September 09 (aka Arranged Marriage Movie Day)
March Of Happiness
Directed by Lin Cheng-sheng
Cast: Lim Giong, Hsiao Shu-shen, Leon Dai, Chen Kun-chang, Grace Chen
U.S. Distribution: none as of this screening
** / CA story of forbidden love set against the backdrop of a turbulent period in Taiwanese history, March Of Happiness feels so slight that it becomes tempting to justify its familiarity by interpreting it as a political allegory.
Set in Taipei over the waning days of Japan's occupation of Taiwan during WWII, the story revolves around A-Yu, a young woman who spends her days in an acting troupe. Although she loves the guitar-playing, floppy-haired A-Jin, her strict working-class father has arranged for her to marry meek, straight-laced Ren-chang, the son of a doctor.
March Of Happiness is a generous picture -- all of the characters are revealed in a sympathetic light (A-Yu's father is demanding and controlling, but not necessarily brutish). Leisurely-paced, it's all well-acted and played out with delicacy and sensitivity, and many of the songs of lament performed in the film by A-Yu's theatre group are pretty, but the picture's various sociopolitical elements (artistic censorship and oppression, the dangers of patriotism, capitalism versus communism) never coalesce in a convincing fashion.
And as generic as they are, the romantic elements are poignant to a certain degree, but the film's conclusion feels slapped together; the tragic story arc is fulfilled in such an arbitrary fashion that it leaves a bad aftertaste.
[Taiwan / 93 minutes / Contemporary World Cinema / Varsity 1]
Kadosh (Sacred)
Directed by Amos Gitaï
Cast: Yaël Abecassis, Yoram Hattab, Meital Barda, Uri Ran Klauzner, Sami Hori
U.S. Distribution: Kino International
*** / B+The opening minutes of Amos Gitaï's film captures the waking moments of an Orthodox Jewish man in one unbreaking shot. As his wife sleeps, we witness his intricate routine of morning rituals -- carefully drenching his hands, adorning several layers of garmets, each blessed with a kiss, and so forth -- while solemnly murmuring his prayers. "Thank you, oh Lord, for not having made me a woman," he states. The film's title appears onscreen: Kadosh.
In a nutshell, this moment encapsulates both the aesthetic and the message of Gitaï's angry diatribe against ultra-Orthodox extremism. The picture is a sustained attack on the oppression of women as dictated by the Orthodox Jewish faith, observed through the fates of two sisters, Rivka and Malka.
Both suffer heavily under the rigid constraints and beliefs of their religion, which commands that a woman's role is to tend to the house, produce offspring, and earn the family's living so that her her husband can devote his days to prayer and study of the Torah. Rivka's failure to bear children has made her a pariah in her community, "not even a woman", while the younger, more rebellious Malka is forced into an arranged marriage with an devout Orthodox Jew in spite of her love for a musician. (Her wedding night is captured in an unblinkingly horrific scene.)
The inequities in their lives are observed in voyeuristic fashion -- the film is largely static, with camera movements limited to a few pans, and there's little underscoring save for some sporadic music which plays as an anguished, plaintiff wail. The end result lends a languid, almost documentary-like feel to the picture which undercuts elements that might play as overly melodramatic. There's a raw immediacy here which is riveting even when the onscreen action is fleeting; Gitaï succeeds in drawing the audience into an empathy with the female characters, liberally employing the use of close-up shots to lend a certain intimacy to the proceedings.
While the film blasts the treatment of women by the deeply religious community, it eschews a sensationalistic tact in favour of a more wry, matter-of-fact frankness. Gitaï bitterly casts an unsympathetic eye on all of the devout Orthodox Jews, depicting the local rabbi as cold and inconsistent (he dismisses references from the Torah which contradict his own orders), and Malka's husband-to-be as a buffoonish zealot that drives around town blasting religious propaganda through loudspeakers mounted on his vehicle. (One scene has him abandon his truck in the middle of a traffic jam to accost pedestrians with leaflets.) Kadosh makes no attempt to even appear balanced; it fearlessly maintains its condemnation of the Orthodox repression throughout.
And despite its relatively muted bleakness, there's an anger that seeps through every frame of the picture, manifesting itself in Gitaï's disdainful depiction of the repression permeating throughout the neighbourhood. While Kadosh's conclusion is an outright disappointment -- an incredible stumble for an otherwise impressively-directed piece -- the film is quietly mesmerizing, well-acted (particularly by the three principals) and often a powerful indictment against an ancient faith.
In attendance: producers Michael Propper and Laurent Truchot
[France/Israel / 110 minutes / Contemporary World Cinema / Varsity 8]
Random Notes: I'm nocturnal by nature, but I was surprised by just how dim the Varsity theatres kept the house lights prior to the screenings. It wouldn't hurt to turn the lights up a bit so that those wandering down the aisles in search of seats could avoid stumbling over each other ... both of my films today were marred by moments of bad framing (and on a thematic level, both dealt with the tragic consequences of arranged marriages) ... this year's opening TIFF clip is both professional and nondescript; it's hard to get enthusiastic about repeatedly watching something so blandly competent -- I'm starting to yearn for the more gaudy, tacky clips of the past.
Alex Fung (aw220@freenet.carleton.ca)
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Film Festival page.
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