I remember the Falklands War; it was 1982 and we (the UK) defended the rights of the people who lived on the island against the Argentineans who tried to impose their rule on a British dependency. That was the way we saw it and we won. I have never seen the alternative version – this was war, although never declared such by either side; there are always alternative versions. Enlightened by Fire (Illuminadas Por El Fuego) tells the story from an Argentinean perspective.

Esteban (Gaston Pauls) is called to the hospital when one of his fellow soldiers, Vargas (Pablo Ribba), attempts to kill himself, twenty years after the end of the war. Nearly 300 Argentinean veterans have committed suicide, which is almost equal to a third of their total casualties. As Vargas lies in a hospital bed in a tiny tiled cubicle that already resembles a morgue, Esteban is forced to revisit his memories of the islands and the conflict. The film is shot in a series of flashbacks as the action switches between the busy Buenos Aires streets and cafes and the bleak windswept islands where the soldiers were stationed in cramped underground dugouts. Esteban recalls the cold, hunger and misery they endured with fellow soldier, Juan (Cesar Albarracin) who was killed on the battlefield.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

ONE OF MY most vivid off-screen images of Indian cinema has been the anointing with milk of Tamil film star Kamal Hassan’s larger-than-life wood cutout by his fans outside a Chennai cinema. The scene which appeared like a straight lift from a movie merely confirmed the enormous appeal and importance actors and actresses enjoyed in Bollywood, Kollywood (Chennai), Tollywood (Kolkata) and all the other Woods in India. The star system is here to stay, and it’s almost hurricane growth appears to be demolishing just about everything on its path. The once great studios and film banners, such as Prabhat, New Theatres, RK, Gemini, AVM, Navketan and Guru Dutt among a host of others, may not have exactly perished, but their glory has faded, sometimes beyond recognition. Once, audiences thronged theatres because of a studio or banner: they knew what to expect from an RK or a Gemini. Today, it is no longer so.

In association with The Lumière Reader, The Zone, a bright new local show hosted by The Silkworm Girl, curating the best in art, music, film and theatre reviews, as well as interviews, special guests and the a cache of giveaways, presents a fortnightly film reviewed by the talking heads at Lumière. The Zone broadcasts every Monday from 5.30-6pm. Tune in to Access Radio on 783AM, stream live, or congregate at The Zone’s MySpace page.

THIS MONDAY (30/4): TIM WONG reviews Bong Joon-ho’s blockbuster The Host – a terrific, genre-elastic monster movie coming by way of South Korea. Podcasts of this and previous reviews can be downloaded at accessradio.org.nz.

JESSICA BORRELLE files an appreciation of “The Loved One”, possibly the blackest comedy of them all.

ANY FILM that includes a scene with a Nana Mouskouri look-a-like twirling around a marble staircase crying out “I’m the first lady embalmer of Whispering Glades” is worth a few hours of your time. The Loved One, a 1965 film adaptation of an Evelyn Waugh book of the same title, is worth many more. Directed by Tony Richardson (the auteur of the 1970 Ned Kelly starring Mick Jagger) this coal black comedy takes aim at the American glamorization of death. The high profile cast (which includes Liberace) delivers exuberant, often bordering on camp performances that convincingly translate Waugh’s irreverent vision onto the silver screen.

Because Bras Cubas actually does very little, this film about his life relies upon style rather than substance. Posthumous Memoirs (Memórias Póstumas) is based on a late 19th century novel by Machado de Assis, which is considered to be a Brazilian masterpiece, and is said to borrow heavily from Laurence Sterne’s Tristam Shandy. As in that novel and recent film interpretation, the narrator constantly intrudes upon the story, with direct appeals to the viewer as he interrupts and analyses the action. He says that audiences follow stories to escape life, and he starts his tale at the end because he is a writer and wants to make his story more ‘interesting and modern’. You soon realise that, despite being a foppish dandy, Bras Cubas (Reginaldo Farias) doesn’t do anything apart from ruminate on random tangents and indulge in shallow philosophies. He eventually dies while trying to invent a miracle poultice, but he never actually gets around to it, and I’m not giving anything away there, because he tells us that at the beginning. Cubas says he leaves life with no deficit or surplus, but although nothing really happens, this film is full of delightful incidents. It is filmed in Sao Paulo, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and Portugal, with beautiful buildings and settings. The interior scenes look deliberately staged; with wigs and costumes, empty rooms and wooden floors, they resemble a theatrical experience. The music of Mozart and Bach underscores it all with sumptuous sound of waltzes and other period dances. I can see why it won several international film awards, and its excellence lies in the fact that it is almost impossible to explain.—Kate Blackhurst

Possible Loves (Amores Possíveis), a rom-com Brazilian style, presents a fresh slant on the Sliding Doors concept. Fifteen years ago, Carlos (the ridiculously handsome Murilo Benicio) had a date at the movies with his classmate, Julia (the equally beautiful Carolina Ferraz) who he was in love with. She stood him up and life went on. But it went on in three different ways and fifteen years on we are presented with three different versions of Carlos’s life, into each strand of which Julia reappears. One of the situations is Carlos’ real life; one is not; and the third is the way he wants it to be. The question is which is which? Both lead actors present three alternative characters and their mannerisms, looks and speech patterns are so different that at first you may not realise they are the same person. But they are the same person, which is the point. The film suggests there is no such thing as fate or soul-mates. In all three scenarios, Carlos and Julia end up with similarities in their interactions, as two people aren’t destined to be together but have to work hard at a relationship. No matter what the circumstances, you will always be the same person and will return to the same place. Carlos is a drifter in all three versions and, unable to make big decisions, he leaves them up to his beautiful wife, gay partner or domineering mother respectively. The bard said “The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings”. Director, Sandra Werneck, may not have Shakespearean pretensions, but the theme is similar. Filmed in Rio de Janeiro, the colour is a little dull and the picture looks slightly retro, although the film is only six years old. It is refreshingly non-Hollywood and as such is able to handle straight and homosexual relationships with equal sensitivity, sexuality and humour. This is a feel good film without too much depth but it does put a smile on the viewer’s face, and won the 2001 Sundance jury prize in Latin America cinema. If that’s what you go to the pictures for, you will be entertained, although you may feel slightly cheated that the credits are cut off half-way through.—Kate Blackhurst

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: the shock and shame story of a night girl.

THERE’s always something not quite right in The Naked Kiss. The acting is a little wooden, camera shots don’t quite match, images pull focus every now and then. In fact, the storyline, like most Fullerian premises, is not quite right either. But this is a typical Fullerian premise – of all us, as individuals and society, aren’t really that quite right either. Apparently this film was cut against Fuller’s wishes by the studio, but despite this, the overall effect is still remarkably unsettling. This film is meant to be “weird”. And as you may see in The Naked Kiss’ companion piece Shock Corridor, Samuel Fuller doesn’t draw moral judgments on what is weird or abnormal. In fact with some of his favourite themes – madness, sexuality, civilization, punishment – you wonder if he was Foucault’s favourite filmmaker.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

THE HOTTEST news in Bollywood at the moment is the Shilpa Shetty-Richard Gere smooch that has taken the sheen off the Aishwarya Rai-Abhishek Bachchan wedding on April 20. And, the best part is, a playful gesture has been blown out of proportion by India’s self-styled moral-keepers.

As a practitioner straddling cinema’s constantly shifting borders, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s outline of filmmaking is, in many ways, to rip the very fabric of motion pictures to shreds. What irony, then, that it is Thailand’s ravenous Censorship Board who intends to take to the director’s latest film with an axe. Make no mistake: Weerasethakul’s films coax extreme reactions, from the indescribable euphoria of watching his Blissfully Yours unfold with all the logic of a mid-film opening credit sequence, to the countless patrons who fled, vindicating in their sheer horror the brave new world that ‘Joe’ (his abbreviated moniker) was cultivating. He would return to the jungle with Tropical Malady: opaque, elongated, and even more spaced-out, the astonishing transcendence of the film had some of us entranced, while others bored shitless. His most recent, Syndromes and a Century, was due to open in the director’s homeland, only to be confiscated on the grounds of four “objectionable” scenes: two involving monks playing a guitar and with a toy flying saucer; another two involving “inappropriate” conduct by doctors on the job. As such, the censors refuse to release the film until cuts are made.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

THIS WEEK, I watched Adoor Gopalakrishnan shoot his 10th and 11th films one after the other at Ambalappuzha, some 15 km from Aleppey or Alappuzha as it is now called. In the heart of Kerala’s scenic Kuttanad district, Aleppey has over the past few years caught the tourist eye with its backwaters and houseboats. There are still some parts there where time appears to have not moved beyond the 1940s, and it is this ambiance that Adoor hoped to capture in his movies. One of the pioneers of the New Indian Cinema of the 1970s, Adoor has directed just nine features in over three decades, a fact that speaks of his passion for perfection.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: foul-mouthed French teens.

WHILE THIS could probably be loosely called a teenage romantic comedy, L’Esquive (Games of Love and Chance) is about as far away from the usual Hollywood teenage histrionics as you can possibly get. It’s a tale of the awkwardness of adolescent love, told in the backdrop of Parisian housing units with a dash of cultural and financial desperation. This is Tunisian-born French director Abdel Kechiche’s second film, and is ultimately a rather touching piece of work.

“As a study of the human psyche facing certain termination, Time to Leave belongs to the same universe as 5x2. But whereas that film found something specific and hurtful in its study of a relationship lost in time’s blender, the new one fails to leech the humanity from its symbolic corpse,” writes DAVID LEVINSON....[Read More]

And concluding our World Cinema Showcase dispatch, DIANE SPODAREK covers her first Tony Gatlif in the director’s latest, Transylvania. The festival, currently in Christchurch, continues through until April 25, while in Dunedin, it opens this Thursday and concludes on May 5.

Lassoed with a malignant tumor at the film’s outset, Romain, the 30-something too-good-looking nub of Time to Leave, initially goes for haute calm in the face of death: Meeting with a doctor, after collapsing on a photoshoot, there’s a glint of expectation as he inquires, “Is it AIDS?” – as if, under the brim of gay fatalism, disease was simply another lauded accessory. But despite the kid’s composure soon giving way, Ozon’s encounter with his self-hatred remains surprisingly by-the-book: For every sideswipe with nihilism incurred, liability is safely pillowed by the fact that, well... the dude’s dying. So basically, this is like Blow-Up in reverse, where all the metaphysical unrest has been internalized. Which means the obvious problem becomes not who died but how to die – or live, rather, with such a drastically shortened lifespan. Unfortunately, for Ozon, the answer to that question comes all too easily, as a blend of biblical Samaratism and new-age sex therapy; bullied into doing Right, Romain re-makes the deathbed he lies in, only to find it eagerly co-opted by a married couple.

Reviewed by Glen Maw

MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM and co-director Mat Whitecross’s docudrama, The Road to Guantanamo, is unavoidably political. Rather than being politically didactic, the film shows us how political actions affect real people; its subjects are not the politically powerful, but the politically powerless. It is a film about intolerance, ignorance and fear, but equally about friendship and the endurance of the human spirit. The docudrama genre allows it to have the sobriety of documentary, but the empathy of drama. It is a film about the state of humanity and it deserved to be made – if only because it tells us a story from a perspective that we do not hear in the western media. Political films are often hard to watch because they try so hard to convince us of their truths that they lack an aesthetic component. Fear not, The Road to Guantanamo is innovatively shot and beautifully constructed.

Purporting “nerve shredding terror”, Adrift (aka Open Water 2) instead offers aphasia and eventual comatose. Invariably, watching six people tread water for over an hour will have that anaesthetizing effect. In a mildly interesting commentary on the stupidity of contemporary youth, a group of teenaged friends – seen earlier in the film cavorting on a spring break getaway, probably drunk and flashing their titties – reunite several years later older, unwiser, and having clearly not evolved. The egregiously chiselled stud of the sextet, Dan, commandeers a million-dollar yacht for their weekend cruise; somewhere in the middle of the ocean, they all decide to go for a swim. Someone forgets to lower the ladder. What follows is a fruitless and hilarious series of attempts to climb back onboard – grab onto the stern’s American flag (which symbolically tears, and is seen in close-up flittering in the wind), phone home via a wet cellphone, make a rope out of everyone’s swimwear – before each succumb to fatigue, self-inflicted wounds, or despair. Unlike the original Open Water’s scuba verite conceit (to which Adrift is a gimmicky and wholly unsanctioned ‘sequel’), the presentation here is nauseatingly commercial, while the potential for what lies beneath is incredibly ignored. Offsetting the inane and badly delivered dialogue in Open Water was a palpable surface tension, where real sharks would randomly break through the water. In Adrift, the threat of Jaws activity never eventuates – all the more bewildering, given when one of the characters is accidentally stabbed, plumes of shark-attracting blood cloud the water. In their absense, we get something far more terrifying: desperate, shitbrained young adults wondering if God will come to their rescue.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

DIRECTOR Jag Mundhra has often been associated with B-grade cinema. Films such as Private Moments, Monsoon, Tainted Love, Sexual Malice, Tropical Heat, The Other Woman and Vishkanya, bordered on the pornographic. But in 2000, he made Bawandar, a pleasing departure from his otherwise eminently forgettable repertoire.

In association with The Lumière Reader, The Zone, a bright new local show hosted by The Silkworm Girl, curating the best in art, music, film and theatre reviews, as well as interviews, special guests and the a cache of giveaways, presents a fortnightly film reviewed by the talking heads at Lumière. The Zone broadcasts every Monday from 5.30-6pm. Tune in to Access Radio on 783AM, stream live, or congregate at The Zone’s MySpace page.

THIS MONDAY (16/4): TIM WONG reviews Jonathan King’s horror comedy Black Sheep – part homage, part imitation, part rural New Zealand self-deprecation. Podcasts of this and previous reviews can be downloaded at accessradio.org.nz.

Laurence Dunmore/UK/2004; R4
Roadshow, $29.95 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

A LOT OF people would love to be Johnny Depp (or at least do him). His effortless coolness, his smoldering good looks, and his general disdain for things like Hollywood make him a modern day equivalent of the celebrated rock stars of the 60s and the 70s. As a result, he’s probably a natural choice to play the Second Earl of Rochester, John Wilmot, the hard-drinking, womanising genius from Restoration-era England.

Mike Figgis/UK/1994; R4
Paramount/RS, $29.95 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

PRIVATE BOYS’ schools as a microcosm of society has been a staple in literature. It hasn’t been different in film, from the classic Zéro de Conduite to If... to Dead Poets Society. In fact, this film came at the tail-end of a spate of a similar group of films such as Dead Poets and School Ties. In this respect, this is a rather curious film within that little sub-genre, especially given that Terence Rattigan’s 1948 play had been filmed before in 1951 with Michael Redgrave as Crocker-Harris, and twice more as a TV movie.

A Tony Gatlif virgin, DIANE SPODAREK soaks in the sights and sounds of the director’s latest gypsy excursion, Transylvania.

With the release of Squeegee Bandit, JACOB POWELL tracked down cultural enigma Sándor Lau, one of New Zealand’s unique new cinematic voices to examine his views on cinema and life as a filmmaker in in Aotearoa.

“If anything, The African Queen stands as testament to the poverty of having a budget: When Powell and Pressburger wanted the Himalayas, they retreated to their London studio, turning lurid backdrop shooting into the approximation of a fever dream. Huston meanwhile, with the facility to fly a cast to Africa, trails the heart of darkness, and returns with a video-diarist’s program of interests: So that what you get are turgid shots a-plenty of wildlife dopily standing around, the light a flat, unchanging, democratic blue. Nevertheless, the area’s elements, in all their scintillating dullness, prove enough to transform Hepburn from tight-buttoned choirgirl into rope-gnashin’ first mate, as she charts the titular vessel on its course to blow up German ship, the Louisa,” writes DAVID LEVINSON....[Read More]

Alternate views on American Classics aside, DIANE SPODAREK considers the steamy Black Snake Moan, awash with Southern Blues, a sound she describes as, “the essence of this movie, the longing for what can never be, because the South is full of misery, and this is another Hollywood version of our insatiable desire to see poor white-trash folks getting drunk and puking their lives down the toilet.” Left-of-field, she also follows two Swedish galpals into the sunset in Heartbreak Hotel, and the Apartheid horror Catch a Fire.

Reviewed by Nicholas Butler

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’s Pan’s Labyrinth follows his earlier The Devil’s Backbone, also set during the Spanish civil war. The common thread that runs through both films is of fantasy placed within the grimness of a twentieth century war. It is a war that many people from outside Spain may know little about it – perhaps simply because it doesn’t have the same currency as Vietnam or WWII. In the case of Pan’s Labyrinth this is a refreshing change for the viewer who sees a sinister Spanish officer in place of the usual suspects. More romantic and accomplished than The Devil’s Backbone, del Toro mixes realism and fantasy in the parable of a young girl, Ofelia, who purveys a wonderful imaginary world as she is lead into zones such as a labyrinth where she meets a faun Pan. Pan is somewhat ambiguous in his intentions, as he seduces her to partake in various tasks, whereas some other creatures are obviously more sinister. Ofelia has to contend with a duality of challenges provided by fairytale creatures and of real life – such as her evil stepfather who is an army officer.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

KIRSHNA has traveled to Deauville, that quaint Norman city on the French Atlantic coast. The last time he traveled, it was to Singapore, chasing his dream woman, Priyanka Chopra. Yes, indeed, I am talking about Rakesh Roshan’s Krrish, part of the Panorama in the ongoing 9th Deauville Asian Film Festival. Touted as the Indian Superman, Roshan’s son, Hrithik, donned a black leather skin-fit suit, and rose from a tiny secluded village – where his grandmother had kept him hidden from the malicious world – to save the world from evil. Just like our mythical hero, Krrish or Krishna also woos and weds (I suppose) Priyanka, a modern-day TV reporter, who meets the demi-god in the sylvan surroundings of India’s pastoral beauty.

The horrors of the Apartheid are brought alarmingly back into focus with Phillip Noyce’s Catch a Fire, a film based on the courageous life of Patrick Chamusso. DIANE SPODAREK reviews.

At the World Cinema Showcase, DIANE SPODAREK follows two defiant Swedish women into the sunset in Colin Nutley’s follow-up to Queen of Sheba’s Pearls, Heartbreak Hotel.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: François Truffaut’s last word.

FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT was one of the most influential French New Wave directors, and consequently one of the most influential directors of all-time. His Antoine Doinel series helped herald a personal cinema previously unseen in world cinema, and his fervent canonisations of previous filmmakers did much to contribute to auteur theory and the importance of the director in the filmmaking process. However, he was also one of the most conventional of the New Wave directors – stylistically and in terms of politics and narrative. However, that’s not to say he’s dull; my favourite Truffaut film, Tirez Sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) features constant tonal shifts and homages all told in a very engaging story. Arguably this is the same territory that Truffaut returns to in his final feature, Finally Sunday! (also known as Faithfully Yours).

A roundup of the current best and rest in film. In this installment: Entourage: Season Three, Part 1; The Departed, Borat, Troy, Match Point.

Classic shmassic. If anything, The African Queen stands as testament to the poverty of having a budget: When Powell and Pressburger wanted the Himalayas, they retreated to their London studio, turning lurid backdrop shooting into the approximation of a fever dream. Huston meanwhile, with the facility to fly a cast to Africa, trails the heart of darkness, and returns with a video-diarist’s program of interests: So that what you get are turgid shots a-plenty of wildlife dopily standing around, the light a flat, unchanging, democratic blue. Nevertheless, the area’s elements, in all their scintillating dullness, prove enough to transform Hepburn from tight-buttoned choirgirl into rope-gnashin’ first mate, as she charts the titular vessel on its course to blow up German ship, the Louisa. That she ends up in Bogart’s arms along the way seems less a question of revelation than reflex: the changeover gradated with the suddenness of a cough. Yet, for all the boxing-match hype surrounding their pairoff, genuine rapport becomes a one-note engine, driven by the sight of Bogart again and again falling playvictim to Hepburn’s butch lack of compromise. With so little to feed on, the two are inadvertantly reduced to signifiers; which means that Huston does finally stumble on an undertow of decay – that of his own stars. And would it be too much to say that, once Bogart begins fighting off a swarm of insects darting the screen (and resembling print scratches more than insects), it's like an outtake from Bill Morrison’s Decasia, the actor staving off the inevitable demise of his own image?—David Levinson

Lurching to the rhythm of the Deep South, Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan pairs Samuel L. Jackson, a blues-playing Christian, and Christina Ricci, a girl trying to untangle her tingle. DIANE SPODAREK watches the unlikely partnership unfold.