Shockingly enough, director Paul McGuigan’s stellar GANGSTER NO. 1 never opened in Chicago. Maybe it hits too close to home for this city where the word “gangster” may have been invented. But I did eventually see the film, and it opened my eyes to the potential powerhouse that lies within Paul Bettany. Seeing him play second fiddle to Russell Crowe in A BEAUTIFUL MIND and MASTER AND COMMANDER didn’t quite prepare me for the rage-a-holic portrayal in GANGSTER, and the best news of the EU festival is that THE RECKONING reunites Bettany and director McGuigan in a much different but no less inventive work. Bettany plays a shamed, 14th century priest, who sleeps with a married woman and commits yet another sinful act to escape his town once he’s caught. This secondary sinful act is kept a secret until close to the end of the film, but even a blind dude can figure out what crime he’s committed.

In any event, the priest is on the run through the woods of England, where he stumbles upon a troupe of actors (led by Willem Dafoe, who resists the temptation to be extra-hammy thankfully; I wish I could say the same for Brian Cox’s portrayal as his second in command) making their way from village to village putting on plays based on bible stories (there really weren’t any other kind of plays at the time). The priest joins the troupe and they make their way to a town where a deaf-mute woman is being sentenced for killing a young boy and stealing his purse. We know something ain’t right in the village thanks to the lurking presence of Ewen Bremner as a devious monk and Vincent Cassel as the lord of the village, who sits alone in his castle passing judgement on the woman.

The actors decide that bible stories aren’t going to draw crowds in this town, so they decide to write and perform a play based on the murder of the boy. The house is packed, but as the play proceeds, various townsfolk protest this version of events, the official version, as it were. Soon the actors realize this sort of crime against children is not uncommon in town, and the guilt-ridden priest takes it upon himself to investigate the crime further. While there weren’t a tremendous number of surprises in THE RECKONING, I admired its unique take on what essentially amounts to an Agatha Christie murder tale set in medieval times. McGuigan avoids most of the traps of such period films, and much like NAME OF THE ROSE or the Brother Cadfael mysteries, it gives you a sense of how crimes such as these were investigated and solved before forensic labs were ever invented. The director keeps things moving, giving us a well-acted, interesting and unflinching tale that teaches us that pervs have changed very little in the last 700 years.

I’M NOT SCARED, Italy, Dir.: Gabriele Salvatores

Italy’s 2003 Oscar entry (directed by MEDITERRANEO’s Salvatores) will scare the bejezus out of you for its first half and keep you on the edge of your seat for the second half, primarily because you have no idea which direction this film is going to take you but almost assuredly it will be a horrible one. I’M NOT SCARED begins as the innocent tale of a 10-year-old boy in a lazy Italian country town. He fills his days walking or biking along the winding roads or through fields with his younger sister and his friends. One afternoon, the gang stumbles across an abandoned farm house, they play, they leave. The boy is forced to go back to the house to retrieve his sister’s lost glasses, when he discovers a very deep, man-made hole in the ground. He peals back the steel siding covering the hole, and the light reveals a foot sticking out from under a blanket. The boy drops the siding and bolts only to return the next day. The foot is still there, seemingly unmoved. The boy throws pebbles at it. He looks away for a second, turns back to the hole, the foot is gone. That first hair on the back of your neck going “boing!” Then out of the darkness of the hole, a twisted, filthy face appears uttering unnatural sounds. The boy runs again. Each time he returns home he tells no one about his discovery. He’s still trying to figure out just what he saw.

Repeated visits to the hole (and even a couple of trips down it) reveal a little more about the mystery figure. I’m not saying any more than this, because the more the boy learns about this person in the hole, the bleaker the future of this kid seems. It’s reassuring in a way to know that films about a child’s lost innocence can still be made today without there being a sexual component to it all. The central child in this film is on the verge of losing his moral center. The strength of the narrative is stunningly enhanced by luscious cinematography and note-perfect acting. The sad lesson in I’M NOT SCARED is that some children earn their adulthood, some have it thrust upon them. It’s scheduled to open in Chicago April 23.

THIS LITTLE LIFE, Great Britain, Dir.: Sarah Gavron

A loving couple experiences harrowing complications when their child is born three-and-a-half months premature and is kept in an intensive care unit for just such babies while it struggles to stay alive. While the baby’s father decides after a couple weeks that he must return to work to make sure they have a steady income while their baby grows more stable, the mother (the astonishingly good Kate Ashfield) moves into the hospital to be near her baby at all times. This is a tough movie to sit through. There are very realistic scenes of the baby hooked up to seemingly dozens of tubes, getting pricked with small needles, struggling to breathe. Peter Mullan is on hand as the baby’s doctor and stabilizing voice of reason for the mother. As much as this may sound like something you’d find on the Hallmark Channel, nearly every movie-of-the-week cliche thanks mostly to the heart-crushing performances. It’s clear that all the time in the hospital and the constant stress of focusing every ounce of attention onto this child does something to the mother’s mind. She starts conversing with imaginary visions of her child at age eight. She sees him running through the hallways, part specter part guardian angel. We’re not scared of this child, but we don’t trust where he’s taking his mother either because it’s more than likely right over the edge of sanity. The wife’s behavior also puts a great deal of stress on the relationship with her husband, who feels robbed of this time with his child but torn by his responsibilities as a provider. This quietly devastating film reaches right for your heart and squeezes until it hurts like the dickens. Since this movie appears to have been made for BBC television, I’m not sure if it will get released theatrically in the states or not. See it at all costs if you can.

SOMETHING TO REMIND ME, Germany, Dir.: Christian Petzold

Strangely enough, I hadn’t even planned on seeing this movie, but I had a couple hours between two other films I was seeing, so I thought “what the heck.” Sometimes you just get lucky. Remember that moment in Miike’s AUDITION when you realize that this wasn’t going to be a sweet love story? In fact, you realized that you may lose your lunch before the film was over. Yeah, there’s a moment like that in SOMETHING TO REMIND ME, and it rocks. A German lawyer meets an attractive but distant blonde at a pool. He’s been so busy with his career, he’s hardly had time to date, but this woman strikes him as something special. He pursues her and eventual she agrees to a date. She shows up hours late, but makes up for it by inviting herself to his place for a late dinner. They listen to his Dionne Warwick albums, drink, eat, laugh, and she sweetly falls asleep on his couch. To capture the perfect moment, he grabs his Polaroid and snaps a photo of her sleeping. The next morning, she’s gone but has left a note that she’d like to meet again that night. While driving to the date, the lawyer spots her walking with a large suitcase to the train station. He confronts her but she is committing to leaving town.

The blonde ends up in a small town where she takes a job working in a cafeteria at a large factory. It just so happens that one of the lawyer’s recently paroled clients has a job in this same factory. Since the lawyer must pay him frequent visits to see how his client’s probation is going, a reunion between the lawyer and the blonde seems inevitable. But the lawyer is obsessing over the blonde and her sudden departure. He knows nothing about her, so he sets about investigating to find out who she is, why she left town, and how he can find her again. It just so happens that the blonde meets the ex-con, and the two form a shaky but harmless friendship. As much as this doesn’t sound like it’s leading to an big “Oh shit!” moment, it’s right around this point in the story that things start shifting. This is one of those great films that, as you get closer to the end, you are forced to rethink what you actually saw in the beginning. A discovery of a book on dating, a missing laptop, and a few old newspaper clippings suddenly all add up in a devastating way. That’s all I’m saying. Director Petzold is so clever, you don’t even realize that tension should be building almost from the first frame of the movie. Once you realize there’s danger to any of the characters, it’s too late. You’re knee-deep in it. This is a masterfully constructed work. Again, I have no idea whether this will ever be realized in the U.S., but if it is, you need to see it.

SARABAND, Sweden, Dir.: Ingmar Bergman

Despite all of his poetic and visually stunning works, my favorite film by Ingmar Bergman was his stark, unflinching, made-for-television masterpiece SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. I first saw it in college, and it’s mind-blowing lessons about the bitterness and distrust that can come with marriage probably single-handedly kept me unmarried until my mid-30s. Now, 30 years later, and on the eve of SCENES’ 3-disc, Criterion DVD release, I was lucky enough to see the first showing outside of Europe (where it premiered on Swedish television recently) of what Bergman has said will be his last work ever, SARABAND. Even more amazing to me is that it’s a follow-up to SCENES, reuniting actors Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson in their roles as Marianne and Johan from that 1973 work. Constructed again in segments (10 scenes plus a prologue and epilogue), SARABAND’s four characters meet in various pairs, with each scene featuring only two actors in various combinations. The other two characters are Henrik (Borje Ahlstedt), Johan son from his first marriage, and Henrik’s daughter Karin (Julia Dufvenius). Karin’s mother died two years earlier from a long illness, and the shockwaves of her death still resonate in the family.

Marianne and Johan have not seen each other in more than 30 years, and one day Marianne decides she wants to see him. Three of the ten scenes feature these two and they are splendid together, like ON GOLDEN POND but without the extreme sap. Despite their stormy history, they still care for each other and value each other’s opinion. Marianne ends up staying with Johan for a few weeks and gets pulling into the drama between Johan and Henrik (they can’t stand each other), Henrik and Karin (their loving relationship might be a little too loving), and Johan and Karin have a strained but ultimately strong bond, as he wants her to pursue her dream of becoming a great cellist. Bergman has lost none of his gifts as a writer. With just a few chosen words, he conveys years of pain and suffering in these characters. And did I mention that Liv Ullmann still looks like a million bucks? This is as perfect an example of Bergman’s abilities as a writer and director as anything he’s ever done. I’m heartbroken that he’s done working, but I feel a tremendous sense of pride on his behave that he never wavered in being an uncompromising filmmaker. Long live the Swedish king in all his misery!

THE HOUSE BY THE CANAL, Belgium, Dir.: Alain Berliner

From the director of the wonderful MY LIFE IN PINK, comes this story of a 16-year-old French girl (Isild Le Besco) whose father dies and she is forced to move in with her much poorer relations in Belgium. Her diva-like ways get her in trouble at first, especially with her eldest cousin, a leach of a man whose father dies literally as the girl arrives at their farm. The cousin in put in charge of the farm, but he’s much more interested in chasing local girls and cavorting with prostitutes. But using her budding womanhood and newfound sexual identity, the girl wins over her relations, especially her younger male cousin, who seems a little slow, but is entirely devoted to his beautiful cousin. It seems as if in every scene, some new drama unfolds having to do with temptation, money problems, and even murder, but all of the problems seems to bring the family closer rather than rip it apart. The actor playing the older male cousin tends to overact a bit, but the saving grace of HOUSE BY THE CANAL is Le Besco, who has a bit of Scarlett Johansson’s acting style in her. She pouts and has a shy demeanor, but she knows full well her effect on people, especially men. HOUSE BY THE CANAL is not a great filmbut it’s a commendable effort nonetheless.

FACING THE TRUTH, Denmark, Dir.: Nils Malmros

Okay, the opening sequence of this movie is some of the most detailed brain surgery I’ve ever seen and it’s in black-and-white. Sheer greatness starts early in the striking B&W tale of director Malmros’ own father, one of Denmark’s leading neurosurgeons beginning just before WWII, who found himself in the middle of one of that nation’s most devastating medical scandals. The story jumps back and forth between Dr. Malmros as a child growing up during very religious and poverty-stricken times to Malmros as a medical student and eventual doctor to his as head of a growing neurology department to an old man fighting claims that he may have knowingly caused the deaths of hundred of patients. The acting is strong here, but the complex timeline was probably unnecessary and adds a bit of confusion to what would have made a solid, linear story. Only once can I think of was this choppy timeline used to add any kind of real drama. Still, it’s solid filmmaking from the younger Malmros, and did I mention the graphic brain surgery footage? Yummy.

Capone

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