سکوت‎‎ ([The Silence], Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1998)

Sometimes you just have to realize that a certain director is not compatible for you as viewer. I have to admit that Makhmalbaf is no director for me. I wanted to like him, because he was introduced to me in Close-Up as a director with a social conscience, but I have failed to like his style. Yes, there is poetry in his pictures, but it doesn't hit me.
Here we have a 10-year-old blind Khorsid somewhere in Tadjikistan. His father did not return "from the war". Now the landlord is presing every day to get his rent. Mother urges the boy every day to get the money. Khorsid works as tuner for instruments, but it seems that they are not very popular with customers. Khorsid, however, gets regularly lost on the way to work, as he rather follows pretty voices or pleasing music. At the end they are kicked out of their home. I have read that this film is filled with symbols from sufism. So be it - I didn't catch whatever symbolic value there might have been. Using some chords from Beethoven's 5th symphony is supposed to make the message a universal one.
It is common that people like Makhmalbaf use amateur actors. Sometimes they do a good job; here they don't. They deliver their sentences worse than reading from a book.
I noticed that I saw this already some time ago, but I managed to forget almost all about it. This is not necessarily a valid judgment about this film, but shows once more that this director does not really overlap with me.
2/10

Western (2017, Valeska Grisebach)

A lonely wolf, an alpha male, a woman they want, hostile landscapes and people. A group of explorers meeting natives, but in this case the explorers are not cowboys, but German workers who are supposed to build a power station. in Bulgaria. And the natives are the local population. They don't understand each other. Misunderstandings can spawn hostility, flirting can become harassment. And who will get the pretty bride in the end? The classical Western plot in modern Eastern Europe.
It is also about communication. The Germans don't speak the language of the local, the locals don't understand German. Everyone speaks their own language and at the end there is some sort of communication anyhow. There is not much happening on the surface, but still there is happening a lot in the faces of the protagonists. A quiet and strong film.
8/10

Lamb (2015, Yared Zeleke)

Here is a rare occasion to hear Amharic on the silver screen. Yes, a film from Ethiopia. It is not, as one could expect, an ethnological story. It is about customs, about traditions, but also about life under the conditions of global climate change, but also about coming of age, becoming emancipated from the boundaries of traditional life. We get aquainted with life in Africa from the inside.
Ephraim and his father live in poverty. Ephraim's mother died recently because of the drought. There are few chances to survive in that village. The father tries to find a job in the nearest city. Therefore he places he Ephraim and his pet lamb with another branch of the family. Ephraim is half-Jewish, the family is Christian and soon there will some religious celebration. Solomon, Ephraim's new step father, wants to make a stew of the lamb - Ephraim's last connection with his mother. Ephraim likes cooking, an occupation that is not fit for men in that society. Instead Solomon wants him to be trained as farmer, but Ephraim is not really gifted for this kind of work. There is another cousin, Tsio, who fights her own battle against gender roles. She has already passed the age to get married and she is an avid reader. She wants to know why the generation of grandparents and parents had more to eat. She has also knowledge that the droughts are not random fancies by God. At the end the grandmother, a SHE figure with a whip for instant punishment opens for ways to loosen up machismo.
Lamb is a nice film. It is very slow, which corresponds to the story. We see beautiful landscapes, watch the life on the market square and follow the doings in a village. All this is not shown for its own sake, but is part of the plot. The manuscript is at times a bit clumsy, especially at the end the narrative is a bit over hedge and ditch. However,it is still a very enjoyable film that tells how to come of age in a oppressive environment.
6/10

Greven på Liljenborg (1964, Annelise Reenberg)

Fremskridt og idyl i den danske provins
Denne folkekomedie hed oprindeligt Alt for kvinden og hentydede til adelsfamiliens motto. Ved relanceringen i 1973 valgte man (ifølge IMDb) den knap så slibrige titel Greven på Liljenborg.
Denne film har et utroligt retro-billede af kvinder. Forelskelsen sker i et splitsekund, som lyn in en gammel hytte - og er selvfølgelig gensidigt. Den unge pige kan simpelthen ikke lade være ay falde for den adelige charme og så forener sig til sidst blod- og pengeadel. Normalt optræder i denne slags fjollekomedier også almuefolk, her har vi dog kun det loyale tyende, som slider for sit herskab til midnat og er oven i købet taknemmelig.  Ja, det var dengang - uden minimumsløn og overenskomst. Den gode gamle tid. Sikkert en våd drøm for Liberal Alliance. Sød reaktionær film - allerede ved den fremkomst var den gammeldags.
5/10 - for rutineret håndværk.

Paulette (2013, Jérôme Enrico)

A comedy about old-age poverty? Including people that were labelled as racaille (thugs)? Here you go - Ken Loach gone funny.
Paulette has a very little pension and can hardly survive. She doesn't pay her bills, is a shameful dumpster diver and a racist, as she says that people with a darker skin live better. Her son in law is black and she hates her grandson. (What kind of mother will give her son to such a bitch?) From her son in law, who is working at the police, she learns that the wealth of the young people is from drug dealing. She wants to enter that business also and gets the chance when she catches a package of weed. The other dealers don't like the extra competition, so Paulette changes her business model. She processes the drugs in biscuits and cakes. However, when she refuses to sell her pain chocolat to school kids, the drug mafia is no longer amused. - In the end she transfers her bakery to Amsterdam.
Bernadette Lafont is grumpy Paulette. Her character is changing during the film. With success and income she becomes a jolly grandmother. Money obviously makes people happy.
This film has a realistic setting, but a fairy tale narration. So we get a conciliatory narration, some fanciful characters and altogether a feel good experience. An amusing, not too demanding film.
5/10

La tourneuse de pages (2006, Denis Dercourt)

Chabrol hasn't lived in vain, as shows The Page Turner. This has been labelled as a thriller. Genre labels might help to decide me if I want to see a certain film, but they also raise certain expectations as to that genre as to excitement and suspense. I think this film was lacking both excitement and suspense, but it was quite well as a drama.
Mélanie is an aspiring pianist. During an important audition she is distracted by one of the judges, Ariane. This affects her performance and she actually fails. Some years later Mélanie has the chance to ruin the life of Ariane.
I don't agree with this POV: this is not about the obsession and hatred of a girl, but about ruining another life. We all know that Ariane did not ruin the plans of Mélanie on purpose. So, it is hard, if not impossible, to sympathize with Mélanie and her cold revenge. This could work, if it was narrated in a neutral voice, but it is not. The character of Mélanie remains quite shallow. I was expecting something more, like an examination of Mélanie's hatred, but it never came. Pity.
5/10

Danmark (2017, Kasper Rune Larsen)

This film had three screenings at CPH:PIX and the day after the festival closed it appeared already on TV. In other words: it won't appear i normal distribution. In other word, it has been estimated that people won't care to see this in a cinema hall. Should they or is this really not fit for the big screen?
It is about a group of slackers in a provincial town in Jutland. These are, says Urban Dictionary, young people who don't feel like doing anything. Vitelloni, thus, if they had lived in the 50s. They hang out, drink, have parties and one night stands.
The main protagonist is called Norge. His flat looks as if he just moved in or is about to move out. In true Oblomov manner he sleeps until daylight, drinks and smokes, shags and listens to death metal rock. One day the girl Josephine enter his life. She seduces him. Later she tells him that she is pregnant. Now Norge discovers his responsibility as a father to be. Norge and Josephine become a  couple.
Larsen is one of the instructors who uses mumbling to attract the attention of viewers in central scenes. In a scene with extreme mumbling Josephine tells Norge that he is not the father of the child and that his was just a tactic to get close to Norge.
The dialog is realistic. (fucking as intensifier etc.). Camera work follows these people as if it was a documentary. But ultimately this is not very relevant. I would have given this a 3, but give it a 2 for extreme mumbling.
2/10

Naked people as marketing strategy

Thorn (2017, Gabriel Tzafka)

It's the day of Jacob and Lise's marriage. They run away from their party to a lonely farm yard. Here they are going to celebrate their honeymoon. There is only a strange neighbor, He tells them that he has been hunting a thief for more than 30 years. The young couple makes a trip to the forest. Jacob has a strange encounter with his neighbor. When he returns, Lise tells him that she has lost her wedding ring. Strange meetings between the neighbors occur.
After some time we see that present and future tense are happening at the same time. The old couple is a projection of the young Jacob and Lise. Reality and projection are mixed, but actually: what is reality and what is projection.
It is also disclosed that she actually never lost the wedding ring. She invented the story to ensure the love of her husband and after 30 years she has given up that hope. Hope is patient, but 30 years to reach this insight seems a bit long.
I saw this at CPH:PIX. Thorn has the same structure as Le ciel étoilé au-dessus de ma tête by Ilan Klipper which I saw on the same occasion, thus a story that starts in a realistic way and then questions what actually is real. However, it seems to me that Klipper has more to tell, more strings to play with, while Tzafka's story is relatively simple and in its own way straightforward.
 3/10

Lille soldat (2008, Annette K.Olesen)

Så fik jeg set den alligevel. Det føles også lidt som et must, at man burde interessere sig for danske film. Medens jeg prøver at have "nye talenter" lidt på afstand, har denne allerede et par år på puklen. Den har ikke opnået en blivende position i repertoire. Derfor bliver den sendt i TV midt om natten, når det nu alligevel er ligegyldigt hvad der bliver progamsat.
Lotte har været soldat. Vi hører ikke meget om hendes mission, men, ja, hun har sine synlige og usynlige sår. Hendes far er vognmand og lover hende noget arbejde. Han driver også hjemmeservice-prostitution. Heldigvis mangler han lige en chauffør som kan køre hans favoritluder og privatmaitresse til kunderne.Og så passer det jo, at private arbejdsgiver skaber velfærd. Lotte synes derimod, at luksusluderen burde være hjemme og skulle passe sit barn. Derfor slår hun en særlig kræsen klient ud. Hendes far og luderen Lily synes derimod ikke, at det er den rigtige måde at skabe velfærd på.
Gad vide hvorfor man fortaler sådan en historie. Lily er glad for sit arbejde. Hun er måske ikke ligefrem en happy hooker, men alligevel fuldt integreret i servicebranchen. Eller skal filmen give os et mere nuanceret billede af prostitution? Se, der er da ikke så slemt. Jo, en gang imellem bliver de slem tilredt, men det holder op, når de har lært at makke ret.  Eller skal den fortælle, at man kan ønske det gode, nemlig at rede en pige fra at være nødt til at sælge sin krop og alligevel bevirker man det. Lige meget hvad, det bliver utilfredsstillende.
4/10

Out (2017, György Kristóf)

Even in its home country this is not known as Vychladnutie, but under the English title. It is a bit sad, that everything needs to have an English title, if it wants to be something. So is this something?
We are in the Hungarian-speaking community of Slovakia. Agoston is a 50+ man who is fired from his job for the sake of reconstruction of economy and blabla - see any argument by any neo-liberal. He finds a job offer from a company in Latvia and is hired fro that job. However, bribes obviously  are are strong force in that society, so he gets a job in a shipbuilding factory. Quickly he becomes unpopular with the foreman. So Agoston leaves that work. Fishing is his passion. He buys the necessary equipment and seems to hope that he will be able to make a living from selling fish.
In Latvia he meets strange people - like Gaida who collects grass for dead rabbits. There is also the wife of a Russian friend, who looks like a plastic doll, who still is very much in favor of a natural life style. At last he makes his dream come true, altough not as he had hoped. All this is somewhat amusing, even entertaining, but ultimately pointless and irrelevant.
5/10

Une rencontre (2014, Lisa Azuelos)

A story that didn't start will never end - this is the tag line of this film. Recently too many "romantic comedies" are in my backlog - or are they just chick flicks? This is not exactly my type of feel good film.
A family father meets an attractive writer at a book fair. He thinks that he is happily married, but actually he has better relations to his children than to his wife. She is approaching MILF-age, so young and beautiful are around her like moiths around the light. But she also falls for the family father. There is only one but - "married men have no dick". Meaning - she does not want to be a mistress and she respects the instution of marriage for the sake of the wife. So they hug and don't exchange phone numbers. So they meet by chance and that is it. The film plays with conventions - just to confirm them.
I saw this film before and forgot about it - maybe these notes will help me to remember it, if I encounter it another time.
4/10

The Little Death (2014, Josh Lawson)

This film is about how to experience the little death.. It is thus a film about sex, situated in an Australian suburb. It is about five  couples that try to spice up their sex lives trying out different shades of kinkiness. These isms and philias are:
sexual masochism: sexual gratification from humiliation, pain and suffering (Paul & Maeve)

roleplay fetishism: sexual arousal by pretending to be someone else (Dan & Evie)

dacryphilia: sexual pleasure in seeing someone cry (Richard & Rowena)

somnophilia: sexual arousal from watching a person sleep (Phil & Maureen)

telephone scatalogia: sexual arousal from making obscene phone calls to strangers (Monica & Sam)
Then there is Steve, the friendly sex offender. The court has him obliged to inform the neighbors about that conviction. We never know what Steve did, but he seems to be lonely. Is this funny? I don't think so.
In my opinion a comedy about sex needs to be light-hearted, but this one isn't, except for the "scatalogia" segment where a sign language translator has to translate a naughty call to a sex line for a mute boy. There is occasional chemistry between the other couples, but in general they are too full of themselves.
5/10

Manuale d'amare 3 (2011, Giovanni Veronesi)

A set of three episodes. Probably they are designed to be funny, at least "feel good" and this they may be for the audience this film is designed for.
Episode one "Giovinezza" is set in a village. Of course the people there are hillbillies. What else? Roberto is there for work. Although he is closely attached to Sara, he gas violent sex on the beach with a local. She, however, is married already, so he returns to what he already had.
"Maturità" is strikingly immature. A news anchor (I think Berlusconi was the role model) is offered casual sex by a woman that turns out to suffer from bipolar disease. She returns to the institution, he is sent as correspondent to Nairobi. In episode #3 we learn that he was taken as hostage by local terrorists? Funny? Romantic? Really?
Even "Oltre" - beyond good and evil a heart can be set ablaze. The janitor's daughter gets infatuated by Adrian, an American professor of history. Everybody was waiting for this Robert de Niro and Mobica Belucci. It's funny to hear de Niro speaking Italian accent, elase also this episode develops as these stories do. They move to a smal town and have their first baby, although he realizes that he could be the baby's granddad.
This may be good for a rainy afternoon when you  don't want to go out to the library and you have watched everything else. Or for practising Italian.
3/10

A Ghost Story (2017, David Lowery)

It is tempting to speculate about how the lives of th others will continue once we are gone. However, this can become kitschy or, maybe even worse, trivial metephysics, like in this cas.
C (Casey Affleck) dies and returns to the home where he lived with M (Mara Rooney). C has a burka-like cloak, as ,known from carton-drawings. At one point he communicates with another ghost in the neighbouir house. Their telepathic conversation is subtitled. Their too many of such visual gimmicks. They don't serve to ease the seriousness of the plot - on the contrary the make the film increasingly more silly. Then a Spanish family moves in and C teaches them what it means to live in a haunted house. More people come and go and at the end their house is demolished.
The soundtrack is very impressive, sometimes the even the cinematography. At its best moments it is like a visual poem, but most of the time this film is just dull.
It is annoying to watch a scen with Mara Rooney stress eating for about 5 minuts while the ghost just stands thre and does nothing. It seems that there were too few ideas to bear a feature film, so those they had were steamrolled like puff-pastry.
3/10