3.7
-- YOUTH,
Paolo Sorrentino
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Like trying to catch the wind, the subject of time is as
fugitive as a breeze that mysteriously lifts the spirit
out of the deep. That time seems to cease when we're fully
engaged in life is the conundrum, or dichotomy that fuels
the extraordinary imagination and films of Italy's Paolo
Sorrentino, especially, his latest, Youth,
a demographic and world only the old can fully speak of.
The film's thin story line magically unfolds in an opulent
palace converted into a spa overlooking the verdant Swiss
Alps. Its amenities attract the rich and famous, among them
Fred (Michael Caine), a music conductor, and Mick (Harvey
Keitel), a film director. They are both octogenarians, life-long
friends, whose children have just divorced. They meet and
chat every day, each, in his own way, trying to make sense
of life, and what it means to live authentically. Fred recognizes
that his creative juices have dried up, while Mick has convinced
himself he's still at his best. What takes this movie to
another level is its physicality, its voluptuousness, but
not the kind that assaults the senses (à la El Topo
by Jodorworsky), but flatters them until they surrender
to introspection.
Every morning, Fred and Mick discuss their feeble urine
production, measured in drops: both suffer from age-related
prostate hyperplasia. There's an unforgettable scene where
a naked Miss Universe, her perfect skin and body bathed
in golden light, sylph-like enters one of the thermal pools
while Fred and Mick, looking on, are speechless. The following
day, in close up, a young masseuse is working over Fred's
enfeebled body, its loose and sagging skin. The cumulative
effect of these immaculately shot scenes is that the viewer
comes to realize that what is really happening in this film
is taking place off screen, but not entirely, again like
the wind we feel but can't grasp. How old do you have to
be -- to be old enough for Youth, asks this film?
His daughter makes sure he doesn't get away with blaming
his youthful trangressions on his youth.
Sorrentino invests the physical world -- the Alps, the lavish
soundtrack, the magnificent sets and their locations --
with a sumptuousness that is so excessive and sensual it
comes to speak the language of metaphysics. As we connect
the dots, supply the syntax, the language of time passing
is being spoken -- in secret alphabets. Just as flamenco
-- like no other style -- brings out the dynamic range and
possibilities of the guitar, Youth raises the bar
in what is possible in cinema. There has never been anything
quite like it. From a director who has studied the masters
(Fellini) in order to free himself from them, Youth
is its own precedent. By eliminating everything that does
not address his immediate concerns, Sorrentino makes sense
of the world by recreating it, image by image, which is
how he comes to discover his particular style and signature.
What emerges is the language he has had to invent in order
to share his values with the world. And as his world finds
a place in ours, the world of cinema turns a corner.
2.7
-- MOUNTAINS
MAY DEPART, Jia Zhangke
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Jia Zhangke's Mountains
May Depart is an ambitious, tightly knit narrative epic
that covers 25 years of China's "great leap ahead" -- and
its consequences. In the opening scene, Shen is teaching
modern dance to her students. Her preference for American
music symbolizes China's goals and beyond. She is being
pursued by Zhang, a young flamboyant, braggadocio capitalist
and Liangzi, who works in his coal mine. Torn between the
two, she eventually decides on the moneyed-man, and lives
to regret it. The first of the film's three chapters is
shot with a square lens, usually used for portraiture, or
to convey an ideal vision of life, which in this case is
the traditional China optimistically looking westward. The
second chapter, shot in normal wide screen, leaps ten years
ahead and finds Shen divorced, her husband with custody
of their child (money talks), and the coal miner, Liangzi,
unable to pay for his cancer treatments. But Shen's spirit,
despite having lost her son (named Dollar), and then her
father, cannot be broken because she remains connected to
China's traditional communal values. In the final chapter,
Dollar, now grown up, is living in Australia, but doesn't
know what to do with his life. He has forgotten how to speak
Mandarin, and requires a translator to speak with his father,
a development which makes this section the least credible.
Father and son are at odds, no one is happy, and the promise
of capitalism rings hollow. Only Shen seems to have found
happiness, and is seen dancing the dance of Zorba in the
final scene. The film was helped by a haunting diatonic
sound track (always welcome in Chinese films), and forceful
character development: Zhangke's political message never
gets in the way of the very credible and compelling relationships.
1.5
-- FRANCOFONIA.
LE LOUVRE UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION, Alexandre
Sokourov
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
A pretentious, static presentation of two administrative
leaders in charge of the art work inside their respective
countries' two most prestigious museums: the Louvre and
the Hermitage. Count Franz Wolff-Metternich, representing
the Third Reich, and Jacques Jaujard, protector of art work
inside the Louvre, meet following Germany's invasion of
Paris. Metternich disobeys orders to ship out art work from
the Louvre over to Germany. We are basically told everything;
there is no drama, no tension, no credibility, and the last
scene was a total cop-out of amateurish stature. The art
work was nice to look at though.
2.1
-- THE MEASURE
OF A MAN, Stéphané
Brisé
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Fifty one year-old Thierry (marvelously acted by France's
Vincent Lindon) has spent 20 months in a job-training program
in construction, yet the course never included anyone going
to a site. He seems unemployable. A skype interview seems
to be going well, but then the interviewee advises him his
resume is poorly written and he stands a slim chance of
getting the job -- this after he takes up 10 minutes interviewing
him. He and his wife have a 19-year-old son with cerebral
palsy. At the bank, he is told to either sell his house
or take out life insurance. He needs cash. Finally, he lands
a job at a supermarket. He is to survey and catch anyone
shoplifting. After two serious incidents at the supermarket,
Thierry has had enough, and walks out on the job. Despite
Lindon's charismatic acting, the editing and story fell
flat. There were some black humour scenes, and though the
director tried to make a documentary on the state of affairs
in France's hiring market, the pit and sadness we were to
feel did not happen.
2.6 --
EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE,
Wim Wenders
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Tomas Eldan is a depressed self-absorbed writer struggling
with writer’s block. On the way home from his ice fishing
jaunt, he hits Christopher, a little boy whom he brings
back to his mother’s house which is just up the little hill
the boy was sliding down on his toboggan. Eldan is relieved
the car caused no injury. But in fact, his car killed Christopher’s
brother Nicolas who got shoved under the wheels. This, he
does not know until his mother asks Christopher where his
brother is. This tragedy forms the epicenter of the film,
but eventually begins to spoke out into every facet of the
writer’s life. However, Elden keeps it all together by not
talking about it. His feelings are buried deep within. His
relationship with his girlfriend falls apart. He forms a
friendship with the mother of the boy he killed; she is
religious and from the get-go says it was not his fault.
It was an accident. Eventually, he becomes a successful
writer with his new wife and her daughter basking in his
new-found fame. However, Christopher, now an 18-year-old
comes back into Elden’s life -- an unwelcome occurrence
on Elden’s part. It would seem he’s being stalked. The young
man needs to sort things out; he is angry and bitter. Wracked
with guilt and pain, both men find a way to finalize their
suffering. The slow-moving realism of the film works well,
but James Franco as Elden is miscast. Also, (inexplicably)
no one aged in this film despite the passing of time. The
only ones who did were the two children Christopher and
Nina, the daughter of Eldan's wife. Charlotte Gainsbourg,
Marie-Jose Croze and Rachel McAdams round out the rich cast
of characters. The women in this film are heroines.
2.0
-- EVERYTHING
WILL BE FINE, Wim Wenders
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Novel use of 3D notwithstanding, very little is fine in
Wim Wender's plodding, vim and vigourless, going-on-narcoleptic
Everything
Will Be Fine. The director's first mistake is casting
boyish looking James Franco as the lead: we're supposed
to believe he's an angst-ridden writer. On two occasions,
the film jumps ahead four years, but Franco, and the female
leads (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rachel McAdams) don't age a
wrinkle: an odd oversight for someone who's been making
films since 1967. Odder yet, the near banalizing of the
very weighty subject of guilt -- from a director who gave
us the unrivaled metaphysical gem Wings of Desire.
Tomas, played by Franco, accidently runs over a child and
becomes obsessed over it, and to such a degree that two
years later, it's the mother of the deceased child who ends
up comforting Tomas. We learn that the mother, too, feels
guilty because she couldn't put down Faulkner instead of
tending to her kids. Self-absorbed, anally-retentive Tomas's
guilt is refracted (not to be confused with illuminated)
through his relationships with three woman, and of course
his writing, which gets better consequent to his guilt.
Towards the end of this endless film, the deceased's brother
- with issues of his own (he breaks into Tomas' house and
urinates on his mattress) -- tries to make Tomas feel guilty
for channeling his guilt into his books. All understanding,
compassionate Tomas hugs him for it and all is well. The
film was shot in Quebec, Canada. One would have expected
the province's architecture and natural beauty to have been
given a better showing in 3D, just as one expects Wenders
to get back to what he now does best: making documentaries,
a genre he has done proud in recent years.
3.2
-- AFERIM!,
Radu Jude
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
"We live as we can, not as we want," explains Costandin
to his son Ionita. It is 1834 in Wallachia, an impoverished
region in southern Romania. They have just captured and
returned an escaped gypsy slave. (In Romania, gypsies
were enslaved from the 14th to the 19th century, which might
explain why, as written in Spain's Royal Language Academy
Dictionary, gypsies had to resort to "manoeuvers to cheat.")
The cuckolded boyar (feudal lord), bent on teaching the
other slaves a lesson in obedience, snips off the slave's
genitals and makes his adulterous wife eat them, before
sending her back to the tower. But the real story of this
film is its authentic historical setting, majestically filmed
in sweeping black and white. The simple story line is the
device Golden Bear winner Radu Jude employs to lay bare
the ugly truths, inequities, superstitions and fierce tribal
hatreds that prevailed in the early 19th century. Costandin
and Ionita, stripped of all their illusions, are the Wallachian
counterparts of Spain's Don Quixote and Sancho. The language
delights in ribald metaphor, X-rated cursing, and equal
opportunity denouncing of all outsiders (Jews, Turks, Greeks
etc) as well as throwing a stark light on the conditions
of life where there are only degrees of difference between
the beaten down peasant folk and the animals they tend to.
Towards the end of this fascinating film there's a shot
of pigs peacefully rooting in the mud, while nearby the
drunken men have unsheathed their swords and the women are
being urged by their husbands to perform sexual favours
for a few coins. Much of the story unfolds along the ever
dangerous trade routes cutting through the great misty forests
in the region, where every meeting with a stranger is a
possible confrontation or opportunity to better one's situation.
The son Ionita quickly learns from his pragmatically wise
and cynical father that it is each man and his tribe or
language group for himself. In the peasant villages (deserving
awards as set pieces), no one is left untouched by the filth
and grime; the women are treated like mules, disease (cholera,
plague) is a constant threat, and everything and everyone
is for sale. Without a trace of bravado, and on its own
cinematic terms, this film is at once an indictment and
homage to the way it was in 1834. Aferim in Turkish means
well done. Aferim Radu Jude.
2.4
-- AFERIM!,
Radu Jude
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
A film created from a historical document in Romania, this
black and white old-style movie, shows the brutal treatment
of gypsies and the slavery they endured. Costandin is a
constable who, with his son Ionita, must capture a run-away
gypsy slave form his rich master (a boyar, second to Prince
in ranking) and bring him back to the master. On the long
trip back on horseback, Costandin waxes philosophical about
life's cruelty and how men will never change. In following
his duty, he is complicit in the fate that awaits the gypsy.
A most unusual film with folklore flare and rural harshness.
Everyone was oppressed except the keepers of slaves.
3.8
-- HEART
OF A DOG, Laurie Anderson
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
A hypnotic multi-media tapestry on the screen that features
the director's beloved dog Lolabelle and how she viewed
the world; it was this dog that she deeply loved. But this
deeply moving film transcends all cornerstones of rationality
and linear thinking. The film is a reflection on how she
cathartically coped with the loss of her mother, her husband,
a good friend and the dog -- all leaving her life in the
year 2011. Viusal, electronic music, words and fraxel-like
images spill onto the screen along with images of reality.
It takes us into a deserted area in Utah where a huge matrix
of buildings stores electronic information on just about
everything any citizen does or says in the US and beyond.
This is the post 9/11 information overload in apocalyptic
style. Using the Tibetan
Book of the Dead to cope with so much in her life, she
navigates her way through the big questions of death, reincarnation,
regret and love. A gifted artist with a voice to match,
Ms. Anderson shares her stream of consciousness thoughts
-- not only as expression of art -- but it is her method
of processing all that she experiences on a day-to-day level.
There is not other film like this; personal, magical and
profound. What a brilliant woman.
2.4 --
SPARROWS, Rünar
Rünarsson
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Nineteen year-old Ari has a stunning choir voice and he
loves Reykjavik, but hhis mother makes him go and live with
his loser drunk of a father whom he hasn't' seen in eight
years. He must try to fit into a new community of derelicts
and deprived teens in an isolated fishing village in Iceland's
forgotten out-of reach regions. The only thing he likes
doing there is visiting his grandmother, and watching Lara,
his childhood friend from a distance. But loss is in store
for all three of them. Ari gets caught against his will
in the degraded behaviour of the people and witnesses a
terrible act. Will he and his father ever find a way to
be close? The film is a delicate landscape of barren beauty
and daily brutalities reflecting moral decay. It is through
Ari that we experience it -- a quiet horror of unrelenting
addiction and sexual abberance.
2.9
-- BORN
TO BE BLUE, Robert Budreau
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Films that default to biography to explain creative genius
tend to be soporific, formulaic affairs: young kid, born
into disadvantaged family and/or environment, rises up against
the odds to become the genius we all know him/her to be,
as if there is a cause and effect relationship between suffering,
hardship and deprivation, and creativity. The best films
-- and they are few and far between - intuitively grasp
that there is no accounting for genius, that it follows
its own quirky indiscernible laws, and the best a film director
can do is narrow his focus to a slice of the performers
life as he responds to the exigencies of his daily life
and times, and perhaps then we'll get a glimmer of how experience
gets translated into art. In Bertrand Tavernier's unsurpassed
Round
Midnight, there's a scene where someone shows an abstract
painting to saxophonist Dexter Gordon and asks him what
he sees: bebop he replies. When asked how he came up with
a particular riff, Keith Richards answered that he happened
to be awake at that moment. That is perhaps as close as
we can get to how and why genius manifests. Robert Budreau's
very credible, albeit far from faultless, Born to Be
Blue focuses on the life of heroin addict, trumpeter
Chet Baker, just after his face has been smashed in by thugs
whom Chet owes money. The film opens with a scene of Chet
playing in a biopic where he takes his first shot of heroin
to the upset of his soon-to-be ex-wife. This is an unnecessary
and confusing beginning that only gets on track when Chet
hooks up with Jane, an aspiring actress-musician, who nurses
him back to health and helps him find the strength to learn
how to replay the trumpet with dentures, but under the condition
that he gives up heroin and agrees to undergo a medically
prescribed methadone treatment. Chet, who has an addictive
personality, of course gets hooked on Jane's sympathy and
support. For its timeless music, insights into the jazz
scene (prejudice against white jazz musicians), and the
relationship between Chet and Jane, Born to Be Blue
manages to get under your skin despite its very even keel.
Chet, played by Ethan Hawke, rarely gets ruffled, even after
being snubbed by Miles Davis, rebuffed by his conservative
father, and given up on by all those who once supported
him. Our interest in Chet is sustained, in large part, through
his relationship with Jane, flawlessly played by the pulchritudinous
Carmen Ejogo, who brings an unusually generous charisma
to the screen: instead of being the strict centre of attraction,
her radiance is such that she lights up everyone around
her, including, in the early scenes, facially disfigured
Chet. If Chet's screen character presences like a ballad
on slow burn, Jane is the plucky pizzicato. Audiences should
not confuse Born to Be Blue with biography; the
film, a work of fiction, is more of an improvisation on
the facts of Chet Baker's life than a rendering of them.
What Blue, under the keen helmership of Budreau,
does best is disclose by indirection the abstruse and tantalizingly
mysterious relationship between life and art such that the
viewer comes to better understand that the gifted play by
a different set of rules, that their choices in life --
which might not make much sense to exercise fanatics --
are guided by their faith and belief in that what survives
beyond the grave and allows for intimations of the ineffable
is art and only art.
4.0
-- REMEMBER,
Atom Egoyan
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Beware the devastating dualistic consequences wrought by
a person and inflicted on that person suffering from dementia.
Beware the one who manipulates this foggy-headed person
in order to serve his own sharply focused vengeful purpose,
full of self-interest -- yet somehow justified. Zev is the
man who has dementia; Max is the man who manipulates him.
Both are very old, and meet in an old age home. Zev sets
out on a journey to track down the German SS Nazi responsible
for killing both his and Max's family. And what a journey
it is. This spellbinding thriller with a slow build has
an ending never before masterminded by any screen writer
thus far. Christopher Plummer as Zev is hypnotically brilliant.
He plays his role with such authenticity, who would ever
think none is real. (I won't give away the spoiler) As the
sweetest, gentlest man to come out of Auschwitz, Zev is
so loveable, and Plummer has created his finest acting job
in this brilliantly scripted story. Martin Landau as Max
(nothing wrong with his marbles) and Jürgen Prochow (remember
him in Das
Boot) complete the circle of incomparable casting. Remember
is a film you won't ever forget!
2.9
-- THE
ASSASSIN, Hsiao-Hsien Hou
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Artfully crafted cinematography that captures the beauty
of Chinese palace life in the 9th century -- expect that
all is not well. Betrayal of family promises, and conflicting
regional politics set asunder the calm beauty of a traditional
court life of the Tang Dynasty -- a golden age for China.
The forgotten girl of the family, betrothed to her cousin,
ends up not as a wife but an assassin. The martial arts
are graceful, tense and used to shed light on character,
not on chaos. At this year's Cannes Festival, best director
was awarded to the Taiwanese Hsiao-Huen.
2.7
-- CORNER
OF HEAVEN, Zhang Miaoyan
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
More of a documentary than drama, Zhang's depressing black
and white film tells the story of 11-year-old Guo, who has
been abandoned by his mother in rural China. A shoulder
held camera, like a second skin, follows him (we see more
of his back than front) as he searches for his corner of
heaven (his mother) in the wasteland that industrialized
China has become: debris and detritus are ubiquitous. Beneath
brooding skies sucked dry of light, over the buckling remains
of abandoned buildings, through rivers that have been reduced
to trickles of scum and waste, the all-seeing lens eviscerates
the ugly truths of China bent on keeping pace with the West.
Along the way, Guo encounters other kids like himself --
easy prey for the lowlifes and criminal element scrabbling
to stay alive; it's only a matter of time before Guo loses
his innocence, grows a carapace and becomes that someone
you don't want to meet. Despite almost never speaking, Guo
is a fully developed character whose personality takes its
shape in response to the necessity of adapting to his sordid
surroundings and an uncaring world. Be as it may that Zhang's
third feature is a wholesale indictment of China's heartless
capitalism, it's the boy's plight that engages the viewer
and not the film's message or agenda. With the implicit
blessings of the authorities, Guo and the millions like
him will indeed find their 'corner of heaven' because the
opium pipe is here, there and everywhere in China -- at
a fraction of the cost of social aid.
1.0
-- POLK,
Nikos Nikolopoulos & Vladimir
Nikolouzos
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Artsy yellowish and black and white still shots that stay
on the screen for over five minutes. A total bore that goes
for artistic pretension to uncover the mystery surrounding
the murder of American journalist George Washington Polk.
I mean really -- how long do we want to stare at a screen
watching Polk eating a lobster -- sweating away without
any explanation to his perspiration? Ironically, the film
does not succeed in revealing anything about his murder,
but cops out, preferring to film surreal scenes of absurdist
impact that have no impact at all, except compelling the
viewer to yawn, and to never eat lobster again.
3.0
-- NEON BULL,
Gabriel Mascara
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Gabriel Mascara's latest is a plotless, lyrically paced,
bullguiling film that is at once an understated celebration
of the bodies of both bulls and beings, and a wake-up call
to the world regarding Brazil's enlightened attitude towards
changing gender norms -- and where you would least expect
it: on the macho rodeo circuit. Iremar and his fellow cowboys
(vaqueiros)
are charged with transporting and grooming bulls for the
next show: they look tough, talk tough, walk tough, but
Iremar loves to design clothes and dreams of owning a sewing
machine, and is very picky when it comes to his perfumes.
Galega, the only woman in the group, is the no-nonsense
truck and tractor mechanic, and at night, a honky-tonk burlesque
dancer, while Junior spends all day in front of the mirror
combing out his long hair -- hardly the stuff of macho men
and the Chanel Number 5 crowd. Muscular Iremar apparently
isn't attracted to the very sexy Galega; instead, in a wonderfully
silhouetted scene, he ends up making love on a cutting table
to a woman who is eight months pregnant. But this film is
much more than an illustration of a paradigm shift. The
bull-hands, who share the same working and sleeping quarters
as the bulls, and have to perform their daily ablutions
outside, are stand-ins for Brazil's growing legion of the
working poor. That they don't seem to mind speaks to a director
who is more interested in producing a work of art than making
a political point. That said, in an overwrought and lengthy
homo-erotic scene that beggars credulity, eight naked men
are crowded under a single shower head, as if their next
wash-down might never come -- unless we're expected to believe
that heterosexual men who are truly comfortable in their
own skins should have no qualms about taking group showers.
The film is deliciously shot in mostly wide-angle; both
actors and landscape are given equal say under the beautifully
bright Brazilian sun. Since there is no narrative to speak
of, the scenes -- mostly vignettes of the cowboy quotidian
-- are self-sufficient and their own reward: Iremar trudging
through a field of caked mud looking for broken mannequin
body parts, or clandestinely stroking a horse for its prized
sperm. As a window into a world that is probably on its
way out, Neon Bull is a memorable way in.
3.6
-- NINTH
FLOOR, Mina Shum
[reviewed
by Andrew Hlavacek]
The screening of Mina Shum’s new documentary, Ninth
Floor, was an auspicious event for not only its subject
matter, but also for the location of this Québéc première.
Part of FNC 2015 in partnership with Cinema Politica Concordia,
Ninth Floor recounts tumultuous events in the history
of Montréal’s Concordia University -- ones that helped expose
Canada’s problem with race and racism in the afterglow of
Expo ’67’s multi-cultural euphoria.
Screened in the legendary Room H110 -- Concordia’s Hall
Building auditorium -- Ninth Floor assembles participants
of the 1969 student occupation of the university’s computer
lab. Following a rupture between students and administration
over allegations of racism against biology professor Perry
Anderson, students piled into the computer room and staged
a protest of civil disobedience, which lasted 14 days and
ended in mass arrests, police brutality, vandalism and arson.
The events surrounding the occupation of the computer room
are complex. The participants’ testimonies draw out an uneasy
history of institutional, social and individual racism that
pervaded in the 1960s, manifestations of which continue
into the present. Archival footage -- generously provided
by Concordia University -- is often damning as administrators
and principal players betray their biases by strategically
stalling negotiations with the students. Moreover, the film
gives voice to credible testimony that casts great doubt
on official histories, which blame the student-protestors
for the destruction.
Blending present-day interviews, documentary footage and
scripted fictional scenes depicting the isolation of the
'Other,' Ninth Floor propels the political and
social issues whitewashed in the 1960s into the fabric of
the modern Canadian reality. In so doing, Mina Shum situates
the 'Computer Room Incident' -- as it is little-known today
-- in the historical context of a broader struggle of the
North American civil rights movement as well as the contemporary
context in which student movements continue to face the
threat of institutional reprisal for justified, democratic
protest.
Last Friday’s première screening of Ninth Floor
was a singular event in that it took place on the hallowed
ground of its subject matter. The audience participation
-- along with the attendance of some of the original complainants
-- demonstrated a continual schism between official histories
and the popular imaginary. This makes the film even more
important in that it transcends its proper scope to interrogate
the Canadian reality of today. From the comments made by
various spectators, it is clear that Canada needs to reconcile
its past with its present practices in order to move forward
toward a goal of real equality where the establishment no
longer feels threatened by race. Ninth Floor screens
again at FNC on Friday October 16 at 1pm. http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/en/films/ninth-floor.
2.7
-- THE
CLUB, Pablo Larrain
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Chilean Pablo Larrain's The
Club is a refreshingly original albeit highly disturbing
take on the sexual scandals that have brought the Catholic
Church to its foot and mouth diseases. In order to spare
the church from more public disgrace and, in theory, to
allow them the time and space to come to terms with their
sins, four very bad priests and a wicked, conniving nun
are sent to a half-way house in a small coastal town (La
Boca) in Chile. Their regular and jovial noon meal is interrupted
when a fifth priest arrives, who is shortly thereafter outed
by someone he abused as an alter boy. He commits suicide,
at which point the church sends in Father Garcia to investigate
the shooting and report on moral rehabilitation of the other
priests. What ensues, in ear-shattering, sexually explicit
language, is enough to chill the religion out of even your
most ardent believer. The dialogue, the confessions, however
unsubtle, are as gripping as they are dirty and disgusting.
That these now middle aged men were ordained as priests
speaks not only to their failings and moral bankruptcy,
but the institution itself which should have from the outset
weeded them out and sent them straight to hell. All too
aware of human nature as it concerns daily reports on the
violence and inhumanity of war that we eventually become
accustomed and then numb to, Larrain makes sure that we
don't become complacent as it concerns priests who plunder
little boys, convincing them that when they swallow semen
they are taking in the love of god into themselves. This
is a film that does not end with the closing credits. Why
are these sick criminal priests in a safe house instead
of a maximum security prison remains a question in waiting.
The theatre-like sets were ideally suited to the superb
acting performances from all the leads.
2.7
-- FROM
AFAR, Lorenzo Vigo
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Kids that have been abused by their fathers, sexually or
otherwise, more often than not become abusive, manipulative
adults. Lorenzo Vigas's tight-rope of a film gets full points
for making that very point while exploring the unflattering
relationship between sex, money and power. Armando is a
well-to-do middle-aged homosexual who hits on young men
from the barrio (Caracas). Elder, presumably heterosexual,
desperate for cash, agrees to a tryst, but can't go through
with it: instead, he beats up Armando and steals his money.
But despite the beating and band aids, Armando persists,
showering Elder with his largesse. In a series of clipped
conversations, we learn that both of them have been abused
by their fathers: that Armando's has just returned to Caracas
and that Elder's is in prison for murder. As Armando strategically
becomes the kind and sympathetic father Elder never had,
the latter begins to feel guilty, and finally offers himself
to Armando and volunteers to kill the father that he wants
dead. From
Afar is about life-long wounds that won't heal, and
the chronic inability of the abused to interrogate their
self-destructive behaviour. The edgy, volatile relationship
between Armando and Elder sustains the film in which their
characters are cleverly, almost by stealth, reversed. Kindly
Armando isn't as kind as we are led to believe, just as
Elder, an amoral punk thief, isn't all that bad. The unsightly
barrios of Caracas that surround the opulent center get
a fair hearing as does the blight of Latino homophobia.
3.4
-- BODY,
Malgorzata Szumowska
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Polish forensic pathologist, Janusz (masterfully acted by
Januszk Gajos), has his hands full with all kinds of macabre
cases that reflect the depressive state of Poland. His daughter
Olga suffers from anorexia and bulimia; she can't deal with
the death of her mother and the coldness of her father.
He has nothing but disdain for Olga which he expresses with
a look or a by speaking a single sentence. Their communication
is in tatters. Olga eventually joins a clinic where therapist,
Anna, a woman who claims to connect with dead souls tries
to help her, and eventually and with great reluctance Janusz
join the séance arranged at his tiny apartment. Anna falls
asleep at the table, and the film ends with a humorous if
not endearing twist that salvages the father-daughter relationship.
It would seem that body and spirit are one and the same,
and if one is out of whack the other is too. The acting
is superb. Maja Ostaszewska in the role of Anna resonates
with her own quiet despair, but ironically, the character
is so far gone that it adds humour to the film. She offers
a brilliant interpretation of loneliness, denial and kookiness
which finds its own purpose by giving to others.
2.4
-- SONG
OF SONGS, Eva Neymann
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Films about Hasidic Jews are invariably criticisms of a
way of life that seems excessively harsh and unfairly removed
from the vital present. Song
of Songs is no exception. Stetl life, presumably in
the late eighteen hundreds in Ukraine, is an persistently
dreary affair: the stuff of leaden skies, rain and snow
mixing with mud, dilapidated buildings, paint peeling off
every wall, and joyless inhabitants whose faith, on a good
day, offers only scraps for comfort. Shimek and his adopted
sister Buzya revert to bathed-in-light fantasies to escape
their confinement and religious protocols, and swear their
eternal love. Their relationship is torn asunder when Shimek
is sent away to the big city to study medicine. When he
returns ten years later, thoroughly citified, to claim Buzya,
he rudely discovers she is already betrothed, and that their
enduring love cannot be consummated. Song of Songs
is a weighty, depressing film that features exquisite sets
and luminous cinematography: every scene is a museum piece
-- but at the expense of character development. Sometimes
painfully sharp, sometimes exquisitely diffuse, the focus
reveals -- even more than the physical reality -- the psychological
universe of the shtetl. As to the rationale behind this
tortoise paced film, it is not at all clear if the director
wants the audience to feel thankful not to have been born
into that modest way of life, or if she is making a more
general statement that clinging to an ethos that is out
of step with the present is a recipe for tragedy. An award
goes to the casting and the gallery of memorable faces that
grace the screen.
1.9
-- SONG
OF SONGS, Eva Neymann
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
A shtetl in the Ukraine introduces us to Rabbis, the Yeshiva
and most importantly, to Buzya and Shimek. The young boy
has an overactive imagination and a desire to wed Buzya
when time comes. Alas, he goes away to study medicine and
she is betrothed to another. This theatrical, stylized portrayal
of Jewish life was not credible. Taken from the Song of
Solomon that declares his love for the Queen of Sheba, the
lyric in the film, spoken by Shemik, alludes to this love
story in the Old Testament. The film dragged and its portrayal
of Hasidic life did not ring true. Too theatrical and manipulative,
the director tended to turn the screen into a gallery of
photographic stills of certain scenes. It just wasn't realistic.
3.3 --
EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT,
Ciro Guerra
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
In 1909, Karamakate, an indigenous shaman living in Amazonia,
agrees to help Theodor, a German ethnographer who is so
ill, he's dying. The cure lies in a plant called yakura
-- also used as a hallucinogenic with powers over dreams.
They must travel deep into the jungle to find it. But Karamakate
strikes a deal with the European scientist. He must lead
him, in turn, to his people whom he thought had been wiped
out by colonists. Theodor convinces him that they still
exist, and he will bring the shaman to them. Along the way,
they land at a religious outpost whose leader is a torturer
of young aboriginal children. Karamakte tells them to follow
the lessons from the ancestors, whose teachings he tries
to impart to them in an hour. Things do not go well there.
Fast forward to 1944, and Evan, a young botanist, is seeking
the same plant; he has read the diary of Theodore. Now we
see the shaman much older, and together through conflicts
and mistrust, they end up finding the plant, but to Evan's
horror, the shaman destroys it. It turns out, Evan has not
been honest, and the whites continue to rape the jungle.
The film is visionary and very compelling. Primitive in
feel and artistically daring, it creates a sensory palette
of experiences while painting a venomous message about the
nature of 'civilized' Man.
3.2
-- IXCANUL,
Jayor Bustamante
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Maria's life is a rough and regimented one. She works alongside
her hard-working, devoted mother whose husband oversees
the coffee plantation workers in a 2000-metre-high village
in Guatemala. The family toils endlessly on the snake-infested
grassy plantation. But 17-year-old Maria has her heights
set as high as Pacaya, the volcano that hovers over the
area and the house they are renting from the man betrothed
to her. Maria dreams of going, with her lousy 'boyfriend'
Pepe, to America where everyone has cars and a house with
white fences. Pepe gets her pregnant, but abandons her.
This, she was not expecting. Her life spirals down even
further when she gets bitten by a snake in the plantation.
Here again she was tempting her fate, as she thought that
being pregnant wards off the snakes. Maria is rushed to
the hospital, and is saved, but is told by her betrothed
that the fate of the baby includes a funeral. He ends up
being as lousy as Pepe -- a liar who betrays everyone. When
the family finds out there is no baby inside the coffin
during the funeral, they go to the authorities, trying to
communicate that they must find the baby. Unfortunately,
the family only speaks the language of the Kaqchikel community
in the remote region where they live. So they must rely
on Maria's fiancé to translate for them in the office of
the official. Her fiancé completely deceives them -- misleading
the family and the authorities. Maria's dreams are dashed
in every way -- a message form the director that the modern
world and the primitive can't converge in a way that fulfills
the hopes and aspirations of those living in the mountains,
eking out a living with their bare hands. This is the director's
first feature. Impressive indeed, the work offers a sensitivity
that is subtly woven into a compelling, totally credible
narrative.
3.0
-- IXCANUL,
Jayro Bustamante
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
One of the unintended insights offered up by Jayro Bustamante's
mesmerizing debut film shot in the upper reaches of Guatemala
is that travelers who exoticize primitive places never want
them to change regardless of how the locals feel. Ixcanul
privileges the viewer by transporting him to a 2000 meter
high Mayan village that is nestled along the fertile slopes
of an active volcano. We quickly learn that village life
and its inviolable traditions are no longer immune from
the effects and temptations of modernism. Maria, whose family
has arranged for her marriage to a coffee plantation owner,
wants to get away. Word of the outside world, in the form
of publicity and magazine images, has made her envious of
the place and person she thinks she wants to be, so she
agrees to give herself away to Pepe, a good for nothing
coffee picker who works for Maria's foreman father, because
he plans to go to America, which as he describes it corresponds
more to myth than an actual place. Maria gets pregnant and
then gets bitten by a snake, and has to be taken to an hospital
in a big city. The bewildered family's first contact with
the modern world, wonderfully captured by a harried camera,
exposes both its material compensations and moral shortcomings;
Maria is saved by modern medicine but loses her baby who
did not -- as she was led to believe -- die. Among the delights
of this fascinating film, which unfolds like an allegory,
is the austere beauty of the landscape, the highly entertaining
pragmatic marriage deliberations when the two families meet
to discuss Maria's future, and from the very first frames
of the film, Maria's remarkable face and its persistently
sullen glow, which wordlessly speaks for the hopes, fears
and fate of all primitive people caught between the past
and present.
3.4
-- JAFAR
PANAHI'S TAXI, Jafar Panahi
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
A charming film that sounds the alarm on the state of affairs
in Iran -- all via a taxi and the passengers who are consecutively
picked up by the kind-hearted film-maker Jafar Pahani now
stuck driving a taxi on the streets of Teheran, subsequent
to his interrogation and ultimately, the banning of his
films -- all viewed as subversive to Islamic culture by
the authorities. The taxi Jafar drives has three hidden
cameras that film Hana, Jafar's 10-year-old precocious niece
who has a film class project that is 'screenable,' approved
by the conservative oppressive regime. She films right from
the car as her uncle drives her around. She uses a little
camera from the car. In the taxi, we meet a man injured
in a car accident, a deformed man hawking illegal American
DVDs, and then two old ladies carrying two beloved gold
fish (the bowl breaks in the taxi, but Jafar picks them
up and pours water in a plastic bag to save them). We also
meet a mugger who states every thief should be hung, a teacher,
and a disbarred lawyer who now sells roses, but still defies
the system by helping those illegally thrown into jail.
The ending of the film takes a turn for the worse, as brutality
and spying converge on the innocent, including our heroic
taxi driver. This unique and valuable piece reveals the
gritty reality of Iran's punitive system, yet it does so
with humour and pathos. The film makes a big statement,
nailing a poignant message without hammering us along the
way. Sometimes, a quiet style produces the loudest effect.
This film does.
3.7
-- HEART
OF A DOG, Laurie Anderson
[reviewed
by Andrew Hlavacek]
It is the story of a story -- perhaps it is a story of the
story -- of writer/director Laurie Anderson’s relationship
with her rat terrier Lolabelle. More profoundly, Heart
of a Dog is a complex, multi-layered rumination on Anderson’s
relation to death, dying and the ever-deepening reality
of a society under constant surveillance. A multi-disciplinary
artist, Anderson has her hand in all aspects of production,
including animation and music. The result is a beautifully
haunting film-scape that draws together dream, reality,
poetry and philosophy. There are multiple intervening narratives,
which are only loosely connected; more precisely, each strand
of narrative acts like a departure point for further musings
on the difficulty of mindful existence in the swirl of human
and animal relationships. Several overarching themes anchor
Heart of a Dog: the transformation of America into
a police state following the 9/11 attacks, Anderson’s profoundly
meaningful relationship with her beloved dog and her long-time
practice of Tibetan Buddhism. Queer, exciting, complex and
visually stimulating, Heart
of a Dog
is a personal masterwork that will beg multiple viewings.
2.8
-- ANNA,
Charles-Olivier Michaud
[reviewed
by Andrew Hlavacek]
Anna (Anna Mouglalis), a Montreal-based investigative reporter,
pursues a story of human trafficking in Thailand. Her guide
into the world of forced prostitution is Xiao (Xiao Sun),
a woman who has experienced the dehumanizing system of serial
rape and confinement, and who is now forced to take care
of the girls the Triad thugs control. As she digs deeper
into the Bangkok netherworld, Anna finds herself in increasingly
riskier circumstances. Attracting too much attention, Anna
becomes a victim of the same treatment, waking up weeks
later in a Montreal hospital, beaten, gang-raped and scarred
for life. Charles-Olivier Michaud attempts to bring light
to the plight of thousands of Asian women and girls who
are forced into prostitution and slavery in a global Triad-controlled
industry of human trafficking. The film follows Anna on
a disturbing journey of self-realization through violence,
rage, vengeance and fear as she comes face to face with
the same ugly realities half a world away in Montreal’s
Chinatown. Michel Corriveau’s powerful score drives a tense,
creeping narrative whose revelations cause more than a little
discomfort as Anna comes to terms with her trauma and begins
to piece together a means to reclaim her life and her work.
Though Michaud tries hard to do justice to a serious humanitarian
crisis, his film nevertheless feels a little forced, not
to mention sadistic, by manipulating his Caucasian protagonist
into the fate of her subjects -- as if a woman should not
be able to empathize with traumatized women of another culture
and race without directly experiencing their ordeals. The
film ultimately begs the questions: Is Anna
needlessly sensationalistic in forcing its female heroine
into such a position and, can this be viewed as a cynical
ploy that assumes that audiences would no be able to empathize
were the film’s primary victim not white?
3.0
-- 600
MILES, Gabriel Ripstein
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
There are enough Mexican-US border films to fill (and then
burn) a catalog. The best ones (The
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) wisely avoid the
banal good guy-bad guy binary, off the charts body counts,
and the gratuitous, cheap-thrill violence that invariably
erupts between drug lords and wannabes and of course the
authorities on their heels. 600 Miles is a gripping
character study with drugs and gun-running in a supporting
role. Among the film's austere pleasures are its laconic
script, a sound track that uses the natural elements to
great effect, and unbowdlerized look at American gun culture.
Young Arnulfo is charged with purchasing guns in the US
and smuggling them into Mexico. He is eager to impress the
capo, just as agent Hank Harris, played by Tim
Roth, is eager to nail him. All goes well for the very likeable
kid until the two meet, at which point we begin to learn
that Arnulfo is way over his head, that he isn't constitutionally
cut out for a life of crime. When things don't go to plan,
Arnulfo tries to stay calm but the camera, like a predator
closing in on its prey, catches him as he truly is -- agitated,
anxious, panting like an animal fearing for its life. When
his cartel Uncle reprimands him for daring to bring Hank
(now his prisoner) to his home, he breaks down and begins
to whimper and cry like a little boy. When he is ordered
to kill Hank, he refuses, and when his Uncle calls him a
"faggot" (he is in fact gay) the kid kills him for it, and
then breaks down. Hank, steely and calculating, takes over
and the two of them find themselves on the same side, with
the cartel in hot pursuit. The ending is at once a shocker
and exposition of Darwinism and its uncompromising modus
operandi. Despite a few slip-ups in respect to plot credibility,
Ripstein's debut feature film speaks to a director who is
very much in command of his craft and vision.
2.2
-- JOURNEY
TO THE SHORE, KiyosiI Kurosawa
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
A slow lyrical-moving lyrical film that elegantly explores
how deeply we miss our beloved ones when they pass away.
Yusuko, the dead husband of Mizuki, a piano teacher, suddenly
appears in her house. Together they explore the past, go
to places that he once loved, but the inference is, he never
brought her along. In reliving the past, regrets are revealed
on both their parts, but become transformed as another chance
to right the wrongs are presented and followed through.
The film's intriguing theme enriched with lovely music and
fine acting is gently and elegantly explored, but confusing
moments, artsy symbolism and some sentimentality diminish
the impact it could have had. Still, we are left feeling
the loneliness Mizuki feels when, at the end of the movie,
she sits alone staring at the ocean at the spot where he
drowned. Revisiting the past and reinventing it with departed
one by your side is indeed a wish we would all like to come
true.
2.8
-- VANISHING
POINT, Jakrawal Nilthamrong
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Opening striking black and white photos of a deadly automobile
accident, a sometimes cloudy, nervous, invasive camera hovering
over a police investigation of a rape combine to predict
a whodunit film, but then the scene abruptly shifts to a
young man trysting with an older, compassionate sex worker,
which again segues to a another aspect of life in southern
Thailand where Buddhists and aggrieved Muslims were recently
at arms over minority rights issues. Just as we think we've
figured out what the film is about, the tectonic plates
shift and we're left dangling over an existential abyss
such that by film's end the only possible conclusion to
Nilthamrong's haunting, non-linear film is that it's about
the daily preoccupations of life in Thailand caught between
modernism (iPhone culture) and ancient ways (Buddhism).
In the accumulation of its details, Vanishing
Point is a sullen, brooding affair with the camera skillfully
supplying the amorphous metaphysical grid. The viewer-generated
syntax is comprised of a deflating mix of ennui and resignation.
As a meditation on life, the film forces the conclusion
that like a fountain whose flow is constant but form never
changes, life goes on, and we are merely its very ephemeral
and replaceable parts, each of us a 'vanishing point' paused
before eternity. The film is an invitation to transform
that bleak inevitability into a point of departure, and,
with a nod to Blake, "hold infinity in the palms of your
hand." Full marks to Nilthamrong who aimed high, and despite
a shoe-string budget never lost sight of his objective.
1.5
-- VANISHING
POINT, Jakrawal Nilthamrong
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
The film opens with policemen forcing a young offender tracked
down in the forest to reenact -- using a big stuffed bear
-- the rape and murder he committed. The victim's body we
never see. Set in an area in Thailand, the film takes us
into a brothel hotel, a condom factory owned by a fifty-year-old
man who never speaks to his wife and daughter, but does
with his mistress. He tells her how bloody the area used
to be -- an embattled bastion for gangs and rival political
factions. The film moves too slowly and is poorly edited,
yet it is raw in tone and comes off with authenticity.
1.1
-- LOVE,
Gaspar Noé
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Sheer non-stop sexual exhibitionism of a couple in love.
Interestingly, the main fellow in the film -- 25-year-old
Murphy who is in love with Electra -- gets a girl pregnant,
and names the babe Gaspar. If this film is a take on his
own father's life, then no wonder he made such an aberrant
film which is an insult to any sort of subtlety in love
and sex. Contrary to its motive, it does not inspire the
desire to love -- but to leave the theatre. The plot trudges
along going nowhere except between the sheets.
2.0
-- SALOME,
Al Pacino Director
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Want to watch Al Pacino make a fool of himself -- unintentionally?
Then, go see this disaster of a film. I gave it 2 rating
for the sheer laughability of it, and also because it delves
deeply into the critical turning points in Wilde's life.
Pacino has set out to do a play -- a reading of the famous
play, Salome,
written by Wilde, and at the same time make a movie from
the play along with filming his own exploration into Wilde's
erudite and sad life. Pacino travels to Dublin, London,
the desert and of course most scenes take place in L.A.
where the play is being produced in Wadsworth Theatre --
under the auspices of Estelle Parsons. What we end up with
his the ageing actor's histrionics, his utterly dismal failure
to take on the role of Salomé's step-father, and to treat
others with the civility he so admires in Wilde. He begins
to identify with the playwright, even suggesting, he too
is a martyr, and he furthermore implies that he is bisexual;
watch the film carefully and what he says in one line. The
good thing about the film is the information he explores
on the life of this great genius, his suffering and his
lousy taste in choosing a no-good-nick lover named Bose
who betrays him. The film sheds more light on Pacino's high-strung
temperament than it does on his directorial talents. There's
even a scene where he gets angry about not being able to
just perform on demand -- he needs to wait for 'the moment.'
The final scene wherehe sports a turban and is walking in
the desert towards actors in another film that he splices
from as clips is hilarious -- and it isn't supposed to be.
The question arises, why he made this film. He himself does
not know but reveals he is being led to do it by a force.
Is Pacino coming to grips with his own sexuality? When he
equates himself in some parts to understanding the poet
as if they are both half of the other, this is not only
arrogant, but deeply misguided. I, for one am pleased that
in the L.A.
Times
headline review, the critic wrote: Pacino is over the top
. . . What was he thinking? Fortunately yet ironically,
Jessica Chastain as Salomé saved the day - even though she
had John the Baptist's head served to her on a silver platter.
3.2
-- ROOM,
Lenny Abrahamson
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
In making the case of the superiority of European literature,
the critic Lionel Trilling proposes what sets apart great
literature is that it competes with philosophy in the setting
forth and elaboration of its ideas. There are occasions
when the same can be said of certain films of a certain
genre.
Lenny Abrahamson's absorbing drama, Room,
is one of those occasions. It of course cannot hope to compete
with philosophy's open ended Being and Nothingness
issues, but it does tackle the weighty concepts of freedom
and confinement. If you have already read Emma Donoghue's
novel of the same title, try to forget about it when watching
the film; better yet not to have read the book. Films based
on novels, regardless of their excellence, invariably disappoint.
With the exception of Hal Ashby's Being There,
I've always been let down by film versions of books.
In the dialectic tradition, Room constitutes the
being-there where 5-year-old androgynous looking Jack and
his mother Joy have to negotiate the hazards of both confinement
and freedom. Joy Larson has been held captive in a backyard
shed for seven years. Her captor, a sexual predator, provides
them with the necessities of life. Daily life unfolds from
the perspective of Jack, who in point of fact doesn't feel
confined within the certainties of the shed, an ersatz womb.
"Ma" schools him, feeds him, exercises him, and is always
there for him. Her challenge, an epistemological one, is
to explain the existence of the outside world to a boy whose
only knowledge of that unreal place comes from television.
The second half of the film begins after a nerve-fraying
escape. Despite his initial fear and reticence, there are
wonderful scenes of young Jack discovering the poetry and
mystery of the world and its entities that now includes
him. But like prison lifers, for especially the mother,
adapting to freedom poses its own challenges as responsibilities
multiply in proportion to the ever-increasing complexity
and unpredictability of a largely indifferent world. If
not in his resilience, young Jack, in his adaptability,
recalls the amazing Hushpuppy from the brilliant Beasts
of the Southern Wild. Without a trace of the maudlin,
this film will break your heart by opening it up to the
limitations and confinements we all must come to terms with
in life. High marks go to the casting, the performances
of both mother and son, and especially to Donoghue's situationally
adroit, empathetic script.
3.5
-- THE SAVER,
Wiebke Von Carolsfeld
[reviewed
by Nancy Snipper]
Once in a rare while there comes along a film that steals
our heart because of its honesty and simplicity. Yet the
subject matter is pretty serious. Fern, a 16-year-old aboriginal
girl, living in Montreal, has just lost her mother who spent
her life cleaning houses and taking care of her only daughter.
Fern has to start cleaning those houses. She finds a book
about how to become a millionaire and reads it, but saving
money just doesn't get her far. She ekes out a living cooking
in an African little restaurant, avoiding a terrible landlady,
and doing odd jobs for her as a janitor, and then must suddenly
put up with her Uncle jack who appears at the door. He wants
to become her guardian. Fern is on her last rent money and
is told to get out, but not only does she do a great deed
to help the mean landlady and her autistic son, but takes
in Uncle Jack once again; after she kicked him out, and
gets herself rehired at the restaurant she is told to leave
for having almost burnt down the kitchen. As Fern begins
to deal with the loss of her mother, she enters a happier
stage of her life, and this is where the film ends. It's
a moving little film that turns victimhood into a reverse
state of victory. Imajyn Cardinal is a great actor who deliberately
underplays her role in order to fully inhabit the psyche
of Fern and vibrate the pathos buried in our hearts.
2.5
-- MUCH
LOVED, Nabil Ayouch
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
If the lusty camera angles, the burqa-defiant bevy of exposed
breasts, and storyline are predictably trite and titilating,
the proposition that we are all equidistant from God gets
a striking telling in Nabil Ayouch's Much
Beloved, a Moroccan film that boldly lays bare both
the seedy and banal truths of prostitution. Like with real
estate, "location location" is the value or is
event maker, which in this film is Muslim Marrakesh -- and
not Protestant Amsterdam. Round the clock news channels
have made us familiar with Islam's near absolute injunctions
as they concern moral conduct: the politically outspoken
are subject to public lashings, thieves risk getting their
hands chopped off, and women infidels are still stoned to
death -- but when it comes to fallen women, their procurers
and clients, human nature is accorded exceptional latitude,
which in the context of Islam makes for a film that closes
the distance between us and them and challenges the validity
of the "law of small differences." Director Nabil Ayouch,
who gave us the memorably harrowing and much better Horses
of God (2012), outs his religion (its hypocrisy) and
people, undresses them in public, to the effect that he
is now persona non grata in his own country. His
film makes the case that in respect to our recurring appetites
and passions, the lies we tell our loved ones, and the manner
in which money and power are inextricably linked, Christians
and Muslims have much more in common than what they have
been told. What gives Much Loved its edge and lustre,
despite the in your face familiar tropes and conventional
narration, are its spicy henna-and-milk scenes, and fidelity
to the truism that "no man is a hyprocrite in his pleasures."
![Canadian Tire Repair Scam [2211 boul Roland-Therrien, Longueuil] = documents-proofs](../2010_v9_n5/./images/mapleleaf.jpg)
