September 12, 2002
After a 6 movie day yesterday, I only booked 3 today, and I’mm only going to review 2 now. My last film today, CAVALE or ON THE RUN, is part of a trilogy. I’ll go into it once I’ve seen the second part tomorrow.
THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST is an Aki Kaurismaki film. For those who have seen Aki’s films before, that’s a long enough review. Based on previous Kaurismaki viewings you’re either a fan or you’re not. Kaurismaki’s unique Finnish comedies all share a certain sensibility that I quite like: underplayed characters deliver underplayed dialogue within whacked-out but simple plots. In MAN WITHOUT A PAST we get an amnesiac mugging victim trying to build a new life. The characters are all quietly heroic, eccentric, amiable and dignified. The film is charming and amusing. Kaurismaki flicks hava history of showing up at rep theatres in Toronto. We can hope this one will follow suit.
MAN WITHOUT A PAST reminded me a lot of one of two Swedish films I just saw in Montreal. MARRIAGE DERAILED was a half hour short that tells the story of two train conductors who meet daily for 3 minutes when their trains are concurrently in the one station their routes share. It all starts with a friendly smile one day, with escalating communication, then gifts given on subsequent meetings. With only enough time each day to imagine more than actually have a relationship, we watch as the infatuation buds, blossoms, and prematurely withers. It was all quite sweetly done, and a memorable film. At half an hour though, where will it ever play again? Maybe on a new digital cable channel for half hour long charming Swedish shorts? Maybe…
MADAME SATA is my only South American flick at the fest this year. Filmed in rundown bits of Rio de Janiero that easily pass for 1932 when the film is set, it’s based on the true story of an infamous Rio drag artist who lived his life outside the mainstream and was punished again and again for it. Joao Francisco dos Santos was a study in contrasts; poor, gay, and black, he was a rough and tough fighter with a short fuse who really just wanted to entertain people with fancy costume and a falsetto. While he loved men he had girlfriends he treated like wives and over time adopted seven children. He did whatever he wanted and sometimes paid for it, with several trips to prison, once for murder. He died a legend in his community in 1976.
In his feature film directorial debut, Karim Ainouz delivers an accomplished piece of filmmaking that vividly portrays the raw atmosphere of Rio’s bohemian Lapa quarter, and the intensity of the conflicts and relationships of the main characters in wild but disciplined story. Beautifully filmed and edited with an expertise that won’t develop in most director’s lifetimes, this guy’s got the potential to be great name.
Gotta sleep!
Craig James White
Toronto - show me the movie!
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September 12, 2002
Six screenings in one day.
I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.
I had been concerned that it might kill me, but as it turns out, it only made me stronger. Here we go.
Another day, another doc. This one, LOST IN LA MANCHA, tells the story of Terry Gilliam’s ill-fated attempt in 2000 to film Don Quixote. Now Gilliam is one of my favourite directors (he gave the world BRAZIL) so a film that details the disasters that lead up to the scrapping of a Gilliam flick was something that I couldn’t pass up.
The doc itself is not particularly innovative, or noteworthy for its direction, but it works pretty well. We get a good look at the various elements that have to come together to make a film, and then we watch as one by one enough calamities pile up to bring the filming of Quixote to an end.
Just some of the problems? Well, too small a budget to start with, an unbelievable rainstorm that transforms a desert and washes away some equipment, and a lead actor in so much pain he can’t walk.
Gilliam and his team look pretty good throughout, they’re just swamped by problems beyond anyone’s ability to control. One problem with the documentary is also beyond human control, and that was that the climax hits early with the biblical deluge on the third day of shooting, and after that everything’s just a long slide into oblivion from there. Despite that, it’s all very watchable, with some nicely done Gilliam-style graphics to animate the piece, and rueful laughs throughout.
Gilliam himself showed up for the first screening my sources tell me, doing the loser sign on his forehead as he walked down the aisle. He didn’t make it to my screening, but the documentary directors were there to assure us that Gilliam is still trying to find the money to make Don Quixote. Will this candid documentary of a fiasco help? I’m hoping it will.
Every year there is some film that rubs me the wrong way, far enough the wrong way that I walk before the credits roll. This year the honour goes to THE BARONESS AND THE PIG, a really ineptly made Canadian flick that crossed my stupidity threshold about 1 hour and 15 minutes in. With only 20 minutes to go, I decided I’d rather be outside filling my lungs with smog. Why? Well, I think it went like this…
THE BARONESS AND THE PIG is the late 19th century story of a rich American woman (Patricia Clarkson) who has married an English baron (Colm Feore) and moved to a Parisian chateau. In an age full of new ideas and inventions, the Baroness is determined to hold a salon where she’ll introduce to society an enfant sauvage she has rescued from a pigsty.
That’s the central bit. Side stories include the bitchy and decadent Countess who shows the Baroness a thing or two about Parisian society, and the pig himself, the contemptuous Baron whose only concern with his wife is for her money. With two villains happily established, one would hope to have have someone to root for. Our sympathies however have nowhere to land.
The saintly Baroness, who has the money to embrace the latest inventions and styles (there are some lovely Charles Rennie Mackintosh furnishings in the chateau, best thing in the flick) and who espouses the radical and progressive ideas that were so revolutionizing the time, is obviously an endlessly curious and intelligent woman, and should be a smart one too. She is however entirely blind to her surroundings and naive to a ridiculous degree. I understand that the director may want to portray her as an idealist and singular of purpose but he has made the Baroness both too bright a light and dim a bulb all at the same time to either be believable or sympathetic at all.
The enfant sauvage, a bastard child who was raised in a pigsty until the Baroness brings her to the chateau and tries to civilize her, is also a role that demands some subtlety in its handling, but we get none of that. When we first meet her she is grunting, kicking, and biting. In her next scene a day or two later she’s had a maid’s uniform pulled on, dusts and washes dishes when asked, and parrots everything anyone says to her and is learning to speak well. Surely common sense, let alone enough MIRACLE WORKER/NELL/MY FAIR LADY/GREYSTOKE type flicks out there would be enough to establish that the speed with which this transformation is portrayed defies any credibility.
Those films also point to this mistake: the enfant sauvage should have been the central role. It would be far more interesting to see a girl thrust into a new world of competing ideas who is trying to find her place in it, if she wants one at all. Too bad we were stuck with a parade of ninnies. After one painfully stupid scene too many, I walked.
It’s worth mentioning that no-one else walked out. People were laughing at some jokes. Maybe I just didn’t get it. Maybe the theatre was full of undemanding, opiated masses. I dunno. Film sauvage.
THE WAY HOME was everything the BARONESS was not. This Korean film tells the tale of a young boy from Seoul whose down-on-her-luck single mother has left him with his back-country grandmother while mom looks for a job to replace the one she has lost.
Grandma’s place is nothing like the modern city Sang-woo comes from. There’s no running anything, and this kid, whose every desire has been catered to up until this point, finds that turning on the waterworks will no longer get him whatever he wants.
Grandma is poor, stooped, and mute, and maybe you can fill in the rest of this cliche, caring, dignified, and noble. I say cliche because there are also any number of films about people returning to simpler times to find out what’s really important about life: THE WAY HOME is a terrific addition to that list. This is the flip side of the enfant sauvage story, where the spoiled city kid eventually learns that all the trappings of civilization mean nothing without love and respect for other people.
Without relying on endless shots of nothing happening, and no saccharine sweetness, THE WAY HOME is a quiet, simple, and engaging film with real depth. The grandmother is played by a 76 year old woman who had never even seen a movie before. She’s astonishing. Everyone else is fine, I have no complaints about any of them, but the whole film hangs on this woman’s performance, and she’s wonderful. This is one of those parts where you can’t believe this person is anything other than what you’re seeing on screen.
Despite being from a country and a language that normally gets no time on North American screens, THE WAY HOME deserves to play here. If it’s marketed well, it just might find an audience. I hope so.
BLIND SPOT: HITLER’S SECRETARY is a 95 minute long documentary of Traudl Junge, one of four women who worked in Adolf Hitler’s office, and who was there when Hitler and Eva Braun commited suicide, simply telling her story to the camera. With no archival war footage, we seen nothing excpet her face and hands.
It’s a lot of subtitles to read. It gets more interesting as it comes to the end.
THE NAZI is a 14 minute short by indie actor/writer/musician Rod Lurie that proceeded BLIND SPOT. It features James Cromwell as a nazi war criminal in jail in Isreal who is visited by an American woman whose Grandmother died in a concentration camp. She has come to forgive him. The two play mind games with each other. I didn’t believe how it played out and was happy to see it end.
BLISSFULLY YOURS is a Thai film that caught my attention through the hyperbolic language of the official festival notes. (You an look them up on the website at http://www.bell.ca/filmfest if you’d like.) I didn’t see as much in it as the programmer did.
This film features three characters who spend their time trying to get around the system, thwarting the demands of their jobs and the laws of the land through small lies. The plot: Thai girl with illegally immigrated Burmese boyfriend get away from town and have a picnic in a scenic jungle setting. A friend shows up. 2 hours, 5 minutes. Can you say languid?
All anyone was talking about on the way out (it’s de riguer to listen in on film conversations at the fest) was that a few minutes from the end Girl unexpectedly plays with Boy’s thing on screen…
…which leads in nicely to the day’s last film for me, Toronto-made RUB AND TUG. It stars Don McKellar as a newly hired manager of a massage parlour. His job: make sure the girls are only giving massages, nothin’ else, ’cause the owner doesn’t want to have to worry about the cops busting him. It should be the recipe for a rip-roaring comedy.
A first feature from director-writer Soo Lyu, it also stars some lesser known but rising Canadian actors Lindy Booth, Tara Spencer-Nairn, and Kira Clavell as the three masseuses. And, AND, Michael Cram. Well, Mike Cram. Mike’s a friend of friends of mine. Or maybe he’s fully fledged friend now. Anyway, I sat beside Mike through the screening. Mike’s mostly done commercial work up til now. Maybe you’ve seen him in IBM and Bud Light spots. In RUB he’s got a mid-size part, integral to the plot, his first in a feature film.
He, and all of the cast did quite well I thought: the acting is pretty tight throughout. The acting is better than the material actually, which is totally contrived and pretty goofy. Lyu tries to mix melodrama with comedy to give us an all-round feel-good kind of flick, but the dramatic elements are far too silly to be believable, so what could have worked better as a flat-out comedy suffers because of the mishandling. In the first half of the flick when quirky McKellar has a more comic role, he’s uniquely hilarious. In the second half when the movie swings towards melodrama, McKellar’s character switches into evil bastard mode, which doesn’t fit at all, and which wastes McKellar’s comic talents.
Mike Cram’s character is a shy first-time massage parlour client. We like him because he wants rub only, no tug: he’s no pervert, he’s a gentleman with an aching back. He is also however a straight-laced immigration department officer, and when the masseuse he’s fallen for reveals she’s in Canada illegally, well, he’s gotta deport her of course. Cruel fate!
During the screening Mike squirmed while a scene played out at the airport where his character strains for - like forever - with his conscience: can he let Cindy escape deportation? How to do it? The camera lingers and lingers on Mike as he tosses his head back and forth with the big question. It must not be fun to watch yourself when you know the editing of your scene has been bungled, but it was pretty neat for me to watch Mike squirm: it heightened my experience of the film. Everyone should have a squirming actor beside them at every film. Hooray for the festival!
Cheers!
Craig James White
Toronto - show me the movie!
Posted by rae under reviews | Comments (0)
September 10, 2002
Today started with my favourite fiction film so far this year: MA VRAIE VIE À ROUEN, which means “The True Story of My Life in Rouen”.
For a few years now we’ve been hearing how digital camcorders and a Macintosh will turn everyone into filmmakers. Sometimes it happens, and some of those films show up at short film festivals. Doubtless there are hundreds more shorts made that way that are sent to festivals, but thankfully those festivals have got a programmer to staunch the flow.
I say that because you can’t see a whole programme of shorts at the Toronto festival without seeing a couple of clunkers, despite these shorts being the most noteworthy that the fest has received. I can’t imagine how painful it must be to sit through hours and hours of garbage looking for gems, or semi-precious stones which they also seem to accept.
Back in ‘99 a couple of film school grads from Florida made a film that looked like a home movie, and turned it into a huge hit. The BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, (made for about $50,000 US or $12M Cdn so it wasn’t exactly a home movie, and heck, they were film school GRADS), used hifi video and 16mm film and a fresh script that didn’t seem scripted at all.
All that fake realism got old fast though. Did anyone see BLAIR WITCH 2? And where are all the other home movies we were promised? Some are on the net, but they aren’t in our cinemas. Is it possible that you need more than just a camera and a computer to be an auteur?
Trouble is you still need a script, and good script writers with fresh ideas aren’t found under every rock. Writer/directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau have emerged from under a very rare rock.
In MA VRAIE VIE À ROUEN, the action starts when teenaged Etienne turns on a camcorder he’s just been given by his Gran for his birthday. It continues for on and off through nearly an entire year - we see the seasons pass quite clearly - whenever Etienne picks up the camera and turns it on. He films anytime he can, occasionally driving his mom or friends or teacher crazy, but also finding them in moments when they are happy to perform. Once in a while Etienne’s subjects are happy to just be natural in front of the camera too.
The triumph here is that while this film is fiction, its natural feel is utterly convincing. Questions during the Q&A mostly concerned what was real of what we just saw, and what wasn’t. It works on every level. All of Etienne’s relationships have perfect chemistry: his mother, (Ariane Ascaride), his best friend (Jonathan Zaccai), his grandmother (Helene Sugere), and his teacher (Lucas Bonnifait) are all brilliantly observed, written, and acted parts. Etienne himself is played by rising French skater Johhny Tavares who actually got a medal in a competition this year that the character wins in 2001’s filmic competition.
The camera presents us Etienne’s point of view too, and while it’s a pair of 30 year olds that created the film, they certainly remember what their late teenage years were like. I’d swear an intelligent, lonely, creative 17 year old came up with this whole thing.
So I bought this flick hook line and sinker. Now I hope I’ll be able to see it again. It doesn’t have North American distribution yet, and I don’t know what the chances are that it will get it. It’s not AMELIE type material: it’s not a slickly made mass-market crowd pleaser (that’s no swipe at AMELIE, I loved AMELIE). It’s just a great little film. If it doesn’t open here, and there are surprisingly few French films that do open in Toronto, then I’m moving to Montreal or Paris or something.
Too bad I had to leave the ROUEN Q&A in progress to get to BIG SHOT’S FUNERAL, my next film. This is a Chinese comedy that stars Donald Sutherland as a great director failing to make an epic film in Beijing. When the filming nearly kills him, he asks his Chinese crew to plan a “comedy funeral” for him. To pay for the funeral, they decide to put it on tv and sell commercial time and ad space.
It sounded promising as a satire about rampant capitalism changing the face of life in China, but the film tries to do too much, goes on too long, is badly acted whenever some of the Chinese cast speak in English (Sutherland is lots of fun however), and is way too slapstick. It’s a great idea that would work in any capitalist country, but it needed more discipline to work. Too bad. Someone could and should remake this for another market.
FUNERAL was preceded by an incomprehensible short film about a guy who gets mad, too mad, called THE SPACE BETWEEN. It’s written, directed, and featuring Chad Lowe, and starring his wife Hilary Swank and some other people, who cares? I didn’t for this thing. You will never have to see this.
BUBBA HO-TEP was my foray into this year’s Midnight Madness programme. It stars legendary cult film guy Bruce Campbell of the EVIL DEAD flicks as an aging Elvis who now passes his days in an obscure East Texas nursing home, and tells the story of what happens when an awol Egyptian Mummy looking for souls “to suck” wreaks nightly havoc there. Aging Elvis and his nursing-home-mate, an aging,black JFK, decide to take the Mummy on and hijinks ensue.
Totally nuts, this film was a breath of stinky air just when one was needed. Soon to appear at a drive-in near you (we can all hope - it’s perfect for one.)
The screening for this film was, like those for BOLLYWOOD/HOLLYWOOD and the Korean TAKE CARE OF MY CAT, attended to a large degree by an particular ethnic group: Nerds in this case. Besides John & Kristen Chew and myself, (clearing throat sound) everyone in the room had just arrived from their favourite comic book store, and they were clearly thrilled by the flick. If you are a nerd, take note: BUBBA HO-TEP will make you laugh.
THE QUIET AMERICAN is a new film by director Phillip Noyce (DEAD CLAM, PATRIOT GAMES, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, etc.) based on the novel by Graham Greene. It tells the story of Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), a British news correspondent living in Saigon in 1952 and his relationship to his Vietnamese lover (Hai Yen Do) and with a newly arrived American doctor named Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser).
In a time when the French colonial masters are fighting an insurgent and growing communist army and an emerging and mysterious third force, nothing in Viet Nam is as it at first seems. Just when Fowler is is recalled to London by his paper he finds that things in Saigon are dramatically changing, especially as Americans make their new presence felt.
Beautifully shot in an exotic location with atmosphere just oozing off the screen, and with a well acted, intriguing story THE QUIET AMERICAN would have been a good time even if Michael Caine hadn’t shown up to take questions along the with director and producers. Prior to the screening as I was filling up my bottle at the water fountain, Caine was standing a few feet away with festival director Piers Handling and director Noyce. Noyce was introducing Caine to Robert Schenkkan, one of the co-writers of the screenplay, whom he hadn’t yet met. That slightly amused me. Had to happen eventually, right? A couple minutes later Caine entered the auditorium to a standing ovation. Fun night.
Until tomorrow…
Craig James White
Toronto - show me the movie!
Posted by rae under reviews | Comments (0)
