2006 NYFF Wrap-up

Twenty-three films in just over two weeks, a handful of festival-related parties, and hours of conversation with critics, bloggers, festival programmers, distributors, directors, and other assorted denizens of the film world. And now it's over. In retrospect, it was a strong year, and a welcome relief from the dearth of interesting films released in the first eight months of 2006. Interestingly enough, my top three picks of the festival — Syndromes and a Century, Woman on the Beach, and Climates — all contain a bifurcated narrative structure. That two of the three are dysfucntional relationship dramas should come as no surprise to those who know me well. I've already written once about Woman on the Beach, and will do so again when the DVD comes out next month, for there's plenty more to say. Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Climates caught me by surprise and simply blew me away — not only the most beautifully shot film at the festival, but one of the greatest breakup films of all time. (I'll save my review for when the film opens in NYC later this month.) As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've had several false starts at penning a proper review of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century, but I can say this about it — while I've certainly enjoyed watching the director's other films, I must confess that I never quite got any of them. That wasn't the case this time. The vast number of ideas burried in his city doctor/country doctor split — the reversals, variations, and contrasts — spoke to me in a series of little epiphanies that left me smiling through most of the film. The sequence that finds a woman staring down the camera until it backs off to a comfortable distance might very well be my favorite cinematic moment of the year, followed of course by the highly unexpected all-aerobicizing ending. For those interested in the music used in that scene, it's from Japanese recording artist Neil & Iraiza, and the song is called Fez (Men Working). Yes, I've uploaded a copy for you all: Neil & Iraiza - Men Working.mp3 Brief thoughts on a few other titles from the festival: The Host (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea) — Given all the praise from Cannes, I had no doubt that I would enjoy Bong's take on the monster movie. What I didn't realize was just how moving it would be as well. As with his two previous features, the police procedural Memories of Murder and the black comedy Barking Dogs Never Bite (my review here), Bong again proves himself a master of genre subversion, incorporating just enough political and social subtext to allow it to trascend convention. (Also, my vote for poster of the year. See above.) Marie Antoinette (Sophia Coppola, USA) — Who would have thought that this film would turn out to be the most contentious of the festival amongst critics? Though it was the first film screened for the press, it was the one title you heard people arguing about throughout the entire festival. I can't help but believe some of the backlash is due to the director being la fille de Francis, and not, as some critics claim, outrage at the absence of voices from the enlightened citizenry. Sure, it's full of shoe, fashion, and confectionery porn, but were we truly expecting anything else? From its opening shot of a reclining Kirsten Dunst giving a knowing wink to the camera to the familar chord triplet of Gang of Four's Natural's Not In It, it should be apparant that we're not about to get a in-depth study of 18th century class relations. It's bascially a reworking of Lost in Translation — a young married girl, trapped in a strange country, struggles to find herself. This is the cattiness and decadence of Versailles as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl. And why not? It's a bit of fun, a great soundtrack, some good performances, and not much more. The casting of Rip Torn and Asia Argento as Louis Quinze and his mistress Madame du Barry is pure genius, and the pair are contenders for sleaziest couple to ever grace the silver screen. Offside (Jafar Panahi, Iran) — It's hard not to like Panahi's overly optimistic allegorical tale of a group of young woman daring to challenge the patriarchy by sneaking in to a football match. However, it seems like a step backwards for the director whose last film, the tense, gritty, Crimson Gold, held the promise of a new direction for Panahi. Offside feels as if it was targetted specifically to the international film festival circuit, and could have easily been the followup to 1995 festival darling The White Balloon. Gardens in Autumn (Otar Iosseliani, France) — Fans of the Tbilissy-born director will find nothing terribly new in his latest absurdist romp — a political satire about a cabinet minister who in a matter of minutres goes from riches to rags — yet there's an unfamilar warmth to the film that works well with the director's trademark Tati-esque setups. Séverin Blanchet is magnificent as Vincent, the dethroned politico who wanders carefree from one situation to the next, but it is Michel Piccoli in drag as Vincent's mother who steals the show. Paprika (Satoshi Kon, Japan) — I watched all eighty-nine minutes of Kon's latest foray into anime weirdness in slack-jawed wonder. However, it was too early in the morning for me to make sense of this bit of kawaii psychedelia that finds (to mention but a few) a refrigerator, a giant frog, and the Statue of Liberty dancing down a Tokyo street. One that I'll have to see again. Our Daily Bread (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria) — All I could think about while watching this documentary on food production in Europe was how nice the conditions are in the manfacturing plants, at least when compared to their American counterparts. Instead of contemplating on how and what we eat, I marveled at the precision technology, and the attention to cleanliness. (The film ends with an intense scrubbing down of a slaughterhouse.) Having been deeply disturbed by Lino Brocka's Insiang a few days prior, which opens to the amplified squeals of pigs being manually slaughtered, Geyrhalter's mechanized images in comparison left me cold. Years ago I saw Frederick Wiseman's Meat, which, like Our Daily Bread, is devoid of commentary, yet its effect is far more lasting. Geyrhalter's film seems more like an installation piece than a proper documentary, and that might very well have been his intention. Poison Friends (Emmanuel Bourdieu, France) — Much like the superb My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument (which Bourdieu wrote for Arnaud Desplechin), Poison Friends is a dramedy set amongst a group of good looking young French intellectuals in nice sweaters. Though unlike Desplechin, Bourdieu is less interested in romantic entaglements than he is in intellectual machismo and blustering pomposity. It may lack emotional depth, but Bourdieu's sharply drawn characters and talented cast of relative newcomers make this a fascinating watch. A film that repeatedly name-drops Karl Kraus, it couldn't be more French if it tried. Inland Empire (David Lynch, USA) — Remember Agent Cooper's dream sequences in Twin Peaks? ("Sometimes my arms bend back.") Imagine that for three hours and you've pretty much got an idea of what to expect from Lynch's latest.  A film where every doppelgänger has an antipode, it's one that's going to keep third-year film studies students busy for years to come, even if this work plunged from the depth of Lynch's subconscious practically resists interpretation. Still, it's a must-see, if only for Laura Dern's performance (her best) and the closing credit sequence. Little Children (Todd Field, USA) — Is Little Children this year's Crash? Perhaps. For his second film, Todd Field has once again transformed a respectable piece of literature (here, Tom Perrotta's novel of the same name) into a ham-fisted bit of pretentious nonsense that treats its audience like the titular tykes. Field's perspective on suburban America is nearly as condescending as the expository narration that runs through the film (itself an indication of a weak screenplay), and his need to bestialize an already creepy child sex offender by turning him into a self-mutilating Norman Bates clone would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic. The darkly comic tone that pervades Perotta's novel has been entirely stripped away and replaced with the overwhelming stench of Field's own Oscar-baiting self-aggrandizement. The most insulting film of 2006, I fail to understand how it got accepted into this or any other festival. Other NYFF reviews: The Queen Woman on the Beach Bamako Private Fears in Public Places The Journals of Knud Rasmussen