Hey folks, Harry here.... by some strange flight of weirdness... Harold Hellman's emails were instantly sent into an old folder I never checked or knew existed till today... So I apologize to all craving coverage of the amazing SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL... Here ya go with an amazing eclectic list of titles from days 21 through 23....
DAY TWENTY-ONE: Thursday, June 14
MANHOOD AND OTHER MODERN DILEMMAS -- France, 2000, written and directed by Ronan Girre.
Well, I guess it had to happen sooner or later. I've had a good run this year at the festival; although I've seen a couple of movies that didn't really work, everything else has ranged from good to excellent. I was starting to hope I would escape this year without being subjected to an outright dud -- but that was until last night.
"Virilite et autres sentiments modernes" (translated as "Manhood and Other Modern Dilemmas") starts well. We meet Laura, an attractive young woman, in the Paris subway. A man catches her eye, and she follows him, explaining why in voice-over. At the end of the pursuit, she turns to the camera and offers us additional comments in direct address. Next, we meet Alexis, an attractive man, who recounts in similar voice-over and direct address his unhappy romantic history. His neighbor then plays matchmaker between him and Laura, and for a while it's a cute courtship comedy between seemingly mismatched partners: He's an actor, and she's a takeover specialist at a financial office.
For the first half hour, this is bright and funny. The film has a bouncy Euroclub musical score, the characters are likable, and there's an interesting fantasy edge to the world. Specifically, Laura has a "handicap" in which she occasionally breathes out a cloud of flame. Sometimes it's a tiny flicker, sometimes a huge burst. Nobody ever really comments on it; it's just taken for granted, and is a strange and funny twist on the story. There are other similar elements; the first time Laura and Alexis kiss, for example, the ground under their feet catches fire.
But then, about thirty minutes in, the movie takes a very strange turn. During the first love scene, Laura blindfolds Alexis so he can't see her turn into some kind of demon, complete with horns, dramatic lighting, and heavy black eyeliner. Alexis then becomes a horrible jerk; his life's fortunes improve, based on the increased confidence he feels as a result of his relationship with Laura (though also possibly due to her nefarious powers), but regardless he insists that he deserves all the credit for his new success and begins treating Laura badly. The film seems to be about the difficulty an old-fashioned man has in coping with modern sexual politics, but instead of being progressive, the movie comes across as defending his male chauvinism, and as setting up Laura as a demanding, controlling monster.
By the time Alexis is sitting at the kitchen table, discussing his situation with the severed head of a freshly plucked chicken he found in the refrigerator (catch the oh-so-subtle symbolism?), I was starting to get annoyed, wondering if the film had fully committed to its new trajectory. And by the ending, which features Alexis shooting Laura with magic bullets to kill the demon inside her (after which she apologizes and says, "This time I'll make you happy"), I had progressed to real anger. The film's view of male/female relations is deeply confused; it wants to believe it's progressive, but it flirts with an unconscious fear of women bordering on misogyny. It would be one thing if this were a specific story about one guy helping rescue one woman, but it repeatedly sets itself up as announcing insights about men and women in general, despite the fact that its opinions seem to be those of a sexually paranoid 14-year-old boy.
The movie's shortcomings are captured in a moment from about an hour into it. Alexis has just cheated on Laura; of course she's furious. He's visiting his matchmaking neighbor, asking her, "What does she want? It was just one time." The neighbor's advice: "You have to marry her." Alexis: "Will that work?" The neighbor: "You don't understand women at all." Me, in my head, wanting to scream at the screen: "Neither does this movie!"
I hated, hated, hated "Manhood and Other Modern
Dilemmas." After a very promising first half hour, its
sudden transformation into sexist apologia for
ignorant machismo was a serious violation, and
provoked serious hostility from me. I'm still angry
now, thinking back on the experience. The weirdest
thing is, the film is from France, and I was under the
impression that the French were more evolved about
this sort of thing. At any rate, I never, ever want to
see this movie again, and that's all there is to it.
THE PRINCESS AND THE WARRIOR -- Germany, 2000, written
and directed by Tom Tykwer.
Tom Tykwer made a huge impression in the U.S. with his previous film "Run Lola Run." I thought it was fun, though it wasn't as profound as it seemed to believe itself to be; it was more of a windup toy that skimmed across the surface of some fascinating ideas at blinding speed. For his followup, rather than try to copy the success of a wholly unique film, Tykwer has wisely changed direction. This may irritate some viewers who wanted nothing more than another ninety minutes of rave music and frantic sprinting, but it bodes well for Tykwer's continuing development as a filmmaker.
His new film, "The Princess and the Warrior," has many of the same preoccupations as his previous work: fate, coincidence, and intertwined destinies. However, it handles these themes in a much more subtle, thoughtful, and mature manner. The heroine, Sissi, is played by Franka Potente, who previously played Lola. Here, though, instead of being brash and headstrong, Sissi is quiet, uncertain, and naive, working as a nurse in a psychiatric institution where she can retreat from the tumult and confusion of the outside world. (Eventually we find out she was even born there.) At the same time, Bodo, a former soldier, is battling the demons of his past while he and his brother formulate a scheme to escape their dead-end existence. Sissi and Bodo are soon thrown together by a horrific accident; he saves her life, and she then refuses to leave him alone.
There are moments of incredible intensity in the film (two people at my screening actually passed out during an on-screen tracheotomy), but unlike "Lola," Tykwer takes the time to listen to his characters and watch how their relationships change and evolve. Sissi is a favorite nurse at the hospital, for example, and many of the patients relate quite closely to her; the way their perception of her changes when they find out about Bodo becomes a major story element in the second half.
The rhythms of the film are far more elliptical than the angular "Lola," as people meet, move away from one another, and then circle back, sometimes deliberately, sometimes by chance. The plot also refuses to settle down to a comfortable cliche; although some aspects are familiar movie devices (a bank robbery is featured prominently), they aren't resolved in conventional ways. The whole first hour, in fact, would serve as the basis for a lesser Hollywood effort, as Bodo saves Sissi's life and then she finds a way to return the favor in a crisis situation. Here, though, that choice happens at the midpoint, and launches a whole new plot direction.
Audiences looking for the machine-gun pacing of "Lola" will likely grow restless during this second hour, but I found it totally absorbing. The last few minutes are strangely beautiful, providing resolution to Bodo's dilemma, although they follow a rooftop climax that feels oddly convenient given the unconventional nature of the foregoing story. The film is beautifully photographed and deeply felt, and moves easily between a gentle, floating tone and bursts of sudden kineticism. It won't be a runaway hit like "Lola," but it cements Tykwer's reputation as a filmmaker to watch.
P.S. I liked this movie a lot, despite the distraction
of the mook in the muscle shirt who sat next to me and
cackled idiotically at every plot twist, regardless of
whether it was funny or tragic. It says a lot about
how involved I was that I could tune out the yahoo and
give myself over to the movie.
BATTLE ROYALE -- Japan, 2000, written by Kenta
Fukasaku (from Koshun Takami's novel), directed by
Kinji Fukasaku.
It's hard to know how to feel about "Battle Royale," the newly infamous film from veteran Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku. It features very important, thought-provoking themes and ideas, but it's wrapped in a deliberately inflammatory package that borders on incendiary. It also slams back and forth between being funny and tragic, graphically violent and laughably soapy, leaving the audience's head spinning in confusion.
It announces its melodramatic tone in its very first shot, as huge ocean waves pound jagged rocks while histrionic opera thunders on the soundtrack. The premise is quickly sketched for us in subtitles and in the opening scenes: In a near-future Japan, ravaged by economic collapse, the powers-that-be control their rebellious youth through a violent competition. Every so often, a class of ninth-graders is selected at random to be dropped on a remote island. All of the kids are armed to the teeth, with the expectation that, after three days, only one of them will be alive. (Consider it "Lord of the Flies" plus Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" by way of "Survivor.")
The movie follows one of these classes -- forty-two kids -- as they're plucked from their comfortable school life and thrown headlong into a nightmare of violence and paranoia. Some of the kids band together, protecting one another and trying to figure out how to beat the game. Others go solo, playing seriously and slaughtering their classmates without remorse. A small number of students, unable to bring themselves to participate, kill themselves rather than attack their friends. All the while, their teacher/supervisor (played by Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano) monitors their progress and provides regular updates on the body count using the island's public-address system.
Obviously, a story about teenagers mowing each other down (they have guns, knives, crossbows, and more) is designed to raise the audience's hackles, and the movie pulls no punches in that regard. We see an axe plunged into one boy's skull, another boy's throat is blown out by the electronic collar used by the supervisor to enforce compliance, and of course there are thousands of bullets fired. The natural enmities of teenage life are frighteningly exploited, as some kids use the opportunity to exact revenge on hated bullies or romantic rivals. One participant, not from the original class, apparently signed up "for fun," and relentlessly butchers everyone he meets without a second thought.
The whole movie is shot through with a wide stream of very dark humor. During their orientation, the kids are shown a training video in which a friendly woman twitters happily about how they're going to kill one another. Also, the survival packs issued to the students are supposed to each contain a weapon of some kind, and most do, but some kids end up with decidedly nonlethal items like pot lids or paper fans. And Kitano seems to be present mainly to provide coal-black comic relief, as he claps morbidly along with the training video or shouts helpful killing tips into his microphone.
There's a lot of other stuff, though, that doesn't really work, or that distances the audience from the film. Very few of the kids are well-developed as characters, meaning their deaths are horrible only in an abstract fashion, adding to the body count without deepening the story. (In fact, most of the time, whenever the movie starts developing a character's backstory, that person is almost always a minute or two away from dying.) The hacker subplot is kind of dopey, and there are also several moments where the movie starts to develop a head of dramatic steam, only to dispel it with a sappy romantic confession or other melodramatic speech, usually delivered while the character is lying in a pool of blood. It might be more about clunkily-translated subtitles accentuating the non-sequiturs ("you look really cool," for example, comes totally out of left field), or maybe we were all a bit punchy because the midnight movie started an hour and twenty minutes late, but there were several instances where the audience's laughter was more derisive than delighted.
Still, despite the uneven and occasionally awkward tone, the movie does have a few serious issues on its mind. The obvious metaphor, of course, is about the notoriously competitive Japanese school system, and the cutthroat tactics employed by students and parents to achieve success. One can also read a subtext about dispelling the myth of childhood innocence, and how social marginalization is literally a life-and-death issue for teenagers; when a group of girls goes in minutes from being supportive friends to slaughtering each other in paranoid jealousy, it's frighteningly believable. The film can also be seen as a heavy-handed parable about the divide-and-conquer strategy of class warfare, where peers are established as a false enemy as a means of distracting them from the true adversary high above.
But again, the movie's messages get confused in several ways. First, obviously, the premise is so brazenly confrontational that many people will be repulsed by the superficial story (particularly the graphic violence) and won't bother to think about what the movie's trying to say. Yes, the old truism is valid -- a movie isn't about what it's about, it's how it's about it -- but it's also true that most viewers don't bother to think very deeply about what they see, and any deeper themes will be totally obscured. Second, for all the subtitles that describe the future society and the "Battle Royale" legislation, the students seem totally unaware of it, which undercuts the satirical value of the tournament as a social-engineering tool. And, of course, there are the lapses into soapy melodrama, which remind the audience they're watching a movie, instead of engaging them in the satire.
"Battle Royale" is certainly an interesting film, and
as always the moral reactionaries who will condemn it
as exploitation purely on the basis of their
perception of its apparent exterior will be saying
more about their own intellectual limitations than
about the movie itself. Unfortunately, whatever the
filmmakers might have intended, however complex and
thoughtful, doesn't quite make it to the screen, and
that's a shame.
DAY TWENTY-THREE: Saturday, June 16
VIVA LAS NOWHERE -- USA, 2001, written by Richard
Uhlig & Steve Seitz, directed by Jason Bloom.
Within the first couple of minutes of "Viva Las Nowhere," we're pretty sure we know how the rest of the movie will turn out. Frank Jacobs (Daniel Stern) owns a tiny motel in the middle of nowhere, and is married to Helen (Patricia Richardson), a shrill Bible-thumper. Despite his dead-end life, he dreams of being a country-music songwriter. "Just you wait," he tells his wife. "Someday these songs are going to be worth something." Okay, we think, based on this conventional setup: It's about a lovable loser who makes good.
For a few minutes, this is exactly what it seems to be. Frank goes into town to sing a song for amateur hour, and finds that Roy Baker (James Caan) and Julie Mitchell (Lacey Kohl), legitimate celebrities, are in attendance, watching and performing. After the show, a disgusted Roy dumps a drunk Julie on the side of the road, Frank rescues her, Helen hates her, and we see the standard formula being set up.
But then, suddenly, Helen confronts Julie at the motel, and the movie takes an unexpectedly dark turn, totally reversing the movie we thought we were about to see. After a moment of adjustment, though, we nod, and think, oh, okay, it's a femme fatale movie: clueless dork gets victimized by sultry bombshell. Right, okay, got it.
Except we don't. An old military buddy of Frank's shows up, and catalyzes yet another gigantic plot twist. Within the first fifteen or twenty minutes, the movie has reinvented itself twice, surprising us with sharp turns into new territory. At this point, we have no idea where we're headed, but that's part of the fun. All we really know is that we're in the land of black comedy and convoluted plot -- comic noir, if you will -- and we have no clue what might happen next.
Every actor gets interesting things to do: James Caan has the slimy villain down pat, but this time he's got a long skanky ponytail, and he sings as well. Patricia Richardson plays wife Helen as well as her twin sister Wanda, and creates two characters who are totally different but whom we still believe are closely related. Daniel Stern plays Frank as an affable dork, and maintains the balance of letting him do stupid, selfish things without making him unsympathetic. Lacey Kohl nails the seductive siren, and displays a hell of a singing voice to boot. Sherry Stringfield has a less colorful role as Frank's friend Marguerite, but she gets the job done.
"Viva Las Nowhere" doesn't really have any aspirations
beyond being an fun and unpredictable dark comedy, but
on that level it succeeds. We laugh where we're
supposed to, we blink at the audacity of the plot
reversals, and we walk out satisfied. Director Jason
Bloom has fun playing with noir conventions, and keeps
everything moving at a brisk clip. The cast is solid,
the handful of country-and-western songs are peppy and
upbeat, and the movie is engaging and entertaining.
What more do you want?
JOINT SECURITY AREA -- South Korea, 2000, written by
Seong-san Jeong, Hyeon-seok Kim, Mu-yeong Lee,
Chan-wook Park, and Sang-yeon Park (from the novel
"DMZ"), directed by Chan-wook Park.
"Joint Security Area" starts out as a fairly conventional murder mystery, with the interesting twist that it's set in the DMZ between North and South Korea. It's a whydunit more than a whodunit: A South Korean soldier is in custody, having left two dead North Korean soldiers (and one injured) in the guardhouse on their side of the border. Given the volatile situation, the only investigation anyone could hope to trust is conducted by the neutral Swiss, who assign Major Lang, a female officer of Korean descent, to the case. Her job is to figure out what Sergeant Lee, the South Korean soldier, was doing across the border, and why he shot the three North Koreans.
From this intriguing premise is spun a fascinating and ultimately devastating story of humanity rediscovered amid political paranoia. Lang quickly uncovers several inconsistencies with the stories, and travels back and forth across the border interviewing the participants, including North Korean survivor Sergeant Oh (Song Kang-ho, from "The Foul King"). Then, after one particularly damaging revelation precipitates a shocking tragedy, we move into a long flashback that begins to establish exactly what really happened. (Tip: Pay close attention to the dates in the subtitles, or this transition may be initially confusing.) I don't want to give away any details, but I will say that the picture the film presents of life on the border is far more plausible, and human, than the hardline posturing offered by politicians on either side. Finally, at a critical juncture, we leave the flashback and return to the present, and both timelines are resolved more or less in parallel.
The film is marvelously balanced, seeing the situation and its participants with a clear eye; it neither demonizes its characters nor lets them off the hook for their beliefs and mistakes. There's a lot of humor, too, as in the flashback scene where Lee suddenly comes face to face with Oh and his stationmate, with unexpected results, or when two soldiers engage in a spitting game across the border. In addition, the film takes the time to provide the background necessary to understand some of the story's details, particularly in a small, understated scene where a group of American tourists is being given a tour on the South Korean side and a gust of wind blows a woman's hat across the border.
The only real problem I had, in fact, was an interlude about an hour into the film during which a history lesson is suddenly plopped into the narrative. We watch newsreel footage and listen to somebody summarize events in voice-over for several minutes, all in order to provide important background for Major Lang's character. This probably resonates much more strongly with Korean viewers than it does with me, so it's hard to fault it, but it was a strange hiccup in what had up to that point been a riveting storyline. Thankfully, there's another half hour of movie after that, and the final resolution is spellbinding, but it was still a definite speed bump.
"Joint Security Area" has been a smash hit in South
Korea, partly because of its humanist view of what are
normally very polarized Korean politics, but also
because it's a damn fine movie. Its final shot, a slow
tour of a photograph we barely noticed being taken by
a tourist earlier, confirms the film's subtlety,
wisdom, and dramatic power. It's intelligent,
well-crafted, often suspenseful and occasionally
hilarious, and ultimately very moving. I recommend it
highly.
GHOST WORLD -- USA, 2001, written by Daniel Clowes &
Terry Zwigoff, directed by Terry Zwigoff.
Although "Ghost World" has some superficial similarities with another film I saw at the festival, "My First Mister," in that the heart of the story is an unlikely friendship between a teenage girl and an older man, it doesn't take long before it establishes its own voice and territory. Ultimately, it's a fresh, funny, and very entertaining film, and should connect strongly with its audience.
"Ghost World" is more honest than "My First Mister" in several ways. First, the way it brings together Enid (Thora Birch) and Seymour (Steve Buscemi) is far less contrived; she first sees him as a result of a cruel prank she plays, exactly the sort of thing a cynical teen like her might do. Her worldview is also more clearly drawn, and more truthful. You'll roll your eyes along with her at the sappy platitudes offered during the graduation ceremony that opens the movie, and you'll identify with her difficulties coping with a horrible cinema snack-bar job.
In addition, instead of the lead character being in abject isolation, she also has friends and family she can talk to. Chief among these is Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), who was her best friend in school but from whom she starts to feel distanced after graduation, but there's also Josh (Brad Renfro), the guy who works at the convenience store. The lead character doesn't have apparently limitless free time, either; this is a world where the kids have to hold down jobs, attend summer classes, and look for apartments.
Director Terry Zwigoff (whose breakthrough was the documentary "Crumb") has a dry, deadpan style that fits the subtle observational quality of the story. There are no flashy camera pyrotechnics; these is the land of suburbs and strip-malls, seen for the dull, soulless landscape it is. Everything is about character and observation, down to the tiniest details and smallest supporting roles, from the mullet-headed doofus with the tank-top sunburn who practices nunchucks in the convenience-store parking lot to the pair of weathered jeans that sits ignored and abandoned on a cross-street sidewalk.
And because it's all about character, the cast is a major element of the film's success. Thora Birch is remarkable as Enid, giving her just the right touch of cynical intelligence and discontent (watch how she wrinkles her nose in disgust when one of her summer-school classmates bamboozles the teacher with a weighty justification for a trivial project), and then diving deep when Enid's illusions begin to crumble around her. Steve Buscemi has never been better, submerging his patented oddball mannerisms in favor of a nuanced and heartfelt portrayal of a man frustrated with being stuck at the fringes of society. Bob Balaban is on hand as Enid's father, distracted but well-meaning, and the great Illeana Douglas is absolutely hilarious as the bohemian art-class instructor. The relationship between Enid and Rebecca is uniquely well-observed, a much more thoughtful and realistic friendship between teenage suburban girls than is usually seen in American movies.
If there's a problem with the film, it's in the ending. There's a wonderfully ambiguous and poetic moment involving an apparently crazy man waiting on a bench for a nonexistent bus; had the film stopped here, holding and resonating, it would have left several minor threads unresolved, but would have been emotionally quite satisfying. Instead, it continues for several few minutes, unnecessarily answering questions we could have quite happily filled in ourselves. As my moviegoing companion said, endings are very hard, and "Ghost World" unfortunately ends on a small plateau instead of an upswing.
Up until that point, though, it's a marvelously funny and subtle character study that deserves to be seen by its intended audience. Fans of the Daniel Clowes comic will enjoy it (he co-wrote the screenplay, after all), but they should be aware that this is pretty much a whole new story set in the same world as opposed to an adaptation of existing material. Director Zwigoff acknowledges the story's origins with the film's opening shot, panning across a series of open windows that subtly echo the panels of a comic book, and there are a few important touchstones with the comic (Enid's fondness for a particular children's song, for example, was mentioned during the Q&A), but otherwise this movie stands on its own.
"Ghost World" is a smart, very funny character-based
story that finds its heart in interpersonal
connections and the subtle ways those relationships
change over time. If you need broad capers and car
chases to be entertained, look elsewhere, but for
anyone interested in human comedy, "Ghost World" is a
winner.
BAISE-MOI -- France, 2000, written by Coralie Trinh
Thi, directed by Coralie Trinh Thi & Virginie
Despentes.
"Baise-Moi" is a very aggressive, very edgy movie that has gotten a lot of attention in the last few months for its explicit sex and graphic violence. It certainly lives up to its reputation in terms of content, but somehow it feels oddly hollow and pointless.
The story is so simple as to be almost nonexistent. Manu and Nadine are women on the fringe; Nadine's a prostitute with a horrible roommate, and Manu and her junkie friend have been kidnapped and raped. One night, Manu and Nadine randomly meet outside a subway, decide they're soulmates, and go on a rampage of sex and murder. And, well, that's it, really. It's been called a nihilist "Thelma and Louise," which is somewhat accurate, except that it also includes graphic sexuality (the horrifying rape scene features explicit penetration shots).
It's a very angry movie, representing a worldview almost unique in cinema, in which two women take control of their lives and screw and kill whomever they want, particularly men. However, it comes across as strangely rudimentary, intuitive but amateurish, with sloppy storytelling and very low production values. The ever-present anger makes it a potent emotional cocktail, but it feels formless, as if the filmmakers thought the expression of violence, sexuality, and rage would suffice, in and of itself, to make it a satisfying moviegoing experience. It doesn't.
Now, I need to be clear: I didn't dislike it simply because I'm male, though I'm sure some men will recoil in reactionary horror from its violation of their conventional view of femininity. I actually found a certain measure of raw wit in the scene where one of the women inserts a pistol into a man's rectum and pulls the trigger, in a reversal of typical penetration roles, which is probably the scene that will freak out insecure men the most. But by that point I had long since become desensitized to the parade of bloody vengeance and carnal hunger, particularly because there's little effort made to differentiate between the women once they've launched their spree or to explore their characters in anything other than the most superficial way. Case in point is the scene in which the women's sisterhood is cemented; it's an interminable montage of them dancing together in their underwear in a hotel room, straight out of a mediocre 1982 coming-of-age afterschool special.
Here and elsewhere, the film employs a sledgehammer inversion of standard male/female archetypes. (For example, after one murder, one woman complains to the other that they don't have any good wisecracks.) While it's powerful to some extent, it's the film's only real idea, and it gets old fast. The ending is also rather perplexing; seeming as it is to be a validation, its decision to punish the heroines is abrupt and awfully confused. I'm sure some women will enjoy it up to that point, finding vicarious fulfillment of deeply buried contrarian desires, but for the rest of us, there's not much "there" there.
This is one of those notorious movies that people will feel compelled to watch at some point, just to see what the fuss is about. It isn't as bad as "Caligula," another movie that falls into the same category, but it isn't really very good, either. If you want to see a better-executed (but still violent) woman's-revenge story, rent Abel Ferrara's "Ms. 45," and if you want to see a sexually explicit movie about strong women, go find one of Michael Ninn's porn videos. But whatever you do, "Baise-Moi" really isn't worth your time or trouble.
Hellman out
