Countries

Irrational Man (2015)

André Crous

An alcoholic philosopher decides to try his hand at committing what he believes to be an ethical murder, but the execution is neither comical nor tragic.

irrational manUSA
3*

Director:
Woody Allen
Screenwriter:
Woody Allen
Director of Photography:
Darius Khondji

Running time: 95 minutes

Woody Allen likes to play it safe in all of his recent films. This safety, while often peppered with hilarious dialogue or neurotic characters teetering on the brink of hysteria, also makes many of his works, at least those of the past 20 years, mediocre and forgettable. There have been demonstrable exceptions, particularly when his actresses are given free rein to express themselves, or when he takes greater pains to construct a story with both a beating heart and a strong head.

For the former, the examples that come to mind are the hot-blooded whirlwind performance of Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Cate Blanchett’s stunning portrayal of a narcissistic, delusional, alcoholic divorcée in Blue Jasmine; the latter include Mighty Aphrodite, which borrows from both George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and ancient Greek plays, as well as his magnificent Crime and Punishment-inspired Match Point.

Irrational Man is not a comedy and does not elicit a single laugh from the audience. In theme, it is closest to Match Point, replete with Dostoyevsky references (a copy of The Idiot lies next to his bed, he scribbles in a copy of Crime and Punishment, and the Russian novelist’s name is explicitly cited in a discussion with a student), but unlike his 2005 film, there is no thrill and no tension. Even the film’s most dramatic moment – a murder – is devoid of anxiety, and while the homicidal act takes place onscreen, the death occurs off-screen.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Abe Lucas, an alcoholic philosophy professor who has just joined the faculty at Braylin College in the sleepy town of Newport, Rhode Island. He is a nihilist who believes philosophy can do little more but talk about life’s problems. Nonetheless, Allen gives us a CliffsNotes introduction to existentialist philosophers in Lucas’s classes and then proceeds to the much more dramatically satisfying situation that serves as the plot’s turning point: Lucas decides that he can give meaning to his life by helping someone in need, even if this means he would have to commit murder.

One day in a coffee shop, he overhears a woman complaining of a judge who will very likely take custody of her children away from her and give it to her ex-husband, who is friendly with the judge. Lucas, without knowing much more than what he discovers from this one-sided account, makes up his mind to kill the judge.

The other track on which the story advances involves one of Lucas’s students, Jill Pollard (Emma Stone), who has fallen in love with him despite her having a long-term, caring boyfriend. Jill is a terribly disappointing character, as much for Allen as for Stone, who has played much stronger women in the past (her attention-grabbing turn in Easy A immediately comes to mind). In Irrational Man, she starts off as a smart philosophy major who takes on her professor’s worldview head-on but very quickly becomes doe-eyed and infatuated with him, and she tries her best to lull him out of his rudderless existence. When she fails, she flings her body at him.

This is a terrible debasement and does not endear her character to the audience at all, particularly because we feel she has given up control of her life to a man who is tossing and turning in a wasteland of despair.

The mentions of the philosophers are little more than padding and serve little purpose other than to remind us Lucas is philosophically minded. The look of the film, as is usual in an Allen production, is competent without drawing any attention to itself. The single exception, however, is absolutely stunning and underscores the skills of master cinematographer Darius Khondji, for whom this film marks his fifth collaboration with Allen.

Towards the end of the film, when Jill is starting to suspect Lucas has had a hand in the death of the judge, she watches him alone out on a jetty, a silhouette against the radiant sunlight reflecting off the still water. But there is something unusual: Lucas’s silhouette seems to vibrate, even melt, around the edges where it meets the bright luminosity behind it. The shot is breathtaking and catapults the film’s visual language into the stratosphere, albeit momentarily.

This Woody Allen film is about as unfunny a movie as he has ever made. But unlike some of his other films, which at least worked still played with our emotions, this one lacks the vocabulary to get us roaring with laughter or our adrenaline pumping. Despite the intriguing premise of ending a life to infuse your own with meaning and intensity, this work is mostly forgettable, and the weak character portrayed by Emma Stone is very unfortunate.

Dogtooth (2010)

André Crous

In a world that is entirely make-believe, a patriarch creates the rules that govern the existence, even the meaning of words, of his children, and no outside influence is tolerated.

dogtoothGreece
4*

Director:
Yorgos Lanthimos
Screenwriters:
Yorgos Lanthimos
Efthymis Filippou
Director of Photography:
Thimios Bakatatakis
Running time: 95 minutes

Original title:
Κυνόδοντας
Transliterated title:
Kynodontas

They play a tape recorder and listen to the week’s lesson. Words from outside the home, like “sea” and “highway” and “excursion”, are redefined as elements inside the home, and the obvious take-away is that these people will never get to experience real seas, or highways, or even excursions.

The five people in question constitute a family, although the connections between them are so tenuous that we cannot say with certainty that they are related because they do not interact with each other the way family members tend to do. In fact, they do not act the way anyone does and none of them is called by a name. Although they do not live far from the Greek capital of Athens (the one car they have, which only the domineering father is allowed to take to venture outside the house, has the number plate “YY”, for the East Attica regional unit), their house is located on a restricted access road, and no one ever drops by to say hello.

For all intents and purposes, the two parental figures and their three teenage children (one or two of whom might even be in their 20s already) live in a bubble that is highly manipulated by the father, and to some extent by the mother, who introduces new words in a way that distorts the reality outside the home. The lack of natural social interaction has also led the children to speak in a detached manner that makes them sound a little like lifeless robots.

The father, cognisant of his son’s burgeoning needs to express his sexuality, brings home a female security guard from the large firm where he works to have sex with his son. The act itself has no chemistry whatsoever, perhaps because the son’s lack of stimulation has turned him into a mechanical puppet. The son soon learns that his favourite position is doggy style, and many a viewer will speculate whether any allowance has been made for the son to be homosexual. If the term does not exist in the son’s vocabulary, what would he do with such feelings?

The family has a television set, but the outside world does not intrude. They only watch their own home videos, and between the videos, the cassettes and the 1983 Mercedes-Benz (according to online posts) that the father drives, one could easily assume this story takes place in the 1980s — that is, until we see the mother phoning her husband at work and him picking up his small mobile phone. It is also easy to think that the parents are conservative individuals who are scared that their children would be exposed to salacious influences, but they watch porn together in the living room when their offspring are asleep.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos presents his material with sharply lit images and very often shows his characters with their heads cut off by the frame to convey the idea of an idyllic atmosphere that leads to mindlessness. The robotic voices and the simple white clothes that the children wear also suggest a complete lack of creativity and a bond of unity and uniformity that is hard to miss. The father, who is the only one ever to leave to house, even goes as far as to remove the labels from the food and water he buys, lest they indicate life beyond the walls of his property.

And yet, there are subtle hints that things are not as peachy as the father would like to believe. The middle child (the elder daughter) bears a scar of unknown provenance on her shoulder, and all the children sometimes speak to the fence or throw a slice of cake to the other side. We later learn that they used to have a brother, who has escaped to the other side, but his existence only comes up in a single scene whose focus is very much elsewhere.

This film is clearly about control, and about the abuse that parents sometimes inflict on their children in order to “protect” them from undue influence. It is a fascist approach, to be sure, and the film ends on a very tragic note that should not come as a surprise to anyone who recognises that anyone who has tasted freedom will demand more of it. Throughout the story, the family dog is being trained to listen to his master’s orders, but the dog appears to be just one yelp shy of Labrador kindness, and the question hangs in the air whether control and training would ever be able to supersede innate behaviour.

Dogtooth is a powerful indictment of parents who impose their own vision of the world on their children and subsequently distort reality so that they may feel like they are in control. Lanthimos’s approach is both shocking and slightly comical, and we cannot look away.

(The title refers to the father’s statement that only when the children’s dogteeth, or eyeteeth, have come out, their bodies will be ready to “face the dangers that lurk outside”.)

If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (2010)

André Crous

The boy with the peaceful demeanour should not be underestimated. He has been biding his time, but when things don’t work out the way he was expecting, he takes a violent leap to seize a fantasy of stability.

if-i-want-to-whistleRomania
4*

Director:
Florin Șerban
Screenwriters:
Florin Șerban
Cătălin Mitulescu
Director of Photography:
Marius Panduru

Running time: 90 minutes

Original title: Eu când vreau să fluier, fluier

Don’t think for a moment the soft-spoken boy from a broken home who has spent the past four years in a juvenile detention centre has not been affected by his immediate surroundings. He seems to be in complete control of himself, resisting the provocations of many of his fellow inmates and even seemingly ignoring the sexual assault that takes place from time to time. The director calls him a “good boy”, one who has not made any trouble and is even allowed a second chance.

But just nine days before his release, the 18-year-old Silviu Chişcan, originally from the east Romanian town of Brăila, gets a visit from his younger brother, Marius, who tells him their mother has found a job in Italy and will take him with her within a few days, perhaps even before he is released. This visit nearly coincides with the appearance on the scene of a young social worker, Ana, whom Silviu fantasises about (as do nearly all the other young men who rarely get to see a woman) and expects to go on a date with once he returns to a free society.

When I Whistle, I Whistle is a film that is all about control and eventually about the loss of control. Its main character avoids lashing out at anyone and keeps his emotions bottled up inside until the very end because he does not want to spend the rest of his life in this place. But others around him throw obstacles in his way, and so does his mother when she hits him repeatedly upon visiting him on one of his final days behind bars. And yet, he does not react.

As should be expected, all of his pent-up anger eventually comes to a boil, at a time and in a way that is unfortunate at first, and ultimately even tragic. Fortunately, the story’s development is far from morose, and actor George Pistereanu with his big black eyes is absolutely mesmerising in the lead. The explosion of fury that kicks off the third act does not arrive out of the blue but is brilliantly and powerfully foreshadowed by the film’s most impressive scene: the day Silviu’s estranged mother pays him a visit, and he lets loose a torrent of contempt for the way she treated him and her role in sending his life down the tubes. The scene is tense to the point of being hypnotising and despite Silviu not reacting in the way we expect him to, there is something cathartic about his performance.

Marius Panduru’s camera yields images that while obtained by hand-held cameras are restrained in their shakiness — an apt visual reflection of the tension between the central character’s external appearance and internal well of emotions. Director Florin Șerban focuses our attention with short bursts of information through editing that allows us to glimpse a potential threat that immediately captures out even though it often lasts for a very brief moment.

At other points, however, the film has no problem letting us wait for the Silviu to gather his thoughts. The camera stays on him while he is thinking, considering whether or not (and how) to react to harassment or what he perceives to be injustice. It is a fascinating look at people whose lives do not unfold according to the rules of a screenwriting manual but are immensely interesting because of the way the filmmaker here presents them to his audience. The actors are equally important in this regard, and one particular scene late at night, during which Silviu insistently whispers in the ear of a friend so that he can borrow his phone, is riveting because we know there is always the potential for violence to erupt at the drop of a hat.

While short of plot, this 90-minute film is deep on emotion and back story, and although we often wait for Silviu to show his fighting spirit, he should not be underestimated. This is a man who has spent the past four years in an atmosphere that is far from gentle, and context certainly informs character. Those who miscalculate the effect on a young man who would hold onto whatever stability he can find at any cost do so at their peril.

Diarchy (2010)

André Crous

Short film with skeletal cast of characters is ambiguous, tense and gorgeous.

diarchiaItaly
4*

Director:
Ferdinando Cito Filomarino
Screenwriter:
Ferdinando Cito Filomarino
Director of Photography:
Daria D’Antonio

Running time: 20 minutes

Original title: Diarchia

Rich half-siblings (one of whom is played by Louis Garrel) and the consequential visit of a stranger immediately bring to mind the provocative 2003 film by Bernando Bertolucci, The Dreamers, but the short film Diarchia, by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino (another Italian), is something quite different.

For one thing, whereas The Dreamers was animated in large part by garrulous discussions about philosophy and the cinema, with no small focus on sexual intimacy, Filomarino strives here for one thing only: tension. Having arrived at the grandiose summer villa of his friend Luc, the Italian Giano, clearly an outsider to this world of opulence, albeit faded opulence, does not want to fight back when Luc starts landing punches on him. But eventually, of course, he lashes out as way of standing up for himself and when he hits Luc, the Frenchman tumbles into the stairwell and breaks his neck.

Now, Giano has to clean up the mess by dragging the limp body from one room to the next so that Luc’s anonymous half-sister (whose line of work is unknown, even to Luc) does not catch him in flagrante delicto. These scenes are tense but not without some gallows humour that could have made Hitchcock proud, especially when Giano drives away from the villa with the cold body of Luc in the passenger seat, his eyes wide open and a big smile on his face. What happens next is unexpected and requires some analysis: Luc’s smile suddenly grows bigger, and he turns his head to look out of window, before a cut to black.

Having spent the previous 10-15 minutes in the company of Giano, who is concerned but in total control and shows very little if any anxiety at the prospect of being found out, this final moment initially seems like a condescending spit in our collective face, like those “it was all just a dream” epiphanies. But dig a little deeper, and the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, even though together they form a picture that may be abstract at best.

Let’s look at what the film is actually about. On the surface, which is certainly the area that ought to interest and engage the viewer the most, it is about a visit gone wrong, an unhappy coincidence, a death, a cover-up and an escape. The first half is playful but with at least one character a bit out of his depth, we also feel slightly awkward, especially when Luc starts punching Giano — softly at first, then harder and harder, almost like a bully. The second half is stressful but not exactly thrilling stuff, as Giano never breaks a sweat and even makes a point of staring at the half-sister moments after he accidentally killed Luc. There is a slight desire, but it is likely for the position she occupies and the life she lives rather than her looks.

When Giano is on the verge of leaving, the half-sister asks him whether he would like to join them for a ski trip, and there is a moment when, despite the obvious insanity of accepting, he seems to be considering the proposition. And although the title is never mentioned in the film, one has to take its connotations of tradition, and of the ruler as one of two equals, into account. “Diarchy” refers to the system of government that has two rulers instead of one. The small nations of Andorra and San Marino are two of the best-known examples.

Although the film is not very generous with its facts, we can surmise that Giano is not from the same social class as Luc and his half-sister, although it is unclear how he got to meet Luc and why he was invited along to their private residence, especially as we gradually realize that Luc and Giano do not know each other very well. This issue of class does not get much attention, but it might offer one of the best points of entry into an interpretation of the film; after all, the very first shot of the film is taken from the front of Luc’s car, decked out with the immediately recognizable logo of Mercedes-Benz.

The film is bookended by two scenes in Luc’s car. In the first scene, he is driving, and in the last scene, Giano is driving, although he only gets to drive because he has, by the looks of it, fatally punched his way into Luc’s position. And yet, when director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino suddenly reveals that this may just be a fantasy, he also brilliantly undercuts the possibility of Giano ever driving a Mercedes-Benz anywhere besides his own daydreams.

The camera moves around effortlessly inside the villa, and the technical credits are impeccable. These 20 minutes offer the viewer a great deal to ponder, especially after the first viewing, and except for a strange encounter with a fox, the second viewing will confirm that this is not a one-trick pony.

Move (2012)

André Crous

drei zimmer kueche badGermany
3.5*

Director:
Dietrich Brüggemann
Screenwriters:
Anna Brüggemann
Dietrich Brüggemann
Director of Photography:
Alexander Sass

Running time: 110 minutes

Original title: Drei Zimmer/Küche/Bad

Almost as if he is baiting the critics and the nay-sayers to respond the way he expects them to, director Dietrich Brüggemann repeats one key phrase, or value assessment, or judgment, in the very last scene of his third feature film, Move: “It tries to overwhelm, but it doesn’t transcend.” It is almost too easy to apply this criticism to the 110 minutes that precede it, as a group of 20-something friends learn to deal with growing up, mostly without any abiding success. Their inability to look beyond their common bubble means that their interactions are solipsistic, a cesspool of relationships that develop out of convenience, and the only saving grace — the reason why this film is worth your time — is its comedy, which at times literally had me rolling around with laughter.

Despite the “three” in the original title, which refers to the layout of an apartment as one would find it in the classified section of the newspaper, the film is actually divided into four parts (and a loose fifth) that mirror the seasons and thus allow us a yearlong overview of the eight central characters’ actions and the reactions they produce.

Philipp and Dina have been best friends since forever. Philipp is dating the wildly moody Maria, who is moving to Berlin to be with him. Meanwhile, Philipp’s one sister, the timid Wiedke, is moving in with the popular Dina, while his other sister, Swantje, writes down every conversation at their parents’ home and is dating a Goth. Philipp is also good friends with the expressionless, emotionless Thomas, who has been dating Anna for a while, but the relationship is clearly going nowhere. And then, the handsome Michael arrives on the scene, and most of the girls fall for him, even though he is dealing with issues from childhood. Oh, and then Philipp’s parents non-chalantly break some shocking news over Christmas dinner.

This is just part of the round-robin of relationships and relationship issues that the film offers its viewers, but Brüggemann, who co-wrote the screenplay with his sister Anna (playing the role of Dina, arguably the main female character), is stunningly adept at steering our attention where he wants it to be, without ever seeming heavy-handed. He crams an enormous amount of plot into his film, perhaps too much, by cutting the material very tightly, and it is often at the end of his scenes that one recognises how other films would have lingered or over-explained. Brüggemann’s actors and his editor together create snappy moments whose meaning is immediately obvious, and yet they are as brief as they likely would have been in real life. His use of jump cuts is always well-timed and underscores the subtly comical nature of many of his more dramatic scenes.

Brüggemann’s sense of humour is equally refreshing, from hiding the identity of a peripheral character by only revealing one part of him (and then being open about the approach by having Philipp say he can never remember the guy’s face) to creating dramatically ironic comedy that only the viewers can appreciate because they see both sides of the moment to very judiciously having the same Christian missionaries knock on people’s doors at the worst possible times in their lives.

But despite the director’s masterful combination of sights and sounds (the indie band Guillemots and its frontman Fyfe Dangerfield provide the background music to the film’s most emotionally resonant sequences) and narrative sprints, as well as his playful approach to storytelling (he even goes “meta” by starring as a photographer named Alexander Sass, the name of the actual film’s director of photography), his film reaches a point where the norm is the unexpected, and there is no firm sense of where all of this is headed, or what would bring closure.

The final few seconds are a case in point, as Brüggemann suggests that, despite everything these characters have been through, they are likely to go through it all again, because you never stop growing up and you never stop learning. You keep on falling, like the pots and the pans in the very first scene, or Philipp, whose skills as a cyclist leave much to be desired, but you keep getting back up. Things may be precarious, but they are not entirely hopeless, and that is why we stay tuned.

It’s not easy growing up, but watching other people doing (or trying to do) it can be hilarious. The performances of the cast members all gel together very well, and the casting of Herbert Knaup (whose turn as Lola’s father in the cult film Run Lola Run is unforgettable) as Dina’s slightly hysterical father is a masterstroke. The only minor problem with casting was that Swantje (Philipp’s younger sister) and Maria (Philipp’s girlfriend) look so similar they are difficult to tell apart at first.

Move is a fast-paced look at the angst of becoming an adult and the mistakes that people make again and again as they try to find the balance between pleasure and stability. The Brüggemann brother-and-sister duo is very perceptive about the good and the bad of this period in people’s lives, and their depiction of the turmoil is genuinely engaging, even though they almost exclusively prefer to prioritise the funny sides of their episodes. The story does start to become slightly absurd towards the end, as coincidences seem to spawn more coincidences, but all in all, this is a creative, masterly controlled film about a key point in the characters’ lives and one that most audiences will be enthusiastic about.

Manglehorn (2014)

André Crous

manglehornUSA
4*

Director:
David Gordon Green
Screenwriter:
Paul Logan
Director of Photography:
Tim Orr

Running time: 95 minutes

Angelo J. Manglehorn is a locksmith and a miserable wretch of a man. He lives alone, but not quite. His own real connection to another living, breathing creature is his relationship with his cat, Fanny. But even Fanny seems to have given up on this life, as she refuses to eat and seemingly prepares to shuffle off her mortal coil. Manglehorn himself is not much better, although an early interaction with a woman who accidentally locked her baby in the car makes us realise he is capable of caring, even though his social skills leave much to be desired.

But then come the voice-overs, and the first voice-over is so beautiful I was literally on the verge of tears.

There are few directors in this world whom I want to give a hug to just because I feel so elated that they are contributing to the cinematic art form, but David Gordon Green is certainly one of those. Green’s first two features, George Washington and All the Real Girls, which he made in his 20s, received near-universal critical acclaim. But it was his third film, Undertow, that moved me viscerally through its action yet spoke to me through its unconventionally poetical approach to its story. That film also had some of the most amazing bits of voice-over I had ever heard, and while the comparison to Terrence Malick is easy to make, Green is usually far less sentimental.

Manglehorn is certainly not for everyone. Little of note ever happens, and when it does, we are left puzzled by the meaning of what we just saw. Two scenes everyone will be bound to discuss are the graphical presentation of the operation on Fanny, which easily could have come from an episode of Nip/Tuck, and the multi-car pile-up in which we see not blood but smashed watermelons on the steaming wreckage, which we see Manglehorn pass thanks to the smooth Godard-inspired lateral shot. What do they mean? Nothing obvious, and they don’t look like anything else in the film. And yet, thanks to Green’s capacity to both present naturalistic events in a way that is entirely unrushed and simultaneously astound us with their simple humanity, even these moments don’t feel out of place.

The surprising thing is that Manglehorn is played by Al Pacino, the king of loud-mouth recklessness, and his performance here is utterly compelling despite his character’s absolutely cringe-worthy behaviour towards those who might be his friends if he gave them half a chance or half a sincere smile.

He has the rarest of interaction with his son, a wealthy commodities trader living the high life, but also doing so alone, and much of the second half of the film is devoted to the budding relationship with Dawn (Holly Hunter), the bank teller he sees once a week and whom he has decided to ask for what she presumes is a date. She is also lonely, but they are not on the same wavelength, and the romantic idea of love they witness at the bank, when a man comes in to serenade a woman, is as beautiful as it is the exact opposite of what she is in for with Manglehorn.

The story with his son, competently played, though without a great deal of texture, by Chris Messina, is short but turbulent, and while there is no clear-cut resolution or happy ending, the development is absolutely satisfying from the points of view of both drama and realism.

And finally, there is the infuriatingly garrulous Gary who for all the money in the world would not stop talking. Harmony Korine shows redoubtable virtuosity in his portrayal of this simple man who thinks he has made it big by opening a massage parlour (read, “brothel”) in town, but whose bullying of Manglehorn’s son immediately defines him as a loser.

The metaphor of the locksmith and the big secret he keeps is obvious, but the presentation of the material makes even the mundane rise to the level of the extraordinary. There is a scene with a mime that is comparable to the end of Antonioni’s Blow-Up, and this kind of comparison firmly underlines the magnificent talent of David Gordon Green. The voice-overs do become burdensome, but the film never becomes predictable, and the score by David Wingo and Explosions in the Sky, who also worked on Green’s winning Prince Avalanche, is wholly infectious.

Manglehorn is a challenge, but it is one that is worth taking on, as the experience provides a glimpse of humanity and conveys the feelings of some unusual people, even when they themselves are not even sure what they are.

Class Enemy (2013)

André Crous

class enemySlovenia
4*

Director:
Rok Biček
Screenwriters:
Nejc Gazvoda
Rok Biček
Janez Lapajne
Director of Photography:
Fabio Stoll

Running time: 110 minutes

Original title: Razredni sovražnik

Although inviting comparisons with the French The Class (Entre les murs) because of filmmaker Rok Biček’s decision to shoot the entire film inside a single school building (the camera never even ventures outside, not even onto the playground), the Slovenian Class Enemy, which uses first-time actors for the student roles, is a more stylised representation of the tension created by a teacher whose straight talk is the spark that ignites an outwardly calm but already combustible situation.

The film is based on real events the director himself was witness to during his first year of high school, although he significantly altered the focus by having a single teacher (instead of what was historically a larger group of individuals) bear the brunt of the students’ attacks. The character is called Robert Zupan (Igor Samobor), a cold and distant educator who has only one desire: To see the children make something of themselves and achieve their best by doing their best, which he judges not to be the case at all when he replaces their beloved German teacher, Nuša (Maša Derganc), who is also the class teacher.

But the very first scene, which is set before Zupan’s arrival, should make it clear to those paying attention that all is not well. A dreadful silence hangs in the air, and we soon learn that one of the boys, Luka (Voranc Boh), has lost his mother. This being a high school, with dozens of children who are all very different, many things are said that can have an impact on others, and one ill-conceived comment by another boy in class, Tadej (Jan Zupančič), about how unnatural it is for someone to grow up with two fathers (because he says a child cannot grow up well if it doesn’t have both a mother and a father), seems entirely inappropriate in light of Luka’s recent loss.

Throughout the first act, an introverted girl named Sabina (Daša Cupevski) seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and the only thing holding her back from the precipice is her ability to play one of Chopin’s piano preludes. Zupan seems impressed and is even mesmerised by her performance, but before long he has a direct talk with her about her plans for the future, and when these appear to be nonexistent, he tells her she may become just another “loser”, and perhaps her parents are to blame.

She flees the classroom in tears and literally into the white light outside that floods the screen, before we learn she has committed suicide. The students soon revolt against what they deem to be oppression, or even totalitarian rule by their German teacher the “Nazi”, and the consequences are grave.

Biček’s director of photography, Fabio Stoll, bathes the entire film, with the exception of a final scene that takes place outside, in a cold blue hue, and costume designer Bistra Borak also clothed most of the actors with navy blue material or jean jackets. The effect on the audience, remarkably, is not alienation but a thorough immersion in the frigidity these characters all have to deal with, because they all deal equally awkwardly with the life-changing event of a student’s suicide, for which there is no definite reason.

The director is no stranger to the depiction of existential anguish, as his student short Duck Hunting presented the case of two young men who take revenge on their father for an act he committed that is clear but never shown. Biček is a formidable director, completely in control of his subject, and his script, tightly focused on the mass heartache and the easy transition to a mob mentality, has a palpable feeling of mystery and sadness at its core.

There is never a dull moment, and the shift in our understanding of the teacher’s motivations, from fear to potential empathy, is handled adroitly by the director, who also edited the film along with co-screenwriter Lapajne. Class Enemy may be one of the best feature films débuts in a very long time. Despite the limitations the director imposed on himself, which prevent us from seeing these people interact outside the confines of the school, their bubble of existence inside the building does provide us with a sense of cohesion — a bubble of existence that is self-sufficient and whose energy can exert great force on those it comes into contact with. The events hurtle towards a well-conceived conclusion that makes a great deal of sense and provides us with an ending that is both logical and emotionally satisfying.

Viewed at the 2014 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Butterfly (2015)

André Crous

Argentinian filmmaker Marco Berger takes on parallel realities to show characters rising above circumstances and becoming themselves, time and time again.

Mariposa

Argentina
3.5*

Director:
Marco Berger
Screenwriter:
Marco Berger
Director of Photography:
Tomás Perez Silva

Running time: 103 minutes

Original title: Mariposa

The worlds of Marco Berger’s films are almost always happy (though never uncomplicated) places. Going against the tradition of using (anguish about) sexuality as a way to amplify the drama, this Argentine director has consistently — with a single exception, Ausente — presented his viewers with stories where small steps lead the way to happiness. His films have no villains, although a case can certainly be made that the teenager in Ausente is the most (and only) unpleasant character in his œuvre. Instead, he focuses on the gentle tension that exists when people like each other, and this tension is resolved either through satisfaction or through the departure of one of the parties. His bright, optimistic world view is reflected in the atmosphere of his films, filled with sunshine and greenery.

While Berger almost exclusively examined same-sex attraction in his previous films, his fourth and latest feature, Butterfly (Mariposa), which premiered in the Panorama section at the 2015 Berlinale, places heterosexual attraction in the foreground. However, his affinity for one of the central tenets of gay rights is unmistakable: The major theme of the film is that no matter our circumstances, we will fall in love with the person with whom we were meant to fall in love. In the end, it’s always nature, not nurture.

In the very first scene, a butterfly sits perfectly still, and a young mother leaves her infant daughter by the side of the road. A few moments later, we see the mother with her daughter again, just as moments earlier, but she notices the butterfly gently flapping its wings and makes the decision to hang on to her child. The consequences of this single moment will be evident throughout the rest of the film, as we see the effects of her two decisions.

The idea of parallel worlds has been done before on film, with examples ranging from Sliding Doors to Run Lola Run (Lola rennt), but Butterfly, shot in Buenos Aires and in and around Tandil, is much more subtle and much less pure spectacle than those two films were. It is to Berger’s credit that the sexual tension at the heart of his story — between a boy, Germán (Javier de Pietro), and his adopted sister, Romina (Ailín Salas) — is handled with tenderness, understanding, and absolutely no sentimentality or exploitation, and his overarching message is a powerful one. At times, the symbolism of the butterfly does become needlessly belaboured, as the main character inexplicably buys a kind of butterfly snow globe for no apparent reason other than to suggest to us that he is being moved by some force he does not understand: his universal self across all worlds.

In the one story, the bearded, curly-haired Germán, an only child, falls in love with Romina, the girl with the dyed blond hair and the dark roots whom he meets when his parents crash into her in the woods. In the other, the clean-shaven, bespectacled Germán grows closer and closer to his adopted sister, Romina the brunette, whom his parents had found in the woods as a baby, until they both realise they can no longer resist the temptation to be with each other. In the meantime, their relationship to each other in both worlds affect those around them, but only temporarily, as everyone eventually gravitates towards the same people in either story.

One of these people is the handsome Bruno (Julian Infantino), Germán’s friend in the one world and Romina’s boyfriend in the other, who physically and awkwardly gravitates towards Germán. It is obvious Bruno is not particularly attracted to Germán, but there is a conspicuous yearning that — as Berger has shown in nearly all of his films, including his first short film, The Watch, by letting shots of underwear speak volumes — manifests itself as a hilarious, throbbing erection.

Despite Bruno being more or less closeted in not one but two worlds, we always sense that happiness is just around the corner, and when the moment arrived, I started smiling like a giddy teenager. Berger makes us fall in love with his characters because they are thoroughly likeable and their world is one that we want to be a part of. This world seems entirely credible, and while the characters may stumble here and there, most of their desires are ultimately fulfilled.

Berger has stated that the origin of Butterfly was partly personal, as it relates to the time after he was rejected by two film schools in Norway, and he had to choose between giving up on his dream and following his heart. Whether he would have ended up making films regardless is, of course, an open question, but audiences around the world will be enthusiastically applauding his decision to make movies that inspire them by creating wholly plausible worlds we want to believe can be ours, too.

He says he also drew inspiration from the 1998 film Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Los amantes del círculo polar), about two step-siblings falling in love in a world that is so elusive it slips through our fingers at the end.

The separation between the worlds of Butterfly is at once very clear and not always obvious. The characters differ with regard to the colour and the length of their hair or their facial hair, and Berger also uses red and blue in various ways to distinguish the worlds from each other. However, the scenes are often cut in such a way that they start in one world and abruptly change to another when there is a sudden cut. This strategy is mostly successful but sometimes seems unnecessarily overused. The continuous back-and-forth between the two worlds and their stories does require the viewer to pay attention throughout, but this intense scrutiny and comparison pay off handsomely because we recognise that, despite all the obstacles, our characters are slowly moving in the direction that will make them the most happy.

With Butterfly, Berger has affirmed his view of the world as a place we should be optimistic about. The screenplay, built on small moments rather than big ideas, is intelligent but never seeks to outsmart the viewer. Unfortunately, the fast-paced alternation between the two worlds and the focus on two couples instead of one do slightly hinder the depth to which the characters are revealed (Hawaii and Plan B were much more effective in this regard), but even within these constraints, Berger does elicit a great deal of feeling from his situations. His characters have their reasons for acting the way they do, and while some will point to the broken heart of at least one girl in one world, and of another in the other, as evidence that people sometimes do get hurt, the film leaves us with the message that going for what we want often leads to the best possible world. After all, without those two broken hearts, the future may have had exponentially greater heartache in store.

Lake Tahoe (2008)

André Crous

lake-tahoeMexico
4*

Director:
Fernando Eimbcke
Screenwriters:
Fernando Eimbcke
Paula Markovitch
Director of Photography:
Alexis Zabé

Running time: 86 minutes

Lake Tahoe is an acquired taste. This small film by director Fernando Eimbcke consists mostly of static shots and has very little dialogue. It is set in a town so sleepy that the main character’s first act, inexplicably crashing his family’s red Nissan Tsuru on a wide road devoid of any turns, is the most action we’ll hear (we don’t even see the accident) the entire film. The boy’s name is Juan Cardozo, and through seemingly random incidents in which very little happens, we learn something about him in a way that is ultimately very satisfying for those who can stand the wait.

Eimbcke already showed in his début film, the narratively cosy and visually exciting Duck Season (Temporada de patos), that he is interested in characters rather than events. Both films also take place in a very short time frame: Duck Season over a Sunday afternoon, Lake Tahoe presumably on a Saturday morning and into Sunday morning. Both films star Diego Cataño as a taciturn, kind-hearted teenager who has some stuff to deal with. His presence is a big reason why these two films work so well. We can see him thinking behind his big eyes, even though we only have the faintest idea what might be going on in his head, and this mystery, which is never entirely opaque, is effective at keeping the viewer’s attention.

During two-thirds of the film, we get multiple shots of Juan walking around, often in frames that repeat again and again, trying to find someone who can help him fix the car. On his way around the town in which he often seems to be the only one who is (barely) awake, he meets an assortment of oddball characters, from a young mechanic who is a kung fu fanatic to an elderly mechanic who shares breakfast with his boxer dog, Sica, in a scene that becomes ever more touching as the film wears on.

Countless black screens interrupt what little action there is, although the soundtrack is ever-present, making us focus on the small details in the wind that are here one second and have disappeared the next. Most of the shots suggest the same idea, as the frame is empty for significant stretches of time at the beginning at the end of the take, with Juan traversing the screen in the middle. It is like a deadly quiet lake with a ripple of movement that breaks the stasis before it returns to tranquillity once more. 

The theme of loss becomes central to the film towards the third act, as we realise what is gnawing at Juan. But there is a long wait before Eimbcke gives us the information we need, and even his presentation of Juan is an exercise in patience, as we never get a close-up of his face and have to wait a very long time just to see him from closer than in a long shot. Eimbcke’s director of photography, Alexis Zabé, who has worked with Carlos Reygadas and also lensed Eimbcke’s Duck Season, departs from the static shots on at least two occasions. The first time, it works, as Juan escapes from an uncomfortable situation and we suddenly get two short dolly shots. But the second time, when Juan sees his mother crying in the bathroom, there is a slight push-in that is out of sync with the rest of the film.

While the latter shot attempts to elicit some feeling from us, there are a few scenes that are surprisingly effective at addressing our emotions. One involves the old mechanic making an important, albeit spur-of-the-moment, decision that ties in Juan’s own situation, a second is another unexpected scene late at night between Juan and the receptionist from an auto shop, and a third comes in the final scenes between Juan and his brother. Eimbcke, who had already worked so beautifully with children in Duck Season, continues his impressive understanding of their emotions here and gets another impressive performance from the young Cataño whose combination of white and black clothing suggests some inner struggle in the character. 

Lake Tahoe trips up only once, and that is by having a cutaway too soon, during one of the most powerful emotional moments for Juan. But in most other respects, this is a beautiful experience of spending time with a character that very slowly lets his guard down, accepts the gaping hole a loss has left in his life and assumes his new role with as much courage as he can muster. The film is absolutely beautiful, and thanks to Eimbcke and Cataño also eminently watchable.

Duck Hunting (2009)

André Crous

Lov na raceSlovenia
4*

Director:
Rok Biček
Screenwriter:
Rok Biček
Director of Photography:
Simon Tanšek

Running time: 23 minutes

Original title: Lov na race

One shot early in Rok Biček’s 23-minute Duck Hunting puts our mind at ease even while we feel the narrative tension building. It is a shot around the dinner table, and we have already been introduced to the three main characters in the present. In this particular scene, the story has skipped backwards into the past. The father is seated on our left and one of his sons, Matej, is on the right. Right in front of us, with his back turned towards the camera, is the younger brother, Robi, who is barely moving. For the first few moments of the scene, we see only these three, before the mother’s head suddenly appears from directly behind, or in front of, Robi.

All the while, there is a faint whistling sound, which had already started in the previous scene, many hours earlier out in the woods where the father took his sons duck hunting, and this sound disappears the moment Robi leaves the table halfway through the meal. At that point, about one-third into the film, we still have no idea what is going on, but when the director drops a hint a few minutes later, our mind goes back to this scene of the three men and the almost invisible mother.

Biček, who at the time of production was attending the University of Ljubljana’s Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, includes very little dialogue in this short film and instead opts for long takes, whose apparent stasis is subverted because they were recorded on a handheld camera.

There is another scene at the dinner table, right at the end of the film, that is even more crushing, as the characters arrive at a kind of catharsis that is far from tidy but fits perfectly with the volatile twists and turns of the taciturn characters.

What makes Duck Hunting such a praiseworthy film (Biček’s second fiction short) is his consistency of form and his skill in straddling the line between giving and withholding information, which results in a work whose meaning we can deduce but which is nonetheless never transparent. “Why did you do it?” Robi screams at his father in the present. Unlike the main character in Biček’s stunning 2013 début feature, Class Enemy (Razredni sovražnik), the father here does not have a chance or is not eloquent enough to defend his actions, but for a long time we don’t even know what those actions are, and we never know with certainty.

Sliding effortlessly between past and present, the film further underscores the connection between the two by repeating one or two scenes in the same spaces in different time periods.

Another bold move was the decision to have no music in the film, which emphasises the silences. Along with the very grainy texture of the images obtained with a 16mm camera, this film’s audiovisuals splendidly complement and reflect the brutality of (what we gather is) the central situation. Although the opening scene drags on a little too long, and the acting in that scene is not particularly great, the rest of the film keeps us absolutely spellbound as it moves between times and from subtle gesture to sudden violence, and it is to Biček’s credit that his 23 minutes contain more ambiguity than most films and fewer words than most scenes.