#tiff08

Tears for Sale (Carlston za Ognjenku)

by James McNally on September 14, 2008 · 2 comments

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Tears for Sale (Carlston za Ognjenku)

Tears for Sale (Carlston za Ognjenku) (2008, Director: Uroš Stojanovic): Reportedly the most expensive Serbian film ever made, Tears for Sale is a visual spec­tacle com­bining Balkan folk­lore with modern CGI to create a hugely enjoy­able exper­i­ence. Toronto critic Norman Wilner called it “bat­shit crazy,” and he’s not wrong, but I saw that as a pos­itive going in, and I was not dis­ap­pointed at all.

The film is set in a Serbian vil­lage in 1918, at the end of the Great War, and the women of the vil­lage are mourning the deaths of all their men in battle. We meet a pair of sis­ters, Little Boginja and Ognjenka, who work as pro­fes­sional mourners at the many funerals held in the vil­lage. They’re kept even busier due to the fact that the village’s sole source of income, its vine­yard, is a mine­field. The sis­ters are des­perate to lose their vir­ginity but when the women of the vil­lage bring Ognjenka to the town’s only remaining man, a repulsive old creature named Grandpa Bisa, her scream kills him. To avoid being burned at the stake for this crime, the sis­ters promise to bring back a virile young man within three days. They’re bound by the vil­lage witch’s curse on the spirit of their beloved grandmother.

They set out on this adven­ture and encounter other vil­lages in their situ­ation, bringing home the gravity of the region’s his­tory of inter­min­able war­fare. Though much of the film is played for laughs, there is a very real Balkan sad­ness just under the sur­face. Finally, in a larger town, they meet a pair of trav­eling per­formers: Arsa is a suave enter­tainer who can dance the Charleston, and Dragoljub calls him­self the Man of Steel and goes around shooting him­self out of a cannon. The two sis­ters pair off and sep­arate, each hoping to escape to the big city of Belgrade with their new love. Each hopes the other will bring the man back to their vil­lage, but in the end, both return, with tragic results.

The plot is really more of a fairytale, and the visual effects are fant­astic, very much like some­thing from Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, Amelie, A Very Long Engagement). Additionally, the art dir­ec­tion and cos­tumes are sump­tuous and over-the-top, and it doesn’t hurt that the whole film is also incred­ibly sexy. Though I’m doubtful this will get any sort of North American the­at­rical release, I’m already waiting for the DVD.

P.S. The Serbian title trans­lates to “Charleston and Vendetta” (Vendetta appar­ently being the trans­la­tion of the older sister Ognjenka’s name).

Official site of the film (Serbian)
Trailer

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: #tiff08, serbia

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Patrik 1,5

by James McNally on September 14, 2008

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Patrik 1,5

Patrik 1,5 (2008, Director: Ella Lemhagen): Goran and Sven are a gay mar­ried couple who’ve just moved to the sub­urbs. They’re in the pro­cess of adopting and when they get the news that Patrik (“aged 1.5″) will be arriving soon, they’re ecstatic. But when the Patrik who shows up is a 15-year-old homo­phobic delin­quent, things quickly go off the rails. Though their neigh­bours seem tol­erant, it’s obvous they’re not com­pletely com­fort­able with this unusual family. To make things worse, Patrik’s arrival throws a wrench into the couple’s rela­tion­ship, too. Sven had pre­vi­ously been mar­ried to a woman and fathered a child and seems uncom­fort­able that his life seems to be resuming a sim­ilar shape. Will Goran’s dream of being a hus­band and father and having a house in the sub­urbs sur­vive the arrival of this sullen teen­ager? Well, of course it will.

Though I found this romantic comedy quite touching, it was just a bit too sen­ti­mental to make it really great. Patrik’s delin­quency never seems to become apparent, and I could see the happy ending coming from a mile away. Still, it was refreshing to see a film about a gay couple strug­gling with some of the same issues as me and my wife do.

Official site of the film
Trailer

6/10(6/10)

Tagged as: #tiff08, adoption, homosexuality, sweden

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Adam Resurrected

by James McNally on September 11, 2008 · 1 comment

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Adam Resurrected

Adam Resurrected (2008, Director: Paul Schrader): Let me begin by saying I have a lot of respect for the work of Paul Schrader. Anyone who has been both a screen­writer and a critic before becoming a dir­ector is bound to have my respect. Which is why I felt so miser­able leaving the screening last night. Adam Resurrected is an out-and-out stinker, and I’m sorry to say it.

To be com­pletely honest, I was a bit nervous going in. Films that try to see the comedy (black or oth­er­wise) in the Holocaust have rarely fared well. Jerry Lewis shelved his film The Day The Clown Cried (1972) after crit­ical out­rage, and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful (1997), des­pite a rap­turous recep­tion here at TIFF (one I wit­nessed in person) fell out of favour pretty quickly as well. Schrader’s film dif­fers in that he presents the “clown” char­acter, Adam Stein (Jeff Goldblum) as insane. When we meet him, it’s 1961 and he’s being escorted back (after an unsuc­cessful dis­charge) to a “pro­gressive” asylum in the Israeli desert spe­cific­ally for sur­vivors of the camps. He’s clearly the star patient, enter­taining the other patients and even the staff with his quick wit, and car­rying on a love affair with a gor­geous nurse. The head doctor (Derek Jacobi) indulges him endlessly.

Through flash­backs, we dis­cover that he lost his wife and daugh­ters in a con­cen­tra­tion camp while he him­self was spared. The camp com­mandant (Willem Defoe) recog­nizes him from his nightclub act and decides to keep him as his pet. And I mean this quite lit­er­ally. He forces Adam to act as his dog, barking and walking around on all fours. Since he’s also a tal­ented musi­cian, he’s also used to soothe the inmates with violin music on their way to the gas chambers.

The plot becomes even more bizarre when a boy shows up at the asylum thinking he’s a dog. Adam gradu­ally reaches out to him, based on his own memories, and brings both the boy and him­self back to life (hence the portentous title). That’s the psy­cho­lo­gical resur­rec­tion, anyway. Physically, Adam appears to be invul­ner­able. He seems to be able to bleed at will, and to heal him­self of tumours. It’s no wonder that one of the inmates con­siders him the Messiah.

The film is based on a famous and rather con­tro­ver­sial Israeli novel by Yoram Kaniuk, pub­lished in 1971. Significantly, Schrader said the book came out in the same gen­eral era as Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (1969), two other chal­lenges to the typ­ical depic­tion of war­time exper­i­ences. Famously, both of those novels were called unfil­mable, and the films made from them have never really been con­sidered successful.

Goldblum, as always, jumps in with both feet, but his strange accent and tend­ency to mutter left much of his dia­logue inde­cipher­able. Defoe and Jacobi are just wasted in paper-thin roles, and the film is fur­ther marred by an abund­ance of shaky hand­held cam­er­a­work. In the end, I just didn’t care about this strange char­acter, and I found myself rolling my eyes more than once at the ham­fisted metaphors.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ector Paul Schrader, actor Jeff Goldblum, screen­writer Noah Stollman and pro­ducer Ehud Bleiberg 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: 15:56

4/10(4/10)

Tagged as: #tiff08, holocaust, israel, worldwar2

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The Brothers Bloom

by James McNally on September 10, 2008 · 3 comments

in Film Festivals,TIFF

The Brothers Bloom

The Brothers Bloom (2008, Director: Rian Johnson): I’d been really anti­cip­ating this film after seeing Johnson’s debut Brick (2005) about a year ago, but looking at the trailer, I was a little wor­ried that he had strayed too far into Wes Anderson ter­ritory. The pres­ence of Adrien Brody riding on a train and a steam­ship and the metic­u­lous (and some­times ridicu­lous) art dir­ec­tion left me thinking that Johnson was bor­rowing just a little too much.

After seeing the com­plete film, I’m still of that opinion, but it didn’t make the film any less enjoy­able for me. It helps that I’m a big fan of Wes Anderson. Where Johnson dif­fers is in his full-throttle, go-for-broke style of storytelling. Just as in Brick, you’ll prob­ably either sign on early in the film or you’ll just tune out com­pletely. In my case, Johnson’s sharp ear for dia­logue and his sheer ball­si­ness as a film­maker imme­di­ately put me on his side.

The Brothers Bloom are Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and his younger brother Bloom (Adrien Brody). No, the names don’t really make sense. It’s okay. They’re a pair of conmen who like to live the high life by flee­cing suckers out of their money. Stephen is the “author” of the cons and he really does treat each job like a work of lit­er­ature. These pro­fes­sional liars make their living amongst the rich globe­trot­ting jet­set­ters who really only seem to exist in the movies. Bloom is the moony romantic who wants out, and Stephen agrees, if Bloom will go along on “one last job.” It so fig­ures that the last job involves the gor­geous Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz), who is both incred­ibly rich and incred­ibly naive. Predictably, Bloom falls for her. And pre­dict­ably, com­plic­a­tions ensue.

In fact, so many com­plic­a­tions and reversals and lies and double-crosses occur that even at the very end, I was unsure whether it wasn’t all going to be revealed as yet another level of the con, a la The Usual Suspects (1995). But for­tu­nately a real heart beats within Johnson’s whipsmart script, and the movie is sweet and silly and smart all at once. Stephen says it best: the per­fect con is the one where everyone gets what they want. In my opinion, the whole film is a clever meta­phor for film­making, and even though Johnson is making it all up, everyone gets to go away happy.

Official site of the film

Here is the Q&A with dir­ector Rian Johnson and actors Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz and Mark Ruffalo 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: 8:15

The Brothers Bloom
Director and stars at the premiere

8/10(8/10)

Tagged as: #tiff08, conartists, conmen, heiresses, onelastjob

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Genova

by Jay Kerr on September 8, 2008

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Genova

Genova (2008, Director: Michael Winterbottom): Genova is a psy­cho­lo­gical drama about a father (Colin Firth) and his two daugh­ters Perla Haney-Jardine and Willa Holland) who struggle with the tragic loss of their mother (Hope Davis). Firth’s char­acter thinks that a change of scenery will help the family to get through their bereave­ment and takes a teaching pos­i­tion in Genova.

Catherine Keener plays an old friend of Firth’s who shows the family around the city. The new sur­round­ings serve as a dis­trac­tion for the family but it also casts them fur­ther into an abyss of unset­tling change. The narrow alleys in Genova make it easy to get lost and Winterbottom uses this set­ting to create tension.

The acting is first rate. Firth is per­fectly cast as a hus­band and father who ven­tures alone into unknown ter­ritory — new city, new job, raising a teenage daughter who is coming of age and dealing with a 10-year-old daughter who blames her­self for her mother’s death.

Perla Haney-Jardine provides a stand-out per­form­ance as a child who has fre­quent night­mares and is haunted by her mother.

Winterbottom’s Genova has been described as a mood piece but I wasn’t in the mood for this art-house film. I didn’t feel that Genova meas­ured up to all of the praise that was lav­ished on it by TIFF’s Cameron Bailey. It’s a fine film with great per­form­ances but in the end I was dis­ap­pointed. I sup­pose I wanted to see more of Italy and a little less grief.

6/10(6/10)

Tagged as: #tiff08, grief, italy, uk

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