V’07 : pt2 : Best new features : 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, Import Export; Little Moth, Milky Way

Published on: November 11th, 2007

  

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS                  [8/10]              
Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes earlier this year, and it's not hard to see why – although I'd probably rank it below both David Fincher's Zodiac and Ulrich Seidl's Import Export (see below), and I perhaps marginally still prefer Mungiu's inexplicably little-seen 2002 debut, the Magnolia-like Occident. 4 Months - as its "telescoping" title implies – is a rather more focused, straight-down-the-line affair than that sprawling 'crisscrosser'. Set in (what we now know were to be) the last years of Romania's Ceausescu dictatorship, it focuses on a pair of twentyish students. Pregnant Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) decides to have an abortion – not a straightforward matter in a police-state, especially given her flighty impracticality.
   Luckily best-friend Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) is much more level-headed, although she does have her own personal problems. These get put on the back-burner as Otilia sets up a meeting with "backstreet" abortionist Mr Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) – but hiring his services proves to be a tricky procedure, and his labours ultimately incur an unexpected form of payment…
   Mungiu's blunt, near real-time approach recalls another recent, prize-garlanded drama from this particular country, Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr Lazarescu – both films painting Romanian cities as l'enfer-c'est-les-autres obstacle-courses for their hapless residents. But whereas Puiu's picture slowly sprawled into self-indulgence and implausibility, Mungiu expertly tightens the narrative screws while firmly resisting any hint of melodramatics. Instead, he wisely trusts his terrific (and seldom off-camera) star Marinca to carry the picture on her deceptively slight shoulders.
   And, rather than tackling the pros and cons of abortion – the picture won't convert anyone who has strong feelings about the issue – 4 Months is, we realise, more about Otilia's self-realisation. As she reassesses her situation in the light of Gabita's misadventures, we see her taking charge not only of her friend's life but also of her own. And it surely isn't too fanciful, given the carefully-specific geographical and chronological setting of the film, (and despite Ceausescu never being shown or mentioned) to suggest that our heroine's move towards independence parallels Romania's own imminent, belated, and traumatic 'awakening.'

IMPORT EXPORT                                                  [8/10]               
Writer-director Seidl gained something of a reputation as a misanthropic provocateur - "shit-stirrer", to be precise – with his 2001 breakthrough Dog Days, a searing examination of desperate lives in a stultifying Austrian suburb. Import Export is his followup fictional-feature, revealing Seidl as an old-school liberal humanist concerned with the (forcible) extension of sympathy, and displaying an acute awareness of and interest in Europe's current socio-economic realities.
   These are analysed via twin plotlines: one ('Import') focussing on Ukrainian nurse Olga (Ekateryna Rak), an attractive blonde in her mid-twenties whose diligent toils bring meagre reward. Reluctant to explore the shadily lucrative world of internet porn, she heads west – and finds a series of more-or-less demeaning/over-demanding jobs ("I can hire you and fire you," she's told. "That's how it is in this country!").  'Export' concentrates on hot-headed Pauli (Paul Hofmann), an energetic youth somewhat lacking in academic skills but by no means stupid (he seeks "harmony with myself and my surroundings".) After an abortive, humiliating stint as a security-guard, he starts working for his piggishly-lascivious stepfather Michael (Michael Thomas), who delivers superannuated space-invaders to desolate eastern-European destinations – and takes advantage of the attractive, cash-strapped young ladies he meets there.
   Seidl (working with co-scriptwriter Veronica Franz) alternates between the story-strands in a manner that adheres to a well-established form of cinematic syntax. But the screenplay's structure doesn't turn out as we're led to expect – indeed, the audacity of the picture's ambiguities may frustrate some. This structural aspect, though ultimately one of Import Export's most intriguing and successful elements, isn't ever allowed to overwhelm of Seidl's content, however. He takes us on a clear-eyed journey to places we'd rather not think about, let alone visit, and does so in a way that's illuminating but never didactic or preachy. His 'trademark' in-your-face techniques (including disturbing scenes protracted beyond 'acceptable' lengths) are deployed for a specific and justifiable purpose – to show the realities of exploitation in its many forms. The subtext being that, in our age of cosily blinkered anaesthesia, only extreme images and emotions can rouse us from our bourgeois slumbers.

LITTLE MOTH                                                        [7+/10]            
No international film-festival these days is complete without a rough-edged, no-budget, underground Chinese drama, shot on hand-held DV cameras, starring non-professional actors and exposing some harrowing aspect of the nation's grim contemporary life. Little Moth (based on the novel of the same name by BAI Tianguang) is very much within that particular tradition, but it's nevertheless a fine, auspicious second feature for writer-director-editor Peng – a "misery-fest", perhaps, but one that gains extra emotional resonance as it lingers in the memory.
   The title character is an 11-year-old girl nicknamed Xiao E'zi (which apparently translates as 'Little Moth'), played by ZHAO Huihui. Little Moth is unable to walk due to "a strange illness", rendering her a valuable, sympathy-magnet commodity for those adults who make an illicit living via street-begging. Her latest 'parents' are the venal Luo (HONG Qifa) – "it's impossible to be in this business if we take pity on others!" – and downtrodden wife Guibua (HAN Dequn). Long inured to her fate, Little Moth is eventually persuaded to escape after befriending one-armed XIAO Chun (ZHANG Lei), who's also a hapless participant in the "business"…
   Peng's budgetary restrictions only occasionally intrude – specifically, when passers-by stare/grin/point into the camera. And his script loses focus somewhat in the second half, alternating between Little Moth and Guibua to emphasise how adults can also fall foul of exploitation. But these aren't major negatives in what's largely a gripping, convincing and (appropriately) upsetting work of rigorous unsentimentality – including one superlative, late-in-the-day dinner-table sequence (reminiscent of the suffocating claustrophobia of LI Yang's Blind Mountain) when we realise an seemingly fortuitous development for Little Moth isn't all it appears. And young Zhao, though she "does" very little, is excellent throughout – in fact, her excellence lies in how little she does, as the implications of her stoic resignation are infinitely more moving than any amount of tears.

MILKY WAY                                                             [7+/10]            
Though not quite up to the level of his terrific, discombobulating debut Forest (2003), Milky Way confirms writer-director Fliegauf as one of European cinema's more adventurously maverick talents. It's a gnomic, elliptical, wordless mid-length feature in which conventional dialogue is replaced by murmurs, groans and assorted sound-effects – and as such feels, if anything, like an unofficial, belated companion-piece to Hukkle (2002, by Fliegauf's countryman / contemporary PALFI Gyorgy – both born in Budapest in 1974).
   But whereas Palfi's eye ranged over humans and fauna alike, Fliegauf here is concerned with people in specific environments. His camera never moves, delivering (James Benning-style) ten extended shots notable for their precise composition, revealing a bone-dry (occasionally blackly-comic) wit as their narrative elements slowly become apparent. Some of the discrete vignettes (such as pt3, involving a pram and what we deduce are two parents) have the terse, concentrated economy of the classic literary short-story – others are surreally poetic, quizzically ludic, disturbing in their ambiguity. All of its sections are notable for the acute attention paid to the sound-design, and for the alien detachment of Fliegauf's relentless gaze.
   The fundamental guiding principle is a rather naggingly arch conceit – on more than one occasion, the silence of the "characters" feels like a strained authorial contrivance rather than an organic element of the situation – and there's something off-putting about the way people are reduced to the puppets or pawns of a sardonic, unseen manipulator. Perhaps inevitably, Milky Way is a hit-and-miss affair, more a matter of incidental pleasures than of cumulative or sustained effect – but when Fliegauf really hits his stride (in particular pt4, involving mountain-bikers, a JCB, a tree, an unseen crow and a bird's nest), he comes across as a kind of Tati, Magritte and Iosseliani all rolled into one.

Neil Young
11th November, 2007

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days : [8/10] : 4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile (subtitle Tales from the Golden Age) : Cristian MUNGIU : Romania 2007 : 113m : seen 25th Oct, Kunstlerhaus (paid  ‚¬7.50)
Import Export : aka Import/Export : [8/10] : Ulrich SEIDL : Austria 2007 : 135m : seen 27th Oct, Kunstlerhaus (complimentary press-delegate ticket)
Little Moth : [7+/10] : Xue chan : PENG Tao : China 2007 : 99m : seen 28th Oct, video-room
Milky Way : [7+10] : Tejut : FLIEGAUF Benedek : Hungary 2007 : 76m : seen 26th Oct, video-room

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