| Linz subpages :1: Fresh Air, Reprise, Body Rice, Mum 'n' Dad, April In Love |
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| Saturday, 30 June 2007 | |
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FRESH AIR [7/10] Friss levego : KOCSIS Agnes [co-director Andrea ROBERTI]: Hungary 2006 : 109m : seen 24th April at City-Kino cinema The first thing that hits you about Fresh Air is its look: though the downbeat, urban subject-matter would lend itself to grittily realistic handling - lovelorn fortyish toilet-attendant Viola [NYAKO Julia] and her teenage daughter Angela [HEGYI Izabella] struggle to get along in the confines of their cramped Budapest flat - the approach taken by Kocsis (and Roberti) is consistently stylised and carefully composed in terms of colour (hard reds, bottle greens), composition and framing. The cue is taken from the two protagonists, who (all-too-believably) communicate largely by looks and gestures rather than words, and seek to transcend their drab surroundings - and the humdrum routines (at work, at school) that dominate their lives - by escaping into an inner world of vibrant creativity. Angela is an aspiring fashion-designer who dreams of escape - clearly worried that she may end up reliving her mother's disappointments. Nevertheless, we soon realise that Viola's romantically-inclidned soul is actually able to find ample modes of expression despite her straitened economic circumstances and the unprepossessing nature of her workplace. Since the decline of Smellovision, cinema hasn't the ideal medium to explore the olfactory sense - but Fresh Air, in which Viola seems permanently wreathed in a vapours of perfume and/or air-freshener (this can't have been the most ozone-friendly of productions), manages the tricky feat of making odour central to the narrative. This is one of numerous pleasures and grace-notes which ensure that potentially depressing (even tragic) material becomes a slowburningly deadpan comic delight in Kocsis's hands - it's somewhat early days at the moment, but comparisons with Aki Kaurismaki may not eventually prove too wide of the mark. There are even a couple of laugh-out-loud moments - the pick of which is an ill-advised visit by Angela to an Evangelical Christian gathering, where (in a scene which perhaps nods to a similar moment in Belle de Jour) she stubbornly refuses to take a communion wafer and is scolded "Sister, you must have more faith!" Elsewhere, Kocsis and Roberti skilfully maintain the picture's steadily slowburning tone, even as events in the latter third skirt dangerously close to melodrama. And they manage to inject unexpected freshness into the most hackneyed of situations, as in a suitably tentative proto-romantic interlude where Angela is told about the creation of stars and the 'Lorentz Force' by a smitten schoolmate. It helps that Hegyi is a real find: she has a perpetually wary cast to her elfin features - the Dorothy Tutin of the new Hungarian cinema, if you like... REPRISE [6/10] Joachim TRIER : Norway 2006 : 105m : seen 25th April at City-Kino cinema Slick, flashily dour tale of discontent among a group of affluent Oslo twentysomethings runs a heavy "so what" risk but ultimately is (albeit narrowly) saved by a sly undercurrent of knowing humour. The gleaming cinematography of good-looking, moody, fashionably-attired Nordic lads ("spoiled rich kids from the west side", as someone accurately labels them at one juncture) occasionally - and amusingly - gives proceedings the look of a late-period a-Ha video, or a Dunderdon ad-campaign. This inevitably serves to undercut the characters' oh-so-painful struggles with their various moral, philosophical, personal and creative issues - all of it flecked with a stereotypically "Scandinavian" kind of gloom. As Ian McKaye so memorably and eloquently put it on the classic Minor Threat track Sob Story: "BOO F-CKING HOO*." Nothing which follows matches the impact of doomily majestic opening titles, in which a festive patriotic parade through the city streets is given an ominous (even apocalyptic) feel via the use of slight slow motion and the accompaniment of Joy Division's New Dawn Fades). This sequence alone is sufficient evidence of Trier's considerable flair and confidence. But time and again he goes overboard with his tricksily in-your-face directorial approach (character-names appearing on-screen, Trainspotting-style in blocky 'Impact' font, as the image briefly freeze-frames; copious omniscient authorial narration) that seems intended to mirror the protagonists' own second-hand, too-cool-for-school, archly modish, self-aware aesthetic, but has surely now been done to death in recent cinema. A classic instance, then, of style wrestling with substance, and the former quickly finding a submission-hold. There are also problems with the time-hoppingly episodic script, which, while admirably ambitious and literate, doesn't quite sustain the weight of its lofty ambitions. A warning-sign is that the numerous minor and peripheral figures prove much more interesting, and rather better company than the central quintet - indeed, the more screen-time a character has, the less impact he or she ends up making. This is partly because the central duo have to carry the burden of the drama, while the supporting roles are given rather more opportunity for more comic material - suggesting that Trier, like his doom-laden heroes, should really try to lighten up a bit in future. BODY RICE [5/10] Hugo VIERA DA SILVA : Portugal 2006 : 120m : seen 25th April at City-Kino cinema It's 1991, and, as The Offspring were later to put it, The Kids Aren't Alright. In the immediate aftermath of reunification, numerous delinquent Berlin youths (of both sexes) are sent as part of a government programme to Alentejo, a dusty, depopulated corner of rural Portugal. Here they are to be "desocialised" in a barren environment diametrically opposed to the hectic urban surroundings they've left behind, and which are briefly glimpsed in flashback over the picture's punkish opening titles. In Alentejo, harmful distractions are supposedly minimal. But despite a daunting language-barrier several of the Berliners are able to interact with the (simlarly-disaffected) local youth, which leads to friction, some violence, and tricky romantic entanglements. The exact nature of the 're-education' (/punishment?) remains unclear - the kids are only very loosely "monitored" by adults (who are themselves dysfunctional to varying degrees), and they don't seem to have any kind of structured activities in their informal 'commune' setting other than hanging out and hanging about. One thing seems certain: grinding ennui is clearly supposed to be part of the brats' "therapy" - and it is all-too-doggedly reproduced for the viewer via what's become a default mode of European arthouse cinema (perhaps now best known via the so-called Berliner schule): long takes and scenes, an enigmatic withholding of information (there's an apparent homicide later on which is handled in an exceedingly opaque manner); pregnant pauses; sparse, functional dialogue; naturalistic performances (redolent of a kind of zonked-out, general-purpose anomie); an improvisational feel; 'observational' camerawork. There are a couple of significant and welcome divergences from the established 'formula': the camerawork features rather more in the way of smooth tracking shots than is the norm, and there's a nifty deployment of period "acid-house"-type trance tunes throughout, including a handful of lengthy, wordless sequences in which the kids cut loose in a series of semi-informal, outdoor, daytime 'raves'. Even better is another protracted bit, in which a teenage girl happens upon a discarded toy robot - battered and perhaps slightly malfunctioning, but still very much able to 'dance' (rather like the kids themselves, of course). It isn't a crowded field, but this knee-high, body-popping robot turns in the picture's most touching and nuanced 'performance'. For the most part, unfortunately, Body Rice (and typically, the title is never explained or even mentioned) is, for all its virtues, frustratingly uneven, punishingly slow, and wildly overlong as it gropes towards some elusive significance. Something of an hermetic exercise in mannered self-indulgence, then, and still at least one or two further edits away from the finished article. MUM 'N' DAD [5/10] Mama i tata : Faruk LONCAREVIC : Bosnia-Herzegovina 2006 : 64m : seen 25th April at City-Kino cinema Intriguing, original but ultimately unsatisfying two-hander focusses intently on an elderly couple (alert, naggingly impatient, sprightly Zagorka Borota; ailing, stroke-impaired, crotchety, mule-stubborn Vjekoslav Tamljak) in their city-centre flat as they bicker, kvetch and generally get on each other's nerves. It's a flawed but promising debut from a director evidently unafraid to explore new storytelling forms. Though this particular project feels like it would be better suited to TV - or perhaps even an installation space - the performances from Boroto and Tamljak emphatically deserve to be seen on the big screen. Reportedly newcomers to acting, they really do really do come across like folk who've spent far too long in each other's company - and could easily be figures from a late-period Samuel Beckett play. It's all too rare to see the problems of old age explored in modern-day film-making - an even more unfortunate omission among European directors, given the continent's ageing population. And Loncarevic certainly doesn't hold back in presenting such issues as incontinence, brittle bones, dementia and the onset of Parkinson's disease - although these indignities and infirmities essentially make for a somewhat "unhappy hour" for characters and audience alike. Flashes of black comedy are discernible from time to time, but as proceedings continue (at a largely sedate pace entirely in keeping with the age and slowness of the protagonists) the mood grows increasingly dark - bleak even, in an oppressively nightmarish manner that's may remind some of Cristi Puiu's Death of Mr Lazarescu. Scenes are protracted in what look like a series of extended takes, with only a handful of shots throughout the entire course of the film. The couple's daughter (Sabina Bambur) makes a brief appearance, but otherwise we're stuck in this drab, claustrophobic apartment, watching Mum and Dad vie for the upper hand over each other like Balkan variations on Baby Jane and Blanche. While there are several powerful sequences along the way - including a particularly disturbing, out-of-the-blue moment of domestic violence - the project is repeatedly hamstrung by a clever-clever structural device which presents everything we see as if it's a Big Brother-type 'reality' show, complete with advert-like product-placement interludes shot in a stylised, soft-focus, instrumental-scored fashion that represents a radical departure from Loncarevic's prevailing, rigorously-unadorned, dogme approach. Mum 'n' Dad clocks in at a length which is the bare minimum for features at many film-festivals, and features conspicuously slow closing titles - as if Loncarevic was trying to pad out his material as much as possible. It's a small package - which could clearly have been a bit shorter - but one which contains no shortage of intriguing ideas. A pity, then, that they haven't quite been thought through in terms of the tone, narrative or the characters: neither of the protagonists seems like they'd bother with watching reality TV programmes, so it's hard to see why this particular format should be applied to this particular story (unless we're supposed to interpret the interludes as glimpses into Dad's mental decline?) Voyeuristic, lowest-common-denominator television is always ripe for sharp satire; the indignities and infirmities of old age are a pressingly topical and valid subject for cinema - a shame, then, that the two end up pulling Mum 'n' Dad in unproductively different directions. APRIL IN LOVE [8/10] Avril : Gerald HUSTACHE-MATHIEU : France 2006 : 96m : seen 25th April at City-Kino cinema Though initially somewhat stark, dour and austere in its painterly depiction of life in a remote, unorthodox rural nunnery, April In Love gradually reveals itself as a beguilingly sly, unexpectedly sensuous, culture-clash comedy/romance/drama. At the age of 20, novice nun-to-be April (Sophie Quinton) goes in search of her long-lost brother and discovers the delights and temptations of the world beyond the leafy environs of Notre Dame de Consolation. "You renounce the world without knowing it," she's told by Sister Bernadette (Miou-Miou) - a reference to the fact that April arrived at the establishment as an infant foundling, and was brought up (indeed, "raised to be a saint") entirely within convent walls. Tracking down the frere proves surprisingly (indeed, implausibly) easy - the 'innocent abroad' greets him with the understandably-nonplussed lad with the line "I'm a nun - and I'm your sister." As perhaps befits a film from a writer-director whose previous project (a 48-minute short from 2002) was entitled Une chatte andalouse (and also starred Quinton as a young nun) the result is a sort of delightfully Buñuelian variation on Amelie... or perhaps a Lars Von Trier picture with the cruelty replaced by something akin to a joyful innocence. Cleverly calibrated to appeal equally to believers and non-believers alike (Consolation's community of Trappistines is, we learn, no longer regarded as part of the Catholic church) this is a vivid, bold, timeless kind of cinematic fable - one which subtly nods in the direction of the most famous "sexy nun" movie of all, Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. Lofty company indeed, but April In Love features several truly magical sequences that lift it far above the normal run of 'Gallic charmers.' Performances are a major plus: Quinton, lit to demure perfection by cinematographer Aurelien Deveaux is a delight as the sweet but wiser-than-she-looks April; while Nicolas Devauchelle provides deft support as the blokishly charismatic young lad whom providence places in April's path (though this is yet another picture where Devauchelle's prominent Straight Edge tattoo sits awkwardly with his character's fondness for a drink or four.) A master of smooth tonal transitions, Hustache-Mathieu has some sly fun with "period" detail early on - it takes a while before we're able to work out exactly when the picture is taking place. Certain clues eventually reveal that the action is actually taking place in 1988, which is less relevant than the fact that the year of April's birth is therefore the notorious soixante-huit. Hustache-Mathieu's avoidance of tweeness, mawkishness or sentimentality meanwhile is, given the subject-matter and the somewhat melodramatic nature of the twisty latter developments, little short of (ahem) miraculous. Neil Young April-June 2007 NB: all timings are taken from the festival catalogue; all films seen at Crossing Europe film festival in Linz, Austria, at public screenings (except Fresh Air: special jury screening.) click HERE for the Jigsaw Lounge index of reviews from Linz 2007 click here for the Crossing Europe 'CrossBlog' entries ------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Life's not been good for you It's just not fair You did nothing to deserve it You did nothing at all Sit back and watch It turns from bad to worse No matter how loud you cry It always hurts Boy I'm glad I'm not in your shoes How could things Get any worse for you? You're so fucking alone How could things Get any worse for you? I don't blame you When you piss and moan Everybody gets What you should've got Everybody takes Your opportunities Everybody gets The breaks that belonged to you Everybody takes Your just desserts Life's not been good for you It's just not fair I've got some news for you Nothing is fair I wish there was a way To make it all better I pray for a way To make you happy Cause I'm sick and I'm tired Of your whining, complaining, and bitching and moaning Boo fucking hoo |
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