Neil Young's Film Lounge

for this week’s TRIBUNE : San Sebastian Film Festival report, part 2 (Eastern Europe)

MARCIN Wrona is probably the biggest film-director in Poland right now. Indeed, at 6 foot 5 1/2 inches, he’s surely one of the biggest directors anywhere. But there’s more to stature than height measurements, as his diminutive compatriot Roman Polanski proves. Fortunately for Wrona, his talent is also decidedly outsize – as proven by his second movie, The Christening, which enjoyed its first “foreign” screening at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain last month.
   As we noted here last week – in the first half of our two-part report on the festival – this 58-year-old, 10-day jamboree is by some way Spain’s leading cinema-related event. In the European pecking-order, it’s behind only Cannes, Venice and Berlin, and is a much more manageable, accessible and enjoyable affair than its higher-profile rivals – not least because of its location in the spectacularly beautiful, gastronomically unparalleled Basque-country coastal resort of San Sebastian (a.k.a. Donostia in the local Euskadi language.)

   While best known for Spanish and Latin American fare – not for nothing is one of the main festival sections labelled Horizontes Latinos - San Sebastian offers geographically eclectic programming. The main competition, won by Peter Mullan’s emphatically Glaswegian Neds, featured productions from China, Morocco, Japan, Portugal and the Philippines.
   The Golden Shell line-up did not, however, feature a representative from Poland, as World Premieres are favoured for that section and The Christening (Chrzest) had already debuted a couple of months before, at the Polish national film-festival in Gdynia. It’s hard to say whether this tough, sometimes brutal thriller would have appealed to the main-competition jury, of course, as violent genre pieces are generally passed over in favour of more ambitious/pretentious fare.
   But in terms of sheer, old-fashioned film-making craft, Wrona and his collaborators – most notably scriptwriters Grzegorz Jankowski, Grazyna Trela, Dariusz Glazer, plus superb cinematographer Pawel Flis – deserve great credit and widespread exposure for their taut little tale of life on the fringes of Warsaw’s gangland.
   It tells how a “respectable” thirtyish businessman (Wojciech Zieliński), realising that his criminal past is about to catch up with him, asks his long-time pal (Thomas Suchardt) to be the godfather of his new-born son – and, if necessary, to become his surrogate in marriage and fatherhood. Psychologically intricate and morally ambiguous in a stimulating manner recalling the novels of Patricia Highsmith, The Christening is also a no-nonsense, uncompromising thriller which looks and sounds consistently impressive.
   There’s a stupendous co-lead performance from Zieliński, who quite brilliantly conveys Michal’s tormented, multi-layered personality, while newcomer Suchardt – a dead ringer for the young Brad Pitt from certain angles – more than holds his own in what’s by any measure a striking big-screen debut.
   Highly touted in Poland since his award-winning short Magnet Man (2000), the 37-year-old Wrona only made his first full-length feature – the relatively little-seen My Flesh, My Blood last year – but is now getting the international attention he deserves with The Christening, which played to enthusiastic responses at the Toronto Film Festival just before San Sebastian. Hopefully this North American exposure will lead to Hollywood interest in a remake – if there’s a more suitable project for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (with the latter perhaps also in the director’s chair), it’s so far eluded this critic…

   Another pair of emerging talents from Eastern Europe worth noting are Romania’s Andre Ujica and Bulgaria’s Dragomir Sholev, whose Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu (Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceauşescu) and Shelter played outside the main competition. Ceauşescu debuted at Cannes in May, and is a three-hour compilation of newsreel footage covering three decades in the career of the former Romanian leader. An impressive feat of archival research and nimble editing, the film offers a peek into a recent past which now often feels jaw-droppingly distant and strange – as well as reminding us that Ceauşescu for many years was regarded as a relatively decent, progressive form of socialist, far from the megalomaniac dictator he became in his final years.
   There’s also a Romanian aspect to Shelter (Podslon), Sholev’s acute study of inter-generational conflicts that mainly plays out in a cramped, lower-middle-class flat in an unnamed Bulgarian city. The screenplay is by Romania’s Razvan Radzulescu, previously responsible for several key features in his country’s much-feted ‘New Wave’ including Cristi Puiu’s multiple award-winning Death of Mr Lazarescu (2005).
   And once again, mordantly dark humour leavens essentially grim subject-matter, as a harrassed middle-aged water-polo coach (Cvetan Daskalov) struggles to deal with his 14-year-old son’s choice of friends – most notably a swaggering, booze-quaffing punk (actress Irena Hristokova, seamlessly playing male à la Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously).
   Claustrophobic and talky, Shelter avoids feeling excessively theatrical thanks to Krum Rodriguez’s imaginative, prowling camerawork and the inclusion of atmospheric, bookending outdoors scenes – and though decidedly small-scale, it’s a more than promising first full-length effort from Sholev, amply confirming the promise of his similarly-themed 2008 short The Go-Between.

   This wasn’t the only Radulescu script on show in San Sebastian, and he continued his examination of parents/teenager relations in Constantin Popescu’s Principles of Life (Principii de viata) a fully Romanian affair, co-written with Alex Baciu, and featuring the country’s most internationally recognised actor, Vlad Ivanov. Having stolen the show with supporting roles in Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (he was the scheming, lecherous abortionist) and the more recent Cannes wow Police, Adjective (pedantic, dictionary-wielding chief copper), the 41-year-old Ivanov was overdue a juicy leading role. And he certainly gets one here as Emilian, a superficially genial chap whose blustery bonhomie conceals a hair-trigger bad temper. Chronicling an annoyance-packed day leading up to a much-discussed holiday with his surly teenage son (Gabriel Huian), Principles is a droll character-study that mainly exists as a showcase for the ample talents of its star – here resembling a burly, bearded, balding cross between Garry Bushell and James Gandolfini.
   Nothing special in terms of direction or script (indeed, the “moral” regarding how to deal with uncommunicative teens is somewhat objectionable), but highly watchable if taken simply as The Vlad Ivanov Show, it’s certainly a leap beyond Popescu’s previous outing – sprawling, controversy-stoking post-war guerilla epic Portrait of the Fighter as a Young Man, which only world-premiered at Berlin in February. If nothing else, it’s encouraging that directors like Popescu and Wrona are making their films so quickly – or rather, in the current economic situation, that they’re able to make their films at all.
   
Neil Young
5th October, 2010

written for the 13th October edition of Tribune magazine

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NICOLAE CEAUSESCU : [7/10]  : Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceauşescu : Andre Ujica : 180m approx : seen 25th September in Principe cinema {18/28}
THE CHRISTENING : [8/10] : Chrzest : Poland 2010 : Marcin Wrona : 86m approx : 23rd September, Teatro Principal {21} — rating upgraded to 23 following viewing on 1st October in Reykjavik
PRINCIPLES OF LIFE : [6/10] : Principii de viata : Romania 2010 : Constantin Popescu : 87m : 21st September, Teatro Principal {15}
SHELTER : [7/10] : Podslon : Bulgaria 2010 : Dragomir Sholev : 85m : 20th September, Teatro Principal {19}

all seen at San Sebastian International Film Festival, Spain
Jigsaw Lounge – San Sebastian 2010 index-page