VIFF 2011: Week 3 - You're not ready for pop. (The kid with a bike, Artist, Alps, Michael, Martha Marcy May Marlene)

Round up reviews of films I've seen at the Vancouver International Film Festival week 3, in order of preference/impact:

1. Le Gamin au vélo (The kid with a bike) (Dardene & Dardene | Belgium)

Impression: VIFF announced the People's Choice today, and if it wasn't for the fact that the Dardene brothers' feature was screened just last night, I'd think that it would've given the eventual winner a pretty good run for its money, judging from the crowd reaction. I distinctly heard a "woot!" and there were tears flowing around me. The moment Cyril (played with so much angst and sweetness by Thomas Doret) unexpectedly clutched for dear life onto Samantha, there was no doubt he got her complete attention, and the audience's (mine) in turn. The child abandonment story tugged at the heart with such ease, no manipulative strings attached could be seen or cared to be found. It was sweet, without the saccharine, tough without the embellishment, and heartbreaking without the melodrama. There was a long, silent, beautiful sequence of him riding a bike after a particularly crushing turn of event that showed off both his incredibly exact performance and the Dardene brothers' master direction. I'm not one to have maternal feelings, but this boy's transparent yearning gave my ovaries a good squeeze.

Reaction: So that's what a maternal feeling is like.

2. The Artist (Hazanavicius| France)

Impression: With The Artist, Hazanavicius made a loving tribute to the silent era in the same zesty, playful manner as many of the era's films. While it ridiculed the arrogance of its silent stars, it also paid respect to the inventiveness and the heart of many artists that drove the industry. The use of sound was clever in a way that really highlighted the shock and awe of its introduction to the screen. The audience ate this up; I could see this film going a long way at the Oscars.

Reaction: How come it took us this long to have this movie made? I want that dog! So. Bad.

3. Alps (Lanthimos| Greece)

Impression: Going to see the film with no prior knowledge of what it was about really added to the uncertain feeling of what was happening to its characters. Alps focused on a group of unlikely grief performers, taking on the role of the departed as family members tried to come to terms of the baggage left behind. There are performances within performances, and after a while, I started to wonder if the real thing was just a performance. The absurdity and odd humourous moments didn't negate the sad state everything was weighed down by. I don't know how this compares to Dogtooth, the director's previously acclaimed film (and surprising Academy Awards Foreign Film nominnee), but it makes me all the more interested in what else he has to offer.

Reaction: Prince is alive! Prince is alive? He is!

4. Michael (Schleinzer| Austria)

Impression: While I was curious about the comparison the film's director had been drawn to Haneke, I was worried about how it was going to turn out, given the delicate nature of child exploitation. Would the young actor be introduced unnecessarily to the reality of pedophilia? How would they handle the sensitive scenes? It's one thing to have adults acting out a scripted horror; it's another to have a kid exposed to such horror, even in pretense. Other than one shocking scene played out in a humourous tone that nevertheless was quite terrifying, the film for the most part spared its audience its most tragic scenes, opting instead to hint at them with pre- and post-preparation by Michael, the unknown sickness that dwell amongst everyday people. Following the modern European clinical, matter of fact aesthetics to approach difficult, dark social underbelly subject matter, the film made no attempt at a cause and effect explanation of what made Michael Michael - he had a presumably loving family (a mother and a sister who cared enough to cry over him, at least), a successful career (he prided himself over not being "one of the four" who'd lose his job in this tough economic time), and a hint of a precocious mind (he purportedly made way for Christmas right after Easter as a child because he was "impatient"). There was something unsettling about him though - one got a sense that his meticulous and methodical way of ordering his everyday activities belied a rigid, contemptuous, deeply insecure boy who never developed a true adult connection with the world. I can't imagine playing a pedophile to be all that easy, but Michael Fuith did an incredible job of acting the part, looking both ordinary and creepy. I can't look at that face the same way again. Sorry, Michael.

Reaction: I can't watch.

5. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Durkin| U.S.A.)

Impression: MMMM had a dream-like flow about it, which was rather typical of an indie flick. The titular character's daze coloured all that we could see. "I know who I am," she said with a slight quiver. Her mouthful of a name pointed out the contrary though - she was as lost as lost can be. She was neither a teacher nor a leader, a dream whispered to her by John Hawkes' cult leader in an attempt to lure the directionless youth into giving herself over to a promised defined, pure life. One could see how the haves - in their glass house and suppressed guilt and hatred - could be held up as a reason not to be for the have nots. It makes seductive the counterpoint lifestyle for those looking to be held in something they could feel with their hands. Martha spouted the same values those with high morales might even line themselves up with, but she parroted them like one would a school lesson. She was but a mouthpiece for the discontent, no more authentic and loving than the world she ran away from. Durkin made an interest point of allowing her two worlds to collide so seamlessly, despite the stark contrast (one that was hinted at as a possible danger with the consequence of one bump in the night with her fellow "housemates"). The only way one could tell the past from the present was the people occupying the scene - cinematically, they were all the same. She was a beautiful vessel (her beauty was commented a few times in the film) for the two sides to impose their will on, not unlike what various groups try to do with our youth. In some ways, the film showed how powerful the desire to belong can be, and that same desire could lead us down a rabbit hole we may not come back from. Unfortunately, the characters felt quite derivative, and Olsen felt a bit too Maggie Gyllenhaal at times even in her manner. It was a solid film, but no greatness here.

Reaction: Wow, Elizabeth Olsen is like a cross between the Olsen twins and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Death is love? *rolls eyes*

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VIFF 2011: Week 2 - What's wrong is wrong (A separation, Havre, Sleeping Beauty, Ms Bala, Anatolia, Footnote,Like Crazy, Starbuck, Elena, Turin Horse)

Round up reviews of films I've seen at the Vancouver International Film Festival week 2, in order of preference/impact:

1. Jodái-e Náder az Simin (A separation) (Farhadi | Iran)

Impression: Iran's official entry for Foreign Film Oscar is a sophisticated, nuanced, meaningful portrait of Iran as it wrestles class, religion, gender, and the wheel of modernity in the frontier of its people's home. For an involving, intricate plot, there's barely any excess fat in the film to speak of. Every single character occupying the screen is an empathetic human being - there's no stereotype to be found, not even the usual dictatorial male figure in this deeply patriarchal society. It warmed my heart to see loving, respectful parenting figures in films, however flawed they were in other ways. The cast clearly infused their story with much pride and a deep knowing of their existential condition. There's no easy solution; the struggle between living the truth out loud and managing delicate human relationships can only be negotiated one step at a time. Farhadi captured its subtlety and drama with equal ease and wisdom. This is a rare family drama that works. I know what I'm rooting for comes Oscar time.
Reaction: What beautiful children.

2. Le Havre (Kaurismäki | France / Finland)

Impression: The set up of Le Havre, a stylized retro comedy of sort, was quite ridiculous: a shoe shiner in Normandy went on a mission to help a young refugee avoid being captured by the government and reconnect with his mother in London. It was more whimsical than serious, though there was enough humanity behind the film for us to care. Sometimes, a film is a romanticized version of a dream of a true emotion. This was such a film, and gosh darn what an absolute delight it was.
Reaction: Man, I love this movie.

3. Sleeping Beauty (Leigh | Australia)

Impression: Sleeping beauty is an austere, gorgeously shot fable about, on a literal level, a smart, young girl getting paid to go to sleep while her clients did what they had come for, and on a figurative level, a smart, young girl walk-sleeping her life away. "Sarah" turned herself into an object to be used by others in seemingly endless fashion, from science experiment to server to sex work. Her beauty was her calling card, and she used it like everyone else does: a functional object to act upon (she corrected the woman who would be her pimp that her "vagina is [her] vagina" and not a temple). No one was home; no one was interested. Her only human connection, beyond the veneer of manners, was with the Birdman, whom she would at times enact domestic scenarios with. Gradually, our girl began to take a vested interest in what was happening to her. The revelation was not exactly what she had in mind, and it only enforced the barren life she'd chosen for herself. The film ended at the moment of her realization, and it was a powerful punch of a scene to leave the audience with. And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, Julia Leigh has arrived.
Reaction: Is she serious? Only one rule? I can think of a million things that you'd want to put in that rule book and I have only seen one scenario!

4. Miss Bala (Naranjo | Mexico)

Impression: Mexico's drug war has become a breeding ground for crimes and corruptions. Naranjo anchored his pessimistic observations and damning critiques of the whole bloody affair to Laura, an aspiring contestant in a beauty pageant caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Much like a beauty pageant, the war on drug is a loud, glittery show that masquerades a seedy, ugly underbelly of humanity. The contestants are swallowed in the flow of power and money. The system is rigged - it can crown you a beauty queen one evening and throw you under a bus the next, and no one would bat an eye. Poor Laura's only trying to survive under fire, as she bends to the will and whims of the criminals and the government that fails to protect her. Along the way, she tries to find moments of grace, but they are so ever fleeting. Will the good people take a stand? We keep hoping, but does it matter an ounce if it's all just show and tell?
Reaction: Girl, DO SOMETHING!

5. Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da (Once upon a time in Anatolia) (Ceylan | Turkey)

Impression: I should've taken a hint from the title that Anatolia would be like a bedtime story, with emphasis on it being a story to be told before falling asleep. I went to see it at the end of a very long day, and I did not realize what a bad idea it was until half an hour into the film or so, when I started to drift away in the middle of yet another false body-ID alarm in the dark of the night. Once they hit daylight, however, the sleepiness lifted and I was able to enjoy the film for what it was: a procedural film about truth and discretion, and the shortcomings of a very human system. There were a number of laugh out loud and cringey moments having to do with police and hospital set up. It was a contemplative tragicomedy worth seeing, just not at the end of a very long day.
Reaction: Let there be light!

6. He'arat Shulayim (Footnote) (Cedar | Israel)

Impression: Footnote was a comedy about the fierce competition between intellectuals trying to survive in a world where they want to matter most: the archives of academic history. At its center was an elitist father who spent his life obsessing with the minutiae of Isreali's Talmud writings that he never got around to publish on time, when it mattered. His successful son's fortune exceeded his, and he grew envious of the son's achievements. Meanwhile, the son secretly idolized his father and did his utmost to realize his father's dream of winning the Israeli Prize. His father, blinded by resentment, arrogance and a dogmatic approach to their shared passion, proceeded to sabotage his only fan's effort. Cedar made a very charming Jewish intellectual comedy with Footnote, though it may have been a little on the light side.
Reaction: But isn't that what people have children for? To achieve what they can't in their life time?

7. Like Crazy (Doremus | U.S.A.)

Impression: Like Crazy explored gently the meaning of "can't live with you, can't live without you." A story about an encompassing connection between two people over time and space should've hit a home run with me, but it hit me a lot less than I thought it would. While Anton was sweet and Felicity's teeth were charming, their love was ultimately too precious and thin to make much of an impact. It wasn't particularly compelling, even if it got something worthwhile to say about the unpredictable course of chemistry and how a connection is inherently born between two people in their particular context. Some people are lucky enough to have plenty of meaningful, enveloping connections throughout their life, be it with the same or different partner. Some people don't find or know any at all. And then there are those who spend their lives trying to recapture the magic that came so easy at one time, only to find out that - like the first heroin high - it can not be experienced again, even with the same person. The cast tried their best to lend some heft to the story, and Doremus made an effort to frame them in a nostalgic, intimate postcard hue. Still, it felt a little too cute to warrant more than a cup of tears (tears are how I measure all love stories).
Reaction: *sniffle* when Anton broke up with Jennifer Lawrence. That felt real.

8. Starbuck (Scott | Canada)

Impression: A harmless feel-good Canadian comedy about what you make of a family. It was a true crowd-pleaser so I'm not surprised it was a runner up at TIFF. There's really not much else to write home about though.
Reaction: Oh no, not another emo running joke. But that's kinda sweet.

9. Elena (Zvyagintsev | Russia)

Impression: So, Zvyagintsev's The Return was really good. His new film Elena, Cannes' Special Jury Prize winner, came with high expectation as a consequence. While the film was well made, its principles were a crapshoot of unlikable people going about their life focusing solely on what they could take or feel entitled to. Other than the stark contrast between the lifestyles of the rich and the poor, there was not much that separated the interiors of their life. Elena was the conduit between the haves and have-nots, and the film almost in a cannibalistic way ate up its own titular character. She was an example of someone who didn't think her own crap stink, as she hopped on the high horse when it came to chiding her husband's rebellious daughter, but turned a blind eye to her own moral compromises. There was no sympathy for any class, and unfortunately, that didn't make the film a compelling story one would want to visit again.
Reaction: Gosh darn I want some sliding doors. I really don't like this character. At all.

10. A torinói ló (The Turin Horse) (Tarr | Hungary)

Impression: I wanted a Bela Tarr experience at the theatre, especially since it was going to be his last film. Sometimes, though, things sound better on paper than in real life. The film started out really promisingly, with a prologue explaining how this was the story of what happened to the farmer and the horse that came at a pivotal point in Nietzsche's life. The image of the poor horse trudging along to foreboding music was quite stark and beautiful. However, the harsh, repetitive, poor-in-every-way life of a doomed father and daughter pair (and their dying horse) told in excruciating, laborous details wasn't really something I prepared to spend 3 hours experiencing, however well photographed it was. I spent most of the film actively making up stories about people on screen in order to stay interested and awake. The film had somewhat of a punch line; I just wished it came an hour or two earlier.
Reaction: Ah, more potato munching. From a different angle. Very well. Why doesn't she have it with salt like her dad? Is she protesting? Such a rebel. Who does she look like? She looks like somebody. Shirley Duvall? Hm.

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VIFF 2011: Week 1 - Life has a big gap in it. You don't try to fill it like a fvking lunatic. (Taiga, Waltz, Mir, Tyrannosaur, Top floor, Skin)

Round up reviews of films I've seen at the Vancouver International Film Festival week 1, in order of preference/impact:

1. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (Herzog | Germany/Russia)

Impression: Werner Herzog's abiding interest - human's connection to nature - was once again given the grand stage by way of the vast, beautiful, harsh Siberian Taiga landscape. Propelled along its seasons by the ever charming (if not heavy-handed at times) Herzogian narration, Vasyokov's documentary (edited by Herzog) on the Bakhtin villagers explored the mythical one-man-and-his-dog-versus-the-universe story in all its glory. Although Herzog would like you to believe that our central character - a wise, renaissance man of sort in the form of a seasoned trapper - epitomized the complete self-reliance of ancient "cave men," his snowmobile, riffle, and a supporting cast of women and children at home would beg to differ. In spite of its romanticism, the film worked as a compelling study of tradition's last frontier.

Reaction: "I want to make that canoe. Right now."

2. Take this Waltz (Polley | Canada)

Impression: There could be very good reasons for you to find Waltz intolerable: its set up was precious, its characters were all a twee bit self-absorbed, and it tread the familiar territory of the ambiguous heart's affairs (Blue Valentine worked in the same vein). Yet, Sarah Polley dotted her Is and crossed her Ts so meticulously and patiently that the film - viewed in an uncertain frame of mind - could gently break your heart, if you'd allow it. The title of this post came from a line in the film that was particularly telling of the direction Polley wanted to take her viewers (the irony of the line spoken by Silverman's character is that it was exactly what she was doing). This was about the heart making decisions in a cloud of unknowns, or as Polley put it: “I wanted to make a film about desire, not a philosophical essay, but to be inside of it, to feel how delicious it is, and how difficult it is for us, as human beings, to either turn our backs on that sensation or to live with the primal gap it creates, one that needs to be fulfilled. I wanted to show the process of someone trying to escape that essential state of being and how it doesn’t always work." The cast felt lived in, with Michelle Williams continuing her impressive acting streak. The two comedic actors (and inspired choices) - Seth Rogen and Sarah Silverman - gave their rather unexpected best work here. As the icing on the cake, my home city Toronto never looked better in film as a character on its own.

Reaction: "I need to stop crying. It's only a movie. I need to stop. "

3. The boy Mir: 10 years in Afghanistan (Grabsky | UK)

Impression: Grabsky followed an eight year-old Afghan boy named Mir for one year in 2001, with the hope of capturing "an ordinary life in an extraordinary time." Rather than stopping after one year, he continued to follow Mir for another 10 years, hoping to document the rise of Afghan people along with him. It was a difficult and beautiful, depressing and uplifting picture of an irrepressible spirit, struggling to grow and live on a land people only knew how to fight over and not be responsible for any of it.

Reaction: "That boy never stopped smiling!"

4. Tyrannosaur (Considine | UK)

Impression: If there was a painting suitable for this film, it's Wilhem Freddie's depressing, crushing La Priere (The prayer). Tyranonosaur told a story of two strangers taking turns comforting each other in time of great spiritual needs. While it didn't seem so at first, with one being a drunken angry old man prone to violent outbursts and the other being a married woman of faith, they shared a common beast named anger. It was the kind born from a deep pain accumulated over years of taking it all in stride, hoping that there was a greater purpose for all the suffering, only to realize that even if there was, the damage was done. There was no undoing, only temporary comfort in those offering shelters along the way. As such, the film relied on its small, intimate cast for the emotional heft to override the obviousness, and it got that in spades.

Reaction: "This is not a morning movie."

5. Dernier étage gauche gauche (Top floor, Left Wing, Cianci | France)

Impression: A classic comedy of errors in some ways, Cianci's whimsical, political hostage-taking thriller moved along splendidly like a thriller should, even as it weaved in and out of a couple of family dramas on the way.

Reaction: "Who'd throw a fridge, honestly?"

6. La piel que habito (The skin I live in, Almodóvar | Spain)

Impression: The best way I could describe Almodóvar's latest venture is that it's a horror melodrama, one that paints a very perverse and clinical portrait of sexual violence. Bandaras played a surgeon cum research scientist on skin transplant, who conducted unethical surgeries and experiments in his own lavish, modern lair. While the twist was quite disturbing, the storyline became predictable half way through and it fizzed out like a typical soap opera. As a picture I looked forward to the most at the festival, it disappointed under the weight of expectation. Nevertheless, it was pretty enough to entice me along the way for the most part.

Reaction: "That can't be a good idea."

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Oscars 2011 Best Picture nominations: A Brief Review

It's not too often that I would have seen every picture nominated for the Oscars before the winners are announced, so why not a run down of what I thought of each nomination? In order of preference:

The kids are all right - A heart-warming lesbian love story cleverly disguised as a non-threatening romantic comedy about a modern family's rather special predicament: a bisexual mom having an affair with the sperm donor, forcing everyone to re-evaluate what was important in his/her life.

True grit - The Coen Brothers remade the famous John Wayne vehicle into a Coen Brothers film that was pure, crackling entertainment infused with girl power and all that jazz.

The Social Network - A good, technically accomplished, dialogue-driven flick about the social elements that drive the success of Facebook.

The King's Speech - An emotionally driven, intellectually dispensable but entertaining movie, with a top notch cast dramatizing a fictional account of the King of England's friendship with an eccentric speech therapist.

Inception - Although not particularly revelatory, it's still a terrifically entertaining, inventive action film with a highly re-watchable value.

Toy Story 3 - The final chapter of a beloved franchise about self discovery and growing up did an admirable job of closing the curtain on childhood (and the series) gracefully, but its creativity fell short of the monumental achievements set by its predecessors.

Winter's bone - The story unfolded like a novel, with dark, artsy, brooding chapters constructing disturbed figures of a shadowy criminal clan, as seen through the eyes of a bull-headed young girl forced to make dangerous and heart-breaking choices to survive.

Black Swan - Natalie Portman was perfectly cast as a frigid, withdrawn ballet dancer looking to break out of her mold set by an enmeshed mother-daughter attachment relationship in this melodramatic coming-of-age horror.

The Fighter - A decent flick packed with loud performances about the sacrifices and the iron will of an Irish American boxing family to rise above its circumstances.

127 Hours - The film started out rather promisingly, only to deteriorate in the final act and missed the chance to really build something substantial out of Aron Ralston's fierce drive for independence and extraordinary will to live.

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VIFF 2010 Mini Reviews: Inside whistle ... yeah

Inside Job ( Charles Ferguson) U.S.A. This film should be renamed The Insidious Job - it was vicious finger-pointing, and most of it was probably deserved. Ferguson (impressively perusing his PhD in political science to make his case), with an eye for the global context, documented the beginning of the financial crisis that we're (hopefully) at the tail end of. While the film was fairly standard in terms of documentary style, the pertinent subject was deftly narrated in a way that was thought provoking, educational and entertaining. Interviews with financial insiders, politicians (hello Eliot Spitzer!), and journalists traced the crisis all the way back to the Icelandic economic collapse as the smaller scale model of what was to come. The eye opening aspect of the film for me - for someone who isn't as familiar with the U.S. government insiders - was that the new "Yes we can" Obamam administration carried some of the same cowboys that toppled the world on its pay load. The message was stark clear: we live in a world of recycled solutions offered by the same recycled system cogs who caused the problems in the first place. They work with an eye on personal gain above all else, protected by an irresponsible capitalist system. It's obvious that responsible government check points and a system of accountability should be put in place, especially for such a complex, faceless, economically driven system of governance. But the dance between freedom and responsibility will no doubt continue to play out in the market. In the mean time, don't forget that conventional wisdom: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Eu când vreau să fluier, fluier (If I want to whistle, I whistle; Florin Şerban) Romania. Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear, Berlin International Film Festival. | Set in a small detention facility for juveniles on some country side, the film told simply the story of a youth, Silviu (played with simmering anger betraying the doe-eyed exterior), nearing the end of his sentence only to blow it all away in the last couple of weeks. The triggering event began with his little brother, whom he acted as a guardian to all his life, informing him during a visit that their mother would be taking him away to Italy, thereby leaving him once again abandoned by family, particularly his mother. It lead to him taking a beautiful (and intoxicating) social worker hostage in an attempt to get his mother to promise not to take his brother with her. Broken family home life and childhood abandonment, the hallmark history of many delinquent youth, were at the root of the emotion that escalated in a rather unexpected and surprisingly understated fashion. The smart, reasonable way Silviu went about his plan clashed with the extent he would go to in order to prevent an event he felt helpless about spoke volume of the damage his mother'd done to him emotionally and psychologically. The film was so restrained, it seemed to lend more danger to the anger and frustration felt by Silviu, threatening to push the story to a violent end. To the film's credit, its focus was in the existential moment, almost singularly so, without melodrama and embellishment. Romanian cinematic industry has been going gangbusters in the past few years, churning out an impressive number of quality, award-winning films. While Whistle was less ambitious than what came before, it did an admirable job of continuing the much welcomed resurgence.

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VIFF 2010 Mini Reviews: Poetry for The Sleeping Beauty

La Belle Endormie (The Sleeping Beauty; Catherine Breillat) France. Princess Anastasia was cursed by a wicked fairy when she was born; as a result of her guardians' attempt to "protect" her, she was bound by a spell that would make her fall asleep for a hundred years when she reached age six. She would then spend that dreaming time traveling in her dream before coming to her 16 year old body a hundred years later. From the moment one of the guardian fairies claimed that "childhood takes too long," the film began to build a case against it. For certain, Anastasia - without a proper childhood experience - came to her teenage time as a child, even less self-possessed than ever before. Her tenacious, vivacious personality at age six gave way to a moody, uncertain teenager. Having aged in her dream while not really having actual growing up experience, she was a woman child who was not quite of any time. Childhood seemingly consists of frivolous things, and it may have led to the belief that it is "too long" ("for what it consists of," was what they really meant - 10 or 12 years of your entire life would not be nowhere near the time spent in adulthood). It was rather uncharacteristically unwise of god fairies to believe that - it would seem to reflect a precocious, impatient child's view of childhood rather than an immortal's. Childhood seemed, from the film, to be an important self-esteem learning period. It would've been a really good time to learn the ways of the world so Anastasia could come to the adulthood transitioning time (teenagehood) a bit more ready. By trying to shorten it in reality, they may have inadvertently cursed her with an unfinished childhood that may prevent her from growing up - and growing old - like she should. Anastasia did get some kind of deal for her hundred years of lost childhood (and so did we): her dream scape was hypnotic and magnificently beautiful, brimming with adventures and intense adolescent heartache. It was an interesting film, but, like Anastasia's childhood, remained a road meandering and unresolved.

Poetry (Lee Chang-Dong) Korea. (Cannes 2010 Screenplay winner). Mija lived with Jongwook, the grandson that her daughter had left in her care. While he worked out his angst in isolation and detachment, she sought meaning in the remain of the days by joining various classes and groups offered in her community. She stumbled her way into the beauty of poetry and found her creativity flowing unexpectedly in the tail end of her life. When a girl from Jongwook's school committed suicide and he was implicated in the process, Mija was torn between the sense of duty to protect him from the law and her sympathy for the young life lost. The hopelessness that led to the senseless death contrasted her own struggle for meaning in a beautiful scene in which Mija visited the suicide site, her familiar hat flown off in the rain. Jeong-hie Yun was an irrepressible spirit as Mija, her femininity enforced by her inner strength. Lee Chang-Dong deftly tackled the delicate subjects of meaning and mortality with much more humour and poignancy than you would expect. It would be worth your time to take a closer look at the script that won at Cannes last year.

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VIFF 2010 Mini Reviews: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, but Don't be afraid, Bi! (Day 6 & 7)

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, 2010). Thailand. Winner: Palme d'or, Cannes 2010.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Boonmee's world renown director - is a Buddhist (and gay, but that may not bear as much relevance for Boonmee as it did for Tropical Malady). I don't advocate having foreknowledge of an artist's life before attempting to analyze his/her work, but in this case, it might just be what may help us put the pieces of this challenging work together. The story - adapted from a Thai book called A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives (1983) - revolved around Uncle Boonmee, whose dead relatives appeared to him (and his remaining family) in the night and helped him experience visions of his past lives. Thematically, the film could be explained with a little understanding of a Buddhist-related concept of transience called "wabi-sabi" (so named by the Japanese based on Buddhism's Three Marks of Existence). The idea is to accept that nothing lasts, nothing is complete, and nothing is perfect. In essence, the film was about imperfect beings living a rather surreal, transient life until death transformed them into other imperfect beings. In one of the most eerie sequences in the film, Boonmee was visited by his presumably dead son, who transformed into a gorilla-like beast with glowing red eyes. It may have been a nod to old Thai cinema, but it could also be interpreted as a nod to the tranformative link between us and our closest relatives and/or evolutionary ancestors. Elsewhere, marks of imperfection were physically embodied by the film's characters: Boonmee's liver was failing, his sister's legs were asymmetrical, the princess in one of his visions was facially deformed, and so on. Boonmee's past lives may have been shown as a way to prepare him for death, which was depicted as merely a transformative process in which one living form (human or other animals) is exchanged for another. Even violence and oppression - captured in a rather disturbing and comical sequence involving soldiers and the aforementioned beasts - were transient, it seemed. Various cinematic tools and techniques found in older Thai film tradition were in a way relived by the film, suggesting perhaps a continuation and transformation of older cinematic forms. Death was everywhere, but nothing was as final as one may believe.

Winning Cannes' Palme D'or this year may help Boonmee pique the interest of a certain kind of audience - perhaps enough to fill several screenings, especially if it was to be selected by the Oscars in the foreign film category (Boonmee was chosen as Thai's official submission). Sustaining this interest, however, may prove a bit more challenging. Even at Cannes, it was rumoured to have played to a divided audience, judging by the number of walk-outs. Attrition rate was not noticeable at my VIFF screening, but it would not have surprised me had the audience here followed suit. Far from being an offensive film that could have precipitated this kind of reaction, Boonmee was a grand, meta, mythical journey occupying its own stratosphere. It was a thoroughly Eastern/Buddhist film, if a film could be defined as such. There were lots required of its audience, in both patience and willingness to explore a highly unusual, highly fragmented, densely packed mystical quest. However, given that it also embodied the spiritual journey it explored, granting its audience the kind of experience possibly similar to something achieved via meditation, it may just worth skipping yoga classes for.

Don't be afraid, Bi! (Phan, 2010). Vietnam. Special mention, VIFF's Dragon & Tiger Awards.

To Sigmund Freud, life is a struggle between two opposing forces: eros (love instinct) and thanatos (death instinct). First time director Dang Di Phan created a deceptively serene picture within which these two drives came to a head on an ordinary Vietnamese family looking to reconcile its fragmented parts. Bi was a little boy who chanced upon these forces with more wonder than fear, a disposition that the film seemed to implore the audience to adopt, or return to. His grandfather came back to live with the family after having fallen seriously ill abroad. Bi's father, unable to face his own presumed issue of childhood abandonment brought about by the reunion, sought the buzz of alcohol and youthful lust. As a result, the care of the grandfather was transferred solely to the women of the house: Bi's mother, aunt, and housekeeper. Given the subjects at hand, the film could've been a heavy-handed art-house fare. For certain, there were moments in which a checklist of what tended to show up in art house films could be drawn up for the film. However, there were plenty of pleasant surprises in Phan's direction, the most remarkable of which was how the film skipped along lightly, like the wind brushing on his green-field canvas. Eros and thanatos would at times seem to abruptly and forcefully burst on to the screen, but their shadow never completely overpowered the film's blithe spirit.

In the context of the Vietnam war and the profound effect it has had on the country's collective psyche as well as its people's personal history, it was noteworthy how the young director imbued his first work with so much optimism about the healing process. The staging of the film itself was a mix of old and new, with colonial arrangement contrasting modern details. The land and its people seemed to have changed rather quietly and shockingly so from the usual image of a war torn Vietnam burnt in the world's memory. The poetically composed final shot of the plane landing over a cemetery plot, where Bi explored his province and nature at the beckoning of his mother, suggested a cyclical nature of these departures and arrivals. At its heart, the film adopted a zen attitude towards life's deeper forces: things happened, are happening, and will happen. You'd either hop on the train or be left behind, toiling in the misery of your own nonacceptance (like Bi's father). Interestingly, the women in the film seemed to wisely embrace both eros and thanatos with little resistance or struggle, perhaps presenting a commentary on possible gender differences in this arena. The film encouraged the audience to walk unafraid along Freud's ghosts, by showing how they were just a part of our natural being. Once embraced, there was nothing left to fear. We could all be Bi, for the rest of our natural life, if we'd just let our self be.

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VIFF 2010 mini reviews: My joy, Tamara Drewe, I wish I knew (Day 4 & 5)

My Joy (Loznitsa, 2010). Ukraine.

A truck driver (Viktor Nemets), taking the advice of a teenage girl looking to make a living as a sex worker, got off road while attempting to cut through a traffic jam in a small Ukrainian town. Unbeknownst to him, that was the last time he knew of his decency and self-identity, as his nightmare (and ours) began with the meeting of three strange men in the night coming to rob him of his load. He was carried and transacted, for the most part, by various figures in the film, like the last shred of humanity nobody wanted, dredged through the unforgiven desert of a senseless existence. Rarely had a film made me feel so helpless, angry, and oppressed (while admiring its execution at the same time). The lawlessness of the land turned people into grubby animals, and they in turn beat the crap out of any reminder of anything that was ever good left in the world. My joy was brutally bleak in its observations and uncompromisingly oblique in its presentation. It occupied the same sadistic world as that of Haneke's Funny Games, but without a readily available plot for the audience to follow (or a fourth wall to break, for that matter). The hand held, guerrilla, realistic style of film making meant there was no detachment possible - we were in it with him, suffering the psychological horror that he transferred to us by virtue of us being the only entity with self awareness and empathy in this communal experience. His unresponsiveness - possibly from the head injury's trauma - meant we were left on our own to respond for him, as helpless witnesses to the worse of human unkindness. The film went far beyond the implication that corruption of the laws incurred the most selfish and base of human behaviour; this was a world of traumas and abusers inflicting their pain upon others. It was a film to be endured - and you may want to for such a daring, unconventional film, but perhaps only once.

Tamara Drewe (Frears, 2010). England.

Plastic-modified beauty may not buy happiness, but it got Tamara Drewe the kind of attention she craved as a young girl growing up on the ugly duckling side of the fence. She understood the power of beauty - aided by sheer, unadulterated guts - and used it to thump her nose, so to speak, at the people who used to reject her. She soon found out, as these inner beauty fables tended to unfold, modern pretty girls have (surprise!) problems too, ones that her overeager ambition wouldn't know what to do with. Based on a comic strip that was itself a modern retelling of Thomas Hardy's Far from the madding crowd, Tamara Drewe exercised its comedy of errors duty diligently, leaving the audience with easy laughs and the pleasant feeling of a tea room escape. There's a certain comfort in familiarity, and the film was a comfortable experience. The small town life depicted seemed to exist from an unchanging time of yesteryear's romance novels with a slight feminist ambition, complete with its host of small-minded, nosy, but charming characters. Our heroine was still pining for love and deliberating marriage choices as her primary concerns. Plain-jane wives were still being taken for granted and growing green with a mix of contempt and envy for the pretty young things who would soon steal her undeserved husband away. We have seen it before, and we'll see it again. In the mean time, have a cookie and call it a show.

Hai shang chuan qi (I wish I knew; Zhangke, 2010). China.

Briefly, this gorgeously filmed documentary / fictional hybrid meta feature examined the history of Shanghai as told by eighteen people affected by the Cultural Revolution on both sides of the communist equation. Small in stature and modest in manner, Jia Zhangke, a seminal (and beloved, judging from the appreciative audience) living Chinese filmmaker with an appetite for knowledge and art, appeared at the VIFF screening I attended and spoke enthusiastically at length about the film during his Q&A. Apparently, he had wanted to make a film about an earlier war. However, in the process of gathering materials for the film, he found more compelling, moving individual stories that would have been difficult for him to justifiably crystallize in a feature film. Instead, he let a fraction of the people he interviewed - the survivors of an important moment in modern Chinese history - drafted their own film memoirs. The title of the film was inspired by a song recalled - and sung - by an old aristocrat:

I wish I knew how
It would feel to be free
I wish I could break
All the chains holding me
I wish I could say
All the things that I should say
Say 'em loud say 'em clear
For the whole round world to hear
I wish I could share
All the love that's in my heart
Remove all the bars
That keep us apart
I wish you could know
What it means to be me
Then you'd see and agree
That every man should be free

I wish I could give
All I'm longin' to give
I wish I could live
Like I'm longin' to live
I wish I could do
All the things that I can do
And though I'm way over due
I'd be starting a new

Well I wish I could be
Like a bird in the sky
How sweet it would be
If I found I could fly
Oh I'd soar to the sun
And look down at the sea
Than I'd sing cos I know - yea
Then I'd sing cos I know - yea
Then I'd sing cos I know
I'd know how it feels
Oh I know how it feels to be free
Yea Yea! Oh, I know how it feels
Yes I know
Oh, I know
How it feels
How it feels
To be free

One got the feeling that "I wish I knew" was also Zhangke's dream of the past, as his curiosity about Chinese history grew with the films he made about contemporary China. Like the recurring bridge motif and Zhao Tao's ghostly presence, the film served as an attempt to connect Shanghai's present occupants to their history, as a way of explaining the city's current importance in the modernizing China. It was - and is - a port of dreams of freedom, a witness to these dreams' realization (or lack thereof). As their audience, we, too, became witnesses to their personal evolution. As a film enthusiast, I found it particularly interesting to see other filmmakers and their respective films being used as parts of Shanghai's constructed history. The film ended with a controversial modern day chaser of dreams - the car racer cum novelist Han Han, who uses his power as a celebrity to blog rather fearlessly about China’s corrupted state officials (a fact that was not disclosed in the film). The message was clear: people's dreams of freedom were stronger than any party affiliation. Is the Chinese government watching?

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VIFF 2010 capsule reviews: Armadillo, Biutiful, R U There (Day 3)

Armadillo (Metz, 2010) Denmark. Winner: Critics Prize at Cannes 2010.

It was a surreal experience watching Armadillo, especially on the heel of the Oscar-winning film, The Hurt Locker (a film that used a documentary, in-action style to explore a bomb squad's life in Iraq during the war). The line between documentary style film-making and fictional film-making has become thin enough that a real documentary like this would seem at times fictional (possibly due to the amazing editing work). The Danish film unfolded like an assured, dramatic, emotionally resonant fictional film, as it documented the life of soldiers at Armadillo, an operating base that was home to Danish and British soldiers in Helmand province, Afghanistan, where they supposedly were trying to drive out the Talibans and establish 'peace.' The soldiers were followed from the time they set out to say good-bye to their families to the end of their mission. We saw them bonded over porn and macho activities, waiting anxiously to face 'war' as they expected. Instead, they were treated to months of little activities other than the occasional interactions with the locals, many of whom weren't too thrilled with their presence and blamed them for the region's increased instability. The Talibans hid with the locals, and one really got a sense of how difficult it was to simultaneously on the defense/offense and not yield collateral damages. When they finally were tested in the extreme confusion of combat fires, the implications of their actions (did they really break the rule of engagement and "liquidate wounded people and pile up the dead to take pictures of [themselves] as heroes?") were profound, and caused quite a stir in Denmark. The soldiers were allowed to defend themselves in the film - through their words as well as the footage of them in combat. Perhaps Metz summed it up best when he said: "maybe we're looking at something that goes to the core of something very human. The soldiers are so close to death and they actually kill someone. The way they handle the bodies afterward maybe testifies to something at the very core of humanity – of our grubby human nature. War has always been there. It has always been part of us." (quote via The Guardian)

Biutiful (Iñárritu, 2010) Mexico.

Iñárritu aims high when it comes to finding misery in the world. His matrix of human connections is that of misfortunes (see his previous films: 21 Grams, Babel). Good people make unfortunate decisions to survive, only to end up with horrible consequences because, well, life is just unforgiving like that. Uxbal (Javier Bardem), true to Iñárritu's typical character style, was forced to make difficult choices every day of his life, as he lived in the shadows of human existence with a family strung together tenuously by the wife's bipolar condition. He had a terminal disease; his children were abused; his wife was a chaotic presence; his brother slept with her behind his back; his good friend sold illegal drugs but he had to provide covers for; his predatory business partners exploited him as much as they could; the people he helped using his psychic gift (he could see the dead and their last thought) were resentful of his message as often as they were grateful for it; and his well intended decisions just kept getting him further tangled in a never-ending web of suffering. The good times did not stay long, and they were never wholeheartedly created to be just so. Uxbal's descent into hell was gradual and torturous: even by the time his spirit was thrown a life line in the form of an imagined family face, it was not much of a relief. Iñárritu wants you to get that life really, truly sucks for some people, and perhaps misery ends only after life. It was an exercise in feeling helpless, albeit a beautifully shot one.

R U There (Verbeek, 2010) Netherlands.

It was a typical exotic love story: Caucasian boy traveled the world and fell for a beautiful, mysterious local girl. They had an ambiguous relationship both online and offline. Verbeek attempted to investigate the line where the virtual world met reality, but what he ended up with was a feature-length advertisement for Second Life. The problem was, Second Life was anti-cinematic, choppy, shallow, hollow, and awkward. The chemistry off screen was not any better, despite the leads' effort to look as though they belonged in the same movie. There was one brief moment where Verbeek almost had a decent film: Jitze (Stijn Koomen), a professional gamer who was in Taiwan to compete in a video game tournament, witnessed a motor vehicle accident that he did nothing about. Then, instead of cutting away, the camera lingered a little too long, going for that unnecessary sensational effect. Elsewhere, the film skipped ever too lightly and superficially on the virtual worlds its main characters occupied - both the virtual gaming industry and Second Life resembled ideas of what they could look like, according to outsiders. The film bore an interesting premise, but that was all it was.

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VIFF 2010 capsule reviews: Barney's Version, Hahaha (Day 1)

Barney's Version (Lewis, 2010) Canada.

Barney, a TV big wig sporting a caustic sense of humour and an insensitive persona, found the love of his life at the wedding to his second wife. It was not his wife to be (delightfully played by Minnie Driver); it was a guest in attendance, the radiant Miriam in blue (Rosamund Pike). What followed was a love story in the tradition of rom com's 'the one' mythology, with Paul Giamatti playing the role of the homely, cynical man wooing the sophisticated princess. The new romantic leading man in recent rom coms has only his unyielding love to offer and very few other qualities of note, but he would always end up inexplicably winning the love of some beautiful, complex leading lady. Barney's Version was created with the same conceit, framed from the perspective of an awestruck, self-sabotaging man. One never got the sense that Barney was in any way an equivalent or an equal partner to Miriam. His son even went so far as to state that Barney did not deserve Miriam in his life, a position the film never succeeded in dismissing, despite the attempt at trumping up his never-say-die love for Miriam. The cast members filled their roles in good spirit, but the film offered very little depth, originality or chemistry between the leads. Overly sentimental, and ultimately forgettable, Barney really did not need this version to be told.

Hahaha (Hong, 2010) Korea. 2010 Cannes winner - Prix Un Certain Regard (for "original and different" works)

Aspiring film director Moon-kyung and his friend, film critic Joong-sik, met up shortly before Moon-kyung left for Canada. They swapped stories of their recent trip to the seaside town of Tong-yeong over drinks. Along the way, despite their initial insistence on only skimping the pleasant surface of life, the two friends inadvertently ventured beyond the safety of their wading pool, providing us with a more complete picture of what happened to them over the summer. The two interweaving stories, told from Joong-sik's and Moon-kyung's perspective, were arranged in alternating sections, with each character taking turn stringing their interconnected experience together. The film gently made a case for our life story being a series of overlapping narratives. The meeting itself was presented in a series of freeze frames, as though the audience was rummaging through a photo book. Hong's honest but tolerant view of his characters' growth process made it possible for us to empathize with their struggle, however seemingly minute. The film offered an interesting peek at the Korean youth culture and its romantic aspirations, simultaneously poking fun at its naiveté and respecting its raison d'être. As a romantic comedy, it was as awkward, light-hearted and funny as their summer romance - certainly a welcomed fresh take on a genre overridden with cliché and conventions.

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TIFF review, Day 3: Little White Lies, in friends we trust

Title: Les petits mouchoirs (Little White Lies)
Director: Guillaume Canet
Language: French
Year: 2010
Critical Reception: TIFF 2010 entry
Psych Index: Homosexuality, Intimate, Family Relations
In Brief: The story centered around a tightly knit group of well-to-do but troubled friends shaken by an accident befalling one of its members. The actors fully inhibited the picture, creating an aura of warmth and sentiments while trying to keep their darker corners in check. At times, the director (and writer) gave into personal indulgence and made the film overly sentimental (and long) when it did not need to be. Nevertheless, Lies was a sweet little film about friendship and, though the director thought differently, the little white lies that greased it along the way.

Comment (SPOILERS ALERT): Les petits mouchoirs (Little white lies; Canet, 2010) made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival to much chaos: the initial program ran into the second subtitling problem I encountered at the festival, much to the cast-on-hand's dismay. Canet, invoking the film's friendship theme, persuaded his captive audience into forgiving the technical difficulties that led to hours of waiting in line for the film. While the audience ultimately was soothed by the film's character charms, the dramedy, like the screening schedule, depended too much on the audience's good will and ran on way longer than it should have.

The gently told story centered around a tightly knit, mostly thirty something group of friends attempting to get on with their pre-planned vacation - and their life - at a beach-side cabin owned by its eldest member, Max (Francois Cluzet), after an accident that left one of their own (Jean Dujardin) in a life-threatening condition. Their friendships were tested by secrets and the revelations thereof, the most severe (and effectively handled) of which was Vincent's (Benoit Magimel) confessed feelings for the tightly wound and possibly homophobic Max. Other characters struggled with their own heartache, blinded by self interests and deceptions, until the weight of their drama, like Max's little weasels, broke their wall (Max literally did that in a fit of rage, as obvious a metaphor as it comes). Lies may be necessary at times, but as these characters found out, there comes a time when the consequences of living a white lie get a little too costly (perhaps a slight commentary on the closeted homosexuals out there). And it was practically impossible to contain consequences once personal lies become shared secrets.

Canet did not shy away from courting the English-speaking audience looking for a little crowd-pleasing foreign title to feel good about: he scored his entire film with well known English songs at opportune times. It was perhaps not surprising that he chose the English-subtitled screening for his Q&A when given the choice to speak at length with either a French audience or an English-speaking one. Unfortunately, his ambition - or, as he confessed at the Q&A, his affinity for songs in the English language - detracted from the cast's terrific ensemble work. Having a character (Marie's musician boyfriend) belting out a couple of English songs on the acoustic guitar for his French-speaking group of friends rendered a rather delicate moment false and trying.

While the script fell apart in the maudlin final act, the film as a whole was lifted by the strength of its well-observed characters. There was a sense of a natural, easy camaraderie that helped burrow the group in the audience's emotional space. They had the sort of friendship that people could fantasize about - having intimate connections with really attractive people, aided by a touch of drama and deception, well within the safe confines of ready forgiveness. Despite the obvious privileges that threatened to distant much of the group from the sympathetic viewers, their genuine portrayal humanized their struggle and saved the film from being completely swallowed by wishful sentiments. Canet may have written the film as a love letter to his friends, but as confessional cinema, it felt a little too wanting to truly convey the depth of its universal theme.

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Spike Jonze's I'm Here: Teenage Robot Romanticism

Title: I'm Here (Watch it free on line here)
Director: Spike Jonze
Language: English
Year: 2010
Critical Reception: Generally well accepted, though not many reviews exist for this short film
Psych Index: Intimate
In Brief: A half hour short, cute film about a lonely robot ready to give, in whatever capacity, to ... love? I can't encourage the sort of twisted sacrifice shown in the film, as it involves the kind of burden that could break even the strongest relationship. However, it does illustrate effectively the consuming power of desperation and uncompromising desire to connect with anyone who'd witness our existence, even if it means to give up parts of us in return.

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