Next Cinema Lounge

The Cinema Lounge meets Monday, September 9 at 7:00 p.m. for its annual look back at the films of summer and a look ahead to the films of fall and the holiday season.

Cinema Lounge, a film discussion group, takes place the second Monday of every month at 7:00 PM at Borders Books, 600 14th St., NW in Washington, DC (near the Metro Center Metro stop).

By Jim McCaskill

EDINBURGH, Scotland. August can exhaust you anywhere. August in Edinburgh can really do you in when this city becomes World Culture Capital. The city is filled with the buzz and excitement of outstanding performances in the International Festival, Fringe Festival, Book Festival, the Tattoo, Radio-TV Festival and of course the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Operas ranged from traditional Wagner to a new one on Jerry Springer. Your day can stretch from Shakespeare for Breakfast, a variety of dramas and authors in the afternoon, pausing for Mozart at Teatime, the latest new film from Turkey and rounding off the day with a Late Night Romp with chiller films. Next year it may be even more jammed with the addition of the International Computer Game Festival.

As might be expected September 11 was present in many artistic guises. The biggest Hollywood stars in Edinburgh were not at the Film Festival. Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were in a Fringe production of The Guys, a play that focused on a fire captain's need to speak at the funerals of men in his station. The film of The Guys is scheduled for release in Spring 2003.

This was Artistic Director Shane Danielsen's first year. How did the new boy do in his freshman year? Not bad. Some top quality films held their premieres here. An interesting Retrospective brought an important Japanese director to everyone's attention. Kon Ichikawa is not a name widely know in the west. His more than 75 films show great breadth and talent. An Actor's Revenge is truly one of the world's greatest films.

There were a dozen films that I can strongly recommend with four of those real stand outs. One of the joys of film festivals is discovering wonderful films that for a variety of reasons never get distributed in the US. This year a real find was Turkish director Zeki Demirkubuz. This 38 year old director, graduate of Department of Communications, Istanbul University, has two films that everyone acclaimed, Fate (Yazgil) and Confession. (Itlraf) I liked Fate a little more than Confession. His previous films were C Blok (1994), Masumiyet (1997) and The Third Page (1999).

Fate is based on Albert Camus' The Outsider. Musa's inability to mourn for his mother affects his entire life and leads to disastrous consequences. He tells the police, "You can say you are guilty but cannot say you are innocent." We are all guilty of something. "You charged me with the murder of three people but found me guilty of not being unhappy when mother died." "They offload the problem of being human onto people like me."

In Confession Harun suspects his wife his having an affair. "Tell me what is going on or I will kill you." "Look at the state you have me in." And look at that state we do. Where does an act of contrition lead? Tough, unrelenting look at a marriage and lives in collapse.

My top picks from EIFF are, besides Fate, All or Nothing (Mike Leigh, UK, 2002), July Rhapsody (Nan Ren Si Shi) (Ann Hui, Hong Kong, China, 2001), and Rabbit-Proof Fence (Phillip Noyce, Australia, 2002). Rabbit-Proof Fence won the audience best film award.

A longer article on conversations with Mike Leigh and cast of All Or Nothing (click for picture) will be in a later issue of Storyboard but for now the master continues to work. The story is about another family in a downward spiral. Timothy Spall gives an outstanding performance as a mini-cab driver. Spall's character says, "If you knew what was going to happen to you, you would never get up in the morning." Lesley Manville as his common-law wife is trying to hold the family together. Her income as an overworked Safeway cashier provides the only stability in this family. Ruth Sheen and James Cordon follow in their father's footsteps: overweight, directionless and on the brink of disaster. Leigh's ability to work with cast in developing script works well here. Spall was in Tom Cruise's Vanilla Sky and will soon be in Japan and New Zealand shooting Cruise's next film Last Samurai. Spall assured me that with his bulk he would not be playing a samurai warrior.

July Rhapsody (click for picture) begins with a beach scene conversation between father and son that reveals a marriage now burnt out. "Not every ending fulfills your expectations." Much in the manner of Edward Yang's Yi Yi this gentle film looks at marriage and life with a poetic touch.

What would you do if the government stole your daughter? If you think families were on the brink of desolation in the previous films, wait till you see one where it is government policy to remove children from their family's home. From the early part of the 20th Century until 1970 it was the official policy of the Australian government to remove children whose fathers were white and mothers Aboriginal. They were called the Stolen Generation. Rabbit-Proof Fence (click for picture) follows three little girls who escape from the mission and find their way home by foot, across 2000 kilometers of Australian outback, following a rabbit-proof fence all the way. The fence actually stretched from north to south across the continent. Doris Pilkington, the daughter of Molly Craig, who at age 14 was the eldest of the three girls and wrote the book upon which the film is based. Molly, now 86, said "Those other kids that were taken, they were much younger. They didn't know mother. But I was older. I knew mother. I wanted to go home to mother." A longer article will appear in a future Storyboard. Kenneth Branagh plays the government official given legal custody of all children destined for removal. This was their way to prevent a third racial group.

The remaining top twelve are Abouna (Our Father) (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Chad 2002), Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Dai Sijie, China, France 2002), Clay Birds (Tareque Masud, France, Bangladesh, 2002), Japon (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico, Spain, 2002), Morvan Callar (Lynne Ramsey, UK, Canada, 2002), Revengers Tragedy (Alex Cox, UK 2002), Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 2002).

"Jim," said my friend Gina Berg, DCFS member and visitor to Edinburgh, "Aren't you going to see Abouna? How often do you get a chance to see a film from Chad?" Thank you, Gina. This film is really worth seeing. "Where's Dad?" asks one of two brothers and the film unfolds as they go looking for their missing father. What happens to a family when the father has to travel far, this time to Tangiers, Morocco, for work. One character stands on the Chad borders and points, "Over that border you are somewhere." The boys are taken to a religious school but escape to continue looking for their father. "Does Dad love us? Then why are we suffering?" At the end of the film the oldest brother says, "Nothing's more important than freedom."

In 1971 if you were an intellectual you were sent to rural areas for re-education. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (click for picture) is the story of two young men who were relocated to a remote mountain village and their impact on the village and one young girl in particular. Who re-educates whom in this film? "I will transform the Little Seamstress. I will cure her of her ignorance." By reading classic western literature to this untraveled, uneducated girl they do change her. Is all change good? Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Balzac have an effect. "I feel like I am someone else."

In the 1960s unrest in Pakistan, people are unhappy with military dictatorship. This unrest led to a harsh crackdown that resulted in the formation of Bangladesh. What does it mean to be Muslim at a time like this? Anu is a fun loving child whose father has reestablished his Muslim roots. Casting a book aside as Hindu rubbish, he says, "You women will ruin him," and sends his son off for a proper religious education. The Clay Bird (click for picture) in the title is a trinket picked up by Anu at a village fair as a gift for his sister. It is also a line in a song in the film, "The bird is trapped in a lady's cage. If you give me thoughts of freedom give my wings the strength to fly."

Japon was a film I liked at the Rotterdam Film Festival. Comments on it were made in the February Storyboard. Some changes were made for Cannes but they were so minor I did not pick up on them. This is a powerful film with an extraordinary ending. For a first time director, Reygadas has made an outstanding film, a tough film set in rough scenery.

Morven Callar (click for picture) will also get a full Storyboard article later this year. There are some flaws in trying to bring Alan Warner's cult novel to the screen but talented director Lynne Ramsay gives it a go and makes a impressive film. Her first film, Ratcatcher, was well received and this one has been also. The film benefits from the mesmeric beauty of Samantha Morton. She said, "I always knew Morvern Callar would be very special to me. I had a very funny feeling that I had to do this film, it was just something I had to do." You may remember her for her Academy Award nominated role as the mute in Woody Allen's Sweet and Low. She was also Iris in Carine Adler's Under the Sun. Recently she starred in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. Her next film will be Jim Sheridan's East of Harlem. Kathleen McDermott almost steals the film as the bubbly, outgoing best pal, Lana. Stopped on the streets of Glasgow by casting director Des Hamilton, McDermott was persuaded to attend an open casting call. Several call backs later the trainee barber was cast. The plot line? What do you do when your boyfriend commits suicide on Christmas Eve and leaves a just completed novel in his computer?

Brush up your classic English. Jacobean drama is about to hit the silver screen. Having plumed the depths of Shakespeare and Elizabethan drama we are now set to move to the next era. Revengers Tragedy takes no prisoners in this direct, confrontational film. In the Elizabethan era you had to be pro monarchy. Marlowe was murdered in a pub. "In the Jacobean times you had more freedom. You wanted to see the aristocracy brought down. Not endless Hamlet," said director Alan Cox. This film follows past British films such as If..., Clockwork Orange, O Lucky Man. This is currently scheduled for major release early in 2003. Storyboard will have an article at that time.

Abbas Kiarostami's Ten gives ten separate sequences as a young woman (Mania Akbari) transports family, friends and strangers around Tehran all the time giving advice. "We women are unhappy." "We don't love ourselves." "First you must love yourself." To see a segment of Iranian life today this is the film to see.

If you have been hiding in a West Virginia coalmine for the past few months, you need a 'heads up' on this year's French sex film. Defiantly an AYOR (at your own risk) film. The first 12 minutes of Irreversible are unbelievably violent. Told, as is recently fashionable, from back to front, we begin with the punishment for a crime and then the crime. Maybe it does help to first see what happens to this rapist. The worst part is the sustained 8 minute anal rape. The camera, positioned at ground level right in front of the victim, does not give you any relief. Not for the faint of heart. At the end of the day, or rather at the end of the film, I did not see the reason. It did not offer any fresh insights.

Other films I saw that were in the acceptable film category were: Eight Women (France 2001), Angela (Italy 2002), Australian Rules (Australia 2002), Dragonflies (Norway 2001), The Guru (USA 2002), Le Souffle (France 2001), The Importance of Being Ernest (UK, USA 2002), It Kinda Scares Me (Israel 2001), Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (UK 2002), Pleasant Days (Hungary 2002), Sex Is Comedy (France 2002), This Is Not a Love Song (UK 2002).

The question that needs to be asked is Why wasn't Once Upon a Time in the Midlands ranked with the top films? It had everything needed: bright director looking for breakthrough film, good script, good cast. Robert Carlyle is in top form as an ex-husband returning to claim his former wife. Carlyle has played nutters in only four of the 22 films he has made (Albie in Cracker, Colquhoun in Ravenous, Begie in Trainspotting, and Renard in The World is Not Enough) not as Gaz in Full Monty. Maybe it is too formulaic. Its title gives it away as a western template laid upon the British Midlands. This film owes a lot to High Noon. Will the sheriff screw up enough courage to fight for his own? In this film, will Rhys Ifans defend his family from the bad guy? This film gives Ifans more room to show growth than roles such as Spike in Notting Hill. For me it just did not come together. Still it is an interesting film and one that many will enjoy.

The only film I saw that I did not like was the woeful Soft Shell Man (Canada 2001). The closing credits reveal that two crabs died in the making of this film. Those wee beasties died in vain.

Now to relax a bit before taking off for the Toronto Film Festival.

To the Barricades

By Jim McCaskill

PARIS, France. If you are strolling near the Carrefour de l'Odeon this September, it may seem that they have begun the revolution without you. The streets will be filled with student revolutionaries and all the trappings of the evenements of 1968. You are not in a time warp. Bernardo Bertolucci is filming Gilbert Adair's novel The Holy Innocents. The film will focus not on the politics of the student revolt but on the personal relations between Theo (Louis Garrrel), his sister (Isabelle (Eva Green) and their American friend, Matthew (Michael Pitt). In the novel he was British but that was changed. The title has also been changed to The Dreamers. Adair is writing the script and making changes to his novel.

FIPRESCI Pix Picks

By Jim McCaskill

MUNICH, Germany. Juries of members of the international film critics association, FIPRESCI, have made awards at several film festivals this summer. La Cage (The Cage) (Alain Raoust, France, 2002) won the award at the International Film Festival of Locarno (Italy). The jury said La Cage won "for its cinematographic expression which relies more on images than on words, in creating a young woman's portrait in search of inner peace, after have committed a crime".

At the Motovun (Croatia) Film Festival the award went to the German film Halbe Treppe (Grill Point), (Andreas Dresen, 2001). The jury said "Halbe Treppe is a powerful depiction of daily life at the German-Polish border, made through an inventive creative method."

The Deserted Valley (Thung Lung Hoang Vang) (Pham Nhue Giang, Vietnam) was the FIPRESCI jury's choice. Director Pham Nhue Giang's film was cited "for its compassionate, poetic and evocative portrayal of an isolated community coming to terms with modern society." A special mention went to A Wedding in Ramallah (Sherine Salama, Australia) "for its keenly observant approach to a contemporary, personal and yet universal topic, and for the effective rapport created between the director and the people involved in her story."

Calendar of Events

Previous Storyboards

August, 2002
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