A group of cattle is herded around an enclosure in relative silence, until the familiar rambling of a rodeo announcer intrudes upon the scene. This relationship between man and animal is enforced repeatedly throughout legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s study of packing plants, Meat. Humans hide behind gigantic, intimidating machines, often heard but not as often seen. Cows and sheep are processed rather than raised, clamped between pieces of metal and hung on large hooks. Occasionally the camera takes a break from the killing floors to sit amongst those who deal in meat. Men on phones, some clad in ten-gallon hats as if fulfilling a stereotype, seduce potential buyers with misleading statistics. At one moment in the film, a group of Japanese tourists are taken around the plant, slavishly jotting down even the most frivolous details.
As usual, Wiseman does not offer any singular commentary, and with a subject matter which is a constant hot button in many circles, even rivalling some human rights issues, one gets the feeling that Wiseman deliberately avoided being more pronounced in his critique of the more inhumane practices of these packing plants. However, it is important to remember that Wiseman had previously documented more shocking animal cruelty in a research lab in Primate, an institution with arguably more responsibility towards their subjects. While Wiseman’s film does grant the viewer exclusive access to the domain of its subject, it does not feel like a particularly unique perspective, nor does it compare with Wiseman’s other in-depth documentaries.
A modern twist on the Pygmalion story, Endhiran concerns the endeavours of Dr. Vaseegran who constructs a high-powered android named Chitti in his own image. Despite sharing the athletic ability of Bruce Lee and the dance moves of Michael Jackson, Chitti is not regarded by the relevant authorities as a valuable contribution to the field as it lacks rational ability or emotions. When Vaseegran transplants a positronic brain into Chitti to help him relate to humans better, he gets more than he bargained for as Chitti’s newfound emotions lead him to develop strong feelings towards Vaseegran’s fiancée Sana. Attempting to win Sana back, Vaseegran foolishly goes into competition with Chitti’s superhuman powers, underestimating the android’s ability to mimic his master’s behaviour.
A huge success at the box office, grossing more than any other Indian film ever, Endhiran covers many genres and feels as if it was designed to entertain the widest range of people conceivable, although whether it fulfilled this goal is another question. Lead actor Rajnikanth, playing both Vaseegran and his robot analogue Chitti, has some great comedic turns but is unable to sustain interest for the film’s 155-minute runtime. For the casual Western viewer, there are plenty of WTF moments – a scene where a naked girl runs into traffic is particularly baffling – as well as a plethora of tongue-in-cheek movie references, although the proviso of satire has not saved the film from accusations of plagiarism. But for all its various flaws, this Kollywood blockbuster has undeniable entertainment value.
Isaac works as a photographer whose role it is to take the ‘final’ pictures of people’s loved ones. Having been hired by a particularly wealthy family to photograph the body of the recently married Angélica, Isaac finds himself inappropriately fixated on the resultant images. As he attempts to return to normality, heading to vineyards to photograph the local workers, Isaac is constantly haunted by the image of this beautiful woman he never knew. His behaviour grows more erratic, and an unfortunate episode during one of his photography expeditions confirms the extent of his manic infatuation.
This being the latest film of many by prolific 102-year-old director Manoel de Oliveira, The Strange Case of Angelica is evidence of a well-lived career in film. De Oliveira establishes mood magnificently, the first ten minutes of the film dominated by the sound and presence of nighttime rain, and a plot about photography gives a great excuse for some superb images of the Douro countryside. With the collaboration of cinematographer Sabine Lancelin, who has lensed several of his productions, de Oliveira composes each scene like a tableau, restricting movement to maintain the illusion of a painting come to life. Disappointingly, as with several of the director’s most recent pictures, Angelica is too stoical to convince emotionally, especially in the film’s fantastical moments – for example, Isaac’s imagined meeting with Angélica comes off more farcical than magical. Though not totally devoid of enjoyment, Angelica requires considerable patience, and the third act is likely to leave one wanting.
After splitting from her patronising, abusive husband for the married American Bob, Marta slowly comes to terms with the concept of freedom. Her newly-formed illicit relationship with Bob at first appears to give her everything she needs, even an apartment which Bob pays for. In an attempt to further liberate herself, she has flings with a photographer, whom she encounters during a modelling shoot, and a drug-dealing bad boy who perhaps leads her the furthest astray. Before long, she is once again left picking up the pieces of her own life, as well as those of others.
A wistful tale of anomie in a metropolitanised Europe, Besieged is a key film of the Cinema Novo, Portugal’s own take on post-war neorealism. The film often echoes early Polanski and Cassavetes, and it’s safe to say the males in the film don’t come off particularly favourably – the title and opening credits refer to a siege of manipulative men. Consistently androgynous with her cropped hair and schoolgirl skirts, Marta is a tragic figure whose constructed happy-go-lucky image, occasionally recalling the starlets of the French New Wave, belies her status as a lost woman. Unfortunately, given how much of the film rests on her story, Marta isn’t a particularly sympathetic character, her twists and turns led more by disillusionment with her current state than a genuine desire to create a new life for herself. Simplistic sound design becomes distracting when less is heard than seen, but the film does feature some magnificent vérité photography.
Margrét Dagmar Ericsdóttir is an Icelandic producer whose son Keli experiences a particularly severe form of autism. Margrét worked with famed Icelandic director Friðrik Þór Friðriksson to create a documentary in which she talked to experts and other parents of autistic children to understand the condition better for herself. Margrét visits professor of animal sciences Dr. Temple Grandin, who stands as living proof that one can achieve goals despite being diagnosed with autism at a young age. Other interviewees explain how they or their relatives have overcome their problems through openly embracing the comforting aspects of sensory stimulation.
What marks The Sunshine Boy apart from other documentaries of a similar nature is that the filmmaker herself has a personal connection to the subject, but chooses to learn through examining others in her position. Essentially, the journey of the film is one of reflection, and it is to Margrét’s credit that we as an audience are never allowed to wallow in pity. The range of experts deal with autism in different ways, some apparently more effective than others, and the suggestion is that a parent could feasibly teach these methods at home to give the child the best opportunities in life. What perhaps doesn’t work so well is the choice of music – the use of Björk’s song Human Behaviour in particular is a little insensitive. Additionally, Kate Winslet’s narration is quite unnecessary – for a documentary about overcoming communication problems, it’s unusual that the investigator should be dubbed by a famous actress.
After the boundary-pushing histrionics of Irréversible, many questioned what exactly Gaspar Noé could do next in an attempt to outdo himself. As a result, his latest project Enter The Void has been hyped to an almost embarrassing degree, with themes of drug addiction and spirituality promising an intense display of zeitgeist. Expatriate drug dealer Oscar lives with his pole dancer sister Linda in a flat in Tokyo. On what appears to be a slow evening at a bar, Oscar is shot by the police, and the story takes a turn as he becomes a floating ghost, able to see but not interact with the world around him. In this spirit form, Oscar seeks to fulfil his childhood promise – to protect Linda from evil.
Although it’s shot entirely from Oscar’s point of view, Noé keeps a lot of the film on the surface, and he frequently repeats symbols as if to remind the audience that this film has profundity. Oscar mentions the Tibetan Book of the Dead, before sinking into a DMT-induced hallucination evoking mandalas. A memory-led narrative full of potential becomes worryingly simplistic with lines like “I promise I’ll never ever leave you”. As proven in Irréversible, Noé knows how to play with his audience, and one must applaud him for some of what he manages to put on screen, but where he might have conceived of his film as a sugary pill designed to cure cinema’s ailments, one can’t help but feel this is little more than a placebo.
In the opening scene of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Rio Das Mortes, Hanna Schygulla repeats to herself a passage from a childcare book about achievement, indirectly teasing the two protagonists who are to be introduced later. Mike and Günther, feeling unfulfilled by infrequent employment and soured relationships, decide to unravel the mysteries of a treasure map, plotting a trip to Peru in the hopes of finding gold. Mike’s girlfriend Hanna doubts the men’s ability to organise such an excursion, but is crushed when they succeed, and tries to find whatever means she can to stop them.
One of ten films made by Fassbinder between 1970 and 1971, Rio Das Mortes appears to have suffered the most from a lack of focus, with thin characterisation and an unproductive narrative. Whereas the chain-smoking hedonists in his earliest films were consigned to their worthlessness, Mike and Günther are given a misleading goal and take an hour and a half to fail it. And even though the plot promises exploits of Herzogian proportions, there is not enough time in the film for anything to build up, and more importantly, nobody in the film appears to realise that Rio das Mortes is in Brazil. Whether intentional or not, the film offers a host of awkward laughs, particularly during a woeful fight where Günther’s trousers split. There are glimmers of the familiar Fassbinder here, with Schygulla stealing the scene as ever, but all in all one wonders who, if anyone, was driving the film to its conclusion.
In multimedia artist Péter Forgács’ fiction film Own Death, the protagonist is heard and often not seen, presented to the viewer through found footage and photographs as he describes his life after the near-death experience of a heart attack. The protagonist, assumed to be a publisher or printer, is very aware of his physical vulnerability and often refers to his reaction to his environment (sweat and muscular pains being particular favourites). But as he unravels each moment of pain or suffocation, the images suggest a secret joie de vivre, a longing to fulfil the dreams he had almost lost forever. Occasional segments of text, echoing the narration, appear across the screen in a typewriter serif.
Forgács’ interpretation of Péter Nádas’ novella is reminiscent of Peter Greenaway, creating a new text from several existing texts, and the bricolage of dozens of people’s lives hint at reincarnation or a desire to be anyone else. Newly shot footage flows adds motion to an otherwise sedentary slideshow, and intimacy is afforded to images of fingers and faces through use of gentle musique concrète, care of Béla Tarr’s frequent collaborator Mihály Víg. Whether deliberate or not, the narration is frustratingly anodyne and monotone, and one wonders if we are meant to celebrate the protagonist’s ability to articulate his pain, or to merely suffer with him. Moreover, the man’s thoughts often feel repetitive and steal the footage of some great mythic potential. An intriguing experiment, but one that never leaps off the screen as it should.
Beloved by much of his community, fisherman Miguel appears to be living the dream with his heavily pregnant wife Mariela. Once alone outside of the house, he lives the other element of his double life, a hidden romance with a painter named Santiago. During a late night rendezvous, Miguel is confused when Mariela fails to notice Santiago’s presence, and he soon learns that his secret lover has drowned at sea. Though he initially believes himself relieved of his guilt, repeated visions of Santiago push Miguel to discover his true feelings, and when Santiago’s ghost asks him to find his body and arrange a proper burial, he stops at nothing to fulfil his wishes.
It is undeniable that Undertow was made with heart, but its first-time director Javier Fuentes-León has a few issues with articulating his message clearly. Using the idea of a ghost to represent intolerance in small communities is inspired and works for part of the film, but it just isn’t believable enough to hit the viewer as hard as it should. Great care has been taken to establish the family environment in Miguel and Mariela’s household – an illuminated religious painting in their living room hints at the couple’s selective participation in religious living – but Santiago is undercharacterised by comparison. In many ways, one should be grateful that the subject isn’t blown out of proportion by melodramatics, but it is easy to miss the gravity of the conclusion if one hasn’t invested all their emotive response in every scene.
Intercut with footage from old Danish films, this peculiar anthology film invites twenty international directors to direct short films about Danish women, and the open brief makes it hard for the viewer to travel from one film to the next.
The Weather – short remake of Berlin, Symphony of a Great City?
Expectations – interview snippet which means little out of context
Me – dark, brooding depiction of sexuality, with notes of sci-fi
Meditation – entertaining portrait of a loving matriarch with an unusual hobby
Danthing – utterly surreal computer animation, reminiscent of Guy Maddin
My Things – sentimental, and a sweet interpretation of the title;
Light Apparel – baffling proverbial piece about gender inequality
Archaeology – mildly interesting documentary which discusses the Sami people
Centre – superb experimental short which keeps a moving ball at the centre of the screen
Life In Six Steps – ambitious Reggio-esque documentary which doesn’t quite gel together
Berlin Retour – unusual time-travelling WWII short with a questionable aesthetic
Casting – weak comedy which aims to subvert the stereotypes of Danish women
Peeping – culture-shock drama; feels like an excerpt of a bigger film
Dreaming – typical political fare from Dušan Makavejev, with cheeky self-reference
Bliss – inaccessible fragment of a conversation between the artist and Vietnamese friends
My Father – touching short about memory; could have been longer
Pork And Apple Stew – dreadful absurdist animation
Rhythm – decent piece on samba, although tenuous link to the theme
Tochuken Kumoemon is a renowned actor whose arrogant reputation precedes him. He views the stage as his domain and does not give much consideration to the feelings of his colleagues, a fact that dutiful wife Otsuma knows all too well. She accompanies his theatrical balladry on the shamisen, but this collaboration appears to be the closest the two ever get. Alienated from romantic feelings, Tochuken pursues a young geisha with little consideration for the feelings of his wife or son. Even when Otsuma falls ill, Tochuken refuses to visit under the proviso that it would dismantle their relationship as performers were he to be seen tending to her as a husband.
Tochuken Kumoemon seems to refer to director Mikio Naruse’s own practice, an allegory about keeping one’s feet on the ground in the duplicitious world of theatre. Though not entirely indistinguishable for the audience, the film’s two realities often intertwine, hinting that the viewer is to see the film from Tochuken’s perspective, although he is hardly a sympathetic character. As in Naruse’s later Avalanche, the male lead carries the story, but it is the wife’s sufferance which is intended to resonate with the viewer. Unfortunately, too much effort is expended on profiling Tochuken before the true story begins, and his relationship with his son is scarcely described. There are still strong moments of drama, particularly as Otsuma struggles to get through to her husband, but viewed through the prism of the performer’s ego, they ultimately amount to little true emotion.
A young schoolboy with prominent ears walks through the Paris streets. After he catches sight of a crudely drawn anti-Semitic propaganda poster, he unwittingly wills it to life, taking it on as a cynical sidekick named ‘The Mug’. Such whimsy is the language used by comic-book artist Joann Sfar as he portrays the story of Lucien Ginsburg, better known to the world as Serge Gainsbourg. The women in Gainsbourg’s life interact with this grotesque caricature as if it were still a part of him – until, that is, he settles down with English actress-singer Jane Birkin. Divorced from his alter ego, Gainsbourg’s work grows more fiercely political and his relationship crumbles, but a brief flirtation in a club appears to put him back in the right direction.
Though it certainly captures some of the essence of Gainsbourg’s haphazard life, Gainsbourg (Vie Héroïque) is a confusing extravaganza that rushes straight past emotion in order to keep the audience’s visual interest alight. Sfar might have been showing only the moments that Gainsbourg would have wanted to remember, but the film quickly grows frustrating as key moments in his life are compressed into ten-second shots. One doesn’t doubt that Gainsbourg must have had fond memories of his seduction of Brigitte Bardot, but for this affair to be given more screentime than his parents’ deaths combined seems almost disrespectful. An array of superb performances, helmed by Gainsbourg doppelgänger Éric Elmosnino, keep the viewer’s attention, but the film itself lacks the impact to leave an impression.
In the middle of the Uzbek desert, a blond-haired woman limps aimlessly, bandages adorning her body. Spied by a father and son team of hooded shepherds named Bo and Bu, she is fitted with a makeshift leash and dragged behind their cart like an animal. At first, Bo and Bu appear to show some affection for the woman, whom they name Ba. They feed her, wash her and take care of her as if she were a member of their flock. Before long, the two men find themselves vying for her attention, but are unable to shake off their obsessive objectification of her, and she is violently thrown around between the two like a ragdoll.
The film portrays the men as unpolished savages, unable to communicate beyond monosyllables. It is alleged that the film sparked controversy in various Central Asian countries for such a blunt depiction of the area, but director Ali Khamrayev quite pointedly does not associate the film with any specific country, saying only that it takes place “11,000km from New York”. In spite of this, the film seems to only really have one thing to say. The woman, played by Arielle Dombasle, stands apart from the backdrop as a blue-eyed, pink-lipped Barbie doll, an icon of all things European. Her presence in the desert alone seems to be the catalyst for the shepherds’ downfall, evoking a simple statement on European influence. Neither a straight drama nor a hilarious parody, Bo Ba Bu is an unusually mixed bag.
A middle-aged man looks longingly through a window, a stiletto in his hand. A black screen, accompanied by soaring post-rock guitars, occupies the screen for the next minute, before returning us to the man, who is now pottering around an empty events venue. It is this tantalisingly languid style which Lisandro Alonso uses in his short feature Fantasma. Words are scarcely uttered, if ever – the narrative comprises unnerving silences and pregnant pauses, told in rigid shots which invite the audience to take in the dimensions of each scene. The man eventually meets a young female student at the cinema, where the two are the only attendees to a screening which seems to show the man as some sort of explorer.
Naturally, a patience for long takes is crucial to get through Fantasma, but even then there is no solid guarantee of enjoyment. Like Tsai Ming-Liang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn and Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin, Alonso gives us a literal cinematic experience, transforming the darkened screening room into a stage wherein performance is unadulterated by dialogue. The scenes surrounding this nucleus of reflection offer a slight narrative more led by possibility than certainty, and while the man is an interesting sight, his slick black hair belying his true age, his story just doesn’t feel interesting enough to pursue. The introduction of the student promises a connection between the two characters, but teasingly doesn’t deliver. It isn’t that Fantasma has little to say, rather that it is perhaps too subtle for its own good.
Set in rural Gaul in the 5th century, French directing legend Eric Rohmer’s swan song concerns the love between shepherd Celadon and shepherdess Astrea. The young lovers are blighted by the disapproval of Celadon’s parents, but when Astrea mistakes Celadon’s use of a pretend girlfriend for infidelity, the relationship buckles under the strain. Having witnessed Celadon run into the river, Astrea believes that he has drowned and finds herself inconsolable. However, Celadon is kept alive by a group of nymphs who give him the confidence to return to the village in the hopes of finding Astrea again and winning back her heart.
In essence, it’s a simple Romeo and Juliet story in a bucolic setting. Rohmer presents his youthful protagonists as victims of circumstance, their core emotions otherwise unshakable. But as pure as its message is, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon takes a long time to say ver little. Too much of the film is afforded to characters literally reading poetry. What frustrates most however is that the romantic hysterics see no representation in the mise-en-scène – with the beautiful sweeping backdrop of a verdant valley, it’s a disappointment that the battle of emotions is left entirely up to the young cast, who appear a little wet behind the ears. To put it bluntly, one could just as easily be watching an amateur production in the woods. An undercooked, inflated melodrama which often feels like Shakespeare manqué, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon should only be seen by Rohmer completists.
An unnamed man (Isaach de Bankolé) meets two men at an airport who provide him with a list of cryptic instructions in various languages. Apparently obeying them, the man then takes a plane to Madrid and endures a series of mysterious meetings with people. The people do not appear to know the protagonist, or even each other, but they share in common a philosophical manner which renders further instructions difficult to interpret. Each of these encounters follows the pattern of a bizarre ritual involving two cups of espressos, the question “You don’t speak Spanish, right?” and a written code which the man reads and then eats. Throughout his unorthodox journey, the man registers almost no emotion, even as he is repeatedly accosted by a flirtatious nude woman. Towards the end of the film, the man’s role becomes clear when he makes his way into a guarded compound in the desert.
It is hard to sum up The Limits Of Control after just one viewing. By deliberately eschewing familiar narrative traits, director Jim Jarmusch demands special attention to detail from the audience, but the film’s slow pacing and the repetitive nature of the meetings often drive away interest. In essence, it is a mystery reluctant to be solved, Christopher Doyle’s stellar cinematography burnishing the more incomprehensible moments to a pretty shine. But even at his most obscure, Jarmusch’s boyish sense of humour remains, with lines such as “sometimes I like it in films when people just sit there, not saying anything”.
‘Bugchasing’ describes the practice of actively seeking sex with HIV-positive men, with the express goal of contracting the disease oneself. It is this shocking act which is the subject of Louise Hogarth’s hour-long documentary The Gift. The film goes for the jugular in its portrayal of the facts, opening with an impassioned cry for help from Doug, a gay man who has just learnt that his promiscuity has left him with the disease. Several other case studies reveal naïveté regarding the health risks involved with unprotected sex, and a general misunderstanding of the devastating effects of being HIV-positive. We also meet the individuals who celebrate their disease, tattooing themselves with the biohazard symbol and throwing ‘conversion’ parties. Members of the LGBT community form a vox pop throughout the film to contextualise the issue in mainstream homosexual culture.
Hogarth’s exposé has the best interests at heart, but it is often hard to take seriously as some of the interviewees show a lack of solemnity for the subject. Facts and glossary definitions appear on screen embellished with excessive graphics and house music, as if glamorising the subject. HIV is mentioned repeatedly, but the film does not go far enough in illustrating how damaging it is beyond throwing out the occasional statistic. Nonetheless, it does serve as a vital cautionary tale for an apparently uninformed minority group, as well as conveying a more universal message about trust and health. The Gift provides insight on a fortunately rare practice, but could have gone further.
Breakfast is an important meal. It sets you up for the day and gives you the required nutrients, no more, no less - it's a square meal. And this, in a way, is what this film review blog is meant to do. No matter what sort of film it is, every review gets exactly 250 words - just enough to get your RDA of plot, background info and critique.
I try my best to watch and review films from all over the place, in the same way I might have French toast one morning, and Coco Pops the next. Anyway, I'll leave you to get stuck in. Feel free to give me feedback, ask me where to find films, tell me off for unfair comments... I'm all ears. Bon appétit!
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