MIFF 2009 Day 17 - 9/8/09

• Kynodontas (Dogtooth, Giorgos Lanthimos, Greece, 2009)
• Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, UK, 2009)
  

Dogtooth
Here's a director with something to say, and a novel way of saying it. We've read stories in the paper of parents who have locked their children up for years, decades even. How do they get away with it, we ask ourselves. This film explores that scenario, with middle-age, middle-class parents struggling to keep a lid on their three twenty-something children. The film is sparse, interspersed at times with the unexpected, including violence.

Fulfilling the sexual needs of three adults is a logistic nightmare, and the film treads that ground also with restraint, but increasing horror. The significance of the film's title becomes evident at the rather brutal but ambiguous ending. This is a disturbing film, that affected me for some time as I walked the streets after the screening. It's also one of my favourites.

Fish Tank
I'm over social realism. Let me re-phrase that; I'm over Ken Loach-style social realism. You know, the foul-mouthed kids on the housing estate, the booze, the drugs, the sex, the violence. There's nothing wrong with Fish Tank, but it feels like a road we've been down so many times before. Arnold puts a couple of spins of her own into the story, especially the one where our teenage protagonist takes a young girl into dangerous territory, with the audience teetering on the edge of their seats. There's also some great dialogue (such as the younger sister's profanity). But I still felt for most of the film's duration (and the 120+ minutes felt very long), "so what?".

MIFF 2009 Day 16 - 8/8/09

• La nana (The Maid, Sebastián Silva, Chile, 2008)
• Zift (Javor Gadev, Bulgaria, 2008)
  
• Das Flüstern der Bäume (The Whispering of the Trees, Tom Lemke, Chile/Germany, 2007) + Salt (Michael Angus/Murray Fredericks, Australia, 2009)
  

The Maid
Psychopaths are everywhere, even in our own homes. That's the message of this film about Raquel, a jaded and bitter maid to a middle-class Chilean family who's been around a little too long. Twenty years in fact, since a year before the oldest daughter was born. When the parents decide to get another maid in to assist Raquel, she sabotages all their endeavours but the mother is too attached to let Raquel go.

I found the film a little frustrating, because I hate this kind of character (I've seen my share of corportate psychopaths) and wanted to see successive maids overcome the obstacles put in their way. I also hated how the maid mostly gets her way each step of the way, but none of this is a reflection of the film. It's an OK story, nothing special and the film was enjoyable enough without showing any great insights.

Zift
Film noir, Bulgarian-style. Aside from some sub-titles that disappeared into the print, this is a tremendously enjoyable and satisfying film that uses every noir cliche, but uses it with style, tongue-in-cheek and with a strong, dark Balkan flavour.

Salt
I was keen to see this short (28') on recommendation and also after winning a festival award (don't ask me which one). The visuals of Lake Eyre, including time-lapse photography are absolutely inspirational and I'd love to be able to recreate what Murray Fredericks has. I also loved the personal nature of his story, the video-journal nature of his record and his frankness. A beautiful story and film that I highly recommend. This screened prior to The Whispering of the Trees. Check out the official website for some amazing examples of the time-lapse photography.

The Whispering of the Trees
I knew nothing about this film and went sight unseen on the strength of its accompanying Salt. I had planned to attend the Closing Night film, Bran Nue Dae, but figured I'll see it when it gets its inevitable (but yet unscheduled) release. With a fascination for indigenous cultures, I found it a very endearing documentary, about a slowly disappearing culture in southern Chile and Argentina. This remote community survives entirely by their harvesting of pine nuts, a dangerous job that has sustained them for generations.

MIFF 2009 Day 15 - 7/8/09

Today I had the pleasure of having lunch with Lynden Barber from Eyes Wired Open who has braved the southern climes to interview MIFF director Richard Moore for SBS, visit the Len Lye exhibition at ACMI (his article) and cram as many films into the weekend that he can. It was the first time we'd met other than online and I I took him on a little walking tour of Melbourne's laneways before catching Fassbinder's Chinese Roulette. I highly recommend his Eyes Wired Open as one of the best Australian film blogs.

• Chinesisches Roulette (Chinese Roulette, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany/France, 1976)
• Best of the MIFF Shorts
  
• Un lac (A Lake, Philippe Grandrieux, France, 2008)

Chinese Roulette
In some respects, I feel similarly towards Fassbinder as I do towards Godard. Other than Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, little of Fassbinder's work touches me and - like Godard's films - feels designed to remain distant. Chinese Roulette is unmistakably Fassbinder: the melodrama, the score, the sexual innuendo, the camp undertones.

Anna Karina's role demands little of her. She plays the husband's mistress and speaks a few words of German here and there. As in Godard's films, it appears her role is little more than window-dressing, pretty as she is.

The film encapsulates an era, and is fascinating in that context. The story is a bit of a romp and enjoyable enough. Like Godard, I don't feel I know enough about Fassbinder's intent to discuss the film further, but am happy to be enlightened by others. I enjoyed the film, but it was nothing special.

Best of the MIFF Shorts
I didn't realise that this session was largely taken up by the awards ceremony, so we only got to see six shorts:

• Instead of Abracadabra
  A Swedish comedy (with a zany sense of humour guaranteed to appeal to Australian audiences) about a young layabout whose amateur magic shows sometimes put relatives in hospital.
  
• Next Floor
  The silent era styeled credits preface a film without dialogue. The visuals recall any number of gothic horror films and the style is almost Greenaway.
• Two Men
  A simple premise is explored in a novel fashion, a kind of what-if, indigenous style.
• Necessary Games
  I can't say I'm a big fan for experimental cinema, though this one is intriguing.
• The Cat Piano
  Inventive, entertaining, film noir with a voiceover by Nick Cave - how could you go wrong?
• Slaves
  The animation does an excellent job of making a dark subject accessible. Who'd have thought that the terrible things described are taking place today?
  

Memo to self: next year, include at least one shorts session in my program.

A Lake
"It's like sticking knitting needles into your eyes" is how one walk-out described this film to me, though I found it captivating. I just had to capture that response, which I find amusing, and fair enough. I noticed quite a number of walk-outs and I don't blame any of them.

A Lake is a difficult film: the hand-held camera has a tendency at times to replicate the experience of the epileptic protagonist. There's not a whole lot happening. Our man cuts down trees in the snow. The visuals are staggeringly beautiful. His fits are increasing in frequency, which he reveals to his sister (with whom he has a sexual fixation), but not his mother.

The film is dark, brooding and again, difficult. Yet somehow compelling.

MIFF 2009 Day 14 - 6/8/09

• Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loura (Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl, Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/France/Spain, 2009)
• La barbe bleue (Bluebeard, Catherine Breillat, France, 2009)
  

Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl
There's a timelessness to this relatively short (63 minutes) story by the world's oldest working film-maker (100 years old). A man is narrating to a stranger on a train the story of his meeting and breaking-up with the titular girl. It's based on a novel that the director makes a point of crediting. I have no idea how old the novel is, but I sense it could be several decades old. And yet, the story also works well as a contemporary story. At this stage of the festival, I find both the length and the nature of the story quite enjoyable.

Bluebeard
I'm not familiar with the story of Bluebeard though apparently this is a fairly faithful retelling by Breillat. The period setting is like a continuation of her previous film, An Old Mistress, though both are completely different films. Bluebeard doesn't have quite the same richness of visuals that An Old Mistress does and the stories are very different.

Breillat superimposes the telling of Bluebeard with another more contemporary story of two sisters, set in the recent past. One of the sisters is called Catherine and I suspect it may be semi-autobiographical.

The film seems a minor work for Breillat. There's some obvious social commentary at the start when the girls are removed from their strict Catholic private school as a result of the death of their father. Other than that, it's pretty much pure story-telling that I found worth-seeing on its own merits as well as being part of Breillat's body of work.

MIFF 2009 Day 13 - 5/8/09

• Eastern Plays (Kamen Kalev, Bulgaria, 2009)
• Villa Amalia (Benoît Jacquot, France/Switzerland, 2009)
  

Eastern Plays
The cliched MIFF blurb for this film didn't give me high expectations and yet I was surprising satisfied by this small film that contains a little bit of a lot of elements that I like about festival films. The ideological divide between brothers fortunately wasn't the main thrust of the film and consequently didn't intrude on the overall narrative.

The protagonist, Itzo, is a likeable enough guy - it seems. Then, inexplicably, he becomes a real asshole, the result - we discover - of his being a recovering junkie. The film deals with the nature of relationships, communication, cultural acceptance, politics and violence. The story doesn't seem to dwell too much on any one issue, avoiding any overt didactism but clearly making some points to be pondered.

Coming from a country I know next to nothing about, and covering many of the universal social issues that appeal to me and in a skillful manner, this is a very enjoyable film and worth seeing.

Villa Amalia
A woman (Isabelle Huppert) walks out of her man, her house, her life when she discovers her lover of 15 years is cheating on her. The plot seems to share common threads with Three Colours: Blue, one of my two favourite films, or Haneke's The Pianist (also starring Huppert) but is not as strong as either of those two films. I initially thought that Huppert's character may be suffering mental illness, as her reactions to her infidelity seem very extreme. But there are mysteries that need to be unearthed.

I've often mentioned my appreciation for Huppert as an actress and this role seems like it's cut out for her. Perhaps too much so, to the extent that it seems a little cliched, as if the part were written especially to showcase the talents we know so very well. I tried not to dwell on these thoughts while watching the film, but they sometimes haunted me, which I found a little distracting. Which is not to say that the performance isn't good, because it is. The story keeps an air of mystery which, shrouded in the film's gorgeous visuals, works quite well.

I enjoyed the film. It doesn't aim particularly high, but nor does it need to. What it sets out to achieve, it does it well. In that respect, I could describe it as another 'quietly satisfying' film like, Still Walking.

MIFF 2009 Day 12 - 4/8/09

Due to illness, I dropped Yuri's Day and The Nun from my schedule but watched Morphia in the comfort of my own lounge-room, thanks to a preview screener for the Russian Resurrection Film Festival. As for The Nun, I generally love Rivette, though I heard the print was at best ordinary. I finally ventured out for the 9:15PM screening of The White Ribbon and was questioning my sanity - sick as a dog and staying up to midnight for the screening. But I'm glad I did - it remains my favourite film of the festival so far. Coincidentally, both films I saw are set in the same period.

• Morfiy (Morphia, Aleksey Balabanov, Russia, 2008)
  
• Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, Austria, 2009)
  

Morphia
Morphia is a technically impressive film – the period reproduction in particular is awesome. Set in Siberia at the outset of the Russian Revolution, a talented young doctor is sent on his first assignment to a small provincial hospital in which he is the sole doctor. After an allergic reaction to a diphtheria vaccination, he is given morphine, to which he gradually becomes addicted.

Despite obvious strengths, the film may be a challenge for some audiences. An amputation and a tracheotomy are particularly gruesome. The constant snow and blizzards also have a chilling effect. Perhaps most significant is that there are virtually no redeemable characters and the main protagonist is a lying drug addict, and we never really get insights into his inner world. The director seems intent on keeping us out in the cold, in more ways that one. I couldn't warm to it, I found it disturbing and had to watch something light afterwards.

The White Ribbon
The White Ribbon is perhaps Michael Haneke's most mature and entrancing film. That's quite some claim, given the awesome body of work he has created (in my mind, there is no such thing as a bad Haneke film). It encompasses or flirts with a number of themes and genres already covered in his earlier films (such as social realism, horror, crime, thriller, supernatural), perhaps playing with our expectations and yet subverting them, but never in a cheap, contrived manner. Haneke plays it straight with the audience, but you never really know where he's going. What's important with this film is to focus not on the destination, but the journey.

This is a film in which you really need to concentrate, take note of who is who (and there's a lot of people to keep a track of) and which children belong to who. There's also a lot of children, who play some stunning roles. Some of them may be victims, some of them innocent bystanders and some of them something more sinister. If evil exists, can you blame the children? Or the often well-meant but deluded parents. Some of the imagery used is amazing, in particular the chastised boy with the simple cross on the wall behind him. Many times the camera takes a point of view shot to very good effect. The characterisations, period detail and reproduction of mannerisms and social mores are all at the very highest levels of achievement and it's not hard to see why this film was awarded Cannes' highest honour.

The story is superficially much more conventional than one associates with Haneke. At first it seems a slightly rambling, rustic, rural tale. A subversion of expectations? Maybe.

Eventually, like Hidden, the film has something to say about politics, and more besides. There are broadsides at religion and society in general. At the outset of the start of World War I, Haneke seems to suggest that the brutality of the next two wars over thirty years could perhaps be traced to the cruel ways that humans treat each other on the micro level: within villages, communities and families. The film is shot in black and white, a bold choice by Haneke, but it works very well. It resembles a Carl Dreyer film (think Gertrude) or even Bergman.

MIFF 2009 Day 11 - 3/8/09

Still unwell, I missed Film is a Girl & a Gun and Dogtooth, and there was a no-show by Claire Denis for her talk with Philippa Hawker. On the strength of Beau travail, one of my favourite French films, I just couldn't miss 35 Shots of Rum.

• 35 rhums (35 Shots of Rum, Claire Denis, France/Germany, 2008)
  

35 Shots of Rum
I sense that there's a lot more I could write about this film than I will, because I don't have the time to ponder and research it. It's clearly a very personal film for Denis, who was due to introduce it and attend a Q&A, but didn't show. Apparently she's preparing her latest film for screening in competition at Venice. But Michelle Carey conveyed a few words about the film, and how the story basically is about her grandmother who died, leaving her grandfather to raise her mother.

This is another 'quietly satisfying' film that is observational and captures some of the minutiae within relationships. A father and daughter struggle to let go of each other, each pursues another or is pursued. People make advances, counter advances, there are rejections. Love, pain, it's all there.

MIFF 2009 Day 10 - 2/8/09

• Blind Company (Alkinos Tsilimidos, Australia, 2009)

Blind Company
I first discovered Tsilimidos' work with Tom White, a film that impressed me with it's beautiful visuals, humour and humanistic narrative. That film also changed the way I looked at the homeless. Coming soon after Candy and Little Fish, I didn't have high expectations for Em 4 Jay, a film about a couple of drug addicts. I was so over drug addicts and yet this film blew me out of the water. Again photographed by Toby Oliver, the visuals are just amazing but it's once again the deeply humanistic story-telling that won me over, and this remains my equal favourite Australian film. It may then be no surprise to hear that Blind Company was my most anticipated film at MIFF this year.

I never took much notice of Colin Friels until I saw him play the titular role in Tom White, in which he magnificently demonstrates frailty and an understated desperation. Once again he takes centre stage in Blind Company as Geoff Brewster, who is living in isolation at the family beach cottage, waiting for inevitable death. Geoff's quiet daily routine is thrown into turmoil when his nephew, Josh (Nick Barkla), arrives unannounced and consequently engages in antagonistic behaviour.

Tsilimidos is a competent and assured director. With Blind Company, he is in no hurry to reveal the secrets of its characters, but that shouldn't test the patience of the film's target audience. The story is basically a relationship slow-burn that reminds me a little of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's style of narrative in films like Climates or Three Monkeys.

The performances are, as expected, convincing. Friels is always good value and his role as a dying academic is full of ambiguity. Nick Barkla gets to show his range. He was completely convincing as the junky in Em 4 Jay. In Blind Company, he is almost as convincing as the Porsche-driving reckless son of privileged parents - somewhat a yuppy.

I presume it was Adam Arkapaw's cinematography on Julius Avery's excellent award-winning (Cannes Jury Prize, no less) Jerrycan that caught the eye of Tsilimidos. His camera work has a very Eastern European aesthetic about it. The outdoor shots are reminiscent of Christopher Doyle's beach scenes in Paranoid Park and have the strongest visuals.

Indoors, however, is a different matter, and while there is a reliance on natural light, the camera exposure often leaves characters in silhouette. The effect is to shroud the film in darkness which distances the audience. This is the single-most flaw in the film.

I spoke to the director briefly after the film and he confirmed that Toby Oliver was unavailable. Being the film's premiere screening and Alkinos being pre-occupied post-screening, and me being sick, I didn't get the opportunity to discuss further. There was to have been a Q&A session which didn't happen because the film ran late. Apparently there will be one at a future screening, which I will aim to attend.

Overall, the film is worth-seeing and another fine addition to the country's body of work. It's especially worth seeing as part of the director's body of work, even if it isn't his best film. Tom White and Em 4 Jay were always going to be hard to beat.

MIFF 2009 Day 9 - 1/8/09

I'd planned to see the Roy Andersson shorts but MIFF-fatigue got the better of me and I took the early part of the day off. I wasn't impressed with either film I did see.

• Hansel and Gretel (Yim Phil-Sung, South Korea, 2007)
• Double Take (Johan Grimonprez, Belgium/Germany/Netherlands, 2009)
  

Hansel and Gretel
Koreans are great with horror, when they get it right. Unfortunately, this isn't one of them. It looks great, but the story is a narrative mess and is way too long. A man crashes his car on an isolated road and is lead by a child through the forest where he is taken to a remote cottage. The film re-imagines the Hansel and Gretel tale, subverting expectations along the way. It starts out almost farcical and perhaps would have been better had it stayed that way. When the story becomes darker, its horror never quite convinces. The story is all over the place and I found it very unsatisfying. It's my least favourite film at MIFF yet.

Double Take
I imagine there's a large festival demand for films like this one, but Double Take did nothing for me. Basically it's a visual essay with what I felt had very little to say and padded the film's very long 80 minutes much like a reality TV show - the way the same scene is repeated over and over again.

OK, Hitch had body doubles. OK, The Birds is a metaphor for the Soviet threat and tapped into people's anxieties of the era. And OK, JFK was assassinated because of his liberal stance on the Cold War. I could see it all coming a mile away, and it took so long to make its points, and it made them without substance. This is not my kind of film at all - neither satisfying as a documentary and nor for its playful manipulation of Hitchcock's signature image.

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.

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.

The Week in Review - 5/7/09

Circumstances conspired to enable me to see more films than usual this week. First, there's been an abundance of films worth seeing: Melbourne Cinémathèque, of course, but also ACMI's Focus on Girls 24/7 and advance screenings that I didn't want to miss. Also, it's school holidays, which means I have a two-week break from my Alliance Française classes and on top of that, with conflict in the home, what better to avoid stress than sit in a dark cinema? Don't worry, it's a long story. A very long story.

FILMS:

• Coco avant Chanel (Anne Fontaine, France, 2009)
• Cztery noce z Anna (Four Nights With Anna, Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland/France, 2008)
• Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski, UK/West Germany, 1971)
• Winged Creatures + Q&A (Rowan Woods, USA, 2008)
• Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cleo From 5 to 7, Agnès Varda, France/Italy, 1962)
• Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Jeanne Dielman, Chantal Akerman, Belgium/France, 1975)
• Balibo (Robert Connolly, Australia, 2009)
• Wanda (Barbara Loden, Barbara Loden, USA, 1970)
  

Coco avant Chanel
I'm loathe to cricitice a film like this. It's like many I see that are well-made, technically proficient and yet do nothing for me. I'm simply not part of the more mainstream target audience that will revel in the drama, the period and the background to this iconic character. I don't find that her life is that interesting and that she never married is no great accomplishment.

Four Nights With Anna
This film does so well what I love about Eastern European cinema: it looks absolutely beautiful (in a decaying sort of way - check out my profile, urban decay is one of my interests) and its minimalist story-telling leaves one guessing. The film does have Hitchcockian elements and you feel that the director is messing with your expectations. This is my first experience of Skolimowski, so I'm interested to see the other Cinémathèque screenings to get a sense of what he's about.

Deep End
Having discussed this elsewhere, I don't really feel like regurgitating much of this. I liked it, it's historically fascinating, a kind of document of its time. As I was discussing with someone last night, it seemed to do for 1970s London (by a Pole) what Wake in Fright did for outback Australia (by a Canadian). Both films seem very frank and truthful analyses of their respective settings by so-called outsiders.

Winged Creatures
I don't care what Rowan Woods produces; anyone that can make a The Boys has won my respect. For me, the uncompromising brilliance and edge-of-your-seat suburban terror of that film indicates unusual talent. I took the opportunity of telling him after the Q&A that The Boys is a film that he can probably never equal. I know a director is focused on the current and upcoming projects, but the truth has to be said.

It can be easy to fault Winged Creatures and Matt Ravier has done an excellent job of pointing them out, though I don't feel the faults are as fatal as he. During the Q&A, Woods seemed to acknowledge some of the flaws himself, and knew that an ensemble film is inherently difficult.

As much as I would love Rowan Woods to make films like The Boys, I suppose every director wants his or her films to be seen, to make money and to make work for future work. Maybe Woods doesn't see a future in uncompromising bleak social dramas. So what we have now are compromised bleak social dramas.

Winged Creatures is a more ambitious project than his previous endeavour, Little Fish. First, it was made in Los Angeles with a fairly high-profile cast that includes Forest Whitaker, Kate Beckinsale, Dakota Fanning, Jackie Earle Haley, Jennifer Hudson, Guy Pearce, Jeanne Tripplehorn and others. It's visually a nicer film to look at and the themes are also more interesting. So, I feel it's an improvement on Little Fish.

The film is clearly looking for an audience, and compromises have been made to succeed in that direction. As Matt Ravier points out, there is little subtlety and little is left to chance that the audience won't understand the narrative each step of the way. It makes the film accessible to a wider audience but, as with Coco avant Chanel, this is not what I look for in cinema.

I liked the themes the film explores. Various survivors of a random shooting in a diner try to come to terms with their trauma, each in their own way. Dakota is chilling as a born-again Christian and her final transformation is very moving. But her initial transformation is just too over-the-top. I was surprised how gripping the film starts out. Unfortunately, the ensemble structure diffuses the opening dynamics and the film gradually loses momentum.

Cleo From 5 to 7
I found this rivetting. At first, it seemed to have the frivolity (sans the experimental nature) of Daisies, also screening as part of the ACMI Focus on Girls 24/7 and which I saw at Melbourne Cinémathèque a year or two ago as part of the Czech New Wave program. Clèo is a young female singer with a sort of princess bitch syndrome a la Daisies. As she wanders the streets of Paris, with concerns other than the latest hat or shoes (she may have cancer), the film takes on an element that strongly recalles Louis Malle's Le feu follet. Like Malle's film, the protagonist's journey takes us on a walking tour of the back-streets of Paris, but without anywhere near the level of bleakness of Le feu follet's Alain Leroy. Interestingly, these films were made about a year apart (Clèo was made first).

The 5 to 7 refers to two hours in an evening of Clèo's life, depicted in real-time, as she worries about her hospital test results, interacting with various people.

Jeanne Dielman
Is this the film that inspired Van Sant's Gerry? Two very different films, different scenarios and aesthetics, yet strangely parallel. Sure, one is set in mountain and desert regions as two Gerrys try to find their way; the other about a widow/housewife/mother-cum-prostitute who is trying to find her way.

This film is an amazing and confident accomplishment for the young Akerman (she was 25 when this was made). Like Gerry, it demands much of an audience. You must submit to it, to its pace, to its rhythm. You have to get into another mode of experiencing cinema. In Akerman's film, the camera is static virtually the whole time, and the subject is banal beyond belief. We view Jeanne as she cooks, cleans, tidies and receives clients. Takes are long, no detail is left unseen. The story takes place over three days, and each day seems superficially much like the previous.

Yet there's change we can't help noticing. We are not privy to Jeanne's inside world, which is clearly conflicted, but we can deduce this by the slight ripples in her daily rituals. She has decent middle-class standards and yet a pragmatic need to survive financially, which she achieves through prostitution. This film rewards the patient and I was surprised to see only one walk-out during its 200 minute run-time.

Balibo
This is the film that opens MIFF in a couple of week's time and I was lucky to attend a media preview, introduced by the director. I was thinking it was the closing film and I mentioned to someone that it would make a good opening night film, which of course it is - silly me! The buzz coming out of the screening was palpable, with some saying it's not just another good Australian film, but one of the best films of the year. Refer to my comments about Chanel.

I like the film, in fact parts of the film I like a lot. Firstly, Australian films rarely touch political issues, but this is one political issue - a tumour in the nation's psyche - that has festered for way too long and needs to come out into the open. In a sense, the film confirms that which we always knew, or at least suspected. It demands questions, but doesn't necessarily ask them, if you get my drift. It leads us to water but doesn't make us drink, trusting an audience to understand the issues, without ramming them down our throats.

The performances are generally good, especially Oscar Isaac as a young and charismatic José Ramos-Horta (now the president of East Timor). The film has a couple of problems, the main one being coherency. There are different narrative threads, taking place in different time frames and the film's effectiveness is, as I mentioned with Winged Creatures, diffused by the parallel handling of the threads. Despite this, the film manages to rise above the flaws, and present what feels not just worthy, but important. It involves us in events that are historic and relevant, in an authentic way. The film is particularly effective in its bringing the story to a climax; it's very moving without cheap sentimentality.

For a more positive and extensive response to the film, check out Matt Ravier's review.

Wanda
What a remarkable piece of film-making - they don't make 'em like this any more! With grainy 16mm film and an aesthetic that strongly recalls Cassavetes, we just don't see enough of films like this. Barbara Loden directed and played the main role, a raw depiction of a woman with not a lot going for her. Divorced as an irresponsible mother with no regard for her children, she takes up with a thief and finds her situation going into downward spiral. The revelation of characters, in particular the thief, is both clever and funny. There is a truthfulness to the depictions that is chilling and awesome.