Tag: 2011

SFF 2012 Review: Beauty

Oliver Hermanus’ South African drama stretches too little plot out for an extended slow-moving exploration of a repressed homosexual Afrikaner.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Beauty (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Oliver Hermanus

Writer(s): Oliver Hermanus, Didier Costet

Runtime: 99 minutes

Starring: Deon Lotz, Charlie Keegan, Michelle Scott

Festival: Sydney Film Festival 2012

Distributor: Palace Films

Country: South Africa, France

Rating (?): Rental For Sure (★★)

More info

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In 2011, Oliver Hermanus’s Beauty (Skoonheid) was awarded the Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. The award, by its own mission statement, is aimed at promoting “queer visibility in a world wide followed festival, it is also to remind the whole world the necessary equality of rights for all, whatever its sexuality”. South Africa is undoubtedly a nation that became known for the subjugation of a people in defiance of the rest of the world, and with Apartheid over as an official policy, Hermanus aims to point out another form of segregation in Afrikaans society. Yet he has elected to tell his story in such a drab way to obscure his point at best, and to misdirect any of its meaning at worst.

François (Deon Lotz) is a middle-aged South African man who seems to be living a happy life with his wife. Like many men in his social circle, he’s openly racist and homophobic, but we suspect he is attracted to Christian (Charlie Keegan), who mesmerises him at his daughter’s wedding. This is confirmed when François takes off to secretly rendezvous with a group of men, who participate in an orgy before returning to their normal lives. As his feelings for Christian grow into an obsession, François becomes poised to snap.

To describe Beauty as leisurely paced would suggest a momentum that is wholly absent. For the most part, the film is about the male gaze, punctuated only by two intentionally ‘shocking’ scenes, both of which signal their presence long before they arrive on screen. The first of these is of course the orgy, a sweaty and intentionally unattractive affair, kept in the shadows of a remote house, a stark and perhaps ironic contrast to the film’s title. The second of these is an act so brutal, that it shocks the film out of its complacency and overwhelms everything else. When it is over, we realise the film could not have gone in any other direction, but also that it has nowhere else to go.

François is a wholly unlikeable character, and even at his most vulnerable he reacts with such impotent rage that simply demonstrates his character is no more layered that the face he presents to the public. We get no no sense of why he is so captivated with Christian, beyond being an attractive young man, and the promising opening sequences around the secret society of men are never followed up on. They simply become a footnote, an establishing shot for François’ sexuality, only to be brushed aside for the monotony of his journey. By focusing on the singular nature of François’ obsession, and shot with a disengaged lack of focus, Beauty‘s worst crime is that it sheds no more light on the issue of sexuality in South Africa.

Beauty played at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2012. It is released in Australia on 2 August 2012 from Palace Films.

June 19, 2012
SFF 2012 Review: Alps

Greece’s Yorgos Lanthimos explores absurdity and horror in living the lives of others, boldly deconstructing our personal narratives.

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Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Writer(s): Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou

Runtime: 93 minutes

Starring: Aggeliki Papoulia, Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris, Ariane Labed

Festival: Sydney Film Festival 2012

Distributor: TBA

Country: Greece

Rating (?): Highly Recommended (★★★★)

More info

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Following Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth, and last year’s Attenberg which he produced and starred in for Athina Rachel Tsangari, Alps is every bit as magnetic and offbeat as its predecessors. Using the similar absurdist emotional distance that Lanthimos has previously constructed to keep his audience at arm’s length, he carves out a story about the intimate act of entering a grieving family’s life and attempting to substitute for the recently deceased. It doesn’t provide audiences with any easy answers, but is nevertheless a fascinating deconstructive narrative of the multiple lives we all live.

Paramedic ‘Mont Blanc’ (Aris Servetalis) leads a group he refers to as ALPS, who find grieving families through a local nurse (Aggeliki Papoulia) and offer their services as “stand ins” for their loved ones. Other members include a young gymnast (Ariane Labed) and her cruel coach (Johnny Vekris), who doesn’t tolerate any departure from the rules. The acceptance of the women’s downtrodden functions within the group is just part of the leap audiences will have to make, as are the families who willingly allow strangers to enter their houses as substitutes. When the nurse takes on a job outside the group, her own grip on reality begins to slip, and the punishment from within the group is brutal.

If Dogtooth explored the eccentricities of those completely cut off from the rest of society, Alps focuses on a group who are far too closely involved in the lives of others. The members of ALPS give stilted performances in the field, in broken English or monotone Greek, a running gag that is indicative of the insincerity or at least ambiguous motives of the group, which is never explained or explored. More broadly, Alps is a commentary on the familiar notion of post-modern identity, one where we all play our parts, and alter our personalities to suit those around us. As the nurse begins to come undone, it is her need to be a part of something more than herself that becomes the focus. For this, she is reprimanded physically in one of the film’s more confronting scenes, and this reaction is one of the true pieces of emotion on display.

Coupled with absurdity, including bookends set to Orff’s “Carmina Burana” and an elctro-pop remix of the 1960s hit “Popcorn”, Alps might also be seen as a commentary on a ‘buy anything’ culture, one where families can be rented for funerals and weddings, and relationships are formed in the digital morass. In the face of these weighty themes, we often have little choice but to laugh, before recoiling in horror at the consequences of that flippancy. Lanthimos’ bare photography leaves the film’s emotional core open to interpretation, but he may simply be pointing out the craziness of the world we live in.

Alps played at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2012.

June 16, 2012
SFF 2012 Review: Death of a Japanese Salesman

A reflection on a former Japanese salaryman’s final days brings us a joyous and intimate celebration of life.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Ending Note: Death of a Japanese Salesman (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Mami Sunada

Runtime: 90 minutes

Starring: Tomoaki Sunada

Festival: Sydney Film Festival 2012

Distributor: TBA

Country: Japan

Rating (?): Highly Recommended

More info

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An inevitable part of living is dealing with death, and is a fate that awaits us all regardless of where we live or how much money we earn. When former marketing man Tomoaki Sunada learns of his inoperable cancer shortly after retiring, he takes the same pragmatic approach to his imminent demise as he has with all other things in life. A common practice in Japan, he begins a ‘end of life’ diary, or an “ending note”, detailing all of the things he would like to do before he goes. In addition to planning his own funeral, and being baptised so he can have a ‘simple’ Christian ceremony at a local church, his list is a simple one of playing with his grandchildren and saying “I love you” to his wife. Through the lens of his youngest daughter Mami Sunada, we learn how important those things are to Tomoaki’s life.

Funerary rites and the conversation around death is a delicate and complex one in Japan, coming with taboos and rituals that will often be impenetrable to outsiders. A handful of Japanese films have dealt with funeral preparation, including the early 1980s Jûzô Itami comedy The Funeral (1984) and Yôjirô Takita’s Oscar winning Departures (2009). Rarely have we been given such an intimate portrait into the restrained emotional balance that surrounds a Japanese death, or into the private lives of a family suffering personal tragedy. The process of making a video diary before death has apparently become increasingly popular in Japan, but his daughter becomes the ever-present observer in Tomoaki’s late life, capturing moments that Tomoaki may not have shared on his own.

Shot over the period of time covering Tomoaki’s discovery of the cancer to his death, we learn of Tomoaki’s shift in perspective from workaholic to family man in his later life. The title might recall Arthur Miller’s famous play, but its original Japanese title of Ending Note (エンディングノート) demonstrates that the focus is more on what can be achieved in the short time he has left, rather than simply reflecting on a life unfulfilled. The structure is mostly linear, although cutaways to his retirement and the early days of his cancer show how much he deteriorated in a short period of time. Mami Sunada has also provided the voice over on behalf of her father, which helps maintain some distance from the subject, but also acts as a constant inner monologue for the ailing subject.

Despite the reported box office success and awards the film has received, and a production credit from the always wonderful Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ending Note: Death of a Japanese Salesman is very personal film for both Sunadas. Capturing wonderfully candid moments with a local priest, Tomoaki’s attention to detail and a disarmingly insightful set of grandchildren, we get a sense of the love Tomoaki’s family has for him. While he is willing to dimiss himself a workaholic, and certainly elements of that remain, his family rallies around him from around the world, theirs lives all the better for having him in them. Sunada’s film brings us close to being a part of her family, and as he makes his final farewells to his family, there won’t be a dry eye in the house.

Death of a Japanese Salesman played at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2012.

June 10, 2012
SFF 2012 Review: Killer Joe

William Friedkin returns with a vengeance in this southern-fried tale of hillbilly murder, rampage and good old-fashioned insanity. Guaranteed to make you a vegetarian.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Killer Joe (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: William Friedkin

Writer(s): Tracy Letts

Runtime: 103 minutes

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon, Thomas Haden Church

Festival: Sydney Film Festival 2012

Distributor: Roadshow Films (Australia), LD Distribution (US)

Country: US

Rating (?): Highly Recommended

More info

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It’s been six years since horror maestro William Friedkin graced us with a big screen outing, an adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Bug (2006). Friedkin arguably defined more than one genre with The Exorcist (1973) and The French Connection (1971), but the last half decade has only seen him surface on a few episodes of the less-than-groundbreaking CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Going further back into Letts’ bibliography, the 76-year-old filmmaker crafts a film that would be considered audacious at any stage of a director’s career.

Drug dealer Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) is in deep with some local lowlifes, and hatches a plan with his idiotic father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) to kill his promiscuous mother for the insurance money. Hoping to split the payout with the sinister local cop ‘Killer’ Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), so named for his side-business as a hitman, Joe instead elects to take a retainer: Chris’ naïve and beautiful sister, Dottie (Juno Temple).

Friedkin’s Killer Joe wastes no time in going for full raw exposure, especially with Gina Gershon showing us her best entrance since Showgirls. Nasty and unapologetically sleazy, the rural Texas trailer-park setting is the hottest, wettest and stickiest kind of redneckery this side of the Bible Belt. The characters are wretched reprobates, birthed from an unholy union of Natural Born Killers and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and this seems to be just fine as far as the actors are concerned. The film shares a number of the uneasy excesses that drove Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me past the point of reason, especially as it reaches its bloody denouement, with one of the most memorable uses of fried chicken in a motion picture. However, Friedkin’s overtly satirical approach tempers the madness, filtering it through the uncaged and unhinged Matthew McConaughey.

It is a rare thing to see a leading man let loose the way that rom-com veteran McConaughey does in Killer Joe. “His eyes hurt,” remarks Dottie on several occasions, and while his piercing gaze does betray the insanity that lurks beneath, he is impossible to look away from. Yet he isn’t alone in his wonderful performance, with a cast that’s universally bold and beautiful to watch. Rising star Temple, soon to be seen in The Dark Knight Rises, is magical as the dippy Dottie, who borders on ethereal and virginal, and occasionally crosses over into wrong side of sanity. Gershon is in her element as Ansel’s sometimes wife, but it is Haden Church who tends to steal even the most grotesque moments on screen.

Like Francis Ford Coppola, who has been experimenting with Tetro and Twixt over the last few years, Friedkin appears to have found his inner film-student in the autumn of his career. Inspired by the excesses of Letts’ script, adapting his own screenplay, Killer Joe might be violent and vile, but it is also sharp, engaging and outright hilarious at all times. It may never compare to Friedkin’s 1970s masterpieces, his style and flair feels as fresh as it did four decades ago.

Killer Joe played at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2012. It is released in US cinemas on 27 July 2012 from LD Distribution. It will be released in Australia by Roadshow Films.

June 8, 2012
SFF 2012 Review: Monsieur Lazhar

A charming if familiar tale of teacher knows best, so much so that it almost charms itself out of existence.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Monsieur Lazhar (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Philippe Falardeau

Writer(s): Philippe Falardeau

Runtime: 94 minutes

Starring: Mohamed Saïd Fellag, Sophie Nélisse, Émilien Néron

Festival: Sydney Film Festival 2012

Distributor: Palace

Country: Canada

Rating (?): Wait For DVD/Blu-ray

More info

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Native Québécois Philippe Falardeau won “Best Canadian First Feature” at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2000 for his debut feature La Moitié gauche du frigo (The Left-Hand Side of the Fridge). In his short career of four features, Falardeau’s most recent work was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, losing to the unstoppable goliath of A Separation, an Iranian film that challenged its nation’s institutions. Yet the pair of films, along with Israeli nominee Footnote, share a great deal in common, exploring the importance that we place on bureaucratic process and organisations, perhaps at the cost of those they are meant to benefit. With Monsieur Lazhar, Falardeau uses the familiar environs of a primary school.

Following the suicide of a much loved teacher, who hanged herself in her own empty classroom, a class of fourth graders struggles to come to terms with the tragedy. Bashir Lazhar (Mohamed Saïd Fellag), an Algerian refugee, is quickly hired to replace her, but he too is battling with his own demons. Despite his cultural differences, and a grief that nobody at the school is willing to talk about, Bashir begins to reach the class with his idiosyncratic style of teaching. In particular, Alice (Sophie Nélisse) earnestly tries to please to overcome her sadness, and Simon (Émilien Néron) – who discovered the body – continues aggressively acting out.

Comparisons might readily be made with Dead Poet’s Society, in that a teacher breezes in and out of these children’s lives and leaves them forever changed. However, an easier fit might be Laurent Cantet’s The Class (2008), which examined a racially mixed classroom of teenagers preparing to face a system that stared back at them blankly. Both films use the classroom as a platform for discussing much broader issues than their small lives could possibly burden, and both feature well-meaning teachers faced with a system, and a group of kids, who have largely lost the ability to emotionally confront reality. Monsieur Lazhar is quite pointedly stating that complicated rules around the way children and curriculums are handled are distancing the classroom from core values, although this fails to materialise into anything more concrete.

Mohamed Saïd Fellag delivers a solid performance, balancing his own dark past against the weight of nurturing young lives, but the signposts are too obvious to truly feel anything but a sense of inevitability about his character. Appropriately, the real stars are the children, particularly the Genie Award winning Sophie Nélisse in a debut performance that never betrays her inexperience. Like co-star Émilien Néron, it is difficult to remember that these are only actors at the start of their journey. The film gives them a path to follow for the rest of the way, but never fully commits to stepping through it personally.

Monsieur Lazhar is playing in competition at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2012, and again at the Melbourne International Film Festival in August 2012. It is released in Australia on 6 September 2012 from Palace Films.

June 6, 2012
Review: Friends With Kids

A confident directorial debut from actress Westfeldt, albeit one that sometimes falls back on familiar. A terrific cast gathers around this mostly funny and heartfelt alternative to a rom-com.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Friends With Kids (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Jennifer Westfeldt

Writer(s): Jennifer Westfeldt

Runtime: 107 minutes

Starring: Jennifer Westfeldt, Adam Scott, Maya Rudolph, Chris O’Dowd, Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Megan Fox, Edward Burns

Distributor: Roadshow Films

Country: US

Rating (?): Better Than Average Bear

More info

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At first glance, Friends With Kids may simply seem like an excuse for a Bridesmaids class reunion. Yet drawing together this multi-talented cast of comedians and dramatic actors is filmmaker Jennifer Westfeldt, mostly known to audiences from her numerous television and Broadway appearances and titular appearance in the indie hit Kissing Jessica Stein, which she also wrote. For her directorial debut, Westfeldt follows a similar thematic thread, and explores the idea of fitting in kids and relationships into modern city living.

Jason (Adam Scott) and Jules (Jennifer Westfeldt) have been friends for most of their life, and know the intimate details of each other’s relationships. As their friends Leslie (Maya Rudolph) and Alex (Chris O’Dowd) start having children, followed closely by their other companions Ben (Jon Hamm) and Missy (Kristen Wiig) being in a similar family way, the single Jason and Jules begin to notice how much parenthood has changed their comrades. Vowing not to become like everybody around them, they decide to skip marriage and have a child together, raising him together but living their romantic lives separately. Things become complicated as the great experiment brings with it unexpected consequences.

Friends With Kids is simultaneously an attempt at doing something new with the familiar rom-com formula, but also a throwback to the mid-1990s indie fare of Edward Burns. Indeed, the one-time king of the New York indie dramedy turns up for a significant role in the film’s second half, sealing the deal and the tone of the piece. There are some very familiar genre tropes at play, with a certain sense of inevitability hanging over much of the narrative. However, like the two leads, writer-director Westfeldt has made a conscious decision to experiment with the format, focusing on the characters and their individual development rather than falling over itself to keep the eventual coupling from happening.

For the most part, this approach works, being just as much a talk-fest as it is dramedic collision of warm bodies. Scott and Westfeldt make likeable leads, and there is a genuine sense of them being functional human beings who exist outside of the microcosm we are presented with. Likewise, their support network are not simply a rehash of “best friend” archetypes, although married life is painted with an taint of unflattering chaos. Wiig and Rudolph are criminally underused, taking a back-seat in key dramatic moments to Hamm and even O’Dowd. Supporting roles for Megan Fox and Edward Burns, as Jason and Jules’ alternate partners, are not wasted either.

Westfeldt falls back on the familiar in the second half of the film, perhaps dragging the film out longer than is absolutely necessary, and leading to slightly uninspired finale. Yet she has also created a group of people that we enjoy spending time with, so that we are provided with a reason to want to see them get together. Unlike similar mainstream hits of the last decade or so, Westfeldt’s dedication to character pays off, ensuring that these friends come with benefits.

Friends With Kids is released in Australia on 7 June 2012 from Roadshow Films.

June 5, 2012
Review: Declaration of War

Grief and love and coupled with great humour and poignancy in this semi-autobiographical drama from French actress and director Valérie Donzelli.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Declaration of War (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Valérie Donzelli

Writer(s): Valérie Donzelli, Jérémie Elkaïm

Runtime: 100 minutes

Starring: Valérie Donzelli, Jérémie Elkaïm

Distributor: Palace Films

Country: France

Rating (?): Highly Recommended

More info

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Many artists channel their grief or angst into their work, and with Declaration of War (La Guerre est déclarée), Valérie Donzelli and her co-star/writer Jérémie Elkaïm put theirs on screen for the world to see. After being encouraged into the acting profession by Elkaïm, the two developed a relationship and had a child together. Their world changed dramatically after learning that their child had a life-threatening disease, and this forms the basis of their film, which was nominated for an impressive six César awards.

When Juliette (Valérie Donzelli) spies Roméo (Jérémie Elkaïm) across a crowded dance-floor, it’s love at first sight. Upon learning each other’s names, they resolve that they must be doomed to a horrible fate. They are partly right, although these lovers are not star-crossed in Shakespearean terms. After marrying and having a child, their world is rocked when the increasingly sick boy Adam is diagnosed with a brain tumour requiring years of care and surgery. With the support of family and friends, and the dedicated healthcare workers, the pair lay it all on the line for the sake of their child.

Coming from such a personal place, Declaration of War is a heartfelt and always genuine exploration of living with grief. The declaration of the title refers to the couple rallying all of their resources in the battle against Adam’s cancer. Films about children with a terminal illness are usually about as depressing as they sound, yet Donzelli’s film determines to find the positive message at the centre of this emotional roller-coaster of a tale. Taking a few notes out of Truffaut, she recognises that films involving children don’t have to have an emotional consistency throughout. The film rapidly swings from being intensely romantic to an unbearably heartbreaking sequence where family and friends first learn of Adam’s illness. The tonal shifts include a off-the-wall love song, set to Jules et Jim montage, unabashedly sticking out like a sore thumb in this constantly shifting landscape.

Even as the film settles into the morbid monotony of living out of a hospital, constantly surrounded by illness and death, the pair still manage to find great humour and humility in the situation. Conversely, as another child in the hospital dies, there is no animosity in Roméo’s voice as he suggests that they should just move on with their on lives. As the march of time goes on, the film becomes more about survival and the legacy of the fight, with Gabriel Elkaïm appropriately playing his own 8-year-old counterpart. Having transformed the worst into a call for arms, albeit at a great personal cost, both the couple and the audience can only feel richer for having spent time with this compelling and likeable couple. Declaration of War is a rare inspirational piece of cinema, regardless of what life has in store for you.

Declaration of War is released in Australian on 31 May 2012 from Palace Films.

May 27, 2012
Review: Delicacy (La Délicatesse)

A lightweight but sometimes genuinely emotional makes full use of the almost universal love the world has for Audrey Tautou.

It has been over a decade since Amélie, and yet it still seems to define how the world views its beautiful star, Audrey Tautou. Not that she isn’t complicit in this perception. Of the dozen or so films she has made in the interim, over half of these have been romantic comedies, and more than half of those have been largely forgettable. When we last checked in with Tautou in Beautiful Lies, she remained the beautiful eye-candy that she was a decade ago in what will always remain her most famous of roles. Yet despite her “edgier” window dressing, she did little to escape the shadow of a role that has hung over her for the better part of that period. With Delicacy (La Délicatesse), Tautou continues her water-treading.

Nathalie (Tautou) is hopelessly in love with her husband, until he is unexpectedly killed. Mourning his loss, she buries herself in her work, not allowing herself to enjoy life at all. Shunning the advances of her sleazy boss (Bruno Todeschini), she spontaneously kisses her unattractive Swedish co-worker Markus (François Damiens). She thinks nothing of it, but it radically changes Markus’ outlook on life. Against the odds, the two begin to form a romantic relationship, baffling everyone around them.

David Foenkinos’ 2009 novel of the same name is a beloved tome in its native France, where the novelist/screenwriter’s work has been a popular bestseller since its release. As such, this adaptation is expected to come with some sense of the familiar, but the standard plotting of the attractive younger women inexplicably drawn to the “ugly” and quirky guy is hardly original. Indeed, it would have made for a far more interesting turn if the roles had been reversed, but that film is another film entirely. Foenkinos’ directoral debut, which he shares with his brother Stéphane Foenkinos, is a quietly confident one, but it all too often falls back on the familiar.

Using the post-Amélie tweeness that seem to have afflicted every film now shot in the Gallic borders is not a barrier in and of itself. The brothers Foenkinos do a miraculous job of setting up a doomed romance at the start of the film, and a genuine sense of loss when Nathalie’s husband is removed from the scene. Following the sufficiently cinematic period of mourning, a typically preposterous set of events leads to new and incredulous love. Again, this is hardly unexpected in this most reliable of genres, but what becomes important are the events and behaviours set in motion after the inevitable is set in motion.

Very much a showcase for Tautou’s beauty and talents, she doesn’t get much of a chance to stretch her acting skills beyond the first act. Once she is snapped out of a convincing depression, it is François Damiens who begins to steal the scenes. Insights into his neuroses and inner fears border on Woody Allen territory, although these are largely used as a comic roadblock to the inevitable. Unexpectedly, the chemistry that develops between the two leads is a warm one, and makes the path of least resistance an even smoother ride.

Although there is a slightly cloying sweetness to Delicacy, including a Pez dispenser used as a shorthand for something of significance, but the relationship between Nathalie and Markus is filled with some well-earned laughs. Some of these are squarely at the expense of the Swedish, some of which will go over the tops of the heads of anybody who doesn’t share in the Franco-Swedish rivalry. Despite this, there is much to like in this fairly inoffensive cool breeze of a romantic comedy. If this is not an antidote to the more overbearing cousin of the Hollywood rom-com, it serves as a good placebo until one gets here.

2012 | France | Director: David Foenkinos, Stéphane Foenkinos | Writer(s): David Foenkinos | Starring: Audrey Tautou, François Damiens, Bruno Todeschini | Distributor: Transmission | Runtime: 108 minutes | Release Date: 3 May 2012 (Australia)

May 14, 2012
Review: Footnote

An Academy Award nominated drama from Israel, infused with moments of humour and a the most terrifying force of them all: academics!

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Footnote (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Joseph Cedar

Writer(s): Joseph Cedar

Runtime: 106 minutes

Starring: Shlomo Bar’Aba, Lior Ashkenazi, Micah Lewensohn

Distributor: Rialto

Country: Israel

Rating: Worth A Look (?)

More info

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Israeli cinema has come to increasing international prominence in the last few years, with documentary Waltz with Bashir (2008) allowing animation to tell some of the more troubling tales of the 1982 Lebanon War, and the similarly themed Lebanon (2009) exploring the lives of a handful of soldiers within that war. With Footnote, the cinema of Israel gets incredibly bold by exploring the wrangling of a handful of elite Israeli scholars and the behind the scenes forces that put them, and keep them away, from that illustrious position.

Philologist Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar’Aba) is a largely unrecognised scholar in the field of Tulmudic research, frustrated that his life has been meaningless due to rival scholar Prof. Yehuda Grossman (Micah Lewensohn) publishing similar results ahead of him. Eliezer’s only claim to fame is a single footnote in a seminal text. His son Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi), also a researcher in a similar field, is the polar opposite to his father, with his work recognised by the academic community and the public alike. Yet when a clerical error sees Eliezer awarded the prestigious Israel Prize instead of his son, Uriel’s efforts to help his father retain the prize don’t quite go where he expects.

Nominated for an Academy Award, Footnote is a surprisingly funny and dramatic depiction of the lives of academics. The discussions of scholars, depending on their field of researcher, can be coma inducing but there is a surprising amount of politics involved in academia. This is especially true of those fields of research necessarily tied to multi-million dollar grants, or in this case national identity. Footnote adds the further dramatic tension of the father-son relationship, which really would have been more than enough to carry this intriguing narrative through to its conclusion. Yet neither of these two sides of the coin are fully fleshed out, and while neither exploit the obvious opportunities to wallow in overly dramatic melodrama, perhaps they should have just a little.

The central performances are both excellent, with Bar’Aba going from downtrodden to puffed up and arrogant within a few key scenes. Similarly, Israeli Film Academy winner (for Walk on Water) Ashkenazi lends weight to the investigative role of the son, whose internal struggles largely fill up the spaces in between. Mostly engaging, writer/director Joseph Cedar’s 2011 Cannes Film Festival winning screenplay flattens out a bit towards the end, but must still be commended for opening the door for this kind of exploration in Israeli cinema.

Footnote is released in Australia on 19 April 2012 from Rialto Distribution.

April 13, 2012
Review: Twixt

Francis Ford Coppola returns with a stylistic departure and a self-conscious foray into the surreal, taking a swipe at the rise of supernatural fiction along the way.

[stextbox id=”grey” caption=”Twixt (2011)” float=”true” align=”right” width=”200″]

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Writer(s): Francis Ford Coppola

Runtime: 90 minutes

Starring: Val Kilmer, Elle Fanning, Bruce Dern, Ben Chaplin, Tom Waits

Distributor: Pathé

Country: US

Rating: Better Than Average Bear (?)

More info

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It may have taken him decades, but the director of such classics as The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now has once again become the experimental filmmaker promised in 1963’s Dementia. Following the self-distributed Tetro, Francis Ford Coppola has gone down that same path again with Twixt, a film that caused a buzz when it asked potential viewers to choose from a number of different posters for the film.

The gimmickry around the film was coupled with the Toronto International Film Festival premiere, which asked audiences to don 3D glasses during certain scenes of the film. For the European release of the film, the gimmickry is gone and we are left with a gothic vision that is not exactly straightforward, but compelling nonetheless.

Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer), a “bargain basement Stephen King”, arrives in the isolated town of Swan Valley for a book signing. Disillusioned with the industry, he has turned to heavy drinking as a way of drowning out the pain of the loss of his daughter. His only motivation is persistent debt, something his wife never ceases to remind him of. Despite the tour of the strange town being a misfire, he meets the eccentric local Sheriff (Bruce Dern), who wants to work with him on a vampire book about the historic mass murder in the town. Coupled with that he has a doozy of a victim in the morgue: a young girl with a large wooden stake driven through her heart. After a haunting dream involving the ethereal goth V (Elle Fanning), Hall decides to collaborate with the sheriff, uncovering even more strangeness in the town.

Twixt is one of Coppola’s most conscious and personal pieces of filmmaking to date, and you can almost see the cogs working throughout its all too brief running time. Coppola doesn’t simply conjure up a gothic sensibility, but rather makes Edgar Allan Poe (Ben Chaplin) a central guide in Baltimore’s dream world. Yet it is almost a parody of this genre as well, from the gravelly Tom Waits voiceover describing the town’s multi-sided clock tower to the exaggerated style of acting that the players necessarily fall into. This gives the film a wickedly dark comic element, poking fun at the weighty melodrama that vampire fiction has transformed into. Yet at the same time, one of the central ‘ghosts’ of the film is the death of the protagonist’s daughter in a speedboat accident, mirroring the filmmaker’s own loss of his son Gian-Carlo to a boating accident in 1986.

Swan Valley is more Twilight Zone than Stephen King, and is designed to always keep audiences slightly off balance. The acting style is in sync with the look of the film, reminiscent of Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City during the dream sequences. In daylight hours, Mihai Malaimare Jr’s stunningly crisp cinematography echoes Twin Peaks, another series that Twixt owes a debt to. However, it is in the nocturnal wanderings of Hall Baltimore that the film really comes alive (so to speak), captivating with Poe’s tales of mystery and imagination, a ritual murder and the enigmatic cult figure Flamingo (Alden Ehrenreich) who lives on the other side of the lake.

Perhaps Twixt is merely Coppola exorcising some of his own personal demons, or maybe he has simply been inspired by the skilled filmmaking of his own children. The pieces don’t always click together, and the fine line between parody and just plain ridiculous bends on a regular basis, but it never breaks. Twixt is the message of a filmmaker renewed, and while he doesn’t quite find the “bulletproof ending” that his novelist character seeks, he is now at a point where he is ‘twixt one stage of his filmmaking life and the next.

Twixt was released in France on 11 April 2012 from Pathé. At the time of writing, is yet to receive a US or Australia release date.

April 12, 2012