Melbourne International Film Festival 2010

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Well MIFF is on again. It's a bit of an eclectic program this year. Few films really leap out, but there is a whole host of unheralded films that promise to be interesting. It looks like I might see a lot more films this year than usual.

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The Illusionist, directed by Sylvain Chomet

Sylvain Chomet directed one of my favourite animated films, The Triplets of Belleville. That film had a wonderful cast of weird characters and was extremely funny.

The Illusionist is a bit different. it's based on a screenplay by Jacques Tati that the great director never filmed. The film is about a middle-aged stage magician who struggles to interest any audience and has to deal with a totally uncooperative rabbit.

The magician accepts a job in Scotland and ends up forging a friendship with a young girl who is rapt by his sleight of hand. He goes to Edinburgh and she runs away to follow him.

The film then introduces a cast of eccentric characters who share the hotel they live in. The magician struggles to make a living and the young girl starts to mature into a young woman.

This film is very funny in parts but it has both sad and romantic undertones. Chomet slips in several tributes to Tati - the magician has Tati's real name, and there is a scene where he walks into a cinema where Mon Oncle is playing and is staggered to see himself on screen.

A highlight of the film is Chomet's beautiful rendition of Edinburgh and its surrounds. Chomet lives there now, and he lovingly portrays his adopted city.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0775489/

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1428, directed by Haibin Du

It's a pretty solid documentaries section of the Festival this year. This film stood out for me, with glowing advance notices.

1428 is the story of the Sichuan earthquake, where more than 70,000 died and millions lost their homes. The film's title is the time on 12th May 2008 that an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 hit China's Sichuan province.

Du's team were on the spot within days, filming the after effects of the devastation; they then returned about six months later to observe the reconstruction.

The aftermath of the earthquake shows the back-breaking work of manually clearing the rubble, and desperate people trying to survive any way they can. There are affecting scenes of grief, particularly one where a family searches a school building for their missing son.

In the latter part of the film, Du returns to Sichuan to catch up with some of the people we met in the first half. This part drags a bit, with a few too many political speeches, and makes the film seem over-long.

Despite that, this is a stunning piece of photo-journalism.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1500679/

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You. My Joy directed by Sergei Loznitsa

This one is a very much misnamed movie. Not a lot of joy in it. Not at all.

This is a Russian film about Georgy, a truck driver who heads off to work on a normal day, and gets caught up in a spiral of ever-increasing brutality, venality and violence. On his trip he encounters corrupt traffic cops, a teenage prostitute, robbers and worse, as he gradually falls apart.

This would be a very powerful movie in the Michael Haneke mould, except that Loznitsa indulges himself in too much camera trickery. The film is full of sweeping pans across crowds, intentional blurring for effect and camera rocking that makes the viewer almost seasick.

The cinematography does nothing for the film and, at over two hours, made it pretty much a pain to watch. It gave me a headache that I still have.

Loznitsa's film has a grim story to tell, with a tragic ending. Shame about the camera work.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1646114/

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A Somewhat Gentle Man, directed by Hans Petter Molland

This one was more like it. A Norwegian comedy-drama about Ulrik, a murderer released after serving 12 years for killing his wife's lover. The stoic Ulrik, played with brilliant understatement by Stellen Sarsgard, has to deal with his grasping former crime boss, an ageing landlady who's desperate to get him into bed and a son who doesn't want to see him any more. He gets a job as a mechanic with a loquacious boss who even manages to talk through a heart attack.

All the while, his old boss Jensen is urging him to kill the man who snitched on him and put him in jail.

There are a great many laugh-out-loud scenes in this film, with just a few gross-out moments. Sarsgard is extremely effective is the befuddled Ulrik, and the cast of crazies around him enable Molland to both tickle the funny bone and warm the heart.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1386683/

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Cell 211, directed by Daniel Monzon

Cell 211 is a Spanish prison drama that has been hugely successful, cleaning up at the Goya awards against competition like the Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes.

Monzon's film is a tense and exciting thriller. It centres on Juan, a trainee guard who is being shown around the prison the day before he officially starts work. A riot breaks out while he is inside and the guards mistakenly leave him behind.

The only way Juan can survive is to pretend that he is an inmate and to ingratiate himself with Malamadre, the hard case who instigated the riot. At the same time, he tries to alert the guards to his presence and enable his escape.

Things take a turn for the worse when Malamadre takes some ETA terrorists hostage. This elevates the riot to a national issue, and government and the media get involved. A government negotiator comes in and tries to both help Juan and resolve the hostage crisis.

As the film unfolds, Juan starts to wonder just who he can trust and how he can keep both himself and his young wife safe from harm.

Luis Tosar puts in a mesmerising performance as Malamadre and Albert Ammann is suitably heroic as Juan. A strong cast of character actors make up the cast of guards and convicts, including Carlos Bardem (Javier's brother) as a totally untrustworthy convict.

Cell 211 is a great thriller, with a modicum of political commentary thrown in. I have no doubt that Hollywood will come along and remake this one day; it's that good. However you should watch the Spanish version, if only to catch Tosar's malevolent performance.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1242422/

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The Day Will Come, directed by Susanne Schneider

The Day Will Come is a French-German psychological drama centred on a family living on an Alsace vineyard. One night a young girl, Mia, knocks on their door seeking help; she has been in a car accident. It is abundantly clear to the audience that she has faked this accident.

They reluctantly take her in just for the night, but it soon becomes clear that Mia has no intention of leaving. She harbours a grudge against the German mother and is determined to have it out with her.

Mia soon reveals a shocking secret about Judith, the mother, and throws the family into chaos and confusion. Judith's husband is resentful of Mia's intrusion, and the children have very mixed feelings about it.

But Mia is not finished. She has an even darker secret to reveal and this one will tear the family apart.

I really enjoyed this film. The plot contains few surprises, but Schneider and her cast do a great job of portraying the dynamics of the situation and the effect that Mia's revelations have on all parties. Highly emotional scenes are shown with stunning effect and feel very true to life. The ending is really quite beautiful with a little bit left open to the viewer's interpretation. A dramatic and very satisfying film.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1458550/

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Bibliotheque Pascal, directed by Szabolcs Hajdu

This one was quite an intriguing film, and hard to describe. I confess I mainly went to see this because I noticed it was selling out, and was curious to know why.

The film centres on single mother Mona, and opens in a mundane fashion with her trying to convince a civil servant to grant her custody of her daughter.

The civil servant asks her to explain where she has been the last few years, what happened to the child's father, etc. Mona then proceeds to tell him a wild tale of a bandit who leaps at her from the sands and can project his dreams, a talent their daughter inherits.

Later Mona is sold into sex slavery and ends up at a high-class brothel in Liverpool called the Bibliotheque Pascal. The brothel caters for a clientele who wish to indulge their sexual fantasies with great figures from literature, such as John of Arc, Lolita and Desdemona. Pascal, the owner of the brothel, forces Mona to perform these roles, starting as Joan of Arc.

The brothel scenes and dream sequences are brilliantly imaginative, especially when contrasted with the drab reality of the civil servant's office. The brothel rooms dedicated to the literary characters are cleverly designed so as to re-interpret the original works in slightly twisted ways.

Orsolya Török-Illyés shines as Mona and Shamgar Amram is a disarmingly amoral Pascal. The film is best seen as a fantasy that provides a powerful allegory for how violence is twisting and destroying our culture, yet still affirms the power of dreams and hope.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0997035/

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The Trotsky, directed by Jacob Tierney

This Canadian comedy is a masterpiece, one of the most howlingly funny films I've seen in years.

Jay Baruchel plays Leon, a high school student who is convinced that he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. He plans his life accordingly, determined to emulate Trotsky at every step of the way.

He leads strikes at his father's factory on his first day on the job, and gets thrown in jail. He happens to meet an older woman with the same name as Trotsky's wife and the same age difference, and so courts her to the point of stalking. He gets into blazing rows with his father, and ultimately gets banished to public school. Once there, Leon becomes a defender of the down-trodden students and mounts an aggressive campaign for a student union.

It's a great concept and brilliantly executed. It reminded me of Breaking Away at times, particularly with the relationship between an eccentric son and his bewildered father. Jay Baruchel is deadpan straight throughout and can get laughs with just a look, so well is his character drawn. The rest of the cast are just as good; while some roles are stereotypical, all of them are played to the hilt, to great effect.

A really fun movie. Go see it.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1295072/

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Son of Babylon, directed by Mohamed Al Daradji

One of the great things about MIFF is that they usually screen films from the Middle East that would rarely if ever get shown here otherwise. These films are a window into a region that, since we technically are at war there, we need to take time to understand.

Son of Babylon is an Iraqi film set in the weeks after the fall of Saddam. An old Kurdish woman is on the road with her grandson, trying to track down her son (and his father). He was one of Saddam's victims in the 1991 purges, and was last heard of at Nasariyah prison.

She and Ahmed, her grandson, make a difficult journey on foot, car, bus, any method that will get them the 600 kilometres to Nasariyah. Ahmed plays incessantly on his father's old flute, a reminder of his father that is never far from his grasp.

They encounter people who both help and hinder them. Of course they encounter American soldiers, but they are seen only as obstacles on the journey; this is no polemic against the US. The ongoing war in Iraq is only hinted at - this film is about the devastation of Saddam's reign and its human consequences.

Along the way they meet a nice and helpful man, whom Ahmed takes a shine to. He turns out to have been a member of a Republican Guard unit that massacred Kurds, which leads Ahmed's grandmother to drive him away.

As their search becomes more desperate the film shows horrors that make one gasp, considering the banality they are shown with. Ahmed turns over skulls in a mass grave with no more than mild inquisitiveness. It's dreadful to think that a twelve year old child can be so inured to violence.

Yasser Talib delivers a magnificent performance as Ahmed. His energy and cheek in the first act are winning and endearing, yet he also portrays Ahmed's later anguish with great effect, never straying into the sentimental.

This film is perfectly balanced. It does not take sides or point fingers, and it allows for both humour and for great sadness. Ultimately it is a film about forgiving those who have wronged us, and maybe that's just the kind of film we need to see being made about this part of the world.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1415290/

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I was enthusing to some people at work about The Trotsky. A couple of my colleagues looked puzzled and said "Who's Leon Trotsky?"

Sad.

[Georgina]

This is fascinating to read, WS. I'm sorry I don't have any input, but I'm enjoying it.

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Thanks. I'm enjoying it too.

Quite a few more to come - I'm seeing at least another 10 films. This year is a big one for me.

[Georgina]

No kidding. How are you managing to get so much film-viewing in?

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Jul 30, 2010 9:31:53 GMT -5 Georgina said:

No kidding. How are you managing to get so much film-viewing in?

I can generally get in a couple of films on a weeknight. Duck out of work an hour earlier, and watch a 4.45 session then a 7.00 session. Home by 9-10 pm. The odd 9.45 session leads to a very late night, so I only do that Fri or Sat.

Weekend sessions are often in the afternoon, which is easy to arrange.

I'll take a half day off next Wednesday to put in a marathon session (and so use up the midweek freebies I get as a member).

[Georgina]

Wow. That's a huge intake! They'd begin to blur together if it were me.

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I Love You Phillip Morris, directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa

This is probably the most commercial film I'll see this year. I usually skip films like this, as I can see them any time, but Beth was really keen, so we went along.

The film is made by the team who made Bad Santa, which was a good sign. It is about Steven Russell (Jim Carrey), an upstanding Christian family man who has an epiphany and realises that he is gay. He relocates to Florida and starts to live openly as a gay man, but turns to crime to finance his new lifestyle. Eventually, of course, he ends up in prison.

There he meets Phillip Morris (Ewan MacGregor), who becomes the love of his life. The ever-inventive Steven spares no expense and leaves no stone unturned to liberate Phillip from prison and to afford him a lavish lifestyle.

Carrey mugs less than usual, but he still seems to overplay Steven to the point of caricature. There are some scenes where Carrey is trying to be serious and dramatic and you can almost see him about to break into a big grin. It's just too complex a role for him to do justice to.

McGregor is disturbingly coquettish as Phillip, but he is a bit stereotypical. Definitely not the sort of role you would expect to see him in, but he is quite good in the part, albeit with not much to do.

This is a pretty funny film with some serious overtones. However it does seem to suffer from a lack of identity: is it a conman story, a gay romance, a prison drama, an escapee story or what? It tries to be all of these at times, and somehow never hits the mark at any of them.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1045772/

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Enter the Void, directed by Gaspar Noe

It's hard to imagine a bigger contrast than the one between Phillip Morris and this film, which I saw on the same night.

Enter the Void is set in Tokyo, and is Noe's attempt to portray an after death experience on film.

Noe shoots the film from the perspective of Oscar, a young drug dealer. Oscar shared a traumatic childhood with his sister Linda, and the two share a pact that they will never leave one another, even after death.

The film opens with the two of them in Oscar's apartment where he mentions that he has been reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead. After taking some DMT he heads out with friend Alex to consummate a drug deal. On the way, Alex explains what the Book of the Dead has to say about our after-life experiences.

The deal goes horribly wrong and Oscar ends up dead. The rest of the film shows us his after-death experiences and the effect of his death on his friends. Noe also gives us his and Linda's backstory leading up to their fatal Tokyo sojourn.

This is a sinuous, hypnotic and highly erotic film, full of sweeping montages of colour and light portraying in and out of body experiences spanning the night-time streets of Tokyo, drug trips and steamy sexual activity, all from Oscar's post-mortem POV. Since Oscar is a ghost, this concept allows Noe to take his camera anywhere and show us anything.

The film is a visual tour-de-force, and Noe shows that CGI can do a whole lot more than just give us cool monsters and big battle sequences. From the opening credits on, he assails our senses with colour and light, while using minimal dialogue to convey the story of Oscar's and Linda's lives to give the film purpose and shape. The climax is a very long sequence in a love hotel with all of the main characters engaging in sex as Oscar looks on, before finally choosing his way out of the afterlife and into reincarnation, as presaged in the Book of the Dead.

This film is definitely not for everybody - there were a lot of walkouts - and it is probably a bit too long and somewhat gratuitous in parts, but it is still a stunning example of cinematic imagination and of the unique blend of high technology and high art that great film can deliver.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1191111/

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Honey, directed by Semih Kaplanoglu

Honey is the third of a trio of films (the others being Egg and Milk) about Yusuf, a young Turkish poet. This film shows Yusuf as a six year old, the child of a beekeeper.

Yusuf is painfully shy, has a stutter and struggles to read. He talks in whispers and is extremely close to his father, but a fair bit more distant towards his mother.

The film recounts his struggles at school and his worries when his father goes away on a long honey-gathering trip and leaves him behind with his mother.

This is a sedate family drama, with little or no melodrama. It tells its story largely through exposition rather than dialogue. The film is beautifully shot; almost every exterior has gorgeous views of the Anatolian mountains. Newcomer Bora Altas is extremely good as Yusuf. He gives a wide-eyed performance that conveys a lot of emotion without the need to say much.

I have not seen Egg and Milk, so I can only wonder whether there are aspects to this film that I missed. It stands by itself as a film, but I have this feeling that there is more to it that I didn't get, because I haven't gone the full journey through Yusuf's life.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1571724/

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This is the second year in a row that anti-Israel film makers have threatened MIFF because it accepts a small amount of sponsorship from Israelis. Last year it was Mike Lynch, who pulled his film Looking for Ericfrom the Festival.

I thoroughly disapprove of film makers trying this stuff on. In return, I boycotted Lynch's film, and I will not see any of his in future.

It is particularly disappointing that this year the threats are coming from the makers of Son of Babylon. I saw that film and particularly appreciated its message, as a film made in the ME, of forgiveness of those who have wronged us. Apparently that sentiment doesn't extend to Israel, and the film makers prefer to indulge in hate-motivated pettiness rather than believe in their own message. Sad.


Festival threatened over Israel link
Karl Quinn
August 4, 2010 - 11:19AM

The Melbourne International Film Festival has been threatened with legal action for refusing to withdraw a film at the request of its makers, who objected to the festival receiving funding from Israel.

The Iraqi-set feature film Son of Babylon screened on July 26 and July 28, as scheduled, despite demands it be withdrawn in protest at the fact that the festival receives funding from the Israeli government. That funding amounted to a return economy-class air fare for an Israeli director, just as it did at last year's festival.

"The festival was informed in enough time to stop the screening ... therefore if you have knowingly disregarded our wishes and screened the film, we will of course be left with little alternative than to take appropriate action against the festival," producer Isabelle Stead wrote to MIFF executive director Richard Moore last week in an email exchange leaked to the Cinetology blog on crikey.com.au.

"We would of course be very reluctant to do this, but you should not underestimate our resolve to ensure that our film is not associated with the state of Israel as long as it continues its illegal crimes against humanity," she added.

There is in the filmmakers' stance a distinct echo of Ken Loach's decision to withdraw his film Looking For Eric from last year's festival on the same grounds.

On July 18 last year, The Age broke the story that the veteran English filmmaker had said "if it did not reconsider the sponsorship, he would not allow the festival to screen his film".

In a letter to Mr Moore, Mr Loach cited "illegal occupation of Palestinian land, destruction of homes and livelihoods" and "the massacres in Gaza" as reasons for the boycott.

In refusing to return the Israeli government sponsorship, Mr Moore said acceding to Mr Loach's demand would be "like submitting to blackmail".

That set him and MIFF apart from the Edinburgh Film Festival, which had earlier done precisely that. In acknowledgment of its stand on this issue and in response to pressure brought by the Chinese government over the documentary The 10 Conditions of Love, about Uighur independence leader Rebiya Kadeer, the Victorian civil liberties group Liberty last month gave the 2010 Voltaire award to the festival.

This year’s flare-up is a little more complicated, however.

Mohamed Al-Daradji, the director and co-producer of Son of Babylon, wrote to the festival about 14 hours before his film was due to have the first of its two festival screenings last Monday, requesting that the festival cancel it and the second scheduled screening on Wednesday July 28.

Within two hours, Mr Moore had replied. "To request a withdrawal of the film on the day of the screening is simply not acceptable and shows a lack of respect for our organisation," he wrote. "We are not able to replace the film at short notice and we will screen it today. I am prepared to consider other options for the second screening but I will also need to consider the financial ramifications to our organisation."

In a separate email, Mr Moore suggested the festival could cancel the sold-out July 28 screening in return for a payment of $4450. The filmmakers offered to reimburse the festival for some of the costs associated with the screening on the assumption that it had been cancelled. They also offered to help the festival find alternative sponsors.

However, the July 28 screening went ahead, prompting an angry email from Ms Stead.

"When we grant a festival permission to screen a film that took us years to make along with danger, blood, sweat and tears we do so with trust. I would have thought a festival would morally recognise the need to tell a Palestinian co-production that it was funded by the state of Israel," Ms Stead wrote.

"I will again reiterate that any permissions granted to Melbourne IFF to screen Son Of Babylon have been revoked."

The website for Human Film and Iraq Al-Rafidain, which made Son of Babylon, claims the production company is "continually working to breakdown cultural divides through film" and "do[es] not apply any language, cultural, political, religious, or any other barriers to our film making practice".


This story was found at: www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/festival-threatened-over-israel-link-20100803-115ed.html

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Kosmos, directed by Reha Erdem

Kosmos is a challenging film, a mystical, metaphysical drama. At the outset we see a wild-looking man surging down a snow-covered hillside, panting and crying.

We next see him alongside a torrential river. He sees a young boy face down in the middle of the river. The man, Battal, dives and and saves the boy from a certain death.

Thanks to this act, Battal is grudgingly accepted by the insular local townsfolk. Battal, who also uses the name Kosmos, is a disturbing element. They see him both as a layabout vagabond and as a shaman with possibly miraculous powers. He speaks of opening oneself to God, but is a chronic thief.

Battal is a unique character, compellingly played by Sermet Yesil. He barks, howls and hoots instead of talking. When he makes a connection with some of the more damaged members of the little community his face lights up in big smiles and he giggles. Frankly, I've never seen a performance like this, and it's part of what makes the film challenging.

Erdem does a great job of underlining the town's insularity. The biggest local issue is whether to open the border to the outside. The soundtrack is a constant barrage of roaring blizzards, howling wild dogs and the endless crash and thump of nearby military manouvres. This creates a claustrophobic atmosphere which makes the insertion of a character like Battal even more bizarre.

I had to grit my teeth at times (I really didn't like all the howling), but overall this film got me in with its manic yet vulnerable main character and a rather neat ending.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1371574/

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World on a Wire, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

This was my pick from the retrospective section of the program. World on a Wire is a German TV mini-series made in 1973 and recently restored and re-released. At 200 minutes it was a tall order, particular when seeing it as one of four screenings in a row.

The film is a sci-fi about Stiller, a computer scientist who has invented a simulator that stores 10,000 identities that function exactly the same as real humans. Stiller comes to realise that the powers-that-be wish to use his invention to enrich themselves and their rich friends. When he starts to question the sudden death of his predecessor, he finds himself being marginalised, people claiming not to know anything about people he is certain he has seen, and an onset of migraines and nausea attacks.

Eventually Stiller learns an even more disturbing secret which heightens his paranoia and leads him into a major confrontation with almost all of his colleagues and the wider world.

Being a 1973 TV production, World on a Wire can't help but look a bit dated. The reaction shots in particular, and some of the stunts, look extremely stilted and overdone. But this was a visionary and original story at the time, covering ground similar to The Matrix a quarter of a century before the Wachowski brothers came along.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0070904/

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The Mouth of the Wolf, directed by Pietro Marcello

This is a documentary set in Genoa about an ex-convict cop-killer, Enzo, and the love of his life. Surprisingly his love is Mary, a transsexual that he met in prison.

Marcello shows us the dark lanes and shadows of Genoa's port district, with a narration that talks about the history of Genoa. He intercuts the story of Enzo and Mary with footage of Genoa's past, shown in a Ken Burns style glow.

But Enzo and Mary are at the centre of this film. The key scene is an interview with the two of them in their dream home, reminiscing about how they met and how their love blossomed behind bars. It's a scene of loving domesticity.

In addition to Mary's retelling of Enzo's past, there is a narrative voice that talks only of the city, with no reference to the relationship that is at the heart of the film. It was unclear whether Marcello was trying to show us Genoa or the story of Enzo and Mary, but he doesn't do justice to either in the end.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1603480/

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Red Chapel, directed by Mads Brugger

This Danish documentary is nothing short of bizarre in concept. Brugger takes two young Danish-Korean comedians to North Korea to perform in Pyongyang. Brugger's covert aim is to confront the North Koreans and expose the evil at the heart of their society.

He tries to do this mainly by utilising one of the two comedians, Jacob, who is a spastic. Early on, Brugger comments that, even if the North Koreans can pick up a bit of what they say in Danish, there is no way they are going to understand Jacob's manglings. Jacob's handicap is also a potential provocation for a society known to maltreat the handicapped, or worse.

The film is quite hilarious in parts. The two comedians put on a deliberately atrocious show for their Korean cultural attaches, almost daring them to stage it. The Koreans, on the other hand, take the show and try to twist it into a propaganda vehicle for them. At the same time, Brugger acknowledges that he is also a propagandist. When Jacob accuses him outright of having no moral sense at all, he agrees.

As the film progresses we see the stresses that the situation places on the two boys, and the very real danger they are all in. Jacob in particular experiences conflicting feelings over how nice the Koreans are to him personally yet how obvious they are at condemning his handicap.

Brugger's observations on North Korea are clearly pre-determined, but the film also shows a human side to the North Korean people, without endorsing their society. It's major punch is in showing the impact the trip has on Jacob, who moves from treating the trip as a performance, through a near breakdown and eventually to a self-affirming insistence on responding to the situation in his own way.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1104746/

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My Dog Tulip, directed by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger

Beth has to go see this movie.

My Dog Tulip is based on a memoir by British writer J.R. Ackerley. It starts with the observation that "Unable to love each other, the British turn naturally to dogs". Hmmm.

This animated film is an account of a middle aged man who acquires an Alsatian bitch from a friend. The dog takes over his life and soon becomes his closest companion, essentially the ideal friend he has searched for all his life.

Ackerley (voiced by Christopher Plummer) makes some wonderfully wry comments about canine behaviour and dogs' relationships with humans. The funniest parts of the film are about Ackerley's attempts to get Tulip mated and how he tries to deal with a bitch in heat living in an inner London flat.

Stylistically the film reminds me of Gerald Searle, with busy line portraits and a watery colour palette. There are scenes where Tulip is represented anthropomorphically as a young girl in a dress, and these are done with little or no colour and outlines only, a neat way of depicting Ackerley's fanciful ruminations within the animation of his memoir.

My Dog Tulip is a very funny and warm-hearted film, with a stack of vocal talent including Plummer, Lynn Redgrave and Isabella Rossellini.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0843358/

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Peepli Live, directed by Anusha Rizvi

This was my choice from the Bollywood section this year, and it was a big gala event. It sold out the Regent Theatre, one of our biggest theatres, where Wicked used to be on.

The reason was that the word got out that Aamir Khan would be here personally to introduce the film and do a Q&A afterwards. For those of you not in touch with your Bollywood side, this is about the equivalent of announcing that George Clooney or Johnny Depp will be here in person. Aamir Khan is probably the biggest actor in Bollywood and the Indian community here went absolutely gaga over him.

Khan produced Peepli live but does not direct or star in it. The film is a first-time effort by Anusha Rizvi, a former journalist, who both wrote and directed the film. (Khan BTW was exceedingly graceful about taking little or no credit for the film; he always praised the creative team and minimised his own contribution).

Peepli Live is a satire about two brother farmers who are going to lose their block of land because they can't repay their government loan. A local politician tells them that they can get the money if one of them commits suicide; they can then take advantage of a government program to assist the families of farmer suicides. The older of the brothers talks the younger, Natha, into doing it.

Before long a journalist hears about it and writes a story, the story upsets some candidates in the Peepli by-election and it suddenly becomes big news. The media descend on Peepli en masse and camp outside Natha's house, filming his and his family's every move, including his visits to the outhouse. Great significance is read into even the most minor incidents and "will he or won't he" becomes the biggest story in the land.

As a result Natha becomes a major inconvenience to State and Federal politicians, all of whom are determined to twist the outcome of his story to their advantage.

This is a hilarious satire on so many levels. It spectacularly lampoons the herd mentality of the media, the venality of politicians, the silliness of government programs and rural village life. The mostly inexperienced actors are extremely good, with Farrukh Jaffar particularly funny as Natha's bed-ridden harridan of a mother.

In the midst of all that, Rizvi manages to make some telling points about rural poverty in India and the despair that it creates. Khan fleshed these messages out during his Q&A, and he's sincere about them. It's true that satire is an effective way of dealing some hard political issues, and Anusha Rizvi does that here. Peepli Live has been a global success, including at Sundance; quite an achievement for a first film.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1447508/

[Georgina]

Aug 7, 2010 2:13:39 GMT -5 wheelspinner said:

My Dog Tulip, directed by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger

Beth has to go see this movie.

My Dog Tulip is based on a memoir by British writer J.R. Ackerley. It starts with the observation that "Unable to love each other, the British turn naturally to dogs". Hmmm.

This animated film is an account of a middle aged man who acquires an Alsatian bitch from a friend. The dog takes over his life and soon becomes his closest companion, essentially the ideal friend he has searched for all his life.

Ackerley (voiced by Christopher Plummer) makes some wonderfully wry comments about canine behaviour and dogs' relationships with humans. The funniest parts of the film are about Ackerley's attempts to get Tulip mated and how he tries to deal with a bitch in heat living in an inner London flat.

Stylistically the film reminds me of Gerald Searle, with busy line portraits and a watery colour palette. There are scenes where Tulip is represented anthropomorphically as a young girl in a dress, and these are done with little or no colour and outlines only, a neat way of depicting Ackerley's fanciful ruminations within the animation of his memoir.

My Dog Tulip is a very funny and warm-hearted film, with a stack of vocal talent including Plummer, Lynn Redgrave and Isabella Rossellini.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0843358/

This one sounds really endearing. I'm going to keep a catalog of these movie names so I won't forget what they're called when I decide to pick up movies to watch.

Thanks for your interesting synopses of all of these movies. Again, I marvel at your capacity to watch and digest so many films in such a short time.

[wheelspinner]

Aug 7, 2010 12:42:04 GMT -5 Georgina said:

Again, I marvel at your capacity to watch and digest so many films in such a short time.

It's catching up with me - I'm definitely suffering Festival burnout. I have a head cold and am feeling under the weather, so yesterday I just blew off the film I'd planned to go see. Today is the last day and I planned to see four last films, but I'm going to skip the last two and get an early night.