Here are some quick reviews of some of the other films I saw divided into really good and good categories. The thing about film festivals is that seeing so many films heightens your critical senses to such a degree you end up being very picky. Films that on a week-end viewing during the year you would rate exceptional may only register as okay. At least that’s my experience. I’m not sure it applies to professional critics. But take that into account in what follows.
Really Good
My Sweet Pepper Land
Fantastic opening sequence of the rule of law being implemented in the newly liberated state of Kurdistan. You laugh at a fairly macabre sight of a bungled hanging. Our hero is a former freedom fighter. Civilian life quickly palls – there’s a humorous take on traditional matchmaking. He travels to a remote border town to do his bit for the rule of law. A sheriff in a lawless land. Fantastic scenery, attractive hero, the beautiful Golshifteh Farahani (from The Patience Stone) plays the romantic interest. She also plays a beautiful instrument shaped like a flying saucer that emits haunting music. There’s a nice riff on music throughout. There’s also a more nuanced take on women’s lives than usual in films from this part of the world. Her character is resisting traditional matchmaking (as our hero has). She’s managing to live an independent life with father’s blessing, less so her brothers’. And there’s a gang of women freedom fighters who play a critical role in the story. I’m not spoiling the ending by saying the bad guys lose and love triumphs.
Wajda
The first feature film ever shot entirely within the Saudi Arabia by the country’s first woman director, Haiffa Al-Mansour (who studied at Sydney University). A heartwarming story of a feisty young girl struggling against the constraints imposed on her as a female in this very oppressive, to women, society. A lovely relationship between her, Wajda, and the boy next door. She wants a bicycle so she can race him on hi – she’s sure she can beat him. He teaches her how to ride. But she needs money to buy her own. Selling braided bangles isn’t a big enough earner but a competition at school about knowledge of the Koran just might. A surprise to everyone when she enters. She’s not that devout! Beautifully understated, but clear-eyed depiction of the daily oppression women live under. Everyday official sexism – requiring male drivers to get you to work, being left out of family trees, being kept out of sight of men, being discarded for second wives if you don’t produce a male baby. All observed by young Wajda. Scenes in the school – all girls of course – are great. Lovely performances from everyone but especially the two young kids. Very enjoyable.
Prince Avalanche
A gentle exploration of relationships between men and women and between men. I like Paul Rudd – even in overalls with an awful haircut and even worse moustache to press home his dorkiness. He’s the older of two blokes out in the bush repainting road signs and markings after a bushfire. The film is quite instructive about the process involved in that – lots of measuring, hammering and some nifty machines! Emile Hirsch is the younger fellow who takes off into town for a hard living week-end. The resulting conversation about how it all went is in turn hilarious and full of pathos. So are the revelations about Paul’s relationship with Emile’s sister told via correspondence. It seemed to me to be just the sort of conversation men would have about women when women are not around. There’s a nice touch about an old man and old woman they come across in their travels as well. A very warm film.
Call Girl
A harrowing exposition of the sex trade in Sweden, juxtaposed against its purported progressive policies about equality. Very hard hitting. Great performances by every-one. The seventies fashions are execrable (but authentic!) I thought the young woman at the centre of it was a deeply unsympathetic character at the start but by the end you really feel for her. This wayward girl is lured into prostitution as an election campaign is unfolding. Candidates make speeches about equal rights for women. A Parliamentary or Government Committee is investigating relaxing laws relating to under-age sex, incest and so on. All the while sex parties involving politicians and senior officials including police is occurring regularly. A lone honest cop attempts to uncover it all. Based on truth they say. An angry film and rightly so.
A Touch of Sin
A look at modern China through the eyes of four different characters living in very different circumstances. Great opening shot of a modern highway, a bright red tomato being tossed up and down. Then a startling scene where a put upon traveller turns the tables on his attackers. Then we’re in a village where an honest man is seeking redress for a collective wrong – the privatization of the local co-operative. With blood curdling results. Back to our traveller, home for his mother’s traditional birthday celebration – where the whole village turns out. His profession becomes clearer. He’s a travelling man. Makes enough money – but at what cost? We move on to the story of a woman having an affair with a married man. Though the affair is not the main focus. We see her visit her mother who has a food stall near the construction of a new airport – itinerant work. She’ll move on when the building is done. The woman travels back to her own – more settled and secure employment – but it’s not so secure. She’s attacked and exacts bloody revenge. Our fourth witness to evolving China is a young man working in an enormous, modern factory making goodness knows what commodity for Western comfort. An accident at work sees him try his hand at something else. His choice comes down to sexual exploitation or industrial exploitation. Sad. The overall message – it’s tough earning a crust and maintaining a sense of self in a China in transition. Many memorable moments.
Illo Illo
A heartwarming story of family life in Singapore in the 1970s. The family is doing well. Enough to employ a maid. We come in just as she is introduced into the household. The boy is antagonistic, rude, hurtful. The maid sleeps in his room. The mother, expecting a baby but still working, is trying to do the right thing. The father is anxious about how she is to be afforded. He has lost money on the stock exchange. We see the norm for Fillipino maids in Singapore – passport taken away, access to home only by pay phone, inadequate pay and restrictions on second jobs, at the beck and call of children. This maid, like others, hastens through the housekeeping and manages a second part-time job as hairdresser, for less pay because what she’s doing is illegal. Economic times are tough. Mother’s work is preparing redundancy letters for people being let go at her workplace. Father gets laid off but doesn’t tell family. Accepts a menial job, washes his uniform at night, smokes on the stairs – unbeknownst to wife. Then loses that job. Mother falls for a ‘how to get rich’ scam. The relationship between maid and boy becomes close. Mother becomes jealous of the closeness. Tough times mean she has to go. Beautifully told. All the characters are real. No-one is all good or all bad. Their relationships are complex – but all survive. The maid leaves with dignity. Mother, father, son are coping with what life is throwing at them. The film ends with the birth of a daughter – the family will survive – it’s extremely moving
Capturing Dad
Set somewhere in Japan. A lovely portrayal of two sisters looking after each other, looking out for their mother. All strong women it turns out. Starts with a phone call – the girls’ father is dying. He left the family long ago. They don’t remember him. Toward the end of the film there’s a flashback to the day of separation. Two little girls playing in a park. In the here and now mother sends the girls to see their father. Dresses them in their Sunday best. They go the the station, change their clothes and travel by train to see a father they never knew, with a new family the don’t know. The journey takes a while. It’s a nice slow paced movie. They are met at the station by a little boy – their half brother. Cute. Sad. The father has died. They’re not dressed for a funeral! But they go and acquit themselves well through a couple of small, domestic hurdles. Back home their mother is dealing with her emotions, hearing the news of the father’s death. They all meet up at the end. All is well. Really sweet film. With a whimsical little spot at the very end involving a tuna!
Approved For Adoption
An inventive mix of animation and film is used to tell the story of a Korean orphan adopted into a Belgian family. Sad but heart warming. The family do their best but the boy is dislocated, different. Adolescence brings troubles. He meets other Korean expatriates. He starts drawing. He returns to Korea. Beautifully done.
France’s Ha
A quirky portrayal of a young woman trying to find her place in the world. Beautifully shot in black and white, the film is made by the performance of Greta Gerwig, who I’d never heard of, in the title role. She’s a great character, fully drawn, not the usual schmaltzy heroine. A real young woman behaving like a real young woman does – socially awkward, maladroit, talking too much, being too needy, not picking up social cues, not taking advice, generally mucking things up. The people around her also behave like ordinary people, mostly well, sometimes not so well. Her parents are kind and well intentioned but a long way away and can’t really help. Her best friend is taking a different path. She has to manage this herself. Her disarray is expressed through her living arrangements as she moves from place to place. It’s nice when she finds a place of her own. Shades of Virginia Woolf.
Good
It Felt Like Love
A woman director, exploring the experiences of young women seeking, as the title says, love. Exposes the sexist treatment of sexually experienced teenage girls compared to young boys. But the real focus, which is quite confronting, is the lengths a young girl will go to become get that experience. She leaves herself open to terrible exploitation but the older youth she has set her sights on doesn’t take advantage of her. There is a complete absence of adult guidance in any of this. Despite the close relationship with her father. Great performances from everyone, especially the main character. Nice scenes of inner-city New York. Evokes the listlessness and yearning of youth in summer.
Drinking Buddies
A look at how what you fancy might be a good and strong relationship at work, doesn’t in fact turn out that way when you take it further. I didn’t know it when I was watching the movie, but it was made spontaneously with no script which makes it interesting. Set in a boutique brewery with lots of drinking which explains the title. The four leads are all good. The film takes lots of unexpected turns – or rather doesn’t go where you think it is heading. We move from seeing the characters at work, socializing with workmates and then socializing with their partners. Then we see the two of them together outside of work, and without their partners. And where things might develop or might not. And off it goes – no easy resolutions here. Just messy relationships that ebb and flow.
Like Father, Like Son
In Tokyo two families have to confront the fact their two sons were swapped at birth. A frame for looking at different father / son relationships. The mothers don’t get much of a look-in. A bit cliched in the stark choices on offer – uptight high flying executive type intent on best private education, high standards etc., versus happy go lucky, heart of gold, handyman, electrical store owner. Still the two boys were good – especially the uptight little fellow being brought up by the high flyer dad.
Everybody In Our Family
I enjoyed this despite myself. A quirky story of a man going off the rails and you sort of sympathize with both him and the plight of his former wife and her family who he ends up terrorizing. Quite funny. A man rides through town on a bike, picks up a car from his parents, having a low key argument with them about his former wife – defending her. Travels to former wife’s home to pick up his daughter to take camping, is prevailed upon to wait until the mother comes home who promptly tries to stop him going camping. Things spiral out of control from there.
Nobody’s Daughter Haewon
A moody, elegiac film. About a student and teacher who’ve had an affair. Nothing much happens. There’s a lot of walking around the same places – a park, a tourist site, a cafe. People talk. Mother and daughter – the former is emigrating to Canada. Student and teacher. Student and a person she meets. Student and a friend of hers who is also having an affair with a married man. You get a picture of life in Korea -social mores especially about extra-marital relationships and relationships more generally. It’s also about loneliness and the search for love. Quite nice.
A Hijacking
Most notable for having Casper from Borgen in it and the newspaper editor from the same show! Poor Casper is the cook on a Danish ship hijacked by Somali pirates. He has a bad time. Newspaper editor is the executive called upon to negotiate. You get a picture of tactics used in these sorts of negotiations. And the stresses on the people back home. Especially about their dependence on experts in these sorts of negotiations. And also of the discomfort suffered by the crew – terrible cramped, claustrophobic and unspeakable hygiene wise living conditions and the stress of living under threat of possible execution at any minute – played right out until the last minute. But it was not as tense as I thought it would be. Which might be a good thing.
Foxfire
I remember the sumptuous colours in this film. Strong performances. Good story – a girl gang in the fifties fighting against the sexism of the times. But I didn’t warm to the main character which affected my enjoyment. Good depiction of the fifties and the casual ‘everyday sexism’ women endured. Feisty women as well. Go from a gang as school girls to a collective of young women. Some dubious money making methods. You just knew it couldn’t end well. But a story worth telling and well told.
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