The second movie I saw in IFFR's Criss Cross program highlighting French crime/police movies. The guy introducing it made it sound like an action spectacle on par with The Raid, which it of course wasn't. What it really is, is a run-of-the-mill thriller about a group of armed robbers who get into some shyt because one of them sold a dirty gun used on their last job to a bunch of drug dealers, and now that their guy is being charged for the armed robbery, the dealers are blackmailing the robbers to attack a heroin transport. It could've made for a more interesting movie if it ever bothered to expand the characters beyond "We have a family" as the reason they do anything, especially since the movie spends a lot of time on emphasizing that simplistic motivation.
Noces (A Wedding) is one of the festival favorites and I can see why, even though I ended up just barely liking it. It's a coming-of-age drama about a young Pakistani girl in Brussels who after getting pregnant (and a subsequent abortion) is up for a marriage arrangement by her parents. Of course, she rebels against the forced marriage. What initially makes the movie interesting is that it finds a pleasant way to look at the place of Muslim culture in western culture. Her parents are open minded about the fact she had sex before marriage and even her getting pregnant and getting an abortion, and when they offer her three candidates for marriage in Pakistan whom she can talk with through Skype, they consider themselves incredibly forward and modern thinking. The way they play up the irony of this is nicely done, and there's a lot of attention put in emphasizing how strong honor still counts, and how important it is for a family to maintain it, but unfortunately as the movie progresses it slowly abandons its modern sensibilities and becomes a predictable melodrama, hitting an absolute low when roughly an hour into the movie the "plot gun" is introduced, because every Muslim store owner has a gun that will be seen only once until it is needed for unnecessary drama in its forced tear jerker ending. And just like that, a movie that was shining great light on the place of Muslim beliefs in modern society, falls apart under the weight of going for the cheapest of endings.
At 3 hours and 46 minutes,
Ang Babaend Humayo (The Woman Who Left) is one of the shortest entries in the minimalist "slow cinema" filmography of Phillipine director Lav Diaz. Which I would normally choose to sit through, no matter how much I respect what he does, but since it won the Golden Lion at Venice and 4 hours is doable (for the record, he has movies that range from 6 to 9 hours), I went for it. The movie tells the story of a woman who has been wrongfully imprisoned for 30 years and is suddenly released back onto the streets when a guilt-ridden fellow inmate testifies she was framed. Returning to society, she hides her identity in order to slowly plot revenge on the man who set her up. She spends most of her time on the streets, hanging around with vagabonds such as a hunchback egg seller, a dirty hobo lady who calls everyone "demons" and a dancing, epileptic transvestite. These scenes initially feel like the longest in the movie but through every little conversation we learn more about them, and more about her, and the bond you start to feel with these characters becomes strangely unique. It deals with a lot of themes, but perhaps its greatest accomplishment is in its completely natural female empowerment. Through numerous subtleties spread throughout its near 4 hour running time, you come to realize that she is not just (and always was) a strong woman, but now also a hardened woman, yet still capable of understanding (and loving) the less fortunate in society. Her cerebral status is only strengthened by her occasional "disguise" of a white veil, putting her front and center of the strong religious themes throughout the movie. Of course there's the minimalist style, with the entire movie being shot in stark black & white and each scene an unmoving steady cam shot that last several minutes. Each shot is beautifully photographed of course, and three hours into the movie when you think there's no way Diaz can surprise you anymore, he pulls a couple of tricks out of his sleeve that work phenomenally because they are the first tricks he pulls in the movie period. Powerful film making and needless to say, I am now a believer.
So of course the next movie had to be
The Mole Song: Hong Kong Capriccio, the long awaited sequel to 2013's
The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji by Japanese cult director Takashi Miike. Picking up right where the first movie ended, with lead character Reiji, a clueless undercover cop working to capture the highest ranking Yakuza boss in Japan, hanging naked from a cage containing rival gang members as they're being carried to a Yakuza BBQ by helicopter. But with the Chinese mafia gaining ground in Japan, a new crime unit leader who hates any form of cooperation between the police and the Yakuza and Reiji's police sweetheart who still doesn't know he's a mole, Reiji only gets more trouble on his plate. With its wonderfully diverse and ridiculous slapstick humor that literally can't be explained because
it has to be seen, the movie is just as hilarious and outrageous as its predecessor.
Another Criss Cross program flick, this time detailing the political games following an attack on an highly classified but also illegal arms shipment arranged by the French defense ministry for Congo. Add a high class escort service for politicians who run their own blackmail scheme, a "cleaner" whose actions throw more dirt on the floor than anything else and a young female cop trying to keep afloat in a sea of conspiracy, the movie certainly has enough going on to keep you mildly entertained, in addition to the typical hard boiled French action (a cop shoots at a perpetrator's car, who slams into another car, causing the passenger of said uninvolved car to crash through the windshield), but its execution leaves much to be desired so despite some interesting ideas, it never becomes captivating.
Perhaps the most interesting movie I've seen this IFFR, for a big part but certainly not entirely because of its very taboo-ish subject matter. A film director discovers a sex clip online featuring his younger half sister, and returns home, plants a camera in her room and starts spying on her life. Quickly it becomes clear there is a certain affection between them, and from there I'll let you guess what happens. The other main thing that makes the film click is the strong vision by director Pedro Aguilera, using a deliberately intimate aspect ratio (1:33:1) that puts every detail front and center and gives immense power to each close-up, accompanied by very vibrant colors that make all these details pop. The acting is very strong as well and despite its creepy premise it manages to be a very thoughtful exploration of the wobbly balance between lust and attraction, perversion and innocence. Although I'm not sure the rest of the audience agreed because I was the one who had to start the applause, and that only ever happens with movies that got these wanna-be "culturally engaged" uppity snobs and hipsters (who make up most of the festival audience) in their feelings. For some reason they also didn't seem to appreciate that I immediately raised my hand to ask director Aguilera if he himself had a sister, even though that seemed like a perfectly reasonable question to me.
Last but not least, here are some extra pictures of lead actress Ivana Baquero from the movie. Why I post these pictures, you wonder? Because she's hot? No, but it helps, because it sells the impact better when I tell you that you know her already. Eleven years ago she played Ofelia, the little girl in Pan's Labyrinth.
the whole time.
the whole time.
