VIFF: Day 12

Catching up is so hard to do...

The Robber (2010)
Benjamin Heisenberg
Austria

Marathon runners take note: if you want to give your heart rate monitor a run for its money and put a little spark in your training regiment, try robbing banks. Benjamin Heisenberg new film is a tense thriller that rides a wave perpetuated by a true story. Based on an Austrian man who had a taste for robbing banks and a talent for running marathons, The Robber capitalizes on this unique character study with a little dramatic magic. We first meet Johann as he is finishing up his prison sentence. Running circles around a small prison yard, he is ordered inside along with the rest of the inmates only to continue running on a treadmill he has in his cell. From this scene and the rows of running shoes he has, we realize that he is serious about running. He is released from prison, continues to train and wins the Vienna Marathon. It seems he has turned his back on his criminal ways. But what we eventually find out is that Johann is something of an adrenaline junkie, and an extremely fit one at that. Working a bank robbery (or two) into his schedule gives him a physical and emotional test that satiates his compulsion. As one might expect, The Robber has a couple fantastic chase scenes: one a heart-pounding escape in the heart of Vienna and another a more measure hunt in the woods. Johann is played with palpable tautness by Andreas Lust (who played the policeman in Revanche.) But Johann's pathological path is treated as a sort of fate that he can't break free from which I had a hard time chewing on. Needless to say, it is a fate he can't run from or run with for long. The Robber is extremely poised and efficient in making an argument on Johann's behalf, but it's only half effective if your not buying the sympathy that he's trying to sell.


sampaguita, National Flower (2010)
Francis X Pasion
Philippines

Another film that blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, sampaguita, National Flower does so with a documentarians lens. Sampaguita turns a tender eye on the stories of Manila street children who scrape by selling garlands of the sweetly scented sampaguitas. Francis X Pasion (can that be his real name?) started by interviewing a half dozen kids and then used the kids to act out their own situations and scenarios. The result is an amalgamation: the bold interviews are woven between the heartbreaking street-wandering milieu. The film doesn't offer answers or resolutions, but instead presents an honest and fortuitous portrayal of the resilience of these young kids.


Aurora (2010)
Cristi Puiu
Romania

You know those tile games where one space is open and you have to slide the tiles around in the frame to get all the tiles in place to make a picture? This is how Cristi Puiu's plot is constructed in Aurora: each sequence is slightly out of place, but not so much that you can't see the entire picture. The catch is that Puiu's tile game is 3 hours long and the images he uses to build a story are incredibly ambiguous. It's only in the last 20 minutes that you start understanding how you should shuffle the pieces, and when the film ends you are still shuffling. Aurora is a knock out followup to The Death of Mr. Lazarescu that contains the same uncanny sense of detail but is infused with a huge dose of abstraction. The film follows the very peculiar coming-and-goings of Viorel (astonishingly played by Puiu himself) as he obviously prepares for something. But the timeline is askew and the character and his intentions are a mystery. Eventually these things come together, but despite the explanatory finale (a procedural that would have made Mr. Lazarescu either tired or agitated), much is left in a fog of obscurity. Gritty and complex, Aurora is a film that I can't wait to revisit.

VIFF: Day 11

Winter Vacation (2010)
Li Hongqi
China

Li Hongqi, be still my heart! Winter Vacation is something of a perfect mixture of Chinese specificity and avant-garde bravado. An incredibly austere set piece, Winter Vacation doesn't concern itself too much about drama or reality but instead builds a laconic daydream filled with irony and surrealism. Both adolescents and adults seem to be stuck in aimless stagnancy in a small town in northern China over winter break. Normally this vacation, which coincides with the Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year), is depicted as an extremely lively time with family, food and firecrackers. Li Hongqi has painted the antithesis of this conception with the youth standing around looking at each other (and occasionally throwing slurs at one another) and their guardians doing much of the same. Winter Vacation is anchored by two sets of characters: five teenage boys who continually ask each other what they are going to do and an antagonistic grandfather and grandson sitting at opposite ends of a couch trading jabs. The film cycles through the non-events of the town—a thug extorting money from a kid, a woman buying nappa cabbage, a couple getting a divorce—but always returns to our two groups of heroes. At first these individuals seem oblivious to the absurdity of their stage set life until it is slowly revealed that they are more than aware of their sardonic situation. Kids and adults alike are calm but pensive. Li punctuates the beautifully barren images with a subtle soundtrack by experimental composer Zuoxiao Zuzhou (who has also contributed to soundtracks for Jia Zhangke, Zhu Wen, Yang Fudong and Ai Weiwei.) I, being a person who generally likes watching paint dry, adored Winter Vacation and it may just be my biggest discovery and favorite film of VIFF.


Chassis (2010)
Adolfo Alix, Jr.
Philippines

The VIFF program bills Chassis as "sub-proletarian Filipina Jeanne Dielmann," a trick that seemed to have me in mind. There is an air of truth in this statement (especially in their respective final sequences) but the two are literally and metaphysically worlds apart. Nora's husband drives a truck and they live with their young daughter in makeshift homes underneath idle trucks in the truck yard alongside many other families. Her husband is often absent, even when he is not driving, and seems completely uninvolved with helping raise their daughter. Under the most extreme circumstances, Nora does her best to provide for her daughter and occasionally turns to prostitution to make ends meet. At one point in the film a man on the bus is asking for donations for people with disabilities. Although it is unimaginable, Nora sees that her situation could be worse and gives the man some money. Far be it from me to tell you that her situation does get worse, but Nora's perfunctory attitude is eventually pushed to the limit. Shot in black and white, Chassis makes the most of emotion in this even keel portrayal of life on the fringes.


Mundane History (2010)
Anocha Suwichakompong
Thailand

It's hard to see a mystical film from Thailand and not think of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. But this would be ignoring that Thailand is a country deeply rooted in Buddhism, a religion that is far more open to broader definitions of life and the universe and Mundane History is magically able to work this into a simple but corporeal story. Ake is a young man who has been recently confined to a wheelchair from an accident that is never fully defined. Understandably bitter, Ake is hard on his new and easygoing nurse Pun, a man who is not much older than Ake. Early in the film, Pun laments to someone on the phone that he's not sure if he likes his job: "Everyone here is soulless." Mundane History patiently spends time proving this statement wrong. Ake slowly opens up to Pun and director Anocha Suwichakompong slowly introduces us to much larger themes that connect us all. The timeline is patterned, working back and forth within the period of time that Ake and Pun get to know each other peppered with burst of abstractions. The film derides conventional notions of time (presenting the title credit 20 minutes into the film) and the narrative is unconcerned with conclusion. As a matter of fact, the film ends with a bold statement on beginnings with an unblinking and visceral birth. The uncanny combination of macro and micro themes in Mundane History works seamlessly under Suwichakompong's gentle direction. If Pun releases animals in order to build his karma, Suwichakompong has made a film in order to build ours. It is also worth noting that Mundane History makes good use of pop songs in its soundtrack from the bands Furniture and The Photo Sticker Machine.


Oki's Movie (2010)
Hong Sang-soo
South Korea

Hong Sang-soo films should be more spread apart, because having just seen the vibrant Hahaha, Oki's Movie seems like a pale exercise. Split into four short films, Oki's Movie puts two men from different generations and their respective affair with Oki under the Hong microscope. The respective films show four different perspectives from four different times. Jingu is a film student whose affair with Oki raises the jealous ire of his professor, Song who also has a history with the young woman. Jingu is the hapless hero who we embarrassingly see flinging his ego in places it doesn't belong. In one of my favorite scene's from the film, Hong sets up a hilarious post-screening discussion where Jingu is answering questions about his film. Jingu is drunk and is being overly essoteric about his film when a young woman stands up and asks him why he dumped her friend he was seeing a couple years ago. The uncomfortable but compulsory Q & A that we all know so well is kicked up a notch as the young woman presses Jingu and no one, including Jingu, can put a stop to it. Oki's Movie certainly has its moments, but the four chapter portraiture—notated by separate credits and Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance"—seems like an unnecessary distraction.