Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


Forum locked This topic is locked, you cannot edit posts or make further replies.  [ 1 post ] 
Author Message
PostPosted: Sat May 19, 2007 11:07 am 
Offline
Site Admin

Joined: Sat Mar 08, 2003 1:50 pm
Posts: 4859
Location: California/NYC
Some highlights of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2007, its fiftieth year

Though nothing I saw except maybe Lady Chatterley was really magical this year at the SFIFF, the general quality was high, and I can think of six that are worth singling out, and quite a few more worth mentioning.

Lady Chatterley
will be coming to US theaters. Pacale Ferran, whose film won the French Cesar for best picture this year, based it not on the familiar third version but D.H.Lawrence's second version, which has less blunt sex talk, more tenderness, and more focus on the relationship beyond sex between Lady Chatterley and her impotent husband's gamekeeper. The gamekeeper's called Parkin instead of Mellors, and he's not gruff and harsh or inarticulate, just a loner and a man of few words. Jean-Louis Couloc'h is quite special in this role, not like a movie actor at all. Seen without a shirt by his future lover he has a bull-like muscularity, but he always wears a coat and tie. Balding, a bit stocky, the actor has a quiet assurance and a kindness and patience that make a unique impression. Marina Hinds as Lady Chatterley is equally convincing in her arc from a fading creature almost losing the will to live to a blooming, radiantly happy young woman discovering sexuality and love. Hippolyte Girardot as Sir Clifford, like the other actors, avoids any exaggeration. We feel his helplessness; he need not telegraph it. What's avantgardist in the film is its slow pace; it takes its time to give a full sense of the lifeless house and the vibrant world of trees and grass outside. The sex scenes are the more real for happening fast. This is film that gets a well-known story right as never before. The fact that an English story with English names is all in French gives the whole something of the feel of a fable.

Veronica Chen's Agua
, an elegant narrative feature about competition swimmers, Chino (Nichoás Mateo) and Goyo (Rafael Ferro) at two stages of their lives, is stunning for the way the act of swimming is filmed. The sparingly used but unforgettable underwater photography captures the grace and symmetry of the swimmers' bodies, their unity with the water, the sound of heartbeat and breathing that become a meditation. Chen combines adept documentary realism with dramatic sequences that underline these two men's poor adaptation to life outside their obsession. Goyo has just returned after years of hiding following a drug disqualification that cost him the championship in a marathon, and Chino fails to make it to the national team in indoor pool competition and is lost and rudderless. Agua is distinguished by a clear rhythm defined by the contrasts between the silence of the swimming under water and the cacophony of life above water at a big pool or at a meet with a crowd of spectators. Both swimmers in a sense are defeated, but are thus freed to go on with the next stage of their lives.

Argentinian Carlos Sorin has carved out a place for himself with his little Argentinian road movies mostly using non-actors and filmed in remote Patagonia. His Road to San Diego is his most adept, winning, and mainstream film to date. Its hero is Tati Benitez (Ignacio Benitez), a naïve country boy who shares something with billions of others on the planet: he is a huge soccer fan. And his idol is the Argentinian superstar, Diego Maradona, "El Diego." Tati is an out-of-work lumberjack with a pregnant wife living in a little village in the Misiones jungle who carves a huge root to look like his soccer hero. When Maradona has a heart attack, Tati goes on a journey carrying the carved root as a worshipper would make the pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint. He meets various people along the way, including some of the actors in Sorin's previous Bombon, El Perro, about men traveling to dog shows. His main companion paradoxically is a Brazilian truck driver, Waguinho (Carlos Wagner La Bella) whose soccer idol is not Maradona but Pelé. The Road to San Diego is about hero worship and how at some level it blends into folklore and magic. Tati is a sports fan everyman, and Sorin's feel-good saga expresses universal truths through its quirky specificity. The director has never been more accomplished, this time making use of more elaborate shots and crowd sequences and achieving greater narrative thrust. The secret of his quiet mastery is probably going to get out now.

Edie and David Ichioka's Murch is a simple little 85-minute documentary that gives the legendary American Zoetrope editor Walter Murch a chance to sound off for a while about how he cut and pasted movies like The Conversation and The Godfather and Apocalypse Now into the classics they are, and crafted his remarkable recreation of Welle's Touch of Evil according to the director's fifty-page statement of his original intentions. This is "just" a "talking head" film, but with his clear explanations and colorful metaphors Murch is a head that really knows how to talk, and the Ichiokas illustrate all his references with just the right clips from the films in question exactly when needed. For anyone interested in how films are put together, this is enlightening, inspiring stuff.

Joachim Trier's Reprise is a youthful New Wave-ish display of wit and cinematic panache from Norway that's a portrait of a recent generation of creative Oslo young people. In the foreground are Erik (Espen Klouman Høiner, a tall blond guy who smiles almost all the time) and childhood pal Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie), equally presentable and well off, with bright eyes and a crew cut. Both seek to embark on writing careers at the same time, and both idol-worship an outstanding but reclusive older writer called Sten Egil Dahl (Sigmund Saeverud). Phillip gets published first but then hits a snag when a psychotic episode lands him for a while in a sanatorium. Erik comes next with a book oddly title Prosopopeia, and he gets shot down on a TV discussion show for his lack of candor. Girlfriends come and go. Some of the ironies are a bit too obvious, and the debt to Truffaut and more recent French cineastes may be be over-evident, but the way a group of friends is cohesively represented and the energy of the narrative and the adeptness of the editing are exhilarating and fun; it looks like Norway's not short of cinematic talent these days. This is a promising display of brilliance and intelligence.

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's Daratt (from Chad) is a powerful film about delayed revenge. The young Atim (Ali Barkai) has lost his father in civil war; he knows who did it. When the government announces a general amnesty on war crimes, his blind grandfather commands him to go to the capital and kill the man. Revenge is a dish best enjoyed cold means it's not a crime of passion but of premeditation. That takes time, and it's not easy for a youth like Atim. Besides, when he arrives in the city, he gets hired by the killer, an austere baker named Naseera (Youssouf Djaoro), and while both of them seem consumed with anger most of the time, Atim experiences satisfaction in learning to do the baking by himself, and up close it may be harder to see a way to do the deed. The strength of the film comes from its tension and suspense, from the accumulating power of things left unexplained. It is never obvious, right up to the last scene, what Atim is going to do. Daratt is one of the most vivid ever portraits on film of prolongued, inarticulate rage. Its intensity, its vividness, its simplicity, even the dry heat of the setting, all conspire to make for a riveting film.

And also . . . If none of these absolutely haunted and mesmerized me the way Mexican Ricardo Benet's News from Afar (Noticias lejanas) did last year, or (even more so) Argentinian Lisandro Alonso's Los Muertos did two years ago, on the other hand the general quality of what I saw was higher. Other standouts that gained festival recognition: Pavel Giroud's beautiful, witty The Silly Age, about a pre-adolescent charmer in Havana on the eve of revolution, won the SFIFF's new Chris Holter Award for humor in film. Its wry portraiture and jewel-box look make it a pleasure to watch. Fernando Vargas' The Violin, an atmospheric black and white film about peasant rebels, focused on an old street musician, and won the SKYY Prize for a first independent feature: it's most notable for its gritty realistic images and convincing depiction of the faces of the rural poor of Mexico. Jeanne Waltz's A Parting Shot, from Switzerland, with young French star Isild Le Besco, won the FIPRESCI international film critics award, again for an outstanding first feature, and is a subtle, economical film about two youthful rebels who're tamed and matured by helping each other under stress.

There were also very fine films I'd already seen at Lincoln Center and elsewhere: Bruno Dumont's return to form Flanders, depicting the ravages of war; Abderrahmane Sissako's indictment of the rich countries and the WTO in Bamako, Christophe Honoré's lively Nouvelle Vague renewal Dans Paris, starring Louis Garrel and Romain Duris; and the dazzling performance of Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan's La Vie en Rose (La Môme).

And I could also mention the family funeral drama from Korean Lee Yoon-ki, Ad Lib Night; Chinese Xiao Guo's clever meta-fiction of a screenwriter and a murderer How Is Your Fish Today?; noted Italian actor Kim Rossi Stewart's very moving dysfunctional family study and directorial debut, Along the Ridge (Anche libero va bene); French Canadian Philippe Falardeau's novelistic depiction of a search for identity, Congorama; and the list could go on. It was a good experience, this festival, again leaving one with a strong impression that filmmaking is alive and well all over the globe and new talent is springing up faster than you can keep track of it. Too bad such a lot of this never makes its way to our theaters at all, or is seen only in TV or Hollywood recyclings.

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Forum locked This topic is locked, you cannot edit posts or make further replies.  [ 1 post ] 

All times are UTC - 8 hours


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 141 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group