Hadewijch (Director: Bruno Dumont): In this, his fifth feature film, Bruno Dumont has created something as mysterious and beautiful as his protagonist. We meet young Celine in a convent, where she is hoping to take her vows as a nun. But her refusal to eat and other acts of self-denial worry the Mother Superior, who turns her out into the world, hoping to rid her of what she considers “self-love.” Though she lives with her wealthy parents in the centre of Paris, they’re distant and there’s some suggestion of buried issues with her father.
One day she meets some boys in a café, who are amazed at her trusting nature. Yassine takes a special liking to her, although she rebuffs his romantic advances, claiming she only has love for Christ. The young Muslim is befuddled but still besotted, so he continues their friendship. Eventually she visits the home he shares with his brother Nassir in the housing projects outside the city. Nassir is a “serious” Muslim, according to Yassine, and he thinks they’ll hit it off. He has no idea.
Nassir recognizes the fire that burns in Celine’s heart, and though their religions are different, their passion is the same. Over time, he convinces Celine that God is not only about love, but about justice as well. Soon after that, he takes her to Lebanon to show her the injustice he finds there. Dumont patiently lays the groundwork for a stunning climax that shows just how easily love can turn to violence.
Meanwhile, in a parallel plot, we follow David, a petty criminal working in construction at the convent. He breaks his parole and is sent back to jail for a few months. It’s not clear what his purpose is until the final scene, in which the two lives stand in stark contrast to each other. Celine lives in extremes, reaching for holiness and finding tragedy. David is an everyman, flawed but more capable of love than Celine could ever be. The intersection of their lives leads to a powerfully moving ending.
Dumont put his faith in non-professional Julie Sokolowski to play Celine, and the decision pays off. She portrays her disconnection from the world naturally, even as she radiates a forbidden sexuality. Her purity attracts men, but she only has eyes for Christ, and her obsession verges on the sexual. Her prayers are painful, expressing her yearning to be with Christ even as she protests his absence. She longs for the ecstasy and oblivion of union with God, and the connection with some of the rhetoric of Islamic terrorism couldn’t be more clear.
This is the first of Dumont’s films I’ve seen, and I’m captivated by his intelligence and willingness to explore such interior issues as religious faith and obsession. In the post-screening Q&A, he revealed that Hadewijch was a real mystic from the Middle Ages, and his exploration of what a modern example would look like in a world filled with political action makes for one smart and haunting film.
Official site of the film (en francais)
Here is the Q&A with director Bruno Dumont from after the screening:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Duration: 27:10
(9/10)
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
christianity,
faith,
france,
fundamentalism,
islam,
religion
Cleanflix (Directors: Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi): The Mormon religion forbids its adherents from watching R-rated movies, but Mormons desperately want to see the films that everyone else is talking about. This moral quandary created what looked like a golden business opportunity for a group of Utah entrepreneurs. Beginning in 2000, Ray Lines began using computer software to digitally remove offending scenes from DVDs. His edited versions of the movies were a hot seller and soon his business, Clean Flicks, was growing wildly. At its height, he owned 10 video stores and supplied another 70. He even moved the business online, selling off the stores to a number of different people. Daniel Thompson bought several of the stores and seemed to be the most successful. But after the Directors’ Guild of America filed suit against Clean Flicks and its operators, these businesses were living on borrowed time. When the case was finally settled in 2006, they were forced to close down.
But quite a few carried on. They simply found other companies to do the editing and bought their movies from them. Among these outlaws was Thompson. He simply felt that the market demand was overwhelming, and business was too good. He continued operating under what he saw as a legal loophole, which allowed educational use of copyrighted material. But his penchant for seeking the spotlight only brought unwanted attention to Flick’s Club, the editing company he was using, and they were soon ordered to shutter their operation. To make things worse, within a few months of his own business closing down, Thompson was charged with paying a minor for sex. The irony of someone operating a business which offered sanitized movies to a religious clientele being involved in such scandalous behaviour was not lost on the local media, whose attention Thompson no longer wanted.
The directors of Cleanflix faced the not-uncommon documentarian’s dilemma of having to deal with a changing story. Unfortunately, it’s led to the fracturing of their film into two pieces. The first half is an engrossing film about issues of censorship, intellectual property, and an examination of Mormon cultural mores. The second half is a voyeuristic look into one man’s moral failings. In my opinion, the effort to meld them into a coherent film is only partially successful. It’s unfortunate that Thompson’s downfall seemed to be greeted with such glee by the smugly liberal audience. I don’t think the filmmakers’ intention was self-righteous, and the “comeuppance” angle blunted the impact of several interesting issues, which remained unresolved.
For instance, I’m curious how the “fair use” copyright activists who advocate for the freedom to “mash up” intellectual property feel about editing Hollywood movies to remove objectionable content. I was also fascinated by the cultural phenomenon of religious people trying to get around the letter of the law so they can say they’re watching the same films as the rest of America, even when they’re not. I can appreciate how Thompson’s failures as a human being illustrate the futility of trying to protect people from bad external influences, but by letting the audience see him as the villain, Cleanflix shouts when it might have whispered.
Official site of the film
Here is the Q&A with directors Andew James and Joshua Ligairi from after the screening:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Duration: 16:14
(7/10)
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
censorship,
mormon,
mormonism
