16/08/2011
15/08/2011
Locarno 2011, the report.
Olivier Père, the artistic director of the 64th Festival del Film di Locarno is a firm believer of the Italian doctrine of ‘La Bella Figura’. He wears nice suits, coloured shoes and trendy specs. He’s young, looks good and is the ideal eyecatcher of this festival. Last year his debut was good. This year he surpassed the expectations and positioned the festival as one of the most interesting on the circuit. This edition rested on three pillars. Cinema of the auteur, breakthrough cinema and glamour.
Three elements make up the cinema of the auteur. The main competition, namely the Concorso Internazionale, the retrospective and the honouring of Abel Ferrara awarded with a Pardo d’onore.
The winner of the main prize, the Golden Leopard was ‘Abrir Puertas y Ventanas’, English title ‘Back to Stay’ by Milagros Mumenthaler. A Swiss-Argentine-Dutch coproduction about three sisters living with their grandmother. One sister leaves after the old woman dies and the tensions rise. The selection of the main competition is a bit safe. The word auteur is used a lot in regard to this competition but it concerns mostly gratitiuos coming of age drama’s like the cool but pretentious ‘Un Amour de Jeunesse’ by Mia Hansen-Love and the poetic but visually flawed ‘Tokyo Koen’ by Shinji Aoyama who receveid a special prize recognizing his earlier work. The Dutch film ‘Onder ons’ by Marco van Geffen dissapoints. It’s good at depicting the life of a Polish au pair in a desolate Dutch suburb, but lacks in imagination and sophistication., not to mention the confusing ending. 'Din Dragoste cu cele mai bune intentii’, English title ‘Best Intentions’ by Adrian Sitaru won best direction and best actor. This Romanian film was at least original by using an interesting point of view camera technique throughout the movie involving the audience with the amusing story about a paranoid son mistrusting everyone in the hospital his mother is staying after suffering a stroke. The festival redeemed itself in regards to the meaning of auteur with the annual retrospetive dedicated to auteurs who established themselves as big names of film history. This year Vincente Minelli was picked. An excellent choice. If the days pick was not appealing, one could escape into the worlds of ‘An American in Paris’, ‘Some came running’, ‘Lust for Life’ and many other colourful classics. Minelli and his work were discussed and reviewed at high level by specialists introducing each film. Another example of love for the auteur was the presence of Abel Ferrara at a forum with the public. Everybody could just walk up to Ferrara for a tête a tête. It’s this laid-back atmosphere that makes Locarno special.
The second pillar of the festival consisted of the breakthrough cinema, first and second features which make up the Concorso Cineasti del Presente. Storylines are less idyllic or pathetic but rawer, more avantgarde. Less accesible at times but more daring. ‘Hanaan’ by Ruslan Pak convinces with it’s raw and vivid recount of the Korean minotity in Uzbekistan and the dangers of drug addiction in the former Soviet republic. ‘El Estudiante’ is a very sophisticated debut by Santiago Mitre who made a political thriller about the campagne for the position of dean at a big university in Buenos Aires. A succesful allegory of the hectic political climate of present day Argentina. Oddly enough the organisation was in doubt about the film. Some said it was good enough for the main competition but eventually it was decided the film was too superficial to contend. The winner of the Concorso Cineasti del Presente was the Italian film ‘L’Estate di Giacomo’ , again, a poetic coming of age drama revolving around a deaf teenager knowing he has to let go of his childhood.
The last pillar was all about glamour. Père puts his money on star quality and why not? The festival gets more recognition, and one way or another glamour and cinema will be linked forever.
Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig got on the stage of the beautiful heart of the festival, the Piazza Grande, to introduce the, highly anticipated but cheesy ‘Cowboys and Aliens’. Leslie Caron, star of the classic ‘Gigi’, spoke lovingly about her former mentor Vincente Minelli on the same spot. Abel Ferrara gave an unforgettable concert in the pouring rain and Cluadia Cardinale picked up a golden leopard. Even Kirk Douglas at 95 found time to salute the audience on the opening night from the giant screen.
The highpoint of the festival besides Ferrara’s concert and Q and A, was the screening of ‘Drive’ by Nicolas Winding Refn who already won best director in Cannes for this instant classic reinventing the genre of film noir, supported by an amazing soundtrack and a memorable performance by Ryan Gosling, the Indie circuit favourite who’s going mainstream.
The public however chose Canadian film ‘Bachir Lazar’ by Phillippe Falardeau which won the prize of the public reserved for out of competition films screened on the Piazza Grande. A well crafted emotional classroom drama about children struggling with the aftermath of the suicide of their teacher. In comes the Algerian refugee replacing her, helping the children to mourn with unconventional methods through the eyes of the rigid Quebequan parents and schoolsystem. However the film never explores the suicide of the teacher, who hanged herself in the classroom for a number of children to see. The hastily clarification at the end feels forced and makes the film less meaningful then it could be.
That the winner of the prize of the public went to a French speaking movie could hardly be a surprise considering the traditional French orientation of the public at Locarno. This was clearly evident in the overcrowded forums of two of France’s biggest stars, Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu. Huppert’s Q and A was boring. Depardieu however was entertaining during a hilarious , entangled monologue. 'I immediately recognize the difference between a labour of love and an industrial film. Just like I recognize the difference between good, home made wine and industrial wine. But to do so you have to practice, hence my ridiculous nose’. When asked about his relationship with Italian cinema he answers 'I like Italy, because they have a tradition of good food, working the land, growing good products’, nothing is said about his collobaration with Bernardo Bertolucci or Marco Ferreri. ‘I eat a lot in Italy’. When asked if he was having a good time in Switzerland the reply was 'You have good cheese’. During a lucid, non-food related moment, he actually explained the essence of Locarno. ‘What makes this festival so great, are the screenings in the open air at the Piazza Grande. A movie theatre is nice as well, but outside, that’s a celebration of cinema. It brings me back to when we were all kids, somewhere outside watching moving images on a big screen. Pure magic!’. Well said, Gérard.
07/08/2011
Abel Ferrara at Locarno
Abel Ferrara is relaxed when he sits down at the crowded Spazio Cinema, the forum of the festival in Locarno. The man responsible for masterpieces like ‘Bad Lieutenant’, ‘The King of New York’ and ‘Snake Eyes’ is quite popular amogst the festival’s visitors.
The night before het confirmed his reputation as the Master Provocateur when he received the Pardo d’onore on the stage of the Piazza Grande in the pouring rain giving a jamsession, Ferrara on acoustic guitar, to a cranky audience. After the second tune it was quite obvious Abel should stick to his day job, being an auteur of cinema. Sections of the crowd who just want to see a blockbuster in a big square began booing. After the third tune the boo’s got louder. Artistic director Olivier Père and the mayor of Locarno were nervously hovering around Ferrara urging him to maybe stop this concert. Ferrara’s two bandmembers clearly affected by the hostile atmosphere stopped playing. How did Ferrara react? In the best possible way. He played one more long tune, solo, with a big grin on his face. The harder they boo’d,, the more he had a good time.
Today he looks like he’s not having a great time, he looks tired, not interested in questions. But after the first question he turns into the storyteller everybody came for.
His description of the filmdirector’s status in the USA is hilarious. ‘ A conversation like this, with you people all about me the director, lemme tell you, that wouldn’t happen in back in the States. Americans don’t give a fuck about directors. In Hollywood a director is like a necessary evil, someone slowing down the factory. But hey, I’m an American myself. I’m the same. I’m interested in movies, not so much in the guy who made them.’
The intellectual tone of the interviewer is bugging Ferrara a bit. When asked about why he started out with porn (9 Lives of a Wet Pussy) to then progress to horror (The Driller Killer), he answers ‘Hey dude, I just wanted to make movies back in the day. And that’s what the american public wanted in those days, porn ans slasherfilms like the “Texas Chainsaww Massacre’ a personal favourite of mine, Spielberg likes that one to he once told me. They cost close to nothing, but made huge profits so I could be free in the future to make more personal movies, nothing more man’
After the next question Abel’s really getting into his swing. “Why didn’t you stay in Hollywood after Body Snatchers in 1993?’ The answer is exemplary for the relationship between Ferrara en The Company Town like he calls it. ‘I was never asked to stay’ The interviewer:’But Body Snatchers is wonderful movie.’ Ferrara:’ Yeah well, at the expense of my own mental sanity”
Tinseltown and the excentric New Yorker, they’ll never see eye to eye. When talking about Warner Brothers he referrs to the people there as gangsters. “They take you to L.A after, ’Bad Lieutenant’ and say ‘Ok, you’re a big hit, we don’t know why, but you can make us some money. Out here you just direct and shut up. You got nothing to do with the money. On how it’s spend and why, is that clear?’ A few months later Body Snatchers is 4 million dollars over budget, and I’m being summoned to this acquablue pants and white shoes wearing westcoast gangster’s office. First thing he says to me is ‘You’re going to take that phone over there and call him to tell him he can go to the Jersey coast.’ I have no idea wat this guy is talking about. Again ‘You’re going to call him and tell your New York buddy that he can go shoot at the Jersey coast.’ Now I get it. This mobster wants me to call Spike Lee , because he’s working on Malcolm X, 5 million over budget, to tell him he can’t shoot in Mekka where he was planning to go. And I’m from New York too, so I should call him. Then he says ‘And by the way, where is my 4 million dollars’ I’m telling you, that cat made me feel like I was going to end up in a trunk that night. Spike, Oliver (Stone) and me were the tree New Yorkers at Warner Brothers during that period. The didn’t go after Spike that much because he has even more connections to the press then they do. And Oliver was so succesful, working on JFK at the time, that he didn’t care and could call them bloodsucking motherfucking vampires without too many consequenses. When I left the office he yelled he would never hire someone from New York again”
‘But they’re in trouble now. This is like the third or fourth time time they are trying to shove this 3D shit down our throats again. In the fifties it was their reaction to television. Now they’re panicking again because of the internet. I see kids on the subway in New York watching movies on their phones. 3D, a movie already is 3D! Why should I wear those silly glasses. My brain is creative, I can imagine the things on the screen have depth. What do they want, people running out of the theatre because the train is moving towards them? Come on, man!’
The audience is responding well, Ferrara notices and begins targeting the moderator ‘A journalist once described you as catholic anarchist, what do you think about that?’ No man, I’m a reborn buddhist’ replies Ferrara making the poor man wish he never asked that question. ‘I was raised in a strict catholic way by nuns’ he surprisingly serious continues, ‘and when the religion is in you it’s hard to get it out.’ Ferrara’s films are charged, like another Italian American director’s films, with catholic symbolism. When asked what movie he had like to have made he didn’t, Scorsese’s answer left little to the imagination “Without a doubt, ‘Bad Lieutenant’
Ferrara’s characters are often people with problems like addiction an loneliness living on the outskirts of society. “Why is everbody on drugs in your movies, do you find that interesting?’ asks the moderator. When answering Ferrara’s face shows he thinks this is by far the most stupid question the guy has asked this afternoon, “I just make movies about what I see in real life’
If you read a little about Ferrara, three words keep popping up. Compassion, forgiveness and redemption. Everybody keeps writing down what he just read, I once read that I’m the King of Redemption. I don’t even know what that word means, do you know ?’ he asks the audience. Two people respond. One makes a joke about it, the other gives a deep, farfetched definition, which Ferrara dismisses under loud acclaim of the audience.
One of the questions of the public involves the ‘Bad Lieutenant film’ Werner herzog recently made. But this guy is on the German’s side ‘Is it true you started the media war against Herzog and the movie, not even having seen the movie, just because it had the same title?’ Ferrara is a bit upset and counters “ Hey man, that film is made with the blood, sweat and tears of my crew, Harvey Keitel and me. First those gangsters went to Harvey a few years ago telling him they wanted to turn it into a tv series. Harvey was interested and asked why I wasn’t at the meet. ‘No, Abel is in a hospital somewhere in Switzerland. The funny thing is, this here festival is my first visit to Switzerland ever. It struck Harvey as odd because the night before he just had dinner with me. Harvey is loyal. They offered him a lot of money but he didn’t cave in, The only thing that could made him do it if I was on board as well. I’m just annoyed because it took so much of me to get ‘Bad Lieutenant” made anyhow. ‘What the cop takes the drugs? What kinda movie you’re trying to make? Every studio thought I was crazy. But I did it, and we delivered. Ok, they offer Nicolas Cage 2 million dollars, who’s always in need of money, I don’t know where he all spends it. But I like Nic, he’s an actor, I know where he’s coming from. I don’t even have a grudge against Herzog. That man never sees other people’s movies. I really believe he never even actually saw the original. I don’t believe he was lying about that. Why should he, they offer him a million bucks and he jumps. There’s nothing wrong with that, he’s just an European wanting to make films and money. And now he thinks he’s got beef with me, he don’t want that. No, I got a problem with those gangsters. Ok, you don’t want ma as a director, because I’m difficult and from New York, no problem, fine! But not to hire not one of my boys, my crew, who created the original ‘Bad Lieutenant’, that shit don’t fly. But they got what they wanted now. A stupid Company Town movie.”
“So you don’t live in L.A anymore, you still live in New York?’ ‘No, I moved to Rome a few years ago. I live in the neighbourhood next to the Vatican. The neighbourhood with the highest concentration of atheists in the world. None of my neighbours believes in God. Come to think of it, Rome is like a Company Town too. Religion is business, so no one really believes.
05/08/2011
05/02/2011
The Russian Soul of Gromozeka - International Premiere
Image: Courtesy of International Film Festival Rotterdam
Russian director Vladimir Kott attempted the seemingly impossible. Depicting ‘Russian soul’. A Dutch documentary maker went on an extensive trip to Russia to find an answer to the question what Russian soul actually means. In a journey that took him from Moscow to Vladivostok, he wasn’t able to find a conclusive answer. Russians even tend to say that you can’t understand Russian soul by reason.
‘You can only approach and sense our soul’ Kott tells me when I bring this up in the lobby of the Pathé theatre in Rotterdam. This particular soul comes in many different forms and shapes. Dostoyevski describes one, but Kott was inspired by another great Russian version, Checkov’s.
The film is loosely based on ‘Three Sisters’ by the famous playwright. A play about unhappy sisters desperate for a different life. Gromozeka revolves around three childhood friends who once formed a band as young boys but lost track of each other leading melancholy lives as adults. ‘My characters, like Checkov’s sisters, want to lead another life but are overcome by a form of fatalism and do nothing to obtain that other existence, just like in the play’, said Kott.
The paths of a clumsy policeman, a cabdriver torn apart by family circumstances and a terminally ill surgeon are crossed in a mosaic-like structure. The tragedies befalling them are wrapped in intelligent comedy and the touching fashion in which they try to survive in the harsh concrete jungle of Moscow makes them endearing characters. As if the audience is the fourth friend who left the stage a long time ago looking on.
In relation to the other Tiger nominees the film is rather conventional in its storyline, camera, art direction and acting. It‘s safe to say that the movie is the odd man out considering this year’s selection. Most Tiger projects tend to lean on an experimental approach to cinema whereas this film contains a highly accessibility. Therefore Kott is very pleased that his picture was selected by the International Film Festival Rotterdam to make its world premiere. On questioning him about how he feels the festival audience has responded to his work he reacts positive. ‘The screenings were all early in the morning and each time I was surprised to see very few empty seats. When people left the theatre I saw they were touched and that’s the greatest compliment for me as a director’
The story is touching, aimed to mind and soul. ‘Indeed, my film is different from the others in competition, mind you, there is nothing wrong with cinema appealing more to intellect, but I wanted my film to honor the traditional Russian cinema in which emotions are targeted as well. I think one doesn’t necessarily exclude the other. I like to think my movie reaches a balance. I want my audience to think and feel simultaneously.’
Gromozeka is a famous clumsy Russian cartoon character shown in a short clip, who always arrives late to save the day thus explaining the title. The three men are a mixture of Checkov’s sisters and this cartoon character. Clumsy, tormented and desperate. Gromozeka is to be considered as one of the years best Tigers, even though the jury begs to differ.
During a question and answer session someone from the audience asked the inevitable question ‘What defines Russian soul exactly?’ An extremely serious Kott replied ‘Russian soul is gloomy and moody, while the world’s soul is bright and cheerful.’ But then again Kott’s outlook on the Russian soul is contradictory to what he shows the audience. Gromozeka is not gloomy or moody. It is heartwarming.
31/01/2011
Review: The Mill and the Cross (2011, Poland / Sweden) - European Premiere
Image: Courtesy of International Film Festival Rotterdam
Don’t expect a conventional biopic about Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Don’t expect a conventional film anyhow. Lech Majewski, Polish artist, poet, writer and director pays a visual tribute to one of his favourite works of art by Bruegel. The procession to Calvary, painted in 1564.
Majewski first saw the works of the Flemish Master in a museum in Vienna where he was confronted with the artist’s Weltanschauung. A view of the world that sucked him right in and transported him to the landscapes of long by gone eras filled with people and their daily routines.
And that is exactly the ambitious layout of The Mill and the Cross. To give the viewer that same sensation, sucking them into the painting. During the big talk before the European premiere of the picture at the International Film Festival Rotterdam Majewski stated he always had the feeling he could live in Bruegel’s landscapes.
Using state of the art technology he succeeds to give the audience the feeling to live for a mere 90 minutes in the landscape of the painting. The images are of a dream like quality, with intense bright colors like the ruby red tunics of the mercenaries to the deep ochres disappearing into the sfumato on the horizon. This picture would no doubt amaze Bruegel on seeing the seamless overlapping moving image and his original painting. Layer after layer achieved this effect, one shot in particular consists of a staggering 143 layers! Real locations to match the landscape in the painting were scouted all over the globe, from the land of the Czech Republic to the clouds of New Zealand. The composition is explained by voice-over of Bruegel himself, portrayed by Rutger Hauer, moving through his own painted arena. Short story lines are used to introduce some essential figures in the painting, like the mother, played by Charlotte Rampling, of the condemned son, while Michael York portrays a wealthy banker and art collector.
The culmination of the film lies in the freeze moment in which all figures are halted by a gesture of Bruegel’s hand followed by another hand gesture performed by the miller high above in his mill on the jagged rock overlooking the spectacle, stopping the vanes in a Bruegelian metaphor of God stopping time. He just makes bread and looks on. Subsequently the camera glides the audience through the painting during a dazzling scene covering multiple points of view of the canvas. The audience was clearly holding its breath in the old Luxor theatre during this piece of bravado.
Majewski makes the painting come to life and what guts to make a feature about it! He goes to great lengths explaining the philosophy of Bruegel in which everyday life is more important than the bigger than life events in the Bible. Jesus is even obscured by Spanish soldiers and Flemish peasants. After the crucifixion life goes on and children playing replace the cruel acts filling the landscape in the painting.
The Mill and the Cross is of invaluable educational importance, even tough too theoretical to get carried away by. A fascinating experiment drenched in love for painting that will inform you better about Pieter Bruegel the Elder than any documentary you’ll ever see.
Rating: ****
30/01/2011
Review: Bleak Night (2010, South Korea - International Premiere)
Image: Courtesy of International Film Festival Rotterdam
High school can be very traumatic for boys. This is the case in every nation in the world, but maybe even more so in South Korea. Bleak Night by debuting Korean director Yoon Sung-hyun starts out as a classic whodunit. The saddened father of a boy whose death is shrouded in mystery goes looking for the deceased boy’s best friends searching for some answers. One of them had suddenly moved prior to the death and the other had not attended the funeral. Shady circumstances causing the father to suspect foul play.
The ingenious flashforward-structure used in the film confuses the audience. The film doesn’t start out with the death of Gi-Tae, a marvelous performance of Lee-Je-hoon, but we see him as the school bully whose only ambition in life is to terrorize his classmates and his best friends in particular. A classic interpretation of ‘we hurt the ones we love the most’. Especially kind-hearted Becky portrayed by Park Jeong-min-I is a favorite and easy prey for Gi-Tae.
The only one who has the guts to stand up to this near borderline case is the third member of the trio, Dong-yoon, played by Seo Joon-yeong. The three of them also have their good times. To illustrate their fragile friendship the director shows us beautiful dreamy shots of late afternoon sun filled baseball games on the railroad tracks alongside the grey suburbs of the big city. The unbearable lightness of being a teenager in suburbia is interrupted by sudden violence. Bleak Night deals with the world of boys only. Girls are just extras. In that regard there is even a hint of gay feelings in Gi-Tae’s persistence of harassing Becky. Every time he pleads for forgiveness like a lover does when he’s been unfaithful. The three actors are astonishingly realistic in their approach and are completely credible as a tight knitted tough emotional explosive group of friends. The many hand-held close-ups of the boys give a good impression of the internal conflicts tearing them apart. When I asked the talented young director during the Q&A how he achieved this interplay amongst inexperienced young actors (Park Jeong-min-I debuts as an actor), he answered that he gave them the difficult task of really listening to the other actor during dialogues instead of focusing, like young actors often do, on their own lines and to react instead of recite.
As the structure of the narrative gets closer and closer to the resolution of the question of who and how, the fabric of the film changes from a whodunit in to a social drama in which there are only victims and perpetrators. Everybody is innocent and everybody is guilty.
The emotional warfare in Bleak Night is, according Yoon Sung-hyun, a metaphor for the current state of South Korea, where people hurt each other because like Gi-Tae, they are weak on the inside. Weak, because people don’t live for themselves and are defined by their work. They suffer from peer pressure, just like everybody has experienced at one time or another at school.
The result is a complex, well-crafted, emotional gem of a film. It’s been only the third Tiger feature I’ve seen this year, but I already dare to state that Bleak Night, the winner of the Pusan New Current Award, is a serious contender for winning the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Rating: ***+
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