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KINO OTOK III : Izola Film Festival, Slovenia
reviews by Neil Young (titles as given in official catalogue)
PART ONE (below)
Who Is Bozo Texino? (9/10)
Picture of Light (5/10)
Cycling Chronicle : Landscapes the Boy Saw (7/10)
Monoblock (4?/10)
Full or Empty (6/10)
PART TWO
Longing (6/10) / Bab'Aziz (6/10) / Worldly Desires (7/10) / The Immortal (6/10)
PART THREE
Live-in Maid (7/10) / Grbavica (6/10) / Delicate Crime (4?/10) / A Short Film About the Indio Nacional (6?/10)
OVERVIEW : for TRIBUNE magazine
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seen Friday 26th May at Art Kino Odeon (Bozo) and Kino Culturni Dom (Picture), Izola
WHO IS BOZO TEXINO? (9/10)
I recommended this film to the Kino-Otok ('cinema island') festival here in Izola, introduced it this afternoon at the 'Art Kino Odeon,' and conducted a Q&A with director Bill Daniel afterwards, so can hardly be considered impartial. I stand by my original rave-review of the film, and was glad to see that it works just as well on the big screen as it did on my TV in Sunderland where I watched it from DVD. Radical in form and subject, it's a 55-minute documentary (or rather a "document"?) about American railroad hobos and their graffiti "handles" (an old-school equivalent of what are now better known as "tags") - one that apparently consumed 17 years of its director-cinematographer-editor's life.
Like his subjects, Daniel proudly rejects the conventional wherever possible, and embraces the rough edges of the film-making process, with jagged editing and the inclusion of countless accidental "flaws" in both image and sound. But his images are often startlingly beautiful (it's no surprise to find he's worked extensively in photography), his soundtrack an absorbing collage of voices and music. It all adds up to an accessible, absorbing, often surprisingly hilarious journey into a hidden Americana - one deserving of the widest possible exposure.
PICTURE OF LIGHT (5/10)
Showing as part of the festival's mini-retrospective for Canadian/Swiss documentarist Peter Mettler, this 1994 travelogue follows him as he treks to the snowy wilds of northern Manitoba with the aim of capturing the eerie majesty of the Northern Lights (aka Aurora Borealis). The resulting Lights footage - speeded up with stop-motion camerawork - is indeed spectacular, and the sections in which Mettler simply allows us to gape in wonderment at the display are easily the most effective and striking of the picture.
Unfortunately Mettler uses these images as the starting-point for philosophical speculations (on the nature of filmed images; on the difference between representation and reality) which rapidly cross over from the thoughtful to the ponderous. The fact that they're delivered in (copious) narration via his own droning atonal voice doesn't help matters: this is a self-consciously slow, self-important work which treads a tricky path between the startling and the soporific.
seen Saturday 27th May at Kino Culturni Dom, Izola
CYCLING CHRONICLE: LANDSCAPES THE BOY SAW (7/10)
From veteran director Koji Wakamatsu, Cycling Chronicle (the exact translation of the full Japanese title is a matter of considerable controversy) follows an unnamed 17-year-old as he mountain-bikes through modern-day Japan: from the bustling city to the underpopulated small town to the barren coastline to the snowy interior. It's strongly suggested that the lad is fleeing after murdering his mother: newspaper headlines indicate that such homicides are a nationwide phenomenon. Wakamatsu's intention is clear - this is explicitly a direct, perhaps even didactic, state-of-the-nation analysis, and his diagnosis is not a pleasant one: Japan is suffering from a deep social malaise, a situation relating directly to its unique historical circumstances (we learn as much from the oldsters who talk at considerable length to the boy during the rare moments when he isn't glued to his saddle.)
Much of the film consists of audaciously extended sequences of the boy cycling, occasionally accompanied by an unsettlingly ethereal score and some oddly strangulated, squawking "songs": such passages are poetic, austere and unexpectedly absorbing. Elsewhere, however, Wakamatsu is capable of startling clumsiness - especially when the boy "flashes back" to what may or may not be the killing of his mother. These repetitive interludes sit uneasily with the restrained subtlety of the extended cycling passages, making for an odd mix of the low-key and the heavy-handed that frustrates at the same time as it intrigues and beguiles.
Wakamatsu loses his way, however, in the final moments: a crucial turn of events relies on a daft, melodramatic incident involving the bicycle that defies all known laws of physics and gravity, followed by an ending that's as predictable as it is gratuitously nihilistic. Tasuku Emoto deserves special commendation for his performance as the conscience-stricken youth: he holds the screen despite having virtually no dialogue, and is subjected to what seems to be a gruellingly arduous physical ordeal as he clocks up mile after mile in what are frequently taxing conditions. His hard work can be justified in the name of art (and physical fitness): the grim ultimate fate of his faithful conveyance is rather harder to excuse.
seen Sunday 28th May at Art Kino Odeon (Monoblock [walkout]) and Manzioli Square Open-Air Cinema (Full), Izola
MONOBLOCK (4?/10)
I managed just over two reels (forty minutes) of this artsy exercise in stilted, surreal theatricality before my patience snapped and I bailed out. Vaguely post-apocalyptic tale is set in and around a monolithic apartment building located in a heatbaked, barren, semi-urban zone. Here we meet a woman (mid-50s) and her daughter (early-20s). The woman has become mentally unstable after being sacked from her job as a 'Minnie Mouse' in a dilapidated amusement park, and receives regular blood transfusions for an unspecified, perhaps fatal complaint.
The daughter has one leg shorter than the other and so must wear awkward shoes which impair her walking. She receives regular visits from a man who we never see - after sex, he throws down two gold coins as payment. The third major character is the middle-aged woman's best friend who lives next door: she's the daughter's godmother and the pair often visit the building's roof where they bathe in a circular tub-like pool full of scuzzy brown water. Dialogue throughout is arch and gnomic; visual compositions are similarly over-cooked. Cumulative atmosphere is oppressively nightmarish - and not in a good way.
FULL OR EMPTY (6/10)
Amiably dry, charming comedy from Iran follows the misadventures of an earnest, resourceful young chap (Navid Raisi as 'Navid Raisi') who has two goals in life: to become a teacher and a husband. With these ambitions in mind, he travels to a small town where he knows not a soul, but is determined to make a go of things. His good intentions are repeatedly frustrated by pettyfogging bureaucracy, generalised hostility and the unwanted attentions of the local police. But no matter what hardships life throws at him, Navid continues to believe that contentment is just around the corner...
Picture is an 'underground,' shoestring-budget production, and it shows: performances and direction are rudimentary, though the (DV) camerawork and editing (both by writer-director Abolfazl Jalili) are surprisingly slick. He favours short, laconic scenes - peppered with running visual and verbal gags - which propel the plot along at a fair rate of knots, even if this material does feel somewhat overstretched at 98 minutes.
Like its chirpy protagonist, Full or Empty is so eager to please and so unadornedly direct in its intentions that it's very hard to dislike. The English-language subtitles are often frustratingly illegible, however, and in the saggy final third the film does come perilously close to overstaying its welcome. That said, proceedings do conclude on a nice note of typically deadpan semi-absurdity: Navid has always been a cork bobbing along among life's choppy waves, and in the final moments his buoyancy is quite literally put to the test.
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