A Film a Week - The Alien / Namo

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

This year's edition of Berlinale is not riddled with political scandals like it was the case one year ago, when films were pulled out of the festival even if they were selected for the official competition, or barely made it to the festival after all. It was an "interesting" year for Chinese cinema, with the government fortifying itself by the means of censorship. This year's biggest attempt at scandal also comes from Asia, but from a different part of the continent - from Iran. Nader Saeivar's directorial debut "The Alien" was set to premiere at Forum sidebar of Berlinale, and the principal question was would Saeivar and his crew be able to leave the country and travel to Berlin. They made it.

"The Alien" opens with an establishing shot typical for Iranian cinema, a long, fixed camera shot of a shop's front in the afternoon. In the corner of the shot, there is a car that seems quite ordinary. The static shot converts into a slow zooming into the shop itself, showing the ordinary activities in the neighbourhood: the local teacher comes to buy something on his way back to work, the owner is arguing with his son, some other neighbours drop by. When the action moves outside, the parked car is still there.

Rinse-repeat for the next day. And the day after that. The car is still there. And in Iran, it could mean just one thing: the people inside it are on a stake-out mission. Being the new lad in the 'hood, and possibly even new to the town, the teacher Bakhtiar (Bakhtiyar Panjeei) becomes the prime suspect among his neighbours to be the reason for the car being there. His withdrawn, even secretive attitude does not help either, and his refusal to conduct himself according to the unwritten rules of the community (instead of cooperating, he basically ignores the car and the people in it) could put the final nail in his social reputation coffin.

The pressure on him multiplies, not just in the neighbourhood, but also at his job, where he needs to pass the final exam and the suitability interview in order to get his permanent teaching license, and in his own home where he is constantly between his ailing father and his not exactly patient wife (Sevil Shirgi). Will he be able to handle it all or will he become a victim of other people's paranoia?

There is a lot of it in the context and the subtext of this slow-paced film. Firstly, Bakhtiar and his family come from the ranks of Kurdish minority in an ethnically mixed unnamed town. And minority and ethnically mixed environments are more prone to get some more unwanted attention from the central government in dangerous mix of theocracy and bureaucracy, which Iran is. Finaly, in a paranoid, controlling society, everybody has some kind of secret to keep, not just Bakhtiar, but also his wife, all the neighbours, friends and acquaintances. The difference between him and the rest is that he does not want to pretend any more.

Nader Saeivar is a screenwriter by trade, and for his work he was already awarded, for instance in Cannes for the script he co-wrote with the legendary dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi for the latter's film "3 Faces". Script-wise, this is a cooperation of the same two people and it proves to be the best aspect of the film, as new and new layers come to light in perfect timing. However, some of the dialogue lines are overly explanatory, which, combined with the theatrics in acting, results in off-key line delivery.

It also shows that, unlike Panahi for whom the filmmaking is simply the calling, Nader Saeivar as a filmmaker needs more practice in order to to learn the aspects of the job he has not mastered yet. He knows how to recognize an important story and to tell it in an intelligent way, but the narcoleptic pace, the insisting on concentric circles-type of structure and overly expressive acting by most of the cast members pretty much annul the positive aspects. With better directorial control and some more determined editing, "The Alien" would not be just a decent, yet politically important film that shows its maker's potential. It would be a properly good one.

A Film a Week - Idol / Woo sang

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

One thing is certain: Lee Su-jin's second feature "Idol" ("Woo sang" in the original language) is a head-spinning thrill ride of a movie which, in the end, can become exhausting. Having in mind Lee's previous feature, a minor sensation on both the genre and the regular film festival circle titled "Han Gong-ju", Idol's inclusion in the Panorama selection of this year's Berlinale is completely justified, even though the film certainly has narrow limits regarding the exposure outside of its native South Korea and hard core genre circles.

Basically, it is a story about two fathers connecting by a hit-and-run accident involving their sons. The title character of sorts Koo Myung-hui (Han Seok-kyu of "Shiri" and "The Berlin File" fame) is a politician on the move whose career prospects seem promising due to his respectable, honest and trustworthy public image. His son Johan is the supposed perpetrator, but Koo stays firm in the decision to let his son try his luck with the legal system rather than to make an attempt at cover-up. On the other side of the spectre is a simple-minded van driver Jong-sik (Sul Kyung-gu) whose mentally handicapped son was the victim. He is full of rage and is not going to be satisfied with a proverbial slap on the wrist of a sentence for the politician's son, so he hires a private detective to conduct his own investigation.

As it plays out, there were witnesses to the accident, and they saw a young woman leaving the scene. It turns to be Jong-sik's daughter in law, Ryeon-hwa (Chun Woo-hee, the lead actress of "Han Gong-ju", also seen in Na Hong-jin's "The Wailing"), and she might not be that innocent. She is an illegal immigrant from China with "colourful" past, a tortured soul prone to torture and violent behaviour herself. And so begins the battle of the wits full of twists and turns where no one is actually innocent set against the rainy nights of Seoul for the exceptionally noir-ish feeling.

Noir as a genre has archetypical characters in its foundations and that is the path that Lee Su-jin takes straight from the start. The trouble is, however, that even the main trio (a seemingly benevolent, but corrupt politician, a vengeful proletarian father and a woman who serves as a damsel in distress, a femme fatale and a downright psycho) is never elevated to anything more than a cliché. The Korean star actors do what they can, Chun Woo-hee is especially memorable, and their interaction is both juicy and compelling. The supporting characters fared even worse: they are lost in numbers and relegated, at best, to plot devices.

It is evident that Lee, who also penned the script, has her mind somewhere else: on the plot that is complicated enough so it keeps the viewer intrigued for the whole duration of the film. However, the last drop of its logic gets lost in the inflation of twists and turns, so even the most attentive of the viewers to make any sense out of it.

Combined with fast pace, rapid editing and the runtime of 140 minutes, "Idol" definitely outstays its welcome a bit due to its intensity. But it is technically masterful and stylistically polished enough to be fun for most of the time, especially for a certain type of genre audience, which makes it more than a decent efort.

A Film a Week - So Long, My Son / Di jiu tian chang

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

While the specific sociopolitical moment (the re-emergence of censorship in China affecting the line-up of this year's Berlinale with eliminating Zhang Yimou's "One Second" from the official competition due to "post-production issues" being only the most prominent example) surrounding the world premiere of "So Long, My Son", the newest film by the Chinese 6th generation director Wang Xiaoshui, might be forgotten in the next couple of months, the film itself, the skill it was filmed with and its social relevance are here to stay with us for quite a period of time. The world premiere at Berlinale was crowned with the double Silver Bear for both of the leading actors and more of the festival exposure is likely to occur for Wang's three-hour epic examining the social and humane cost of the decades of the "one child" policy in China.

For the first hour of the film, the viewer might get lost in places, time frames and the network of secrets, lies and relationships between the characters. The film opens in mid80's at the river bank somewhere in the north, where one boy, Haohao, tries to convince another, Xingxing, to go to the water. In the next one, we see Xingxing, now a teenager played by up and coming Roy Wang, being his rebellious self, playing video-games at the dinnertime to disapproval of his caring mother Liyun (Yong Mei) and his more stern father Yaojun (Wang Jingchun). However, in the following scene shot discretely from afar, a boy got drowned and his family, Yaojun and Liyun, as well as their friends carry him on their hands to the hospital. So, did Xingxing survive the drowning somehow?

 

As it plays out, logically, he did not and the "new" Xingxing is the boy adopted before or when Yaojun and Lijun left their home in the north and moved to the southern coastal town of Fujian where they, unlikely many northern immigrants chasing quick cash, live a quiet life and keep to themselves, not even speaking nor understanding the local dialect. Xingxing, raised as a typical member of the generation of "little emperors" (the term forged for boys in particular during the years of "one child" policy), runs away from home when trouble he was looking for finally finds him.

Meanwhile, in the series of flashbacks we learn about Haohao's parents, the Party official Haiyan (Ai Liya) and Yingming (Cheng Xu) and the role they played in Liyun and Yaojun's life. Liyun was "encouraged" by Haiyan to follow the official policy and abort her second child, which left her unable to have more children in the future, while the relationship between Yaojun and Yingming's cousin Moli (Qi Xi) hired as his apprentice in the factory grows out of professional limits.

From the description, the plot seems melodramatic with lost sons, prodigal sons and sons born outside the wedlock, but the director Wang who also co-wrote the script with Ah Mei, rarely aims for pathos and over the top sentimentality. Instead, he focuses on the repercussions of the different social and economic policies ran in China over the course of three decades, from the dusk of Cultural Revolution and hard line communism to the boom of consumerism under the wing of state-sponsored capitalism witnessed at the turn of the millennium. The consequences are being shown from the perspective of ordinary people, using the two families as an example focusing more on the individual than wider social level of the scope.

Ambition, guilt and shame is something Wang deals with, while the wheel of history and politics stays always in the background. That is the principal reason for the non-linear structure which makes the film hard to follow in the beginning, while it pays off in the end, with a rare example of an earnest, non-sappy happy ending in the recent film history.

The acting is masterful throughout. Both Yong Mei and Wang Jingchun were crowned for there performances at the festival's award ceremony, rightfully so for the layered portrayals of complex characters, but the rest of the ensemble deserves a shout as well. That especially goes for the young Roy Wang who shows some real star power and the tactile Qi Xi whose beauty is even more stunning than in her breakthrough role in Ye Lou's "Mystery".

Regarding the technical aspect, "So Long, My Son" is an accomplished piece of cinema with mesmerising cinematography by Kim Hyun-seok who applies just the right amount of camera movement for the film to be neither static nor hectic and the unobtrusive music written by Dong Yingda in a pretty classical fashion. In the end, the mathematics is pretty simple: the viewers who remain patient for the first hour of the film will be rewarded in the end with a subtle and detailed piece that shows Wang Xiaoshui is close to the top of his game.

A Film a Week - The Crossing / Guo Chun Tian

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

It has been more than two decades since Hong Kong has rejoined the People's Republic of China, while maintaining its own political system, autonomy, currency and, generally speaking, way of life. The neighbouring Guangdong province has seen a huge economic developed since then, but another phenomenon is on the rise. There is a large number of people who commute on daily basis and therefore have double identity of sorts. That topic needs to be addressed also in cinema and the mainland Chinese first-time filmmaker Bai Xue does it in a stunning fashion and with a lot of style in her feature debut "The Crossing" ("Guo Chun Tian" in original). The film premiered at the last year's edition of TIFF to a warm critical reception and was shown on home turf at Pingyao International Film Festival, where it scooped a couple of awards before heading to its European premiere at Generation 14plus sidebar of Berlinale.

The secret of its uniqueness is the angle its writer-director takes, which is completely non-political. The trick she pulls is and old one, but it serves the purpose: he chooses a 16 year old girl as his protagonist. Her name is Peipei and she is from the mainland city of Shenzhen, but goes to school in Hong Kong. Since she has always wanted to see the snow, she wants to go to Japan with her best friend Jo for the next winter holiday season and she has to work for it. The minimal wage waitressing job does not pay that well, so she falls in with a crowd of teenage smugglers led by the motherly figure Mrs Hua to whom she is introduced by Jo's boyfriend Hao. For their iPhone smuggling scheme she is a perfect asset: nobody suspects a girl in a high school uniform who commutes daily, but sooner rather than later her life of crime will affect her relationships with the people in her environment on the both sides of the (administrative) border.

The choice of the protagonist's age is not just utilitarian in the way to avoid the inconvenient political questions, but it also opens more universal dichotomies in the terms of age (16 is the age when most of the people in Hong Kong start working, at least part-time, which changes their perception of life more to the adult side) and class. Simply put, a mainland student in Hong Kong school is considered a bit posh at her home town, while on the other side of the border she has to face with her classmates who are more affluent than her and their lifestyle she cannot afford nor imitate. Also, the script finds just the right tone regarding Peipei's family situation, making her father largely absent hard worker and her mother absent-minded casual alcoholic and party girl.

The casting choices Bai Xue makes are also on the money. That especially goes for Huang Yao who plays Peipei, for whom the role is a screen debut after some experience on the stage. The actress is proficient in both Mandarin and Cantonese, which is not a common trait, but it is necessary for the role, her naivety (or innocence, take it as you like it) cannot be faked, and that also goes for her uneasy chemistry with her co-stars, mainly Sun Yang as Hao and Ka-Man Tong as Jo, while Elena Kong fits the role of Mrs Hua perfectly, finding a perfect balance between menacing and warm presence.

But the people are not the only characters in this story. The cities are also elevated to that level. With the help of his DOP Piao Sangri, Xue employs different styles in portrait of both of them, highlighting the verticality of Hong Kong and busy feeling of its streets and alleys, while Shenzhen is caught in longer and wider takes, insisting on the calmness of the landscape where the protagonist feels at home. Combined with controlled pacing (kudos also to the editor Matthieu Laclau whose work we got to see on recent Jia Zhangke films from "A Touch of Sin" onwards), "The Crossing" is a complex film that tackles a number of topics with surgical precision, while keeping its heart at the right place.

Synonyms / Synonymes

kritika objavljena u dodatku Objektiv dnevnog lista Pobjeda i na portalu Analitika

Čim su objavljene prve kritike filma „Synonyms“, ostvarenje Nadava Lapida postalo je jedan od takmičarskih favorita Berlinala. Na kraju je krunisano i glavnom festivalskom nagradom, Zlatnim medvedom i priznanjem kritike FIPRESCI. Iako to možda deluje kao redak primer konsenzusa žirija različitog profila, izraelsko-francuski film svakako ne spada u kategoriju univerzalno privlačnih, već je bliži kontroverznim naslovima koji oštro dele gledaoce. 

Činjenica da je još jedan film iz Francuske, Ozonov „By the Grace of God“, dobio Gran pri žirija pokrenula je lavinu glasina o „francuskoj vezi“ i protekciji kod predsednice žirija, glumice Žilijet Binoš.

Sve to dešava se u trenutku kada je ovogodišnje izdanje Berlinala pogodio skandal velikih razmera. Nakon honkonško-kineskog naslova „Better World“iz programa Genaration, povučen je i takmičarski film „One Second“ kineskog veterana „pete generacije“ Žanga Jimoua, uz neuverljivo objašnjenje o zastoju u postprodukciji. To je u rang favorita po principu kompenzacije i političke izjave propeliralo i tročasovnu društveno-kritičnu dramu „So Long, My Son“ Vanga Siaošuaija koja je na kraju nagrađena sa dva Srebrna medveda za dvoje glavnih glumaca.

O filmu „Synonyms“ teško je izraziti koherentno mišljenje jer ovo i nije naročito koherentno ostvarenje i to, čini se, sa jasnom režiserskomnamerom. Reč je o filmu u kom su perspektiva režisera i problematičnog protagoniste skoro pa podudarne i čija radnja, premda izložena hronološki, nije posložena nužno logično. Ta vrsta kontraintuitivnosti može se uzeti kao plus ili kao minus, a može se i samo konstatovati kao nešto na čemu režiser insistira iz nekog sebi znanog razloga.

Berlinski pobednik počinje svojevrsnim standardom stranca u Parizu koji ne poznaje nikoga, a znanje jezika mu je školsko više nego životno. Prva varijacija na tu tipsku temu je rani obrt u kom glavni lik Joav, u interpretaciji fantastičnog debitanta Toma Mersijea, ostaje bez svega što je imao: kofera i odeće na sebi. Tek ga sutra ujutro skoro nasmrt smrznutog pronalazi buržoasko-umetnički par iz komšiluka, pisac u pokušaju Emil (Kventin Dolmer) i oboistkinja Karolin (Luiz Ševijot).

Oni ga oblače, pomažu mu da se snađe, daju mu novac i slušaju njegove priče, ali i to dolazi sa cenom. Počinju da se otimaju za njegovu naklonost i uvlače ga u neprijatni ljubavni trougao. I to je takođe još jedan standard. Ta priča u maniru filma „The Dreamers“ Bernarda Bertolučija čini jedinu konstantu u daljem prosedeu.

S druge strane, ostatak radnje koja prati Joavov pokušaj uklapanja u Pariz i stvaranje novog identiteta, izdeljen je u nekoliko međusobno nepovezanih, često bizarnih vinjetica upitne proverljivosti. 

Tako imamo, primera radi, malo čime motivisanu scenu plesa u klubu u koji je Joav ušao ne bi li se „ogrebao“ za pecivo; epizodu sa tučom dva izraelska veterana od kojih jedan provocira nasilje pod egidom borbe protiv antisemitizma; Joavov kratak period rada na mestu čuvara u izraelskoj ambasadi i kasnije poziranje čoveku za kog nije jasno da li umetnik ili perverznjak, da bi sve kulminiralo u integracijskoj školi jezika i kulture pevanjem „Marseljeze“.

Jasno, Joava nešto muči. Zbog toga više ne želi da pripada Izraelu koji mu se gadi, ali takav kakav je ne može da pripadne ni Francuskoj. Svi njegovi pokušaji integracije i asimilacije osuđeni su na neuspeh i bivaju praćeni nemotivisanim ispadima besa. Biti stranac u stranoj zemlji nije lako, makar na početku, a pritom patiti od posttraumatskog stresa izazvanog ratom, taj osećaj neugode i nepripadanja sužava i koncentriše do nivoa sopstvene kože.

Sasvim je moguće da je Joav Lapidov alterego, budući da je izraelski režiser početkom milenijuma živeo u Francuskoj i da je tom periodu prethodilo služenje vojnog roka u Izraelu. To bi bilo logično objašenje za bliskost dveju perspektiva, nekoherentnost, ritmičku „neparnost“ i osećaj magnovenja između stvarnog i fiktivnog. 

Lapid tu pokazuje režisersko umeće sa nekoliko sjajnih subjektivnih kadrova koji odstupaju od standarda pseudo-verističke drmusave kamere iz ruke i uz nekoliko dosetki. Ali, problem je u tome što film suviše liči na sopstvenog protagonistu.

A Film a Week - The Shadow Play

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

There is a lot of controversy about the Chinese films being pulled out of this year´s Berlinale. Having in mind that Generation title "Better World" was yanked out just before the festival and Zhang Yimou´s "One Second" was canceled and replaced by his old title "Hero" just days before its scheduled premiere, some might say that the sensitive situation with Ye Lou´s "The Shadow Play" (it got its permission from the national board shortly before the festival) got resolved without much fuss. The film was screened at Panorama and faced immediate positive reactions from the international press.

It is a crime story in a noir-like mystery key set in the ever-growing city of Guangzhou and amongst its real estate tycoon elite. In the midst of the turmoil about an urban development project that would leave a number of poor people homeless, the supposed leading man behind it Tang Yijie (Zhang Songwen) was found murdered. The hotshot police detective Yang Jiadong (Jing Boran) is assigned to the case and his investigation leads him in a number of counter-intuitive ways that might concern the murdered man´s business and personal ties. He is a man of a peculiar past connected with the town´s most influential businessman Jiang Zicheng (Qin Hao) in ways that exceed just business partnership.

Yang finds himself on a slippery road at the early stages of investigation when he gets involved with Tang´s long-suffering wife Lin (Song Jia) who also turns out to be Jiang´s lover. Tang´s daughter Nuo (Ma Sichun) might also be involved and a mysterious disappearance of a company woman Lian Ah Yun (Michelle Chen) seems to be the key for resolving the murder. Is Yang going to be successful in the battle of the wits with his richer and more influential advisories?

"The Shadow Play" is the film with a more than a fitting title where the viewer is spoon-fed the information about a very complicated plot masterfully written by Mei Feng, Qiu Yujie and Ma Yingli. As a director, Ye is does a good work, showcasing his perfect sense of rhythm and the ability to control the tempo, profiting on perfectly timed shocking revelations, sharp left-turns and nicely packed flashback moments that provide the key information about the characters and relationships.

Production design is also compelling for the story that stretches over the course of two decades and three major metropolitan cities in three different systems (Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Taipei). The camerawork by Jake Pollock based usually on shaky hand-held shots sometimes suits the film well, while occasionally getting exhausting, especially when overdone in action scenes. The blurred colours are generally a nice touch.

Regarding the acting, there was not much to be done since most of the characters fit the noir genre types, while regular bursts of melodrama from the story background also take their toll on the actors. However, the complicity of the crime and corruption plot and the sheer intrigue of it propel "The Shadow Play" to the ranks of an essential watch for genre lovers with a special taste for contemporary Chinese cinema.

A Film a Week - Sunday's Illness / La enfermedad del domingo

It is strange how festival programming could define the destiny of a particular film. Screened in a wrong selection at the right festival, it could get lost on the circuit and end up forgotten. This year Ramón Salazar’s fourth feature Sunday’s Illness serves as a perfect example: after the premiere at Berlinale’s Panorama and a very short spring festival tour, it ended up on Netflix (in the “International” section) in the early summer interesting only to the niche audience. Great reviews and “word of mouth” did not help much, so one of the best features of the year is largely overlooked.

The plot can be summed up in one sentence: a woman in her 40’s shows up in her estranged socialite mother’s life with a strange demand that two of them spend 10 days together in a mountain village and at home the mother abandoned without looking back. Over the course of days filled with scarce passive aggressive communication some personal and family secrets are revealed changing the lives for the both of them.

It all sounds like a bog standard material to be worked with in either the quiet arthouse mood piece register or as a more luscious Almodovar-esque melodrama, but Sunday’s Illness is something special right from the start. The film opens with a sharp contrast of messiness of younger Chiara’s (Bárbara Lennie) walk through the wooded area in the mountains and older Anabel’s (Susi Sánchez) preparations for hosting a charity dinner at her upscale, mansion-like home. The forest is wild and threatening, the inside of the house seems safe, but with more than a hint of rigorousness in the DOP Ricardo de Garcia’s symmetric framing and tone-down lighting, while the contrast is highlighted with the women’s hair colours – raven black and silver, almost white.

Their first encounter, with Chiara being on of the waitresses at the party and the very one to pour the last glass of wine before bedtime for Anabel, is awkward, as is Chiara’s request that will ensue. The next day, when the request is formally granted, with Chiara signing the papers stating that she will not seek further compensation, Anabel’s rich husband (Miguel Ángel Solá) seems relieved, but Anabel is not so sure what she is getting into. For a good reason, that is, since she is aware what she had done to her daughter when the latter was only 8 years old.

It would be bad to spoil the plot any further, even though the revelation comes at the two-thirds mark after a stretch of an exceptionally well written, elaborate banter between the two. Let us just say that Sunday’s Illness transcends both of the niches, the artsy and the melodramatic ones, by offering a genuine feeling of the drama with artistic elegance and striking emotion.

Sunday’s Illness depends a lot on its actresses, and they are both brilliant choices for their roles. On the surface, Susi Sánchez might seem as a link to Almodovar films (at least the last three where she featured), but here her performance is as strong as it is nuanced, which makes her character arc compelling. This year might prove to be crucial also for Bárbara Lennie who appeared in significant parts in four high-profile titles, including also the Cannes opener, Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows, but her performance in Sunday’s Illness leaves the viewer virtually speechless.

Salazar rarely misses the step in constructing the story (the dying bird detail is a tad too blatant character-building stunt for such a subtle work), while he shines as a director, employing a lot of purely visual storytelling through the predominantly static shots, with the excursion to something way wilder than that in the film’s technically most demanding shot of the two women riding some kind of cart down the slopes.

It is fair to say that Sunday’s Illness is one of the best films of the year for both its formal and narrative merits.

A Film a Week - The Silent Revolution / Das schweigende Klassenzimmer

Stalinstadt, GDR, 1956. A group of high school boys travels to West Berlin to see a film, a B-movie in which the actress shows her naked body, something that was not considered appropriate in socialist cinema. The point is not the movie, but the journal shown before: the report of Soviet tanks entering Hungary to crush the very first anti-communist revolution attempt in Europe. Sick of the Soviet occupation and domestic socialist propaganda, they decide to convince all of their class in joining them for two minutes of silence as the sign of the protest against socialists killing other socialists.

That causes a lot of stir in the rigid school system and the whole class falls under suspicion by the school and political authorities. It might seem a bit exaggerated, but lot of thinks are at stake in a country that relies on propaganda and paranoia. Were the school kids listening to the foreign radio? How did they get their information? What motivated them to act? Were they trying to conduct a revolution of their own? The pressure amounts on their parents and on them and the group dynamics shift from unity achieved through the debate to the state of cracking.

The Silent Revolution is a fiction film written and directed by Lars Kraume and based on Dietrich Grastka’s novel inspired by true events. At the beginning, it seems that what we expect, we shall get from it: a slightly above TV-worthy period piece written from nowadays mindset treating the events in the past with some kind of an agenda woven into the film’s text. The acting is decent, the period details are precise and the toned down pace and rhythm is just tolerable as we are expecting that the atmosphere of threat will be developed over the course of action.

The trouble is we do not get it. Kraume fails to convince us that his young characters are in danger of any sort. They will get an official warning from school? So what! Their unity will be tested under pressure? It always is. Even the characters themselves are thin, usually reduced to one or two personality traits, so we have a rebel coming from the ranks of “red bourgeois”, a pragmatic from a working class family, a generic radical girlfriend whose loyalty will be switched from one boy to another because of the “political” and not emotional reasons, the system firm believer, the tag-along people etc. etc. The dialogue is, appropriately, stiff and banal and Kraume even tries and fails to win us over with the oldest trick in the book: the love triangle, while he barely touches the social aspect of the whole thing.

And that is too bad, from a personal point of view, because I am usually a sucker for the things like coming of age, school-set films, youth rebellion and Cold War history. I am ready to “buy” it even when it is a bit sloppily done and unremarkable. Presumed good intentions aside, The Silent Revolution is just too flat.

A Film a Week - The Happy Prince

It is obvious that Rupert Everett’s debut as a writer-director, Oscar Wilde biography focused on his last three years of life The Happy Prince, was a passion project. Everett played Wilde’s literary alter-ego in Oliver Parker’s The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband and Wilde himself in the theatre play The Judas Kiss as he does in his own film, so we can even debate that he developed some kind of Wilde obsession. However, it is hard to see that from the meandering beginning of the film.

The good news is that The Happy Prince and the portrait of Wilde in it as a troubled man, fallen socialite and literary genius just needs a bit more time to kick in, and the film gets better and more emotionally resonant with time. Those acquainted with the biographical facts will not find anything that new here, but Wilde’s fall from grace shown a couple of times in the flashback scene on the train station where Wilde as a prisoner was spat on by an angry mob serves really well. On the other hand, the other recurring flashback scenes of Wilde telling his titular tale to his children as a bed-time story seems a bit sentimental and does not do much to establish his character as a man longing for family life as intended.

The focus is somewhere else, on relationships with his wife Constance (Emily Watson) which is more on the financial side and his friends and lovers sometimes providing support like his publisher Robbie Ross (Edwin Thomas) and loyal friend Reggie Turner (Colin Firth), but usually leading to more and more trouble like Alfred “Boise” Douglas (portrayed as a divine-looking, but charmless spoiled brat by Colin Morgan), Wilde’s financial struggle not just to get by but also to maintain the hedonist lifestyle, constant moving from one place to another, writer’s block and schemes to somehow get around it. Most of all, it is about his desperate search for love anywhere he could (not) possibly find it.

Which brings us to the title. The tale itself was, like most of Wilde’s work in that genre, atypically dark and with a bleak ending instead of a happy one, which goes well with the generally dark tone of the film. But Wilde as character is not selfless like the statue of the prince in the story. Maybe he is in an emotional sense (to all the wrong people), but in his actions he is quite selfish. The parallel has been drawn somewhere else – to the decay and his crumbling physical and mental health pictured by John Conroy’s cinematography in grayish rainy colours and underlined by Rupert Everett’s acting always a notch above his sense of directing the film. Wilde here is an unhappy prince, like the statue stripped of its glamour desperately trying to revert the time and to be loved and accepted.

A Film a Week - Requiem for Mrs. J / Rekvijem za gospođu J

There are two kinds of fiction films from Eastern Europe, heavily relied on standard tropes, that are being deemed desired by big festivals. Basically, either we get a serious-as-death social realist drama about the perills of communism, capitalism, transition or war and its effect on Average Joe / Plain Jane and their family, or we get pretty much the same context, but seen throught the filter of irony, pitch-black and absurdist comedy. The question is: “Why should not we have both versions?” And with a dash of surrealism, too. Bojan Vuletić’s sophmore feature Requiem for Mrs J, which premiered in Berlinale’s Panorama Special, is something new, smart and emotionaly charged.

Our title heroine, Jelena (played with great devotion by iconic Serbian actress Mirjana Karanović), lives the daily life of depression. Her daily routine is mundane and empty, her flat in drab residential blocks of New Belgrade suburb is messy. She lives with her elderly mother-in-law (a wonderful, for the most of the time silent performance by the legend of Serbian cinema and theatre Mira Banjac) and her two daughters, grade-school age foul-mouth Koviljka (newcomer Danica Nedeljković) and twenty-something over-worked Ana (Jovana Gavrilović). Ana’s boyfriend Milanče (Vučić Perović) might not live there, but he is never too far away, especially when there is work that needs to be done.

Jelena was widowed almost a year ago and has no real reason to live. So she wants to make a statement with killing herself on her husband’s death anniversary. But before that, she needs to wrap up some ordinary things: to get her name carved next to her husband’s on their gravestone, to try to take out her life insurance money and to validate her health insurance (there is a reason for that, don’t worry), for which she needs some kind of paper from the company she worked for until recently. And since we are in Serbia, that kind of bureaucratic nonsense can get very tricky, absurd and even crazy.

Aside of actors, the strongest feature of Vuletić’s film is cinematography by Jelena Stanković. The pallette consisting mainly of muddy brownish-gray colours may be a bit expected in this kind of film, but the real power is in static master shots, beautifully composed and perfectly simmetrical. When the camera finally gets to move, usually in our heroine’s nighmarish daydreams, it speaks volumes, being at the same time poetic and making a strong statement.

Still, Requiem for Mrs J is an interesting piece of cinema, but not a perfect one. The first change of tone, from kitchen-sink drama to Kafka-esque style absurdist tragi-comedy was done perfectly, but Vuletić doesn’t want to end on that note. So he shifts the tone again in the final act, which leads to the ending that doesn’t quite work, but still has its charm in some details. Additional problem is Vuletić’s writing with occasional long lines of text, that is all fine and dandy when they are delivered by experienced actors like Boris Isaković and Srđan “Žika” Todorović who both have their small supporting parts, but they prove to be a problem for Jovana Gavrilović who over-acts the hell of the scene that should be the emotional center of the film.

Nevertheless, Requiem for Mrs J is a good film, and quite effective parable on everyday life in Serbia painted by poverty, disillusion and overwhelming bureaucracy. Even suicide does not seem like an easy way out. It might not even be possible.

A Film a Week - Spoor / Pokot

After several years working on different television series, Agnieszka Holland returned to filmmaking with modern day rural thriller set on Polish-Czech border with ecological and political undertones Spoor which premiered in this year’s Berlinale competition and won Alfred Bauer Prize. This is her first film since Oscar-nominated In Darkness (2011). It is to early to speak about awards ambitions, but, in Polish and Central-Eastern European context of “non-liberal democracy”, Spoor will be talked about in months to follow.

The film is based on Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead (2009), adapted for the screen by novelist and the director themselves. The plot is centered around Mrs. Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat-Grabka in a great turn), a retired civil engineer who moved to a small village in mountain region, took a part-time job teaching English in local elementary school and developed interest in astrology and eco-activism. The latter can be especially tricky in the region with strong hunting traditions, where literally everyone is connected through hunting societies and where the grade school age children are thought hunting anthems.

First her dogs disappear, which can be a natural hazard of life in the wilderness, or more likely provocation of sorts. Shortly after that, dead bodies of hunters start popping up, from a low-life poacher to local magnate, police chief and even mayor and all of them had their disagreements with the “crazy” old lady. Mrs. Duszejko has a theory that, since all the crime scenes are covered in different animal tracks, it is some sort of natural cycle and payback for all the hunting and poaching. Or maybe we have the case of a good ol’ fashioned serial killer here...

Luckily, she is not all alone there. Her neighbour Matoga (Wiktor Zborowski) makes some moves towards her, but more than that, they enjoy the company of one another. Mrs. Duszejko’s kindness towards a troubled young woman called “Good News” (Patrycja Volny) will result in friendship with her and another outsider, an epileptic computer technician Dyzio (Jakub Grieszal) working for the police. And her “party” is rounded with a travelling Czech university professor interested in insects named Boros (Miroslav Krobot).

The sense of community, no matter how marginal and alternative it is can be crucial for mental sanity in the conservative, patriarchal, even primitive and primal environment. It is not just about ecology and making the case against hunting (even though the film’s internal calendar is informing the viewers about the hunting seasons). It is about Polish society in general: the strong influence of the Catholic Church and interwined conservative structures that are posing for absolute majority even if they are not. The anti-eco argument was pulled out for the last parliamentary elections, the old left-leaning government was accused of taking care only after “eco-fanatics, bicycle-riders and vegans in big cities”, and not giving a damn about “regular”, conservative, god-fearing “majority” of Polish people. That kind of narrative worked: Polish society is divided in two sides pitted against one another, with virtually no dialog in between them and little hope that the things will change in near future. Having that in mind, Spoor is a film that perfectly nails the current moment of time, no matter the fact that the source novel was written years ago, when the overall situation was not that bleak.

I would like to say that Spoor is as good piece of cinema as it is an important, uncompromising social statement. Unfortunately, it is not true, it is good, but not that good. The production values are decent, on the course of similarly themed Nordic thrillers. The TV-roots of such films are evident on every step on the way, and Holland’s recent work leaves its mark. She tries and somewhat succeeds to tweak it up with some marvelous shots of nature changing with the seasons and humorous intervention with the hunting calendar. The actors’ performances are also commendable, with the stage and film veteran Agnieszka Mandat-Grabka leading the way with the “juiciest” role of the film’s heroine and others following her cue and taking their moments to shine.

The main problem with Spoor is not the fact that it relies to heavily on context, but its logic and mechanics taken from literature that works so well on paper does not cut the deal for the film. Right from the start, it is obvious that Spoor is a direct screen adaptation just by its rhythm. The feeling is cemented with the ending which is perfect for a crime novel, but is over-explanatory and too verbal for the art and craft of filmmaking. That should not come as a surprise since the writer was involved in adaptation of her own work, and the good thing is that Spoor works for the most of the time, but it still could and should be a better piece of cinema.

A Film a Week - When the Day Had No Name

“In the suburbs of Skopje, three days before Easter 2012, four boys were found dead by the lake. They went fishing the morning before. The case still remains unsolved. But this is not their story.”

This is, paraphrased, the title card of Teona Strugar Mitevska’s new film When the Day Had No Name, premiering in this year’s Berlinale section Panorama. It is clear that Mitevska is not trying to solve the police case, not even documenting the boys’ last two days (as another Macedonian author, Milčo Mančevski did with the last passage of his latest film Mothers). This is more of the re-imagination, not that much of the gruesome murder, but more of their coming to age in contemporary Macedonia troubled with poverty, lack of hope for a better future and shadows of ethnic conflicts between Macedonians and Albanians.

Mitevska takes her time to get us acquainted with the characters, all played by newcomers. Milan (Leon Ristov) lives in a recently built mansion with a step-mother (played by the filmmaker’s sister and one of rare professionals in the cast Labina Mitevska) he can’t stand. His best friend Petar (Hanis Bagašov) lives in a cramped home with a lot of relatives and has not so discreet crush on Milan. By the way, Milan is dating Renata (Ines Hodžić), but is not ready to come forward to his friends because Renata could be considered fat and undesirable in the shallow mindset of teen boys.

The rest of the gang are Vladan (Dragan Mishevski), Ace (Stefan Kitanović), Rapae (Ivan Vrtev Soptarjanov) and wheelchair-bound Cvetan (Igor Postolov). They spend their days wandering around the decaying post-socialist suburbs, talking trash on the school playground, getting in a fight with some local Albanian boys their age, boasting about their manhood and planning a night in town and a fishing trip together. In the background we can see the desperation and graffiti full of the on-the-nose symbolism like “No future”.

The film has a nice, deliberate pace and is heavier on the atmosphere than on plot, but it is not devoid of it. Mitevska stays discreet enough in her choices not to show everything, which is especially important in the “whorehouse” scene, where she stays on the corridor with the group, while they one by one go to the room to “have their fun”. The film is masterfully shot by French DOP Agnès Godard (The Falling, The Sister) and edited by Stefan Stabenow (Babai, In Bloom) and Sophie Vercruysse (Baden Baden, Our Children), and the strings drone by Jean-Paul Dessy dictates the mood in a delightfull way.

The problem is, however, the treatment of the teen characters. They function well as the group character, but they are not developed enough on an individual level. Milan and Petar actually resemble human beings, but the rest of the gang are stripped-down to one or two traits and quirks. For instance, Vladan dates a divorcée, so he actually knows a thing or two about women, Ace is a nationalist and a loud-mouth chauvinist, Rapae is “the crazy one” because he has long hair and a motorcycle and Cvetan, aside of his handicap, is the only one with moral doubts about having fun in an illegal brothel. That kind of sketching the characters takes its toll when they start to fall out with one another, which feels kinda forced.

The other trouble is much more common in cinema: the filmmakers rarely have contact with real teens so they could understand their world-views. Mitevska is no exception to that, her characters are more like how she imagines the boys of that age than what the boys are actually like. In the film a bunch of 18-year-olds are acting like infantile 13-year-old kids. That might work for the director to prove her point about some sort of arrested development in an impoverished country on a brink of the war, but that is pretty standard for nowadays East European art house cinema. When the Day Had No Name is a good example for that: visually polished, well-intended, but pretty unremarkable, almost ideal to be some sort of a festival “filler”.