Brief comments on films seen (or first seen) at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival. (Main report on the Festival can be found here.)
HEAVEN (41) (43 - second viewing) (dir., Tom Tykwer) Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi [Feels like exactly what (I assume) it is : a first draft pending subsequent application of Kieslowski's magic touch. Tykwer's touch isn't quite so magical, though he gets the prologue right (Blanchett's tragic mistake) - then grows increasingly strained and inexpert, first when Ms. B. realises said mistake (pause everything for about 30 seconds so she can milk the big moment with all her great-actressy faculties) then the clunky interrogation scenes, cops blustering unconvincingly, actors trying too hard in stilted Euro-pudding English ("Because of him, children die every week" ; "I've ceased to believe - in sense, in Justice, in Life"). Questions mount - why bother with the whole angle where the authorities are 'on' to his plan? why does she run away with him when almost everything we've seen defines her in terms of conscience and accepting her punishment (and almost nothing defines her as being in the grip of amour fou)? why do they turn into his'n hers shaven-headed homunculi in the third act? why does the villain speak from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke? Some good stuff near the end, notably the silhouette kiss and ascent to (presumably) Heaven, but most of it is just embarrassing : Tykwer mugs every scene for 'sensitivity', punctuates the action with a slow, wistful piano piece entitled "Silence". Need I say more?]
[Liked it a little more on second viewing, but what kills it is the constant disjunction between ethereal atmosphere laid on with a trowel - that minimalist piano score is virtually wall-to-wall - and content that's contrived at best, bone-headed at worst (and always flimsy, though the same could be said of BLUE or RED). Makes no sense to climb into a helicopter at the end, but Tykwer needs it for his big symbolic coda ; no real reason to shave their heads, but they have to look alike to show they're soulmates, two sides of the same coin, etc. Never believed a word of it - don't believe it when the cops keep yelling "Who do you work for?" when she's obviously distraught, don't believe when Ribisi goes to the trouble (and risk) of making her a tape just to ask if she wants his help (and why must she take the risk of returning the tape just to say "I agree"?!), and especially don't believe it when they run away together, given that everything up to that point has shown Blanchett as a person of conscience, set on doing what's right (she's guided by remorse and responsibility, not love). Pretty to look at, though - and it has a certain hypnotic stillness...]
THE GOOD THIEF (69) (dir., Neil Jordan) Nick Nolte, Tcheky Karyo, Said Taghmaoui, Nutsa Kukhianidze, Emir Kusturica, Ralph Fiennes, Mark and Michael Polish [Pure style, which of course is the best way to remake BOB LE FLAMBEUR - only replacing bittersweet Parisian ambience with candy-coloured zest and extravagant high spirits (too bad Jordan already made a film called HIGH SPIRITS). Chris Menges does Chris Doyle (aping the Wong Kar-Wai effect where a travelling-shot seems to move in rapid spurts of slo-mo, plus a magic-hour shot of Monte Carlo with all its lights gleaming that's to-die-for), French hip-hop is ladled on the soundtrack (and film is often cut to it, as with the jump-cuts at the very end), Kusturica talks about "noisy hammering heist guys" and Jordan indulges his Irish blarney - lots of puns (Taghmaoui to the Polish twins : "Twin beds only?") and general gabbiness, some of the banter almost too elaborate (see Nolte's lengthy speech about "enablers" and "co-dependents"). Joins OCEAN'S ELEVEN, and perhaps the upcoming TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE, in the ranks of remakes that charmingly finesse the whole question of comparisons with the originals, using their ineffable stylishness to thematic advantage - being 'about' the conflict between smooth professionalism (what the film calls "mathematics") and messy emotion, just as they're also incidentally about the exhilaration of purely formal pleasures vs. the tortured, emotional question of matching up to the original. Problem is there's not enough at stake - because little sense of melancholy, too much "mathematics", feelings taken for granted (this is why Soderbergh was canny enough to include "Clair De Lune") ; perky, charming, playful (Fiennes cops a credit as "Fine Art Advisor"), great fun nonetheless. Possible best line : "Remember the 80s?" "No."]
TAKE CARE OF MY CAT (62) (dir., Jeong Jae-eun) Bae Doo-na, Lee Yo-won, Ok Ji-young [Travails of late-teenage girl friends on the cusp of adulthood ; no sex, though (it's not that kind of movie). Cell-phones, lots of text-messaging (words seen onscreen, crawling stealthily across the frame), witty use of split-screen, adolescent high spirits - kind of like a "Blossom" goes Korean, or perhaps NOW AND THEN with a few more years on the protagonists. Lots of nice detail - process of choosing a cell-phone signal (they finally settle on "Chim Chim Cheree"), spin-the-bottle drinking games, talking in helium voices, pompous Dad advising daughter to always choose the most popular dish in an unfamiliar restaurant ("And remember," he tells the waitress, "if it's no good, you're responsible!" - and laughs 'charmingly'). Terribly cute and rather conservative - divorce a bad thing, yuppie life morally corrupt - but still very likeable ; and the cast is adorable.]
SWEET SIXTEEN (58) (dir., Ken Loach) Martin Compston, Annmarie Fulton, William Ruane [What a kid! Brave (taking a beating rather than do something which might hurt his mother), yet sensitive (looking up at the stars and planets through his wee telescope) ; mischievous (stealing his grandpa's false teeth for a lark) yet tenacious, a natural leader (fighting for his drug-dealing turf, climbing up the ranks of the local mini-Mafia) ; all this - and not yet 16. A too-perfect hero is a problem here, ditto melodramatic plot turns courtesy of the ever-banal Paul Laverty (Loach just hasn't been the same since they started collaborating) : GODFATHER-style initiation seemed a cheap trick, and I just didn't buy the character arc of the rather goofy best friend (his destructive revenge seems excessive for a basically passive character). Still undoubtedly powerful, dialogue salty as ever, and the final revelation that all our hero ever wanted was his lost childhood - i.e. that his Mom isn't who he thought she was, and definitely doesn't deserve him - works very well ; just needed a bit more conviction, and fewer scenes like the kid going on a joyride with opera accompaniment (delinquent - yet with feelings!). Is that supposed to be a 400 BLOWS ending, or just a random freeze-frame by the seaside?]
THE QUIET AMERICAN (46) (dir., Phillip Noyce) Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, Hai Yen Do [Disappointing, and I say that as a big Graham Greene fan (never saw the Mankiewicz version, which apparently upends his anti-American ending) ; critical consensus seems positive, even some talk of Oscars, but come on. "I don't get involved," says Caine's jaded expat correspondent early on ; "It's not easy to remain uninvolved," says Fraser's quiet (but ugly) American, reading a book called "The Dangers to Democracy" (which is obvious enough in itself but also explained in the dialogue, just to make sure). Add the fact that we know the end from the beginning, and clearly plot surprises aren't the point here - should be witty dialogue and lots of it (see e.g. THE TAILOR OF PANAMA), plus languorous Oriental ambience. Doesn't deliver, even Chris Doyle's photography nothing special ; critical acclaim possibly due to implicit 'statement' on current US policy, but even that is way out in the open (it's a question of emphasis : Pyle reads anti-Red propaganda in the novel also, but it's mentioned rather than seen and submerged in other information, not so blatant) ; Noyce signposts everything, and a scene of carnage with graphic close-ups and pounding score verges on the obscene ; theme of damage caused by good intentions - sentimental American rescuing dogs, wanting to "protect" women - remains strong, but Caine's betrayal is made easy when it should be painful. A thin, simplistic movie.]
MAN WITHOUT A PAST (62) (dir., Aki Kaurismaki) Markku Peltola, Kati Outinen, Annikki Tahti [Why is this getting all the plaudits? Perfectly likeable, but not superior to other Kaurismakis and indeed more self-conscious than the very best ones, showing the director in 'entertainer' mode - characters like the cop who speaks in florid rhetorical flourishes ("Do you have a room to rent?" "Does a wolf cry out his loneliness?") are walking gags rather than the usual deadpan almost-jokes. Familiar traits in good working order - stark compositions warmed by splashes of colour (blue door, pink blouse, lime-green shirt), period pop songs on the soundtrack, photo of Matti Pellonpaa on the wall, courtly old-fashioned reserve edging close to nostalgia ; how else to describe this placid, almost Capraesque village with its happy bums and Salvation Army bands (only the State is heartless, casting our hero on the streets)? Tries for dreamlike - is there a suggestion that it's all a dead man's dream? - occasionally gets there ; often very funny, but probably not as heartfelt as everyone seems to think. Thanks to Erik Gregersen for pointing out that the striking, preternaturally crisp shot of two blond boys looking down on our hero is in fact a reference to a famous Finnish painting called "Wounded Angel". I wish I knew stuff like that.]
SPIRITED AWAY (78) (dir., Hayao Miyazaki) [Told a friend later that I loved this because it made me feel "unreasonably happy", which was just a figure of speech (*) but not too far from the truth, now that I think about it. Narrative-wise, it rambles and doesn't necessarily make sense, though I recall only one instance of outright cheating - when Chihiro is warned that the boiler-man will try to trick her, a complete red herring - though the snowballing rhythm is perhaps the rhythm of fairy-tales, back when they were told rather than written (and before the Brothers Grimm made them compact and intelligible) - starting off on one event, wandering off to another, keeping them all in the air (even "The Iliad" is full of digressions) ; some have noted the corporate angle, Chihiro having to work her way out of trouble, but it never seemed especially pointed or coherent (eco-message slightly more relevant, but still fairly marginal). Attraction is entirely unreasonable, that Disney-defiled word called 'magic', highlights beginning with the first appearance of the monsters - shadowy wraiths filling the town, a boat arriving in the darkness, playing-card shapes emerging from its cabins, birthing bodies as they walk - including the black soot-balls with big eyes, the comedy with No-Face, the dragon pursued by bird-shaped scraps of paper, the train-ride to the witch's lair (such colours!), our heroine's klutzy charm and all the various frog-headed, canary-shaped supporting beasties. No-one's really a villain - even the Margaret Thatcher-like witch a slave to her baby - and there's always little gags in the background, like the mosquito-like buzzing whenever the little crow appears ; it's a great film, advocating kindness and patience without a hint of message-mongering. That the little black soot-balls exist is delightful enough, that our heroine has to feed them is even better ; that she feeds them handfuls of tiny, multi-coloured stars (of course! what else would they eat?) fills you with a giddy, immeasurable joy. Mileage may vary, I assume...]
(*): Lifted, I now realise, from Pauline Kael. Sorry Pauline.
CITY OF GOD (71) (dir., Fernando Meirelles) Alexandre Rodrigues, Matheus Nachtergaele, Leandro Firmino da Hora [First thing to say about this (or perhaps the second thing) is that it's kinetic, propulsive, utterly compelling cinema ; second thing to say about this (or perhaps the first) is that it's 90% completely amoral, 10% actively immoral (esp. when it turns Knockout Ned's moral corruption into a cheap joke - "The third time, the exception became the rule"). Hard to justify the flashy tricks - fast-motion, split-screen, telling same story from different viewpoints, Tarantino-style - in the service of violent death, but it's worth comparing to something like MENACE II SOCIETY, with its more alarmist, Manichean viewpoint, violence equated with psychosis and nihilism, something for our hero to try and escape ; here, violence is part of the Carnival - it's a samba movie about violent death - mixed in with friendship and jealousy and everyday humour (even the fearsome Li'l Ze gets a foolish moment, standing dejected and rejected after he asks a girl to dance ; his madness stems from his physical ugliness, a wry side-note on the Brazilian cult of beauty), which is much more honest both - I suspect - about the feel of ghetto life (gangs and cliques of all kinds - the "Church crowd", the "hoodlums" - all mixed together) and the simple fact that violence is a part of life. Doesn't judge at all, even when you feel it should (the fact that the hero's a photographer possibly implying that the best one can do is report) ; otherwise, a film of terrific skill and enthusiasm, highlights include the shooting of the Runts, the big party set-piece, "Flirting With Crime" interlude and WILD IN THE STREETS-type ending. Easy to scoff, but it really is a blast.]
INTACTO (67) (dir., Juan Carlos Fresnadillo) Leonardo Sbaraglia, Eusebio Poncela, Max Von Sydow [Opening shot shows an almost sci-fi landscape, a casino like a spaceship in a lunar setting ; ensuing film probably at its best when it preserves that edge of strangeness, otherwise not unlike a TV episode or Tale of the Unexpected (staking one's finger on a bet recalls Roald Dahl's "Man From the South"). Max von Sydow better than he's been in ages, blindfold-through-the-forest scene notably tense ; still hangs together quite loosely, oddly structured so we leave the heroes hanging for a stretch in the middle, taking up the story of the bullfighter (maybe something to do with Fresnadillo's avowed intention to make the film "more warm and passionate" as it goes on, give it emotional heft). Nice subtext in the concept of people who can't touch others without jinxing them - it's the EDWARD SCISSORHANDS idea - but it's not really a deep movie, just a nifty entertainment with a swooping score. Hollywood beckons, no doubt.]
UNKNOWN PLEASURES (69) (dir., Jia Zhang Ke) Zhao Tao, Zhao Wei Wei, Wu Qiong [Too on-the-nose about its theme, which (of course) is the venal face of Chinese capitalism : everyone's after cash, "my commission", even the Lottery ("Make your leisure time pay!" cries a TV commercial). Not quite so simple, though, because money is more than just an evil - it's a dynamic force in a film that's all about dynamism (fluid, impressionistic structure) versus stasis (scene-by-scene inertia wherein our young heroes idle, smoke endlessly, sing bad songs, watch TV, etc) : a US Dollar is a mythical beast, pulling characters towards the same unknown pleasures as the US films (PULP FICTION) they describe to each other, or the scooters they ride through dry river-beds and rubble-strewn back alleys just to get some movement in their lives. Unlike PLATFORM, which seemed to side with the background march of Time flattening the various vicissitudes, this seems to plunge into all the teeming details of Life-as-it-is (though we still feel Time underneath it all, marching on emptily in these dead-end lives) : it's a rich film, done with humour and occasional tenderness - there's a goofy, loveable moment when our heroes sing along with the TV, and I also smiled at the cigarette-smoke kiss (with delayed reaction), father trying to cash the magic Dollar at a bank (but not The Bank) of China, etc. - and it also looks quite beautiful, everything cloaked in a soft, buttery light (quite a shock to learn it's shot on video, though that may just be a sign of my visual illiteracy). The light seems to cling to people, as if adding yet another obstacle to movement ; emphasis is placed on repeated actions (man getting face slapped ; woman trying to get up, pushed back down again ; motorbike starting up and stalling), repeated long past the point of reason or plausibility ; "The bomb looks real, but you don't," our hero is informed while planning a bank robbery - and he does look unreal, with his tragic-rebel look and impossibly perfect cheekbones ; the whole thing seems to take place at one remove, yet inviting where PLATFORM was detached. 'Look at this picture of life circa 2002,' it says, holding it up to the light. Fascinating.]
STEVIE (70) (dir., Steve James) [More voluminous notes on this than anything else I saw in TIFF - every other line seemed relevant, somehow - but it all boils down to the same thing : Steve James returns to a screwed-up kid he "mentored" years before, finds the screwed-up kid has grown into a predictably screwed-up man - and turns him into a documentary subject, even while struggling with the ethical question of whether doing so would be an exploitation of their relationship. Most interesting at its most personal, i.e. when James brings himself into the narrative - though he seems to think confessing his doubts about what he's doing absolves him of guilt for doing it ; least interesting in the horror-show aspects - broken families, trailer-park grotesquerie ("I was gonna knock her in the head with a claw-hammer ... Like everybody else, we have our differences"), tattoos, bad teeth, etc. Rambles a bit, esp. in the middle section, but you wouldn't want to lose scenes like the impromptu appearance by the local chapter of the Aryan Brotherhood, or the inspirational interlude with the lovely, nurturing foster-couple - contrasting sharply with James' own social-worker wife, who wants Stevie to "get in touch" with his feelings and comes off creepily passive-aggressive (deliberate? surely not). "This film will be an honest film," says James, and he probably means it - all the awkwardness is part of the process : the worst thing you can be in his book is a "slick asshole", and the film is touchingly non-slick, if not altogether successful. Bonus points for great William Faulkner opening epigram : "The past is never dead. It's not even past."]
MORVERN CALLAR (54) (dir., Lynne Ramsay) Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott [Not a huge amount to say on this much-acclaimed movie. Guess I just don't appreciate Ramsay's rather over-determined aesthetic, with its sparse dialogue and very deliberate dead patches interspersed with self-conscious effects (even if many are superbly done) - a song suddenly bursting over a scene in a supermarket, our heroines crying "Let's do some baking!" and glimpsed through a doorway throwing flour at each other, the sudden saturated colours marking their passage from touristy Spain to the real thing. Theme involves "trying to understand" a boyfriend's death (despite his suicide-note plea to leave it alone), Death ever-present, possibly related to the insect motif - albeit ants and cockroaches rather than worms and maggots. One amazing scene of general disorientation at a party (music, voices off, shouts of "Have you seen my boyfriend?"), lots of very impressive shots, and I guess it's a 'nice irony' that Morvern's search for authenticity ends in triumphant dissimulation. But, you know, whatever...]
SPIDER (47) (dir., David Cronenberg) Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Bradley Hall, Lynn Redgrave [Not bad, but there's not much there. Dank London atmosphere, dreamlike feel - slow, deserted, rich with overheard comments - greenish-grey light over everything, Fiennes impressive in a limited way ; psychology quite flimsy, however, not the classic Oedipal scenario - rage channelled towards the mother rather than the father - but close enough, which makes it hard to care overmuch about Spider's tortured psyche (esp. if you see the twist coming, though I admit I only anticipated it by about 10 mins.). Its fans seem to value it as the ultimate in film-as-solipsism, Spider shaping the world around him as an extension of himself, just as film directors create worlds in their own (psychological) image ; I'll take FIGHT CLUB or MEMENTO, thanks...]
THE EYE (48) (dir., Oxide and Danny Pang) Lee Sin-je, Lawrence Chou, Chutcha Rujinanon [Saw this at Midnight Madness on the back of a six-film day, refusing to take notes as a matter of principle. Not much remains, thinking back on it almost a month later, but there are a couple of genuine frissons in the first half - scariest for me being the ghost who asks "Why are you sitting in my chair?" - but creepiness tends to dissipate once our heroine sets out to find the cause of the haunting. Final resolution unsatisfying, as these things often are (reducing the horrors inevitably makes them less scary) ; mildly effective, but I still prefer BLINK in the 'blind woman getting her sight back with unwanted side-effects' stakes.]
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS (54) (dir., Shane Meadows) Robert Carlyle, Rhys Ifans, Kathy Burke, Shirley Henderson, Ricky Tomlinson [Not good but hard to hate, given Meadows' gregarious sensibility - typical shot : everyone sprawled across a bed together, kids asleep, TV blaring in the background - and such details as Tomlinson as a C&W singer calling himself the "Midlands cowboy" (though the whole Western angle never goes beyond the title and opening credits). Emphasis on funny cars (a pink three-wheeler, a "Tartan-Mobile") and colourful insults ("Ya big streak o'pish!"), though also on the rather startling implication that being a snitch and coward is OK if one is also responsible and a solid citizen (as in ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS, Meadows is ultimately much less enamoured of flaky individualists than he lets on) ; basically lightweight, but the actors are good, and take their moments with aplomb. Totally irrelevant bit I keep giggling over, for some reason : MC calling out the numbers in a game of bingo. "Chips and curry on a plate ... 38".]
ASSASSINATION TANGO (53) (dir., Robert Duvall) Robert Duvall, Ruben Blades, Frank Gio, Kathy Baker [Robert Duvall, International Man of Mystery : who else (never mind what other film-star-turned-director) lingers so lovingly over neglected sub-cultures, talks the talk in such loose, good-humoured, happily discursive scenes? He really is a most unusual American film-maker - though the film itself is ramshackle, built around a frankly absurd hitman angle (why doesn't our hero just go back to the US and come back in two weeks, incidentally?), and there's still a slight dishonesty (as there was in ANGELO MY LOVE) in romanticising this kind of self-enclosed, self-regarding culture : isn't the tango just a dance after all - and isn't there something faintly off-putting about this preening, very macho society? Not to mention that Argentine tango looks a little silly - lots of kicking legs and spinning torsos - not to mention lines like "For me, the panther is the symbol of elegance". Duvall is a treasure, and can go on making these quirky, improvisational little films forever, far as I'm concerned ; nowhere near as good as THE APOSTLE, though. Best gag : "Adios muchachos".]
TURNING GATE (66) (dir., Hong Sang-soo) Kim Sang-kyung, Chu Sang-mi, Yeh Ji-won [Thought this was going to be great, based on the first half-hour - Rohmeresque emotional detail, impressive framing, quietly exhilarating scenes like the four people drinking and chatting in unbroken medium-shot ; slightly disappointed to discover it's merely very good, solid but a little airless (needed more scenes happening without a larger purpose, like the bit where the kid gets her finger caught in the car door). Themes a little fuzzy after all this time [writing this a month later, though I hope to see it again in Thessaloniki], but seemed to be a case of emotional push-and-pull, our hero shying away from love throughout the movie - resisting the loss of identity implied by "me in you and you in me" ("To me, love is just liking a lot") - while trying to be honest, trying not to hurt anyone, above all trying to learn from the past, finally taking the plunge (identified with the lovelorn snake at the turning gate) ; ending bittersweet, because he 'fails' but grows, affirms his humanity ("Even though it's difficult to be a human being," characters tell each other, "let's not turn into monsters, okay?"). Hong's building-blocks are the small mysteries of Life - coincidence, chance meetings, repetitions, characters talking in circles - his insights appearing by osmosis more than anything. Special Mention to composer Arvo Part, also featured in HEAVEN and GERRY (of the TIFF films I saw) ; this is the sound of the globalised arthouse...]
KEN PARK (59) (dir., Larry Clark / Ed Lachman) James Ransone, Tiffany Limos, Stephen Jasso [Larry Clark's best and most honest film to date in my opinion, both because he skews towards comedy over KIDS-type moralising (and is often very funny, esp. in the GRADUATE-type relationship and scary-ludicrous Scrabble scene) and because he brings his own repressed pedophilia to the table - already hinted in ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE - dealing partly in adult / teen sexual longing (the final threesome and Utopian sex-as-panacea message, leaving the kids to their own devices, contrast with the previous scenes where adults invariably mess them up). Might also be described as a middle-class GUMMO or a teenage HAPPINESS, and could Ken Park (whose only real function is to get killed) be a jokey reference to Kenny of "South Park"? Clark still amused by cheap shots, silly bits like a character pissing and drinking beer at the same time, and it's worth comparing this to ALL OR NOTHING, whose abusive-son character behaves very similarly to "Tate" in this one - except Leigh is compassionate, taking the character to another level, whereas Clark is flippant, using him for easy sensationalism. Guess he'll never be more than an entertainer, but since when is that a bad thing? Sample dialogue : "Can I eat you out?".]
VOLCANO HIGH (52) (dir., Kim Tae-kyun) Jang Hyuk, Shin Min-ah, Jang Ryang [Lots of fun, combination teenpic and MATRIX-style action ; now if only it had a plot - and didn't confusingly change focus (to the "new teachers") about halfway through. Lots of freeze-frames, OTT action, funny captions sometimes lost in translation (one caption informs us of the villain's real name, which apparently sounds very silly in Korean). Sample dialogue : "Shall I, Dark Ox, test your endurance?". Good for video, frequent forward-winding advised.]
DIRTY PRETTY THINGS (51) (dir., Stephen Frears) Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Sergi Lopez, Benedict Wong [Chris Menges is back (see also THE GOOD THIEF), and he's shrugged off dirty realism for a bright, bracing look ; Sergi Lopez irresistible, Benedict Wong getting in some good one-liners as a wisecracking hospital worker. But the script is awful (awful!), dialogue often stilted, Audrey Tautou unconvincing as Turkish peasant, pretensions to be saying something significant about immigrant underclass lame and embarrassing. "We are the people you do not see. We drive your cabs, and suck your cocks". Must be tough maintaining one's invisibility in that context...]
PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (66) (dir., Paul Thomas Anderson) Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman [Easy to see why it went untitled for so long, at any rate. Sandler as a very PTA-esque hero, typifying his manic-depressive sensibility (all those wild directorial mood swings from tenderness to violence), in a strangely arid film destined to be dissed by the many, championed by the passionate few. Once again the base is loneliness and alienation ("I don't know how other people are," admits our hero), topped by male insecurity - frightened man-child simmering with volcanic rage, smothered by sisters and taunts of "gay boy" - flavoured with a wealth of disparate elements (the pudding, the piano, the phone sex, the aggressive hyperactive music score full of drums and bells and cuckoo sounds) ; first half-hour is like nothing else, second half marred by dead scenes (e.g. when he's being chased by the "brothers"), oddly tentative romance and poorly-staged final confrontation. Hero's relationship with the world is unclear - is his pudding scam an act of subversion or the ultimate act of faith in "rules and regulations"? - but maybe that's the point ; visual landscape seems sketchy and emaciated, but maybe that's the point. Not a success, but full of fleeting pleasures ; may work better on second viewing, when I already know it's not going to come together. Hands-down weirdest moment : "Business is very food".
[Second viewing: actually liked it a little less this time, though any talk of shortcomings must also note PTA's brilliance at creating moments like the phone booth lighting up, or shots like the couple kissing in Hawaii as the world rushes by in silhouette, or scenes like the escalating chaos when Watson and the sister come to visit. Also, I don't think it's right to speak of "dead scenes" - the whole thing works at a similar level of abstraction and the staging isn't poor so much as whimsical, as if content to set things up symbolically. Otherwise, though, I have exactly the same problem with this as I do with (say) BUFFALO '66 - a film about the loser-as-superhero, alienated and dysfunctional yet with so much inner strength and so much love to give; only the Right Woman can see his true self, someday those who taunt him will feel his wrath, etc etc. Even worse in this case because Watson is such a thin character and because our hero gets an inner badass right from the start, allowed to erupt in volcanic rages. Over-emphatic compositions (hero in a corner of an empty frame, etc), sudden loud noises on the soundtrack, Sandler's maddening recessive quality. Nothing to refute the possibility that PTA will soon make a(nother) masterpiece; this ain't it, though.]
CHICKEN POETS (67) (dir., Meng Jinghui) Chen Jianbin, Qin Hailu [Can such things be? A Chinese film in the style of Richard Lester, full of madcap invention - black chickens, ostriches, advertising slogans, "How To Be A Poet" software, colour-blind heroine telling (apropos of not very much) how she always wanted to be a flight attendant, pauses for musical numbers and stock footage of Communist heroes. Formally accomplished, often hilarious, but thematically banal - is venal capitalism sapping the intellectual life of China? - and a little too obvious, petering out towards the end. Definitely something going on, though, what with this and Jia Zhang Ke - a Sixth Generation of worldly Chinese film-makers, light-years away from the rural period dramas of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige ; first Chinese film I've seen that uses foreign music (heavy metal!) as background - not for contrast, as in PLATFORM, but just background, as you might get in a Western movie. Progress, I suppose...]
SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (55) (second viewing: 54) (dir., Park Chan-wook) Song Kang-ho, Shin Ha-kyun, Bae Doo-na [As in BAD GUY (and as per the title), this requires a fondness for the kind of character we'll call the Melancholy Sadist - shall we pity him, or avert our eyes in horror? - which I'm not entirely sure I possess. Both melancholy and sadistic, first half full of ellipses typifying the characters' lack of connection (striking image of hero and heroine together but apart in the same shot, 'blocked' by furniture in the middle), second half fragmented climaxing in Miike-style ultra-violence (first Achilles-tendon slash I've seen since PET SEMATARY, if I'm not mistaken) ; whole thing seems to have deliberate echoes of HIGH AND LOW - only in reverse, starting with the kidnappers and moving to the victims - though I couldn't discern much of that film's rich-versus-poor social comment (unless in the kidnapper justifying his actions - but surely as a joke! - in economic terms, "movement of capital maximises the value of money"). Well-made but unsatisfying, though it's hard to know how much is straight and how much tongue-in-cheek ; pretty sick sense of humour, in any case. Is that really Bae Doo-na from the cute and cuddly TAKE CARE OF MY CAT as our hero's girlfriend?] [No real difference on second viewing. Patchily effective, but the main attraction is watching a grim revenge thriller with unspeakable detail shot and paced like a Hong Sang-soo movie. Also, Park's images are composed for depth - didn't make notes, but I remember noticing over a dozen compositions either with foreground/background action or something pulling the eye 'into' the frame - giving the film a sense of visual fullness, if nothing else. Rich-versus-poor social comment is there, pace my previous comments - the kidnappers are poor, the victim/avenger a rich man who lost the good life "after the economy crashed"; his revenge is also a kind of revenge on the poor for bringing him down to their level. Make sense?].
THE MAGDALENE SISTERS (55) (dir., Peter Mullan) Geraldine McEwan, Anne-Marie Duff, Nora-Jane Noone, Dorothy Duffy [Starts so strong - esp. a wordless scene at a party, done with frowns and glances and compulsive Irish music on the soundtrack - and so obviously worthy and thought-provoking I was more or less mechanically on a 60+ till about an hour in - at which point I realised I wasn't actually enjoying it very much at all. Unabashedly Dickensian (nuns having bacon for breakfast while their charges eat gruel, OLIVER TWIST-style), which Geraldine McEwan at least seems to have realised, giving a marvellous rendition of sardonic villainy, and it does work in bits and pieces (e.g. the perfectly-weighted scene where the Lord's Prayer is used as a weapon) - but it's such a thin, one-sided concept, and the film offers little beyond rote nun-bashing ; it's no surprise to learn (as per Mullan's Q&A) that the most victimised character - a girl who ends up in a mental institution after being raped by a priest - is also the one who's completely fictional (the others being "composites" of real people). Works in a trashy way, like a prison movie or sadistic-public-school movie, though the final revenge is quite affecting ; is it a joke that one of the girls is named Una O'Connor?]