Welcome to AICN's 6th report on the MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL from Father Geek and our marathon reporting tag-team of Tamsin and Norman. Among other delights our reporters were treated to a new film by Jan Svankmajer, who does wonderful phansiful films of flight and fancy. We've got a DVD collection of them right now here at Geek Headquarters in Austin, and I love them. So Father Geek is happy to hear all about another fresh one...
A great day at the Melbourne International Film Festival today.
Started the day brilliantly with a fantastic Polish film, "The Big Animal" directed by (and starring) Jerry Stuhr from a 1973 script by Krzysztof Kiesilowski. It is the story of a middle-aged couple from a small town who adopt a camel after it is left by a travelling circus troupe. This is a magnificent film which explores prejudice, narrow-mindedness and small-town values by asking whether or not a big, "different" animal like a camel can be accepted and loved. It has won quite a few awards around the world, including The Los Angeles Film Festival and deservedly so.
Next up was a hilarious South Korean film called "The Foul King" about a weakling bank clerk who starts training to be a wrestler, specialising in cheating. This was hysterically funny and I actually had tears of laughter throughout. Really enjoyed this one.
The third film, "L'amour, l'argent, l'armour' wasn't that good. It was the story of a young boy and a prostitute who fall in love, run away, and hit the road together, escaping their shabby lives. Another teenage road movie which had some good tunes in the soundtrack (Velvet Underground and others) but not much else.
The new one from Abbas Kiarostami was up next, called "ABC Africa". It was his doco on Uganda and the HIV AIDS crisis. As much as I love Kiarostami unfortunately it wasn't much of a doco with the same images of emaciated children shot from above, and lots of singing and dancing. Sure we can always use the reminder that things are bad and we should all do our bit, but I think the documentary could have said a lot more.
Lastly we had a crazy little Czech fairy tale "Little Otik" from Jan Svankmajer who is
known for his outlandish surrealist films including "Faust". This is the
story of an infertile couple who use a tree trunk as a substitute baby.
Then the tree trunk starts to come alive and it has a HUGE appetite. The
couple try to keep it a secret and it is only the nosy little girl who lives
next door who discovers the truth. This was a crowd-pleaser and extremely
funny and entertaining. It was a little long but a fun world to be part of
for a couple of hours.
Overall a really great day, especially the first two.
To the person who asked, I am seeing "Brotherhood of the Wolf" on the 1st of
August, and have heard many positive things about it.
Another big one today - maybe I'll try for seven.
Tamsin (by the way I'm a "HER" not a "HIM".
Whoa!!! That just goes to show you that even at ol' Father Geek's advanced age you can still learn something NEW/DIFFERENT everyday, Tamsin is a female name... Cooooooool!!! Now, on to Norman's part of this column...
I don't like dissing films. And over a festival, with the sheer volume of films coming at you, it's hard not to repeat the same easy crits over again. Plus, praising a film is much more enjoyable, and therefore an easier write. That's why I'm pleased to report back - as MIFF nears its halfway point - with positive news.
I considered missing the Korean THE FOUL KING because my only other MIFF encounter with an amiable comedy - the Belgian EVERYBODY FAMOUS - was pretty dire. Jeez I'm glad I didn't. This was an absolute treat, and I foresee big crossover success for FOUL KING. Dae-Hun is a timid blank clerk, intimidated by a boss who likes to grip him in vicious headlocks. He takes up wrestling atnights, and is soon given a character: "The Foul King" (because he cheats every opportunity he can get). Soon Dae-Hun is wrestling professionally, and also giving his boss something to think about by finally breaking those headlocks.
The audience was sold on this from the word go. Director Kim Jee-Won constructs his gags with an assured tone, paying set-ups off at the most unlikely of moments (one in particular being when our Foul King mistakes a prop wooden fork for the real article). Dae-Hun is played to perfection, particularly at one moment when he's giggling at the silliness of the wrestling moves and then straight-faced when chided by his trainer.
This isn't an unqualified rave, though. The final set piece of the film, which is of course a fight, teeters on demanding our empathy with Dae-Hun rather than winning it through comedy. A subplot regarding a possibly illegal loan pushed through by the evil boss was also left hanging. Luckily Kim regained the requisite tone near the end and the audience left the theatre with grins and a happy rumble of praise.
I wanted to let this good feeling settle but my program informed me that I had LATE NIGHT SHOPPING. The team behind this Scottish "slacker comedy" (Variety's words, not mine) have been compared to the Boyle/Hodge/McDonald team behind that one okay film, one brilliant film, and two crap ones. It's probably an accurate comparison, because Metzstein/Lamont/Lothian have now gotten that one okay film out of the way. This determinedly youthful ensemble piece reminded me of the Australian ANGST which came and went during 2000 - with the echoes of coincidence driving the action.
What really cheeses me off, though, is just how conventional this and many other supposedly "youth" film narratives really are. People can argue about compromise all they like, but when you really harness that new way of telling a story it's like a rocket going off (and the wider audience knows this too). MIFF 1999 I staggered out of RUN LOLA RUN convinced that I'd seen a new kind of cinema. The same for KIDS, and TRAINSPOTTING. It's something that doesn't happen too often, and that's why I'm carpet-bombing MIFF this year. Not much luck yet, but I'm still looking.
Next was (do I hear "another"?) Korean film, MEMENTO MORI (translated as "Remember the dead"). The scrabble-players who synopsise the MIFF films mentioned not one but several magic words in their wrap: Dario. Argento. Lesbians. CARRIE. Psychokinetic. So of course the queu stretched almost out of the cinema, and 30 titty-less moments into the film we had more than a few walkouts. I consider myself a good friend of Dario - he promised to appear on my variety show in the 70s but negotiations broke down over airfares - and I can say with some authority that MEMENTO MORI bears no sign at all of his ouevre. Naughty MIFF synopsisers.
Co-director and writer Kim Tae-Yong introed this film, urging us to "not close our eyes to the drama", and not think of it as a horror flick. Wise advice as it turned out, as this is basically a teen film set in a single-sex girls high school. A diary documenting a lesbian love affair between two of the students gets into the wrong hands, and bad things start to happen. One of the lovers commits suicide, and her ghost comes back to haunt the school that had frowned upon her affair. The first 30 minutes of this is keenly observed drama of some weight. After which point the filmmaker's hold over their material slips and I lost my footing in the flurry of flash-backs and flash-forwards. I wanted to love MEMENTO MORI - as it is, I can recommend it as extremely interesting. Just don't expect Dario Argento.
Old Norman Gunston was developing a bit of a neck and back ache by this point, but luckily one of my fans had brought along a tape of my 1993 comeback shows. I passed out within the first ten seconds and when I came to my muscles were totally relaxed. Nice one, McGregor.
LITTLE OTIK was completely sold out, so I crept in via the catacombs and watched from my private box near the spectacular roof of the Capitol Cinema. It's the story of a barren Czech couple who adopt a wooden-carved baby as their son, naming him Otik. And Otik becomes real (stop-motion and all) - a real, wooden baby with an appetite that chronologically includes milk, carrot soup, cats, people, and cabbages. Alzbetka, a little girl in the flat opposite the couple, realises the correlation between their situation and an traditional Czech fairytale that also includes a hungry wooden baby. She attempts to protect the ravonous Otik from the same fate - a hoe through the stomach - as in the fairytale.
Director and writer Jan Svankmaer handled this material beautifully, barely putting a foot wrong over two hours. As in all great fairytales the characters are boldly drawn without seeming like cut-outs. The clear, inevitable swing of action and consequence so characteristic of fable dominates this tale, but it's to Svankmaer's credit that we are always kept guessing about where he's going with it. Reading a little deeper, it's a story about trying to resist tradition. Which is what we all should - and need - to do sometimes, really. So endeth the sermon according to Norman Gunston.
