MIFF 2009 Day 8 - 31/7/09

• The Man Who Came With the Snow (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran/France, 2009)
• Une femme est une femme (A Woman is a Woman, Jean-Luc Godard, France/Italy, 1961)
• Tony Manero (Pablo Larrain, Chile/Brazil, 2008)

The Man Who Came With the Snow
Nice-looking film that is made by an Iranian but set in a former Soviet country. The result: a film that has elements of Iranian cinema, such as the view of an adult world from a child's perspective, as well as the dark look of Russian cinema. In the middle of the night, a man escaping a blizzard enters a village hotel, disrupting the routine of these down-and-out whores, thieves and hustlers. Who is he? Where is he from? What is he doing here? A mystery, this is a nice festival film, something you won't see otherwise, and I like its relatively short length (about 75 minutes) - it's paced just right.

A Woman is a Woman
Another Godard, another soul-less film. Funny, yes. Smart, yes. Cutting edge (for it's day), yes but dated horribly. I sense that Godard feels superior to his audience. I don't perceive the anger with his audience that I do with others, but his films are distant and don't engage me. I'm still trying to understand Godard, and I really need to read Godard on Godard, which I will. Even understanding Godard's intent, I don't think will affect me. Godard doesn't aim to connect emotionally, he's looking for an intellectual or philosophical engagement. I don't watch films for that. For that, I read books or watch TV. Perhaps that's why Godard moved to television as his medium of choice.

Tony Manero
Sex, violence, disco - what more could you want in a film? Yeah, this is pretty weird and not what I was expecting. It's no Mister Lonely and it's no Red Faces (and if it was, I wouldn't want to be Red Symons). Our Tony Manero wannabe will do anything to win a look-alike competition - anything. The film is more social realist than anything and it has a pretty gritty (even grimy) look with hand-held camera work that is generally OK but sometimes a little too wobbly. The story is quite good but the visuals are a little spartan. It's OK for a festival film but I can't see how this could get a release other than being sold on its connection with Saturday Night Fever.

MIFF 2009 Day 7 - 30/7/09

Running at 190 minutes, I figured I'd drop United Red Army off my schedule yesterday, have a little break and do some other things (like blogging). Then darn, the person who suggested it to me in the first place tells me it's the best film he's seen yet. I'm a bit pissed with myself and yet not. I've long given up on the idea that one can see everything one wants to at MIFF, or even during the year in general.

• Red Riding: 1983 (Anand Tucker, UK, 2009)
• Away We Go (Same Mendes, USA, 2009)
  
• The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, USA, 2008)

Red Riding: 1983
What an incoherent mess this finale to the Red Riding series this is. Unlike the first two, you have to see the others to make any sense of it. And even if you have seen the others, you'll still struggle! There are unexplained shifts between the three time frames and nothing to signal which period the film is in. John Dawson, the developer murdered in 1974, suddenly appears when we're thinking it's 1983. The number of characters who flash past in quick succession makes it hard to know who plays what role and what the hell is going on. At the end, confusion reigns and I'm left wondering "what the...?"

I expected James Marsh's 1980 to be the best instalment and it was.

Away We Go

My planning for MIFF avoided seeing three films in a row, and this one wasn't really on my radar because it's getting a commercial release. I had a spare two hours between films and because I knew this would be light-weight comedy and Red Riding isn't really emotionally challenging, I slotted this between the other two.

There is nothing about this film that identifies it as a Sam Mendes film. No particular insights, no revelations about relationships, just another 'quirky indie comedy', a genre that I find I'm a bit bored with, and have been with at least Little Miss Sunshine. It's not as stupid or contrived as that piece of populist trash, but it pushes all the right formulaic buttons: hip music in all the right places, a parade of idiosyncratic characters, quirky diaogue, characters who struggle with their age and responsibilities. It looks nice enough and audience laughter came at all the intended places but it's only worth seeing if you want to see how Mendes does mainstream. Or if you're a 30-something feeling directionless in life, or pregnant.

The Hurt Locker
At the risk of sounding sexist, you wouldn't know this thrilling film was directed by a woman. It's heart-in-your-mouth from go to whoa as we follow a US Army bomb disposal unit in Iraq. The suspense, the dialogue, the understated humour, the character development are all excellent. The film is like a cross between Beaufort (MIFF 2007, for the suspense), Full Metal Jacket (for the characterisations), Jarhead (itself derived from FMJ, but set in the region) and Children of Men (for the embedded journalist style of camera work and editing).

I found the choppy look a bit more than required and tend towards the David Stratton perspective on that account, though I expect he would acknowledge the strengths of the film. This is perhaps the best film I've seen that depicts the current military situation in the Afghanistan/Iraq region and maybe that's because the film does nothing didactic. Like most of the other films mentioned above, it simply depicts the lives of these men in war and the small details of their day-to-day existence. And man, what a bloody struggle, as they count down the days to their return to the US, just hoping to stay alive each day. Definitely worth seeing.

The Chinese farce continues

While more Chinese film-makers are reportedly withdrawing their films from MIFF, I can't for a moment believe that there is not undue pressure being placed on them by their government to do so.

The Age reports that "Three more Chinese films pulled from Melbourne festival".

Other than MIFF

With a full-on schedule booked for MIFF (some 40 films), it's easy to forget that there's other things on (all film-related, of course). I had booked myself in for United Red Army at the Forum this morning but, at 190 minutes, figured I'd take some time out, and hence this post.

Having given Balibo a whopping 5 stars (and I don't know how that's justified), I'm a little bemused by Jim Schembri's 1/2 star for Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control and, furthermore, his description of the film in today's Age as a 'blockbuster':

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince enjoyed a second weekend at No.1 with a massive haul of $6.46 million across 510 screens for a total of $29.6 million. This was despite the opening of the new Jim Jarmusch blockbuster The Limits of Control, which managed $28,999 on five screens.

[p.18 in the Arts section under 'Box office' - as yet not online; emphasis is mine]

Now, though I loved The Limits of Control (which you may have gleaned from my review), I'd hardly call it a blockbuster. It really is a niche film and Jarmusch is a niche director. That the film is showing on a measly five screen pretty much confirms that. And how can a film screening on five arthouse screens take a dent out of a mainstream blockbuster screening on over one hundred times the number of screens, largely the big multiplexes?

Opening on the eve of MIFF was always going to hurt the film's box office in Melbourne, because the target audience is largely focused on the mega-circus that is MIFF. It's a pity, because it's a better film than anything I've seen yet at MIFF (13 films to date).

...

Cedar Boys
This new Australian film by Serhat Caradee opens on limited release today and my preoccupation with MIFF has prevented me from reviewing it in more detail. It depicts the struggle of immigrant families in contemporary society. I often connect with this subject, though Australian films tackling these themes in recent years have usually failed to have the authenticity and dramatic tension that Cedar Boys achieves.

The film is nicely photographed and well-acted. The dialogue in particular is excellent, very real. Hopefully Cedar Boys will find an audience. The lack of marketing and the timing (mid-MIFF) isn't working in its favour, so if you're steering clear of the MIFF crowds, this is one to look out for - just be quick; it may not be around for long. Check out the official website.

...

Lake Mungo, another Australian film, opens today. There's a Q&A session with the cast and crew 6.30pm tonight at the George cinema.

...

Post-MIFF
For your post-MIFF fix, you may want to put the following into your calendars:

• 16 August: Gruber's Journey at ACMI
  
• 18 - 20 August: Indonesian Film Festival at ACMI
  
• 19 - 26 August: Russian Resurrection Film Festival at the Como
• 21 - 30 August: Melbourne Writer's Festival at ACMI
  
• 25 - 30 August: Israeli Film Festival at Como and Brighton Bay cinemas
• 27 - 30 August: Anna May Wong on Film at ACMI
  
• 3 - 30 September: AFI Professional Members' screenings at ACMI
  
• 4 September & 2 October: Red Hot Shorts at ACMI
  
• 10 - 15 September: The Bicycle Thief at ACMI
  
• 16 September - 5 October: Italian Film Festival
• 17 - 27 September: Focus on Australian Noir at ACMI
  

MIFF 2009 Day 6 - 29/7/09

• Aruitemo aruitemo (Still Walking, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2008)
• Red Riding: 1980 (James Marsh, UK, 2009)
• Tatarak (Sweet Rush, Andzrej Wajda, Poland, 2009)
  

Still Walking
MIFF held a Kore-eda retrospective a couple of years ago and I think I saw them all, or maybe I missed one. Consequently, I was keen to see this latest effort and wasn't disappointed. Basically, it's a day in the lives of a family that unite (begrudgingly) each year to observe the death of a family member thirteen years earlier.

The son, daughter and their respective families travel to the home of their parents, an aging and retired doctor and his wife. It's summer and straight away I'm reminded of Olivier Assayas' sublime Summer Hours, especially the opening scene which similarly depicts the various dispersed branches of a family in an infrequent rural get-together in the family home. While Assayas' film procedes to explore other themes, Kore-eda's remains very much in the small details of the inter-family interactions.

Kore-eda is a very talented director. It is the observational nature of the film in capturing details of otherwise very ordinary people that makes this film a delight to watch. It feels almost a privilege to be privy to their lives, to see what makes them tick. It reminded me of a funeral I attended a couple of years ago for the father of a work colleague. I knew not the deceased man but attended to support my work pal, who had shown me support in various ways after my son's passing. At the funeral, I heard various eulogies that brought tears to my eyes as I received some insights into this man's life. And so I felt with this film, which becomes a meditation on the nature of relationships and ultimately, their passing.

Still Walking is a quietly satisfying film, certainly no headline act, but the type and quality of film I look forward to each year at MIFF, largely because this is the only time of year we get to see films like it. If quiet, nuanced, insightful, contemplative cinema is your thing, you'll want to see it.

Red Riding: 1980
As expected, with James Marsh at the helm, this is a big improvement over the previous instalment (Red Riding: 1974). The story seems to have a closer alignment to the Yorkshire killings, plays out with more realism and is more convincing all-round. Paddy Considine puts in a good performance and all-in-all, this ain't a bad genre film. I'm now looking forward to the final instalment, 1983, tomorrow.

BTW, while there are some slight connections between this and the previous film, you don't need to have seen the earlier one at all. This is self-contained.

Sweet Rush
It's Wajda in his twilight years; old age is here and death can't be too far away. And so it is with this film, a very strange creature indeed, that requires some further information to glean its meaning. It mixes a film's fiction with events taking place in the life of the film's protagonist and we switch between different 'realities'.

Technically, the talent is obvious and the visuals are very nice. A bit more narrative clarity would have been nice. By the end, I had some idea of what it's about and, if you ever consider seeing it, make sure you read up about it first.

MIFF 2009 Day 5 - 28/7/09

Day 5 and still no knock-out films I've seen. What about you?

• Home (Ursula Meier, Switzerland/France/Belgium, 2008)
• Red Riding: 1974 (Julian Jarrold, UK, 2009)
• Katalin Varga (Peter Strickland, Romania/UK/Hungary, 2009)
  

Home
I wanted to see this film on the strength of my fascination with Isabelle Huppert, who is perhaps my favourite actress. Huppert is obviously sought for her unusual talents: her ability to display both strength and fragility - often concurrently - and her ability to take on very demanding roles. She seems to be drawn to the types of roles and films that also draw me. They're often in small films, like Home, a film I'd describe as not one of Huppert's finest choices.

A family is living within spitting distance of a disused highway, which is effectively their front yard. Life is about to change drastically when, with little warning, it is resurfaced and consequently re-opened to traffic. Privacy is lost, noise and fumes intrude and the family's routine is completely transformed, upsetting the domestic balance.

The scenario is quite inventive and executed effectively, at least visually. I was wondering throughout the film how they were able to realistically create the whole set-up, especially the transformation of an old highway to a new one. The family dynamics are mostly well-developed and the film sucks us into its world... to a point. Unfortunately, the various elements of the film's narrative don't stick and plausibility becomes an issue. As the film progresses, it becomes less and less believable.

Wouldn't the respective statutory authorities give more warning? Wouldn't they provide more amenity, like access to the property? Would the family really imprison themselves? The MIFF synopsis describes the film as a "social farce" that "teeters on the verge of comedy", but that wasn't my perception at all. It seemed very much a social drama/family drama. The film looks nice, but the story is inconsistent and Meier doesn't seem to make the most of her good ideas.

Red Riding: 1974
Julian Jarrold isn't exactly what I'd call an exciting director, but was prepared to give this British crime thriller a go based on good word-of-mouth. It immediately reminds me of the French Public Enemy no.1/Mesrine starring Vincent Cassell, but is not quite as strong. It is very entertaining as a mainstream genre film and feels like a tele-movie.

The film's set-up is not too bad, though some devices seemed a bit too Underbelly-populist, like the sex and nudity. The film is based on a novel, and frames a fiction around real-crime events, namely the Yorkshire Ripper. The film does get a bit silly as it progresses, but it still had my heart palpitating and palms sweating, so it does work on its intended level. The verdict: fun, lots of energy and exciting, but not must-see material. Wait for DVD or TV; who knows, it might get a theatrical release. I'm still planning to see the next instalment, Red Riding: 1980, and I have higher hopes for this as it's directed by James Marsh whose previous films include Man on Wire and The King, my no.2 favourite film of 2006.

Katalin Varga
I don't have much to say about this film; basically I found it pretty ordinary. A woman is ostracised from her village after an affair and consequently exacts revenge on men who wronged her many years earlier. My biggest problem with the film concerns how she catches up with these guys and the impossible coincidences involved. There are other technical problems, like the use of sound and sometimes sub-standard visuals, but I could overlook those. I gave myself a lower threshold for walking out, and could have walked out on this at any point, but it was enjoyable enough to go along with the ride and stay. It's only 84 minutes long, so that was a plus (not very flattering, though, eh?).

MIFF 2009 Day 4 - 27/7/09

• Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, France/Italy, 1965)

Pierrot le fou
This is the only day that I've only scheduled one film - the calm before the storm? I know that MIFF Senior Programmer Michelle Carey is very fond of Jean-Luc Godard and recommended the three Godard films in the Anna Karina retrospective. Me, I'm still not sold on his work and that ambivalence continues with this brand new print of Pierrot le fou. It's a lovely looking film, it's bizarre, with a strange sense of humour that appeals to me. Still, there's something I can't engage with, and today's screening revealled to me something new.

A recurring feature of Godard's films is, of course, his intellectualism. What I noted today is that his films border on didacticism. L'histoire(s) du cinèma is a manifesto, maybe even an angry rant at the audience. That element is there in Alpahaville and I detected it again in Pierrot le fou. Paul Belmondo's character is a surrogate for Godard, giving us the same monotone rant. Godard may be a pioneer of French cinema, or perhaps cinema itself, and I respect his intellect, but his films don't talk to me. They don't grab me by the jugular and compel me to get involved in their stories. They leave me feeling indifferent and I may be the loser, but I don't care. Not yet, anyhow. I'm going to continue exploring the work of Godard and remain open to the possibilities, but it hasn't struck me yet. Pierrot le fou is definitely worth watching, but I don't rate it highly.

MIFF 2009 Day 3 - 26/7/09

• Les plages d'Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès, Agnès Varda, France, 2008)
• Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard, France/Italy, 1965)
• Amintiri din epoca de aur (Tales from the Golden Age, Hanno Höfer/Razvan Marculescu/Cristian Mungiu/Constantin Popescu/Ioana Uricaru, Romania/France, 2009)
  

The Beaches of Agnès
While I'm generally not big on documentaries on the big screen, I do like to catch one or two during MIFF if, for no other reason than variety. With this film, I was also keen to see it because of my recently seeing Varda's sublime Clèo from 5 to 7 and also because of the film's positive reception at Sydney Film Festival.

The film is a truly sweet recollection by an aging artist on her life's work and of those who are and were dear to her. It traces the path of her life's work beginning with photography - a life-long passion, theatre and film. She recalls her life with Jacques Demy with great affection and sadness (at his AIDS-related death in 1991) and describes the Dardennes as her spiritual brothers. There is a very personal way in which Varda depicts her legacy as she sees it and I found it very moving. Highly recommended.

Alphaville
Fabulous new print, shit sub-titles. I can't believe that in this day and age we still have to suffer white sub-titles that disappear on light backgrounds. That's about a third of the film - very frustrating. Aside from that, the film is enjoyable enough. The noir aspect mixed up with low-budget sci-fi with political and social elements make for intriguing viewing. I enjoyed it, but like most Godard films, find it a somewhat impenetrable from an emotional level. Maybe that's what Godard intends. Godard isn't high on my list of priorities, but I do want to catch the three titles of his screening as part of the Karina retrospective. And I would like to see this film again, once I've read a little about its political meanings. There's clearly a message there that I didn't get. FWIW, the film looks great and the two protagonists, Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina, look fabulous.

Tales from the Golden Age
Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was my favourite cinema release of a couple of years ago so I was pretty keen to catch this omnibus film which he wrote but had different directors work on. There's six stories, all about the difficulty of life under the crazy bureaucracy of communism. Of course, we popularly consider it communism, but those Eastern bloc regimes were just dictatorships in the name of communism or socialism, which gives those ideologies a bad rap.

The film starts and ends with communist-era music, patriotic or nationalistic rally calls that accompanied the propaganda of the superiority of the communist way. It kinda sets the scene for the ludicrousness of the reality, which the film's various stories set out depict. The film is more accessible to audiences than Mungiu's Palme d'Or winning film, structured largely as black comedy and works well in that form. The film is beautifully photographed and there's a consistency to the stories that makes it seem more like an episodic single-film rather than multiple short films. Ultimately, the film underlines the difficulty of life under the old regime and makes fun to the concept of a "golden age". Well-worth seeing.

MIFF 2009 Day 2 - 25/7/09

• Kdopak by se vlka bál (Who's Afraid of the Wolf?, Maria Procházková, Czech Republic, 2008)
• In Conversation with Anna Karina & David Stratton
• Anna (Pierre Koralnik, France, 1967)
  

Who's Afraid of the Wolf?
My first MIFF film was from the NextGen stream and I attended with the family. It's a fairly typical festival film aimed at children, and you can read that as meaning fairly bland. It looks nice and the performances are OK but the writing is so condescending. My 8-year old son enjoyed it, but it's unlikely to be something he'll remember. I find that some of the best children's films are actually not aimed at children, like Persepolis or even The Edge of Heaven. Or children's films that don't underestimate the intellectual capacity of children, such as Azur and Asmar or The Secret of Roan Inish.

Who's Afraid of the Wolf? starts off with promise but the plot becomes quite silly, culminating at an ending that is just fruity. I don't go to these films with high expectations, so in this case, I wasn't disappointed. And you can't expect every MIFF film to be a gem. This one certainly isn't.

In Conversation with Anna Karina & David Stratton
Once again, the MIFF ticketing system is a fiasco and I wonder if they will ever get it right. Last year, my festival passport would have got me entry into this session, but this year I had to pay. No complaints from me about that. MIFF, despite what people may complain about, is cash-strapped (only 5-6% of its budget is government-funded) and hosting guests costs money. $20-$25 to hear David Stratton speak with Anna Karina is certainly better value than paying $50-$55 to hear Tarantino introduce his latest film.

My complaint concerns not being able to load these special sessions onto one's festival pass. You still have to print out a paper receipt. I forgot to print mine out and had to slog it out in the Forum queue, something I hadn't done for a couple of years. Thanks to incompetency and lack of staff flexibility, it wasn't a pleasant experience and hopefully it will never happen again.

The MIFF members' queue was quite small, but the staff were inexperienced and my wait was about 30 minutes - this was just to print out the ticket that I'd already paid for. I wanted to get another ticket and put it on my partner's membership card, who was not arriving for some time. The MIFF staff told me they could not do it without her membership card. I suggested that they should be able to, because I organise all her ticketing on my home computer. The very rude supervisor suggested I come back with my partner's card (and presumably wait another 30 minutes) or go to an internet cafe. Fucking great! and I said just that. I put it down to experience, and the inexperience of these volunteer staff (well, some of them are). And never, never, ever be in that situation again. Be organised and print your tickets at home, because these motherfuckers have so many people to deal with and they can't give a damn because they're swamped. Thanks Jo, you made my fucking day.

As for the session, arriving early I was at the head of the queue and found a seat right in front of the stage. Anna Karina's English is quite OK but she had some difficulty comprehending some of the audience questions. Partly that was the sound system and also some of the questions were not particularly lucid. David Stratton was the consumate host and interviewer as usual and guided the procedings with professionalism. Anna admitted to some early nerves.

When asked about which director/s she found the best to work with, she unequivocally named Godard, the man she married and lived with for ten years. She found it painful at times to recall aspects of that relationship and sometimes changed the subject during the session. She mentioned that she doesn't have any one favourite film that she's been in, but that there's several and that her answer would change every time she's asked. That's all I can recall at the moment, though I couldn't help but notice that she has a very husky voice which I presume is from smoking.

Anna
Named simply after the female lead, this is, as Anna herself described it as "a mad film" and she seemed bemused that so many people turned out to both see it and stay for the post-screening Q&A. I attend these MIFF retrospectives for much the same reason that I attend Melbourne Cinémathèque - to catch a body of work and to appreciate individual films in the context of the whole. It's a sort of educational thing. I wasn't particularly impressed with the film itself; it seems frivolous and insubstantial, though enjoyable enough. A musical, it seems to be a low-budget vehicle for the music of Serge Gainsbourg and the beauty of a very young Karina.

MIFF 2009 Day 1 - Opening Night

I decided not to attend Opening Night for a couple of reasons: most significantly, I'd seen the opening film, Balibo - check out my short review - and didn't feel like seeing it again. Last year I'd regretted not seeing a couple of other festival films rather than go through the whole Opening Night thing: it starts late, then there's speech after speech (Victorian Premier, Lord Mayor, major sponsor, MIFF board and director, etc). Unfortunately that wasn't an option this year (economically unfeasible was the answer to my query) so I figured I'd let my complimentary double pass be made available to a willing paying member of the public (the event was long sold out), and I'd get an early night. Late night drinking isn't my thing anyway, party or not, and I've hardly touched alcohol since my motorcycle accident in January. I didn't really get an early night anyway.

So, did you go to Opening Night? What did you think of the film and proceedings? I seem to be largely alone in my less than enthusiastic response to Balibo, just like I seem to be largely alone in my enthusiastic response to The Limits of Control. I hope and think Balibo will do well with a broader, post-festival audience.

Today I attended two films and In Conversation with Anna Karina, which I hope to post about tomorrow.