The Week in Review - 11/4/10

I can't believe I saw ten films this week. I'm not working at present and had four days where I saw 2 films each day. This was also partly due to Easter and partly because of the Festival of German Films preview screenings (I'm posting separately about these).

The stand-out of the week is Animal Kingdom, which will definitely make my top 10 of the year. This film is going to sweep the AFI awards this year and is as good a film as Samson and Delilah. The only other new release so far this year that is every bit as good is Jacques Audiard's A Prophet/Un prophète. It seems that Madman are trying some new strategies in their marketing and invited a small number of reviewers - mostly bloggers and those with a web presence - to a screening ahead of the media preview. The film has lingered and consumed me more than any film has for a long time. I'll post my review on it separately in a day or two.

La Mirada ended, and I attended the final screening, not realising it was the closing night film. It cost me $24, and I didn't stay for the after-party - ouch! But The Swindlers (part of Almodóvar Presents) is a lot of fun and it was great to see this film, screened for the first time in Australia.

FILMS:

• Atraco a las tres (Robbery at 3 O'Clock, José María Forqué, Spain, 1962)
• Welcome (Philippe Lioret, France, 2009)
• The Eclipse (Conor McPherson, Ireland, 2009)
• Figuring Landscapes: Enactment (Patricia Piccinini, Ben Rivers, Margaret Tait, George Barber, Tammy Honey, UK/Australia, 2008)
• Animal Kingdom (David Michôd, Australia, 2010)
• Kick-Ass (Matthew Vaughn, USA/UK, 2010)
• Whisky mit Wodka (Whisky with Vodka, Andreas Dresen, Germany, 2009)
• Die Wölfe: Nichts kann uns trennen (The Wolves of Berlin: Part One - Nothing Can Part Us, Friedemann Fromm, Germany, 2009)
• Los tramposos (The Swindlers, Pedro Lazaga, Spain, 1959)
  

DVD:

• Schwerkraft (Gravity, Maximilian Erlenwein, Germany, 2009)

Robbery at 3 O'Clock
The Spanish academic who introduced this film mentioned it is widely regarded as the best Spanish comedy ever. Well, claims like that are always debatable, aren't they? It's largely a matter of taste. I don't know if I'd put it on such a high pedestal, but I can understand why historically it might be considered with high regard. After all, a film needs to be considered in the context of when it was made, something that described in the introduction.

Spain in 1962 was a pretty dark place. It was more than twenty years into a dictatorship that capped off a long and devastating civil war. This film gave the Spanish some ray of light, some joy and it is a lot of fun to follow a rag-tag bunch of bank employees plot to rob the branch they work in. The film's opening sequence makes clear what its influences are with a dialogue-free sequence that is pure Charlie Chaplin farce.

I imagine the film would be more enjoyable for a Spanish speaker, who would better understand the nuances of the language - apparently some of the dialogue was absorbed into popular Spanish culture at the time. The film makes a slight swipe at the government at the start of the film but is otherwise largely apolitical. We were told that this was the film's Australian premiere and was part of Almodóvar Presents at La Mirada.

Welcome
There's something distinctly unsatisfying about this film, and it nagged me most of the way throughout its length. It's one of the films from the French Film Festival 2010 that I decided (fortunately) to wait for its theatrical release. I've heard mixed things about it, and I'm definitely in the camp of the disappointed.

I was similarly disappointed with Lioret's previous Je vais bien, ne t'en fais pas/Don't Worry, I'm Fine which at least had the benefit of a quietly simmering performance by the wonderful Mélanie Laurent. Both films tend towards earnestness, overly so. They both have an arthouse aesthetic, both with human issues, but the issues are too overt - especially in Welcome.

Welcome, I'm sure you're aware, is about a young Iraqi who has found his way to France and is wanting to get to England to join his girlfriend. Failing to cross by truck, he meets up with a swim coach, learns to swim and plans to swim the English Channel. On the one hand, the film draws attention to the far-right neo-fascist policies of Nicolas Sarkozy, that would have been adored by John Howard, that criminalise any citizens that assist refugees in any way. I agree with the left-leaning (ie, social/humanist) policies the film is endorsing, but I don't need it thrust down my throat so overtly. Michael Winterbottom did it much more successfully (and seriously) with his In This World (2002), a much more timely film.

Lioret's film is much safer, clearly designed to appeal to a more mainstream audience - not that there's anything wrong that per se. It's just that with an added element of a domestic story, it all feels more than a little contrived, melodramatic and overtly appealing to our heart strings (especially with the use of music). It's the sort of film that probably did well at the French Film Festival or, post-festival, with the prime Palace demographic.

Another problem for me is Vincent Lindon in the main role of swim coach. Maybe it's my prejudice, but I don't like his looks for a role like this. He often plays a Mr. Everyman, which is what's asked for here. The trouble is, he doesn't come across as a Mr. Everyman. His acting is quite wooden, his face is largely expressionless and he has too narrow a range to effectively portray his character in this film. About the only roles I find him effective in are as a criminal. Otherwise, I normally see the actor and not the character.

For me, a film that exemplifies a much more satisfying depiction of an 'issue' is Michael Haneke's Caché/Hidden in which an Algerian massacre in France takes backseat to a contemporary story filled with ambiguity. Haneke assumes his audience will 'get it' without being preached to like Lioret's film does.

The Eclipse
This is quite a decent and thought-provoking film from the Republic of Ireland, set and filmed in Cobh, Cork County. Michael (Ciarán Hinds) is a single father grieving for his deceased wife. Hinds' is perfect for the role and his performance is spot on. He has a melancholy presence that conveys a repressed emotional burden. All is not perfect in his world, and a ghostly presence seems to be lingering. Is it his wife? Has Michael not let go of her? Or is it his elderly father-in-law, still alive, but on the precipice?

The film is not conventional horror - which is largely puerile, aiming at a teenage demographic. It's not really an adult ghost story, either. It crosses genres and really stands up predominantly as drama. The supernatural elements take up a small proportion of the film's screen time, but add an ever-present ambiance that looms in the background. The naturalistic lighting, tending towards darkish, accentuates the sombreness.

Michael is a regular volunteer at the local writers festival, during which he finds himself driving around the celebrated English author of The Eclipse, a book about ghostly experiences by the attractive author Lena Morelle (Iben Hjelje). Michael has the perfect opportunity to talk about the disturbing phenomena in his house, but is reluctant to completely open up. This scenario is perfect for a slow burn drama as various intertwining relationships unfold, involving another celebrated writer, Nicholas Holden (Aidan Quinn).

The performances of the lead characters are all strong all and the story is multi-layered, covering various themes, including grief, lettting to, celebrity and human relationships in general. If anything, it could be accused of being slightly over-ambitious to its detriment, but this is a minor complaint.

Michael's role as driver gives the film the opportunity to display the Irish countryside and townships, and these visuals of the architecture and scenery are just superb, without being postcard cliches. It's one of the things I love about world cinema, experiencing other places in some small way.

The supernatural element is used with restraint for the most part - The Others comes to mind, but that film was much more ghost-orientated. So horror film buffs might be disappointed. The Eclipse really aims at a more conventional arthouse audience with its solid dramatic themes, with the supernatural more an interesting variance on the genre.

As an aside, for me ghosts are a given, something I've experienced for as far back as my memory allows (at least since age two). I've never seen ghosts depicted in cinema quite as I've experienced them, but that's because I've never seen them physically but rather sensed them, or 'seen' them by my 'third eye'.

It's hard to convey, but there was a ghost that regularly visited me in my dreams all throughout my childhood. In my sleep, he assumed a form like a wolf and would breathe up close onto my dream body's face - a sort of dream within a dream. His breath stank like fish and hearing him would scare me. If, within my dream, I realised that my dream body was not real and it was just a dream, eventually he would go away. Mostly though, he would fool me and if my dream self woke up, them my real self would also wake up and I would have wet the bed. This continued until around age ten.

I was living interstate at age 23 when this same entity visited me again, when I was travelling away from home. I instantly recognised him when he appeared in my dream and, without waking up, I threatened him and he quickly disappeared. I later learned that there is no need for threats because ghosts are very insecure and will leave if asked to. Since that time, on the rare occasions when I've senses another entity, I've done just and they have always left without incident.

Actually, when I was nineteen years old, I was attacked by a ghost when I was sleeping under the stars along the Nullabor Plain. I was just drifting into sleep when I saw shooting stars which, according to Indian belief, are a bad omen. Fear gripped me at a vulnerable time and the next thing I knew, an entity was choking me. I warded it off mentally and it disappeared, leaving me a little traumatised.

I still sometimes sense entities around at night when I'm going to bed and often do a mental visualisation to protect myself. This involves asking all uninvited guests to please leave and any well-wishers may remain. Call them guardian angels if you like, but I have seen them while wide awake. I understand those without similar experiences may find this kooky or superstitious; for me it's just a innate part of my understanding and contributes to my perspective of life and death, something I alluded to in my post 'A Change of Plans'.

For the best part of thirty years, I've been left pretty much alone by ghosts or entities. I don't really call them ghosts, which implies they're a different type of being to us. The term 'entity' seems more appropriate - I see them as being people like you or I, but unembodied for whatever reason). I attribute my being left alone to my coming into my own power, understanding them and understanding myself relative to them.

Figuring Landscapes: Enactment
What can I say - experimental/conceptual art cinema usually does nothing for me. I thought I'd give this a go, but it was the same. So far, I haven't been able to penetrate that space.

Kick-Ass
A lot has been written about this very entertaining film. Some of the superlatives have been over the top, but it definitely is one of the best in its class. It's certainly not what the marketing of the film would have you believe it is. While the writing is very good, I think the film's success is the amazing performance and sneering charisma of the then eleven year old Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl. She steals the show and it wouldn't be the same without her. And even Nicholas Cage gives a decent performance (something he hasn't done since Adaptation and Bringing Out the Dead).

The Swindlers
This is a nice little vintage gem from the vaults of Spanish cinema, beautifully rendered in colour. Pedro Almodóvar selected this film for La Mirada and I can see how its "sardonic humour" (as festival director Rocio Garcia described it) would be right up his alley. It's right up mine, too. Three friends collude to con people out of money by any means they can but go straight to win the affections of a girl. The script is sharp, the performances good and the ending is just great.

The Week in Review - 28/3/10

The offerings at the cinema are so thin at the moment. I did a bit of research and worked out a few films worth seeing at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, but couldn't work any of them into my schedule. Weekends I've been busy with family and weekdays the screenings just haven't been convenient times. So, I've resorted to DVD: three of them this week.

FILMS:

• A Single Man (Tom Ford, USA, 2009)
• Daguerréotypes (Agnès Varda, France/West Germany, 1975)
• Yo también (Me, Too, Alvaro Pastor/Antonio Naharro, Spain, 2009)
  
• How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlouis/Chris Sanders, USA, 2010)

DVD:

• The Terminator (James Cameron, USA/UK, 1984)
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, USA/France, 1991)
• Funny Ha Ha (Andrew Bujalski, USA, 2002)

A Single Man
I was planning not to see this film, because the trailer gave the impression that Firth was reprising his glum role in Winterbottom's effective though unremarkable Genova. However, reading Lynden Barber's post on the film, I decided to give it a try and wasn't disappointed.

Yes, Firth is reprising that role, more or less. People have raved about his performance, which is perhaps the best I've seen him - not that that's saying much because he normally imitates a door. Too much is made of an actor's ability to induce tears before the camera. It might be impressive, but it sometimes becomes little more than a party trick (and I'm thinking of Penelope Cruz here).

In this film's case, the acting is fine. What makes the film so watchable, however, is all to do with the film's construct and style and less to do with the acting. I kept thinking of Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - the unconventional approach to how the image is framed and how the story is constructed. The visuals all serve to suck you into the emotions of the story. I don't think it's a substantial film, but definitely worth watching for its unconventionality. It could be accused of style over substance, but I'd say the style is the substance.

Link: Audio interview with Tom Ford

Daguerréotypes
Agnès Varda, documentary, need I say more? The micro-level capturing of a local community, of a life-style perhaps long gone is rivetting. It mirrors thousands or perhaps millions of similar experiences world-wide. I love this woman's work and will jump at any opportunity to see more of it on the big screen. It screened at Melbourne Cinémathèque.

Me, Too
This is the opening night film of La Mirada Film Festival, my favourite Melbourne festival after MIFF and the French Film Festival. It's a curious film in its own right, and moreso as an opening night film - in fact, I'd call that gutsy programming. It blends elements of romantic comedy and black comedy, but is mostly social drama made in a manner that is accessible for a relatively mainstream audience.

Me, Too is unashamedly an 'issue' film, championing the cause of those with Down Syndrome. The story largely follows Daniel (Pablo Pineda) who starts his first job at age 34 in a government social services agency having just completed his university degree. The film challenges preconceptions of those with the condition. The actor factually has it and yet is able to effectively portray the intellect, characteristics and abilities of such a person. It's an impressive accomplishment and certainly challenged my notions.

Laura (Lola Dueñas) is a co-worker with issues of her own that form a tangential story. Both characters are social misfits of very different sorts, and very different backgrounds. While their pairing, so to speak, adds a populist slant to the film, it also serves to further challenge the audience, and there's some anticipation where their relationship might or might not go.

I don't think I'm quite the target audience for Me, Too but found it quite enjoyable nonetheless and appreciated the challenging nature of the story. It's quite ambitious, which is a good thing, but leaves the director with quite a number of threads to manage at the end, which gives the film a slightly overlong ending.

Me, Too opens the La Mirada Film Festival on Thursday 1 April at ACMI. The festival runs to 11 April.

How to Train Your Dragon
This is quite a likeable film, if you're part of the target market. My 9 year old son has read five of the books in the series and he thoroughly enjoyed it. It's not completely faithful to the source material, but is true to the spirit (on his say so - I've not read any of them). I like that the film doesn't market itself on any 'name' actors. The voice actors are all thoroughly competent and enjoyable without a single Tom Hanks, Mike Myers, George Clooney, Cameron Diaz or Miley Cyrus among them - thank god. I usually find the use of celebrities for voice actors a distraction.

This is a Dreamworks production, so you know it's going to be fairly conventional and mainstream. It's full of cliches, but that's not a negative. It is aimed at fans of the book and its lovely visuals don't disappoint - some of the scenes are quite reminiscent of Avatar. For what it's worth, my son gives it five out of five stars, but in his words, "dragons are my favourite fantasy creature". I think it's a good film for primary school age children and younger, and parents should find it enjoyable enough.

The Terminator
I first watched this on video in the early 90s and was struck by the power of the story, and still am. Much has dated in the film, but not necessarily to its detriment. The clothing, hair, makeup, music and colloquialisms all reveal a certain period. The film's special effects are the most dated, but I'm inclined to cut some slack here, because the film has to be looked at in context of time. Just like King Kong (1933) - the SFX are a joke by today's standards, but because the story is so good, and the film employs the best technology of its time, there's a certain reverence one may have for it (well, I do).

Arnie and Linda Hamilton are both so young in this flick, and little is done to Arnie to endear him to us. His hair style is terrible and basically he's just an unstoppable killing machine. There's something particularly terrifying about his character, a cyborg that will stop at nothing, neither bullets, fire nor explosions. His is a primal stereotype, the stuff of nightmares, more like the stuff of the horror genre - like say a zombie or vampire, only scarier. Perhaps this is one of the reasons this story works so well - it combines science fiction with drama, action, suspense and its own brand of horror. As Sarah Connor says, you could go crazy thinking about the logic (because ultimately the logic of it fails), but it's a great concept nonetheless.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Perhaps it's my 52" flat screen television, or my improved powers of observation because this film - long my favourite in the genre (action/SFX/sci-fi) - betrayed flaws I hadn't seen previously. Mind you, it's been many years since I saw this last. The technology has dated compared to what's currently available to film-makers, but it still holds up extremely well. Unlike similar types of films today, the SFX are used gratuitously, in a showy manner to showcase the technology without necessarily furthering the narrative. Hollow Man (2000) is a classic example of this.

In T2, Cameron employs the technology sparingly, only when needed. The story is always first and when the SFX appear, they are so organic to the narrative that one can't help but be impressed and absorbed in what's transpiring.

With what's available now, the SFX in T2 are not as impressive now, and one can see the 'seams' that weren't so obvious nearly twenty years ago. Like Arnie's character cutting his arm, or the face damaged by bullets (sometimes it's his face with prosthetics over the top, other times it's actually a mask).

Watching both Terminator films back-to-back (and for me, the franchise ends with the second), the humour stands out in spite of the terror. Both films have parallel trajectories and often parallel incidents. For example, Arnie appears first in both (obviously a trick in the second), getting clothes from punks in the first and bikies in the second. When Arnie throws the bikie onto the stove, it's like the blackest of black humour to see this guy burning himself. Yet when we next see Arnie in his clothes, they're all immaculate, like they're straight off the racks, all to the tune of "Bad to the Bone". It's quite a blast, really.

For the integrity of the franchise, they really should have stopped at 2. I saw 3 and it was just a shadow of the originals, milking blood out of a stone. I didn't even bother with Terminator Salvation. T2 is a very rare example of a sequel bettering the original, though on these viewings, I thought that T1 has bridged some of the gap. When I want to see a blockbuster, this is how I like to see them done.

Funny Ha Ha
This Bujalski film is reputedly the first of what is now known as mumblecore, a so-called movement of independent film-making. It seems to borrow heavily from the aesthetics, narrative style and low-budgets of John Cassavetes' work as well as the so-called Dogme school (without the rules). I can't say I'm a big fan of some Dogme but I do love Cassavetes' films. Unsurprisingly, the elements of the film that seem to borrow more from Dogme bother me while the strengths of the film have more in common with Cassavetes.

The devices that initially gave me reservations are the deliberate camera shake, the sometimes poor sound and the unusual framing characters often have part or all of their heads cut off. These were initially distracting but as the story and character development unfolded, I developed some empathy and emotional engagement and the distraction reduced. It didn't go away completely, but I started thinking about what is Bujalski trying to achieve.

Is it a variation of cinéma vérité, where we're taking a fly-on-the-wall perspective, as if we're present but obscured to the characters in some way? Or is Bujalski skewing the camera, in a sense like what Hal Hartley does with his camera rotations, albeit differently - in this case pointing the camera down slightly? Is he challenging the audience, and its conventional expectations of how a picture should look? Or just being different, to differentiate himself? Or trying to create a different aesthetic, consciously emulating Dogme? Maybe it's a bit of all of the above. I reserve my judgements for now and would like more exposure to mumblecore in general and Bujalski in particular.

I find it hard to believe that the sound could not have been better, without too much cost or effort. This appears to be an example of true guerilla film-making (ie, making it as cheaply and quickly as possible) and/or it's deliberately compromising (ie, reducing) the quality at times to disguise the genuine flaws.

The grainy 16mm film has a nice grungy aesthetic, and despite the high level of emotional honesty and social realism, some care has gone into the visuals with the use of colour and frame composition that I found enjoyable to watch. The story itself is well told. We follow Marnie, a 24 year old who loses her job, pines for someone who seems just out of reach and basically is struggling to find her place in an adult world. She parties and hangs out with her friends but, despite her attractiveness (think Natalie Portman), appears onely and confused. I don't think its fair to call this a slacker film, partly because the characters are not true slackers and partly because of the degree of realism is so Cassavetes-esque (think of the part that alcohol plays in his films).

I like that such an engaging film can be made on clearly a very low budget - perhaps some will find it too much like a student film. I also like that it addresses the very real and contemporary concerns of a particular demographic, which unsurprisingly is the demographic of the director (who plays a not insignificant role in the film, as a potential love interest), namely the early to mid twenties. In this sense, it serves as a kind of document, a documentary-like film very much unlike anything typically made about or for this demographic.

The film has a chastity you mightn't expect. Love and yearning are a strong theme, and mixed with excesses in alcohol, one wouldn't be too surprised where this could leave. There is no explicit sex or sexuality and little more than a kiss on-screen. The use of profanity is also very minimal, an element that is all the more noticeable when it occasionally occurs. This is much more representative of the middle-America it depicts than the populist Hollywood cinema that wildly exaggerates profanity. While we in Australia think we know American culture through TV and cinema, the real America does not engage in public cussing and sex as depicted in the media.

I did watch Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation on the (very) big screen at the Astor a while ago, but didn't appreciate it at the time (pun not intended) - perhaps my consequent discovery of Cassavetes helps me to better understand his work now. I thought this film might be a bit raw (aesthetically) for the missus, but she also likes it. For now, I hold on to my above-mentioned reservations about mumblecore and look forward to discovering more. Funny Ha Ha seems like a good place to start. It offers hope that a new generation of 'indie' film-makers is emerging.