| DVD and Film Mini-Reviews #91 |
[Oct. 15th, 2007|12:29 am] |
The final installment of my VIFF (Vancouver International Film Festival) and VLAFF (Vancouver Latin American Film Festival) viewing.
Chronicle of an Escape (Chronica de una fuga) (Adrian Caetano, 2006)
****1/2
A new repressive regime change in Argentina and anyone who opposes the government is rounded up and sent to detention centres, even if their opposition is based solely on hearsay, rumour or spite. Such is the case when the government kidnaps the goaltender from a local football (soccer) team. Torture ensues as they try to extract names from him, even though he has none to give them. His name was given by another inmate, forced by the government spill anything, even if complete fabrication. A treatise on the value of the write habeas corpus. Eventually, after months of lockup, four of them plan their escape. Based on a true story. The film really gets at the feelings of paranoia and of a caged existence.
Bliss (Mutluluk) (Abdullah Oguz, 2007)
****
Meryam is raped, and as such has brought shame upon her family for her lost chastity. One of the village heads decrees that old customs must be adhered too and orders his son, Cemal, to obstensibly take Meryam to Istanbul (she believes she's to enter into an arranged marriage), but to dispose of her along the way instead. He can't bring himself to kill her though, and the two eventually find refuge in a fishing village along the Sea of Marmara, on the run from others in the village who have learned of Cemal's "betrayal". In the fishing village, they eventually cross paths with a professor, and they embark with him on his yacht. A bit of a love triangle forms as the two men's affections grow toward Meryam. It's a really simple story overall, but entirely engaging. The performance by Meryam is scintillating, and is perhaps the one thing that truly makes this film work.
The Champagne Spy (Meragel Ha-Shampaniya) (Nadav Schirman, 2007)
****
A documentary about Wolfgang Lotz (half German, half Jewish), the Israeli spy that infiltrated the highest levels of Egyptian society as an ex-Nazi. Examines the psychological impacts of long-term undercover work, on the spy and on their family. Most of the intimacy of portrait is gleaned through interviews with the son (who was around the age of twelve during his father's missions in Egypt). Follows the story from the onset of the mission, through to his capture, incarceration, and eventual release (in a prisoner exchange after the Yom Kippur War). Through Super 8 video of the son's, we actually witness the father's estrangement from his own family during his infrequent visits from Egypt back to Paris, it's palpable. The film also covers the difficulty of deep cover spies integrating back into normal society after the close of their mission. This is a tragedy of a Shakespearean sort, the downfall of a Israeli hero, a hero from the Israeli perspective at any rate, but a failure to everyone else around him.
After the viewing we were treated to a Q&A by the director. I was a little disheartened by this, as he revealed some omissions in the story told, most notably that of Lotz's trial in Egypt. Wolfgang was tried as a German, and great effort was spent trying to maintain this ruse, for if the Egyptians were to discover that their captured spy was Israeli, he would have been sentenced to death quite swiftly. The film is unapologetic in it's portrayal that Egypt was complete hoodwinked in this regard. Yet, in the Q&A, the director revealed that Egypt did in fact know that Lotz was Israeli, but for reasons of honor and saving face, decided to keep that fact to themselves, not wanting to go through the embarassment of having had an Israeli spy who had infiltrated some of their highest levels of goverment and society out in the open. (Syria had just gone through a similar debacle a year earlier, having lost a lot of face among other Arab nations). I felt a little betrayed by the film finding that out, feeling as though this Israeli director was trying to embarrass Egypt 30 years gone past, even though Egypt knew full well their prisoner's heritage and loyalties from the outset.
Hotel Very Welcome (Sonja Heiss, 2007)
***1/2
Have you travelled the world? Been to foreign countries? If so, then you'll get a real kick out of this effort, which details the travails of four separate groups of travellers. Two groups in Thailand. Two groups in India. Language issues. Cultural issues. They all come into play in amusing vignettes on the travel experience. But the film goes beyond that, as each group has selected to travel to escape some problem back home, with the view that the travelling experience will answer and solve those problems. The ultimate message being that a vacation can't solve personal problems, it's only a momentary escape from them. Further, upon reflection, the film is about relationships, each character (or group) experiencing or escaping from or searching for a relationship. I use the word group loosely, since the "groups" in question are generally single people, they are: in India a fellow escaping the impending birth of a son via a one-night stand, in India a girl trying to find herself at a Bagwan institute and dealing with a possessive boyfriend back in Germany, in Thailand two English blokes who discover the breakdown of their friendship of money and control, and in Thailand a girl who seems perpetually stuck in her hotel room, trying to catch a flight to anywhere who somehow develops a relationship with the travel agent she speaks to daily.)
Faro: Goddess of the Waters (Faro, la reine des eaux) (Salif Traoré, 2007)
***1/2
Science and faith underpins this African offering. A young man, now a civil engineer, returns to his village with the hope of bringing increased prosperity via plans for a small dam and canal system. The young man, Zanga, is treated with distrust, and since he does not know who his father is (his mother refuses to tell him), and as such is a bastard, as a bad omen. Then when a near drowning occurs on the river, the villagers take it as a final sign that Faro, the goddess of the river, is angry. Thus the clash between new and old begins. The film never takes a heavy-handed approach in its themes and the director treats both faith and science in equal measures. Light comedy and light drama. The performances, even though mostly by non-professional actors, are generally strong. The cinematography is, as one would expect, gorgeous. Good use of the colour palette in most every frame. The film itself can be a little slow at times, a tad meandering, but overall an interesting and enjoyable viewing experience.
The Girl Cut in Two (La fille coupée en deux) (Claude Chabrol, 2007)
**1/2
An uncohesive romantic comedy that takes a very unexpected (and unwelcome) dark twist at the end. Early during the viewing, a friend commented that the film had a 60s feel to it. And viewing the remainder the film I started to look at it in that perspective. And she was quite right in a number of ways, the staging of scenes, a couple of the characters were of that 60s sort of caricature, the music during some of the comedic moments, the soft desaturation of colours. But it was never very consistent. It sometimes felt like a 2007 film, sometimes like something from the late 1960s. I'm not even sure I should be banging the film on this idea, since I'm entirely unsure if a 60s verve was his intention at all. But on reflection, it certainly would have been a better film if it had paid a more consistent homage to seminal 60s films such as Breakfast at Tiffany's, or The Party, or even Stolen Kisses (by Francois Truffaut). The film, this subject matter, needed to be taken less seriously than it often was, a lighter more airy approach would have benefited it greatly. And that dark twist, even in hindsight, there was a bit of foreshadowing, but I don't think anyone in the audience took it for the gravity with which the director and writer intended. It was out of place here in this film. The story: a local weather girl gets involved with two men, one of whom she obsesses over, while the other obsesses over her. Hijinks ensue? Not really, which is a shame. |
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My favourite Hitchcock film is finally getting the full-on Criterion treatment.
