These reviews were largely written for two websites; the larger format reviews were for Closeupfilm.com and covered recent cinema releases while the shorter pieces are DVD/Blu Ray reviews for Moviemail.
Cristian Mungiu, 2007, Romania, 113 mins
Cast: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days trails a formidable amount of praise in its wake; it was awarded the Palme d’Or and named Best Film of the Year in Sight and Sound. For that reason, it epitomises the new taste in film circles for stark realism – the “way it is” school of representation that wears its twin badges of honour – social and political polemic – openly and with pride. Certainly, second-time director Mungiu has a lot to be proud about. His story of two student friends trying to procure an illegal abortion in Ceausescu’s Romania is relentlessly compelling, beautifully acted and superbly controlled throughout. Long takes are used to particularly strong effect, ratcheting up the tension in strained dialogue scenes and keeping vital action off-screen for an unbearable amount of time. Nothing is allowed to impede the flow of the narrative nor puncture the carefully-constructed atmosphere of the period.
But what may be most valuable about the film is its corrective to certain liberal assumptions in the West. Because the same coterie of reviewers that value this so-called “gritty” realism often do so because of some rather simplistic Left-Wing tenets, and these are shattered by Mungiu’s unflinching portrait of Communism. Not only is this a system on the brink of collapse, with shortages and poverty ever present, but it’s a world where the absolute power held by the governing party drips down through the social strata to pollute the behaviour of the individual, leading to officiousness and petty-mindedness. Otilia’s attempts to secure a safe operation for her friend Gabita are not impeded by generals or committees but by a hotel receptionist who can wield her own bit of authority over a guest or a porter who, for the hell of it, phones the police.
Leftist critics would have us believe that capitalism forces everything in society to become a commodity, but Mungiu shows that the only difference in a Communist state is that the commodities are being sold on the back street - from the black market cigarettes stashed by a student to the foetus in Gabita’s womb. In such an environment, people’s true character becomes masked by the roles they’re forced to play. Is the abortionist who forces himself on Otilia a con man or a genuine medic? In the circumstances, what’s the difference? Add to that the portrayal of a system that educates its young to high standards and then buries them in a dead-end job in a godforsaken backwater, and you have a work that shows how Communism first determines, then destroys, the very thing at the centre of the film’s narrative – a life.
Ingeniously, Mungiu draws us into this world through the eyes of the long-suffering friend, rather than the pregnant woman herself. He wants to show how, in such a society, an individual’s problems become everyone else’s. Gabita is as much a product of Ceausescu’s society as the jobsworths who surround her; her ingrained naivete and selfishness are the long-term result of falling back on a totalitarian state and its culture of ignorance. Otilia, on the other hand, takes responsibility for her actions and, by doing so, exposes herself to danger, exploitation and blackmail. But the powers of state remain ‘hidden’; at the end, instead of being able to confront the mechanisms that have made their lives a misery, the two friends, like their fellow citizens, can only stare at each other in tense, mutual recrimination.
However, despite all of the above, I feel I must offer a cautionary note. The problem with such a determinedly realist film is that it leaves one numb with the misery of it all. The audience staggers out not so much empowered or enlightened as stunned into submission. The trouble with someone telling you “the way it is” (or was) is that it leaves you nothing to say in return – the communication with the audience is only one way. And so, there is no spirit of the film transcending its culturally specific dimensions and opening out into the universal. Mungiu’s film is a masterpiece but with nowhere to go.
Claire Denis, 2008, France, 100 mins
Cast: Alex Descas, Mati Diop, Gregoire Colin
When the ten best lists of the last decade are drawn up, the whole era is going to look like a curious tribute to Yasujiro Ozu. Because the finest directors of our time – Hou H'siao-H'sien in Café Lumière (2003), Abbas Kiarostami in Five (2003) – have been genuflecting before the great Japanese master, both paying homage to his work and registering its influence on their own. Ozu was active from the silent period through to the early 1960s, first working in genre flicks before specialising in the shomin-geki, or domestic family drama. Now French filmmaker Claire Denis has picked up on his favourite motif from this latter stage, the relationship between father and daughter, most particularly with regards to her forthcoming marriage. The result is 35 Shots of Rum, an exquisite little gem buried in the boondocks of the summer season.
Lionel is a driver on the Paris metro. A widower, he brings up Josephine alone in a somewhat deserted block of flats where their only friends are Gabrielle, who clearly fancies herself as Lionel's partner, and Noé, who's chasing the daughter. We're introduced to these characters at a leisurely pace, with many ellipses in plot and actions dislocated from their direct consequence. The effect is one of observing life lived instead of constructed for camera. Furthermore, Denis's knowledge of the French-African community means this is one of the most sensitive and authentic portraits of immigrant culture in the West – neither relentlessly miserabilist (and therefore without hope), nor artificially positive and mired in political correctness.
In this regard, the profession of the lead character is well-chosen; the imagery of constant movement along parallel lines aptly sums up the relationship between Lionel's world and ours. Denis sees cultures as operating at tangents to each other while essentially being of the same universe; hence the superb diversion halfway through when Jo and Lionel travel to Germany and meet his addled mother-in-law and marvel at the quiet beauty of children parading the windswept roads in Halloween costume, their jack-o'-lanterns glowing eerily in the half-light. It should be utterly incongruous but we understand, almost through osmosis, that this is a world Lionel has been familiar with at some stage and to which he is still uncannily connected.
The film really takes flight in two particular sequences. The first is set in a bar towards closing time where Noé tries to assert his claim on Jo by dancing awkwardly with her in front of the customers only to be completely trumped by a father-in-law with sexual designs of his own on the barmaid. The control of music, character movement and framing is at its height here, suggesting the sensual curve of a woman's back and the aggressive attack of the male gaze as a series of integrated movements. Festival jurist Hamé has boldly claimed that Denis is the only French filmmaker “who knows how to film black skin” but this scene goes some way to justifying such a statement.
However, the most brilliant material belongs to René, Lionel's long-term colleague on the trains, who now faces a lonely retirement. His farewell party is the stand-out sequence of the film, showcasing a simple but deeply-felt performance from artist Julieth Mars Toussaint, the best in an embarrassment of riches from such a talented cast. Throughout the story, his character operates as a marker of mortality, a chorus figure who pops up every now and then to represent the destiny each one faces. But Toussaint's presence is so palpable that it's felt in every scene, even when he doesn't physically appear, making his fate far more than a minor sub-plot.
From the operatic imagery of Beau Travail (1999), Denis has moved to a gentler register of restrained observation, and her work has benefited immensely. The result is a kind of innocent faith in human beings but one which doesn't feel the need to varnish the truth – a rare virtue these days. In fact, this may be her best film to date. We can only hope Ozu continues to exert his influence on directors for generations to come.
Director: Ben Hopkins/Ekber Kutlu
UK-Turkey/2006/Tiger Lily/85 mins
One of the most original British films in recent years, Ben Hopkin's 37 Uses For A Dead Sheep is a moving and touchingly eccentric portrait of the Pamir Kirghiz, nomadic farmers in the mountainous regions of Central Asia, who endured an endless cycle of migration and exile as various Communist regimes forced them from their homelands.
It's a grim tale, but Hopkins approaches it with a playful sense of humour, re-enacting the most crucial moments of the history in silent film vignettes, with the surviving Kirghiz as actors. He also takes us behind the scenes of these re-enactments, recording the amusing interaction and occasional friction between his team and the community.
But Hopkins is not just concerned with the past and gives equal weight to his interviews with the younger generation forsaking their old culture and looking to settle elsewhere. In this sense, his film forms a companion piece to Sergey Dvortsevoy's outstanding Tulpan.
The result is a pleasingly unpatronising variation on the ethnographic documentary, offering new and thought-provoking insights into the events of the 20th century.