Nyff 2012

[Chris Knipp]

Rama Burshtein: Fill the Void (2012)

A drama from Israel about how a marriage is arranged in the ulta-Ortohdox community, with a Jane Austen-esque protagonist.

[Chris Knipp]

Joachim Lafosse: Our Children (2012)

The Belgian director is a specialist in claustrophobic, inappropriate relationships and situations. Here in a glossier and more complex film than before he uses the outstanding cast of Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup (of Audiard's A PROPHET) and Émilie Duquesne (of the Dardennes' ROSETTA) in a story about a young couple who live with a wealthy doctor. The dependency and the man's long closeness with the doctor leads the youn woman to become unhinged after delivering four children in raid succession. This film was in Un Certain Regard at Cannes and was well received in Paris after its August 2012 release.

[Chris Knipp]

Lee Daniels: The Paperboy (2012)

An enjoyably lurid southern noir set in the mid-Sixties, from a novel by Pete Dexter. Lots of violence, shock value, and humor, without the claim of relevance of the director's previous PRECIOUS. Fun turns by Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey, John Cusack, the British actor David Oyelowo, and an especially good one by Macy Gray as Anita, the family maid, who does the voiceover narration. US limited release begins Oct. 5, 2012, but Daniels is a friend of the NYFF; his PRECIOUS was also featured here. The critics love to hate this.

[Chris Knipp]

Abbas Kiarostami: Like Someone in Love (2012)

Confusions. Who is this pretty young woman and what is she doing visiting this retired professor? Her boyfriend is going to be upset when he finds out what she's been up to. In Japanese, clever, technically impeccable and well acted, but not as much a brain-twister as the celebrated previous Kiarostami film shot in Tuscany, CERTIFIED COPY, and somehow ultimately rather inconsequential-seeming.

[Chris Knipp]

Oliver Assayas: Something in the Air/Après May (2012)

After the brilliant Carlos, a companion piece about Assayas' own life in the same period of the early Seventies as an artistic youth with a filmmaker-writer father navigating his way through leftist radicalism to find himself. Lots of intense and specific discussions of politics and a variety of secondary characters help to offset the grand set pieces that include a party sequence so grand it has a chateau catching fire as the beautiful hippies party and do drugs. This is no match for the previous film, but Assayas' historical chops are still up and the feel of the Seventies is unusually well evoked with clothes, music, art, politics, and all the trappings.

[Chris Knipp]

David Chase: Not Fade Away (2012)

Chase of 'The Sopranos" has a good idea: a coming-of-age movie that channels the Sixties through chronicling a lead singer whose suburban New Jersey garageband noes NOT make it to fame and fortune. The trouble is that there are conflicting pulls toward a family story, a band story, and a period study, and nobody here is deeply memorable, though there is some sharp dialogue and Chase celebrates the music he loves.

[Chris Knipp]

Michael Haneke: Amour (2012)

The ultimate test of love: a man must care for his wife in increasing decline, both of them in their eighties. For Haneke, though the story becomes a painful watch, it's unusually tender, sweet, and intimate. Winner of the top prize at Cannes this year. To be released in the US in December (Sony Classics).

[Chris Knipp]

Sally Potter: Ginger & Rosa (2012)

This impressionistic two-girl coming-of-age tale set in 1962 includes a vividly teary performance by Elle Fanning, a surprising number of American actors playing Brits, and an ambitious attempt to nail the zeitgeist that sinks under the weight of egotism, the girls' and the director's.

[Chris Knipp]

Dror Moreh: The Gatekeepers (2012)

A documentary with archival footage and interviews with six former heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli security organization, candidly provide explanations of why the country despite the agency's efficient operations, is not secure due to the lack of a two-state solution, the settlements, the continued occupation -- politics over which they had, and have, no control.

[Chris Knipp]

Leos Carax: Holy Motors (2012)

The great mind-blower of the festival, and of Cannes, where it won the Prix de Jeunesse. Many theories about what it's about and what it means, or you can just go with Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian and say it's "pure pleasure." A rich man, an actor? goes about in a white chauffeured stretch limo (by Édith Scob of Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE), taking on a seres of a dozen or so different functions/assignments/identities in the course of 24 hours. A gorgeously surreal, cinematic, allusive, surprising film that will delight many cinephiles and arouse the rage of others. A triumph of the bizarre skills of Carax regular Denis Lavant, and the director's first movie in thirteen years. One of the festival's most memorable films.

[Johann]

Thanks for the heads-up on the Carax.

It sounds like the film I'm looking for.

[Chris Knipp]

I hope so. A triumph for Carax.

[Chris Knipp]

I'm no good at translating but the Cahier du Cinéma critic Jean-Sébastien Chauvin wrote this about HOLY MOTORS as quoted in Allociné:

Peu de cinéastes ont le courage de questionner ainsi leurs spectateurs, à part Godard évidemment, sans s'ériger en petit juge comme le fait Haneke, mais avec l'angoisse profonde de l'artiste qui se demande s'il reste des spectateurs pour voir la beauté dans le monde.

--which is something like (it sounds better in French I guess?)

Few filmmakers have the courage to challenge thus their spectators, except of course Godard, without setting themselves up as a little judge as does Haneke, but with the deep anguish of the artist who wonders if there are still spectators to see beauty in the world.

Now why does HOLY MOTORS grab me so much more than "Joe's" UNCLE BOONMEE, with which it's being compared (UNCLE BOONMEE got the Palme d'Or, this didn't, partly because that year Tim Burton was head of the jury, this year it was Nanni Moretti)? Many reasons.

[Chris Knipp]

Javier Rebollo: The Dead Man and Being Happy (2012)

A dying hit man leaves Buenos Aires with a 40-something woman he picks up at a gas station and they drive across Argentina's northern outback region, encountering desultory adventures while a dual competing voiceover bombards us with the director's clever ironies. The actors are good, but the best part of this overly stylized road movie is the odd, desolate local color. However Argentine filmmakers have arguably done that better than this 44-year-old Spanish director. His third film. The veteran actor José Sacristán, who plays Santos, the hit man protagonist, won Best Actor at San Sebastián.

[Johann]

Bang-on observations about Tim Burton and the Cannes jury.
Tarantino was criticized for "influencing" the Cannes jury in 2004 when Fahrenheit 9/11 won the Palme.
But is Michael Moore's film a direct reflection of Tarantino's sensibilites? Fuck no. And he said so at the time.
He (quite correctly) said that the Jury was awarding the best FILM of the Festival.

Can Tim Burton say the same?
I don't think so.
Uncle Boonmee was a quirky, oddball artistic bon-bon that tickled Tim's fancy. HE'S GUILTY.
Fahrenheit 9/11 didn't tickle anyone's fancy.
It was a sobering wake-up. And the Best Film of the Festival that year.