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Berlinale 2017, Day 9 (Ciao Ciao)

I had one hour to get from “gog” to “Ciao Ciao” and afterwards I had to run home to attend a family outing, so this was a pretty stressful day up to that point. Thankfully the rest of the evening was nice (and had good food unlike the Saturday before) so this was actually the most pleasant of the social obligations I had to attend during this Berlinale.

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Ciao Ciao
China/France 2017, Song Chuan, 83′

After returning to her Yunnan hometown from Guangzhou, Ciao Ciao gets stuck in a marriage that quickly bores her while she gets close to hairdresser who claims to be from Guangzhou.

OK let’s get over this quickly. This was the worst movie I have seen this Berlinale, and it may in fact be the worst movie I have seen in all Berlinales I have ever attended. I could tell that the film would piss me off since the first 30 seconds, when you saw an overly saturated landscape (so green that it hurt your eyes, and the exact opposite of the pretty green you see in “Mushishi” or, to keep it within the Berlinale, “Honeygiver among the dogs”) accompanied by amazingly terrible Chinese techno music.

The techno music was present throughout the story, and so was the terribleness. The characters are stupid, their actions are inexplicable, their sex scenes cringe-worthy almost to the point of disgustingness and the storyline is absolutely unengaging. The dialogue contains tidbits like “if you love me, you have to give me big gifts, that’s what a man is supposed to do”, and portrays a despicable lower farming class. If I were a farmer in Yunnan, I’d be utterly pissed at how I was being represented in this film: lazy, greedy, treacherous and sex-crazed.

Loris was more forgiving towards “Ciao Ciao” and essentially said that he didn’t get the film, but in my opinion that the film was just so crappy that whatever was incomprehensible about it (like the characters’s motives) was due to the fact that the film failed to make sense. If anything the film serves as a reminder that the bad Chinese films are out there, and how infuriatingly bad they are.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 9 (gog)

It feels to me like my last few days were crazy and things are finally calming down. If all goes well, I am looking at a fairly relaxed month of March, and it is quite wonderful to think back at the Berlinale fondly, when everything was really stressful yet exciting at the same time.

The screening of “gog” was one of the most special events I have ever experienced at the Berlinale (perhaps not as special as “Calvary” or “Ai no Mukidashi” though), because I had never seen a 3D film at the Berlinale before. Most interestingly, the Berlinale introductory video is in 3D! I had hoped for this, since silent films also come with a silent intro (and the best aspect about that is the joyful anticipation of how Stephen Horne will accompany it this time), and it was just as glorious as I expected. That alone almost made “gog” worthwhile, though of course we need to keep in mind that every screening is 11 euros now. (EDIT: Loris also pointed out that “gog” in particular was 13 euros because of the extra fee for 3D. So that would indeed be a lot of money for 30 seconds of the Berlinale intro in 3D.)

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gog
USA 1954, Herbert L. Strock, 85′

In an elaborate underground research station in New Mexico, two scientists mysteriously die in a cold chamber. Our hero David Sheppard arrives at the research station with the task to find out what happened. While Sheppard and the audience learn more about the research station (including the powerful nuclear control computer NOVAC and two cute robots Gog and Magog), more and more such accidents crop up.

To be honest I was very unsure about this film at first. I was into the looks of the robots, which remind me a lot of the Daleks but look much cuter, but I wasn’t so sure if I wanted to see a low budget American film from the 50s. In the end, “gog” was as B-movie-ish as I expected, but very satisfying at the same time.

My favorite part about the film was definitely the technobabble. Usually I find them exhausting, but in “gog” I enjoyed them because they come with such enthusiasm. The film oozes love for technology and is not afraid to have its characters go in depth when talking about their research. Sometimes we spend minutes hearing about how a certain machinery works, what kind of research they do, what it is all for and the likes.
I have never seen anything like this before, and I am so used to a certain fear of science in art and media that it was very refreshing for me to see a film that spends time just marveling at the possibilities of technology. To go even further, even the resolution of the story is very kind towards artificial intelligence. Instead of having a robot going rogue or malfunctioning, like in “Test Pilota Pirxa”, the threat comes from external human manipulation, so the robots and machines are not only cool, but utterly innocent. (So are all the characters we meet – everybody is in the same boat and a good person.) Wow. Because of its blatant optimism, I think it was the most feel good film I had seen for awhile.

Other than that, I concede the story is absolutely nothing worth writing home about. There is nothing particularly clever or well-made about the film, and its female characters (especially the female lead) are either stock characters or, even worse, damsels in distresses. This is the 50s after all, and for all its love for science, the film doesn’t even try to portray something like an actually smart and competent woman. Of course the film also contains hilarious scene where some woman shrieks in fear and a guy goes up to her, slaps her and says: “Get your act together!” Some people in the audience literally laughed at how bad it was.

So yeah, the film is pretty dumb (so dumb in fact that some guy behind me exclaimed “Was für’n Quatsch!” as the end title got shown) and no love for technology could change that it’s not particularly knowledgeable about it, but I don’t care – for me it was a great experience, both because of the 3D gimmick and because the film itself was so strangely enjoyable despite (or maybe because of) its badness.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 8 (Honeygiver among the dogs)

After my biggest source of nervousness (the screening I attended with O) was over, I felt like I had much more energy to devote to my own screenings of the Berlinale, so I decided to go to this horribly late screening which I had been unsure about all week. It started at 10.45pm but at least the trains were running all night on a Friday so I was able to take the train all the way back home and get there by 2am. Could be worse!

Nevertheless, from my previous experiences I knew that by 10.30pm I was typically so tired that I was waiting for the screening to end and be able to get home (which was usually the last half hour of a film). Apart from the unusually late start time, the film was also extraordinarily sleep-inducing! I was half awake and half asleep throughout most of the film, but every time that pretty background music, I felt myself slipping into sleep. It happened so many times that I fell asleep almost on cue. I got the impression that I woke up yet again in time to see most of the important story-related parts (mostly towards the end when the mystery was finally revealed).

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Honeygiver among the dogs
Bhutan 2016, Dechen Roder, 132′

Besides falling asleep, what affects my impression of the film the most is probably the fact that both Loris and I thought the “femme fatale” strangely looks like a former fellow student of ours back in high school. It’s not just her appearance, but also the way she composed herself and especially when she smiled. They both uncannily have the same mouth shape. The actress is arguably very beautiful and did a very good job conveying an air of mysteriousness, but oh boy was that overdone. Within the film it makes sense because she is supposed to be this spiritual figure, but in real life I cannot imagine any man actually falling for this woman who keeps walking through the woods like she’s on a catwalk, except much slower and more respectful towards nature (or whatever that was supposed to be). It is remarkable that the female character in your usual film noir is a male fantasy, whereas here it is clearly a female fantasy. I know I shouldn’t lump all men in this world together, but men, whoever they are, are not into this type of mysterious woman; if I had to describe it, I’d say she is totally not sexy, not in any way.

The look and the style of the main female character reminded me of women’s fashion magazines. They may be hollow and superficial but if you look at them more in depth, they show that the typical woman does not actually try to look like how men want her to look like, but how her peers or she herself wants to look like. That is why you see women caked in make-up, wear huge loose-fitting frumpy clothing, dress up in weird girly styles or starve themselves such that they look more like a super model and less like Marilyn Monroe. Women’s magazines may be backwards, and all these trends may seem horrendous to you, but dressing weirdly like that actually give women a space in which they assert themselves and their womanhood instead of allowing themselves to live in the eye of men. However, this film is all about a man doubting his own world and perception because he’s fallen for a woman, except the woman does not convince me for those reasons above.

For all of you who know me, I also disliked the spirituality of the whole thing. While I like certain flavors of spirituality (perhaps the cute character designs of “Kamichu!” and the likes inspired me to like shintoism), most are strangely disturbing to me. I am really into a yoga these days, and grateful that it has become such a trend that you can easily find material about it that avoids both a strong reverence to its original roots and so much inappropriate ignorance that it borders on cultural appropriation. I admit I know very little about religion in Bhutan, but whatever I saw in the film was rather off-putting. It was beautifully photographed in the film for sure, but the atheist in me was revolting and I cared very little for that “protecting the land” concept.

Now that I spent so much time complaining about the film, it is important to note that if you don’t mind the main character nor the religious aspects, it’s a perfectly good movie. As I mentioned, it looks beautiful and the slow pace is not a problem if you can enjoy the lush greenery (and the associated spirituality), and the story is suspenseful and engaging and leads to a satisfying conclusion with a lovely plot twist. I’m not surprised that the film was popular with the audience, and just like “Bai Ri Yan Huo”, this film is a great hommage to those film noir classics.

PS. I am really into that plot crucial gho that Kinley wore for parts of the film. The traditional outfits are very nicely styled and carefully draped and worn in this film, unlike what you see in most Google image results for “gho”.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 8 (On the beach at night alone)

Sometimes I forget what I have done on a specific Berlinale day other than seeing movies. I think I actually managed to spend an entire morning and afternoon (after the film) with O on day 8, but I just don’t remember. I do know that by the time I got to the film, I was pretty tired and glad that there were only 3 days left, and that I could sleep in on these days. I was looking forward to some (if not all) of these films very much, and it definitely helped that the cinemas were also comparably less packed than the first weekend.

I doubt I missed out on a lot when I fell asleep. The only thing that confused me a little was that I didn’t know whether the film had two or three parts (like “In another country”), but later I learned that part 2 was just much more extensive than part 1. If that is the case, then I suspect I actually didn’t miss out on a lot at all, perhaps just 15 minutes or so.

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Bamui haebyun-eoseo honja (On the beach at night alone)
South Korea 2017, Hong Sang-soo, 101′

To me, parts 1 and 2 are completely different films, though they are both quite typically Hong Sang-soo. It’s good to know that all of his movies are still exactly the same (as I expected and desired), but somehow this one fails to stand out for me.

Let’s start with part 2, which actually is special for a Hong Sang-soo film, because it’s unashamedly giving an insight into his own real life relationship with Kim Min-hee. Maybe that makes this film even more autobiographical than his other films, but these autobiographical tidbits actually dampen the art in my opinion. The confrontation between Mim-hee’s character and the director sounds exactly like what it is: Two people shouting their feelings at each other, embarrassing themselves in the process and ultimately not saying anything of interest to anyone else. I couldn’t really relate to any of them during that moment, much unlike in part 1 when things were largely unspoken and therefore more interesting.

Part 1 also wins because it has other little Hong Sang-soo tidbits that I like: a conversation in a pretty cafe, a charming bookstore (in this case with a very charming bookstore owner who also composes children’s music!) and a stroll through the park followed by a cutely awkward meeting with some foreigners. Even a mystery man character appears and gets to do something humorous at the end. I can relate to the main character’s desire to live somewhere else, even though you can strongly feel her cultural and mental disconnect with the place, so I thoroughly enjoyed this part. I liked that the director was physically absent even though he was constantly on her mind.

As it so often happens in Hong Sang-soo films, you don’t know which parts were “real” and how the different parts connect. I like the simple interpretation that parts of the film were a dream, which is honest and goes in line with the unusual amount of wishful thinking (which is a lot even for a Hong Sang-soo film). “On the beach at night alone” was ultimately not bad, but I preferred most of his other films.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 7 (O-bi, o-ba)

This screening was by far the emptiest I have seen during this Berlinale. Even “Himmelskibet” had a full house, and Danish dude was surprised by it. Mostly it can be blamed on the time slot: nobody wants to watch a film at the Zeughauskino from 9.30pm to 11pm, and “O-bi, o-ba” is some obscure Polish science-fiction film without a notable fanbase to speak of. The Japanese films had the weeaboos, “Letters from a Dead Man” had the Russians and Pirx had the Estonians. (In fact, I distinctly remember somebody trying to get into the screening with the argument “I’m an Estonian journalist!”) For a change, I got to the cinema at a good time and enjoyed finding a decent seat with lots of space around me.

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O-bi, o-ba: Koniec cywilizacji (O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization)
Poland 1985, Piotr Szulkin, 89′

After a nuclear catastrophe, about 2000 humans are left on earth, hiding within a protective “dome” about the collapse. They believe that an Ark will come to save them, and the belief has been propagated by the government to motivate people to survive. As Soft, a public servant, realizes that the dome cannot be repaired because the only engineer alive who could refuses to do so, he tries to look for an airplane and get out of the dome with his girlfriend, the prostitute Gea.

I will forever remember “O-bi, o-ba” as the film that was even more devastating than “Letters from a dead man”, another nuclear winter story and thus very comparable at least when it comes to the premise. Perhaps this is mostly because I expected something very different. Overall I expected more comedy in a film that features Jerzy Stuhr, and indeed the film cannot be completely taken at face value. Many scenes are so grotesque that they are definitely supposed to be funny, apart from your obvious stab at the Bible and the likes. However, the doom and gloom is overwhelming, and the neon colors contribute to the grotesque nature of the world even more.

When I picked the film, I saw Jerzy Stuhr on a screenshot and thought the title was amusing. (It turns out the title is inspired by the babbling of the director’s daughter, which is awesome.) Unfortunately, neither seem to be really able to contribute much to the film. The title is literally nonsense and Jerzy Stuhr may be doing a good job, but he’s essentially an everyman in the film, except with more knowledge and insight than the others.

Until the devastating ending, “O-bi, o-ba” has many interesting aspects to offer. I liked the character of the engineer who refuses to fight a futile fight and the one of Soft’s boss who is slowly going more and more crazy, I enjoyed the part where Soft looks for a Bible only to realize that nobody cares for it, and I was amused to find out that the starving people are fighting over food made out of recycled paper.

But the ending, oh wow. Compared to “O-bi, o-ba” every single dystopian film I have seen has some sort of hopeful ending, or the end itself doesn’t really have that much of an emotional impact (like in “Melancholia”). “O-bi, o-ba” literally ends with humanity dying while the people foolishly believe they are being saved. I also had a soft spot for that young boy who grabbed onto Soft and believed in him, only to be disappointed. I believe Soft was intending to help him judging by the sad look on his face when he found the boy again, and the boy’s demise was much sadder than any other death I have seen at the Berlinale, including the absurd death that Soft’s girlfriend Gea fell into (yes, she literally fell to her death out of her misguided belief in the Ark that will save them all).

For awhile, I wasn’t sure if I could fall asleep after seeing this nightmare of a film, but I was lucky because I got over it quickly after all. I can see why so few people wanted to see this kind of devastating film, but I think it deserves to be brought out of its obscurity even though (or maybe because) it was so uncomfortable for me to watch.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 7 (The Other Side of Hope)

This film was heavily anticipated. The old man actually asked me to buy two tickets for this screening for his friends, but I couldn’t do it because I wanted this time slot for Loris and myself. Due to the trains running late (yet again), I made it to the movie theater only 10 minutes or so before the film opened, even though I leave the house 1 1/2 hours early for almost every screening, and afterwards I had to rush to pick up O. In the end, it worked out fine but I didn’t actually meet the old man that day.

Of course it’s not necessary to see a Kaurismäki at the Berlinale, because his films are always available afterwards. But it was hands down the best film in this Thursday morning time slot, and Loris and I felt like seeing it, so there we are.

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Toivon tuolla puolen (The Other Side of Hope)
Finland/Germany 2017, Aki Kaurismäki, 98′

Khaled is a Syrian refugee who more or less by chance ended up in Helsinki. He applies for asylum in Finland but gets rejected, so he decides to flee and stay in the country illegally. Wikström is a merchant and decides to leave his wife, give up on his former business of selling shirts and ties and open up a restaurant instead. While Khaled is homeless on the streets, he is discovered by Wikström behind the garbage bins. With the help of his three employees and their little dog, Wikström takes Khaled in, gives him a place to sleep and a job in the restaurant.

The verdict is pretty clear: How can anyone not like this film? Everybody I know including all the online reviews I read seem to agree that the new Kaurismäki is lovely in every aspect. If that refugee film didn’t win the year before, this one would have definitely gotten the Golden Bear. Much like “Le Havre”, “The Other Side of Hope” is optimistic, funny and has extremely lovable characters. In this case, the degree of lovableness goes through the roof, and everybody of relevance is either simply likable or a genuinely good person who does good things. What’s not to like?

One thing I noticed immediately was that the refugees are all pretty good-looking (the main character, the good friend, the sister) whereas all the locals are pretty ugly and/or old. It makes for an amusing contrast and I believe it also contributes to many comical situations.

Another thing I noted (a little later, of course) was that it took awhile until our main characters finally meet. It said it was 45 minutes in some review, but I had the impression it was more like one hour. In any case they spent at least half of the film not yet knowing about each other’s existence, which also means that you didn’t get to see them together that much. I thought it was the film’s only weakness: except for that scene in which they meet, there is not that much personal interaction between them. Their friendship is largely dependent on what they are (Finnish, Syrian) and much less on who they are, which I had been looking forward to.

Danish dude mentioned to me that the infamous Scandinavian unfriendliness or distance towards people is rooted in their impressively well functioning social welfare system. Just like how in Germany nobody gives you a seat on the subway no matter how much you look like you might need it, people in Denmark don’t make small talk with you, let alone become your friend, because they don’t meddle in other people’s affairs and believe that nobody needs their support, because the system will take care of it. As a result, expats in Copenhagen never meet or befriend any Danes, and leave the city because no social contacts are keeping them there. “The Other Side of Hope” shows a different aspect of Scandinavia… or it’s wishful thinking because in reality Finns don’t talk to each other either.

Finally, and this is so typically me, the dark ending of the film (and the shadow of violence cast upon it) was actually most memorable for me. It is an image that I can still recall very vividly, and it does make me wonder why all the reviewers and even I thought that the film was a feel-good movie. Of course the ending was beautiful, but with just that one violent scene at the end Kaurismäki managed to give a believable and realistic portrayal of a Finland that is not just composed of lovable, helpful people. It didn’t feel that way when I just saw it, but the more I reminisce about the film, the more I am devastated by the sadness of its ending. I think it was a masterpiece move of Kaurismäki’s to include this kind of dichotomy in “The Other Side of Hope”, and it reminds me that I need to see more of his films.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 6 (A day after a hundred years, Uchujin Tokyo ni arawaru)

This was one of the weirdest screenings I have seen in awhile, mostly because the main feature was announced as “having a bad print quality, but the film is so great that [they] are showing it anyways” and the short film that came before was a silent film that was actually – gasp! – shown silent. Even when you don’t have live music, the film usually comes with some form of musical accompaniment, but here we actually watched the 11 minute film in complete silence. I thought it was the strangest thing, and the silence itself actually made me want to fall asleep. When the main feature finally started, I immediately felt a little more awake.

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Hyakunen-go no aruhi (A Day After a Hundred Years)
Japan 1933, Shigeji Ogino, 11′

In 2032, scientists bring back the spirit of a man who died 90 years ago. The man is impressed by the technological advances and learns about life in the future.

Danish dude saw these two films on another day and said he thought the silent film was the worst film he has seen in awhile. I can definitely see where he’s coming from, because the animation is absolutely horrendous. Considering that the film came 3 years after sound films came about, it is shocking how badly it is made. Sure, I tend to have high expectations for animation but I don’t expect Kyoto Animation-like quality from everybody. But even if you take history into account, if Lotte Reiniger can make “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” mostly on her own, then the lazy art in this film has no excuse.

Nevertheless, I liked the film because the story spoke to me. I thought it was humorous and at times surprisingly accurate when it comes to predicting how the world would look like one day. Sure, magnet trains don’t look like they do in the film (the style of the futuristic architecture is actually decent, it’s just the handiwork in the execution that is sloppy) but it was very interesting to see how they imagined us almost 100 years ago. In fact, I even got a little confused about when the film was made because they were talking about some “Great World War” taking place around 1942, and I was impressed that the film seems to be prescient about these kinds of details. For me, this short film oscillates somewhere between impressively good and impressively crappy, but overall I think it did not deserve to sink into obscurity.

drrt

Uchûjin Tôkyô ni arawaru (Warning from Space)
Japan 1956, K?ji Shima, 87′

The appearance of UFOs and then of actual starfish-like shaped aliens sends the people of Japan into panic. It turns out the aliens are there to warn Earth from the impending collision of a big planet which would destroy all life on Earth, and later on help the humans to survive.

Uh yeah, I don’t personally agree with the claim that the film is great, although it definitely has many entertaining moments. The starfish-like aliens are cool and positively remind me of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Naru Taru, and until the middle of the film, I was highly entertained and very grateful for the humorous story (which was something I really needed this late at night).

I think I am just allergic to Japanese victimization, so the film took a quick turn for me when the “Japan is the only country that has suffered under nuclear weapons” threat came out. The film turns Japan into this poor little country at the mercy of the greater powers of the world, just a few years after it very much aspired to be one of those great powers. This is especially apparent when the children come into play – they are completely hopeless, faceless, always in fear of something and look frumpy and desolate in the way they are styled (very very not cute, unlike the children in “Letters from a dead man” where they manage to be active characters despite being catatonic). Needless to say it is the invention of a Japanese scientist that will save them all, not an American or another otherwise, and certainly not some technology brought in by the aliens, who are described as much more advanced than humans.

Maybe it’s unfair to judge a film based on these kinds of political considerations, but despite my enjoyment of the story otherwise I was honestly quite disturbed by the subtle nationalism of it, so there we are: I found both Japanese films of the day good and bad at the same time, so in that respect they are a perfect match for each other.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 6 (Kurzfilme Kplus 1)

The event I have been anticipating for weeks is to attend a screening of the Berlinale with O. I saw that it’s recommended for 4 year olds (the only screening recommended for this young age group), and I was pleased to see that, of course, there would be plenty of overly eager parents with their 2 and 3 year olds. After 2 1/2 Berlinales of leaving O with my parents so I could attend the screenings, I am finally able to share the experience with him, yay!

We spent a very calm morning, took a nap from 10.30am to almost 1pm and got to the venue almost 45 minutes early. In fact, we were able to get in first and snatch two of those booster seat cushions such that Oskar’s head was almost at my height and he could see very well despite sitting in the comparably deeper (but very comfortable) special seats that you normally pay an additional fee for. The seats were so big that O asked “Have to put on your seat belt?”

It’s embarrassing to think about it, but when the Berlinale opening sequence was playing, I teared up, that is how much it meant to me that I am finally able to show the Berlinale to O. Ever since, O recognizes the Berlinale logo on all of my Berlinale bags…

As expected, O loved the experience. This was his first time in a cinema theater ever, and I was afraid he would be scared of the movie theater becoming very dark. I warned him beforehand and he saw that all the kids around him were not scared either, so it went very well. It helps that all the films were short, so even though there were some that he didn’t like as much (the second and the second to last) he was fine because he was anticipating the next story.

By the way, I ended up kicking out all other short film screenings from my Berlinale schedule this year because I somehow felt more like watching feature films this time. I saw a bunch of great short films with Shii in Uppsala, and I had doubts the Berlinale selection could surpass that.

After the film, we did not stay for the Q&A because O’s German is not good enough for him to understand and enjoy it, but we were able to get some postcards stamped with the adorable stamps by the same lady as 2015. O loved those stamps so much that he declared her film as his favorite – sounds like her marketing machine is working even better than I expected.

Later on, O was very excited all evening and it took him awhile to get settled for sleep, so I ended up leaving much later for my evening screening than I anticipated.

drrt

Sabaku
Netherlands 2016, Marlies van der Wel, 3′

A bird loves to sit on top of other animal’s heads, but whenever he opens his mouth, a huge loud trumpeting sound comes out and chaos ensues. Finally he gets to meet an elephant with whom he becomes best friends and they trumpet together while the bird sits on his head.
The kids loved aforementioned ensuing chaos, and O liked that there were lots of animals involved, but he didn’t seem to find it as funny as the other kids. I thought the film was cute, and a nice allegory on how everybody can find a suitable friend.

Dziedošais Hugo un vi?a neticamie piedz?vojumi (Singing Hugo and His Incredible Adventures)
Latvia 2017, Reinis Kalnaellis, 9′

Hugo, a chicken in a chicken coop, dreams of becoming a big star but his singing disturbs the other chicken and gets him abducted by chicken thieves. He gets sold to various places, a crazy chase ensues and Hugo accidentally ends up at a circus performance where he finally fulfills his dream.
I thought the story itself was enjoyable and nice, but the character design is significantly less cute than for most of the other segments, so O was less into it. I doubt O was a big fan of the action (or the sleazy human characters) either.

Odd er et egg (Odd is an egg)
Norway/Portugal 2016, Kristin Ulseth, 12′

Odd is the child of chicken and his head is essentially an egg that may break and thus needs a lot of attention and care. As a result, Odd has no friends because he can never play along with their dangerous ball games and the likes. One day, he meets a girl who dresses up like a bee and whose free spirit inspires him to shake off his fears, and she becomes his first precious friend.
When I saw that the story would involve an outcast school-aged child, I was worried that O would think the topic to be boring. I was so wrong, because the story was mostly about Odd and Gunn becoming friends – and O loves that! Even though he understood relatively little about what was said in the dialogues, he grasped that this is a heart-warming tale of two children becoming friends and doing fun things together, and that made him happy. I thought it was adorable too, even if the premise and the ending are also a little silly.

1Minuutje natuur (1Minute of Nature)
Netherlands 2016, Stefanie Visjager/Katinka Baehr, 7′

The film consists of five little segments of children talking about something of their lives for one minute, with some matching animation using stick characters and real-life objects as backgrounds.
I was not too into the style and O didn’t get how the animation illustrated what has been said. This film is actually a little more advanced than the others, but without really saying that much if you ask me. It was OK.

Der kleine Vogel und die Raupe (The Little Bird and the Caterpillar)
Switzerland 2017, Lena von Döhren, 4′

The little bird from two years ago still cannot fly, and befriends a caterpillar in this story who helps him get away from the mean fox.
Just like last time, this was extremely cutely animated and it surely helps for O that it had no dialogue at all. It seems like the films about the little bird are favorites with the audience every time. As for me, I already forgot what happened in the story, but I am glad that O had a good time and treasures his stamped postcard so much that it’s now hanging on his wall.

Hedgehog’s Home
Canada/Croatia 2016, Eva Cvijanovic, 10′

The hedgehog lives in modest housing within the forest. One day, the fox invites him to his house and offers him to stay over, but the hedgehog still prefers to go home. It’s a little tale about how your own home is always the best.
This is a classical fable with lots of dialogue and the animation is often dark and a little intimidating looking, especially with a bear, a fox and a wolf as characters. No wonder O wasn’t too into it, even though I thought the story itself was actually fine.

Jazzoo
Sweden 2016, Adam Marko-Nord, 9′

In these ultra short segments, various animals are doing fun things accompanied by jazzy music.
To me, this was the most humorous part of all of them, O really liked the colorful animation and the animals that were involved (in fact, it seems like he had a dream concerning one of the segments afterwards and then claimed he saw it in the cinema), and we were both very into the music. Sadly the parts were also so short that the content was ultimately not very memorable, but even so I remember I found it to be one of the best and most entertaining short films in the selection.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 5 (Requiem for Mrs. J)

I just spent an hour waiting in line for tickets, another hour waiting for O to arrive, another 2 1/2 hours in which we sat through a ballet (he was watching intently throughout its entire course while I almost fell asleep) and another hour getting home together. Now it’s 11pm and I’ve been wanting to sleep since 8pm or so. Bottom line: I feel reminded of that morning after seeing “Call me by your name” when I rushed to get to “Requiem for Mrs. J” by 9.30am. Thankfully it worked out well time-wise, but having slept some 5 hours or so I knew beforehand that I’d fall asleep. (Amusingly, Loris told me I slept through a sex scene when I was noting that I hadn’t seen any during this Berlinale.)

There was also a Q&A at the end which Loris attended but I ran back home to get some sleep before picking up O again, and I looked forward to resting before the next day, which was my most anticipated day of all.

drrt

Rekvijem za gospodju J. (Requiem for Mrs. J)
Serbia/bunch of other countries 2017, Bojan Vuletić, 94′

Jelena lost her job, and ever since her husband’s death almost a year ago, there is nothing in life for her. She decides to kill herself with a pistol on the day her husband died, but till the week is over, she has to put things in order: She needs to cancel her life insurance, get her name onto her family grave stone, re-new her health insurance card. Every step seems to get more complicated than the previous one, leading to kafkaesque scenes.

I had pretty high hopes for this film, and I wouldn’t say it was bad. In theory, this film could have been right up my alley: I like the subtle black humor it suggests in its title, and the general premise of a woman who wants to prepare her own suicide but meets crushing bureaucracy and a rigid societal system. Sounds like something I like, right?

While Loris was really into the film, I have no idea why the film didn’t click with me at all. Maybe I was too tired to sit through a slow-paced film (but I was tired when I saw “45 Years” so that doesn’t count), maybe I have too little knowledge or understanding for the circumstances in Serbia, maybe I just didn’t find Jelena compelling enough as a character because she actually did very little in the film. The last scene, which I could tell was set up to be an emotional, almost hopeful ending, left me rather non-plussed.

However, the most noticeable part for me was Jelena’s relationship with her daughter. I absolutely understood the daughter’s complaints about her mother not doing anything around the house (she literally sits by the table a lot), when rationally I know that Jelena, having recently lost her job and her husband, would have no interest in housework. But in the way she was portrayed I had a hard time getting on her side on the emotional level. (Perhaps in a different medium, like a book, this would have been different.) I also didn’t really buy how the daughter ended up reconciling with her mother based on nothing (or so I felt). It’s not like she knew that her mother was (essentially) coming back to life, and it’s not like her situation or their relationship had actually changed for the better.

I have a soft spot for films from Eastern Europe, and I doubt that will change with this one, because from what I remember it’s the first of its kind ever that somehow didn’t work for me.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 4 (Call me by your name)

Like most people I know who go to the Berlinale, I avoid the gay movies. Of course I make conscious exceptions like I did for “Love is Strange” (largely because I am into Alfred Molina and John Lithgow and liked the premise a lot), but when it comes to the Berlinale the genre is famously oversaturated so the likelihood of stumbling upon something great (like “Weekend”, in my mind perhaps the greatest gay film ever) is so small that I usually wouldn’t run the risk.

In this case, I completely failed to realize that this is a gay movie. (Can you believe it?) I thought “oh there is a new movie by the director of ‘I am love’ and I have not seen an Italian film in awhile”, and that was enough for me to choose this film without looking at the synopsis too closely.

It was also the first time I saw a late screening at this year’s Berlinale, and the first thing I noticed about the film was that it managed to keep me awake even though I felt really, really tired. Even though I was at the premiere of the film, I couldn’t be bothered to stay for the Q&A afterwards.

drrt

Call me by your name
Italy/France 2017, Luca Guadagnino, 132′

Every year, Elio’s family takes in a young archaeological researcher at their summer villa to stay with them and to help Elio’s father with his research. This year, the visitor is a charming and exceeding good-looking American who first confuses Elio, but slowly they realize their feelings for each other.

It’s difficult not to compare the film with “I am love”, so I will unashamedly do so. What struck me the most was how incredibly unusual “I am love” is as a film, and how straight-forward the love story plot in “Call me by your name” is compared to it. How can a director who cooks up some of the most unusual stories make another movie about something so trivial? Not that it is necessarily a bad thing – boy meets girl (in this case boy meets boy) can be nice and interesting – but I just expected otherwise from this director. I was especially into the family relationships in “I am love”, which I felt was sorely missing here. All the other characters just served as supporting cast to the main characters’s relationship. Literally supporting in fact.

That was another thing that surprised me a little – the relationship has absolutely no challenges outside of itself. That can be nice too, but in this case the parents and girlfriends (!) seemed over the top helpful. The parents freely discuss their son’s relationship: “Oh our 17 year old son’s boyfriend is leaving and he will be heart-broken so why don’t we send them on a short city trip so they can intensify their feelings further before he leaves?” The girlfriend Elio toys with and essentially dumps by not talking to her for 3 days says stuff like “I don’t want to get involved with you. I have a sense that you will hurt me and I don’t want to be hurt” prior to entering a relationship with him anyways (of course), but after getting dumped and after Oliver leaves, she (almost literally) says this to Elio: “I heard about Oliver leaving, and I’m sorry that you are sad. It’s alright, I am not angry at you, I really am not. Can we still be friends? I love you, Elio.” What the heck?

If one accepts that “Call me by your name” is the ultimate gay high society utopia, the film can be thoroughly entertaining (as I hinted before, I did not fall asleep during it) precisely because everything was so utopic and idyllic. Just like “Love is strange” (and also like “I am love”) the characters live in this perfect world of thoughtful intellectuals in which they have a scrumptious breakfast in their Italian garden, with fresh orange (or other) juice, croissants and fruits from their orchard. When the father and Oliver talk about their archaelogical research (and claim that those ancient sculptures of males were erotic), the mother comes in with more freshly squeezed juice in a jug and pretty cups on a tablet. Their cook makes the most delicious looking foods, and they all casually switch between their three languages within any conversation (French, Italian, English). Oh and they are Jews too!

I was amused to see that Louis Garrel’s sister is somehow just completely normal-looking, much like Chiara Mastroianni. The girls in the film are all comparably average-looking, whereas the main characters look more like of a combination of Shii and Louis Garrel himself (Elio), and Don Draper in blonde (Oliver). Alfred Molina and John Lithgow make for a more realistic couple in “Love is strange”, but as I said, you just have to accept the utopia “Call me by your name” lives in, and then the film becomes a fun escapist fantasy. (OK, the sex scenes were boring. At some point 2/3 into the film, the physical aspect of their relationship became important and I yawned throughout it pretty heavily.)

Oh, I also like the gimmick with the title (which I completely failed to realize until it was shown at the end of the film). It’s cute, and it reminded me of “You’re ugly too”.