Jamie passion and passionfruit!

Compared to 2005, this year has been a relatively rich year in film offerings in Buenos Aires and although no one film stands out we have a good slice of worthwhile movies at the top end of the scale.  As a consequence the list of nominations for best performances has been especially hard to draw up and I feel that I have probably left out some very good efforts.  I will probably comment on one or two during the next few days.  Anyway, I have chosen what I liked and felt to be the most memorable and enjoyable works of celluloid for this year.

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This could be the film that launches the best new actor in Hollywood – Al Gore.  As our guide in this documentary on the issue of global warming, he is frank and at times even humorous.  He states his case clearly and even the obvious directorial decisions regarding the inclusion of details about his sister’s death or his child’s accident which come across as being rather cursi fail to sink him.  Yes, this is an important movie and it is interesting to see someone use the industry to promote an idea that would normally be rejected by big business.  The content is very important, the style and format might be rather questionable but An Incomvenient Truth is an event which shows once again how vital it can be to harness the power of the cinema to get a message across.  It is not a great film in terms of cinema – more of your powerpoint stuff like Fuerza Aerea but it is watchable and serves the purpose it was made for.

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I will probably dedicate a few more lines to this Argentine film than it deserves, largely because it is an easy target but also because it has a few things that save it from infamy.  Where it falls down is that it is your typical talky ideas which come out of the mouths of the characters in rather unlikely speeches.  There are also several plot developments which stretch the imagination – no matter how desperate the 2001 crisis was.  One of the last acts, the raising of the grandfather`s hulk of a fishing boat thanks to the ill-gotten gains of the penniless son in Barcelona begs disbelief.  Lucas Ferraro is a Gael Garcia Bernal copy who does a reasonable job in the lead role, supported by Pepe Novoa as the father and a fleet of locals.  In general the Argentine men are pessimists, charmers, liars and rather stupid and the women come out as more sensible and yet long-suffering.  But the portayal of a certain type of Argentine is really spot on and explains why they get into the messes that they do.  The Barcelona scenes are all a bit unreal too but apart from that the camerawork and the general intentions of the director suggest that there is a little hope.  For a first film, it is pretty flat but with a good scriptwriter and a good editor(far too many scenes of Mar del Plata’s fishing industry to set the scene at the beginning), this could be rectified.

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A Spanish film about the life of Madrid’s prostitutes – or rather two of them: Caye, a local girl and Zulema an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic.  The film is all good intentions and attempts to portray their lives but somehow it rings rather false or cliched on several occasions.  What gives the film life are the two very good performances by Candela Pena and Micaela Nervarez in the main roles and by Manu Chao’s music.  While it is watchable, I felt there was something very predictable and almost hackneyed about the script and that this prevented it from really lifting off.

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Argentine Peruvian film about a tarot reading taxi driver who wants to do good by his family but somehow it’s never enough, has a keen sex drive and makes friends among the local prostitutes, is involved in dubious scams to bus people from Lima to Buenos Aires for cheap medical attention, etc.  Definitely colourful and it does depict Lima life well.  But ... the story doesn’t really get you anywhere – it is nice enough but not enthralling and even if Jesus Aranda does a good job in the lead role, this is merely a film to pass a bit of time.  Nice titles.

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Some films transcend the screen and become so real that for much of the screening you feel you are actually there.  Fateless is one of these films, at least from the moment that the 14 year old boy who is the lead character arrives at the Auchwitz concentration camp.  The scenes in the camp are stunningly beautiful thanks to the wonderfully artistic photography of Gyula Pados.  It reflects the mental processes of the boy as he gets weaker and hallucinates more in this unreal world he has to accept and live in.  The portrayal of the camps, while sparing us much of the horror and violence of some films, seems to be one of the most realistic we have seen – reminiscent of the bleakness of “The Pianist”.  The film is a fascinating look at the process of change in a human being who deliberately takes a passive and distant approach to his fate – he is more interested at keeping his word to his father than any speculation on his future.  Marcell Nagy carries the film on his shoulders and the story based on Nobel winner Imre Kertész’s autobiography is a testament to the author’s ability to go deep and give us an authentic human reaction and not something neatly packaged for the cinema.  Full marks to new director Lajos Koltai and his Hungarian team.  This is a first class film.

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A decent Argentine film about the life and work of the Catholic priest Mario Pantaleo who happened to have the gift of healing hands and cured many people who had been given up on by the medical profession.  The film also looks at the friction this caused with the Catholic church – Mario was in fact a true servant of the people and established a parish, school and many other works in the poorest areas that the church hierarchy overlooked.

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From the reviews I didn’t expect so much of this film which has been called extremely dull.  Well, it may not have been the best film that the Merchant Ivory team have made (and it represents their last) but it has enough features in it to make a pretty good couple of hours.  Perhaps the film is not as good as the sum of its individual parts , but some of those individual parts are worth mentioning.

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Old-style British comedy with Maggie Smith doing another great turn as the housekeeper with a past, the luscious Kristin Scott Thomas as the bored vicar’s wife and Rowan Atkinson as the thoughtful and dull vicar.  There are a host of minor characters to liven things up too.  It is very British, gives you a good giggle but is ultimately both unrealistic and a bit light and frothy.  Wasn’t much convinced by Patrick Swayze as a sex-mad golf coach but the three leads are a joy to watch and as a nice way to pass a dull afternoon, the film fits the bill.  Otherwise it's nothing special.

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