerawork, but it's all a bit low-wattage. Too lukewarm to be involving. Gentle stuff, if anything over-modulated, pastel-coloured. Five or six girls: their loose connections. Lost in Tokyo: solitude. Gently simmering, but will it ever even near the boil? Hazy, pastelly DV: some deadpan comic moments, some poignant touches. Cuts from girl to girl. Dialogue is occasionally less than clearly audible during interior sequences. Bulimia: hint at some kind of drama developing? Repetitive, monotonous stuff. Tokyo Tower a prominent landmark behind. All scenes play at similarly lukewarm temperature, they seem to cut in the middle. Style is there, substance lacking. Merits visible, but not very feel-able. Technically accomplished, but static, despite the choppiness. Characters have quirks and affectations rather than characteristics - it's like a distaff version of a Nobuhiro Yamashita picture. Relationship issues; sex. Artist at work: we watch paint dry. Blue fish dies on camera : poisoned? CGI? Scenes are either too long or too short. Not much sense of time passing. Key is friendship. Pacing is slightly off. Finale: cakes and tears on the beach. Cutesy, pleasant... Sweet, but indigestible, and rather hard work for what we get. seen 31st Jan at Venster (press show) SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY Sang sattawat : Thailand/France/Austria 2006 : Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL : 105m : [3?/10] "I want to be a normal person, but I'm in the grip of a mysterious force that keeps me in these saffron robes I can't abandon" - so says a monk. Hmmm... Camera steadily fixed on hospital scenes. Absurd, deadpan whimsy freewheels. A singing dentist? Improvised? Inexplicably annoying charm, inexplicably charming annoyance. Lovelorn under the trees: tale of the orchid. Orchid root: "they think it lacks form and order." And what, exactly, does the title mean? Scenic backdrops for noodling "plot": stories, flashbacks within stories. Happiness is elusive. Concentration on the sensory... Cheesy singer, with al-fresco guitar. "Normally, I sing about teeth and gums." Second half: scenes from first half are replayed from another perspective, but the dialogue is different: clearly re-shot. First half is rural, second half is urban: both set in hospitals: we're invited to muse on the parallels and differences between the two. The motto: Destroy Dirty Things. It's structural clever-dickery: slooooooow, pretentious stuff, paceless. If in doubt, stick in a tracking shot around statues. Quite "nicely" shot and scored, but dramatically it's utterly inert. Are Thais really so zombified? Banal repetitions, corridor shots ripped of from Elephant. Sub-Fantasma stuff... wandering, stately camera. Chakra-healing, artifical limbs. Nonsensical: nebulous structure and purpose. Director chucks in any old nonsense, confident many will acclaim it as inspired art. Discursive, tangential, amorphous (sense of hidden structures). Panda? Pandora... Are they all on Mogadon? Elevator scene: they are. Reincarnation chat, corridor tennis. It's possible to drive a pretty large truck through these meaningful pauses. Statues are as animated as the characters (i.e., not at all). Love, work, interstitial sadnesses. Enigmatic: closed circuit of personal tropes, themes, preoccupations. Ominous music rumbles on the soundtrack. Mutes and near-mutes. Gratuitously lengthy shots. A fondness for corridors. Some nice shots here and there, but........ Smoke is sucked into a black disc, with Tarkovskyish music playing: would make a fine last image, but on it goes. A scenic, glacial, hermetic, solipsistic universe: insufferable pretentiousness on the subject of life's ineffable strangeness. seen 2nd Feb at Cinerama (public show) <<<<<<<<< NOTES AFTER SECOND VIEWING, JANUARY 2008 >>>>>>>> 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST A fost sau n-a fost? : Romania 2006 : Corneliu PORUMBOIU : [8/10] December 2005: 16th anniversary of Revolution (cf Chiang Kai-Shek's famed comment on the French revolution). TV 'talk show' preparations. Cash-strapped teacher is one of the guests. Stygian gloom of modern small-town Romania. Decayed infrastructure. All camerawork is on tripod. "No one could care less any more." Running gag : kids throwing firecrackers in background. Droll, dark, cynical comedy. "No one gives a shit" Hand-held camera replicates TV-studio effect. It's not Bucharest, nor is it Timisoara. The question: "Was there, or was there not, a revolution in our town." Dictionary of Mythology. Only two guests on the 'chat' show. Events in Timisoara, December 17th. Replicating cheap TV studio, camera goes in and out of focus. A paper hat becomes a boat: nice touch. Audaciously talky in the second half. Memories of revolution: unreliable. Scornful caller: "They did nothing but drink!" Seeking to "clarify this business." Key is the specific timing at which the 'local' revolution began. Hilarity accumulates. "There are some grey areas." Audacious, original structure - works a treat. "Our debate." "Our town in the middle of nowhere." "One makes what revolution one can." Tone is sustained, deepens. Program's transitions between on-air and off-air. Bracing cynicism. Talking 'bout a revolution... Increasingly absurdist: but the structure is strong enough to make it work. seen 31st Jan at Venster (press show) THE UNPOLISHED Die Unerzogenen : Germany 2007 : Pia MARAIS : 95m : [7/10] Dad released from jail, 15 minutes in: Euro-hopping drug trader. Bad parenting. His daughter: teenage girl's startling precocity. Die Innere Sicherheit: criminal family on the run. She's 15? 16? Focus squarely on the teenage girl: adult body, young face. Three-hander: girl and parents. Tantalising glimpses of 'normality'. School isn't a realistic option. Casual theft. Her mis-education, escape into fantasies. Growing up fast. For her, the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence - she's the kid who wants to run away from the circus. Music a touch superfluous, but it doesn't get in the way. Drugs abound. She's the rough diamond: unpolished (father's scams include trips to Antwerp diamond district). Burden is placed on actors, but they respond. Her dawning sexuality. Ratty sofa on the lawn. English as the lingua franca. "Your parents have a weird ethos." Non-stop debauched excess provides an unfortunate environment for raising the child: her self-education, self-reliance, her strong inner fibre. Dialogue strong: "The air is filled with poison now, because everything you do is so... ugly!" Music (most conventional aspect) is a bit over the top; focus is solidly on the characters. Child's performance is the very strong suit. seen 3rd Feb at Pathe (public show) Neil Young 9-11th April, 2007 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - all seen in Rotterdam (Netherlands) during International Film Festival Rotterdam - all details (titles, countries, directors, running-times) from IFFR catalogue |
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