A Film a Week - Santosh

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Like India itself, its cinema tends to be very diverse. The cultural diversity of the country itself powers the diversity of cinematic styles and schools, while also diversity genre-wise can be noted, from Bollywood spectacles and popular action flicks via highly artistic stuff, documentaries and docu-fiction to proper genre flicks like fantasies and horrors. Genre-mixing also occurs and when it is done smartly, the results can be very interesting. In the case of “Santosh”, the genres in the mix are procedural crime thriller and a naturalist social drama with certain documentary ambitions. The film premiered at Cannes’ Un certain regard and we were lucky enough to catch it at Zagreb Film Festival.

The titular protagonist played by Shahana Goswami is a widow of a police officer who was killed on duty. Her in-laws hurry to take her back to the family she came from, having her for a “cursed witch” who was somehow responsible for their son’s death, possibly still unable to reconcile with the fact that their marriage was not an arranged one. A lucky break happens to Santosh when she goes for a “compassionate appointment” scheme through which the widows (or widowers) of the police officers fallen on duty are offered training and constable position with the paycheck on top of their partner’s pension.

She accepts it and soon enough, even though she is not highly regarded by her male colleagues, she gets some respect from the community. Pursuing a path to help an illiterate Dalit man to file a missing person report for his teenage daughter, she soon enough stumbles upon her first murder investigation. The victim is the same girl whose missing her father tried to report and the primary suspect is a Muslim youngster from the village nearby, Saleem (Arbaz Khan) who tried to seduce her. Guided by her mentor Sharma (Sunita Rajwar of the “Stree” serial), Santosh uncovers how the system divided along the lines of gender, class, caste and religion really works in contemporary rural areas of Northern India. Newsflash: the idea of justice is merely a dream, the games of power and humiliation are played constantly and “railroading” the convenient suspect is quite a common practice in the police force so defunded that it is not able to conduct a proper investigation.

“Santosh” is a feature-length fiction debut for the British-Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri who previously made her name with two documentaries – “I for India” (2005) and “Around India with a Movie Camera” (2018) – in which she explored the country’s reality both after and before gaining independence from the British colonial rule. The documentarian background of the filmmaker can be observed both in her script that uses a relatively simple crime-thriller-”sunny noir” plot to explore the contemporary reality in its background and in her approach to directing in which she opts for naturalism through dimly lit hand-held shots in more actiony sequences contrasted with longer and calmer observational shots that try to depict ordinary life.

Both the cinematography by Lennert Hillege and the editing of Maxime Pozzi-Garcia deserve praise, and so does Suri’s work with the actors that are kept in various registers fitting for the types and the functions of the roles they play. For instance, Shahana Goswami is beautifully subdued as the protagonist who has to stand a lot of inner turmoil at her new job, and so is Arbaz Khan as the frightened suspect, while the actors who play the characters who provide the film with the concepts and ideas rather than emotional grounding are instructed to use broader strokes, which suits Sunita Rajwar and the rest of the cast members who play the figures of authority quite fine.

However, “Santosh” does not fare that well as a genre piece since its overall energy is much calmer from what the audience expects and the dynamic accents are not as strong as they should be for such a film. On the other hand, it is hitting the mark of a socially conscious and emotionally charged drama, a character study and a morality play. The end result is an art house flick that is extremely friendly with the festival-attending audiences.

A Film a Week - Sew Torn

 previously published on Cineuropa

There is a theory that every little choice we make could potentially change our lives completely, but in practice, all of the decisions can lead to pretty much the same outcome. For Barbara, the heroine of Freddy Macdonald’s feature debut, Sew Torn, showing on the Piazza Grande at Locarno, this would equate to different types of death, as we see them in an elegantly shot opening montage sequence. This premise is not all that new – we will remember films ranging from Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run to those that actually mimic video-game logic, and the same goes for the approach adopted, which runs along the same lines as the Coen brothers’ earlier works. Nevertheless, this combination might sit well with wider audiences at festivals (the film actually world-premiered at SXSW), in regular theatrical distribution and, later, on VoD platforms.

Barbara (Eve Connolly, best known for her roles in the series Into the Badlands and Vikings) is a seamstress who operates the shop she inherited from her late mother in a village in the mountains. There is not much work to do, and the still-grieving Barbara is not highly motivated to do it either, but when she gets a call from elderly bride Grace (Caroline Goodall), asking her to mend her dress for her third wedding, she heads to her place. Since Grace is quite a pest of a client, Barbara makes a mistake and loses a button, so she has to go back to fetch a new one.

On her way back to her shop, she witnesses something that will change her life. What initially seems like a traffic accident is actually a drug deal gone wrong, which involves courier Beck (Thomas Douglas) and the local mobster’s reluctant son, Josh (Calum Worthy). Barbara has three choices: to use her particular set of skills as a seamstress to commit the perfect crime, to call the police or to simply drive away. However, in any of these situations, mobster Hudson Armitage (the seasoned John Lynch) will soon enter the scene…

The film’s lightweight quirkiness in most aspects is probably its biggest trump card. This world – which looks like the Swiss Alps (where it was actually shot) but is populated by Irish actors, is pastel-coloured and is filled with strange knick-knacks, such as portraits accompanied by a voice which is activated by a switch in the guise of a needle or thread – is definitely something we do not see in the movies every day. It also serves as a reminder of the talent of Viviane Rapp, who acted as both production and costume designer here, and of Macdonald’s sense for including strange little details in the bigger picture. Macdonald should also be commended for his work as his own editor, as he proves focused enough to filter out ideas with a noticeable amount of determination.

As for the acting, Eve Conolly could turn out to be a revelation, especially for parts that require versatility but not great nuance, so that any transformations can be applied quickly and instinctively. On the other hand, John Lynch is still the “MVP” of the film thanks to his sheer threatening presence, which remains sinister, even when we catch him peddling the same, corny joke for the third time. Meanwhile, the others have bit roles that they are instructed to approach in a more or less cartoonish way.

All of this is sufficient to make Sew Torn a fun movie and a pleasant viewing experience. Clearly, it is not a masterpiece in any way, but Macdonald has proven himself to be capable of executing a proper crowd-pleaser.

A Film a Week - The Owner / Hozyan

 previously published on Cineuropa

Over the course of the last decade, Yury Bykov has positioned himself as something of a renaissance man in Russian independent cinema. Beyond writing and directing a number of modestly budgeted, genre-infused and socially charged films, he has also often acted, edited and composed the music for them.

His newest effort, The Owner, which had been in production since 2020, finally premiered at last year’s edition of the Geneva International Film Festival. Most recently, it scooped the top prize at Belgrade International Film Festival FEST, marking the helmer’s second time winning the Belgrade Victor award, after the success o The Fool back in 2015.

Once again, Bykov deals with an ordinary man who gets entangled with corruption in the contemporary Russian provinces. This time, our man is Ivan / Vanya Menshov (Artyom Bystrov, star of The Fool), a modest car mechanic living a simple life with his wife (Klavdiya Korshunova) and their two children in a snowy provincial town. Their lives are about to be changed when they witness a horrific car accident, after which Vanya reacts promptly and bravely, saving the man involved from his burning car.

That man, however, is not an ordinary person, but Dmitri / Dima Rodin (Oleg Fomin), the most powerful local FSB (Federal Security Service) agent, and, as it turns out, the master of business, life and death in the region. The two start spending more and more time together, which initially turns out to be rather beneficial for Vanya as he quickly rises in the ranks of the luxury car dealership owner’s affairs. However, both Dima’s power in the greater scheme of things and his gratitude have their limits, and so does Vanya’s tolerance towards Dima’s shady and vengeful character…

Bykov once again creates a lean but powerful political thriller powered by the lived-in performances of his actors, who elevate their archetypal characters to a more life-like plane. The visual style employed to portray the contrasts between crumbling Soviet-era urban locations and the perks of the nouveau-riche lifestyle, with hand-held camerawork that tends to get shaky during the action sequences, is quite suitable. The same goes for Anna Krutiy’s dynamic editing, which makes the film’s two-hour runtime seem much shorter. Even Bykov’s writing has improved from his previous efforts, and his penchant for preaching through the mouths of his characters is kept at a bare minimum.

On the other hand, it seems that Bykov is now more critical of the system as a whole, as The Owner aims higher than corrupt police officers (The Major), local officials (The Fool), or tycoons who privatise the factories (The Factory). Dima’s profession might be a clear hint at whom his character is a stand-in for, while the repeating motif of grassroots ecological protests being dispersed at his order may indicate what Bykov represents.

A Film a Week - Twenty Hacker

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

From a film titled “Twenty Hacker”, one might expect that we are going to get some hacking action in the world of financial, corporate cyber-crime. But with Han Hyun-seok’s debut effort, we are simply not that lucky.

Working from the script written by Ahn Jeon-joo, Han actually opens the film with an action-type of scene. Our protagonist Jae-min (Kwon Hyun-bin) is in a darkened corporate building, working some “magic” with computers there while constantly being on the phone with the rest of the crew. His time is running out, and on his way back, he is interrupted by the security guards. That intro sends the first half (or even more) of the film to the realm of flashback…

We learn that Jae-min is a computer science student whose father was a victim of a hacking fraud, so he strives for revenge. When he is not studying or spending time with his only friend and love interest Jo-hee (Lim Na-young) who is, unfortunately, in love with the university’s alpha-dude and sportsman Chan-ho (Lee Su-woong), Jae-min hacks into the systems of fraudulent companies and alarms the police of their illegal actions anonymously. His actions draw the attention of a group called Better World, of which the two of his former school “frenemies” Man-gook and Hye-so are already members. Could they work as a team in order for Jae-min to execute the revenge on the rival group?

The story and the idea behind it are simple enough, but the whole thing is crippled by both clumsy plotting and equally unapt genre-mixing with romantic comedy. In that the whole cyber-crime and hacking angle gets lost and feels sacrificed for the unfunny, poorly-timed and ultimately slapstick-y jokes. The sense of meandering is even enhanced with tone-deaf directing that, in theory, probably serves as Han’s showcase of solutions that are, unfortunately, largely wrong.

That notion gets quite obvious with the technical components, especially the editing that uses all the tricks and tips applicable to television, such as zooms and horizontal camera rotations as editing tools, montage sequences and abrupt cutting. They all make the already artificially convoluted plot even harder to follow. The overbearing use of soundtrack that shifts in music styles and sometimes even relies on the many-times-heard loops and jingles is also a dead give-away that the creative time has no idea what they are doing.

The same TV-qualities could be applied for acting that is never above the level of K-drama series. In the defence of the actors playing the roles of the main couple, they are pretty much amateurs, coming from the ranks of music with only previous experiences in the drama series. The rest of the cast pretty much goes along the given lines.

All in all, “Twenty Hacker” does not seem like a movie at all, but more as an extended pilot for a run-of-the-mill TV series. The sooner we realize it, this bitter pill gets easier to swallow, but it still does not mean that the show made out of it would be particularly worth watching.

A Film a Week - The Vanished / Vanishing

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Denis Dercourt is by no means an A-lister in the realm of French cinema, but he nevertheless made some career, both at home and abroad in Germany, especially with his 2006 Cannes title “The Page Turner”. With last year’s “The Vanished” (somewhere already released as “Vanishing”), Dercourt tried to bring his career on a new level by adapting the novel “The Killing House” of a renowned British crime fiction author Peter May in a French-Korean co-production and set in Seoul. After the premiere at last year’s Busan, some minor festival bookings and limited theatrical and online releases, it is now released globally on various digital platforms.

The topic is set in an opening sequence. A bulky man (Choi Moo-seong) goes to an underground surgical facility from which he picks up a heavy load in suitcases. The facility itself turns out to a mob-operated organ harvesting point, and the organs obtained there go through a complicated procedure of being masked as properly imported ones before being transplanted to the patients. However, the real plot starts with a discovery of a female dead body in a nearby stream. The body has been there for at least one month, so it cannot by identified by any of the conventional means, but the strange thing about it is the fact that the victim died while being under heavy, but still not lethal dose of anesthetic.

Luckily for the detective Park (Yoo Yeon-seok, glimpsed as young Woo-jin in the original “Oldboy”, who made a career on television after that), who handles the case, a forensic conference is in town and the French “star” of it, Alice Launey (Olga Kurylenko) is an expert on a new method of fingerprinting the heavily decomposed bodies, so he enlist her help. First they discover the identity of a dead woman (who turns out to be a legal Chinese immigrant working for the cleaning service), and then the bigger plot that involves more bodies and an organ trafficking scheme. While they try to solve the case(s), a romantic spark between them lights up…

The trouble with the otherwise thick plotting in the script Dercourt co-wrote with Marion Doussout starts with very rough characterization in which only the detective and the forensic expert have a hint of psychologically deeper personality, which still does not make their romance any more believable. The rest of the characters, with the noble exception of her assistant Mi-sook (Ye Ji-won), turn out to be the usual types, such as the mob contractor, the assassin (Kim Woo-hyung), the corrupt doctor (Lee Seung-jun) and the mobster, making the whole organ-trading scheme and therefore the investigation feel quite generic.

However, Dercourt is slightly better as a director than he is as a writer, at least in the terms of composing the atmosphere with a dash of noir in a largely procedural plot, resulting in a modern, distinctively European thriller with some Korean flavour. In his defence, the plot of the original novel takes place in Shanghai, in a very different legal and political system, so some things might have got lost in translation.

Acting-wise, the accent is put on the only proper star of the film, Kurylenko, who not only speaks a tad too perfect French, but manages to play an indefinitely troubled character in a very convincing manner, while the rest of the cast pretty much follows her leads. As Park, Yoo Yeon-seok adds a bit of a goofy charm, but the lack of a real chemistry could be seen in more emotionally demanding scenes. The same could be said regarding the mystery of Mi-sook’s character, which Ye Ji-won plays competently in her own terms, but it still cannot be a match for Kurylenko’s skills and zest.

The technical components of the film are probably the highlight of the film, especially when it comes to Axel Cosnefroy’s cinematography in very distinctive lighting that is dim and cold at the same time, and Jérôme Lemonnier’s eclectic music score that uses the neoclassical forms, electronic beats and noirish jazz in a counter-intuitive fashion. Valentin Féron’s editing also deserves praise for the quick pacing favoured over clarity and especially for the craftiness of the opening sequence that raises the hopes that “The Vanished” would be a better film than it eventually is.

All things considered, it is a decent, if unremarkable piece of work. Less than sum of its parts, more likely a median value of them, it is sufficient for an average viewing experience at home, which makes digital platforms a good choice for the primary channel of its distribution.

A Film a Week - Tooman

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Tooman (or toman) is the super-unit of currency in Iran (worth 10 rials, used in the monetary calculations in daily life) and also the title of Morteza Farshbaf’s third feature film. What revolves around what in this one is actually quite an easy guess. The movie premiered earlier this year at Fajr Film Festival before the festival touring options were cut short for the whole industry. We got to see it at Tallinn Black Nights where it competed in the official selection.

The film follows the two buddies, Davood (Mirsaeed Molavian) and Aziz (Mojtaba Pirzadeh, glimpsed in Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning “The Salesman”) over the course of a year. The guys and their gang of friends are passionate about three things: football (as in soccer), horse races and gambling, so they, lead by Davood, devise a betting operation of sorts which brings them billions and billions of toomans seemingly by pure luck. Once the big money enters the picture, things tend to go sour for all of them personally and on the level of group dynamic. Could Davood, Aziz and their crew keep their sanity, friendship and lives?

“Tooman” was clearly inspired by the American crime-drama classics, especially those directed by Martin Scorsese. Some of the key ingredients are also here in the mix, like the typical “rise and fall” narrative, the bursts of violence and even the questionable attitude towards the women. The only thing “Tooman” lacks is a narrator who would tell the story with more clarity and some sense of humour, which is just the beginning of the problems.

Long story short: Farshbaf is not Scorsese even by a long shot. The plot is so bewildering that pretty much every aspect of it seems random and the filmmaker’s attempts to provide an illustration by graphics of the bets and wins are largely futile. In the end, we do not know a thing about their operation, is it fair by anyone’s standard, who are they crossing, how and why. Also, the toxic masculinity of Farshbaf’s characters (the women here are basically non-entities, their only use is to be hit or shouted at for hindering) is never countered with any form of criticism.

Directing-wise, the film also does not live up to its own ambition, especially when the filmmaker, whose past experiences are in the realm of drama, tries to play with the genre. The lack of production values and the technical know-how speaks volumes here. It is a bit better when it comes to the breakdowns within the characters’ minds and the consequences for their friendship, but it also basically goes nowhere. Luckily, Farshbaf has some sense of aesthetics, so he can treat us with a shot or two of the Iranian cinematic elegance (executed by the cinematographer Morteza Najafi), usually having something to do with a moving car and two people talking in it, while the electronica-infused soundtrack by Mohamadreza Heydary closely follows the mood cleverly framed in the four acts named after the seasons of the year.

In the end, “Tooman” is just an ambitious projects whose ambition is never backed by the clarity of vision and the sharpness of execution. Too bad.

A Film a Week - Take Out Girl

 previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Hisonni Johnson (also known as Hisonni Mustafa) is best known for his camera- and directorial work on music- and superhero fan videos, as well as on television has a new feature indie film under his belt. “Take Out Girl” has premiered at this years edition of Cinequest Film Festival and is reaping awards at minor festivals across the US ever since. We had the chance to see it at CAAMFEST Forward aimed at Asian-American cinema.

The titular character is Tera, played by Johnson’s co-screenwriter Hedy Wong. We meet her in the midst of her acting on her abrupt decision to drop out of college in order to help her ailing mother Wavy (Lynna Yee) with the work in their Chinese takeaway. We learn that Tera is whip-smart, business-oriented and that she takes no bullsh*t from anyone. The business is family-owned, together with Tera, her brother Saren (Lorin Alond Ly) and cousin Crystal (Mier Chasin) also work there.

The business is failing, but Tera has an innovative idea: to use her “invisibility” as a young Asian delivery girl in order to deliver the drugs pushed by the Latino gang lead by Lalo (Ski Carr). There is a lot of logic in that idea (she would mostly be ignored by the police, especially if the package is comfortably wrapped inside a bag with the logo), and the success seems inevitable. On the other hand, she might quickly find herself way over her head for doing the risky business with the violent people. Could that have the repercussions for her family and her new love interest Nate (Dijon Talton), a kind black man who works as a janitor in the area?

Johnson and Wong get some of the aspects quite right in their screenplay, especially when it comes to depicting the multi-cultural milieu of Los Angeles and the hardships that both the first- and second generation immigrants have to endure in their life since they never had a proper shot at the American dream. The family and the intrapersonal relationships are also nailed by the screenwriting duo, while Hedy Wong is more than capable to channel the energy of a smart and strong young woman willing to fight and hustle in order to provide a better life for her family that is largely ignored by the society.

The other characters, however, usually suffer from under-development, so the lesser-known actors that are quite good at melting with the background of a daily Los Angeles murmur cannot actually shine. Lynna Yee is a noble exception as the single mother operating the honest business that has to face with the old age and the years of hard work taking their toll. While Lalo is relegated to a gang-banger stereotype, the others both from cohort and from Tera’s surroundings are quite one-dimensional as characters.

Another problem is the pacing of the plot, where Johnson, assuming the multiple roles in the crew (apart from being the director and one of the screenwriters, he also dealt with the cinematography and editing, while also being the producer of the film), seemingly tried to elongate the material which would be perfectly appropriate for a killer short to the feature format. There is a slight feeling of repetition and redundancy dramaturgy-wise, while the shoestring budget becomes apparent in the more demanding action scenes, especially on the special effects level. Other than that, Johnson manages to pack the movie in the aesthetics that slightly resembles that of a music video (quite expected), while the hip-hop infused soundtrack by James Van Boldt and Zaiaku certainly helps by dictating the rhythm and highlighting the diversity.

If not exactly smooth in melting the aspects of the family- and social drama with those of a genre film, “Take Out Girl” is very efficient in painting the detailed landscape of the things we are not able to see that often in both the mainstream and the independent cinema. It is an interesting, important movie that can be considered to be a noble effort.

A Film a Week - Integrity / Lian zheng feng yun

previously published on Asian Movie Pulse

Alan Mak is a Hong Kong helmer whose legacy exceeds the boundaries of the national cinema. The reason is quite simple and a part of common knowledge: "Infernal Affairs" trilogy that has spread the influence of the contemporary Hong Kong genre cinema to the whole world. Mak was not the only person responsible for it, since he collaborated with Felix Chong, with whom he also did another trilogy, "Overheard". On his own, Mak has envisioned yet another crime thriller trilogy named "Integrity", which is tonally different from his previous work. After a smart and out of the box theatrical release last year for the Chinese New Year (the slot is usually reserved for featherweight comedies and dramas) that resulted in decent earnings on the box office, "Integrity" is now available on video.

The story revolves around the relationship between an ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) chief investigator King (Lau Ching Wan) and his star witness Jack Hui (Nick Cheung) in a case against a tobacco trade company Alpha Leader's CEO and a corrupt customs agent (Anita Yuen, wasted in a bit role). When both Hui and the CEO fail to appear at the court, ICAC is given seven days to bring them. Since Hui is spotted in Australia, King's estranged wife Shirley Kong (Lam Kar Yan) is sent to persuade him as an ICAC expert negotiator, while strange things and transactions (including those in criptocurrencies) come to the light.

It is clear that fear was not the only motivator for Hui's escape, but the threat of violence hangs in the air for those involved, while everyone in ICAC tries to locate the puppet master pulling the strings in the back. It turns out that King and Hui go way back, and this type of ethically questionable operating does not sit well with King's boss (Alex Fong) and King's star status in the organization is also in danger...

The tonal difference from other Mak's works is apparent from early on, since "Integrity" is a talky cop-thriller slash procedural that is almost devoid of all the action. However, there is one car chase scene in the second half of the film that is almost too brief to be taken in consideration and one spectacular murder later on where Mak shows his directorial skills. The viewers remain engaged for the time being with a number of plot point revelations (spoken!) and twists and turns. The role models are clear here: the paranoid thrillers of the early 70s New Hollywood movement, like Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" and Alan J. Pakula's "Klute" and "The Parallax View", but Mak proves not to be the type of a writer and director who is capable of pulling it off as a proper cinematic experience. Despite the solid production values, Jake Pollock's slick cinematography, Curran Pang's precise editing and even Anthony Chue's old school orchestral score, "Integrity" looks like a high-end TV movie or like a piece of a slightly outdated mid-budget theatrical movie from twenty-something years ago.

The trouble is with Mak's writing schtick of inflationary twists and turns that can be corrected only with Mak's signature action directing, but Mak the director has taken another path here, exposing all the vulnerabilities of Mak the writer (Ram Ling and Wai Ho Chuen, also signed as writers, are secondary here). The flashbacks seem out of the blue and unnecessary, while the cliffhanger ending is obviously signalling that the sequels will appear. With them, "Integrity" might get some additional sense and, well, integrity.

The good thing with Mak's writing is that at least the trio of main actors get enough of their characters to work with and that the dialogue sounds both natural and genre-movie cool, at least with English subtitles. Veteran actor Lau Ching Wan, also known as Sean Lau, (of "Black Mask" and "Mad Detective" fame) chews the script in a self-confident, unflappable way, while his chemistry with the other two is also considerable. Chinese-Canadian actress Lam Kar Yan (Karena Lam) elevates her role from the cliché of a vulnerable female cop, since she might as well be the smarter part of the couple. The other veteran, Nick Cheung (the lead actor of Dante Lam's "Unbeateble") has the most enigmatic character to work with and he seizes the opportunity, mixing the calm attitude with the mystery around Hui.

In the end, "Integrity" can serve as the proof that the trilogies work better if they are not envisioned as trilogies in first place, but when they spontaneously grow out the frame of a single film. That means that we, as the viewers, will have to wait and see before we judge Mak's vision when, or if, the sequel gets out to the theatres and on videos. When it comes to "Integritiy" as a stand-alone movie, it is uneven, not bad per se, but there is something missing...

A Film a Week - Birds of Passage / Pájaros de verano

With his previous film, The Embrace of the Serpent, Ciro Guerra has done a good job of telling the story of an almost extinct tribe, the perils of civilization, colonization and exploitation from a distinctive angle. The film was so masterfully shot and astonishingly beautiful that an average viewer would miss an obvious left-wing, tribal nationalist, anti-civilization attitude constructed around the “noble savage” kind of trope. The film got an Academy Award nomination for foreign language film and had a long and fruitful festival tour, effectively putting the Colombian cinema on the world map.

His new one, Birds of Passage, co-directed with his producer and wife Cristina Gallego, is equally mesmerizing and breathtaking, but in a completely different way. Instead of stark black and white with the shades of grey in the surroundings of the Amazonian rainforest, now we have desert-like landscapes of Guajira peninsula shot in Sergio Leone-like full-blown colourful vistas. Guerra’s traditionalist, romantic point of view is still present, but not the main topic of the film, which makes things a bit more complicated and problematic, morality-wise, since Guerra’s ambition could be an elaborate allegory about the recent Columbian history.

On the plot level, Birds of Passage is a standard issue mobster rise and fall epic, set between late 60’s and early 80’s in somewhat exotic environment of Wayuu tribes that kept their original lifestyle even through the 20^th century. Our guy is Rapayet (impressive newcomer José Acosta), a simple man with a somewhat influential uncle living on the outskirts of the tribe, but dreaming to marry the clan matriarch’s daughter Zaida (beautiful Natalia Reyes), which would pull him up in the ranks. However, the matriarch Ursula (Carmina Martinez, scary good in her role) sets the almost impossible dowry for Rapayet to collect. Realizing that coffee trade does not bring that much profit, Rapayet and his “alijuna” (the term for an outsider or a Spanish-speaking foreigner in Wayuu language) Moises (Jhon Narvaez) start dealing with the American hippies working under the cloak of peace corps, but actually seeking for a marijuana connection. Rapayet has some connections within the ranks of his relatives from another clan, which is enough to start the business.

Not just that the dowry is collected swiftly, but also money starts to flood the tribe, corrupting the simple life, not just by imported technology (like cars and arms stashes) and the ridiculously looking houses in the place of former tent settlements, but also leaving consequences on the psyche of the tribesman who are, as we see, not immune to greed. It might be the foreign Moises who fires the first shot, but a lot of trouble and “alijuna” interference is yet to come, leaving the most rational and realistic of the bunch, Rapayet, in the crossfire of interests drawn frivolously from the old tribal traditions and modern greed.

Just like in Embrace of the Serpent, the references to other directors’ works in Birds of Passage are numerous, but not in the way to make the film stale and derivative. Here, instead of Herzog and Apocalypse Now-period Coppola, the spectator might recognize the ultra-violent ending from de Palma’s Scarface, the attention to details at the family gatherings and rituals in the likes of Coppola’s Godfather, while the visual identity owes something to both classical and “Spaghetti” Westerns. There is also a sense of authenticity in depiction of Wayuu way of life, from their clothes to the beliefs and obsessions over birds as omen-bringers.

As the metaphor of the recent Columbian history, the film does not work, since its take is overly simplified, excluding many other factors from the equation, leaving only drugs, money, cartels as a form of corporations and Americans as the reason for the natives demise. That opens the field for criticising the film on its moral grounds: the director’s sympathy is in the state of schizoid division between Rapayet’s down-to-Earth approach and Ursula’s monstrously frivolous interpretation of tradition that is usually based on her initial almost classist dislike of her son in law, with a leaning towards cheering for the tradition for the sake of tradition and blaming everything on money, drugs and “alijunas”. The biggest trouble is that it should not be the main subject of the film, but Guerra and co. make it that way.

A Film a Week - Ash Is Purest White / Jiang hu er nv

It seems like the Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke is playing with the cinematic language and moves the borders of filmmaking with each of his films, but we can always rely on two things. His wife and muse Tao Zhao will be the star and with his every film he will examine how the “people” element gets lost in the transition of the People’s Republic towards the modern and technologically developed world. China is a land of contrasts in which the time travel is somewhat an ordinary thing: over the course of one day a person can see the close future in the centre of the big cities, recent industrial past on the cities’ periphery and in the large provincial towns and even the relicts of the nineteenth century in its vast rural area.

His newest feature, Ash Is Purest White, is the story of crime, love and honour that follows the gangster’s girlfriend on her rise, fall and moderate rise again over the course of fifteen years or so, noting the changes in society in the background. The plot starts in the year 2001 in the mining town Datong in the filmmaker’s native Shanxi province where the small-time gangster Bin (played by Liao Fan of Black Coal, Thin Ice fame) controls the local gaming parlour that turns to nightclub in the evening with his girlfriend Qiao (Tao Zhao) as his right hand. Bin seems satisfied working and basically running errands for the local big boss that plans going legit until the boss is murdered and he has to step in. He is unprepared for the job since his actual knowledge of the world of the “jiangsu” (gangster) world does not exceed the things he learned from the Hong Kong flicks he and his buddies are obsessively watching.

Soon enough, he gets in trouble – the new kids are aggressive and eager to take over and he gets himself under attack which leads to a violent street fight which is interrupted by Qiao holding Bin’s gun and shooting in the air in an iconic frame. She takes the fall for him and is sentenced to a five-year stretch in jail with him getting considerably less time. Once she is out, she is surprised that he has moved on, having a non-criminal business and a new girlfriend now. She decides to track him down, which she does in the budding region around the, then future, Three Gorges Dam project, and she does it in a resourceful way via scheming the businesspeople for the money in a funny-to-die sequence, but she is actually searching for herself.

That she finds once she leaves him and moves on with her life. Her prospects are grim, with a fellow passenger on a train talking about UFO tourism in the desert as one of her rare hopes. In the film’s gentlest moment, he says he has a business of giving guided tours to UFO enthusiast, she replies that she has never worked in tourism, but is an actual witness to the UFO activity. The both lie, they know that they lie and the other one lies, but they just go with the flow for the sake of the conversation. Instead, she decides to go back to her hometown, back to the place she started and back to the same mahjong parlour business. Years later, Bin follows her, paralysed from the stroke and bitter, with the ending that will leave the viewer deeply unsettled.

It is evident that Jia does not only dwell on the same subjects as the ones in his 21^st century films, but also quotes himself quite often, along with a number of other filmmakers in the wide range from Martin Scorsese to John Woo to Wong Karwai to Michelangelo Antonioni, playing simultaneously with the images, the words and the music. The using of the 80’s Western pop standards and chansons in the likes of the ones heard in Hong Kong gangster flicks tells the story about the cultural trends coming way to late to deep province of China where they are taken way too seriously for no reason. The same tricks he employed in his previous two films actually work well also in this one, but the goal is a bit different.

The reason for that is that Ash Is Purest White is not just emotionally packed and beautifully shot film, but also a supreme vehicle for its actors (both Fan and Tao have never been more tested to a greater result) and an ultimate feminist story about fighting uphill battles and gaining empowerment. All things considered, it might just the Jia’s best film since Still Life (2006) if not in his entire career.

A Film a Week - Gutland

How often do you have a chance to watch a, I quote, “surrealist rural noir” from Luxembourg in which a popular Slovenian tune is played five minutes in as the vision of the peak of the local beer festival? Not often? Me neither. While being surrealist is sorta prerequisite for a European rural noir, and films are being made in Luxembourg through the different co-production mechanisms, Gutland still seems like an unlikely outcome, which may or may not be a fun thing to watch. On the side note, the tune called Golica is apparently hugely popular all over the German-speaking Europe, beer festivals in Luxembourg included…

Now, seriously. Gutland is a fiction feature debut for a Luxembourgian filmmaker Govinda Van Maele who already has a handful of shorts, a couple of TV-series episodes and a feature-length musical documentary called We Might As Well Fail under his belly. And it kinda is a rural noir about a German robber hiding in a Luxembourgian village, laced with a bit of deadpan, slightly absurdist humour and wrapped in a shroud of mystery.

The German thief is Jens, played by Frederick Lau (of Victoria fame) and he is on the run both from the law and from his former companions, so he comes to a picturesque village over the border in the Grand Duchy on the pretence of looking for work, but actually looking for a place to lay low for a while. His first encounter with the locals is not exactly pleasant, but it all changes when the mayor’s daughter Lucy (Vicky Krieps, best known for her role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread) falls for him. Suddenly, he is not only given work on the farm and a trailer to live, but also invited to every single social event and encouraged to participate in the activities side by side with the locals. As the time passes by, Jens finds out that the locals might not be well-meaning as they seem to be, and his peace comes with a price of playing a certain role, while things get weirder and weirder.

Gutland is handsomely shot by the director’s brother Narayan who opts for using real, existing locations and hand-held camerawork with a thing for rich textures of nature and country life in the background. The casting is also interesting, combining the stars of European cinema, such as Lau, Krieps and Pit Bukowski (seen in genre flicks The Bunker and The Samurai, among others) with a number of local newcomers. The script, reportedly doctored by Razvan Radulescu (known for his scripts for Romanian New Wave films like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Child’s Pose) has a nice absurdist qualities in details.

The trouble is, however, with Van Maele’s main story, its three-act structure and his inability to keep the pacing in the middle. After an interesting exposition with a lot of quirky characters, Gutland either goes nowhere, or down a predictable road. The mystery of the village is revealing slowly, but is not that mysterious, and the occasional visits from Jens’ former associates have the predictable purpose to jump-start the film when the pacing goes down and to insert some instant tension. It does not work that well and feels a bit formulaic. Than again, maybe Gutland is a film with a deeper meaning (it could serve as a metaphor for well-off states in Central Europe not trusting the strangers from the East and South, forcing them to fit into certain patterns) and the using of the well-known formula is the only way to go.

A Film a Week - Holiday

Dealing with some topics and tropes can be touchy nowadays. Let us say rape or any form of violence against women, if done by a male filmmaker will always have, rightfully so, a shadow of the doubt about his intentions. Are they purely noble? Inquisitive? Political? Some form of activism? How about attention grabbing? Or simply voyeuristic, maybe even sadistic and misogynistic? Luckily, the director of Holiday, a film that has a brutal rape scene at its very centre, is a woman. The debutant in feature length format, Isabella Eklöf, also co-wrote the script together with Johanne Algren. The new set of rules applies, the film can even be regarded as subversive and therefore a perfect companion piece to a French feminist rape and revenge thriller simply called Revenge, directed by Coralie Fargeat.

It might seem like a long shot, having in mind that Revenge is pretty fast and furious, yet stylishly done action flick with more than a hint of bloodshed, while Holiday is a slow-burning gangster drama constructed around a love triangle with only one murder very late in it (and that murder is purely accidental). However, there are a lot of things in common on the surface level as well as in deeper character analysis to bring the two films together.

The list of similarities starts with the leading characters, even their physical appearance (both are lean, petite blondes) and the girly-girl style (or the lack of style to speak of). When we first see Revenge’s Jenny, she seems to be a stupid girl chasing some instant fame and falling for a good-looking sleazeball that is her boyfriend. Later on we can assume that she is an archetypical female in the male world, pretending to be anything the men around her want her to be, thinking that she would profit from that kind of behaviour. Holiday’s Sascha (played unapologetically and in stunning fashion by Victoria Carmen Sonne) is also a stupid girl of sorts, a gangster’s girlfriend so materialistic that she easily gets addicted to attention, gifts and the luxurious lifestyle without having any real clue what is actually going on. Only in the end, after the crucial rape scene (and due to it), we as the viewers can ask ourselves whether she is an intelligent, calculating psychopath in development.

The case for Sascha’s stupidity is a strong one in the beginning. Having spent all her money, she tries to seduce her boyfriend’s boss, a Danish mafia kingpin residing in Turkish resort town of Bodrum, she was supposed to give message to. She fails the loyalty test and also as a seductress and even gets slapped a couple of times for trying to climb up the ladder too fast. However, when her boyfriend Michael (Lai Yde) comes and covers her with attention and gifts, everything seems fine and she fits well in the gangster “family” (which actually seems like an extended family together with girlfriends / wives and children of different ages) occupying a hillside villa overlooking the bay. Michael might call her “princess”, but there is something cold and threatening about him, so Sascha starts hanging around a friendly-looking and kind-hearted Dutch man named Thomas (Thijs Römer) she has accidentally met at the ice cream shop. But her luck is about to change…

The good thing Eklöf does is leaving most of the circumstances clouded by mystery. It was a gamble, but it paid of. What are they doing in Bodrum except for enjoying the sea and the sun? It is some kind of business, but we do not get to know the details. We do not need them anyway. Also, the moment Michael gets bored with Sascha and turns abusive to her is hard to pinpoint, as well as his motive for such behavior. Did his boss tell him of his encounter with her? Did he find out about her relationship with Thomas and get jealous? Did he get angry about something work-related (there is a scene of roughing-up an associate that messed something up, also unexplained)? Did he just get bored for no reason? Was he planning the whole act all along as a psychopath would do?

Eklöf got lucky or, more probably, played it really clever and cool with another bluff: the structure of the film. The whole first half serves as the exposition filled with low-intensity events and glimpses into the group dynamics. So all the chips came down to the disturbing prolonged rape scene spiced up by forced oral sex, staged and filmed in one frame with such confidence that no veteran director would be ashamed of. And it worked perfectly, adding layers to characters, especially Sascha and shifting motivation, while keeping the deliberately moderate pace, making Holiday completely fresh in the terms gangster films done from a distinctively female point of view, more interested in psychology than in action.

A Film a Week - A Hustler's Diary / Maste gitt

Imagine a talkative low-level gangster doing a voice-over narration pointing that his life has changed dramatically because of a certain stream of occurrences. Add a bit working-class / low-life slang to it and some humour just to make it more interesting. Congratulations, you have got your basic gangster flick in which the tone can vary from a bit self-serious drama to full-throttle comedy. Now, transfer the whole thing from the usual context of Guy Ritchie’s London, Quentin Tarantino’s Los Angeles or Martin Scorsese’s New York to something different. Something European. Scandinavian. Maybe Swedish.

Is not Sweden a welfare state with low crime rate? It is and it is not, depending from the viewpoint. It is quite a nice place to live if one gets to the middle class or even a bit higher up the social ladder. Unfortunately, that kind of life is not always an option for someone of immigrant descent, especially if they are not promising athletes or artists. They are usually confined to some kind of ethnic ghetto located far enough from the city centre, ruled by unwritten rules, where crime could prove to be a viable option. Sometimes we get a chance to see that kind of life in Swedish films that aim for more realistic feeling. Sometimes we just see them portrayed like nameless, menacing criminal stereotypes.

The good news is that Ivica Zubak, the co-writer / director of A Hustler’s Diary, is of immigrant origins himself (born in Croatia), so he actually understands the complexity of the problem, and his view of the topic does not look like yet another potential minor theatre hit, nor it seems like an “over-medicated” (doctored) festival drama. His debut feature Dreams was a tense drama, on the verge of becoming a thriller, set in a similar milieu like his newest film that takes more clues from crime-comedies.

Our narrator guy is Metin Turkoglu (co-writer Can Demirtas), a small-time burglar and hustler who remembers the wise words of his late father that a person should plant a tree, write a book and have a child before the final moment. With the first task already done and while waiting for a suitable partner for the third one, he zealously keeps his diary as a source material for some future book project in which he describes his and his friends’ not particularly legal adventures. However, being smart enough and dreaming big enough, he dreams of switching his career of crime for something more respectful, like becoming an actor.

A botched audition for acting studies at the national academy ends with him losing his book. It is found by one of the professors (famous actress Lena Endre playing herself) and shown to her hipster publisher buddy Puma (Jörgen Thorsson), so instead of acting, Metin gets the chance for writing career. The trouble is that all the names, places and events in his “book” are as real as it gets. If the book gets published, his life on the mean streets of Stockholm project-building suburbia will be in a great danger.

Sincerity of the portrait of immigrant life and crime as a social mobility shortcut aside, A Hustler’s Diary works best as a darkly funny crime comedy. Lost diary might seem like a typical plot device leading the story down the predictable path, but Demirtas’ and Zubak’s script is smart enough to throw us a curveball every now and then and therefore keep us entertained. Some of the dialogue gets lost in translation, since its verbal humour component is actually based on the differences between street and standard language. Zubak also deserves kudos for his sense of directing. He works well with actors, most of them seen in his previous works, and shows admirable control of the rhythm of the film. On the other hand, the visuals sometimes leave a lot to be desired and the contrast between the city and immigrant suburbs could have been accented better, but slamming the film because of that might seem as nitpicking.

A Film a Week - Mali

previously published on Cineuropa

Oddly enough, the last and the most eagerly awaited world premiere at this year’s edition of the Pula Film Festival, Mali, written and directed by Antonio Nuić (All for Free, Donkey, Life Is a Trumpet), is a sequel of sorts. Or, more accurately, an instalment in his series of shorts and features about the same characters. They were introduced in one of his student shorts, rising to national fame in the final chapter of the well-received triptych Sex, Drinks and Bloodshed, on the topic of football hooliganism in Croatia, where a night of game-watching among friends veers off in an unpredictable direction, unearthing dangerous secrets.

Some 13 years later, the child seen as a baby in the previous film, Mali (mesmerising newcomer Vito Dijak), is about to finish primary school. His mother, Martina (not seen in the film), is dying of cancer in hospital, and his father, Frenki, played by Vito’s real-life father Franjo Dijak (Goran), has come back from jail a changed man – not exactly leaving his criminal ways behind, but becoming more savvy about them. The trouble is that as soon as Martina dies, her parents will sue Frenki to gain custody of Mali and probably win the case, even though the boy has been doing much better in life since his father got back, improving his grades, behaving better and nurturing his chess skills. However, Frenki has a plan that not only involves testimonies from the staff at Mali’s school, but also from his new business partners, his sleazy lawyer friend Vladek (Robert Ugrina) and dirty cop Majić (Živko Anočić), as well as his loser mates Boki (Bojan Navojec), Raks (Rakan Rushaidat) and Kečo (Hrvoje Kečkeš). Meanwhile, overly violent cop Slišković is on his tail.

In Mali, Nuić disaffirms the “Hitchockian” theory of “drama as life with the dull parts cut out”. Pretty much all we see are people immersed in ordinary situations and rituals: chit-chat, buddy-to-buddy banter, drinking, doing drugs, enjoying a birthday party and a field trip, all of which is slotted into a compelling crime storyline, while the supposed action takes place off screen. Its “Croatian Usual Suspects” label might ensure that it gets some time on the festival circuit before it opens domestically in winter 2019.

This lean, 90-minute film works better than expected for such an ambitious crime-drama transposed to a Croatian setting thanks to Nuić’s precise writing, dialogue that blends gritty realness and effortless cool, and his sure-handed directing that uses the skills of the crew (consisting of his usual collaborators) to the maximum. Radislav Jovanov Gonzo’s cinematography (varying the colour palette to match the location, whether urban or rural, and changing the length of the shots to match the mood) is impressive, as is Hrvoje Štefotić’s pulsating, tension-inducing original score.

The actors are also employed masterfully. Franjo Dijak, Rakan Rushaidat, Bojan Navojec and Hrvoje Kečkeš have certainly played some part in creating their characters together with Nuić from their student times on. Now, the “gang” has been reinforced by Robert Ugrina and Živko Anočić (doing a good job of being both scary and smart at the same time), and especially by Vito Dijak, whose measured, controlled performance is rarely seen in child actors. He might just represent the bright future of the Croatian acting scene, while his character is, ironically, the very dark, dystopian future of Croatian society if trends such as risky yet highly organised crime and corruption continue to grow.

A Film a Week - Loving Pablo

There must some kind of competition between the high-profile Spanish-speaking actors who will serve as the best Pablo Escobar ever featured on either big or small screen. And after Édgar Ramirez (Killing Pablo), Benicio del Toro (very good in Escobar: Paradise Lost, even though the film itself was a kind of bland experience) and a brief episode by Mauricio Mejía in last year’s American Made, the turn came to Javier Bardem to put on his fake belly / fatsuit and his mask and to try his luck as the notorious drug kingpin in Fernando Léon de Aranoa’s Spanish-Bulgarian co-production Loving Pablo. Maybe somebody should tell the whole crew behind this silly challenge that the goal has been already set pretty high by the Brazilian actor Wagner Moura of the Netflix TV series Narcos.

For his angle to this well-documented, told and re-told story, de Aranoa chose the best-selling memoir Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar by the drug lord’s former associate and lover, celebrated TV journalist Virginia Vallejo which he adapted himself. Generally speaking, de Aranoa is a reliable scriptwriter and even more reliable director of Mondays in the Sun fame, but after interestingly drafted, though cliché-ridden feature A Perfect Day and “on the right place at the right time” documentary Politics, Instructions Manual, Loving Pablo makes him look amateurish like a bottom of the class college boy trying to emulate the ultimate crime-drama bio-pic classics in the likes of Goodfellas. Long story short, everything he could do wrong – he did with vengeance.

His writing is lazy, relying to much on the source material and therefore clumsily patched with the god-awful voice-over narration done by Penélope Cruz who is also present as the semi-active co-leading character Virginia. The end result is that the voice-over is overlapping with the visual narration which would look better and more elegant without explaining the obvious. Even the structure is kinda pedestrian, lacking any kind of personal or political angle and simply lining up the biographical events in a chronological order. When he finally distances himself from the book, he does so in an atrocious fashion completed with borderline moronic dialogue and even more idiotic monologue.

The musical choices which were aimed to channel the scorsesian style of sorts are also lazy, reduced to often-heard 80’s cheesy pop, Latino and rock standards, with Carlos Santana’s Black Magic Woman (as the pillar of Latin rock) used completely out of context somewhere around the half an hour mark. The only interesting and humorous piece of soundtrack is the Christmas standard Let It Snow in the scene when the cartel’s transport jet lands on an American highway, but even this is too much on the nose (pun intended).

Also, the attempted use of torture and shock does not do any good for the film because it usually ends with some half-hearted brutality and over the top animal cruelty with a “top-down” approach in which a horse gets killed in the beginning, a dog gets beaten in an elaborate human torturing scene around mid-point and a flock of pigeons flies into the helicopter propeller near the end. And let us not speak about ripping off de Palma’s Scarface’s signature chainsaw scene.

Let us maybe speak about the use of the language(s) here. Filming mostly in English might seem as a reasonable, business-friendly solution, but with a heavy (as in totally fake) Spanish accent it just sounds ridiculous, especially underlined with Spanish curses and phrases known to every owner of a TV set. Unfortunately, that puts the central pair of actors between the rock and the hard place. They have some chemistry in the scenes they share (which is understandable given that they are a real-life couple), but their cartoonish accents, his constant mumbling and her occasional telenovella styled hysterical over-acting just remind us how both of them are not really on the top of their game when acting in English, like one The Counsellor or Vanilla Sky was not enough already. Finding the counter-argument might prove futile: Bardem’s performance in No Country for Old Men was wordless and the interaction between two of them in Vicky Christina Barcelona was mostly in Spanish which suits both of them better.

Speaking of acting, not that the rest of the crew fared better, with both Spanish or English dialogue, like Peter Sarsgaard as a DEA agent or Julieth Restrepo as Escobar’s slightly less glamourous wife Maria Victoria Henao, but that again is a strong case of seriously under-developed characters due to the lazy writing.

We might compare Loving Pablo to a car crash, but that would not be accurate. Trainwreck would be more adequate comparison, but still would not describe it completely. No, what comes to my mind is a mid-air collision over a densely populated area: leave any hope to be a survivor of this one.

A Film a Week - Control / Het Tweede Gelaat

The third instalment of Vincke-Verstuyft film series based on Jef Geeraets’ hit crime novels titled Control (the original Flemish title with the direct translation Double Face makes a bit more sense, while avoiding confusing the film with a dozen others) came eight years after the second and the whole 14 after the first one. While The Memory of the Killer (2003) was a considerable international hit that year, even dubbed the year’s best crime thriller, Dossier K. (2009) never raised above the local level. So far, Control falls somewhere in between those two: it is a well-done, slick crime thriller / procedural with some festival and video exposure world wide, yet nothing exactly groundbreaking.

Directed by Dossier K.’s Jan Verheyen, Control is the strongest in portrayal of two Antwerp ace police detectives working on especially complex cases, Fredy Verstuyft and Eric Vincke (Werner De Smedt and Koen De Bouw, respectively, both reprising their roles from previous films) and the rift the time has created between them. The case in case here is the one involving a vicious serial killer who leaves naked, decapitated bodies of women somewhere in the eastern part of Flanders. While “by the book” Vincke, now superior to his former partner, wants to explore the murders connection to similar cases in Cologne and even employs a profiler from Netherlands Mulder (Marcel Hensema), “rogue” Verstuyft thinks the key to solve the mystery is Rina (Sofie Hoflack), a minor celebrity psychologist / owner of a rehabilitation centre and a party animal whom he found naked and possibly drugged in the vicinity of one of the crime scenes and took for intended next victim of the killer. The woman drives the rift in between two of them and the things worsen when Verstuyft starts a romantic relationship with her…

The good thing is that Control is more modest than ambitious, which serves perfectly for a police procedural / serial killer flick. The particular subgenre was bled dry in the 90’s, so some kind of relocation and re-contextualization would not do suffice to save it. Verheyen, however, goes for the familiar “meat and potatoes” appeal for serial watchers and fans of the genre with a dash of euro-chic taken from Scandinavian thrillers and neo-noirs from the first decade of the new millennium, mostly felt in crisp digital cinematography by Danny Elsen that starts with lots of modern architecture in cold palette shifting it to depleted city centre flats and warmer bloody reds nearing the end and in Joris Oonk’s and Chirsnanne Wiegel’s electronic score discretely dictating the tempo.

Well-acted and well-directed, Control does not wear out its welcome even in the format of a notch over two hours. The script by Carl Joos (of Broken Circle Breakdown fame) is functional enough to propel the film from point A to point B to point C and so on, the dialogue is witty at moments and Joos acknowledges the limitations of the genre as in the limits of the pool of suspects, deploying plot twists in all the right places. The director Verheyen deserves kudos for hat-tips to sleazy thrillers of the 90’s and especially to Paul Verhoeven’s masterpiece of the genre, Basic Instinct, as he does for a couple of sex scenes between Fredy and Rina. No matter that they are, like, ridiculously pretty people (movie star level) we probably could not see in real life. Well, how about those beheaded corpses in densely populated Flanders? I did not think so either.

A Film a Week - Black Snow / Nieve negra

One can never go too wrong with Argentinian cinema. And by that, I do not mean some heavy art house and festival stuff. I am talking about the films you could and should see in a regular movie theatre: genre films, crime and political thrillers. Because Argentinian culture and especially cinema is a stellar example of symbiosis of European and American influences. Think of modern classics like Nine Queens, Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes, Ashes of Paradise or even Pablo Trapero’s Carancho and The Clan. Also, one can never go wrong at all with Ricardo Darin in any role. An underdog investigator obsessed with a murder case and entangled in high politics in The Secret in Their Eyes, a cynical shop keeper in Chinese Take-Out, a con artist in Nine Queens or a dying actor in Truman, he can make a memorable part out of pretty much any given material.

While not the best Argentinian thriller ever, Martin Hodara’s Black Snow serves as more than decent hour and half of fun. It is a backwoods noir developed around a family mystery, shot on various locations in Patagonia, visually interesting and tense, with several prominent, even great actors in the cast. Darin is there. Another star of Argentinian genre cinema, Leonardo Sbaraglia, is also there. The legendary Federico Luppi has a supporting part. And the rising star of European cinema, the nomadic Laia Costa (best known for the title role in German one-take extravaganza Victoria) has her premiere in Argentina.

Marcos (Sbaraglia) comes back to Patagonia from Spain with his young and pregnant wife Laura (Costa) to bury his father. The father’s last wish is to find his eternal peace next to his son Juan who died as child, as seen in the opening scene. The land and the house deep in snow-covered mountains now belongs to Marcos’ elder brother Salvador (Darin), with whom Marcos and the in and out of mental institutions sister Sabrina (Dolores Fonzi) are not on speaking terms. There is also an issue of selling the land to a Canadian mining corporation for a large sum of money presented by an old family friend Sepia (Luppi), which Salvador declined in anger. Will Marcos, with Laura’s help, get to an agreement with his brother? What exactly happened to Juan? Will the tragedy in the past come to life in the present?

Plot-wise, Black Snow is a bit predictable, since some of the points and twists are staple diet for the genre, so there is no real element of surprise. The biggest problem is with its final twist that is too randomly convenient. But Hodara does well with the tempo, the atmosphere, the tension and especially with the visuals, showing the nature that is magnificent, dangerous and somewhat dirty under the surface covered with pure white snow, constantly reminding us of the hardships of the mountain life.

But essentially, Black Snow is an actors’ piece and Hodara should be praised for perfect casting. Leonardo Sbaraglia has some of the worldly charm as Marcos, but there is also something dark with him. Laia Costa brings the tactility and once again shows the star potential. Oddly, the biggest surprise is Ricardo Darin, who takes his versatility to another level. His characters were very different, but most of them were extremely verbal. In Black Snow he plays a laconic, almost silent, but menacing wild man and he doesn’t miss a spot. Once again, great job.