Tag: PIFF

This year’s PIFF was pretty short. We only visited Shii in Stockholm (or rather in Uppsala to be more precise) and with everybody more or less in the regular work force except for Shii and me, this was basically a week-end trip. As a result, we ended up sightseeing a little bit and watched less films. Hopefully next time we actually get to marathon films again, when the PIFF is tentatively slated for summer.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

I will keep this one short. The bottom line is that I have absolutely no idea why this is a classic. I am a huge fan of both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (much more the former though), and I think both of them gave a great performance, yet I was somehow not into the story (nor the characters) at all. Apparently it’s a cult novel, but it’s so obviously written by a man who does not look particularly kindly upon aging women. I don’t even have to delve into the absurdity of how Jane descended into madness, because ultimately books or movies don’t necessarily have to be hyperrealistic about the psychological mechanisms if it leads to an engaging story.

For me, Baby Jane didn’t really have that, so as a result this is the typical case in which I have enjoyed watching a film in friendly company, but the film itself was not that great. I am happy that it revived the careers of two great Hollywood stars, but I wished for them that it had been better roles.

We were relatively badly prepared for the PIFF this year. Usually we bring films with us and discuss what to watch beforehand, so even if we change our plans halfway (as we almost always do), we typically get an idea of what we will see. Not this time. It was only recently that I met with a friend who claimed “Wild Tales” was the best film of the last 5 years, and that prompted me to propose it for the PIFF while we were desperately looking for what to watch. It turns out the recommendation was spot on (though that claim with the 5 years is an exaggeration of course).

Wild Tales

I’ll give some short comments on each of the segments, but given that this is a black comedy, I cannot fully express why this movie is so surprisingly worth watching.

Pasternak

This one was impressively short but probably our favorite overall. Personally I had a thing for the very last sequence, but “Pasternak” is over the top funny, concise and simply perfect. Ranked no.2

Las Ratas

Perhaps the least outwardly funny of all the segments, I liked it for its unabashed vengefulness. If only you could get rid of the Trumps of this world like that, but there is a reason why “Inglorious Basterds” never happened. Ranked No.5

El mas fuerte

Speaking of the devil, this segment reminded me a little bit of what Tarantino would do, but Tarantino could never come up with the ending twist which made us all laugh out loud. Ranked no.4

Bombita

All of the segments have elements of social commentary, but this one is perhaps so the most. It would never be this funny in an US or a European film. Of course the respective Western countries come with their own absurd inefficient bureaucracies, but it would never ring so hilariously true if it wasn’t set in a somewhat inherently chaotic country. The satisfying vengefulness aspect reappears, and that might make “Wild Tales” the perfect escapist movie. Ranked no.3

La Propuesta

Being one of the longer segments (if I am not mistaken), this was perhaps by far my least favorite. It’s a hilarious take on corruption with a few great one-liners and twists, but not as exhilaratingly so as the other segments in my book, most likely because in this case, I can’t really relate to that world. Ranked no.6

Hasta que la muerte nos separe

No film can be without a love story, and what a love story this one is! It was also a very long segment, but I thought every escalation of the disastrous wedding was fantastic. Maybe because my family never has any open confrontations these eruptions have been almost cathartic, and the end felt absurd at first, but upon further inspection, it was absolutely right after all. They let it out and they are now even, so they can leave it all behind to focus on these feelings that were very much present the entire time. I think it’s a fabulous wedding. Ranked no.1

Jodorowsky’s Dune

It’s time to kill the backlog, because the Berlinale is beginning and I am hoping and praying to be able to see many interesting films. Ever since the PIFF (which took place in October last year, mind you) I primarily watched films on airplanes, because I have mostly been busy traveling or preparing for said travels. It’s a first world problem, but now I’m glad to be done with all that for awhile and “settle” a little bit.

First of all, I must admit that during the PIFF I fell asleep during “Jodorowsky’s Dune”. I was just so tired after the first day, so I think I saw about 30 minutes or so before I dozed off slowly while sitting up, and only woke up when everybody was bursting into laughter about his rape joke. Shortly after I fell back asleep again. So I decided to re-watch the film with Pip, whom I knew would be interested in it. In retrospect it turned out well, because he was really into the film. We are now even considering purchasing the book if Taschen ever releases it.

Needless to say, we all enjoyed the film. Even if you discount that wildly inappropriate rape joke, the film is designed to be entertaining, which is great for a documentary. It also gives a pretty good introduction to both Jodorowsky and Dune (I have never seen a film by Jodorowsky nor did I read Dune), which helps because there isn’t all that much unexplained name-dropping. It is certainly cool to see famous people like Orson Welles randomly appear in it, but for me the best part was the glimpses of the set designs and how the artists talked about it. Perhaps I am just into this goth-y style, but it also came with incredible details and an atmosphere befitting of what I imagined Dune to look like.

Speaking of which, Jodorowsky himself is quite a fascinating character. Sure, he is amazingly weird but his way of roping people into his epic enthusiasm is absolutely beautiful. I love how strongly he believes in his collaborators who then actually produced amazing artwork. With film-making being so dominated by tyrants like Preminger or aforementioned Welles, I am glad to see somebody inspire good art by, well, being inspiring and a decent leader. I think many people would benefit from the guidance of a mentor and a leader like that, especially the young, talented and ambitious, and I found the spirit that goes through this film heartwarming because of that.

Is “Dune” the greatest film never made? Maybe, and actually I think it would have worked marvelously as a Battlestar Galactica-like show some 50 years later, but it history is already written and I am glad that Jodorowsky has gotten this far and produced so much great work in the first place. I just hope it gets published.

Top Hat

It’s definitely been awhile since the last time I have seen “The Dreamers” which I told myself I would watch every year to assess how my love for films has changed. Without even seeing the film, one thing is for sure: I definitely outgrew it by now, and I have always known that I would one day. It actually makes me a little sad to have lost that youthful, foolish spirit, yet at the same time, a big part of me thinks that adulthood (and motherhood especially) actually made my life richer than the foolishness of youth, much unlike what your average Hollywood film would suggest. I read that Rohmer only makes movies about young people and I suspect his disdain for old people is merely more open than other people’s. Films like “Make way for tomorrow” or “Amour” are rare. But I digress. So I looked through my 2014 favourites list and realized that nothing has changed from it. I barely watched anything in 2015 and my sense of films has basically stagnated. This is dangerous, and I hope to improve on that in 2016.

“The Dreamers” is also the main reason why I want to see “Top Hat”, apart from the fact that I have never seen anything by the famous Rogers/Astaire couple. I also realized that “Top Hat” is actually their most famous film (or at least that is my impression), with none of the truly famous dance musicals of later days featuring any of them. I got the impression that the pair is more famous for themselves than their movies, and seeing “Top Hat” confirmed that for me. The storyline is nice, funny sometimes, but ultimately somewhat dull. It’s the music, the choreography and the ridiculous but stylish stage design that make 50% of the film’s appeal, and the other 50% is the unparalleled chemistry between Astaire and Rogers. I have never seen anything like that, and I doubt I ever will again. There is so much joy in the way they dance together that I never even thought of falling asleep for a second, even though it was late and some of the others either went to sleep or fell asleep during the film.

By the way, my favorite dance is actually not the one in which Rogers had all the feathers on her dress fly off, but the one where they initially seek shelter from the rain and fall in love. She wears pants in that scene, and somehow that made their moves much more appealing to me.

I definitely want to see “Swing Time”, even though I expect its story to be even worse. If the dances are good, I think I would accept the most absurd plot just to see Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire dance, that’s for sure. It’s sad if “Top Hat” really is their best film, but then it’s definitely worth a second look.

* On a completely unrelated note: If you ask a female feminist who advocates for equality between men and women in all regards, she is on a sinking ship with a single male who offers her his life vest because she is a woman – would she refuse?

La femme de l’aviateur

The answer is probably threefold: Books, operas and O. I have been getting into an almost obsessive reading phase ever since I bought another huge bunch of books and re-organized my bookshelves such that these books can fit in. Also, we are getting ready to move to Singapore which means no more opera for me, so I am spending an extraordinary amount of time watching them, even watching them on TV because I somehow just got into the flow. I have a list of operas online and when they will be taken down. It’s the Netflix effect: If I know that something will be taken down soon, I am more likely to watch it. (With that said, if you know where I can get my hands on a production of “Un re in ascolto”, let me know.) Finally, a trip to London and various small things with O (going to the doctor’s and the likes) took up most of my time. Oh yeah, I also forgot a forth point, which is that I was catching up on exhibitions going on in Berlin. But now, having gone to almost 7 exhibitions or so, there are “only” 5 left which will come in the next few weeks. The winter exhibitions are almost always even more interesting, because people are more likely to go to a gallery on a winter day rather than a sunny day perfect for swimming in the lakes. As a result, I barely watched any movies at all, and once I got out of the rhythm of watching stuff, I was too distracted to get back into it.

Having ranted so much on my life, the main reason for this sheer endless blog hiatus is actually “La femme de l’aviateur” itself. The worst thing about exceptionally good movies is that they send me into a writer’s block sometimes. “La femme de l’aviateur” was that kind of film, even though I personally did not expect that at all. I thought there is much to say about this film, packed with lovely dialogue from Rohmer, the Nouvelle Vague master of dialogues. I think I will always see Rohmer this way, because “Ma nuit chez Maud” blew my mind with its witty dialogue and perhaps the best female character of all of Nouvelle Vague.

One strong memory for me was myself lying on the couch, watching the film while trying to guess Lucie’s name (lovely name, and so French!). I was mesmerized with her precocious character. She is the perfect young girl of any man’s fantasies, perhaps because she appears much smarter and more full of herself than everyone around her. I loved her and the way she dragged our kind of dull protagonist along. Judging by how she spoke about Latin homework, I guessed her name was “Marie-Laure” or something similarly pseudo-high-class sounding (and I avoided “Anne” because that name was already by the protagonist’s lover). As per quick look on Google, Lucie’s actress is a certain Anne-Laure Meury, so my instincts aren’t all that much off, huh?

Other than Lucie, I did not have any super memorable impressions to share after all this time, but I remember that it was the best film in the PIFF this year (which is pretty good!) and I understand why it’s on Gorp’s fictional Sight & Sound list. The details of the film (and what they talk about) is somewhat difficult to remember or even talk about – I actually feel that way with all the Rohmers I have seen so far – but the impression of awe about Rohmer’s capability to craft a story on human interactions persists.

I think I need to watch all the other 5 films from Rohmer’s “Comedies & Proverbs” series too. Originally I was not planning to see them for the silly reason that I prefer Nouvelle Vague films in black and white, but “La femme de l’aviateur” certainly changed my mind on that.

The Killing

It’s totally off-topic, but I wanted to mention it anyways. Yesterday, Pip and I were watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation from the terrible, terrible first season (“Coming of Age”). One minor character made a big impression on me because he was so bad, so annoying and so horribly acted. It made me feel sorry for the desperate actors trying to land acting gigs and having to accept the worst roles ever. There was also one scene with Worf in which he had some utterly stupid lines (“Only idiots have no fear” *stern face*) that made me feel sorry for Michael Dorn to have gone through so many seasons of bad characterization before he was able to return with a better role in Deep Space 9. Considering how Star Trek was supposed to be all idealistic and such, the reality of the show is a rather bleak one for its actors (like the first Ferengi appearances or that terribly racist TNG episode at the beginning of season 1). I perceive the idiocy of these roles as worse than getting naked on camera, because it makes you look like you’re incapable of acting. So I was wondering about this aforementioned minor character and it turns out he was played by this guy. When I saw the Memory Alpha article, I had a feeling I have read this name before, and then it suddenly dawned on me. We watched “All the Way” back when it was shown in Boston, just to see Bryan Cranston on stage. (I still remember how Cranston ended the show announcing modestly that they are all hopeful for the show to make it to Broadway, and then it moved on to get a Tony Award.) It absolutely blew my mind that the poor guy who played annoying Remmick on The Next Generation (and gets his head blown off in that role) will end up becoming a great playwright later on. And if I hadn’t been curious about this Remmick character, I would never even have discovered this unlikely connection.

Now I could talk about lucky and unlucky coincidences and tie it to “The Killing” to make the previous paragraph sound like it has some actual purpose, but that would just be an excuse. I will even continue to digress by musing about how I saw some of my favorite films at the PIFFs. There are many possible reasons for that. It could be because we tend to choose films that we expect to be good (especially Gorp, who will often choose a film he has seen and loves), but it could also be because during a PIFF, I am more likely to view a film in a different way. I usually never watch films in a group bigger than 2 people, and the dynamic of multiple people seeing a film and talking about it while it goes on is very special. “The Killing” is one of those examples where the PIFF most likely affected my impression of the film. I thought that the direction and the cinematography were brilliant and found the story very suspenseful too, but maybe I perceived it that way because I saw the film from a different perspective than, say, back when I watched “Detour” by myself (another film that Gorp likes, but I thought was kind of meh).

In another curious coincidence, Coleen Gray died just recently, over 2 months after we saw the actual film! Unlike for Robert Schenkken, I simply looked her up because she struck me as strangely beautiful. This coincidence reminded me of how a French teacher back in school desperately tried to convince us that the book we were reading were not actually that old using the argument that the author was still alive, and then, a month or so later, she died at age 99.

All in all, “The Killing” is a film one must see and not write about. I read that the film influenced Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” and it clearly shows. Both are wonderfully shot cheap gangster movies with some great story twists, and in both cases I think that the constraint of making their film cheap is bringing the best out of them, so I prefer “The Killing” over “Barry Lyndon” and “Reservoir Dogs” over “Django Unchained” or “Kill Bill”.

Kamome Shokudo

If you don’t know the film and look up its Wikipedia article, you can probably guess where the PIFF went this year. In fact, we even visited the restaurant where “Kamome Shokudo” was filmed! Today, the restaurant makes hearty foods but its decor is also geared towards Japanese tourists who come for the film: You can still see “Kamome Shokudo” on the window right underneath the restaurant name like a subtitle, and it’s written in Japanese (exactly in the font the movie uses). Unsurprisingly, we saw a Japanese couple studying a Helsinki guidebook while eating. The restaurant itself is fantastic. Maybe the food is not haute cuisine, but we got lots for free (water, coffee, tea, milk and even homebrewed beer and a soup) in addition to decent prices (8-10 euro meal) to begin with, and the owners and employees are extraordinarily nice.

Just for that cute restaurant experience, it’s lucky that “Kamome Shokudo” exists. Other than that, the film is… odd. Just like all of the director’s films, it celebrates the quirkiness of its main characters to the point that it’s a little unrealistic. I guess I was not really into the philosophy of the film. I like the idea of her Japanese café in Helsinki, and I enjoyed seeing her fail in a lovely manner. But then she started talking about how Japanese food is the greatest in the world and the Finns must see that (which, in the end, they miraculously do!) and even though I thought the food looked very appetizing, I could not relate to that degree of food patriotism. In fact, I think that it borders on nationalism and find it somewhat dangerous to the ideal of understanding other cultures when people so strongly believe in the superiority of their own culture’s food.

Nevertheless, I liked the film’s wacky characters, and it was much fun to see all these touristic elements of Helsinki which we visited earlier on the same day we saw the film. It’s a very girlish movie (without being a chick flick). I would agree that its story is (despite the latent nationalism) very gentle and sweet, and I really liked how nothing much happened.

PS. It’s been 2 months since the PIFF, but life sure was busy. I want August to be the month where I get back on track with all these things I have been neglecting, including blogging.

Parada

I am a little restless and I cannot sit through a movie without getting distracted (it’s “Dernier étage gauche gauche” and the fact that I have to really concentrate to be able to understand their banlieue French doesn’t help). Since I am also not tired, I figured it would be.

We are back from the PIFF! This time we managed to watch 4 movies, and coming back from it, I am overwhelmed by feelings – nostalgy for all the PIFFs we had, happiness to see O again, complete exhaustion which makes it hard for me to get out of bed and handle O’s tantrums, excitement about our next trips and finally some almost crippling worries which I won’t divulge any further because they don’t actually concern me directly. In any case, it felt so immensely good to go through the films to review our experiences this time, and recall to mind the highlights (a sauna in our Helsinki bathroom, some great modern art in the KUMU and Kiasma museums, walking through super pretty Tallinn by “nightfall”, trying various Estonian foods – kama is awesome – and of course, the movies). After coming back, I feel an intense desire to watch more movies but perhaps it’s not so easy without the lovely company at the PIFF.

In order to make a huge train of thought leading to “Parada”, I realize that we also are a bunch of unlikely friends. Sure, we are all somewhat affluent, middle-class hipster kids who enjoy the same things in the city (architecture, art museums, good food) and have a significant overlap in our movie tastes, but we also have somewhat different cultural backgrounds, we are all from a different place and there is some noticeable age gap (I admit that Shii is right about that). Our AirBnB host in Tallinn instantly pegged us as “quite an international crowd” and immediately proceeded to recommend young expat foodie places to us. What makes “Parada” so great and work so well is how its characters are also lovably similar. Of course there also is the laughing out loud gay humor (I love how it showcases so intensely how incredibly gay almost every manly ritual is), but most of all, I was mesmerized by much positivity and understanding it promotes between so wildly different people.

The only criticism I have ever heard about the story is about its melodramatic ending. I don’t care. I think it’s a fitting ending, and it’s not like the story claims to be (traditionally) realistic. As with every good comedy, the realism is in the overdone, so an overdone absurd melodramatic ending totally fits in my book. As for me, I was rather moved by it, and if those journalists had looked up the background for the film, it looks pretty real. I have the suspicion that some critics wanted a 100% light-hearted comedy and simply don’t want to face the fact that some activists actually risk their lives out there. I am totally with the plight of the people in this case.

Nevertheless, the best part of the story was the road trip where Limun goes to find his comrades in war. OK, I admit that I am a sucker for road trips, but I found that part, their friendship and their final acceptance of the gays so utterly hilarious. (“Do you know what a sexual minority is?” – “Of course! It’s you the Serbians, no?”) I am not surprised how the film did well in all of ex-Yugoslavia, because it makes so much sense to me that deep down they actually all love each other. (Germans and Poles probably do too, but I am not so sure about the French.)

All in all, I am not surprised that “Parada” is topping Pixelmatsch’s ranking at the Berlinale in 2012. It tops no.2 and 3 by far.

Slumdog Millionaire

After a film festival is before a film festival, or something. The PIFF is coming up, the second biggest “film festival” of my life besides the Berlinale, and I made a list of films I would propose to watch. Last year, we randomly watched two films in an actual movie theater during an actual film festival, and besides that we only saw 3 films in those 4 days in Lisbon. We will see how it goes this time, but the very act of picking films for this occasion made me feel excited about watching movies. (Much unlike going through Netflix or my own to-watch lists, where I typically don’t really feel like watching that stuff. The only list that sparks this kind of joy, to put it in the words of Marie Kondo, is my list from the Film of the Day thread, courtesy of Shii and Gorp.) I feel like a little girl about to discover the big world, and considering how I haven’t really felt like watching a film ever since the Berlinale ended, I am quite happy that the feeling came back just in time for the PIFF.

I mean, heck, I watched “Slumdog Millionaire” in January! All of that really feels like ages ago. However, and this refers to this posting’s title, there is a benefit in not writing a blog post instantly. Maybe my first impressions are now lost, and often I end up not writing much about a film when I have forgotten a lot of its details, but sometimes time can only tell which details have made a large impact on me. I watched Poulenc’s “Dialogue des Carmélites” at the Komische Oper (in a surprisingly amazing production by Calixto Bieito no less!) and until today, I am being haunted by the final scene. It’s perhaps the most intense scene in all opera, and this is impressive because I was largely bored and a little taken aback by all that came before. I recently added the opera to the list of operas I want to see again simply because of its ending (and I just read that Tcherniakov changed the ending – that was a shock, but I am curious too).

Alright, I digress. My point was that having let time pass allowed me to focus on the things I remember the most about “Slumdog Millionaire”, which was that boy having his ears being destroyed. That one also haunts me until today, and I honestly cannot understand how the film is being marketed as a feel-good film when there is so much pain and suffering shown in it. Do people just ignore it? Do they just think “ah, they are Indian kids in slums, it’s alright”? I am guilty of usually ignoring what is bad in the world, but when it’s so obviously in your face (even if it’s a piece of fiction), how can you feel good about it?

Other than that, I remember the film as a Western film with Indian looks. With Chinese films, there are always elements that make people go “ah, it’s totally made for the Western audience” (a problem that Japanese or Korean films don’t really have as much), which is especially amusing since Hollywood films nowadays have elements totally aiming at its Chinese audience, and “Slumdog Millionaire” seemed to have a lot of these kinds of elements, especially in the humor department. There are no cultural inside jokes, not even the cultural subtleties you see in Japanese or Korean films which alienates but also fascinates people outside of the culture. This kid from the slums acts like he’s a British kid put into the body of an Indian slum-dweller, and then takes it from there.

Of course “Slumdog Millionaire” was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the ride and it pushes all the right buttons to make for a very entertaining evening. Freida Pinto is also immensely beautiful, and I am impressed that she and Dev Patel ended up dating – seems to be a Hollywood thing nowadays, like the Twilight couple.

Simon of the Desert

Ahh, asceticism. To be honest, I try to practice it a little in life now. Recently, I threw away a lot of things in order to fit all my belongings into the cabinets of my own room. In terms of volume, apart from the hideous wardrobe filled with stuff of my parents, I’d say that half of it are books, a quarter of it are documents from school and the rest is random crap, mostly memorabilia really. Only a fraction of this “random crap” is actually stuff I use frequently, and it’s now all in the small drawer which doubles as nightstand.
Another thing I try to do is to simply eat less, which does not quite go well with my desire to check out more places to eat in Berlin. As a restaurant city, Berlin bores me but perhaps I’m just wrong and I need to step up my game to make it as enticing to me food-wise as Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston used to be. Travelling is a whole different issue – Lisbon was quite tough on my belly with its many, many pastelarias.

None of what I said really applies to Bunuel’s films, so I apologize for digressing. However, it’s a little difficult to write about this oddity of a film, mostly because I don’t really know what to make out of its ending. Apparently Bunuel wanted more scenes in the present, giving Simón an entire storyline there and make him interact with his surrounding, but personally I totally thought the desert parts were enough. The film probably wouldn’t make any difference to me if the last jump in time didn’t happen, especially since I have no idea what it was supposed to mean.
No, the best parts of the film are the ones where Simón interacts with with the devil and other characters (haha I loved the dwarf!) This was the funniest Bunuel film I saw (“Un chien andalou”, “L’age d’or” and “Belle de Jour” are all pretty un-funny), and I definitely appreciate his humor. The dwarf was my favorite! Also, Bunuel is so obsessed with catholicism hahaha. He may be an atheist but he’s one who keeps going back to his Catholic roots by mocking it. It’s probably tough to escape the claws of a strict Catholic upbringing in Spain, just like Salvador Dalí couldn’t.

While the premise “Simón from the pillar into the modern world” is a lovely idea, I am glad that “Simon of the Desert” ended up being mostly in the desert. I thought it was a funny short film and absolutely worth a look.