4 stars

How to Cheat in the Leaving Certificate (1997)

André Crous

Ireland
4*

Director:
Graham Jones
Screenwriters:
Graham Jones
Aislinn O’Loughlin
Tadhg O’Higgins
Director of Photography:
Robbie Ryan

Running time: 77 minutes

First things first: This was the début feature of a 22-year-old, and yet neither the usual first-time desire to show off nor the flaws of not knowing how to direct actors are on show here. The film has fast pacing but slows down at very significant points to focus on effecting smooth transitions through credible though very well-written dialogue; it is also great fun.

Shot during the summer of 1996 and showing the last school year (culminating in the middle of 1997) at James Joyce College in Dublin, the film quickly assembles a group of characters who want to beat the system by cheating on the big school-leaving exam called the leaving certificate or just “leaving cert”.

The film exploits the creativity and ingenuity (and, perhaps, blind optimism) of school children to make us believe they can put their heads together and best the security of the establishment, i.e. the Department of Education. But they, and the filmmaker, present the case in almost meticulous fashion to make us believe this can be done, even by complete amateurs.

Now, as the narrator reminds us, “cheating in the exam properly isn’t easy”, and it takes the group of students, almost all of them intelligent in ways that are different to the one tested by the school-leaving exam, a full year to put together a plan that would work.

They have few real obstacles, but while there are one or two tense moments, including a classically staged but very effective sequence of cross-cutting that brings to mind the famous tennis sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, the goal of How to Cheat in the Leaving Certificate is to be more like a manual than a dramatic tale.

The idea of a manual is supported by delicious, informal but very informative narration provided by Nial O’Driscoll, who sets out all the information one would need to successfully pull off the act of stealing the papers from the Department of Education’s high-security warehouse in the rural Irish town of Athlone.

The narrator also continuously reminds us of how important the exam is, and we often go back to the teachers who try to explain to their students how they should divide up their time to study for this once in a lifetime opportunity to make it big in the world and go to university. “Failure in the leaving certificate means failure for the rest of your lives!” a teacher bellows ominously in the opening scene.

The main actor in all this is Fionn (Garret Baker), a pupil whose friend Cian committed suicide when he was found cheating in his exams. Fionn is a lonely boy but he is committed to making a point by cheating and then coming out afterwards to show that his skill at staging such a heist apparently means nothing because it is not the kind of skill tested by the leaving certificate exam.

The logic is a bit flawed, but his quiet determination to prove to himself and to those around him the Department of Education is not as intelligent as they would like to think is certainly admirable and keeps the viewer glued to the screen.

The generally light-hearted approach of director Graham Jones to his material, especially in the form of the pleasure of listening to the narrator explain in great detail (at one point he even laughs at the naïveté of the characters, immediately endearing himself to us), goes a long way towards gaining our confidence that this is a film to be enjoyed fully.

And yet, with Cian’s suicide in the background and the sad face of Fionn claiming our attention in many scenes, it is also clear that this entertaining film is tinged with sadness that adds unexpected depth to the characters.

It is a great joy to watch this film, which shares the same kind of wit as The History Boys but is far more straightforward in its intentions and its emotions, perhaps unfortunately eschewing the complexity of the latter. The title tells us that everything will be fine, and the moments of dramatic tension because of the uncertainty about what is going to happen are very rare. The writing is superior to the film itself, although there is the odd well-chosen visual flourish, and it would have been good to see Graham Jones contribute to more screenplays, which unfortunately has not really been the case since the release of this film.

From Beginning to End (2009)

André Crous

 Brazil
4*

Director:
Aluizio Abranches
Screenwriter:
Aluizio Abranches
Director of Photography:
Ueli Steiger

Running time: 105 minutes

Original title: Do Começo ao Fim

From Beginning to End is a brave film from Brazil that handles not only the issue of incest, but of same-sex incest, with unbelievable grace and beauty, and were it not for some awkward moments of acting and an overuse of its poetic approach, this could have been a truly breathtaking film.

At times, the events as presented are depicted with such love and tenderness it is difficult not to be moved to tears, despite any misgivings one might have about the makeup of the relationship at the core.

The film, narrated by an adult Thomás, tells of the first few weeks after his birth, during which he didn’t open his eyes until he felt ready. That moment when he decides it is time coincides with a visit by his slightly older half-brother, Francisco, to the hospital, and when Thomás opens his eyes, he looks straight at Francisco.

Six years later, the young boys show a remarkable bond. Although they are stepbrothers and live in Rio de Janeiro with their radiant mother and the younger Thomás’s youthful father, Alexandre, everyone gets along very well, and there is great friendliness between these two parents and Francisco’s father, Pedro, who lives in Buenos Aires.

Luckily for them, such an open and friendly environment does not reject or question their intimate relationship, despite the parents’ suspicions that their sons’ behaviour is not something they are used to seeing. But it has to be said that this behaviour is heartrendingly beautiful.

Francisco takes on the role not only of older brother but of caretaker to his brother, whom he showers with love and attention. As Thomás admits on the voice-over, his brother always made sure he was happy, as we can see in a scene where Francisco receives a present and then asks his father whether he brought Thomás a present as well.

We never see the two of them fight and they seem to share not only a bond but a heart and a soul. There is a scene where the 11-year-old Francisco falls asleep on his bed holding the 6-year-old Thomás in his arms that has more emotional resonance than most films about love and intimacy.

The film’s opening shots are long, unedited tracking shots and Aluizio Abranches should be highly commended for his direction of the two boys’ movements in these scenes, as they run through the house playing, being followed by the Steadicam. It’s an approach that is also very effectively repeated during a trip to Buenos Aires during adulthood.

While it is no surprise that the relationship between the two brothers turns physical when they become young men, this physical attraction isn’t always presented on-screen with the same careful approach as during the earlier scenes, and we get some awkward images that resemble soft-core porn and a transition from childhood to adulthood that is anything but smooth. However, this awkwardness is redeemed by numerous moments of endearing delicacy that join Thomás and Francisco over time, and we realise that there lies beauty in a relationship not born out of sex but born out love built up over a lifetime of shared memories.

When two partners are the same age and engage in acts that are pure and consensual, anyone with the faintest of libertarian streaks would agree that there is nothing wrong with them continuing their committed relationship with each other. Incest too often calls up the abhorrent crudeness of young girls and boys raped by their own father, which is something light years removed from the feelings of mutual love, respect and responsibility made evident in From Beginning to End.

Abranches acknowledges that his characters live in a kind of bubble, removed from the rest of the world, by having them mostly interact with each other whenever they are not speaking to their parents, and we start to wonder whether they have any other friends. In a particularly striking scene, when the bubble is about to break, they sit on a rocky wall high up on a hilltop with the Carioca coastline behind them, but it seems like the world behind them is cold, completely blue, filtered off from the contours of their immediate setting.

It is unheard of for a film of this nature to deal with its problematic central issue in this way, and while it steers clear of confronting some of the larger problems this relationship is likely to generate if more people became aware of it, its decision to immerse the viewer in a world of acceptance and understanding is understandable as it succeeds in communicating the strength of the feelings at play and the depth of emotion these characters share.

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)

André Crous

USA
4*

Directors:
Maya Deren
Alexander Hamid
Screenwriter:
Maya Deren
Director of Photography:
Alexander Hamid

Running time: 14 minutes

Though she directed it with her husband Alexander Hammid (credited as Alexander Hamid), Meshes of the Afternoon has come to be firmly associated with Maya Deren. An amazingly solid surrealist film, it easily inhabits the space that is usually filled with the pompous ego of Un Chien Andalou.

From the outside, Meshes of the Afternoon seems to tell the tale of a slightly disturbed woman, perhaps with suicidal tendencies, who goes to sleep in a chair (it what might or might not be her own house) and proceeds to dream an equally disturbing dream, before, well, it’s not clear at all what happens at the end of the film because over time the apparently clear distinction between dream and reality is elided to the point where Inception would be straightforward.

A few symbols, most prominently the key and the knife, are constantly evoked over the course of this 14-minute film, and it is the way in which they feature and the way Deren and Hammid make them manifest onscreen that turn everyday objects, inanimate as they may be otherwise, into objects of uneasiness. A few jump cuts (and remember, this was 15 years before À Bout de souffle) are used to great effect to unnerve the viewer and another impressively staged sequence involves the main character slithering through the air, or perhaps across the ceiling on her back, in ways that seem possible in a dream.

The film is silent and it goes not for visceral horror, as in Buñuel and Dali’s film, but for a sweet darkness that plays with light and shadow, has an appearance by the Grim Reaper whose face is a mirror (another symbol that will reappear towards the very end of the film) and drags us ever deeper into the hole of uncertainty regarding the clean separation of realities. A bizarre number of close-ups involving feet are also there to interpret as you wish.

What is most admirable about the film is its deft transition between points of view and its seduction of the viewer by making us comfortable with one kind of reality while positioning us to accept another much less definable reality almost immediately. The film certainly succeeds in holding our attention, though towards the end, after shards of a mirror abruptly fall into the ocean (though, unlike the end of Un Chien Andalou, the action does not suddenly shift to the seaside), the film does become slightly less compelling.

The use of the camera is astounding and such simple motions as rolling it from side to side to simulate the sensation of being on a boat, even while the action is inside the very stable confines of a house, is perfectly suited to the material and evokes a slight nausea that is useful if not essential to the viewer’s experience.

The film has more shadows than actual characters and the lack of character names is a fact as interesting as it is significant. The well-known image of the central character looking out of a window, seemingly trapped by a transparent sheet of glass, has been used by many subsequent films and is one of the rare images where the intention and the meaning seem to be apparent.

Meshes of the Afternoon is a rabbit-hole film that would be endlessly fruitful for discussions of the subconscious and the way in which our light and dark desires can manifest themselves in our dreams, not only in images but in movements and, most importantly, in atmosphere.

To Forget Venice (1979)

André Crous

Italy
4*

Director:
Franco Brusati
Screenwriters:
Franco Brusati
Jaja Fiastri
Director of Photography:
Romano Albani

Running time: 101 minutes

Original title: Dimenticare Venezia

Quite extraordinary. Here is a film that reminded me of Bergman’s playful After the Rehearsal in its treatment of memories – nonchalantly inserting them into the physical fabric of the present – and yet it had the lush sexual undertones of a provocative Fellini. It deals primarily with the passing of time. But instead of it being a cause for anguish, it is a reason to reaffirm the happiness that life can provide. In typical Italian style, the film is warm and very human despite some melancholic themes, and it deals frankly with issues relevant to all of us.

The film starts with an opening credits sequence that at first seems wondrous and radiating childlike energy, as groups of children play in a forest with barely an adult in sight, while opera music bellows on the soundtrack, transporting us to a place of rapturous enchantment. One of the only adults around is Claudia, a girl in her late twenties, and toward the end of the sequence, she notices a young man and woman having sex in the distance. She sneaks a peek but makes sure the children don’t see the couple, and moves on.

One very short but infinitely clever moment is staged by director Franco Brusati: Three small girls sit at the base of a tree trunk lifting up their skirts ever so slightly. In front of each of them, going downhill, a shallow furrow has been dug out. When all is clear, and the signal has been given, the girls let loose to have their urine race against each other and make it to the end of the furrow in first place. It is a moment of sublime beauty and minimalism that will be visually referenced later in the film at a point that offers a stark contrast to the feel-good ambience of this youthful scene.

At a farmhouse in the Italian countryside, the middle-aged Anna (Mariangela Melato) is living with her partner, the young Claudia, and Anna’s late uncle’s widow, the aging opera singer Marta (Hella Petri). Marta is planning a trip with her family to Venice, and has invited her brother, Nicky (Erland Josephson), and his very handsome young boyfriend Picchio, along for a small family reunion.

Nicky and Marta have not seen each other in a long time, and Nicky’s arrival back home brings all sorts of beautiful memories, of his own sexual awakening and of the joy he saw on his sister’s face during childhood. One of these flashbacks depicts a birthday party (set to the sound of an Italian lullaby, Ambarabà ciccì coccò) that is straight out of an Ingmar Bergman film and is the highlight of the film, both blissful and soulful in its representation of a memory that underscores one of the film’s constant threads: the ineluctability of the passage of time.

But heavy as this theme is – and its effects are very visible, if not devastating, from a chance meeting with the much-older version of a young Rosino, who had once shared pornography with the young Nicky, to the brutal cut from a young birthday face to the same face at the gates of death – it is modulated by the theme of love that is subtly underscored by the different relationships, all of them gentle and understanding, and only once made explicit, in Marta’s impromptu performance of “L’Amour est un oiseau rebelle” from Bizet’s opera Carmen during a lunch excursion in the forest.

Everyone is convinced times stands still for them, and they have such illusions because their memories haven’t faded, but once they are confronted with the visible effects of time, as Nicky is during his meeting with the old Rosino, can serve to thoroughly disabuse them of such ideas. In a late-night conversation with the gorgeous Picchio, during which Brusati shoots and lights him so as to cut a very angelic figure, strongly lit from above, Anna makes the same mistake of saying “Everything around us changes, grows, matures, dies, but we don’t.” She is wrong, but she still has a long way to go before such a realisation will dawn on her.

An unabashedly joyful celebration of life, To Forget Venice is nostalgic without being sentimental. The significance of time, and the healing power of the passage of time, is very quietly implied, but the film’s characters seem aware of it only obliquely. Nicky has come to be comfortable with himself, though he has lost his quirky boyhood looks, while Picchio is still beautiful but has not really become truly comfortable in his skin, or in his relationship with others. In one scene, before the very old maid Caterina enters his and Nicky’s room, he pushes the two beds apart “for Caterina’s sake”, while Nicky just looks at him, amused at the young man’s fear of being found out. It is a pity the director did not have the same level of comfort in presenting these relationships to us and there is barely any physical contact between the couples.

It is a pity this film is not more accessible (at this writing it is not available on DVD and even a VHS copy is near impossible to track down), but Erland Josephson’s presence, as in Bergman’s and Tarkovsky’s work, is a dependable sign the filmmaker chose to examine the finer parts of human existence with an eye and a paintbrush that few others possess. That filmmaker is Franco Brusati and with To Forget Venice he has created a very important film that deserves to be seen.

The War Room (1993)

André Crous

USA
4*

Directors:
Chris Hegedus
D.A. Pennebaker
Directors of Photography:
Nick Doob
D.A. Pennebaker
Kevin Rafferty

Running time: 96 minutes

D.A. Pennebaker knows how to pick the right candidate – a political candidate who is not the favourite to win but who brings with him a sense that things are about to change big time.  He became the father of political American “Direct Cinema” in 1960 when he filmed John F. Kennedy’s campaign in New Hampshire, which ended in a win, propelling him forward and enabled him to capture the nomination of the Democratic Party. The film was called Primary and it changed the face of the documentary film.

The War Room starts in New Hampshire in January 1992, where William J. Clinton, former governor of Arkansas, is preparing to win the state, but he loses to Paul Tsongas from neighbouring Massachusetts. It is curious to see all of the names of the candidates who participated in this primary back on screen. I was too young at the time to be caught up in the minutiae of the process, but it is wonderful, as we approach another election cycle, to look back at this field and their obstacles and be reminded of the repetition that is nonetheless always exciting because the participants bring new baggage every time.

The film opens with the accusations made by Jennifer Flowers against Governor Clinton, complete with the tape recordings to prove it; she alleged that Clinton had had an affair with her reaching back many years. Of course, we now know today that she should not have been ignored as quickly as she was, and it does appear rather odd that his own campaign never questions their own candidate, but I guess that is normal for presidential candidates’ campaign staff. It is made obvious, and his senior adviser James Carville acknowledges as much, that everybody thinks Bill Clinton is the perfect candidate, the only one they would spend their time and their energy on to promote, and they believe in him so completely that they prefer not to get involved in any negativity about him.

Perhaps he never would have been elected if they had questioned him, and the country would have been worse off as a result.

Besides Carville, who is the main attack dog and chief strategist for the campaign, there is the young George Stephanopoulos, his communications director, who would later act briefly as Clinton’s press secretary in the White House. These two guys have total confidence in Clinton’s abilities and inspire us with their attitude of getting the message out that (George H.W.) Bush has been a failure as a president, despite his skills as a politician.

The film follows the campaign from New Hampshire through the primary process to the eventual nomination at the Democratic Convention and ultimately ending on November 3 with the general election. A lot of material has to be squeezed into this film and obviously, when the film was released in 1993, many things could be left unsaid. Today, that is a problem because we are left with questions that go unanswered and expectations that are often unfulfilled. We don’t know what the pay-off was, because we are looking at a kind of shorthand that is difficult to decipher after nearly twenty years have passed.

For example, while much is made of the upcoming appearance of his Democratic competitor Jerry Brown at the convention (he was going to make like Ted Kennedy in 1980 and ruffle feathers because he had not collected the most delegates), we never see his speech. We also learn that Perot withdraws from the race only to re-enter a few weeks later, without much fanfare either in the media or in Clinton’s campaign headquarters. Bush is like a barking dog in the background: we are aware of him but we don’t see him all that much. We know he seems hesitant to debate Clinton (citing issues with the format of the debate), but there too the film puts very little information on the screen.

The most important thing to remember while we watch this film is that it is about the “war room”, in other words, it is about Carville and Stephanopoulos and their tactics, and not really about Bill Clinton. It is fascinating to watch Carville come up with a political barnburner on the spot, the product of his passion for the moment, his enthusiasm for Clinton’s candidacy and his political savvy.

The camera’s mobility is a great advantage for putting us in the “present” with the events – in particular, when we run through the corridors backstage with George Stephanopoulos after the presidential debate, when he has to make his way to the media gaggle as soon as possible to comment on the evening’s proceedings.

For anyone who follows politics, it is also nice to see much younger faces of those who are still ubiquitous on television. People like Paul Begala and John King.

Finally, on the election night, the film comes to an end. And while we all know how the story ends, it is the team behind the scenes that make this a story to really appreciate. The emotion of team Carville-Stephanopoulos at the last war room meeting is beautiful and pure and the film should be studied by every political campaign against an incumbent. For the rest of us, it offers a moment of reflection. Are all these fights important? Would it have made a difference? And how is it possible that Roger Ailes still peddles so much influence?

North (2008)

André Crous

Norway
4*

Director:
Rune Denstad Langlo
Screenwriter:
Erlend Loe
Director of Photography:
Philip Øgaard

Running time: 78 minutes

Original title: Nord

Jomar Henriksen is feeling blue, but he has decided to strike while the iron is hot – the iron being the gas stove in the little wooden structure, somewhere close to Trondheim, that functions as living quarters for this 30-year old who has been depressed since his wife and young son abandoned him following an accident he had on the slopes. He has panic attacks, spends most days lying in bed, popping pills and drinking spirits (often at the same time), and watching the National Geographic Channel on television, which is currently focused on tunnel disasters.

But an unexpected visit by Lars, the man his wife left him for, makes Jomar reconsider the static trajectory of his existence, and so he goes on a trip up north (passing through a tunnel when he takes this decision), to bridge the abyss of the accident and stretch back into the past to reconnect with his family, and with other members of society.

This is a Scandinavian film, so you should expect a fair amount of deadpan behaviour from the characters, though the film seems positively action-packed compared to other well-known ventures such as the Norwegian The Bothersome Man, or the work of Swedish director Roy Andersson, not to mention the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. The fine observation of Jomar’s awkward road-trip and his gradual recognition that he must (and can) regain some sense of existence are made possible, in large part, by the very perceptive screenplay written by acclaimed author Erlend Loe.

Nord has a very small cast: scenes rarely, if ever, consist of more than three characters. Norway’s desolate, snowswept, winter landscape is beautiful and as it becomes ever more prominent towards the end of the film – including the gorgeous shots of either a snowmobile or a skier on the clean, white mountainsides – the film finds direct influences or indirect commentary on the events on the ground. A particularly striking moment occurs when the northern lights appear above a lonely shack in the snow while Jomar recounts the day of his skiing accident.

These characters that Jomar encounters on his journey up north prepare him, in subtle ways, to face the rest of the journey and also demonstrates that he has a good heart that has been numbed but not broken by recent experiences. He meets a teenage girl, Lotte, who is slightly abrasive in the way that most teenage girls are, but never annoying; she has her own problems of isolation. When Jomar’s snowmobile breaks down he is saved by Ulrik, barely out of his teens, who is always suspicious that Jomar might be gay – a sign that Ulrik might be a little confused about himself. And finally, close to his destination of the Tamok Valley, he finds an old Sami man who spends his days in a big tent, having chained himself to his snowmobile.

The film consistently ensures that the viewers have a smile on their faces, and the cinematography does an admirable job of capturing the beauty of Norway. I was somewhat disappointed that the meeting between Jomar and Lotte, the teenage girl, was omitted, and we do not share much of Jomar’s perspective on the bleak wilderness around him, but the sad music (mostly strings, though one memorable moment is provided thanks to the Norwegian band “Kaizers Orchestra”) sets exactly the right tone for the story.

Niagara (1953)

André Crous

USA
4*

Director:
Henry Hathaway
Screenwriters:
Charles Brackett
Walter Reisch
Richard L. Breen
Director of Photography:
Joseph MacDonald

Running time: 85 minutes

Niagara is all about Marilyn Monroe — everything happens as a result of her, and the effect of this blond goddess on the people around her is blood-curdling. This film proved that film noir was not limited to colour, nor was star-studded suspense limited to Hitchcock.

Shot mostly on location in gorgeous Technicolor, Henry Hathaway’s Niagara demonstrates the talent of a young Ms Monroe (she was 26 years old during production of this film) and her ability to play — but never overplay — the role of the wily femme fatale: Rose Loomis.

And while Joseph Cotten, whose portrayal of Leland in Citizen Kane arguably engages us as much as Charles Foster Kane, stars as her husband, George Loomis, he is not nearly as memorable as Monroe. There is another couple, the Cutlers, who arrive at the Niagara Falls just as things start to fall apart for the Loomises, but they serve more as a sideshow to the fun than anything else — the viewer’s companions, compared with the shining stars of Monroe and Cotten.

This couple, Ray and Polly Cutler, is spending a few days in a luxury resort opposite Niagara Falls. They are on a delayed honeymoon, having just moved here in order for Ray to start working at a Shredded Wheat Company plant. But on their arrival, making the acquaintance of Mr and Mrs Loomis, they soon discover that all is not well – Mrs Loomis, for one, leaves her husband, who seems to be mentally ill, at home, while she flirts her way into another man’s arms at the Falls.

The Falls, shown so often from up close, and appearing in the background on many occasions, serve both as a nice backdrop to the story and as a very ominous reminder of the destructive power of beauty. In one very frank conversation between Ray Loomis and Polly Cutler, he anticipates the story’ developments:

Let me tell you something. You’re young, you’re in love. Well, I’ll give you a warning. Don’t let it get out of hand like those falls out there. Up above… d’you ever see the river up above the falls? It’s calm and easy, and you throw in a log, it just floats around. Let it move a little further down and it gets going faster, hits some rocks, and… in a minute it’s in the lower rapids, and… nothing in the world — including God himself, I suppose — can keep it from going over the edge. It just… goes.

Niagara does a neat job of combining both suspense and surprise, and in one of the film’s key moments, the suspense is accomplished by a deafening silence – one that would have made Hitchcock proud. In another moment of audiovisual ingenuity, reminiscent of the famous scene in North by Northwest when a conversation is obscured by an airplane engine, the sound of the Falls drowns out an important bit of dialogue between George Loomis and Polly Cutler.

The Cutlers are in way over their heads: Polly, though a goody-two-shoes, is still bearable, but her husband, Roy, has a constant smile on his face that shows there is nothing going on upstairs. The two make a quaint couple, far removed from the emotional turmoil in the relationship (and the characters) of George and Rose, and at times this disparity between the two couples is a little too much to take. But the film sketches the situations and the motivations well enough and Hathaway’s direction is exactly what is needed to tell this story coherently and effectively. I was also impressed by the very good quality of the scenes that use rear projection — coming only two years after The African Queen, whose green screen made for some terrible pictures on the rapids, Niagara is brilliantly staged and photographed to create the impression that all of these scenes on the roaring waters are taking place outside a studio.

Elite Squad (2007)

André Crous

Brazil
4*

Director:
José Padilha
Screenwriters:
José Padilha
Rodrigo Pimentel
Bráulio Mantovani
Director of Photography:
Lula Carvalho

Running time: 113 minutes

Original title: Tropa de elite

In a city like Rio de Janeiro, whose police force “protects the corrupt”, especially when the corrupt is one of their own, an incorruptible force of guardians is essential: in this case, such individuals have formed an elite group, trained more aggressively than the Israeli army, that performs the function of watchmen, and it is no coincidence that Foucault is discussed in a sociology class attended by Matias, a talented policeman who will be trained as a member of this “Elite Squad”, or BOPE (Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais).

In the first scene, Matias and Neto – another policeman and a friend since childhood – are singled out as possible replacements for Captain Nascimento, a member of BOPE whose life has been turned upside down by his continued involvement in their operations; his personal life (he is about to become a father) is straining under the pressure of his life as a special forces policeman and he needs to get out.

BOPE is hardcore and they are physically and mentally as tough as they come, but while these guys can track down and punish the most devious of slum lords, they are clearly filled with rage and the film hints at some of the reasons. There is frustration amongst the most law-abiding policemen that everybody is not fully held accountable, that it is too slow or that it is not strict enough. Some of the policemen see their colleagues turn their job into a way to earn extra money by using their position as a way to extort ordinary individuals – by promising them special protections, for example – and this game with the law has ominous potential: “Those who get paid to uphold the law can also get paid to cut it loose.”

At the centre of developments is an upcoming visit by Pope John Paul II (the film is set in 1997) to Rio de Janeiro: His Holiness decided to stay at the favela of Turano, a notorious slum, so that he can be closer to the poor and destitute, and it is up to the BOPE to ensure that the Holy Father will lose no sleep over his safety in such a poor, crime-ridden area of the city. But the preparations for the visit take a backseat to the stories of Matias and Neto, respectively the brains and the heart necessary to make a good BOPE agent, and the challenge Nascimento faces in deciding who would replace him.

Some of the film’s action scenes are quite shocking – not because of the brutal violence they depict, but because the characters committing these acts are often policemen themselves, who are supposed to uphold the law. In one sequence of events, the endemic corruption on the force is treated with some comedy, as heads butt and we see how quickly chaos can erupt in an environment where bribery is a normal part of the job of being a policeman. But the rest of Elite Squad shows a much darker side of the Rio police: portrayed as a bunch of reckless hooligans, more or less kept in check by the cream that is the BOPE, the latter can also act like barbarians in the name of keeping order – at one point they prepare to torture an informant by raping him with a broom.

One should be able to get a clearer picture of the two sides that provide the Rio crime scene with such tension. We are informed that peace in Rio “depends on a delicate balance between the ammunition of the scum and the corruption of the cops,” but the film tries its darndest to show that the police’s brutal tactics may be mitigated by the fact that they are ultimately making the city a better place. However, the film doesn’t come close to equalling Fernando Meirelles’s City of God, a film that still ranks as one of the best favela pictures ever made. It always seems like we get an outsider’s point of view of the slums.

Elite Squad is well-made, and both Matias and Nascimento have stories that the viewer wants to follow through with, but the constant voice-over becomes boring, despite its overload of well-formulated bits of information and the apparent (though strictly illogical) omnipresence of its narrator. Followed by Elite Squad: The Enemy Within.

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

André Crous

France
4*

Director:
Agnès Varda
Screenwriter:
Agnès Varda
Directors of Photography:
Jean Rabier
Alain Levent

Running time: 90 minutes

Original title: Cléo de 5 à 7

A morbid sense of impending doom hangs over this seemingly lighthearted frolic in the Parisian sunshine. Cléo is a young woman who is expecting the results of a medical examination, which a fortune-teller leads her to believe might be catastrophic and certainly involves the prospect of death. We follow her as she passes the time buying a hat, driving in a taxi, meeting friends and trying to relax in the Parc de Montsouris.

Cléo from 5 to 7 takes place in real-time, though director Agnès Varda crams much more into her 90 minutes (the film is really Cléo from 5 to 6.30, but the title wouldn’t have had the same zap) than is actually possible, but never mind – the effect of watching everything unfold in apparent real-time is exhilarating. The audience shares the ups and downs of the main character, Florence Victoire, nicknamed Cléo – for Cleopatra – by her friends, though admittedly her melodramatic nature (a point made over and over again) does make her appear wholly unstable at times.

Varda as a director is very active in this film, which seems deceptively improvised, but contains many moments that visibly enrich the thematic texture of the film. Starting with the tarot card of death in the opening scene, the only part of the film that is in colour, Cléo from 5 to 7 has a whole array of very brief shots – either from Cléo’s point of view or from the camera’s point of view, though the camera often identifies with the main character and we get many looks on the street directed at the camera. Besides a broken mirror and a scene at the aftermath of a gunshot, we also see funeral homes, a café called “Bonne Santé” (Good Health), a street performer piercing his biceps in a scene of real body horror, and we hear a radio report of Edith Piaf’s latest operation. Another very well-crafted moment occurs in the darkness of a tunnel when Cléo tells her friend Dorothée that she might be seriously ill.

At the time of the film’s release, the spectre of colonial war, the conflict in Algeria, was pervasive but also serves an important function in this film – a function that only becomes clear towards the end of the story, in the calm setting of the 14th arrondissement’s Parc de Montsouris.

While Cléo from 5 to 7 was not Varda’s first feature-length fiction film (her 1955 film, La Pointe courte, had already established her as a force to be reckoned with, or rather one to be inspired by, and anticipated the revitalisation of the French film industry at the end of the 1950s that would be called the Nouvelle Vague), it has the same kind of playful humanity that made Godard’s À Bout de souffle such a charm, and the play with form is best appreciated in a short silent film which the boyfriend of Cléo’s friend Dorothée, a projectionist at a cinema, screens for them. The film shows two different kinds of realities, one seen through darkness (or sunglasses), the other without them, and perhaps the only other silent-film-within-a-film that I have seen which has amused me as much was Almodóvar’s Shrinking Man in Talk to Her.

The film constantly reminds the viewer how much time has passed, and how much time is left, by means of text on the screen that informs us of the current time as well as the main protagonist for the next part. A little tongue-in-cheek, the different “chapters” go up to number 13, clearly linking with the numerous mentions of superstition throughout the film; it is an unexpectedly beautiful and emotional moment when we realise who the protagonist(s) of the final chapter are.

Cléo from 5 to 7 has a ditzy central character who is waiting for some news that might change her life, or maybe her life will be changed in the process of waiting. The film is simple and consists of small conversations from daily life that do not seem staged for the benefit of a fiction film, but rather evoke a certain feeling of humanity that is so important in a film that wants both the dread and the sunshine.

Attack the Gas Station! (1999)

André Crous

South Korea
4*

Director:
Kim Sang-Jin
Screenwriter:
Park Jeong-woo
Director of Photography:
Jung Woo Choi

Running time: 113 minutes

Original title: 주유소 습격 사건
Transliterated title: Juyuso seubgyuksageun

This film is a gas! (I know, I know…) With the same kind of adrenaline in its visuals that reminded me of Run, Lola, Run, this  South Korean film is simple-minded but dedicated to its goal of providing sheer rip-roaring entertainment. In the opening scene, the film’s four main characters, a group of guys fresh out of high school, rob a gas station and proceed to destroy the entire property in a rampage of destruction. In the following scene, which takes place a few days later, the guys are back to rob the same station again, but this time they have spent their money on clothes that make them seem a little more respectable.

The problem is that the manager of the gas station has taken precautions and tells them that his wife has taken the day’s profits with her and now she can’t be reached. The director, however, decides to show us early on that the manager is lying and has hidden the money somewhere in the office. As a result, the four would-be robbers look like even greater buffoons since they fail to search the office. But more on their stupidity later.

The action-packed first scene of Attack the Gas Station! raises the question how the film could possibly sustain its rhythm. Of course, it can’t, but we are provided with some very cool visuals, from upside-down shots and shots taken from very low angles to shots in which the camera is pointed vertically upward, or tilted, with wide-angle lenses, or taking the place of a character being kicked in the face by a boot heel that comes straight at us. There are also some rather silly uses of the slow motion, but all in all the film has a great time testing out some visual tricks and doesn’t bore us with repetition.

The story is not complicated. The four guys take the manager of the gas station and his three employees hostage, and when anybody pulls up to have gas put in their car, the robbers take the money for themselves, while they are waiting for the manager’s wife to return home and deliver the money to them. Random scenes of chaos erupt when customers are rude or when a local gang comes to collect money from a high school boy who works at the station. But whatever happens, the leader of the four robbers has a very serene quality about him and even though the four of them might not have a clue how to handle the situation, they make it clear that they are in control – and, somehow, they usually are.

The characters they come up against are hardly the rough underworld types, although there is initially much talk about the gang leader, Yongari, but he turns out to be a complete whimp. One of the guys, Bulldozer, keeps watch over the steadily growing group of hostages, but he behaves like a bad imitation of a Toshiro Mifune character, baring his teeth, pulling faces and forcing people to crush their skulls into the floor.

But the film has some wonderful moments, and they usually involve music. Halfway through the film, a big fight scene is accompanied by a techno version of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons (Spring)”, and later on, when the hi-fi breaks down, the Yongari gang performs in the background, and this musical number stands as the highlight of the entire film, for it is unexpected, well-executed and highly entertaining.

The film doesn’t quite know how to keep itself busy in the second half, but when all the different factions come together during the climax, and the four main characters’ backstories have been established, we get a wonderful combination of form and content that makes for a very appropriate ending to a film that never takes itself too seriously.