| Linz subpages :3: Attwenger Adventure; Holidays; double Belle; Balkan Champion; Destiny |
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| Saturday, 30 June 2007 | |
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ATTWENGER ADVENTURE [7/10] Markus KAISER-MUHLECKER : Austria 2007 : 90m : seen 24th April at Moviemento cinema Infectiously entertaining documentary chronicles Linz folk-punk duo Attwenger and manages tricky feat of maintaining our interest over the course of full feature length. The pair have been very well known in their native Austria for the best part of two decades, but their appeal isn't as parochial as their dialect-heavy lyrics might suggest: John Peel was a fan, and the pair recorded a session for the legendary DJ's Radio One show. Even those left cold by the band's music will warm to their contrasting personalities: drummer/singer Markus (a wiry, rangy sort who bears more than a passing resemblance to Sugarcubes frontman Einar Orn) and accordionist - and occasional vocalist - Hans-Petter, the latter a slightly chubbier ringer for Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield. While Markus supplies lashings of pungent agit-prop, the wonderfully laid-back Hans-Petter repeatedly steals the show with his deadpan asides and world-weary attitude. Director Kaiser-Muhlecker doesn't break much new stylistic ground, snappily editing together archive footage, videos and new material showing the lads at home, at play, on the road and chewing the cud. But the content of Attwenger Adventure ensures the film is never less than diverting and engaging. And in a 'globalising' world where such vibrant examples of unapologetically 'local' culture are becoming increasingly valued, it's also pleasingly topical too. "Am besten mit dem Hausvastond des eine in a Haus, die Diadln und die Fenstan zua, dann konna nimma aus," as they HOLIDAYS [7/10] Ferien aka Vacation : Thomas ARSLAN : Germany 2007 : 91m : seen 27th April at City-Kino cinema European cinema has never had a shortage of films about thirtysomething folk suffering marriage crisis as a result of infidelity; nor has the continent suffered much of a dearth of character-based dramas in which family-members congregate in rural locales, there to explore their feelings about each other and shed light on long-dormant enmities and passions. So it's testament to writer-director Arslan that Holidays, which stands at the intersection of these two well-worn, Bergman-ish sub-genres, should feel so fresh and absorbing. The key to the film is the way Arslan moves between various stories as they near-simultaneously unfold, following a pair of inquisitive children in one scene, moving to the painful travails of their parents in the next, then spending time on the laconic puppy-love of a teenage couple, and so on. It's a multi-generational approach that seems to find interest in each of the generations, while also taking care to explore the buildings and countryside around them. Slow-burning and low-key, with moments of slyly deadpan humour among the prevailing seriousnes (even the Aldrich-esque belated arrival of the opening titles may raise a smile or two) this is a finely-calibrated, resonant work which confirms Arslan as yet another talent to watch in a strong generation of young-ish German film-makers. BELLE DE JOUR : [9/10] : Luis BUNUEL : France 1967 : 101m BELLE TOUJOURS : [6/10] : Manoel DE OLIVEIRA : Portugal/France 2006 : 68m both seen 28th April at Moviemento cinema - 'Double Belle' It makes perfect sense to schedule these two films (the latter an extremely belated, 40-years-on sequel to the former) together, and indeed Belle Toujours won't mean very much to any viewer unfamiliar with the original, in which a bored, bourgeois, sexually-repressed Paris housewife (Catherine Deneuve) goes "on the game" with unexpected results for all concerned. But the juxtaposition also serves to strongly emphasise the limitations and essentially minor nature of the new film, while confirming Bunuel's picture as a sui-generis mini-masterpiece (a daft, episodic thrillerish plot becoming a vehicle for all manner of deadpan experimentalism and anything-goes perversity). Deneuve is a no-show, her role played instead by Bulle Ogier - but Michel Piccoli returns as one of the screen's great connoisseurs of decadence, transgression and corruption, Monsieur Husson. His supporting performance in the 1967 picture steals the show - the moment when he slips into English for the phrase "pure compulsion" (or, as some subtitled prints have it, "sweet compulsion") is one among countless pleasures provided by his silkily modulated turn. He's four decades older and centre stage in Belle Toujours, and while he hasn't quite lost his old devilish charm, his contirbution is that much more laboured and strenuous. Likewise the film, directed by the indefatigable nonagenarian De Oliveira - certain sequences have a pleasing lightness of touch, and there's something grimly admirable about a picture which tackles the passing of time and the ravages of age with such unapologetic directness. But Toujours - which features one rather ill-advised "surreal" moment that feels more like something from a TV skit-show - is conspicuously padded out to reach the bare-minimum feature-film length of 64 minutes, and on reflection might have worked better as a scaled-down miniature (i.e. a 20-minute short), rather than the awkwardly-sized canvas we're left with here. BALKAN CHAMPION [6/10] Reka KINCSES : Germany 2006 : 86m : seen 29th April at Moviemento cinema "My father the hero" - Hungarian/Romanian style... well, sort of. Director Kincses compiles a warts-and-all portrait of her dad which, the poignant final frame indicates, is fundamentally intended as a warm familial tribute. Before this point, Kincses' motivations aren't so clear - at times she takes an objective view of papa's career, including copious contemporary TV footage which emphasises how Kincses Sr achieved national fame/notoriety in the wake of Romania's 1989 revolution. Kincses Jr then traces how he became a prominent spokesman for Romania's sizeable Hungarian minority before falling foul of political foes and friends alike - the latter rather more dangerous than the latter. Determined to set the record straight, Kincses Jr tracks down the surviving cronies and enemies - the audience being made privy, Quest For Corvo style, to nearly every stage in the journalistic process. Via intimate material shot in the family residence during the current decade, the film takes on a much more domestic feel - indeed, to the extent that one occasionally feels that Kincses Jr is using the process of movie-making to deal with her own psychological issues and settle long-burning scores with various family members. At such moments it's in her interest to stoke arguments among her nearest and dearest - and her scientist mother rises to the bait in fiery fashion on more than one occasion. The personal and political thus intertwine in self-indulgent but watchable fashion, though it's only in that key final image that the two really come together and deliver the overdue emotional sucker-punch. DESTINY [5/10] Kader : Zeki DEMIRKUBUZ : Turkey/Greece 2006 : 103m : seen 29th April at City-Kino cinema Bekir (Ufuk Bayraktar) is an apparently ordinary bloke in his early twenties, working in a city-centre carpet emporium. One day a flirtatious, slightly younger woman wanders in - she's Ugur (Vildan Atasever), and Bekir rapidly falls head-over-heels in love with her. Indeed, he struggles to contain the extent of his passion - with disastrous, violent, and wildly melodramatic consequences for both... Destiny is constructed as a series of brief-ish, discrete episodes, set around several different locations around Turkey, and which propel us forward through the chronology of Bekir and Ugur's on-off relationship at a disorienting speed. There's never any attempt to identify exactly when the various events are taking place, but the changes to the main characters' appearances indicate that considerable periods of time are elapsing between the segments. By the end, the hapless protagonists have both suffered at the hands of their unfortunate fate - or is it merely the flaws in their characters that have brought them so much misery? Ambitious stuff, but unfortunately neither multi-hyphenate Demirkubuz (who produces, directs, writes, edits and also pops up in a minor supporting role) nor his two main actors are quite up to the task of carrying it off. There's certainly no shortage of incident (much of it bloodily violent), and the picture is given a certain meaty, doom-laden intensity by the extremity of the inarticulate Bekir's dire (and largely self-inflicted travails). But in the end Destiny - a suitably portentous title, by the way - feels like a rather flimsily-constructed idea for a narrative, a gimmicky structure which buckles under the burden of Demirkubuz's fondness for weighty philosophical and psychological themes. 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 click HERE for the Jigsaw Lounge index of reviews from Linz 2007 click here for the Crossing Europe 'CrossBlog' entries ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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