In Another Country
South Korea | Directed by Hong Sang-soo
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Biography
Korean director Hong Sang-soo
is not well known to most American moviegoers, but he is to a certain group of
cinephiles, and those cinephiles go to the Cannes Film Festival, where this
year Hong’s film starred the well-known French actress Isabelle Huppert. It’s
an arthouse lover's dream crossover, but unfortunately it’s not much different
from what the director has done before, and Mike D’Angelo (at the A.V.
Club ) fears Hong is “creatively exhausted, having rung almost
every possible variation from his limited set of interests.” This time, three
semi-romantic stories are played out with the same actors playing slightly
different roles. Structural playfulness and repetition are common to his work,
as is what Karina Longworth so adroitly describes in the LA
Weekly as “a very
specific tone, often at once deadpan comic and melancholic, self-deprecating
and self-aggrandizing.” The
Guardian calls the
film a “transitional doodle.... slight, diverting, forgettable.” The
Playlist goes for “light, charming and funny” instead of “slight,”
and praises Huppert, as doesVariety ,
citing her ability to maintain “a coherent identity while calibrating a range
of feelings expressed by her three different personas.” THR sums up the viewer’s experience well:
“Hong slyly provides enough structural intricacy and interconnectedness to keep
semiologists and deconstructionists in business for weeks, while more general
audiences may be happy to enjoy the picture's more straightforward pleasures.”
In Another Country – review
South Korean director Hong Sang-soo and French actor Isabelle Huppert join forces in this transnational doodle of a film that is diverting but forgettable
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'Amusing and exasperating' ... Hong Sang-soo's In Another Country stars Isabelle Huppert. Photograph: Cannes
In Another Country is a transnational doodle of a film, of the kind created by disparate movie eminences who meet each other at film festivals – well, probably just Cannes – and promise to work together. Sean Penn and Paolo Sorrentino's collaboration on This Must Be the Place was one such, and so surely is this: an odd conjunction between South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo and French actor Isabelle Huppert. It is amusing and exasperating, with the amusing part just about in the ascendant. Mostly.
To distract herself from money worries, a young film student sketches out three different versions of a script featuring an elegant, slightly haughty Frenchwoman (naturally, Huppert) who comes to Mohang. In the first version, she is a visiting film director; in the second, a woman having an affair with a Korean film director and in the third, she is a single woman whose husband has deserted her for a Korean man, and now she seeks guidance from a monk.
We of course see these three variations acted out on screen, interspersed with scenes showing the woman scribbling: it is a little like Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda. But the "real" story, the story of the writer's financial woes – that is left irritatingly unexamined and unresolved. Perhaps even the fiercest Isabelle Huppert fan would not expect her to give three radically different performances, and so it proves. In Another Country looks very much like something written on a napkin and shot in the one afternoon that Huppert could come to South Korea. Slight, diverting, forgettable.
VIDEOS
Holy Motors
France |
Directed by Leos Carax
Carax's first film in over a
decade was certainly one of the most talked-about (if not strangest) entries at
this year's fest, but all that positive buzz didn't translate into any awards.
But, as Mike D’Angelo said on Twitter ,
.”..not winning any awards diminishes the awesomeness of HOLY MOTORS by 0%.”
Over at the A.V.
Club , D’Angelo praises the film as a “visionary, jaw-dropping
spectacle” and declares it “the film by which this year’s festival will be
remembered in years to come.” His enthusiasm was echoed by many critics, even
though they all had trouble describing exactly what it is they had just seen.
Eric Kohn at IndieWire says,
“There's no doubting that "Holy Motors" is an ungodly mess of images
and moments, some more alluring than others, but it sure leaves a mark.” Peter
Bradshaw of The
Guardian adds, “Leos
Carax's Holy Motors is weird and wonderful, rich and strange – barking mad, in
fact. It is wayward, kaleidoscopic, black comic and bizarre; there is in it a
batsqueak of genius, dishevelment and derangement; it is captivating and
compelling.” Variety ’s
on the bandwagon as well, stating, “Leos Carax's narratively unhinged,
beautifully shot and frequently hilarious 'Holy Motors' coheres — arguably,
anyway — into a vivid jaunt through the auteur's cinematic obsessions."
Holy Motors: love it or hate it, Cannes cognoscenti can't stop talking about it
Perplexing new film from director Leos Carax has been greeted by boos, cheers and tweets declaring love, hate or mystification
Email
Director and stars of Holy Motors in Cannes (from left): French actors Edith Scob and Denis Lavant, Kylie Minogue, director Leos Carax and actors Jeanne Disson and Elise Lhomeau. Photograph: George Pimentel/WireImage
Once in a while, a film comes along at the Cannes film festival that utterly divides the critics, that is despised by some and adored by others – and that absolutely no one can stop talking about.
It happened last year with Terrence Malick'sThe Tree of Life – hailed as a masterpiece by some, derided as pretentious rubbish by others.
In 2000 it was Dancer in the Dark, Lars von Trier's Cannes sensation in which a singing Björk is dragged to the gallows.
This year, that film is Holy Motors from French director Leos Carax . Its first screening was greeted by boos drowned out by cheers, by volleys of ecstatic and furious tweets and by one big question: what the hell was it all about?
Asked that very question, the inscrutable Carax proved to be of little help. Clad in shades and a leather jacket, and brandishing an unlit cigarette, he simply shrugged, frowned and wagged his finger disapprovingly.
Some critics were bewitched – if bewildered. "Certifiably nuts" summed up Variety ; "completely bonkers" said the Hollywood Reporter .
For Indiewire , it was "balls-to-the-wall crazy, beautiful and unbelievably strange". Little White Lies, a film magazine, strained to describe its effect : "It plays a little bit like a Charlie Kaufman film that's been co-directed by [Luis] Buñuel and [Jean-Luc] Godard."
British critic Jonathan Romney was frosty: "How bad is the Leos Carax?The Brown Bunny of surrealist chic," he tweeted , referring to Vincent Gallo's 2003 production – one of the most universally loathed films in Cannes history.
On Kylie Minogue, who has a small but memorable part in Holy Motors, he said her performance "was marginally worse than in the Doctor Who Xmas special ".
The film's enigmatic story concerns a man called M Oscar, played by Denis Lavant, driven through the streets of Paris by a chauffeur.
Every so often he adopts a disguise, gets out of his limo and performs a role – as assassin, dying old man or Gypsy beggar woman. Or, most oddly, as a priapic, satyr-like creature who emerges from the Paris sewers to abduct a model, before dressing her in a burqa and snacking on her hair.
Minogue appears and bursts into song, before hurling herself from the roof of a derelict department store.
At the end of the film Oscar apparently returns to his family home, only for his wife and children to turn out to be apes. There are also talking cars.
The actors, who were speaking ahead of the film's official premiere, also pleaded ignorance on how the film should be interpreted. Denis Lavant – who plays the central character and thus a virtuoso 11 roles – said he had not yet seen the film.
Alone of the cast members, Minogue bravely attempted an interpretation: "From reading the script and from the few days I was on the film I did get to thinking [it was about] how we present ourselves in the world in different moments. If I can try to be as overall as that, and it's much more profound, but that's a brief response."
Gradually, Carax – best-known for the 1991 film Les Amants du Pont-Neuf , and making his comeback to feature films after 13 years – became just half a shade more forthcoming.
Asked about the public reaction to his film, he said: "I don't know who the public is, except a bunch of people who will soon be dead."
Asked if it was an homage to the history of film, he said: "If you decide to live in that island which is cinema, it is a beautiful island, with a very big cemetery … if you feel the film is about cinema, it's not a conscious process. If you make a film, you make cinema."
On the title of the film, he said it came from a feeling that there was a "solidarity between the characters, animals and machines … that's why I called the film Holy Motors. We have incredible motors inside ourselves too".
Expanding a little on the role of the main character, he said: "The character played by Denis is an actor, but it is not a film about actors, but about a man, a person, and the experience of being alive."
The extreme reticence of Carax caused some speculation about the experience of being directed by him.
Minogue described the experience as "tender" and, turning to the director, said: "You didn't want to say too much, did you? Less was more." She also said that Carax had known nothing of her history as a pop star and soap opera actor – aside from her 1995 duo with Nick Cave, Where the Wild Roses Grow.
"So it was like starting on fresh ground. He wasn't clouded by everything else that I do." She added: "I banned my entire entourage from coming with me. I stripped myself of being Kylie and wanted to go back to being as basic as possible so that I could be a blank canvas for Leos."
In the end, the polarised reaction to Holy Motors makes it the perfect Cannes film, the succès de scandale that the Croisette loves to love – or hate.
Tree of Life and Dancer in the Dark may have been loathed in some quarters – but both films ended up winning the Palme d'Or.
Kylie Minogue: I want to stop people thinking, 'What's she doing in a film?'
The singer has a dubious back catalogue when it comes to movies. But this time, with Holy Motors the talk of Cannes, Kylie Minogue's gamble seems to have paid off
Wholly unclassifiable … Denis Lavant and Kylie Minogue in Holy Motors. Photograph: Rex Features
When Kylie Minogue alights at the Cannes round table, the guests rise up and block her from view. Everyone has their hand outstretched, clamouring for an introduction. This journalist is from Portugal and that one's from Tasmania. "Wow!" exclaims Kylie as each country is namechecked. They'll eat her up, they love her so. Hello Kylie, I'm from London. "Wow!" says Kylie, beaming excitedly into my face as though I've told her I'm magic.
The singer is in Cannes to attend the grand unveiling of Holy Motors, a film that erupts in the main competition like some gaudy firework display, spooking the dignitaries and splitting the critics. Some say, "Wow!" And some say, "Wah!", though neither camp can pin it down. Leos Carax's picture is flamboyant and preposterous; completely joyous and wholly unclassifiable. Denis Lavant plays a chameleonic actor on assignment, ferried around Paris in a white limousine and changing en route from beggar-woman to satyr to assassin to victim. Minogue crops up late as a tragic, trenchcoated femme fatale, singing a torch song inside the derelict Samaritaine department store. At night, in the garage, the limousines start talking to each other.
Kylie shakes her head in wonderment. "I need to see it again in order to form an opinion of what it all means?" she says, her bright uplift turning statements into questions. "I'm still flabbergasted. I mean, it's overwhelmingly beautiful? And it's not depressing, even though there's a lot of darkness in there, too. It's got talking cars? It's hilarious."
She explains that she was introduced to Carax by a mutual friend, the French director Claire Denis. She first hit it off with Denis when they met at the hairdresser ("basically, life revolves around the hair salon"). Carax, for his part, had barely heard of her and this was a bonus. It meant that she could come to the role fresh, with no baggage. "I wanted to take away all the things that have become second nature to me whenever I see a camera. I've been doing what I do for a long time. Normally it involves being that person – that 'Kylie'. This time I was able to go back to being 11 or 12 again, working on a set and being part of the gang. Blank page, open book."
There's a lot of history to blithely erase. By the time she hit her teens, Minogue was already a mainstay of Australian TV, eventually graduating to the role of feisty, dungaree-clad Charlene in Neighbours, and from there to worldwide pop stardom. She blitzed the airwaves with I Should Be So Lucky and Especially for You, then bounced towards maturity via Better the Devil You Know and the infernally catchy Can't Get You Out of My Head. Her success has been memorialised with a bronze statue on the Melbourne waterfront and a quartet of waxworks at Madame Tussauds. But who knows? It may also come at the expense of an acting career that seemed to get smothered while still in its infancy.
"I'd definitely love to do more acting," she says today. "My heart cries out for it; it's such a deep longing. For years I've been waiting to get back into it and it just hasn't happened. Or, it has happened and it was so disastrous that I thought: 'Oh, it's just not for me.'" Reviewing her role in The Delinquents, for instance, the Mirror sniffed that she had "as much acting charisma as cold porridge", while a co-star slot (opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme) in Street Fighter prompted the Washington Post to dub her "the worst actress in the English-speaking world". Putting aside her playful turn as the Green Fairy in Moulin Rouge!, her screen credits have not been pretty.
On paper, Holy Motors could easily have been another calamity to add to the list. Instead, it winds up as the talk of this year's festival; the most audacious film in competition, for all its wild detours and screeching flights of fancy. So Minogue took a gamble and the gamble paid off. "I've got a lot of work to do before people stop thinking: 'Oh, what's Kylie Minogue doing in a film?'" she admits. "But this has made me feel it's possible to do something beautiful and challenging, and to be believable as someone else."
If Holy Motors is about anything, it's about the roles that we play, the lives we inhabit and the way in which these performances can make one feel that they are living a lie. This must be something Minogue has experienced in her own life. "Oh, absolutely. Totally. For 25 years I've been putting those inverted commas around Kylie." She sips at her water. "It's a weird thing, the world we live in now, where everyone has a cameraphone. There's a line in the film: 'Cameras used to be bigger than us and now we can't even see them.' When I started, there was something almost romantic about the notion of paparazzi. I mean, it wasn't. They were still chasing you down the road. But that guy had to put film in his camera and work out whether it was worth pressing the button to take the shot, otherwise he's got to stop and change the film. So it was like this age of innocence. Whereas now, the cameras are everywhere. So if I'm at home in sweatpants, looking like a total dag, and I step outside?" A shake of the head. "You don't even know where the cameras are any more."
And yet, this being Kylie, she would rather look on the bright side. A moment later she's off again, enthusing about shooting in Paris and being in Cannes; marvelling at the pure, happy accident of finding her way into this oddball, surreal picture that has everyone so excited. "I think I'm having a full out-of-body experience at the moment," she marvels. "When I get back to London, I'll need to see a picture of myself to prove I was here."
Audience complete, the guests again rise up to swamp her. They want her to wait a moment, stand still for a second, while they huddle in and take their photos. Every phone is a camera; there will be proof she was here. "Wow!" exclaims Kylie, posing gamely in the sunshine as the pictures are snapped. "Wow!" The inverted commas are back in place.
VIDEOS
Cosmopolis
USA |
Directed by David Cronenberg
Prior to Cannes, the questions
surrounding David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel Cosmopolis concerned Robert Pattinson’s
performance and how Cronenberg would bring DeLillo’s words to life. The answers
seem to be a mixed bag. IndieWire claims, “Pattinson holds his own
without exactly broadening his range,” and The
Playlist calls him
“surprisingly adequate.” The A.V.
Club likes his
“perfectly robotic” performance in a film that is better the “more abstract and
overtly stylized” it becomes. Variety embraces the film’s spare, episodic
narrative and dialogue that teems with heady ideas,” but THR finds it “lifeless, stagey and lacking
a palpable subversive pulse,” andThe
Guardian agrees,
calling it “stilted, self-important and dismayingly shallow.” Oh well, maybe
Cronenberg and Pattinson’s next
project will be
more appealing to critics.
MOVIE REVIEW: COSMOPOLIS
Aug. 15, 2012
PLOT: A young billionaire on the brink of financial ruin has one hell of a day PLOT: A young billionaire on the brink of financial ruin has one hell of a day while traveling in his stretch limo across a New York City that's teetering on the edge of anarchy.
REVIEW: The face of pitiless capitalism belongs to Robert Pattinson in David Cronenberg's COSMOPOLIS, an adaptation of Dom DeLillo's novel of the same name that would most likely be Gordon Gekko's worst nightmare. A strange bird, this is; a talky, play-like art-house project starring one of the world's most recognizable actors in a role not one of his fans wold pay to see him in. Which, of course, means Pattinson is just right. Cronenberg, too, is the right director for the material, so it's curious that this movie just feels wrong. And not in the usual fun, Cronenbergian way. Wrong in the “this simply doesn't work” way.while traveling in his stmply doesn't work” way.
We'reWe're in New York, the President is in town, and we're sitting with Eric Packer (Pattinson) as he crosses town to get a haircut. He's chosen the wrong day for this venture: the president's arrival has congested city blocks every which way, as has a rapper's funeral and the general disarray caused by a frightfully large group of anarchists preaching the evils of greed and the upper class. The year is unspecified, but some kind of revolution seems to be upon us. This is the “Occupy” movement with bats and firepower.
Packer is a billionaire at 28 and a genius at his game, a financial whiz-kid who has all the technology he needs at his feet. He sits like Captain Kirk in a futuristic chair with touch-screens at the base of its armrests inside his limo - a sound-proof construction that acts like a metallic womb, its windows ready to go dark at the press of a button - so he can destroy who he needs to destroy and continue his rise as a rich-beyond-imagination tycoon with the conscience of a wild predator.
Packer's snail-like journey through Manhattan's streets (actually, Toronto's streets) will enable him to meet with a variety of consultants, lovers and associates, though his reaction to almost everybody is one of barely-veiled disdain. Packer is losing millions on this day because he's bet wrong on the Chinese dollar's strength, but he doesn't really care; he's close to losing his mind as well. A threat on his life appears to seal the deal that Eric is determined to take a one-way limo ride to hell, and he can't wait to get there. in New York, the President is in town, and we're sitting with Eric Packer (Pattinson) as he crosses town to get a haircut. He's It's just too bad we can't wait for this thing to end; COSMOPOLIS is sometimes so dull and pretentious you almost want to tell it to pull over and let you out.
Throughout his career, Cronenberg's characters have often been analytical, cold, calculating. His plots craftily enjoy upsetting these characters with the illogical, the strange and ugly. He seems a natural fit for the tale of Eric Packer, a shallow magnate who absolutely needs his life to be altered in some sick, savage way, for his own sake or for our own. But Cronenberg (directing from his own script) makes this too much of an anti-septic occasion, keeping us at arm's length from everything, from the characters to the dialogue - which never sounds natural or believable in the slightest – to the suspenseless way the story ultimately brings Packer face-to-face with the man who wants to destroy him (Paul Giamatti).
Compounding the problem, COSMOPOLIS has no emotional resonance, because it is about a man who, devoid of almost all human feeling, can't even find catharsis – or hell, enjoyment - in his own self-destruction. It moves from scene to scene rather gracelessly as characters speak in drone-like monotone about the familiar topics: greed, power, the hollowness of wealth, the meaningless of it all, etc. The plot, such as it is, is a clothesline for a slew of eloquent spiels by talented actors who sound like they're rehearsing lines for a play. And, since we pretty much hate Packer from start to finish, we have zero empathy for him or investment in what will happen once he figures out what he wants to do with himself. The film mirrors his detachment all too well: there's no heart or feeling in this thing at all.
I'm unsure of what the statement being made with COSMOPOLIS is, but it can be said that Cronenberg certainly gets everything he needs out of Pattinson, whose dead-eyed stare and creepy smirk fully capture Eric's soulless nonchalance. The actor doesn't turn in a flashy performance (there's no way he could), but he's an intriguing screen presence with a glimmer of something off just behind the eyes that makes me think he has a career in playing psychos and crazies, not pretty boys. He catches plenty of ire because of TWILIGHT, of course, but after that's all over, I do believe he should seek out quirky, bizarre roles that accentuate his inherent weirdness. Even if Eric Packer is a creep lacking in anything likable, Pattinson proves to be very watchable.
chosen the w"Cosmopolis," an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s typically provocative novel of the same name, is the first feature film since 1999's "eXistenZ" that filmmaker David Cronenberg has directed and scripted. This in part explains why "Cosmopolis" is such a triumph: it’s both an exceptional adaptation and a remarkable work unto itself.
Cronenberg makes slight but salient changes to DeLillo’s source narrative. These changes, which are best described by one character as “slight variation[s],” prove that Cronenberg’s given serious consideration to what should and shouldn’t be represented in his adaptation of the author’s ruminative, conversation-driven narrative. For example, in Cronenberg’s film, Eric Packer (a surprisingly adequate Robert Pattinson), an ambivalent and self-destructive power broker, does not get to have sex with his wife like he’s wanted to do throughout DeLillo’s book. Other changes, like the fact that Packer is investing and studying the steady rise in the Chinese yuan in the film and not the Japanese yen, as in the book, are equally striking. These differences noticeably enrich DeLillo’s original story, making Cronenberg’s "Cosmopolis" that much more rewarding in its own dizzying way.
Throughout both versions of "Cosmopolis," Packer searches for a break in his routine. Against the advice of his over-protective bodyguard Torval (Kevin Durand), he fights back anarcho-protestors and gridlock traffic caused by the President’s visit to another part of town so he can go get a haircut. The ritual, and also the familiarity of this ritual, is what matters to Packer. But Packer also insists on going out and getting his haircut now because, as he explains during one of many declamatory speeches, of the turbulent conditions Torval has warned of. He’s no longer waiting on his death, he’s inviting it.
Cronenberg and Pattinson’s Packer is a different kind of suicidal but their character isn’t significantly less active in constructing his own demise. In DeLillo’s "Cosmopolis," Packer knows what’s happening with the yen, whose value keeps exponentially increasing, but is keeping that knowledge close to his chest. In Cronenberg’s variation, he's less sure. Packer is thus more immediately defined by his frustration with the finite-ness of his capabilities. He looks to others for solutions to his problems and finds that his yes-team can only confirm his own impotence. He is not slyly organizing his own downfall, but frantically seeking it out, unsure of whether or not he can find what he’s looking for. Packer only succeeds by sheer dumb luck: the man and an assassin looking for him have a lot more in common than the two realize.
At the same time, Cronenberg doesn’t slim down DeLillo’s simultaneously sprawling and precisely dense narrative as much as he carves his own flourishes onto it. A couple of scenes, including Packer’s interest in bidding on a chapel full of art, and his visit to a night club full of drug-fueled ravers, are only necessary to establish a uniform pace to Cronenberg’s narrative. But in that sense, these scenes are just as essential as the ones where Kinski and Torval give Packer advice. Everything matters in Cronenberg’s "Cosmopolis," but not everything is necessarily the same as DeLillo’s book. And that makes the film, as a series of discussions about inter-related money-minded contradictions, insanely rich and maddeningly complex. We can’t wait to rewatch it. [A]rong day for this venture: the president's arrival has congested city blocks every which way, as has a rapper's funeral and the general disarraVIDEOSy caused by a frightfully large group of anarchists preaching the evils of greed and the upper class. The year is unspecified, but some kind of revolution seems to be upon us. This is the “Occupy” movement with bats and firepower.
Packer is a billionaire at 28 and a genius at his game, a financial whiz-kid who has all the technology he needs at his feet. He sits like Captain Kirk in a futuristic chair with touch-screens at the base of its armrests inside his limo - a sound-proof construction that acts like a metallic womb, its windows ready to go dark at the press of a button - so he can destroy who he needs to destroy and continue his rise as a rich-beyond-imagination tycoon with the conscience of a wild predator.
Packer's snail-like journey through Manhattan's streets (actually, Toronto's streets) will enable him to meet with a variety of consultants, lovers and associates, though his reaction to almost everybody is one of barely-veiled disdain. Packer is losing millions on this day because he's bet wrong on the Chinese dollar's strength, but he doesn't really care; he's close to losing his mind as well. A threat on his life appears to seal the deal that Eric is determined to take a one-way limo ride to hell, and he can't wait to get there.
It's just too bad we can't wait for this thing to end; COSMOPOLIS is sometimes so dull and pretentious you almost want to tell it to pull over and let you out.
Throughout his career, Cronenberg's characters have often been analytical, cold, calculating. His plots craftily enjoy upsetting these characters with the illogical, the strange and ugly. He seems a natural fit for the tale of Eric Packer, a shallow magnate who absolutely needs his life to be altered in some sick, savage way, for his own sake or for our own. But Cronenberg (directing from his own script) makes this too much of an anti-septic occasion, keeping us at arm's length from everything, from the characters to the dialogue - which never sounds natural or believable in the slightest – to the suspenseless way the story ultimately brings Packer face-to-face with the man who wants to destroy him (Paul Giamatti).
Compounding the problem, COSMOPOLIS has no emotional resonance, because it is about a man who, devoid of almost all human feeling, can't even find catharsis – or hell, enjoyment - in his own self-destruction. It moves from scene to scene rather gracelessly as characters speak in drone-like monotone about the familiar topics: greed, power, the hollowness of wealth, the meaningless of it all, etc. The plot, such as it is, is a clothesline for a slew of eloquent spiels by talented actors who sound like they're rehearsing lines for a play. And, since we pretty much hate Packer from start to finish, we have zero empathy for him or investment in what will happen once he figures out what he wants to do with himself. The film mirrors his detachment all too well: there's no heart or feeling in this thing at all.
I'm unsure of what the statement being made with COSMOPOLIS is, but it can be said that Cronenberg certainly gets everything he needs out of Pattinson, whose dead-eyed stare and creepy smirk fully capture Eric's soulless nonchalance. The actor doesn't turn in a flashy performance (there's no way he could), but he's an intriguing screen presence with a glimmer of something off just behind the eyes that makes me think he has a career in playing psychos and crazies, not pretty boys. He catches plenty of ire because of TWILIGHT, of course, but after that's all over, I do believe he should seek out quirky, bizarre roles that accentuate his inherent weirdness. Even if Eric Packer is a creep lacking in anything likable, Pattinson proves to be very watchable.
VIDEOS
Beyond
the Hills
Romania |
Directed by Cristian Mungiu
loves and was loved by in this world – back to her. But Voichi fond god-and god is the most difficult lover one can be jelus of.
director’s note
Beyond the Hills
is for me primarily a ilm about
love and free will: mostly about how love can turn
the concepts of good and evil into very relative
ones. Most of the greatest mistakes of this world
have been made in the name of faith, and with
the absolute conviction they were done for a
good cause.
Beyond the Hills
also speaks about a certain way
of experiencing religion. It has always concerned me
how much attention believers place on respecting
religious habits and rules and how little on applying
the essence and wisdom of Christianity to their day-
to-day life, for example.
then what is it? Is it dangerous
or not? The ilm also speaks
about the various ways in which
Evil can manipulate people,
and the subtle ways in which
it can manifest itself. I wonder
whether indiference is not one
of them.
Deep down, I hope,
Beyond
the Hills
speaks about options
and choices in life deriving from
education or from the lack of
education, and about how many
things in life derive from things
that you cannot inluence, or of
which you are not guilty: where
you were brought into the world,
by whom, and in the middle of which community.
The ilm also speaks about a region of the world
- like many others - where longtime exposure to an
endless succession of misfortunes and atrocities
of all kinds has led to a breed of inert people who
have lost their normal reactions in front of normal
stimuli. This is not necessarily their fault - it is just
a natural survival mechanism, but one which is
experienced as an extra burden for those still alive
amongst them.
– Cristian Mungiu, 2012
VIDEOS
The Angel's Share
UK | Directed by Ken Loach
outline
A bittersweet comedy about a Glasgow boy
locked in a family feud who just wants a way
out. When Robbie sneaks into the maternity
hospital to visit his young girlfriend Leonie
and hold his newborn son Luke for the irst
time, he is overwhelmed. He swears that
Luke will not lead the same stricken life he
has led.
On community service Robbie meets Rhino,
Albert and Mo for whom, like him, work is
little more than a distant dream. Little did
Robbie imagine that turning to drink might
change their lives - not cheap fortiied wine,
but the best malt whiskies in the world.
What will it be for Robbie? More violence
and vendettas or a new future with
‘Uisge Beatha’, the ‘Water of Life’?
Only the angels know...
Ken Loach won the Palme d’Or in
2006 for The
Wind That Shakes the Barley 82, and his latest Cannes
entry also earned an award, though it is a much less serious affair that Variety describes as an “amiable comedy about
young Glaswegian roughnecks discovering the world of whisky. Indeed, amiably is
how most critics treated the film. Giving it four out of five stars, The
Guardian ’s Peter Bradshaw believes Loach’s “latest collaboration
with screenwriter Paul Laverty is warm, funny and good-natured.” THR agrees that “a few clumsy touches do
not seriously diminish the charm of a film that is ultimately a heart-warming
celebration of kindness, friendship and forgiveness,” and the A.V.
Club finds
“plenty of laughs, a host of vivid performances, and some genuinely fascinating
details about the world of real alcohol snobs.” One dissenting vote comes from The
Playlist ’s “C-” review: “Some good laughs and a passable
air of bonhomie do nothing to cover up the
fact that ‘The Angels’ Share’ is totally lightweight and distractingly
underdone.”
More awards
Sundance hit Beasts of the Southern Wild (which opens in the U.S. on June 29) also
impressed the Cannes jury, collecting the Camera d'Or for best first feature.
(See ourSundance recap for reviews of that film). Elsewhere,
Carlos Reygadas earned top director honors for Post
Tenebras Lux, while the screenplay award went to Cristian Mungiu
for Beyond the Hills. The latter film also saw its two
leads, Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan, share the best actress trophy,
while Mads Mikkelsen was named the festival's top actor for The
Hunt. Reviews for all of those films are below.
The Angels' Share – review
Ken Loach expertly combines comedy with politics – and a drop of the hard stuff – in a warm, deftly-plotted heist movie
'We fervently wish for their caper to succeed': the heist crew in Ken Loach's The Angels' Share.
Though not generally considered a comedy director, Ken Loach has made films that have contained some of the funniest moments and sequences of the past 50 years, and he has regularly employed club comedians in serious roles (Crissy Rock in Ladybird Ladybird, John Bishop in Route Irish) and developed the talents of people such as Ricky Tomlinson not previously considered comics. It's just that Loach is a master of sudden, disturbing shifts of mood, and the comedy is embedded in works that are often deeply sad or tragic. The football game, for instance, that Brian Glover referees in Kes is at once hilariously funny and a brilliant study of bullying, bad education and humiliation that illuminates the film's larger context.
The background of The Angels' Share, his latest collaboration with the leftwing Scottish lawyer turned screenwriter Paul Laverty, is the widespread, seemingly permanent youth unemployment and the despair and communal erosion it engenders. But the realistic and humanistic tone is bracingly optimistic, and it's one of the 75-year-old Loach's sprightliest films, made at an age when most directors have hung up their viewfinders, entered a period of terminal decline or settled for repeating themselves.
The movie begins with a group of criminals brought together by chance in the manner of The Usual Suspects and gradually modulates into a heist comedy that combines two classic Scottish films, both directorial debuts from different eras, Alexander Mackendrick's Whisky Galore! (1949) and Bill Forsyth's That Sinking Feeling (1980).
The young offenders, played by non-professional actors who perform brilliantly under Loach's sympathetic direction, are introduced at Glasgow's City Court when pleading guilty to a variety of crimes. Their demeanour is playfully contrasted with the solemnity of the bewigged judge, and most of the offences are quite minor – petty theft, defacing public statues, drunkenness in a public place. However, one of the defendants, Robbie (Paul Brannigan), is up for grievous bodily harm, and he's only saved from another custodial sentence because his girlfriend is eight months pregnant.
All of them are given community service and are fortunate to come under the supervision of Harry (John Henshaw, a familiar face from TV drama and the occasional movie), a middle-aged, working-class Mancunian who forges a bond with Robbie. He's as sympathetic a figure as Colin Welland's teacher in Kes and Peter Mullan's soccer coach in My Name is Joe and brings a wealth of unpatronising understanding to his charges' lives and problems. The unemployed Robbie, determined to go straight and be a good father, appears to have everything against him – a history of violence (there's a revealing razor scar on his left cheek) and his girlfriend's brutal father, who's determined to get him out of Glasgow and away on his own, whether by force or bribery. Harry could be his salvation.
At this point a major dramatic and thematic device appears to link the action, the humour and the ironic morality, and it's whisky. Harry is a connoisseur of fine single malt. He pours a dram to celebrate Robbie's fatherhood. He takes the group of offenders, who are doing public service, painting old community centres and cleaning cemeteries, on a tour of a distillery and then to a whisky tasting in Edinburgh. These occasions constitute a delightful documentary on scotch, its history, production and consumer appreciation. By revealing that Robbie has a natural nose for the hard stuff, it also leads to his discovery of a vocation, his return to crime and his ultimate redemption.
In Whisky Galore! some Scottish villagers help themselves when a whisky-laden merchant ship is wrecked on their shores. In That Sinking Feeling some unemployed teenagers in a desolate late 1970s Glasgow plan the robbery of a warehouse containing stainless steel sinks. Crime is not new in Loach's work, and characters in past films, though not explicitly here, clearly believe in the dictum of the French anarchist and social reformer Pierre-Joseph Proudhon that property is theft. They rustle sheep, rob a sporting goods van to equip their football team with strips, make away with the grass from the bowling green of (naturally) a Conservative club.
In The Angels' Share, Robbie and the companions hear of an extremely valuable old whisky being auctioned at a Highland distillery and plan an ultra lo-tech heist to give them the nest-egg they need. You might infer here that the thieves believe whisky is part of the Scottish legacy that the boys' ancestors were robbed of when the Highland clearances took place. The unwitting participants in their plot are Harry, who has encouraged Robbie's newfound passion, and a sophisticated broker who deals in rare whisky (the excellent Roger Allam who, coincidentally, has a strong resemblance to Alexander Mackendrick).
So there is politics underlying every aspect of this funny, warm-hearted, deftly plotted film, and we fervently wish for the caper planned by this endearing quartet to succeed. We care for them in a way we don't for the cool, cynical confidently smirking George Clooney in his slick Ocean's Eleven heist movies. The film's title, The Angels' Share, is apparently the term used to refer to the 2% of whisky that evaporates in the cask each year. An interesting item of distilling lore, it's initially a joke about capitalist exploitation that turns at the end of the film into a metaphor for generosity and gratitude.
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