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New Directors/New Films and Film Comment Selects 2014 General Forum thread
New Directors/New Films and Film Comment Selects 2014 General Forum thread
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FEBRUARY 17-27 2014 PUBLIC SCREENINGS
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MARCH 19-30 2014 PUBLIC SCREENINGS
Dedicated to the discovery and support of emerging artists, New Directors/New Films has earned an international reputation as the premier festival for works that break or re-cast the cinematic mold. Celebrating its 43rd year in 2014, the festival takes place March 19-30 and is presented jointly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art
As before I expect to attend screenings of all the New Directors/New Films series and perhaps a few of the more elusive Film Comment Selects. A link index of the reviews will come here.
The General Film Forum discussion-access thread begins here with links to Festival Coverage section reviews and opportunity for viewer comments..
Links to all Filmleaf's 2014 ND/NF and FCS reviews:
Badadook, The (Jennifer Kent 2014)--ND/NF
Buzzard (Joel Potrykus 2013)--ND/NF
Cherchez Hortense (Pascal Bonitzer 2012)--FCS
Dear White People (Justin Simien 2014)--ND/NF
Double, The (Richard Ayoade 2013)--ND/NF
Felony (Matthew Saville 2013)--FCS
Fish & Cat (Shahram Mokri 2013)--ND/NF
Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, A (Ana Lily Anirpour 2013)--ND/NF
Japanese Dog, The (Tudor Cristian Jurgiu 2014)--ND/NF
Me and You/Io e te (Bernardo Bertolucci 2013)--FCS
Mouton/Sheep (Gilles Deroo, Mariane Pistone 2013)--ND/NF
Obvious Child (Gillian Robbespierre 2013)--ND/NF
Of Horses and Men (Benedickt Erlingsson 2013)--ND/NF
Our Sunhi (Hong Sang-soo 2013)--FCS
Quod Erat Demonstrandum (Andrei Gruzsnetczki 2014)--ND/NF
Return to Homs (Talal Derki 2013)--ND/NF
Salvation Army/L'Armée du salut (Abdellah Taïa 2013)--ND/NF
Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, A (Ben Rivers, Ben Russell 2013)
Stop the Pounding Heart (Robert Minervini 2013)--ND/NF
Story of Fear/Historia del miedo (2013)--ND/NF
Story of My Death/Historia de meva mort (Albert Serra 2013)--ND/NF
Strange Color of Your Body's Tears, The/L'Étrange couleur des larmes de ton corps (Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani 2013)--ND/NF
Strange Little Cat, The/Merkwürdige Kätzchen, Das (Ramon Zürcher 2013)--ND/NF
To Kill a Man (Alejandro Fernándo Almendras 2013)--ND/NF
Trap Street/Shuiyin jie (Vivian Qu 2013)--ND/NF
Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga, The (Jessica Orneck 2014)--ND/NF
We Come As Friends (Hupert Sauper 2014)--ND/NF
Youth (Tom Shoval 2013)--ND/NF
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NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2014: EARLY SELECTIONS
As before the FSLC/MoMA selection committee has announced some "early selections." The whole program will come later. (Feb. 14, 2014)
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THE DOUBLE
The Double | Richard Ayoade
UK | 2013 | 93min
Richard Ayoade has built a loyal following with his hilariously off characters, notably the one he plays in the TV series The IT Crowd and those that inhabit his 2010 directorial debut, Submarine. Starring Jesse Eisenberg as both Simon James, a humdrum worker drone, and his gregarious doppelgänger, James Simon, the film is set within both the claustrophobic confines of Simon’s bureaucratic workplace and his paranoid mind.
Of Horses and Men | Benedikt Erlingsson
Iceland | 2014 | 80min
The debut feature by celebrated stage director Benedikt Erlingsson announces the arrival of an innovative new cinematic voice. Set almost exclusively outdoors amid stunning Icelandic landscapes, the film features in equal parts a cast of exquisite short-legged Icelandic horses and human characters—including the terrific Ingvar E. Sigurdsson and Charlotte Bøving as meant-for-each-other but put-upon lovers—illuminating with great inventive flair the relationship between man and beast.
Salvation Army (L'armée du salut) | Abdellah Taïa
France/Morocco/Switzerland | 2013 | 81min
Like the book it’s based on—Abdellah Taïa’s own 2006 landmark novel—the Moroccan author’s directorial debut is a bracing, deeply personal account of a young gay man’s awakening that avoids both cliché and the trappings of autobiography. With a clear-eyed approach, devoid of sentimentality, this wholly surprising bildungsfilm explores what it means to be an outsider, and with the help of renowned cinematographer Agnès Godard, Taïa finds a film language all his own: at once rigorous and poetic, and worthy of Robert Bresson in its concreteness and lucidity.
A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness | Ben Rivers and Ben Russell
Estonia/France | 2013 | 98min
As collaborators, Ben Rivers and Ben Russell, two intrepid and nomadic talents of experimental film and art, have created one of the most bewitching cinematic experiences to come along in a great while. In A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, Robert A.A. Lowe, the celebrated musician behind Lichens and Om, gives a strangely affecting, perhaps even trance-inducing performance as the film’s Parsifal figure, a quixotic man who embarks on a quest for utopia—the holy grail of infinite truth, self-knowledge, and spiritual connectedness.
Stop the Pounding Heart | Roberto Minervini
Belgium/Italy/USA | 2013 | 100min
Sara (Sara Carlson, playing herself) is part of a devout Christian goat-farming family with 12 children, all home-schooled and raised with strict moral guidance from the Scriptures. Set in a rural community that has remained isolated from technological advances and lifestyle influence—no phones, TVs, computers, or drunken teen brawls—the subtly narrative film follows Sara and Colby, two 14-year-olds with vastly different backgrounds who are quietly drawn to each other. By presenting an authentic, impartial portrayal of the Texas Bible Belt, Minervini allows for the humanity and complexity behind the stereotypes to show through.
Story of My Death (Història de la meva mort) | Albert Serra
Spain/France | 2013 | 148min
No one else working in movies today makes anything remotely like the Catalan maverick Albert Serra, a cerebral oddball and improbable master of cinematic antiquity. Known for his unconventional adaptations of Cervantes’s Don Quixote (Honor of the Knights) and the Biblical parable of the Three Kings (Birdsong), Serra here stages the 18th-century passage from rationalism to romanticism as a tussle between two figures of legend, Casanova and Dracula.
Trap Street (Shuiyin Jie) | Vivian Qu
China | 2013 | 94min
Notions of surveillance and observation are turned inside out in Trap Street, producer Vivian Qu’s first turn as a director. Noir in tone, and a great representation of the newest generation of Chinese filmmakers, the film is a bold story of who is really watching who that, while firmly embedded in the current cultural context of China, could happen to any one of us.
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Film Comment Selects 2014 slate
From the Film Society of Lincoln Center, NY. "The 14th edition of Film Comment magazine’s essential and eclectic feast of cinephilia presents 22 discoveries and rediscoveries, 17 of them New York premieres, and nine without U.S. distribution, handpicked by the magazine’s editors after scouring the international festival circuit in 2013. "--Mindy Bond, FSLC.
This is concurrent with the Redez-Vous and New Directors screenings, so hard to attend but I may see one or two. I'd like to see the Petzolds and the Moodysson but it depends on my schedule.
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WE ARE THE BEST (Lukas Moodysson)
A.O. Scott in the NY Times offers a preview of Film Comment Selects with thumbnails of some of the films.
Our Sunhi
Hong Sang-soo | 2013 | 88 mins
A former film student awakens romantic longing in three men who cross her path in this acutely observed take on misread behavior, indecision, and awkward interchanges between the sexes from one of cinema’s undisputed masters of moral comedy.
Monday, February 17
9:00pm
Thursday, February 20
4:45pm
Me and You
Bernardo Bertolucci | 2012 | 103 mins
A teenager from a well-to-do-family tries to escape the outside world by shutting himself in his mother’s basement, but finds himself sharing the space with his heroin-addicted older half-sister in Bertolucci’s first Italian-language feature in 32 years.
Thursday, February 27
8:30pm
Betrayal
David Jones | 1983 | 95 mins
Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, and Patricia Hodge star in this rarely screened adaptation of one of Harold Pinter’s greatest plays, a semi-autobiographical portrait of an adulterous affair.
Read more »
Tuesday, February 18
8:45pm
Blood Glacier
Marvin Kren | 2013 | 98 mins
Scientists researching climate change at a research base in the German Alps discover a mysterious substance leaking from a glacier containing micro-organisms that can infect multiple hosts, and soon do, in this over-the-top creature feature for the Global Warming age.
Saturday, February 22
10:00pm
Cannibal
Manuel Martín Cuenca | 2013 | 116 mins
The blunt title of this quietly disturbing, creepily atmospheric, and deeply perverse character study of a small-town tailor who forms a connection with his “masseuse” neighbor won’t prepare you for the slow and mesmerizingly deliberate experience in store for you.
Saturday, February 22
3:20pm
Wednesday, February 26
3:30pm
Cherchez Hortense
Pascal Bonitzer | 2012 | 100 mins
Jean-Pierre Bacri and Kristin Scott Thomas are together at last in this old-school relationship movie by frequent Rivette and Ruiz screenplay collaborator and ex–Cahiers du cinéma critic Pascal Bonitzer, an underrated filmmaker in his own right.
Tuesday, February 18
6:30pm
Tuesday, February 25
4:45pm
City of Pirates
Raúl Ruiz | 1983 | 111 mins
Funny, frightening, and enigmatic, this rarely screened film by the late Raúl Ruiz is like a cross between Peter Pan and Friday the 13th as told through a wildly baroque visual style that suggests a collaboration between Georges Méliès and Sergio Leone.
Wednesday, February 26
9:50pm
Enemy
Denis Villeneuve | 2013 | 90 mins
In his second collaboration with Villeneuve, Jake Gyllenhaal gives his best performance to date as both Adam, a reserved and humorless history professor, and Anthony, an animated and cocksure bit-part actor who catches the academic’s eye due to their alarming resemblance.
Thursday, February 27
6:30pm
Fat Shaker
Mohammad Shirvani | 2013 | 85 mins
In this singular and cryptic film from a subversive new voice in Iranian cinema, an obese con man uses his attractive deaf-mute son to extort money from predatory women looking for a boy-toy—until one of his marks makes herself at home, with unexpected consequences.
Saturday, February 22
1:30pm
Felony
Matthew Saville | 2013 | 105 mins
Moral dilemmas abound in this tense police drama starring Tom Wilkinson and Joel Edgerton, who also wrote the screenplay, another knockout from the Australian production collective behind Animal Kingdom.
Monday, February 17
6:30pm
Flesh of My Flesh
Denis Dercourt | 2013 | 76 mins
Director Denis Dercourt in person for Q&A!
An unsettling and strikingly oblique psychological horror film that gives new meaning to the term “motherly love,” Flesh of My Flesh takes us into the schizoid reality of a woman whose young child has a rare medical condition that requires a highly unusual diet.
Saturday, February 22
5:45pm
Ghosts
Christian Petzold | 2005 | 85 mins
Petzold’s third film interweaves two intersecting storylines to explore the spectral existences of three female outsiders—a pair of late adolescent girls and an unstable middle-aged woman—who struggle to reconnect with “normal” society and find a place to belong.
Wednesday, February 26
8:00pm
Healthcare Mayhem: The Carey Treatment + The Hospital
Blake Edwards | Arthur Hiller | 1971 & 1972 | 204 mins
Suspicion abounds in this month’s Film Comment Double Feature of two early-1970s medical gems: The Carey Treatment, an elaborately plotted mystery thriller starring James Coburn, and The Hospital, a blackly comic drama by Network writer Paddy Chayevsky.
Tuesday, February 25
7:00pm
The Hypnotist
Lasse Hallström | 2012 | 122 mins
Hallström returns to his native tongue for the first time in 25 years for this twisty, visually striking Nordic noir about a psychologist (the great Mikael Persbrandt) who’s lured back into hypnotism—a practice he’d sworn off—to help solve a horrific crime.
Friday, February 21
3:30pm
Sunday, February 23
8:00pm
Intruders
Noh Young-seok | 2013 | 99 mins
Director Noh Young-seok in person on February 20!
This twisty, blackly comic suspense thriller from South Korea follows a screenwriter who rents a winter cabin in a remote country backwater to concentrate on his latest project, but finds himself surrounded by a colorful and noisy cast of characters.
Thursday, February 20
6:45pm
Thursday, February 27
4:15pm
Metro Manila
Sean Ellis | 2013 | 115 mins
In this Sundance Audience Award winner, a family of poor rice-farmers travels from the desolate mountains to bustling Manila in the hopes of making some money, only to discover that the exploitation they faced at home is nothing compared to what greets them in the big city.
Friday, February 21
6:00pm
The Sacrament
Ti West | 2013 | 95 mins
Director Ti West in person for Q&A!
Indie horror specialist Ti West adopts a first-person found-footage approach, with his usual flair and assurance, for this story of a Jim Jones–type religious cult that will stick in your mind long after the credits roll.
Friday, February 21
8:30pm
Top of the Lake
Jane Campion | 2013 | 350 mins
Twin Peaks crossed with The Killing—and that isn’t the half of it. Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss stars in this thrilling seven-episode television series, the toughest, wildest picture Jane Campion has ever made.
Sunday, February 23
1:00pm
We Are the Best!
Lukas Moodysson | 2013 | 102 mins
The director of Together and Lilya 4-ever is back on form with an energetic rough-and-tumble story of three rebellious teenage girls who form a punk rock band to defy the stifling conformity of early-1980s Stockholm.
Saturday, February 22
7:45pm
The Weight
Jeon Kyu-hwan | 2012 | 107 mins
This exquisitely shot, one-of-a-kind tale centers on a sickly hunchbacked mortician who takes pride and pleasure in cleaning and dressing the dead and his burdensome younger stepbrother, who wants nothing more than to be a woman.
Thursday, February 20
9:30pm
Wolfsburg
Christian Petzold | 2003 | 90 mins
Petzold’s first collaboration with Nina Hoss, star of his art-house hit Barbara, is a slow-burning thriller that uses the relationship between a hit-and-run driver and the victim’s mother to examine the role of chance in people’s lives and the existential malaise of modern Germany.
Wednesday, February 26
6:00pm
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The full New Directors/New Films program is up now. You'll find it here.
Or on the Filmlinc (FSLC) website.
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ME AND YOU/IO E TE (Bernardo Bertolucci 2012)--FILM COMMENT SELECTS
An antisocial 14-year-old holes up secretly in his Rome apartment basement for a week to fool his mother into thinking he's gone on the school ski trip. Later his long estranged older half sister turns up to detox from heroin and as he is forced to help her, they bond. No reason to go beyond Mike D'Angelo's Cannes 2012 report that this film's just "pleasurably inconsequential," but also that it's great Bertolucci has gone back to filmmaking after a decade of serous health problems (he's confined to a wheelchair). The film is enjoyable, and the performances by Jacopo Olmo Antinori as the boy and Tea Falco as his half sister are excellent. This is the filmmaker's first film in his native Italian in thirty years.
The first of three FCS 2014 films I got to see. [Correction: later I got to see a fourth.]
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I liked all the Film Comment Selects titles I got to see, though I'd have liked to see others, especially ENEMY, FELONY and WE ARE THE BEST. These were the other two, along with Bertolucci's ME AND YOU. [Later I did get to see FELONY.]
CHERCHEZ HORTENSE (Pascal Bonitzer 2012)--FCS
A "comfortable, Parisian, leftist French comedy, Positif called it, the story of a man who gradually regains his self respect, after failing in his attempt to secure an undocumented person from the danger of deportation. Kristen Scott Thomas, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Claude Rich and Isabelle Carré star in this film rescued from obscurity by the Film Comment selection committee.
OUR SUNHI (Hong Sang-soo 2013)--FCS
Hong's usual themes of directors and film students and men pursuing women work unusually well here, again with more focus on the POV of the woman (being sought by three men) as in his last, NOBODY'S DAUGHTER HAEWON.
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First day of press screenings of New Directors/New Films 2014
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (Ana Lily Anirpour 2013)
Sundance hit: A hip Iranian-American women's lib, skateboarder, hijab-wearing Nosferata vampire romance, with a vintage Ford Thunderbird and a cat. In Farsi and with Iranian actors but shot in California.
OF HORSES AND MEN (Benedickt Erlingsson 2013)
An Icelandic feature that's essentially a sequence of short films depicting mishaps involving the indigenous short-legged horses in a beautiful Icelandic valley.
WE COME AS FRIENDS (Hupert Sauper 2014)
Another devastating and provocative documentary by Austrian-born, French-resident Sauper (of DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE), this time about the new nation of South Sudan and how it is being exploited and colonized by Chinese and American businessmen, Teas missionaries, superficial UN officials, and others.
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Second day of screenings.
BADADOOK, THE (Jennifer Kent 2014)--ND/NF
An Austrialian horror story about an evil children's book that possesses a young widow with a six-year-old boy.
DEAR WHITE PEOPLE (Justin Simien 2014)--ND/NF
Sundance satire about black students on an Ivy League school. It's not as good as it sounds.
MOUTON/SHEEP (Gilles Deroo, Mariane Pistone 2013)--ND/NF
Oddball storytelling from France using real people in a Norman seaside town.
STORY OF FEAR/HISTORIA DEL MIEDO (2013)--ND/NF
Avant-garde Haneke-esque ronde of uneasy people in Buenos Aires in the summertime somewhat in the vein of Mendoça's NEIGHBORING SOUNDS.
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Third day of screenings.
Japanese Dog, The (Tudor Cristian Jurgiu 2014)
A charming, humanistic departure from the current Romanian cinema of irony and brutality, the story of an older man reunited with his son, who has been living in Japan. Wonderful use of locale, a great actor, and delicate color. Feature debut.
Quot Erat Demonstrandum (Andrei Gruzsnetczki 2014)
Another excellent Romanian film, in beautiful black and white shot on film, about Cold War repression in the mid-Eighties, focused on a brilliant mathematician and his friend's wife, who get entangled in the web of the Securitate, the state spy network. Though this may seem a familiar subject the film has new angles, and its precision in evoking the period is admirable.
Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga, The (Jessica Orneck 2014)
A combination of philosophical proclamations about wilderness and civilization with bits of the Slavic fairy tale about the witch Baba Yaga, who eats children, with 16mm landscapes of cities and forests and some interesting montage. An experimental film of grandiose ambitions.
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Day 4 of ND/NF screenings.
TO KILL A MAN (Alejandro Fernándo Almendras 2013)
This cool observational crime story from Chile has some things in common with the work of fellow countryman Pablo Larraín -- the creepiness and moral ambiguity. But Larraín's vivid characters and pungent mise-en-scene are absent. Almendras prefers drabness, and this ordinary murderer with his drawn out clumsy mop-up is painful to watch.
A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS(Ben Rivers, Ben Russell 2013)
An experimental, art film by two hitherto unconnected artists in three parts, joined only by having one person in all three. Not for most film fans.
STOP THE POUNDING HEART (Robert Minervini 2013)
Is this a docudrama or Christian propaganda? It debuted at Cannes, but the Christian market is its niche. Intimate scenes, nice visuals, but many unanswered questions.
Buzzard (Joel Potrykus 2013)
A slacker scam artist flees from Grand Rapids to Detroit -- madcap, macabre humor by a smooth director-actor team.
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Day 5 of ND/NF screenings -- end of the first week.
THE DOUBLE (Richard Ayoade 2013)--ND/NF
Thirty-something British director Richard Ayoade (SUBMARINE; "The IT Crowd") has produced an ingenious adaptation of the Dostoevsky doppelganger tale starring Jesse Eisenberg and frankly influenced in style and outlook by Gilliam's BRASIL and Welles' THE TRIAL. It is a triumph of editing, mise-en-scene, and acting and therefore certainly no sophomore slump, but one looks forward next time to his getting back a bit of the warmth and fun of his groovy, nostalgic debut.
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FELONY (Matthew Saville 2013)--FCS
From the ANIMAL KINGDOM production team, but milder stuff. A cop story not about crime-fighting but a detective who gets into a grave moral dilemma in failing to admit harm he's done by his own drunken driving. Tom Wilkinson adds complexity and punch as an older cop with problems of his own. Both written by and starring Joel Edgerton (a crook in the earlier film, the detective in trouble here).
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RETURN TO HOMS (Talal Derki 2013)--ND/NF
Winner of the world jury doc prize at Sundance, this is the most visceral, intimate portrait of urban rebel warfare you're likely to see. It also tenaciously follows a charismatic young leader, Abdel-Basset Al-Sarout, a 19-year-old star soccer player and blacksmith when it begins. He leads singing chants in the peaceful rebel demonstrations at first, and when armed conflict begins, becomes a leader ready to die a martyr. Filming is so risky and up-front we see rebels wounded and killed on camera. A remarkable film, a vivid snapshot, a poetic memoir, an impassioned plea -- a concentrated essence of all the hope, passion, and despair of the Arab Spring.
THE STRANGE LITTLE CAT/DAS MERKWÜRDIGE KÄTSCHEN (Ramon Zürcher 2013)--ND/NF
I've reported on this before, but am reprinting my review from the SFIFF of last year. An experimental work by a young Swiss-German filmmaker that focuses on the mechanics and oddities of life examining objects as closely as humans, as observed from a family kitchen where people come and go in the course of a day. You may not get it, but let's say it's like Jacques Tati without the humor. It has been shown at no less than three dozen film festivals since its debut at the Berlinale early last year.
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YOUTH (Tom Shoval 2013)--ND/NF
Another strong visceral film from an Israeli flimmaker, a new one. Israeli writer-director Tom Shoval's debut feature YOUTH brings up hot national issues like economic injustice, alienation, violence, sexism, and diminished expectations, but that wouldn't count for much if he had not crafted an intense, suspenseful story about a crime that is all the more visceral and shockingly physical for being done by a pair of young testosterone-fueled amateurs. -- good Israeli family boys turn into criminals.
STORY OF MY DEATH/HISTÒRIA DE LA MEVA MORT (Albert Serra 2013)--ND/NF
Sometimes maybe it makes sense just to hang out with famous people in period costume (Cassanova in this case) to get the feel of what they might have been like, and there are some beautiful painterly images, but also note what Cahiers du Cinéma says: "These two hours and a half of deadly (we insist: deadly) boredom will be the despair of those who love the films of Serra and will want to die when they see this gross caricature of radical chic cinema which is as pretentious as it is insignificant." It won the grand prize at Locarno though, so there you go.
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Week two, day three of ND/NF press screenings.
FISH & CAT (Shahram Mokri 2013)--ND/NF
Intricate patterns of looping and voicovers, creepy restauranteurs, university students at a winter kite festival at a Caspian lake, all done in a single take (like Sukurov's RUSSIAN ARK, but without the beauty, glamor, history, or art), and what the point of all this is or how the fish and cat fit in for that matter, I cannot tell you. Two hours and a quarter of self-indulgence from a new generation of Iranian filmmaker.
SALVATION ARMY/L'ARMÉE DU SALUT(Abdellah Taïa 2013)--ND/NF
An austere, Bressonian Moroccan gay coming-of-age tale (from a celebrated 2006 novel by the director) in two episodes ten years apart. Suggests the writing of Paul Bowles. Filmed by Claire Denis' frequent dp, Agnès Godard in blues and grays. So simple and harsh the beauty of it may dawn on you only later.
OBVIOUS CHILD (Gillian Robbespierre 2013)--ND/NF
A rom-com about a female standup-comic that ends with an upbeat abortion sequence. Instead of bolting, the father turns out to be a sterling, hunky, Mr. Right. Definitely a woman's movie, but a nice change from the indulgence of male immaturity of the Apatow comedies. Jenny Slate stands out in the lead role and Jake Lacy is effortlessly appealing as Mr. Right.
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The Film Comment Selects seems like a fantastic menu of movies- Raul Ruiz, a new Bertolucci, and Denis Villeneuve's Enemy are ones I'd check out.
The New Directors series is a great idea to expose new talents-I wish I could see them. You are in the zeitgeist of movie-watching at the moment Chris. New York is a REAL movie town.
I'd love to have the time and wherewithal to see and write about these films like you do. (Reading about them is the next-best thing, tho...)
I've been watching Scorsese's HUGO a lot on DVD recently. It is hypnotic. The third time I watched it I noticed that Melies (Ben Kingsley) is sitting at the counter of the toy shop in a shot in the exact same pose as his automaton is put in by Jude Law- looking down and hand on the table- So, George Melies IS his automaton. Makes sense, doesn't it? The automaton creates pictures, and so does Melies.....
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I missed ENEMY at FCS because could not go at night and no screener, but it opens in NY cinemas tomorrow and I'll be going this weekend. I did see and reviewed the new Bertolucci. The Raul Ruiz was not new but 1983. Yes this is a great movie town, the best for English-speakers. Paris offers other things not available here. They say Toronto is a great movie town and there are those who love the Montreal Film Festival, someone I liked very much at Lincoln Center screenings who died last year, Mitch Banks, said it was his favorite. And he had been a regular at Cannes, Rotterdam.
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Mitch Banks by CK
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TRAP STREET/SHUIYIN JIE (Vivian Qu 2013)--ND/NF
A cute young guy falls in love with a mysterious woman and then he gets in trouble because she works at a secret government site and they think he had an ulterior motive in meeting her. First feature from China has lots about the information age's invasion of privacy and mapping of the world, but also light, lively scenes and Hitchcockisn moments. A fine beginning.
THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS/L'ÉTRANGE COULEUR DES LARMES DE TON CORPS (Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani 2013)--ND/NF
Exercise in pure style by the Belgian couple who made ND/NF 2010 AMER, likewise based on Italian Dario Argento "giallo" slasher-horror films. Catnip for cultists, unwatchable for others. This team has a formidable team and technique if they choose to make a regular film.
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20,000 Days on Earth is one I will have to check out. Nick Cave is a fascinating man to me. A friend saw him perform in Belgium last year and she said it was like going to church.
Denis Villeneuve seems to have struck a new actor/director match: himself & Jake G.
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I wish I'd learned more about Nick Cave from 20,000 DAYS ON EARTH but it is certainly a stylish and flowing present-day portrait which I'll be reporting on shortly.
I don't know if Villeneuve and Jake are on a long-term thing-- I think for some reason they did the two movies close together but PRISONER came out quite a while before ENEMY. I hated PRISONERS and am hoping ENEMY will restore the confidence in the director I got from INCENDIES.
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Outstanding as always, Chris. Trying to read your posts before I rush back to work. Here is social media link
https://www.facebook.com/newdirectors
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MARCH 19-30 2014
PUBLIC SCREENINGS
Final day of ND/NF press screenings (Mar. 14).
SHE'S LOST CONTROL (Anja Marquardt 2014)--ND/NF
Maybe so has the director. The gauche title of this American indie first film is a hint that this isn't really successful. It's supposed to be about how people are more out of touch and focuses on a woman getting a masters in social psychology who works as a sex surrogate referred by a psychotherapist to help people with intimacy issues. Nothing is believable or quite clear, everybody is uptight.
SALVO (Fabio Grassadonia, Antonio Piazza 2013)--ND/NF
Sicily. A cool, chiseled mafia bodyguard (Saleh Bakri) kils a rival who's ordered out a hit on the man he guards. In the process, he rescues a young blind woman (Sara Serraiocco ) who ought to have been collateral damage and goes into hiding with her. This unusual film has a virtuoso long take sequence that is also virtuoso acting, and is an usual combination of gangster thriller and operatic doomed romance laced with epic spaghetti western style and a touch of dry comedy. Winners of the Critics' Week grand prize at Cannes last year. This debut is good news for Italian cinema.
20,000 DAYS ON EARTH Ian Forsyth, Jane Pollard 2013)--ND/NF
A suave elegant 'biopic' that dodges the cliches of the genre, by and about the Australian singer songwriter Nick Cave, who wisely avoids archival footage and simply talks about himself, to wife and friends (sitting beside him in his Jaguar), to a shrink, to archivists. Entertaining and artful, but all the facts aren't here. This is the closing night film of the New Directors/New Films series.
For my recommendations and comments on this year's New Directors/New Films sereis (and the few Film Comment Selects films I saw) and thanks to the organizers and staff, go here.
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The university had a 2-day colloquium with novelist and filmmaker Abdellah Taia, which concluded with a screening of SALVATION ARMY followed by panel discussion and Q&A. I would not characterize the style of the film as "harsh" or "Bressonian". It is fragmented though, and the ending is a bit abrupt, as you say. Actually, the ending is more than a bit abrupt, and surprisingly downbeat given that, as you point, the protagonist achieves his objective of relocating in Europe but does not seem glad to be there. Apparently, the film is quite different from the novel, and those familiar with his literary output appeared somewhat disappointed by what was excised from the book in the process of adaptation to film.
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Harsh because there are no frills in the depiction or storytelling at any point. Bressonian? Well, I'm not an expert on Bresson, but the festival blurbs have repeatedly referred to Bresson, including the one at Miami.
" Taïa finds a film language all his own: at once rigorous and poetic, worthy of Bresson in its concreteness and lucidity" -- MoMA New Directors/New Films blurb.
Quote:
With sparing dialogue, stunning painterly cinematography by Agnès Godard and perfectly pitched emotional charge, the film pays homage to both French master Robert Bresson and to the godfather of Egyptian realism, Salah Abu Seif.
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The Bill, Cosford Cinema, University of Miami
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You're right. I should have mentioned that the film is being marketed as "Bressonian" and my dear colleague who wrote that hagiographic text followed suit (perhaps he felt obligated as a courtesy to our guest).
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SALVATION ARMY (Abdellah Taïa), cont'd.
Festival blurbs can't be trusted, but I thought the film SALVATION ARMY was Bressonian. If you don't, why? Jay Weissberg (VARIETY) reviewing the film at Cannes Critics' Week and Alastain McCartney reviewing the book alone both point out the book is much warmer and more life-affirming, and one wonders why. Anyway, I stick by my description of the film.
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I can't respond because I don't know what is it about the film that merits the qualification of "Bressonian", which I associate with a style Paul Schrader called "transcendental" over 30 years ago. I recognize this is a matter of opinion and I am willing to believe that many people think of Bresson when they watch this movie. I didn't.
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Got it. I think it's meant as a compliment though.
That's interesting that you insist on that stipulation that it can't be "Bressonian" because it's not "transcendental" (are you sure?-- that the movie isn't "transcendental" that is?) because in a 2012 discussion between Kent Jones and Jonathan Rosenbaum at Film Forum around a Bresson retrospective it was brought up right away that there are objections specifically to applying the word "transcendental" to Bresson's filmmaking. In his reply Rosenbaum offers evidence that Bresson wasn't always all that "Bressonian" himself!
Quote:
"Just as Freud couldn’t always be blamed for the Freudians, Bresson didn’t always feel obliged to behave like a Bressonian."
Now that I read that the novel is quite different it becomes a bit more inexplicable anyway. Taïa obviously intended it to be very different from his book and has said so in interviews, but he hasn't said why he wanted it so different and what he intended by this style departing from the warmth of the book, even to making the boy's sexual encounters in Casablanca seem passive and joyless whereas in the book he has a good time.
It would be interesting to know if Taïa had Bresson in mind at all. Not that it matters. It's a rather weird film. Rather fragmentary. I didn't dislike it but I didn't love it. It deserves a lot of credit for bravery in shooting such a theme and story (mostly) in Morocco. Taïa has said the Arab Spring should make it more possible to do such work. Not that gayness isn't condoned in certain contexts routinely in Morocco as SALVATION ARMY itself shows, but making a film about it is another story. One could substitute "austere and brave" for "Bressonian" with no loss.
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Ricahard Ayoade's THE DOUBLE comes out Friday, May 9, 2014.
The Filmleaf review of it is here.
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GILLIAN ROBESPIERRE'S OBVIOUS CHILD
This ND/NF 2014 film has been in the news (June 26, 2014) because of NBC initially refusing to air an ad for the film because it used the word "abortion." OBVIOUS CHILD began releasing June 6, 2014 but has recently spread to more theaters. It is now showing at five theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Filmleaf review of OBVIOUS CHILD here.
Metacritic rating 75%.
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BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI: ME AND YOU/IO E TE (2012)--FCS
US theatrical release began 4 July 2014 at Lincoln Plaza, Broadway at 62nd Street. Metacritic rating (as of 4 July) 56%. But Stephen Holden in the NY Times review 4 July 2014 was appreciative, calling it a "small, beautifully made film."
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FABIO GRASSADONIA AND ANTIONIA PIAZZA: SALVO
22 August 2014 limited US release led to a review by Mike D'Angelo in The Dissolve. He admires the opening tour de force but finds the "descent into mawkishness" and introduction of the miracle of sight that's virtually ignored thereafter mean, as they rather do, that the second half of the film is useless. It's true Salvo is lopsided, but again, in the context of today's lame, ho-hum Italian filmmaking, the excitement and intensity of that opening and of Bakri's presence deserve more recognition than D'Angelo's stern and tidy wrapup gives them. (Salvo also stands out in a New Directors series that was a pretty mixed bag.) Whether the promise here pays off remains to be seen. Metacritic's rating of 59% shows August 2014 US reviews reviews were on the cusp of favor but not quite there. In her NY Times review (rated a 70 by Metacritic) Manohla Dargis shows some enthusiasm in her very specific observations of scenes, and she calls Bakkri " a man as beautifully sculptured and silent as a Michelangelo slab." Somehow this failure remains more memorable than a lot of successes.
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SALEH BAKRI IN SALVO
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ABDELLAH TAÏA: SALVATION ARMY (2013)
Just announced (19 Dec. 2014): It opens in New York on January 23, 2015 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
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"Winner, Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival
Official Selection, Venice Film Festival
Official Selection, New Directors/New Films
Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival"
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YOUTH (Tom Shoval 2013)
This Israeli film about two middle class siblings who go wrong, one of my favorites of ND/NF 2014, goes into US release Friday 21 August 2015.
