Hey folks, hello my Dutch friends, Harry hee... The Beast recently sent me a photo of my mates and I having drinks in a red lit Rotterdamn pub and me feasting upon a diet-unfriendly serving of Patat Met. Jarno, Silvain... Hi! Jarno taught me the word CANKERHOUER, he rules. I think that's how you spell it. Anyways, the Lovely Elaine has dished up her first official report from Rotterdam right now and it's a doozy. Seems like a good start to the fest for her... Can't wait to hear about that new Takeshi Miike flick! OoooOOoooh Boy! Here she is....
Hi Harry,
Elaine here, with the first of what will hopefully
turn out to be a series of daily reports.
DAY 1
Remember that scene in "Naked" where Johnny tells Sophie that she may already have had the happiest moment in her life, and that all she has got to look forward to is sickness and purgatory? Well, that's how I'm feeling right now. The festival is but a day old, but I already feel as though I've seen the best thing on offer - right on my first day, in my very first screening. It is called "Flower Island," and while it isn't entirely perfect (the second act is, ahem, rather uneven), that which it does get right is so staggeringly brilliant that I had tears streaming down my cheeks not just once but several times. I don't trust myself to tell you about it after just one viewing, so I'll defer my review until I have had a chance to see it again. In the meantime, I urge all of you in Rotterdam who seek a morbid, emotionally draining experience to check it out, and not to give up when the film seems to go off the rails in the second act.
As for my other films on the opening day, well, they
were fun. Both "Storytelling" and "My Brother the
Vampire" (up for a Tiger Award) turned out to be a
hoot, and I also had quite a laugh about "Waterboys,"
a Japanese comedy which I suspect will go down well
with the Rotterdam audience. The only film I have thus
far been disappointed with is Serge Lalou's "Entre
nous," which was too documentary-like for my tastes.
WATERBOYS
(Yaguchi Shinobu, 2001)
"Waterboys" is a Japanese comedy about teenage boys in tight swim trunks. They're silly, they're clumsy and they can't swim their way out of a paper bag, but by the end of the film they have become heroes and have won the hearts of the boys and girls they love. Their secret? Synchronised swimming. Yes, you're reading that right - they become heroes through their love for, er, synchronised swimming.
"Waterboys" is set at an all-male high school. When the story opens, the Tadano School Swimming Club is about to be discontinued because there is only one member left. Then a new coach with big boobs shows up, and suddenly all the students wish to join the club, even if their coach makes it clear that it is synchronised swimming she intends them to pick up. Before they get their first lesson, the coach is forced to go on maternity leave, and the majority of the boys pulls out of the "synchro." However, five of them (all hopelessly clumsy nerds) persist, and with the help of a dolphin trainer and a TV fitness show, they not only overcome their personal problems but popularise their sport, too.
It is easy to find fault in the movie. The story is
predictable (one point for every "Karate Kid"
reference you spot!), the acting is completely over
the top and the humour tends to be of the puerile
physical variety. Yet the film exudes such energy that
it is hard not to like it. By the time the boys give
mouth-to-mouth to an electrocuted dolphin (don't ask),
you'll want them to achieve all the success they
crave, and when they finally put on the show they have
been working towards for weeks, you will be howling
with laughter. It isn't exactly Esther Williams, but
who needs perfect toes when he gets to strut his stuff
in front of hundreds of yelling school girls?
MY BROTHER THE VAMPIRE (Sven Taddicken, 2001)
German cinema is up for a Renaissance. Exhibit A: Tom Tykwer, whose "Princess and the Warrior" is in my opinion the most underrated film of 2001. Exhibit B: Sven Taddicken (27), whose "Mein Bruder der Vampir" has Tiger Award written all over it.
"Mein Bruder der Vampir" (My Brother the Vampire, or Getting My Brother Laid) is a comedy about sex. More specifically, it is a comedy about a 29-year-old retard who wishes to have sex with his brother's girlfriend and his 15-year-old sister who tries with all her might to lose her virginity. Sound vulgar to you? It did to me, too. But against all odds, "Mein Bruder der Vampir" turned out to be an exquisite piece of cinema, full of original flourishes and just within the borders of good taste.
Taddicken's debut is an exercise in modern filmmaking. A cocktail of youthful exuberance and sophisticated storytelling, it is a hilarious comedy which, despite its baroque styling, never loses sight of what is essentially a heart-felt story. It maintains a light and cheerful tone throughout, and if it does occasionally get surreal, it never gets grotesque or slapstick-like; just charming and at times wickedly funny.
Much of the humour of the film derives from the interaction between the four leads. There is Nic, a precocious teenager so desperate to share her obsession with sex with someone that she invites her retarded brother Josch to sit in on her attempts to spy on her elder brother Mike and his girlfriend Nadin. There is Josch himself, who doesn't care about sex but envies the intimacy between Mike and Nadin. Then there is Nadin, who thinks Josch is sweet and is more or less inclined to grant him his wish, since it is after all his thirtieth birthday and he isn't much of a threat to her and Mike. And finally, there is Mike, who cannot see Josch's urge for sex for what it is and would rather teach him how to jerk off and take him to a whore than let him have some time alone with Nadin. Between these four characters, a complicated tangle of emotions develops, and it isn't until the end that they realise that the solution to their problem is amazingly simple.
There is some outrageous fun to be had in "Mein Bruder the Vampir." The scene where Mike buys Josch girlie magazines and teaches him how to whack off ("Nice technique. Not bad. But maybe...") is a riot, as is the one in which Josch tries to seduce Nadin. Yet the funniest moments are those which are not directly linked to intercourse. The way the angelic-looking Josch, who likes to dress up as a vampire, answers Nadin's "You're cute" with a dead serious "No, I'm the Prince of Darkness." The imaginary conversations Mike and Nic have with their partners. Nic's oh-so-cool chat-up line ("Have you seen the latest Vince Gallo movie?") when she finally finds herself face to face with the object of her desire, a thug who interrupts his torture games to lip-sync to an Eartha Kitt song about chastity and the nature of being evil. It is in scenes like these, seemingly unrelated to the plot but brilliantly executed, that Taddicken's star shines brightest.
Make no mistake: Sven Taddicken is a director to
watch. He has both a superb eye for detail and a
terrific sense of timing, and with the visual panache
and directing ability displayed in "Mein Bruder der
Vampir," he should go very far indeed. "Mein Bruder
der Vampir" is a debut to cherish and heartily laugh
about.
ENTRE NOUS (Serge Lalou, 2001)
Serge Lalou used to be a documentarian. That is obvious from his debut feature "Entre Nous" (Between Us), which elevates the fly-on-the-wall technique to a form of art.
"Entre Nous" is about a hermit family living on an island just off the French coast. The pater familias, it transpires, has just died, and the mother, though critically ill, refuses to be moved to the mainland for treatment. Meanwhile, her eldest son (a strong performance by Bruno Putzulu) is torn between his love for his girlfriend on the mainland and his responsibility for his mother and two sisters, all of whom are mentally unstable. In the end, he manages to get his family on the broader shore, but not without some dramatic losses on the way.
As befits a documentary maker, Lalou excels in inobtrusively following his characters, and the way he registers the boredom of living on a desert island and the mounting frustrations of the family members and their occasional visitors is quite impressive. At the same time, however, the documentary-like approach is the film's downfall. Lalou is so busy registering situations that he forgets to put them in a context, thus missing out on an opportunity to heighten their emotional impact. Halfway through, therefore, the story becomes tedious, and not even the relatively action-packed ending can save the film.
It would be useful if Lalou
learned to DIRECT his next
film, rather than just observe his admittedly
impressive actors.
STORYTELLING (Todd Solondz, 2001)
Enough has been written about "Storytelling" on AICN to justify my not going into detail about it. Suffice it to say that Solondz' latest is wickedly funny. It may be uneven, and it might have been more effective if the director had concentrated on one story rather than outline two, but it analyses the moral bankruptcy of American society and supposedly superior critics with great deft, and comes up with a German-American equation which I, who oppose the death penalty, find to be somewhat true. In my opinion, therefore, "Storytelling" is a worthy successor to "Happiness," even if many other AICN reviewers would have you believe otherwise.
Anyway, so much for today. I'll be back tomorrow with reviews of Japanese drama "Blue Spring," Kim Kiduk's "Address Unknown," Peter Bogdanovich's "The Cat's Meow" and Takashi Miike's "Agitator." Until then, it's goodbye from Rotterdam, and all the best...
Elaine
