Dia Dokuta -- Dear Doctor

on the last weekend of the festival, they have 2 venues reserved for audience favorites .. so i got to see Dia Dokuta .. which i'd skipped on thursday because i was way too busy [sigh] ...


monday, september 7 .. from Japan .. Dear Doctor ..


a fascinating exploration of deceit .. of the differences between treating disease and treating human beings ..


an intern has been assigned to work for 2 months with a doctor in a remote area of japan .. the older doctor is loved by those he treats .. he makes house calls to the elderly who cannot easily go to the clinic ..


then one days, the older doctor disappears .. the film flashes back more than forth between a police investigation into his disappearance, and to vignettes of the doctor at work ..


I'm glad that this was shown again among the people's choice screenings .. worth seeing ...


cinemoo in montreal .. the ffm now over ..

akasa kusum - flowers of the sky

monday september 7 -- ffm -- montreal

10:10 in the morning, sri lanka ... akasa kusum .. flowers of the sky ..

Sandhya Rani was once a film star .. doing bollywood style musicals .. now she rents out a room in her home to young starlets who need a discrete place for their affairs .. Sandhya has 2 sisters, one lives in Canada and encourages her to immigrate .. the other drops by for money and food for her family ..

film goers are also shown another story .. of a young woman who works in a bar as a "party" girl .. she finds herself pregnant and HIV positive ..

the stories of these 2 women come together in an interesting way ..

cinemoo in montreal

chi l'ha visto -- ffm

sunday september 6, evening

Chi l'ha visto .. a german film in german and italian .. and yet another film i happened on at this festival in which a son is looking for an unknown or absent father ..

since certain aspects of films seem to be there for the sole purpose of foreshadowing, i wondered at the outset about the implications of Gianni being shown performing at a gay club where he hangs out in a squalid room .. smoking, drinking, doing lines of cocaine and other men .. some around him are in drag, possibly transexuals ..

he decides to leave germany to try to find his italian father whom he hasn't seen since he was a child .. he knows the name, and that he'd been a handball champion .. so the film becomes a road trip .. and reveals more of gianni's obsessiveness in this search ..

he hooks up with paul, another german .. but paul eventually cuts out because gianni is more interested in his quest than in having a good time ..

eventually, in telling people along the way that he's looking for his father, some one tells him about an italian tv show, chi l'ha vista, where they help in searches of this type .. Gianni contacts the show and provides details .. they agree to take him on, but no information turns up ..

there is a scene where gianni is watching the show in his hotel room .. a blond woman is walking in front of an audience with her microphone, telling a story in the first person .. with a male voice .. the story has the deatils of gianni's, but from the point of view of the father .. gianni does not respond to this .. lost in his own thoughts?

later, gianni performs in front of the hotel room mirror as mc, son, and found father as they might appear on the tv show when it's his turn .. we, the film audience, get to see some fine acting .. and also, something childlike in this character who is supposed to be in his early thirties ..

i was convinced there was some sort of dramatic irony at work here .. that the film audience was privy to the fact that a father couldn't be found because the father had become a woman .. my seatmate at the movie believed that the male voice over was gianni's imagination ..

there is a final scene in a cemetery which provides what i feel is a brilliant conclusion to gianni's quest .. this is not an overly long film, and if it happens to play somewhere near you, it's an interesting well-acted character sketch ..

cinemoo at the ffm in montreal

villa amalia

Sunday morning, september 6

a french film, Villa Amalia .. based on a novel .. introspective

ann/éliane has spotted Thomas, her live-in boyfriend of 15 years .. as he trysts with another woman .. in the process, she happens upon a childhood friend, Georges ..

she ends the relationship with thomas, "quits her job" (she is a pianist composer performer who is supposed to be going on tour), sells her apartment, her belongings, and does her best to make herself disappear .. something we know she's tried before .. after all, she has changed her name .. to erase history ..

she leaves ... to lose herself and to find herself ...

talky .. and long silences too .. nice to look at .. especially the part where she seems to be heading for italy from switzerland .. on foot ..

i guess this hasn't been too informative, but you know how existential french films can be when they want ..

 

cinemoo on montreal

dust of time by theo angelopoulos

Saturday evening's film (september 5) is very difficult to "review" from one viewing .. it is incredibly confusing .. i'm here talking about Theo Angelopoulos's Dust of Time .. which begins (or close to begins) with the death of Stalin ..

here it's announced in a central square in Khazakstan (i can't spell it) Spiros has got forged documents to travel there to rescue Eleni who is in exile .. it doesn't work .. they get caught when running late to catch a night train because they, um, er, paused in an empty tram ..

she is exiled even further to syberia .. i'm not sure where he goes .. in syberia she has a son (because of the tram pause) and gets togtehr with an old friend Max who is from Leipsig ..

all this is the topic of a film by her grown-up son A, who has left new york where he eventually grew up, living with both his parents, who were liberated from wherever .. it is december 1999 .. he has a broken marriage and his young daughter is suicidal and missing ..

never mind that the narrative (is there a narrative?) skips from time to place to time .. the grown-older characters start to say dialog they would've spoken when considerably younger and somewhere else .. or else there is the character's thoughts in voice over ..

and why are all these Europeans speaking English to each other? no, it's definitely not dubbed .. they all speak dialog written in stilted English, which adds to the woodenness of the "acting" ..  okay, Willem Dafoe (who plays the grown-up son born in Syberia and grown-up in New York, and living in Berlin) .. he's a native speaker of English, becuase of the dialog, he too, sounds totally wooden .. (well, maybe, what with all the character's personal troubles, the acting is supposed to be wooden [sigh]) .. the one notable exception to stiffness is Bruno Ganz (Max) ..

and what about make-up? Irene Jacob, who plays Eleni at various times of the character's life, could they only afford talcum powder for her hair to make her appear old?

okay, so i've panned this film .. yet .. there's something to it that is compelling .. something that kept me watching without looking at my watch for the 125-minute duration .. maybe it was piqued curiosity, never satisfied ..

 

cinemoo in montreal

nunta muta / silent wedding

saturday, september 5

the romanian film Nunta Muta/silent wedding

a wedding in a remote village .. all the guests are gathered .. the food prepared .. the wine ..

 

but Stallin has just died, and the Russian commandant imposes a mourning period, and orders the wedding party to be called off .. or those who celebrate will be charged with treason .. so the villagers decide to celebrate in complete silence, lest they get caught ..

yes, there is the usual bunch of stock characters playing out a cartoon story line .. with lots of slapstick ... but against the backdrop of the absurdities and dispassionate violence of the russian occupation, it may be one of the few ways to  show it ..

in certain respects it reminded me of some of the yugoslavian (serb, croation, you name it) films i've seen over the years ..

the scene of the silent wedding itself, with its extended mime comedies .. could be a classic of the genre (especially were some of the "jokes" not quite as lengthy: we do get it!) .. but, then, some people are dense ..

case in point: broken telephone: the groom proposes a toast. as no one can read his lips, he whispers it to the guest next to him .. the toast passes from mouth to ear till the mute man hears it and is only able to mumble something unintelligible to the next person .. we then see the subtitles for how the toast gets mangled from person to person, getting raunchier and raunchier .. till, somehow, when it gets back to the bride, is wedding quality again .. as much of this relies on mis-hearings, the subtitler did an admirable job in conveying all this in English ..

so i forgive the film maker, Horatiu Malaele ..

 

cinemoo in montreal

Sans Rancune! / with no regrets ..

Friday september 4 ...

a lovely Belgian/French film, Sans Rancune! / with no regrets ..

1955, at a boy's boarding school .. for the sons of men who died in the war .. Matagne has been kicked out of a few places .. he is in his final year .. the school seems to run on rather permissive principles .. well, no, not like Summerhill .. but, rather, a kind of mutual respect between students and teachers, a preference for made-up traditions .. such as using the greeting "sans rancune" ..

the lit prof (nicknamed Vapeur because his "exams" are like steam engines) tells the class to stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down .. and then he yells at them that they are sheep, and why are they following insane orders .. and that 50 million people died because a bunch of sheep followed insane orders ..

matagne decides that this lit prof might be his father whose plane was shot down during the war, 15 years earlier .. presumed dead, but no body ever found .. his father, who'd left him and his mother when he was 2 ..

where Vapeur inspires Matagne to do some sleuthing, he also inspires him to become a writer ..

this bit is in French .. the director discusses the movie

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6kasf_tournage-de-sans-rancune-dyves-hanc_shortfilms

if it happens to play in your neighbourhood (hey, my local readers, it's opening in Montreal) it's worth a night out ..

 

cinemoo in montreal

Dear My Love, followed by Love and Savagery

Tuesday, September 1

a japanese one called Dear My Love .. it lasted 2 hours and 10 minutes .. i never once looked at my watch ..

3 couples closing in on age 60 ..

one having arranged a divorce after 30 loveless years .. he, a successful businessman who retires from the large firm to become involved with a young start-up run by his most recent younger woman fling ..

his wife of many years has done nothing but cook and clean for him and their daughter .. (who is very pregnant, and involved with a young man who is not the father of the child she's carrying ..) the wife finds a job simply to have something to do .. as her ex has left her well taken care of financially .. she cleans and cooks for a woman who is a translator of american novels ..

the translator often seeks professional advice concerning medical terminology from a doctor who subsidizes his income as a consultant for writers .. usually of medical tv shows .. he is widowed, has a teenage daughter, and is very shy .. this relationship is another the movie follows ..

the doctor has a patient with diabetes .. this man runs a fish store with his wife .. years earlier he had wanted to be a rock star, but had to take over his father's fish business .. so he married one of his "fans" .. they are childless and bicker all the time ..

 

***********

wednesday, september 2

Love and Sabagery: a canadian-irish co-production .. a geologist poet from newfoundland travels to ireland to see a burren .. and falls in love with a young woman who is about to become a nun .. she fights her attraction to him .. members of her family turn nasty on him for his interest in her .. he writes poems to her ..

the irish landscape is exquisite .. the mother superior is human ..

 

actually a film worth seeing

cinemoo in montreal

Moonlight

tuesday, september 1,  10:30 a.m. 

 

a Chinese movie .. Moonlight ...  lots of antiphonic singing of folk songs ..

well, the subtitles called it antiphonic .. choral, responsive singing .. in this case, of folk songs .. a young woman goes to where her foster father had collected folk songs 40 years earlier .. the film jumps back and forth between the 2 time periods .. well, more back than forth, though we always immediately know we're back in the present because the cell phone is immediately set to good use .. how there'd be a cell tower there isn't clear ..

the landscape against which the love story plays out is exquisite (as ever in chinese films) ..the acting always strikes me as, well, acting .. and i'm too much of a cynic to believe that people, even in china, and even 40 years ago, would sing while they worked .. but though the meaning of the lyrics was only as clear as the bizarre subtitles, the singing itself was lovely .. and i felt perfectly content to be sitting there

this evening, it'll be a japanese film .. about 3 couples aged sixty-ish ...

 

cinemoo in montreal

easier with practice / the athlete / alias

Monday August 31st ..

first film at noon .. and american one which has won awards at 2 other festivals ..

easier with practice ..

davey is on a road trip with his brother to promote his self-published collection of short stories .. one night, in a cheap motel, he receives a phone call from "nicole" .. whom he's never met .. she called the motel room randomly .. she wants "phone sex" .. and they start a relationship of sorts .. though she refuses to give him her phone number .. and also refuses to actually meet him .. until the end of the movie .. the acting was fine .. but somehow i feel this movie would make a much better stage play .. because it's more about faces and dialogue .. so the visuals don't really contribute .. anyway .. just an opinion ..

my next movie was only at 5pm .. so i decided to see another one between .. and chose the documentary The Athlete .. which is really not a documentary .. more a biographical dramatization about Abebe Bikila, the ethiopian marathon runner who'd won the gold in 1960 in Rome -- barefoot -- and again 4 years later in tokyo, 6 weeks after an apendectomy ..

i'd looked up his biography on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abebe_Bikila so knew what to expect .. but i hadn't fully appreciated why his win in *rome* was so important to ethiopians .. as it was phrased: "it took 500 000 italian soldiers to occupy ethiopia (under mussolini) but 1 ethiopian soldier to conquer Rome .."

then I saw Alias .. another documentary .. about a man finding his real father ..

i've seen others like this in previous festivals .. about the children of deseparecidos .. about the offspring of bigamists .. this one, like the others, seems to be a search for self as well .. the reunion with the probably biological father was pleasant .. the film maker was at the screening .. among questions after, did he ever have the test to determine actual paternity? No .. he hadn't ..

anyway .. 2 more tomorrow ..

cinemoo in montreal

Meisjes / over the hill band .. and For the Love of Movies

sunday august 30, 2009

the morning's first film for me started at a reasoable 10:40 a.m., so i had time to get a

second load of laundry going before leaving home for the theatre ..

meisjes/les filles/ over the hill band

the director, a few members of the crew, and the 3 women who make up the "band" were

on hand to greet the audience prior to the screening .. a film in flemish with french sub-titles ..

a newly widowed woman in her late sixties ,who once-upon-a-teenage sang in a band, decides

to get her former group together again with the help of her good-for-nothing never-made-it

musician son, all this much to the distress of her solid-citizen family-man other son ..

her friends go along with the plan, and eventually, the group, which has to "update" their mode

of singing, tempo, lyrics, end up on a talent show .. i wasn't expecting the ending .. though in

certain respects, it was foreshadowed .. so i was teary-eyed for myself and my personal situation ..

 

*******************

my next film started half an hour after, at 1pm, and was across the hall .. so no need to rush ...

from the documentary section, For the love of movies: the story of american film criticism

the director, himself a film critic, was present to greet the audience .. and did a q and a after

the screening, which i didn't stay for ..

the best thing about this montage of interview segments was that, whenever a scene from a movie

was discussed .. often the one scene that most influenced or affected the interviewee during his/her

formative years, ... that scene was the visual while the person spoke .. this made the film so much

more than talking heads .. and i caught the titles of films i'd never heard of .. such as The Boy with

green hair .. and Two Thousand Maniacs! .. neither of which I'd particularly want to see

one little thing that irritates me in documentaries is the "vintage" clip .. which is identified in the

credits .. but at the moment i'm seeing it, I really wish they'd discretely indicate the year and venue

of the clip .. (like a young Woody Allen being interviewed? when?)

the structure was chronological, with present-day critics discussing their earlier 20th c. predecessors

with knowledge and respect .. it is more people-focused than idea focused ..  and reminds me of the travel

film, if it's tuesday, this must be belgium: visit 10 countries in a week: land in four, fly low over six ..

but it'll play on some tv network that likes documentaries ..

 

cinemoo in montreal

enen / case unknown, followed by Eatrip

early morning screening, on Saturday, August 29 ...

 

9 ayem film in the way too early for a saturday morning category of insanity ..

a polish film, enen (case unknown) ...

from the blurb, I expected a thriller .. I've seen a fair number of polical films from europe and

south america over the years .. interesting how we are "constructed" by our reading and

viewing history to anticipate plots with which we are familiar .. here, a young psychiatrist

trying to find out who this mystery patient is, and why various former administrators are

trying to hide what they know and their connection to this strange not quite catatonic man ..

 

*************

 

i then took the subway 2 short stops to the other venue (too lazy to walk), grabbed a bite,

and went to a mid-day screening of a japanese documentary about food .. Eatrip ..

about food and people's feelings about it .. from which i share with you this wisdom ...

   "I have been eating for 90 years and I still enjoy it .. that's the beauty of it .."

at the end, all the various interviewees were gathered in a tent in a field for

a feast .. one dish that looked intriguing (though i'd have reservations

about eating it) .. appeared to be a bed of ice completely covered with

a layer made up from very thin slices of radish (?wasabe?) upon which were laid

thin filets of white fish, all of which was now covered with fresh strawberries ..

well, maybe I would eat it!

 

cinemoo, at the montreal film fest

Korkoro/Liberté/Freedom .. Tony Gatlif

1st of my films of the festival, on Friday Aug. 28 .. a new one by Tony Gatlif ..

Korkoro/Liberté/Freedom

1943, occupied France .. a Rom family .. a French boy whose parents had "disappeared" and who has joined them .. a veterinarian who helps them, a schoolteacher who is also a member of the resistance .. some collaborators .. those with whom they "collaborated" .. there are those who are evil, those who are Just, and those who are simply innocent .. there are also poplars ..

Gatlif was there .. he not so much introduced the film as bonded with the audience ..and the audience bonded right back ..

from my perspective, Gatlif has done it again .. another remarkable movie .. it it happens to play near you, try to get to it .. otherwise, when the dvd comes out, get it from netflix and invite all your friends ..

 

cinemoo

33rd montreal world film festival, 2009

their 33rd, my 25th! and i've finally decided to get back to this ..
so i'll post what i've said about the movies i've seen so far ..
cinemoo