So this year’s Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF) is in full swing – well, as full a swing as a lesser number of films and smaller theaters will allow. I think it’s somewhat misleading to see all those “Sold Out” signs on the Festival’s big schedule board by the ticket tables at AMC River East, because I think most of those films were being shown in the smaller theaters in this cineplex (three of the first four films I saw were in these theaters). In previous years, when the venues were the much larger Music Box Theater (where I had various body parts shoved in my face during the scramble for seats for Patrice Chereau’s Intimacy, for example) or the Landmark Century, “sold out” signs meant there were herds of film aficionados in the house. I’m not sure that’s the case this year. I’ll be eagerly anticipating the Festival’s attendance figures, but I hope there aren’t less people attending – that’s going to be a shame, because the Film Festival is a pretty critical element of this city’s cultural fabric. In the meantime, here are my reactions to the first set of films I saw since last week’s opening:
Vincere – With this Cannes Film Festival competition entry, I thought famed Italian director Marco Bellochio was testing a permanent cure for narcolepsy. With all the yelling actors, symphonic clashes, and booming military music, this film is louder and more hysterical than a five-engine fire alarm or ten episodes of the Real Housewives of Atlanta (actually, a little bit of NeNe sassiness would have livened up this snoozer). I’m not really sure why all this noise is necessary, except for Bellochio’s anticipation of the audience falling asleep – the manner in which he tells the story of Benito Mussolini’s mistress who bore him a son but spent most of her adult life being moved out of public view by Il Duse and into various mental hospitals is pretty uninteresting, pedestrian, and choppy. As can be expected from Bellochio, however, there are some pretty stunning visuals (the mistress perched on the steel bars of the asylum as snow falls, for example), but a lot of the film is just plain ridiculous. Lead actress Giovanna Mezzogiorno, who looks and acts like a crazier Marion Cotillard, is impressive, but she ultimately gets carried away, and by, the film’s relentless histrionics.
Hipsters – “Russian film musical”: uhmmm, those words together are almost as incongruous as “David Letterman sex object”. But hey stranger things happen all the time, so this Toronto Film Festival favorite proves that Russian movies can be fun, exuberant, wacky, and all-singin’-all-dancin’, which is a good thing. Director and writer Valery Todorovsky creates this original, imagined world of American jazz-loving, pastel color-wearing, non-conforming twentysomething hipsters battling dour, grey-suited communist youth party members in 1950s Moscow, who want them to abandon those snazzy duds and put on those Party pins to join the majority of Soviet youth as “squares”. It’s like a more simplistic, old-fashioned Glee but without the hunkiness of Matthew Morrison and with an overabundance of pasty white boys who need to put on some spray tan. There’s no new or fresh insight in the storytelling, but the cinematography is lush, the original musical score is eclectic and surprising, the choreography flashy, and the acting heartfelt. Hey, where else other than a Russian film musical can you see communist youth party members energetically perform a hip hop production number?
Complices (Partners) – I strongly believe that Film Festivals should be showcases for the new, the fresh, and the different, that’s going on in world cinema. They shouldn’t be putting on Law and Order SVU homages, which unfortunately and perplexingly this Swiss-French film is. The CIFF slot for this turkey could have been taken by another film that is far worthier. This 89 minute first feature from director Frederic Mermoud about the murder of a young male prostitute and the search for his missing girlfriend, who may or may not hold the key to solving the crime, is more excruciatingly tedious than back to back colonoscopies. The story-telling isn’t really suspenseful (you sort of suspect who the culprit is halfway through the film, of course, it’s the guy’s pimp, who else?), there’s a lot of gratuitous full frontal nudity from both young leads, and there isn’t a differentiating visual style (the cinematography and design is dull grey most of the time). Well-known French actress Emmanuelle Devos in the Mariska Hargitay-female detective role makes the most of what isn’t there – her most challenging scene involves puffing on a cigarette after her detective partner commits an unethical act (she’s puffing on that cigarette as if she is playing Ophelia). I was flabbergasted at all that audience applause at the end of the screening I attended – was it for lead actor Cyril Descour’s taut, smooth, six packed anatomy, lovingly photographed by Mermoud? If not, what was it for?
Eastern Plays – This Bulgarian film, directed and written by Kamen Kalev, received excellent reviews when it was shown at this spring’s Cannes Film Festival Director’s Fortnight competition. Despite a lot of the usual East European auteur artsy tracking shots, this film is probably the most interesting I saw in the past couple of days. A frustrated artist, mesmerizingly played by Christo Christov in his first movie role and who unfortunately passed away in an accident after filming, bitter and mean to his loved ones, experiences a brief period of redemption after helping the Turkish victims of a racially-charged beating in a Sofia side street. I really admired Kalev’s socially conscious, non-judgmental depiction of Bulgarian society – a society full of alienated, angry, racially-conflicted unemployed or underemployed young people, a direct reflection of the country’s struggles with economic development, or lack of. Christov’s character is also very compellingly written – critical, self-doubting, angry, misanthropic, but also tender, generous, and hopeful towards his brother and the daughter of the beating victim. The typical, open-ended, non-emotional, obscure art-house film ending of Christov disembarking from a bus is a little deflating, but the film is pretty strong as a whole.
Photo: Scene from Eastern Plays. More Film Festival blog entries will be coming up in the next week.
Recent Comments