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reviews
The Saddest Music in the World | 2003, directed by Guy Maddin, 99 min
If you don't know Guy Maddin's films, this isn't the one to start with. It may seem as though it is, since it features what's so far his most mainstream cast and most straightforward story (based on a Ishiguro screenplay—who would have imagined that?). But "mainstream" and "straightforward" are exactly why Saddest Music disappoints. It has its delights—Isabella Rossellini's performance, primarily—but feels throughout like imitation Maddin. And uninspired (who would have imagined that? ). There's not a single idea in this film that Maddin hasn't more excitingly explored elsewhere.
Maddin, understandably, has had trouble transitioning from his earlier, smaller pictures to his current, larger-but-still-small films. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs was slow and uncertain, but I prefer it to Saddest, because there it felt as though Maddin was working toward something new, trying to extend farther the dreamier parts of Gimli Hospital and Archangel. It contained a brilliant flooded seduction scene, but overall it didn't work, and a lot of people didn't like it. But it was an ambitious failure.
Saddest Music runs in a different, easier direction: stretch the offbeat humor. Perhaps emboldened by his masterpiece Heart of the World, Maddin has built another rapid-fire story of an absurdist competition, but this on doesn't achieve in 99 minutes the emotional impact Heart managed in just four. Maddin demonstrates that his storytelling abilities have come a long way, and much of Saddest Music is enjoyable, if arbitrary (Maria de Medeiros's character delivers a few lines about her tapeworm, each one funny, but it's a gag that could have found a home in any other Maddin feature). Simply put, there's neither larger purpose nor formal innovation.
It pains me to say anything bad about a film by Guy Maddin, whose movies until now certainly haven't been trendy, though they've always had elements of mass appeal. But Saddest Music's glib winks backward coast so near the current detestable retro-hipness that I must voice a fear about Maddin's work. The very real danger his style risks, when empty of formal challenge, is that of becoming a gimmick, a kind of filter applied to otherwise wholly familiar movies: Maddin Vision!
The smothering convention of North America's here and now is a cynically thoughtless, popularized postmodernism: a glib commodity fetishism bearing only the impression of rebellion. Saddest Music stands too near it for my comfort. I hope I'm overreacting, or overlooking. [Adam]
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Warabinokou (To the Bracken Fields) | 2003, directed by Hideo Onchi, 124 min
"I haven't been taught things in such a long time, and now I'm feeling excited like a child." So Ren tells Nui, her daughter-in-law. Ren, who is 60, is being taught to set traps; the night before, she and her seven companions agreed to break the sacred rules and hunt: "Let's kill the rabbits, the birds, the fishes!" They, the Warabinos, are only supposed to beg for food, but rain and then snow has kept them from their home village. But that has been anticipated: Warabinos may only beg because they must prepare for the next life. They have been exiled to Warabino in order to starve to death.
The film, set in a timeless, placeless Japan, spends no time debating whether Warabino should exist. It's something of a myth—ghosts sometimes come speak to the characters—and yet it's grounded in a horrifying realism: a crippled woman takes minutes to crawl across a bridge, knowing that unless she reaches the village and begs for a rice ball, she will die. We watch the Warabinos living the last days of their lives, making shoes and mending roofs, joking and flirting and bickering, preparing for death while doing whatever they can to survive, because they find that they cannot help but try to live.
Most of the film is narrated, back and forth, by Ren and Nui, thinking to one another. We never see them writing, and Warabinos are forbidden from speaking to villagers, so unless they are telepathic, they are thinking only to themselves. I find this tragic, because Ren and Nui confess to one another so much that is so beautiful and sad, and their thoughts are their only comfort. But we, the audience, can hear them, and this film is, of course, for us.
"Warabinokou" was shot by Shoji Ueda, the cinematographer on all of Kurosawa's films from "Kagemusha" onward. Here, as in Kurosawa's "Yume" (Dreams), Ueda shoots forests and snow in a still, silent manner that's simultaneously elegant and terrifyingly primeval. (It's not unlike how Tarkovsky could make water and grasses appear so alien.) Like a Tarkovsky film, like a Kurosawa film, "Warabinokou" is a rare gift: a film that, when remembered days later, still devastates. [Adam] | an interview with Shoji Ueda
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Talaye Sorgh (Crimson Gold) | 2003, directed by Jafar Panahi, 95 min
The latest collaboration between Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi is everything you'd expect: a brilliantly complex and sensitive treatment of social discrimination built through their distinctively unhurried, seemingly meandering scenes.
The surprise is first-time actor Hussein Emadeddin, who plays Hussein, a war veteran made slow by cortizone; his performance must now be added to the list of cinema's greatest. Talaye Sorgh starts at his story's tragic end, then jumps to an earlier point, proceeding chronologically to just before the events of the opening scene. And so Hussein's initial, inexplicable rage is contrasted by his silent, impenetrable suffering at the hands of his employer, the police, and the indifferent wealthy. The accumulation of these abuses may not justify Hussein's ultimate response, but we leave Talaye Sorgh understanding it. [Adam]
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Karn Torsu Kong Kammakorn Rong-ngan Hara (The Hara Woman Workers Struggle) | 1975, directed by Jon Ungpakorn, 52 min
This is a 52-minute documentary about a 1975 struggle over control of a garment factory in Orm Yai (a section of Nakhon Pathom, a city west of Bangkok). The film, directed by Jon Ungpakorn, consists largely of interviews with workers directly involved with the conflict, including: a former child worker who recalls having to hide when inspectors came, a few workers who were beaten by hired thugs, and Shawkiang Saechua and Niyom Kantoe, leaders of the eventual resistance group. The workers tell how they were forced to stand all day in overheated factories, were forbidden from talking, had to pay to replace broken equipment, were given water and a toilet only after months of requests, and had little food and no medicine or care of any kind. Still, needing to work, they suffered these conditions for many years.
In March 1975, the Hara Company opened a new factory in Bangkok and moved equipment there, firing 100 of the then-300 Orm Yai workers. The workers responded with protests and demands. By September the Hara Company had demonstrated that it was unwilling to compromise, repeatedly sending men and police to beat and cut the workers, and firing anyone who complained. In September the workers occupied the Orm Yai factory in a sit-in. The Hara Company responded by abandoning the factory, moving the sewing equipment to Bangkok. Amazingly, the workers then formed their own company, the United Labourers Factory; for the next five months they lived and worked in the factory, making and selling clothing. The workers display the jeans they have made, and proudly relate how they have begun to educate themselves. They also needed to post guards, because they could expect no help from the police or the government: Thailand was a military dictatorship at the time. Part One ends with an appeal to other Thai workers to demand their own rights, and occupy their factories if necessary.
Part Two was made in spring 1976, when the workers were arrested en masse after their representatives tried meeting with the Prime Minister. The Orm Yai community freed them on bail, and after failed attempts at arbitration, the workers sued Hara Company. The documentary ends with the results of that trial pending. As one worker puts it: "If the company loses, they will be fined 1000 baht [about fifty 1976 US dollars]. If we lose, we will go to prison. Because prisons are for the poor, not the wealthy." [Adam]
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Tongpan | 1977, directed by Paijong Laisakul, Surachai Chantimathon, and Euthana Mookdasanit, 60 min
This is an amateurish film made by the Isan Film Group in 1975 and 1976, when the Thai military dictatorship had momentarily relaxed its control (it would crack down again in spring 1976, probably not long after Tongpan was finished).
Isan is a region in northeast Thailand, and "Tongpan" is the name of a fictional farmer and fisherman who lives there. Like many inhabitants of Isan then, Tongpan struggles to provide for his family. The fat cats in the government and military, aided by westerners, want to dam the rivers to provide electricity for Bangkok and Chiang Mai.
That kind of thing really did happen, and it caused the suffering of thousands of people, so it's a shame that Tongpan is such crudely made propaganda (it begins with a man on a bus turning to the driver to stiffly deliver the line, "Comrade, when will we reach Chiang Karn?"). Even a crude documentary like Anuthin 14 Tula might have been preferable. Still, Tongpan now possesses a historical significance, if not an aesthetic one, as a testament to the political freedoms Thais briefly enjoyed in the mid-70s. [Adam]
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Bangkok Happy | 2003, directed by Maussa Vorasingha, 3 min
Though it starts with a good concept—the video is a series of perhaps twenty pedestrians stating to the camera why they are happy—Bangkok Happy quickly turns annoying, thanks in great part to its grating accompanying music, and a poorly chosen, overly-precious closing clip. [Adam]
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Man Ching's Interview | 2003, directed by King Wai Cheung, 25 min
Man Ching is a six-year-old girl who must everyday cross the border between Hong Kong and mainland China to go to school. She is recruited by filmmakers who want to make a short fictional film about a six-year-old girl who everyday does the exact same thing. The idea, as I thought I understood from what the film's own narration, is to first show the real-life Man Ching making her real-life border crossing, followed by fictional footage depicting the same events.
Why the film wants to do this isn't clear, but then, even more confusingly, the film proceeds to do something else instead. It seemed to me that Man Ching left a school in Hong Kong, and her mother on the mainland, in order to go live with her aunt in Hong Kong. And attend a new school there, for which she needed to give an interview to school officials.
Maybe the film isn't confusing, but it lost me. Perhaps because I was watching a subtitled copy. But some confusion is no doubt deliberate. That Man Ching's Interview isn't a straightforward documentary is obvious from its stated goals, as well as the manner in which it is shot: it's often playfully staged, and routinely conceals information. There's a scene, for instance, in which Man Ching meets her father, a truck driver, at a border crossing, and the event is shot such that we never see his face. In other places, the characters are clearly hitting marks. When Man Ching finally meets with school officials for her interview, there's a key moment when we think she's waving to the camera crew, but then a reverse shot reveals Man Ching's aunt—and no camera. This is in direct contrast to earlier scenes where characters speak and react to the camera and its crew.
I left Man Ching's Interview uncertain of what I'd seen, or what was being attempted. I'm intrigued enough to watch it again, should I have the chance, though I have my doubts as to how worthwhile poring over the film would be. [Adam]
Note: An unofficial criterion of the festival seems to have been choosing films whose soundtracks repeat one piece of music: Karn Torsu Kong Kammakorn Rong-ngan Hara, Anuthin 14 Tula, Jagoda u Supermarketu, The Affair. Man Ching's Interview uses Auld Lang Syne three times (and one character even notes that the British played the song in 1997 when they handed control of Hong Kong over to China). The saving grace is that it uses three different arrangements.
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Liyab (Flames) | 2003, directed by Socorro Fernandez, 10 min
My question for the filmmakers is why they spent so much money illustrating such a slip of a story. The high production values, which provide nothing of interest to look at, overwhelm the plot, which is already so simple that it barely supports the film's ten minutes. A man lies brain-dead in a hospital, but his estranged wife won't allow his life support to be turned off, preferring to use him as bait to reveal his secret lover. This she conveniently explains in the first scene to the dying man's best friend. Well, in a film this short and with so few characters, you can guess who, four minutes later, will announce in a tear-drenched monologue that he's the lover in question. (The film's homosexual "twist" reminds me of the joke about the doctor who won't operate on the son who's been hurt in the car crash that killed his father.)
When not wasting our time in the hospital room (which features an annoyingly loud life-support machine and needless tracking shots), the wife visits the film's most promising character, a very bored, transvestite candle seller. My version of Liyab is a single ten-minute DV shot of her wearily hocking her wares. [Adam]
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Junk Life | 2003, directed by Voravuth Chuanyou, 26 min
Student films aren't always bad, but don't look to this one for hope. Especially since the copy I saw featured a mangled soundtrack and practically unreadable English subtitles. The latter was too bad, because all of the video's pleasure was in those titles:
Mother: "Get me an alcohol now."
Store Owner: "How. Do you drunk everyday?"
I also made out "What the hell you drive. Is my leg broke?" and "You shouldn't alive anymore" and "Are you crashed again? Do you hurt." Junk Life is thirty minutes of poorly-shot DV footage in which three actors forget their dialogue for the benefit of a tape recorder wrapped in a ski jacket. Sometimes the action is in slow-motion, sometimes it's sped up, and sometimes it's accompanied by Barber's Adaggio, which should be banned from the movies. [Adam]
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Broken Blossom | 2003, directed by Matsuoka Naomi, 30 min
This won best short documentary, even though it isn't a documentary: it's a video diary, particularly reminiscent at times of those made by Sadie Benning. But I'm glad it won, because it's very good, if frustrating. Naomi is obviously talented, filling Broken Blossom with powerful moments and insights ("It's not that the body is dumb, just strange"), and several bits of outright genius. (There's a terrific single-shot scene in which she plays with figurines shaped like a bent carrot, a pug, an adult panda, and a baby panda). But mixed in with the good stuff are some embarrassing stumbles, such as when she follows a description of her miscarriage with a shot of her cutting her hair with a knife.
The real problem, as the film progresses, turns out to be its lack of structure. Naomi has either three shorter, better films here, or the start of a longer, much more carefully patterned piece. Even the simple addition of chapter titles would have helped tremendously (the audience I saw it with was very restless after fifteen minutes, and I remained nervous throughout that the work would at any second collapse beyond recovery). The final disappointment comes when she passes up no fewer than three brilliant possible endings to settle on one of the video's more uninspired moments.
But so many of the intuitions underlying Broken Blossom prove so strong that, rather than collapsing, the film repeatedly, and almost effortlessly, recovers to well and beyond. It was a highlight of the festival. [Adam]
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Bu San (Goodbye Dragon Inn) | 2003, directed by Tsai Ming-Liang, 82 min
Tsai Ming-liang's newest film, the ultra-minimalist Bu san, is yet another masterpiece from one of contemporary cinema's greatest directors.
Various people gather at Taipei's Fu-Ho Grand Theatre during a nighttime tempest to watch King Hu's martial arts classic Long men ke zhen (Dragon Inn, 1966). With this setup Tsai blends a tribute to a dying cinematic heritage with a series of interwoven scenes focused on his usual subject, loneliness: there are successive gags centered on a frustrated, gay Japanese tourist (the Fu-Ho was famous for cruising), as well as the theater's enigmatic club-footed ticket booth worker (Chen Shiang-chyi), whose sad story is revealed by the film's end. The audience also includes actors Tien Miao and Jun Shi, former stars of Long men ke zhen, and perhaps a few ghosts. People come and go throughout the film, suggesting the overlapping of audiences past and present, and culminating, when the lights finally come up, in a heartbreaking, prolonged shot of the theater.
The Fu-Ho is in the film is slated for demolition, and, indeed, the theater was torn down soon after Bu san was completed. Our only consolation at such a loss is that a film this magnificent now exists. [Adam] | see also The Missing
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I sognatori (The Dreamers) | 2003, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, 115 min
The Dreamers won its fight to be shown uncut in the US, but it will also be stamped with the reviled NC-17 rating, which is unfortunate because clearly the film was made to appeal to neophytes of New Wave cinema. I can't imagine any viewer who has already seen Jules and Jim, Breathless, or Band of Outsiders will get much out of it. Adapted by Gilbert Adair from his own story, the film wants to be a valentine to the cinema of the sixties and the radical politics that converged in Paris in 1968, both of which were formative for its director. However, by playing the old saw of a feckless American abroad who is initiated by a pair of sexually confused siblings, Bertolucci succeeds only in packaging once adventurous, almost indigestible ideas into easy digestible soap opera treacle. Do we enter along with Matthew (Michael Pitt) a world of uninhibited sexuality and thought? No. More than Band of Outsiders, this film evoked the love triangle in Sophie's Choice (a novel, and film, on the other side of the culture divide), but the film's desultory ending doesn't even deliver resolution on that front. The kids watch movies, have sex, and then they start marching in the street. Oh yes, somewhere in the midst of all this they also pick dinner out of a garbage can. I assume that was Bertolucci's shorthand for the maturation process.
Though the compositions are painterly and haunting, and the art direction seems knowing (though some of the prominent cultural artifacts are so obvious I winced), all it seems adorned rather than integral to the film. It seems the biggest problem is that there isn't much in the film that suggests an original thought or idea, other than young people in Paris in the sixties sure had it good, what with riots in the streets, sex in the bedrooms, and the Cinematheque around the corner. If the film stirred my brain, it touched only gray matter, having more affection than meaningful reflection on a time when revolution was a real possibility and cinema was its engine.
Note: Jonathan Rosenbaum offered this astute anecdote in his review of The Dreamers in the Chicago Reader (February 20): "I don't know about you," my oldest French friend said to me two weeks ago, "but I sure wasn't having a great sex life in May 1968." [William]
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The Cooler | 2003, directed by Wayne Kramer, 101 min
Alec Baldwin's commanding performance as an old-school casino boss has received a lot of attention, and while his performance is commendable, his role hasn't been imagined beyond the familiar East Coast transplant who uses physical torture to deter cheaters as opposed to just ruining their credit records.
Unfortunately I found the films central conceit a little odious. With William H. Macy as a walking bad-luck charm employed by Baldwin to 'cool off' gamblers who catch fire at the tables, writer/director Wayne Kramer and writer Frank Hannah ask the audience to sympathize with a casino, and their primary strategy is to portray every patron of the casino as something to scrape off your shoe. In the world of current American cinema this is very familiar territory: make the audience care about just one character (or hell, just one filmmaker) by giving them no option but to hate everyone else. Though Macy is ostensibly the main character, his one-note sap could barely carry a short subject. I got the feeling the filmmakers had a similar realization halfway through the production, and tried to add bulk to Baldwin's character, but I have no facts to back that up.
As the story goes, things change for Macy's 'cooler' when he falls in love with a waitress; instead of cooling off crap shooters he sets them ablaze. At this point the already cold-blooded Baldwin becomes monstrous, and the audience is asked to sympathize with him even as he's hacking off limbs. And why not? No one other character in the film registers as something more than an object of contempt. I didn't buy it, but Alec was a lot of fun to watch. [William]
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Nói Albinói (Nói the Albino) | 2003, directed by Dagur Kári, 93 min
The soundtrack includes Jonathan Richman, Minus, Presley, and slowbow's wonderful "Aim for a Smile." Today's indie films sure contain great music. Especially these "disaffected character studies" that the Miramax generation of indie filmmakers love making so much.
In this slice of life, we follow Nói—albino only because the genre demands such gratuitous details—stumble through a loose series of vignettes set in his nowhere hometown in Iceland. Charmingly, I must admit; credit is due actor Tómas Lemarquis for his understated, somewhat bemused performance. My advice to young Nói: just move. Your isolation and resentment are the understandable product of being stuck in a script where all of the other characters—walking quirks—have been written to invite an easy laugh or disgust (or both). Oh, not as much as in a real indie film like Ghost World or Welcome to the Dollhouse; Nói Albinói is too good-hearted or carelessly made to strive for that degree of cynicism. But don't fret, Dagur Kári: a few more pictures, a few years in Hollywood, and you'll get the formula down.
Maybe because Nói Albinói can't decide between cynicism and quirkiness, it contains some good scenes, like a late night date at a museum, and a nicely foiled bank robbery. They made me wish that the cinematography wasn't so functionless, that the editing wasn't so clumsy, that the character of Nói's grandmother wasn't so unecessary, that Nói and his deadbeat father and bookstore-owning friend and frustrated math teacher were allowed some room to do something other than stubbornly force forward the minimal, familiar plot. But Nói the film, like its hero (and so many arthouse movies today), is lazy, and lets us be lazy, too, letting the indy songs emote for us, coasting on popular cynicism and laughing at the easy jokes until one hell of a plot twist brings it all to a ridiculous conclusion. [Adam]
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Anuthin 14 Tula (14 October) | 1973, directed bu Shin Klaipan, 94 min
On 6 October 1973, the Thai military dictatorship arrested 13 students who were protesting at Suan Luang (a field with great historical and political significance, in front of the Royal Palace in Bangkok's Old City). Students met to protest at nearby Thammasad University, then as now a harbor for liberal and socialist ideals. On the 9th the University cancelled classes and exams (October is the end of the Thai semester). Over the next few days more and more students gathered, eventually moving to the school's football field. On 12 October, the amassed students demanded the release of their fellows by noon the next day. When that deadline passed, they marched down Thanon Ratchadamnoen (the traditional route walked by the king after his coronation) to the Democracy Monument, built in 1932 to celebrate Thailand's transition to a democracy. The crowd kept growing, and by 10PM there was word that the students were going to be released.
But the morning of 14 October—"the Day of Great Sorrow"—saw instead police and military forces circle and attack the protestors with tear gas, tanks, and live ammunition. Hundreds of civilians were murdered in the ensuing fighting. At 7:15 that evening King Bhummiphol (still king of Thailand) addressed the nation, calling for calm. As a result of his intervention, the Prime Minister resigned, and the military was shamed into a relative calm for the next three years (during which time the aforementioned liberals and socialists were much emboldened: see Tongpan and Karn Torsu Kong Kammakorn Rong-ngan Hara). 1976 saw the return of even more brutal oppression, a backlash against which led to the eventual overthrow of the dictatorship.
The events of 14 October are somewhat taboo in Thailand, and this documentary is little seen. Unfortunately, it seems to have been much neglected. The video copy that I saw was made from a worn, high contrast 16mm print with a warped and tinny soundtrack. At two points the image was replaced by "not yet rendered" screens; I'm guessing that those were subtitled sections that weren't fully processed.
Even without these transfer problems, the documentary is a mixed bag. It consists mainly of long, uninterrupted stretches of black and white (and some color) 8mm footage of the crowds, presumably shot by a variety of onlookers and participants. Over this are played repeated Marxist songs, with occasional narration. At 94 minutes, it can get tiring. The benefits are of course being able to view such remarkably immediate footage of a momentous event in relatively recent Thai history. The crowds are staggeringly large, and the footage of 14 October itself is horrifying. It may be that the best use of Anuthin 14 Tula will always be as a source of footage for other films, but even that would be a remarkable achievement. [Adam]
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Matir Moina (The Clay Bird) | 2002, directed by Tareque Masud, 94 min
When Rokon, at the start of the film, asks his classmate Anu why he came to the maddrassah, it prompts a flashback that effectively establishes the backstory: Anu has been sent there by his cartoonishly belligerent father. The film returns to the present, at which point it forgets that it can use flashbacks.
Matir Moina is an exercise in forgetting. Rokon mysteriously tells Anu that he is regularly visited by "a friend," but won't divulge more. Later, when he falls ill, the head of the madrassah pronounces him possessed, and orders that various cruel treatments be administered. And then the film abandons Rokon, focusing exclusively on the start of the fighting that, forty years ago, cleaved Bangladesh from Pakistan.
That means more time spent watching the father, busy exercising his belligerence by prescribing the wrong medical treatment for his dying daughter, estranging his wife and brother, and repeatedly predicting the exact opposite results of the burgeoining revolution. The program notes call the film "quasi-autobiographical," and perhaps writer/director Tareque Masud suffered such a person at the time. But this straw man argument of a movie quickly exhausted my sympathy. [Adam]
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Dogville | 2003, directed by Lars von Trier, 177 min
Dogville's fun—unless you hate von Trier films, in which case you'll hate this one, too. But a few days later you'll wonder if it was worth it. Unlike Breaking the Waves or Dancer in the Dark, or any other von Trier film, this one is pure sensation, a visceral film designed to provoke audiences to extreme positions.
But although it might be exciting, it would be silly to fight over this movie. Provocation as artistic content lacks novelty, and Dogville will seem experimental only to those who haven't seen experimental films. Although it may seem concerned with philosophy, it has nothing of substance to say regarding its supposed subject, stoicism.
What is Dogville, then? Dogville is entertainment: Fight Club for arthouse film fans. And it is an entertaining film: for 177 minutes if gave me what I know I can count on von Trier et al to deliver: fantastic DV photography, a mise-en-scene that's every bit as functional as it is freshly beautiful, accomplished performances that easily handle the melodrama.
But it doesn't do much good to think beyond the film's formal accomplishments. Von Trier has made pulp before—his haunted hospital soap opera Reget—but here he, unfortunately, has Something to Say. About America, at that. Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark didn't say things: they obsessed. Dogville starts as obsession, too, but then foolishly opens its mouth, ruining a lot of the fun, and all of the art. [Adam]
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Dogville | 2003, directed by Lars von Trier, 177 min
Danish provocateur Lars von Trier's new film pits another painfully innocent woman against a crowd of people designed to be hated. Actually, they aren't people so much as simple patterns of specific behavior you can see coming for miles, a quality that becomes more apparent if you look at von Trier's last few films. Much has been said about the film of being anti-American, but it is told as a fable, so if anything it's anti-human. Set on a stage that represents the town of Dogville, von Trier's set successfully depicts a Midwestern island surrounded by blackness by night and overcast skies by day, but what point there is to this choice seems academic at best. We know what von Trier thinks of his cardboard stand-ups and milieu, because his film plays like a familiar schema in which we know the outcome of every scene before it begins. However the film seems more confused than its earlier incarnations, Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark; it catches Lars von Trier in an ever more ambitious pose, dealing away even the little suspense we've come to associate with his films. By ultimately reversing the schema those previous films followed, von Trier seems to be responding to his critics with a reflexive ending, but it's an ending as trite and hateful as anything else the director has offered up. In the end the film plays like a stunt, more than the other von Trier films I've seen, and I didn't play along. The audience, however, ate it up. The end credits feature a montage of American photography dealing with poverty, scored to David Bowie's "Young Americans," but what purpose that choice served the film escaped me. [William]
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Uzak (Distant) | 2003, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 110 min
I've wanted to see Uzak since it won the Grand Prize at Cannes. There critics and audiences hailed its director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, as the second coming of Andrei Tarkovsky. Other names dropped were Antonioni, Tsai, Angelopoulos, Kiarostami and Panahi—masters of slow, methodical, compositionally meticulous cinema. So I probably expected too much from it. But Uzak has been much overrated.
I found myself, as the film began, admiring the opening shot: we watch from the top of a hill as Yusuf makes his way through the snow below, climbing upward toward the camera. He pauses to allow us a good look at him, then moves off-screen left. The camera, after a few seconds, pans to follow, revealing a road but no sign of Yusuf. Instead, a car is winding its way toward us. Then Yusuf steps back into the shot from off-screen left to hail the car, his hand prominent in the foreground. As the car approaches and slows, white-on-black title cards appear, leaving us to imagine from the soundtrack the car stopping, Yusuf getting in, the car pulling away. All very nice. There were some small points I took issue with—I thought the opening composition of the valley pleasant but underwhelming; Yusuf's features at the top of the hill were underlit; and the camera reframed twice, slightly but perhaps needlessly, during Yusuf's ascent. And it was, of course, very reminiscent of Tarkovsky, especially in its use of two alternating planes of action. But, overall, nice, making it easy to dismiss those small concerns.
But they returned as the film continued, and the opening shot's significance grew muddy. Contrast it with the closing image, or with any other part of the film. What is the purpose of rendering so much of Yusuf's traveling in a style so reminiscent of Tarkovsky's? How does such a rendering contribute to Yusuf's conflict with his cousin Mahmut, his repeated failed attempts to meet women, or the final decision he comes to? Forgive me if this is just a failure of imagination is on my part. Individual scenes themselves are for the most part well-done, though they always remind you of another director, usually Tarkovsky, usually very strongly of Tarkovsky (why?). Uzak fails to add up. Is it poetic meditation? Class-conflict allegory? Bittersweet, tightly-restrained comedy? Postmodern neorealism? None, really.
Consider a more narrative scene in which Yusuf arrives at Mahmut's apartment. This single shot introduces the apartment's janitor, Kamil, who tells Yusuf that the buzzer often stops working, agrees to pick up a package for one of two exiting men, and retrieves a shopping list from a red bucket that drops into the shot's foreground; an offscreen woman's voice asks Kamil to run to the store for her. The action develops well, and makes good use of two planes of action: the red bucket is a nice comic capstone in a funny scene that delivers key information. We learn that Yusuf has come to see Mahmut, and that Kamil is the apartment's busy everyman.
But as it turns out, Kamil will have only one more scene in the film, in which he simultaneously try to handle problems for Yusuf and a female tenant. Kamil is a misdirection, gone by the second hour.
Perhaps the choice fell to more Kamil or more Tarkovsky-derived close-ups of Yusuf. Ceylon spend a great deal of time invoking Tarkovsky, as well as directly imitating him (the recurring close shot of Yusuf is modeled on shots of Donatas Banionis as Dr. Kris Kelvin in Tarkovsky's 1972 classic Solaris). In one scene, characters openly discuss Tarkovsky (Mahmut once dreamed of making films like Tarkovsky's, but now works as a commercial photographer). Mahmut later watches portions of Stalker (1979) and Zerkalo (1975). Ceylon's repeated use of Mozart's "Symphony Concertante," often with the sound of dogs barking, recalls Tarkovsky's uses of works like Bach's "Choral Prelude in F minor." We learn that Mahmut's music collection is heavily devoted to Bach).
Again and again, a character in close-up stares forlornly past the camera, then moves to join a background plane of action. Consider the shot in which Yusuf walks past the beached ship. We open with a close-up of a hanging piece of tackle. Yusuf walks right to left in the far background, slightly out of focus. As the shot pans to follow him left, it discovers the ship, and Yusuf moves closer to us before exciting screen-left. The camera movement lingers over the ship, and then Yusuf reenters the shot from the left, farther in the distance, walking away. The scene illustrates Yusuf's failed plans to go to sea. It is well-executed and beautiful. But it suffers from its obvious imitation of Tarkovsky.
A danger in evoking other artworks is that you may make the audience wish they were instead enjoying that other work. Watching Mahmut and Yusuf watch the "entering the Zone" sequence of Stalker, I found myself wishing that I, too, was watching that film. Especially because Ceylon's uses the lengthy excerpt to make a banal point: after Yusuf, bored, goes to bed, Mahmut turns off Stalker and turns on porn. How he's sacrificed his dreams of making a Tarkovsky!
Ceylon obviously has not, but should, because he's a better director when he's not trying to channel others. The film's final ten minutes don't imitate, and they're the best ten minutes of the film. Ultimately, Uzak is a class-conflict domestic drama about a country-mouse versus a city-mouse. It's exactly the kind of film Tarkovsky would never have made. How many years did Woody Allen berate himself for not being Bergman or Fellini? Ceylon will never be Tarkovsky, but that's no shame. He should focus on being Ceylon. [Adam]
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Bright Young Things | 2003, directed by Stephen Fry, 106 min
If Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies is anything like Stephen Fry's directorial debut, an energetic romp through pre-war London with the progeny of the ruling class, I may not ever readit; I felt left out of this two-hour witnessing of the ninnies running about. The editor of a major paper (Dan Ackroyd) has devoted his front page to the exploits of 'bright young things,' but the film spends more time conjuring mania to surround these questionable characters as observing its consequences.
Don't mistake me: the film is enjoyable to watch, and was obviously created with great affection (cocaine is jokingly referred to as "the naughty salt"). However too many of its episodes unwind like hyperactive yarns, creating a busyness that gets old fast. The mile-a-minute verbal jousting gets replaced by equally-manufactured epiphanic moments with attention given only to the achievement of some trite effect. Ever so much insufferable fun. The Young Ones vet Nigel Planer appears in a cameo, which gave me a bonus. Based on the Evelyn Waugh novel Vile Bodies. The film will premiere in the U.S. later in February at the Portland International Film Festival. [William]
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Zatoichi | 2003, directed by Takeshi Kitano, 116 min
In his stylish take on Japanese legend, "Beat" Takeshi Kitano makes plain his thematic debt to Kurosawa's Yojimbo, while exploring his own interests in bizarre characterization and the music of violence. Kitano plays a blind masseur roaming the countryside who deftly puts down all the convenient baddies with his preternatural swordplay. The hero also befriends some of the oppressed locals (a staple in Kurosawa films) the farmers, wins lots of money at dice, and takes all the best lines. However, the film's events do not seem clichéd because Kitano's sense of repetition allows the audience to continuously reflect on what it is watching. In addition, all the blood that is spilled in the film (and there are buckets of it) is digitized, creating lively and painterly images and a feeling that there is a set of priorities other than those proscribed by the genre at work (though I'm not sure anyone, including Kitano, could tell me what they are). Kitano seems to be such an intuitive filmmaker that his choices only occasionally reflect a consideration for his audiences and their expectations. The fact that his films are so well received, and their audiences so enthusiastic, is a testament to Kitano's filmmaking skills and the absolutely winning personality of the characters he plays.
As in Yojimbo Kitano plays a swordsman hiding out in a village being terrorized by an endless gang war. After killing off bad guys on both sides he is pitted against a young ronin seeking to better his family's lot. Meanwhile revenge-seeking two brothers dressed as geisha work with Kitano's character to lure gangsters to their deaths. Though the rigid parallel story of the stoic ronin who leaves behind a devoted wife held little interest for me, the rest of the film is alive is ways that are surprising and seemingly natural: a local idiot races across the screen occasionally to fight off an army only he sees, and a quartet of farmers makes music with their hoes while tending the fields. These are only a couple of examples of the offbeat variations Kitano brings to the genre. On the other hand, a needless denouement that punctuates the revenge plot distracted me from the brilliant dance sequence that ends the film shows that not even Kitano can totally resist the genre's tendency to drag things out. The film is currently playing the festival circuit, and is slated to be released in the U.S. this summer. [William]
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Zhou Yu De Huoche (Zhou Yu's Train) | 2003, directed by Sun Zhou, 97 min
One wonderful thing about Zhou Yu De Huoche is how, instead of focusing on the love triangle at its plot's center, it chooses to explore the nostalgia and reverie that result from that triangle. Fittingly, the film tells its story nonchronologically, repeating shots and an important poem, only gradually revealing its key events. A single viewing might leave you somewhat confused about what, exactly, happens, but there's no escaping the film's overwhelming and tragic sense of longing. It gets rushed at the end, and a subplot involving Gong Li in a second role doesn't fit as well as it should, but these minor complaints don't diminish Zhou Yu's impact.
Many critics complained that the film's "style" needlessly obscured the familiar plot—and then complained that the plot was too simple—but they just want another instantly-recognizable, banal movie. Zhou Yu De Huoche is a real film. [Adam]
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Lian ai feng jing (The Floating Landscape) | 2003, directed by Carol Lai Miu-suet, 100 min
Here's a movie for those who wished Zhou Yu's Train would dispense with the unnecessary "style" and spoon out some weepy melodrama. Though Lian ai feng jing is an unfair example, being particularly badly made.
It's great when characters just tell us what they're thinking! Sam writes in his diary that it's too bad he's dying: his poor girlfriend! And yet he can't stop thinking about that mysterious landscape! He'll paint it! When he dies, his girlfriend, Maan, attempts suicide—it's scary! But then she's OK! But then she nearly dies a second time! But then the cute mailman, Lit, bursts in and saves her! Again she's OK! It's a good thing that she met cute mailman Lit! I wonder if he'll help her find the landscape! I wonder if he'll help her love again!
It's easy to pick on movies like Lian ai feng jing, in which we know that two characters are in love because one cries out, "I feel like the happiest man in the world!", and then the two of them spin around, laughing, and kiss. While violins swell. Much better is a long, single tracking-shot in which Lit walks Maan home, imitating bird calls for her. Uninspired and easy, but for a few minutes the actors stop acting, and some chemistry sneaks in.
What most intrigued me was the subplot involving Maan's friend, Tung. She tells Maan that she married young, but that her husband turned out to be a jerk. Now she has a new boyfriend, whom the husband pops in on twice to beat up. And that's it: a scene and then, much later, a three-scene sequence, both dropped randomly into the movie, without consequence or significance.
Lian ai feng jing is ultimately harmless, and its ending is animated, but don't let that make you see it. [Adam]
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Vodka Lemon | 2003, directed by Hiner Saleem, 84 min
The same cinematographer, Christophe Pollock, shot Vodka Lemon and Depuis qu'Otar est parti, and both are pretty films, but his work in Vodka Lemon is much better. It is, among other things, a very deadpan comedy, and part of achieving that effect depends on concealing, then revealing, crucial pieces of information: where characters are standing in relation to one another, whom they are speaking to, what they are holding, etc.
Vodka Lemon similarly conceals for most of its running length the scope of its story, following three separate plotlines before tying them together. Along the way it continously offers fantastic moments: a recurring gag involving newlyweds looking to furnish their apartment; a beautifully sensuous tracking shot through a barn filled with sheep; an unexplained horseman who rides through random scenes; a sudden, joyfully ironic shot of nighttime snowfall. It all adds up to a terrific film about global capitalism's as-of-yet unfulfilled promises to the people of one small, snowbound Armenian town.
At a time when so many movies don't know what to do with two hours and more, Vodka Lemon handily demonstrates how much room 84 minutes allow. [Adam]
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Jagoda u Supermarketu (Jagoda at the Supermarket) | 2003, directed by Dusan Milic, 92 min
So Serbia has its Kevin Smith films—that is, its clumsily-made satires not half as clever as they smugly assume. Hooray.
Though its premise has some potential (a war vet takes hostage an American supermarket), Jagoda offers only feeble and obvious criticisms to capitalist imperialism, GMO foods, and the world-at-large's seeming indifference to the Balkans, before proceeding to reveal itself as a slightly-scatological romance shallow both in scope and execution. One of the few bright spots is title-character Jagoda herself: Branka Katic charms while her fellow actors annoy, even though her character is eventually reduced to repeated cute snorts while stifling laughs.
I'd be willing to forgive Jagoda u Supermarketu its faults if only its last forty-five minutes didn't repeat a single obnoxious "jazz" theme no fewer than thirty times. The first half and closing credits are mercifully accompanied by a marching band whose single theme is far more bearable. [Adam]
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Bom, Yeorum, Gaul, Gyeoul, gurigo Bom (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring) | 2003, directed by Kim Ki-duk, 101 min
In a house floating at the center of Jusan Pond live an elderly monk and his young apprentice. Bom, Yeorum, Gaul, Gyeoul, gurigo Bom attempts nothing less than the presentation of an entire human life (that of the apprentice), mapped to the seasonal cycle. Thanks to its bold and roundabout scenes, thrillingly gorgeous photography, and well-judged occasional silliness, it's continually surprising and suspenseful, ending with a tremendous sequence set to "Jung-sun arirang." Wholly enjoyable. [Adam]
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The Affair (Topanga) | 2003, directed by Carl Colpaert, 99 min
Halfway through The Affair, the three central characters—a young, unhappy housewife, her druggie lover, and her indifferent, architect husband—meet for a dinner party that for no real reason becomes a sleepover. They're even joined by a very optimistic young woman named Starr, who likes to paint pictures of little green birds perched on turgid male penises. The sequence isn't anywhere near as good as you might imagine—and how do you waste that setup?—but the filmmakers would have been wise to stretch it out for the whole length of the movie, because the surrounding material is just, well, terrible.
The film's main problem might be that it portrays seriously its plot and characters, which cease being petty, narcissistic, and lifeless only to unintentionally amuse. But everything's bad, really. The soundtrack consists of this one awful phrase from this one awful song; if you, like me, hate it the first time you hear it, just walk out, because it gets repeated no fewer than twenty times. The production design and camera do little except force attention on the stiff acting and first-draft dialogue. The plot leaps amusingly at times—the best bit after the sleepover comes when the script needs to have some police raid a barbecue (which features two of the most comically filthy children I've seen in a movie). The ending awkwardly strives for some kind of forced epiphanic closure, fails even at that—and then the movie is over.
The cinematographer, Frederic Goodich, told viewers that he shot The Affair on high definition digital video. Sad to say, the film is an argument against that format. (My program guide contained a very fine looking black and white still shot that doesn't appear in the film and which I now imagine is a production photo.) The projection that I saw contained very noticeable vertical scan-lines that rendered anything a dozen feet into the shot's background practically unrecognizable, and the resolution was comparable to analogue video. But I'd guess the fault lies more with the filmmakers than with the technology.
Mr. Goodich—who organized the festival's cinematographers day and seemed very nice—also told us that the film's distributor had changed the title from Topanga to The Affair. I don't think it makes any difference. [Adam]
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The Missing | 2003, directed by Lee Kang Sheng, 84 min
Bu jian was written and directed by Tsai Ming-liang's regular actor Lee Kang-sheng, who often plays the same character, "Hsiao Kang." Lee also served as assistant director on Tsai's 2001 short DV film Fish, Underground (aka Conversation with God). Tsai executive produced Bu jian. Its cinematographer was Liao Pen-jung, who has lensed most of Tsai's films: The Skywalk Is Gone (2002), Dong (The Hole, 1998), He liu (The River, 1997), Aiqing wansui (Vive L'Amour, 1994), and Ch'ing shaonien na cha (Rebels of the Neon God, 1992). And Bu jian stars Lu Yi-Ching, who played the mother in Tsai's Ni neibian jidian (What Time Is It There?, 2001).
Given this, it's no surprise that Bu jian is heavily influenced by Tsai's style: long, minimalist, mostly-dialogueless scenes set in everyday environments and often shot in single takes. But it would be unfair to dismiss Bu jian as a weaker imitation of a Tsai film. First, how much of Tsai's style is exclusively his? His films obviously owe much of their effects to the regular contributions of Lee and Liao. As with the films of Bergman/Ullmann/Nykvist, it seems to me we're dealing here with a body of work made by a group of artists: a group perhaps heavily dominated by Tsai, but a collaborative group that makes assigning particular credits difficult.
In any case, I found Bu jian most remarkable for how its significant differences from a Tsai film. It opens with a strong narrative crisis—two unrelated characters, a woman's young grandson and a teenage boy's grandfather, go missing—that provokes the increasingly intertwined searches of the frantic grandmother and the far more laconic teen. The camera work is also far more mobile, and strongly centers actions, which are often staged in backgrounds obscured by foreground objects. The soundtrack blends multiple sources: a given moment might overlap two separate songs with the noise of traffic, or the sounds of multiple video games. All of this contributes to an ominous, accumulative existential tone far different from Tsai's more staged, delicately balanced comic tragedies. Where a Tsai film is tense and rigid, Bu jian is meandering and indeterminate, a strategy well-suited to its apparent subject: the indifferently inhospitable nature of Taipei and probably all modern cities.
Bu jian looks and sounds terrific, and provides Lu with the opportunity for another powerfully uninhibited performance. So it's disappointing when the film's narrative resolves in a clumsy metaphysical twist that can only draw unwelcome comparisons with Tsai. Even worse, the twist violates the film's tone, cutely commenting on what until then had been so convincingly, dreadfully subtle.
That withstanding, this is a strong first film. The festival program guide notes that Lee is preparing a second feature, Help Me. Bu jian promises the beginning of another avenue of exploration for the artists gathered around Tsai. [Adam]
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Ma Camera et Moi (My Camera and Me) | 2002, directed by Christophe Loizillon, 84 min
Nearly all of its footage is "shot by" characters in the film, most by its protagonist, Max, who has been filming his life since he received his first camera at age six. Other contributors include his similarly-obsessive uncle and his blind masseuse girlfriend (Julie Gayet in an expert performance).
Ma Camera et Moi, thus, incorporates a variety of styles and media (analogue and digital video; 8, 16, and 35 mm), and Max exists largely as voice-over, guiding us through an assemblage of what would otherwise be fairly disparate footage. Loizillon et al make it look deceptively easy. The film is clever and touching both in its details about Max and as a celebration of personal cinema—especially home movies, but also the tradition of experimental filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, and Michael Snow. [Adam] | an interview with Christophe Loizillon
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Depuis qu'Otar est parti (Since Otar Left) | 2003, directed by Julie Bertucelli, 102 min
2003 saw two high-profile films attempting to deal with the influence of Krysztof Kieslowski: Heaven and Depuis qu'Otar est parti. Both had direct connections with the master. Heaven was shot from Kieslowski's final screenplay; Otar's director, Julie Bertuccelli, was assistant director on Trois couleurs: Bleu (1993) and Blanc (1994). Otar is maybe more successful than Heaven, but only because it's more cautious to tread Kieslowski's ground—which also makes it the less interesting of the two.
Very early on, young protagonist Ada (Dinara Droukarova) exits a building to hear (but not see) a car crash, directly recalling Bleu. And the way in which Ada stares at the wreck only to walk away inherits Kieslowski's love of coincidences and startling character actions. But the scene is an aberration. It's as though Bertuccelli had to get Kieslowski out of her system, then move on to a domestic drama (though the final images again evoke Trois couleurs). Perhaps concerned with not making a failed imitation of Kieslowski (like Heaven), Betucelli has made a film that's relatively empty.
Much has already been made of the central performances, especially 90-year-old fledgling Esther Gorintin's, and it's true that she's great and that the other actors are good. They deserve to have been given more to do. Two nighttime power outages and some dawn scenes allow regular Godard cinematographer Christophe Pollock ample opportunity to create his distinctive low-level, backlit compositions, giving the film a simple and appealing surface. But even with these resources, scene after scene goes nowhere, usually focusing on dialogue in which the characters restate the central conflict, creating an effect far more lackluster than tense. It's a short film stretched to feature length, or a film more concerned with being about the idea of its plot scenario than with developing anything. It's a film desperately in need of a subplot. An early discussion of Stalin must have been included only to quickly sketch Gorintin's character, since they're abandoned. (I suppose you could say that the film is "about" contemporary Georgian life, but then why do we have the dominant plot crisis? And why finish by resolving Ada's domestic struggle?) A few scenes start to suggest that Ada's boyfriend will be a focus, but then he, like the car crash, disappears, and we realize that both elements were just easy means to depict Ada's disaffection. When after ninety minutes the film suddenly delivers a rapid resolution, it's more than welcome, though disconnected in pace and tone from the previous material. Why did we have to wait so long for that?
The film that I would ultimately contrast Otar with isn't Heaven but another festival entry, Le Cerf-Volant, a movie that exists well outside of Kieslowski's influence. Like Otar, Le Cerf-Volant is prettily-shot shot and takes its time investigating the static results of a simple plot scenario. But Le Cerf-Volant is more of a film: more concerned with its politics, more dramatic in its staging, broader in its range of emotions, more inventive in its pacing and eventual conclusion. [Adam]
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Khahit Errouh (Threads) | 2003, directed by Hakim Belabbes, 92 min
The first five minutes of Khahit Errouh excited me: its jump cuts and low-budget surreal imagery, as well as its enigmatic voice-over, told me to expect a film not unlike those of Jodorowsky or Paradzhanov (the festival guide had told me the same thing, which is why I had chose to see the film). But by ten minutes the expressionist touches were looking half-hearted, if not downright silly. No loss, then, when the rest of the film forgoes them to become a banal domestic drama.
Why does Khahit Errouh rapidly introduce a dozen characters and then give them so little to do? Why does it draw so few connections between the tales, with so little payoff? Khahit Errouh has ideas but not structure, and little evidence of control.
The eventual domestic drama is about a dying man who has returned to Morocco after a lifetime of exile in the US, accompanied by his Chicago-raised daughter (a part very badly acted). The conclusion of their storyline isn't worth waiting for, even though the film finds it monumental. My guess is that Belabbes is dealing with very personal material, and hasn't yet figured out how to relate it to others.
It's not nice to say so many bad things about first-time directors, especially ones who clearly want to make more ambitious films. So what's good about Khahit Errouh, then? There's a very nice, if obvious, sequence in which the daughter's dressing and dancing is intercut the with a circumcision, and with the beheading of a chicken (there's that obviousness). It's followed by a wonderfully quiet scene in which the circumcised child refuses to eat any chicken. There's another nice scene wherein a teacher lectures students on sacrifice. And the film picks up near the end, when it turns to an until-then neglected character: a young woman who wants to see the ocean. I liked how she restates her desire only to arrive at the ocean in the next shot. That scene, in which she wades through the water to a place where she has her hand painted, contains the film's best photography, and ties back nicely to the resolution of the central plot. Not nicely enough to save the film, but nicely. [Adam]
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Lost in Translation | 2003, directed by Sophia Coppola, 102 min
Lost in Translation is a pleasant enough film, if unambitious. Johansson and Murray delight, though Murray in particular has played his part better elsewhere. Our heroes arc from unhappy to happy (always fun to watch), but what they find so life-altering about their encounter eluded me. Perhaps they just needed to get out more often to karaoke clubs? Ah, the magic of love.
Like in just about every recent US independent film, the viewer's sympathy for the main characters is based on the assumption that they’re better than everyone else. The film has no real interest in cultural conflict, but spends its time prettying up its stars, inviting the viewer to vicariously hang out. Kevin Shields provides welcome new music, and the soundtrack is packed end-to-end with excellent indy tunes. Which are used, as in just about every recent US film, to tell you exactly what to feel (hint: unhappy turns to happy).
Ultimately, Coppola asks her audience not to think but to sit back, react, and enjoy. Which I did. [Adam]
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The Company | 2003, directed by Robert Altman, 112 min
The Company is a treat. You can see in the background hints of the original screenplay, surely something more focused on Neve Campbell's character finding love while dancing in Chicago's Joffrey Company. In Altman's hands it has become an ensemble piece—though Malcolm McDowell steals the movie. We get a series of vignettes from an entire year with the Company, interspersed with lavish dance productions, that after a while focuses on Campbell's character, then backs off. From its extended opening to its matching closing credits, it is relaxed and polished, and possibly my favorite of Altman's recent films. [Adam]
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Le Cerf-Volant (The Kite) | 2003, directed by Randa Chahal Sabbag, 120 min
Lamia (Flavia Bechara) doesn't want to marry her cousin Samy, a wedding negotiated over the border by megaphone and videotape. Youssef (Maher Bsaibes) doesn't want to be a soldier in the Israeli Army. But both teenagers are Druze, left with few options by the Lebanese-Israeli conflict in the Golan Heights's Valley of Laments and Tears.
Le Cerf-volant begins and ends with parallel actions in which Lamia defies the current order, each time with very different results. The narrative develops in fits and starts: key events occur very rapidly, and then the film settles back into a seemingly idyllic haze. Lamia's dreams repeatedly surface as her dominant personality leads her to try to rewrite reality itself. (When Youssef askes her when her birthday is, she replies, "When I decide it is.") Everything comes together in a fantastic ending that, while a highly desirable resolution, sadly, is today only imaginable.
Through its inventive pacing and cinematography, and especially through its ending, Le Cerf-volant becomes that kind of utopic film Curtis White describes in The Middle Mind (2003): one that "creates social longing for something we don't have," a longing that "brings with it a subtle but serious impatience" with the status quo. [Adam]
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