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World Cinema
Contributed by Sara Schieron
Wednesday, 19 April 2006
Of course the festival is known for it's international films. It is
called the San Francisco INTERNATIONAL Film Festival, after all. Below
you'll find a listing of short reviews of films shown during the fest.
The majority of these films will be presented with their filmmaker in
attendance. Look for our video and audio podcasts with these filmmakers
at the iTunes music store (Filmshi) or link to the music store from
filmshi proper.
FACTOTUM is this generation's answer to the writer/personaltiy of Charles Bukowski. Though hardly enigmatic, this writer/bastard/drunken genius is equally admired and despised; depending upon which camp you subscribe. Directed by Bent Hamer and featuring Lily Taylor as Jan and Matt Dillon as Hank Chinaski, the film is an adaptation of 4 different short stories by Bukowski. Set in a non-descript time period, the film follows Chinaski though his drunken days and nights as he smokes, fucks and drags himself from job to meaningless job, always fired, always swearing, always drinking and always writing.
EDEN is an understated romantic comedy about a corpulent gourmet chef who becomes platonically (one can assume) entranced by the wife of a local Inn proprietor. The wife, Eden, has a daughter with downs syndrome and when Gregor (the chef) brings her a chocolate cake, Eden eats a decoration and goes into a relatively unromantic moment of meditation she later characterizes as "heaven". She approaches Gregor for dinner and slowly becomes addicted to his cooking. Meanwhile her marriage improves, she finally becomes pregnant, and she seems to have a rekindled sense of hope and passion. Though the plotline reads like any other foodie romance, the film is full of uniquely German humor and nuisance and it's thoroughly enjoyable. Most impressive is the use of screen space. The director seemed to go out of his way to hide the character of Gregor - who is quite large - in the frame. The acts are punctuated by moments of quiet intensity that occur in almost complete darkness. In addition, the Michael Hofmann's treatment of faces in the emotionally tenuous dialogue sequences between Gregor and Eden were breathtaking. Repeatedly he found ways of dwarfing their faces in the frame, such that their close-ups represented their faces as if they were in long shot. This transformed their faces into more precious elements that compel us to look closer. Additionally, it felt reminiscent of the experience of great cuisine: you remember the base and the finest of details - and the details are usually the most impressive part.
THE LIFE I WANT is a film about the making of a period piece. Like other films about filmmaking, this film takes from 8 ½, DAY FOR NIGHT, and THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES but THE LIFE I WANT alters the convention a bit by following the parallels between the developing relationship of the two actors and the lovers they play in the tragic romance. The couple falls in love speaking to each other in sweet nothings - a language the actors are incapable of without their script. They change their inflection and interpret their parts and in the process deal with issues of sincerity in their performances: how much are they to give? To an effect their lives suffer for lack of the romantic language they recite. In the end, the film makes some beautiful transitions between the world in which they act and their world of acting.
The Director is expected to Attend.
A LONG WINTER WITHOUT FIRE is incredibly beautiful. When a farmer and his wife lose their only daughter in a fire, Jean the husband tries to keep working while Laure the wife stops, immobilized with grief. Lacking the ability to help her, Jean commits her, takes a job at a factory that produces metal poles and negotiates to sell his farm. At his factory job, he meets 2 refugees from Kosovo: a brother and sister. He befriends the brother and through his friendship, develops a quiet relationship with his sister. Their mutual loss binds them and, in a wholly visual way, we see them transform the meaning of fire together. Though the theme is one easily disregarded as the redundant premise for more than one hundred foreign films, A LONG WINTER WITHOUT FIRE is deftly written and makes fantastically effective use of the pauses and quiet spaces that in other films could be slow or plodding. In this film, deliberate pace, sparse conversation and snow covered landscapes produce an atmosphere of quiet desperation that visually communicates sense of abandonment and isolation experienced by the characters
The Director is expected to Attend.
SEEDS OF DOUBT is a masterful debut by Egyptian/German director Samir Nasr. Algerian scientist Tariq lashes out at his wife Maya's boss at a dinner party and is reported to the police as a suspected terrorist. At first Maya is offended and frightened by the accusation and the possible outcome of such rumors but eventually she develops doubt in Tariq's gentility. Quickly, dangers Tariq didn't share with her become lies and create suspicion about what other things her husband might be hiding from her. What is valuable about SEEDS OF DOUBT is that it isn't a self-fulfilling prophecy. When Maya becomes suspicious and finds evidence to substantiate her fears, the big questions isn't "how will the terrorist be brought to justice?" The film offers us a great deal of access to the couple as subjective entities. We see they are in love and show great care for each other. Maya's doubt seems as strong a threat to their marriage as the terrorist Tariq is accused of committing. While the terrorist hysteria gets to Maya, the most important aspect of the story is the relationship damaged by the doubt that, when planted, was allowed to grow.
PERPETUAL MOTION may look, on the surface, like a Chinese Chick Flick,
but 5th generation filmmaker Ning Ying uses this gathering of women to
tackle issues of national identity and sexuality in post-Mao China. The
host, Nuinui learns her husband has been trading dirty emails with one
of her friends so she invites her girlfriend over on the eve of the
Spring Festival for a lunch that plays out like a whodunit with
menopause jokes. Men are theoretical characters in this film, and are
equated with sexuality and nationhood. In one dialogue about sex, the
women grill the youngest of the group about her "reputation" and ask
her to rate men by their nationality: "French men are romantic, it's
part of their culture...English men are too conservative to have sex with
me." Though the women meet to lunch (and covertly uncover the
adulteress) the only part of the meal we actually see is the
(presumably) first course: chrysanthemum scented hen's feet. The women
enter internal monologue and address the experience of the hen's feet
course; how strong the hen was, what she could have clawed, how to eat
the feet in the daintiest way. Beyond that their meal is treated like a
premise, not an event, and the final shot in the film shows three of
the four women walking down a street in Beijing, reminiscent of THE
DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOUGOISIE, as the camera slowly leaves them
behind.
The Director is expected to Attend.
SA-KWA is a jovial romance about a foundling couple that can't seem to balance their marriage with their selfish goals. A first feature directed by Kang Yi-kwan the film does contain it's fair share of charm and humor. However, the virtues of the protagonist Hyun-jung are not so easy to identify and her relationship with her husband Sanghoon, while pleasant, is not completely believable. This is, of course, because the characters remain selfish in their actions event through their marriage and cohabitation. SA-KWA does confront the messy, imperfect topic of marriage and it does so in a way that is believable, and this accomplishment is a strong virtue unto itself.
PERHAPS LOVE is a fantastically ambitious, brilliantly defiant film. Jumping back and forth between multiple timelines that depict a similar story from different points of view, we learn about the love triangle between the director and his film's two romantic leads. The film in production is a big budget musical in the tradition of MGM, but equally inspired by more diverse visual landscapes. Peter Ho-Sun Chan directed this film that could be read as a film about the making of a film about the making of a film. With photography by Chris Doyle and Peter Pao, and choreography by Farah Khan the production is exuberant and the performances nuanced. The narrative organization of PERHAPS LOVE is occasionally challenging and puts the viewer in the position of assertively determining the story for herself. In this it may be difficult for some and pleasurable for others. Regardless which camp you fall into, if you love "silver screen" glamorous, this film has a lot to offer. PERHAPS LOVE arouses nostalgia for a type of cinema that seems to have no place in our modern film traditions, and that loss is lamented in the film in almost every way it can be, resulting in a use of high gloss glamour that not only fits our current perceptions of it but indulges our appetites for it as well.
