2.5
-- THE HANDMAIDEN, Park Chan-wook
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] Combining
the multi-perspective narrative style of Rashomon with the
voluptuousness of Fellini's Amarcord, Park Chan-wook's The
Handmaiden, despite the trite and tired plot, manages to sustain
interest over its near two and half hours. It's an erotic
tale of a swindle involving a seductive pickpocket and her
gentleman accomplice out to relieve an innocent heiress of
her fortune. The tale is told thrice with three different
victims, with the lesbian lovers being granted the last word
- but not quite. All three sections are incorporated into
Marquis de Sade-like reading get-togethers whose members'
members look to literature's licentious worlds to get the
blood flowing. The sets are garishly sumptuous, the settings,
both indoors and outdoors, drop-dead gorgeous, and you need
look no further than this film to find "the beautiful people."
The camera, one button at a time, from the nape to the small
of the back, takes forever to expose and palpate the marble-smooth
skin waiting to be introduced to the pleasures of the flesh.
Turning a tooth ache into a sensual encounter speaks to the
acrobatics of both the lensing and script rendered silent
by the imperatives of want and desire. From the very first
frames, the cinematography behaves like an appetite that can't
get enough of the sumptuous decor and its myriad surface textures,
turning ordinary objects into museum pieces, and creating
the illusion that the inanimate world makes itself beautiful
in order to stop us in our tracks. If it weren't for the vivisection
of the unequal relationship between the served and servers,
and the two women scheming to make a life for themselves in
the straight laced Victorian orient, the film could easily
be accused of deferring to style over substance. But if the
story line grabs your attention as much as its aesthetics
and studied sensuality, you'll rate this film considerably
higher than my take it or leave it two and half stars.
3.2
-- SOY NERO, Rafi Pitts
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] If
you have ever wondered why there is a disproportionate number
of Mexican names on the PBS News nightly roll call of the
dead, you need look no further than Rafi Pitts's Soy
Nero, a film that draws attention to
itself as much for its creative technical flourishes as original
take on a theme that has been the subject of many excellent
films (El Norte, La Juala de Oro, Paraiso
Travel).
Nero, an undocumented Mexican-American, finds himself on the
wrong side of the wall looking to return to the promised land.
He succeeds on his second try and is police-escorted to a
sprawling villa in Beverly Hills where his older half-brother,
a mechanic and girl-friend (Mercedes) 'presumably' live. Nero,
18-years-old, still wearing vestiges of innocence, quickly
settles into the American dream spending his first evening
drinking and getting high at pool-side. With his brother passed
out in a lawn chair, Mercedes discreetly arrives, greets Nero
with a smile, the camera clinging to her body as she removes
her robe and self-consciously tugs at her bikini before gliding
into the pool. Without a hint of impropriety, the scene smolders,
as do all the scenes in the film. Each vignette is so expertly
constructed and tensile, the sometimes questionable relevancy
and duration all but vanish in the pure pleasure of the moment.
When the real owner of the house arrives the following morning
and the charade crashes (they are both staff), we are poignantly
reminded that the have-nots are prisoners of both their station
in life and unfulfilled dreams.
The second half of the film takes place in the Middle East
(Iraq, Afghanistan), in a sun-scorched wasteland not all that
different from the one between Mexico and California. Nero
has signed up for another dream (The Dream Act) that promises
the illegal immigrant a green card if he enlists in the military
and survives his tour of duty. Nero belongs to a unit charged
with guarding a checkpoint. His fellow soldiers, a couple
of bickering Afro-Americans, are suspicious of his origins
and pedigree. As if condemned to be the voiceless outsider
wherever he finds himself, he hardly speaks in this section
of the film. After the post is ambushed and bombed, he finds
himself alone in the desert until rescued by another unit
that treats him like the enemy when he can't produce a social
security number.
The film features exceptionally creative use of the high-powered,
long distance lens which crunches distance and slows down
time so that great expenditures of energy seem all for naught:
it can take an suspenseful eternity for a vehicle to arrive
at a checkpoint. In the vibrant, liquified, wavy background
familiar objects are rendered unrecognizable. Through that
same lens (wide-angle format), Nero is a mere speck against
the vast expanses he has to negotiate, be it the no man's
land between Mexico and the USA or that same space between
his dreams and soldier's life on the front lines of a war
he doesn't understand.
If the script was a bit overwrought in the second half, and
Nero's character not fully fleshed out, the compelling, semi-autonomous
scenes are their own reward with the story providing the syntax.
As a unique perspective on the American dream that can be
bought and sold like a commodity or a gun-for-hire, Soy
Nero does the El Norte genre proud.
2.9
-- HARMONIUM,
Kôji Fukada
[reviewed
by Jordan Adler]
Simmering with panic and aggression, the new drama-turned-thriller
from Japanese filmmaker Kôji Fukada is a disquieting affair.
In plot, theme and style, it reminds one of Tokyo
Sonata, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa in 2008, except this
one is more sinister. In the first scene, grade-schooler Hotaru
(Momone Shinokawa) plays away on the family piano, trying
to keep with a metronome’s beat. Just like her playing, the
balance in this family will soon be slightly off. Her withdrawn
dad Toshio (Kanji Furutachi) and mom Akie (Mariko Tsutsui)
live a functional middle-class life in Japan. However, the
sudden arrival of Toshio’s old friend, Yasaka (Tadanobu Asano),
at their home, starts to stir up some strangeness. Yasaka
slurps his dinner quickly and wears a dress shirt to the park,
but his quirks slowly become more ominous. He spies on Hotaru
when she is on a jungle gym and then begins to make a move
on Akie, whom he suspects isn’t faring too well in her marriage.
To spoil Harmonium’s secrets would be unfair, but
the plotting escalates rapidly around the middle, before the
film jumps forward eight years, as we watch the family still
coping with the aftermath of Yasaka’s actions. The drama’s
inclusion of dark thrills into an ordinary family unit will
make some shudder, aided by Fukada’s minimalist aesthetics
that announce the creeping arrival of something wicked. One
wishes the film’s screenplay, especially in the second half,
had mirrored the restraint of Harmonium’s visuals. A few too
many secrets and lies spill out in ways that feel inorganic,
although the performances are incisive enough to mute these
problems. Meanwhile, the film’s climactic scene, which features
some fake-looking special effects, goes big when a more psychologically
nuanced finale would have been more affecting.
2.9
-- WEIRDOS,
Bruce McDonald
[reviewed by
Jordan Adler]
It is the weekend of the American Bicentennial, but the only
glimpses of that fanfare in the new film from Bruce McDonald
(Trigger) come from televised parades. The various Nova Scotia
residents who populate Weirdos
may be tuned in to celebrations of their neighbours to
the south, but the radio hits and folksy charm of the characters
here are definitely Canadian. Just as many from this country
struggle to define their national identity, especially in
the shadow of American patriotic fervor, 15-year-old Kit (Dylan
Authors) is at a crossroads with his sexuality. He is gay,
but in the closet, and hasn’t yet told his girlfriend Alice
(Julia Sarah Stone) or his father (Allan Hawco), who Kit heard
using a homophobic slur. So, he has packed a suitcase and
plans to hitchhike his way to Sydney with Alice, so that he
can live with the artist mother (Molly Parker) he rarely sees.
Scripted by playwright Daniel MacIvor – a Sydney native, openly
gay, who was a teen in the late 1970s – Weirdos nails
the details of closeted anxiety. Meanwhile, the classic rock-heavy
soundtrack, crisp black-and-white cinematography and spirited
performances from the young ensemble (Stone, in particular,
grabs our sympathy), reminds one of the freewheeling films
that played on American screens during the 1970s. (The change
of location is refreshing). There is little counter-culture
clashing though, beyond some mild teenage smoking and drinking,
although an Andy Warhol surrogate shows up to be Kit’s “spirit
animal.” (This quirky touch doesn’t add much). Although the
performances are often affecting, at just 85 minutes, this
sweet study of teenage confusion feels a bit slight. One could
imagine a heftier draft doing more to develop various character
relationships, such as the one between Kit and his single
father.
2.2
-- MIMOSAS,
Oliver Laxe
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
A visually arresting but disjointed narrative, Mimosas
takes place in the awesome Atlas mountains in southern Morocco.
A group of tribesmen reluctantly decides to follow its sheikh
over a dangerous mountain crossing because he wants to die
in the town of his birth. He expires en route and from that
point on has to be carried. During the trek through treacherous
terrain things happen without rhyme or reason: the group suddenly
splinters then inexplicably finds itself together again; the
body of the sheikh gets swept down a torrential river only
to miraculously reappear intact. During the middle section
of the film, the incoherent story line is somewhat rescued
by breathtaking cinematography and our interest in the conflict
between two of the tribesmen. Shakib, a man of resolute faith,
has been summoned to lead the group. Opposing him is Ahmed,
who has never set foot in a mosque, and, who along with Said,
is a thief. Their positions in respect to their faith are
severely tested by extreme cold and hunger, a lethal confrontation
with a band of marauders, and a life and death disagreement
over the location of their final destination (Sijilmasa).
Whether viewed as a factual account or an allegory, the film
suffers from lack of credibility, on top of which the director's
tendentious views on Islam turns what could have been a compelling
drama about faith into a propaganda expedient. It is hardly
a coincidence that the only young woman in the film is a mute;
or that Shakib, for whom reason counts for nothing next to
his absolute faith in his God, with sword in hand, à
la Don Quixote, launches a wholly irrational attack on a group
of armed villagers who are hanging the mute who was kidnapped
earlier. In Shakib's bloated Quranic utterances and bizarre
behaviour, the fanatic is born. As for the marauders, they
are not just hanging the woman, but in fits in starts, torturing
her by letting her down for a gulp of air before hoisting
her up again, their sadistic pleasure increasing with each
yank of the rope. This unforgettable scene leaves no doubt
as to Laxe's take on the people and ethos of the region. Like
maggots feasting on a decayed corps, the camera crawls all
over the hideous, pock marked faces, in and about the gaps
of rotting, black teeth, up into the slimy nostrils, the unseeing
blood-shot eyes - a savage horde of ugly disgusting sub-humans
begging for extermination. More interested in outing his politics
than telling a story, through Laxe's warped lense we learn
that Morocco's Atlas is no country for the mimosa and its
beautiful flower, and woe to the men convinced that faith
and faith alone is enough to turn rock into orchards of plenty.
3.0
-- BELGICA,
Felix van Groeningen
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Everything, over time, turns into its opposite, or, paraphrasing
Jean Baudrillard, in order for anything to be of interest
it must be 'haunted' by reversibility. Belgica
tells the story of two brothers, one-eyed, doe-faced Jo, and
his older, louder, stronger brother Frank. Together, they
grow the Belgica, a boisterous music club that caters to a
strictly hedonistic clientele. At the beginning, the club
does very well, with Frank making the major decisions while
looking out for his kid brother. On the home front, Frank
is burdened by his wife and kids while Jo is looking to have
a family with someone he met at the club. In a series of symmetrical
reversals, in both the club's fortunes and personal lives,
everything spirals into its opposite. The club becomes violent
and unprofitable, while Frank, who is on a 24/7 high, finds
himself unable to break the losing streak of bad decisions
that leave him at odds with his brother and wife. All of the
relationships are under the influence of the explosive cocktail
of sex, drugs (especially cocaine) and throbbing music which
was tellingly recorded live by the group called The Shitz.
Thanks to expert camera work and editing, the mad frenzy and
energy generated by the club scenes perfectly capture and
preserve the hedonism of the day and the raw pursuit of pleasure
for its own sake, as if the laws of gravity no longer apply.
Eventually, Frank becomes a victim of living in the fast lane
and is no longer capable of running the club or being a father
to his children. The relationship between Frank and Jo deteriorates
to the point where the latter wants to buy out the former.
In the end, everything has changed. For the better or worse
asks the film? Like a multi-faceted surface of a precious
gem, which in its making the movie aspires to be, it depends
on the person and the manner in which the facet strikes the
eye and the ear. With its in-your-face emphasis on the moment
and strong performances from the two leads, Belgica
manages to retell an oft told story so that it feels like
you are hearing and seeing it for the very first time.
2.1
-- PRANK,
Vicent Biron
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Absence, as in derelict parents, plays a major role in the
comedy-drama Prank
that follows the lives of four teens who spend their days
and nights confectioning pranks to help them pass the abundant
time they have on their hands, or, in Freud-speak, to supply
the deficit of attention their lives are lacking. Nerdy, friendless,
orthodontically challenged Stefig, is invited by Martin, his
girl-friend Léa, and Jean-Sé, all of whom are three or four
years older, to film a prank they've devised, at which point
he becomes part of the team for whom pranking is their raison
d' être, a device that very quickly wears thin. Stefig's
attraction to rebel-punk, platinum blond Léa provides the
only story of interest. We are offered glimpses of what the
largely absent, self-absorbed parents are doing while their
kids are on the lamb. In the only brief epiphany in the film,
Stefig revolts against the others - "you're all losers" --
but finds himself alone again until he reconsiders. Without
ambition, any future or role-models, condemned to a nowhere
existence, the foursome at least have each other. Prank
paints a bleak societal portrait of the equivalent of bee
colony collapse syndrome, and accuses the absentee parent.
The back drop to the film isn't so much the white middle class
neighbourhoods that grow these kids but the nihilism that
prevails and snuffs out their future. Of note is Biron's energetic
cinematography, the sudden washes and fades into which images
and ideas from the films of Jean-Claude Van Damme (ersatz
role model) are interpolated. The problem with Prank
is its excessive pranking on which the the project's considerable
talent base is squandered. Leaving the film, I felt that the
final prank was the one played on the audience for whom the
promising beginning ended up going nowhere.
2.6
-- THE RED
TURTLE, Michael Dudok de
Wit
[reviewed
by Jordan Adler]
The latest animated adventure from Studio Ghibli – even though
this is technically a co-production, although staple Isao
Takahata is on board as an 'artistic producer' – is imaginative
and swirling with visual poetry. However, despite various
stunning moments, The
Red Turtle’s survivalist realism and dream logic doesn’t
quite mesh as seamlessly as the studio’s past efforts. The
wordless story, from Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit,
follows a man with shoulder-length hair and white robes, who,
tempest-tossed, washes onto the shore of a deserted island
populated only by beach critters. The first half of the 80-minute
drama chronicles his repeatedly failed efforts to escape the
island’s throes and get out to sea. But, every time he builds
a raft, a mystical figure from under the sea swims upward
and destroys the floating structure. Back on the island, the
castaway’s dreams are illuminating but also harsh, just like
the moonlight that bathes the sand at night. However, once
the titular creature appears, soon to be joined by other bodies,
De Wit’s story begins to drift into a lull of episodic situations.
The lack of dialogue gives the audience the opportunity to
bask in the film’s storybook beauty, but also limits one’s
attachment to the characters’ feelings and motivations. The
Red Turtle’s images are individually striking; however,
stretched beyond a reasonable running time, the poetry begins
to plod. The final third feels aimless when the story should
be refining its focus and building toward a stirring conclusion.
2.5
-- DOGS,
Bogdan Mirica
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
The "be careful what you wish for" admonition, or films based
on someone assuming another person's identity is a sure recipe
for the unexpected and/or getting more than you bargained
for. Dogs
not only keeps the faith, it ups the ante. In the opening
scene, the camera, like a dog sniffing its way through scrub,
is stopped in its tracks by ominous bubbles breaking the surface
of a swamp - an apt metaphor for what's in store. Roman, hailing
from the capital Bucharest, inherits a vast tract of border
land from his grandfather, who was the leader of a local criminal
organization. For reasons never explained, but probably smuggling,
the capo's underlings-thugs don't want him to sell the land.
Much of the story consists of their attempts to dissuade him,
employing intimidation techniques that recall David Lynch:
a severed foot is found; there's a Klu Klux Klan-like gathering
of headlights just outside the main residence and a chilling
night hunting scene. Eventually, Roman meets the thugs, a
sinister, unwashed bunch, who instead of making its views
felt, pass around the bottle, politely inquiring about life
in the city. The awkward dialogue is punctuated with silence
and foreboding as the friendly gathering imperceptively turns
menacing. Roman, tone-deaf, fatally under-appreciates the
danger at hand, which predicts the violence that ensues. If
we grant that the suspenseful build-up doesn't miss a beat,
technical virtuosity alone is not enough to carry this film.
Although the blood-count was graphic, it was restrained in
the sense that it wasn't in your face but on the windshield.
That said, bull-fight aficionados will not be left wanting.
Dogs is a brooding mood piece but lacking in bite.
That it wasn't meant to be anything other than that will satisfy
some viewers and disappoint others.
3.2
-- THE STUDENT,
Kirill Serebrennikov
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
The
thorny issue of radicalization in the secular age is given
an incendiary hearing in Kirill Serebrennikov's riveting The
Student (the alternate title is The Disciple).
Christianity, taking a last stand against modernism, and no
less than other religions, is very capable of growing its
proper fundamentalists and providing the necessary textual
support. Inga, recently divorced, is worried over and a bit
afraid of teenage son Venya, who has become distant and aloof.
His grades are falling and he repeatedly skips swimming class
because the girls are all wearing skimpy bikinis, which the
Bible he carries with him at all times explicitly proscribes.
In an unforgettable scene, a swooning, pivoting underwater
camera performs a ballet with lissome female bodies, perfectly
capturing their smouldering sexuality. Venya is an angry,
brooding, but highly charismatic student, self-annointed to
carry out a critique against the moral decadence of his time
and place -- Christian Russia. The classroom scenes are as
outrageous as they are X-Rated. Fluently incorporating the
sound and fury of the Bible into his scathing condemnations,
the viewer is initially seduced by Venya's arguments, in particular
those aimed at the sexual license enjoyed by modern youth.
It redounds to the director's great skill and attention to
pacing that our attraction to Venya initially feels the same
as the attraction of someone undergoing gradual radicalization
-- someone who will eventually become a religious fundamentalist.
Full of the Lord, Venya decides that his biology teacher,
Elena, his intellectual nemesis and a Jewish atheist (Christ-hater),
must die, while the fate of his loyal disciple Grisa hangs
in the balance after the latter makes a homosexual pass. As
the film feverishly jumps the tracks from one explosive conflict
to the next, the splintered soul of Russia is laid bare. The
school administrators, representing the old-guard, are somewhat
sympathetic to Venya's semi-delirious, apocalyptic utterances
while the younger generation is totally sold on the promised-pleasures
of secularism. In the no-man's land between the two extremes
is born the fundamentalist-fanatic slouching towards Bethlehem,
and a superlative mix of ingredients that assures an absorbing,
thought-provoking film that honours both the combattants and
the very high stakes.
2.8
-- AFTER
THE STORM, Hirokazu Koreeda
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Who
hasn't secretly wished to return to a more happy and idyllic
period in one's life? Hirokazu Koreeda's no-nonsense drama
looks back at that happier period through the eye of the storm
of the present, where a divided family is forced to spend
the evening together while waiting out a typhoon. The thin
story line consists of family members coming and going at
the mother's small apartment in the projects. Through a series
of off-handed remarks - like photo flashes in the dark - we
learn why Kyoko left her husband Ryota who is still in love
with her. The initially affable, basketball-tall Ryota isn't
so much a bad person as incurably weak and irresponsible.
To supply his gambling addiction, he'll steal from his mother,
whose husband was also a gambler. Ryota published a novel
to some acclaim 15 years ago but hasn't written since, and
now works as a shady, wire-tapping detective. In his encounters
with the various family members and co-workers, we learn that
his best intentions are no match for what is unwholesome and
unsavoury in his character. He dreams of winning back his
wife but can't come up with his monthly alimony payments,
so he is only allowed to see his son Shingo once a month.
After the Storm is not a happy film. No one is untouched
by Ryota's gambling habit, and while we feel sorry that he
can't enjoy a relationship with his son, the facts make the
case that it's probably for the best. The elderly mother,
Yoshika, wonderfully played by Kilin Kiki, who stuck by her
husband through thick and thin, now feels her mortality and
desperately wants to see the family whole again, but she too
has to relinquish her dream in a film whose final scenes unfold
like a 'requiem for a dream.' While both mother and son stubbornly
cling to their illusions, it becomes clear -- if not in words
then in body language -- that what's past is gone: Ryota is
unshaven and disheveled while his ex-wife is prim and proper,
determined to get on with her life without looking back. Such
is life in this quietly affecting tale of ordinary people
caught up in adversity and having to make difficult choices.
Despite the mostly interior scenes, the film is by no means
static, its momentum generated and sustained by solid character
development, including the characters with bit parts. From
beginning to end, the dialogue bristles and benefits from
thoroughly enjoyable diacritical remarks and observations.
That an obvious lesson isn't a necessarily easily learned
one is After the Storm's most enduring truth.
3.5
-- SAND STORM,
Elite Zexer
[reviewed
by Jordan Adler]
The debut feature from Israeli director Elite Zexer simmers
with indignation as it comments on the constraints felt by
women in a Bedouin community. The film focuses on the anguished
Jalila (Ruba Blal-Asfour), trying to raise four daughters
and not show her thornier side during the short time after
her husband (Hitham Omari) re-marries. She is also not privy
to the desires of her eldest, high school student Layla (the
transfixing Lamis Ammar), who is in a relationship with a
boy from many towns away. Layla pines to move away from a
village where she would have to uphold patriarchal gender
standards: the trick is to figure a way out. Zexer immerses
the audience with the customs and rituals of a village rarely
seen on the big screen, while offering subtle twists on the
conventional tale of teenage agitation from the strict mores
of the parents. Sand
Storm’s powerful critique of gender dynamics comes, subtly,
from various sides – in sour glares from Jalila, pithy talk
among her daughters, choice repetitions of dialogue – until
its fire becomes overwhelming. (An oft-repeated line in the
film, centered on choice, comes to be very significant, showing
the screenwriter’s care for organically building the story’s
main themes). Meanwhile, the performances are all first-rate,
especially Ammar as the stubborn teenager, defiant as her
youthful dominion recedes. The young actor, in her film debut,
offers a gaze in the final scene that, much like Sand
Storm, shakes to the core.
2.8
-- SAND STORM,
Elite Zexer
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Sand
Storm is an apt metaphor and title for director Elite
Zexer's brave but somewhat unsubtle first film, which with
restraint and keen attention to detail develops the notion
that what's worse than bad weather outside is bad weather
inside. As proxy for Islam, the location - an isolated Arab
village in the desert - is deliberately vague. Under the microscope,
Sand Storm investigates the plight of the gentler
sex and the role and rule of tradition in Islam. The first
response to a sandstorm is to close your eyes, at which point
you are blind. As the story unfolds, not only the women but
also men are shown to be blind to the manner born in which
their lives are pre-determined by cultural fiat. Desiring
a grander house and more Rubenesque woman, Suliman decides
to take on a second wife. Jalila, the mother of his four children,
stoically accepts her fate. She discovers that her daughter
Layla is in love with a boy, Omar, from 'another tribe,' which
is unacceptable since the father decides whom his daughter
will marry. Despite Layla's protestations, the father arranges
for her to marry Munir, but the mother objects, finding the
choice unworthy of her daughter's beauty and intelligence,
and insists Suliman find someone else. For speaking out, for
contradicting her husband, Suliman, also in thrall to tribal
protocol, is obliged to banish his wife. Layla decides to
flee with Omar but can't go through with it, feeling responsible
for the fate of her mother and sisters, and reluctantly agrees
to marry Munir. As it begins, the film ends with another wedding
ceremony, another deal cut, another fate sealed. As the camera
catches the younger sister surreptitiously spying on Layla
meeting the bland and rotund groom for the first time in the
bedroom, her future is writ. While Israeli director Zexer
sticks to the narrative and painstakingly avoids moralizing,
Sand
Storm, although not an outright propaganda piece, is nonetheless
a blunt-edged, albeit engaging, indictment of Islam's deeply
embedded sexism and androcentric world view. The film works
because viewers are shown up-close the intricacies and internal
dynamics of family life under Islam, and by extension, are
moved to reflect on the freedoms they take for granted.
2.4
-- PACIFICO,
Fernanda Romandia
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Not much happens in first-time director Fernanda Romandia's
lyrically paced film Pacifico.
The events, or rather non-events, unfold near the tropical
sea-side resort of Puerto Escondido (Mexico), but the city
is peripheral to the central location, which is a construction
site and the simple family homes nearby, the ever presence
of the sea in its many moods, and the cactus-studded sandy
terrain. Oriente, who hails from the mountainous region of
Michoacan, is the foreman of the construction gang: he is
overly fond of his tequila and likes to recite his favourite
lines from Don Quixote. During his extended stay, he falls
in love with one of the locals and is torn between staying
or returning to his family, a decision made more difficult
by Coral, the 6-year-old daughter who looks up to Oriente,
and spends too much time innocently wandering around the construction
site. In a series of loosely connected vignettes, we enter
the lives of these unassuming workers and their families,
eavesdropping on private conversations as they discuss their
quotidian, their love lives and hopes for the future. The
film doesn't pretend to offer anything more than an intimate
glimpse into the rural life of a largely forgotten people
for whom decency and tradition are one and the same. Shot
on a shoe-string budget, Romandia directed and casted the
film and co-wrote the script. As if beaten down by the relentless
heat, the camera is often static. There is nothing in the
film that draws attention to its making except for the inexplicably
decibel heavy diegetic sound-track: from the high-pitched
screech of electric saws, the piercing collisions of metal
on metal, to the deafening crashing of surf-high waves, the
beleaguered, battered ear searches in vain for a symbolic
justification of the sonic assault, but alas, I couldn't find
it: Unless the noise was meant to infer that higher forces
are more than any of these workers can handle as it concerns
improvement of their lives. Romandia has a good ear for natural
dialogue which was credibly supplied by local actors. Through
indirection and inference, we learn that limited resources
and being unschooled are not deterrents for families wanting
and doing the very best for their children. Pacifico
is a modest first take in a career that shows considerable
promise.
2.3
-- MEAN DREAMS,
Nathan Morlando
[reviewed by
Jordan Adler]
The tone and natural beauty of Terrence Malick’s early films
comes through in the sophomore effort from Canadian filmmaker
Nathan Morlando – but, sadly, little of the poetry. Blame
it on a hackneyed script from Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby,
which moves briskly without finding much in the way of original
moments or crackling dialogue. The story is of two young teens
that end up on the run. The boy, Jonas Ford (Josh Wiggins,
a capable anchor), lives on a farm, several miles from town,
helping out his rancher dad. The girl, Casey Caraway (Sophie
Nélisse), has moved into the house nearby with her police
officer pop, Wayne (Bill Paxton, imposing). The attraction
between Jonas and Casey is instant, which Wayne notices, as
he tries to keep this new neighbour away from his “baby girl.”
After Jonas witnesses Wayne commit a horrible act of violence,
he and his girlfriend escape the grip of the father and go
on the lam, where they try to evade the storms in their midst.
Nélisse (an award-winner for Monsieur
Lazhar a few years ago) and Wiggins have a disarming chemistry
that grinds against inorganic dialogue, while the conversations
about good and evil also feel forced in. Nevertheless, despite
conventional plotting, the menace throughout Mean Dreams
is palpable; from Paxton’s oily turn as the abusive patriarch
to the pounding score by Son Lux. Featuring Canadian treasure
Colm Feore in a supporting role as a deputy with mysterious
motives.
3.5
-- NERUDA,
Pablo Larrain
[reviewed by
Jordan Adler]
This year in cinema could be the year of Pablo Larrain. The
Chilean filmmaker brought us the haunting drama The
Club in winter, while his portrait of Jackie Kennedy (starring
Natalie Portman) was a recent TIFF prizewinner and is due
in December. But he’s not done yet: also roving the festival
circuit is another Larrain drama, Neruda, about the
legendary Chilean poet and Communist politician. To call it
a “biopic” sells its lightness, nuance and self-reflexive
layers short. The drama focuses on the postwar period when
Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco) and wife Delia (Mercedes Morán)
went from the halls of power into hiding after a warrant is
issued for his arrest. Half of the running time sticks with
the titular figure, portrayed with gravitas and flair by Gnecco.
The rest sides with Oscar (Gael Garcia Bernal, offering deft
comic timing), the lead investigator tracking down the Communist
leader and doing a rather lousy job of it. Larrain and screenwriter
Guillermo Calderón refuse to spoon-feed the history, so a
quick refresher before the lights dim may be needed. Regardless,
as soon as the cat-and-house chase begins about 20 minutes
in, Neruda becomes a dazzling dual character study of two
men of unequal wit. Larrain has long been interested in immersing
audiences with the period – remember the lo-fi video aesthetic
of No? – although Neruda captures the era in nifty
ways. The filmmaker employs natural lighting, jarring shifts
in location and obviously fake rear-projection, which hint
at how a movie of the story’s era may have looked, while also
keeping with the film's themes regarding the artificiality
of storytelling. Like the work of the poet it examines, Neruda
manages to be unconventional and endlessly absorbing.
2.7
-- NERUDA,
Pablo Larrain
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
The notion that there is no pursued without the pursuer, or
an idea is only as meaningful as the opposition it generates,
is central to Pablo Larrain’s highly inventive if not
always convincing drama about the poet-politician Pablo Neruda
and his times. The film vacillates between historical drama,
biopic and allegory, and of course no Latin American film
is complete if it doesn’t include a sequence or two
of magic realism. In sharp contrast to our own vacuous, deteriorated,
tweet-wrecked language, Neruda
opens up a window into a world where the poet and the power
of the word are to be reckoned with, which in the late 1940s
in Chile pitted Communism against the government of Gabriel
Gonzalez Videla that was turning to the right. Fearing the
poet and his influence, the President engages a bumbling police
inspector, Oscar Peluchonneau, luminously portrayed by Gael
García Bernal, to hunt down Neruda, who goes into hiding.
The chase, or the relationship between the hunter and hunted
and their peculiar interdependency, takes on a surreal quality
as the inspector, in mostly voice-overs and priceless facial
expressions, reflects on his profession, his mission and secret
admiration for the poet. The dialogue, deliciously sardonic
and witty, is of the highest order and seamlessly includes
lines from the poet’s famous Cantos, inspired by the
suffering and sacrifice of the peasantry opposed to the regime.
The film is also a no-holds barred character study. Unlike
the hungry and exploited workers for whom the poet is a hero,
Neruda, more admirable than likeable, is an out-and-out voluptuary
(code for glutton). Handsomely overweight, he enjoys the best
food, the best wines, and repeatedly risks his life in order
to be surrounded by bevies of naked women whose youth and
wantonness his middle-aged wife cannot match. But since he
is a rebel with a cause greater than himself, he enjoys both
the fidelity of his wife and adulation of the masses.
To better capture the era, the film is exquisitely shot in
faded newsreel tint, while the meticulously designed sets
and decor, as Neruda flees from one town and room to another,
speak to impeccable production values. Pablo Larrain’s
Neruda exalts the power of the word and reminds us
of the respect and status once accorded to the poet, and makes
the case that a portrait of the artist with all his flaws
and foibles does not make him a lesser man but a fuller one.
3.1--
AMERICAN HONEY, Andrea
Arnold
[reviewed
by Jordan Adler]
Few films from 2016 capture the shallow thrills and aching
despair that has defined so much of this year’s polarized
political landscape as Andrea Arnold’s new drama. Running
162 minutes, yet rarely feeling long, American
Honey centers on Star (Sasha Lane, a great discovery),
an 18-year-old who lives in squalor and jumps at the chance
to run away to survive and strive with a band of young adults.
These teens and twenty-somethings, coming from all corners
of the U.S., drive from state to state in a big white SUV,
find the rich neighbourhoods and sell magazine subscriptions
door-to-door. The boss over these eager workers is Krystal
(Riley Keough) and her right-hand man, Jake (Shia LaBoeuf,
as charming as he’s ever been), starts falling for the new
arrival. Their passionate, off-kilter affair takes centre
stage, although Arnold’s film – the first of her titles set
in the U.S. – keeps swerving in unpredictable directions.
American Honey has a raw, intoxicating energy, and
its asides – dance parties around a bonfire, discussions about
Darth Vader – eventually reveal substance, drawing on the
difficulties of growing up young and poor while yearning to
be visible. Here, themes related to class struggle, religion
and the American Dream drift organically into the story. As
the protagonist, Lane is a natural who possesses a flinty
edge as well as the sweetness to which the title alludes:
Star comes from a dark place and each day reveals new layers
and feelings. Still, one would have sacrificed a few scenes
of Jake and Star’s affair for time with this irreverent crew
of young hustlers, who spend much of the running time singing
along to hip hop and chirping at each other with exuberance
and bravado.
3.5
-- DEATH
IN SARAJEVO, Danis Tanovic
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence
of the same" gets a blistery retelling in Danis Tanovic's
edgy drama that unfolds in a hotel in Sarajevo where an UN
assembly is taking place, commemorating the events that precipitated
WW I. The film stars the human genotype (human nature), against
which best intentions and reason are no match. The storyline,
which centers on the hotel readying itself for its international
guest-list, is merely a device -- and a brilliant one at that
- that introduces us to Omer (Izudin Bajrovic), whose hotel
is being threatened with foreclosure as well as a strike from
employees that haven't been paid for two months. Helping him
deal with the gathering assembly is the very all-business
and attractive Lamija (Snezana Vidovic), who is torn between
her career and loyalty to Omar and her mother, who is at the
vanguard of the strike.
Through deftly rendered relationships between the various
employees and departments, we are introduced to the imperatives
of history and memory as Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and Herzegovinians
try to find common ground in the present. On the roof of the
hotel, a journalist, with her own biases, interviews players
from both sides of the conflict, each convinced of his own
rectitude. Collated into that immiscibility is the European
view, on whose watch Sarajevo has suffered through WW I, WWII,
and the horrific break up of Tito's Yugoslavia that left a
quarter of a million dead.
Thanks to a riveting script and razor-sharp editing, this
bleak, message driven film makes its points without a hint
of didacticism. Scenes that take place in the laundry room
or hotel kitchen, in their quasi-accidental accumulation,
speak - so that the viewer supplies the connective tissue
-- to the uncompromising politics of the region and the dyed-in-blood
codes of ethnicity. Refract the truth often enough and it
is sure to emerge splintered, undecipherable, as dead as hope
is in Sarajevo. As a microcosm of the region, the hotel, thanks
to a burrowing camera that follows the employees from the
main floor into its multi-faceted underground, is stripped
of all pretense and propriety. In its dungeons are a gambling
den, strip club, surveillance cameras, and the thugs serving
the criminal elements calling the shots. Death
in Sarajevo is at once a fascinating account and indictment
of the fear and mistrust that hold the entire region in a
head-lock, where everyone outside of family is an outsider.
At a minimum, this masterly conceived drama turns us all into
insiders, and, in a world where unlike people and cultures
are sharing the same spaces as never before, is a precautionary
tale that deserves the widest possible audience.
3.4
-- TWO LOVERS
AND A BEAR, Kim Nguyen
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
The event maker in Kim Nguyen’s haunting, fascinating,
highly original, Two
Lovers and a Bear is location (Iqaluit). Everything --
relationships, shopping, partying, dressing -- is under-the-influence.
As the camera follows the favoured means of transportation
(the high-powered, all-terrain snowmobile), the viewer quickly
learns that in the extreme north nothing is biodegradable:
mixed in with the snow banks that line the roads are wooden
crates, discarded junk and a fleets worth of abandoned vehicles.
The director uses the brilliant natural light and pervasive,
antipodal darkness to convey both awe and respect the north
commands: the long shots are breathtaking, the remoteness
unlike anything you’ve ever seen – a wonderland
that invokes terror and incredulity that anyone could survive
there. We quickly learn that extreme conditions often appeal
to people looking to escape the extremes they have been subjected
to in 'the south.'
Madly in love Lucy and Roman are damaged goods, both victims
of abusive fathers. Their fragile love and stability are severely
tested when Lucy announces that she is going south to study
biology. As if in thrall to the harshness and absolutes of
their environment, each in his own manner breaks down. Roman,
flirting with suicide and who has categorically refused to
return with Lucy, drinks himself into a stupour followed by
hospitalization, while Lucy’s demon, in the form of
an hallucination, relentlessly stalks her. Lacking the funds
to fly themselves out, they finally decide to snowmobile their
way home in what will prove to be a journey fraught with peril
and weird and unforgettable scenes that seem to come straight
out of a dream sequence. In an environment that lends itself
to the expectation that whatever can go wrong will go wrong,
Nguyen wisely opts for a balanced unfolding of both major
and minor crises, including philosophical pronouncements delivered
by a talking bear, and a surreal evening spent in an abandoned
radar station.
The casting was a tour de force, from the minor roles delegated
to the locals to the selection of the two leads, Tatiana Maslany
and Dane DeHaan, who deliver deeply affecting yet very natural
performances. From the opening scenes framed by the deep cold,
we are spellbound, like deer frozen in head lights, by the
expressions worn on DeHaan’s face: no matter what he
does or says, everything, like a beautiful sadness, is refracted
through his quiet hurting and fragility.
In cinematic language that is its own precedent, even while
conceding the North invariably takes more than it gives, Two
Lovers and a Bear is an homage to the physical and metaphysical
beauty of the land and its imperatives, and the indestructible
spirit of the defiant men and women who challenge its dominion.
2.6
-- I AM NOJOOM,
AGE 10 AND DIVORCED (Moi, Nojoom, 10 ans, divorcée), Khadija
Al-Salami
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
Deepa Mehta's Water
and Jeremy Teicher's Tall as the Baobab Tree are
probably better films than I Am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorced
by Khadija Al-Salami, but none is as important. All films
deal with enforced but legal child marriage. Nojoom's case
garnered international attention in 2009 when her plight was
brought to the attention of the Yemeni justice system. Despite
an uneven script and lapses into melodrama the film, quite
brilliantly, manages to address two very separate and mutually
suspicious audiences: the local population that subscribes
to Sharia law and the West that unapologetically regards child
marriage as a legalized form of pedophilia. In a far-off-the-beaten-track
village in Yemen, a farmer and his wife, suffering through
hard times, decide to marry off their 8-year-old daughter,
Nojoom, who only wants to play with her dolls; they are desperate
for the dowry and are looking forward to feeding one less
mouth. The groom, 20 years older than his child bride, rapes
her on their wedding night, after which she is treated like
a slave until she finally manages to escape to the capital,
Sana'a, where she explains to a sympathetic judge that she
wants a divorce. Father and groom are arrested, and interrogated
under oath. The groom is asked if he is familiar with Sharia's
position on child marriage. He explains that he is a decent
law-biding, peasant who can't read, that with the blessings
of the local sheik he is simply following tradition. The judge
explains there is no excuse for ignorance, that Sharia, while
it condones child marriage, obliges the groom to wait until
the child comes of age (message for local consumption: pedophilia
verboten). Where the film could have indulged in
pure messaging and stereotyping, it instead grants father
and groom the complexity of character that humanizes them
despite their ignorance, and contextualizes without exculpating
the tender of children to the highest bidder. Father and groom
are not so much evil as hostage to the traditions into which
they are born. Nojoom is an important true story
that needs to be told again and again. For viewers for whom
cinema is an opportunity to vicariously visit foreign lands,
they will be treated to the fascinating World Heritage architecture
of Sana'a and breathtaking panoramas of Yemen's arid and rocky
countryside turned green under extensive cultivation. A nod
to very credible performances from mostly non-professional
actors.
Ratings for 2015 Festival
du Nouveau Cinéma.
Ratings for 2014 Festival
du Nouveau Cinéma.
Ratings for 2013 Festival
du Nouveau Cinéma.
Ratings for 2012 Festival
du Nouveau Cinéma.
Ratings for 2011 Festival
du Nouveau Cinéma.
Ratings for 2010 Festival
du Nouveau Cinéma.
Ratings for 2009 Festival du Nouveau Cinéma.
Ratings for 2008 Festival du Nouveau Cinéma.
Ratings
for 2007 Festival du Nouveau Cinéma.
