Brief notes on films seen at the 2001 Thessaloniki Film Festival.

After 3 years, I'm still looking for an Opening or Closing Night movie I can really get behind at Thessaloniki ; VA SAVOIR (57) (dir., Jacques Rivette) Jeanne Balibar, Sergio Castellitto, Marianne Basler, Jacques Bonnaffé seemed a sure bet to turn things around yet I never quite connected with this elegant trifle, playing like an emaciated riff on MA VIE SEXUELLE - first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. The themes, once again, are deception, miscommunication and the ways people change, dwelling in the intersections between Life and Art (theatre and literature, in this case), working round the residue of past relationships ; men are silly, women sensible, everyone talks within the same emotional range - highly strung, like a jealous lover - and nothing very much really happens (it's a surprise when it gets inventive, as with the climactic duel). Fine performances, Castellito exhilarating as a true man of the theatre, but the film seems a little too enamoured of its own languid wit ; I prefer when elegance is taken for granted, as in Desplechin and Assayas...

Talk of the Fest was KANDAHAR (49) (dir., Mohsen Makhmalbaf) Niloufar Pazira, Hassan Tantai, Sadou Teymouri, schedule hurriedly revised to accommodate an extra screening. And why not? Weren't we living through a crucial time, Huntingdonian clash of civilisations and so on? Wasn't it time for films to go beyond mere aesthetics, taking part - taking sides - in the global conflagration? Hadn't a world-class film-maker pledged his talents to the Good Fight after Afghan journalist Pazira came to him with her story, lightly fictionalised for this earnest road movie? She's going back to Kandahar - having left when the Taliban took over - to save her sister, who's so unhappy she's pledged to commit suicide during the next eclipse, i.e. in less than a week as the film begins. How she plans to save her isn't clear, but it involves chronicling her journey through a tape recorder, into which she speaks pertinent facts about Afghanistan : "In Afghanistan, each ethnic group has a name of its own," she informs her sister, which might seem a little puzzling - you'd think she'd already know that, living in Kandahar and all - except that we've long since figured out the film's m.o., which has nothing to do with dramatic coherence and everything to do with well-meaning didacticism. By the time you leave the cinema, it vows, you will know more about this blighted Third World country.

Facts and figures come thick and fast. The war (in its various forms) kills one person every 5 minutes ; all girls' schools have been closed down by the authorities ; amputees have to wait a year or more for artificial limbs. Makhmalbaf the film-maker doesn't disgrace himself - he's got an eye for everyday absurdity (like the doctor who prescribes bread as if it were pills, three times a day, and must wear a fake mullah-style beard to be accepted by the community), and a feel for the way hustlers operate even (or especially) in wartime, angling for every last cent they can get. The film - unlike, say, THE CIRCLE - isn't without humour, or occasional tension, or a faith in human ingenuity (never give up hope, is the message : "The walls are high, but the sky is higher still") ; it generally avoids victimisation, blaming patriarchal Afghan culture as much as the Taliban ; yet you have to wonder who it was made for - or rather, you don't, because it delivers most of its salvos through an English-language voice-over (heroine to her sister, ostensibly), clearly aimed at the right-thinking Western audience. The whole thing is a hard-sell-cum-lecture, and one doesn't know whether to give in, or be embarrassed that an artist of Makhmalbaf's stature is preaching so crudely, or annoyed to be treated (implicitly) as a mindless drone who's never heard of Afghanistan and needs the situation spelled out from first principles. We know, we groan inwardly as armless and legless people are paraded for our sympathy - briefly turning a didactic film exploitative, verging on obscene - we know ; but what can we do?

That question, at least, now has an answer - even if it's not the right answer. "I wonder what Bush thinks of it," said one Festival-goer to another with a meaningful smirk, reflexively pitting the US - symbol of global authority - against a patently anti-authoritarian movie ; yet the US President would surely be delighted by the film, justifying as it does all attempts to pound the Taliban into submission. Liberalism and militarism have currently merged, which is the real political story in the world today ; maybe films will eventually get around to reflecting it...

Till then, there are only heartfelt-but-misguided tracts like THE MAD SONGS OF FERNANDA HUSSEIN (41) (dir., John Gianvito) Thia Gonzales, Dustin Scott, Robert Perea, Sherri Goen, quoting John Trudell in the frontispiece to one of its three sections : "Don't trust anyone who isn't angry". Mr. Gianvito clearly is, and made the film - as he said in the Q+A - partly as a channel for his indignation at what he saw in early-90s America, the eruption of jingoism (and outright racism) on the Home Front during the Gulf War : like the peace protesters who feature heavily in the movie, it's easy to believe he made it because he had to, even if he knew it wouldn't change anything - all of which makes the film impossible to dismiss lightly, though the Thessaloniki jury (led by John Boorman) left it pointedly out of the prizes. It's painfully sincere, and that's mostly what's wrong with it.

This is a film where a returning Gulf War veteran - haunted by nightmares, plagued by questions about how many "sand niggers" he got to kill - not only tells a girl what really happened but draws her a complete, geographically-accurate map of Iraq and the surrounding area, scratching it out with a stick in the sand (because it's Important for the audience to know these things - even if they're too busy tittering at the absurdity of the exposition). It's a film which points out the obscenity of Gulf War trading-cards for kids - then points it out again in a later scene, just to make sure. It's a film where a radical professor ("I think all authority should be undermined") is played by Gianvito himself, whereas his antagonist - the father of a boy in his class, who thinks him a bad influence on his son - is a bull-necked redneck type simmering with violence ("You son of a bitch!"). It's a film with a five-minute montage of outlandish Gulf War memorabilia, dwelling on T-shirts saying things like "Kill 'Em All, Let God Sort 'Em Out" (rather like the Moral Majority crusading against rock music with a montage of Ozzy Osbourne and Marilyn Manson). It's a film which finally gives up on characters altogether, getting real-life peace activists to play themselves, reciting poems with titles like "War Poem Autobiography" and sharing their stories for the benefit of a mixed-up youngster ("I feel I've learned by listening," he says thoughtfully when the session is over).

What can you say about this stuff? Clearly it comes from the heart, and Gianvito has a fine eye for the rugged Southwestern terrain (lots of rock-and-water compositions, building to a memorably fiery climax at a "Burning Man"-type festival) ; but it's preaching to the converted, and it doesn't even see any problem with that. There's a tinge of defeat to the whole enterprise, as if the director (like his activists) knows he's desperately out of step with America : reaching out to kindred spirits is all he can do - no use trying to build a case for neutrals, or drawing people in with narrative and humour. "It's hard to be funny in times like this," says someone, while a peacenik admits she "can't think of a single peace joke" - yet the humourless self-importance is precisely what kills it. Easy to agree on the insane mindlessness of contemporary culture. Audiences shun any hint of commitment or ideology, echoing Albert Finney's line in SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING : "All I'm after is a good time ; all the rest is propaganda". But if films like this actually provided a good time - well, they wouldn't be propaganda, would they? QED...

Anyone seeking further confirmation is directed to SLOGANS (53) (dir., Gjergi Xhouvani) Artur Gorishti, Luiza Xhuvani, Agim Qirjagi, Birce Hasko - which works very nicely while it's trying to entertain (for about an hour or so), then falls apart when it starts to rail against the regime (Enver Hoxha in 70s Albania), humiliates every vaguely sympathetic character and repeats its points, turning into a tract. What's annoying is that these final scenes don't actually add very much to our understanding, the dark absurdity of those times having been established by the fuss over the titular slogans - cumbersome maxims like "Glory To The Revolutionary Spirit" which schoolchildren are forced to build using rocks on the side of a hill (the favoured teachers getting shorter slogans, those in the doghouse getting back-breakers like "Vigilance, Vigilance, Always Room For Vigilance"). The abuse of power implicit in totalitarianism is memorably evoked, and village life shown with quiet humour and attention to detail ; I suspect the problem is the film-makers' own anger at their country's grim history, causing them to fall into overkill when it comes to martyrs and Stalinist show-trials. Still better than a film like NOT ONE LESS, which shares the basic premise - new teacher in rural school - but downplays ideology to the point of non-existence ; maybe after China gets its own ideological re-think...

Then again, maybe it's just that the world has changed, turned post-ideological : consider THE NEW COUNTRY (64) (dir., Geir Hansteen Jorgensten) Mike Almayehu, Lia Boysen, Michalis Koutsogiannakis, which does provide a good time, deals broadly with political issues - but also pounds FERNANDA HUSSEIN-type ideology as hard and vigorously as Lukas Moodysson did in TOGETHER. He co-wrote this one, bringing much of the same exuberant humanity, esp. in the irrepressible teenage character played by Almayehu (reminiscent of the similar character played by Paddy Connor in THE DREAM CATCHER) ; in fact, this is probably about as much fun as a garish, in-your-face crowd-pleaser with three (3) vomit shots and cuddly neo-Nazis can be - full of raucous life as its illegal-immigrant protagonists go on the road in a DV Sweden. Those neo-Nazis (led by the bearish Big Bert) are a little startling, though, esp. in conjunction with the admirable woman who helps refugees (ruining her marriage in the process) because, like the peaceniks in Gianvito's film, "my humanity would be less if I didn't" - but turns out to be a deluded fool, not even realising the 'Jews' she's sheltering are in fact virulently anti-Semitic Russians. Makes you wonder how long it'll be before Moodysson clashes violently with the PC brigade, but it's just that he's out of sympathy with zealots and activists - his philosophy is simply that "you have to believe people are good", which is sensible enough when you think about it. The film is political - how could it not be, with illegal immigrants as its heroes? - but not in the crude way of KANDAHAR or FERNANDA HUSSEIN ; it also suggests Sweden as a kind of higher-fibre Australia, draping comedies in splashy colours with kitschy pop on the soundtrack (Roxette, Ace of Base) and an earthy, often cruel sense of humour. Working well, for now ; I just hope we don't end up with a Swedish MURIEL'S WEDDING...

MURIEL's Syndrome struck (for me) in the otherwise dissimilar LATE MARRIAGE (57) (second viewing: 67) (dir., Dover Kosashvili) Lior Loui Ashkenazi, Ronit Elkabetz, Moni Moshonov, Lili Kosashvili, viz. being asked to laugh at the antics of characters I found deeply unpleasant - and not even to laugh in the sharp satirical way of (e.g.) THE WAR OF THE ROSES, where it's clear the film itself has contempt for its characters, but in the crowd-pleasing way of (e.g.) MOONSTRUCK, with cute little dogs and moustachioed old men blustering in the bathtub. The film is set in the Georgian community of Israel, making it (I suspect) something like a hillbilly movie in the US - characters are 'colourful' and obviously backward, with their superstitions and arranged marriages - yet the eccentric relatives and high-volume family quarrels co-exist uncomfortably with a hard, cutting sensibility. Constantly belligerent, from the cynical, oppressive parents trying to force their son into an arranged marriage (secretly jealous of his love affair with another woman, being products if arranged marriages themselves) to the son himself, revealed to be merely a weak-willed schmuck - making this a brave, honest film (the ending is extraordinary), just not a very pleasurable one.

Maybe I'm just too much of a romantic for this stuff. If I had to pick a key moment, it might be our hero's father explaining (to the parents of the girl he's trying to match up with his son) why Love is over-rated : if you ignore the heart, he says, it becomes light and floats up towards the brain ; if you attach too much importance to the heart, it becomes heavy and sinks down towards the genitals. The opposite of an arranged marriage, in other words, is lust - hence presumably the long, minutely-observed (one might say Rohmer-like) sex scene making up almost the entirety of the son's relationship with the Other Woman, and presumably also why the Woman herself is passionate rather than tender. Those of us who think (or like to think) the opposite of an arranged marriage is in fact love - i.e. that the heart exists as a separate place between the head and the balls - are bound to be a little disappointed ; and all of us, irrespective of romanticism, must abhor details like the cute little dog in a party hat at the climactic wedding. On the other hand, Boorman's jury showered it with prizes - Actress and Screenplay as well as the runner-up Silver Alexander - and that makes sense too... (Second viewing, August 2004: This really is an amazing movie; but it has everything except a reason to care - the hero clearly sees the illicit relationship as great sex and not much more, though the unfortunate woman does hope for more, giving up only when she realises how weak he is. Kosashvili is on record as being on the side of Tradition - for once! - and maybe that's why he can't find a place for Love in his scheme of things. Bottom line: Who gives a fuck what happens to this idiot?)   

Quick notes on films which I liked well enough, to varying degrees, but just want to get out of the way (been a long year, Festival-wise):

DRIFT (53) (dir., Michiel van Jaarsveld) Christel Oomen, Dragan Bakema, Hans Hoes : Mr. van Jaarsveld prefaced with a warning that the film had been controversial on home turf (Holland), adding we should brace ourselves for some "shocking" material and shaky camerawork : he obviously doesn't watch very many movies. My admiration for ROSETTA increases every time I see another drearily miserablist slice-of-life, nor is the camerawork all that shaky by, e.g., Dogme standards ; sensitively done nonetheless, treating the older man / teenage girl scenario with considerable tact. Lives up to its title a little too completely, though, one of those films where nothing is resolved. Thought the nice boy on the margins might open up a new chapter, as in the final shot of ROSETTA ; he doesn't. Thought it might end with a decision, heroine moving on with her life in some way ; she doesn't.

Speaking of slice-of-life : CRANE WORLD (58) (dir., Pablo Trapero) Luis Margani, Adriana Aizemberg, Daniel Valenzuela works better than most - partly because the visuals are striking (super-grainy b&w, heightening rather than flattening reality), partly because the hero is such a likeable lug with a squashed, jowly face (amusingly, his son seems to be following him into flabbiness). He operates a crane, finding a measure of freedom ; he thinks back to his youth, when he played bass in a well-known rock band (how he "moved around the stage a lot" - having been considerably thinner) ; he falls asleep in front of the TV ; he washes his car on a Sunday, trouser-legs rolled up, the hum of the city in the background. Unlike Rosetta, he's not ambivalent - not remotely a monster, just a decent guy battered by Life - making the film less intriguing than it might be. All very human, though...

THE FLUFFER (54) (dir., Richard Glatzer / Wash West) Michael Cunio, Scott Gurney, Roxanne Day, Taylor Negron, Richard Riehle : BOOGIE NIGHTS without the flash, though even the feeling of community in the first half gets diffused as we follow the central (unrequited) romance, esp. as the object of affection - Gurney as narcissistic porn star "Johnny Rebel"- falls to pieces. Is there a point? Maybe just the Buzzcocks over the end-credits - "Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't Have)"? - though also the suggestion that porn creates distance by its very nature, i.e. depends on detachment and dehumanisation : if Johnny's like a fly, buzzing from person to person, that may also be precisely why he's so good at what he does. Narrative falters, but good bits along the way (the lap-dance, everything involving Riehle and Negron) and surprisingly personal touches : not much doubt that West is a film-buff, or that he's put a lot of himself in this. Nice to see a character who riffs on "Vertigo" rather than "Star Wars" when he's stoned, anyway...

SISTERS (59) (dir., Sergei Bodrov Jr.) Oksana Akinjshina, Katya Gorina, Sergei Bodrov Jr. : Saw this right after DRIFT, and maybe I was just grateful for something light (do I lose my film-buff credentials?) ; playful rather than substantial, though perhaps the glimmer of a theme in the two half-sisters - who go on the road together after gangster Dad gets targeted by business rivals - being born on opposite sides of the 1989 revolution (might they stand for pre- and post-Communist Russia?). Not a lot to think about, but wide-open rhythm recalls Bodrov Sr.'s FREEDOM IS PARADISE (he co-wrote this one), and Bodrov Jr. absolutely oozes charisma in hilarious one-scene cameo ; lots of Russian pop on the soundtrack, couple of good jokes (like the kid who wants to go live in Germany, because they treat Jews better there) - mostly in the spacious, digressive rhythms, though, and the byplay between the characters. Often lazy, totally unconvincing, very goofy, very relaxed, surprisingly enjoyable.

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (42) (dir., John Cameron Mitchell) John Cameron Mitchell, Michael Pitt, Miriam Shor : What do you call a treatise on the influence of philosophy in rock'n roll? "You, Kant, Always Get What You Want"! Funny guy - shame the musical in-jokes (plus gratuitous digs at Boston, Kansas, Lilith Fair, "I Will Always Love You" etc.) aren't matched by equivalent songwriting chops. Terrible MOR anthems, served with lashings of self-pity and barely enough plot even for the relatively short running-time ; Mr. Mitchell's strenuous attempts to be 'visual' are touchingly naive amid this flamboyant theatricality, but does he realise he looks strikingly like Rachel Griffiths? (His sidekick looks more like a manic David Carradine.) Very showbiz, sometimes funny, generally flat ; Hedwig comes from Berlin because Berlin is a divided city, you know - just like he himself is divided, neither man nor woman. Gosh...

OPORTO OF MY CHILDHOOD (61) (dir., Manoel de Oliveira) Augustina Bessa-Luis, Maria de Medeiros, Leonor Silveira : Biggest surprise is perhaps how vital De Oliveira's voice-over sounds : on this evidence, he's got a few years left in him yet. Otherwise short, sweet and properly Proustian, with one outstanding sequence - the drive down magically lit streets, seen behind the chauffeur's silhouette - poignant detail here and there (V.O. echoing the young Manoel as he speaks, or the way he mentions some old building then cuts to whatever boutique or restaurant it's been turned into, saying simply "Now it is this") and a tendency to go on a bit about people who mean nothing outside the director's inner circle (then again, he admits it's "for my children"). Minor work, but I'm glad I saw it - if only for the brief newsreel glimpse of Fernando Pessoa, one of my favourite writers. Cheers, Manoel...

Modest pleasures, master film-makers : AN AFTERNOON WITH A TORTURER (66) (dir., Lucien Pintilie) Gheorghe Dinica, Radu Beligan, Ioana Macaria is exactly as per the title - the "torturer" a middle-aged Romanian with a shady past, interviewed in his home on a quiet afternoon by a journalist and a former political prisoner. Will they break him down? Will he confess to his terrible crimes? Fortunately, melodrama gives way to black comedy : the tape recorder doesn't work ; the torturer talks too fast, then too slow ; his ageing antagonist falls asleep, interrupting the confessions with a stifled fart ; an old woman shuffles about in the background in headscarf and dark glasses (she "accepts my nastiness", explains the monster). Pintilie, working with a talky three-parter that might've been a play (though it's based on a novel), keeps the tension simmering throughout with beautifully-judged interruptions and judicious use of sound - wind-chimes, phone calls, the occasional roar of distant cars - treating the subject with chilling matter-of-factness ; no moralistic hysteria here, though the question of divine punishment inevitably underlies a film that begins with a character (apparently) offering proof of God's existence. Pintilie responds with a brilliant visual pun, suggesting he remains unconvinced ; the torturer's punishment is here on Earth - in his ugly memories, and menacing incursions by a new generation of monsters. Small-scale, certainly, but perfectly formed ; heartless, sophisticated, and so beautifully calibrated you want to turn it this way and that, admiring it from all sides like a little diamond.

Ditto BRIEF CROSSING (66) (dir., Catherine Breillat) Sarah Pratt, Gilles Guillain, Marc Filippi, second Breillat triumph in less than a year ; more prosaic than A MA SOEUR!, definitely less edgy (Breillat seems gradually to be morphing into Rohmer), made for TV (a ten-film series called something like "Masculin Feminin", exploring gender roles from different angles ; details in the "Cahiers du Cinéma" Venice report, which I seem to have misplaced at the moment). Still very fine, detailing a brief encounter on a cross-Channel ferry : she an English woman in her 30s, he a French boy in his teens - making the film 'controversial', and you have to wonder if the British element is meant as a dig at that country's absurd child-protection laws, forbidding the depiction of minors in sexual situations even if the actors playing them are over 18. "People break us with their fears," says the heroine wisely, and Breillat clearly agrees (you can almost hear her chuckling when adolescent Thomas initially pretends to be 18 then is forced to admit he's only 16 : oh no, we just became illegal!).

The film teasingly emphasises its hero's jailbait qualities, accompanying an early shot of him with the ship's p.a. cautioning parents that children "should not disturb the other passengers" (he also stands next to a prominently-displayed sign warning him to "Please Close The Door Quietly"). When he meets Alice, he's predictably awkward and embarrassed (they meet in the dinner queue, and he offers her a child's tray, adult-sized ones having run out) ; she controls the relationship, literally making a man of him - identifying him with all the other men she's known, all of whom have hurt her, just as men always hurt women. Indeed, she says, "I can't fall in love with someone who can't hurt me", echoing Anais the Fat Girl - but making the film a kind of mirror-image to A MA SOEUR!, since Anais meant what she said more than we realised, whereas Alice means what she says less than we might think : her words turn the boy into a man, but only perhaps as a prelude for getting her revenge (a woman can leave, she observes wryly ; that's her only power). The film works both as trenchant drama and psychological thriller of the heart, as richly slippery as its subject, which is the constant war between men and women : is the ending a feminist triumph, or is Thomas' genuine emotion actually preferable to his lover's cold mindfuck? Neither side gets any favours, which is as it should be ; and putting a magician's stage act right in the middle of the frame as the duo look into each other's eyes ranks with the flickering orange flare in MILLENNIUM MAMBO on the year's hit-list of Audacious Distancing Devices - even if the act in question (sticking a woman in a box full of knives) then becomes an over-explicit metaphor for Oppressive Patriarchy. Then again - given how the film develops - I suspect Breillat already knows that...

The 25-year-old director of LA LIBERTAD (63) (dir., Lisandro Alonso) Misael Saaverda was in attendance at Thessaloniki, inviting audiences to approach him, should they spot him wandering around the Festival area, and discuss the movie. Obviously a brave (or sincere) man, and I wonder if he stuck around for the screening I attended, with an audience who clearly didn't know what they were letting themselves in for and erupted into spontaneous applause at the first line of dialogue 40 minutes in (preceded by lots of muttering and sarcastic shouts of "Hey, what happened to the subtitles?"). It wasn't just the absence of dialogue, but also the absence of conventional 'action' as the camera follows a young woodcutter on a typical (i.e. uneventful) working day, prompting Monty Python fans to remark that he cuts down trees, he eats his lunch, he goes to the lavatory (all onscreen) ; yet, by the end, the audience was quiet, whether deadened by the rhythm or - more likely - hypnotised by the film's peculiar magic as it limns the contours of a life, prompting the viewer to wonder how their own life might measure up to objective scrutiny.

"Objective" is of course the word that's causing all the problems here ; those who hate the film claim to find no authorial craftsmanship in it, scoffing that it takes no special skill to follow someone around with a camera - a strange objection, given that the film (unlike, say, Warhol's infamous experiments of the 60s) isn't actually in real time, nor does it always hew to its protagonist. His relationship with the forest is clearly an element, the paradox that he's so much a part of it while making his living by destroying (or at least exploiting) it : the birdsong he hears and tall grass he steps through are just as prominent in the shots as the man himself - and take over completely when he falls asleep, the camera veering away to explore the canopy of trees and clouds looking down on him implacably. Above all, the film raises a structural question that may be unanswerable (but remains fascinating) : if you start off with a quick pre-credits shot - our hero sitting shirtless beneath the stars, bathed in the warm glow of a fire - followed by such a significant title (meaning "Liberty"), then end the film by returning to that pre-credits shot, is the cyclical structure merely a reconfirmation of "La Libertad", the film merely an explication (like starting and finishing REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE with "There is a Fort in the South where years ago a murder was committed"), or is it a questioning of that lifestyle, inviting us to view it in a different way based on what we've seen in the interim? Choosing the latter makes the film more complex, adding a friction between the film-maker and his subject ; choosing the former makes it merely a paean to the 'simple life' (it's perhaps significant that the film originally ended with a lengthy shot of our hero laughing, breaking the cyclical structure - though whether laughing joyfully or mockingly I've no idea). Either way, I liked it, if only because I expected to be bored and I wasn't : more than enough going on in every shot, with the wealth of everyday detail and various sounds of the forest. Aesthetically, it's very pleasing ; conceptually, of course, it's endlessly debatable...

A few more random notes:

Very little to say about WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE (44) (dir., Shohei Imamura) Koji Yakusho, Misa Shimizu, Mitsuko Baisho which I found undernourished and repetitive, even more mysteriously overrated than THE EEL (which it resembles). "Man's been a lecher throughout History," says Imamura, and his emphasis on the restorative powers of sexuality is as welcome as the little surprises he likes to pile up - a sudden CU of a parrot, a doorbell coming off in someone's hand, a young African running through the streets of a small Japanese village. Everything is connected, seems to be the point, Nature's cosmic wholeness, with water as the force keeping it all together (water has the power of life and death) ; all very generous, but a little more discrimination might've helped - the film never seems to get anywhere. Best joke : our hero outrunning the marathon man in his rush to get together with his leaky beloved...

More quirkiness in SILVIA PRIETO (61) (dir., Martin Rejtman) Rosario Blefari, Valeria Bertucelli, Gabriel Fernandez Capello, which often comes across like a Jean-Pierre Jeunet done in naturalistic style (and done rather well, hurrying along in brisk, jagged rhythm) : all the characters have their little obsessions - Silvia has a thing about chopping chicken, her friend likes to spray on masses of deodorant, etc - with assorted props (a canary, a "bottle lamp", an Armani jacket) weaving in and out of the narrative. At its best, it unfolds in a kind of domino effect, each apparently random detail leading to a whole new development ; underlying it all is the ongoing struggle to make sense of Life, trying to keep up as it twists and turns - starting over, trying things out, whether changing one's hair or finding out more about one's name (ending with a roomful of Silvia Prietos exchanging notes) - marking Mr. Rejtman out as a talent to watch, even if the film itself is rather minor. Best line goes to a reluctant wife : "If I ever have a child, I'll feed him nothing but organic foods - then, when he's 14, I'll bake him and eat him!". Gosh...

TROUBLE EVERY DAY (65) (dir., Claire Denis) Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Beatrice Dalle, Alex Descas : "You can't give it a 65 just because you like Tindersticks!" protested Mike D'Angelo indignantly. Ah, but I can. A luxurious exercise in style, an ode to flesh - abstracted in gorgeous, creamy visuals - and the finest blend of morbid and sensual since THE VIRGIN SUICIDES ; Tindersticks score helps too, ditto Gallo's unblinking eyes and Byronic mien (though he makes a pretty unconvincing research scientist). The title is meaningless but very cool, which says it all really...

Rating of 59 for a comedy means either I admire it but didn't find it very funny (viz. FREDDY GOT FINGERED), or else the opposite - meaning that I'm giggling just at the memory of THE CHATEAU (59) (dir., Jesse Peretz) Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Sylvie Testud, Philippe Nahon but can't in good conscience recommend such a ramshackle movie. Special 'Do You Have A Rheum?' Award to Mr. Rudd for pushing funny-foreigner humour as far as it'll go - and beyond : his enthusiasm carries it, what Pauline Kael referred to (re: Barry Bostwick in MOVIE MOVIE) as "that wonderful Dick Powell candied-yam cheerfulness" as he does his best to ingratiate himself with his French hosts, earnestly scrunching up his mouth to pronounce "chateau" or announce "Je t'aime, patate!", unaware he's making a declaration of love to the dinner-table spuds (his "Je m'appelle / Tu m'appelles" routine is also pretty hilarious). Film itself settles down to being merely sweet, though there are good things throughout - Rudd's monologue about self-help books, Testud's song accompanied by the human beatbox, a dance by candlelight, even Donal Logue turning up near the end to show how not to do improv. Did I mention it's all improvised?...

NINE QUEENS (51) (dir., Fabian Bielinsky) Ricardo Darin, Gaston Pauls, Leticia Bredice : HOUSE OF GAMES lite, except that nothing is very convincing - something of a fatal flaw with this kind of movie. Still entertaining, with its endless scams and truculent 'mark' (think Robert Shaw in THE STING), but there's not much there. Obviously got Bielinsky noticed, though...

MIRROR IMAGE (56) (dir., Hsiao Ya-Chuan) Lee Jiunn-Jye, Fan Hsiao-Fan, Era Wang : More a calling-card than a proper movie, overstretched even at 72 minutes. Playful, humorous, almost Godardian (circa BAND OF OUTSIDERS), but increasingly hard to discern a point - pawn-shop as mirror image of the country, perhaps (doing well when the economy's doing badly and vice versa)? characters as mirror images of each other (which is why scenes are repeated from various viewpoints)? Diverting nonetheless - heroes talk in funny voices, a stuffed toy says "Fuck you" when you press a button, and the young actress who plays Eiko has terrific comic timing. Nice to see they're making these kinds of films in Taiwan as well, esp. with Hou Hsiao-Hsien executive-producing...

PLATFORM (51) (dir., Jia Zhang Ke) Wang Hong-Wei, Zhao Tao, Liang Jing-Dong : As a solid block of life, quite remarkable : short of actually going there, I don't think I'll ever be able to hear rural China mentioned again without thinking of this movie. Human interest is minimal, though that may be the point - privileging master-shots so completely over close-ups seems designed to submerge individual dramas to the overall community and desolate landscape (grey brick houses, jagged blue mountains in the twilight). Meant, I guess, as a statement of China's long march to capitalism, but the point gets blunted somewhat (nothing seems to change after privatisation) and there's a certain condescension in emphasising how behind the times these hicks are, forever catching up to fashion a couple of years too late ; that said, if you want to hear "Brother Louie" sung in Chinese against a grim industrial backdrop, this may be your only chance. Don't think I've ever watched a film with so many walkouts in the audience ; still impressive, in its way.

LAN YU (39) (dir., Stanley Kwan) Jun Hu, Ye Liu, Jin Su : Dead in the water, but the images are nice : there's a weird mirror composition at one point - hero looking left with the mirror on his right, so the eye-lines are all screwed up - so at least you know it isn't some talentless hack at the helm. Starts as relationship movie, turns into a love story (as in LOVE STORY) ; sculpted light makes it good to look at, but it never engages and even the ending is wrong, spoiling a suggestive final shot with banal b&w insert. Political content is apparently there - East Berlin and Tiananmen Square both getting name-checks - but I totally missed it ; guess I wasn't really paying attention by that point...

Those who despise 'pretentious' foreign films often say things like "You only like [Movie X] because it's foreign" ; IN THE BEDROOM (47) (dir., Todd Field) Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Nick Stahl, Marisa Tomei seems to have the opposite effect, in that everyone seems to be loving it because it isn't foreign - because it features a high-voltage cast, with a pair of Oscar winners and everything, in the kind of melancholy piece (a study of bereavement) usually associated with dour arthouse auteurs. Never mind that it trudges dutifully through its scenes, filled with long-winded dialogue and lugubrious pauses ; never mind that it offers nothing like the poetic image of Nanni Moretti finding his redemption at the wheel of a car filled with sleeping children in THE SON'S ROOM (and boy, does it make that film look good), let alone the graceful overlapping strands of THE SWEET HEREAFTER ; never mind how second-tier it would seem if it were foreign ; this is Hollywood's idea of a 'serious movie', and already being tipped for Oscar glory.

It's a patently sincere film, out to 'examine' grief ; it means well, and occasionally finds a poignant moment. But it also features scenes like the bereaved couple watching TV as a stand-up comic comes on, his patter in tragic contrast to their pain (they don't change the channel, just sit there letting the whole Irony thing sink in), or else sitting in a car listening to the radio, gazing into nothingness, or else fielding gaffes by embarrassed friends ("I'm so sorry," say the friends, and our heroes nod sadly), or shaking people's hands with a muttered "I know" as they try to express their sympathy. It's the hardest thing in the world to portray grief convincingly, but there's nothing hard about thinking up such obvious indicators, or instructing your actors to sit still with furrowed brow - especially when the film is taking so unconscionably long about everything (the 135-minute running-time being an earnest of its sincerity), even the big quarrel scene going step-by-step from initial flare-up to final apology and conciliatory hug. It's as though Mr. Field wanted to make the definitive film on the subject, but grief is about the little things - sudden flashes of recognition that the person is gone, maybe finding something you want to share and suddenly remembering you can't - and should come in piercing moments, not a general morass of despondency ; above all, describing an experience literally is no substitute for expressing it cinematically. It makes you wonder whether Field is unaware of how arthouse films are made these days - how allusive and impressionistic they are about evoking loss, from YI YI to UNDER THE SAND to LATE AUGUST, EARLY SEPTEMBER. It all ends in violence - possibly going to show that it's not such a 'serious movie' after all...

CATCH US IF YOU CAN (62) (dir., John Boorman, 1965) The Dave Clark Five, Barbara Ferris, Yootha Joyce : Imitation-silk purse out of a very definite sow's ear : the brief was presumably A HARD DAY'S NIGHT with the charmless Dave Clark Five as The Beatles, but Boorman goes off in a different direction - playing down the banter (Clark comes off as a terrible prig), bringing them in contact with the real world - fringe-dwelling hippies, an "old married couple". Everyone's looking for escape, tying in with the HARD DAY'S NIGHT-ish theme and making the masked ball sequence (everyone dressed as movie icons, tying in with film as the ultimate escapism) especially exhilarating. Works in fits and starts, but surprisingly interesting ; the Five's jazzy pop is the perfect counterpoint.

ZARDOZ (68) (dir., John Boorman, 1974) Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestelman : Incredibly bizarre, beautifully photographed sci-fi, taking in all kinds of themes - incl. the director as Wizard-of-Oz-like creator, just as Connery's life-memories become a movie shown in the Vortex, created by the man he killed ; also of course a statement of primitivism, pitting Connery against the over-civilised Vortexians, insisting that violence and anger (and above all Death) are a necessary part of being human - hence the lovely final shot, time-lapsing life in a few seconds. Gets far too silly in the final section - Boorman loves themes, but a simple action climax is beyond him - and the whole thing has a whiff of Monty Python, with those tacky pastel costumes out of LOGAN'S RUN. Ambitious and remarkable, nonetheless.

EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (18) (dir., John Boorman, 1977) Richard Burton, Linda Blair, Louise Fletcher, Max von Sydow ; They really don't make them like this anymore : no studio would be so profligate today with the sequel to a blockbuster and potential franchise. Just a train-wreck of a movie, getting worse as it goes along. Burton is awful.

ACTRESS (53) (dir., Stanley Kwan, 1992) Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau, Tony Leung Kar-Fai : This (apprently mutilated) 126-minute version isn't as bad as they say - certainly enough here to suggest how the full version works (breaking up the period story with Brechtian alienation effects), without quite convincing that a masterpiece could be made of this material. Heroine is opaque, which seems to be the point - 'created' by various directors, though it's clear she also had a hand in her career ; her extended death scene remains potent, and of course Cheung is gorgeous. Absorbing rather than compelling.

LEO THE LAST (44) (dir., John Boorman, 1970) Marcello Mastroianni, Billie Whitelaw, Calvin Lockhart : Boorman's films always seem to flirt with risibility, usually avoid it through stunning visuals : this is more of an 'interesting', deliberately muddy look (compounded by a bad print) and never quite takes off, falling apart in the final scenes. Note equation of protagonist and Boorman himself (life = movie, as in ZARDOZ, though in this case the camera is a telescope) and French Revolution analogy, barricades and all. Generally a failure ; isn't it great that Hollywood - viz. United Artists - made the occasional mad, ambitious movie like this, though?...

EXCALIBUR (69) (dir., John Boorman, 1981) Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Nicholas Clay, Cherie Lunghi, Nicol Williamson : Second viewing, still the loopiest of Arthurian legends - Williamson's burlesque Merlin a particularly inspired idea, equating magic with humorous detachment (nothing brings us down as surely as self-importance). Combination of graphic spectacle, Wagnerian riffs, cheeky self-parody and melancholy fatalism - plus the way action is telescoped, everything happening so fast - makes for a film unlike any other. Intoxicating.