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WHOOSH! That’s the sound of The London Film Festival 2013 whizzing past, these days spreading its tentacles into the provinces as well as the suburbs. WHAM! is the sound made by the special effects (and our jaws as they drop to the floor) at Alfonso Cuaron’s 3D exploits. AAAAH and AWW! are the verdicts on the true-life story behind Steve Coogan’s powerfully emotive writing and acting, and on James Gandolfini’s final role.
Part 1 of our round-up brought you reviews of the US and UK films coming your way over the next few months. But what about the filmmaking fraternities in the rest of the world? How have these countries fared at the 2013 festival? Part 2 delivers the movies that might just open your eyes to other cultures, new talents, fresh ideas and different ways of looking at ourselves and our world. And as if that wasn’t enough, we also assess the documentaries that created a buzz at the latest London Film Festival over the next five pages.
France
So have our nearest neighbours across the channel shown us up again? Abdellatif Kechiche’s BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR is a massive step up from his own previous film, Couscous. And it’s very different to Amour, (last year’s benchmark French film from Michael Haneke) yet also plunges us deep into the characters and emotions of two characters, resembling an engrossing novel more than just a plot-driven, linear journey. And like the Haneke film, it’s a warts-and-all, close-up study of a relationship. Be prepared before you go though, for a) this is a three-hour long movie and b) it’s very graphic in its lesbian sex scenes, which leave little to the imagination.
That said, the three hours pass in a flash, as you’re drawn into the fiery duo’s sensual passion. And there’s nothing gratuitous about the sex scenes, as they’re central to the powerful attraction that overwhelms the protagonists. Adele (Adele Exarchoploulos) starts as a student disturbed by her feelings, unable to relate to her attentive boyfriend, yet aroused and stimulated by a bold, blue-haired woman, Emma (Lea Seydoux) who she meets in a gay bar. Both actresses are utterly compelling and credible, disappearing into their roles, as they are drawn inexorably together, jealous of anyone else’s attentions even as they’re hanging out with bohemian friends, and constantly pushing their relationship to breaking point. Unmissable.
ME, MYSELF AND MUM (right) is a broad comedy not only written and directed by Guillaume Gallienne, but also starring him in the lead role, in which he ages from schoolboy to adult, but never really grows up. Encouraged by his overprotective mother to embrace his camp character, as she wishes he’d been born a girl, the bubble-haired Gallienne sports a constant look of surprise. Through terrible holidays in Spain, mixed experiences at boarding schools, even in a German spa, he is always a fish out of water. It’s all cleverly framed as if he’s performing on stage to a live audience too, as it’s based on Gallienne’s original one-man show. And, of course, not only does the ending surprise everyone, but Gallienne also plays his own mother!
The final part of director-screenwriter Cédric Klapisch’s trilogy, CHINESE PUZZLE, is set in New York City and is more than a little in love with the Big Apple. Like a warm bath, this is a classic French romantic comedy, drenched in charm, and populated by gorgeous adults and adorable kids. Romain Durais plays Xavier, newly separated from his wife (Kelly Reilly) and pursuing her to Manhattan to be near their children. As he Skypes with his publisher and his ex (Audrey Tatou), he struggles to fit in, and is compromised by covering up for his friend (Cecile de France on form again) and her lusty liaisons. It’s the reverse of An American in Paris, as he’s a French guy in NYC, acting as a magnet, as everyone starts visiting him there, with humorous and surreal moments pinging around as the plot zips along. Charm like this is hard to resist.
More playful with form, yet more serious in intent, Claire Simon’s GARE DU NORD is entirely filmed at the famous Paris railway station. Starring Nicole Garcia as lecturer Mathilde and Reda Kaleb as student Ismael, it draws you into the world within the Gare du Nord, and into their unlikely, burgeoning friendship. Verging on documentary at times, Simon’s technique is to take our hand and show us around. Strangers argue and fight, crime bubbles away and liaisons dangerous and tender occur, reflecting what’s going on far outside this microcosm.
Based on the true story of a very recent heist, 11.6 is nevertheless gripping. The action starts with the robber, Toni (Francois Cluzet looking more and more like Dustin Hoffman) turning himself in. Then it leaps back to see what drove him to commit his audacious crime. We build up a picture of Toni as a loyal security guard, toiling away alongside a slow-witted pal (in Mice & Men style – and there’s even a mouse). Then one day Toni flips (like Michael Douglas in Falling Down) and plans his revenge on his penny-pinching bosses – and on the banks themselves. So it’s a thriller where you know the ending, but the engaging Cluzet and director Philippe Godeau make the ride worthwhile.
Another entirely believable and superbly acted drama, SUZANNE from Katell Quillévéré, looks at two daughters growing up under the watchful eye of their widowed trucker father. The narrative jumps and leaps forward, leaving holes for the viewer to fill, as one daughter goes off the rails, and the story darkens and hurtles towards the end. But again, you keep watching for the engaging performances, especially Sara Forestier as Suzanne, and Adele Haenel as her younger sister.
Spain
Fiction can often face up to issues that non-fiction struggles to depict. And domestic violence – and the lingering threat of it – hangs heavily over THE FEAR (right). A whole family are cowed by the father’s bullying, and director Jordi Cadena lets the picture tell more than words or actions. There’s an echoey sound and atmosphere. We glimpse painful bruises on the mother’s back, broken glass in the sink. The teenage son and young daughter cling to each other and find it hard to trust others. But despite all the foreshadowing, you’re still unprepared for the cataclysmic, brutal ending.
Focusing on Madrid’s bright young things, THE WISHFUL THINKERS is an earnest, black and white movie about making movies. It reminds you of the fiction with obvious transparency in even showing retakes, and it meanders as friends, lovers and colleagues are filmed, but director-screenwriter Jonás Trueba ensures it’s always likeable.
Italy
Far more sophisticated than The Wishful Thinkers, but also experimenting with that grey area between fiction and documentary, is Daniele Gaglianone’s engaging MY CLASS. Recent migrants to Italy are learning to speak Italian in evening class – which seems even more poignant in the light of the Lampedusa tragedy. A film crew is capturing this class of genuine immigrants, yet their inspirational, patient teacher is played by an actor, the excellent Valerio Mastandrea, and they all do fresh takes for the crew. But what makes this movie stronger is their articulation of their deepest fears and desires, as classroom scenes give us insight into their backgrounds and native lands, and their emotions rise to the surface.
Tackling another hot-button topic, Valeria Golino’s HONEY is about an ‘angel of mercy’ called Irene, aka Honey, played by Jasmine Trinca. She makes a living from death, in getting drugs and helping facilitate a good ending for terminally sick people. She’s all very professional and matter of fact as she’s sent on missions of mercy across Italy, for money, even going as far as Mexico to get exactly the right meds. Until she hits a flaw in the plan and faces a massive dilemma. As instructed, she gives the right pills for a terminal treatment to a older man, but he turns out to be in perfect physical health. What should – and what can – she do? It not only challenges her moral certitude, but might also force viewers to reevaluate theirs too.
A kidnap thriller set in Sicily is not exactly unprecedented, but SALVO, from joint directors-screenwriters Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza is a little different. Salvatore is a ruthless hitman going about his business in Palermo’s relentless heat, like the Milk Tray man, but with a gun, until he can’t quite complete one of his missions. Having taken out everyone else, ‘Salvo’ cannot bring himself to kill a young, blind woman. We hear her breathing amplified, extreme close-ups dominate, and we get her point-of-view as she’s taken to a remote, abandoned warehouse with bags of atmosphere, and starts to regain her sight. Others want her dead. But will Stockholm Syndrome force her towards Salvo – and is escape possible?
Inventive, tongue-in-cheek and featuring festival favourite Martina (Lives of Others) Gedeck as a gallery owner, THOSE HAPPY YEARS is Daniele Luchetti’s knowing examination of the world of ‘cutting-edge’ performance art in the seventies. Kim Rossi-Stuart plays Guido, an avant-garde artist with a very open attitude to his marriage, and a desire to be exhibited in Milan. He and his wife, Serena, have two unbelievably cute sons, one of whom narrates and films their adventures. Luchetti explores their love, trust and freedom, with warmth and humour, and traces Serena’s affections when they take another direction. He may think he’s a liberal, liberated new man, but Guido is unable to deal with this. But can he fight back?
Greece
The premise of THE ETERNAL RETURN OF ANTONIS PARASKEVAS (right) is brilliant. A TV presenter’s career is on the slide, so he fakes his own kidnap to a huge, empty hotel, far away from the public eye. Then he watches as the media coverage and his own personal popularity soars. This is quite a coup for the screenwriter Elina Psykou, who also directs with some wit on her feature debut. And in the title role, Christos Stergioglou is suitably lugubrious and troubled as he expects to rescue his flagging career, but is in danger of cracking up and going feral in his solitude. In truth, the final film doesn’t quite work, despite some nicely surreal moments, but there’s loads of promise from Psykou, making hers a name to watch.
Germany
Consisting of 59 ‘chapters’ and running at just under three hours, THE POLICE OFFICER’S WIFE, from director and screenwriter Philip Gröning is structurally compelling, as each section, however lengthy or fleeting, adds another angle or layer to the narrative. Indeed, you feel almost emotionally drained by the climax. At the opening, everything looks idyllic externally. We see a young family: policeman, his doting wife and their small daughter, as they go on an Easter egg hunt, have supper and enjoy their domesticity.
This is interspersed with scenes from his work, but there’s a constant feeling that he can fly into a sudden, unprovoked rage. We glimpse his wife’s bruises, hidden on her back, arms and legs, multiplying and spreading over time. She’s always on edge, on guard, as this casual suburban brutality continues. He plays his video games, does his job, and beats his wife, but she still loves him. Everything is normalised and entirely believable and crushing to watch – exploring the same territory as The Fear, but in greater depth.
Russia
In director-screenwriter Boris Khlebnikov’s stark A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE (right), Sasha is a pawn in the midst of land-grabbing politics. He encourages a group of workers to settle and labour on farmland, and when a sudden buyout is announced, he’s happy to settle for compensation, but his farm workers won’t quit. This is their only hope, they just want to work, banding together to fight to stay. Sasha is persuaded to dig his heels in and lead them, even though he risks losing his girlfriend Anna, who works for the developers, and he’s also threatened. He doesn’t know who to trust, he starts losing other comrades, and is driven to the very edge. Some compelling issues drive the drama, as greedy, faceless development steamrolls idealism and individualism.
SHAME, from director Yusup Razykov, is based on the Kursk submarine disaster, and those waiting… and left behind. What emerges is that the women back on the shore are just as trapped in their remote, icy isolation. A mood of desperation and bubbling panic permeates the film, which is very strong on atmosphere. Much of the action and tension revolves around a strong, but flawed outsider, Lena, beautifully played by Maria Semenova, who is just one of many damaged people portrayed. Haunting.
Romania
Calin Peter Netzer’s CHILD’S POSE is a smart skewering of an entitled, upper-class Romanian family and their sense of entitlement. They all close ranks to try to prevent the spoilt, grown-up son going to jail after he kills a poor child while driving. The rich mother, Cornelia (the excellent Luminita Gheorghiu) is in every single scene, bending every rule and coercing every witness and law officer to get her son cleared, as she swiftly loses focus of right and wrong in her singlemindedness. He’s ungrateful, of course, but Cornelia still says: “I’d give my life for him. I’d cut off my hand for him.” Claustrophobic and involving throughout, this movie shows how blind and smothering love can be.
Bosnia
Experienced filmmaker Danis Tanovic shows the brutal truth of having to live – or exist – on the very edges of society in AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF AN IRON PICKER. Using real Roma people ‘reenacting’ what had really happened to them, Tanovic fashions a documentary-style story of one family who cannot get help when the overworked mother of two tiny daughters has a miscarriage and needs treatment. Her husband – the ‘Iron Picker’, who collects fly-tipped scrap metal to sell – tries to make ends meet despite power cuts, bitter snow, and their beat-up car finally packing up and ironically being turned into scrap. But they face endless closed doors and discrimination, seriously endangering her health, and the men of the village even reminisce that life was better in the war, having spent four years in the trenches. Desperate and eye-opening.
Poland
Of course, we already know Pawel Pawlikowski from his bittersweet British films Last Resort and My Summer of Love. And now with IDA he’s tackling something much more personal and rooted in his homeland, Poland. Written together with Rebecca Lenkiewicz, and filmed in rich black and white, this starts out as the coming-of-age story of an orphaned young nun, Anna in the 1960s. Before taking her vows, Anna is allowed out into the real world and immediately faces her past, discovering from her aunt, Wanda, that she is in fact, Jewish, that her real name is Ida, and that the rest of the family was murdered when she was a baby. Wanda and Anna set off together to find out more about their family and their disappearance, encountering free spirits and dark secrets, the revelations shocking both of them, and giving Wanda more survivor’s guilt. But how will each of them react to revisiting the past? This deservedly won the Festival’s Best Feature Film award.
Already accustomed to creating powerful and visually arresting movies, Andrzej Wajda has here forged a memorable portrait of Lech Walesa, a crucial leader in Poland’s modern history. WALESA. MAN OF HOPE shows the electrician starting off in modest family surroundings, with long-suffering wife and growing brood, and gradually bringing hope to the working class from a mixture of stubbornness and commitment. The cult of personality helps buoy him up as he confronts the police and the government, leads the Solidarity union, keeps getting fired and arrested throughout the eighties, and eventually ends up rising to the top of government himself. Justly revered in Poland, credited with starting the protest that culminated in the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, but perhaps more divisive elsewhere, Walesa makes a fascinating biographical subject for a film elevated by the fine performance of Robert Wieckeiwicz in the title role.
Netherlands
A modest movie about isolation and suppressed desires, IT’S ALL SO QUIET from director screenwriter Nanouk Leopold, foregrounds a middle-aged farmer, Helmer, who is also sole carer for his frail father. Endless silences are Helmer’s constant companion, and the only other people he really speaks to are the guy who fetches the milk from his dairy herd, and the young farmhand who briefly arrives to help out. Both stir up unwanted feelings for Helmer, who is utterly lonely but unwilling to articulate his emotions. And even as he patiently lifts, bathes and cooks for his bed-ridden father, we sense that the old man might have treated Helmer badly in the past.
Norway
Once you’ve seen the breathtaking KON-TIKI you’ll understand why childhood friends and joint-directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg have been seduced by Hollywood to make the next film in Jerry Bruckenheimer’s Pirates of the Caribbean series. The duo really know how to make an ocean-going epic with thrills aplenty. Unlike Pirates, however, this is based on the true story of Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian adventurer who even as a child in the 1920s craved danger and risk. Fast forward to 1937 and he’s in Polynesia with his wife, still looking for a big challenge.
Shot in English, stunning throughout, the film’s central action is set in the 1940s when he’s planning to emulate the ancient Kon-Tiki voyage on a balsa-wood raft. He swiftly gathers comrades to join his unlikely expedition, as he plots the journey to Polynesia, gathering funds and supplies from his Peruvian starting point. Through stubborn determination, the crew overcome perfect storms, constant perils and unfriendly whales and sharks, and many of the set pieces evoke nautical movies from Moby Dick to Jaws, and even Robinson Crusoe. As the voyage proceeds, they transform from motley crew to sunkissed, bronzed heroes, and from naysayers to true believers. It’s some trip.
Sweden
One of my absolute favourites of the entire festival, and a real return to form for Lukas Moodysson, WE ARE THE BEST! is a glorious comedy, set in 1982. With a thumping soundtrack, Nordic knitwear and three stroppy Stockholm teenage girls driving it onwards, this is a junior version of a classic rockumentary. Two best friends, Klara and Bobo love punk music, but cannot play a note. Yet, in true punk fashion, this doesn’t stop them starting up a band, going as far as recruiting Christian guitarist Hedwig to join their ranks and instantly improve them. Idealistically against pretty much everything, they fight over the cute boy singer in another punk band, have musical differences, and fall out and make up. In short, Moodysson has fashioned a laugh-out-loud microcosm of all the music bios you’ve ever seen.
Nigeria
A confident debut from Chika Anadu, B FOR BOY focuses on Amaka, as she nears her 40s and is desperate to give her husband, Nonso, a boy child by any means necessary. She’s under huge pressure from his family, and knows that if she doesn’t deliver, he’ll probably take a second wife. With a well-directed but unpredictable plotline based on Anadu’s own screenplay, and a great leading performance from Uche Nwadili as Amaka, this promises big things.
Syria
Almost impressionistic, Mohamad Malas’ LADDER TO DAMASCUS doesn’t tackle the current Syrian civil war head on, but instead focuses on romantic characters drifting in and around a courtyard commune stuffed with similarly idealistic students, including a filmmaker. Most of them are in an oasis of relative calm while the revolution is hinted at, and they’re almost in denial about what’s happening elsewhere – until events in the Damascus streets start to make their mark.
India
Skewering the terrible caste system that’s still going strong in India, FANDRY, from director-screenwriter Nagraj Manjule, sees its inequities through the eyes of the engaging Jabya, an untouchable teenage boy. He encounters discrimination everywhere, from home to school and even threatening his love for a fair-skinned girl well out of his league. Expected to help his father catch feral pigs – ‘fandry’ – while his schoolmates spectate, Jabya is consumed with embarrassment and seething anger against those who tease and persecute him, until he flips.
The idea for THE LUNCHBOX apparently came from director Ritesh Batra working on a documentary about Mumbai’s lunchbox delivery men and the assertion that they never make a mistake. But in Batra’s charming romantic comedy, there is indeed a mix-up that results in the delicious creations of one woman, Ila, being delivered not to her husband’s workplace, but to a completely different man, widower Sajaan, toiling away in an accounts department. Ila’s unappreciative husband doesn’t even notice the difference, but Sajaan is transported by Ila’s food, and they start exchanging notes inside the lunch tins. Will their friendship turn to love or will they both remain stuck in their respective ruts? Will Sajaan’s nosy, greedy, but well-meaning colleague thwart his plans? With the main roles superbly handled by Irfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur, plus Nawazuddin Siddqui as the colleague, there’s lots of fun finding out.
One thing a good crime or detective drama can do is tackle other topics, like social problems and politics that normally get brushed under the carpet or only shown in conventional documentaries. Just look at the story layers of The Killing and The Bridge. Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s SNIFFER isn’t set in cool, calm Scandinavia though, but in crowded, noisy Kolkota. This time, Nawazuddin Siddqui takes the lead, as the eponymous Sniffer or private investigator, Anwar. His intentions may be honourable, but in truth, he doesn’t have the stomach for his spying and prying, finds it hard to be inconspicuous, and would much rather spend time with his beloved old dog. We see how everyone is getting information on everyone else, including potential spouses, and how religious ‘rules’ can exclude the likes of Anwar. And he also stumbles across the darker side of Kolkota and child trafficking. Mainly upbeat and boasting oodles of charisma, both Anwar and the film strike an occasional reflective tone, giving new depth.
Singapore
Worthy winner of the First Feature Award at this festival (and also at Cannes), ILO ILO alternates between humour and pathos. Director-screenwriter Anthony Chen shows a middle-class couple trying to cope despite financial pressures and their son Jiale getting naughtier by the day. So the heavily pregnant mother hires a Filipino maid, Terry, to do the housework and keep the boy in line. But the conniving Jiale has other ideas, and it becomes a battle of wills between him and Terry. Meanwhile the husband isn’t letting on that he’s lost his job in the recession, and has secretly taken up smoking. To secure the role of Jiale, Koh Jia Ler was picked from auditions with thousands of children, and it’s clear why he got the gig. Trivia lovers might also like to know that when the expectant mother (Yann Yann Yeo) is filmed giving birth over the end titles, that is actually her own child being born. Is this perhaps a first?
Korea
With the London Korean Film Festival just around the corner, seeing some new Korean films certainly whets the appetite. LEBANON EMOTION is the impressive feature debut of director-screenwriter Jung Youngheon and, as the filmmakers are at pains to point out, it has absolutely nothing to do with Lebanon. The phrase simply sums up the feelings of emptiness and despair that can press any of us down – and this project was the director’s own cathartic way of tackling his own ‘Lebanon Emotion’. The film’s main character, Heonwoo, is still grieving for his mother and has contemplated different methods of suicide, when he’s suddenly shaken out of his introspection by a strange sequence of events. A female ex-felon, a vicious gangster, a comical fisherman and snow-covered woods find their way into Heonwoo’s existence, and he has the chance to reinvent himself as beloved hero. Youngheon is one to watch.
Having now seen a handful of Hong Sangsoo’s movies, it wasn’t a big surprise that both of his films at this year’s festival, NOBODY’S DAUGHTER HAEWON and OUR SUNHI plough exactly the same furrows as their predecessors and each other. Each revolves around one strong young woman (Haewon, Sunhi) and the men drawn to them. Both films have elements of repetition and symmetry with set-piece meetings and conversations, alcohol loosening the tongues of all the characters and making them drop their guards (in vino veritas indeed), and almost no action. Yes, these movies are sly and witty, yes, they show how manners shape behaviour, but Hong is such a fine director that I’d now love to see him try something new.
China
Something epic and something intimate from China. The first film is FOUR WAYS TO DIE IN MY HOMETOWN from director Chai Chunya, an odyssey encompassing age-old Buddhist tradition, story and myth, set on the edge of Tibet. A father prepares for death by lying in a coffin for three years, and a chorus of pipe-smoking Hardy-esque locals and shadow puppets complement the stories of Earth, Water, Fire and Wind. The traditional Chinese orchestral music throughout won’t be to everyone’s taste, but is entirely appropriate here.
The second movie is surveillance thriller TRAP STREET, the debut feature from Vivian Qu, about a young guy bewitched by a woman who gets in his way while he’s surveying the town. By day he’s digitally mapping this area, and by night he works in the black economy, putting up illicit CCTV monitors all over the place. But he dares to ask why some places don’t show up on the GPS, including LAB 203, which just happens to be where this same woman works as a research scientist. Until she disappears…
Philippines
Brillante Mendoza’s THY WOMB shows a couple just about getting by, subsistence living on the coast. He’s a fisherman, she’s a midwife, yet she is childless herself. And unlike B For Boy, she wants to find him a second wife to give him the child he craves. But will her selflessness pay off, and will this plan be fruitful?
Laos
THE ROCKET from director Kim Mordaunt, is the story of Ahlo from birth, when his twin dies and he survives. He grows up in constant hardship, with his family’s village about to be taken over by the building of a huge dam. They’re sold a bunch of lies and displaced to a non-existent new village, but young Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe) is enterprising and won’t be defeated by their situation and the injustices. He becomes Mister Fix-It until they are cast out again, and flee with their only friends to an inappropriately-named place called ‘Paradise’. But when there’s a competition to build the best rocket, Ahlo is determined to get the cash prize and transform their lives – with a little help with his friends. You can’t keep a good (young) man down.
Japan
Yuya Ishii is one of my favourite quirky directors, having made both Sawako Decides and Mitsuko Delivers. Now, with THE GREAT PASSAGE (right), Yuya moves seamlessly into the mainstream with a comedy drama about the making of… a new dictionary. When the respected dictionary editor is about to retire and needs to find a replacement, he selects an unlikely individual, the tongue-tied, almost mute Mitsuya Majime. The ambitious, living dictionary that his team are about to embark on, ‘The Great Passage’, is an uphill battle that takes years. Meanwhile, Mitsuya is rendered a hopeless romantic as he falls in love with his landlady’s granddaughter, struggling to find the right words to express his passion for the knife-wielding sushi chef. But despite many setbacks, his romantic and professional exploits continue. Utterly beguiling.
Mexico
THE GOLDEN DREAM from Diego Quemada-Diez follows a group of Guatemalan kids – including one indigenous Indian – trying to get to the US via Mexico. It’s a big adventure and starts out like Stand By Me, but quickly gets darker and crammed with jeopardy. Their ordeal becomes more horrific as their journey progresses, especially when violent bandits discover that one of the boys is actually a girl in disguise. No spoilers here, but there’s a growing feeling of attrition and disappointment, despite the initial optimism as they head towards their golden dream.
Venezuela
Revolving around 9-year-old Junior (the superb Samuel Lange) and his stressed mother, director Mariana Rondón’s BAD HAIR shows this afro-haired boy craving affection and approval, which he thinks he’ll get if he has straight hair. His ambitious granny, Carmen, has other plans for him though, aiming to turn him into a huge singing sensation. But will Junior’s flamboyant individuality be hammered out of him, just as his hair is straightened to conform?
Argentina
THE PARROT AND THE SWAN – like My Class and The Wishful Thinkers – is a film within a film about being filmed. All very meta and witty from director Alejo Moguillansky. It revolves around a sound recordist (‘Parrot’) who is hopelessly romantic and has been dumped in the middle of filming. Dry comic characters punctuate the heightened yet slowly unfolding situation, with the flirty crew documenting ballet dancers performing. Filmmaker in-jokes include no sound for the audience when Parrot isn’t switched on, as he’s recording for the film, as well as the film within the film. Clever clogs.
LA PAZ from director Santiago Loza, starts with pampered Liso (Lisandro Rodríguez) leaving a psychiatric hospital, but still on meds. His suffocating, over-doting mother and father spoil him, but his grandmother and the family’s loyal maid, Sonia, are more pragmatic and try to help him reconstruct and restructure his life. His ex-girlfriends seem justifiably wary, and viewers must read between the lines. But with Sonia’s help, might there be a form of redemption and renewal for him?
Chile
With its irrepressible middle-aged heroine and thumping disco and Latin soundtrack, GLORIA, from director Sebastián Lelio is not your typical South American film drama. In fact, on the surface it sounds more like a telenovela soap opera, but it’s far from it. Gloria (Paulina García) hits the singles bars and clubs with verve, until she falls for Rodolfo, a divorced, older guy who runs a paintball and bungee jumping theme park.
The attraction is instant and she is willing to commit to him, even introducing him at a family gathering. But he doesn’t seem to be quite as divorced as he claims, frequently disappearing altogether, then popping up again and relying on Gloria’s intoxication with the idea of romance as much as with him. She sees her kids moving on and moving away, her neighbours are distressing, and she craves a fresh start. But he can’t let go of his past – whatever that is – and she seems stuck in denial. Garcia, who is a revelation in the title role, and has starred in many TV series, won the Best Actress award at Berlin. And she makes you cheer her on throughout, even as the final credits are rolling and Umberto Tozzi’s anthemic song, Gloria, is playing.
KEY DOCUMENTARIES
Some really strong documentaries this year from across the world. A number of them are up-close-and-personal biographies, so let’s start with the best of those, Alex Gibney’s THE ARMSTRONG LIE. This film had to be put on hold in 2009 when the award-winning Mea Maxima Culpa director was just hitting his stride, because his subject, Tour de France cycling legend Lance Armstrong, was embroiled in a doping scandal. Then everything went back into production this year, and Armstrong finally came clean and admitted the enormous scale of his doping and his lies. Armstrong’s mantra was “to lose is death” and he seemed to have made a Faustian pact to win at all costs, forever concealing the truth … until his downfall. Almost shockingly candid in his revelations, which are sharply contrasted with his previous, on-camera protestations of innocence and outrage, this bang up-to-date documentary shows that he probably would have got away with it if his hubris hadn’t driven him towards his ill-advised 2009 comeback. Abandoned team-mates, his dodgy doctor, the complicity of many of the cycling fraternity who backed up his cast-iron, heroic cancer survivor image – all these muddied the waters for Gibney, who was himself a fan who could easily have “bought into the bullshit”. But didn’t. A must-see.
Another American maverick who made as many enemies as friends was the late Gore Vidal, who is celebrated in THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, written and directed by Nicholas Wrathall. It starts with Vidal standing by the gravestone he’s planning to share with his dead partner, then criss-crosses his remarkable career, in which he had chums like William Faulkner, Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Newman and even JFK. He knew Amelia Earhart too, as she’d had an affair with his father, who married Jacqueline Bouvier’s mother. So the name-dropping comes thick and fast, as do the wonderful anecdotes and one-liners, building up a picture of a one-off, left-wing, society maverick, who’ll be much missed.
Ever so slightly to the right of Vidal, but sharing his devil-may-care attitude to all-comers is filmmaker John Milius, who gets his own life story told in Zak Knutson and Joey Figueroa’s MILIUS. In texture it resembles The Kid Stays In The Picture, but with extra helpings of macho and bravado for the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls crowd. Talking heads Walter Murch, Coppola, Spielberg and Lucas line up to pay homage to this bear of a man, who was kept out of the Vietnam War due to his asthma. And it’s generously stuffed with clips to illustrate Milius’ gift for memorable dialogue and mythic plot. From Apocalypse Now and Big Wednesday to Conan and Red Dawn, they all have his brilliant, if reactionary, fingerprints all over them.
A subtler and even more influential director to be given the full treatment is Italy’s Bernardo Bertolucci, in Walter Fasano and Luca Guadagnino’s BERTOLUCCI ON BERTOLUCCI. They’ve combed through every bit of archive, every Bertolucci interview out there, to give the fullest possible portrait – or self-portrait – of this man who loves movies. He talks of his time in analysis, of Pasolini and the language of cinema, of censorship, of French and Italian film movements, of musicals being one thousand per cent cinema, and on basing The Partner on Dostoevsky’s The Double (like Richard Ayoade at this year’s London Film Festival). In short, he reckons the pleasure of the relationship between the filmmaker and the viewer is sensual, and feels that cinema puts order in his chaos. Makes you want to watch his films all over again.
It would be hard to find a more harrowing documentary than Claude Lanzmann’s three-and-a-half-hour LAST OF THE UNJUST, which follows up his unforgettable holocaust film Shoah. It centres on Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia and the propaganda films made there, while Jewish elders ran the camp in the Second World War. The one surviving elder, Benjamin Murmelstein, gives lengthy first person interviews to Lanzmann, who pieces it all together in cool, matter-of-fact, almost prosaic fashion. Which makes the story that Murmelstein “has to tell” all the more devastating.
The festival also revived the classic 1966 Shirley Clarke documentary PORTRAIT OF JASON. This close-up of Jason Holiday is an outrageously entertaining, no-holds-barred interview with the thirtysomething gay, black hustler in his prime, who spends much of the time laughing at his own reminiscences.
And for a musical portrait, it’s hard to imagine a better on-the-road, warts-and-all movie than MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS. Comically candid, this was almost accidentally commissioned by Matt Berninger, the elegant, focused lead singer of the rock band, The National, who had hired his awkward, slacker brother, Tom as a tour assistant. When Tom took it upon himself to document their world tour in minute detail, he got access-all-areas where he wasn’t wanted, keeping the camera rolling when he was explicitly told to turn it off, showing band members brushing their teeth, showering and trying to prepare themselves immediately before going on stage to thousands of adoring fans. Until they all finally got fed up with him and he was sacked. If you love The National’s glorious music, you’ll be uplifted by their performances. And if you like Spinal Tap style rockumentaries, you won’t be disappointed. This is hilarious.
Post Arab Spring, Egypt seems to be in constant flux, and a new musical craze has sprung up from this, shown by director Hind Meddeb in ELECTRO SHAABI. Young men use ‘Mahragan’ music as a frenetic way to express themselves, much like hip-hop crossed with Algerian Rai. They may seem a bit blingy and Westernised, but they’re also conscious souls who love Bob Marley, riffing, dancing and making beats, as they pour it all into making something uniquely Egyptian. And the action inevitably ends in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Politics also enters into Fred Wiseman’s four-hour, in-depth epic AT BERKELEY, in which the prestigious US university faces devastating funding cuts, threatening their whole existence. Major soul-searching discussions and endless heated debates see intellectuals sparring with each other. But this also poses the bigger questions: what value do we place on education, and who is it for?
In Slovakia’s EXHIBITS OR STORIES FROM THE CASTLE, the subtle political question concerns how we care for our elderly. Palo Korec’s poignant, but unsentimental portrait includes several eccentrics and a couple with a simmering romance, but mainly gives us “stories of people who have lost everything – and the only thing they have left is their life.” Also looking at the less fortunate, novelist Xiaolu Guo’s short but thought-provoking LATE AT NIGHT: TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS has vignettes of East Londoners of all ages, backgrounds, jobs, political persuasions, faiths and nationalities, all with a love/hate relationship with their city, and mixed up with archive and a fake newsreader.
A more romantic view of London comes in Paul Kelly’s HOW WE USED TO LIVE, the fourth in his collective’s series on the capital. This is entirely constructed from colour archive dating from 1950 to 1980, and beautifully scored with music from Saint Etienne alumni, overlaid with Ian McShane’s timeless narration. The river, the pubs, the parks, the buses and everyone smoking everywhere, make it feel like a more innocent time. Football, music, nightlife, police, and the city “a forest of concrete and glass” are effortlessly, magically nostalgic. So much so that I’ve invested in their previous London Trilogy on a BFI DVD.
Jon Savage’s book TEENAGE has been brought to the screen by Matt Wolf, and focuses on American, English and German youths navigating those difficult adolescent days before they were given a voice, stopping its coverage at the end of the Second World War. The strengths are the fresh archive and the narration from the likes of Ben Whishaw, tackling age, race, politics, music, drugs and sex, constructing a “living collage” littered with quotes from actual teens. The only weakness is the obviously fake footage they’ve made to accompany some of the key characters, deliberately blurred, but detracting from Savage’s hidden histories. But when there’s also music from Gene Krupa’s band, who’s to complain?
Also constructed from memories, testimony and archive, ex-war reporter Greg Barker’s MANHUNT looks at the CIA’s tireless, two-decade-long pursuit of Osama Bin Laden. Their intricate ‘incident rooms’ are recreated, the rhythm and pace of the film shifting as they reach Homeland territory. There are major coups in getting the likes of General Stanley McChrystal to talk, in an admission that shock and awe only creates more terrorism, and that we need to understand better what motivates terrorists to take action, and ask: “why is the enemy the enemy?” We also see just how many key operatives are women with an eye for detail – the ‘Sisterhood’ – as Barker’s film tries to “provide a lens of history that doesn’t exist yet”. This is the searching, unglamorous antithesis of Zero Dark Thirty, and is perhaps all the better for it.
Perhaps the most innovative way to tell an horrific tale of systematic state abuse is director Rithy Panh’s decision to lovingly create and paint clay figures of characters and scenes in THE MISSING PICTURE. He’s looking back at his childhood, growing up under the horrific regime of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, working in forced labour camps, watching people die all around him as collectivisation and militarisation take hold. Private memories and emotions have to be stored away. And by distancing himself through the use of state propaganda archive and scale models, Panh somehow manages to bring it home even more vividly, underlining that “the revolution that they promised us only exists on film.”
To document a very different existence in Finnish Lapland, director Jessica Oreck’s AATSINKI: THE STORY OF ARCTIC COWBOYS follows brothers Aarne and Lasse as they tend, herd and finally kill reindeer. She homes in on the intimate, intricate details, then gives us fabulous wide shots of wintry scenes, vast expanses of frosted forests and round-ups warmed by the camaraderie and joking amidst the business. It’s at once beautiful, harsh and enlightening, and contrasts the herders’ state-of-the-art snowmobiles with their ancient slaughter techniques.
Finally, like many of the best documentaries, Paul Crowder’s 1 is a loving yet probing examination of a unique world – Formula One racing. He takes us into the gasoline-drenched, sometimes dangerous, always macho sport that’s produced heroes, fall-guys, and fatalities. Lots of fatalities. Until the sport started to pay more attention to safety, common sense, and bad press. Characters like Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley are now known for fuelling its success as a money-making machine, but they also helped get fatalities down to almost zero. You warm to the baby-faced Belgian Jacky Ickx, to Jochen Rindt, Fangio, Senna and Hunt. They knew no fear, and it’s easy to see why the glamour and not-so-cheap thrills of motor racing can be so seductive and addictive. And the whole thing’s superbly narrated by Michael Fassbender.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.