| SIFF
2006 |
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1
: 1 (Denmark) ***** Ethnic tension
in a low-income housing project in the suburbs tests the opinions
and beliefs of the native Danish community and of the Palestinian
immigrants. Not as successful as last year's Games of Love and
Chance, on a similar subject matter and set in France, but very
powerful, well-acted, and ingeniously edited. The film is worth watching
even just for its opening sequence and corresponding ending shot,
which place the plot within the larger social context, drawing on
the contradiction between the good intentions of urban planners and
the harsh social reality.
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3
Needles * One of the most ridiculous
and haphazardly put together films I've seen in a long time. The three
separate stories tell about criminally negligence that leads to AIDS
(called "the virus" in the film, for some silly reason). The
middle one, which takes place in the director's native Canada, is the
most coherent. The first, which takes place in the Chinese province
of Guizhou, features wooden acting, Mandarin in Hong Kong pronunciation
(as realistic as a film about Irish people shot entirely with Native
Finnish speakers trying to speak Queen's English), and an eight-month
old baby coming directly out of Lucy Liu's womb. So far, my lemon award
for this year's SIFF. |
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A
Side, B Side, Seaside (Hong Kong) ** An
uneventful summer outing of four high school girl students to Chang
Chau, an outlying island untouched by Hong Kong's hustle and bustle.
A similar subject was treated delicately in the Taiwanese film Three
Summers (1992) but becomes a meaningless adolescent film in this
case. |
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Adam's
Apples (Denmark) *** A black comedy
about a Neo-Nazi sent for rehabilitation at a countryside church. The
maniacal priest turns out to have his own dark secrets. As expected,
the hoodlum sees the truth. The film does not go beyond a collection
of entertaining scenes, although it skirts many landmines, including
the ending -- or rather, endings -- which avoid cliches. As The
Producers has already shown, it's just hard to write a comedy about
Nazism. |
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| Ahlaam
(Iraq) *** Depicting in documentary
style the circumstances that bring a handful people to an insane asylum
and the drama that ensues when the asylum is bombed by U.S. planes in
2004. A must-see for showing the human face of the much-demonized Iraqi
soldier. Daily life under Saddam Husein is portrayed in surprisingly
similar terms to that known from images of life in North Korea and at
the height of Stalinism - life goes on, and the ordinary man and woman
find themselves caught in the crossfire, any crossfire. The film is
riveting, yet the cinematography takes no chances. It is nevertheless
a breakthrough in avoiding the melodrama and made-for-TV look of most
productions in Arabic. |
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Avenge
But One of My Eyes (Israel) ****
This documentary traces the rhetoric of Israeli mainstream education
(with a brief detour, which doesn't seem as so far away, to Fascist
Kahanism), and shows how the stories told about the siege on Massada
and of Samson's suicide killing of 3,000 Philistines resonate with
the situation in the Occupied Territories. More riveting - and justifying
the film's repetitive structure - is the absolute blindness of the
israeli educators and students to the resonance. The director, Avi
Mograbi, inserts himself into the narrative, but does not find the
space to comment on his own expectations.
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Carmen
in Khayelitsha (South Africa) **** Carmen's
story, already told everywhere from Hong Kong (The Wild, Wild Rose)
to Chicago (Carmen Jones), is transposed to the township of
Khayelitsha and sung in Xhosa. A fresh interpretation that weaves the
original plot with post-Apartheid realities, never too daring, unevenly
acted and sung, with sometimes unconvincing metanarrative
breaks, and a bit on the long side -- and yet a worthwhile experience,
not just for the thrill of a Bizet opera sung with Xhosa tongue clicks. |
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| The
Cave of the Yellow Dog (Mongolia) ***
A sweet, well-photographed film that ends up saying very little about
nothing. The director who made The Weeping Camel two years
ago takes to heart the idea that a dog or a baby on stage will steal
the show, and puts on screen one dog and three cute children. The formula
works, but it's more tired the second time around. |
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Garpastum
(Russia) **** Alexey Guerman Jr. , known
to SIFF viewers as the director of The Last Train. Like the
previous film, Guerman tells the story of war's ravages in atmospheric,
bleak, lengthy shots. Yet whereas Guerman's first film joins the long
tradition of WWII movies, which establish the grounds of Russian nationality
through common suffering and bravery -- this piece handles the much
more complicated WWI, wh has in general been overshadowed by the Revolution.
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The
Illusionist (U.S.) ** SIFF continues
to look for the lowest common denominator, if not lower, for
its opening gala film. A short story with a potential (my two stars
are given to the story, not to the film), which could have been made
into a fun film, ends up as an inventory of cinematic clichés.
The best defense I can find for the film is that U.S. filmmaking abounds
with such missed opportunities (often undersigned by Ron Howard). Not
good enough.
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Little
Red Flowers (PRC) ****
The film, about a PRC kindergarten in the 1950s, hits the viewer
rather hard on the head to get the message that PRC upbringing aims
at conformism. Curiously, the most important scene for driving home
the message is left understated and stylized. Toward the film's end,
the child sees that not only kids get "little red flowers"
as prizes but also grown-ups: the soldiers going to the battlefront
wear big red knots on their chests. The superb sound track, the excellent
work with children - arguably the best in any Chinese film - and the
unassuming storyline combine to an accomplished piece. |
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Lunacy
(Czech Republic) *** Jan
Svankmajer uses his signature animation to tell a story about lunacy
and totalitarianism that is surprisingly simplistic compared to his
previous films. Svankmajer's talent in combining animation and human
subjects is left aside as the shots alternate between the media rather
than confront them with each other. As all other films by the master
of intricate symbolism, the piece is visually brilliant and emotionally
disturbing. |
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A
Perfect Day (Lebanon) ** The story
of a mother and son, each unable to cope with the loss of a beloved.
The mother grieves for her husband, who was kidnapped and has been missing
for fifteen years; the son cannot get over parting with his girlfriend.
The description of these two different griefs in similar terms remains
unexplored, and the slow film seldom goes beyond cinematic clichés. |
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Prairie
Home Companion (U.S.) *** I will always
be grateful to Robert Altman for films such as Shortcuts and
The Player, but the uneven director falls into a trap prepared
for him by Garrison Keilor. whose script is as fun and coherent as any
of his NPR shows -- that is, an uneven string of mini-shows that one
can tune in and out of. As in the NPR show, the best moments are the
insider's jokes, which makes the film a must for Altman and GK fans,
but a passing spark on the big screen. |
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Seven
Swords (H.K.) *** Tsui Hark shows
again his knack for breath-taking and innovative images, taking iconography
explored in almost-contemporary films (Gangs of New York) and
adapting them to create his idiosyncratic image of the jianghu,
the realm of outlaws. Tsui, whose earlier films provide interesting
social commentary, have become an extravagant pageant of meaningless
images, and this one, unfortunately, is no exception.
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Shanghai
Dreams (PRC) *** Once enfant terrible,
the director Wang Xiaoshuai makes a mainstream, conformist movie about
yearning for Shanghai among a family that has been relocated during
the Cultural revolution. Unconvincing and slightly saccharine. |
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Ski
Jumping Pairs - Road to Torino 2006Ski Jumping Pairs - Road to Torino
2006 (Japan) *** a mockumentary about a
quantum physics professor who devotes his life to inventing and promoting
the sport of ski jumping in pairs. A well-executed, if rather unchallenging,
comedy that suprisingly manages to maintain a consistent level of humor
throughout. |
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Three
Times (Taiwan) ***** Hou Hsiao-hsien
Three REVIEW FORTHCOMING |
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Twelve
and Holding (U.S.) **** A well-wrought
piece that may count among the best of the dysfunctional American suburban
life subgenre, such as Ice
Storm andAmerican Beauty. Unlike many
of those films -- and vaguely reminiscent of Egoyan's Exotica --
the plot eventually settles on the need to forget and forgive. The skeleton
that remains in the closet (or more literally, buried) at the end of
the film is emblematic of the intricate and mature coping with the issue
of forgiveness, toward oneself and others.
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What
a Wonderful Place (Israel) **** A
painful look at the collapse of the Zionist dream, tracing the fates
of a Ukranian prostitute, a Thai agricultural worker and a Filipino
nurse in Israel. The film fails to expose some of the drarier aspects
of migrant worker expoitation, but the superb acting, well-structured
plot, and strong case made for intercultural understanding make up for
the flaws.
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Zozo
(Lebanon/Sweden) *** A brave attempt to
map onto each other the civil war in Lebanon, the experience of a child
who escapes the war and becomes an immigrant in Sweden, and his post-traumatic
fears. The Lebanese-born director has a good eye for characters and
spaces, yet he is curiously better at grasping the subtleties of life
in Sweden. The shots depicting how the war continues to haunt the child
in his new country are original poignant.
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MORE REVIEWS FORTHCOMING:
Perhaps Love; Initial
D; Dreaming of Space; I for India; Iberia;
Close to Home; A Comedy of Power; Grain in Ear |
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