Father Geek here with another great report from Ozymandias and his crew of Italian reporters working with Robert Bernocchi in beautiful Venice. They've put together another fine group of reviews, and once again they have some up close and personal conversations with some important and popular film makers exclusively in English for you AICN readers out there. Now, here's Ozy...
Hey AICNers!!!!Ozymandias reporting in...
For those of us who can't be there treading the streets (well actually treading water in the streets but you get the idea...) here's today's instalment from Venice by way of Dublin (dontcha love the internet???!?!)
Ozymandias reporting in...
For those of us who can't be there treading the streets (well actually treading water in the streets but you get the idea...) here's today's instalment from Venice by way of Dublin (dontcha love the internet???!?!)
Hi Ozy. First, i have to correct a mistake. Yesterday i talked about the journalist Alberto Farina. He writed a book about explotation movies and not just about blaxplotation as i said. I'm sorry. So let's start with the reviews and the interviews.
U-571, by Jonathan Mostow, in Sogni e visioni (review by Robert Bernocchi)
April 1942. A group of sailors has to carry out a very diffucult mission: they have to capture a top secret Nazi coding device from a german submarine. Their mission can change the destiny of the war, because Hitler U-boats are causing massive Allied shipping losses. But they have to face many problems, including to understand how to drive a german submarine. I had already seen this movie in Rome in the offices of the italian distribution. I think that is a great film, that reminded me the classics of the fifties (that's an opinion confirmed by the director at the press conference). I was excited for two hours for the skillness of Jonathan Mostow and his cast. I think that one of the most interesting thing is the fact that he can tell general events (the war) and particular ones (the fate of the sailors). The Nazi coding, even it's very important, is used as a MacGuffin, how explained Alfred Hitchcock to François Truffaut. So, we know that these mens have an important mission that can save the world, but we are more involved with their fate. During the press conference, the producer Dino De Laurentiis said that he wants to make spectacular movies against the little stories of many italian films. I agree completely. We had the chance to make video interviews to everyone involved in U-571 (Mostow, McConaughey, Bon Jovi, Keitel, Paxton and De Laurentiis). Except the producer, all the interviews are in english and will be available at our site tomorrow.
The Princess and the Warrior, by Tom Twyker, in Sogni e visioni (review by Giovanni Colucci)
Sissi (Franka Potente) is a nurse in a mental institute. Bodo, a man sufferent for the tragic death of his wife, lives with his brother Walter. Bodo saves Sissi after an incident and then he disappears. The girl falls in love with him but he refuses her. But many events will help them to forget their past. The fourth movie by Tom Twyker, the appreciated director of Run Lola Run, is a very particular love story. If you know the films by Krzysztof Kieślowski, you can understand the importance of the fate in the lives of people. Run Lola Run was a himn to fastness, while here he changes abruptly and directs, with the same will to experiment something new, a history that's slow. The are many qualities in this film. The skillness of Twyker to use his camera (in particular there's a scene where the camera skims over the protagonist that is worthy of Orson Welles). The actors are great and above all Franka Potente, that describes wonderfully the purity of Sissi. The score is perfectly connected to images. The sets were builded with much attention and are very cold and geometric as the movie requires. And the ending is not intellectual but it rest near to the spirit of the history. So, if you believe that love can win over all, that's the movie for you.
Press conference of The Princess and the Warrior
Run Lola Run, that was premiered in Venice two years ago, was an incredible fast movie. The Princess and the Warrior seems more a dream at ralenty.
Tom Twyker: the Princess and the Warrior is a previous project than Run Lola Run. I have no intention to make a slow movie after the fast one. We had to find the good way to describe the character played by Franka Potente. The rhythm of the film depends by the character and this time Franka doesn't run.
The movie is a romantic love story. What do you wanted to comunicate?
T.T.: this film is born and has developed from an emotion that i know well. I'm very satisfied because the film don't simply tell a love story, but describes this emotion. The two protagonists are very romantic, but in a special way. Sissi, that is accustomed for his work to every kind of experiences, is so stubborn to follow the man she loves.
Franka Potente: Bodo is a dream for my character. She's pure as a child and she found in Bodo his Graal.
In the scenes at the hospital the acting is very realistic. Do you used real fools?
T.T.: i don't need that. The actors that work with me are always crazy.
Do you think that the fate and the coincidences can change the live of people?
T.T.: we always think that we know how things will go and instead a little coincidence can change everything. In my movie, unlike real life, we can realize what is the coincidence that makes the difference.
What is the town where you shooted the movie?
T.T.: it's Wuppertal, the town where i was born and where i grow up. When i said that we'll shoot there, everyone told me "What!!! Five months in Wuppertal? I won't resist". But eventually they appreciated it by discovering the hidden beautiness.
Why do you quoted Miracolo a Milano by Vittorio De Sica?
T.T.: because it is one of my favorite movies ever. I found very beautiful the mix between reality and fable. You don't ignore the problems of normal people, but there's always a space for the fugue toward a fantastic world. And even my movie wants to be a realistic fable.
Merci pour le chocolat, by Claude Chabrol, out of competition (review by Robert Bernocchi)
First scene: we see the wedding between the piano player André Polonski and Mika Muller, the owner of a firm that produces chocolate. That' s their second wedding, because they were married many years before. Meanwhile, the young girl Jeanne Pollet discovers that she can't be sure about who are her parents. In fact, for the mistake of the hospital, Jeanne could be the Polonski's daughter. The girl starts to investigate and understands there are many hidden secrets. The lovers of french nouvelle vague know well the skill of Claude Chabrol. But with Merci pour le chocolat the director surprised us one more time by his originality. Chabrol has a perfect knowledge of the rules of the thriller. So, he can play with the expectations of the audience. I think we can compare Chabrol movie with the Scream trilogy. Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson were able to surprise us with an horror, even if we thinked that we've already seen everything. That's the same with Chabrol. That's enough to show a wedding between two people that were already married or a girl who tries to discover his origins. And if you add a few ambiguous characters with their secrets, he have a great movie. But even a genious needs great actors ro realise his work. So, i applaud the interpretation of Isabelle Huppert: she is often unbearable in many other movies, but in Merci pour le chocolat she's perfect.
Press conference of Merci pour le chocolat
I think your movie is very cold. It was made intentionally?
Claude Chabrol: maybe that's just a matter of copies. We can have warm copies and cold copies. More seriously, my idea was to create an atmosphere where my characters are isolated. And i didn't want to give a bright life to people that are so boring. We are talking about people that spend their life to escape. Someone escapes by playing music, someone in a perversion. Even music can be a perversion.
I would like to know if you noticed the similarities between your movie and the movie by Raul Ruiz, that is a fable set in a middle-class environment.
C.C.: i'm in the jury of the festival, so i can't talk about movies in competition. But i don't feel they are similar. I don't know what Isabelle Huppert, that was also in Ruiz movie, thinks. They both start from an analogous problem, the uncertainty about the family of the protagonists, but in fact they are very different.
Isabelle Huppert: me too, i don't think there is a similarity, but many people think there is. So, i don't know what to think.
I adored the way you describe the psychology of the characters. What was your work with the screenplay?
Caroline Eliacheff, screenwriter: i've written the screenplay with Chabrol and i'am also a psychoanalist. Every character has his own motivations and we tried to show them through their behaviours. The bet is to highlight the deepness of a character with the images and not the words.
C.C.: Caroline beginned to write his screenplay by starting from the last scene and i tried to transpose his ideas on screen. We didn't work together because i'm not able to do it. But she made a large part of the job.
You and Isabelle Huppert worked many times together. Can we say that she is your muse? And what are your projects?
C.C.: i wouldn't say she is a muse. Every time, i'm doubtful if she will surprise me again and the answer is always yes. So, that's a pleasure to work with her. I'm sure we'll collaborate again, but maybe next time i'll give her the role of a saint.
You said that this movie is about perversion. What relation exists between chocolate and perversion?
C.C.: thank you for the question. The chocolate represents the sweet surface of our existence. For example, many problems of our life are just hidden behind a layer of chocolate. But i love chocolate. Maybe i'm perverted too.
Il partigiano Johnny, by Guido Chiesa, in competition (review by Francesco Alò)
September, the eight, 1943. The Italy declares officially the armistice. The desertor Johnny, student of foreign languages and translator, lives as a prisoner in the house of his parents. He decides to be involved in the struggle against fascism by joining the partisans that live in the mountains. After his squad is decimated, he passes with the soldiers of the charismatic captain North. So, he spends with them the winter of 1944, between shots, escapes and starvings. The masterwork of Beppe Fenoglio is adapted in this movie by Guido Chiesa with energy and honesty (Chiesa realised, between fiction and documentaries, seven films about the resistence). But the problem is that we can't understand the motivations of the characters. Besides, the direction is uncertain between to follow the spectacular realism of Saving Private Ryan or the stylistic poverty of Land and Freedom by Ken Loach. So the movie is just a long series of separated episodes. The characters are coming and leaving without an explanation. The movie lacks of rhetoric and romanticism, but the impression is that Chiesa wasn't able to manage a large budget (by italian movies, of course). That's the same to give a Ferrari to a normal driver. The interesting cast (between them some of the most interesting italian actors of these last years as Fabrizio Gifuni and Barbara Lerici) is wasted. There's very difficult that this movie will be a hit.
Before Night Falls, by Julian Schnabel, in competition (review by Robert Bernocchi)
Reinaldo Arenas is a young cuban writer in the first years of the revolution of Fidel Castro. Although there is no doubt of his talent, the regime doesn't love him. First, because he is an homosexual. Second, because he is a free artist. After he published his first book in his country, his next works are banned. Definetely, he escapes to New York. Life, books, death and a lot of sex. If the director Julian Schnabel had the intention to realise the classic portrait of a damned artist, we can say he achieved his goal. That's the second movie for the ex painter. If Basquiat disgusted me for the lack of interesting ideas, Before Night Falls is a little better. The problem is that we started from the bottom of the ocean (where just the submarine of U-571 can arrive). Schnabel is an amateur who makes ridiculous choices. Why he have to see a shot from the point of view of an axe used to cut a tree? And how he could think to use the same score played by german kraut rock band Popol Vuh for the masterwork Aguirre, by Werner Herzog? And Johnny Depp. My god. He is a trans who find an interesting way to hidden his objects (use your imagination or think about the character played by Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction). You can't imagine how ridicolous he is. After some minutes he appears again as a gay lieutenant. So what does that mean? But i'm really angry about how is described the protagonist. We know very little about his art, but we see many moments of his sexual life. You could think he became famous for his sexual talent. Schnabel complained in Venice that Hollywood is a lobby of stupid people. Maybe he can have some reasons, but he is not in the position to criticize them.
Robert Bernocchi - La Finestra sul Cortile
