September 2004

The Alzheimer Case (De Zaak Alzheimer)

by James McNally on September 12, 2004

in Film Festivals,TIFF

The Alzheimer Case (De Zaak Alzheimer)

The Alzheimer Case (De Zaak Alzheimer) (Belgium, dir­ector Erik Van Looy): Although based on a novel, this stylish police thriller’s main con­ceit (”hitman has Alzheimer’s”) could have been lifted from a Hollywood film executive’s idea of “high concept”. Except that it would have made a for­get­table Hollywood pic­ture. Instead, dir­ector Van Looy sets this story in his native Belgium. Police detect­ives Vincke and Verstuyft are like a modern day Starsky and Hutch, without the bad hair­cuts. Who knew that Antwerp even had police, never mind such cool ones? Their job is to track down the man who’s killed sev­eral high-profile politi­cians and a young child prostitute.

Reminding me a lot of Terence Stamp in The Limey, vet­eran actor Jan Decleir por­trays aging hitman Angelo Ledda, whose refusal to kill the young girl leads him to seek revenge on the people who want her dead. His deteri­or­a­tion is a cause for sym­pathy as well as a plot device. He must com­plete his “mis­sion” before he for­gets his reasons for car­rying it out. He also plays a cat and mouse game with the police who are trying to solve the killings, staying one step ahead until he can no longer think clearly.

Van Looy admitted his fond­ness for “police thrillers with a soul” and espe­cially for the work of Michael Mann, and the influ­ence of Mann is every­where. If you like Mann, you’ll like this film. Well-developed char­ac­ters, moody cine­ma­to­graphy and fine acting didn’t com­pletely save this film, though. I thought the plot was a little too straight­for­ward, and the film itself was about 20 minutes too long, with a couple of false end­ings that could have been re-cut. I think I would have given a shorter ver­sion of this film an 8, but even if it was a slightly deriv­ative cop film, it was a slightly deriv­ative cop film in Flemish!

Note: The film even­tu­ally got a North American release under the new title The Memory of a Killer so you may want to look for it under that title at your local DVD shop.

Official site of the film: ms.skynet.be/alzheimer

7/10(7/10)

Tagged as: belgium

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Salvador Allende

by James McNally on September 12, 2004

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,TIFF

Salvador Allende (Chile/France/Belgium/Germany/Spain/Mexico, dir­ector Patricio Guzmán): September 11 will forever be remembered in this country as the anniversary of the attacks that brought down the World Trade Center. But it’s also the anniversary of the death of Salvador Allende, the demo­crat­ic­ally elected pres­ident of Chile whose gov­ern­ment was brought down by a CIA-backed coup d’etat in 1973. Director Guzmán has spent his entire film­making career doc­u­menting and exploring the tragic recent his­tory of his country, and with this film he finally turns to Allende, a hero to Chile’s polit­ical left. The coup that res­ulted in his death led to 18 years of brutal dic­tat­or­ship under General Augusto Pinochet, a dark period from which the country hasn’t entirely emerged.

A deeply per­sonal por­trait, the film prob­ably makes more sense in the con­text of Guzmán’s other films. For someone who doesn’t have much back­ground on Chile, it can be a bit mad­dening since it assumes a famili­arity with the his­tory of Chilean politics. Early film of Allende cam­paigning for pres­ident is quite moving, though. The dir­ector has mostly been based in Paris since he fled Chile after the coup, and it’s clear that the Chile to which he returns doesn’t have much time for him. His inter­views with old Socialist Party mem­bers are touching, but seem only nos­talgic. He doesn’t talk to anyone from the cur­rent polit­ical scene, and an inter­view with the former US ambas­sador appears to have been con­ducted by someone else, a long time ago.

The fact that no offi­cial bio­graphy of Allende has ever been pub­lished in Chile is remark­able. It’s almost as if Chileans want not only to forget the night­mare of Pinochet, but also the dream of utopia that Allende offered before­hand. Sadly, at this point in Chile’s his­tory, Guzmán seems a bit like one of the old com­rades he inter­views: con­demned to irrelevance.

On the other hand, the par­al­lels between Allende and cur­rent Venezuelan pres­ident Hugo Chavez are remark­able, including the opposition’s tac­tics of strikes and eco­nomic protests. It is no wonder that Chavez sus­pects US involve­ment in the coup that nearly toppled his gov­ern­ment in 2002. In that coup, while Chavez and his min­is­ters were holed up in the pres­id­en­tial palace, the army threatened to bomb the building, a threat that was actu­ally car­ried out by the Chilean mil­itary in 1973. The footage shot by Guzmán of that event is par­tic­u­larly chilling. My hope is that Allende’s idealism and com­mit­ment to peaceful change are a beacon for Chavez, and indeed for all the people of Latin America and the rest of the world. He was one of the first heads of state to warn about the dangers of mul­tina­tional cor­por­a­tions, for instance, and it is clearer than ever that the struggle of the world’s people is no longer about Cold War alle­gi­ances and ideo­lo­gies, but against rampant global cap­it­alism and the con­sumerism that feeds it. Guzmán said he wanted to make this film for young people. Perhaps in a few years’ time, he can make another film in Chile, not about old sol­diers, but about young ones.

Related Web Site: www.salvadorallende.com/

Related Web Site: www.neravt.com/left/allende.htm

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: chile

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Ferpect Crime

by James McNally on September 12, 2004 · 1 comment

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Crimen Ferpecto

Ferpect Crime (Crimen Ferpecto) (Spain, dir­ector Álex de la Iglesia): I knew I was going to enjoy this film from the moment a large rumpled man in a Misfits t-shirt lumbered onto the stage to intro­duce him­self. “Hola, amigos. The person who is sup­posed to intro­duce me is not here. I am here but she is not here. She is in the bath­room.” Director Álex de la Iglesia had us laughing even before the first frame of his film. While admit­ting that Ferpect Crime was just about the worst title for a film ever, he told us that this film was about a man who was so obsessed with living a per­fect life that it was bound to cause prob­lems. It’s no sur­prise to learn that the dir­ector has a degree in philosophy.

Rafael works as a salesman in the ladies’ wear sec­tion of an upscale depart­ment store. He’s very pop­ular at work, espe­cially with the ladies, and he’s very very good at his job. So good, in fact, that he con­siders him­self a lock for the pos­i­tion of floor man­ager. But after losing the pro­mo­tion to his hated rival Don Antonio, things take a turn for the worse and pretty soon Rafael has a dead body on his hands. His only help comes from the one woman he hasn’t already bedded, the unat­tractive Lourdes. Before long, Lourdes has Rafael wrapped around her finger and his life is far from the model of per­fec­tion he has always pur­sued. As the plot thickens, the comedy becomes much darker and the film almost turns into a thriller. There is also a strong ele­ment of satire, making this much more sub­stan­tial than the laughs would indicate. The con­clu­sion (”lesson” seems too strong a word here) is that it’s only after we give up our unreal­istic expect­a­tions of living a per­fect life that we can really begin to live at all. But if that’s too heavy for you, then go just to see the scene where Rafael goes to meet Lourdes’ par­ents. This film makes me want to see every other film by this warm and wickedly funny director.

Film’s Web Site: www.crimenferpecto.com

Director’s Web Site: www.alexdelaiglesia.com

9/10(9/10)

Tagged as: spain

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Drum

by James McNally on September 11, 2004

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Drum (South Africa, dir­ector Zola Maseko): Drum is the story of Henry Nxumalo, a journ­alist for South Africa’s pion­eering Drum magazine. Set in the mid-1950s, the film attempts to recreate the ambi­ence of Sophiatown, an area of shops and nightclubs in central Johannesburg that has been com­pared to Harlem during its Renaissance. Henry is at first con­tent to write sports stories for the magazine, until the gradual encroach­ment of apartheid laws threatens his beloved neigh­bour­hood. Henry’s politi­ciz­a­tion leads to con­front­a­tions with the author­ities and to a pre­dict­able end.

Overall, I don’t feel like I have much to com­plain about. It’s just that, well, I think I expected more punch. I’m a vet­eran of many films and plays dealing with South African his­tory, but most of them (Cry Freedom and the under­ap­pre­ci­ated Barbara Hershey vehicle A World Apart, for instance) deal with the polit­ical awakening of white lib­eral South Africans, and have been dir­ected by white, often for­eign, dir­ectors. Even so, I found them powerful and inspiring. Naturally I expected that a film about a genuine black hero dir­ected by a young black South African dir­ector would be even more powerful and affecting. And this one just wasn’t. Clearly, the casting of American Taye Diggs in the role of Henry has a little bit to do with it. His casting tells me that the dir­ector wanted to make a com­mer­cial film, and with that comes some inev­it­able tradeoffs. The film feels too short and hur­ried to make Henry’s trans­form­a­tion con­vin­cing. His rela­tion­ships with his wife, boss, and col­leagues were surely an integral part of the story, and yet they feel super­fi­cial here. At the Q&A after the film, Diggs even admits that he still feels the part should have gone to a South African actor. The dir­ector countered that “women dig Taye Diggs” and that his pres­ence would “put bums in seats.” Enough said about that.

The music, though, stands out and almost suc­ceeds in elev­ating the film. Granted, it is pretty hard to mess up the music in a South African film, and here there is a fine mix of town­ship jazz and mournful hymns that hints at what life in Sophiatown must have been like.

Overall, the film was com­pet­ently written, dir­ected, shot and acted. But it feels a little bit like a missed oppor­tunity. Apart from the two films I men­tioned above, you really should see the one-woman play The Syringa Tree (by Pamela Gien) if you ever get the chance. That play, per­formed by one woman on a nearly bare stage, has left indelible images in my mind that no film can ever match.

Related Web Site: Drum Photographer Jürgen Schadeberg — check out the film on this page entitled “Have You Seen DRUM Lately?” which sounds like a nice com­panion piece to this film.

7/10(7/10)

Tagged as: apartheid, southafrica

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The Real Underground Cinema

by James McNally on September 10, 2004

in Uncategorized

Police in Paris have dis­covered a fully-equipped cinema in the cav­erns under­neath the city. It appears to be the work of the “Perforating Mexicans”, one of the city’s secret soci­eties of “cata­ph­iles”, people who enjoy exploring the hidden net­work of cata­combs and tun­nels that stretch for over 170 miles. This reminds me of the Troglodistes in Caro and Jeunet’s film Delicatessen. (via kottke)

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