Neil Young's Film Lounge

Sheila Seacroft’s Cluj film-festival dispatches (1) Everyone Else; Revanche; Quiet Chaos; Thomas

.  Sunday, May 31st   .

   It seems like some kind of reversal of reality to be leaving a sun-baked (even at 8am) Britain for a cloudy and damp Cluj in north-western Romania. The 'Clujeans' think it's chilly, though to a British northerner like me it's 'shirt-sleeve' weather. But I hear it has actually been snowing this weekend in Brasov, a city further south but higher in the Transilvanian mountains.
   It's great to be back, though, and to an even bigger festival. This time the new multiplex, Cinema City, is open on the edge of town and TIFF (=Transilvania International Film Festival) has three screens in use there each day, giving a total of 10 different screens overall throughout the festival.
   But for my first film it's back to balcony of the good old city centre Victoria with its faded pink plush. And there's a full house to see…

EVERYONE ELSE     [6/10]
Alle Anderen : Germany 2008 : Maren ADE : Germany 2008 : 119m : seen at Cinema Victoria : Neil Young's notes from Berlin {rating 6/10}
   A bravura beginning and classy, intense performances never quite raise this tale of mismatched lovers to the heights clearly aimed for. Chris and Gitti, on holiday in his mother's house on Sardinia, are totally wrapped up in each other, and spend their time playing silly games with private codes. Avoiding contact with other people, they prefer to wallow in their own private world. When they run into an old friend of Chris's with his smugly pregnant partner, conflict arises as they both – in their different ways – realise the relationship has deep problems. 
   It's Gitti, really, who is the oddball: strong featured, willful and wild (favourite games: self-harm and playing dead), while Chris, an architect after a prestigious prize and, really, a bit of a cold fish (favourite games: carving phallic dolls out of vegetables, talking Italian), with a feminine look (pointed up in a rather heavy handed fashion) and languid ways has you realizing from the off that he is not on the same level of intensity.
   And because of this difference, while they're both clearly – and wildly – physically attracted to each other, I was never convinced by their supposed amour fou, which is a considerable drawback to one's appreciation of the film. An excessive amount of watching the couple larking about aimlessly in the sun with little real development of character or plot (e.g. they go for a hike, he strides on in front, she gets cross) begins to weigh heavy. Yes, life's like that, but film surely has to engage the audience a bit more.
   What's more Gitti, though at times practically psychotic, seems somehow to be not quite as odd to the outside world as we need to see her – one of the mentioned aspects of her wildness seems to be that she always wears casual beach-clothes, and a great deal is made of her wearing or not wearing a more formal (and feminine) dress.  But when she does put it, on the fact is insignificant.
   You can see the point – she won't wear a dress and be female, he looks feminine and she puts make-up on him, but it's another theme that doesn't carry through. So when, after well over an hour of fairly amusing love, incipient strife and larkiness, the mood turns melodramatic in the extreme it's a bit of a step too far, and one longs, actually, for some kind of coup de grace. For these two, hell isn't alle anderen, it's each other.
 
.  Monday, June 1st  .

QUIET CHAOS     [7/10]
Caos calmo : Italy 2008 : Antonello GRIMANDI : Italy 2008 : 107m : seen at Cinema Arta
   You can't help liking this gentle film about grief and bereavement, despite its soft centre and ultimate failure to really engage with its subject. And this is to a great degree down to the wonderfully subtle playing of its lead Nanni Moretti.
   While on holiday high-flying businessman Pietro (Moretti) and his brother rescue two women from drowning on the beach, only to return to the house to find Pietro's wife has died in an accident. From now on he must look after his 10 year old daughter, a responsibility which, full of anxiety at having been elsewhere at a crucial time, weighs on him so heavily that he decides not to go back to his office but to conduct what work he can from his car, parked by her school gates.
   He becomes a well-known habitué of the square, while a power-struggle goes on at work and he becomes a kind of counsellor for his work colleagues and his troubled sister in law who visit him al fresco. After school he returns home with his daughter to read to her from the author with whom he discovers his wife had been exchanging emails. 
  Pietro seems better – but really isn't better, the quiet chaos of unresolved grief sometimes turning up unbidden, explicity in a fantasy sex-scene which is rather troublingly gratuitous and at odds with the gentle ways and – yes – the niceness of the rest of the film. But I suppose that's the point. More grating than that is the sudden intrusion of rather cheesy songs (Thom Yorke an honourable exception) at points of high emotion. Overall, the film's power is in its tender portrayal of everyday life.

REVANCHE     [7/10]
Austria 2008 : Gotz SPIELMANN : 121m : seen at Cinema City : Neil Young's view from Crossing Europe FF, Linz {rating 6/10}
   Beginning in the same territory as Import Export – with young Ukrainian woman Tamara working in a Vienna brothel and engaged in a secret, loving relationship with the handyman Alex, this Oscar-nominated film changes kilter and becomes a tale of guilt and redemption among basically good, flawed people.
   Alex, desperate to get them both away from the smarmy unscrupulous brothel owner, decides to do a bank robbery – with an unloaded gun – in the small town close by his grandfather's farm. It goes horribly wrong, and the rest of the film deals with the consequences of this chaotic moment and its effects on Alex, his grandfather, and the local policeman and his wife.
   Intense and beautifully shot, with the camera holding on to scenes as if to give the opportunity for contemplation about the sadness of things, it also delivers moments of high suspense. There are great performances throughout, but scene stealer in chief is Hannes Thanheiser as Alex's elderly grandfather. Although one particular aspect of the plot seems unrealistic, and at times the film may be a little too slow-burning for its own good, it's a sober and moving look at the pressures on ordinary people.

THOMAS   [6/10]
Finland 2007 : Miika SOINI : 70m : seen at Cinema City
   And slow-burning is also the word for this affecting look at old age. We first meet Thomas (Lasse Poysti) as he slowly and painfully climbs the stairs to his irascible brother's flat for their regular chess-game.
   He seems mild mannered and drily humorous, the normal one of the two, but after his brother's death it becomes clear he has no contacts with anyone else and lives alone in a small apartment from which he peers out, perched on a stool, thorough the small window at street level.
   Forays to the park bring a dour relationship with another solitary man who seems to recognise him from the past, and then we realise that this is not merely a tale of old age, but of the results of a past tragedy – one which accounts for Thomas's isolation.
   Though the film, even though of its essence slow-moving, could do with a little more pace at times, and its 70 minutes feel more like 90, this is a promising debut for Soini, who uses a palette of sombre browns and sparse interiors to illustrate the numbness of a solitary life without human contact. Poysti, meanwhile, is simply mesmeric.

Sheila Seacroft
2nd June, 2009

all films seen in Cluj, Romania, at the 8th Transilvania International Film Festival
public screenings – complimentary press tickets

Jigsaw Lounge CLUJ 2009 INDEX PAGE

Sheila Seacroft's dispatches
1 : Tues.2.June : Everyone Else; Revanche; Quiet Chaos; Thomas
2 : Sat.6.June : About Elly; Fluke; Machan; Tears of April; The Possibility of an Island
3 : Wed.10.June : Apocalypse On Wheels; Australia; Awakening From a Dream; Weddings, Music & Videos – plus report on directors vs homeless football game
4 : Thu.11. June : Constantin and Elena; Hooked; Passo Doble
5 : Mon.15.June : Police, Adjective and Antichrist