((++)) WaaHoo! / ((+)) Yea / ((=)) Mixed / ((-)) Ummm / ((--)) Uggghh
Pulls the audience into a dark, mesmerizing world that never loosens its grip. While the story of an unsustainable romantic triangle that disintegrates into violence and tragedy could have slid easily into blackly comic grotesquerie, director Matteo Garrone's measured approach and soulfully humane focus combine to dignify the characters, allowing the tale of solitude, longing and sorrow to inch quietly under the viewer's skin. (Variety, David Rooney)
Euro Pudding - Cedric Klapisch - France ((+))
Writer-director Cedric Klapisch again uses a story loosely developed out of an assortment of characters in a specific environment, which worked for him in his 1996 breakout hit "When the Cat's Away." While it fails to match the playful charm of "Cat's Away" or the precision-timed comedy of stage adaptation "Un Air de Famille" the new film remains breezy and entertaining. (Variety, David Rooney)
The Good Old Naughty Days - Michel Reilhac – France ((+))
A nifty collection of blue movies from the silent era. Selected from a treasure trove of 300 such one-reelers discovered in the attic of "une famille tres respectable," this compilation of a dozen hardcore shorts made between 1905 and 1930 reveals production standards far in advance of comparable films being made elsewhere at the time, as well as an inventive and often humorous array of diverse couplings. ...astonishment comes in the form of a man receiving oral favors simultaneously from a woman and a dog. (Variety, Todd McCarthy)
Hypnotized and Hysterical – Claude Duty - France ((+))
Three unusual young women at crucial junctures in their lives are thrown together…. A completely off-kilter confection with witty musical numbers. Peppered with comic visuals and propelled by wonderful perfs from its central trio, this is a fresh, funny, impossible-to-catalog romp with a style and humor all its own. (Variety, Lisa Nesselson)
Irreversible – Gaspar Noe – France ((=)) IN COMPETITION
A demanding but rewarding emotional odyssey in a challenging visual package. Certain to divide audiences as surely as the Wall once divided Berlin….except for the weak of stomach and the closed of mind, there's nothing scandalous here - just sometimes abrasive bravura filmmaking skillfully applied to subjects that matter. (Variety, Lisa Nesselson)
The only reason why it didn't completely turn my stomach is because I haven't eaten all day, and now I'm glad I didn't. (Professor of film at the University of Illinois, Edwin Jahiel)
Chronicles the viciously brutal rape of a woman and the horrific vengeance that her bloodthirsty boyfriend doggedly pursues. The camera spins, cartwheels and flips in its relentless devotion to its restless subjects as they pass from room to room, elevator to subway, and street to avenue underpass. Moreover, these shots are shown chronologically backward, to heighten the sense of terror, confusion and empathy…. The result is an assault upon the senses that had people streaming from the theater -- especially during an unflinching, 10-minute anal rape scene that climaxes in the pummeling of a head into a concrete floor. (IndieWire, Stephen Garrett)
"Irreversible" has taken "time destroys everything" as its motto, and it's nice to know this film will not be exempted. (LA Times, Turan)
Japon - Carlos Reygadas - Mexico ((=)) CAMERA D'OR SPECIAL MENTION
An astonishingly confident debut... a prime candidate for the Caméra d'Or for best first film. For sheer audacity and originality, there can't be much to beat it in the whole festival. A disabled painter leaves Mexico City for the remote countryside in a state of deep depression. Eventually he holes up in a tiny village, where an old Indian woman gives him shelter in the barn adjoining her house. The innate humanity of his host, the harsh beauty of the poverty-stricken countryside and the simplicity of his new lifestyle give him strength. (The Guardian, Derek Malcolm)
Flawed but ambitious and achieves enough to let cineastes feel [the director] has more to offer. (IndieWire, Michael Giltz)
An existential journey as solemn and intimate as it is majestic and imposing. Slow-burning, almost actionless epic. Powerfully visual storytelling delivers great rewards as the meditative drama moves into increasingly complex, at times confrontational territory. (Variety, Todd McCarthy)
Kedma – Amos Gitai - Israel ((=)) IN COMPETITION
“Kedma," offers [a] dramatization of the days leading up to the official formation of the Israeli state in 1948, with Jewish refugees landing ashore and almost instantly fighting with the Palestinians. Hard and bitter, the film showcases two eloquent and impassioned speeches from either side that articulate the roots of the endless cycle of suffering so much in today's news. (IndieWire)
Turns it into a dull history lesson. Pic is stripped of any backgrounding, peopled with archetypes rather than fully-drawn characters, and features self-consciously arty direction that gets in the way of story-telling. (Variety, Derek Elley)
The Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie - China ((+))
This is basically the stuff of a traditional Hollywood, or French, melodrama — two guys in love with the same innocent girl, separation, loss — and then a coda in which, years later, the men meet and wonder whatever happened to the girl they once loved. The material is certainly predictable, but Dai and his mixed French-Chinese production team handle it with great confidence. (Variety, David Stratton)
A poignant lyricism transforms this story about love and culture into a cinematic poem. A semi autobiographical look at his years spent in a Maoist re-education camp as the son of "bourgeois reactionary" parents...exquisite cinematography. (Hollywood Reporter, Kirk Honeycutt)
Marie-Jo et Ses 2 Amours - Robert Guediguian - France ((=)) IN COMPETITION
Marseilles again providing the invigorating maritime backdrop filmmaker etches an eloquent, often moving portrait of romantic yearning and human frailty. But the final half-hour succumbs to the kind of operatic excess that far too often sinks films dealing with themes of infidelity in a murky sea of poetic retribution. (Hollywood Reporter, Michael Rechtshaffen)
Madame Sata - Karim Ainouz - Brazil ((=))
Vivid 1930s-set biopic recreates a key period in the life of the legendary gay streetfighter, criminal and killer, an uneducated black Brazilian descended from slaves who doubled as a cabaret singer and drag artiste styled after Josephine Baker. The choice to shoot often close in on the characters in a heated, claustrophobic style, in lustrous, dark tones and desaturated exteriors effectively underlines the shadowy allure of the characters' illicit nighttime world. (Variety, David Rooney)
The Man Without a Past - Aki Kaurismaki - Finland ((+)) GRAND PRIZE
Centers on one man whose life and memory are taken from him, who starts over from scratch to find love, self-esteem and a place in the world. Pairing the dramatic trajectory of vintage melodrama with the Finnish director's customarily de-emphasized, amusingly deadpan style….enormously satisfying, superbly crafted [film] that should extend Kaurismaki's devoted following. (Variety, David Rooney)
The theme of amnesia has been treated many times by the cinema over the years, but few with such tragi-comic effect as in [this film]. Entertaining. (Film Festivals.com, Ronald Bergan)
Mon-Rak Transistor - Pen-ek Ratanaruang - Thailand ((+))
A bittersweet story of young lovers separated by circumstances. A retro-styled mix of comedy, romantic melodrama and musical enlivened by appealing leads, an amusingly kitschy song score, sharp production values and a colorful, bubble-gum pop look, the film is unsophisticated in certain aspects and is significantly overlong. But it has enough charm and vitality to follow the similarly eye-catching "Tears of the Black Tiger" as a light-hearted arthouse entry for selected export dates. (Variety, David Rooney)
Morvern Callar - Lynn Ramsey – Scotland ((++))
The highlight of the Fortnight. Samantha Morton plays a young woman whose boyfriend kills himself on Christmas Eve. It proves a marvelous opportunity for the oddball Morvern to rethink her life. This blackly comic drama is a triumph guaranteed to give her cachet and, if she needs them, bigger budgets down the road. (IndieWire, Michael Giltz)
It’s a marvellous film, as revealing about the scuzzy horrors in Spain as it is oblique about what makes Morton tick. She is a bored shelf-stacker in a supermarket. She goes to druggy parties with her best friend (Kathleen McDermott). She isn’t remotely interested in literature, but by appropriating her boyfriend’s last work, she is stalked by posh publishers. It’s a wonderful, grisly comedy about hope and denial. No festival should be without it (The Times UK, James Christopher)
A stunningly self-assured work with an address to its audience of overwhelming conviction. The cinematography by Alwin Kuchler is vivid, the sound design subtle and intricate. (The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw)
Only The Strong Survive - D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus - USA ((+))
"Only the Strong Survive" is a dream movie soundtrack, with the artists performing the songs live: Hayes sings "Shaft"; Pickett gives us "In the Midnight Hour." But the filmmakers do more than present exceptional performances from singers now in their 50s and 60s or even, like Thomas, their 80s. The narrative goes back in time with archive footage of the Supremes, the Chi Lites.... (Hollywood Reporter,Judith Prescott)
The Pianist - Roman Polanski - Poland ((=)) PALME' D'OR WINNER
[A] relative disappointment.... Based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman, who like Polanski survived the Warsaw ghetto, The Pianist is undeniably powerful at times, yet was filmed in a curiously flat style, while offering few new insights into this tragic period that hadn't already been covered. [The Guardian, Akin Ojumu]
It tries to do too much and often feels like it is depicting the period through a fast-motion camera. It is never boring, often moving, but doesn't give the viewer time to become deeply involved in the protagonists. One of the director's finest, most serious and successful films in many a year, a document that cannot fail to move the viewer and a story of survival in the darkest of times that gives hope, even in the face of war and persecution. (Film Festivals.com, Stephen Locke)
To be sure, it's a solid, respectable work [but] surprisingly lacks a feeling of personal urgency and insight that would have made it a distinctive, even unique contribution to the considerable number of films that deal with the war in general and Holocaust in particular. One feels very little throughout the entire picture, which is actually quite an accomplishment given the extraordinary nature of the story. [Variety, Todd McCarthy]
The scale of this production is epic. Entire streets of a now vanished city are re-created in Berlin's Babelsberg Studios and miniatures and digital effects later portray a city turned into an uninhabitable wasteland. The movie recounts its tales of horror and triumph, but never makes the viewer experience them. [Hollywood Reporter, Kurt Honeycutt]
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