2007 Film Festival, Day 11
I started Monday with La Vie En Rose. I'd hoped to drag C along, if only to tell me if I was missing any jokes in the French, but she wasn't able to get the time off work.
I wouldn't call myself a huge Edith Piaf fan -- I enjoy her music, but don't own any. I might now.
The main actress, Marion Cotillard, is superb; I actually wondered whether they'd gotten another actress to play Piaf at her oldest, she did it so well. The way she held her hands, the imperiousness and the nervousness, the joy when singing... it was just all very good.
The rest of the film is good, though sometimes it meandered, and the fact that it was non-linear meant that there were a few sequences whose place in the timeline was unclear to me. (I did my best to keep track by the state of Piaf's hair, and how severely plucked her eyebrows were.) I guess most films about a person's life are going to be a bit unruly, just because people are complicated. The revelation on the deathbed felt a little forced, though.
All in all, I really enjoyed this film, and I hope C gets to see it soon.
* * *
Half Nelson is a film about a history teacher who coaches basketball, engages and challenges the kids in his class, is writing a book... and isn't strong enough to cope with all the pressures, abusing alcohol and drugs to escape. One of his students (whose family, it turns out, have their own set of issues with narcotics) isn't picked up after a basketball game, and finds him high on crack in the toilets; a friendship cautiously forms.
This isn't To Sir With Love. While the teacher is getting in trouble for not following the curriculum, the students are obviously already learning, and most of them are enjoying it -- and we see evidence that he's inspired some of his previous students to go on to university to study history. What we see is him losing his grip, and the student helping him, while going through her own problems.
It also gets points for having both the "What do you call cheese that isn't yours?" and the "Interrupting Cow" jokes. ;)
One of the few reservations I have was that I found that, after events that happened at a colleague's place, I lost empathy with the teacher for a while.
I liked this film; it might be a while before I'd be prepared to see it again, though.
* * *
Exiled is one of the better films in the Asian gangster noir genre I've seen this festival. Very stylish, ballet-like gun battles with puffs of red mist, loyalty, betrayal, honour, and all the other elements that make a good movie of this genre. I think the reason I liked this better than others I'd seen to this point is that had a certain sense of formal inevitability -- I'm not sure I'll be able to express it well, but one of the things I like about noir is the feeling that everything has to happen, and there's no escaping your fate. Maybe that's why it's a popular genre in Asia? And in this case, it felt quite fable-like; people were closer to archetypes, than particular people, which is another thing that I like in the genre.
Basically, there is a man who has returned to town; one group has been told to kill him by a mob boss who he tried to kill many years ago. Another group is trying to save him. The man, and the two groups, are all friends. Gangster noir ensues.
I liked it, would happily rewatch it, and will probably buy it at some point.
* * *
In a complete change of pace, Quinceanera is the story of a girl near her 15th birthday (a big deal in Hispanic culture in the States) who gets pregnant, despite denying that she's "done it" with a boy. Her pastor father throws her out, and she goes to live with her grand-uncle, who is also looking after her cousin (whose family want nothing to do with him, either). This is set in Echo Park, an LA suburb which is becoming gentrified, and part of the story is the affair between her cousin and the two gay men who buy their great-uncle's house and the property that it is attached to.
Many of the actors that appear are non-professional, or appearing for the first time (they went non-Union for reasons of budget); this is not at all evident on the screen. The film-makers were there (a white gay couple), and unsurprisingly, they were asked about how the Hispanic community felt about the film -- apparently, they've been very supported by that community, and they talked a lot about how they tried to make sure that they got stuff right by talking to the people in their neighborhood right the way through. (They live in Echo Park, and everything was shot locally; many of the locals also appeared.)
This was a good movie, and it seemed even better once I realised the constraints they were working under. I'm not sure whether I'll try and see it again, but I'd probably watch it all the way through if I started watching it by accident.
* * *
A Few Days In September was my final movie of the day, with the lovely Juliette Binoche getting to play a kick-ass French secret service agent. (Though like most NZers, my attitude towards the French secret service is somewhat ambivalent after the Rainbow Warrior.)
I remembered that it was a thriller, and the pic shows a speedboat; however, it's much more a cat-and-mouse thriller than the action-thriller I was half-expecting. I liked it, even though the twist was obvious fairly early; it perhaps wasn't as tense as I like my thrillers.
Worth watching on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
I wouldn't call myself a huge Edith Piaf fan -- I enjoy her music, but don't own any. I might now.
The main actress, Marion Cotillard, is superb; I actually wondered whether they'd gotten another actress to play Piaf at her oldest, she did it so well. The way she held her hands, the imperiousness and the nervousness, the joy when singing... it was just all very good.
The rest of the film is good, though sometimes it meandered, and the fact that it was non-linear meant that there were a few sequences whose place in the timeline was unclear to me. (I did my best to keep track by the state of Piaf's hair, and how severely plucked her eyebrows were.) I guess most films about a person's life are going to be a bit unruly, just because people are complicated. The revelation on the deathbed felt a little forced, though.
All in all, I really enjoyed this film, and I hope C gets to see it soon.
* * *
Half Nelson is a film about a history teacher who coaches basketball, engages and challenges the kids in his class, is writing a book... and isn't strong enough to cope with all the pressures, abusing alcohol and drugs to escape. One of his students (whose family, it turns out, have their own set of issues with narcotics) isn't picked up after a basketball game, and finds him high on crack in the toilets; a friendship cautiously forms.
This isn't To Sir With Love. While the teacher is getting in trouble for not following the curriculum, the students are obviously already learning, and most of them are enjoying it -- and we see evidence that he's inspired some of his previous students to go on to university to study history. What we see is him losing his grip, and the student helping him, while going through her own problems.
It also gets points for having both the "What do you call cheese that isn't yours?" and the "Interrupting Cow" jokes. ;)
One of the few reservations I have was that I found that, after events that happened at a colleague's place, I lost empathy with the teacher for a while.
I liked this film; it might be a while before I'd be prepared to see it again, though.
* * *
Exiled is one of the better films in the Asian gangster noir genre I've seen this festival. Very stylish, ballet-like gun battles with puffs of red mist, loyalty, betrayal, honour, and all the other elements that make a good movie of this genre. I think the reason I liked this better than others I'd seen to this point is that had a certain sense of formal inevitability -- I'm not sure I'll be able to express it well, but one of the things I like about noir is the feeling that everything has to happen, and there's no escaping your fate. Maybe that's why it's a popular genre in Asia? And in this case, it felt quite fable-like; people were closer to archetypes, than particular people, which is another thing that I like in the genre.
Basically, there is a man who has returned to town; one group has been told to kill him by a mob boss who he tried to kill many years ago. Another group is trying to save him. The man, and the two groups, are all friends. Gangster noir ensues.
I liked it, would happily rewatch it, and will probably buy it at some point.
* * *
In a complete change of pace, Quinceanera is the story of a girl near her 15th birthday (a big deal in Hispanic culture in the States) who gets pregnant, despite denying that she's "done it" with a boy. Her pastor father throws her out, and she goes to live with her grand-uncle, who is also looking after her cousin (whose family want nothing to do with him, either). This is set in Echo Park, an LA suburb which is becoming gentrified, and part of the story is the affair between her cousin and the two gay men who buy their great-uncle's house and the property that it is attached to.
Many of the actors that appear are non-professional, or appearing for the first time (they went non-Union for reasons of budget); this is not at all evident on the screen. The film-makers were there (a white gay couple), and unsurprisingly, they were asked about how the Hispanic community felt about the film -- apparently, they've been very supported by that community, and they talked a lot about how they tried to make sure that they got stuff right by talking to the people in their neighborhood right the way through. (They live in Echo Park, and everything was shot locally; many of the locals also appeared.)
This was a good movie, and it seemed even better once I realised the constraints they were working under. I'm not sure whether I'll try and see it again, but I'd probably watch it all the way through if I started watching it by accident.
* * *
A Few Days In September was my final movie of the day, with the lovely Juliette Binoche getting to play a kick-ass French secret service agent. (Though like most NZers, my attitude towards the French secret service is somewhat ambivalent after the Rainbow Warrior.)
I remembered that it was a thriller, and the pic shows a speedboat; however, it's much more a cat-and-mouse thriller than the action-thriller I was half-expecting. I liked it, even though the twist was obvious fairly early; it perhaps wasn't as tense as I like my thrillers.
Worth watching on a rainy Sunday afternoon.