LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2005

These comments all appeared on a blog I created for the Festival, which is why they're so rushed and inadequate. In fact I find many of them embarrassing, which is why I've transferred them to the site so I can add a bit more substance when/if I re-watch the films in question. You're welcome. 

[Addendum: This page now simplified because apparently it wasn't working on Mozilla. If you want the full formatting, incl. the comments which are what I'm responding to in many cases, the blog itself should still be up at http://theofest.blogspot.com]

October 29

Festival over, back to the grind. More to come...

AMERICAN MADNESS (Frank Capra, 1932) (66)

[This would've been my second viewing of THE PASSENGER but it completely sold out one of the flagship Leicester Square theatres, with dozens of people (incl. me) having to be turned away. Go, cryptic glacially-paced Euro-art!]

BUBBLE (Steven Soderbergh) (72)
Soderbergh's a genius, but his films all feel like exercises; his genius lies in the problems he keeps setting himself, and the ease with which he solves them. Here it's the line between reality and unreality - specifically the Lynchian unreality of mundane small-town lives - visualised in a kind of stylistic schizophrenia: the style is affectless, matching the content (vending machines, mustard-yellow walls, a sign reading "Customer Orientation"), yet the style also erupts at intervals - first in a gratuitous wide-angle pan (the most 'unreal' of moves, literally twisting the fabric of the image), then a series of extreme close-ups when the heroine goes to church, a red flag alerting us to her inner life. If she's super-religious she doesn't show it - but of course that's the point, people living in a bubble so they never see the bigger picture (their life, we're explicitly told, is like the life of a doll); something awful happens and we - who can see the bigger picture - are encouraged to sift for clues, like a cinematic game of 'Where's Waldo?' (was it jealousy? religious mania? remember the way she stopped chewing when the girl revealed she was a single mother?), but of course it remains unexplained. There's a constant tension in the way Soderbergh views these people - they're allowed dignity and feeling, but the film is very aloof and doesn't exactly sympathise; they're not mocked, Solondz-style, but some scenes are played for laughs (it's quite reminiscent of FARGO); it's a character piece about Ordinary People, but shot almost entirely in impersonal wide- and medium-shot. The result manages to be utterly banal and utterly strange, which is pretty much the idea; one shot seems to reference Edward Hopper - his famous painting of someone sitting in a bar behind an awning, seen from out in the street - and I think that's what he's trying for, that sense of quotidian anomie as autistic poetry. Cold but brilliant, and only a genius could've got those performances out of non-pros. 

DESOLATION ROW': Avant-Garde Program
For Them Ending (Jonathan Schwartz)
Neptune's Release: A Shot in the Dark (Joell Hallowell, Jacalyn White)
The Bleeding Heart of It All [L'Eclat du Mal] (Louise Bourque)
Terrace 49 (Janie Geiser)
The Two Minutes to Zero Trilogy (Lewis Klahr) (*)
Trilogy About Clouds (Naoyuki Tsuji)
nostalgia (april 2001 to present) (Christina Battle) 

(*): I know some people - actually it's more like one person - consider this one of the greatest films of the 00s, so I feel I ought to say something. I basically had two problems here, which were (a) the first segment ("Two Days to Zero"?) felt repetitive, and I couldn't see why the awesome juxtaposition of judder-cam and dreamy 60s pop needed to be stretched out to 20 minutes (beyond the fact that it was, in fact, awesome); and (b) it felt like the 'narrative' should be getting clearer as we moved towards the Moment of Truth, but in fact I was just as hazy on the details after "Two Minutes" as I was after "Days"; if Klahr is playing on the impulse to construct a narrative out of related fragments (itself an act of textual violence), as we do in comic-books and of course in movies, shouldn't a narrative in fact be constructed? That said, there were several bits when the juddering was perfectly in sync with the music that were blissful and (surprisingly) a real adrenalin rush - the music harnesses the judder or something, the violence of the camera-move gets gloved by the phrase of music so it feels more potent (yet the music is gentle so the feeling isn't corrupted; it's luxurious, like a ride in a powerful car). I'm rambling; still, I dug this movie.

SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE (William Greaves, 1968) (82)
Wow. Who knew, etc.

October 28

KISS KISS BANG BANG (dir., Shane Black) (75) (second viewing: 73)
A movie-nerd movie, but it's the breadth of Black's references that makes it so exuberant - not just what came out last year but Mike Hammer novels, Chandler chapter-headings, "my friend Flicka" (!), Robocop, 60s-style credits and THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. Also of course his riff on CHINATOWN - a film with classic private-eye trappings that's about an innocent wising up (only this time it's a finger rather than a nose that gets bandaged) and also about LA, town of "damaged goods", rampant insincerity and the incestuous ways of the movie industry (incest too - literal and metaphorical - is an echo of CHINATOWN). There's surprising pathos when the childhood friends unexpectedly meet, a long way from Indiana, and she admits with a wry smile "I didn't get famous" - and maybe it's just because the moment is quiet, in a riot of manic energy. Then again I like manic energy, and wild one-liners (Larry Miller using elephant metaphors to explain why lust isn't the first thing that comes to his mind at the sight of a naked man), and self-referential narration, and scripts that develop in ways both rational and delirious, and the kind of congenital smart-ass who takes a cliché like "She's had more guys than she's had hot meals" and turns it into a gag (the hero's grammar also gets corrected on more than one occasion). Downey Jr. screams 'I'm back!' with every fibre of his being, but in this case it's appropriate. Charges of homophobia are understandable, but off the mark I think; certainly, if it makes football-playing heartland teens call each other 'Gay Perry' as a term of affection, that can only be a good thing. [Second viewing, 2 years later - and of course it never did get through to football-playing heartland teens, or anyone else, and watching it now I can see why it flopped. It's a very strange film, shot through with insecurity and even self-loathing, constantly holding itself down; Black has a really dark poignant subject in mind, LA as a town of damaged people corrupted by evil childhoods and (especially) the duplicitous dream of fame and glamour - but every time he starts showing their pain and insecurity he quickly doubles back into smartass machismo (the gay jokes seemed like defence mechanisms this time round, ditto the Guy Ritchie-isms like thugs arguing over proper diction). May have been trying for a LONG GOODBYE, using Chandler trappings as a conduit to character drama, but Altman managed to inhabit those trappings easily and casually whereas Black overdoes them - obsessed with 'entertaining' - and ends up obscuring his own purpose. Full of evasions and mixed messages, which makes it interesting but not wholly successful. Then again, it's also among the funniest action comedies of the past 10 years.]    

FACTOTUM (dir., Bent Hamer) (62)
"If you're going to try [being a writer], go all the way ... It's the only good fight there is". Totally upfront about the Writer as Existential Hero ("My contest is only with myself"), which is just as well since I've always found the Bukowskian wallow in misery - a.k.a. the School of Life - rather tiresome; more low-key than BARFLY, less outrageous, more matter-of-fact, hence more convincing (but less fun). Matt Dillon lumbers like he's doing us a favour just by getting out of bed in the morning, but his world is well-observed with its fleeting encounters ("And I never saw any of them again") and wilful seediness. Exchange that's actually surprisingly true: "People just need love"; "People don't need love; what they need is success of one form or another. Can be love, but it doesn't have to be".

BROKEN FLOWERS (dir., Jim Jarmusch) (53)
Seen in commercial release. Comments to come, eventually.

LOWER CITY (dir., Sergio Machado) (46)
From Mr. Machado's opening comments: He and his co-writer spent about two weeks discussing what the film should be about before starting to write; this is because (he explained) in a country with as many problems as Brazil, what a film is saying should be "as important as a school or a hospital", otherwise the budget would be better spent elsewhere. What LOWER CITY is saying (he added) is that when you first see someone, from a distance, all you notice are the differences between you; after a while though, when you look at them up close, you realise that "the most important things are the same for everyone"; thus, by putting you (the viewer) up close against the hookers and hustlers, it makes you realise they're really Not That Different to You and Me. The film is certainly non-judgmental as a girl hitches a ride on a boat to Salvador with two guys, happily offering her body in part-payment - but then they end up hustling and whoring in the Lower City, the guys fight over the girl, the girl becomes pregnant, various shady characters turn up offering shady deals, etc. There's a decent eye for various kinds of exploitation, but mostly you realise these characters are really Not That Different to a million other movie characters. Those who despised CITY OF GOD for its transformative stylishness, enjoy.

October 27

Due to overwhelming public demand (cheers Dan), it's the Return of the Bloggy Asides! Bloggy Aside 1 concerns the pale middle-aged woman who sat next to me in the internet cafe yesterday, talking really fast in an Irish accent. First I knew of her was when she suddenly turned to me and said: "Excuse me. Could you please stop scratching yourself?". I complied (though I didn't think I was scratching myself), and something about my response obviously pleased her because 10 minutes later, completely out of the blue, she started telling me how she was a victim of identity theft, her former roommate had stolen her personal data, this had been going on for years and the cops refused to help because she (the roommate) was a compulsive liar and always made it look like she (the woman) was imagining things. Stupidly forgetting Big-City Rule #1 - Never Humour an Insane Person - I told her I was sorry for her troubles and her roommate sounded clearly psychotic, like those women who steal someone else's baby when they lose their own (I don't know why I said this; I suspect because I saw it on MARCH OF THE PENGUINS a few days ago). Her eyes lit up and she started bombarding me with questions: Who's lost a baby? Has this happened to someone I know? Why did I mention lost babies? Did I think her roommate might be a closet baby-snatcher? Putting on my smoothest voice and explaining that of course I only meant the same pattern of behaviour, etc, I quickly grabbed my coat and got the hell out of there. Sometimes I think I see her on the subway, trying to catch my eye...

Bloggy (yet somehow Film-Related) Aside 2: For fucksake, not another festival cold! This one isn't as bad as the one that laid me low in Toronto last year but still put a crimp in today's movie-watching, mostly because I keep sniffling and coughing and don't feel like sitting in a crowded theatre for two hours. I know why it happens, of course - at the risk of offering Too Much Information, I've got the whole hairy bearlike thing going and sweat really easily, plus I'm constantly running up and down escalators in the Underground, standing in sweltering trains then walking into the chilly air. Anyway, this is why I missed LEMMING today (I didn't miss much, right guys? right?) and may decide not to see BROKEN FLOWERS tonight. Autumn in England - and/or Canada - sucks in my opinion. This wouldn't happen at the Sao Paulo Festival...

TIME HAS COME (dir., Alain Guiraudie) (61)
OK, looks like Guiraudie's true metier are mad dreamlike things like this and NO REST FOR THE BRAVE, not low-key realism as per THAT OLD DREAM THAT MOVES. Fine with me - I dig his sense of humour - and suffice to say this is a tale of gay French samurai in faux-medieval garb living in the mythical kingdom of Obitania, where the "Warriors" fight the "Bandits" and people talk about ounaye herdsmen, kevara (a drink) and krobans ("Spare me your two-kroban speeches!"). As in NO REST there's a gay couple with a partner in his sixties, a punk-music interlude, and gentle natural light making the most of the video visuals (admittedly I've seen both films on video); everyone has bizarre names and they talk about the possibility of Love in between offbeat action scenes (THAT OLD DREAM wasn't a fluke; Guiraudie's still a humanist, even in outlandish settings). The last two lines - "It's hard to feel comfortable in your own country"; "Look around. You'll see you are not alone" - might be the rallying-cry of a defiantly original filmmaker seeking his niche in a land of Bacris and Jaouis; this one isn't major work, nor does it add up to much, but don't be fooled. He's a huge talent.

THE PLANE (dir., Cedric Kahn)
Watched 55 minutes on DVD, didn't see much evidence of subversion. Boy-and-his-dog picture with a magical plane (possessed by the spirit of a dead father) as pooch, managing a few dark moments - the plane gets angry, and destroys the kitchen; there's a morbid little girl-friend who claims to hear the voices of the dead in the forest at night - but mostly content to work as superior kidpic (my rating was somewhere in the mid-50s). Kahn isn't slumming, though he obv. streamlines his oblique style; there's some striking images of walking to the lab across the fields at night, and a Sign of the Times conversation when the boy asks Mom if Dad's gone to Heaven. "Some people believe that, other people believe other things," she replies multi-denominationally; "I believe he's wherever we want him to be". We live in the Age of the Spiritual Cop-Out...

THE SKY TURNS (dir., Mercedes Alvarez) (67)
Didn't take notes, and missed the first 5 minutes, but the premise is simple enough: Spanish village awaiting its death (there hasn't been a baby born there in decades; the last one was the filmmaker, now grown up and returning to the world of her early childhood). The inhabitants take the long view - philosophical about the end, shrugging that "in 400 years no-one will remember what happened here" - and so does the film, placing the village on a locus of Time and History stretching back to the dinosaurs (almost the first thing we see is a site where dino-bones were uncovered). There's a sense that the people are mere witnesses to their own lives, their spirits already crossed over - like the village itself, looking unearthly in the morning mist, they seem lost to the world; it's a shock when George Bush is mentioned, or the gigantic blades of a wind-power plant appear on a nearby hill - making the film both touchingly elegiac and a little one-dimensional. Almost all the scenes harp on the same theme: memories, ghosts of the past. These people's lives have become truncated, reduced to taking their place between past and future; they're waiting out their time (albeit with dignity and good humour), and the film seldom tries to transcend their quotidian (cf. Terence Davies). Only Art is allowed a way in, preserving what it can; the rest is silence.

October 26

MIRRORMASK (dir., Dave McKean) (71) (second viewing: 70)
In a real (not academic) world where filmmaking is back-breaking work requiring dozens of creative decisions per writing/directing hour, it seems faintly obscene to dismiss this densely-packed kidpic with a shrug while praising something like TEN SKIES [see below] - even though SKIES is conceptually fascinating and this is conceptually not much more than an Attitude-laden 00s riff on THE NEVERENDING STORY. Early-teen fantasy elements drag it down, ditto a slightly alarming subtext whereby heroine's best chance to help ailing mother is not growing up (!) - her evil-twin, parallel-dimension self is snogging boys, smoking and being rude to parents, therefore must be defeated if Good is to triumph. Trust comic-book writers to come up with a regressive Message (McKean and cohort Neil Gaiman are among the few comix names even non-comix people like me have heard of), though also trust them to create a parade of dreamlike visuals - a collage-faced sphinx; a roomful of spiral staircases to nowhere; random creatures floating around, incl. one with a shoe for a head - and spice it with self-deprecating wacky humour; the film is often very funny, esp. when it's using the conventions of LOTR-type fantasy like the oracle that Spe-e-eaks! In! A! Re-e-eally! Slo-o-ow! Porte-e-entous! Wa-a-ay! Not much more than a stylish fable with "Alice in Wonderland" touches, but that should be enough imho. 

CITIZEN DOG (dir., Wisit Sasanatieng) (57)
Turned up late to this one, missing the first 10 minutes (due to having dallied too long in a Thai restaurant, oh the irony); as I sat down, a guy in a lime-green-and-purple uniform was looking quizzically at his middle digit while a V.O. explained: "Pod began to suspect the finger he had found may not have been his own". Obv. offbeat but very much a Thai AMELIE, a collection of tics based around a series of obsessive-compulsive characters - one likes to lick everything in sight, another always picks out the basil in her basil rice, and like Jeunet's characters they tend to collect stuff (bus tickets, plastic bottles, etc); the set-pieces too tend to feature a repeated idea, as when hero sees heroine's face everywhere (on his bedroom posters, the face of the news anchor on TV) or becomes obsessed with her blue dress and starts seeing blue dresses on everyone he passes, incl. a dog and its litter of puppies. There's also a ghostly cabbie, a slang-talking teddy bear who smokes like a chimney, a granny reincarnated as a gecko (hilarious!) and of course kitschy colours and an underlying urban melancholy (All the lonely people..., etc). An easy sit, but diminishing returns, and those ugly skin-tones are unfortunate. When I grow up I want a goatee like Chuck Stephens.

TEN SKIES (dir., James Benning) (no rating - but probably around a 63 if I had to rate it as an Experience)
Almost late for this one as well, barrelling down the bridge across the Thames toward the theatre, getting ridiculously sweaty, when I suddenly stopped and thought to myself: "Why are you running? If ever there was a movie where it wouldn't matter to arrive a little late. What's the worst that could happen - I miss two minutes of sky?". That's all it is - ten patches of sky shot with a locked-off camera, each shot lasting exactly ten minutes - though planes and birds make occasional appearances and a couple of the skies feature distant human sounds, and it's actually quite interesting because of course one starts seeing shapes and faces in the abstract image (I saw a sheep in Sky 8, Stalin and an otter - though not together - in Sky 4, and E.T.'s head near the end of the spectacular Sky 5), and of course the skies keep changing so you drift off for a minute then think 'How the fuck did that cloud get way up there?'; also it puts you in touch with the pulse of the planet, Eternal Verities going on while we live our meagre lives etc, also some of the skies (esp. the last one) are extremely beautiful. Unfor. didn't stay for the Q&A, where someone (hopefully) asked Benning why he picked these particular patches of sky - or maybe randomness is part of the deal in this kind of structuralist fun - but I did catch the opening comments, which proved once again how the pretensions of Art-world honchos can get in the way of the work. First the guy from the Whitechapel Art Gallery (they're doing a complete Benning retro) asked us to consider that the film "might be read as political", then Benning himself got up to say an artist's job is "to pay attention then report back", adding that we need to pay attention to the world, "need to find new solutions, not drop bombs on people". All quite sensible, and I do take the point that greater appreciation of the natural world might lead in a roundabout way to greater tolerance of the people with whom we share it, but dude ... you're talking about 10 shots of sky here. If you feel that strongly about it, un-lock your camera and take it into the war zone, make an Oliver Stone movie or something. Or is that too crude for the true Artist?...

October 25

WAKE UP AREZOO (dir., Kianoosh Ayyari) (65)
Press screening for THE PROPOSITION got cancelled so I switched to this skilful, heartfelt, unsurprising Iranian docudrama about the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people in the city of Bam in 2003. This is such a tragic event it would take a truly heartless viewer not to be moved. In fact, I was moved; no post-modern actors playing characters with the same name as themselves, no comment on the plight of women in Islamic societies or coded criticism of the government in Tehran for authorising shoddy house-building - but the chaos is impressively recreated, esp. the use of music way down in the mix. It even inspired me to write a song, which I think has the potential to be a modern classic. Hope you like it!

Wake up Arezoo, wake up
(Dum de-dum de-dee dum),
Wake up Arezoo, wake up
(Dum de-dum de-dee dum).

The town's collapsed in a heap,
Wake up Arezoo and weep,
The earthquake's over, it's four o'clock
And we're in trouble deep, wake up Arezoo,

Ohhhhh....

What we gonna tell the mullah?
What we gonna tell your mom?
What we gonna tell our friends when they ask
"How was Bam?"
Wake up Arezoo...

[Ah well. There goes my chance of being mentioned in GreenCine Daily.]

THE WENDELL BAKER STORY (dir., Andrew & Luke Wilson) (36)
More late changes: LINDA LINDA LINDA was completely sold out so I went for this tedious jape, starring Luke (who also wrote) and Owen, who presumably agreed to co-star so the film would get made, his brothers would be humiliated and the world would know he's the only Wilson with writing talent - a truly twisted case of sibling rivalry! Someone after the screening compared it to Adam Sandler and it does try for that goofy sweetness, Tex-Mex flavour also echoing the good-ole-boy antics of Burt Reynolds comedies - but it's long-winded, and titular Wendell changes halfway through from a fast-talking hustler to a wimpy nice guy (a.k.a. Luke Wilson); he's a lot more fun in the early scenes, name-dropping "Jenny Lopez", calling the Rio Grande "the Tigris of Texas" and batting lines like "Y'know, Mozart didn't sell a single album while he was alive". Over-active soundtrack also a liability, Seymour Cassel and Harry Dean Stanton as retirement-home patients undeniable assets but sadly over-milked. Mildly notable for the first GREED reference in a Hollywood comedy since 1994's GREEDY; though at least it made sense there...

THE WAYWARD CLOUD (dir., Tsai Ming-Liang) (68)
It's true I've come round to Tsai in the past few years; then again, he's also come around to me. He's cutting now, shifting away from master-shot austerity - I counted four different set-ups in the first bit of watermelon-sex - moving the camera sometimes, adding zany jokes, spectacular song numbers and a surprisingly easy-to-decipher subtext. Love = water (in short supply), sex = watermelon (almost but not quite the same), and we even hear about "watermelon substitutes" (= masturbation/porn). Water prompts the first two song numbers - first when Lee's head is half-submerged in the stuff, then the water bubbling out from the hole in the ground - and both are love ballads (unlike in THE HOLE, the musical interludes are thought-out as carefully as the rest of it); sex - in one case drops of semen - prompts the later ones, and they're not romantic songs but raucous funny songs because sex is funny in Tsai World (funny-sad, but still funny; a bottle-cap gets stuck inside a masturbating porn star's orifice, and has to be fished out by the film crew). Sex is contact but there is no real contact, a problem made literal as our hero fingers not the girl (though she moans in pleasure) but a half-watermelon placed between her legs. We open with people not-quite-meeting in a tunnel, end with the ultimate in sex without feeling (it couldn't get more unfeeling); the final minutes - reminiscent of the earlier watermelon orgasm-by-proxy, this time with a wall between the lovers - could be pessimistic, Lee silencing the girl when she tries to bring feeling (love) into it, but I think it's hopeful in a way, Lee making clear he no longer wants half-measures and hypocrisy; if he can't have water, he won't accept watermelon either (unless I'm missing something major, which is possible given how loudly the audience was laughing when it wasn't walking out). I'll be seeing this again - I spotted the VCD in Chinatown - because I think the rating could go higher, but in brief: Tsai's most commercial film (extreme ending very much included), his most intelligible and most fun. Folco-type purists may feel he's become less powerful, however.

TAKESHIS' (dir., Takeshi Kitano) (70)
Kitano makes his Fellini movie, his Richard Lester movie, even his Matthew Barney movie. "Imagine this!" he says, and at a stroke a cook changes into a clown, a plate of spaghetti into a human face; Kitano changes too, from confident Beat Takeshi persona to insecure 'Mr. Kitano' persona - but also back again, which is why the film's totem is the ugly caterpillar, marking time till it turns into a butterfly. Talk of unhappy childhood, a WW2 flashback directly representing Japan's humiliation at the hands of the Americans (also a factor in BROTHER), all feed into a very personal story of an ugly boy who turned himself into a superstar - and the constant violence, a futile attempt to blast problems away, is more than balanced by the constant eye for beauty, a ballet on the beach with a soccer ball or lavish dance interlude with DJ at the mixing-table (obviously appropriate). All the acclaim, forever getting bouquets - "Money would be nicer," he says wryly - but what's it all about in the end? A dream-state, one reality melding into another, and the problems never going away however much you blast at them; the final shot, freeze-framing Takeshi in "so cool" yakuza mode, is a valediction, but also an ironic shrug as if to say: 'Between this and nothing, I'll take this'. My favourite Kitano in a walk, though he still doesn't make me laugh. [Name-Dropping Alert: Mike Leigh sat two rows in front of me, next to a woman who kept sneezing. He didn't laugh much either.]

October 24

Bloggy Asides aside, and no offence to the mavens of the blogosphere, but this is no way to do a festival. Here I am seeing the year's top movies and I have to write about them right away at some crowded cafe, with Usher on the sound system and the clock counting down (the retarded system in England is that you pay in advance and get exactly one hour or two hours or whatever, after which you have to find exact money and rush to the cash machine or lose all unsaved changes). No time to let things marinate - as I badly need to do with Von Trier - no time to pick my mots justes. It's not fair I tell you.

SEPARATE LIES (dir., Julian Fellowes) (58)
'And now we're living / Li-i-i-iving / Se-eparate lies...' [Maybe growing up in the 80s wasn't such a good idea after all.] In other news, I had a meeting yesterday with a (helpful) script editor who told me my script didn't have enough "reveals" and the average feature script should contain 35 "reveals", 5 of them being "major reveals"; looks like Fellowes talked to the same guy, or maybe the source book was one of those books with really short chapters and a cliffhanger at the end of each one. It's a tale of the "secrets and discontent" beneath comfy upper-middle-class life - cricket games, a country house with a cocker spaniel, reading 'The Times' on the commute to work - turning into one of those clenched-teeth British dramas where Emily Watson smashes a tray in frustration then looks up and says "I'm so, so sorry". She's actually quite bland, and Rupert Everett just looks bored (as usual) as the Other Man, but Tom Wilkinson is magnificent as the grumpy, conservative husband - we know he's the cautious type because he bats for ages at cricket without scoring many runs - so much so it's a little contrived when he instantly decides to lie after learning the truth about the accident, showing his hypocrisy ("At the risk of sounding stuffy, I like to do the right thing," he says earlier, and Wilkinson has a gift for making decency convincing). Actually the characters don't bother lying to each other - once found out they just admit the truth with a shrug - giving a (perhaps inadvertent) upper-class air of nonchalance to the whole thing; tension and intrigue don't become oppressive, as if everyone knows things will turn out reasonably well in the end; the most painful part is lying to the cleaning-lady, which a Haneke or Chabrol would've played for maximum guilt, but Fellowes doesn't twist the knife - and it's no surprise (or particularly ironic) when the lower classes end up coming to the rescue, like they did in GOSFORD PARK. Scene by scene it's excellent, and I guess the script editors are right: the parade of twists and turns - sorry, "reveals" - keeps an audience hooked, but also made the film seem shallow, and longer than its 85 minutes. Making the Inspector a black man is typical of the slight schizophrenia at its core: it wants to punish its characters for being privileged - hence no doubt prejudiced - but it's also clear the cop is a threat because he's not 'One of Us'. Define 'Us' (does it include You-the-Viewer?), and you define the movie.

ONCE YOU'RE BORN (dir., Marco Tullio Giordana) (45)
"Once You're Born You Can No Longer Hide" to quote the Italian title. Middle-class boy falls off a yacht (shades of CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS), gets picked up by a boat carrying illegal immigrants and develops a social consciousness, which persists even after he returns to his opulent home and loving family. He's been "Born" and can no longer "Hide", d'you get it? Some of the choices are lame, like cross-cutting to the yacht after he falls overboard - they're obviously not going to find him so what's the point, except to wallow in the painful moment when Dad discovers Sandro isn't in his bed. (Sandro!) The choice to leave the final act - the actual consequences of the boy's awakening - inconclusive is admirable in theory, but feels in practice like Giordana had nothing much to say about it.

WORKINGMAN'S DEATH (dir., Michael Glawogger) (74)
Pretty much as expected, the only question being how much Glawogger's obvious agenda was going to overwhelm his riveting material - "5 Portraits of Work [plus an Epilogue] in the 21st Century" (I admit to a bias, since I've always been fascinated by films that focus on people working - WEST OF THE TRACKS, WILL IT SNOW FOR CHRISTMAS, etc - so adjust accordingly). The answer is not too much, though it's pretty clear that (a) manual labour as practised by the working-class is a noble pursuit, however dirty or distressing, and (b) this kind of work is now left to the Third World, developed countries having moved on (in their decadence) to service industries and leisure parks. The film steers a skilful middle course between earnestness and KOYAANISQATSI-style over-aestheticisation: there's no narration, no talking heads (though we eavesdrop on the occasional conversation); the images sing, esp. in the third and fourth segments - the third in particular, slaughterhouse-workers in Nigeria, is unforgettable, but the shots of light streaming through open windows as Pakistani ship-breakers relax after a hard day are also breathtaking. Each segment has its own tone and (literal) colour: black-and-white (coal and snow) and stubborn pride in Ukraine - fitting in with b&w footage of Stakhanovite workers in the Soviet Union - sulphur-yellow and slightly sleazy in Indonesia (though we do get a long conversation on Bon Jovi, and whether it refers to the band or the man himself), the blood-red of animal entrails in Nigeria, blue of the ocean in Pakistan; only the fifth segment (in China) is weak, but it's also very short and leads into the Epilogue (at a former German steelworks), which is awesome. Some will dismiss it as travelogue, but I didn't see exploitation or even sensationalism (though Nigeria is certainly not for the squeamish); just common elements across the world - animals, songs, fear of death - and a window on unfamiliar lives, backed by a John Zorn score. Powerful stuff.

PUSHER 3 (dir., Nicolas Winding Refn) (70)
Tarantino or Soprano? Bit of both, but more the latter - and the best part of this crime drama is how crime is shown as a search for solutions; even the gross-out climax (the weakest, most show-offy part imo) isn't done for sadism, but sound business reasons. PUSHER was mediocre and I never even saw PUSHER 2, but this is hugely entertaining in LONG GOOD FRIDAY style; bonus points for quick glimpse of a Radovan Karadzic photo in our (Serbian) hero's flat - tying in with old mate 'Radovan', who wants to go straight but agrees to participate in one last round of gruesome torture. For old times sake...

 October 23

Bloggy Aside [which is meant to imply self-indulgent rambling and ranting (as habitually and/or stereotypically practised by blogger types) as opposed to good meaty film analysis, I only mention this because my terminology seems to be confusing some people, it's all borrowed from Sicinski anyway]: Should I go see Animal Collective on Tuesday? Dandy Warhols? The Coral? (OK, so they're fey.) K T Tunstall, of perfect-pop nugget "Suddenly I See" fame? Still haven't caught that Bob Hoskins play, either.

It's hard to stay on-topic when a Festival isn't the only game in town - or even the biggest - but a big shout-out to "Lee Walker" for recommending that Jeff Wall photography exhibition at the Tate. I went this morning, and I'm glad I did. For the uninitiated, Wall's photos are mounted in light-boxes and usually large-scale - almost life-size in many cases. When you look at the people in wide-shot compositions from across the gallery space, they look like they could be standing on one side of a street, with you on the other. The light-box also makes them glow, as objects do in actual light, giving an illusion of 3-D hyper-reality; you feel you could literally step into the photo. Yet the photos are invariably staged, often with studio production values - makeup, etc - and are sometimes "digital montages", dozens of photos seamlessly blended by computer to create the illusion of a real moment.

Actually, I don't think Wall himself is drawn to the same things in his work that fascinated me. The more elaborate pieces, e.g. a panorama of dead soldiers, are so clearly manufactured (albeit realistic) they lose their edge. The best are works like the b&w "Passerby", a fleeting shot of a man turning to look at another man he's just passed on the street; we just see the backs of their heads, and the sense of voyeurism is inescapable - you feel the man is about to turn back, see you staring and scowl as he walks on (the fact that it's b&w adds to the impression of parallel universe). Other photos contain inchoate stories, like "Tran Duc Van" in which a Vietnamese man leans against a tree (the tree itself, and its shadow, take up most of the photo), not with his body but resting his hands awkwardly against it; his expression could be pain or exhaustion; a blond, shabby-looking woman stands at the edge of the photo, looking away from us. It's impossible to say if they know each other, if the man is actually in pain, etc, but the hyper-reality gives it Moment Out of Time status. In the most evocative photo, "A Ventriloquist at a Birthday Party in October 1947" - which might be an actual 1947 photo, for all I know - the sense of Time-travel is inescapable; it made me want to stand close and imagine myself in 1947, with plastic figurines on the table, a half-full glass of orange juice, a box labelled "60 Game Marbles"...

Speaking of Time-travel, I also walked through the Rachel Whiteread exhibit at the Tate; don't know its title, but it's literally mounds of white plastic boxes, hundreds or maybe even thousands, stacked in a vast warehouse space. The boxes form a couple of towers and assorted mini-structures - but the main point is that they're piled all around you, at least as tall as an adult human being and frequently taller (the towers are about the height of a two-storey building). "It's like when you make something at school," a father was explaining to his young daughter, and I noticed various kids grinning in delight as they walked around; this is no surprise, because the main effect of the exhibit (whatever Whiteread's stated purpose) is to make you feel like a child. It's like stumbling on one of those comic-book Lost Cities, scaled to some unknown race of super-beings; one walks around dazed - and also feels a strange stirring of freedom, as if in a new world. Mostly, however, it's soothing (I had a similar response to the giant spider that guarded the entrance of the Tate last year, seeming to shield spectators beneath its roof of metal legs; I'm sure "Lee Walker" knows what I'm talking about); this is Art as comfort-food, allowing the sophisticated viewer to let go of his/her sophistication and feel small again - hence fresh, wide-eyed, no longer jaded. Though maybe I should find out what Whiteread herself has said about this exhibit before crying Infantilisation...

MANDERLAY (dir., Lars von Trier) (49)
Why is Grace suddenly talking (and acting) like a schoolmarm? When does V.O. topple from pleasingly literate into annoyingly wordy (probably somewhere between "overweening daddy" and "a trifle over-spirited")? Did they really think sleazy Willem Dafoe could step in for James Caan, or Bryce (who alternately reminded me of Julia Roberts and Juliette Lewis) for Nicole Kidman? Above all, how could Lars put such a dent in my Theory of DOGVILLE, viz. that the empty soundstage conceit wasn't just a gimmick but an integral part of the story, acting as a visual representation of the Open Society? (He does the same here - and this time it is just a gimmick.) Unlike DOGVILLE it doesn't work dramatically - only politically, and even there LvT's bold authoritarian ideas seem a bit lacking in ambiguity this time round; the final twist is that democracy isn't for everyone - shades of Bush in Iraq - and indeed the oppressed themselves may prefer to remain oppressed, but Grace is made to seem naive from the start (her denial of her sexual fantasies marking her out as a hypocrite) weakening the other side of the argument, that the elite must take responsibility for the passivity of the underclass, i.e. that "You made us" (Lars also loves the fact that democracy, once granted, can lead to embarrassing decisions for the well-meaning folks who grant it, e.g. support for the death penalty). If Grace isn't allowed any good faith it puts her in an impossible position - for how, after all, can America make reparation for past wrongs except by trying to help? It's just bashing, albeit provocative enough to be enjoyable, if it worked as drama; God's-eye shots suggest you have to see the Bigger Picture, but is Von Trier really so impartial? I mean come on.

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE (dir., Hayao Miyazaki) (78)
Second viewing, dubbed version this time. Certainly not 'worse' - in fact, seeing it in English revealed a bunch of tiny, on-the-margins jokes that hadn't been caught by the subtitles - but Miyazaki seems to naturally belong in my 77-78 range (only MONONOKE scored lower). I'll try and figure out why when I eventually write about it.

October 22

Bloggy Aside: I keep mixing up today's titles in my mind, birthing a brace of weird made-up movies. "March of the Lovers" is a haunting Patrice Chereau mood-piece about an old man whose wives and ex-girlfriends appear in his dreams, marching towards him in a stark procession with fingers pointed accusingly. "Regular Penguins" is a quirky coming-of-age comedy about a couple of young misfit birds Somewhere in Antarctica who like writing poems and staying in their rooms with the door locked, though their folks keep telling them to go outside and act like ... y'know, regular penguins. I think I may be getting a little stir-crazy, actually.

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (dir., Luc Jacquet) (50)
Watch out Pingu, it's "the mother of all blizzards"; Saddam may be on trial but his legacy lives on in this National Geographic doc, a tale of triumph and family values though in fact both sides in the culture wars could plausibly claim it as their own (penguins are monogamous, but only for a year at a time; the family may be sacrosanct, but gender roles get reversed and it's just a family of convenience anyway). "Not that different from us, really," concludes Morgan Freeman, having earlier made clear that "This is a story about love" - though no graphic penguin sex, just penguin romance and lingering close-ups. The birds themselves come across as passive, likeable and oddly fatalistic, despite the film's attempts to imbue them with the ol' pioneer spirit (they're "stubborn", having refused to leave Antartica when lesser species were dying out or moving on); you might also wonder about Mother Nature's sanity, and the wisdom of having an entire species hinge on such nick-of-time escapes - all it takes is one bad winter when the female penguins won't be able to find food in time, and a whole generation gets wiped out. It's a tearjerker, but only amazing in the way that shots of glorious sunsets get acclaimed as 'great photography'; the real miracle is there for the filming. To paraphrase another famous general: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le cinema".

REGULAR LOVERS (dir., Philippe Garrel) (76)
"You'll never forget," pleads the girl. "This. Now. Promise me!" Garrel remembers, but remembers it all - not just the flush of Revolution (the fact that Bertolucci is name-checked so pointedly can only be a riposte to THE DREAMERS), though of course remembers that as well, all the details, not just the way you talked of Molotov Cocktails but the way you solemnly extended your hand that had been holding the bomb so your friends could smell its acrid remnants; not just the heady days of 1968, though, but also the slow decline of 1969 (and beyond), the way idealism gradually deflated in boredom, oblivion and puffs of "the bamboo". It's a tale of failure, and I don't agree with cinephilic teenager baaab that Francois (Louis Garrel, with more than a touch of Jean-Pierre Leaud) becomes self-aware as the film goes on - even when he [SPOILER] at the end it's not in a noble way but because he "screwed up"; the one who becomes aware is the girl, crying silent tears as the gap between Ideals and Life (furthering her career by going with the man who can help her) opens up before her; all Francois can think is that publishing his poems "would feel like betraying something, but I don't know what". Garrel knows what - the epic mythology of the 1968 riots, not shown in Spielbergian flash-cuts but static, impenetrable, haunting: offscreen noises, a fire, a moving car, a sense of dislocation but also being part of some greater whole. They resonate throughout the movie, sparking ironies as the intellectuals blame the masses for not following through on Revolution, then later when Francois tells the cops he's a student - a year after the excitement - and gets a smile and a bland reply ("Nothing wrong with that"); the film is a slow drift from political to personal but needed more in the third hour, specifically in the relationship between hero and heroine. There's a sense that he's standing in her way (note his dream at the end, where he seems to be stopping her from doing what she wants) but all we see are two people drifting apart, without much detail. Maybe Garrel can't remember quite that far. Shot of the year: the one that distinguishes "This Time Tomorrow" from myriad other music-on-film scenes - five dancers shoulder-to-shoulder, as if performing for the camera, one last Moment before terminal decline. I want to see this film again.

October 21

Bloggy Aside: My ticket for an early-evening show of CORPSE BRIDE - at the Vue, a totally unexceptional Leicester Square multiplex - cost £11. For the benefit of all you whiny New Yorkers out there, this is the equivalent of US $ 19.45. It's also equivalent to CYP£ 9.30 for all our Cypriot readers, and approximately 44 Reais for any Brazilians who may be reading this. And the moral of this story? Shut up whiny New Yorkers.

[Next-day postscript: Good job on the sharp-eyed comments, Vlad (takes one to know one) - though not actually beer, just a few too many glasses of Pinot Grigio. Didn't realise I was so transparent.
I'm not entirely sober tonight either, though that Bacon Double Cheese sort-of helped (haven't had Burger King in years). Apologies for the shoddy standards of this blog, jusht a lil posht-feshtival drink is all. Hic, etc.]

SHANGHAI DREAMS (dir., Wang Xiaoshuai) (61)
"This isn't our home," says the paterfamilias - like Hou's displaced Chinese 'temporarily' in Taiwan - and the setting is a wintry, slate-grey city deep in China's interior, like in PLATFORM. Given those austere references it may be a blessing that this is so accessible, with teen-movie angst and a lucid explication of the socio-political context - the good Party members who moved to the provinces during the Cultural Revolution, only to find themselves isolated and out-of-the-loop once Deng's reforms opened up business opportunities in the cities - not to mention songs and accordion music (no surprise that Kusturica's jury gave it an award). Also Boney M, but let's not talk about that. The 80s in China seem more like the 50s - strict rules, repressive dress codes, secret dance parties where the boys preen and strut while the girls watch from the sidelines - and the family drama is intelligibly done, with fine performances from father and daughter (he rants and rails, but only because he dreams of taking the family back to Shanghai; she, meanwhile, has her own dreams, listening to love songs on the radio); "This is our home," says the girl, and of course that's the problem in a nutshell. Overlong, with loss of focus in the final stretch, and I don't get those gunshots over the final shot (diegetic?); Wang likes re-e-ally slow pans when shooting conversations, making for some awkward in-between shots with people half-visible at the edge of frame - nor is his style as expressive or rigorous as PLATFORM. More involving, though.

DREAMING OF SPACE (dir., Alexey Uchitel) (53)
Is it just me? Fourth film in two days to start superbly then fall apart. Maybe I just can't concentrate anymore - but the early scenes are very enjoyable, esp. the texture of the image; don't know what it is (maybe shot on Super-8?) but the interiors are wonderfully grainy - and since it's evocatively set in faded restaurants and dingy boxing gyms (in a small town on the Russian-Norwegian border circa 1957), and the lead character is a funny, high-spirited, slightly buffoonish chap named "Horsey", I felt like I could watch it for hours. But I drifted off, the atmosphere gradually lost its flavour, the grainy visuals disappeared - seems to be an effect Uchitel and his DP contrived for the opening scenes, but not the rest of it - and by the largely ineffective coda (featuring Yuri Gagarin) I was ready to move on. Maybe it is just me.

HELL (dir., Danis Tanovic) (64)
Time Out London calls it "po-faced and over-determined", Mike del Angelo speaks of "sub-Chekhovian banality", but neither explains what the title's referring to - which might be (I guess) because it's so crashingly obvious, but alternatively because it's cryptic and elusive the way Kieslowski used to be back in the day. Tanovic's stylings are certainly a lot more Kieslowskian (at least post-1990 Kieslowskian) than Tom Tykwer's in the clunky HEAVEN - doublings-back and repetitions, focus on stray Significant Detail like a bee struggling to escape from a glass of water, gorgeous Euro-actresses slinking around in tasteful (and expensive) apartments. The meaning of "Hell" remains open, though it could be the feeling when love is unrequited, or the emotional vortex opened up by rage or revenge ('Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'?), hence the admittedly crude "Medea" reference; there's even a broader reading - that Hell can't exist anymore because we live in a world without faith, where Tragedy fails and Destiny (suggestive of grand schemes and Divine Plans) has been reduced to Coincidence (a mechanical device for nihilism and a world without meaning). Maybe there's only humanity (very Kieslowskian), at its best when it gently places a baby bird back in its nest, at its worst in mentions of cannibalism - or the mother's remorseless emotional cannibalism. Maybe we all make our own Hells, trying in vain to escape the past, trying to avoid one repetition (a father leaving his family) only to find another (a husband trying to return). Meanwhile Emmanuelle Beart is being hypnotic - she's got a touch of the feral, like Nastassia Kinski - Karin Viard is fragile and Carole Bouquet the ultimate ice queen. Flawed, to be sure, but sleek and intriguing.

CORPSE BRIDE (dir., Mike Johnson & Tim Burton) (69)
Note: I refuse to call this TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE till I actually see solid evidence - like maybe bones or something - that Tim Burton has a grisly secret walled up in his basement. Tell you one thing, though; Commercial Release is kicking the Festival's ass, at least so far.

October 20

THE CHILD (dir., Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) (75)
Back to the hustlers' world of LA PROMESSE but it's also, more strikingly, the other side of THE SON - both being tales of redemption, specifically what needs to happen after a terrible thing is done so it can be (morally) undone. But THE SON is a tale of Forgiveness, the most exalted form of expiation - because a sin/transgression creates a duty on the victim as well, the duty to rise above hatred - while this is a tale of Punishment, operating on the more prosaic level of the perpetrator's need to cleanse himself morally by doing penance. Obv. less sublime, and also schematic like much of the brothers' work - he redeems the wrong done to one boy by rescuing another boy, just as Olivier Gourmet in THE SON did his duty to one boy by forgiving another - but the stark moral landscape feeds into the stark physical landscape (the usual windswept streets, payphones, culverts) to create undeniable highlights. Twice I held my breath, riveted to the screen - when Renier falls to his knees asking forgiveness, then later when he tries to help the kid out of the freezing river (water seems to hold an atavistic terror for the brothers, what with this and the Death Pond in ROSETTA). Kudos also for delaying the girlfriend's righteous anger - most films would have her lashing out when she finds out about the [SPOILER] but this saves it for later, when Renier has become aware of what he's done and feels her rage more acutely. Cruel to be kind, etc...

FORTY SHADES OF BLUE (dir., Ira Sachs) (47)
Sachs mentions Loach and Pialat in the press notes - and I swear he's quoting LE GARCU in that bit where everyone dances in formation on the dance-floor - but his own film is a lot neater, and less interesting as it goes on. The first 15 mins. or so are superb, driven by contrasts - Rip Torn's angry edge vs. golden light and warm soul-music; dark bearlike Torn vs. long angular Russian blonde Dina Korzun - with a jagged rhythm reminiscent of Alan Rudolph. Then Darren Burrows turns up, very dull as Torn's son (actually worse than dull; he's supposed to be damaged, but just seems smug and sulky), and Korzun becomes the outsider who operates as the film's conscience, telling Americans how spoiled they are ('back home in Rrrussia', etc etc); she doesn't even seduce the son out of revenge - which might have complicated matters - they just kind of end up together because Torn is treating them badly (he, meanwhile, gets reduced to a stock tyrant, barking orders into phones). Good intentions, major disappointment.

VIVA CUBA! (dir., Juan Carlos Cremata) W/O
Strangely enough, I had a Mojito just a few minutes before watching this; pure coincidence, only realised it later. (This will hopefully be the last mention of pre-movie boozing on this blog.) The film itself turns out to be a kidpic shot on crappy-looking video, with straight-faced Che iconography and a Revolutionary message on class equality. I only lasted 15 mins. though it's well-made if that's what you're looking for, and won the Kids' Movie prize at Cannes and everything. Me, I think I'll peruse the Festival synopses a bit more carefully from now on.

DARK HORSE (dir., Dagur Kari) (61)
Deadpan sub-Jarmusch slacker comedy in dirty b&w; hugely, unexpectedly funny for about an hour, but why do these things always run out of steam? (Makes you appreciate DUCK SEASON even more.) I recall just one shot from the last 20 minutes - you'll know the one; you literally can't miss it - whereas I recall all kinds of good stuff before that. The girl in the bakery talking to the doughnuts (she's on drugs at the time). Grandma's house introduced via a strange whirring sound - hero looks worried - then a tree suddenly toppling into frame (cue Grandma, wielding a chainsaw). "When you talk about A-level taxes and B-level taxes, my mind goes blank and I don't want to live anymore." Dad's dodgy friend, who tries to explain the situation to our hero ("Let's say that you are the colour green..."). The girl with a bust of her torso in her bedroom - "That's me, mass-produced" - and hero surreptitiously brushing his hands against the nipples when her back is turned. The magistrate who levitates (!) for his daughter's little friends at her birthday party ("Can you do magic tricks?"). Ultimate Bringing-Down-the-House Moment: hero and heroine talk in a cafe - "I think I'm coming down with the 'flu"; "Hmm, could be an ear infection" - as one ... then two ... then three elephants appear, solemnly ambling down the street through the window behind them.

TIME TO LEAVE (dir., Francois Ozon) (55)
Why do people bother with terminal-illness movies? You can't win. Go for raw realism, chemo treatments etc and you end up with a downer; consciously try to aestheticise the experience (as this does), and you risk being labelled glossy and shallow. Having hero look at people in the park with rueful yearning, glimpse his childhood self in the mirror, think back to the moment long ago when he first (presumably) realised he was gay, is obv. inadequate but quite effective. Having him start being cruel and selfish - refusing to share his death with others (who don't even know he's dying) - rather than try to be nice to everyone, is refreshing. Having him meet a waitress who asks him to have her baby (her husband is sterile) is at first distracting, then courageous, because the thing turns into a mess (the husband has to strip as well, so hero can get it up in the first place, and they end up on the bed in a tangle of limbs) and the audience find themselves laughing shamefacedly at a terminal-illness movie. Having him start to throw up and bang his head against the wall in the final act is too little, too late. The ending is total DEATH IN VENICE, the whole thing elegant and disposable. Question I Wish I'd Asked Ozon in the Q&A: So what do people who've actually lost loved ones to cancer in real life think of your movie? Also, beware: Arvo Part is back in the (art)house.

October 19

QUO VADIS, BABY? (dir., Gabriele Salvatores) (31)
For this I missed CONSTANT GARDENER and THREE TIMES? (Actually I missed them for LAZARESCU and this was the only choice in the warm-up slot, or I wouldn't have given Salvatores the time of day after I'M NOT SCARED.) Neurotic repressed sister and long-dead artistic sister. How did Sister B die, all those years ago? Is there an answer in the secret videotapes she made, full of endless confessional speeches? (Sister A watches, and smokes moodily.) Is there an answer in the suave LAST TANGO-quoting film professor? Is it true that "Women and elephants never forgive [sic]"? And why is M excerpted, and why does "Psycho Killer" play on the soundtrack? Why all the early-80s music, anyway? "My father said I'd never get anywhere with my personality. But I see Pure Cinema inside of me!". Alas, Salvatores' idea of Pure Cinema is a shot of VHS cassettes laid out on the floor like pairs of eyes, and a little boy in a skeleton mask sitting on a park bench. Hopelessly ridiculous - trust me, I'm not doing it justice - but any film that sets a steamy love scene to Ultravox's "Vienna" (not just playing in the background but cutting in close as the music swells, and sweeping off the sheets with a flourish on the clash of a cymbal) is clearly going to be a guilty semi-pleasure.

THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (dir., Cristi Puiu) (63)
Really well marshalled and set up and written, but I'm confused: Where are people getting all the stuff about Kafkaesque nightmare and/or Dantean circles of Hell? Yes, I do realise Mr. L's first name is Dante, but what's onscreen is a very reasonable (imho) portrait of a medical emergency, the doctors not always noted for their bedside manner - hey, it's Bucharest - but mostly conscientious and sometimes compassionate; the one who refuses to operate is obv. the worst and even he's just being bureaucratic, not malicious or irresponsible (besides, it's clear that L. is a goner; it's not like they kill off a healthy man with the wrong medicine or whatever). Actually reminded me more of the Puiu short I saw in Greece, CIGARETTES AND COFFEE, where a middle-aged humiliated man begs his yuppie son for a job - it's clear Puiu's Big Theme are the older generation left behind in post-Ceaucescu Romania (as opposed to the new "messed-up generation", incl. most of the sarcastic doctors here), whom he views with a certain gallows humour but more earnestness than people seem to think. Certainly didn't see much of Lucien Pintillie's ironic cruelty, let alone Kafka - just solid detail, well-placed jokes (Torino/Toronto) and enough skill to keep things going for two and a half hours. In short, I seem to like it for all the wrong reasons, and predict a great career for Mr. Puiu in award-winning TV dramas; sorry, Level IV crowd.

BLOOD AND BONES (dir., Yoichi Sai) (44)
"Then Kiyoko suddenly collapsed from a brain tumour..." Epic family saga with the usual procession of twists and turns, except in this case it's mostly brawls and fights because Beat Takeshi plays a man of "ceaseless violence" ("could well be the finest role of his astonishing career," says the Festival program, untruthfully), a monstrous abusive patriarch whose callous misanthropy doesn't change at all over six decades. One-note rendition of Evil certainly makes its point - he brands a recalcitrant worker with a hot coal, forces a girl to eat maggot-infested meat, pushes his daughter down the stairs (later she's bent over the kitchen sink, spitting out her own teeth) - but destroys nuance. What can it mean that he's Korean-Japanese, or that he worships money (part of the post-war economic miracle) while his son is a Commie? The answer is nothing; how could such a monster symbolise anything? No real landmarks to reflect the passage of Time either (as in Hou's TIME TO LIVE...), no sense of space; I'm usually a sucker for last-minute-flashbacks-to-the-opening-scene-with-the-hero-as-an-old-man-recalling-himself-60-years-earlier, but in this case no. Couldn't care less.

LAST DAYS (dir., Gus van Sant) (72)
Seen after two pints of beer, sitting as close to the screen as possible. Never let it be said I didn't give Gus's woozy ambience-driven vision all the help I could. [Seen in commercial release. Comments to come.]

October 18

Bloggy Aside of the Day (don't worry, I won't keep doing these till the end of the festival; besides, I try to make them movie-related) is actually a plea for information. The scene is a high-end pizza place where an American couple are talking to their London-based friend (and no, I wasn't eavesdropping; the whole restaurant could hear them). They live, by their own account, in "a small village near a big town", and are proud of the fact that their daughter thinks they're the strictest parents of any of her friends; "When she said that, I was like, Yesssss!" laughs Mr. Middle America. Unfortunately, there's a problem with the neighbours. "You don't like to judge a book by its cover, but the mother and father - the little girl is adorable, but the mother and father are, like, motorcycle freaks. The little girl is adorable, but the mother and father are tattooed up to here, and they wear leather and everything. And the mother took the kids to this Michael - Michael..." "Jackson?" "No-o-o! [wild laughter] No, this movie, this Michael - " "Moore?" "No, it's this movie, I'm sure you know it. It's all about sex. I mean, we weren't even gonna go to this movie. And the mother took the kids to it!" And more in that vein - but here's the thing: I can't think of a single movie made by a Michael that's all about sex. What were this insane couple talking about? Over to you, blog-type readers...

MAN PUSH CART (dir., Ramin Bahrani) (56)
Man push cart (actually pull cart). Do odd jobs. Peddle occasional porn. Find helpless kitten. Hang out with extremely cute Spanish chick. Observe life of the city. Stare moodily into the distance. Nurse old wounds, think about old dreams. Cinematic frame squash hero (he's often scrunched into a corner). New York City squash Pakistani immigrant. Traffic roar by. Post-9/11 racism rear ugly head. Gritty realism offer no surprises but it's pacy, deft and mostly quite accomplished, if a bit too keen to play victim. Hero used to be a famous singer back in Pakistan, so you keep expecting him to launch into golden-voiced song out of his misery - but this never happens. Be grateful.

THE GIRL FROM MONDAY (dir., Hal Hartley) (52)
"Let's fuck and increase our buying power!" Terrific Big Idea in this "science fiction by Hal Hartley" - a near-future where sex is marketing and vice versa, people have bar-codes and live in a "culture of desire", a free-market dictatorship where they get points (like in a supermarket) for having sex (sex-appeal in insured, and being unappealing increases your premium). All kinds of riffs played on this - spurious Revolutionary ideal ("the autonomy of the individual", whereas of course this society depends on commodifying autonomy), "Walden" as samizdat literature, the "Agency" in charge of it all (as in CIA but also advertising agency), terrorists suspected everywhere, illegal aliens who are literally aliens. Best of all is the point that counter-revolution is also a form of marketing, providing "opportunities for the would-be martyrs" (I wish the idiots who buy "American Idiot" and think they're making a Statement could think that far). Alas, the Secondary Ideas are undeveloped - brainwashing of high-school students, the Girl From Monday herself - and the film becomes quite dull; even the style is wrong, self-consciously cutting-edge with canted angles, jump-cuts and extreme-DV visuals, pixellated trails of blur every time anyone moves; it might've made more sense (budget aside) to use a glossy Sirkian style, expressing the culture of complacency and luxury. Must admit I heard snoring in the auditorium; Hartley's getting too academic, losing his audience - though it's just an extension of the earlier stuff, creating comedy by bringing logic (in this case market logic) to sexual relationships. Not awful.

SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE (dir., Park Chan-wook) (58)
[mild spoilers]
Tarantino gave Park a Cannes award, so Park returns the favour with a KILL BILL knock-off, only not so stylish or imaginative. Wasn't really into it (rating somewhere in the 40s) till the final section - the revenge itself - unexpectedly changed things, reconfiguring the film from a consciously 'cool' exercise into something blunt and sickeningly literal, an actual discussion of vigilantism with all banal details in place - should we do it, who should go first, how do we avoid getting caught, etc. At first it feels tasteless, esp. since the film up to that point is such a tease - its controlling metaphor is that taking revenge = baking a cake, and its heroine says stuff like "I'm planning to kill another person. Do you think I'm sexy?"; unlike MR. VENGEANCE, which borrowed the austere style of the master-shot school, this does gliding shots and high-angles and puts classical music (mostly Vivaldi) over its atrocities, in the cheeky style of Greenaway in COOK, THIEF. It's a totally weightless film - then we find out the horrible truth about the villain and the middle-aged parents of his victims turn up, sobbing and weeping and deciding to take the law into their own hands. It's shocking because it's so un-cool, so gruelling and sadistic and prosaically nasty, and if I were sure Park intended the contrast (e.g. if his style changed radically at this point) I might celebrate the film as a subversion of the whole Tarantino aesthetic; but I think he's trying to have it both ways, and it's not enough. Still have to say I felt physically sick in that final section, which I don't think I've ever felt before in a movie - not because of what happens but because the terms of reference change so suddenly, and a false sense of security (the shield of ironic style) is exploded when you least expect it. No wonder the ending has the heroine choking on her own cake...

October 17

OK, today's featured weirdo is a Bavarian mushroom farmer. I'm not 100% sure that's what he does, but it seems pretty likely: big, ruddy, 250lbs easy, massive thatch of curly hair, pink short-sleeved shirt a size too small, checking a tourist guide in the Tube with his equally ruddy-looking wife. Suddenly he stops (nearly causing a pile-up) in front of a poster for CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT, grabs wife by the sleeve and pulls her back. "Oho!" he says, and points at the poster. "Oho! Vollas! ... Grummitt!". And laughs heartily, oblivious to the stream of commuters trying to get by on either side.

This has been your Bloggy Aside for October 17. And now ... the LFF!

AFTER THE NIGHT ... DAWN (dir., Sandip Ray) (43)
Obv. not the fault of this vaguely Chekhovian drama set in the West Bengali highlands that I saw it less than 24 hours after the gold-standard of vaguely Chekhovian dramas set in the West Bengali highlands (the Press notes include a quote that "it may remind one of the work of Satyajit Ray"). Sandip turns out to be Satyajit's son, but seems to have inherited all the wrong things - creaky staging and genteel old-fashioned quality, giving it a middle-aged feel. DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST is actually hilarious but the humour here is stiff, lots of polite chuckles and affectionate joshing; significantly, God comes into it - residing in Nature or the lovely cadences of a girl's singing voice, as opposed to gurus and religious freaks - whereas He never appeared in DAYS (Ray Sr.'s humanism was more natural; Jr.'s feels forced and cerebral). There's a third-act rupture throwing the characters in extremis, and even the earlier stuff is absorbing in a stagy way, but I wonder if Sandip would even get financing for something so modest and uncinematic if not for the family name. Incidental fun, as always in Bengali movies with middle-class characters, in seeing which phrases get spoken in English (presumably because no Bengali words exist) - in this case including "one-track mind", "primeval instinct" and "useless bookworm".

NEW YORK DOLL (dir., Greg Whitely) (67)
Rock star turns Mormon (Whitely is also a Mormon, and the Church comes off very well indeed). Didn't sound too promising, esp. since I'm not too familiar with the New York Dolls, but lack of interest in the subject turned out to be a good thing since I (a) didn't know about the sting in the tail, and (b) had a healthy contempt for the various ageing-punk types going on about the legend of the Dolls and their impact in the "dark days" of the 70s (did you know prog-rock was "boring"? heavy metal "stupid"? well, they were). "The most important thing about them was style," says someone (possibly Bob Geldof), as if that were a good thing - but through it all shuffles our hero, Arthur "Killer" Kane, catatonic bass player turned middle-aged librarian and obvious lost soul (a "man of grief", as the song goes at the end). At first he seems pathetic, but his sadness and bewilderment - and tentative joy in his beliefs - go way beyond rock'n roll casualty chic or fashionable tale of recovery (though he does call religion "an LSD trip from the Lord"); when he looks around in awestruck wonder at the furniture in his hotel room, or vacantly prepares for the Dolls' reunion concert - saying the music is no problem but he's worried the kids will think he's still a party animal, and try to mob him - it's like Chance the Gardener plonked down in a Green Day mosh-pit. His bonding with the old bandmates after 30 years of oblivion is all the more poignant for being near-invisible. Fuck rock'n roll; this made me weepy.

HIDDEN (dir., Michael Haneke) (72)
Is the mother really having an affair? Why is the young son unhappy? Did things really happen as Dad claims they did, all those years ago? Is their life as he describes it to Grandma - busy, uneventful, "no highs or lows"? Are the trappings enough, the books on the shelves and red wine with dinner? (Haneke, the Teutonic Chabrol.) What about the other, unseen friends going through divorces, operations? Why is there always "a distance"? Haneke's gone one step beyond CODE UNKNOWN, withholding even the cryptic clues offered in that one. All we can say is that lives are lived under hidden forces, and the outside world goes on around them, with the strong often bullying the weaker - in Algeria round the time of the hidden secret, in Iraq and Palestine on TV right behind the couple as they worry about their missing son (they ignore it, of course). What do they want, the oppressed of the world? Maybe nothing - just for us to know they're watching us, following what we do, albeit invisibly; just for us to know our conscience isn't clear (even though we think it is); just for us to "be present" at their misery as we go about our own lives, and nurse our own secrets. Haneke's right on the brink of losing his audience, and however many times he puts "Hidden" and "Unknown" in his titles people are still going to hate him for being so unhelpful - but he still knows all there is to know about visual tension. One more thing bothers me: if that final shot is meant to tie in with the boy who "never got an education", I may have to knock off a couple of points for excessive moralism...

ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (dir., Miranda July) (71)
Much to my surprise. (Anticipated rating: 45.) Seen in commercial release, comments to come post-Fest.

October 16

Yeah I know, I'm not seeing much - though I'd have seen more today if TOKYO STORY hadn't been sold out. (TOKYO STORY sold out? I think we're not in Cyprus anymore.) But the Fest proper starts on Thursday and I'm pacing myself - besides this is London, I don't want to spend every day watching movies. Post-Impressionists at the Tate sounds good, also I should try and catch a play while I'm here. Branagh's directing some wacky comedy called "Ducktastic", Brian Dennehy is Willy Loman, but I'm currently eyeing the Le Chuck Special: Bob Hoskins appearing (in) "As You Desire Me". Why would I make it up?...

THE ARISTOCRATS (dir., Paul Provenza) (57)

DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST (dir., Satyajit Ray, 1969) (86)
Second viewing, first in 12 years. Deduct a couple of points if you're not a Westernised ex-colonial who often feels out of sync with his homeland, but otherwise: This movie is so awesome.

October 15

No Press screenings on the weekend, so everything today and tomorrow is seen in commercial release (or repertory) - but I'll probably wait till I get back home to write about any of these, 'cause this blog thing is taking wa-a-ay too long. I just can't do instant writing, I guess. I am a craftsman, etc.

A History of Violence (dir., David Cronenberg) (66)

Howl's Moving Castle (dir., Hayao Miyazaki) (81)

Innocence (dir., Lucile Hadzihalilovic) (70)

October 14

KEKEXILI: MOUNTAIN PATROL (dir., Lu Chuan) (60)
"Sometimes it is beautiful to just look and not think - like when you take a journey in a foreign land. Sometimes you let your mind drift off, so there are double narratives going on. That's very interesting to me." - Apichatpong Weerasethakul, interviewed in the latest "Cineaste". I can feel "Lee Walker" (*) giving little whimpers of joy so let me say right now this is not particularly Joe-ish (it's part-financed by Columbia Pictures, for one thing), being instead a kind of eco-friendly action flick. In 1985 there were over a million Tibetan antelope on the great plain of Kekexili - where "every step you take may be the first human footprint" ever planted on that spot - but a decade later there were under 10,000. Save the antelope, Kekexili Mountain Patrol! The plot is dopey - though the Patrol's quixotic mission becomes rather poignant - but Kekexili itself is always present, the stately mists in the mountains, barren vistas and nights full of stars, and the film becomes memorable anyway. Also look out for: Best! Death-by-Quicksand scene! Ever!

(*) Thanks for the recs "Lee"; in fact, "Desolation Row" and SYMBIOPSYCHOthingy are the only two films in this Fest I've bought tickets for just to be sure I get to see them (so feel flattered, dammit). Thanks also to Guilherme and Atli, I will definitely try to catch these littleknown pictures of the Brazilian and also Icelandic cinema.

BEE SEASON (dir., Scott McGehee, David Siegel) (54)
Final credits include a "very special thanks" to Anthony Minghella, so I'm guessing he punched up the script a bit - unless it's for creating son Max, who's prominent in the cast (and not a great actor imho). Unusually 'structured' for these directors, and they deserve props for taking the cute world of SPELLBOUND (the spelling-bee doc, not the Hitchcock) and making it weird and mystical - but still so schematic, like all their movies. Richard Gere is tyrannical Dad, a New Age academic who goes on about "connection" and making the world whole again by acts of kindness like it says in the Kabbalah - but is so self-centred he never connects with his family, though he cooks for them and makes a big deal about it (he also makes a big deal about his kids understanding Hebrew, not just learning it by heart, but doesn't see the irony in coaching his daughter for spelling-bees, where words are defined by their spelling rather than their meaning). Juliette Binoche is fragile Mom, who likes microscopes and kaleidoscopes and collects shards of things because she sees the world in fragments. Dad is a hypocrite and doesn't understand when Max tries to find himself by becoming a Buddhist (I guess it's brave of Gere to take the part, given his rep as a Hollywood dilettante dabbling in Enlightenment) (**), but the little daughter is the true mystic, and can use her gifts to either (a) win the spelling-bee OR (b) save the family. Sometimes effective - I think it'll get some good reviews - but also quite stilted, and the people feel like symbols rather than people and the DOLCE VITA reference is meant to tip us off that everyone's looking for Meaning, etc. At least I've finally figured out what it reminds me of (you know that feeling when you watch a movie and it reminds you of something else but you can't put your finger on it? it was driving me nuts!): it's that D.H. Lawrence story "The Rocking Horse Winner".

(**) At least in my cynical circles. Does this clear things up, kza?...

October 13

Bloggy aside: Ah, it's good to be back in a big city. I saw a stressed-out woman rubbing her hands obsessive-compulsively while waiting for a bus today, a pudgy stockbroker type putting the moves on a long-necked Latvian girl who didn't seem to speak any English at the table next to me ("You can have a smoke later, when we're crossing the river" "Smoke?" "Yeah I'm saying you can have a cigarette in a bit, when we cross the river." "With bridge?" "Yeah. No, I'll swim, you can sit on my shoulders heh heh" "Please?" "No it's all right I made a joke. I'm just bein' cheeky", etc), and a couple of 12-year-olds in yarmulkes getting frisked by a security guard before they were allowed to enter whatever Orthodox-Jewish function they were attending. On the minus side, it took me ages to find an internet place and these comments will be sadly truncated if I want to be done before my credit runs out...

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES (dir., Atom Egoyan) (64)
Longtime Egoyan fans have a right to feel disappointed with the way his career's going, but this is easily the most potent of the mash-ups he's been making since he went into FELICIA'S JOURNEY mode. As in that film, we have: (a) campy ironic view of 50s culture, (b) horror and melodrama elements consciously pumped up to near-comedy - CUs of evil lobsters, for chrissake! - (c) a comment about celebrity, specifically in this case the tabloid culture that strips all mystery from famous lives, (d) post-modern self-consciousness (as when the V.O. apologises for Maury Chaykin's gangster being such a stereotype), all of it wrapped around (d) Egoyan's trademark obsession with the truth as both cathartic and unbearably painful. As befits a director who's become a celebrity, his characters' lives are no longer private, and his sensibility has become flamboyant and baroque (even his extras are baroque, see e.g. the mom with a pair of creepy ash-blonde little girls in the background of a hotel-lobby shot) - but he's still recognisable as the old Egoyan, above all in realising (and being moved by) the fact that acts of cruelty are often acts of kindness in disguise; "Forgive me" are the final words, as they might be in EXOTICA or THE SWEET HEREAFTER. Arch humour, smouldering performances, a conflation of acting with sexual tension - the first three shots encapsulate the whole movie - and a poignant feel for displaced emotion (like Kevin Bacon's tears for the "miracle girl"). Also many clunky bits, as in FELICIA and ARARAT; there's no doubt Egoyan has lost much of his elegance in this new phase. But he's clearly trying for something big, so give the man a chance in my opinion; artists change, etc.

A COCK AND BULL STORY (dir., Michael Winterbottom) (59)
"Because it's funny," says someone when asked what reason the film-within-a-film has for existing; "Isn't that enough?" "Well, maybe if it's genuinely funny," comes the reply - and I think of the laughter at the packed Press screening, and the woman journalist who wheezed "That was top, that was so funny" as we were filing out. Maybe. But there's a bit when a snippet of found footage is suddenly inserted (something about Pavlov's dogs), and I had a fleeting vision of a totally experimental, Craig Baldwin-ish muddle of images, and how that might express not so much "Tristram Shandy" but the audacity of "Tristram Shandy" better than this pleasant in-joke - which is mostly a case of showbiz folk being predictably impossible and even comes with a character arc, Steve Coogan's shift to a (slightly) more responsible attitude re: wife and child. The book's theme is described as Art's failure to ever capture the limitless richness of Life - impotence is a frequent motif - and a bit of that gets through, random people's stories entering the narrative (e.g. when the PA talks about her mother's sacrifices) only to be deflected off self-centred Coogan; mostly however it's cute post-modernisms, actors being vain, Ian Hart as Frank Cottrell Boyce, a BARRY LYNDON reference, a Michael Nyman self-parody, a killer Al Pacino impression (over the final credits) and a salient question about the plural of "fetus". Best scene: LANCELOT DU LAC.

"4" (dir. Ilya Khrzanovsky) (48)
Can dogs - the most intelligible, least exotic of animals - really be conduits for obscure mystical energy? ("Dogs are closer to God," says a drinker in a bar; one guy killed a dog and suffered a run of bad luck - first his lover left him, then "something with his teeth" - recalls another.) Can the number "4" - not as magical as 3 or 7, an easily-divisible number, the number of legs on a table - really be the basis for all human life? Thought this would be hallucinatory and formally out-there (one friend called it "headache-inducing") but it's actually quite earthy and mundane, set in dingy realistic interiors and dank muddy landscapes; often reminiscent of JAPON (incl. a series of through-the-windshield driving shots in quick succession), but without that film's rigour - glum satire on the New Russia for the first half then singing peasants and endless village feasts that start to feel woozy, like a slowed-down Kusturica. Sign of the times: Putin can't be mocked, even in fun - he only drinks good Russian mineral water and hardly any alcohol, claims the guy in the bar (who doesn't know what he's talking about anyway) - but a dig at his wife is apparently okay.