VIFF: Day 10

Another Year (2010)
Mike Leigh
UK

For those who found Happy-Go-Lucky too annoying or Vera Drake too depressing, Another Year finds Leigh back in the territory of Secret and Lies, Life is Sweet and High Hopes. Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Sheen) play a happily married couple and hosts to a handful of lonely outsiders, who find warmth from the friendliness of the couple. Tom's a geologist and Gerri's a therapist and they effortlessly wile away their time in each other's company preparing food or tending their garden. At the forefront of the colorful cast of characters is Mary (Lesley Manville), a perky but lonely co-work who is always trying too hard to see the bright side of things that are clearly not bright. Covering a full year earmarked by the seasons, Another Year burns with a warmth that equally bitter and sweet. Some things change but most things don't. The cast is simply remarkable as Leigh is able to pull out some of the most amazing performances through his unconventional methods. This is especially the case with Ruth Sheen who steels the show as she did with a very similar character in High Hopes. Another Year is a gentle masterpiece from a gentle master. Another Year is scheduled for a US release later this year, and will be a shoe-in for one of the best of the year.


Aftershock (2010)
Feng Xiaogang
China

Garnering the favor of 1.3 billion people is nothing to scoff at. Feng Xiaogang's new blockbuster fantastique, Aftershock, has become the highest grossing domestic film in China. But, as we all know, impressive box office numbers don't always mean an impressive film. Feng has created the kind of weepy big budget melodrama that Hollywood incessantly cranks out every year, and it is predictably admirable and disappointing. Based on a novel of the same name, Aftershock dramatizes one family's epic experience of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake (the deadliest in history) and it's 30 year after effect. Husband and wife, Da and Qiang, and their twin son and daughter are representative of an average family that was torn apart by the earthquake. In this story, the four member family suffers one death and enough physical and emotional damage for the remaining three to last a lifetime (or the remainder of Aftershock's 135 minute runtime.) Feng pulls out the disaster CGI early in the film, but then allows full-tilt melodrama to drive the film home. Moving through the decades, the character's age and the country changes, landing the film in the middle of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake for a sense of resolve. Perhaps I give Aftershock a pass for its many shortcomings, most that come in the form of a forced narrative and an extremely heavy-handed drama. But the era that the film encapsulates is something of a harbinger for China. Although China's two biggest earthquakes fall in the years of 1976 and 2008, the significance of those years is not lost on most. With the death of Zhou Enlai and Mao Zidong, 1976 was an end of a very difficult epoch, preparing the country for the biggest changes yet that is most dramatically symbolized by the Summer Olympics held in Beijing in 2008. This subtle yet very nationalistic subtext lies just beneath the surface of Aftershock's blockbuster facade. China's Oscar contender, Aftershock shoots for broad mass appeal and sells out on just about everything else.

R (2010)
Michael Noer and Tobias Lindholm
Denmark

In the realm of the prison/gang hierarchy film, I'm afraid we are on the brink of a revisionist upheaval which I could tire of very quickly. R starts to follow A Prophet so closely that I quickly got bored with this film's intentions. Rune is a tough and wily convict transferred to prison block where even the guards nonchalantly predict Rune's doom. Using wit and obedience, Rune finds a way to make peace and work his way into the lucrative drug trade being run by the prison kingpins. R is eventually able to set itself apart with an unexpected twist, but it certainly takes its time doing so. Although engaging and well acted, I sat through R feeling like I had seen this film too many times before.

Ben Wheatley's DOWN TERRACE

(Down Terrace played at the Sound Unseen Duluth International Film Festival earlier this year, and recently opened in NYC. Hopefully it will make a pass through the Twin Cities; it's a nasty litte comedy. This review was originally publish on In Review Online.)

Ten years ago some friends and I stumbled across a British SNL-type television series called “Jam.” Forget “Monty Python,” “Jam” was a mixed bag of some of the darkest and most off-kilter humor I had ever seen and continues to make me howl every time I watch it. Created by Chris Morris, director of the recent feature Four Lions, “Jam” is proof that the seeds for a film like Down Terrace had already been sown, as it traverses much of the same territory in tone and production. Director Ben Wheatley uses his television know-how from UK comedies “Ideal” and “Wrong Door” to create an unexpectedly wry and deathly dark comedy about a family of odd, low level gangsters.

The film opens as Bill and his son Karl are released from jail on charges that apparently did not hold up in court. They are eager to find who ratted them out, but not until they have had a few beers and smoked a little weed. Bill’s wife Maggie busies herself in making tea and helping Karl who has the ability to throw a fit at the drop of a hat. The three of them criticize and ridicule their random associates that show up to the house, but there is no evidence that they are any different. Bill waxes poetically about transcendentalism, Karl reunites with his now very pregnant ex-girlfriend (much to his parents chagrin) and Maggie emerges as the placid ball-buster of the family and, to some extent, the larger network of the family. Meanwhile the three of them independently start ‘cleaning house’ with droll brutality.

The handheld camerawork and the less-than-dynamic sound may be a form of necessity and comfort for Ben Wheatley, directing his first feature, but it also allows Down Terrace to masquerade its twisted intentions as a docile sitcom. Any attempt to pin down the genre is eventually replaced by trying to wrap your head around these absurd characters that seem less like hardened criminals than two-bit thugs trying to convince everyone (including themselves) that they are hardened criminals. Wheatley’s whip-smart script is perfectly complemented by the ease in which the actors fill the shoes of the incongruous characters. It’s no surprise that the actors who play Bill and Karl are father and son and that Karl’s girlfriend is also his girlfriend off screen. Despite their quirky nature, there is a comfort in which the family sways between clashing and cooperating.

Karl writes his manifest destiny in the family and surfaces as the unlikely star of the film. Played by Robin Hill, who also co-wrote the script with Wheatley, Karl is an unsympathetic man-child clumsily making his own rules. Evidence of coddling from his parents hilariously erupts and then disappears. Shortly after he reconnects with his girlfriend, they are up in his room having a heart-to-heart when Karl suggest they pull out some of the letters she wrote to him in jail as a way to rekindle their affection. He spends about 5 seconds looking for them in his cluttered room before he is convinced that someone taken them. Rendered immobile, he stands upright and simply starts screaming, “Mum! Mum!” at the top of his lungs like a toddler who just lost his teddy bear. Right at the moment you think he is going to go physically ballistic, he looks over and calmly says, “Oh. Here they are.” The bizarre moment is over, but scenes like this set an erratic tone for the entire film.

Down Terrace chronicles two weeks of events and non-events surrounding Bill, Maggie and Karl. The days are marked by on screen intertitles that remind you how much or how little happens, usually in the close confines of the trio’s small flat. The film spirals downward pretty quickly and unfortunately, due to the cheeky nature of the film, it fails to have the effect that it should. Although Down Terrace never rises above the dark cynicism of comedic surreality, it does so with such clever plain-spoken subtlety that the discarded weight of the body bags hardly matters. Down Terrace adds a fresh, but slightly bitter and dispassionate, take on the gangster genre that revels in low-gloss of filmmaking and dark idiosyncrasies of human nature.

MSPIFF 2010: Day 3

For the Love of Movies - Take It or Leave It
I'm sorry, but this 'film criticism in crisis' topic is getting old, and in most cases off the mark. If you want to find a crisis, look at the print publication industry. Yes, film critics are losing their jobs, but so are hard nosed journalists who worked in an industry that is now failing under the pressure of the internet. I would agree that film criticism for the masses is dead. No one is going to base their decision on whether or not to go to a movie based on a review. People are either going to go see Sex in the City 2 or they're not. But what has grown stronger is a core conversation about film on the internet, in small publication and even in some of the dailies. Unfortunately, most of the dailies still think they are targeting the masses with film reviews. Although For the Love of Movies sells itself as a survey of American film criticism, it feels like a eulogy. As a historical piece, it merely skims the surface. At 80 minutes it attempts to cover a century of thought, and although it hits the highlights, it never delves very deep. It spends too much time on the Pauline Kael/Andrew Sarris feud and closes by reveling in the cynicism toward the internet and 'unqualified writers.' Possibly the best thing about the film is seeing and hearing interviews with critics that I have spent time reading—Molly Haskell, Kenneth Turan, J. Hoberman, Andrew Sarris, Michael Wilmington, just to name a few. (Not scheduled to play again, but available on DVD if interested.)


Looking for Eric - Highly Recommended
Looking for Eric is the best film I've seen so far at the festival (excluding 35 Shots of Rum.) Overall, I am very cold on Ken Loach's films and haven't seen one that has really stood out to me. Looking for Eric has changed all that. Working with far more humor, Loach crafts a affecting and hilarious portrait of a middle aged man at the end of his rope. Eric is a postman who is burdened with the guilt of leaving his wife of over twenty years ago and is distraught by his inability to communicate with his two teenage sons. His mates do their best to help, including organizing a meeting guided by a self-help book to build confidence. When they are instructed to close their eyes and imagine the world through the eyes of someone they admire, Eric immediately chooses Eric Cantona, star player for Manchester United, as his muse. Enter Eric Cantona who routinely shows up to help Eric work through his problems. The friendship that Eric builds with his hero, even if it is in his head, is incredibly tender. Steve Evets is amazing as Eric. I never doubted his anger, his depression or his love for football. But big points go out to Eric Cantona for taking on the role and filling it perfectly. Looking for Eric has a working-class realism that you might expect that glows under the performances of Evets and Cantona. I was willing to forgive a finale that has pieces fitting too neatly and enthusiastically in place due to the sincerity that permeated the entire film. (I'm getting this out too late to recommend the second screening, but let's hope Looking for Eric returns to this town and yours.)


Reykjavik-Rotterdam - Take It or Leave It
I had shades of déjà vu watching Reykjavik-Rotterdam, an accomplished thriller from Iceland (with no volcanoes.) Reykjavik shares many elements with The Square, which I had seen just the day before. Although they run on completely different narrative threads, they both have a similar gritty feel and they both have a character who is a foreman anxious to get some cement poured. I've never had the problem of films blurring together, but under the circumstances of watching three or four festival films a day, I am always struck by the similarities among films. Call it copying, appropriation or inevitable, genre films need to be a little more creative. This is where The Square has the edge on Reykjavik. The Square works consciously with cliché in the mind (much like Shaun of the Dead) and uses it, and our expectations, to its advantage. Reykjavik-Rotterdam feels more like a film mimicking a successful formula. Kristófer has gone clean. He is sober and he has ditched his booze smuggling days for the family life with his wife and kids. But the strains of a low wage job force him into doing just one more run so he can afford to put a down payment on a flat. Kristófer's best friend helps him set up the run, but he also has the makes on Kristófer's wife. Some things go right; some things go wrong. The plot feels forced and the characters rarely go beyond one dimensional. I was in turns entertained and incredulous. The film was penned by the author of Jar City and also shares a couple of actors from that adaptation. The attempt to sell Reykjavik-Rotterdam as the next Jar City pulled me in but left me sorely disappointed. (I caught the second screening and it is not yet scheduled to play again. I can say anyone is missing anything.)