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 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 Day 16

Sat 9 August
Pora umierac (Time to Die, Dorota Kedzierzawska, Poland, 2007)
Hîrtia va fi albastrã (The Paper Will Be Blue, Radu Muntean, Romania, 2007)
Sztuczki (Tricks, Andrzej Jakimowski, Poland, 2007)
De la guerre (On War, Bertrand Bonello, France, 2008)


Time to Die
A nice looking film with it's gorgeous black and white cinematography and photogenic subjects (an elderly woman in her deteriorating home and a border collie dog). Somehow, it all seemed a bit too twee. The director played it safe and pulled all the sentimental strings he could. At this stage of the festival, it didn't grab my interest particularly. It's the kind of film that could do well at the Palace Como cinema.

The Paper Will Be Blue
The Romanian Wave films continue to impress and this one is right up there. It has an aesthetic similar to 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days though, rather than a social drama, this is a war/political thriller. It depicts Bucharest at the peak of civil unrest and during the revolution that culminated in the overthrow of the communist dictatorship of Ceaucescu. Some of the politics are a little opaque to non-Romanian audiences, which I didn't mind. What was evident was the confusion, mistrust and general peril in the streets.

The film starts with a tragic outcome that the rest of the film leads up to. We follow a military unit as one member attempts to join the revolution, and as his comrades struggle through the urban chaos to bring him back. The film has the realist/documentary feel of many of the Romanian new wave films. We get glimpses into the everyday lives of the protagonists, betraying the director's humanist approach to the subject. The film is a testament to the events of the era. Highly recommended.

Tricks
A Polish social drama with a slight hint of understated black comedy. This would be a good film for culturally aware adults to take their children to (but it's not part of MIFF's New Gen stream, so kids weren't allowed). The film looks nice with its depictions of family life in impoverished provincial Poland. I would have enjoyed it more outside of the festival context.

On War
This is a very unusual film, and that's a good thing. It's not a conventional story and it's not conventionally told. A film-maker is unfulfilled and stumbles into a cult that transforms his life. He leaves his life as he knew it and things get both weird and potentially dangerous. The film looks great, is unpredictable but I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have due to fatigue. It was at this point that I decided to make it my last festival film. I was planning to see A Christmas Tale on the final day. Better to get a day's rest before I return to work.

MIFF Day 13

I saw four films today, more than I like to, and all of them were at the Forum. For me, as a Screen Legend MIFF member, it means I can use the reserved seating there. Festival director Richard Moore came and sat next to me for one film (well, for part of it - I doubt he's seen a complete film during the festival) and I gave him some feedback. He's well aware of the repetitiveness of the ads, and I also mentioned that the theatre lighting tends to go off as the audience is entering the cinema. I've been collating a list of suggestions since before the festival started, something I also did last year. I'll be sending these off post-festival.

Wed 6 August
Du li shi dai (A Confucian Confusion, Edward Yang, Taiwan, 1994)
Occident (Cristian Mungiu, Romania, 2002)
Fata Morgana (Werner Herzog, West Germany, 1970)
Le premier venu (Just Anybody, Jacques Doillon, France/Belgium, 2007)


A Confucian Confusion
I saw this at a 1pm screening, the time of day I'm most likely to nod off if a film doesn't engage me. So, while I did nod off more than once, I felt that this is quite an interesting film by Yang, one of my favourites of his so far. A festival retrospective affords the opportunity to see multiple works and connect themes. Yang's work documents changes in Taiwanese culture, how it has become Westernised yet retained Chinese idiosyncrasies (like superstitiousness, for example).

A Confucian Confusion is both comedic and melodramatic, with more than a touch of soap opera. Yet Yang's mature and confident style works well with the whimsy by once again developing interesting characters and their inter-relationships. I'd like to see this film outside of the intensity of a festival to better appreciate it. Well worth a look.

Occident
I wanted to see as many of the Romanian Wave films as possible but didn't think I could fit this one in. When I realised it was by the director of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, my favourite arthouse release of 2007, I made the extra effort and saw it this evening, even though it meant I would see three films consecutively (not something I like to do). I'm glad I did.

This first film is a completely different type of film to the director's acclaimed second feature. It's a black comedy cum social drama with three interwoven and overlapping stories. The tone is light, the cinematography reflects that and is a much more commercial film than the Palme d'Or-winning 4 Months. I found it very enjoyable, the more so seeing it in context with the later film. How this guy's work has matured from one film to the next!

Having now seen his two films, it strikes me that he may have been strongly influenced by the work of Krzysztof Kieslowski. Occident is a lighter film than Kieslowski ever made but uses similar devices and has similar themes. 4 Months is more like the 'hard-core' mid-career films of Kieslowski. Occident is no must-see film, but is a good festival film and, as it's not available on DVD (as far as I can ascertain), MIFF is a good opportunity to see it.

Fata Morgana
I've heard much of the 'legendary' film-maker, Werner Herzog, but seen little of his work (other than Grizzly Man and Rescue Dawn). This is a strange film, more of a moving picture essay. There's little dialogue, mostly just a prose narrative, much of it sounding very biblical. The visuals are of the Sahara, and quite stunning. I counted 27 people walking out on this film, more than any other film at MIFF so far (but well short of the 60 or so I counted at The Man From London last year), but I found it visually interesting enough to keep awake (always a good indicator). Mind you, if I knew what it was going to be like, I wouldn't have gone, but it's not too bad.

Just Anybody
I walked out this film after an hour. It was late, I was tired and I couldn't justify staying for something so dull and uninteresting. It seems like an overly-intellectual exploration of a scenario that is almost completely implausible: an attractive young woman tries to redeem the junkie loser who raped her, to the point she practically stalks him. There are so many other contrivances with interwoven relationships that it feels like a stage production or made-for-TV. At best, the film seems unready for release, as if the actors are rehearsing. The digital camera work was also a bit rough and looked cheap. My suggestion: avoid.

MIFF Day 12

French classes today, sandwiched by a film either side. For what it's worth, today I learnt about imperfect (l'imparfait) and revised passé composé. I have weekly classes at Alliance Française and conversational classes with a French person, Cécile, in a local cafe each weekend. I'm loving it and have recently started feeling like I could be understood in France (though I'd struggle to understand others, hehe).

In short, the early film was disappointing and the late film was fun.

Tue 5 August
California Dreamin' (Endless) (Cristian Nemescu, Romania, 2007)
Surveillance (Jennifer Lynch, USA, 2007)


California Dreamin' (Endless)
This is my least favourite of the Romanian films at this year's MIFF so far. It's the most contrived and there's a number of clues that this was made with an international (especially a US) audience in mind. First there's the title (which bears no conceivable connection with the film's story). Then there's the use of US troops on their way to the Balkans. When the ends comes and the title track blares out, the film's unashamed targetting of Western audiences is most obvious.

The film's cinematography was enough to put me offside. The use of wobble-cam was just way over the top and distracted me for every single minute of the film's long 150 minute run time. The story (a black comedy) is too trivial to warrant such a length. And the film's central premise - that a local station-master could hold up NATO forces until they present a required customs form - is just so implausible that I couldn't buy into the story at all. That the delay took five days was just inexorably painful. I'm sure some mainstream audiences could find this amusing and entertaining, but it shitted me big time.

Surveillance
Trash! Exploitation! Implausible! But I liked it, a guilty pleasure. Trash, but polished trash. Bill Pullman is close to the top of his game, and boy he's aging. Jennifer Lynch has extracted a performance from him that reminds me of his performance in her dad's film (and my favourite), Lost Highway. This is a good festival film, a bit of fun in between all the serious stuff, not unlike some of the Ozploitation flicks.

MIFF Day 11

Mon 4 August
Boogie (Radu Muntean, Romania, 2008)
Leonera (Lion's Den, Pablo Trapero, Argentina, 2008)
Kong bu fen zi (The Terrorizer, Edward Yang, Taiwan, 1986)

Boogie
This film is screening as part of the Romanian Wave stream at MIFF. I liked it quite a lot. I felt it wasn't as powerful as it could have been, perhaps due to a lack of dramatic tension, or perhaps the characters were hard to empathise with. There were other elements that worked well. Like most of the Romanian films I have seen, there is a unified aesthetic, in films by various directors. And Australian film-makers could really learn a thing or two from these, as they are clearly made on shoe-string budgets (probably much less than our own productions).

Boogie uses very long takes of naturalistic dialogue - it fits clearly into the social realist genre that I'm fond of. It depicts the everyday in a very typical relationship, the sparring, the conflict. A couple are on vacation with their young son. The husband's meeting up with a couple of old friends and going out to drink with them while the wife (played byAnamaria Marinca, the central character in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) stays behind is the central plot. It's not an earth-shattering film but is quietly satisfying, showing confidence by the director, using subtlety and understatement to tell his story.

Lion's Den
I didn't like this film at all. There's a sense one gets right from the start of some films that it's trying too hard to be cool and stylish, but treats the audience's intelligence with, if not contempt, then indifference. Maybe that's a bit harsh, but that's how I felt with Lion's Den. A supermodel-looking babe finds herself accused of murdering her boyfriend and we never find out for sure. The movie is so caught up in its own sense of cool to bother with resolving little details like those. As implausible as every step is, we're taken on a silly ride through the nursery section of an Argentinian women's prison, where our babe goes when she's found to be pregnant.

The film tries hard to wring our emotions, but at every point where I felt I should be crying or feeling some gut-wrenching emotion, I felt nothing. Everything looked staged. I could have walked out of this film at any point from two minutes into it.

The Terrorizer
This is my favourite Edward Yang film yet. It's an ensemble piece that connects people from different social standings within Taiwanese society. The connections are clearly contrived, yet it works quite well because of the film's visual and narrative austerity. There is a sparseness that has a very attractive aesthetic. The circular structure that reminds me of Jafar Panahi's The Circle.

MIFF Days 2 - 7

We're a week into MIFF, and I've only written about the Opening Night film, Not Quite Hollywood. Fatigue, time (or lack of) and the realisation that I have to get to bed by 1am have prevented me from writing as promptly as last year (as I recollect, I did a write up every night, no matter the time - crazy!). I must say, I made a big mistake this year. I went to Opening Night with not enough sleep, and have struggled since. I'm trying to catch up now, but it's difficult. Memo to self: next year make sure you're well-rested before the festival starts.

Day 2: Sat 26 July
A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest, Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania, 2006)
Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston, Australia, 1978)

Day 3: Sun 27 July
Vikaren (The Substitute, Ole Bornedal, Denmark, 2007)
My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada, 2007)
Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, UK, 2008)

Day 4: Mon 28 July
Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land, Teresa Prata, Portugal/Mozambique, 2006)
Momma's Man (Azazel Jacobs, USA, 2008)
Katyn (Andrej Wajda, Poland, 2007)

Day 5: Tue 29 July
El Baño del Papa (The Pope's Toilet, Enrique Fernandez, Cesar Charlone, Uruguay/Brazil/France, 2007)
Moartea domnului Lazarescu (The Death of Mister Lazarescu, Alexandru Munteanu, Romania, 2005)

Day 6: Wed 30 July
Bam gua nat (Night and Day, Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 2008)
Élève libre (Private Lessons, Joachim Lafosse, Belgium/France, 2008)
40 x 15: The 40 Forty Years of the Directors' Fortnight (Olivier Jahan, France, 2008)
Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong, 2008)

Day 7: Thu 31 July
Gitmek: My Marlon and Brando (My Marlon and Brando, Huseyin Karabey, Turkey, 2008)
Qing mei zhu ma (Taipei Story, Edward Yang, Taiwan, 1985)


12:08 East of Bucharest
This is a quietly satisfying film. It starts out as an ensemble drama with understated dry wit and somewhere along the way - I'm not sure when - it becomes a black comedy. The film documents the impact of the fall of the Ceacescu dictatorship on a micro level, analysing social changes, people's recollections and how lies are perpetuated. I'm making a point to see as many of the Romanian films screening at MIFF, and this was a good start.

Long Weekend
Screening as part of the Ozploitation stream, I'd heard good things about this film. With a low budget and a cast of two, despite its obvious flaws, this is a film that has much to admire and enjoy. Director Eggleston is able to maintain a high level of suspense without dialogue for long stretches. I liked the film and the missus really loved it.

The Substitute
I took the kid to see this, and while I didn't think it had anything scarier than a Harry Potter movie, there was one scene that unsettled him to the point that he started crying (he's 7 years old) and the missus had to take him out. Aside from that, I found the film fairly clumsy, like many Australian or German films. It felt like an Australian kids flick you might see after school on the ABC. It also seemed quite derivative (from parts of Men in Black). It has, however, won overseas awards as a children's film. It has funny moments, but I found it unsatisfying as either a children's film or as a film in general.

My Winnipeg
This ode to Guy Maddin's hometown reminded me of a film I watched online on Matt Clayfield's blog a while ago, but be damned if I can find it. This is the second Maddin film I've seen, after Brand Upon the Brain at MIFF last year. In the context of a film festival, I like the unconventional nature of Maddin's work, though this one is not as gripping as last year's title. Still, it's worth a look.

Of Time and the City
I found this pretty dull, perhaps a made-for-TV BBC documentary. Because I set up my MIFF schedule and forget what each film is about, I often go into the cinema without a clue of what I'm about to see. It took me quite some time to work out that this film is an homage to the director's hometown Liverpool. I found the narrative using mostly prose, including quotes from a wide range of writers like Jung and Engels, distancing. With a short run time of 72 minutes, I still found myself looking at my watch waiting for the end.

Sleepwalking Land
This film looks good and had some good elements, but just didn't work for me. I found it's narrative too clunky, too contrived. The dynamics between the actors just didn't seem quite right and I couldn't believe in the story.

Momma's Man
Low budget indie US film-making that aspires for the transcendence of Old Joy, replete with subtle political messages. Not bad, but doesn't achieve Old Joy's peaks.

Katyn
Wow, this film packs a punch. It looks great (with the same cinematographer from Polanski's The Pianist and Oliver Twist). Like other Polish films I've liked (including others by Wajda and also early Kieslowski), there's historical and political references that may seem a little oblique to non-Polish audiences. If anything, that only piques my interest to learn more about them. Perhaps more of a problem, though, are some of the relationship dynamics that I didn't completely work out - it'll take another viewing to clarify some of them for me.

Nonetheless, this is a powerful film that was clearly a very personal project - it depicts the World War 2 massacre that took the life of Wajda's own father and clearly impacted not just many of the films he has made, but his whole life. It certainly shows that the Soviets were not benevolent dictators but rather treacherous murderers who colluded with the Nazis for their own ends. Massively popular in Poland and that's country's entry for this year's Oscars, hopefully it will get a local release. This was the first stand-out film at the festival for me.

The Pope's Toilet
An enjoyable enough dark comedy that captures the social and cultural life of poverty in an Uruguayan village as it prepares for the visit of the Pope. The ending is somewhat predictable but it's the journey that is more satisfying.

The Death of Mister Lazarescu
This is the kind of film I want to see at a festival, or any time for that matter. A film like this would never be made in the West, yet it is as universal as any film could be. Who would think a story that follows an obsese and drunken slob through the last hours of his existence could be so compelling? With long takes, the film has a documentary look and feel very similar to 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, my favourite cinema release of 2007.

The film is an damning indictment, not just of Romanian bureaucracy, but of the failings of hospitals everywhere. In all its minute detail and documenting of hospital admissions, I could see no material difference between how we operate here on the other side of the globe in a much more affluent society. Perhaps the only departure from Australian society is that we could more reliably expect an ambulance when needed.

Like 4 Months, this film has a fly-on-the-wall feel to it, as we get a glimpse into this poor man's life: how he lives, what is family situation is, who his neighbours are and how his addiction to alcohol is about to lead to a descent into bureaucratic hell as he is shunted from one hospital to another. Must-see cinema at its finest!

Night and Day
Pardon me now, and for the rest of my mini-reviews of MIFF films, if I become repetitive in my use of the term "quietly satisfying". For that is how I found this film, as I did with the director's Woman on the Beach, which screened at MIFF last year. A Korean guy flees to Paris to avoid possible arrest for possession of marijuana. Not seeking to absorb French life in any way, he simply bides his time and we see a foreigner's experience of Paris as he hooks up with various compatriots. While I've been a little disappointed with my overall selection of films so far, this one is enjoyable and - wait for it - quietly satisfying.

Private Lessons
I should not have gone into this film with the high expectations I did. But I couldn't help it: after the director's magnificent Private Property, my favourite film at last year's French Film Festival, this is one of only two films that this year I decided I must see. It is not a bad film, but lacks something that his early film had.

Both films have a common theme: boys growing up without their fathers. While Private Property was extremely restrained and understated, Private Lessions goes for the jugular and puts to the fore, transgression that is only hinted at in Private Property. The film looks good and has some good elements. I think it lacks subtlety. Perhaps after Christophe Honoré's Ma mère (My Mother), it is a little too predictable and a little too contrived. Still, if you like transgressive and challenging cinema, this is a good film to see.

40 x 15: The 40 Forty Years of the Directors' Fortnight
I suppose this is a reasonable festival selection considering the Directors' Fortnight stream at this year's MIFF. It was interesting enough, but nothing compelling that says you've gotta go out and see it. It covers how the DF came into being, its rocky history and where it is now.

Ashes of Time Redux
This film is all style and very little substance. It's a story in the vein of Zhang Yimou's martial arts spectaculars though with Wong Kar Wai's vivid and impressionistic visuals. I found the story very confusing and would need to see it again to understand it better, but there's no way I'd want to see it again, regardless of how good it looks. There's some good humour there, especially the way the film at times resembles or emulates the American Western genre. For me, the film is meh.

My Marlon and Brando
An interesting film that is not spectacular in any way but holds much interest for its depiction of a Turkish woman who tries to travel to Kurdish Iraq to hook up with her lover. It's 2003 and the US has just invaded Iraq, and she has to go via Iran. What I found most compelling was the difference in social mores as she travelled from one country to another. Turkey is really progressive compared to some of the places she went.

Taipei Story
I found this disappointing after all the hype surrounding Edward Yang. The film is austere, with minimal dialogue or narrative exposition. Generally, this is a quality I admire and it's on display in a MIFF film I liked a lot more, The Death of Mister Lazarescu. In Taipei Story, I found it kept me confused for way too long and I failed to understand the nature of the relationships between some of the central characters.

Transylvania

As far as I am concerned, cinema exists primarily to watch films like Tony Gatlif’s Transylvania. It is full of life, love and loss, pain and sorrow, music and dance, culture and superstition. No-one with a heart can help but be moved by this ode to life and the Romany way.

Gatlif has made a career of showcasing the Romany, the culture of the gypsies. Credited with writing, co-writing and arranging virtually all the music in Transylvania, he clearly has a love of music that is infused within his films. This latest effort depicts a woman (Asia Argento) who leaves France and travels to Romania in search of her boyfriend, a gypsy musician.

The infusion of music and dance into the story is pure cinema magic. The cinematography, use of light and use of imagery are all magnificent. The choice of actors, both professional and non-professional, is excellent. Their comings and goings within the film are unpredictable, adding to the believability of the story, as crazy as it gets at times.

Asia Argento really is the star of the film. Her passion, strength and intensity are at the core of the story. Her rendition of gypsy womanhood as Zingarina is for me a landmark performance.

Transylvania is a French, Romanian, English, Hungarian and Italian co-production, which is reflected in the use of a number of languages used in the film (French, Romanian, English and others).

Gatlif showcases the bleak yet beautiful countryside and rural decay of forgotten lands, depicting a way of life that is slowly dying. His love for this culture and respect for those who are part of it is evident, and his depictions of it are electric, exhilarating and moving. The film’s ending is amazing.

I’m on a good run at the moment. This is the third film in less than a week that has brought tears to my eyes. Sharing some themes with the excellent, The Edge of Heaven, which I saw last weekend, this is a superior and more eclectic film. For me, this is close to as good as a film gets and is my equal favourite for the year so far, along with Paranoid Park. There is so much to like about it and I can’t use enough superlatives. This is must-see cinema.

For a number of reasons, the Kino Dendy cinema is my favourite cinema in Melbourne, though I see many more films at ACMI. The quality of Kino’s programming has declined in recent years, screening more and more middle-of-the-road French and other films. But then, this is pretty much true across the whole spectrum of current cinema. Gatlif’s films typically screened at the Lumiere before it disappeared a few years ago, and it’s reassuring to see Dendy pick up this more eclectic film.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

A film’s adornment with the Cannes Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) brings considerable expectations by an informed audience. When I saw Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, other than knowing it tackled the subject of abortion, and that it had won the Cannes top prize, I knew nothing about it.

The film is set in 1987, towards the end of the communist era, in Romania. Two women, friends sharing a university dormitory are planning something that is not immediately obvious. Gradually, we learn that Otilia is making arrangements for Gabita's clandestine and illegal abortion.

The opening scene’s use of shaky hand-held camera (a pet hate) gave me reservations that thankfully proved unfounded. The cinematography is generally excellent, and the cinéma vérité style produces a strong sense of reality and immediacy as we follow the characters. The apparent use of a digital camera allowed the flexibility to film within small rooms as if one were a fly on the wall witnessing the action. There are fabulous long takes in which we witness the unedited talent of the main actors who display excellent emotions and timing. Mungiu has selected an excellent cast and extracted remarkable performances that are both naturalistic and convincing.

There are various themes that the film covers or depicts:

• pregnancy as the natural consequence of sex
• the tendency of youth to disregard the consequences of sex
• the corrupt nature of communism and how social repression pushes various activities underground
• how impersonal was life under communism
• most importantly, the terrible consequences of removing the availability of abortion as a legal option for women

As a youth, I remember my mother talking about the days when women risked death and abortionists risked jail (up to fifteen years in Victoria). Baby boomers and older may recall the name Dr. Bertram Wainer who campaigned for legal access to abortion in the 1960s and ‘70s. It all began in 1967 when he provided emergency treatment for a woman who had a backyard abortion.

Regardless of the morality or ethics of abortion, the social and other consequences of lack of access to it are just too great. This film clearly illustrates this point in a matter-of-fact manner without moralising or proselytising. Mungiu is neither promoting nor denouncing abortion. The film could even be used by so-called pro-lifers to attack abortion. Overwhelmingly, though, a reasonable person seeing this film would conclude that the social cost of banning abortion is too great. Those who would turn back the clock to those pre-Wainer days should go see this film and remind themselves what barbaric options women will take should abortion go underground again.

The only other film I can recall that tackles similar territory to this film was Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake. Both films are very different. Leigh’s film takes the perspective of the abortionist, a caring woman who performs what she considers an important social function for which she is punished. Vera Drake is more stylised than 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. It is a powerful film, but is topped by this newer film.

Mungiu’s film is more realist, and takes the perspective of the pregnant woman (or rather the friend assisting the pregnant woman). The abortionist in the film, Mr. Bebe, is portrayed dispassionately and reasonably objectively. Some may see him as a pig of a man, greedy and uncaring. Some I have spoken to got that impression. I like Mungiu’s use of ambiguity. Mr. Bebe saw himself as a nice enough person and, while I don’t think he was as nice and altruistic as he may have like to convince himself, I do think there was some honorable intention there. Each viewer can ponder this.

The cultural aspect of the film is fascinating. The way individuals interact with each other, particularly on a professional level, affirms many films made in different communist countries at different times, by different directors and of different genres. When one person serves another in a shop or hotel, there is at best indifference or at worst contempt, rather than the service mentality that we expect. Bureacracy is everywhere and with it, distrust and demands for identity papers for nearly every trivial transaction.

The black market is everywhere in the film. People trade with a nod and a wink. Kent cigarettes are high in demand, and people go to great lengths and pay a small fortune to get them (it cost more for a packet of Kent as it did for a hotel room for a night). Perhaps it was an image thing.

Mungiu has stated that his film is not a critique of communism, but just a backdrop for a very personal story – the film depicts the experience of a friend of his. The credits in the film refer to Tales from the Golden Era, which seems at least a little sarcastic about life under communism.

Having seen the film twice (and it was at least as compelling on the second viewing), I found it interesting to note the way the relationship between the two women changes over the course of a day. The closing dialogue was one of the most poignant yet quietly understated endings I have seen in a film for a long time.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a profoundly moving and physically affecting film. It is social-realist film making at it’s very best. This is one of the best films of the year and I highly recommend it.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is screening exclusively at the Palace Como cinema and opens on Thursday.