The Starz Independent FilmCenter Project, Vol. 3

April 26, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Romance, Sweden, Theatrical

by Walter Chaw

FAITHLESS (2000)
Trolösa
***/****
starring Lena Endre, Erland Josephson, Krister Henriksson, Thomas Hanzon
screenplay by Ingmar Bergman
directed by Liv Ullman

It is perhaps most instructive to look back at the beginning of a life when contemplating the end of one. Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman spent his nineteenth year in The Skerries (a Stockholm archipelago), a tumultuous period during which he lost the girl he loved, lost his faith in religion, and finally lost a close male friend to death. That year, when married with the all-pervasive influence of playwright Strindberg and a tireless love of the theatre, provides the root concerns shooting through Bergman's filmography: the idea that marriage is a constant negotiation of losses (abortions and suicides included in that mix) and that should God exist, He is grown apathetic.

Monsoon Wedding (2001)

March 8, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Germany, India, Italy, Romance, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Naseeruddin Shah, Lillete Dubey, Shefali Shetty, Vijay Raaz
screenplay by Sabrina Dhawan
directed by Mira Nair

by Walter Chaw Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding plays like an unedited wedding video, capturing peccadillo along with celebration and ugliness along with beauty. Slyly, a little in the manner of an Ousmane Sembene film, it weaves the troubling elements of its culture into the rituals of joy. (In the case of Monsoon Wedding, Nair explores India’s caste system, American cultural diffusion, the question of expatriated sons, and the inevitable death of tradition.) Yet Monsoon Wedding is also an exuberant Bollywood-lite soap opera with flat characterizations and badly telegraphed plot points punctuated periodically by bombastic sitar sing-alongs. What most separates Nair’s piece from Sembene’s masterpieces, however, is that ineffable sense of naturalism which better defines a culture than an abuse of its mad cinema’s mad archetypes.

No Man’s Land (2001)

February 22, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Drama, France, Italy, Satire, Slovenia, Theatrical, Thriller, War

**½/****
starring Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagovic, Georges Siatidis
written and directed by Danis Tanovic

by Walter Chaw Chiki (Branko Djuric) is one of two surviving members of a front-line relief party that was decimated after their guide got them lost in a fog. (From the first, the visual metaphors fly as thick as pea soup.) His companion Cera (Filip Sovagovic), thought dead by the enemy, has been placed on a pressure-sensitive mine; his antagonist, Nino (Rene Bitorajac), has been disarmed and wounded. The three of them (four if you consider the mine a character) decry their causes while overlooking their similarities. No Man’s Land is at its best when it tantalizes with the possibility for resolution–and at its worst when it explodes the claustrophobia of its first hour to include the UN, the press, and a newsreel montage lending background to a conflict the movie’s only ostensibly about in the first place.

Sleepless (2001) – DVD

February 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Dario Argento, DVD, Horror, Italy, Thriller

Non ho sonno
*/**** Image D Sound D
starring Max von Sydow, Stefano Dionisi, Chiara Caselli, Gabriele Lavia
 screenplay by Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini, Carlo Lucarelli
directed by Dario Argento

by Walter Chaw Italian horror master Dario Argento’s desperation for a critical or popular success is starting to manifest itself in self-imitation and sloppiness. Fourteen years removed from his last good movie (Opera), his latest film Sleepless (a.k.a. Non ho sonno), starring the inimitable Max Von Sydow and heralded as a return to Argento’s roots in the giallo genre, hits North American shores months after bootleg copies of it have already circulated amongst the ranks of disappointed fanboys. Sleepless lacks the savant-level spark of invention that elevates Argento’s best films (Deep Red, Suspiria, Tenebre) and the flashes of brilliance that indicate his second-tier of work (Phenomena, Opera, Inferno). It is listless and painful, with fakey gore and dialogue that reaches nadir even for an auteur never known for his pen.

Suspiria (1977) – DVD

January 19, 2002Posted in****/****, 1970s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Dario Argento, DVD, Esoterica, Horror, Italy

****/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras D+
starring Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé
screenplay by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi
directed by Dario Argento

Mustownby Walter Chaw At their best, Dario Argento’s films are lurid splashes of Hitchcockian reinvention that bristle with audacity and a pornographer’s sensibility. He deconstructs the male gaze in the mutilation of beautiful women, taking a moment (as he does in Tenebre, Opera, and Suspiria) to make guerrilla art of their extravagant suffering. Argento’s films are generally split between two sub-genres of the slasher flick, each defined to a large extent by his contributions. The first is the giallo, films indicated by their impossibly convoluted mystery plots and elaborate set-piece murders; the second, of which Suspiria is one, is the “supernatural,” distinguished by their surreality and lack of a traditional narrative. Known as “The Italian Hitchcock,” Argento, as I’ve said before, is more accurately “The Italian DePalma,” in that Argento’s imitating reads as homage. And though he occasionally selects sources to ape badly (i.e. attempting to adapt Jeunet and Caro to “Phantom of the Opera”), when he finds the perfect source material to serve as foundation for his redux perversions (Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, and Rebecca for Suspiria), the end result can be as original as it is discomfiting.

DIFF ’01: Fat Girl

October 22, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Italy

À ma soeur!
***/****
starring Anais Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero de Rienzo
written and directed by Catherine Breillat

by Walter Chaw

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
"Leda and the Swan" (1928)–William Butler Yeats

Yeats caused a minor stir in 1928 by suggesting that the rape of Leda was an empowerment for a sexually wise woman whose ultimate revenge against manhood was the spawning of Helen of Troy–who, of course, had a key role in the fall of an entire nation. The idea of ill-gotten knowledge as it's tied to a woman's evolving sexuality is not a new one–Biblical and older, in fact. Still, Catherine Breillat throws a new acerbic barb into the psychosexual brew by projecting Freud's classic developmental framework (anal, oral, genital) onto the progression of the uncomfortable seduction of the impossibly young Elena (Roxane Mesquida) by a smooth-talking Italian lothario (Libero de Rienzo). It is only one, though perhaps the most subtle, of Breillat's incendiary yawps against man's barbarism to woman. As Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux), the titular fat girl, summarizes at one point: "All men are sick."

Va savoir (2001)

October 12, 2001Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Romance, Theatrical

Who Knows?
****/****
starring Claude Berri, Catherine Rouvel, Hélène de Fougerolles, Jeanne Balibar
screenplay by Luigi Pirandello, Jacques Rivette, Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent
directed by Jacques Rivette

by Walter Chaw

"I hate symbolic art in which the presentation loses all spontaneous movement in order to become a machine, an allegory – a vain and misconceived effort because the very fact of giving an allegorical sense to a presentation clearly shows that we have to do with a fable which by itself has no truth either fantastic or direct; it was made for the demonstration of some moral truth."
-Luigi Pirandello from Playwrights on Playwriting, ed. by Toby Cole, 1961

DIFF ’01: The Son’s Room (2001)

October 11, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Italy, Palme d'Or Winner

La stanza del figlio
**/****
starring Nanni Moretti, Laura Morante, Jasmine Trinca, Giuseppe Sanfelice
screenplay by Linda Ferri, Nanni Moretti, Heidrun Schleef
directed by Nanni Moretti

by Walter Chaw Teetering along the narrow line that separates “poignant” from “maudlin,” the curiously detached The Son’s Room (La Stanza del figlio) ultimately errs on the side of the latter through increasingly unsubtle and rote revelations about the process of grief. Written (with Linda Ferri and Heidrun Schleef), directed, and starring the “Italian Woody Allen,” Nanni Moretti, the film is too clearly the product of a veteran comedian’s mind: all seriocomic vignettes barely tied together by the loosest of narrative structures. It may be more appropriate to describe Moretti as the Italian version of America’s own teary velvet clown: Robin Williams. (Unflattering, yes.) The winner of the prestigious Palme d’or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (beating out Mulholland Drive, In The Bedroom, and The Man Who Wasn’t There, each this film’s superior), La Stanza del figlio is well performed but unconvincing, aspiring to a sober emotional depth that is consistently undermined by high-decibel wailing, a tinkling, sappy soundtrack and score, and melodramatic trials and their telegraphed resolutions.

Liam (2001)

October 5, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coming of Age, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Theatrical, UK

**½/****
starring Ian Hart, Claire Hackett, Anthony Borrows, David Hart
screenplay by Jimmy McGovern
directed by Stephen Frears

by Walter Chaw Liam is an Irish coming-of-age story that has more in common with John Boorman’s The General and Hope and Glory than it does with Alan Parker’s Angela’s Ashes. It balances the deprivation and desperation of growing up with crippling unemployment, a peculiarly sadistic brand of Irish Catholicism, and rising anti-Semitism with a good sense of humour and a lively feeling for pace that better captures the seesawing emotion of childhood than unrelenting horror or unleavened bliss. The truth of childhood, after all, lies somewhere in the grey liminal spaces between William Blake’s songs of innocence and songs of experience, though liberal time is spent in both extremes. In other words, the true power of Liam is not in the now-familiar images of scrounging for bread and cigarettes while enduring whippings at the hand of Sadeian priests, but in the shame of a little boy who walks in on his mother bathing and the embarrassment of a stuttering child unable to say his own name.

Together (2000)

September 14, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Denmark, Drama, Italy, Romance, Sweden, Theatrical

Tillsammans
**/****
starring Lisa Lindgren, Michael Nyqvist, Emma Samuelsson, Sam Kessel
written and directed by Lukas Moodysson

by Walter Chaw A cross between Lars von Trier’s The Idiots and an irritating home video made by flower children, Swedish phenom Lukas Moodysson’s Together (Tillsammans) is an aggressively affable, ultimately simplistic film that displays almost nothing in the way of the craft or sensitivity of an Ingmar Bergman, his mentor in spirit and most vocal supporter. It is a film that defies criticism by beating critics to the punch: “These people are unlikable hypocritical idiots? My point exactly,” says Moodysson. “It’s filmed with almost no knowledge of even the basics of filmmaking? What better way to show the rawness of real life?” But I don’t buy it, not when we’re eternally two steps ahead of the gutless screenplay and consistently pulled from the drama by the same repetitive series of establishing zooms and shaky framing. Tillsammans looks as bad as any Dogme 95 film.

Bread and Tulips (2000)

August 16, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Italy, Romance, Switzerland, Theatrical

Pane e tulipani
**/****
starring Felice Andreasi, Vitalba Andrea, Tatiana Lepore, Ludovico Paladin
screenplay by Silvio Soldini & Doriana Leondeff
directed by Silvio Soldini

Breadandtulipsby Walter Chaw There are great chunks missing from Bread and Tulips, story transitions that appear inconsequential until one finds them neglected. An action is announced and several scenes later we are left to presume that the action has been performed; an event occurs and several scenes later we give up waiting for the reaction. Nowhere is that discrepancy more jarring than at the conclusion, when our heroine is spirited away from her family and loved ones and deposited in the middle of a different movie. There is a considerable problem with a film that insists on holding your hand through score or ham-handed direction; on the flipside, there is a considerable problem with one that discards basic narrative cohesion in favour of a calculated whimsy. A film like Bread and Tulips.

The Black Cat (1981) – DVD

August 16, 2001Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Italy

Gatto nero
*/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Patrick Magee, Mimsy Farmer, David Warbeck, Al Cliver
screenplay by Lucio Fulci, Biagio Proietti, Sergio Salvati
directed by Lucio Fulci

by Walter Chaw Ostensibly based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name, Lucio Fulci’s The Black Cat is actually more akin to John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (brought to film twice under the name Village of the Damned), with the titular feline taking the place of the telepathic tykes of Wyndham’s apocalyptic fable. Like the children of Wyndham’s tale, the evil cat is a physical by-product of the Freudian id, in this case a creature/familiar that, predictably, runs amuck. Fans of the “Godfather of Gore,” Lucio Fulci, and the Italian horror genre (and specifically the giallo sub-genre of the same) will doubtless be disappointed in what amounts to be a staid amalgam of lurid Hammer Studios plots and settings. Patrick Magee’s performance as the human counterpart to the evil pussycat constitutes the best reason to see an otherwise lifeless gothic horror film. A role Vincent Price or Christopher Plummer would have played once, Magee is appropriately fervent and pitched to campy perfection.

The Others (2001)

August 12, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, France, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Spain, Theatrical, Thriller

***½/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Elaine Cassidy, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan
written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar

by Walter Chaw The Others is an intricate character drama that takes turns shifting its suspicions on any number of scenarios and suspects. It subtly considers each of its small troupe of players as alternately worthy of mistrust, and its fantastic cast is more than equal to director Alejandro Amenábar’s quiet attributions of innocence and diabolical attributions of wickedness. Throughout, Amenábar maintains the unnerving possibility that, despite the spectre of a hoax or a plot ever-looming in the sometimes-inexplicable actions of one or more of its characters, something paranormal might, in fact, be at work.

The House by the Cemetery (1981) – DVD

August 6, 2001Posted in1980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Italy

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Catriona MacColl, Paolo Malco, Ania Pieroni, Giovanni Frezza
screenplay by Lucio Fulci, Giorgio Mariuzzo, Dardano Sacchetti
directed by Lucio Fulci

by Walter Chaw Released in 1981, the same year as his superior The Beyond, Lucio Fulci's The House by the Cemetery is an unintentionally hilarious film that nonetheless manages to provide a few cringe-worthy gore showcases on its way to collapsing in on its own shaky foundation. The score, by Walter Rizzati, is an entirely inappropriate homage to the melodramatic histrionics of Hanna-Barbera's "Scooby-Doo" organ flourishes, and the horrifically bad dubbing only goes partway towards explaining the awfulness of the acting and the pointlessly gimmicky direction. The only time that The House by the Cemetery is something other than an alien soap opera, in fact, is when Fulci does what Fulci does best: leer at Gino De Rossi's (Cannibal Ferox) superbly discomfiting make-up effects.