2019 FESTIVAL
DU NOUVEAU CINÉMA
http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/EN
THE RATINGS
So
far, A & O film critics Robert J. Lewis and Noah
Simon have seen the following films. Here are their
ratings and critical commentary, always out of 4, reserving
2.5 or more for a noteworthy film, 3.5 for an exceptional
film, 4 for a classic.
________________________
2.7
-- TO
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] In
light of the dramatic increase in worldwide migration
and the inter-connectedness spawned by digital communication,
never have so many people from different races and religions
shared the same space. Is it time that the now long list
of films that have been inspired by the mixing of unlike
cultures be assigned its special genre or category?
"Border" films, almost without exception, explore how
people from different language and cultural backgrounds
negotiate their differences. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's To
the Ends of the Earth, despite its treacly ending,
does the genre proud.
A Japanese camera crew is sent to Uzbekistan to promote
Uzbek culture. Yoko, small and cute as a button, is the
only member of the crew in front of the camera. As the
5-some travel throughout the country, the veils and misconceptions
of Uzbekistan are lifted and the viewer is treated to
haunting landscapes, surprisingly modern cities and people
that aren't that much different than ourselves. We also
learn that despite her star role in the filming, she is
treated somewhat dismissively by the male members of her
crew. During her free time, while being tracked by a nervous
hand-held camera, Yoko, on her own, explores Uzbek culture.
Quite often, she is the only woman on the streets. When
she's in the friendly company of the sturdy Uzbek women
in the market place, she is so small we want to hold and
protect her. When her wanderings turn scary, it's because
she doesn't understand the language (which isn't translated)
or the gestures which she misinterprets as threatening.
Yoko's expressive eyes that oscillate between fear and
fascination are priceless as she, with bated breath, squirrels
through the narrow streets and alleys. In one scene the
police ask to hand over her video camera. Fearing the
worst, she runs away but is eventually caught only to
discover that the police were conducting a routine check
regarding the filming of a forbidden site. The camera
is returned to her. In the film's most telling scene,
during a crew meeting where possible sites for the project
are proposed, the translator suggests a local theatre
that features six beautifully painted rooms. He explains
that the rooms were decorated just after WW II by Japanese
prisoners of war, and that he was so moved by their work
he became interested in the Japanese language and culture.
Without a trace of didacticism, the film advances the
idea that people, despite their differences, have much
more in common than they have to fear, beginning with,
pace the late Anthony Bourdain, the sharing of food and
laughter. Besides the arresting and multi-layered performance
by Atusko Maeda in the role of Yoko, and the reveal of
Uzbekistan and its people, To the Ends of the Earth
will satisfy on many levels.
3.1
-- PAIN
AND GLORY, Pedro Almodóvar
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] As
it concerns Pedro Almodóvar's love of vibrant colours
and absolutely everything that is Penélope Cruz, the song
remains the same. His style and signature grace every
frame of Pain
and Glory, a near flawless film that in its reach
fails to scale the heights of his two masterpieces: All
About My Mother (1999) and Talk to Her. (2002).
Almodóvar unobtrusively deconstructs the vaguely troubled
and unhappy life of the celebrated director, Salvador
Mallo, who, while fighting heroin addiction, looks back,
à la Proust, at his past. The film is non-linear, shifting
between the present and his childhood and the events that
marked his life: seeing the beauty of a naked man for
the first time which caused him to faint and awaken in
the present where he runs into a man he had an affair
with in his youth. But as a portrait of an artist, the
film, without rendering judgment, is an unbowdlerized
account of someone who fears he has nothing more to say,
to give. It is while he is in the depths of this rut that
he agrees, along with the actor Alberto with whom he had
a falling out many years ago, to re-introduce to the public
one of his early and best known films. This turns into
a drug-fueled disaster but it gives Alberto a chance to
read Salvador's new monologue; Addiction. Soon thereafter,
the work is shown in public, and the artist, who has been
looking everywhere except within for inspiration finally
finds himself just as he reconciles with his mother to
whom he owes everything even as he acknowledges that he
didn't turn out to be the son she had hoped for.
Thanks to a pitch-perfect albeit measured performance
by Antonia Banderas in the role of Salvador, the film
unfolds like an easy but late-in-the-season summer day
tinged with sadness. Banderas's face is a portrait you
can't tear your eyes from: the sad gentle eyes, the total
absence of blame and malice, and a muted aspect that speaks
volumes to what it means to bear the burden of an artist
not quite at the end of his tether. And while they are
never in the same scene together, there is an otherworldly
chemistry between Cruz and Banderas (mother and son) that
redounds to a director in full command of his art. Pain
and Glory is an accumulation of small pleasures, both
visual and cerebral, that are not to be missed.
0.4
-- MONOS,
Alejandro Landes
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] Despite
the breathtaking locations (high up in the Columbian Andes
and the pristine Amazon), Monos,
which translates into monkeys, would have been a better
movie had the script been turned over to los monos.
From beginning to end, the film is an exercise in non
sequitor, in flouting cause and effect. As an 'up yours'
concoction, Monos comes across as if it were
written by a jaded 15-year-old trying to work out his
adolescent angst.
A mixed group of teenage soldiers are guarding a kidnapped
American female engineer; there's an enemy lurking. A
cow is introduced, it mysteriously dies. Engineer escapes,
survives mosquito attack, escapes again; there's a double
murder. But nothing is explained. Orders are issued. The
issuer disappears then reappears and then is shot. One
is tempted to rescue this mess of a film by drawing an
analogy to Lord of the Flies, but this is to
give it a gravitas that it hasn't earned. Among the film's
many lowlights are its negative-integer character development
and laughably affected dialogue.
For those who enjoy the bizarre, the off-beat, who are
convinced that doing something differently is its own
reward, or for whom convention is best when it's turned
upside down and inside out, Monos will satisfy
and perhaps induce catharsis. Others will liken it to
the Dadaist movement of the early 1920s that argued that
meaning is an artificial construct and that the absurd
is the only game in town worth playing.
That the nation's distinguished critics haven't designated
this sad excuse for a film as fit not for the cutting
room but the guillotine is a tell which implicates them
as much as the film. American legend Andy Warhol, who
made an eight hour film of someone sleeping, would award
Monos 5 stars out of four. It should be noted that in
1962 he sold as a work of art a blow-up of a Campbell's
Soup can, proving that Americans are the least discerning
art consumers on the planet. The establishment's mad rush
to sing Monos's praises is Q.E.D. that not much
has changed since then.
2.9
-- PARASITE,
Bong Joon-ho
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] Of
the hundreds if not thousands of films that have set their
sites on exposing the tragic gap between the haves and
the have-nots, few have been as savage and engaging as
South Korea's Bong Joon-ho's Parasite.
Unkept Ki-taek, his wife, adult son and daughter live
in a decrepit, smelly basement apartment. From their small
street level window looking out, they can observe the
homeless urinating on an adjacent wall.
Employing
inventive cunning and grand deceit, the son and eventually
the entire family find employment at the Da-hye mansion.
The charade goes undetected until the ex-governess, who
was cruelly displaced, returns in order to retrieve her
husband who has been secretly living in the mansion's
hideaway sub-basement for many years. When the Da-hye's
return unexpectedly from a camping trip, the film descends
into an orgy of violence as the have-nots take their revenge.
Despite Parasite's accusation and grave subject
matter, its prevailing tone is glib and cavalier thanks
to pulp-fictionesque dialogue that is too-much under the
influence of comic book culture. The viewer is torn between
the social horrors he is witnessing while delighting in
the efficiency of the infiltration.
If the ending is overwrought, Bong Joon-ho's magnificent
filmmaking more than compensates. His sets are exquisite,
and his expert syntax is lesson on the carry over effects
of objects and even smells from one scene to the next,
recalling the unsurpassed montage in Godfather I. The
dirty toilet in the Ki-taek dwelling is the same in the
catacombs of the Da-hye house. In one scene the Da-hye
family are contemplating the monsoon-like rains from a
huge cinematic like window while these same rains have
turned Ki-taek's neighbourhood into an open sewer. The
artful flood scene comes right out of a Bosch painting,
And the particular Ki-taek smell that affronts the Da-hyes
becomes the not so subtle stand-in for a message that
echoes an observation attributed to Henry Miller: that
if someone were figure out how to convert excrement into
gold the poor would be born without assholes.
Parasite is a campy satire delivered with hammer
blows whose supreme craft more than makes up for its shortcomings
and longish running time.
2.4
-- DIVINO
AMOR, Gabriel Mascaro
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis]
In both Winds
of August (Ventos de Agosto) and Neon Bull,
among the best films Brazil has produced since the turn
of the century, director Gabriel Mascaro, more of a colourist
than raconteur, was more interested in exploring a particular
way of life than the psychology of his characters whose
daily concerns served up what at best could be described
as a storyline.
His latest film, Divino Amor, represents a major
shift in specific gravity that does not pull its weight.
At the beginning of the film we are introduced to the
Brazil of the future, where its famous samba and sensuality
(Carnival) have been channeled into religion.
Joana is a civil servant helping couples sort through
the complex of paperwork that divorce entails. Out of
religious fervour, she tries to help the couples reconcile
and avail themselves to the love of God, just as in her
personal life she is eager to earn God's grace so she
and her husband can finally conceive. She persuades some
of the couples to attend the religious ceremonies where
they are warmly greeted with prayers and compassion. We
soon learn why so many Brazilians have forsaken Carnival
for religion: apparently wife-swapping enjoys the blessings
of God, but ejaculating into a temporary partner is forbidden,
which calls for a co-ordinated coitus interruptus followed
by an Usain Bolt-like dash to the waiting wives. Cinematographically,
there is no distracting the camera that has its lens fixed
on the many gratuitous scenes of copulation. As a viewer
in the throes of discovering that his atheism is nothing
but a sham, his first thought is what is the name of this
religion and where do you sign up.
One day a routine security check reveals to Joana that
she is pregnant. She and her husband Danilo are ecstatic,
and together they sing praises to the Lord. That is until
Joana discovers, after a DNA check, that Danilo is not
the father, nor are any of her sexual partners from her
religious group. She concludes that God inseminated her.
Unsurprisingly, Danilo remains unconvinced and files for
divorce.
In live time, an invasive camera watches Joana give birth
to a child, whose voice it turns out to be the narrative
voice of the film, one of several ploys that should have
been left in the cutting room. As the banal sex scenes
multiply and the notion of divine intervention takes over
the film, Joana becomes less of a person and more of a
cinematic device. On top of which there is no apparent
reason for the film to be staged in the future, gimmickly
represented by a Drive-thu pastor (as in Drive-thru resto),
and building security checks that reveal pregnancies.
What works in the film are its stunning visuals (Danilo
hanging himself upside down naked in order to boost his
sperm count) and the film's other worldliness, or style
which Mascaro sustains from the promising beginning to
the protracted ending. But style usually plays second
fiddle to substance, and this is definitely the case in
Divino Amor, Mascaro's first misstep in a career
that has already and deservedly won him an international
reputation.
3.5
- DINER,
Mika Ninagawa
[reviewed
by Noah Simon]
There's nothing quite like a good genre film. The best
of them use excessive stylization; they have less interest
in displaying subjectivity through formal immersion
than they do through eye-popping aestheticism. In an
industry where the standard for 'good-filmmaking' is
attached to aesthetic and psychological verisimilitude
-- an inherence to the real -- it's refreshing to watch
a movie that pays attention to its own artifice, democratizing
the filmmaking experience by refusing the impulse towards
mechanical and ideological obfuscation. It makes sense
why such films often gain feverish, dedicated fanbases.
Mika Ninagawa's film, Diner,
a new action/thriller from Japan, is as campy as they
come. The film is vibrant, violent, self-aware, and,
most importantly, fun as hell. The story is simple:
Kinako Oba (Tina Tamashiro), an aimless, jobless woman
seeking a way out of her mundane life, finds herself
in a dangerous situation after looking for work on an
online job board. Soon enough, she becomes an enslaved
waitress to a restaurant owner who specializes in serving
crazy, violent assassins. If that sounds insane, it's
because it is. Diner has been compared to the
films of fellow Japanese genre filmmaker Sion Sono,
and with good reason. Like many of Sono's films, Diner
bends the boundaries of reality and fantasy before
inevitably plummeting into a claustrophobic hell-scape
with seemingly no way out. Like Sono, Ninagawa imbues
her film with a certain playfulness and kineticism,
and her camera floats around the scene as if it has
a mind of it own. But make no mistake: Diner
is a statement all its own, to be remembered for its
own contributions to the genre outside of its apparent
influences. It's funny, goofy, entertaining, and has
some of the most killer, singular action set pieces
you'll see all year, which induce as much laughter as
they do bloody catharsis. And the beautiful images!
They're striking and colourful, always the centerpiece
of the scene.
The film predominantly takes place in
the underground restaurant, but Ningawa keeps it consistently
engaging through rapid pacing and creative production
design. She manipulates the environment and gives it
life through quirky choices, such as having pictures
of former waitresses talk and comment on an unfolding
scene. She also displays her knack for expressionism
by occasionally altering set proportions and using canted
camera angles, further contributing to the restaurant's
manifestation of hell. And the variety of characters
-- while barely fleshed out -- all have weird, zany
personalities. For a film whose style is relies on chaos
and disarray, it's actually the politics that can be
a bit confounding.
Diner is ostensibly about a woman finding autonomy
within the oppressive enclosure of a capitalist, patriarchal
society (there are quite a few allusions and references
to puppetry), and yet Kinako's liberation relies on
her subservience to and eventual self-actualization
within the slave labour she's been assigned. Ultimately,
her hopes and dreams revolve around pleasing the main
male character, Bombero, her initial 'owner' and head
chef at the restaurant. One could argue -- as I've attempted
to -- that Ninagawa is parodying the absurdity of Hollywood
action movie tropes, and that very well might be the
case. But there are instances where it isn't clear if
Ninagawa is subverting the misogyny ingrained in narrative
and generic conventions, or if she's just unable to
avoid them. Regardless, it's important to watch films
directed by women, especially when they are within a
genre that is predominantly dominated by men and have,
historically, punished woman characters in its narratives
(and then go ahead and apply this to all of cinema in
general).
At the end of the day, Diner still manages
to be fresh by centralizing Kinako's characterization
-- she's easily the most developed in the entire movie
-- and by giving her narrative agency even within her
isolated situation. With this film as well as Coralie
Fargeat's Revenge, which came out last year,
hopefully this is the beginning of an era of major international
genre films directed by women. For any horror/action/thriller
fan with a preference for stylistic extravagance, Diner
is not to be missed. The story may be thin, as are
the characters. But that's honestly beside the point
-- just enjoy the ride.
3.0
-- THEY
SAY NOTHING STAYS THE SAME, Joe Odagiri
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] Joe
Odagiri's They
Say Nothing Stays the Same is a meditation on a
way of life that is disappearing in Japan -- if not
everywhere. Toichi, a nimble old man with a deeply lined
face and expressive eyes, works as a boatman ferrying
villagers across the river. He lives in a shack nestled
in the rocky coastline where he often sits listening
to the wind, the rustle of leaf and frond and the gurgle
of the river that is home to many species of brightly
coloured fish. From time to time he is visited by Gencho,
a young man who comes to share his food.
In his work he meets people from all walks of life;
some poke fun and insult him because he's uneducated
and poor, others pay him the respect owed to age and
all that it entails. One day he learns from one of his
passengers that a bridge is being constructed upstream.
He knows what this means.
His life changes when he discovers a body wrapped up in
a blanket floating in the river. It's a young woman (Fu)
who he nurses back to health and whose trust he eventually
wins. She is suffering from amnesia but we learn from
the villagers that her entire family was slashed to death
by a psychopath.
The film's languid pacing and the easy rhythms of life
that revolve around the river are seamless. Despite
Toichi's concerns that the balance and calm he has known
all his life are under threat, he continues to live
his life.
One night, during a torrential rain, he is woken up
by a friend who asks him to help transport his deceased
father into the woods so he can give his body back to
the animals he has hunted all his life. The allegory
reminds us that the idea of give and take and respect
owed to the environment has all but disappeared in modern
life.
While we never see the bridge, it looms large in the
film as a metaphor, a crossing over to a future that
will turn its back on what has been tried and tested
over the centuries.
Toward the end of the film and true to the film's title,
we rudely learn nothing stays the same. With the opening
of the new bridge, Toichi is older and rendered useless.
His friend Gencho, dressed to the nines, is now full of
himself and his city ways. When the girl Fu who Toichi
has taken under his wing rejects his advances, he tries
to rape her. When Toichi, after a visit to the doctor,
returns to the bloodied scene, he begs her forgiveness
for not having been able to protect her.
They Say Nothing Stays the Same -- a film that
recalls the Knut Hamsun novel Growth of the Soil
-- is a nostalgiac work that draws the viewer into a haunting
dream world that throws into stark relief the pluses and
minuses of the brave new worlds we have all embraced.
From close ups of Toichi's wise and weathered face to
long shots of the river in the deep of summer or in the
breathless calm of winter, the camera lovingly frames
its subject like a motherbird dotes on its newborn.
3.1
-- ADORATION,
Fabice Du Weiz
[reviewed
by Noah Simon]
Adoration,
the new film from Belgian director Fabrice du Welz,
uses fresh ideas to tell a familiar story. Paul (Thomas
Gloria) is a kind, sensitive adolescent boy who lives
isolated in the woods with his mother, who’s a nurse
at a neighbouring mental hospital. After encountering
Gloria (Fantine Harduin), a similarly aged girl and
patient next-door, he quickly becomes infatuated. Gloria
pleads for Paul to help her escape, at which point this
story become a pseudo fairytale of a damsel-in-distress.
Fairytale tropes are scattered throughout Adoration,
but Weiz mostly tries to break conventions. Stylistically,
the film’s shaky camera and use of zooms create a somewhat
docu-realist aesthetic that counteracts the fairytale
story -- Weiz relates their world to ours, putting us
into reality as opposed to distancing us from it. Despite
a few fantastical images -- such as ominous misty landscapes
and sun beams bursting though the forest -- the film
instead creates a sense of fantasy through peculiar
cuts that confuse the audience’s temporal and spatial
awareness; Weiz uses the magic of editing to teleport
his characters through and across space, forcing the
viewer to ask where they are how they got there, without
ever questioning the reality itself. The film sometimes
takes on the form of a surreally vivid dream.
Adoration plays with gender tropes in unique
ways. Paul provides the alley for Gloria’s escape, but
for most of the narrative it is Gloria who holds the
cards. She takes action, advances the story, and consistently
manipulates the fantasy that Paul sees himself in. Paul’s
isolated life is full of reading books that has made
him impressionable to stories of strong male heroism,
and the film is most interesting when those delusions
shatter in the face of real danger. Regret and doubt
seep into his eyes (the performance is excellent), emotions
that run contradictory to fairytale representations
of masculinity, and themes of fate and eternal love.
The film moves fast, focusing less on the escape itself
and more on the journey, ostensibly leaving space to
positively develop Paul and Gloria’s relationship. But
instead of creating emotional bonds between the two,
Weiz opts to portray the instability of their situation
and its psychological effects. Additionally, as opposed
to maintaining perceptions of innocence, the film very
uncomfortably depicts the two adolescent’s bourgeoning
sexuality, further destroying any notions of fairytale
romanticism (these moments are also slightly problematic
considering Gloria’s mental state). The main issue with
the film’s speedy first act leading up to the escape
is that it leaves behind some compelling elements, namely
the peculiar, inverted relationship between Paul and
his mother.
Weiz’s dark, realist deconstruction of fairytale tropes
is a fascinating, if sometimes plodding, experience.
The film’s subversions seem to be a means in and of
themselves. Viewers don’t immerse themselves into these
characters as one might in a fairytale romance, and
they instead become knowing voyeurs -- we simply observe
as Paul and Gloria go from place to place. Aesthetically
and narratively, then, the film often runs itself into
a corner with no where to go and nothing to say. But
perhaps this suggests the biggest fairytale subversion
of them all -- the refusal to succumb to any moral or
narrative resolution..
3.3
-- THE
INVINCIBLE LIFE OF EURIDICE GUSMÄO, Karim Aïnouz
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] The
saturated colour washes from the opening sequences of
Karim Ainouz's The
Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmäo introduce viewers
to the steamy tropics. The weather that sticks to the
skin like sap sets the tone for what is set in stone in
the 1950s in Brazil: its stifling, cruel patriarchy, the
rude gap between the haves and have-nots, and the institutional
hardships women must endure "If you're poor and go to
a hospital you won't get out alive," remarks Guida, who
has eloped with a Greek sailor, leaving her sister Euridice,
a gifted 18-year-old pianist, in the lurch. When Guida
returns pregnant and without a husband, the father throws
her out into the street, forcing her to fend for herself.
The parents lie to Euridice about her sister's whereabouts,
and for the duration of the film, the separated sisters
refuse to believe that they will never again reconnect.
The film's narrative reach covers many years. If in their
late teens the self-absorbed sisters were the sum of their
immediate passions, as new mothers, and having suffered
through destitution and denial, they emerge as generous
and sympathetic adults even though their dreams have been
crushed.
The sisters, played by Carol Duarte and Julie Stockler,
are the focal points of the drama. Refusing to accept their
assigned role in life, the accusation and recrimination
are raw; nothing is left unsaid just as nothing will change
since it's a world where a man's pride and place come first
-- and Euridice's invitation to study piano at the Conservatory
in Vienna will go unanswered.
In Greek mythology, Euridice was killed by a snake bite.
Orpheus travels to the land of the dead in an attempt to
bring her back. The sisters are separated for the entire
running time of the film. On one occasion, Chrismas eve
-- they unknowingly are living in the same city -- they
come close to meeting. In a heart-rendering scene their
children find each other in a restaurant and begin to play
together.
Much of the film's emotional load is carried by a note-perfect
soundtrack featuring the original music of Benedict Schiefer
and additional music from Chopin and Grieg. There are
moments in the film that are so overwrought that speech
must cease and allow music to do what it does best. The
score has reward written all over it.
Some viewers will conclude that the film is a not so subtle
rebuke of the kind of Brazil the recently elected Bolsonaro
wants to revive. Since there is no direct evidence one way
or the other, that conclusion must default to the mind of
the beholder. But as to the film's excellence, from its
tones, narrative sweep, vivid colour schemes, interior sets,
and marvelous performances throughout, 'I'm persuaded that
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmäo will
live to enjoy the wide circulation it deserves.
3.1
-- LA VIRGIN
DE AGOSTO, Jonas Trueba
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] At
the beginning of Jonas Trueba’s La
Virgin de Agosto, we are told that most of Madrid’s
Madrileños leave the city because of the extreme heat.
As the camera lovingly embraces the film’s main character
Eva, who had decided to stay and enjoy the many local festivals
that are taking place, we quickly come to realize that both
the city and its festivities are incidental. The film is a
masterful character study, inspired by the work of French
director Eric Rohmer.
Unlike Rohmer’s young and flighty women, Eva is not
vapid. But she is very ordinary. Her looks are average, as
is her figure (she’s shy to be seen in a bathing suit),
and she’s of average intelligence and education. But
she has a million dollar (gummy) smile that the camera loves,
and she is disarming. The film, from beginning to end, follows
her numerous encounters with friends and strangers she meets
up with as she explores the center of the city to where she
has moved for a couple of weeks. We discover that she’s
not quite sure what she wants in life, that she used to be
an actor, that’s she’s recently broken up with
her boyfriend, and that she is quite adept at looking after
her basic needs: she knows how to make friends and she has
no trouble attracting men. Among her endearing qualities is
that she is an attentive and sympathic listener, and, in the
manner of Rohmer’s female characters, she’s without
a trace particle of pretention, a quality she brings out in
everyone around her. The script, which forms the back bone
of the film, hits all the right notes, especially when Eva,
who is in her middle 30s, and her women friends are taking
about their monthlies, their romantic hopes and concerns.
Despite the everydayness of Eva and her circle of friends,
Trueba lends them a dignity and respect that do all women
proud. His lensing, and casting all serve that end.
If the ending is somewhat of a letdown, it is fully consistent
with Eva’s character. For viewers looking for a deeper
message, it might be that if Eva, a single woman living in
a new part of town, is able to make friends and meet decent
men it’s because she’s out there in the world.
A famous photographer once said: “Photos won’t
come to you, you have to go out there and get them,”
and that’s what Eva does. She not stuck in the digital
iPhone, iEverything universe. She’s fully engaged with
life, visiting art galleries, attending concerts, meeting
new people, keeping in touch with people she knows.
La Virgen de Agosto is a small gem of a film that
moves briskly along despite the absence of any story line.
It features memorable performances from Itsaso Arana in the
role of Eva, and from Isabelle Stoffel, in a co-starring role,
who delivers a senstive rendering of Olka.
2.6
-- ATLANTIQUE,
Mati Diop
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] A
long lens, cutting through Dakar’s legendary sun-bleached
dust and haze, settles on a half-completed modern high rise
whose backside faces the turbulent sea. A team of construction
workers gathers around a foreman, demanding wages that haven’t
been paid in three months. Among them is Souleiman, whose
thoughts are elsewhere, anticipating his secret rendezvous
with the tall and slender, lithe and lissome, Ada (Mame Bineta
Sane). Her Muslim family has arranged for her marriage to
Omar, a wealthy playboy type, but her heart belongs to another.
Mati Diop, in her first full length film, takes up that forbidden
relationship to explore the class, religious and gender divides
that are causing a major rethink in Senegal. Throughout the
film the Atlantic plays a major role: it mirrors the turbulence
of her country’s societal upheavals, and it swallows
up Souleiman and his friends who dared to dream of a better
life in Spain.
At the half way point, the film introduces the spirit world
that will leave some western viewers scratching their heads.
Ada’s friends who work at a sea-side bar haven’t
been paid. When they take their case to the police, they are
promised an investigation, but the police have been paid off
by the man holding their money. In the dead of night, white
eye-balls lit up from menacing moonlight, the girls, zombie
like, are out for revenge. Ada, grieving her loss, gives herself
away to the policeman who is convinced she is protecting her
lover, or is it Souleiman? The spirit world is a coping mechanism.
It is evoked, out of despair, to right the wrongs and injustices
of life. And while it might be offsetting to some viewers, it
is essential in understanding the Senegal's abiding pride and
prejudices, and the limited choices available to women.
The film features some sharp dialogue; in particular a scene
where Ada’s friends discuss the pros and cons of her
pending arranged marriage. The spirit world is enhanced by
a haunting soundtrack; elsewhere, it is diegetic, leaving
the hustle and bustle of the city to frame the story line.
And if it’s travel that excites, Dakar is given a fair
and sometimes extensive showing. Last but not least, the film’s
understated charm is inseparable from the natural performance
of Mame Sane as Ada, who we would like to see in every frame
of the film, whose long silences and darting eyes and coltish
manner obviate the need for any script. Atlantique,
despite its rough edges and jumpy montage, is for the most
part a edifying journey to a place that begs for a return
visit.
3.5
-- BEANPOLE,
Kantemir Balagov
[reviewed
by Robert J. Lewis] Until
recently there was no name for it - Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder - a post-war condition affecting, often for life,
both combatants and civilians. We learn from first hand
accounts that there is no circumventing, finessing the
debilitating effects of war, the psychic accumulation
horrific deeds either witnessed, inflicted or received.
Without exception war is a savage enterprise, and proof
that reason is no match against human nature "red in tooth
and claw." Every war holds up a mirror to man's brute
nature, a nature that has never been entirely comfortable
in its skin in times of peace and reconciliation.
Kantemir Balagov's wrenching film, in the manner of invasive
surgery, opens up the complex, twisted relationship between
Iya and Masha following the 900 day Nazi Siege of Leningrad.
Iya, who, prone to catatonic trance, has been returned
from the front where she is now looking after Masha's
little boy Pasha.
From the film's opening frames that recall Van Gogh's
misery-saturated "The Potato Eaters," Balagov
enlists his many artistic influences in bringing to bare
the ugly realities of war and their deadening and distorting
effects on the survivors. Despite the grim, run down hospital
where both Iya and Masha work as assistants, Balagov use
of George La Touresque lighting transforms their tragic
faces into Madonnas. With their dark side of their moon-lit
faces taking up the entire screen, we watch in real time
as Iya asphyxiates the little boy she loves, presumably
to save him from a future bleaker than death. And then
again, at the behest of the paraplegic Stephan who wants
to spare his daughters from his condition, when she inserts
a lethal needle into his neck and then blows opium smoke
from her mouth into his - the final kiss of death. The
film is an accumulation of one harrowing, gut-wrenching,
heart-breaking scene after another. When Masha, who as
a coping mechanism has learned to smile through every
hurt, learns of the death of her son, she blackmails the
hospital's doctor/administrator to conceive a child with
Iya who will hand it over in a quid pro quo. The sex is
as joyless as a root canal.
Beanpole,
despite its stark beauty and understated technical virtuosity,
is not without a couple of missteps. Balagov is prone
to overplaying the arthouse card. In his homage to Ingres'
"The Bathers," he constructs a scene where a bevy of naked
woman are partaking of a Turkish bath. It's simply not
credible that such an extravagant space could have been
available in the impoverished hospital. In another episode,
this time recalling Tolstoy's Anna Karenina,
a train comes to a screeching halt and Masha learns that
a woman, also nicknamed Beanpole, has thrown herself under
the wheels. But these are small imperfections in a film
that may one day rank with the great masterpieces of Russian
cinema.
This viewer left the film wondering how he survived such a relentlessly
grim and depressing film whose 2 hour 20 minute running time
seemed to fly by. If nothing else, Beanpole will leave
you thankful for every small blessing that is bestowed by nations
that have been spared the horrors of war and their lingering
after-effects.
2.3
-- GUEST OF
HONOUR, Atom Egoyan
[reviewed
by Noah Simon] Atom
Egoyan's newest film, Guest
of Honour, continues the Canadian fimmaker's penchant
for non-linear storytelling. Within the film's consistent
temporal shifts is an unfolding mystery between a restaurant
health inspector named Jim (David Thewlis), and his daughter
Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira), a high school band conductor
who finds herself in jail after confessing to sexual assault.
The film's jumbling of timelines contributes to its primary
theme: the deceit of memory. Egoyan continues from his last
film -- 2016's Remember -- a particular fascination
with memory and its effects on subjectivity. While Remember
focused on an elderly man's amnesia and that disease's shattering
of his conception of himself, Guest of Honour is
interested in the ability of smart phones to distort memories
and re-create the past, and how such sensations contribute
to a present sense of alienation.
Guest of Honour is framed by the issues of interpreting
memories, emphasized by its noir-style narration (the film
begins with Veronica detailing the film's events to a priest,
played by Luke Wilson). And as the story progresses, one finds
more noir conventions in the struggle amongst the film's characters
for authority over the central narrative voice. But the consistent
clashing of memories and perspectives ultimately create an
unfocused movie whose abundance of ideas fails to resonate
with its over-dramatic tone. Each scene presents a new theme
to preach at its audience: The world's dividing attention;
the obsessive drive for a good reputation; the tension between
the societal codes to which we abide in public, and the taboos
we hide behind close doors (and how the smart phone can blur
the dimensions of public and private spaces). This provides
a titillating yet convoluted experience. Egoyan attempts to
connect these themes to his overall message -- the alienation
of trying to piece together a past through internal memories
and the memories documented through technology -- but this
message becomes muddled amongst long scenes of dialogue that
always seem to strive towards something else. In this sense,
Egoyan appears to tap more into his career as a theatre playwright,
and not as a filmmaker.
It is ultimately Egoyan's camera that approaches any greater
truth. The shots aren't flashy -- there are no intricate camera
movements or overtly-stylized compositions. The camera appears
to be placed right where it should be, offering a visual glimpse
into the film's deeper mysteries beyond the surface level
plot -- Egoyan's compelling use of framing better represent
the characters' dissolution than any stretch of dialogue.
The film's emotion is often derived from the mise-en-scene,
as the actors' interaction with objects brings to mind material
associations with memory, a connection that proves stronger
and more essential than anything else. Egoyan's mastery of
formal elements, after 25 years of filmmaking, is clear. One
might wished he used them more.
|
