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Gelso d' Oro to Silenced at Far East Film Festival14, Udine

2012-05-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Silenced wins FEFF14 Gelso D'Oro

The Gelso d’Oro , the public prize for the best film at the Far East Film Festival (FEFF14 - April 20-27) went to South Korea’s courtroom-drama Silencedby HWANG Dong-hyuk, 2011. The tough and true story of the abuse of hearing appeared children that enraged the Korean public was also voted best picture by Black Dragon accredited film critics at the festival.

Second place, went to the Taiwanese road movie to the highest point in Tibet. One Mile Above, from Taiwan by Jiayi Du.

The Korean war drama The Front Line won the bronze medal. Just before the armistice is signed between North and South Korea in the 50s the soldiers engage in one final and unnecessary battle with each other.

MYmovies.it chose the Japanese farce about bathhouses in ancient Rome and modern Japan Thermae Romae, which was presented in Udine as a world premiere.

This year Hong Kong filmmaker Johnny To won the coveted "Lifetime Achievement Award". The 57 year old filmmaker presented his latest film Romancing in Thin Air.

The Friulian film festival in Italy – “a rock-solid Asian outpost in the West” attracted over 50 thousand viewers at the Teatro Nuovo “Giovanni da Udine” theatre with 1200 seats, and 1200 accredited (journalists, critics, film students, experts, and insiders from 16 countries.

At least 20 thousand people participated in numerous side events in downtown Italy such as martial arts demonstrations and at the Minnamoro discotheque, the after hours hang-out for festival fans.

More than 100 volunteers helped out the staff of this prestigious quality festival that showcases the very best of new Asian films. Special film experts stationed in Korea, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysi and the Philippines cull the box office to bring amazing films to this medieval Italian city close to the Italian Alps. Nearby is the little town of Casarsa where Italy’s controversial and beloved filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini lived with his mother.

The Far East Film Festival is precided over by president Sabrina Baracetti and is part of the "Center for Cinematographic Expression" (Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche).

Next week Movie Magazine will bring you an exclusive interview with Darcy Paquet, Korean film programmer and curator for the Far East Film Festival retrospective on Korean films from the 70s "The Darkest Decade".

For Movie Magazine this is Moira Sullivan , UDINE Italy

Far East Film Festival 14, Udine Italy, Report 1

2012-05-07T07:03:00.000-07:00

Abe Hiroshi in Termae Romae

By Moira Sullivan
The Korean drama Sunny was featured on the opening day of the UdineFar East Film Festival in Italy, which runs from April 20-28. A renowned and excellent extravaganza of popular films from Asia, this festival is now in its 14th edition.

The title of the film comes from the hit single "Sunny" (performed by Bonie M, and written by songwriter Bobby Hebb - 1966). The story is about a seven-member girl gang who meet years later when one from the group is hospitalized with a grave illness. The film revisits the first day of school for Na-Mi who hails from a small town in the Jeollaprovince and moves to the capital city Seoul.

Na-Mi quickly makes friends with six other young women who come to her rescue from classmates who otherwise would have bullied her for her dialect. Na-Mi quickly fits in with the gang comprised of the excellent fighter Choon-Hwa, heavyset Jang-Mi, and Jin-Hee - skilled in the use of profane language, the literary Geum-Ok, future Ms Korea Bok-Hee, and arrogant and perceptive Su-Ji.

Being a teenager is often painful and girls are cruel at this age. The pressures from home, school and growing up are formidable. At school, they find reasons to pick on any kind of difference and often judge each other on appearances, class differences or perceived lifestyles that clash with their own. The heteronormative upbringing is often homophobic and requires conformity. Girl gangs are sometimes a necessity for survival. Director Hyeong-Cheol Kang is adept in bringing these conditions to film and was present at the festival.

As if the first day wasn’t enough entertainment, on the second day Hong Kong producer Johnny To was in town to present his new film Romancing in Thin Air – a film about a woman who lives in a hotel in the mountains and loses her husband. Then, her long time idol arrives who is suffering form alcoholism. She nurses him to back to health but must come to term with her loss that takes precedence over her fan worship. Johnny To also presented his latest project of several years, Fresh Wave - a Hong Kong mentoring program for young filmmakers including a short film festival, which is now partnering up with other international festivals.

On Saturday night a wild film about bathhouses - Thermae Romae was screened by Japanese director Takeuchi Hideki and made at Cinécitta in Italy. It features ancient Rome renowned for its bathhouses, and modern Japan and it’s contributions to this area.

A retrospective of Korean films from the 70s entitled “The Darkest Decade” is featured with some rare films on the Korean psyche during this period.

Other films include The Front Line by Jang Hun about a final maneuver by the North and South Koreans before the armistice is signed in the 50’s. In The Great Magician, Derek Yee from Hong Kong has created a mind-boggling extravaganza of color and fanfare starring Tony Leung as a magician who outmaneuvers a warlord and his seventh wife. And from Thailand comes a story of ladyboys, MTF transgenders who experience heartbreak for choosing their lifestyle, but still keep their spirit, directed by MTF helmer Tanwarin Sukkhapisit in It Gets Better.

Next week more from the Far East Film Festival!

Warren William Magnificent Scoundrel of Pre-Code Hollywood - Book Report

2012-05-03T02:29:00.000-07:00

By Monica Sullivan

When we watch old movies on the late show, one of the questions that comes to mind is, “Are any of these actors still alive?” For fans of films made in the 1930’s and 1940’s, the answer to that question is usually no, with a few exceptions among the youngest members of the cast. One of the busiest actors of that era was Warren William who specialized in playing smartly-tailored rogues.

John Strangeland has written an absorbing biography “Warren William Magnificent Scoundrel of Pre-Code Hollywood” for McFarland Publishing Company, revealing a wealth of fascinating details about this sensitive, thoughtful actor. “The Mouthpiece” made Warren William a star in 1932. Vincent Day was a part that demanded both flamboyance and restraint. Edward G. Robinson and other Warner Brothers actors had turned down the role, which only made it all the more appealing to Warren William. Interestingly, Robinson did appear in a 1955 remake, “Illegal”, a well-made lower-key effort which does not quite pack the wallop of the original. To watch William lose and re-gain his soul as a lawyer is an unforgettable experience.

Warren William was also famous for 1932’s “The Match King” as Paul Kroll, based entirely on Ivan Kreiger, a womanizing Ponzi schemer who destroyed many lives and international economies before his suicide in 1932. Warren William played this heartless charmer to perfection, blending intense drive and calculated subtlety.

Left to his own devices, Warren William would have made many more comedies like “The Lone Wolf” than villainous character studies. Imagine Perry Mason lying drunk in his office and still solving 1935’s “The Case of the Lucky Legs” and you get some idea of Warren William’s playful streak. In real life he was madly in love with Helen, his much older wife, his three pet dogs (they all survived him) and his extremely happy home life. On page 136, there is a picture of the actor at a Hollywood party, looking bored out of his skull. Three dozen pages later he looks much happier with the pups Jack, Jill and Babs and they look equally happy to be with him. Warren William also enjoyed working on his ranch and tinkering with inventions. His work with carcinogenic chemicals undoubtedly led to his early death at 53 from multiple myeloma. As he physically weakened, he accepted low budget films like “Strange Illusion” and starred in “Strange Wills”, a series of radio dramas. John Strangeland's insightful, sympathetic biography packs many great Warren William stories into 230 pages. For more information go to mcfarlandpub.com.

The Charlie Chan Encyclopedia - Book Report

2012-05-03T02:21:00.000-07:00

By Monica Sullivan

Fans of Charlie Chan (and there are more of them than you may think) are a fairly discrete group. Whenever there is even a whisper of a rumor to reactivate the series, focus groups pounce on the prospect as if it were the worst idea ever. Why didn’t a Chinese actor play Charlie Chan? He did in Chinese language Chan films. Doesn’t the series reinforce racial stereotypes? Read the books or watch the movies. Charlie Chan is a clever, patient investigator. Whenever he senses resistance to his polite, persistent methods, he tells the resisters to cut it out with quiet, firm courtesy. Charlie Chan doesn’t cut corners, brawl or rely on car chases to catch killers. He disarms them with tried and true techniques so unobtrusive, they’re barely noticed.

Earl Der Bigger’s novels are precise, colorful and entertaining. The 20th Century Fox films tried to capture their flavor and usually succeeded, thanks to sharp scripts, careful direction and vivid character actors. That’s part of the reason I bought all the books and the Fox Collection when it became clear that broadcast television was skittish about airing the films, even though all the available titles had been beautifully restored.

The paperback edition of “The Charlie Chan Encyclopedia” by Howard Berlin is a welcome addition to the Charlie Chan canon. Berlin knows and loves his subject and in 1900 entries he supplies a welcome context for the golden age of Charlie Chan in Hollywood. The photographs are sharp and well-chosen, although on page 111, a slinky picture of Marguerite Chapman is identified as Marguerite Churchill. Berlin succeeds in showing why Charlie Chan was so popular in his heyday and also why he is still a source of interest for today’s audiences. For more information on “The Charlie Chan Encyclopedia” check out mcfarlandpub.com.

British Film Noir Guide - Book Report

2012-05-03T02:13:00.000-07:00

By Monica Sullivan

“Film Noir.” The words, meaning “black pictures”, come from French movie critics, enraptured by low budget black and white American productions of the 1940’s and 1950’s. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, film noir festivals became brisk money makers for archives, repertory theatres, video and DVD distributors plus countless late night broadcasters and cable programmers.

Unsurprisingly other copyright holders of vintage European titles wanted to get in on this profitable phenomenon. Michael Keaney’s “British Film Noir Guide” from McFarland Publishers provides noir buffs with an illustrated guide to noir efforts across the pond.

One of Keaney’s favorites (and mine) is “Black Narcissus” which shows the struggle of 5 nuns to keep their faith in Calcutta. The film is not a pro or con argument about nuns. It shows how women cope with their emotions in a different environment with a very different climate. The leader of the group, (Deborah Kerr as Clodagh) is swept away by her romantic memories of lost love (lost in the sense that she loved him and he didn’t love her back). Another nun (Flora Robson) is supposed to supply the convent with vegetables from the garden but, dreamily she plants flowers instead. An unbalanced young nun (played to the hilt by Kathleen Byron) imagines herself in love with Mr. Dean (David Farrar) as a local man sent to help the group. She also engages in a deadly power struggle with Clodagh, whose youth and inexperience leave her unprepared to cope with the violent undercurrents of insanity. Why does “Black Narcissus” qualify as film noir? Mainly because it gets to the heart of the noir universe, with nary a gunfight nor fisticuffs in sight. A noir atmosphere is more about feelings and perceptions than it is about direct action and uncluttered decisions.

“No Orchids For Miss Blandish” is a 1948 film heavily influenced by U.S. gangster lore. Its star, Jack La Rue as Slim Grisson, had a long career in Hollywood and is perfect as a bad guy to whom a rich English Rose (Linden Travers as Miss Blandish) is irresistibly drawn. English critics detested the picture, but American audiences liked it and Robert Aldrich remade it in 1971 as “The Grissom Gang.”

Michael Keaney likes the movies he likes and lets the other ones go, sometimes with just one sentence. His dislikes are described in such a cursory fashion that I wondered why he bothered to include them at all. 1959’s “Beat Girl” is a subversive little film which women seem to appreciate more than men. Keaney complains about the score (by John Barry, no less, clearly revving up his gears for the James Bond scores to come) and gives the rest of “Beat Girl” short shrift in a few disparaging sentences.

Still, the main aspect of a book like the “British Film Noir Guide” is that it supplies the reader with an overview of movies they might otherwise not even notice. “Dual Alibi” with the great Herbert Lom playing two parts, “The Fallen Idol” revealing adultery through the eyes of a lonely little boy and “Frieda” which shows life in a British village through the eyes of a German war bride who is driven to despair by the prejudice and bitterness of her neighbors, are some of the titles receiving examination. There are 369 entries, a useful start for any noir buffs. For more information, check out mcfarlandpub.com.

Charles McGraw: Biography Of A Film Noir Tough Guy - Book Report

2012-05-03T02:06:00.000-07:00

By Monica Sullivan

I can think of few movie gangsters I admired as much as Charles McGraw. He was the real deal. Larger than life, riddled with conflict, blessed with a sandpaper voice and a face to match, McGraw was born to play film noir.

“Charles McGraw: Biography Of A Film Noir Tough Guy” by Alan K Rode reveals the difficult personal life of McGraw as a backdrop to his long successful career. McGraw’s vulnerability was alcohol. It led to his accidental death in 1980 after 77 movies during a 35 year film career. Marie Windsor told me in an interview conducted during the 1990’s: “I loved working with Charlie McGraw on ‘The Narrow Margin’ and no, he wasn’t drinking. I want you to know that.” Anyone who watches Charles McGraw’s carefully shaded performance as Walter Brown will see a character bursting with resentment at his job and grief over the violent death of his partner.

Being a hard-drinking tough guy on screen was one thing, playing one off-screen was a long, slow, painful ride to the summer of 1980 and his bloody demise in his own bathtub. It was called an accident, but it was so clearly one that was waiting to happen. McGraw was convinced that he could, with effort, control his drinking, as he controlled his harsh, realistic, performances over the years. McGraw believed he could accomplish this on his own, but the women who loved him knew better. Alcoholics Anonymous was in the year of its infancy when Charles McGraw turned 21, and it would be many years before its educational materials were widely distributed. Hard drinkers like Charles McGraw and his cronies, used to doing things their own way, might not have been receptive to outside help in any event. This is the sad, dark and relentless side of Charles McGraw’s life and that of his family. His finely etched performances on film will live long after him, of course, and Alan K. Rode does a thorough job with his biography of a film noir tough guy, now available from mcfarlandpub.com.

Applause

2012-04-12T18:26:00.001-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Paprika Steen as "Thea" in Applause.

The subject of the 2009 Danish film Applause seems like a western luxury about problems of people's own making. The cinematography has a "Dogme" feel to it—the outdated Danish cinematographic conception created by Thomas Vinterberg and Lars Von Trier, which involves making films in the here and now - no props, natural lighting, and no guns.

The Danish actress Paprika Steen plays Thea, a middle aged alcoholic actress, along with many of the people in her city in Copenhagen: problem drinkers, heavy drinkers, alike. She is trying to quit and regain the love of her two sons from her failed marriage a year and a half ago. The film is shot around the stage performance of Applause with Paprika Steen.

Martin Pieter Zandvliet makes his directorial debut in this film, and although it was made three years ago it seems enmeshed with the virtues of "Dogme"- 'naked' reality in detail such as Thea smelling sheets that belong to her young sons an, listening to their forgotten wind up toys. Not only is Thea's husband gone but is together with a new woman, and she must follow them on excursions such as to the zoo if she wants to see her sons. Seeing them once and awhile is all her husband wants to offer.

Broken homes are sad to watch. Thea consoles herself with drink. Her abandonment of herself and her family before and after is tragic. When she goes out, she sits alone, and insults, rightfully so, a man who wants to pick her up. When she later feels sorry for him, he puts her down. Later she meets him again, and discovers she has already been with him one night, in a blackout. She starts to drink again.

All Thea seems to have is her estranged husband and children, and without them she doesn’t seem to have anything except her personal assistant. There is no hope. Only personal misery. Where are the lawyers and why does Thea have to beg her husband’s psychologist lover for the right to see her children? Eventually she seeks professional marital help, makes an appointment with her husband, but doesn’t show.

Paprika Steen makes this film bearable, and is excellent in her role. Many women in her situation will be able to relate. She is the mother of her children but everyone around her punishes her for being ill. No one is better at it then Thea herself whose self-inflicted pain is difficult to watch.

Applause is an admirable film for its sense of reality, even if the problems in the larger scheme of the world seem unimportant. Nothing is more real than the human connection, and in this respect, Applause is virtuous.

The Lady

2012-04-12T18:12:00.003-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Michelle Yeoh as Aung San Suu Kyi

Luc Besson admits he couldn’t let the story about Aung San Suu Kyi go - and so he made a biopic of the woman who recently won a landslide victory for her party in Burma.

The story begins in 1947 when Aung was a young girl and rebel soldiers assassinated her father, the leader of Burma. The film then jumps to many years later where there is a scene with her British husband Michael who hasn’t seen Aung for three years. He has just been diagnosed with cancer. Three years before, Aung left England to take care of her mother in Burma.

Michelle Yeoh plays Aung Saan Suu Kyi and David Thewlis, her husband Michael Aris, a man whose hair is dreadfully uncombed through the entire film.

This is not your typical Luc Besson film; the story is straightforward and dominated by dialogue and sentimental background music. The rising and falling action documents how Aung San Suu Kyi became the beloved leader of her people.

Burma is plagued by heroin trafficking and the spread of AIDS/HIV, problems escalated during the military junta that took over the government led by Aung's father. A spirit becomes more dangerous if it becomes a ghost, according to a fortune teller. Furthermore, when a country is in peace it won't need a ghost, she says. Her prophecy to the the general of the military junta makes an impact. However, when Aung is hailed by the people, he considers himself badly advised and instead of retiring to play golf, his red kerchiefed men continue to terrorize the innocent.

Aung’s first speech is done in front of a live audience of one million - not a computer generated crowd scene, which is a refreshing development. Her life with a foreigner and time away from her country did not diminish her love for the land her father gave his life for.

It is just these simple facts that the military regime becomes aware of, and their obvious truths made Burma the closed society it became. In the documentary released last week and still playing in San Francisco, They Call it Myanmar everyone is watched. The self contained country became closed to public scrutiny inside and out. For these reasons, Aung was put under house arrest. Unless she was taken to prison to join her people, she declared she would not eat. Michael talks her out of it.

All the lines to Burma are down, especially the ones between Aung and her husband Michael. He tries to return to Burma and is permitted no contact with his embassy - no engagement in politics.

The story is emotional with violin music. The constant phones lines going dead and the ensuing tears make it a dismal story. Nevertheless, it is a true one. While Aung was under house arrest, she received the Nobel Peace Prize. She listened to the story on a radio in her home in Burma.

A remark in the film by an Englishmen after the award that now Burma would have to pay attention is naïve—a country that had been under military control for many decades. Burma did not follow the heed for democracy until just this past week when Aung’s party again won a landslide victory in the government. The military government did not heed her need to be with her dying husband in his final days, forcing her to choose between her people and her family. She replied that it was no choice.

Eric Serra’s soundtrack accompanies the film even as the Burmese march in peaceful protest. The only people seen in traditional face paint – are Aung's maids.

Aung's struggle was still ongoing in 2010 when The Lady was finished. An end to the torture of the Burmese people was not swayed by political pressure of any kind and it is a miracle that Aung San Suun Kyi survived at all. This film, despite it’s flaws, champions her cause and that of her father. Sade’s “Soldier of Love” accompanies the credits.

Jiro: Dreams of Sushi

2012-03-24T00:01:00.002-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Jiro: Dreams of Sushi is a 2011 documentary that is making the rounds and will be opening this week at Landmark Theatres. If you thought you knew all there was to know about sushi, this film will prove you don’t.

Jiro Ono

Jiro Ono is a Japanese sushi master with 10 seats in his subway restaurant in Tokyo and he serves up the most exquisite handcrafted sushi. Few sushi restaurants have such quality. I can think of one on Clement St in San Francisco that seems to live up to the reputation of Jiro—Murusaki’s. It is the kind of restaurant with three courses, as is explained in this documentary, with different kinds of sushi. The San Francisco chef has a diploma for using the deadly blowfish, and that is difficult to come by.

Jiro takes us through the male dominion of sushi making in Tokyo, from the fish markets where brokers bid on fish like the stock market in New York to the restaurants. It takes a while to become a sushi master and Jiro, who is now 80, has received several prizes.

New York filmmaker David Gelb briefly traces Jiro’s upbringing. Apparently Jiro was raised by a strict father who failed at business and he almost never smiles through the film. We learn he was a bully in grade school and he travels to meet his old school chums who can testify to that.

The style of the film includes interview with Jiro’s son, Yoshikazu, who is now in the sushi business, workers in the field, the fishmongers, and fans of his eating.

Documentary filmmakers should find new ways of making their films, because to show interview after interview with a nice background is not enough. The use of fast film speed to convey the routine nature of this business is done a couple of times without much artistic flare. And just when you think you have heard enough Philip Glass to last a lifetime, David Gelb trots him out again, to symbolize the frenzy of this routine business.

It is true that Jiro dedicated his life to improving his craft and perhaps his life doesn’t need a documentary film for us to realize his talents. But how else would we have every learned about him?

Now, to do some serious investigation for the best sushi restaurants in San Francisco.

Joan Chen Honored at San Francisco Asian American Film Festival

2012-03-07T23:26:00.003-08:00

By Moira Sullivan

Joan Chen in The White Frog

The San Francisco Asian American Film Festival has acquired an excellent reputation as a showcase of new films by directors of Asian heritage who grew up in America. This year’s festival runs from March 8-18 with 100 films from 20 countries.

The special spotlight this year is on the Shanghai born actress Joan Chen whose Chinese name is Chen Chong. Joan Chen has lived in San Francisco for the past twenty years and although the designation Asian American didn’t quite fit for her before, it does now, especially with her two children who grew up in the city and her husband Peter Hui, who is a cardiologist in San Francisco.

Chen was discovered on the rifle range by Mao Zedong’s wife and was selected for the Actor’s Training Studio in 1976. She won best actress in 1980 for her role in Little Flower. Shortly after, she moved to the US and studied acting at Cal State Northridge. Her international film debut was in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) when she was only 26.

Chen was interviewed in the documentary Hollywood Chinese (2007) by local filmmaker Arthur Dong and revealed that had she been a white actress her film career would have taken off at that point. Despite nine Academy Awards, she didn’t get a single film offer unlike white actors in the film. Instead, she received marginal roles afterwards. She is perhaps best known to audiences in the USA as Josie Parker in Twin Peaks.

Chen tired of being an exotic symbol in film and turned to directing. Her favorite accomplishment is the film Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl from 1998, which will be screened at the festival. The film is about a young girl who is to take charge of her cavalry youth group in the Peoples Republic of China of the 70s but learns that government officials of the event are corrupt. The film won several Golden Horse awards in 1998 for best picture, best screenplay for Chen, and best actress and actor awards . Other notable recent films starring Chen are Jiang Wen’s The Sun also Rises from 2007 and Jia Zhangke’s 24 City (2008), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

The world premiere of The White Frog directed by Quentin Lee is the opening night film of the festival on March 8 at the Castro Theater. Chen plays the mother of a young man with Asberger's syndrome played by Booboo Stewart, alongside San Francisco BD Wong, who plays the father.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

2012-03-02T17:31:00.001-08:00

By Moira Sullivan

John C Reilly, Lynne Ramsey, Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller at Cannes

We Need to Talk about Kevin, in this film by the same name, but more so, his parents. Lynne Ramsey’s film starring Tilda Swinton as Eva and John C Reilly as Franklin who play the parents of a young boy that grows in to a psychopathic killer. There are many, many warning signs during his upbringing, although it is clear that he was born with mental deficiencies. Kevin (Ezra Miller) is problematic from the beginning, either by putting too much salt on his food, or by being cold and cruel to both his parents and later his sister. Eva's reactions are scrutinized more than her husband’s who is away most of the time and just seems to come home and pat his son on the head like a dog and disappear - most likely to work given the expanse and expense of their home.

It’s important to point out that the film is fragmented as far as narrative order so that we are seeing the prequel, and sequel to an attack by bow and arrow of high school students in a padlocked gymnasium. And we actually never see that, narratively, only fragments to suggest the scene and anguished relatives outside while gurneys of victims are rolled to ambulances.

Instead Eva is shown in the beginning of the film being held high by a huge crowd of people crammed together and being deluged by tomato sauce, or we see her car and house spray bombed with tomato sauce, or Kevin wearing a spotted orange t-shirt that looks like spattered blood, or tomato sauce. The inverted narrative order and the detail paid to the interior design of this American family’s home visualizes what might be the interior of Kevin’s brain – a huge modern, and youthful edifice with wooden furniture, and everything tidily arranged, empty cold and devoid of feeling. A living room with spacious couches, and yet all we ever see is the nuclear family, mother father, son and daughter. Perhaps it is the flashbacks of Eva as she reflects on what she might have missed about her son, but there are things that she doesn’t see, that we do, like the amount of strawberry jam put on white bread for a sandwich where Kevin squeezes the bread together and the red filling overflows. Or when he peals a piece of candy that looks like an eyeball in macro closeup with juice squirting as he squeezed down on the object. Later we see the young daughter with a bandage over her eye.

Was Kevin created by his environment, or was Kevin created before Birth. That is the shocking question that runs through your mind as you see this film. Certainly the township blames the mother for it all. And there are several shots of the couple’s courtship before Kevin was conceived without any visible evidence of weirdness in case it’s the two of them.

We Need to Talk About Kevin was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and was a serious contender for the Palme d’or, although in 2003 Gus Van Sant won for his film about Columbine called Elephant and the subject of high school murders was unlikely going to capture another award.

With this film, Lynne Ramsey has certainly escalated her visual ability as a storyteller. Her previous film Movern Caller made in 2002 was excellent but the strength of this film is that it doesn’t rely on dialogue. The spectator must assemble the pieces to make sense and has to work for this film to enfold, which is the sign of great cinema.

Tilda Swinton as usual is the daring actress who allows us to observe all of her raw emotions without words. And kudos also go to Ezra Miller, whose internal struggle is always captured on his face, clearly having done a quick study of Swinton’s work.


Tilda Swinton at Golden Globes -nominated for best actress

Martin Scorsese's Hugo

2012-02-26T18:59:00.006-08:00

By Moira Sullivan

Cloë Grace Moretz and Asa Butterfield in Hugo.

Film history should be taught in grade school, and it is unfortunate that it isn’t because many people today might better appreciate Martin Scorsese's new film Hugo. Ironically, he mixes the techniques of early cinema with today’s and uses 3D for the first time in his career.

Georges Méliès

Hugo brings to life one of the greatest creators of magic on the screen, Georges Méliès (1861-1938) The story is based on the novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Zelznick. Scorsese ingeniously employs many cross references in the film that are part of film heritage, such as the crash of a train right through the front of Gare Montparnasse, which actually happened in 1895, and Hugo Cabret holding on to the huge clock of the train station as did Harold Lloyd in a silent film of the 20s.

The film is set in Paris the in the 1920s after the Great War, and no one speaks French. It would appear that Scorsese seems satisfied that if people have British accents they will pass as the French. That would include the American actress Cloë Grace Moretz from Atlanta who stars opposite Asa Butterfield from London. Butterfield revealed that Scorsese had him watch the films of Méliès in preparation for making the film, and it is hard to understand how he could have made this film without doing that.

Hugo unofficially works in the train station - Gare Montparnasse - where he keeps the huge clocks working. After a tragic accident in which he loses his father in a fire, his drunken uncle takes him in to do his work at the station. All that is left of his father is an "Automaton", a mechanical doll that he tried to repair and which holds the key to not only unlocking Hugo’s past but also that of Georges Méliès.

Hugo steals food from the shops in the station to survive and tries to stay under the radar of the station inspector on duty with an attack dog and a steel brace on his leg that slows him down, played by Sasha Baron Cohen. Hugo also pockets tiny cogs and wheels from mechanical objects. When trying to steal a wind up mouse from a toy repair shop he has to forfeit his notebook as punishment. The shop owner who turns out to be Méliés, played by Ben Kingsley, is clearly disturbed by this book of intricate drawings of mechanical objects and threatens to burn it. Hugo follows him to his home and outside gets the attention of a young girl who lives with him, (Cloë Grace Moretz) who promises to help him retrieve his notebook. Isabelle’s life is spent in the train station as the toy shopkeeper’s ward, and also by reading. Therefore, she decides to help Hugo because if presents for her the opportunity for adventure, so into the magical world of film she goes with him, as if she isn’t already living within it with Méliès. Hugo takes her to see Harold Lloyd in Safety Last (1923) where he holds on to a huge clock.

Through a visit to a library run by Monsieur Labisse (Christopher Lee) they discover a book on the early history of cinema. They flip through images of early cinema such as a train pulling into a train station. The story is well known by film students that the sight of the train was considered real by the frightened spectators on the late 19^th century. Scorsese shows this in the film but one thing that Scorsese doesn’t show are the fights that ensued in those early screenings in Paris, with movie theaters of over 2,000 spectators. From film history, we also know that Georges Méliès was not as successful as the entrepreneurs, the Lumiére brothers, who inspired him to make a film camera. His vast archive of over 500 films was lost save for 80 0f them that were salvaged and he was presumed dead when he vanished into obscurity.

Martin Scorsese is well known for his film preservation efforts, which makes him one of today’s foremost directors and he has gone into the past to bring to public attention our first films. Paris is considered the birthplace of cinema, and the enchanting film of Hugo shows the city in all it splendor.

Outrage

2011-12-10T10:29:00.001-08:00

By Moira Sullivan

Takeshi Kitano, Japanese actor turned director, otherwise known as Beat Takeshi, brings us what he is best at – yakuza or Japanese organized crime films with all their blood and gore. Outrage was part of last year’s Cannes Film Festival’s official selection.

In what can be seen as a Japanese Reservoir Dogs, rival bosses with hidden body tattoos take turns at offing each other to impress the head family. It seems like every second someone has their face bashed in, or their mouth worked on in the dentist office without Novocain. Takeshi Kitano is a deadpan actor that barely needs to move but instills fear with his cunning style. His motley face is enough to conjure up impending doom, along with the coiled snake energy of some of the other bosses in this film.

Outrage is predictable but with enough gore to make any yakuza enthusiast satisfied. This is the kind of film that is screened late at night or dead in the middle of winter at film festivals when vicious violence seems to light up the screen and bring the spectator into a secret world of intrigue and cloak and dagger vengeance.

Takeshi Kitano returns with this yakuza tale after a decade absence from the genre. People missed him, and he’s back. He is known for serving up violence with impressive timing—but even after a 10-year vacation. It’s just a manner of who gets sliced and diced first. It is actually Kitano’s goal to make us feel pain.

The yakuza of this film hails back to the time when the bosses tried to control bars and pubs, but Kitano figures that today’s yakuza would be interested in an extortion and revenge scene in information technology.

Outrage gives us our fair share of knife plunging, gun firing adrenalin, all in a cool slick style. It’s just a movie but Kitano makes you squirm every time there is an impending violent transaction between the bosses. There is no rest until the 90 minute ordeal is over.

The Skin I Live In

2011-11-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

*SPOILERS*

Vera Cruz: Larger than Life

The Skin I Live In is Pedro Almodóvar’s latest freaky venture into dressing and undressing women. This time his cross dressing fetish involves Male to Female gender reassignment –forced reassignment as punishment for the attempted rape and later suicide of a surgeon's daughter.

There is much to be admired in the art direction of this film - in a sinister way: the Petri dishes that grow skin from fresh animal blood, the surgical gowns and dressings, and other accouterments of the operating room, and another room - a room where a young woman is kept prisoner who can not look out but is gazed upon - who uses mascara to create a living diary with tiny writing and small images, and fashions Louise Bourgeois creations of tattered torn up doll carcasses.

The glass wall that separates surgeon from patient is enlarged like a wide screen cinema. A remote camera is projected into the kitchen where the surgeons mother Marilia (Marisa Paredes) monitors the young woman’s activity and sends up food to her on a dumb waiter.

All pieces of this story are shot in inverted order in different time sequences and this is clever work. A young man who works in a woman’s clothing store - in keeping with Amodóvar’s fetish of course - Vicente (Jan Cornet) is kidnapped by the Frankenstein type surgeon Dr Robert Ledgard, played by Antonio Banderas. It is strange to have to point this out but in this case, gender reassignment takes on the form of a Frankenstein experiment. Not the Mary Shelley Frankenstein but the evil doers of the Boris Karloff lot. What can be worse than waking up with a woman’s body when you adore your body as a man? This puts The Skin I Live In on par with the Almodovar's controversial film Talk to Me about an orderly who rapes a young girl in a coma and brings her back to life and awakens her. Only in this case the relatives of the victim do not thank the perpetrator as they did the young ballet student raped by the orderly in Talk to Her.

Vicente’s mother and friends are worried sick about his disappearance. In this case, the perpetrator played by a side of Banderas we have not met previously eventually allows himself to be seduced by Vera Cruz with huge glassy doll eyes played by the talented (Elena Anaya).

Almodóvar was worried that Talk to Her would not do well in America, and it needs to be said that it is not sure this one will fare well here either. Ever since its introduction at Cannes in May, The Skin I Live in has gotten more than minor criticism. The ironical and comical melodramas of Almodóvar’s previous work do not show any signs of life in The Skin I Live In. It is a somber and uncomfortable story but intriguing in a perfectly bizarre sense.

Almodovar ‘s penchant for ladies clothing, jewelry handbags, makeup, and wardrobe are all all on display and the product tie in for this film must have paid for it.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

2011-10-31T22:20:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Serge Gainsbourg (Eric Elmosnino) with Brigitte Bardot (Laetitia Casta)

The late French singer songwriter Serge Gainsbourg has received a renaissance of tributes in French culture since his death in 1991. His life was cut short due to drug and alcohol addiction but that did not interfere with the love affair he had with the French people.The premise of Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life seems to rest on his origins in a poor Jewish family in Nazi occupied Paris where his father forced him to play the piano.

Young Serge suffered from an inferiority complex and as the story goes he developed an alter ego that made him more dashing and debonair than he felt inside. He cannot be considered handsome but he had outstanding charisma and charm that endeared him to primarily women, but he also served as a hero to men because of that success. As far as I can see this is why he is deserving of the title of the film.

Joann Sfar who made a graphic novel that concentrates on this alter ego directs the film. Obviously, this helped Serge survive who quickly became an accomplished songwriter and made several women famous with his lyrics such as Juliette Greco and Brigitte Bardot.

The insertion of animation in the live action film from the graphic novel does not take the narrative to a higher level, but it does force us to take into account the fragility of Serge throughout the film. His arrogance and disregard for his wife Jane Birkin included a string of affairs and irresponsibility, such as allowing his daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg in a room with a loaded gun in his possession. It is also controversial that he made a duet with Charlotte that many consider disturbing entitled "Lemon Incest". The frequency of incidents with women that were not positive include raw remarks made on the air to Whitney Houston on French TV and the erotic lyrics he wrote for Bob Marley’s wife Rita that infuriated the Jamaican musician.

When Serge was younger, his charm and bad boy image pushed him to fame but as his career imploded with scandals,his sex addiction became more obvious. There are many legends about Serge Gainsbourg that the film takes up and Joann Sfar keeps the story pitched at the musician’s luck with women, as do many biographical accounts. Ironically, the actress who plays Jane Birkin, British actress Lucy Gordon, committed suicide before the release of the film.

The Women on the 6th Floor

2011-10-31T22:01:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

The Spanish maids : Carmen Maura, second from right and Natalia Verberke, far right

The Women on the 6th Floor (Les femmes du 6ème étage, France 2010) was part of this year’s out of competition selection at the Berlin Film Festival and opens in San Francisco this week. Directed by Philippe Le Guay, the film is partly autobiographical inspired by his family’s Spanish maid, Lourdes. In this film on the sixth floor of a stockbroker’s family house live several Spanish maids who serve affluent French households. The setting is Paris in 1982.

Jean-Louis Joubert played by Fabrice Luchini lives a predictable life with his wife Sandra (Sandrine Kiberlain) who has her toenails painted, her dresses fitted and enjoys tea with other French housewives. The maid of the family for 25 years quits but actually is just let go when Joubert’s mother dies, and a young Spanish woman is employed in the household to serve Mrs. Joubert. As might be expected Mr. Joubert is smitten by not only Maria but also all the Spanish maids upstairs. He seems to take a genuine interest in their livelihood, such as having their plumbing fixed, and drives them to mass in the countryside.

The film clearly stakes its claim in revealing the stuffiness of the French upper class and its bourgeois lifestyle. The Joubert kids go to boarding school and there seems little room for the passion of life. The Women on the 6th floor is clearly stereotypical where the Spanish women provide the spice to the French bland diet and for that reason the plot is something that must be endured. One wonders what the director’s real life experience was.

Several powerful actresses make up the ensemble of Spanish maids: Spanish actresses Carmen Maura (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Volver), as Conception and Lola Duenas as Carmen and Argentinean actress Natalia Verbekewho plays Maria. The class differences between the servants and the owners are transparent, lacking any real subtleties in this commercial French narrative. Carmen sells papers for workers’ rights in the town square and has to educate Mr Joubert on the atrocities of Franco who murdered her two parents.

Having one benevolent Frenchman cater to the Spanish women is the major superficiality of the film, especially since Mr. Joubert not only owns the home but also lays real claims to Maria. His sense of entitlement includes moving upstairs with all the maids when his marriage goes sour. It is fatiguing to see Fabrice Luchini once again as an aging middle age man falling for younger women. It is hard to imagine Maria with Mr. Joubert or as the center of attention with the enamored Spanish maids. Still the film had definite charm and nice touches which saves it from the script’s lack of ambition.

My Afternoons with Margueritte

2011-10-03T22:46:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Gérard Depardieu and Gisèle Casadesus

My Afternoons with Marguerittestars French actor Gérard Depardieu, who plays Germain Chazes, a man with a scarred childhood. Because of his weight problem, he has been teased and ridiculed all his life in the provincial French village where he was raised by a single mother. Despite these emotional setbacks he has a beautiful young girlfriend played by Sophie Guillemin – somewhat unrealistic because he is twice her age, yet twice his age is a kindly, elderly woman whom he truly enjoys conversations with – Margueritte, played by the 96 year old veteran French actress Gisèle Casadesus. Margueritte is a well-read scientist and she opens doors to this illiterate adult man who has been the butt of jokes all his life. He lives in a trailer in the garden behind the house where he grew up with his mother. The emphasis on the film is the friendship that develops between Germain and Margueritte - not your usual on screen relationship, and for that reason the film has a warm feel.

The film flashbacks to painful experiences the young Germain endures by a snotty teacher, but there are also scenes of humiliation with his mother who also is vicious in her insults. But when she has a boyfriend who hits both her and Germain she is quick to set him straight to not hit her boy, and stabs the boyfriend’s thighs with a pitchfork, who goes limping away. Later Germain is able to make sense of his mean mother and learns to love her. But his biggest attachment is to Margueritte, who is going blind and is kept in an expensive nursing home by her relatives. The contact is mutual especially when tough decisions have to be made when Margueritte is moved to Belgium by her family.

The film is directed by veteran French director Jean Becker who is known for his handcrafted films with charm about memorable meetings in life, such as The Children of the Marshland from 1994 set during WW1 where a young officer stumbles upon a cottage owned by a 92 year old man.

Griff the Invisible

2011-08-19T12:53:00.000-07:00

Maeve Dermody and Ryan Kwanten

It is unusual to see Ryan Kwanten in a role other than Jason Stackhouse in True Blood but its only fair to him as an actor that we let go of the typecasting a bit to see him not only in films with different characters, but in his own country. I understand that Kwanten must want to expand and show his acting abilities. His most recent projects in filmography, which you can count on your finger during the last decade, features him date in two Australian films. In Red Hill, he plays a policeman in a small town who stumbles on to some bad guys with a sordid past. In Griff the Invisible, he plays a nerdy office worker who likes to dress up in a rubber suit and fight crime.

The character is the complete opposite of Jason Stackhouse, of course. Griff the Invisible evokes the character Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) in Kick Ass who also dreams of being a superhero. However, the dark, brown haired Ryan seems to be swallowed up in this film, and not because we are used to seeing him in a completely different light. Do you know that he is going to play the serial murderer Charles Manson in an upcoming film slated for next year, The Family?

Griff the Invisible may have packed the house at the Toronto Film Festival where it had its international debut last September, and no doubt it will attract the same Jason Stackhouse fans here in San Francisco. The problem with the film directed by Leon Ford is the slow pace with a script that seems to go nowhere and though the director really, tries that are only moments of screen entertainment, Most of the office scenes in the film fall flat. One of Griff's friends is Tim (Patrick Brammall) who is attracted to the young scientist Melody (Maeve Dermody). The director will have us believe that like-minded nerds attract one another and so it is just a matter of time until Griff and Melody lock horns. But just as Griff refuses to betray his childhood friend Hoyt in True Blood and act out his attraction to Jessica, he is equally loyal to Tim. Melody fantasizes about Griff and says things like ”You be the rhythm and I’ll be the beat” but Griff sticks to his agenda of rejecting her advances - at least initially. His rubber suit empowers him to a certain degree and he is seen beating up the street thug bad guys. In real life, however, he is unable to pull off his daredevil stunts and he beaten up by co-workers on the street. Maeve Dermody fairs better as Melody who eventually makes her intentions perfectly clear to Tim and Griff - a good actress.

The film is billed as a romantic comedy but there is little chemistry between Melody and Griff, even if we are led to believe that the charge between the two of them is so powerful that light bulbs explode or doors melt when they are near. Maybe the film loses something in translation as a popular Aussie film. There is a hollowness that seems almost artistic but Griff the Invisible is just too transparent.

One Day

2011-08-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway

Lone Scherfig’s One Day is a film that spans 20 years involving two young people who are first friends and then brief lovers and then friends and then lovers and finally spouses. Anne Hathaway plays Emma Morley, a young college student who sees herself as a wallflower when in truth she is dynamic, funny and brilliant. She hooks up with the playful Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) who goes for all the cute girls that are nowhere close to the charm and depth of Emma. Emma indeed is Dexter’s best friend and she always wants more than he is capable of. In the novel by the same name written by David Nicholls, part of the antagonism between the two is based on class differences. Emma seems reconciled to the fact that she never will make enough money and will have to settle on men that are far less exciting than Dexter.

Blue Blooded Dexter could have anything he wants but decides against his mother's wishes played by Patricia Clarkson to do something useful. Instead, he goes on an airhead TV show, which works fine while he is young, but in time he is too old to play the part and his life starts to unravel. His good fortune turns into personal disaster. But there is always Emma he can rely on, and they manage to stay in touch through the years. Whereas the physical changes that Emma goes through seem upbeat, Dexter’s changes have a lot to do with gaining or losing hair. Indeed the couple makes a splendid pair, but we can only admire them as spectators. Of course, much is there in the book that the film is based on and one suspects this when there is more to the story than meets the eye.

A film based on a novel is a special breed and yet we have no right to demand that a film be faithful to the original source to be a superior product. Witness the Potter films that never seemed to disappoint fans, but The Golden Compass angered others so that there was only one film made based on the novels of Phillip Pullman. It is hard to make a film that spans two decades, so cars, hairstyles, music and fashion speak the loudest.

Danish director Lone Scherfig who made An Education (2009) has taken on another English property and shows with skill how to tell a moving story with just the right touches. And Anne Hathaway shows once against what a talented actress she is and she pretty much steals every scene she is in.

Attack the Block

2011-08-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Attack the Block screened in June at the Another Hole in the Head Film Festival in San Francisco. It was a good venue for it, due to its oddball quaintness. In addition, the film was at Comic-Con last month. Who would have thought that a pack of teens roaming around South London would be in for so much drama after mugging a woman and taking her cell phone? The gang is mostly black, and they all live in the hood of Wyndam Towers. After the holdup, a meteor falls from the sky and hits a VW bug. As Moses (John Boyega), the oldest boy of the pack goes to investigate he is suddenly attacked by a wild creature, which turns out to be an alien. He shoots it dead. From there, a cascade of black furry aliens begin descending to earth. They kill two cops and follow Moses and company around.

Back in their hood, Biggz (Simon Howard) is chomped on by one of the hairballs, and soon after they run into the girl they mugged, Sam (Jodie Whittaker). They are surprised to see her in their building and claim they never would have mugged her if they knew she lived in the same block. This doesn’t wash with her, but there isn’t time to negotiate this, as the black creatures with luminous green teeth are chomping at the bit and scaling Wyndam Towers like cockroaches.

Attack the Block, is an intriguing film because it shows how closely connected the gang is and how finely tuned they are with the survival of the pack. There are other characters that flesh out the story such as a corpulent marijuana dealer played by Nick Frost and one of his main customers, the young Brewis (Luke Steadaway). Brewis is able to make sense of the nature of the invasion, despite being in a constant stupor.

The gang has not escaped the eye of the local young women, including Dimples (Page Mead). These girls are annoyed with how juvenile the gang is but still are ready to standby and lend a hand to the defense plan.This is a bizarre tale about an epidemic that has psychic origins, a visit from outer space that puts into motion a survival plan in which the hood gets closer, cleaner, and wiser. The South London dialect is easy enough to follow with a riveting sound track including a tune by director Joe Cornish.

Attack the Block is also insightful for it shows how quickly the blame is put on the young black teens for the gruesome deaths in the hood and how they fight against this racial profiling in order to save their neighborhood.

Medea, Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy 1969).

2011-06-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Maria Callas as Medea.

Medea by Pier Paolo Pasolini was made in 1969. The scenography was done is by Dante Ferretti, and it was his first movie. And I mention this because he Ferretti not only did the scenography for a few other Pasolini films, but also for Interview with a Vampire, Shutter Island, Sweeney Todd and The Aviator. For the last two films he received Oscars.

To see Medea is a rare treat, because of the art direction but also because of the direction and script by the late director Pasolini. It stars one of his long-term friends Maria Callas as Medea, who is just brilliant. Nothing is usual in a Pasolini film from the quaint costumes, which consist of elaborate costumes with jewelry and intricate cloth, to the special way he tells stories. The film was shot in Italy, Syria and Turkey.

The story begins with a centaur (played by the late French actor Laurent Terzieff) who speaks to a young boy at age 5, 13 and as a young man. He is not his father or mother, says the centaur in his final speech before he sends the boy named Jason on his way, played by Giuseppe Gentile.

“All is sacred,. There is nothing natural in Nature, my lad, remember that!” The speech is an allegory for modern life in which contact with our mythical roots is vanishing. But for this Pasolini gives no credit to any higher power “In fact, there is no god!” says the centaur. He is told to go to a distant land where which has been usurped by his uncle King Kresus.He sends him on a mission to recover the Golden Fleece. It is in the possession of Medea, a sorceress who he convinces to come with him and marry him, after she kills her brother. Her land is one where human sacrifices are used to improve the crops. On return, he tells his uncle that the Fleece is worthless in his land.

Medea turns out to be too old fashioned for Jason who is soon betrothed to the King’s daughter. Medea’s handmaidens implore her to use her magic to take revenge on Jason, and she kills their two children, his new wife and her father the king. Though this should come as no surprise to Jason since this is the way of her land and the way of Medea.

There is nothing subtle about the film. It is crude and powerful. The story is shown rather than told, and the longest spoken dialogue is that of the centaur.

MERRY GO ROUND, Jacques Rivette (France 1981).

2011-06-10T14:19:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Joe Dallesandro and Maria Schneider at dinner.

Merry Go Round by Jacques Rivette is a film that uses the instrument of the camera and editing to create a mystical thriller. In this film we see the young Maria Schneider as she actually looked in real life without the artificial clothing and makeup she is known for in Last Tango in Paris. Maria is a tiny, thin woman, with lots of wavy brown hair, dressed in jeans, t-shirts and moccasins, the kind with fringe on the sides from the 70’s. Schneider picked her leading man for the film, Joe Dallesandro, who reported that Maria in real life was his friend. But according to Jacques Rivette, the relationship between the two on the set became increasingly hostile.

Merry Go Round has a short scene with the present French Minister of Culture and Communication Frederic Mitterrand who plays a courier. Later Mitterrand would present Schneider with an outstanding tribute when she was inducted in the Order of Arts and Letters (Ordre des Arts et Lettres) six months before her death this February.

The totally improvisational story has a loosely constructed plot about how Leó, played by Maria and Ben (Dallesandro) meet in a hotel—a rendezvous pre- arranged by Leó’s sister Elisabeth (Danièle Gegauff) who never shows up. To the story is that Leó and Elizabeth’s father has died and four million dollars of his estate is unaccounted for. Now and then throughout the film there are cutaways to a sax player and bassist playing improvisational music. Leó and Ben then wander through the French countryside looking for Elisabeth and the missing money. Ben tries to seduce Leó but she is immune. So there is no romance between the two. Instead they find an abandoned house and eat a lot of gourmet canned goods from the absent owner. They assemble the goods on a long dinner table. The dinner party is one of the most visually stunning scenes of the film where the two actors both at opposite ends of the table with a huge candelabrum in the center, peering at one another.

In the course of the film an unknown woman pursues Ben through the forest, not to mention a knight in shining armor. Later we see Ben trying to shoot at the women on sand dunes. The woman at first looks like Leo with shorter hair. Elisabeth is kidnapped then rescued by Leo and later shot. It is not clear what happens to the money or if the father is actually dead. The entire premise of the films is to dispense with the conventional use of plot, yet there is a random pattern that you can’t help trying to assemble as a spectator.

Maria and Dallesandro totally steal the film and the rest of the cast serve as distractions of little substance. If Maria Schneider had had her way Merry Go Round would have been the kind of film she would have liked as her first to give her a softer start in art cinema.

Interview with Maria Schneider (re-broadcast from March 2001).

2011-04-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Interview
A Transcript

Maria Schneider

Interview By Moira Sullivan

Maria Schneider was the Guest of Honor at the Créteil Films de Femmes International Women's Film Festival, March 23-April 2, 2001 and honored with a retrospective of her work. Schneider was the star of the riveting Last Tango in Paris (Italy, 1972), a film New York film critic Pauline Kael loved and defended and whose 6,000 word review was used as an ad to promote the film. In Italy director Bernardo Bertolucci and actors Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando were brought to court for making an 'indecent' film. The charges were later dropped. In several cities in the US, the film was banned. Schneider's career after that was always equated with this cardinal work. She starred in over 40 films and is presented here in a personal interview at the Créteil festival.

Q: Maria you were the 'cause celebre' of the '70s art house films and worked with directors such as Antonioni and Bertolucci. You had a very interesting career and did a lot for women's roles and many people remember you for that. What are you doing now?

A: I'm still struggling for the image of women in film and I'm still working, not as much as I would like to because for a woman in her late forties, it's hard to find work. Not only in France. I had a chat with Angelica Houston last year.We spoke about the same problem, you know. I don't know where it comes from? The writers, the producers, or the directors. But I think it's a pity even for the public. We get a response to see a mature woman in film. We see many, many macho men in film. An actress like Meryl Streep doesn't work as much as Bob DeNiro. That's a struggle that's still going on for many, many years.

Q: Lauren Bacall who was guest at the recent Stockholm International Film Festival said the same thing. She said that the film in which she was Oscar nominated 'The Mirror has Two Faces' was the first good part she had got in a long time.

A: Yeah, yeah yeah. It still goes on.

Q: You did a lot for women's roles in the 1970s and were way out there. You say you don't like the theater; you think its boring and are a real cineaste. Did you find art house cinema or did it find you?

A: I was a student and I wanted to be a painter and I studied Greek and Latin. I wasn't planning to be an actress but was a cinephile and saw two, three,four movies a week and that was a great time for movies because you could see all the neorealism, you could see Bergman, Visconti, Antonioni, and because of destiny I had to stop school. I had a fight with my mother. So I was living alone and did little parts in film to just earn some money. And in one of these films I met Birgitte Bardot. And she took me under her wing and I lived with her for two years and with her I met the movie business and her agents and they said 'you should do movies'. So it was well, just destiny. And then I started right away.

Q: How do you feel about being honored by the Créteil Films de Femmes festival for your work this year?

A: Very touched because I have followed this festival for 23 years. I was on the jury in Sceaux (original site of Films de Femmes in the late 1970s) 20 years ago. And I discovered films at this festival which you couldn't see anywhere. The German school, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Margaretha Von Trotta-films that you couldn't see elsewhere. It still exists because we still have to fight, me as an actress, even if we have more women directors today, it's still difficult, more difficult for women. We are not in the production as much as men. An event like this is important and useful. And plus the girls (organisers) told me, I could show five of my movies, that I could choose-that was interesting.

Q: Because you have made over 40 films?

A: Yeah, (laughter).

Q: What do you think about art house cinema today?....Artistic films that use film language instead of having rising action, falling action and resolution?

A: I've seen the Julian Schnabel film (Before Night Falls) with Javiar Bardem. I saw it privately, because I met Julian and he showed me the film three weeks ago and I think it's a beautiful film. Poetic, lyrical and it says something, but not heavily. Its very fine: I'm glad that there are still films like that today. And I think of 'Straight Story' by David Lynch. A film which I love which is more like a John Ford film. But the message is eternal. And that's important.

Q: That is what you mentioned about Last Tango not being--the way that it was made was that it did not age well as 'The Passenger' (Antonioni, 1975).

A: Yes, Last Tango is typically 70s and the style is a little kitsch today. And it got old. 'The Passenger', no, it still stands. I don't know what do you think?br>
Q: It was great. It was also nostalgic to look back at that time.

A: Me too. (laughter)

Q: How do you feel about the response to you-there is a lot of press in France about you being honored at Créteil? How do you feel you've been received?

A: Very interesting. Because finally after I've been doing this now for thirty years, finally I find some cheerful articles, and you know people kind of understand me better now today than they used to. Because the media threw stones at me. When you read the articles back in the 70s they were terrible back then. And now seeing the kind of choices I made, they kind of understand me better. And respect me better, maybe it's the age, I don't know. (laughter)

Q: Adjectives that come up about you in some of the recent press are 'mysterious' and 'difficult to get to know'. Would you say that's true?

A: No, I don't live around show business. I have a simple life. And maybe that's why. I don't go on television often unless I have something to say. And if you're not in the media today and you don't work, you don't exist which is not true. Many people aren't in the media. But they work and do art.

Q: To get back to Lauren Bacall, she is constantly asked questions about Humphrey Bogart despite the fact she had a life after him. The public has this icon in their mind.

A: I have the same with Last Tango.

Q: If you could write your own legend rather then the legend that has been generated about you what would you write?

A: I will tell you in about 20 years even later on.

Q: There is something very tricky about this word legend-it's kind of like a story. But everyone has a story of their life and sometimes we have our own stories of ourselves that don't get told.

A: Movies are a mirror of society and I'm just an interpreter of that. And I love movies because they are the memory of our time.

Q: Thankyou very much for speaking with us Maria. Do you have any imminent projects coming up?

A: I'm going to shoot in May and play the sister of Isabelle Adjani made by Laetitia Masson, a woman director (The Repentant). Isabelle is interesting. It's Mediterranean, and we're playing two sisters and it's quite tragic.

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The 33rd Créteil International Film Festival Report 3

2011-04-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

Teresa Villaverde

The 33^rd Créteil International Film Festival which ran from March 23 to April 3 was topped off in the final days by a visit from Portuguese filmmaker Teresa Villaverde. The filmmaker was present at the screenings of her work such as Mutantes and Transe. It is fair to say that Teresa Villaverde who became a filmmaker in her 20s is probably one of the best filmmakers in the world today. There is nothing random about the way Villaverde frames each scene in her films. Her creative use of the camera and editing is a brilliant picture language Her stories are concise and vivid and create emotional empathy without forced manipulation.

In Mutantes, young Portuguese boys and girls with problems at home and with themselves are incarcerated in juvenile detention homes. They long for the love of their parents and their freedom but don’t know about boundaries without the foundation of a loving upbringing. They turn to each other to make up their lack. Some break out of the center to enjoy short lived freedom but life is so tough they eventually wind up coming back.

Anna Moreira

Anna Moreira plays a tough girl who tries to make it on her own. She winds up getting pregnant and gives birth to the baby in a gas station toilet. Afterwards, shaking she walks inside to have a cup of coffee. The grimness of the lives of these youngsters is shot from a variety of perspectives that are visceral and brutal.

In Transe , Anna Moreira is back as a young Russian woman in a bleak narrative about human trafficking. When giant trees fall in the forest at a road stop for the young woman in transit, the beginning of the loss of self is profoundly foreshadowed. After the trees hit the ground, the images are blurred; this begins Sonia's (Ana Moreira) trance as a young victim of trafficking. Sonia is exposed to the most vicious degradation and loss of personal freedom one can experience. Trafficking is a huge problem today and young women are doubly at risk for being sex slaves but also illegal aliens and thereby are not free to speak out against their captivity.

Throughout the film one asks why does Sonia not resist? Why did she allow herself to be put in the trunk of a car because of a supposed raid by immigration authorities in Germany in a factory where she is temporarily working? We witness the seduction and entrapment . Why does she not run? The loss of self is so complete in this film that it is difficult to watch. But it alerts us to the huge problem of trafficking today for young people. Is it a dream that Sonia envisions a young boy with a rifle in the room aiming at her, where she is forced to service buyers of sex? There are many facets of her trance to reconcile and Villaverde does not make this easy for us.

It was a privilege to meet the director at this festival. Here now is an exclusive interview with Teresa Villaverde.

For Movie Magazine this is Moira Sullivan Paris

33rd Créteil Films de Femmes Film Festival, Report 2

2011-04-22T13:52:00.000-07:00

By Moira Sullivan

At the 33rd Créteil Films de Femmes Film Festival, the daughters of Italian film editor Suso D’Amico were present at a special screening of La Notti Bianche (The White Nights, 1957), by Luchino Visconti. The film that was written and edited by D’Amico stars Marcello Mastroianni as Mario, a young man hopelessly in love with Natalia, a young Italian woman played by Maria Schell. She has waited one year for her lover to return, "L'inquilino" - the tenant, played by Jean Marais, and is desperately in love.

Pilar Miro's The Cuenca Crime (Spain 1980) was screened at the festival about the shepherd Grimaldos who was murdered at the turn of the century. Two of his workers are falsely accused of his death by the police and a corrupt judge and are tortured for committing this crime. The men who are savagely broken down and made out to be savages.

The late actress Maria Schneider was honored on March 29^th with a short tribute. A short film from 2005 and an interview when she was the guest of honor at Créteil in 2001 was screened. Due to the marketing power of the distributors of Last Tango in Paris, the film was widely seen, and indeed the only film that journalists wrote about after her early death. But Schneider’s career went on after her debut in a film that she did not like. Last Tango can also be seen as a fascist expose about the tyranny of power in human relationships where the 19-year-old Jeanne played by Schneider endures a series of physical and emotional assaults by the sadist Paul, played by Marlon Brando. As Schneider said "shooting Paul did me good". Her choices after being cast in Last Tango were wise, and she resisted Lolita roles offered to her by directors such as Luis Bunuel and Joseph Losey.

Next week, more from the Créteil festival.

For Movie Magazine this is Moira Sullivan, Paris.

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