New Directors/New Films and Film Comment Selects 2012

[Chris Knipp]

SONG CHUAN: HUAN HUAN (2010)--ND/NF


DR WANG AND HIS WIFE CHUNFENG DINE IN HUAN HUAN

Having a child in rural China

The story told here is of a young woman, Huan Huan, who is having an adulterous affair with a boyish-looking married doctor called Wang. Huan Huan herself is married to a fat, brutish gambler, Yue Lin, a squirmy little man who sits around smoking cigarettes. Dr. Wang is married to Chunfeng, who can't seem to produce a child. Yue Lin winds up taking bribes from Wang for keeping mum about Wang's affair with his wife. Wang also gives Huan Huan pocket money and pays a large fine to the local family planning committee so Huan Huan's brother can return to the village.

When Yue Lin is humiliated by the police and Wang's clinic is shut down by the local government so he has no more money for payoffs, Yue Lin beats Wang to death. Now Huan Huan is pregnant, evidently by Dr. Wang. As the film draws to a close Chunfeng and Huan Huan are out by the local lake talking about Chenfeng raising Huan Huan's baby as her own. All along Huan Huan has wanted to leave her village to work in a big city, but it's looking as if she won't.

This first feature feels like student work of a rather stiff kind. The choppy editing and lousy acting reminded me of Ying Liang's Taking Father Home (SFIFF 2006). If the latter looked even cruder that's because video cameras keep getting better. While static camera setups are poetic in the hands of Asian artists like Tsai Ming-liang or Hou Hsiau-shen, they just seem like the easy way out here.

Song Chuan's version of rural China is a place of petty corruption, mutual blackmail, a life without beauty or grace. People ignore the "one child" law, and the local police exact bribes for having this overlooked, and for other things. Punctuating the film are excerpts from very curious song and dance videos (real, not made by the filmmaker) in which men and women apparently advertise prostitution, or maybe just sex. These are shown at public gatherings that include not only old folks, but kids. The characters of Huan Huan often use obscene and abusive language.

You wouldn't think any of this, which by the way has none of the style or penetration of the films of Jia Zhang-ke or his generation, was the sort of thing the Chinese government would want shown as part of contemporary reality, and yet this was shown at the UCCA (Ullen Center for Contemporary Arts) in Beijing, and was supplied to the Film Society of Lincoln Center by the Chinese Consulate General in New York. The 32-year-old Song's film was nominated for best feature at the second China (Hangzhou) Youth Digital Film Contest. And he is a graduate of the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts, has worked in films and TV since 2006 and worked on his own films since 2002.

Huan Huan may have been chosen for festival showing as an artifact of the modern China and again, as with the (far more accomplished) filmmakers from Iran, some films are sought by international festivals to encourage underground work challenging the status quo in their repressive country of origin, regardless of artistic accomplishment.

Huan Huan was watched for this review among screenings for the MoMA-Film Society of Lincoln Center March 21-April 1, 2012 series New Directors/New Films, and will be shown to the public in ND/NF at these times and places:

Tuesday, March 27th | 9 PM | FSLC
Wednesday, March 28th | 6 PM | MoMA

[Chris Knipp]

JOACHIM TRIER: OSLO, AUGUST 31ST (2011)--ND/NF


ANDERS DANIELSEN LIE AND HANS OLAV BRENNER IN OSLO, AUGUST 31ST

Last voyage home

In this wonderfully accomplished second film Trier attempts something that's different from the generational portrait of his debut, Reprise, but also has many points in common, starting with the star, Anders Danielsen Lie, the protagonist Anders here, and a key figure in Reprise, (SFIFF 2007) whose arc has a strong point in common. Again Trier's inspiration in the French New Wave is clear: this is an adaptation of the novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle that was the basis for Louis Malle's The Fire Within. And there's a lightness of touch and imaginativeness of camerawork and editing that invoke the New Wave. The big difference is in focus, a turning inward. Reprise was more an ensemble piece, about a generation of young men on the rise. Oslo zeros in on one man, a doomed thirty-something who's finishing drug rehab, who once had everything going for him, but now doesn't seem like he's going to make it.

Lie is an extremely watchable actor, not handsome exactly but sexy somehow (his character defined here as a magnet for women), a live wire with a quality both chiseled and sensitive. In Reprise he is the first of several young writers and best friends who becomes a big success, but then has a psychotic episode from which he does not completely recover. Anders begins this last day with what the Variety reviewer calls "an unsuccessful morning of the Virginia Woolf variety." He is at the rehab center, in a big house out in the country. Today he has a job interview and in an early recovery-type group session he expresses uncertain feelings, or no feelings, about that appointment. The film takes us through his entire day, to the bitter end. There are no flashbacks. A lot of background comes from conversation with Thomas (an appealing, complex Hans Olav Brenner), Anders' best friend, whom he has time to visit because he gets to Oslo early. He and Thomas used to party wild together, but Thomas is a respectable family man now with kids and a wife and a solid academic career.

The talk goes from that table at Thomas' to a stroll through a park and this might seem too talky except that Trier's dialogue is so interesting and his editing and shooting are too fluent for that to matter. Anders makes clear to Thomas that he's suicidal; Thomas argues and pleads with him and yet when he sums up his own life frankly none of the negatives are left out (he admits he and his wife waste evenings playing "battlefield" -- a game that comes up ironically during Anders' long night).

Trier's shooting seems more straightforward here than in his first film, but there are great little touches, like a quick repeat-frame as Anders and Thomas part, that sum up the complexity and uncertainty of the two men's relationship with wonderful subtlety. Likewise a "virtuoso" (Variety) passage as Anders sits in a big modern coffee shop and hears snatches of a lot of conversations, which the camerawork skillfully weave in and out, keeping focus on the protagonist, so the triviality and ordinariness of what's said show both Anders' alienation from quotidian life and the way life seems to him: pointless and silly.

In the interview for a magazine editing job, sharply handled like every scene here, the editor quickly melts from cold to sympathetic and even though Anders levels and admits the 6-year blank in his CV is due to being a drug addict, he has the editor in the palm of his hand but walks out and throws away his application. The blade cuts deeper when he goes to meet his sister and is met by her girlfriend, and learns she is unwilling to see him. His parents have left the big family house and are selling it, because of financial problems his addiction caused. He will go to it later. He goes to a birthday party he initially rejected when Thomas mentioned it. He pours himself a glass of wine.

We know with a kind of sinking feeling where this is going, but the trajectory is never obvious because Trier's scenes are so specific and well realized. And notably, things have a light touch. Anders is going under, but with a flourish, because when he begins to party, he is natural and in his element, never showing excess, enjoying the company of beautiful women, and while in the back of his mind there may be desperation, he frequently flashes his winning smile. When he goes to a kind of rave Trier not surprisingly finds a new way to shoot this dangerously hackneyed kind of sequence, using fast white flashes that are of an almost brain-damaging intensity.

There are many things to like and enjoy in Trier's new film starting with his generally absolute command of the medium, but what appeals most to me is the handling of the addiction, relapse, suicide theme. Nothing is conventional or obvious. Everything is balanced. Anders is or was a winner, but not spectacularly so. He was just a good writer. The script conveys with cold accuracy the effects of throwing away six years of a life, and the collateral damage to family and loved ones. Anders is not beaten down or haggard. He is sharp and healthy. The damage is inside. And as always in "real life," the problem is not the drugs. With this dangerous subject, Trier has exercised exquisite tact. And his film is a thing of beauty. Trier's first film was brilliant; this one is being called a masterpiece and a work of genius. He deserves wider exposure and recognition.

Oslo, August 31st debuted at Cannes (Un certain regard), and has shown at thirteen other festivals. The film has been picked up by Strand for US release. It was seen for this review at a screening in connection with New York's New Directors/New Films series, where is will be shown to the public at these locations and dates:

Wednesday, March 28th | 8:30 PM | MoMA
Thursday, March 29th | 6 PM | FSLC

[Chris Knipp]

KARL MARKOVICS: BREATHING (2011)--ND/NF


KARIN LISCHKA AND THOMAS SCHUBERT IN BREATHING

Earning parole

Breathing is the superb writing and directing debut of Karl Markovics, the well known Austrian stage and screen actor who starred in the 2008 Best Foreign Oscar winner, The Counterfeiters. This is a coming-of-age story that's also all about breaking out of bondage. Its protagonist, Roman Kogler (a gradually more and more sympathetic Thomas Schubert) is in a juvenile prison outside Vienna, and is seeking parole after serving half his sentence. It obviously is not a short one. Later on we learn what his crime was. But Roman has never known anything but institutions. He went directly from an orphanage to here. And his way of winning the confidence of a judge is by making it as an employee in the municipal mortuary, where he is given a uniform, including shoes. In between hard days learning to deal with corpses, the youth swims laps in the prison pool, pool workouts a coming-of-age routine as in the recent Welcome and the earlier Gaspard Ulliel vehicle The Last Day. The film is full of rituals -- the laps, the body searches by a guard on return from work, the commute train, the mortuary uniforms, the time cards. Through all of this Roman is alone. He is in a solitary cell, he talks little and unwillingly to his patient but harried parole officer (Gerhard Liebmann). Working closely with his cinematographer, Martin Gschlacht, Markovics weaves all this into a mesmerizing whole, in which the few words spoken, rules broken, and schedules overridden are riveting -- important steps toward Roman's establishing an identity for himself and gaining his own respect. The film may seem grim, but it's positive, and it's ultimately quite beautiful. Its grayness can't hide its artistic perfection and its emotional truth.

"Breathing" is a theme throughout, symbolic of both entrapment and freedom: it happens under water when Roman swims his laps in the prison pool. It's done a special way when around corpses that may stink. It might have ended, as the boy's mother Margit Kogler (Karin Lischka) reveals when he finds her. (At the job he sees the naked corpse of a woman with his name and he thinks it may be his mother. But he locates the right mother and follows her into an Ikea store, where they meet.)

With his institutional life, Roman must find any escape from ritual exciting. Drinking a (forbidden) can of beer on the city commute train with an American girl is a huge thrill. So must be following his mother, who does not know him, into the store. He has never seen a corpse. But has he ever gone shopping? Ha he ever been kissed? We as viewers gain pleasure from learning the processes of the mortuary employees, which are precisely observed, as are the in-and-out prison routines. But for Roman his life is all about finding a place to breathe.

Breathing is a small, tightly woven film. It's largely wordless, and the sparse dialogue assumes greater life for this minimalism. What the American girl says on the train is comically simple ("You-going-where?") but must be outlandishly fresh for Roman. Roman hasn't much to say to the harried juvenile officer in charge of his case (Gerhard Liebmann), or to the older co-workers at the mortuary and they haven't much to say to him, but the little changes in tone as he learns the ropes and becomes more positive are big on screen. This is a simple tale, but Markovics makes every minute count. Gschlacht conveys a symmetry and lyrical beauty with the bleak settings through which he follows Roman, car, bus, train, mortuary truck, hearse. A big travel poster in a subway station is strongly used, and so is the pulling away of the train that leaves someone, importantly, still on the station bench. Breathing breaks out of its almost clinical style by making Roman Kogler's tough tests and cruel world humanize rather than harden him. Markovics avoids either a saccharine happy ending or a miserablist dark tunnel.

Breathing/Atmen won the Directors' Fortnight prize for European film at Cannes and was included in 14 other international festivals, where it won five other awards. It has had theatrical release in Austria, Germany, in France March 14, 2012 (critically very well received there: Allociné 3.5), and will be released in April in the UK April 20. It was screened for this review in previews for the MoMA-Lincoln Center New Directors/New Films series.

Released in New York August 31, 2012. It has received generally favorable reviews (Metacritic score: 71).

[Chris Knipp]

ANKA, WILHELM SASNAL: IT LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE (2011)--ND/NF


A STILL FROM IT LOOKS PRETTY FROM A DISTANCE

For rough Polish rustics, a neighbor's property is fair game

Wilhelm Sasnal is an acclaimed Polish painter and comic strip artist, who in collaboration with his wife Anka has now made a (77-min.) feature following up on several short Super 8 films and his first feature Swineherd (2008). It Looks Pretty From a Distance (2011]) is a film that up close tends to look as harsh, rude, and disorganized as its human subjects, a group of sub-trailer park people living in rural Poland who live by collecting scrap metal and scavenging for other things and swim in a nearby river. Once again fimmakers, this time a couple of them, ask us to believe that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and seen not from a distance but up close, the life depicted here, . And so it is for Pawel (Marcin Czarnik), Mother Muraw (Elzbieta Okupska), Mirek Kotlarz (Piotr Nowak), Grandfather Kotlarz (Jerzy Lapinski), and -- should I go on? But if you are not Polish you will not be able to keep track of these names. "This is a difficult, irritating and unsettling film, which is exactly how it was supposed to be. It should not be ignored,” wrote (Zdzisław Pietrasik in Polityka).

In fact Polish critics have commented that this is a necessary film, which unveils certain dark Polish secrets, such as the plundering of Jewish property after the devastation of the Warsaw ghetto. But all admit that the minimal plot leaves much open to interpretation. Indeed the Sasnals, a husband and wife team who have art backgrounds reflected in a sensual feel for the physical milieu here, seem to assume too much on the part of the viewer, which may burden non-Poles more. They have filmed their somewhat brutish cast as if we already knew them, and given the paucity of dialogue, it can be hard, particularly for non-Poles, to tell what is going on.

It seems that Paweł, a fleshy, tall, scrap metal guy, wants to live with his girlfriend but the growing senility of his mother is an obstacle. His girlfriend lives with her parents and brother with the bitter knowledge that – when her father dies – his meagre belongings will go to her sibling leaving her with nothing.

Meager the possessions are for all the locals, and there's an unwritten law, apparently, that when someone vacates premises, his possessions are fair game. When Pawel disappears for an extended period without explanation, people keep snatching his stuff here and there, and then one night come in and take out everything, and make a bonfire of most of it in the back yard. They also finish off the chickens and the dog. When Pawel comes back, they won't let him return to living in his house. At this point Pawel may have fair cause to bring in the authorities, if there are any, and so somebody has to finish off Pawel off. There are hints that murdering each other was the custom as far back as the war, when some people drowned their own children and then themselves in the river. Locals tend to be unfriendly -- to each other -- and begrudge each other swimming privileged in the ill-fated river. They also like to smoke, drink bear, and smash car windows in preparation for cutting out the metal. Car parts? That would be too subtle for them, or useless to the country.

The point of the title is that while the characters live in rural squalor, the landscape is fairly lush. To call the the lensing "sumptuous cinematography" as one review does seems, however, a stretch -- or perhaps it is just that the squalor makes it hard to see the sumptuousness. But this does have the kind of raw, intense color you get from 16mm transferred to 35 mm, which this is, with some good handheld work. But the Sasnal's might benefit from greater polish in future in their scripting and editing. If this is a diamond in the rough, it is hard sometimes to see the diamond under the rough.

To search out a similar social and moral level one might think of this as a much too real and less humorous version of Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers. Katarzyna Taras of Stopklatka wrote, "It is not a movie about frustration but about selfless evil that may reveal itself in any time and space regardless of political system. "

Their film was nominated for a Tiger award at Rotterdam, and won the New Polish Film award at the 11th New Horizons Festival at Wrocław, Poland. Zsuzsanna Kiràly's online review seems a well-informed assessment and makes some useful comments on Wilhelm Sasnal's paintings. Lawrence Boyce has a review of the film in Screen Daily.

Apart from the Rotterdam and Polish festival presentations, It Looks Pretty from a Distance/Z daleka widok jest piekny is also included in the New Directors/New Films series at MoMA and Lincoln Center in New York (where it was screened for this review), with the following public screenings:

Tuesday, March 27th | 6 PM | MoMA
Wednesday, March 28th | 8:30 PM | FSLC

[Chris Knipp]

MADS MATTHIESEN: TEDDY BEAR (2012)--ND/NF


KIM KILD AND LAMAIPORN HOUGAARD IN TEDDY BEAR

Hulk leaves home

This character study by Danish first-timer Mads Mathiessen (not be to confused with international Danish leading man and villain Mads Mikkelsen of Casino Royale and Susanne Bier's After the Wedding) focuses on an unusual protagonist, Dennis (Kim Kold), a hulking 38-year-old body builder who has never had a girlfriend and is stuck in a highly unhealthy relationship with his tiny, domineering mother Ingrid (Elsebeth Steentoft), with whom he lives in a suburb of Copenhagen. Using ultra-simple methods and documentary-like settings Matthiessen gets us and Dennis out of this dilemma, through a series of cringe-worthy sequences. Non-actors predominate here, except for Steentoft, a veteran actress. Matthissen has expanded a short (entitled Dennis) into this film -- without adding quite enough for a feature. The cringe-worthiness is what makes the film hold the attention, temporarily, anyway, becaue in the moment things feel painfully real -- often like excerpts from some strange TV dating show. Linking details and subtleties, however, have been omitted and this somewhat plodding tale doesn't ultimately hold up to scrutiny.

Kim Kold is a real international body builder. No actor, no matter how dedicated, could build up those muscles and put on those tattoos for a role. His deep, gruff voice toots out like the horn of a train engine. He has no fancy lines to deliver. Dennis is shy and inarticulate. This Kold can handle, and his imposing physical presence helps us to accept him as a character. He is what he is. At the film's outset Dennis is on a date from Hell with a local girl that's a miserable failure -- which his mother nonetheless strongly objects to when she hears of it. The unhealthy intimacy is indicated by how mother and grown son use the bathroom together. When Dennis attends a celebration for an uncle who has found a bride on a trip to Thailand, he gets the same idea. But he has to hide his trip to Pattaya from his devouring mother by telling her he's going to a competition in Germany. She still throws a tantrum.

In Pattaya everyone assumes Dennis is a sex tourist, which makes for several embarrassing evenings with women for hire, arranged through a local bar owner, Scott (David Winters), who claims to have introduced his uncle to his wife. Dennis' non-performance in these setups, and his rapport with co-trainers in the body building gym, plus Thailand's gay sex trade, make you wonder if Dennis is of another persuasion, but this possibility isn't raised. All these scenes involve non-actors who provide a tacky realism. Then when Dennis goes to a local body building gym and meets Toi (Lamaiporn Hougaard), the widowed proprietress, and she takes him around town, mutual romantic feelings develop. This situation is awkward too, but Toi nonetheless winds up coming to Copenhagen to live with Dennis some time after his return home. How he is going to manage his mother's furious reaction when she sees through his deceptions is something viewers will have to wait and see.

Matthiesen manipulates us and his characters through his sequences somewhat awkwardly, but a sympathy for Dennis is inevitable. He is too simple and needy not to feel for. His mother is surreal. Details are left dangling by Matthiesen and his co-writer Martin Zandvliet, however. Dennis' financial situation and Toi's prompt move to another country when she owns a business are unexplained. How Dennis and his mother work things out also lacks credibility. For that matter Dennis is not a wholly believable character. Could he really have lived all this time with his mother and not be as twisted as she is? Writer-director Matthiesen grabs our attention, but doesn't justify holding onto it.

Teddy Bear (93 min.), whose Danish title is 10 Timer til Paridis or "10 Hours to Paradise," is in Danish and English. It debuted in January at Sundance and in Denmark. It is slated for showing at several other festivals, including the MoMA-Film Society of Lincoln Center joint series, New Directors/New Films, in connection with which it was screened for this review. Public showings at ND/NF are scheduled as follows:

Thursday, March 29th | 6 PM | MoMA
Saturday, March 31st | 8:45 PM | FSLC

[Chris Knipp]

VINCENT GINZBURG: GENERATION P (2011)--ND/NF


MIKAIL EFREMOV AND VLADIMIR EPIFANTSEV IN GENERATION P

Publicity, politics, and drugs in Nineties Russia

A wealth of witty ideas, mostly from the much admired source novel by Victor Pelevin, enliven this fantasy about advertising, media, politics and business in Nineties Russia, This Brazil-like miasma is admirable for a degree of ceaseless invention in preposterous "what-if" and "wow factor" scenes that, despite deep immersion in matters locally Russian, may gain the film some western cult value. Rich period detail and elaborate production values are big pluses: some real time and substantial rubles went into this production. But this is a virtually plotless film -- except for sticking with its amiable but neutral protagonist (who narrates) and being pulled together by some far-fetched business about the worship of Ishtar. The consequent lack of clear direction tends to make P wearying, at least for non-Russian viewers.

As with many overly energetic films this one is probably most memorable at the outset, when we meet aspiring poet and recent university graduate Babylen Tatarsky (Vladimir Epifantsev) taking what advantage he can on his own from the fall of the Soviet Union. What he learned in college is useless so what this means is selling contraband cigarettes and condoms and other trinkets behind a keyhole window in a dark kiosk controlled by Chechen mafia. He learns to up his profit by short-changing customers selectively according to how he sizes them up. Into this bleak world his old pal Morkovin (Andrey Fomin) appears and introduces him to the grandiose prospects of building an advertising business reframing American product promotion and brand names for the Russian customer base. It emerges that for some reason the whole nascent free market Russian media world is controlled by followers of the cult of Ishtar.

The symbolic product inspiring the generation of nouveau-capitalists is a bottle of Russian-made Pepsi, because it was originally given to "Bab" and his generation as Soviet Young Pioneers as a symbol of the possibility of a better world coming, if the nightmare ever ended. Presumably that better world doesn't come, only a succession of governments and product knockoffs and absurd promotion campaigns for both. This is the story of Generation P (for Pepsi). In the ad world, Bab's and his colleagues' game is to get paid by their customers before they go bust, because gangsters are taking over everything and nothing lasts.

As one absurd and sometimes hilarious advertising campaign after another unfolds on screen, there is also stuff about the impeachment of Yeltsin and his attempt to take over the Russian Parliament, cleverly interwoven with alternative ad campaigns for Parliament cigarettes. An ad for a Christian church promotes it as “a first class Lord for first class people.” A funeral parlor Bab sells with the slogan, “Diamonds are not forever.” The recreation of a suitably gruesome medieval Russian beheading drives home a pitch for Head and Shoulders with the punch line, ”Keep them together.” The interweaving of ad ideas and political events is intriguing but hard to follow, and things aren't much helped by the fact that Bab consumes massive events of alcohol, mainly vodka (and a fake political candidate is marketed under the name of Smirnoff) with other mind and body altering substances including cocaine, super-strong Acid, and piles of magic mushrooms provided by another school friend, Gireev (Sergey Shnurov), which lead the hero with his oddball spiritual guide toward eastern mysticism. Acquisition of a Ouija board leads to communication with a mad Che Guevara. The cult of Ishtar being Babylonian, Babylen's odd name makes him feel a special connection -- aiding his rise in the Russian media world. Reaching the apparent peak of that world, Bab joins Azadovsky (Mikhail Efremov), head of The Beekeeping Institute (cover name for a mysterious publicity syndicate), who has the peculiar habit of appearing on the TV under different identities, and is so rich he's quite indifferent to the fact that he's wearing a $170,000 Patek Philippe watch.

The combo of tongue-in-cheek ad campaigns, politics, drugs and spirituality causes the film very quickly to lose all contact with the real world. Even rides in Mercedes Benz's and Labmorghinis can't bring it down to earth. This seems unfortunate in a story that aims to comment on recent history in some detail. Ginzburg, who partly grew up and was educated in the US, West, is tireless in recreating fantastic sequences from the novel, but the story line doesn't make enough cohesive sense, especially not to anyone non-Russian. It doesn't help that most of the cast isn't particularly memorable, including the appealing but bland Epifantsev: Ginzburg has put most of his eggs into the mise-en-scène basket, at the expense of plot, argument, and character. Given a novel source of this complexity and all the wonderfully absurd scenes to recreate, that was perhaps an inevitable compromise.

Ginzburg, who is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York, has done music videos, documentaries and short films. This is his feature debut. Generation P has been shown at several festivals, including Moscow and Toronto, and it was watched for this review in a screening for the MoMA and Film Society of Lincoln Center joint series, New Directors/New Films, whose public showings for the film are:

Friday, March 30th | 6 PM | FSLC
Sunday, April 1st | 1:30 PM | MoMA

[Chris Knipp]

DJINN CARRÉNARD: DONOMA (2011)--ND/NF


VINCENTE PEREZ AND SALOMÉ BLECHMANS IN DONOMA

Banlieue ronde

Djinn Carrénard'S Donoma might invite comparisons with Eric Rohmer, Andy Warhol, or John Cassavetes. He claims to have made his film for pennies, using a digital video camera and a handful of young actors who improvise their lines. Much of the film takes place in St. Denis, the ghetto-esque main "banlieu" or suburb of Paris. The cast includes Salomé Blechmans, Emilia Dérou-Bernal, Sékouba Doucouré, Laura Kpegli, Matthieu Longuatte, Laetitia Lopez, Benjamin Mayet, Amélie Moy, Marina Pelle, and Vincente Perez.

To begin with in a small, claustrophobically photographed banlieue lycée Spanish class, one student, Dacio (Vincente Perez), is disruptive and disobedient and his teacher Analia (Emilia Dérou-Bernal) behaves after class in a totally inappropriate way, rapidly masturbating him through his pants to embarrass him, which she later gleefully recounts to her young female colleagues. But who is the winer on the battlefield of love here? Dacio turns out to be on the make for Salma (Salomé Blechmans), a bourgeois girl who is not a believer but has become obsessed with religion. Salma resists Dacio's advances, though not completely. Meanwhile a black virgin, Chris (Laura Kpegli), originally from Ghana but raised by rich diplomats, now a serious photographer, decides to take as a lover the first stranger she finds in the Metro, and to bring him in to live with her, requiring that they speak only in writing and sign language. The lucky man is Dama (Sékouba Doucouré), a handsome, slim young black man, who later turns out to have just broken up with a (white) photographer, Leelop (Laetitia Lopez). In her search for religious belief Salma eventually takes up with an apparently devout young man, Raîné (Matthieu Longuatte) spotted on an inter-urban train.

This is not all, because there is a social services employee, who interviews both Salma and Dama when he was with Leelop, and Salma gets into difficulties because she insists on caring for her sister, who has terminal cancer. She also thinks she has stigmata and levitates. At a later meeting, the social worker concludes Salma is deranged and needs to be institutionalized. She rejects this and finally meets up with Raîné, in a church. In an intense and challenging encounter he puts her in her place and reveals he is a born again skinhead, who used to be a criminal but now leads a good life.

These scenes and the elaborate choral plotting are often fascinating, the young actors are remarkably vivacious, and the focus on love as couples pair off or break up has a strong link with Rohmer, though the confrontational improvisation more closely resembles Cassavetes. The sexual explicitness at some points justifies the Warhol link. So does the fact that the whole film runs on too long, and could be better if relieved of a solid chunk of its 135 minutes. It is tonally all over the map, moving from the Bruno Dumont-esque religious questioning sequences to the cringe-worthy teacher-student hand-job to the sharp satire of the social worker's polite interview with the couple Dama and Leelop who insist on pretending they're not. Whether this shows the young Haitian-born Carrénard's multiple talent or simply a lack of discipline remains to be seen but he is certainly a talent to watch. Needless to say despite the various comparisons this film isn't quite like any other, and this is why is has been heralded with joy in France.

This film was released in Paris November 23, 2011 and received raves (Allociné 3.9) from the likes of Cahiers du Cinéma, Les Inrockuptibles and Libération, and many of the French critics heralded Carrénard as a breath of fresh air in the world of French cinema. The actors are almost uniformly as talented as they are attractive. Carrénard left Haiti at 11, then after living very briefly in Togo spent two years with his family on the coast of Normandy in France, followed by four years in French Guyana, and then she came to Paris to read Philosopy but says that when "Unlimited UGC cards" arrived (allowing low cost cinema attendance) he dropped out in 2004 to focus on the "moving image," much as Chris in Donoma reports quitting the lycée to focus on using her camera. English subtitles apparently were much improved from the "misspellings and grammatical errors" reported at Pusan, but seem awfully free at times. The tech features are rough and ready: the images work, though some dialogue is marred by uneven sound quality.

Thursday, March 29th | 8:30 PM | FSLC
Saturday, March 31st | 4:15 PM | MoMA

A virtuoso passage from the film on video from which the still above is taken. A girl (Salma) is turned on by seeing a boy (Dacio) picking pockets on the Metro. She takes her valuables out of her wallet and puts in her name and address, and leaves the wallet in her bag so the boy can steal it. It's all observed by Chris, who narrates the sequence.