Jamie passion and passionfruit!

Caché (Hidden)

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Another beautiful picture from Zhang Yimou – an artsy martial arts tale of a few centuries back complete with a dramatic love story and incredible scenes of beautiful landscapes.  Similar but more intimate than his film ‘Hero’, we see Ziyi Zhang again as a sort of double agent,  Takeshi Kaneshiro as a policeman who falls in love with her and another suitor Andy Lau who also is a policeman.  Behind them are bands of rebels and police, all typical of the time.  The photography is superb – Zhao Xiaoding being responsible here and the music accompanies perfectly the grand scenes. 

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Like Innocence, this film also has an open ending that may not satisfy some – but it gives you such a treat on the way that you don’t mind.  Jim Jarmusch has made some very good films and this time he eschews violence for romance and introspection.  Bill Murray is again excellence as the former Don Juan who has been left behind a bit in life and sets out on a trip to visit some of his old flames to see which wrote him a letter advising him of an unknown son.  He is egged on by his neighbour Winston, excellently played by Jeffrey Wright who even plans his itinerary by internet!  Along the way he gets a lot to think about as he sees how different his life is to the women he bed 20 years before.  Sharon Stone is spot on as the car racer widow and cupboard organiser with her lolita daughter Lolita.  Frances Conroy fits as the real estate agent Dora.  Jessica Lange does a very nice turn as an animal communicator and Tilda Swinton is unrecognisable in her short spot as Penny.  We may not get the ending we want but there are plenty of laughs and many observations about the state of Americans today, all wrapped up in a carefully directed, enjoyable film.

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A strange French film about a boarding school for girls set in a forest.  The girls from 6 to 12 perform strict rituals and only ever see two teachers and some old servants.  And yet they organise themselves in this bucolic society and it seems safer than the outside world.  Some girls want to leave however and others – the older ones – have a secret as they are prepared for leaving the school to move on to other things.  We are never quite sure whether a menace is going to come or not – there are tragedies but they are dealt with in a matter of fact way.  The ending is really rather bewildering.  What exactly is the message or metaphor here?  Parts of it – the repeated butterfly metaphor seem too obvious and other parts simply a visual essay in dark beauty.  Hard to know whether this was the right story to put into film – it is based on a Wedekind novella but I think that many people might reach the end and ask, so what?

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Can’t quite figure out what all the fuss is about.  This new Argentine film had crowds snaking around the block when I went to see it and standing room only inside.  Quite frankly it is pretty boring – a risk when the movie’s subject is a ministerial bodyguard who stands around all day outside meeting rooms waiting for his boss to come out and go elsewhere.  There is a story but the plot and action is so minimalist that it makes for a slow deadly dull film as well and whether they would admit it or not, the people around me were wriggling pretty much as the minutes ticked on.  Sometimes life does not make for good art.

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Noah Baumbach has spilled out his vitriol in this autobiographical film about his parents’ divorce.  It can be very witty at times but it is also very bitter.  Jeff Daniels portrays the monster ego of the Dad whose influence on the eldest son is none too healthy.  Laura Linney as the mother is your more stable and yet intense figure and Owen Kline is great as the younger son – twelve years old and into swearing, public masturbation and all sorts of other delights.  Jesse Eisenberg’s character is nicely constructed and shows the conflicts of an adolescent with such a father.  Anna Paquin has a nice cameoesque role and William Baldwin makes a welcme return as the tennis coach.   Good script, good acting but again a movie that leaves one with a sadness and a feeling that humans make life unnecessarily complicated for each other.  All in all very ‘Sundance’.

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I forgot that I saw this 4^th film from the series on video.  What can you say?  Many of the visuals are great especially the contest with the flying dinosaur and the underwater scenes.  Most of the rest is formulaic and it seemed to suffer here as so mch was crammed in to make a long book a reasonably long film.  It is really much more suitable for a television series at this stage.  The acting is all quite uniform and Harry is anodyne with a dash of pluck.  Of the new episode perhaps Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort is the most impressive addition to the cast.  Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody is also fun.  But overall, while I found it entertaining enough, the book is far richer and this particular episode less magnetic than the 3^rd.

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Another ‘northern’ film, another Austrian work dating from 1999.  Similar to Crash Test Dummies in that it takes young, disaffected and marginalised people from the Northern zone of the city who are trying to get ahead in life. Many of them are migrants or children of migrants and affected by the Bosnian war.  Others are locals who have hard family set ups.  One of the obvious messages is the difficulties human beings there have of really connecting and of saying what they feel.  Alcohol or drugs are a frequent release.  And then you have the traditional conservative Austrian values on top trying to impose their rigidity on an increasingly uncomprehanding and varied youth.  This film was designed in part to show the establishment that the reality of Ausrian youth is now multiethnic and really European and that the old rhetoric of protectionism no longer applied.  6 years further down the track and one can`t be very hopeful that these attitudes have become more flexible.  Nina Proll as the blonde cake shop assistant with the rampant taste in men and Edita Malovcic as Tamara her shy Serbian friend do excellent work in a fresh film that is nothing especially earth shattering but is an honest portrait of a selection of young people at the end of the century in Vienna.

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This film is really rather sad.  It concerns a single French woman who comes to Argentina to adopt a baby.  She travels to Formosa, a forlorn Northern province where most people live in abject poverty and the mafias are in action trafficking babies and organs.  As she waits for a suitable baby she crosses paths with a local woman who is bringing up her 11 year old son alone and is threatened with eviction from her cottage in the countryside.    Apart from being an expose into the baby market in a poor area of the world, there is plenty of input concerning machismo attitudes, feudal governments and the neglect of certain populations.  But it is also a personal story of awareness and growth on the part of Helene who realises what it is like to have nothing.  The open ending leaves us unsure of what she will do next but she is no doubt changed by her experience.  Carole Bouquet gives a very satisfying performance in her broken Spanish relying on her eyes and gestures to convey her thoughts.  It is possibly one of her best performances.  Aymara Rovera is a revelation as Juana and the rest of the cast is fine in supporting roles.  Juan Solanas has made a good enough film although it wavers a little in the second half with some uncertainty as to ow to resolve certain issues and an over reliance on stunning sunsets.  What he loses on that front he makes up for in social commentary.  Worth seeing but not if you feel a bit down!

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A rare treat – an Austrian film?  Well, not that much of a treat but definitely an interesting little piece.  A Romanian couple go to Vienna to bring a stolen car back across the border.  There is a delay and they are forced to spend a week on the streets with barely any money.  In the course of those days they meet up with the local fauna, again a strange combination of people before the final dramatic return to the border.  It is a reasonable film giving us a good look at the disaffected young in Europe in a strictly run European nation which gives them little hope for the future.  Good acting all round from Maria Popistasu and Bogdan Dumitrache as the Romanians, Simon Schwarz as the failed security guard and a brilliant turn by Kathrin Resetarits as the drugged up crash test dummy cum amateur home decorator.  Her scenes are hilarious.

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Mon petit doigt a dit ...

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Blood and missing fingers, torture and butchers.  Not my cup of tea.  A mildly interesting start slowly setting up the gruesome scenes towards the end.  If you actually tried to believe what happens in the film you’d go crazy.  It is not actually very credible although we know things like this happen.  My feeling is that it was dumbed down for pre teen US audiences.  If a Japanese or European director had got hold of it, we may have had something!  The idea is quite good.  That’s about it.

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