On location in the French Riviera, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN reports from the 60th Festival de Cannes.

THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL, the world’s single most important cinema event, ignored British and American movies on its prize-giving day. The festival, which ended its 12-day run on May 27, honoured a Romanian film, Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days with the top Golden Palm. Helmed by Cristian Mungiu, the movie dramatises the horror and dilemma of two university students, one forced to abort her child and other helping her to carry it out during the stifling dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. Through stark images, Mungiu builds up the tension the two girls face in a regime where abortion is a crime. Termed “pitch-perfect” and “brilliantly acted” by Variety, the film often conveys unbearable suspense without undue political sentimentality. That the suspense does not eventually lead to unpleasant or frightening consequences may be seen by some as somewhat flat or even disappointing. But Ceausescu’s remarkable ability to achieve precisely that can also be seen as an eloquent testimony of his directorial genius.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Brazilian rage, Part III.

Barren Lives (Vidas Secas), right from the start, doesn’t pull any punches. Through subtitles, Dos Santos exhorts his audience to feel pity for the millions of people suffering in Brazil’s north-east, where arid lands and the cruel elite conspire to tread all over the poor workers. He then proceeds to use very uncomfortable distorted sound on the soundtrack in the opening image, the likes which would have made Michael Snow proud. From that opening, you can tell that this isn’t going to be particularly pleasant viewing.

Reflecting on the second half of the Cannes Film Festival, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN encountered Faith Akin’s new movie, The Edge of Heaven (“impressive without being overtly glossy, and he [Akin] travels from Turkey to German with consummate ease”); Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart, about the intense hunt for a Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in 2002; Competition entry The Diving Bell and The Butterfly; and Andrei Nekrasov’s Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case, a powerful documentary on the murder of a former Russian spy, and an unscheduled addition to the Festival’s official sections.

Courtesy of gautamanbhaskaran.com, The Lumière Reader continues to dispatch Gautaman Bhaskaran’s ‘Out of Cannes’ column over the remainder of the festival.

On location in the French Riviera, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN reports from the 60th Festival de Cannes.

The second half of the Cannes Film Festival threw up some more motivating cinema. Faith Akin’s Turkish movie, The Edge of Heaven had an interesting story to tell us, though I did find the narrative style a little longwinded, even somewhat circuitous. In what often appeared like coincidences, the film places four Turks and two Germans on the screen and shows us how their lives crisscross with tragic results. The most poignant part of the The Edge of Heave is when it underlines the relationship, not quite platonic though, between a German girl and a Turkish illegal immigrant she befriends. The Turk, also a young girl, Ayten (played with great panache by Nurgul Yesilcay), is a political activist on the run from Istanbul, and the movie, divided into three chapters (a style that I first saw in the works of the Danish director, Lars von Trier), paints the horror of a tragedy brought about by Ayten’s relationship with Lotte, the German girl. Akin’s work looks impressive without being overtly glossy, and he travels from Turkey to German with consummate ease.

Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

WOODY ALLEN’s latest movie has something of an uphill battle of expectations to climb. His last film, Match Point, was very close to being a career high point; it’s certainly the only Woody Allen effort that even the most fervent of Allen non-appreciators could list on a film favourites list. It seems slightly unfair, but then, the only fitting way to compare and rank Woody Allen films is to measure them against former glories and former flops by the same man.

Reviewed by Darren Bevan

THE FIRST FILM, 28 Days Later, was such a seminal redefinition of the Zombie genre that it seemed like real madness to tamper with the formula – although to its credit not once does this film refer to those hit by the plague as Zombies (and henceforth neither will this review). But the signs weren’t good with director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland disappearing off to take on Sunshine – in fact they even took their star Cillian Murphy with them. And yet 28 Weeks Later, with little known Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto) at the helm, is actually as gripping – and in parts sickening – as the first film.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Brazilian rage, Part II.

BEING voted the greatest Brazilian film of all-time is not an accolade that is lightly given. (Also having Sergio Leone quote the film in Once Upon a Time in the West is pretty cool too with Henry Fonda’s jacket). This is also pretty remarkable considering Rocha was only 25 when he wrote and began to direct the film. And, as in Earth Entranced there is some considerable talent on show in Black God, White Devil. However, like Earth Entranced there was a lot that didn’t make sense to a non-Brazilian audience – the anger and frustration is directed at the Brazilian institutions, and consequently the film is a little oblique. However, formally, his films are certainly interesting to watch.

In more reportage out of the French Riviera, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the newsmakers, among them Sicko megaphone Michael Moore; more Competition entries in David Fincher’s Zodiac and Kim Ki-duk’s Breath; the Festival’s 60th Anniversary omnibus, To Each His Own Cinema; and speculating on the Palm d’Or winner, among them My Blueberry Nights, Paranoid Park, Love Song and No Country for Old Men.

Courtesy of gautamanbhaskaran.com, The Lumière Reader continues to dispatch Gautaman Bhaskaran’s ‘Out of Cannes’ column over the remainder of the festival.

On location in the French Riviera, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN reports from the 60th Festival de Cannes.

FOR 15 YEARS I have seen this at the Cannes Film Festival. Half way through the 12-day event, the punting begins. I really do not know whether people bet with money, but they sure challenge each other to dinner or a drink. Little wonder then, that restaurants and cafes are full after the Golden Palm has popped out of the envelope.

On location in the French Riviera, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN reports from the 60th Festival de Cannes.

OFTEN, the Cannes Film Festival sparkles not so much for its cinema as it does for its newsmakers. Three years ago in 2004, when Bush basher and documaker Michael Moore came to the French Riviera with Fahrenheit 9/11, he caused enough fire and heat to make the American President uneasy across the Atlantic. When the jury crowned Moore with the Golden Palm, it seemed like the French were gleefully agreeing with the helmer’s view of all that was wrong with America’s First Man.

Seminal movie moments may be crafted on the page, but it’s on screen where they come to life. But it’s not just the actors and directors who inspire us and breathe life into the words – it’s often the composers responsible for the music who do more to evoke memories long after we’ve left the theatre. Consider, if you will, where the opening of all of the Star Wars films – yes, even the dire Phantom Menace – would be without John Williams’ music? Any version of Mission: Impossible without Lalo Schifrin’s pulsating and urgent theme? Or ponder the immortality of Psycho’s shower scene without the strings of Bernard Herrmann’s score? If you’re salivating already, add the following ingredients to the mix – a full symphony orchestra in the form of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, sprinkle a bit of Mezzo Soprano Helen Medlyn back for her fifteenth year with the APO, and season with the likes of Bond, Potter, Skywalker, Meridius, Parker and more. These are just a few of the reasons to head to Aotea Centre in Auckland on June 2 for A Night at the Movies. Tickets range from $20-$80 (booking fee applies), and are available from Ticketek. Those of you who are willing to grumble that it’s a dumbing down of the arts: pull your snobby heads in and go along and enjoy it.—Darren Bevan

With Samuel Fuller taking post as Film Society’s retrospective resident this year, and Paris Hilton set for hard time in a Los Angeles jail, it seemed only appropriate that I revisit Girls in Prison: a flaccid, if mildly competent pastiche of female prison movies and that shady underworld Fuller maintained. Co-written with wife Christa Lang, it was to be Sam’s last screen treatment before his death, pulped by John McNaughton (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) into something sporadically evoking the B-movie imperfection. Through awkwardly tilted angles, silhouetted lighting, and a staid direct-to-video aesthetic, McNaugton has a Shock Corridor template in mind, but it’s really the late iconoclast’s scripted throwbacks to McCarthyism and red fear that authenticates the Fuller signature (that, and a brief glimpse at Ione Skye brandishing her high heel as a melee weapon).

“Love Songs (Les Chansons d’Amour) may at first glance appear dissimilar to the director’s earlier Dan Paris, but on closer inspection one can easily see how alike the two films really are. Honore’s breeziness reflects abundantly in Love Songs as well, and made as a tribute to a dead friend, the movie has the power to tug at the heartstrings. When Ismael sings, “Every minute is like a sob”, walking down a lonely Paris street, the gravity of loss is conveyed in an utterly poignant way. In Competition, Love Songs may not walk away with a prize, but it is a film that moves you,” writes GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN....[Read More]

Courtesy of gautamanbhaskaran.com, The Lumière Reader will dispatch Gautaman Bhaskaran’s ‘Out of Cannes’ column over the course of the festival. Also from the French Riviera: Russia’s The Banishment; Audrey Tautou as Coco Chanel; Old Europe ignored; New Asian cinema thrives.

On location in the French Riviera, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN reports from the 60th Festival de Cannes.

SOMETIMES, I am struck by the power of Bollywood. Imagine watching an eminently French movie at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival, and having it remind you of Bollywood cinema, replete with songs and even dances, at least of sorts. Yes, the characters in the French movie, Christophe Honore’s Love Songs (Les Chansons d’Amour), do not run around trees and across picturesque meadows, but Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni (that Italian legend’s daughter) and Louis Garrel skip, hop and play around to lilting music, melody and some great songs across the breathtaking boulevards of Paris, and often by night, when the city is asleep and the glow from the street bulbs cast a soft, romantic radiance. Add a dash of rain and you have a prefect mood for love and songs.

Abbot+Donen+Curtiz/USA/1949+57; R4
Warner Bros, NZ$14.95 | Reviewed by Tim Wong

DORIS DAY, America’s virtuous sweetheart, made an entire screen career out of her prim, button-nosed upkeep; blonde becoming not only the hair colour of fun, but insurmountable purity. Come the sixties, Day remained firmly upright in her spotless self-image, a virtue sorely lacking in today’s corruptible celebrity. When no longer in vogue, she begrudgingly signed off with the out-of-date Doris Day Show, a small-screen foray that coincided awkwardly with The Graduate, Counter Culture and the Vietnam War. Now appearing as somewhat of an artifact in these Warner Bros. reissues, Day seemingly expired with the sexual revolution, one of the last deities of Hollywood’s dream factory and the collective hypnosis it helped maintain. If the movies were an illusion, Doris Day was the prism that skewered a harsh reality.

“Wong Kar-wai’s flair for visuals and colourful characters grip one, and My Blueberry Nights is by far his most powerful work to date, though there were some moments when I felt that the movie let go my attention. However, My Blueberry Nights has that element of rhapsody and rumination that highlight time, and more specifically lost time,” writes GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN....[Read More]

Courtesy of gautamanbhaskaran.com, The Lumière Reader will dispatch Gautaman Bhaskaran’s ‘Out of Cannes’ column over the course of the festival. Also from the French Riviera: at 60, A Brief History, looking back on magic and mirth of Festival de Cannes.

On location in the French Riviera, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN reports from the 60th Festival de Cannes.

CHINESE director Wong Kar-wai had a dream. He always wanted to make an English language film, and grew up watching American cinema. He loves Memphis, whose summer is quite like that in his native Hong Kong, where he moved from Shanghai’s when he was just five. It is not quite surprising that he loves A Streetcar Named Desire and all that is Tennessee Williams. And had he been born earlier, he might have just cast Marlon Brando in the role of Jeremy, the guy who runs a small cafe in New York in Wong’s latest movie, My Blueberry Nights, which set the 60th Cannes Film Festival rolling on May 16.

Stephen Frears/UK/2006; R4 (SE)
Icon/Warner Bros, NZ$39.95 | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

CERTAIN celebrity deaths don’t so much capture the zeitgeist as put a mortal/morbid frame around it. The best examples are when a figure is a celebrity and there is a political undertone – obvious examples are JFK and Martin Luther King. Slightly removed but just as pertinent was the death of John Lennon. Kurt Cobain’s death will always signal the end of grunge, but there was no extra context. Likewise, Anna Nicole Smith’s recent passing is what we get in this Famous-For-Being-Famous celebutante era. But the most significant celebrity death in the lifetime of both Generation X and Y would have to be that of Princess Diana; the car crash that caused it becoming an ironic metaphor for how her death was handled by the media and the Royal Family.

On location in the French Riviera, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN reports from the 60th Festival de Cannes.

THIS YEAR, Cannes turns 60. When the Festival unrolls on May 16, few would have any doubt that it is the world’s best, where cinema and celebrity produce magic and mirth.

Established to counter the Venice Film Festival that often served as a platform for Nazi misinformation, Cannes had a rough takeoff. Its first edition on September 1, 1939, could barely last 48 hours before Hitler’s army began its destructive march. Cannes screened just one film, Hollywood’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the guests had to return.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Brazilian rage.

Earth Entranced (Terra em Transe) is certainly the most controversial film of Brazilian auteur Glauber Rocha’s output, and remains one of the most confrontational pieces of work in global cinema. Rocha was the key figure of the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement, a movement that has come to be known as the archetypal Third Cinema. So while people may talk about the ideological conflicts in the West during the 1960s, what went on in Paris, San Francisco etc. seems like a first-year university student picking up Das Kapital for the first time when compared to the tumult in Latin America. Few countries, including Brazil, escaped conflict and bloodshed. And while Brazil’s conflicts weren’t so violent, there were a number of highly traumatic changes, such as the sudden 1964 coup which overthrew the leftist government of João Goulart.

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

I AM TEMPTED to believe that Bollywood is all set to invade the fascinating French Riviera this summer. The undoubted Queen of Movie Festivals, Cannes, unrolls on May 16 in celebration of cinema, and six decades of the event’s glorious existence.

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/NEXT MONDAY (14+21/4): TIM WONG recommends four DVDs from the month’s releases, including Once in a Lifetime, a juicy chronicle of soccer at its peak in America; John Cameron Mitchell’s sex comedy Shortbus; Robert Altman’s parting gift, A Prairie Home Companion; and last year’s most authentic American indie, Mutual Appreciation. Podcasts of this and previous reviews can be downloaded at accessradio.org.nz.

Belatedly recognised as an Official Language of New Zealand last year, Sign of the Times documents the deaf and sign language community’s constant forge for that recognition. Screening at the Human Rights Film Festival, BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM looked at its significance.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

Part way into The Host, when a grieving Nam-il lands a dropkick on his dofus-of-a-brother Gang-du, it is clear that we are watching a Bong Joon-ho movie. As a strategically placed signpost – a rather sly directive to Bong’s serial killer subversion Memories of Murder (where said wrestling move was the retaliation of choice) – it completes a brief but remarkable series of events: the Park family, having just witnessed a giant mutant tadpole devour their beloved Hyun-seo, arrive at a makeshift shrine, mourn her apparent death, before collapsing to the floor in a hilarious seizure of blubbering tears and despair. How Bong achieves such a dramatic and invisible tonal shift – from the depths of genuine pathos, to an outbreak of well-timed comedy, and all within the space of 24 frames – is surely alchemy, and is something to behold.

Screening at this year’s edition of the Human Rights Film Festival (Wellington May 9-16; Christchurch May 16-20), Rosita documents the aftermath of a nine-year-old Nicaraguan girl’s rape, her subsequent pregnancy, and the fight by her Costa Rican parents to gain approval for a “therapeutic” abortion in a country where termination is illegal. HELEN SIMS asked co-director Janet Goldwater to shed further light on Rosita’s plight via email....[Read More]

ALSO SCREENING: Belated recognised as an Official Language of New Zealand last year, Sign of the Times documents the deaf and sign language community’s constant forge for that recognition. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM looked at its significance....[Read More]

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: an education in the occult.

WATCHING ninety minutes of this film almost made me want to petition the Council to lighten up Wellington’s streets. I’ve never seen this city look so seedy and menacing. It’s also the perfect setting for Glenn Standring’s debut horror film The Irrefutable Truth About Demons. I’ve always thought if you want to make someone feel uncomfortable, show sodden pavement, and that’s precisely what Strandring did. He achieved what the stated aim of horror films through this grunge, and that is make the audience feel uncomfortable.

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

I HAVE noticed a pattern in Indian cinema. The greater the publicity for a film the greater, it appears, is also the disappointment. Two recent examples are Nishabd and Eklavya, both Amitabh Bachchan starrers. Both sank without a trace, despite all the hullabaloo. The run-up for these movies was noisy, and the pre-release publicity was enormous.

Screening at this year’s edition of the Human Rights Film Festival, Rosita documents the aftermath of a nine-year-old Nicaraguan girl’s rape, her subsequent pregnancy, and the fight by her Costa Rican parents to gain approval for a “therapeutic” abortion in a country where termination is strictly illegal. HELEN SIMS asked co-director Janet Goldwater to shed further light on Rosita’s plight via email.

Reviewed by Darren Bevan

IN ALL THE pre-publicity leading up until the launch of Spiderman 3, stars Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and director Sam Raimi said they felt like they were done with the franchise. While that sent worrying ripples throughout the fan world, having now seen the film, it’s understandable how – and why – the gang want to move on. It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with it – it’s just that it feels distinctly unsatisfactory and is lacking the rich complexity of its predecessors.

Reviewed by Darren Bevan

WHEREAS Sin City posed a fresh visual assault, 300 feels forced, shallow and vacant by comparison. Drawing from the original source material of the historically inspired comic book written by Frank Miller, it’s a retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480BC. Faced by a marauding takeover by the Greeks and their leader Xerxes, Sparta found itself on the brink of disaster. But given the chance to surrender and submit to the rule of the invading forces, King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) decides to take on the 200,000 forces with 300 of the best handpicked men.

A roundup/recap of the current best and rest in film and DVD. In this installment: The Prestige, Little Miss Sunshine, Sketches of Frank Gehry, Black Sun, Flyboys, Go For Zucker, Heading South.

Currently making its way through a wintery Hamilton (May 3-9) before concluding in Christchurch (10-16), the Latin American Film Festival will at the very least make those attending green with envy at the sunbaked South American climate on display. Out of Wellington, KATE BLACKHURST sized up Possible Loves, a Brazilian romantic-comedy that conceptually riffs Sliding Doors; “It is refreshingly non-Hollywood and as such is able to handle straight and homosexual relationships with equal sensitivity, sexuality and humour.” Other films on her schedule: Posthumous Memoirs, an adaptation of a late 19th century novel by Machado de Assis, where “its excellence lies in the fact that it is almost impossible to explain”, and Enlightened by Fire, an ANZAC-timely, alternative Argentinean perspective on the Falklands War. Meanwhile in Auckland, KIM CHOE reviewed the rather far-fetched 7 Days, where a one Claudio Caballero attempts to gamble an exorbitant amount of money in the hope of raising enough funds to lure U2 to Mexico.

Also of considerable interest: Korean Cinema champion Adam Hartzell recently toured our country, posting a lengthy New Zealand Dispatch on the blog of film blogs (and all other film media), GreenCine Daily. In it, he discusses the Latin American Film Festival, Black Sheep, and the many books added to his collection while down under.

Director Fernando Kalife’s Monterrey is a Mexican city rife with Mafia activity. In some ways, it’s not a surprise that doggedly determined but irritatingly naïve hero Claudio Caballero (Eduardo Arroyuelo) turns to its seedy underworld when he’s desperate for cash. It is from this point that 7 Days’ (7 Días) premise gets convoluted and a little far-fetched. Claudio is living in the shadow of his deceased older brother who was once a prolific concert promoter – something that doesn’t become clear until much later in the film. Claudio clearly feels he has something to prove when, moments into the film, he declares that he wants to bring U2 – “the best band in the world” – to town. What ensues is a misguided bet, and a half-hearted race to pull together some old friends to fund the concert – and hence save Claudio from the vengeful Mafia. Although sedentary in parts, the film’s moments of tension are carefully crafted, drawn out – and then rapidly diffused by some backhanded comment. As a result, the Mafia never turn out to be as tough as they look – but then again, they do have a bit of a penchant for U2. The strongest scenes are the ones without dialogue, allowing the creative cinematography and soundtrack to deliver some of the pace that the action does not. It is enjoyable to watch, but did leave me wanting, in U2’s own words, “to hear the things you haven’t said”.—Kim Choe

MACGREGOR CAMERON reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: America in a straightjacket.

WE DELIGHT in the disturbance.

In Monday’s Film Society offering, after some patience with the projection problems, members were treated to another Sam Fuller film, Shock Corridor. Fuller’s film seems stuffed with all those elements that can buoy up an academic’s career for years – from the sense of noir to the barely concealed political stance that Fuller would seem to be putting up for examination. But in much the same way as Peter Breck’s Johnny falls foul of the institution’s examination, all is not what it seems. However before this all goes too far and as one of the insane inmates says in a rare moment of lucidity: “we have too many intellectuals; we need the pistol of common sense.”