REVIEWS by Yomi Braester

9 SOULS (Japan) ** Frankly, I don't understand the recent violent turn in Japanese cinema, which culminated with Battle Royale (a friend told me there are even far more violent films, and I'll just take his word for it). There is sometimes a poetic beauty in what I call "a Japanese happy ending" -- everyone dead, smeared with blood . Apart from the violence, 9 Souls explores some existential questions -- not very convincingly, since the social context seems contrived. On the bright side, it's a well-made film, with sophisticated but not overdone photography, and altogether high production values. The opening aerial shot of Tokyo, which erases the buildings one by one until only Tokyo Tower remains in place, like a red knife in the city's heart, is innovative and evocative.

ANATOMY OF HELL (France) * The film that convinced me that porn films (the 42 Ave kind) can have more honesty to them than some feature films—Anatomy of Hell, for example. The woman director claims that the film shows how the sexual act is always a lonely one. I guess my disagreement with the film starts here. The presumptuous narrative, the plot—which consists of marveling at sex juices an expanding tampon—and the flat acting make a totally negligible film.

THE BLIND SWORDSMAN: ZATOICHI (Japan) *** Even though, unlike other Takeshi Kitano films, this one is a costume dram set in the late shogunate period, it is nevertheless a typical Kitano, with wry humor, cool look, and good fight scenes. Yet, as in most Kitano films, the energy is sustained but not much meaning emerges. The entertainment builds up to the exhilarating festive dance, a Japanese-style Stomp.

BONJOUR MONSIEUR SHLOMI (Israel) **** A witty and warm-hearted flic, feel-good filmmaking at its best. A minor movie, the story about a boy whose talents remain undetected by the education system, the film celebrates the joy of life using all the conventional tricks without becoming trite.

BORED IN BRNO (Czech Republic) ** A silly, funny movie, about sex-craving youngsters and not-so-young lonely people in the Czech city of Brno.

BRIGHT FUTURE (JAPAN) ** Kurosawa, unlike in Doppelgänger, sans humor. A murderer bequeaths his pet jellyfish to his friend, who, together with the murderer's father, try to make sense of the son's legacy, encapsulated in the surprisingly hardy jellyfish. A few poetic images of jelllyfish in Tokyo's water system don't save the film from saying little.

BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS (Great Britain) ** A crowd-pleaser directed by actor, author and celebrity Stephen Fry. The story of a rowdy bunch of youngsters in 1930s England lacks a plotline and any clear focus. The wit for wit's sake wouldn't have been so irritating if it wasn't packaged as a smart statement about media coverage. The will to entertain at all costs and inability to put forth a persuasive reason for making the movie hampers the well-acted, high-production-values film.

CARANDIRU (Brazil) *** An amusing, probably too amusing, portrayal of Carandiru prison in Sao Paolo, told through the eyes of the prison doctor. Although the vignettes don't form a larger picture, and the social context is sorely absent, the film provides an opportunity to rethink the role of social norms—almost none of which seem to concern the prisoners—and how society is reflected in its prisons (it is hard not to think of U.S. prisons, at home and outside U.S. borders).

THE COLDEST DAY (PRC) **** A somewhat overaestheticized movie about marriage and divorce in modern China, a topic that was taboo until Huang Jianxin's The Marriage Certificate and even more recently, and more poignantly, Feng Xiaogang's A Sigh and Cell Phone. The third of a yet-unshot trilogy about love (spring), marriage (summer) and divorce (winter), the film straddles the eye-catching art film (like Meng Jinghui's absurdist Chicken Poets, which shares some of the cast with Xie Dong's film) and the contemporary popular strand of Feng Xiaogang's. The director had worked with Zhang Yimou on seven movies; this directorial debut will make me keep an eye for his next works.

CONTROL ROOM (Egypt) **** An eye-opening documentary on the controversial Al-Jazeera network. Although veteran Bush critics will find little new, the full dynamics between Al-Jazeera and the U.S. regime, between Al-Jazeera and other networks, and perhaps most interestingly among Al-Jazeera correspondents deserves the close look provided by the film.

THE CORPORATION (Canada) ****** You counted right — that's 6 out of 5 stars. The film itself deserves 5, and the sixth indicates that it's a moral must-see. If you can't catch it at the festival, it will also be showing commercially in late June. The Corporation is a Michael Moore-style documentary (with frequent appearances by Moore himself), tracing the evolution, impact and future of corporations. The bodyless and soulless entity that has been granted the legal rights of a person has taken over the role of the church and even of national governments. Even the most informed will find the revelations made in the film, about the privatization of everything on earth and the corporate control over our lives, shocking. Perhaps the most interesting discussion is that of the contribution of often well-meaning individuals to the corporate doom machine. The Corporation is also a lesson in how excellent cinematography and image and sound editing can do miracles even to a talking heads-based narrative.

DARKNESS BRIDE (Hong Kong) ** Despite an interesting modern twist on ghost stories, the film looks like a collection of rehashed images from successful PRC films, from Red Sorghum to sixth-genertion cinema. Wether rip-offs or smart allusions, they drown in bad cinematography, bad lighting, bad dialog, bad character buildup, bad editing, bad mise-en-scène, and almost every other mistake in the book of filmmaking.

DEATH IN GAZA (U.S.) ***** A documentary on the life of Palestinian children under Israeli occupation, especially in Rafah, which has gained special poignancy since the director, James Miller, was shot dead by the Israeli army during the shooting of the film (and on camera). The film gives a balanced picture, and precisely because it explicitly avoids juding "the rights and wrongs" of the situation, it shows the futility and brutality of the Israeli occupation, which causes unjustifiable pain and breeds hatred. Miller's death pushes his fellow crew members to use the movie to reflect on the place of journalists and filmmakers in covering this and other conflicts.

THE DEBUT (USSR) **** An archival copy of a milestone film from 1970. A bit escapist and inevitably showing the marks of time, it is nevertheless a riveting movie, mostly because of Inna Churikova's acting and the back-and-forth between the contemporary plot and a Joan of Arc film-within-a-film, reminiscent of the intricate structure of Bulgakov's Master and Margerita.

DEEP BREATH (Iran) **** The film bears some hallmarks of Iranian films—a straightforward portrayal of daily life, unadorned by any score or fancy cinematography, with little but color and diegetic music to provide punctuation. Yet the film also differs from the earlier wave of Iranian cinema by addressing urban life, and juvenile delinquents in particular. Deep Breath rolls toward its inevitable ending, a foretold death, only to hint, gradually, that our expectations might be frustrated. It is fascinating to see Iranian film develop into new subject matter while keeping to explore the boundaries of filmmaking. In its last minutes, the film pays tribute to Emir Kusturica—the tape dropped in the car contains the score for Underground—and ends with an equally poetic though much more mundane conclusion.

DONAU, DUNA, DUNAJ, DUNAV, DUNAREA (Austria) **** A poetic ride down the Danube, whose name changes from one country to another, in a boat that seems to carry all the memories of twentieth-century Eastern Europe. The downstream journey unravels the story in opposite direction to the milage count, returning the characters to the river's point zero -- perhaps to where history can be rewritten in a more optimistic light. This road movie with an aquatic twist places together unlikely characters to pose questions about humanity in the face of collective history and personal memory. The cinematographer captures the beauty of the places without any National Geographic-style gloss.

DOPPELGÄNGER (Japan) **** The Ring meets Fight Club meets Woody Allen. I haven't been such a fan of the director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, known for films on the supernatural such as Séance (2000) and Cure (1997), because of a peceived lack of humor. Was I wrong! Here Kurosawa uses his hallmark interest in the undead to take jabs at the assumptions on which the genre relies (for example, the live seem more impervious to mortal blows than the zombies, and the ending sequence ends, Japanese style, with a suicide — but I bet you won't guess whose). The cinematography is innovative and sophisticated — Kurosawa uses, for example, the cliché of splitting the screen to show the same actor in two roles, only to subvert our expectations. What starts as a twilight zone flic turns quickly into a spoof on the zen lesson to be learned from artificial intelligence and a satire on corporate greed in contemporary Japan.

DRIFTERS (PRC, Taiwanese production) **** The sixth film by the very prolific director Wang Xiaoshuai. Wang has addressed current issues in Chinese society, including post-Tiananmen nihilism, rampant prostitution, and urban change. Drifters deals with the globalized market of goods and humans. Hong Yunsheng, or Second Brother, is a veteran of the human smuggling industry, having tried to steal his way to the U.S. three times. On the third time he succeeded, had a son with a Chinese restaurant owner's daughter, and reluctantly renounced his fatherly rights before returning to his hometown in Fujian. When the son comes to China, Hong tries to see his son, but the mother's family turns him away by upholding U.S. law. Although the drama revolves around the father's plea for compassion challenges the legal argument, and although the villagers keep arguing that Chinese sovereignty annuls U.S. law, it is also clear that the world is getting smaller. China enters the WTO, streamlining its legal system to fit global economy, and Hong remains a drifter who has nothing to lose in either system. The young son's confusion, not realizing that "China" and "the old country" are one and the same, points to a profound disconnect -- China is a powerful player in global corporate dealings, but at the same time it is "the old country" for the immigrants who are the invisible grist of world economy. Family ties, social networks, and personal relationships are strained, perhaps beyond recovery, by these forces. Wang Xiaoshuai stays close to the original vision of "sixth generation" Chinese directors, who draw on a documentary film style, using little non-diegetic sound and minimal editing. The result is a slow, poetic film that portrays larger social issues as well as individual suffering.

FEAR AND TREMBLING (France) *** A young Belgian woman comes to Tokyo to work as a translator for a Japanese corporation; cultural misunderstandings ensue, and the tragic and cruel outcome is averted only by the protagonist's insistence to chuck it all to her experience as an ironic writer-to-be. I don't know if I should take offense at the cultural stereotyping in the movie, or see it as part of the film's charm. Although too much seems to be made of the cultural difference between a free-spirited, artistically-inclined Belgian and the vindictive, number-crunching Japanese, the result is a comic and thought-provoking film. Yet another version of Bridget Jones: this time she diets on the rigid hierarchy of corporate Japan.

THE GIRL ON THE BRIDGE (France) ***** The flic that was sums up all that French films of the 1960s wanter to be, were, and were not. Leconte combines a road movie, a demimonde piece, slapstick, and romance—and still comes out clean of any sentimentalism or silliness. The love story between a suicidal girl and a circus knife-thrower advances through purely cinematographic means. The editing of the knife-throwing scenes leaves you breathless, not only with suspense but also with the emotional weight and the exhilarating rhythm of montage. The plot, dialogues, and camerawork are all so simple and yet mind-blowing in their irreverence of conventions.

THE GODDESS (China) ***** Most likely the best film made in China before 1949. The director Wu Yonggang shows his mastery of film language, and the legendary actress Ruan Lingyu, as good as any Hollywood silent film diva, gives a top performance. The story of a prostitute who tries to fend for herself and her little boy in ruthless Shanghai is told in touching detail and through innovative cinematography. I look forward to hearing thh live musical accompaniment.

THE GOOD LAWYER'S WIFE (South Korea) ** The latest in the turn to soft porn in Korean film. Despite some very poignant moments, such as the grandmother's shockingly frank discussion of her sex life, most of the sex talk and sex scenes seem gratuitous. The director Im Sang Soo seems to have more to say in the second part of the film, after the plot takes a tragic turn, about sex and bereavement and about how women can take control and take what they deserve, but the slickness of the film remains too much of a turn-off for me. The shooting spaces are perfectly color-matched and huge enough for good camera work—but not for building a convincing plot.

GOODBYE DRAGON INN (Taiwan) ***** The latest masterpiece from Tsai Ming-liang (The Hole, What Time Is It There?). Originally part of a double feature, with Lee Kang-sheng's The Missing, Goodbye Dragon Inn addresses again Tsai's favorite topics: the vanishing of Taipei's cityscapes and momory, and urban alienation—especially among gay men. Like all of Tsai's films, it is very slow, poetic, and almost plotless. As such, it is a strange, though very touching, tribute to Hong Kong martial arts films. Dragon Inn (1967) is one of King Hu's classics (it was only recently released on DVD, and most viewers know the 1992 Tsui Hark remake). The lead actor of Dragon Inn—or is it his ghost?—makes an appearance in a Taipei film theater, only to find out that few people care to watch the movie (the theater, in Yonghe district, was demolished right after the film was shot).

HERO (PRC) **** I bet my friends will be surprised I gave Hero four stars. It clearly cashes in on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, shamelessly relies on star power (Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi), and possesses so little of Zhang Yimou's earlier flair for drama (Judou, Raise the Red Lantern). And yet it is an almost perfect martial arts film -- visual extravaganza, innovative combat moves, the right amount of bogus theorizing on inner peace as the key to physical performance. The film is first and foremost a feast for the eyes. Zhang, himself an accomplished photographer, chose Chris Doyle, of Wang Kar-wai fame, as Director of Photography. With the exception of his rookie films in Taiwan in the early 1980s, Doyle has been flawless -- every light, every frame, every camera move and every developing choice right on target. Doyle also knows the faces of his Hong Kong stars and brings out the best in them. The martial arts scenes, directed by Ching Siu-tung, long-time associate of Tsui Hark, include some breath-taking sceneries (against Ang Lee's verdant bamboo forest, Zhang goes for a snowy mountain lake), a Matrix-like mind-teaser (the film's first fight), and two superb choreographies with Maggie Cheung, dancing against flying arrows and whipping up a leaf storm. All of these are enhanced by Tan Dun's score. The most conspicuous body-and-mind talk compares the sword and the brush, making room for some good martial penmanship. Yet the film still doesn't beat, by my lights, Ashes of Time, Wang Kar-wai's and Chris Doyle's parable on human memory and martial arts tour de force, or The Emperor and the Assassin, Chen Kaige's profound psychological profile of the same Chinese emperor. Hero presents contrived moral dilemmas and eventually whips out the concept of tianxia and holds up a rather simplistic national message. The term tianxia, which owns its current usage to the Confucian reformists of the late 19th century, is (mis)translated as "Our Land" and upheld to justify tyrannical rule for the sake of national unity. This message, which is eerily similar to the Chinese Communist Party's defense of the political status quo, has angered many Chinese critics. Better focus on the film's place in the martial arts flic pantheon.

IN YOUR HANDS (Denmark) ***** The tenth approved Dogma film, this drama looks and reads like a Lars von Thrier movie. A prison priest copes, within the limits of human fallibility, with difficult moral dilemmas. Her predictable failure might be construed as another Danish depressing plot, but in my mysanthropic view, the frank portrayal of human weakness is in itself a form of transcendetal revelation. The realistic parameters of dogma filmmaking foreground the magic of the plot.

INFERNAL AFFAIRS (Hong Kong) ***** The first of a trilogy now shown in its entirety at SIFF, this action film (shown at last year's SIFF) is all that Hong Kong cinema was slandered to be lacking. Coherent plot, credible psychological profiles of the characters, and even an ambivalent ending (so much so that the PRC release has a different, more positive and absolutely inane ending).

INFERNAL AFFAIRS II (Hong Kong) **** Almost as smart and just as visually right-on-target as the first in the series, the sequel—in fact, a prequel—explains the elaborate dynamics between SP Wong (Anthony Wong) and Sam (Eric Tsang), and adds an interesting commentary on the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to the PRC.

INTIMATE STRANGERS (France) ***** A smart, really smart love story. Patrice Leconte at his best, in a drama about a woman who mistakes a tax accountant for a psychiatrist (or is it truly a mistake?). Anna (a tribute to Freud's first patient, Anna O?) meets the pent-up if well-meaning William, a modern-day metamorphosis of Kafka's office-man Joseph K . Predictably, the Freudian process of transference gives rise to a forbidden love, all the more poignant since the two know that their psychoanalytical sessions are dissimulated. The rituals, the little secrets and deceipts, the emotional interdependence and strength of love are played out in an understanted and highly humorous fashion. Love always seems to guard many unknowns, and the film's great achievement is in leaving us with some unresolved riddles.

JAGGED HARMONIES (Germany) **** A love-it-or-hate-it period piece on Johann Sebastian Bach. Unlike other films on the subject, notably The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, which stay within the confines of historical probability, Jagged Harmonies is at once both meticulously historical and wildly imaginative. From the very beginning, we know the protagonists, J.S. Bach and King Friedrich, to be flesh-and-blood, imperfect human beings. Both are imprisonee by their bodies—Friedrich in his homosexuality, Bach in his deteriorating sight and dedication to music. Interspersed with Greenaway-like scenes of bacchanalia, the fantasy requires a leap of faith which not all viewers will be willing to make.

JAGODA IN THE SUPERMARKET (Serbia) *** Despite the imperfect cinematography, sometimes long-drawn scenes, and at times silly humor, this flic is a cute minor comedy that really works. The Director, Dusan Milic, follows closely the winning formula used by the film’s producer, Emir Kusturica (Underground), in his own films. The music sweeps the audience off their feet and at the same time adds a wry ironic twist to an otherwise-bleak situation. Jagoda (Strawberry) becomes involved in a hostage-taking situation at the newly-opened Yugo-American Supermarket. The situation gives ample occasions for a critical examination of post-socialist Serbia. A bacchanalia that laughs heartily at Serbian nationalism, American-style capitalism, and diet crazes wherever they be.

THE KITE (Lebanon) *** A young woman's free spirit and immature understanding of love provide the building bricks for the film's plot, but little happens to develop the characters or provide an understanding of the complex humanitarian conditions at the Israeli-Lebanese border. Good acting and humor save the film but fail to convey a clear statement.

THE LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE (Thailand) ** Chris Doyle is at his usual fantastic camerawork, but otherwise the film lingers without much to say. It seems that the lure of Japanese investment has sidetracked yet another Asian director. Like Clara Law's Autumn Moon, the plot revolves around a young Japanese man who gets infatuated with a local woman but does not sully the purported purity of the relationship by sex. A scene in which the two women are inexplicably exchanged and the implausible ending signal to more interesting interpretations, but if that's what the film was supposed to be about, the director got too lazy to draw any interesting implications.

THE LAST TRAIN (Russia) **** The story of a German doctor left behind by the retreating Nazi army at the Soviet border. Permeated with a sense of utter absence of hope, it is nevertheless an uplifting parable on the persistence of human compassion even when it clearly serves no clear purpose—when it neither alleviates the suffering of the dying nor makes a difference in the benefactor's life. The cinematography is impeccable, and in this case "painterly" is accurate, as the final mise-en-scène alludes to well-known painting.

LEARNING TO LIE (Germany) **** has the hallmark witt and energy of Good Bye, Lenin! -- the director, Hendrik Handloegten, co-wrote the script for that earlier success. In a slightly self-effacing first-person narrative, Helmut presents a Bridget Jones-like character, a young man waiting to fall in love and waiting to find out what woman he wants to fall in love with. The largest obstacle in his way is his lingering emotions for his first love. The Israeli writer Irit Linur has tagged such figures as "the mythical ex," and for Helmut, Britta is more myth than reality. In fact, he never learns to lie (the German title is about lying down, but the English pun works well), and by the end he learns how not to lie even to himself.

THE LEGEND OF THE SACRED STONE (Taiwan) **** Puppet Fu, that is, Kung Fu played by puppets. Taiwan has a rich puppet theater tradition (see, for example, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Puppetmaster), and the film exhibits the nuanced manipulation of puppets. At the same time, the film uses all the special effects known to fantasy martial arts films, creating an innovative and entertaining amalgam. The film is fraught with plot inconsistencies and with absurdly mistranslated dialogs, part of the martial arts film tradition. A milestone in puppet fu.

A Letter to TRUE (U.S.) ** Bruce Weber's rambling thoughts on the Hollywood celebs he worked with, world politics, and friendship, told through letters to his dogs. Weber understands dogs and captures them well in his camera's lens, I sympathize with his political views, and the clips from Hollywood films are endearing—yet Weber fails to explain what makes him different from the many who, as he admits, would like to make a film about their dogs.

THE MAN ON THE TRAIN (France) ***** Part of the Patrice Lecont retrospective. All the elements that make his Intimate Strangers a masterpiece are already present in this film: an improbable encounter between a man who has boxed himself in the same place for his entire life and a maverick; a mutual attraction between the two, who decipher each other's psyche; and gallons of wry humor. Leconte develops his characters through understated dialog and through cinematic allusions: an American western meets a French village drama, and it remains for the protagonists to figure out which roles they'll play in the ready-made script.

MAN OF THE YEAR (Brasil) ***** A slick and humorous film that turns into a harsh portrait of Brasil's social problems. At first, the film seems to skim the surface and enjoy the violence, Pulp Fiction style. Yet the ingenious turn is that as the plot follows Maiquel's rise to gangster stardom, we always know only as much as he does. As a result, we're supposed to laugh with the rich people's sexist jokes, only to find out with Maiquel that they have drawn a Faust-like contract against him. It isn't that we are oblivious to the dangers awaiting Maiquel -- in fact, the whole film is suffused with premonition. Yet Maiquel, too, knows that his days are numbered. He is an innocent hitman, a simpleton inept of fathoming the intricacies of the underworld in which he lives. The empathic story of Maiquel, a victim of his circumstances and a ruthless killer at the same time, reaches at times the emotional force of Berlin, Alexanderplatz.

MAQBOOL (India) **** This Bollywood version of Macbeth isn't much of a Bollywood production, with short and infrequent musical numbers, and is heavy on the Macbeth part, giving a fresh and convincing reinterpretation to many scenes (such as the three witches, transformed here into corrupt police, who also provide the comic relief). Well photographed and well acted, the film truly expands the bard's legacy.

NINA's TRAGEDIES (Israel) **** I have read Israeli reviews that claim the film skims the surface and focuses on wit. I think they miss the point. The film is a thoughtful parable on mourning and our ability to cope with it through understanding our imagination. Some elements, such as the first-person narrative by the young boy, intrude unnecessarily. For a film lover, there are many fun allusions to other films, from the Israeli Peeping Toms (1972) and Ricochets (1986) to the Brazilian Dona Flor and her Two Husbands.

THE NOTEBOOK (U.S.) * Every narrative and cinematographic cliché in the book, in a film that challenges nothing but my patience—to be fair, I couldn't sit through the whole film and left after a long 90 minutes, so I'll stop here.

ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB (U.S.) *** An important documentary that exposes the insensitivity to human lives and suffering, Japanese and American, by U.S. policymakers and commanders involved in the atom bomb project. The footage of pre-war Hiroshima and Nagasaki is fascinating, and the comparison to current U.S. policy is welcome. Yet as a whole, the film doesn't ask many tough questions (for example, wasting an opportunity to follow up on questions posed to high school students) and uses an unfortunately hackney soundtrack.

PAPER CLIPS (U.S.) *** This documentary follows the school project at Whitwell, Tennessee (population 1,600), to collect 6,000,000 paper clips, one for each Jewish person murdered during the Holocaust. The project's impact on the small, homogeneous community is immense. The film tells about the ability of certain objects to assist in the work of memory where even images and words cannot. It presents a compassionate picture of a town of caring and physically affectionate people, who find mental resources where there is no material wealth. Yet the filmmaker asks few questions. What makes the people living so close to the birthplace of the KKK so warmhearted and tolerant, and what need are they trying to fill? Is there any downside to the project as it was conceived? Despite the schoolchildren's and teachers' sincerity, I cannot identify with their conclusions. They seem to look for making peace with the world, a noble (and typically Protestant) goal, but the Holocaust might suggest other answers. It is impossible to wish that no such atrocities ever happen again, precisely at the time that various instances of genocide continue to be carried out through the world, some with the tacit knowledge of "the free world." The Holocaust, because of its irrefutable evil, has become a convenient tool that promotes easy identification with the victims. The paper clip project does not address controversy, moral grey zones and doubts about our own right -- and neither does the documentary.

PERSONS OF INTEREST (U.S.) **** A must-see to any one who hasn't been aware of the human rights violations and ethnic profiling committed by the FBI in the aftermath of 9/11. The film consists of interviews with people dubbed by the Justice Department "persons of interest," that is, people detained for the suspicion that they might have been involved in the WTC bombing (evidence: a ticket stub to the WTC balcony, a children's video game that simulates flight). The interview format allows for displaying a wide variety of emotions, personal characteristics, and reactions to the U.S. government's actions. I wish Michael Moore would follow up by asking U.S. government officers for their reaction.

RIDICULE (France) **** As always, Leconte puts together a very smart and warm film, in this case about the role of wit in Louis XVI's court. The film is a bit too sweet and predictable for my taste, but it prepares for Leconte's later masterpieces. In fact, the film can be seen as a guide to Leconte's own wit—the protagonist is warned never to rely on puns and always keep a straight face. Like Leconte, he uses his wit and literary allusions not to score in silly battles of vanity but rather to make a statement on the social conditions of his time.

RUBY AND QUENTIN (France) **** Francis Veber (The Dinner Game) strikes again, with a totally silly but totally funny film. Depardieu lets go in a brilliant comic performance.

RUNNING ON KARMA (Hong Kong) *** From the sure hand of action master director Johnnie To (PTU), Running on Karma tells the story of a monk turned body-builder pin-up "Big Limb" (Andy Lau metamorphosed through SFX). The supernatural and the au naturel meet in the classic martial arts obsession with bodily performance and spiritual control. Yet like many other Hong Kong well-wrought films, Running on Karma falls flat when it comes to plot coherence. The first part is a good action flic, spiced with a challenge to the ethics of karma. The ending is a gratuitous vehicle for Shanxi's breathtaking landscape and a reduction of karmic retribution to male bonding -- in this case, one man's bonding with himself.

SAVED! (U.S.) *** has the makings of a Golden Space Needle Award winner: touching on important social issues with witty dialogues and an upbeat ending. This was how Shower and Whale Rider got to the top. For a feel-good movie, Saved! does very well -- it combines good acting, an engaging plot, and jabs at the holier-than-thou rhetoric of religious fanatics. It is hard not to like a film that shows how true compassion has little to do with any institutionalized faith, and that correctional facilities and missionary work are a cover-up for those who can't set their own home in order. Add to that slick editing, an effective soundtrack (including filmic allusions, such as the score of The Exorcist at the right moment), and a plot that imparts a sense of closure (a Christ figure set up in the first act is bound to fire in the last). And yet, for my mysanthropic taste, the important issues are skirted. Abortion remains taboo; faith itself is never questioned; gay people are accepted on the same basis as "other imperfections." For a high school flic, it is much better than last SIFF's Camp, but I would have liked to get more from the producers of Being John Malkovich.

SILENT WATERS (Pakistan) **** A credible delving into the period after Zia Ul-haq's coup d'état in 1977 and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, aimed mostly against the Sikh. The complexities of identity are explored through the dynamics between a moderate woman and her increasingly-belligerent son.

THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL (Mongolia) ***** It's impossible not to love this very sweet film, although I was ready to hate it. I would usually find it hard to take seriously a film touted as "exotic, emotionally-charged, and visually stunning." I associate "exotic" with cashing in on curiosity about cultural difference without any attempt to see how we all are exotic for each other. Weeping Camel, a documentary woven into a loose narrative, is an exception. For 90 minutes, we become familiar with camels' facial expressions and voices. We learn to know Botok, a newborn colt who is as lovable as youngs get, and we commiserate with his pain when his mothers turns him away. The happy ending teaches us about the importance of music in animals' and humans' lives, and about the need for never taking our community for granted.

TAKE MY EYES (Spain) ***** Probably the best I've seen at SIFF this year. A harrowing tale about a wife beater, pulling no punches in showing the physical and mental abuse. The dark journey stripped me and my friends from all confidence in human decency and left us equally unwilling to see another film and to walk around people. The superb acting bravely makes no concessions.

TAMALA 2010 (Japan) *** Japan's "superflat" look, an aesthetics that eschews 3D and color gradations, finds it epitome in Tamala 2010, which almost gives up color and texture altogether. The animation film seems to endorse also a superflat logic, whereby everything is possible and nothing is marveled at. Unfortunately, the result is a film that seems to have little at stake. The visuals can, however, be funny, innovative, and irreverent. I'll probably take little away from the flic, other than the greeting "Fucking Goodbye!"

THE TESSERACT (Thailand) **** The Chinese Thai director Oxide Pang (who with his brother Danny made Bangkok Dangerous and The Eye) presents another slick crime flic, this time one informed by social issues. The path of several protagonists cross in a sleazy Bangkok hotel, and the ensuing thriller addresses the personal responsibility in the face of coincidental circumstances.

TOMORROW’S WEATHER (Poland) **** The latest of the post-communist Rip Van Winkle genre, the film tells of Jozef, a man who had hidden from the Communist police by entering a monastery, only to emerge 17 years later into a corrupt capitalist world. He ends up rescuing his family and returning to anonymity. The acting is superb, with the humble and common-sense Jozef played by the director, Jerzy Stuhr, who is one of Poland's prominent actors (Kieslowski fans will recognize him). Despite the framing plot, politics is marginal; what matters is caring for the others -- whether by holding them tight or by letting go.

TURN LEFT, TURN RIGHT (Hong Kong) *** A well-made comedy about two lovers whose lives take parallel paths—and as we know, parallel lines don't meet. The movie uses the big Taiwan earthquake of 2002 to present a parable on the cruelty and redemptive potential of haphazard events.

TWILIGHT SAMURAI (Japan) **** Despite the title, there are few sword fights in this film; those that take place are very intensive and are over within seconds. The film is mostly dedicated to a dramatic drama about a man of Samurai descent, whose eponymous nickname also foregrounds the downfall of the Samurai class after the 1868 reforms known as the Meiji Restoration. There isn't, in fact, that much of a plot, and the turns are somewhat contrived, but the protagonist, Seibei, makes an intersting character of a Samurai who is not interested in the Way of the Warrior and would rather be a farmer.

UNIFORM (PRC) *** The directorial debut of Diao Yinan is a "sixth-generation" film reminiscent of the works of Jia Zhangke (who acted as the film's artistic advisor)—an unembellished look at the downtrodden. The inhibited love story between a man and a woman, becomes deeply tragic as neither of the two is willing to lose face and reveal to the other their faults. The two seem truly capable of compassion and harbor genuine feelings toward each other, but they lack the capability to reveal their tender side. Diao's documentary-like camerawork foregrounds the characters' alienation; too bad the digital video ends in low-quality cinematography.

WALK ON WATER (Israel) **** After making the award-winning Yossi and Jagger, Eytan Fox (director) Gal Uchovsky (scriptwriter and producer) had to meet high expectations. They chose to make an audience pleaser on a macho Mossad agent and son to Holocaust survivors who meets his nemesis in a sensitive, gay german man, the grandson of a Nazi. Lior Ashkenazi gives a strong performance as Mossad agent Eyal, and the script takes funny jabs at his homophobia. Indeed, Fox and Uchovsky, who have lived together for the past 16 years, manage to make a flic that isn't a gay film but carries clear messages about gay issues. Weaving in themes such as the Palenstinian-Israeli conflict and the Holocaust, the film might have been weighed down, yet Fox's touch ensures, as in Yossi and Jagger, a subdued treatment of the climactic moments. For good and for bad, Walk on Water is a lighthearted film. At times it moves in the slow pace of a road movie—perhaps too slow—at times it loses plotline coherence (especially when Eyal flies to Germany), but as a whole it hangs together as a minor film on some of our major dilemmas.

WEAKNESS OF THE BOLSHEVIK (Spain) ** This Lolita light film, about a banker who falls in love with a high school student, is truly disturbing, but not for the same reasons that Nabokov's novel and Kubrick's film were. The portrait of urban ennui, starting with the first-person narrative of the brutally honest Pablo, is convincing, and the acting is superb. Yet a nagging feelings sets in that the whole film is a vehicle for the riveting face of the 16-year-old actress Mariá Valverde. The melodramatic and forces ending kills the film once and for all.

WHEN RUOMA WAS SEVENTEEN (PRC) *** Set against the stunning scenery of Yunnan and among the Hani national minority, the film offers a National Geographic-like glimpse of idyllic life in a lost paradise. A pleaser for feel-good movie lovers. Yet none of the anthropological qualms about such filmmaking, and none of the Fifth-generation directors depiction of the harsh life in rural China, seems to have trickled into the filmmaker's mindset. The only redeeming value is the half-hearted criticism of the touristy commercialism that takes over entire cultures.

WITNESSES (Serbia) **** What seems at first like cinematic trickery—long, elaborate takes and their repetition from different angles—turns out to be an appropriate medium for conveying the multiple truths in a Serbian town during the civil war. The background of a botched act of vandalism and a brutal murder carried out by young militants is gradually uncovered, revealing war crimes as an extension of individual hooliganism and showing that decency isn't always found where we might expect it.