Pasalupo's Roundabout: July 2017

Monday, July 31, 2017

Беса (2009, Srđan Karanović)

A Serbian film! Not so often we see films from that country. But at least my library has some. This caught my attention, because it was Serbia's submission for the 83rd Academy Award.
The plot starts in 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I. Filip (Nebojša Dugalić), a school teacher, has married Lea (Iva Krajnc), a woman from Styria. While Filip is a Serb, the identity of his wife is somewhat complicated. She is from Styria, a Slovenian, and a citizen of Serbia. But as that territory is occupied by Austria, she is also seen as a potential spy and enemy. As Filip is drafted for the army and nobody in the village can protect her, he asks the caretaker of the school, Azem (Miki Manojlović), to look after his wife. Azem is Albanian, he gives the teacher the Besa, the solemn promise, to look after his wife.
In the beginning it seems that Azem takes his promise too literal. Lea feels like in captivity. But slowly they develop trust and also some sort of affection for each other. Besa, but even more his etiquette forbid Azem to touch Lea. At some point there is a tender moment moment between them - but no touching. This is a very delicate scene, maybe even the best in the film.
There is not happening much in this film. An officer from the Serbian army moves in and Azem gets a chance to show how important besa is for him.In the end the husband returns and they move on.
This is an intersting study about two outsiders suporting each other in a hostile environment. It is also a nostalgic look back at a time when wasn't drunken with genocidal fury.
8(10

Tulip Fever (2017, Justin Chadwick)

This review appeared on IMDb. As it is my own text, I think, I may publish it also here:

[Before on IMDb] only one review of the 2014-version [was available]. Based on that review, it is fair to say that some of the plot holes have obviously been stuffed, while others are still wide open (or have been opened). I don't know if the holes have been faithfully adapted from the book or if they were specifically designed for the film.

In the 16th century there was a big economic bubble based on tulip onions. This is the background for a romance between a painter and a married woman. They make out a plan to get rich fast, so that they can run away to the East Indies. So far, so good. The point is now that the two strings never really are woven properly together. The development of the plot is, at best, sketchy. Character development, if any, is rather rhapsodical. The lovers (Vikander and DeHaan) are not really likable. The script gives them zero personality and they compensate by overacting. The only person carrying a bit of sympathy is the cheated husband (Waltz). On the other hand the makers strive to give us impressions of street life then, raw, loud and rather vulgar it is in their view. The final twist of the plot is surprising, but not convincing.

There are further things that were rather annoying in this film: The use of a narrator. It seemed that the makers didn't trust the force of their pictures and thought they had to spell it out for more distracted viewers. Shaky camera and fast clipping. I think it is a misconception to edit a costume drama to fit the taste of the MTV generation. (Make it more like The Girl with a Pearl Earring!)

One reason for historical fiction is to make us understand the burst of the recent economic bubble on the basis of a historical example. The makers of this film didn't really succeed in doing that. The persons in this film are far away and two-dimensional like drawings on a wall. Unless you write a review about them, you have already forgotten them tomorrow.
4/10

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Paris, je t'aime (2006)

An omnibus-film by 18 different directors, some more known than others. A star-spangled cast and a common theme to which everybody has something to say: Paris, the city of love, the city of light, maybe also the city with riots in the suburbs.
Tom Tykwer initially directed a short that became Faubourg Saint-Denis. This spawned the idea to make a short tale about each of Paris' districts. 18 were realized. Most of the films don't relate specifically to their district. For that matter most of the segments could have been placed in almost any big city.

Montmartre (Bruno Podalydès)
A man drives around looking for a place to park his car; then drives away with a woman that fainted on the street - poor.


Bruno Podalydès

Quai de Seines (Gurinder Chadha)
Young men annoy women passing by, one becomes friend with a Muslim girl. Her scarf gives her faith and identity - interesting.

Cyril Descours

with LeÏla Bekhti

Le Marais (Gus Van Sant)
A customer talks to a worker. He believes they are soulmates, but the other one does not speak his language. Nice.

Gaspard Ulliel

Elias McConnell

Tuileries (Joel and Ethan Coen)
A tourist is beaten up, because he allegedly stares at his girlfriend, although his guidebook alerted him not to stare at people in the Metro. Coen'ish with an ironic twist.

Steve Buscemi


Don't look now ...

Loin du 16e (Walter Salles / Daniela Thomas)
An immigrant woman leaves her baby alone, takes a long trip to her rich employer. She sings the same lullaby to both babies. Interesting.


Catalina Sandino Moreno

Porte de Choisy (Christopher Doyle)
A salesman tries to sell his products in a Thai beauty shop. Poor.

Bastille (Isabel Coixet)
A man gives up his plans to divorce when his wife discloses that she has a leukemia. Interesting - almost a feature film plot packed in a short segment.

Places des Victoires (Nobuhiro Suwa)
A woman's grief work about her dead son. An imagined cowboy helps her to continue her own life. Interesting.

Juliette Binoche

Willem Dafoe

Tour Eiffel (Sylvain Chomet)
A boy tells how his parents, both pantomime artists, met. Poor.

Parc Monceau (Alfonso Cuarón)
A man and a woman talk about a third person, Gaspard, and the influence that person has on the woman's life. We see that Gaspard is the woman's baby boy. Very interesting.

Quartier des Enfants Rouges (Olivier Assayas)
An actress has a favorite drug dealer. Disappointing.

Place des fêtes (Oliver Schmitz)
A Nigerian man tells about his life after a brief encounter they had before. Mediocre.

Pigalle (Richard LaGravenese)
An elderly couple spices up their marriage by fantasies about hanky-panky. Poorly executed.


Bob Hoskins and Fanny Ardant

Quartier de la Madeleine (Vincenzo Natali)
A vampire fanatasy. Poor.

Elijah Wood


Olga Kurylenko

Père Lachaise (Wes Craven)
The spirit of Oscar Wilde saves the marriage of a young couple. Nice, but not special.

Emily Mortimer, Rufus Sewell

Faubourg Saint-Denis (Tom Tykwer)
An actress tests the quality of her performance on her blind friend. Intersting idea, poor execution.

Melchior Beslon

Natalie Portman

Quartier Latin (Frédéric Auburtin / Gérard Depardieu)
An couple has one last drink before their divorce. Normal.

Ben Gazzara, Gena Rowlands

14e arrondissement (Alexander Payne)
An American tourist tells in horrible French what she loves about Paris and how she feels that the city is aboutto love her back. Charming.

Margo Martindale

Altogether: 6/10

El ley del deseo (1987, Pedro Almodóvar)

I saw most of Almodóvar's films last year, but then I was too lazy to make nots. The result is that now I confuse most of his films. I want to re-watch some of his films, at least as they become available to me.
Pablo (Eusebio Poncela) is in a kind of relationship with Juan (Miguel Molina, only a supporting role). Antonio (Antonio Banderas) gets infatuated with Pablo, they start a wild affair, but for Pablo it's only a physical thing. - Pablo has a transgender brother, who is now called Tina (Carmen Maura).
Antonio is developing a serious jealousy and kills Juan. - After an accident Pablo has temporarily amnesia and Antonio starts an affair with Tina.
And so on. This sounds like the plot of an opera or maybe rather a comic book, but still -- Almodóvar exaggerates, yes, but he also explores. He explores the boundaries of love. He explores where physical attraction transcends into lust and when lust becomes love. He explores how it feels to love somebody who only loves to be loved. And he sketches how it feels how it feels when you realize that you will never be loved more than by the pers on whom you just have lost. Almodóvar uses a thick brush, his characters are on the extreme side of life, always trying to make most out of life.
Unfortunately this implies in many of his films the use of drugs. This is the one thing I really hate about his films, that many persons use drugs, that happiness is an artificial dream. We never see any damaging effect, only the anesthetic effect to blend out reality. Another recurrent theme is the Catholic Church. Tina used to be a chorus boy in a church and the priest remembers that boy very well. In Almodóvar's films priests are very often very fond of boys.
So, in spite of the melodramatic tendency in this film, I still like it. It may be one of Almodóvar's most personal films, maybe a film about himself (?), as he doesn't tell the story of a woman.
In short: anybody who ever loved passionately must be able to recognize something in this film. This does not look like a film that was shot 30 years ago.
9/10