ANTONIO CAMPOS' AFTERSCHOOL REVIEWED.
Coming of age in the YouTube generation. Fear and loathing, love and death at a New England prep school as seen by a 15-year-old with a video camera. The filmmaker, a protege of a Cannes program who has received many awards and many rejections and was a Presidential Scholar, is only 24 today. Afterschool premiered in the Un Certain Regard series at the Cannes Festival.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-23-2008 at 08:56 AM.
DAREZHAN OMIRBAEV'S CHOUGA REVIEWED.
A rather flat re-working of the theme of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, chiefly interesting for the handsome heroine and views of a newly rich Kazakhstan.
JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI'S FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA REVIEWED.
Very limited, very dark, very finely made portrait of a shy, poorly socialized man who becomes a voyeur. Polish director Skolimowski's first return to directing in 17 years was the opener of the Director's Fortnight at Cannes, is included in the Toronto and New York film festivals, and opens in theaters in France in November.
AGNES JAOUI'S LET IT RAIN REVIEWED.
"Speak to me of rain, not good weather," a Georges Brassens song goes. This new Jaoui-Bacri collaboration is about relationships--of family, ethnicity--sex--that don't always go so well, but the pair are working in a warmer, mellower, more complex mode this time.
P.s. Let It Rain has now been acquired by IFC Films. October 8, 2008.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 10-08-2008 at 08:01 PM.
SERGEY DVORTSEVOY'S TULPAN REVIEWED.
Coming to the wilds of the Kazakhistan steppe, Asa can't win the hand of the pretty shepherd's daughter Tulpan, but he can't give up his dream of an idyllic life out in the wild. Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes.
BRILLANTE MENDOZA'S SERBIS REVIEWED.
A dilapidated Filipino movie theater is the star of this film, but it's not a dark, haunted place like the cinema of Tsai Ming-liang's austere Goodbye, Dragon Inn. This is as if a Third World telenovela, with X-rated sex added, was all crammed into a single comprehensive 90-minute episode. It's an impressive achievement, but a little bit indigestible. An official selection at Cannes, perhaps in that sense as in the general conception meant to provoke. Those who argue the whole production is exploitive and crude aren't far off the mark, but the depiction of a family isn't without interest, though this has none of the poetry and mood of other films about the devolution of a place.
STEVE MCQUEEN'S HUNGER REVIEWED.
Under-40 Brit artist McQueen's powerful drama about the Bobby Sands hunger strike till death in 1981 to win the right for IRA prisoners in Belfast to be treated as political prisoners. Relevant today, though McQueen began the project in 2003 before there was an Abu Ghraib and the comparisons with post-9/11 repression were not foremost in his mind. Clearly one of the best English language films of 2008. Awarded the Camera d'Or prize at Cannes for the best first film in competition.
JIA ZHANG-KE'S 24 CITY REVIEWED.
A somewhat curious mixture of documentary and faked elements, this film depicts the history of a once-large and strategic factory started in the 50's and now dismantled and turned into a 5-star hotel. Some of the talking heads pack an emotional punch, but the best thing may be the handsome cinematography.
JAIME ROSALES' BULLET IN THE HEAD REVIEWED.
This is falsely advertised as a mystery or a thriller. It is hard to stay awake through it. It is, of course, fun to argue about. But better to watch it when you have Fast Forward available. For Spanish viewers, who might detect Basque undertones, it might be more exciting.
After re-reading your review of Solitary Fragments and my review of The Hours of the Day, the previous two, award-winning films by Jaime Rosales, one has to conclude he is extremely consistent in both his thematic concerns and formal methodology. I'm curious as to the reaction in Spain when the new film opens there next month.
Yes indeed, I can see the interrelationships of all three films--I have not seen the one you wrote about though. I ought to have mentioned Solitary Fragments and will make some changes in my new NYFF review of this latest Rosales film. I would not consider it comparable to Solitary Fragments, though in technique it relates (but without dialogue, that makes a huge difference). It seems to have received a lot of attention in Il Pais; I have not tried to decode all the Spanish articles, which you may report on later perhaps. We'll see whether this one garners as many awards. But again, I think the Spanish interest in ETA might bring about a more intense reaction than for US or international audiences. But while Solitary Fragments seemed to me very much to reward close attention, this one seems to frustrate all efforts to make anything more of it than what appears on the surface.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-26-2008 at 08:14 AM.
There is a minimalist movement or tendency within Spanish Cinema right now, most of it centered in Barcelona. The other national cinema producing similarly rigorous works that forego plot (in the traditional sense) to focus on the quotidian is that of Argentina. This strain of filmmaking probably has its roots on Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), which is being screened here next month as part of a director retrospective.
I like how the NYFF is including many films by emerging filmmakers. I wonder how many readers are familiar with Mendoza, Rosales and Omirbaev. Here's reviews of films by these directors I've seen.
KILLER aka Tueur a Gages (Kasakhstan/1998)
"Darezhan Omirbaev is one of the most talented filmmakers currently working anywhere but his nationality seems to have doomed him to the margins". (Jonathan Rosenbaum)
This third feature by Omirbaev (1958) won the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. "Killer", the film's English title, is inappropriate because it raises the wrong expectations. This is not a thriller or a crime movie although it depicts criminality, with the violence just off screen. The protagonist, Marat, works as a chaffeur for a mathematician (Omirbaev's former profession). He rear-ends a Mercedes while driving home from the hospital where his wife Aijan has just given birth to a son. He's forced to borrow money to pay for the repairs then loses his job when the government stops funding scientific institutions (something that also affected the Kazak film industry following the collapse of the Soviet Union). Marat is forced to get a loan from a guy with organized crime connections and the calamities continue.
Killer opens with a scene in which the mathematician can't find a building's exit. We watch him wandering the halls and getting contrasting answers as to which way to go. The scene keeps accruing meaning as the strightforward, clean narrative moves along. As a matter of fact, the film seems even more impressive and more significant after a second viewing. Omirbaev depicts a post-communist society that has lost its traditions and its moral compass. The institutional and economic collapse is dramatized with great economy and conviction. Every scene has a clear purpose, a reason for being.
*I watched Killer on import dvd. Omirbaev first two features, Kairat and Cardiogram are available on UK dvd at a rather steep price. A Region 1 dvd of any of Omirbaev features would definitely be appreciated and quite deserved.
SLINGSHOT (PHILIPPINES)
Brillante Mendoza toiled as a production designer under the psudonymn Dante for a long time before he directed his debut at age 45. He is furiously making up for lost time with 6 films released since 2005, and quickly establishing quite a reputation in his native Philippines and abroad. Mendoza's latest is nothing less than a feat of filmmaking prowess. A comprehensive, fictionalized snapshot of Manila slum life that could easily pass for a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Now imagine the fly being able to move across space at will thanks to those handy, lightweight Hi-Def DV cameras. Mendoza takes you into the cramped rooms, narrow alleyways, and crowded streets with unparalleled urgency and immediacy.
Slingshot is bookended by a vertiginous police raid and a political rally, the only event not staged for the camera. The hard work, skill and time required to make the rest look absolutely real can't be overlooked. That Mendoza is a great director of actors, a brilliant performance shaper, will be obvious to any viewer who realizes Slingshot is not a documentary. The shooting of the film was scheduled to coincide with Holy Week and the campaign leading to council elections. Slingshot consists of a number of vignettes involving multiple characters, none of whom takes center stage. A girl kneels to beg not to be turned in to police after caught shoplifting a dvd player. Another girl, who's missing front teeth, wails after accidentally dropping her dentures down the drain. The youngest among a gang of thieving schoolboys, the only one who gets caught, gets beat up at the police station. A toddler plays with his feces while dad gets high with his friends. A basketball game devolves into a knife fight. Believers pray devoutly to Jesus and Allah. Two women compete for a handsome casanova. Residents make a long line to collect cash in exchange for votes. Scaming, hustling, borrowing, bartering, pawning, begging, stealing. Whatever it takes to survive in the oppressive environment. It has such an impact on the lives of slum residents that Mendoza's sociological, rather than psychological, approach is not only valid but entirely appropriate.
Slingshot ends with a sequence of unmitigated power and poignancy. At the rally, a candidate's empty speechifying is followed by the singing of "How Great is Our God" as a bystander gets his pocket picked.
THE HOURS OF THE DAY (Spain)
Abel is the young owner of a small boutique in Barcelona. He argues with his cute live-in girlfriend, humors his mum, helps his buddy set up a business, prepares a tasty cocido on sundays. Then Abel kills a stranger with his bare hands.
The Hours of the Day is the anti-thriller. Naturalistic performances, long takes, static camera, and use of off-screen space create a hyper-normal middle-class world, undisturbed by Abel's murders. We watch two murder scenes but it's clear Abel has killed before and will kill again. Sometimes the violence takes place outside our view with only sound guiding us. There's no stylization and no musical score.
Evil is banal, unpredictable and, sometimes unexplainable seems to be the message from writer/director Jaime Rosales. The Hours of the Day provides no explanations for the murders, no psychological insight, no flashbacks to a traumatic event, no effort to apprehend a serial killer who goes unpunished.
There were no walkouts, but a portion of the audience was ticked off by film's end. During Q&A with actor Alex Brendemuhl, a few questions had a sarcastic tone. Answers revealed that the filmmakers achieved exactly what they set out to do. Not everybody goes to films to learn that evil happens and you cannot stop it, or predict it, or understand it. The Hours of the Day received the FIPRESCI award at Cannes for "its subtle use of cinematographic expression in the observation of a mediocre man's behavior, whose only specificity is killing".
Thanks for your detailed response to my recent NYFF reviews, which are always appreciated. However this remark of yours could mislead newcomers to this thread or to the NYFF. It isn't a risk-taking festival and it's hard to be when it is a slate of only 28 films meant to be the best of the year world-wide. It is a slate full of famous names and directors who have been in the NYFF before. Even the new names come with success at Cannes, and are not really "new", just less familiar. A few exceptions might be Antiono Campos and Alexander Olch. But I'd hesitate to call Steve McQueen "emerging" when he arrives with the Order of the British Empire, the Turner Prize, and the Camera d'Or at Cannes this year for his first film, and he has actually made a lot of films and videos before.I like how the NYFF is including many films by emerging filmmakers.
Every year somebody writes a piece in a local paper about how establishment and gray-haired the NYFF and its audience are and that's true, though these pieces do ackwledge that the slate is excellent and great for film critics to write about.
Thanks for the information about the minimalist tendency in some Spanish-language film regions. I don't know if "rigorous works that forego plot (in the traditional sense)" really exist, despite Rosales' efforts. One main feature of his latest film would seem to be precisely its hidden plot, which can putatiely be teased out by the patient and observant viewer. Its leading up to a shooting moreover is a traditional plot device. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-26-2008 at 05:27 PM.
P.s. I enjoyed Mendoza's Serbis though I don't know if you could call it an 'art film.' It is a tour de force but also full of flaws. It might be slightly 'risk-taking' in that it's likely to offend the gray-haired Lincoln Center regulars with its explicit sex. I think the VARIETY review says that his Foster Child is much better.
As is clear Darezhan Omirbaev's Chouga or Shuga (the previous spelling was devised for the French audience, I think) did not work for me. I might like something else by him, who knows? In some ways he reminded me of Hong Sang-Soo, whom I like.
As I made clear also, this Rosales film didn't work for me at all, but his previous one did. I'd have to see the one before that which you've reviewed, to decide on that.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-26-2008 at 06:08 PM.
MIKE LEIGH'S HAPPY-GO-LUCKY REVIEWED.
At 65 Mike Leigh counteracts the branding of some earlier films with a definitive anti-"miserabilist" statement. The gifted Sally Hawkins (Vera Drake, Persuasion, Cassandra's Dream) heads a cast of typical British depth in this depiction of the life of a sunny-spirited English 30-year-old..
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