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Berlinale 2015, Day 9 (Kurzfilme Kplus 1)

Sunday in Berlin-Friedrichshain at 10.30am – needless to say that there were pooptons of children. This time it was not huge groups of school or kindergarten kids, but affluent and hipster looking parents trying to instill some culture into their children. The whole affair was quite loud, but it actually made the Q&A rather pleasant. As always, the children asked a lot of “why”-questions and most of them were really good. I really liked the answers given by Montoya who explained his film so well that I liked it more afterwards, and I was in love with the Iranian woman who appeared on-stage with a light headscarf and a very cutesy but elegant outfit. I was impressed by how child-like and thoughtful her answers were, though sometimes she overdid it a little bit (and the children actually did not believe her version of the world). On top of that, the lady from the first film had stamps with her film’s characters for the autograph session. The children were delighted and I thought that marketing scheme was brilliant.

drrt

Der kleine Vogel und das Eichhörnchen (The Little Bird and the Squirrel)
Switzerland 2014, Lena von Döhren, 5′

A short film about a bird and a squirrel fighting over something (food?) and then meeting a fox who tries to eat them. It looks utterly adorable and the kids laughed a lot, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the story itself. It seemed utterly pointless that the little bird couldn’t fly, and there was basically no point to the story except it had action that children like.

Camino del agua (Water Path)
Columbia 2014, Carlos Felipe Montoya, 8′

The story is really short – mother tells girl to go to a further away water source to fill up a bottle of water. She does so but on the way back a stranger with crutches asks her to give him water. She does so, but it turns out that the stranger lied to her and can actually walk just fine. She ends up filling up her bottle again at a pond, and a little fish gets caught in the water. I like how ambiguous the end is (we don’t know if she gets scolded, if the mother notices etc.) and especially how unclear the moral takeaway of the story is. Was her decision a “good” one?
Oh and how much I loved the little girl’s outfit! I was amazed at its cuteness. But I think all of these – ambivalent story, beautiful landscape, cute outfit – are things that little children don’t really care about. Only for adults like me it was truly fun.

The Tie
Belgium 2014, An Vrombaut, 7′
I think this one got an award for being visually impressive or something, but I thought it was remarkable that this was the only film I did not remember just from its title. It sure was beautifully rendered and features a cute idea, but its story was all but forgettable and I was not a huge fan of its style. But the children sure liked it.

Messages dans l’air (Air-Mail)
Switzerland/France 2014, Isabelle Favez, 6′

A cute little story and an awesome cat (see picture above! I loved the cat so much that I chose the picture for this blog post.) I doubt the children were very into it, but I certainly loved the style and enjoyed the sweet love story.

Agnes
Sweden 2014, Anja Lind, 15′

“Agnes” is the longest and one of the more meaningful stories in the bunch, about a 6-year old girl whose 16-year old brother is the most important person in her life. She experiences jealousy when he starts becoming alienated to her as he has a new girlfriend. But before it takes a real toll on their relationship, they reconcile. I didn’t fully get what was going on in their heads because it was all subtly hinted at, but I actually liked the way it was done.

Rosso Papavero
Slovak Republic 2014, Martin Smatana, 6′

A visually stunning dream sequence of a small boy who dreams of, well, a circus. The whole thing looked pretty surreal and the director actually said something about what it was supposed to mean, but I couldn’t understand his answer very well (sad!) One kid asked how those circus waggons could all disappear in a small tent, and his response was: “It’s a magic tent!” Cute.

Mahiye sorkh shodeh (The Fried Fish)
Iran 2014, Leila Khalilzadeh, 11′

Based on a Japanese children’s book, this is the story of a fish who gets caught, then fried but manages to escape being eaten. He offers a part of his body to animals who find him in exchange for taking him to the sea, but one by one they abandon him after eating his flesh. Ultimately quite a sad story, and I would have hated it as a kid. (What is the point of all this sadness?) I also was not a big fan of the animation which looked sloppily done. However, I really liked how it stirred up a lot of discussion with the children. (One of them complained that mice don’t eat fish hahaha.)

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Berlinale 2014, Day 10 (Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1)

A month after the Berlinale started, I am finally blogging about the last film. I had a feeling this would happen and I was a little afraid about it. Luckily I have a very vivid memory of “Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1” which ended up making quite an impact on me, I think.

Fittingly for the Berlinale, we were in the Berlinale Palast for the last film, sitting upstairs in the first row in the very middle. Lucky! As you can imagine, it actually provided a great view onto the screen and considering that the film was almost 2 1/2 hours long, this definitely helped.

drrt

Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1 (long version)
Denmark/Germany/France/Belgium/Sweden 2013, Lars von Trier, 145’

On his way home, the old bachelor Seligman finds a woman beaten up and brings her to his home. When she gets better, she tells him the story of her life and how she became a nymphomaniac, as she diagnoses herself. Volume 1 covers the first five chapters, which detail her youth in which she competes with her best friend about who can get the most men to sleep with them; her first meeting with Jerome, the love of her life, an incident; her father’s death and finally how she meets Jerome again.
Death count: 1.

I read up on what happens in part 2, and I’m not liking it, especially the parts concerning Seligman. However, I haven’t seen it and if I see it I may change my mind, we’ll see. Here, we only saw the first part, and I have to say, I liked it. If you look beyond those explicit sex scenes (yeah yeah, they’re provocative etc., get over it, there’s not even that many of them), the characters in the story make a lot of sense. I don’t think Joe’s character is very common or typical or even “human”, if you want, but she must be seen as an individual. Most people in this world are not nymphomaniacs or anything like her, but her character is well-fleshed out, and so it is possible to relate to her. As somebody who is almost uncontrollably obsessed with sex and who seems to have an incredibly built-in desire for it, she is quite aware of what she is doing and what it means. The story is detailed as one in which she made her own choices – she may not have been very good at controlling her desires, but she had full control of her actions. My favorite part was the one with the crazy wife who intrudes into her life with her children and goes on a crying rampage. It was so damn realistic and I loved how Joe ends the story with the fact that it did not faze her emotionally at all. That part was just so fascinatingly realistic, and shows in a striking fashion what consequences her actions have on other people. The matter-of-fact way she talks about her “sins” is nice because honestly, if there is something people are usually absolutely cold about, it’s what happens to other people who sleep with the same person as you, most often those husbands or wives. It’s not even that psychopathic of her, it’s perfectly normal if we were honest about it. I think I am usually a rather compassionate person, but if some guy’s wife did that in my apartment, the only thing I would want to say to that would be “Get out.”
The realism and the subtle feminism (quite typical for Lars von Trier) are this film’s best aspects really. People are getting it wrong, he doesn’t hate women, he loves them.

My second favorite part of the story was the last one, in which she compares her lovers to different voices of an organ. One of them is Jerome, the love of her life. The film’s main quote is probably “The secret ingredient to sex is love”, but even though Jerome may be the only man amongst whom she loves, he is still only one of them, only a part of the “big picture”. It reminded me of analyses of the Don Juan character who I was extremely fascinated with when I was younger, and she is something like a reverse Don Juan with a psychology just as complex.

I really enjoyed seeing Stellan Skarsgard after “Kraftidioten”, especially since he is in such a different role here. Charlotte Gainsbourg not so much, but I don’t think there is any film in this world which could make me feel better about her. Her adoration of Lars von Trier’s dark side also creeps me out.

After disliking “Antichrist” and dropping “Melancholia” like 10 minutes into the film, I had surprisingly high expectations for “Nymphomaniac”, perhaps because of its premise and because I enjoy Lars von Trier’s provocations. I enjoyed the film and thought that it was rather interesting in the way it handled its heroine. At least in parts, Lars von Trier is in parts regaining the depths he has shown in his older films, like “Dogville” and “Idioterne”, and I am glad that he finally did after almost 10 years of dabbling when only his comedies (“Occupations” and “The boss of it all”) were good.