The Week in Review

What a week of contrasts: Monday I saw what I consider the year's best mainstream release (by the Coens brothers), to date at least. Yes, even better than Cronenberg's Eastern Promises. And Friday gave me one of the year's worst: Tell No One. My Alliance Française classes are over for 2007 (I've completed 3 terms), so it was good to get three French films in during the week.

FILMS:

• No Country For Old Men (Ethan Coen & Joel Coen, USA, 2007)
• The Wild One (Lásló Benedek , USA, 1953)
• The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, USA, 1980)
• Ne le dis à personne (Tell No One, Guillaume Canet, France, 2006)
• 2 Days in Paris (Julie Delpy, France, 2007)
• Ensemble, c'est tout (Hunting and Gathering, Claude Berri, France, 2007)
  

No Country For Old Men
"The best Coen brothers film since Fargo" is the general buzz by Melbourne critics about No Country For Old Men. Utter crap! This film absolutely leaves Fargo way behind and is easily the best film Ethan and Joel Coen have made (at least among the ones I've seen, which admittedly is about half of them). Impatient audiences may prefer Fargo's pace, but this is a much more confident, masterful and mature offering.

The character development is excellent, with some actors playing against type and some with. The film messes with expectations, but in a natural, fluid manner. Like many Coen brothers films, it's about violent crime, and how things often go to plan. And, as someone pointed out to me, the lengths people will go to over money. Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is an everyman who stumbles upon $2 million of drug money and a bunch of dead guys. He makes a choice which leads him down a dangerous path.

The film is kind of like a cross between both of Cronenberg's latest two films, and Eastern Promises and A History of Violence, as well as Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. The film is shot in similar country to the latter, and Jones puts in a similarly performance. Those lines in his face just keep getting deeper and he really portrays a weary lawman with conviction. One reviewer compared him to a character in a Sam Peckinpah movie.

The action in the film is thrilling, the violence chilling, but more than that, the suspense is excellent (many comparing it to the expertise of Hitchcock). The dialogue is great, but the confidence the Coens show by restraint, often using just the visuals is a joy to watch. I'm a big fan of Cronenberg, but this film is easily better than Eastern Promises (which I liked a lot), and I consider No Country For Old Men the best mainstream release of the year (thus far). I'm going to see it again when it gets its Boxing Day release.

The Wild One
There's not much I can say about this classic other than I enjoyed it a lot. Screening as part of the Lee Marvin season at Melbourne Cinémathèque, it was great to see Marvin in such a screwball role (a beatnik biker gang leader). How society has changed! This film was banned in several countries in its day for its subversion. Marvin pairs off against rival gang leader, famously played by Marlon Brando, in one of the roles that has made him a legend. Marvin has the best role, though.

The Big Red One
The Big Red One was a personal project for Sam Fuller, who had fought in all the major campaigns depicted in the film as part of the US First Infantry. Armed with this piece of information gave me a heightened appreciation of the heart that went into the film's making. There's a underlying sense of futility of war, and the film's connecting theme at the start and finish is quite poignant. I don't think the film is the masterpiece that some find it, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.


Tell No One
125 painful minutes. That's what I endured, though it seemed much longer. I didn't have high expectations, but as the film's farce (unintended, I assure you) unfolded, the film pushes suspension of disbelief to a ridiculous level. Basically, it's an English who-dunnit crossed with a very mediocre Hollywood thriller, with a French flavour. The soundtrack is all English-speaking (including Jeff Buckley and U2), so presumably the film was made for either an international audience (think Palace cinemas, and the oft-mediocre French films screened) or the mainstream French audiences who like Hollywood films.

There are so many things to fault in this film that I couldn't even begin to try to list them, but some do stand out. The convoluted layer upon layer of unbelievable plot development and hackneyed characters, the gratuitous nudity, the childhood lovers (at 9, kissing like adults) who have a 15 year age difference in middle-age (he 45, her 30), the stereotypical bad guys, the convenient plot setups, the bad dialogue... should I go on? Nah, just suffice to say that after about 20 minutes I was looking at my watch, and at 45 minutes I was thinking it must be coming to an end (only to be disappointed to see how little time had passed). It just goes on and on and bored me shitless. But, it did have a great car crash sequence on a highway that looked magnificent.

2 Days in Paris
Set in Paris, with a French-born (but now US-based) director/actress and French-produced, 2 Days in Paris is really a US-style romantic comedy, but not puerile like most that genre produces. Delpy has adopted or absorbed some of the Linklater style used with Delpy in both Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, in much the same way that Hal Hartley's influence on Adrienne Shelly can be seen in her directorial effort with Waitress. Yet, with both actress/directors, they have put their own mark on their respective films.

Like Linklater, Delpy has written a story in which there is much dialogue, and much of it is quite sharp and intelligent. The characters in 2 Days are not dissimilar to Linklater's characters, but the rest of the film is otherwise quite different. I was particularly impressed with Delpy's not exploiting her own asset of beauty and looked mostly un-made up for most of the film. It enabled us to absorb her character without that distraction and gave the film a more authentic and naturalistic feel.

The film is a kind of 'meeting-the-parents', as the two lovers finish off a European trip with a 2 day stopover in Paris before returning home in New York. Delpy captures the dynamics of the cultural and language difference quite nicely. Delpy's real life parents (both veteran actors) put in excellent turns as her stage parents. Her father portrays an art gallery owner, and his actual art is seen in the film.

This film is not high art by any stretch of the imagination, but in a genre which typically aims for the lowest common denominator, both in the US and France, 2 Days in Paris is quite a refreshing change. It is quite an accomplishment by Delpy who not only wrote, directed and starred in the film, but also edited and composed the music (we hear her vocals over the final credits).

I found the hand-held camera a bit distracting at times. For the life of me, I can't understand the OFLC's MA classification. The only part that could have been considered offensive in any way was some of the art was sexual in nature. This is puritanism gone stupid.

Hunting and Gathering
I didn't really know anything about this film but went because it is French (and want to practice my listening skills) and because I like Audrey Tatou. Yes, I'm one of those that liked Amélie, and liked it a lot. Perhaps more so because I saw it several months before its release and knew nothing about it. It was so heavily marketed that I think it would have spoiled the magic for me had I seen it later.

I've liked Audrey Tatou in just about everything I've seen her in, and while her performance is OK in this film, I just couldn't get into the film at all. It's the kind of middle-of-the-road French romantic drama that does really well at the French film festival or a release at the Como. It's about young people looking for sex and love, and finding it in unlikely places. Hunting and Gathering goes through all the hackneyed motions, without offering anything new. It's the kind of film the occasional film-goer can go to on a Saturday evening with a lover or with friends as a social event, have a good time and forget before the night is over. The ending looked like it might improve, but then turned feel-good for everyone. That totally spoiled it for me.

MIFF Day 8

After a quiet day yesterday, I saw another three films today and it was a real mixed bag. Nothing stood out particularly, but it's great to have the variety. I'm sure for most people who attend many festival screenings, variety is what it's all about.

Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2004)
Nobody Knows opens to the statement that while based on real events, the characters in the film are all fictitious. The film is a totally unsentimental portrayal of a mother's abandoning her children in an apartment to fend for themselves while she moves elsewhere with her lover. While the film's narrative is grim, in reality it was much worse.

While Kore-eda's Maborosi is a gentle meditative film with many sweeping shots of natural beauty, Nobody Knows is largely confined to the claustrophobic confines of a small Tokyo apartment that the children have been instructed by the mother to keep to. While the two films are visually different, they unsurprisingly share a common aesthetic, Kore-eda preferring to let the visuals do the talking. His style is very observational, the camera capturing many seemingly mundane details, perhaps reflecting his start in film with documentaries.

Kore-eda doesn't artificially build up the drama by, for example, the use of manipulative devices like music to portray the increasingly dire situation of the children. He trusts the audience to take note of the film's narrative, and to understand themselves that these children are in desperate need of help. The escalating measures taken by the children, and the increasing squalor said it all. The naturalistic performances by the children in the film were excellent and Yagira Yuya, then 14, won best actor award at Cannes 2004. As I wrote about Maborosi, this film rewards the patient viewer but could well be boring for the casual movie-goer.

Nobody Knows had a single screening at MIFF as part of the Hirokazu Kore-eda retrospective. Also still to be screened: Hana (Kore-eda's most recent film, which has two screenings), Distance, & After Life. Official website.

The Hottest State (Ethan Hawke, USA, 2006)
This was a surprisingly competent first film by Ethan Hawke as director. While it covers fairly safe territory - a romantic drama - it does it with nice visuals and some originality. While the protagonist William (Mark Webber) is a bit of a slacker, he was introspective enough to try to resolve some of his own issues when his lover Sarah (Catalina Sandino Moreno) splits and leaves him broken hearted. The fact that this was tackled from the male perspective, and grappled with some psychological insight gave the film some gravitas. Mind you, how deeply a twenty-one year old can delve into his psyche is another thing.

I found the film quite enjoyable, more than superficial, but still largely in the "middle-of-the-road" category - not that that's a bad thing. The cinematography was great, and there were nice camera angles. The music was nice but sometimes a little intrusive. While it's the type of film that's likely to do well at Sundance (maybe it has, I don't know), it's a lot better than the quirky comedies like Little Miss Sunshine et al. This film could do well on general release and was an OK film to add some variation to my MIFF viewings, but nothing to rave about. A good first effort by Hawke (who is also a guest speaker at the festival).

The Hottest State screened as part of MIFF's International Panorama. It has no further screenings at MIFF.

I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (Hei yan quan, Tsai Ming-Liang, Malaysia/China/Taiwan/France/Austria, 2006)
This is a strange film, very strange, and not the type of film to get a release outside of a festival. There was virtually no dialogue for two hours - mostly visuals with background noises and music (played in the scene, not dubbed over). We see various strugglers on the streets and buildings of Malaysia and get a strong sense of alienation.

The film is almost a photo essay, constructed largely of beautifully composed shots of urban decay. There's the flooded building site, modest abodes, a huge butterfly and the surrealist streets choked in smoke from Indonesian bushfires. The film challenges an audience's patience and I was surprised there were only a few walkouts. My partner left after 90 minutes, and shortly after a little more action started to appear. A sex scene affected by the smoke was amusing. The final take is particularly poignant and poetic. The film is not something I would generally recommend, but if you like something unusual during a festival, it might be worth a look in. Just be prepared to be patient.

I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone screened as part of MIFF's Neighbourhood Watch. It screens again on Sunday 5 August at 5.15pm at the RMIT Capitol Theatre.

Links: Index of MIFF films reviewed to date / MIFF website