Harry here with the second report from Vox Millennium and there's an interesting run of flicks that are popping out at the Rotterdam Internation Film Fest... Enjoy...
Hi Harry,
My 2nd day in Rotterdam started with standing in line at 8.15 am trying to get tickets for two movies that had maxed out on reservations, which means that 70% of the seats were gone and now people were standing in line to lay claim to the remaining 30%. The guy standing behind me tried to connect with the pretty girl behind him, but utterly failed when bringing the conversational topic on David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive", which is now being shown here, a movie he was curious about and a director he revered and she as it turned out couldn't care less about. That sort of killed the conversation right then and there, so I felt sorry for the guy and immediately told him he needn't worry and that "Mulholland Drive" was a great movie as are all things David Lynch. Then we got into this conversation about Lynch, moved on from there to Takashi Miike and from then on it was a no holds barred trip down memory lane about our most treasured gore fests. That's what so nice about this festival, not only directors are approachable, but the people visiting as well, it's all cool and layed back.
Anyway, I got my tickets and then coffee and then cigarets and then my friend turned up and we went to see the first movie that day: Ljubljana (the Slovenian capital). This was a pretty good flick, which gave you a slice of life of a pretty much lost young generation that basically is dealing with the same kind of problems a lot of young people in our modern western society are strugling with. The movie opens with a suicide, so I felt warned, that cheerful this was not going to be. The central character is Mare, a medical student who has a hard time connecting to people, who gets involved in the rave scene, originally as a possible solution to his isolation, but eventually just as a place to get high on pills, which in the end isolates him just as much as before, with the difference that because of it, he dropped out of college and is now doing door to door interviews asking people about their tv viewing preferences, his quest for love and meaning basically arrived at a dismal end. The rave scene connects Mare to another important character, a girl who'se been at it a while longer and is totally addicted to xtc or whatever pills she consumes. A relationship with her dealer ends with her being deserted, underlining the fact that business and pleasure shouldn't be mixed, a fact nicely illustrated when the two at a rave French kiss with him having a pill on his tongue signifying that this isn't about love but a mutual vested interest between supplier and consumer.
Mare's neighbour is a guy who obviously has a good job; he's well dressed and owns a good car, but still is unfulfilled until he meets the girl of his dreams. He's so tied down to his work however that his involvement with her giving birth to their first child is limited to waiting in some airport for his mobile phone to ring and give him the news. Last there is a young former music student who dreams of a great solo career as a cello player and indeed showed great promise during his study and halfway through the movie we learn he has the chance for a great break in Cologne in Germany. When he turns up near the end of the movie we see that his dreams have not come true: he's playing in a local orchestra and taking care of a wife and child, which basically means that his dream went up in smoke. This movie by Igor Sterk is the work of a talented director, whom I accidentally bumped into later on the street where he asked me the way to a hotel (jeez, he didn't even recognize me!). Visually the movie has some interesting shots, like the one you see Mare sitting at a desk in his appartment and suddenly there are turtles swimming all over the screen and you realize the camera is behind a fish... uh turtle tank; quite funny. I also liked the moment when you see the cello player performing in the local orchestra, which was done very clever sound wise. The camera begins in close-up and you hear him playing the cello; then the camera moves further and further away and we lose the sound of his individual playing and it is all merged into the massive orchestra sound, with no individuality left. Sure, maybe the symbolism is a bit obvious, but I thought it was a nice touch. It's stuff like this that discerned this movie from your average youth culture movie. Director Sterk was there afterwards for a Q&A session, but as usual the audience hardly had any questions beyond "Are you making a new movie?" Yeah right, duh!
On to the next movie, one of two I had been standing in line for almost an hour; the Korean movie "Take care of my cat". This South-Korean movie basically has the same topic as Ljubljana about the generation 20 -25 year olds having moved from adolescence to adulthood and trying to figure out what the hell they should do with their lives. In Asia these days it's a favourite subject, but often done a bit tacky and unimaginitive. Not so this movie. Director Jeong Jae-Un gives an interesting portrayal of five women, friends since high school who each try to give form and substance to their lives, which are very different, having a lot to do with their social background. Two of them are a set of twins that are mostly there for comic relief, but the story could have done without them. The other three are more interesting: The pretty but totally egocentric Hae Ju is the self-glorified centre of the group and seems to have laid the best foundation for her future, since she got a job at a prestigious broker's office and thinks she's in love with her manager who keeps here interested with the promise of a future date, even though basically all he wants from her is to get his coffee when he wants one. At the end she realizes that all her narcistic behaviour and callousness towards her friends when they needed her has brought her is a job as a low waged coffee and copy machine girl who does all the odd jobs, nobody else can be bothered with and that obviously just good looks isn't quite enough to make it in life. Ji Yeong is the most sympathetic character who tries very hard to keep the circle of friends together but realizes in the end that there's no point, since their roads in life are obviously taking different directions. She has artistic talent and wants to design fabrics and types up poems for a physically handicapped friend, whose poems of course carry reflection on and meaning to the story.
Her family hasn't got a clue of what she aspires to do with her life, nor do they care, since they only see her as part of the work force in the family business. In the end she chooses herself and leaves her family as well as the city behind her. Tae Hee is the most troubled and next to Ji Yeong for the viewer the central character. Her family is very poor and she's desperate to find a job and because of her financial and social status doesn't feel part of the circle of friends anymore. Since most of them don't care enough to see her situation for what it is and are not able to empathize, it is only Ji Yeong who does her best to stay close to her. Tragedy ensues when the roof in Tae Hee's house finally collapses and kills her parents. I say finally, because on numerous occasions in the movie we see the roof bulging down and creaking, so we know what's bound to happen.
As Tae Hee refuses to explain to the authorities what happened, she is put in a juvenile correction centre, which seems a bit harsh and this is part of South-Korean justice system I have a hard time understanding: Your parents get killed and you've lost your home and when you refuse to cooperate you go to jail? What about the house owner who refused to fix the roof? Maybe one of the Korean readers can explain this to me. When she's released Ji Yeong is waiting for her and after some hesitation Tae Hee agrees to leave the city with her and go out and seek their happiness somewhere else. The end.
The central three women of the movie are great actresses and they make the movie work with their naturalistic performances. Director Jeong Jae-Un does some neat visual effects, like everytime the girls call one another on the mobile phones, which is through 80% of the movie, the viewer sees their SMS messages reflected on various places in the screen embedded in the sets as they are being typed; gets a bit old after the tenth time, but still a nice touch. This is a good movie, not great, but an endearing and involving bitter-sweet drama, which like the movie before that to our western eyes is still very recognizable and basically proves what a small place the world has become.
The third movie was "Kali Salwaar" by Fareeda Mehta from India. This promised to be a visual feast about a prostitute, named Sultana, living in the slums of Bombay, trying to make a living with her unemployed pimp husband who fails in one job after the other and in the end follows some guru as an escape from his responsibilities and leaves her behind penniless.
The Month of Mourning is coming up and all Sultana thinks about is acquiring enough money to be able to buy a black garment to wear that month so she can feel part of the community. With no clients in sight and her husband on his self-appointed religious quest she's becoming desperate to find the means to achieve her goal. Luckily a man who'se been admiring her for a long time, but wants more than just be another client, helps her out and gets the garment called "Salwaar". Parallel story for unclear reasons is about a wanna be godfather type criminal who badly misjudges his untouchability and doesn't get away with murder; he's mostly comic relief since his behaviour and misguided self-importance are pathetic. The movie is beautifully shot and has a lot of references to main stream Indian movies, especialy as far as the music is concerned and the scenes in which Sultana tries to lure a customer into her web of physical entanglement. The problem I had with the movie was that it was just so utterly boring and uninvolving I kept finding myself noticing a detail, starting to mindwander about it and suddenly find myself nodding off. This happened ten times or so and once I felt an arm suddenly nudging me and my friend whispering urgently in my ear "you're snoring!". It seemed I wasn't the only one that just couldn't get interested in this movie, since many people started walking out of it. At least I physically stayed and only let my mind drift on an ocean of cinematic possibilities that never came to fruition. I was badly disappointed, though I felt quite rested afterwards.
Next came "One Fine Spring Day" which Elaine already reviewed and all I have to say is that I concur with her judgement. It's a nice boy-gets-loses-doesn't take back-girl movie, which is quite endearing due to the convincing performances of the two leads and judging from the amount of sighing from the audience, quite recognizable. Side-plot is the story of the boy's grandmother who suffered under the betrayal of her long dead husband, who had an affair, which of course will be mirrored in the story of her grandson and these two get on so well because they feel their lives connected in that sense. I liked the bits about them and their scenes sort of gave you time to recover from the sometimes overly sweet romance that was central to the story.
"Dinner" was the notorious "patat met" that both Harry as well as Vincent Vega were so impressed with and yeah, I indeed drowned them motherfuckers in that shit.
Last for me that day was "Weekend Plot" from Chinese director Zhang Ming about a group of young adults (once again between 20 - 25) that, not having seen each other for some time, spend a weekend together at the banks of the Yangze river near the town two of them were born, one of them being Jin Xiao-Bei, and the other Yu-Dong who remained in the town and became a policeman there. Jin Xiao-Bei used to be his first love before she moved away to Beijing where the others dwell as well. Yu-Dong obviously still has feelings for her, which doesn't go unnoticed by his wife who doesn't hide her jealousy and tries to sabotage her husband from staying with the group.
Tensions mount when first a dressmaker's dummy is found drifting in the river, a bit obvious reference of things to come, and later a mysterious note appears which causes irritation and fights among them on the issue of who wrote it and who was addressed in it. This movie shows how under the surface of a new generation in China that wants the same things as their western counterparts, there's an insecurity and uneasiness to the newly acquired life-style, a quiet despair constantly brooding under the surface that's easily triggered into expressions of aggression that unfortunately in this movie develop beyond verbosity. The answer to the mystery of the note is lame, but the consequences were dire. I must confess I expected a bit more from this movie and felt midly let down. Nothing much goes on in it and the socalled central "mystery" is a weak device since as an audience member I never really could become involved with the groups misadventures, since I couldn't really make myself care about what happens to them. The constant switch to the town and having to see Yu-Dong's marital tiffs with his spouse, unnecessarily took you out of what was happening with the others where the main story arc lay. It just neither worked nor jelled for me.
Still, at the end of the day I felt I had seen some good flicks, nothing outstanding, but a lot of it above average. Next visit will be this saturday and I already wish I had time for more.
VoxMillennium
