EMILIA PEREZ*** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 6

EMILIA PEREZ is a deeply odd and sporadically successful film from French auteur Jacques Audiard (A PROPHET, DHEEPAN).  It comes to London having won the coveted Cannes Jury Prize and features a story and characters rarely centred on screen.  Some of the musical numbers are stunning. But I found myself over-stuffed, confused and adrift.

Despite the film's name, the protagonist is actually a lawyer called Rita played superbly by Zoe Saldana (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY).  When we meet her she is a poor but smart lawyer frustrated at the lack of opportunities her skin colour condemns her to.  The opening numbers as she writes a speech in a food market, and then discusses her options with some cleaners, are brilliantly rendered with powerful dynamic choreography. 

Rita's life is changed when a drug lord called Manitas (Karla Sofia Garcon) hires her to facilitate his gender reassignment surgery and to hide his wife Jessi (Selena Gomez - Only Murders In The Building) and their two young sons in Switzerland.  That should be the end of their relationship but four years later the now Emilia Perez asks Rita to facilitate her return to Mexico, and to also bring back her children and their mother who will live with their "Auntie".  

Once again, this should be the end of their relationship, but Emilia and Rita end up founding a charity to find the disappeared people of Mexico, victims of the drug war that Manitas was complicit in. Along the way, Emilia finds love with Epifania (Adriana Paz) and Jessi finds love with her ex-lover Gustavo (Edgar Ramirez).  It's only at this point that Emilia's control is upended and in fear of losing her children, Manitas' nasty language and manner break through Emilia's polished new persona. 

There's lots to love in this film. As I said the two opening numbers and Saldana's critique of Mexico's corrupt rich at a fund-raising gala are fantastic. It's rare and moving to see a trans story centred, and to see what Manitas has to sacrifice to live her authentic life.  We absolutely feel her pain at not being able to confess to being her son's father. I also admired the concise way in which the love story between Emilia and Epifania is told. Kudos to Karla Sofia Garcon for pulling of a layered and complex role. 

But there's a lot to criticise too.  First, Rita is a cipher not a protagonist.  After the prologue we never really understand her motives or see any kind of life outside of Emilia. She is just an observer.  I needed more time with her, or to see more layers to her in the contemporary storyline. The same goes for Jessi who is just a ditzy superficial floozy until basically the final five minutes of the film. What a waste of Selena Gomez' talent? And Epifania is similarly shortchanged. It's like a weird trans version of the Bechdel problem. In the most uncharitable reading, who are these women outside of Emilia except for people who she manipulates into satisfying her desires?

Finally, some plot holes. If it's so secret and dangerous that Manitas is having gender reassignment surgery, why does Rita fly the Israeli doctor over to Mexico?  And if Manitas' little boy realises Emilia smells like Papa, then why doesn't Jessi?  I know that in some ways she just think Emilia looks like her cousin Manitas but it's clear Emilia is a trans woman. Can she not figure it out? That she doesn't makes her character even more stupid and frankly unbelievable.

EMILIA PEREZ has a running time of 130 minutes and is rated R. It played Cannes where it won the Jury prize and the ensemble female cast won Best Actress. It will be released in the USA on November 1st in cinemas and then on November 13th on Netflix.

BARDO - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 4

What a pile of narcissistic pretentious wank this film is! And what a waste of talent! What a waste of Inarritu and Khondji's kinetic, fluid camerawork and mastery of cinema! What a waste of a chance to truly explore the relationship of celebrity to art, and of Mexico to America!

It must be said that I have never been a fan of these sorts of masturbatory solipstic films about film-making. Everything that needed to be said about this was said by Fellini in 8 1/2 and even that film strains at my sympathy. But with BARDO, Inarritu has truly gone through the looking glass.

The film opens with a visually ravishing and playful scene of an unseen man - presumably the director's avatar Silverio Gama (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) taking massive leaps over the Mmexican desert. It had a fantastical feel similar to BIRDMAN and I thought, okay, this is going to be fun!

We then transition into a scene where the director is now waiting for his wife to give birth, but apparently the baby decides the world is too fucked up and instructs the doctor to pop him back in. This we see. It's surreal, darkly comic, and I was still thinking, okay, this is going to be fun!

But we then move into the main body of the film which sees the director move through contemporary Mexico in preparation for a high profile American award. He seems disengaged and childishly refuses to co-operate with the people preparing him for the ceremony. He has a fractious relationship with his son who has been raised largely in America. And he has a fractious relationship with his homeland, which he sees as being conquered again, but this time economically rather than militarily.

It all meanders along with surreal scenes interspersed with banal family drama. At one point his wife is running around the flat, tits out, for no apparent reason, and Inarritu delights in showing us the aforementioned baby hanging out of her for no reason other than to provoke? It all felt rather childish and indulgent and pointless, but of course lensed beautifully.

I feel that within this three hour pointless dream-world there's a really taut 90 minute political satire about the commercialisation and erosion of journalistic values and the economic dependency of Mexico on America. But that's not the film Inarritu wanted to make.  What we end up with is the feeling of a director who is in a zipless fuck with his Mexican heritage. He doesn't actually want to engage with its colonial past or present. He wants to safely skate upon the surface of things. The result is an utterly superficial, uninvolving, unengaging meditation on ego.

BARDO has a running time of 174 minutes and is rated R. It played Venice, Telluride, Busan and the BFI London Film Festival. It will be released on Netflix on December 16th.

SUNDOWN***** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 5

Michel Franco's SUNDOWN is a stunning taut character study that takes you from extreme discomfort to a kind of blissful understanding in its short 85 minute running time. It features a typically memorable and nuanced performance from Tim Roth as an extremely wealthy man called Neil who seemingly on a whim decides to turn his back on his family.  As the film opens, we see the family luxuriating in a Mexican resort that could come straight out of HBO's White Lotus. As Neil wryly says to Colin, "why do have to be such an arsehole?"  Their existence is lubricated by endless drinks and low-level bickering. We are unclear as to Neil's relationship with Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) but he seems distant.  

The key plot point happens half an hour in when the family is called home to deal with the death of Alice's mother, and Neil pretends he's left his passport at the hotel and doesn't board the flight. He checks into a random downtown hotel and rather sleepily falls into a rhythm of drinking at the beach by day and sleeping with a local girl by night. He seems happy in this relationship and I rather admired his ability to slip into the local scene. But the audience's frustration mounts with each lie to Alice and our discomfort rises with the momentary flashes of violence.

As the film moves into its final act, Franco and Roth masterfully manipulate our feelings. It's testament to Roth's easy-going charm that even at his most inexplicable, we still hang in there with Neil, hoping to understand. Credit to to Henry Goodman (TAKING WOODSTOCK) as Richard, because his faith in Neil keeps us engaged. The resulting film is slippery and strange and unforgettable.

SUNDOWN has a running time of 83 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and London 2021. 

NEW ORDER / NUEVO ORDEN - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Day

NEW ORDER is a nasty brutal short film about social inequality, envy and corruption.  As the film opens, patients are being kicked off hospital beds to accommodate the victims of a brutal social uprising. We cut to naked cadavers splattered with green paint.  We then cut as brutally again to a wedding in a spectacular mansion where guests hand envelopes bulging with cash to the bride and her mother locks them in a safe.  Their old gardener interrupts the celebrations. His wife is desperately ill but was kicked out of the hospital and now he needs money for a private operation. Mother, father, brother all reject charity but the bride wants to help, and when the social justice rioters reach the wedding house and start shooting and looting, she flees with the gardener. A day later, the house is a scene of carnage and murder.  The bride, who had taken shelter with the gardener, is seized by armed militia.  She's rounded up with other rich people, brutalised, raped and then offered up for ransom.  As the movie ends, whatever this New Order is that has staged the coup has become as bad as the old regime - and may indeed be in cahoots with parts of it.  We end the film with extrajudicial killings.

What is director Michel Franco trying to do with this film?  He rightly shows how the politics of envy underlies a lot of modern political unrest. He rightly shows that rich people can be really self-centred. He rightly shows that there is brutality at the heart of humanity and in that sense, this film makes an interesting companion piece to SHADOW COUNTRY, also playing in this festival. But these are not especially radical thoughts, and I didn't care about any of these characters. The movie soon became a kind of thought exercise - what would happen if...?  And I would have liked more precision and clarity around the ending. 

NEW ORDER has a running time of 88 minutes.  It played Venice 2020 where it won the Silver Lion. It also played Toronto, San Sebastian and London 2020.  It does not yet have a commercial release data.

ROMA - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Four

Alfonso Cuaron (GRAVITY) returns to the Londo Film Festival with another technically superb film - ROMA - a loving recreation of his childhood in 1970s Mexico with a loving but chaotic extended family and his beloved maid, Cleo. The film is full of meticulously staged set design and long fluid takes that move through the luxurious family house.  We see beautiful landscape photography and dazzling light over the ocean. Although I'm still not entirely sure why this needed to be in black and white. It's also worth noting the intensely constructed sound design that shows the street noises of Mexico and the dramatically crashing waves of the sea.  There are some fantastic set pieces here. One is the recreation of a student riot turned shoot-out seen from the vantage point of a furniture store. Another is a tense fluid run through A&E as a pregnant woman is rushed into surgery. I also loved the thread of water imagery running through the film - from - the water mopping tiles in the opening credits - to the dripping tap and blocked sink in the kitchen - to the pooled water in the unpaved road as Chloe goes back to the slum where her boyfriend lives - to the cataclysmic waves at the end.

But for all its technical mastery ROMA actually bored me for much of its first hour. I was struck by the notion that just because childhood memories are precious to you, does not mean that they will be fascinating for everyone else, even if you ARE a master cinematographer. And this feeling of disengagement is exacerbated by the fact that Cuaron takes a long time to truly signal to us that Cleo is going to be the focus of our attention. Otherwise it's just a leisurely created family portrait.  And then the second half of the film just launched us from crisis to crisis, all of which bordered on the unbearable and ended on a pretty hamfisted political point that no matter how much Cleo is "loved" by the family - and Cuaron who makes a film for her - she still gets consigned to the attic-roof.  She's always just be an employee. I do rather wonder how complicated Cuaron's feelings are about this point, and would have loved to see that explored further.  The only time I really felt it was addressed was when the grandmother of the family had to admit that while she loved Cleo she didn't really know anything concrete about her. I also felt that a final act declaration by Cleo at the beach - the only real glimpse we get of her emotional life - was utterly unearned. 

ROMA has a running time of 135 minutes. The film played Venice, Toronto and London 2018. It will be released by Netflix.

COCO

Miguel is a little Mexican boy who lives with his close-knit extended family, complete with seemingly ancient and senile great-grandma Mama Coco. His family are shoemakers but Miguel dreams of being a musician like his hero - the famous but now dead singer Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt). The only problem is that Miguel's family are  against music of any kind and are determined not just to make Miguel a shoemaker in the family tradition, but to erase all memory of his Mama Coco's father - another wannabe musician who apparently abandoned his family.  The consequences of this are that his great grandpa's photo is not laid out with the rest of the ancestral portraits on the Day of the Dead, so that he cannot visit with his family.  Of course, this is just pre-amble. The story truly begins when Miguel is magicked into the world of the dead, and begins a quest to find Ernesto de la Cruz and get his blessing to return and to sing! Along the way he learns much about his family history, and also about the pride and love of coming from a large family.  

In COCO, director Lee Unkrich (TOY STORY 3) creates a truly wondrous, uplifting and profound film of the kind that only Pixar seems able to create.  The animation was bold, beautiful and kinetic - the music truly memorable - and the story well-paced and exciting. But what makes this film stand out is its nuanced and meaningful examination of the ties of family and the dangers of legacy and the power of memory. It'a film that resonated with me - coming from a large Asian family - and I'm pleased to see old grannies taking off their shoe to scold an impudent upstart is not just an Indian trope!  Most of all this film made me cry. And not the cheap deliberately engineered tears of a manipulative melodrama. But genuine, hard-won tears from investing in a little boy's story, in his family, and seeing a loving reconciliation. This is animated storytelling at its most ambitious, intelligent, and affecting.

COCO has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated PG. It is on global release. 

DEVIL'S FREEDOM - BFI London Film Festival 2017 Preview

Serving as a powerful counterpoint to SICILIAN GHOST STORY, Everardo Gonazalez' DEVIL'S FREEDOM is a chilling and unforgettable documentary about the consequences of drug related violence in contemporary Mexico.  Gonzalez interviews both victims and perpetrators of murder rape kidnap and extortion - and hidden by unsettling and levelling surgical masks - their testimony has both candour and power.  What's amazing is how much one can get from the eyes and intonation despite the masks - and yet how honest people are believing they are masked.  You have a schooled describe the weight of a gun and thrilled with the power of his increasing number of kills - a mother in tears as she describes punching police officers to get to the body of her dead son - policeman uncovering corpses that died with their mouths open, signifying that they were buried alive.  The result is a film that is relatively short but rightly intense.  A brave and bold way of showing the horror of life in a country where violence is commonplace. 

DEVIL'S FREEDOM aka LA LIBERTAD DEL DIABLO has a running time of 74 minutes. It played Berlin 2017.  Tickets are still available for both screenings at the BFI London Film Festival. 

The Best of 2012 - ARTHOUSE MOVIES

So here's to the wilfully obscure, fragile, indulgent movies that fought the accountants and got made in the teeth of every sound investment principle. Away from the mainstream formulaic releases, the reason we watch hundreds of films a year is to uncover gems such as these.  In retrospect, I can discern a theme, which is of young naive girls left to fend for themselves when their parents abuse their responsibility toward them.

Matteo Garrone's audacious REALITY

First up, Matteo Garrone astonished me with his visual audacity and provocative take on reality TV. His REALITY was one of those films that leaves you reeling - at once surreal and profoundly familiar. He focuses on a small-town guy desperate to appear on the Italian version to the point where he becomes delusional.  There's a rich seam of black humour, a joy in the grotesque, and a deep truth about how in the world of Facebook and Youtube our lives only have meaning if documented. 

Another Italian director, Daniele Cipri, elaborated on the themes of moral corruption and easy winnings with his similarly ambitious, audacious, darkly comic but ultimately terrifying film, IT WAS THE SON.  The movie stars Toni Servilio as the father of a family in a decrepit mafia-riddled town, squabbling over a windfall to the point of insanity. It shows humanity as grotesque and greedy but never with scorn. 

From Italy to Denmark for Thomas Vinterberg's fictionalised account of an innocent schoolteacher accused of paedophilia, THE HUNT. Mads Mikkelsen visibly shrinks into his role as the quiet, downtrodden teacher, and the movie is all too believable.  It serves as a modern fable about the danger of quick judgements and mob hysteria. 

Mexican director Michel Franco's brutal film about schoolyard bullying, AFTER LUCIA, was perhaps the most brutal watch of the year.  It meticulously shows how an escalation of bullying can lead to devastating result, and hinges on a superb performance from teenager Tessa Ia. Every parent of a teenage daughter needs to watch this flick with their kid.

From Mexico to Chile, where Pablo Larrain's superbly researched NO! tells the story of Chile's referendum to end dictatorship from the point of view of the ad exec hired by the pro-democracy campaign.  Gael Garcia Bernal is compelling as the cynical exec crafting Coke-like ads to woo the youth slowly discovering his political conscience.  I had no clue about this episode before the film, but was utterly riveted and can still remember the ad jingles. 

Next up, two films about teenage girls of no mean courage forced to fend for themselves in extraordinary circumstances, symbolic of their times. Aussie director Cate Shortland recreates Germany at the end of World War Two in this German-language drama about a young girl, LORE, whose Nazi parents are apprehended.  She must take her small siblings across the war-torn, lawless countries, as well as grappling with the enormity of the fact that her parents were on the losing side, and all that they told her may not have been true.  It's a deeply affecting, beautifully made picture. 

The second film is Sally Potter's loosely autobiographical GINGER & ROSA, set in highly politicised 1960s London. Elle Fanning has a perfect British accent as sensitive, intelligent, naive young Ginger whose best friend Rosa sleeps with her father causing an emotional crisis. It's a delicate, fragile movie that drips with authenticity and melancholy. 

As brutal as AFTER LUCIA, Scott Graham's tense, austere drama SHELL was astounding. The British drama featured Chloe Pirrie as a teenager in remote rural Scotland living with her widower father: a relationship in such isolation that it become necessarily unhealthy. 

From Europe to the Middle East for Israeli dirctor Rama Burshtein's visually ravishing, intense, claustrophobic emotional drama, FILL THE VOID. The movie stars Hadas Yaron as Shira, a naive young girl in the Orthodox Israeli community.  She is pressured by her family into marrying her deceased sister's widower, and is repulsed, shocked and entranced by the emotions she feels for him and the impact she has on him.  This was perhaps the movie that prompted the most visceral reaction in me all year.  

Back to the USA, and perhaps my favourite film of the year: the poignant, melancholy, deeply affecting buddy movie, ROBOT & FRANK.  Jake Schreier's drama is set in the near future, and stars Frank Langella as a retired burgler suffering from Alzheimer's, called, Frank, who forms an unlikely attachment to his medical carer robot. This movie poses so many profound questions about the nature of memory, and the duties of family, and what constitutes a "real" relationship, but does so with an admirably light touch.  I'm not ashamed to say it got a little dusty in the theatre. 

Finally, two honourable mentions: movies with art-house sensibilities but mainstream releases: Ang Lee's LIFE OF PI and Wes Anderson's MOONRISE KINGDOM.  Both movies with particular and beautiful visual palettes that tell seemingly fairytale stories of deep import.  Both among the best films of the year. 

THE HUNT was released in the UK in November 2012 but does not have a US release date yet. REALITY will be released in the UK on March 22nd 2013 but has no US release date.  LORE will be released in the UK on February 22nd but does not yet have a US release date. SHELL will be released in the UK on March 15th but does not yet have a US release date. NO! will be released in the UK on February 8th and in the USA on February 15th. ROBOT & FRANK was released in the USA last year and will be released in the UK on March 8th. IT WAS THE SON, FILL THE VOID and AFTER LUCIA do not yet have a US or UK release date. 

London Film Fest 2012 Day 11 - AFTER LUCIA

Mexican writer-director Michel Franco's AFTER LUCIA is a grim, unrelenting movie about a teenage girl victimised by her classmates after an ill-advised, drunken and, crucially, video'd sexual encounter.  At first the abuse it typical cruel teenage boy harassment.  But it steps up a level when the girls become jealous of her.  Early on, there is an opportunity for her to tell her teachers and father WHY she is acting up. Perhaps because she wishes to protect her grieving father from further pain, or just from sheer shame, she keeps quiet. This is a fatal decision that leads to further introversion, abuse and ultimately catastrophic consequences for all involved.  

AFTER LUCIA is at its most affecting when it shows how a father and daughter - once so casually intimate - become distanced from each other as they struggle to cope with their grief and (in her case) extreme bullying. This deterioration of communication was all the more tragic because the director so brilliantly depicted the former closeness.  On a personal note, I am very close to my father and it's just a relationship you rarely see on screen.

At first I found the level of abuse Alejandra takes hard to believe.  I just couldn't believe that schoolkids would be so savage and, indeed, that Alejandra's teachers, if not father, would notice. At its most brutal, the film reminded me of Larry Clark's KIDS.   But the director is always careful to show how she covers up, and also how the kids are cognisant of when and what they can get away with.  And Tessa Ia is so convincing in her portrayal of  girl who just goes inside of herself, that I went with it.  It was then, a shame that in the final reel the movie took a turn that I really did not believe, cheapening the overall effect of the film.

Still, even with that incredible turn of events  AFTER LUCIA remains one of the most disturbing and best of the films at this year's Festival. 

AFTER LUCIA played Cannes, where it won the Un Certain Regard Award, and London 2012. It is currently on release in France, Russia and Mexico.

Running time - 102 minutes

Late review - London Film Fest 2010 Day 5 - LEAP YEAR / ANO BISIESTO

Not to be confused with Anand Tucker's excruciatingly schmaltzy rom-com, Australian writer-director Michael Rowe's film is brutal, raw, honest and captivating. It is no surprise to me that LEAP YEAR won the Camera d'Or at Cannes this year, and of all the films that claimed to be a tough watch at this year's London Film Festival, LEAP YEAR was not just the toughest, but also the one wear that explicit sexual violence was most justified by the emotional heart of the story.

Monica del Carmen gives a stunningly brave and open performance as Laura, a provincial girl who has come to the City. She is desperate to portray herself as a successful, strong, independent woman to the people back home, but in reality she is desperately lonely and alienated from life. She spies on her neighbours, resenting their happiness, and subjects herself to humiliatingly exploitative one night stands. Except, except, as the movie progresses the twist is that it is Laura who is really exploiting the men, and one particular man in particular. Arturo becomes her regular lover. He seems a kind man, but soon rough (largely unsimulated) sex turns to extreme sexual violence. As the acts become more extreme, we learn more about Laura's motivation and her past, and come to pity both her and Arturo. There's an absolutely breathtaking scene near the end, where she is taunting him, tempting him, to do something that she wants, but that he is resisting, and we see just how much power she has over him, despite the fact that in their sexual games she is the masochist and he is the sadist.

LEAP YEAR is tour-de-force film-making - unforgettable. It goes to show that once flashy camera-work and visual effects are set aside, all you actually need are compelling characters and actors and directors willing to push themselves. But, be warned, this movie is incredibly sexually explicit, and aside from that, deals with very disturbing psychological material. I don't think it ever does this lightly or in an exploitative manner, but if tough material makes you uncomfortable, you should definitely avoid it.

LEAP YEAR / ANO BISIESTO played Cannes, where it won the Camera d'Or, London and Toronto 2010 and opened earlier this year in France and Mexico. It opened in the Netherlands and the UK in November 25th.

RUDO Y CURSI - funny Mexican fable

RUDO Y CURSI is a tongue in cheek Mexican fable about being careful what you wish for and love-hate sibling relationships. Rudo (Rough) and Cursi (both "smooth" and "camp") and two step-brothers living in poverty in rural Mexico. Both have ludicrous dreams of escape - Rudo has his gambling "system" and Cursi wants to go to America and become a pop star. When fortune favours them in the form of a travelling football scout, their key mistake is their refusal to forget their childhood dreams and just be thankful for what they have.

The resulting film is very funny - physical humour, obscene jokes, and a warm-hearted mockery of village life and the naivety of poor kids who see a jacuzzi for the first time. When Rudi becomes a big-time goal-keeper he gets a hair-quiff and ray-bans; Cursi gets vulgar blonde highlights and a gold-digging girlfriend. Both make themselves ridiculous. Writer-director Carlos Cuaron has a better sense of the absurd than his brother Alfonso and has made a more playful, if more disposable, movie. I love the way he uses colour and language and frames his shots. A particularly clever device is not to actually show any soccer footage early on in the film but to show reaction shots to Cursi scoring goals.

Put simply, I had a great time watching this flick and I can't wait to see what Carlos Cuaron does next.

RUDO Y CURSI was released in Mexico last year and in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Spain, Uruguay, Panama, the USA, Canada and Israel earlier this year. It is currently on release in Portugal and the UK. It opens in a fortnight in the Netherlands. It opens in Belgium on September 30th.

TRADE - earnest but still compelling sex trade drama

TRADE is a slightly exploitative, certainly rose-tinted drama about sex slaves smuggled into the US via Mexico and auctioned off on a website. Based on an article published in the New York Times, the movie tracks a 13-year old girl called Adriana who's kidnapped by the Russians and freighted into a suburban house in New Jersey where the exchange will take place. The movie is pretty unflinching in showing how these operations work - from casual rape, to "picking up pocket change" en route. Where the movie gets a little ridiculous is in its neat coincidences. Adriana's loyal brother Jorge manages to stalk her kidnappers all the way to the Mexican border where he conveniently hooks up with the world's kindest cop (Kevin Kline). Together, they follow Adriana's convoy to New Jersey where the cop will actually front the money to buy Adriana back. Surely the grim reality of sex slavery is incompatible with this sort of fairy-tale (or religious redemptive) ending?

I have to admit that these hokey narrative tricks help keep the movie palatable and compelling. The relationship between Ray and Jorge leavens the didactic material. Still, TRADE never really rises above a competently made TV movie and packs none of the punch of Lukas Moodyddon's brutal LILYA 4EVER.

TRADE played Sundance 2007 and Berlin 2008. It was released last year in the US, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. It opened earlier this year in Singapore, Portugal, Israel and Mexico and is currently on release in the UK.

London Film Fest Day 12 (late review) - SILENT LIGHT/STELLET LICHT

A still, patient camera captures the sounds and images of a sunrise in the Chihuahua region of Mexico. I'm always amazed by how loud nature is once you get out into the countryside, and these opening shots are incredibly intense. The wide canvas is contrasted with the buttoned-down, scrupulously neat home of Johan, Esther and their many children. The family are Mennonites of German heritage, living by customs and ethics and speaking a dialect that can seem antiquated and strange to modern sensibilities. But behind the well-ordered exterior, Johan's crisis seems utterly contemporary and as mammoth as the landscape in which he lives. Johan has fallen in love with a woman called Marianne and now faces an unbearable choice: either he betrays his wife and his religion or he betrays his true desires. Cornelio Wall Fehr gives a measured and moving performance as Johan. Miriam Toews is desperately sympathetic as Johan's wife, suffering mostly in silence. But the real star of the movie is the patient, unflinching camera of DP Alexis Zabe.

My experience of SILENT LIGHT changed radically as the film progressed. At first I was fascinated to experience an insight into a totally foreign way of life. By the middle of the film I was started to feel bored by the endless scenes of domestic minutiae. But the film built into a highly charged denouement that confounded all expectations.

SILENT LIGHT/STELLET LICHT played Cannes 2007 where Carlos Reygadas won the Jury Prize. It also played Toronto and London 2007. It was released in Mexico, Belgium, France and the UK earlier this year and is released in the Netherlands on February 14th 2008. The movie is Mexico's nomination for the Oscars.

EL TOPO - balls-out film-making

EL TOPO is one of the weirdest movies you'll ever see. It's a cheeky surreal take on the Spaghetti Western shot by a Chilean director in Mexico. I can't explain what it's about, although PhD students can shoot theories of religious symbolism up the wazoo. All I can say is that the humble viewer is presented with images that are hillarious, disturbing and plain old bizarre for two hours. The back bone of the flick is the avenging cowboy, El Topo, who rides through a barren land with his butt naked seven year old son. The landscape is peopled with monks, lesbians, sufis and other random stuff. There's violence - both comic and brutal. And at one point, El Topo swaps his butt-naked son for an avenging chick, and then two. And then they emerge at some point in the futre from a cave (like a Mole - a ha!) and the son is now a weird-ass monk.....Anyways, I'm completely lost, but you can't help but have fun watching this ridiculousness.

It's funny isn't it? Everyone said that cheap Digital Video would liberate young film-makers from the hack studio system and allow them to truly express themselves. But all we've gotten are identikit "Sundance" rom-coms with quirky characters and faux-naif humour. Where are the truly liberated visual artists? Where are pioneers? Where are the Alejandro Jodarowsky's of today?

EL TOPO was released in 1970s and spent a year as the Midnight movie at the Elgin Theatre in New York after John Lennon and Yoko Ono championed it. It was re-released uncut and cleaned up in the UK in April 2007 and is also available on DVD.

LOS OLVIDADOS/THE YOUNG AND THE DAMNED - brutal

LOS OLVIDADOS is a brutal, short, black and white film shot by Luis Buñuel in the slums of Mexico City in 1950. The movie has an energy and authenticity derived from its quick gonzo shoot and the use of real kids and real stories.

A mean kid called Jaibo is released from prison and proceeds to gather a gang of young waifs around him. He beats up the helpless - the crippled and blind - in his desperate but cruel bid to survive. Less excusable is his lecherous advances to a young girl and his violent revenge on the kid who squealed. Jaibo hangs out to dry a young kid trying to make good called Pedro. It is with a sadistic and Dickensian sense of fatalism that when Pedro is given a chance by a kindly reform officer, Jaibo is waiting for him, and drags him back down to the gutter.

Superficially, LOS OLVIDADOS is a very different film from later Luis Buñuel flicks like BELLE DE JOUR. However, within the overall tone of gritty realism we have a sinister dream sequence that is Buñuel at his most idiosyncratic and psychologically penetrating. Still, there is none of the macabre black humour of a film like BELLE DE JOUR here. The tone is nihilistic and fatalistic. This is a world where a mother will feed herself before her son. It is a world where the director will make us sympathise with a blind man, viciously attacked, but then show us the same blind man as a sexual predator. I haven't seen a movie end on such a low note since THE 400 BLOWS.

LOS OLVIDADOS was originally released in 1950, when it won the award for Best Director at Cannes. It has been restored and re-released by the British Film Institute in the UK.

BABEL: Let's challenge prejudice together

This review is brought to you by guest reviewer, Nik, who can usually be found here.

This is the last in the trilogy of films by Alejandro González Iñárritu starting with the Bafta winning AMORES PERROS, followed by 21 GRAMS, and completed by BABEL - a film of interwoven characters and relationships spanning the globe, from the Mexican desert, to the sunshine of San Diego, the wastelands of Morocco, and the buzzing nightlife of Tokyo. The locations are exotic, the scenery and visuals are quietly stunning, and despite the sarcasm of the title of this review, this film doesn't think too much of itself, or withdraw up its own arse.

In fact, the beauty of the film is that it so carefully treads the thin line between being in your face, paint by numbers morality - and being so understated that it becomes arthouse wank. It makes a simple point simply - and beautifully - that it's not so easy to be prejudiced when you have to look a human being - crying, broken - in the face and in the eye. That it's not so easy to condemn when you see acts of self-less human kindness from those who are unlike you - of whom you are initially suspicious and judgemental. This film doesn't pretend to say anything greater - or anything more fundamental or groundbreaking. And it does what it does so well. The acting is powerful, the script is excellent and spans 4 different languages and 4 different cultures with ease. It's well edited - and put together in a seemingly natural non-chronological order - not to make the plot twist at the end, or to be clever, but because it needed to be that way.

That's not to say the film didn't have its downsides - it wasn't quite a work of genius. This may seem trivial, but the musical score - an incessant Spanish guitar - started to grate after a while. It was too heavy handed. And the film probably stretched the point out for too long - although I can understand why all the scenes are in there, and why they're so long - the plot in each story just wasn't substantial enough to justify the running length, and nor were the almost incidental crossovers of the stories. And Brad Pitt looked like he thought he was doing some great community and social good by starring in a film that was mostly in foreign, and wouldn't be screened outside of Canada. Although his performance was good, if slightly 2-dimensional.

Furthermore, I didn't actually identify with any of the prejudices. I like Mexicans, and think they probably do most of the work in California. I don't think all Arabs are terrorists. And I so would have fucked the deaf-mute girl. In fact, thinking on it, what a sweet deal. How's she gonna complain if it's bad? Write me an email? Send me a fucking text message? Imagine it, boning a chick from behind, and suddenly a little scrawled out paper note appears on her back: "harder. and down a little" - class. And anyway, what'll she have to complain about? It's not like she's gonna hear me shouting out someone elses name*.

Having said all that - it was a very good film, and very worthy - it passed the time and it ought to have been made. And while I almost certainly won't be buying it on DVD and have no particular urge to see it again, because it wasn't substantial enough for a second watch, I do happily recommend it to anyone who likes a thinking and sensitive film. My fear is, of course, that this, as with most good art, is only going to be seen by people who already agree with its central points. Sadly the most prejudiced are often the most ignorant - and have little or no access or inclination towards good art, which this film represents. In other words, the people that this film was meant to challenge will be too busy seeing the latest shock flick, or masturbating at home to old episodes of Baywatch.

But all that said, it was a fitting end to the trilogy, and indeed a worthy close of the London Film Festival. And I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though the free popcorn they gave us was so ludicrously undersized. Thanks to Bina007 for the ticket, and thanks in advance to the Royal Association for Deaf People for settling out of court.

*Could all complaints from disability associations or disable people please be directed to nikolai.segura@gmail.com and not to Bina007, who does not endorse any of my jokes, however funny.

BABEL played Cannes, Toronto and London 2006. It opened in Denmark, Italy, Mexico, Sweden and the US last week. It opens in Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Poland, Turkey, wide in the US on November 10th. It opens in Belgium, France, Finland and Argentina later in November. BABEL opens in Spain, Germany and Australia in December and in the UK, Estonia, Latvia and Brazil in January 2007. It opens in Japan in March.

IN THE PIT/EN EL HOYO - laughs not social commentary

IN THE PIT is a documentary film about a bunch of Mexican construction workers building a new flyover in Mexico City. The work is filthy, dangerous and ill-paid. It is also ill-lit, badly photographed and badly organised. The only - and by far sufficient - reason to watch this movie is that it features a bunch of brilliant characters. The workers have a fantastic sense of humour, if filthy, and there ruminations of life, money and love are funny and occasionally insightful. To that end, the doc probably falls short of its aspirations to social commentary. It's also the sort of doc that can be happily seen on DVD. Barring a bravura helicopter shot of the flyover for the last five minutes of the doc, there is nothing that requires a big screen. The only final thing to say is that the doc has an awesome sound design with dance music and new compositions mimicking the sound of the construction site.

IN THE PIT played London 2006 and opened in Mexico in Summer 2006.

HARSH TIMES - conventional LA crime drama

HARSH TIMES is a pretty disappointing movie. I had high expectations because it is written and directed by David Ayer, who also penned the spectacular TRAINING DAY. TRAINING DAY captured life in the rougher parts of LA with a seeming authenticiy that is rare and gave Denzel Washington a chance to play against type and shine. My expectations were also boosted by the fact that HARSH TIMES stars Christian Bale - an actor who seems to have a talent for picking interesting roles in challenging films.

But, to my surprise, HARSH TIMES turns out to be an incredibly conventional movie. Christian Bale plays to type as a psychotic Gulf War veteran trying to land a job with the LAPD. Burned for being too whacko even for the LAPD, Bale ends up being picked up by the Department of Homeland Security. Apparently, they will be accepting of his, 'I'm a soldier of the apocalypse, man!' attitude and some of the most darkly funny material in the film comes from this segment of the movie. I particularly liked the scene where Bale injects drug masking agents into his member with a turkey baster.

Naturally, the pyschotic veteran gets a more grounded but pussy-whipped best friend, played by Freddie Rodriguez. As in all buddy movies of this type, the Rodriguez character wants to sort out his life and get a job, but is driven from the path of righteousness by his best friend's whining. It was like watching ROUNDERS all over again. Lucky Freddie gets Desperate Housewife, Eva Longoria, as his squeeze. She does well with a very stereo-typed character - she seems to exist solely to hurl clever one-line insults at the Bale character. Stuff like, "You're crazy and you're dangerous and my biggest nightmare is you with a badge!" How many times have we heard that before in cheap cop dramas.

While HARSH TIMES contains some mildly amusing stoner humour and some senseless violence, the plot is thin and the character development non-existent. Christian Bale is, as ever, superb at bringing this mentally damaged individual to life, but he is essentially a static character for the two hours of the movie. Anyone with a half a braincell will see the HARSH ending coming a mile off.

HARSH TIMES played Toronto 2005 and is now on release in the UK. It opens in Turkey on September 22nd 2006, the US on November 10th 2006 and France on December 6th 2006.

THE MATADOR - Brosnan is superb; the film is not

THE MATADOR is an odd film but not a successful one. There are so many factors that should turn me on and yet somehow the finished product left me unengaged. We have Pierce Brosnan, the only Bond who ever compared to Connery, playing against type as a sleazy hitman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He meets an all-american stand-up guy called Danny (Greg Kinnear) in Mexico. He appreciates that Danny is a nice guy who loves his wife, and feels sorry for Danny's bad luck in business and the accidental death of his child. Danny finds Julian, the hitman, fascinating, enigmatic, charismatic, but slightly nerve-wracking. The story charts their friendship, Julian's journey back to some kind of mental health, and Danny's move towards a more fulfilling life.

So far, the story sounds intriguing: unusual and amusing. A sort of buddy movie, crossed with a fish-out-of-water story, crossed with a thriller. But this genre-confusion is ultimately THE MATADOR's downfall. The production designer has tried to give us the heightened-cool of movies like Once Upon a Time in Mexico or Ocean's Twelve; the score is chock-full of iconic hits like A Town Called Malice. But we don't have the visual style or wit of a Paul McGuigan or a Quentin Tarantino movie. The use of the camera is pedestrian.

Occasionally the script breaks into crazy humour - and the hitman does have a lot of crude, off-colour, one-liners - largely similes involving Thai brothels and under-age girls. But these laugh-out-loud moments are relatively sparse. The best moment by far is when Pierce, drunk, dishevelled, almost butt naked, strutts through the hotel lobby in cowboy boots and a pair of Y-fronts. This is a genuine little sliver of Pure Comedy Gold. But the comic tone is under-cut by the serious matter of Pierce/Julian's nervous breakdown. Sadly, writer-director Richard Shepard seems unable to manage the tonal shifts in this movie. Forced to make a choice between which "half" of the movie I would engage in, I opted for the drama. Pierce Brosnan is outstanding in the role. His physical mannerisms, the facial expression, the vocal inflection. It is the stuff of awards, were the film not tagged as a "black comedy" (and an unsuccessful one at that). But with the comedy and thriller facets of the movie crowding out any real in-depth character development I left the theatre feeling unsatisfied. Somewhere in this movie there is a really great psychological thriller OR a great Robert Rodriguez flick. At the moment, we just have a flawed film, which is not quite redeemed by a great performance by Brosnan.

THE MATADOR premiered at Sundance 2005. It is currently on release in the UK and will be released in Germany and Austria on April 20th.