Bonsai
(Chile-France-Argentina-Portugal)
Directed, written by Cristian Jimenez
Source: Based on the novel by Alejandro Zambra
With: Diego Noguera, Nathalia Galgani, Gabriela Arancibia, and Trinidad Gonzalez
Moving away from the postmodern cleverness of his first feature, "Optical Illusions," writer-director Cristian Jimenez faithfully adapts Alejandro Zambra's acclaimed novella, "Bonsai," to deliver one of the finest accomplishments from the freewheeling new generation of Chilean filmmakers.
By turns gentle, deadpan, droll and sarcastic, Jimenez's film reflects on Proust's
"Remembrance of Things Past" to track a sweet but doomed love affair between literary -- and pleasurably randy -- college students.
Pic's easygoing balance of serious artistry and unpretentious mood may break into the hard-to-crack North American theatrical market after a terrific fest run.
Perhaps reflecting the fact that Zambra's book has already been canonized as a new classic, Jimenez wisely adheres to the source's themes and narrative essence, as well as to its interplay between fiction and fact, and the miniaturist aesthetic suggested by the title.
Indeed, the pic is equivalent in its 92-minute running time to the book's 90 pages, though it shouldn't be viewed as a merely slavish adaptation, since it contains plenty of its own inherently cinematic frissons and musicality.
The fates of Julio (Diego Noguera) and Emilia (Nathalia Galgani) are sealed from the start, as the viewer is informed that at the end of the film, Emilia dies and Julio remains alive and alone, which he had been years before Emilia's death.
This is leavened by a gently applied flashback-flashforward structure, which jumps between Julio's college years in the provincial coastal city of Valdivia and his adult life eight years later when he's still struggling to become a novelist in Santiago.
The paired time signatures are distinctively marked. Younger Julio is primarily a reader, and a fairly lazy one at that (albeit with serious literary aspirations), and it's this interest that draws him to fellow lit student Emilia, to whom he lies that he's read Proust before falling in love with her.
Older Julio is less a reader than a writer, and also accompanied by a woman -- apartment neighbor Blanca (Trinidad Gonzalez). In both sections, books, writing and sex are never far from each other.
"Bonsai" gets much of its quiet comic energy from Julio's tendency to coast by on a sea of lies, which he then must confront. He's first seen as a collegiate buffoon: Noticing that most of his classmates raise their hands when the professor asks if they've read Proust's opus, Julio raises his, and then checks out the volumes, which he proceeds to read at the beach.
His dry, somewhat expressionless manner is attractive to the obviously smart Emilia, though a good deal of the effect of the film's compressed and economically told love affair comes from the low-key but assured chemistry between Galgani and Noguera, who dominates the film, and manages to be convincing at two slightly different ages.
Eight years on, Julio offers to transcribe to computer the handwritten manuscript of a veteran novelist (Hugo Medina, perfectly cast), though his asking fee proves too rich.
Undeterred, Julio not only fibs to Blanca that he's working with Gazmuri, but proceeds to write his own version of what he thinks Gazmuri's novel should be, based on a reading of the manuscript -- even putting the author's name on the cover page and titling it "Bonsai."
Not surprisingly, the novel's narrative is a close version of his experience with Emilia, and there's a way to view the film so that the college-era scenes are visualizations of the fraudulent/true, semi-autobiographical novel Julio's writing.
It's this flexibility of readings that lend the film the same kind of
expansive emotional texture as the novel, especially in its consideration that
the line between fiction and lies can be a narrow one. Although a pair of more
symbolic scenes involving plants, including a bonsai, are a bit too precious,
Jimenez treats them with a fine, light hand. This wasn't always the case with
"Optical Illusions," and "Bonsai" marks the steady maturing of his artistry.
As was true of the previous film, every filmmaking department is executed
with elegant aplomb, in particular Soledad Salfate's occasionally syncopated
editing (sometimes across multiple locales to amusing effect) and a rhythmic,
rock-accented underscore by the group Panico.
Camera (color, HD), Inti Briones; editor, Soledad
Salfate; music, Panico; production designer, Jorge Zambrano; sound, Manuel
Robles; sound designer, Cristian Freund; assistant director, Waldo Salgado;
casting, Soledad Gaspar.
Andres Waas, Hugo Medina. (Spanish, English, Latin
dialogue)
A UFO Distribution (in France) release of a
Jirafa/Rouge Intl./Rizoma presentation. (International sales: Rezo World
Sales,
Paris.) Produced by Bruno Bettati, Nadia Turincev, Julie Gayet,
Hernan
Mussalupi.
Reviewed on DVD, Buenos Aires, April 14, 2011. (In
Cannes Film Festival -- Un Certain Regard.) Running time: 92 MIN.
By Robert Koehler
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Polisse
(France)
Directed by Maiwenn
Screenplay, Maiwenn, Emmanuelle Bercot.
With: Karin Viard, Joeystarr, Marina Fois, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Maiwenn, Karole Rocher, Emmanuelle Bercot, Frederic Pierrot, Arnaud Henriet, and Naidra Ayadi
A Parisian Child Protection Unit gets the gritty group-portrait treatment in "Polisse," the third feature from mono-monikered actress-helmer Maiwenn.
Crimes against minors, often vice-related, are the harrowing day-to-day reality of this motley group of cops, who face their work with a necessary dose of humor and the more-than-occasional breakdown.
Though rough edges are very much part of pic's fabric and charm, the current two-hour-plus edit is too choppy, with many sequences feeling rushed or underdeveloped. Nonetheless, this police ensembler has enough highlights to arrest savvy arthouse patrons worldwide.
Maiwenn demonstrated a flair for mixing comedy, drama, autobiographical elements and a documentary-like approach in her sophomore helming effort, "All About Actresses." But her latest has more in common, thematically speaking, with her autobiographical directorial debut, "Forgive Me," a crude, at times painfully honest film about a pregnant daughter's relationship with her abusive father.
The helmer's third and by far most ambitious and complex pic, "Polisse" looks at a large group of colleagues who work for the Child Protection Unit in northern Paris. Early reels immediately throw auds into the thick of things, and characters only slowly emerge as Maiwenn follows different cases, heated discussions over lunch and after-work gossip sessions.
The details of the vice-related cases, many of them shocking even for seasoned vets like the ones portrayed here, are not as important as the effect they have on the cops, who try to continue living their own lives as best they can while doing a job that confronts them with bottom-of-the-barrel humanity on a daily basis.
The squad includes Nadine (Karin Viard), who's in the middle of a divorce and has to watch what she eats, while her work partner, Iris (Marina Fois), swears by a little exercise (and some trips to the restroom).
Mathieu (Nicolas Duvauchelle) secretly carries a torch for his married partner, Chrys (Karole Rocher), who's just found out she's pregnant. The unit daddy is Balloo (Frederic Pierrot), who allows Fred (Joeystarr), the resident hothead with the heart of gold, to crash at his place.
Maiwenn is probably most famous Stateside for her supporting role in "The Fifth Element" from Luc Besson, with whom she had a child at 16. Here, she co-stars as a nerdy photog who has an assignment from the Interior Ministry to document the unit's work.
Somewhat oddly, Maiwenn's character is one of the group's blander elements, as is the role played by actress/co-scripter Emmanuelle Bercot.
"Polisse" is most successful in several impressive individual moments, such as a big celebration in a club after a case has a happy ending; a hilarious scene in which the entire office is confronted with a teen who values her smartphone more than her dignity; and the impressive dramatic undercurrents that surface when Fred can't find a shelter for an immigrant mother and her young son.
Impressively, the editing balances these moments of high drama and police action with more routine office work, as the cops blow off steam and reveal snippets of their private lives. But while this equilibrium works well in terms of tone, individual story threads are shortchanged and some narrative inroads barely developed.
Some characters remain background filler except for one big scene, while a late-in-the-game field operation in a mall is treated in such a rushed manner that it seems to serve only as a setup for the rather anticlimactic hospital scene that follows.
The ending rather awkwardly crosscuts between one of the rare scenes that stays close to the p.o.v. of a child victim, apparently chosen at random, and the rather drastic goings-on during a unit meeting.
As in her previous efforts, Maiwenn coaxes terrific, naturalistic perfs from her ensemble without eschewing the extreme emotional highs and lows that could have led to more caricatured turns.
Joeystarr, a rapper famous locally for his run-ins with (irony of ironies) the police as much as his music, delivers on the promise of acting talent he first suggested in "All About Actresses." The way he's seen behaving around his own daughter, of whom he sees very little, speaks volumes about how working for the unit can be its own kind of slow poison.
Handheld video aesthetic again imbues a nonfiction feel that augments the urgency and rawness that propel the entire film. Downbeat but unsentimental score by Stephen Warbeck is used only sparingly.
Running time: 127 MIN. (French, Italian, Romanian, Arabic dialogue)
Camera (color, DV), Pierre Aim; editors, Laure Gardette, Yann Dedet; music, Stephen Warbeck; production designer, Nicolas de Boiscuille; costume designer, Marite Coutard; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS), Nicolas Provost, Sandy Notarianni, Rym Debbarh-Mounir, Emmanuel Croset, assistant director, Frederic Gerard, casting, Nicolas Ronchi.
MORE cast: Jeremie Elkhaim, Ricardo Scamarcio, Sandrine Kiberlain.
A Mars Distribution release of a Les Productions du Tresor presentation of a Les Productions du Tresor, Arte France Cinema, Mars Films, Chaocorp, Shortcom production, in association with Canal Plus, CineCinema, Arte, with participation of Manon, Wild Bunch. (International sales: Wild Bunch, Paris.) Produced by Alain Attal.
Reviewed By Boyd van Hoeij at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 12, 2011.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Where Do We Go Now?
Hallaa lawein / Et maintenant ou va ou?
(France-Lebanon-Italy-Egypt)
Directed by Nadine Labaki
Screenplay, Labaki, Jihad Hojeily, Rodney Al Haddad, with the collaboration of
Thomas Bidegain
With: Claude Baz Moussawbaa, Layla Hakim, Nadine Labaki, and Yvonne Maalouf
In a war-ravaged Middle Eastern village, Muslim and Christian women band together to prevent further sectarian violence in the comic fable "Where Do We Go Now?"
The second feature from Lebanon's Nadine Labaki ("Caramel") offers a clever twist on Aristophanes' classic comedy "Lysistrata" as the resourceful femmes try almost every means at their disposal to pacify their menfolk.
Tickling the funny bone but never tapping the emotions, the genial and at times genuinely inventive pic should achieve modest arthouse success worldwide despite problems of tone, pacing and performance.
Unfolding in an unspecified time and uncertain place, the pic's poetic and visually striking opening moments establish the universal nature of the theme Labaki is humorously addressing, as a bevy of black-clad women (some in headscarves and some bearing crosses) sets off for the local cemetery, their solidarity splitting only when some veer toward the Christian section and others toward the Muslim.
They're from a place with more dead than living, a remote spot lacking television reception, surrounded by landmines and accessible only by a damaged bridge, where mosque and church stand nearly side by side.
Most days, the women gather at the cafe of feisty Christian widow Amal (helmer Labaki) to work on joint projects and share gossip. When a flare-up in fighting in the outside world incites local incidents between members of the two faiths, the women work night and day to defuse the situation, with some of their solutions more potent than others.
Collaborating again with her "Caramel" co-scripters, along with "A Prophet" scribe Thomas Bidegain, Labaki overeggs the pudding with a surfeit of characters at the expense of emotionally engaging character development.
A hint of interfaith romance between Amal and handyman Rabih (Julien Farhat), sweetly limned in a fantasy song-and-dance scene, might have raised the emotional stakes but remains only a comic gimmick.
Likewise, a problem of tone emerges as seriously tragic incidents fail to have a dramatic impact, surrounded as they are by overwrought comic set pieces. And for a long stretch in the middle, even the comedy starts to flag as the women arrange to import a group of Ukrainian "dancers" from the Paradise Palace, but the plot doesn't do much with them.
The mix of thesps and non-pros might have something to do with the lack of energy in the midsection. So, too, the characterization of all the men except the priest and imam as oafs and hotheads.
Labaki and fellow pro Claude Baz Moussawbaa, as the mother of a murdered child, each have what should play as a big emotional scene, but instead comes off as shrill message.
At its best in illustrating the importance of a common female bond (honored even by the Ukrainian outsiders), the pic has its heart in the right place.
Despite her film's failings, Labaki deserves praise for bravely taking on an important issue. Craft credits are pro, but look as if they would have benefited from a bigger budget.
Likable if overloud score by Labaki's husband Khaled Mouzanar does some heavy lifting.
Running time: 100 MIN. (Arabic, English, Russian dialogue)
Camera (color, widescreen), Christophe Offenstein; editor, Veronique Lange; music, Khaled Mouzanar; set designer, Cynthia Zahar; costume designer, Caroline Labaki; sound (Dolby Digital), Michel Casang, Gwennole Le Borgne, Dominique Gaborieau.
MORE cast: Antoinette Noufaily, Julien Farhat, Ali Haidar, Kevin Abboud, Petra Saghbini, Mostaf Al Sakka, Sassen Kawzally, Caroline Labaki, Anjo Rihane, Mohammad Akil, Gisele Smeden, Khalil Bou Khalil, and Samir Awad
A Pathe Distribution (in France)/United Artistic Group (in Middle East) release of a Les Films des Tournelles, Pathe, Les Films de Beyrouth, United Artistic Group, Chaocorp, France 2 Cinema, Prima TV production with the participation of Canal Plus, Cinecinema, France Televisions, with the support of Ministry of Culture Lebanon, Fonds Francophone de Production Audiovisuelle du Sud in association with the Doha Film Institute. (International sales: Pathe Intl., Paris, London.) Produced by Anne-Dominique Toussaint. Executive producers, Lara Chekerdjian, Abla Khoury. Co-producers, Romain Le Grand, Hesham Abdelkhalek, Tarak Ben Ammar.
Reviewed By Alissa Simon at Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), May 16, 2011.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We Have a Pope
Habemus Papam
(Italy-France)
Directed by Nanni Moretti
Screenplay, Moretti, Francesco Piccolo, Federica Pontremoli
With: Michel Piccoli, Jerzy Stuhr, Renato Scarpa, Franco Graziosi, and Camillo Milli
Following a string of mordant themes, Nanni Moretti turns to gentle comedic stylings with the artistically and doctrinally conservative "We Have a Pope." The original-language title, referring to the words spoken to announce a new pontiff, reps the sole irony in this uneven tale of a cardinal (played with consummate brilliance as usual by
Michel Piccoli) who fears the papal tiara.
There are only so many yuks Moretti can milk from the sight of old men in clerical robes, and the film's toothlessness makes it unlikely for arthouse crowds to anoint a work that
shouldn't offend Opus Dei. Euro play will gain traction from "Pope's" Cannes competish berth, and Italo biz was strong on its opening weekend, but the helmer's resumption of his Woody Allen-like mantle appears designed for a conventional older crowd.
The biggest sin here isn't the cutesy, unoriginal take on the upper echelons of clerical life, but rather an inability to balance mildly amusing scenes, which seem tailored for a jokey trailer, with the anguish of a man unprepared for the responsibility of ascending St. Peter's throne. The results veer between occasional smiles and outright pretension, with only Piccoli's mastery transcending the material.
The College of Cardinals is sequestered in the Sistine Chapel (expertly reproduced at Cinecitta) to elect a pope. Following a few inconclusive votes, they appoint Cardinal Melville (Piccoli), who is overwhelmed with humility. As the world anxiously awaits, the prelates gather to announce "Habemus Papam" from the balcony of St. Peter's, but when the words are proclaimed, Melville screams and rushes away.
Stupefied, the cardinals withdraw without declaring the name of the new pope. Technically, Melville is the pontiff, but until he agrees to be publicly proclaimed, his identity can't be revealed. The curia is thrown into a tizzy, especially the Vatican spokesman (an excellent Jerzy Stuhr).
The cardinals remain sequestered, and a shrink (Moretti) is summoned to find out if the pope is mentally stable. The psychiatric session, conducted before the assembled
cardinals and severely circumscribed, reps the funniest scene, yet the script doesn't know where to take it, and Moretti's character becomes as aimless as the film itself.
Through a not-terribly-believable narrative somersault, the spokesman takes the pope incognito to the shrink's estranged wife (Margherita Buy), also an analyst. Following a farcical encounter, Melville deliberately loses his handlers and wanders the streets of Rome , finding inspiration from bus passengers, a parish priest (Salvatore Miscio), and a troupe of actors performing Chekhov's "The Seagull," all of whom help him formulate thoughts on the weight thrust upon him.
Timing works for and against "We Have a Pope": John Paul II's upcoming beatification means traditionalists are ready for a light-hearted pro-Church film they can embrace, but recent scandals have left such sourness that many will expect the man who made "The Caiman" to inject a note of pointed commentary.
They will be sadly disappointed: What they get instead are scenes of cardinals playing volleyball. The clerical fashion show in "Fellini's Roma" conveyed a biting absurdity that Moretti's film can't begin to touch.
Nor does the film have the profundity of the recent "Of Gods and Men," which explored faith in ways both respectful and deeply moving. Here, the uncertain pope's inner turmoil makes for engrossing moments, yet they're sabotaged by the helmer's apparent need to find humor in the thought of a cardinal wanting a good cappuccino.
By the hour mark, the film already feels overextended, and then it leaps into pretentious territory with an overly staged scene in a theater, followed by a finale dwarfed by the intensity of Arvo Part's "Miserere."
Thankfully, Piccoli makes it worthwhile, and thesps and acting coaches could do no better than study the way he conveys humility, intelligence, fear and innocent pleasure with the merest of eye movements.
Casting is flawless throughout, from Stuhr and his marvelous rubbery face, as controlled as that of a silent film comedian, to the multinational extras making up the believable
curia.
Alessandro Pesci's lensing is attractive, calling attention to itself only when quietly conveying an emotion, such as slow zooms of the pope alone in the Sistine Chapel, though slow-mo during the volleyball scene is pointless.
The f/x team does an excellent job inserting real Vatican background shots, and the set
designers and location scouts are to be commended for impressive research.
Running time: 101 MIN. (Italian dialogue)
Camera (color), Alessandro Pesci; editor, Esmeralda Calabria; music, Franco Piersanti; production designer, Paola Bizzarri; costume designer, Lina Nerli Taviani; sound (Dolby Digital), Alessandro Zanon; assistant director, Barbara Daniele.
MORE cast: Roberto Nobile, Ulrich von Dobschuetz, Gianluca Gobbi, Nanni Moretti,
Margherita Buy, Camilla Ridolfi, Leonardo Della Bianca, Dario Cantarelli, Manuela Mandracchia, Rossana Mortara, Teco Celio, Roberto De Francesco, Chiara Causa, Mario Santella, Tony Laudadio, Enrico Ianniello, and Salvatore Miscio
A 01 Distribution, Sacher Distribuzione (in Italy) release of a Sacher Film, Fandango, Le Pacte, France 3 Cinema production, in collaboration with Rai Cinema, in association with Sofica Coficup, Backup Films, Canal Plus, France Televisions. (International sales: Fandango Portobello Sales, London.) Produced by Nanni Moretti, Domenico Procacci.
Reviewed By Jay Weissberg at Cinema Quattro Fontane, Rome, April 17, 2011. (In Cannes Film Festival -- competing.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tatsumi
(Animated - Singapore)
Directed, written by Eric Khoo
Source: based on the manga book "A Drifting Life" and other works by Yoshihiro
Tatsumi
Voice actors: Tetsuya Bessho, Yoshihiro Tatsumi
For Singapore's Eric Khoo, "Tatsumi" reps an engaging departure from both his home nation and his live-action roots. Structurally similar to the helmer's "Be With Me," this animated account of the life and work of Japanese comic-book artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi interweaves biographical elements with adaptations of five of his manga stories, gritty midcentury tales that are said to have revolutionized the medium in Japan with their adult-skewed content.
Pic will have legs on the fest circuit but will do best offshore on ancillary in places like Gaul where comicbooks are most revered. Tatsumi himself narrates his own story, shown via an old-fashioned quasi-cel-animation style with a digital assist; color is used for his bio and one story, while a sparse, nearly monochrome palette is used for the other four stories, mimicking the one-color printing of the original comics.
The artist explains how he was 10 when WWII ended, growing up in an unhappy
household of six. A compulsive sketcher from an early age, he started getting work published in his teenage years, inspired by the work of Osamu Tezuka (creator of "Astro Boy"), who eventually became a rival of sorts.
Later, growing frustrated with the genre expectations that restricted comics to cutesy stuff for kids, he forged a new, darker aesthetic that he dubbed "gekiga" (literally,
"dramatic pictures"), devoted to stories that would cross over to an older demographic.
The tales that unspool here show how Tatsumi's work evolved over the years, growing increasingly bizarre and explicit in terms of both sex and violence. The first and longest, "Hell," about a photographer who grows rich from his much-publicized shot of shadows burned onto a wall by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, boasts a "Twilight Zone" feel with its dramatic but hammy twist.
Self-delusion and poor judgment recur as themes in the other four stories. In "Beloved Monkey," a desperately unlucky factory worker makes a poor decision for his pet. An aged salaryman blows his savings on women in "Just a Man," a mean-spirited cautionary tale of sorts, which is topped in the misogyny stakes only by "Good-bye," an account of a floozy who gets dumped by her American G.I. lover and then seeks revenge, inexplicably, by having sex with her own father.
The anything-goes spirit of the 1970s sexual revolution is further explored in the particularly twisted "Occupied," the story of a man obsessed with obscene graffiti in a public toilet; it's the only tale presented in color.
Pic's appeal will depend on viewer tolerance for the sometimes offensive subject matter, which is par for the course for modern manga but will be trickier to swallow for international audiences beyond fanboy circles.
As a work of animation, "Tatsumi" is pretty rudimentary, perhaps deliberately reminiscent of the Japanimation of the period in which it's largely set. Compositions are
based faithfully on Tatsumi's storyboard-like material, but the characters' movements are perhaps a bit too limited; backgrounds, as per tradition in anime, are much more richly rendered, and creative animation director Phil Mitchell does a pro job of replicating the menacing cross-hatched shadows that are so characteristic of Tatsumi's work.
Running time: 96 MIN.(Japanese dialogue)
Camera (color). Music, Christopher Khoo, Christine Sham; art director, Widhi Saputro; sound (Dolby Digital), Kazz; creative animation director, Phil Mitchell; supervising animators, Rafael Bonifacio, Jebbie Barrios; animation producer, Esaf Andreas Sinaulan; associate producer, Masato Yamamoto.
Reviewed By Leslie Felperin at Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard), May 17, 2011
A Zhao Wei Films, Infinite Frameworks production. (International sales: the Match Factory, Cologne, Germany.) Produced by Tan Fong Cheng, Phil Mitchell, Freddie Yeo, Eric Khoo.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Kid With a Bike
Le Gamin au velo
(France-Belgium)
Directed, written by Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
With: Cecile de France, Thomas Doret, Jeremie Renier, and Fabrizio Rongione
Belgium's Dardenne brothers make movies that remind you the most compelling stories are unfolding right outside your window, rather than in outer space, the distant past or
wherever cinema usually takes us.
But rather than diminishing the medium, they elevate it, as in "The Kid With a Bike," another fest-ready, arthouse-bound neorealist snapshot that subtly echoes virtual soul brother Vittorio de Sica's "Shoeshine" and "Bicycle Thieves."
The Dardennes' sixth Cannes-born feature, "Kid" shadows a stormy 11-year-old grappling with the realization that his father doesn't want him, shoring up the helmers' profoundly humanistic, observational approach after the slightly more mainstream "Lorna's Silence."
As played by newcomer Thomas Doret, Cyril is an intense young man. This much is evident from the first scene, in which the agitated lad attempts to break out of the boys' home where he lives after failing to reach his father by phone.
Cyril simply can't comprehend being abandoned: He's an angry kid, refusing to trust anyone but his own dad, even after seeing for himself that the deadbeat sold Cyril's bike and moved without a word.
"Kid's" first few reels track Cyril's determined search for his father. "Don't be upset if it's not the way you dreamed it should be," warns Samantha (Cecile de France), a kind-hearted hairdresser who generously agrees to watch Cyril on the weekends, hardly realizing what a handful the boy can be.
But her intuitions prove correct: Cyril's dad, a weary-looking lout played by Dardennes regular Jeremie Renier (who made his debut in the brothers' "La Promesse," which might just as easily have been called "The Kid With a Motorbike"), wants nothing to do with his son.
Now, all that leftover aggression needs an outlet -- an idea that fuels the remainder of the film, as the poor, wound-up kid acts out in various ways. Watching Samantha patiently try to get through to her foster charge is like witnessing a cowboy break in an obstinate mustang.
Though the narrative strands shift several times over the course of Cyril's journey, the basic arc tracks how the boy, half wild with desperation, is ultimately tamed by Samantha's fundamentally good nature.
A stock version of the same story might find de France's and Renier's characters gradually falling in love over the course of the film. In the Dardennes' hands, however, Samantha represents the sort of exemplary soul we too seldom see in films -- least of all Cannes, where "Kid" is competing alongside several entries committed to exposing pedophilia and child abuse.
Samantha is one of those beatific yet realistically challenged women, like Simone Signoret's "Madame Rosa," who embodies the best of us, putting aside her own interests in a sincere effort to give Cyril a chance at a proper childhood.
And yet, cinema thrives on conflict, and while the Dardennes' miniaturist style brooks no contrivances, it's not enough to base a film on a boy who refuses to be loved. So the helmers introduce a local thug named Wes (Egon Di Mateo) who sees potential in Cyril's pent-up anger, enlisting the kid to participate in a robbery that brings tragedy into the picture.
Among movie moralists, the Dardenne brothers certainly rank near the top of any list of directors preoccupied with matters of personal responsibility and conscience. As such, there's something a bit disappointing about how straightforward "Kid" is regarding the choices Cyril should be making, especially when compared with the more difficult decisions underlying "The Son" and "L'enfant."
"Kid" is undeniably mellower stuff, a softening further enhanced by Alain Marcoen's lensing, brighter and less brutally handheld than in their past collaborations. Members of an elite list of helmers who have won dual Palmes d'Or at Cannes, the siblings are known for launching acting careers, not casting established names (another regular, Olivier Gourmet, makes a brief appearance as a bartender here).
It's a pleasant surprise, then, to see them cast movie star de France, hot off Clint Eastwood's "Hereafter." The Belgian-born actress gets a rare chance to reprise her native accent for this film, set in Seraing, the blue-collar industrial town that has hosted most of the Dardennes' earlier efforts.
De France is a natural fit, blending into the vaguely white-trashy environs with her acid-washed denim and wild-print synthetics. Still, she's more than proven herself in the past.
The breakout here is 13-year-old Doret, the Dardennes' latest stunningly naturalistic, non-professional acting discovery. Whether blazing through Seraing's streets on his bike or carrying a difficult scene, he's never less than riveting to watch -- his face the telltale
steam-vent that augurs an emotional geyser roiling beneath.
Running time: 87 MIN.
Camera (color), Alain Marcoen; editor, Marie-Helene Dozo; set designer, Igor Gabriel; costume designer, Maira Ramedhan-Levi; sound (Dolby SRD), Thomas Gauder; associate producers, Arlette Zylberberg, Bernadette Meunier, Andre Michotte, Stefano Massenzi; assistant director, Caroline Tambour.
MORE cast: Egon Di Mateo and Olivier Gourmet
A Les Films du Fleuve, Archipel 35, Lucky Red, France 2 Cinema, RTBF, Belgacom production with the help of Centre du Cinema et de l'Audiovisuel de la Communaute Francaise de Belgique, VOO, CNC, Eurimages and the participation of Canal Plus, Cinecinema, France Televisions, Wallimage, Artemis Prods., Tax Shelter of the Belgian Government, Taxshelter.be, Inver Invest, Casa Kafka Pictures, in association with Wild Bunch and Soficinema 7, with the support of the Media Programme of the European Union. (International sales: Wild Bunch, Paris.) Produced by Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd. Executive producer, Delphine Tomson. Co-producer, Andrea Occhipinti.
Reviewed By Peter Debruge at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 14, 2011.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Footnote
Hearat shulayim
(Israel)
Directed, written by Joseph Cedar
With: Shlomo Bar Aba, Lior Ashkenazi, Alisa Rosen, and Alma Zak
It's said that academia is a famously back-stabbing place owing to its small-potatoes stakes. "Footnote" sets out to reveal the navel-gazing elements behind the pursuit of
arcane knowledge while laying bare the storms it creates when ego and father-son
rivalry play their parts.
Scripter-helmer Joseph Cedar shifts sympathies back and forth as frequently as he changes tone from jokey to bitter, skewering ivory tower blindness with some wit and, just occasionally, emotion.
A tendency to overbake may distance some, as could the immersion in obscure corners of Judaica scholarship, though Sony Classics' early Cannes pickup shows noteworthy
confidence.
Target auds will undoubtedly be Jewish viewers and college towns, a not insignificant demographic, yet "Footnote" is unlikely to find the same kind of heavy fest play as Cedar's Silver Bear winner "Beaufort."
Academic researchers rarely make for dynamic screen material (unless there's sexual hanky-panky involved), so Cedar goes to great lengths -- indeed, too great -- to turn
editing and music into the driving force behind the pic's liveliness.
Professor Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar Aba) worked for decades in semi-obscurity comparing corrupted manuscripts of the Jewish texts collectively known as the Talmud, with the near-impossible goal of preparing a version as close to the original ancient
writings as possible.
While Eliezer devotes himself to the minutiae, burying himself in the library or his study and barely publishing, his son Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi) produces book after book on broad Talmudic culture.
Father looks with disdain on his son's intellectual pursuits as much as on Uriel's constant need for the limelight. In many ways Uriel is a more human companion to Michael Sheen's pedant in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris": he loves to lecture, he
soaks up the adoration of students and colleagues alike, and he needs to be right, at all times.
While Eliezer toils away with little recognition apart from a lone footnote in a multi-tome work, Uriel has honors heaped upon him, which he accepts with a faux-humility calculated to set his father's teeth on edge.
The script nails academic gobbledygook along with the viciousness of professorial
rivalries, nicely realized not only via the father-son conflict but between Eliezer and peer Yehuda Grossman (Micah Lewesohn, pitch-perfect), the latter a self-righteous, two-faced SOB who saw his career flourish by deliberately sidelining Eliezer.
The pic's best scene occurs in a tiny office into which Uriel is called after Eliezer gets news that he's receiving Israel's most prestigious award, the Israel prize. The awards committee is chaired by Grossman, and Cedar's aim is unerring as he targets the insularity of the academic world along with the secret pacts and betrayals regularly concocted to keep rivals down.
Tellingly, the scene is also one of the very few not propelled by music. The sequence comes after a key though not unexpected plot twist, whose reveal occurs around the 40-minute mark.
Uriel's subsequent behavior shifts his character from merely a pompous egoist to more of what wife Dikla (Alma Zak) calls him -- a nice guy who avoids confrontation. Viewers feel a surge of satisfaction when he finally does go on the attack, for the right reasons, which makes the character a far more rounded figure than originally presented.
With all his flaws, at least Uriel moves forward, unlike his father, whose recondite pursuit of an elusive ur-text is ultimately presented as blind intellectual masturbation no more useful than Mr. Casaubon's unachieved "great work" in "Middlemarch."
Cedar's impatience with Eliezer's pursuits are crystallized in a well-written speech he puts in the mouth of the old scholar, in which the cataloguing of potsherds as opposed to the study of the vessel itself is proven to be all means and no end.
Despite the presence of Dikla, along with Eliezer's wife Yehudit (Alisa Rosen), "Footnote" is a decidedly male-centric film. Structurally, the pic is divided into named chapters that make for cute markers but give it the not-entirely satisfying feel of a jaunty satire.
Bouncy editing is intimately tied to Amit Poznansky's score, the latter sounding like Stravinsky at his most playful and competing far too much with characters and themes.
As in Cedar's past films, corridors and doors play a key role, with Yaron Scharf's tight
lensing subtly responding to the notion of dividers and passageways.
Running time: 106 MIN.
Camera (color, widescreen), Yaron Scharf; editor, Einat Glaser Zarhin; music, Amit Poznansky; production designer, Arad Sawat; creative designer, Michal Wolff; costume designer, Laura Sheim; sound (Dolby SRD), Tully Chen; line producer, Tamir Kfir; assistant director, Shir Shoshani; casting, Hila Yuval.
MORE cast: Daniel Markovich, Micah Lewesohn, Yuval Scharf, and Nevo Kimchi
A Sony Pictures Classics (in U.S.) release of a United King Films, Movie Plus production. (International sales: WestEnd Films, London.) Produced by David Mandil, Moshe Edery, Leon Edery. Executive producer, Michal Graidy.
Reviewed By Jay Weissberg at Cannes Film Festival (competing), May 13, 2011.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This Is Not a Film
In film nist
(Documentary -- Iran)
Directed by Jafar Panahi, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
With: Jafar Panahi
Take away his pen, and a writer will still find a way to write, but ban an Iranian filmmaker from making films, and what does he do?
In the case of irrepressible auteur Jafar Panahi, it'll take more than an arrest and 20-year filmmaking ban to silence the Iranian New Wave master. Released from prison but ordered not to direct, write screenplays, give interviews or leave the country, Panahi tests his luck with "This Is Not a Film," showing himself unbroken by censorship.
If pic could be smuggled out to Cannes, then it could find sympathetic auds elsewhere as well. Pic assumes a familiarity with Panahi's recent persecution, which sparked an
international outcry after the award-winning director of such soft-spoken, humanist tales as "The Circle" and "Offside" was arrested on March 1, 2010, for "propaganda against the Islamic Republic" in support of those protesting the re-election of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
One year later, on March 15, 2011, Panahi dared to turn the camera on himself, enlisting helmer Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (who specializes in "behind-the-scenes of Iranian filmmakers not making films") for what at first appears to be a mundane day-in-the-life
exercise.
Panahi sits at his kitchen table eating breakfast when he calls Mirtahmasb. Rather than discuss by phone, he instructs his colleague to drop by to discuss a few ideas. "Just don't tell anyone you're coming over," he says, clearly aware of the danger in what they're about to do.
Next we see Panahi's bedroom, empty as his phone messages play aloud. Because he has been forbidden from directing, others must do it for him; hence, one message features his son explaining that he set up the camera on a chair.
Such precautions are strictly semantic, of course. Panahi can call this assembly whatever he pleases (the end credits refer to it as "an effort by" him and Mirtahmasb, with all other credits/thanks left blank), but Iranian authorities aren't likely to share his sense of humor.
Besides, Iranian directors are notorious for spinning elegant parables from minimalist
situations, such as buying a goldfish (Panahi's debut, "The White Balloon") or losing a pair of shoes ("Children of Heaven"), and this project feels none the slimmer for its humble constraints.
If anything, it marks a courageous act of non-violent protest. If Panahi can't give interviews, then he will tell his own story, beginning with a reading of the screenplay he wasn't allowed to film.
Laying tape across his living room floor to delineate the apartment where the story takes place, Panahi summarizes the first few shots in the story, about a young woman whose
parents forbid her to attend university, locking her in a room where she spies a
handsome stranger through her window.
Like Lars von Trier's conceptual "Dogville," "This Is Not a Film" promises to test our idea of what form a film can take. Required to play all the roles, Panahi is overcome by emotion and interrupts himself, asking, "If we could tell a film, then why make a film?"
The way he sees it, description cannot possibly do justice to the power of cinema, making his punishment seem all the more harsh. Panahi frequently worries that the footage is turning out to be a lie.
"It is not me," he frets, and we wonder just how much he's holding back. As "This Is Not a Film" unspools, Panahi's involvement comes to feel more and more like direction in the traditional sense.
At first, he is careful to remain the only character on camera, ostensibly a precaution in case others might be punished for colluding with him on the project. Then his pet Iguana, Igi, makes a cameo, followed by a yappy dog belonging to Panahi's downstairs neighbor, Shima (she remains out of frame). A delivery man hands a bag of food through the door, unaware that he's guest-starring in Panahi's non-film.
Finally, a friendly college student drops by to collect his trash, temporarily subbing in for the building custodian. Panahi can't help making an actor out of him, with the lad
reminiscing about the day the authorities came to arrest Panahi as the two share an elevator ride together.
This would be the film's big setpiece, conducted as explosions go off all around them. The noises, alarming when we first hear them, turn out to be nothing more than firecrackers.
Panahi's day of filming falls on Fireworks Wednesday, which marks the Persian New Year -- a holiday that makes innocuous law-breakers of many, at least according to a news report Panahi watches, in which the president decrees fireworks illegal.
Standing at his balcony, filming the revelry with his iPhone, he seems to be saying that directing is more defiant an act than lighting a firecracker or two. Truth be told, Panahi's
poignant "Film" is infinitely more explosive.
Running time: 78 MIN.
Camera (color, DV), Panahi, Mirtahmasb.(International sales: Wide Management, Paris.)
Reviewed By Peter Debruge at Cannes Film Festival (Special Screenings), May 19, 2011.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
The Fairy
La Fee
(Belgium-France)
Directed, written by Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy
With: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy, and Philippe Martz
A funny-looking woman named Fiona walks into a hotel and offers to grant Dom, the
equally awkward night clerk on duty, three wishes in "The Fairy," the latest fest- and arthouse-friendly lark from semi-absurdist comedians Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy.
The fact that Dom can only decide on two wishes -- he'd like a scooter, plus unlimited gas for life -- and the near-certainty that Fiona isn't magic at all do little to slow the budding romance in this deliriously droll confection, which hones the misfit charm of their earlier features, "L'iceberg" and "Rumba," to find just the right balance.
The Belgo-Canadian-French trio, who specialize in pantomime and circus-style theatrics, have a clownlike knack for finding humor in the everyday. Ketchup bottles, bicycle chains and folding chairs become instruments of uproarious inspiration -- a reminder of the degree to which good, old-fashioned physical comedy has faded from cinema.
But unlike Peter Sellers, Jacques Tati and others who've excelled in this department, Dom and Fiona come as a pair, bringing a welcome dash of romance to the proceedings.
These two were clearly meant for one another, their gawky faces and knobby joints suggesting the string-bean silhouettes of Ichabod Crane and Olive Oyl.
Whether or not auds are familiar with their previous features, they immediately sense the couple's potential when Fiona (Gordon) shows up at Dom's (Abel) front desk. Third wheel Philippe Martz (a regular of their films) has already laid the comedic groundwork, playing an English tourist who none-too-subtly tries to get around the hotel's no-pets policy, but there's something special between the other two, even if Dom is slow to pick up on it.
Dom isn't exactly dim, but there's an endearingly distracted quality about him. For starters, he easily misses the obvious clues that Fiona has escaped from a local mental hospital, and even after figuring it out, he doesn't see that as an obstacle to their budding romance.
Fiona, meanwhile, must be extremely crafty to keep up her side of the relationship, which she does by granting his scooter-related wishes and conspicuously shoplifting a new outfit for their first proper date.
Embracing a fair amount of improv and exploration in their scripts, the creative team invent endless ways to use their bodies. Whenever the narrative momentum starts to lag, there's always room for a spontaneous dance scene, the first of which unfolds in a skinny-dipping daze and semi-explains Fiona's overnight pregnancy.
"The Fairy" improves upon their usual formula by building a tighter, more coherent story on which to hang the setpieces, with seemingly random details (such as the appearance of a woman's rugby team) and callbacks to earlier jokes (including co-director Romy's slapstick turn as a near-blind bartender) ensuring a steady stream of laughs.
One especially amusing sequence polishes "Rumba's" hilarious rear-projection gag, as Fiona and Dom chase after their baby, which Fiona carelessly placed on the trunk of a moving car.
Still, nothing can top Dom's crazy plan to break Fiona out of the hospital -- a sequence that not only brings down the house but also serves to advance the plot in the process.
While "The Fairy" clearly takes advantage of a larger budget and scope, the filmmakers have retained the lo-fi tricks that have always made their sensibility so amusing.
Tati did the same as his career progressed, though he spent more with each picture, until he finally bankrupted himself building "Playtime's" elaborate city set. In "The Fairy," Abel, Gordon and Romy have all of Le Havre as their playground.
And now that the they've established the ideal format for their brand of comicbook-style humor, one can't help but wish they show the good sense to keep it at this level going forward.
Running time: 94 MIN. (French, English dialogue)
Camera (color), Claire Childeric, Jean-Christophe Leforesier; editor, Sandrine Deegen; production designer, Nicolas Girault; sound, Fred Meert, Helene Lamy au Rousseau; special effects, Francois Jacquet.
A MK2 release of a MK2, Courage Mon Amour production in co-production with France 3 Cinema, with the participation of France Televisions, Canal Plus, Cinecinema, BeTV and the assistance of Centre du Cinema et de l'Audiovisuel de la Communaute Francais de Belgique et des Teledistributeurs Wallons, in association with BNP Paribas Fortis Film Fund. (International sales: MK2, Paris.) Produced by Marin Karmitz, Charles Gillibert, Abel & Gordon.
Reviewed By Peter Debruge at Cannes Film Festival (Director's Fortnight, opener), May 12, 2011.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Return
Directed, written by Liza Johnson
With: Linda Cardellini, Michael Shannon, John Slattery, and Talia Balsam
Liza Johnson makes the jump from festival-competing shorts to features with a somewhat familiar slice of life in "Return."
Set in a blue-collar Rust Belt community, pic follows a young woman returning from military deployment who is attempting to fit back in with her friends, husband and two young children.
Unspooling in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar in Cannes, though it would be right at home at Sundance and other American fests, this amiable, stylish, low-key picture should strike chords with fans of filmmaking where performances are restrained,
information is withheld and catharsis is avoided.
Army reservist Kelli (Linda Cardellini) has clearly been affected by experiences during her latest posting, not that she's admitting as much. "A lot of other people had it a lot worse" is the hardly reassuring mantra she uses to deflect questions from concerned friends and family.
Sensitive plumber husband Mike (Michael Shannon) has been attending a military spouses' group with Army wives, and knows not to push Kelli before she's ready to open up. But he loses sympathy when Kelli suddenly quits her day job in a ventilator factory, gets arrested on a DUI charge and places one of their daughters in jeopardy when she
fails to collect her from an after-school activity.
He's less censorious about his own failings: an affair with pretty, young Cara Lee (Bonnie Swencionis), who works at the local car showroom.
Cardellini, still best known for her work in TV's "Freaks & Geeks" and the "Scooby Doo" movies, is wholly credible in the lead role, and there's deft work from the entire ensemble. But because so little is revealed and not much drama occurs, Johnson takes audience interest rather too much for granted in the pic's first half.
A welcome jolt of energy and humor arrives with the introduction of Bud (John Slattery), a fellow member of the DUI program Kelli is ordered to attend. A Vietnam vet who lives in a shack in the woods next to a highly photogenic lake, Bud provides a temporary respite to Kelli's woes -- and more, when she resorts to desperate remedies to avoid another National Guard call-up.
"Return" is hardly the first movie about a soldier struggling to fit into civilian life, and it won't be the last, but few others will be as controlled. Pic avoids such cliches as color-desaturated flashbacks to wartime trauma; instead, Anne Etheridge's lensing nicely captures a built environment of carpet warehouses, light-industrial units and storage facilities, the frame frequently crisscrossed by telephone poles and cables.
T. Griffin's appropriately understated score is used sparingly.
Running time: 101 MIN.
Camera (color, Super 16), Anne Etheridge; editor, Paul Zucker; music, T. Griffin; music supervisor, Joseph Rudge; production designer, Inbal Weinberg; art director, Sara White; costume designer, Erica Munro; sound (Dolby Digital), Chen Harpaz; sound editor, Bill Lacey; assistant director, Bruce Edward Hall; casting, Allison Estrin, Rich Delia.
MORE cast: Paul Sparks, Bonnie Swencionis, Emma Rain Lyle, Louise Krause,
Rosie Benton, and James Murtagh
A Fork Films presentation of a 2.1 Films/True Enough production in association with Meredith Vieira Prods. (International sales: Rezo, Paris.) Produced by Noah Harlan, Ben Howe, Liza Johnson. Executive producers, Abigail Disney, Meredith Vieira, Amy Rapp.
Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Directors' Fortnight), May 14, 2011.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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