VENICE FILM REVIEW: ‘Between Two Worlds’

Posted on September 11, 2009 by admin

between-two-worlds x650By Ray Bennett

VENICE – Striking images and the suggestion that life is a series of random events that might be repeated make “Between Two World”, Vimukthi Jayasundara’s tale of life in Sri Lanka, intriguing.

With no narrative arc, the film follows a young man, Rajith (Thusitha Laknath) who falls from the sky into the sea, clambers onto the shore and survives dangerous encounters in a city filled with rioting people and then in the countryside where unseen authorities shoot on sight.

Cinematographer Channa Deshapriya and production designer Lal Harendranath contribute to remarkably enigmatic sequences that might prove winning at festivals and could reach sympathetic international audiences as a cry for help for the young people of strife-torn Sri Lanka.

The urban scenes are realistic and terrifying with groups of men with clubs descending on anyone found alone, constant gunfire and explosions, and streets strewn with the wreckage from general mayhem.

People Rajith encounters stay with him for a while but then disappear without explanation and are not heard from again. In the jungle-like countryside, he sees incidents that he then learns happened a long time ago and commits acts of violence that prove never to have happened.

He finds a woman, Kanthi (Kaushalaya Fernando) who is apparently his sister-in-law and when she notices he has a damaged eye she treats it with milk from her breast although she hasn’t given birth. A little boy tends to a wounded bird but then climbs a tree and drops it into a large knothole in the trunk.

When a village’s well is found to be poisoned, all the young men who have been hiding from the guns of the authorities, emerge from the forest to bale the water away. The young man joins in and their movements become a dance and a chant followed by a celebration that ends when armed men on horseback swoop down on them.

What all of it adds up to is left to the viewer, but there’s no question that while some bits are simply puzzling there are many arresting episodes and the film echoes as a plaintive call for attention to the ongoing plight of the young people of Sri Lanka.

Venue: Venice International Film Festival Competition; Cast: Thusitha Laknath, Kaushalaya Fernando, Lu Hiuang; Director, writer: Vimukthi Jayasundara; Director of photography: Channa  Deshapriya; Production designer: Lal Harendranath; Music: Lackshman Joseph De Saram; Costume designer: Kanchana Thalpawila; Editor: Gisele Rapp-Meichler; Producers: Michel Klein, Philippe Avril, Michel Reilhac, Chandana Aluthge, Anura Silva; Production: Les Films Hatari, Unlimited, Arte France Cinema, Film Council Prods. Sri Lanka; Sales: Artscope; Not rated; running time, 85 mins.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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VENICE FILM REVIEW: Fatih Akim’s ‘Soul Kitchen’

Posted on September 10, 2009 by admin

Soul KitchenBy Ray Bennett

VENICE – Filled with boisterous good spirits, Fatih Akim’s “Soul Kitchen” tells of a young Greek-German man’s attempts to make a success of a funky restaurant despite a series of mishaps.

The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival and it can expect more rewards on the festival circuit and a welcome from art-house audiences everywhere. It’s a delightful change of pace for director and co-writer Akim, whose “Head On” and “The Edge of Heaven” dealt with very serious stuff.

Co-writer Adam Bousdoukos (pictured, right, with Moritz Bleibtreu) plays energetic and likeable opportunist Zinos Kazantsakis, who runs a popular restaurant called Soul Kitchen in a neglected area of Hambourg. He prepares stodgy fare such as frozen pizza, fish fingers, hamburgers and macaroni and cheese; the service is abrupt and the music is loud but the customers are happy.

But then a tax collector takes away his sound system in lieu of back taxes, his girlfriend Nadine (Pheline Roggan) jets off to a new job in China, and his no-account brother Illias (Moritz Bleibtreu) is let out of prison on parole.

Intending to join Nadine in Shanghai, Zinos hires a new chef, Shayn (Birol Unel) after seeing him get fired from a classy restaurant because he refused to serve warm gazpacho.

Shayn, however, is a culinary purist and he declines to serve the dross that is the mainstay of the Soul Kitchen. He promises Zinos that he will make four dishes that his customers will love.

Almost overnight, the place is empty as the regulars flee from Shayn’s cooking, and the noise of a raggedy rock band that Zinos has allowed to play in place of his confiscated sound system.

On top of that, Zinos throws his back out while renovating his kitchen to please health inspectors and an old pal turned real estate speculator, Neumann (Wotan Wilke Mohring), starts hounding him to sell the property so he can flatten it for development.

The film follows Zinos in his attempts to save his restaurant, solve his back pain, win back his girlfriend and keep his brother out of jail. It’s all done with flair and a great deal of fun. The personable Bousdoukos actually owned a Hamburg restaurant for several years and he is right at home in the lead role.

In a fine ensemble with many well-drawn smaller characters, Bleibtreu (“Run Lola Run”, “The Baader-Meinhof Complex”) as the hapless brother, Unel (“Head On”) as the fussy chef and Bederke, as a waitress, all stand out.

The pace is brisk, it has sharp ideas, and a great soundtrack with eclectic music. Akim and cinematographer Rainer Klausmann make “Soul Kitchen” a place for audiences to savor.

Venue: Venice International Film Festival, Competition; Cast: Adam Bousdoukos, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birol Unel, Anna Bederke; Director, producer: Fatih Akim; Writers: Fatih Akim; Adam Bousdoukos; Director of photography: Rainer Klausmann; Production designer: Tamo Kunz; Music supervisor: Pia Hoffman; Costume designer: Katrin Aschendorf; Editor: Andrew Bird; Producer: Klaus Maeck; Production: Corazon International; Sales: Match Factory; Not rated; running time, 99 mins.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter. Here’s more about the soundtrack

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VENICE FILM REVIEW: Shinya Tsukamoto ‘s ‘Tetsuo’

Posted on September 8, 2009 by admin

tetsuo x325By Ray Bennett

VENICE – Japanese filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto shows what a “Transformers” movie would be like on a shoestring budget with “Tetsuo the Bullet Man”, which features a man whose mother was an android and whose half-human half-machine body comes to sprout an arsenal of fearsome weapons.

Box office is likely to be restricted to fans that were taken with Tsukamoto’s original “Tetsuo”, which came out 20 years ago with a sequel three years later.

Screened in competition at the Venice International Film Festival, it does boast some impressive editing to obscure the cheesy effects and masks, and it has an ear-splitting sound design of howling industrial noise.

Erik Bossick plays the unfortunate individual whose scientist father (Stephen Sarrazin) not only turns him into a piece of frightening hardware with a head like a giant oyster shell but also arranges to have his son murdered and threatens to do the same to him and his wife (Akiko Monou).

The dialogue is lame, the acting is stilted and the film lacks almost any color but that won’t matter to those for whom noise and mayhem are sufficient, and it’s over in less than 80 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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VENICE FILM REVIEW: Oliver Stone doc ‘South of the Border’

Posted on September 6, 2009 by admin

southoftheborder x650By Ray Bennett

VENICE – Good humored, illuminating and without cant, Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone’s documentary “South of the Border” is a rebuttal of what he views as the fulminations and lies of right-wing media at home and abroad regarding the socialist democracies of South America.

Featuring interviews with seven national leaders who all express great affection for their neighbors to the north if not for historical United States foreign policy, the film suggests a clear way forward for a continent that has largely shaken off the grip of imperialism and what Stone calls predatory capitalism as opposed to benign capitalism.

Greeted with extended applause at its Venice press and industry screening, the film will fare well internationally and will attract liberal audiences in Stone’s homeland. Conservative outrage could also spark wider interest and it should thrive among educators and have a long ancillary life.

Clips from CNN and Fox News establish quickly the buffoonish tone with which news about South American politics is usually treated with democratically elected leaders invariably depicted as dictators, but Stone also indicts the network news and media institutions including The New York Times.

Following a brief history of the events in Venezuela that led to the presidency of Hugo Chavez (pictured with Stone, the filmmaker shows how the media in that country altered film of violent demonstrations to show his supporters firing on their opposition and how those images were fed to the rest of the world. He details similar exaggerations in other countries and quotes facts and figures from each region.

His cameras follow Chavez, who was born in poverty, to the place of his childhood and on trips to a cattle farm and a plant that produces flour with help from Iran. On the way there, Chavez tells the director, “This is where we’re building the Iranian atomic bomb.” There is similar black humor from other leaders with Rafael Correa of Ecuador saying of the U.S. media, “I’d be more worried if they spoke well of me.”

The expressed view of the fraternal leaders is that they want independence and equality, and freedom from the International Monetary Fund and U.S. economic control. They all see in President Obama the opportunity for lasting, mutually beneficial change.

Stone is clearly impressed with the leaders he meets and there are many relaxed scenes including one in which he gets a great kick out of Bolivian leader Evo Morales showing him the best coca leaves to chew, a benign cure for the nauseous effects of the altitude in La Paz.

Venice International Film Festival, Out of Competition; Director: Oliver Stone; Writers: Oliver Stone, Tariq Ali; Directors of photography: Albert Maysles, Carlos Marcovich, Lucas Fuica; Music: Adam Peters; Editors: Alexis Chavez & Elisa Bonora; Producers: Fernando Sulichin, Jose Ibanez, Rob Wilson; Executive producers: Chris Hanley, Juan Riva, Serge Lobo; Production: Pentagrama Films, New Element, in association with Good Apple; Not rated; running time, 78 mins.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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VENICE FILM REVIEW: Patrice Chereau’s ‘Persecution’

Posted on September 6, 2009 by admin

persecutionBy Ray Bennett

VENICE – Everybody persecutes everybody else and they all feel persecuted in Patrice Chereau’s talkative roundelay “Persecution”, which stars Romain Duris and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a Parisian couple who spend more time talking about their relationship than getting on with it.

Charismatic stars and the film’s Gallic shrug of acceptance over the difficulties that being in love creates will take the film to festivals and art houses but it’s far from a classic.

Duris plays Daniel, an independent guy who lives from hand to mouth renovating apartments, and seems happy that way. He even takes time to be a volunteer visitor at a retirement home and his very insouciance draws men and women to him including long-time girlfriend Sonia (Gainsbourg), whose job means she travels a lot and she’s kind of glad about that too.

Daniel has a cluster of friends including accountant Michel (Gilles Cohen), who spends all his time grousing that he cannot be like Daniel, and Thomas (Alex Descas), whom Daniel calls “brother” but seldom sees.

Working on two different jobs at the same time, Daniel is disturbed to discover that a stranger (Jean Hughes Anglade) is stalking him. Soon, the man has broken into one of the places and is declaring his love for Daniel, who responds violently.

The willingness of everyone he knows to place Daniel at the centre of their lives becomes a persecution of its own although he berates himself for persecuting all of them. He increasingly encounters strange incidents on the Metro and Paris streets but they seem only to puzzle him.

A requisite nude love scene between Duris and Gainsbourg adds little insight and their constant bickering grows tiresome. Daniel’s tolerance of the stranger’s annoying intrusions seems a bit odd even though he opens up to him about why he volunteers at the retirement home.

Some viewers may end up feeling a bit persecuted themselves.

Venue: Venice International Film Festival, In Competition; Cast: Romain Duris, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jean Hughes Anglade, Gilles Cohen, Alex Descas; Director: Patrice Chereau; Writers: Patrice Chereau, Anne-Louise Trividic; Director of photography: Yves Cape; Production designer: Sylvain Chauvelot; Music: Eric Neveux; Costume designer: Caroline de Vivais; Editor: Francoise Gedigier; Producer: Bruno Levy; Production: Movie Movie; Sales: Vendite International; Not rated; running time, 100 mins.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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VENICE FILM REVIEW: Yonfan’s ‘Prince of Tears’

Posted on September 6, 2009 by admin

prince of tearsBy Ray Bennett

VENICE – Very pretty people seen against beautiful landscapes provide most of the enjoyment in Chinese director Yonfan’s glossy melodrama set in Taiwan in the 1950s when the hunt for communists on the island led to the period known as the white terror.

More a tale of personal betrayal than a depiction of a nation going through turmoil, the film may travel reasonably well in Asia but success elsewhere will have to rely on audiences’ appetite for its romantic flourishes and fairy-tale wrapping.

Joseph Chang and Xuan Zhu play a flawless couple named Sun-Han and Ping with two gorgeous infant daughters. Sun-Han is a pilot and so the girls attend a school for children of pilots while Ping is a perfectly appointed and doting wife and mother noted for her dumplings.

The girls’ favorite reading is a fantasy picture book titled “The Prince of Tears” with a great hero, and they view the world through romantic eyes, especially their kindly teacher who one day disappears having been accused, sentenced and executed on grounds of treason.

Meanwhile, a friend of their father, a scarred and damaged veteran whom they call Uncle Ding (Fan Chih-wei), is a regular in their household and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone that he works for the right-wing government’s security bureau.

Also in the picture is the glamorous Madame Liu (Terry Kwan), who once knew the couple but is now married to the powerful General Liu (Kenneth Tsang).

The relationships between all the adults become strained when it appears that Ping has a history not only with Ding but also with Madame Liu. There is also a secret involving the parentage of one of the daughters. When Sun-Han and Ping are also arrested on grounds of treason, the internecine affairs become somewhat heated.

It’s good that Yonfan is able to tell a story that has such an ugly period in Taiwan’s history as its background but the real horror of the time is not fully explored and the film keeps its focus on the very handsome players.

Xuan Zhu, Yonfan, Terry Kwan at the festival

Xuan Zhu, Yonfan, Terry Kwan at the festival

Venue: Venice International Film Festival, In Competition; Cast: Fan Chi-wei, Terri Kwan, Joseph Chang, Zhu Xuan; Director, writer, production designer: Yonfan; Director of photography: Chin Ting-Chang; Music: Yu Yat-jiu, George Lam; Editors: Kong Chi-Leung, Derek Hui; Producer: Fruit Chan; Production: Far-Sun Film, Peony5 Film; Sales: Fortissimo Films; Not rated; running time, 120 mins.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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VENICE FILM REVIEW: ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’

Posted on September 4, 2009 by admin

bad lieutenant x650By Ray Bennett

VENICE – Filled with unexpected turns and subversive humor, Werner Herzog’s “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” is a jazzy and very entertaining riff on the theme of a cop who spends too much time in a sewer of criminality and corruption.

It’s a far cry from Abel Ferrara’s NC17 1992 film with a similar title and it will appeal to a different audience. It has a seriously involved performance by Nicolas Cage as a good detective on a downward spiral of drugs and gambling. There is a lot of very black humor, and it develops, somewhat surprisingly, into something that suggests a kind of cheerful pessimism.

Herzog has made a piece of mainstream entertainment with quirky particulars and with Cage’s star power it could see substantial rewards from the box office both domestic and international. The film was greeted in Venice with much laughter and, at the end, with loud and sustained applause.

Veteran TV cop show writer William Finkelstein’s screenplay sets the story in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and it allows Herzog to explore the way bad things happen to good people while crooked people prosper.

Cage plays a dedicated police officer named Terence McDonaugh who in the opening sequence jumps into a flooded basement cell to save a locked up prisoner from drowning. He causes permanent injury to his back and while prescribed medicines ease the chronic pain that he’s left with, soon he’s taking illegal drugs, whatever he can find or steal.

The framework of the picture is a police procedural with McDonaugh and his colleagues, including Steve (Val Kilmer) on the trail of the killers of a family of five caught up in drug dealing.

All the while, McDonaugh is trying to score whatever will make the pain go away and there are many inventive, scary and sometimes hilarious scenes to show how he goes about it. He has a hooker junky girlfriend (Eva Mendes, pictured with Cage) and a tolerant bookie (Brad Dourif), and he runs afoul of some powerful bad guys while playing ball with a significantly dangerous drug lord.

Kilmer doesn’t get to do much but Mendes and Dourif make fine contributions, as do Fairuza Balk as an amorous former flame and Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner as the drug king. But it’s Cage’s show and his body language conveys just how much pain McDonaugh is in with one shoulder permanently clenched and his gaze on alert for the next fix. It’s a sly and intelligent performance that brings to mind the tortured character he portrayed in the grievously overlooked “Vampire’s Kiss” (1988).

Ferrara’s “Bad Lieutenant” was a lurid depiction of a very damaged detective made memorable by a fully committed performance by Harvey Keitel. That cop’s drug induced delusions involved a lot of Catholic guilt and visions of Christ. Herzog mischievously has the cop in his film see lizards. Iguanas and alligators pop up when least expected and there’s a very funny scene in which the camera captures an iguana up close with Cage’s demented cop in the frame and they look weirdly related.

Venue: Venice International Film Festival, In Competition; Cast: Nicolas Cage, Val Kilmer, Eva Mendes, Fairuza Balk, Jennifer Coolidge; Director: Werner Herzog; Writer: William Finkelstein; Director of photography: Peter Zeitlinger; Production designer: Toby Corbett; Music: Mark Isham; Costume designer: Jill Newell; Editor: Joe Bini; Producers: Edward R. Pressman, Randall Emmett, Alan Polsky, Gaby Polsky, Stephen Belafonte; Executive producers: Avi Lerner, Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short, Boaz Davidson; Production: Nu Image/Millennium Films; Sales: Millennium Films; Not rated; running time, 121 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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FILM REVIEW: Penelope Cruz in Almodovar’s ‘Broken Embraces’

Posted on August 27, 2009 by admin

penelope cruz broken embraces 2 x650By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Aside from the fact that one is a genuine film artist while the other is an annoying twerp, the difference between the sublime Pedro Almodovar and the ridiculous Quentin Tarantino can be seen in their latest films.

With “Inglourious Basterds”, the American director has made a rubbish movie based on other rubbish movies whereas the Spaniard has drawn on the classic influences of Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk for his sumptuous melodrama “Broken Embraces” (Los Abrazos Rotos).

penelope cruz broken embraces x325Received warmly at the Festival de Cannes in May, “Broken Embraces” opens in the United Kingdom on Aug. 28 from Warner Bros./Pathe, It’s a treat for movie lovers. Not as tightly focussed or significant as Almodovar classics such as “All About My Mother” or “Volver”, it is a sprawling picture that mixes romance, mystery and suspense.

There’s laughter, betrayal and murder in a tale about a now blind filmmaker who recalls his days as a director and the circumstances that led to his loss of sight. The film makes the most of Penelope Cruz, who appears in several different guises in flashbacks to films within the film in which he plays Audrey Hepburn (left) and dons a blonde wig to play Marilyn Monroe (below) and she is never less than stunningly gorgeous. It helps that she also is a great actress.

Almodovar with his superb crafts team – production designer Antxon Gomez, Art Director Victor Molero, cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, and editor Jose Salcedo – makes the most of it. Composer Alberto Iglesias tops it off with a simply lovely score.

I agree with Peter Bradshaw, who said in his review of “Broken Embraces in The Guardian, “I defy anybody to watch it without a tingle of pure moviegoing pleasure.”

broken embraces

 

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LOCARNO FILM REVIEW: ‘Under Bauern: Saviors of the Night’

Posted on August 26, 2009 by admin

under bauern 1 x650

By Ray Bennett

LOCARNO, Switzerland – German cinema’s growing number of films willing to address topics relating to World War II has a fine addition in Ludi Boeken’s “Under Bauern: Saviors of the Night”, which tells of farmers — unter bauern — in Westphalia who sheltered Jewish friends from the Nazis.

The appearance at the end of the picture of characters whose real life stories are related to the subject adds depth to a production filled with emotional power and a constant sense of dread. The film will find an international welcome from audiences who wish to add to their knowledge of the time and appreciate a riveting human drama well told.

Working from a smart screenplay by Otto Jagersberg, Imo Moskowicz and Heidrum Schleef (based on a memoir by Marga Spiegel) director Boeken spurns melodrama in favor of understatement and a clear depiction of events while sustaining an extraordinary degree of tension throughout.

The film begins in 1943 with the Nazis deporting the last German Jews to death camps. Genial horse trader Menne Spiegel (Armin Rohde) won an Iron Cross fighting for Germany in World War I but now his country’s rulers want to kill him and his family.

Desperate, he turns to neighboring farmer Heinrich Aschoff (Martin Horn) and his wife Maria (Margarita Broich) who immediately offers to hide Menne’s wife Marga (Veronica Ferres) and their young daughter.

Menne elects to move from farmer to farmer, living in dire conditions and mostly in the dark for two years. Under constant threat of exposure from nosy SS officers, over-enthusiastic Hitler Youth and frightened citizens, the Spiegels struggle to get by in their separate hideaways.

The film boasts fine performances and is all the more persuasive because it underplays the dogged strength and loyalty of the rural Germans who reject the merciless extremism of dictatorship and put themselves at grave risk.

Even at the end of the war, with the light of freedom about to bring relief, extraordinary tension remains due to the threat of vengeful cowards, freed war prisoners who go on the rampage, and even the liberating Allies who cannot tell a good German from a bad one.

Venue: Locarno International Film Festival; Cast: Veronica Ferres, Armin Rohde, Margarita Broich, Martin Horn, Lia Hoensbroech; Director: Ludi Boeken; Writers: Otto Jagersberg, Imo Moskowicz, Heidrum Schleef; Director of photography: Dani Schneor; Production designer: Agnette Schloßer; Music: Martin Meissonnier, Max Raabe; Costume designer: Elisabeth Kraus; Editor: Suzanne Fenn; Producers: Joachim von Mengershausen, Karl Baumgartner, Werner Wirsing, Pascal Judelewicz; Executive Producers: Christoph Friedel, Claudia Steffen; Production: Filmform Koln, Pandora Films, 3L Filmproduktion, Acajou Films; Sales: Filmform Koln; Not rated; running time, 100 mins.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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LOCARNO FILM REVIEW: Frederic Mermoud’s ‘Partners’

Posted on August 25, 2009 by admin

partners x650By Ray Bennett

LOCARNO, Switzerland – Swiss director Frederic Mermoud’s “Partners” is a police procedural with sex that deals with two sets of couples on both sides of the law involved in the murder of a male prostitute.

The provocative behavior of the two younger characters, who experiment in having threesomes for money, and an intriguing view of the way detectives deal with a key element of the case make the film stand out from the average crime pic. With attractive players and a considerable amount of naked skin, “Partners” could attract attention in key markets.

The tale begins with the discovery of the body of a young man named Vincent (Cyril Descours), whom detectives Herve (Gilbert Melki) and Karine (Emmanuelle Devos) soon discover sold his body online to married men.

The film flashes back and forth from the detectives’ trail to the events that show Vincent flirting with Rebecca (Nina Meurisse) in a cybercafe. They become lovers, and when the impressionable girl learns what Vincent does for a living, she suggests they become a team.

That inevitably bad idea leads to the events that result in Vincent’s death, something the two officers doggedly track until they face a dilemma only they can resolve.

Director Mermoud and co-writer Pascal Arnold’s screenplay makes the behavior of the youngsters just about plausible and gives the detectives sufficient quirks and self-doubts to add depth to the story.

Cagan is especially good at reflecting an inner torment that makes this crime particularly disturbing to him and in conveying the surprise that comes when he sees a chance for redemption.

Although not explicit, the sex scenes contain full-frontal nudity, and the camera lingers on the young bodies perhaps longer than necessary for a film that appears to condemn the exploitation of naive youth.

Venue: Locarno International Film Festival; Cast: Gilbert Melki, Emmauelle Devos, Nina Meurisse, Cyril Descours; Director: Frederic Mermoud; Writer: Frederic Mermoud, Pascal Arnold; Director of photography: Thomas Hardmeier; Production designer: Francois Renaud Labarthe; Music: Gregoire Hetzel; Costume designer: Dorothee Lissac; Editor: Sarah Anderson; Producers: Tonie Marshall, Damien Couvreur; Production Tabo Tabo Films, Saga Production; Not rated; running time, 93 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

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