VIENNALE 2008 capsules (2/7) : features in competition (pt1) : including 'March' [6/10]

The Blue Bull. Essentially a one-man show in which we observe, documentary-style, a twentysomething chap as he passes the time in and around his comfortably spartan isolated farmhouse. Our taciturn, bearded 'hero' applies himself to learning about bullfighting - obtaining theory and philosophical background from books, and enacting increasingly elaborate dry-runs, sans bull, in various corners of 'his' (?) property. What it's all supposed to add up to is anyone's guess, however: shot on cheap-looking, hand-held video, it's visually unengaging and, while intriguing in concept, is too inscrutably gnomic to justify its hour-long running-time. Further drastic trimming might result in a worthwhile short.

Everything Is Fine. A quartet of teen suicides is the trigger for this downbeat, solid but over-conventional drama. After a striking animated opening (which nothing in the body of the film matches in terms of boldness, invention or sheer impact) a fussy, tripartite narrative structure rather laboriously unfolds, flashing back and forwards in time around the central figure: a troubled lad who was part of the same clique as the deceased foursome. This kind of kids-aren't-alright subject-matter is depressingly topical in many 'western' countries, but needs a fresher tack than the film is ever able to find - resulting in a TV-movie-ish enterprise.

Flower in the Pocket. A child's-eye view of Kuala Lumpur is presented in this likeable - but ultimately somewhat ho-hum - shoestring-budgeted, DV-shot production. We follow a pair of schoolboy brothers, who look about nine and seven, and are largely left to their own devices thanks to the lackadaisical negligence of their lone-parent dad (whose workplace travails form a subplot to the main 'action'.) Moments of casual charm abound, and the lads turn in nice, believable performances in a picture attuned to the nuances of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic modern-day Malaysia. At times, however, the director strains just a little too hard for cute, bittersweet effect.

For a Moment, Freedom. The plight of Iranian refugees fleeing via Turkey to Europe is the focus of this slick, manipulative affair that struggles to juggle comic, dramatic and tragic elements. Focus is on an extended family who become haplessly stranded in Ankara thanks to bureaucratic officialdom - but there's also a parallel story in which a middle-aged Iranian and his live-wire Kurdish friend engage in their own quest for asylum in the west. The sentimental, over-conventional score underlines nearly every point in unhelpful, intrusive style and the writer-director's impeccably admirable intentions are frequently undone by his tendencies towards corny melodrama and soapy histrionics.

(How) To Be Dead. Scrappy no-budgeter about a trio of Buenos Aires twentysomethings has flashes of inspiration, but a little of its existential/intellectual larkishness goes a very long way. In a series of sketch-type scenes that give the impression of being improvised 'on the hoof', our heroes (actors playing actors?) engage in verbal, largely sophomoric 'games' - exchanging daft stories, jokes without punchlines, etc - against a series of downtown city-centre locales. Monochrome and largely nocturnal, the picture is nicely shot, and hangdog lead Ignacio Rogers has charismatic appeal - but it's all much too pretentious, opaque and ostentatiously elusive to make it worthwhile.

March. When three young friends kill themselves on the eve of their 30th birthdays, their surviving families, friends and neighbours - in a small Tyrolean town - experience a mixture of grief, guilt and bafflement. Making his feature debut, polymath writer-director Klaus is clearly much more interested in and performance than story or visuals, and he's far from the first film-maker to explore the anomie and discontents beneath the affluent surfaces of 21st-century Austria. He does so with sufficient skill and sensitivity to justify such a choice of material, although this kind of Dardennes-ish unadorned, observational social-realism is rapidly becoming over-familiar.

Neil Young
8th November, 2008

THE BLUE BULL : [5/10] : Spain 2008 : Daniel V. VILLAMEDIANA : 63m U, 26.10
EVERYTHING IS FINE : [5/10] : Tout est parfait : Canada 2007 : Yves-Christian FOURNIER : 115m V, 24.10
FLOWER IN THE POCKET : [5/10] : Malaysia 2007 : LIEW Seng Tat : 97m V, 23.10
FOR A MOMENT, FREEDOM : [4/10] : Ein Augenblick, Freiheit : Austria (Aus/Fr/Tur) 2008 : Arash T. RIAHI : 110m V, 23.10
(HOW) TO BE DEAD : [3/10] : Como estar muerto / Cómo estar muerto aka To Be Dead / How To Be Dead : Argentina 2008 : Manuel FERRARI : 77m U, 23.10
MARCH : [6/10] : März: Austria 2008 : Händl KLAUS : 83m M, 23.10

VIENNALE 2008 index-page

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