2010-2019

Paulina (2015)

André Crous

Rape victim seeks to understand reasons for assailant’s behaviour, but despite creativity, depiction ultimately just skims the surface of complexity.

la-patota-paulina

Argentina
3*

Director:
Santiago Mitre
Screenwriters:
Mariano Llinás
Santiago Mitre
Director of Photography:
Gustavo Biazzi

Running time: 105 minutes

Original title: La patota 

There are always at least two sides to a story where more than one person is involved, and in the case of Paulina by Argentine filmmaker Santiago Mitre, looking at and weighing all the sides can be discomfiting to anyone intent on clinging to black-and-white beliefs. The exercise may even produce immense confusion in the viewer looking to reconcile all these points of view.

The film itself is not confusing; on the contrary, even though it sometimes jumps back in time to cover events once more but from a different perspective, the story is very simple: Paulina, who has started her Ph.D. in law and is also the daughter of a judge, has decided to leave Buenos Aires and head back to her hometown in the Northeast of the country, close to the border with Paraguay, to teach human rights and democracy at a small school. The children, most of them of indigenous heritage, are sceptical of her presence, and the first classes get off to a bad start when Paulina seeks to discuss the concept democracy and is quickly confronted with a different outlook from these children who feel that white Argentines do not or cannot represent their needs in the system. 

One night, when Paulina drives back home on her motorcycle, she is attacked. Suddenly, without warning, the film flips back on itself to show us characters we had not seen before. A young man, Ciro (Cristian Salguero), who works at a sawmill, learns that his girlfriend has broken up with him to hook up with a man from outside the community. He is outraged, and when he sees someone driving a motorcycle in the dark, he takes it to be her and encourages his friends to rape the woman.

This is where the film’s path converges with the previous storyline, as we see Paulina mistaken for the girlfriend and her being gang-raped by the group of boys, most of whom attend her class. The tense build-up, covered very competently by the director and his cameraman, who use short takes that positively vibrate with adrenaline, as well as the shocking incident itself, leaves us stunned, but Paulina’s subsequent actions turn the film into an unexpected examination of the different ways in which people can respond to the same events.

At the centre of the story is Paulina, who feels a desperate need not only to teach but to understand the people in this community. This understanding, we come to see, extends to her rapists and their situation, as well as a questioning of the rationale for punishment as meted out by the law. Her personal life takes a major hit, as well, because of her way of dealing with the fall-out of the rape, but she is determined that the cold rules of the law not be applied to people if the judicial outcome is more or less as pointlessly cruel as the act itself.

Such thinking sends her father, who had his hopes pinned on her to follow in his footsteps, flying into a rage, and we can understand his concern for his daughter’s personal and professional situation very well. On the margins, there is also Paulina’s boyfriend, Alberto (Esteban Lamothe from Villegas), who finds her drifting away from him with every new revelation.

At the same time, it becomes clear throughout Paulina’s arguments that she is the one who should decide over her own life, just as the people affected by the government’s decisions should also be allowed to decide on their own rules. The film does not answer the question whether one should intervene if someone makes a “wrong” decision but instead highlights the fact that people have their reasons, and just because we do not understand them does not make them irrelevant.

Paulina is at its best when it shifts the audience’s empathy between the father and the daughter, and the departure from the linear narrative is effective in this regard, although it would have had a greater impact if it had been used more than just a couple of times. As things stand, it seems more like a gimmick, which is unfortunate.

The film handles its difficult material, including the brutal plot elements of a rape and the mulling of an abortion, but also the marginalisation of a community with little formal education, very competently. There is also fertile ground for discussion, especially about Paulina’s decisions along the way, which seem ever more difficult to comprehend, both for those around her and the audience.

In its effort to create ambiguity by showing us the world is more complex than we might like to believe, however, Paulina only skims the surface of a number of important issues. Had any one of them been exploited with greater care, this may have been an engaging film worthy of deep reflection, but instead, its reluctance to dig below the surface rather than merely hint at the turmoil makes this an incomplete production, well-intentioned though it certainly is.

Viewed at the San Sebastián International Film Festival 2015

Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015)

André Crous

Sadly, another case where it is (far) better to read the book than watch the movie.

hitchcock-truffautUSA/France
2*

Director:
Kent Jones
Screenwriters:
Kent Jones
Serge Toubiana
Directors of Photography:
Nick Bentgen, Daniel Cowen, Eric Gautier, Mihai Malaimare Jr., Lisa Rinzler and Genta Tamaki

Running time: 80 minutes

It may share a title with one of the most accessible studies of a filmmaker ever published, but in his documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, director Kent Jones (assisted here on the screenplay by Truffaut biographer Serge Toubiana) forgot to take a page from the very book with which it shares a title. As a result, it fails to present its facts, few and far between though they may be, in a compelling way.

What we end up with here is a messy assortment of thoughts and reflections on the Master of Suspense, countless extracts from his films (none of which is indicated to the uninitiated) and a mish-mash of audio excerpts taken from the legendary eight-day interview back in 1962 between the young but ultimately immensely influential French film critic/director François Truffaut and the ageing sage who had been thrilling the masses for many decades with his tales of murder but whose status as one of the cinema’s great auteurs was still underappreciated, Alfred Hitchcock.

In the film, we meet 10 directors, among whom only David Fincher proclaims a personal connection with the book, first published in 1966, which contains a wide-ranging discussion between the two cinephiles of all of Hitchcock’s films up to that point, just four short of the ultimate tally by the time he passed away in 1980. The conversation, which sadly was not filmed but only recorded, was facilitated by the bilingual Helen Scott, who gets only one shout-out here without any further information about her. Truffaut spoke no English, and Hitchcock spoke no French, so Scott interpreted back and forth between them from morning till late afternoon every day for more than a week.

Besides Fincher, some of the most loquacious speakers here are French directors Arnaud Desplechin and Olivier Assayas, with speed talker Martin Scorsese also called upon to share his views of Hitchcock’s most famous works. However, it is wholly unclear why these particular filmmakers and their ilk, including Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Paul Schrader, Peter Bogdanovich, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and the little-known James Grey, are recounting their impressions. Had we listened to someone like Brian de Palma, or Steven Spielberg, perhaps we could have learned something about tension, art and entertainment, but while these particular filmmakers are amiable enough, it remains a mystery why they were chosen to share their opinions of Hitchcock. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, they’re no François Truffaut.

Time and again, we return to the question of whether Hitchcock was an entertainer or an artist, a doubt he even expressed to Truffaut. Predictably, the film leans very heavily towards the latter, as was the intention of Truffaut at the time: Along with his colleagues at the Cahiers du cinéma film monthly, he praised the Hollywood-based British director for being the force that drives every one of his films, in other words, for being an “auteur”.

According to Truffaut, the work of an auteur might not always be good, but it is always better than the work of a non-auteur (he used the examples of French filmmakers Jean Renoir and Jean Delannoy as representatives of these two respective kinds of directors).

Hitchcock/Truffaut, unsure of its own raison d’être, turns towards armchair psychoanalysis in its second half, as the directors, most of whom are too young to have met Hitchcock, speculate about the fetish objects in Hitch’s films. Fortunately, we are spared any significant amount of discussion about the blonde actresses he employed, but the topic of dreams does come up, and it is truly puzzling that there is no mention of Spellbound, which was Hitchcock’s big “dream” film and also dealt very cynically with psychoanalysis.

Most frustrating is an extended sequence that encompasses an analysis of Vertigo, during which we learn precious little, except that the film works not because of its narrative, which is deeply flawed and more than a little silly, but because it is, in the words of Scorsese, “poetry”. Such bland statements about Hitchcock the artist, as opposed to Hitchcock the mass entertainer, bring absolutely nothing to our understanding of the director’s undeniable appeal.

What would seem to be the most important point of discussion is one that is mentioned all too briefly: Hitchcock’s problem with realism, especially following the brutal reality of World War II.

Scorsese admits that Vertigo has a “spirit of realism”, but that the film cannot possibly be described as realistic. This is in fact a larger issue in the director’s works and ultimately led to his ex-communication from the world of entertainment because of his stubborn refusal to renounce outdated techniques such as rear projection. This gimmick, often utilised in studio pictures during the age of black-and-white cinema, made Marnie — released in 1964 in between the French New Wave and in the middle of the British New Wave, both of which focused on the lives of people in the middle or the bottom half of society and whose films were shot on location — look downright laughable.

Truffaut, who was just 30 years of age at the time he conducted the interview in 1962, is always a magnetic speaker, his enthusiasm for Hitchcock palpable, and it is a shame Jones only very superficially compares an incident in the Frenchman’s début feature, The 400 Blows (Les 400 coups) with a famous story Hitchcock often told. But he fails to share with the audience, for example, that Truffaut asked himself “What would Hitch do?” when he shot the suspenseful scene in which the rebellious Antoine Doinel’s mother shows up at school to confront him about his lies.

It is all well and good to assemble a few friends to talk about a man who was a giant in the industry before they came along, but this film does not contribute to a deeper understanding of the man, his life or his films. At best, it may serve as a starting point for students who need to write a film review for their high-school English class. Those who did not know anything about Hitchcock or Truffaut before watching the film might very well learn the basics, but for everyone else, this film offers less than the bare minimum. Go out and buy the book instead.

Viewed at the San Sebastián International Film Festival 2015

Beauty (2011)

André Crous

A secret obsession that inevitably leads to tragedy is presented in a film moving at a pace and according to a poetry wholly at odds with the life of its main character.

skoonheidSouth Africa
3.5*

Director:
Oliver Hermanus
Screenwriter:
Oliver Hermanus
Director of Photography:
Jamie Ramsay

Running time: 95 minutes

Original title: Skoonheid

There is no question that the man at the centre of Oliver Hermanus’s Afrikaans-language Beauty is deserving of the title every bit as much as the director’s previous, début feature, the stunningly executed Shirley Adams, was about its title character. His name is Christian Roodt, and he is a charming law student whose enigmatic aura intensifies as we realise he has a calmness about him that belies his age and his boyish good looks. It is a persona that sets others at ease and unfortunately allows some people to take advantage of his affability.

One man who sees Christian and cannot get him out of his head is François van Heerden, a friend of Roodt’s parents, who first sets eyes on the young man at his own daughter’s wedding. But even though the title refers to Christian, Hermanus gently nudges us, from the very first moment, to take position next to François, whose gaze the camera shares with us in the opening take.

This particular take – long and produced via a slow zoom in – is a masterstroke, as it not only sets up the extended takes that mottle the film’s visual landscape but also gorgeously encapsulates both the distance and the longing of the main character that will inform our understanding of the rest of the story. Unfortunately, the editing spells out whom this perspective belongs to before delivering the gut-punch of having the object of affection unexpectedly look straight into the camera and thus catching François (and us, already) in flagrante delicto.

The film creates some of its tension by deploying moments of lingering silence, and lead actor Deon Lotz is excellent at conveying the frustration and the inhibition of a middle-aged, homophobic man who is married to a woman but engages in sex with other men on what we assume is a regular basis (the farm orgies in which he participates are depicted as emotionless and decidedly ugly). This father of two daughters, who lives in Bloemfontein, deep in the South African heartland, likes to drink beer and watch rugby. He represses his secret until there is no more space, and it ruptures his bubble of existence.

But exactly when there ought to be tension, there is none, as happens in the third act when an inebriated François, sitting opposite Christian at an empty diner, cannot stop babbling. We learn nothing, we feel little for him, and we end up feeling sorry for the expressionless, passive Christian who has to listen to this man. And yet, this scene immediately follows a tour de force tracking shot inside a night club that shows us how ill at ease François is with the world of gay men who have accepted their own sexual orientations.

Visually, Beauty is unimpeachable (although the shots themselves may be questionable, as I explain below), and director of photography Jamie Ramsay deserves much acclaim for his stunning, crisp compositions. The intention behind the film is equally noteworthy, as the story of a man whose secret of homosexual attraction ultimately almost destroys him is one that is absolutely necessary for a generation growing up on a staple of mostly uncritically positive depictions of gay characters and lives.

It is not an easy film to watch, as Hermanus’s view of humanity (and particularly of his main character) is unflinchingly pessimistic, and François does not get a moment to relax and be happy. He is always either delusional or suffering because of his desire to get closer to Christian. He doesn’t know what he wants exactly, but he finds himself drawn like a moth to a flame. A comparison to Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle, or The Searchers’s Ethan Edwards, would not be entirely inappropriate, as the obsession of saving someone who does not wish or need to be saved is central to understanding the character here.

Another reason why Beauty is a difficult experience is because of its contemplative pace, which is not always useful. While the few long takes that project François’s point of view have a clear purpose, others are used less sparingly and are more taxing for the viewer. For example, why do we have to be subjected to a static shot of more than 15 seconds of a dim kitchen, shown in the early morning hours, before a character arrives to do something as captivating as… buttoning his shirt?

Hermanus’s plan to have the viewer slide in and out of François’s position is executed a bit ham-handedly, as Christian sometimes looks straight into the camera (which happens briefly in the opening scene, and at least once more later in the film), but he also looks just past the frame, and at the end, he is replaced by another character who looks straight at us/François. This mishmash signals confusion on the part of the director, who nonetheless handles the rest of his material very assuredly, like an illusionist whose tricks barely engage but still intrigue us because we cannot discern exactly how he performs them so seamlessly, fooling us every time.

In this tragic tale of a man whose unrequited lust leads him to revert to the most primitive of behaviours – fitting the stereotype of the macho guy taking, nay violently grabbing, what he wants with utter disregard for the other party – we are urged to share his point of view, but there is little for us to empathise with. The mood is sombre throughout, and Hermanus’s pitch-black vision of his protagonist’s existence never draws us in through the participatory experiences that small moments of happiness would have brought.

Not a thriller and not really a character study, Beauty’s redeeming characteristic is its director’s firm hand, but a collection of technically flawless pieces does not a great film make. Slow cinema, which this film at times intends to emulate, is the domain of poets whose messages are related to us as dreams that are visionary and not just visual. Beauty, by contrast, has a story with precious little to chew on and that ought to have been told in the most immediate manner possible.

This is a beautiful film that sometimes carefully considers and depicts the life of a man whose secret is slowly devouring him, but the story’s loose ends and the director’s persistent determination to obfuscate instead of answering our questions cannot hide the fact that there is less going on here than there ought to be.

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.