Like Anna Karina's Sweater

Berlinale Diary - 1

Somewhere in Berlin they sell umbrellas. Yet no matter how many rain-soaked streets Filmbrain walked, he couldn't find a shop that did. Even a massive three-story shopping mall had not a single Regenschirm to be had. So, it was like a wet sheepdog that Filmbrain saw four films on his first full day of the 2005 Berlinale. Here's a brief summary of today's screenings. Longer reviews of the films will come when there's more time, for there's much to say about some of them. Asylum, UK/Ireland David Mackenzie's follow-up to Young Adam is a fairly conventional psychological drama/thriller that has nice elements to it, but is somewhat of a disappointment after the promise of his last feature. The film is set in an asylum in England in the late 1950s. Natasha Richardson, oozing sexuality (which was seemingly just not proper at that time) is bored with her psychiatrist husband, and his berating and belittling attitude. ("Why can't you be like every other wife?") She soon starts a torrid affair with one of the inmates -- a sculptor who murdered his wife. Though it has some nice twists and turns, there's nothing particularly special about the film, save for some fine performances by Richardson, Ian McKellen, and Marton Csokas as the object du lust. Mackenzie attempted to recapture some of the unbridled passion of Young Adam, but it's a bit too slick here. Dear Wendy, Denmark The latest from Thomas (The Celebration) Vinterberg, from a screenplay by Lars von Trier. Like Dogville, this one will no doubt result in even more cries of "anti-American". Jamie Bell, determined to knock that Billy Elliot reputation, once again plays a Southern boy (as he did in Undertow), though of a very different flavor. The film is an interesting (and terribly clever) meditation on America and it's fascination with guns, and it tells the story of a group of young, self-proclaimed losers who possess and obsess over firearms, but are hardcore pacifists. A dark, bitter, absurdist comedy as only the Danes can do. The closing scene is unforgettable. With an incredible soundtrack that features songs by The Zombies (incorporated into the story), Dear Wendy will be one of the most-talked about films of the year, if it ever finds a distributor. (The film is not in competition at Berlin -- it was strictly a market screening.) Eros, Italy/US/China A triptych of erotic films that is meant to be a tribute to Michelangelo Antonioni. The three films, by Antonioni himself, Steven Soderbergh, and Wong Kar-wai are a mixed bag. The Antonioni film is similar to the awful Beyond the Clouds -- beautiful people having beautiful sex in beautiful locales, while spouting pretentious, often pointless dialog. (Fortunately, tomorrow there is a special screening (new print!) of Red Desert -- a reminder of when Antonioni was great.) The Soderbergh film is very good, and stars Alan Arkin and Robert Downey Jr. as a psychiatrist and patient working through a particularly erotic dream. Filmbrain is a big fan of Soderbergh's smaller, less commercial works (Schizopolis, Full Frontal), and this one is no exception. The Wong Kar-wai piece is also quite nice, though it's far from his best work. Lodged somewhere between In the Mood for Love and 2046, the film contains Wong's signature themes of longing and loss, and once again features a beautiful woman in a room (Gong Li), great Chinese pop-songs of the era (the 50's once again), and a thin-mustached leading actor (Chang Chen). Wong-lite, for sure, but still a pleasure to watch. Colour Blossoms, Japan/Korea/Hong Kong Here's a film that seemed to have a lot going for it. An international cast from three Asian countries, based on a famous work of Chinese literature (The Peony Pavilion). Though it is absolutely stunning to look at, what begins as an interesting romantic drama quickly turns into a cheesy erotic S&M fest. Think The Sixth Sense meets The Story of O. There are some nice moments in the film, and perhaps knowledge of the original work might be of some help, but the film is trying to be too many things at once. Again, longer reviews of some of these films will follow when the festival is over. Until tomorrow. . .tschuss!

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 3, Week 11

Filmbrain chooses a kinky sex scene and a record-breaking number of correct submissions are received. (Draw your own conclusions.) Though it's almost twenty years old, few of you had difficulty identifying Geneviève Bujold's hand from David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. (Now is that Elliot or Beverly she's with?) We're down the final two weeks of the quiz. At the moment there is a tie for first place -- several of you have managed to correctly guess all ten quizzes. Well done! (Filmbrain hasn't worked out the 2nd and 3rd place numbers yet.) Don't forget that prizes are being awarded by the good folks at Zeitgeist Films. See Week 1 for details. Speaking of Zeitgeist, this week's quiz comes from one of their DVDs. A look at their home video page might offer some assistance. Send your guesses to this address. Good luck!

The Road to Berlin (or: Filmbrain & The Bear)

Filmbrain is in the process of preparing for his inaugural trip to the Berlin Film Festival. He's packed both his Weltanschauung and his Schadenfreude, for one never knows how the weather will be. It's difficult not to feel a certain sense of angst over the festival, given its seemingly endless selection of films. Besides the hundreds of new films being offered, there are some wonderful retrospectives, including seven Im Kwon-taek films and screenings of every Kubrick film, with the exception of Fear and Desire (but yes, even the early shorts are being shown!) Then there's the rare English language version of Tati's Mon Oncle that he made simultaneously with the original, as well as screenings of Heaven's Gate (when was the last time you saw that on the big screen?), Vertigo, The Lady From Shanghai, and a new restoration of Battleship Potemkin. As for the new films, the smaller Panorama festival, with its edgier fare, looks more interesting than the main Competition. Though Filmbrain is excited about catching Tsai Ming-liang's The Wayward Cloud and Yoji Yamada's The Hidden Blade, there's a bit too much Hollywood in this year's lineup. (With Roland "blow-stuff-up" Emmerich as the President of the jury, that's hardly surprising.) Hotel Rwanda, The Life Aquatic, and In Good Company are all fine films, but are they Bear-worthy? Let's hope Roland & Co. don't think so. The entire schedule (all thirty-eight pages!) can be found HERE (PDF file). Filmbrain hopes to file daily reports from the festival, though after six to eight hours of watching films each day his brain might be little more than a hunk of Leberkase. The final two weeks of the Screen Capture Quiz will appear as usual on Wednesday mornings, and winners will be announced shortly after (unless tiebreaker rounds are required). Filmbrain is looking forward to meeting up with Greencine's own David Hudson as well as some Berlin-based film bloggers. If anybody else attending the festival is interested in meeting for einen Kaffe oder ein Bier, please feel free to drop an email to this address. Tschuss!

A film series worth drooling over

February -- in which the groundhog seeks his shadow, George and Abe add another candle to their respective cakes, and lovers race to buy cheesy greeting cards as proof of their love. But for New York City cinephiles, February means the Film Comment Selects series at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. For this, their fifth year running, the crew at FC have scheduled a fantastic lineup of the best films you never saw in 2004. This year's schedule might very well be their best yet. Though several of the films have American distributors, most of them will play in the tiniest of Manhattan's cinemas -- this is an opportunity to see them in an ideal environment. There are three Korean films this year, and all three should not be missed. The first two films of Park Chan-wook's "revenge trilogy", Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy are being screened, as is Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder -- easily one of the best policiers of the last decade or so. Regular readers of this site know all too well how Filmbrain feels about the two Park films -- try to catch both in preparation for the third installment which arrives later this year - Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. (Should you miss them, BAM is holding a Park Chan-wook retrospective in March. Details to follow.) Though Filmbrain hasn't gotten around to writing his review, Memories of Murder, based on real-life events surrounding the inability of South Korean police to capture a ruthless serial killer in the 1980's, is at once both brutally savage and wickedly funny, as well as a fairly critical look at life under the Chun dictatorship. Oldboy: Wed 9 @ 4:00 & 9:00 Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance: Sun 13 @ 7:00, Fri 18 @ 8:30 "What distance wouldn't you travel to see that face?" asks the Cinetrix about Maggie Cheung, in the latest film from ex-husband Oliver Assayas, Clean. In Irma Vep, Assayas had her prowling around Paris in a vinyl bodysuit. This time, she plays a junkie, down and out in America and France. This one can't possibly miss, regardless of what some critics say. For some unknown reason, this is only screening once, and is already sold out. For the diehards, there's always standby. . . Wed 9 @ 6:30 Besides Clean, France has six other films in the series -- several of which are worth noting. Christophe Honoré's Ma Mère is based on the novel of the same name by Georges Bataille, and stars Isabelle Huppert. Talk about a match made in heaven! This is the perfect Valentines Day gift! Mon 14 @ 8:30, Fri 18 @ 6:15 The festival includes a tribute to French actress Bulle Ogier, including three wonderful older films. A screening of Jacques Rivette's 1981 film Le Pont du Nord is reason to celebrate -- the film (which has some of the most beautiful shots of Paris ever captured on film) hasn't been screened in NYC in many years. Though Barbet Schroeder's Maîtresse and Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie are readily available on DVD, you shouldn't miss an opportunity to catch them on the big screen. If you've never seen the Buñuel, don't miss it -- this surreal dinner party (without dinner) is a brilliant piece of satire. Le Pont du Nord: Sat 19 @ 3:00, Sun 20 @ 6:15 Maîtresse: Sat 19 @ 9:00, Tue 22 @ 1:00 The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: Sun 20 @ 1:30 Two of Japan's most controversial directors are featured in the series. Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital stars Tadanobu Asano as a medical student with amnesia, while Izo is the highly anticipated pairing of Takashi Miike and Takeshi Kitano -- a film that's meant to be "outrageous even by Miike standards". Vital: Thurs 10 @ 6:15, Sat 12 @ 6:45 Izo: Fri 11 @ 1:30, Sat 12 @ 4:15 & 8:30 There are plenty of other gems in the series -- too many to be discussed here. (Complete program information HERE.) One could easily spend every night at the Walter Reade for the complete fifteen days. As thrilled as Filmbrain is about attending the Berlinale this year, he's a bit disappointed that he'll be missing the entire series. Oh well. Aaron, George, Cinecultist, Scott, Phyrephox, et. al. -- Filmbrain hopes to hear reports from all of you.

Home Alone

Hirokazu Koreeda's latest film, Nobody Knows, with its "ripped straight from the tabloid headlines" theme is prime movie-of-the-week material. Four children, ranging in age from five to twelve, are left to fend for themselves in a Tokyo apartment after their mother abandons them. A thousand and one dire films could easily have been made from this premise, yet Koreeda manages to avoid every possible cliché and pitfall (and there are many) in his take on events that actually did occur back in 1988. Dubbed "The Affair of the Four Abandoned Children of Nishi-Sugamo", it was a nationwide scandal that ended with events far more horrifying than Koreeda's fictionalized account.

Keiko (played by Japanese TV personality You) is a single mother with four children from different fathers. The film opens with her moving into a new apartment with her eldest son Akira (Cannes best actor winner Yuya Yagira). As it would be impossible for her to rent the place with four children, their presence can only be made after the movers leave, and this sequence is one of the films most memorable (and quite striking). Though the children are forced to live by You's strict set of rules -- no noise, no school, no going outside -- they make the best of it, as only young children can do. Keiko begins disappearing on a regular basis -- first for a night, then a few weeks, and eventually forever. In her absence, Akira must care for his siblings -- his sister Kyoko, just a year or two younger than Akira, and on the brink of adolescence, Shigeru, a rambunctious boy, and Yuki, his other sister, just five years old. Akira willingly accepts this responsibility, and his calm and patient demeanor is remarkable for a boy his age, as is his ultimate acceptance of the truth about their abandonment. Only once does he pass judgment on his mother, a comment that she simply ignores. Though dedicated to his siblings (he even buys presents, telling them they came from their mother), Akira occasionally seeks out normal childhood pleasures -- video games, playing baseball, making friends -- and it is these moments that give the film such a naturalistic quality.

The casting of You as the mother, with her childlike voice and expressions was clearly intentional. It's as if Koreeda wants us to reconsider how we think about her. While her real-life counterpart was branded a monster (and sent to prison), Koreeda chooses to portray her as almost a fifth child, thereby making her disappearance seem more like youthful irresponsibility than a calculated, heartless effort. This is a daring move -- other filmmakers would feel the need to lay blame and include many finger-wagging morality lessons, as well as the resulting punishment.

The film is mostly from the children's perspective, and Koreeda spends a fair amount of time on the mundane tasks the children repeat day after day, and there are many close-ups of little hands and feet fidgeting, standing on tiptoe to check on the washing machine, playing with nail polish, etc. It's a powerful effect that draws you in, yet it avoids sentimentality or playing up the sensationalism of the affair. In all of its 141 minutes, it never once slips into melodrama. The music might be a bit overdone at times, but fortunately it's kept to a minimum.

That the children (both in real life and in the film) are able to live alone in this apartment unnoticed for nearly a year is bewildering. Even when the kids begin freely coming and going in tattered, dirty clothes, the neighbors do nothing about it. Yet once again, Koreeda is not interested in passing judgment on a society that either turned a blind eye, or simply chose not to care. This film is strictly about the experience as lived by the children -- and it is for this reason that the film is so wonderful. While Yuya Yagira's win at Cannes might have been too extreme a gesture, his performance is one of those rare capturings of genuine childhood -- on par with Jean-Pierre Léaud in The 400 Blows. Some have criticized the film (and Koreeda) for softening the real story, but just as Distant (his previous film, unreleased in the US) dealt with the after-effect of a fictionalized Aum Shirikyo attack, so is this film concerned not with a simple recreation of events, but an attempt at presenting the children as something other than victims. (Michael Atkinson refers to it as a film about the "fragile reality of childhood" -- a perfect description.)

Nobody Knows isn't always an easy film to watch -- as the seasons go by and the conditions worsen (the film was shot chronologically), it becomes increasingly uncomfortable to passively observe the inevitable downward spiral. Still, it's one that shouldn't be missed. Opens today in NYC. Click here for dates in other cities.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 3, Week 10

Filmbrain is no expert on demographics, but judging by the avalanche of correct responses to last week's quiz, he'd place most of his readers at an age not too far from his own. Not only were several hundred of you able to correctly identify Günter Meisner from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, but many of you provided detailed information as only a true Wonka lover could. Yes, he was Slugworth, yes he was also Wilkenson, and, yes, he scared the hell out of young Filmbrain as well. Kudos to those that picked up on the subtle Johnny Depp connection from the previous week's quiz. As good as Tim Burton is, does the remake stand a chance to improve on the original? Plus (as one Filmbrain reader puts it), "Johnny Depp looks like a deranged pedophile." Leaving a world where children meet horrible fates due to their own selfishness behind, we turn to something even darker for this week's quiz. Oh, the things people got up to in the 80s. . . Send your guesses (and kinky stories) to this address. Good luck!