GFF - To Each Her Own Cinema

To celebrate Cannes 60th birthday, the festival has commissioned a cavalcade of world class directors to create their own homage to the enigmatic art form of cinema itself. But don't think To Each His Own Cinema is all sobbing into light projected memories, although some of it is exactly that. There is also a cynical and ironic response to the 'moving' image. Sandra Dupuy and Emma Lennox pick out some of the 33 strong shorts to explore this love/ hate relationship in what is surely cinema's finest naval gazing.

Sandra’s selection:

For Gilles Jacob, Cannes’ life-long director, the mammoth festival’s 60 candles had to be blown in a different direction this time. No complacency, no gushing tribute, and if possible, no overwhelming nostalgia. The main rules were that To Each His Own Cinema had to be a compilation of 3 minute long segments. Jacob and his team gathered 33 directors from all five continents and from 25 different countries. The general assignment was to translate “their current state of mind as inspired by the motion picture theatre.” No director was to know of the other fragments and synopses from colleagues, and they all accepted to discover the film at the same time as festival-goers and the general public, who were able to watch it thanks to an evening replay on French TV.

As Jacob points out, these shorts are made by drastically different individuals expressing varied aesthetic orientations and thematic preoccupations. The 33 directors are visual poets who capture a parcel of the world and transcend it into an art, cinema, “which under our very eyes creates its own history”. It’s amazing to witness the freshness, pretension-free audacity and accessibility of these sketches, which so skilfully translate the melting-pot aspect of their cultures, origins and talent into 3 minute wonders.

One of the main questions the film raises is whether art imitates reality and whether nature necessarily prevails over nurture. The most extreme example of this occasionally uneasy cohabitation is Amos Gitai’s Le Dibbouk de Haifa. A mixed crowd of Israelis and Palestinians is enjoying a movie until a bomb is dropped on the cinema and the roof collapses, killing and injuring people from both sides. For highly political Israeli Gitai, art for the sake of it can only be enjoyed up to the point where it dissolves behind life’s grim reality. And can one even be bothered thinking about films when he or she confronts daily life-threatening situations?

Cronenberg’s short is politically charged, but also ferociously ironic, as he films himself At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World. The sequence shows him grimacing and trying to position his gun in the best (and often ridiculous) possible ways to commit suicide. Cronenberg’s hilarious performance would on its own have an impact, which is here enhanced by the mock commentary delivered all the way through by unseen and abject Fox-type TV presenters seeking the ultimate juicy drama, like the media vultures they are. The ending sentence “Don’t worry, we will keep you informed all the way to the end” cynically resonates, bringing echoes of past news reports where journalists, seemingly unable to help victims materially, revelled nevertheless on documenting slow and painful deaths.

Finnish cult director Aki Kaurismaki treats us to his unique blend of dry humour and mock socialism, setting his screening in a metal factory (La Fonderie/ The Foundry) and using fetish actor Matti Pellonpää, former Leningrad Cowboy, in a typical low-key, silent and comical performance. Roman Polanski’s Cinéma Erotique, in a completely different register, turns upside down the porn-cinema cliché of the masturbating loner, adding to the scarce showroom audience a middle-aged couple, who gets more and more “inconvenienced” by increasingly loud grunts from their back-row co-viewer. As for Nanni Moretti, he distillates in Diario di uno spettattore his inimitable mix of self-deprecating humour and shameless cinephilia.

All of these, along with Takeshi Kitano, Chen Kaige, Tsai Min Liang, Jane Campion and Lars Von Trier, manage to send an uplifting love message to cinema, and to their audience, while keeping their feet solidly on reality’s ground. All shorts are not equally entertaining, some even feel incredibly pompous or boring or both (I’m thinking of Michael Cimino’s segment, as well as those of Youssef Chahine, Gus Van Sant or Wong Kar-Wai), but the main reproach that can be done is that the film doesn’t including more female directors such as French veteran Claire Denis or young Iranian prodigy Samira Makmalbaf, daughter of the great Mohsen Makmalbaf, one of Iran’s leading directors alongside Abbas Kiarostami. Whether this is due to unavailability or negligence I don’t know, but it reminds us once again how male-centred the industry still is.

Emma’s selection:

The problems of cinema come from issues of power and responsibility, in particular as cultural propaganda for Western ideology. Though the wide array of world directors is able to show global perspectives, it often describes the 'idea' of cinema as nostalgic and American. Children in rural China watch Charlie Chaplin, there are Westerns in Africa, and some Indian teenagers are treated to fashions and styles far removed from their own. There is a melancholy tone to some descriptions of viewings about the fact that this social medium hasn't been used to mythologize their own culture and stories.

The Coen brothers turn this on its head in their clever character led film, World Cinema. An ignorant cowboy, Josh Brolin, tries to pick which classic of world cinema to watch (either Rules of the Game, or Climates) and is suitably moved by the experience, or is it the sales clerk?

But more strongly put is the opposite case, and here are examples in which the directors seem to be saying it's life which is beautiful.

Takeshi Kitano's One Fine Day depicts a failed cinema going experience in which a farmer can’t manage to watch Kitano's Kids’ Return. With little dialogue, the film is a humorous farce cleverly interweaving moments of Kids’ Return as a punchline. Disgruntled, the farmer leaves the cinema to walk home through a beautiful vista of setting sun and mountains, into the eponymous 'fine day'.

Ken Loach- Happy Ending
In the face of increasingly ridiculous and schlock blockbusters, a father and son decide instead to go the football. It's simple, satirical and charming, and who's going to criticise Ken Loach for a happy ending?

Walter Salles- A 8944km de Cannes
Without stepping foot inside a cinema, two Brazilian musicians, Castanha and Caju, do a 3 min freestyle in honour of the Cannes Festival. The talent on display rather enforces music as the world's most potent and entertaining medium, and as they wander off screen Castanha admits that he's never been to Cannes, he just learned about it on the internet.

Wim Wenders' War in Peace is out of the serious shorts the most successful political statement made. It documents an actual screening of Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down to a village in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The grim faces of the adults and children, shot in infrared of the dark screening are contrasted by events outside the make shift cinema, where music and community fill the surroundings. The Western imperialism is emphasised in the juxtaposition of the real victims of war against the racially problematic and biased American entertainment film.

Whatever your perspective on cinema is, one thing that all cinephiles can agree on is the premise for Lars Von Trier's short Occupations. As shockingly violent as it is hilarious, the point is made clear: if there is anyone you should truly hate, it's the film critic.

GFF Review: Special People – by Joseph Wren

Director: Justin Edgar
Screenwriter: Justin Edgar
Running Time: 78 mins

Going into a film called Special People, about a trio of wheelchair-bound teenagers in London trying to make a film, one might get the impression that they’re in for a weep-tastic tale of the triumph of the will over monumental adversity. Luckily, that’s not the case, and the film’s title proves more apt as sarcasm than sentiment.

A failed yet pretentious “director” named Jasper has apparently come to terms with his lack of talent, but once inspired by one of his wheelchair-bound students testimonials about the “everyday uphill struggle” of being disabled, Jasper sees opportunity to co-opt her tale into an inspirational film in a desperate effort to finally make his cinematic masterpiece. What follows are a collection of awkwardly hilarious episodes reminiscent of the comedy of Ricky Gervais or Larry David. When the student film’s crippled star sustains a leg injury, Jasper replies “well to be honest, she doesn’t really use it much anyway”. It’s the bad taste that gets the laughs, and Justin Edgar has a definite flair for writing such sarcastic dialogue. However, his attempts at serious human drama are poorly presented, and the characters one-dimensional. While certainly funny, the film lacks cinematic quality, and its specific brand of humour is best suited for the small screen.

GFF Review: Irina Palm-by Carmody Wilson

Director: Sam Garbarski
Running Time: 103 minutes
Certificate: 15

Marianne Faithfulli s a better actor than singer. That said, she doesn’t appear to give very good handjobs. And that is what Ms Faithfull spends the majority of her time doing in the film, greasing up and jerking off until she can afford to pay for her grandson’s medical treatment. Faitfhull’s performance as Maggie is very slow and deliberate, her dilemma palpably uncomfortable as she contemplates the get-rich- quick route she has chosen to help her family get to Australia. Miki Manojlovic appears alongside as not-quite sleazy club owner Miki, who provides Maggie with friendship as well as filthy lucre, for her trouble.

A sad, troubling, but strangely light- textured film, Irina Palm makes giving hand jobs for money seem a slight headache, rather than a gruesome alternative to working in McDonald’s. Faithfull’s turn as Maggie exhibits a rare dowdiness for the performer, with shot after shot of Maggie shown stumpily tramping down to Soho in her aubergine coat and grandmother’s handbag. It’s an unaffected film, (save for the awful, spitting performance of Kevin Bishop as Maggie’s son-why wasn’t he the one giving handjobs?) with gray, listless London serving as the antidote to the pulsing, gyrating environment of the club. Maggie’s old life disintegrates as she accepts and adapts to her new life, with her friend and coworker at the club warning her stridently to “keep them separate.” Maggie’s workmanlike approach to her job leads to a new confidence, and she oddly, gets a sort of redemption from her little enterprise, in a new relationship with her daughter-in-law, the shedding of negative friends, and, presumably new skills that would make her highly desirable on the singles dating market. Still, they look like godawful handjobs.

Irina Palm isn’t some kind of empowering-through-sex film, though it isn’t a down-and-outer either. There’s nothing really tawdry here. What it is is a quiet portrait of hard deeds done in hard times by a woman who didn’t know she had it in her.

GFF Review: Crazy Love-by Carmody Wilson

Director: Dan Klores
Running Time: 92 minutes
Certificate:12A

Got an ex-boyfriend who just won’t leave you alone? What a yold. Engaged to someone new? That’s a mitzvah. Your old boyfriend hears about it and has acid thrown in your face? Oy vey. That’s the gist of the story behind director Dan Klores’ nutso documentary, Crazy Love. Only, dear reader, she married him. Not the original fiancée, but the lovelorn psycho who blinded her with his jealousy. And that‘s only half the kookiness.

Lovely Linda Riss was a Bronx beauty with a host of suitors. Burt Pugash was a homely lawyer with a career as an ambulance chaser. They meet. Roses are given. A trip in an airplane, nights out in private clubs, jewelery, all are on offer. Linda demurs and dates his guy. Burt is in love. There’s one small snag: Burt’s married. Linda flees, gets on with her life, finds new love. Burt stalks, threatens, and harasses her, finally hiring some local toughs to throw acid in her face. Linda is blinded and scarred for life. Burt goes to jail. He woos her, relentlessly writing letters. Linda travels to Europe, wears glam sunglasses and beautiful caftans. Burt gets out. They get married. Yep, that’s Crazy Love.

Done as a series of interviews with the people who know them best, the Riss-Pugash story emerges as more than bizarre, at least, in part, because of the real-life characters who share their hands in the romance. There are plenty of enormous wattles, dazzling displays of veneers so huge they almost overpower the wattles (almost) and Brooklyn accents so thick you’d think you were in a lineup in a deli somewhere. Friends of Linda’s speak out against Burt from the get-go, only to demur that he’s okay because he treats her okay now. The police officer assigned to protect Linda whilst she was in the hospital recovering from Burt’s acid attack was the one who suggested that Linda reconcile with Burt, and a lawyer friend of Pugash’s tells that he told Burt to “kill off those niggers” who had performed the dirty deed only to “discover, to my embarrassment, there was a tape recording the whole conversation!!!” Embarrassing indeed.

Crazy Love is an exercise in viewing credulity. You can never quite believe what you’re seeing and hearing, and the constant assault of “Oh my God” moments never stop, least of all when it’s revealed, late in the film, that Burt was charged with threatening and stalking another woman. But all is quickly “righted”, and Burt and Linda are left to ride off into the sunset, a sunset he has arranged with laundered money that she’ll never see because her husband threw acid in her face and blinded her.

GFF Review: Four Minutes - by Robert Duffin

Director: Chris Kraus
Screenwriter: Chris Kraus
Running Time: 112 mins
Certificate: 12

When introducing the film at the GFT, festival co-director Alan Hunter told us that Variety had described Four Minutes as Shine meets Prisoner Cell Block H, but he believed it to be classier than that. Thankfully he was correct, and Variety was wrong. The film is set in an all women’s prison just outside Berlin where bad-tempered spinster Ms Kruger (Monica Bleibtreu) has been teaching inmates to play the piano for years. She then encounters the bitter nihilist Jenny (Hannah Herzsprung) whose troubled upbringing is threatening to sabotage her savant like musical genius. Together the two polar opposite women agree to disagree and attempt to win competitions.

The narrative arc is a little over familiar, but the strength of the performances, both acting and musical, makes this an exceptionally powerful drama. Herzsprung in particular deserves plaudits for her feral Jenny, and her piano performances, including once scene where she plays a rousing number with her hands handcuffed behind her back. Bleibtreu too is wonderful as the spinster with a secret past. The octogenarian has outlived the Nazis and seen the face of Germany change, leaving her lost in a new world with only music to cling to. The chemistry between the two leads is first-rate, especially in the lighter moments, such as when poor forward planning results in them swapping outfits at a recital. Ultimately though it boils down to those final four minutes, and a performance that will send you out the theatre on a wave of euphoria. It has a March release date, so look out for it if it opens near you.

Check out the cuffed piano playing...

GFF Review: California Dreamin’ (Endless) – by Joseph Wren

Director: Cristian Nemescu
Screenwriters: Cristian Nemescu, Catherine Linstrum, Tudor Voican
Running Time: 155 mins
Certificate: TBD
UK Release Date: 11 April

The (Endless) in the title doesn’t exactly refer to the film’s particularly long running time, but the fact that this film is being released without having been properly finished. Prior to completing post-production of California Dreamin’, the film’s talented young director, Cristian Nemescu, lost his life in an auto accident, and the film as we see it is the way that Nemescu left it, which was nearly finished, which makes for a particularly unique cinematic experience.

Taken from a true story, a group of American Marines transporting NATO cargo have their train stopped in a small Romanian town en route to Kosovo during the war in 1999. While stuck waiting for paperwork to arrive, the town’s mayor takes advantage of the new visitors, convincing the townspeople to celebrate and embrace the Americans in hopes of boosting the town’s profile and economy. The results are hilarious, as the Marines are invited to a celebration in which they are entertained by an Elvis impersonator, performing atop a stage decorated by paintings of American icons such as Bill Clinton and The Terminator. Romanian schoolgirls look for excitement, and the film’s main character is a sexy teenager named Monica, a quiet but explosive soul who falls for one of the Marines in hopes of getting a ticket out of town. Operating on a multi-strand narrative, which includes flashbacks to another character’s experience during a WWII bombing, as well as the tensions between the hot-headed Commanding Officer and everyone else in his way to Kosovo, the film covers a lot of ground before its ambiguous conclusion.

Nemescu and his co-writers have shown a tremendous knack for dialogue, including the English speaking parts, which flow with a natural rhythm adding to the film’s realism. The film, though overlong and unfinished, is always interesting, relevant, and often exceptionally funny. California Dreamin’ ranks among the very best in recent Romanian cinema, further exhibiting that the national sensibilities of black humor and humanity are something very special.

GFF Review: An Unlikely Weapon -by Carmody Wilson

Directed by Susan Morgan Cooper
Written by Susan Morgan Cooper
Running: 96 minutes
Certificate: 15

A documentary which looks at the life and work of photographer Eddie Adams, the title could refer to his camera, his most famous photograph or Adams himself. Gaining fame as a photographer for the Associated Press, Adams was embedded with the U.S. forces in Vietnam, and charged with photographing the daily grind of destruction and carnage that characterized the American occupation. While other photographers were sent home for being “too political”, Adams stayed on, his gritty images wired around the world as a testament to the war’s brutality and the man’s ability to capture it. The big break came when Adams, as the Americans were pulling out, snapped a last-minute shot of the Chief of Police shooting a member of the Vietcong in the head. The photo set the world on fire, and Adams was credited with taking the picture that ended the war. Adams, a blunt, plain-spoken maverick given to corrupted, curse-laden philosophies, shied away from all the attention the photograph gave him.

The film is a straight-up chronicle of Adams as a professional, delving little into his past or personal life. Interviews with legendary newsmen Tom Brokaw, Morley Safer, and Peter Jennings testify to Adams’ talent as a photojournalist, if the grainy, digitized versions of his photos don’t. The quality of the storytelling is high, with interviews with the above, Adams himself, fellow photographers, and his family, but the production quality sticks out like a sore thumb. Shot on digital, with little respect for sound levels or consistent lighting, the message suffers because of the medium. With Eddie Adams as its subject, the film deserved a little more care in its construction, but bumpy images and mic spikes aside, the man and his work are fascinating and worth watching.

GFF review: Shotgun Stories, by Sandra Dupuy

Director: Jeff Nichols
Screenplay: Jeff Nichols
Running time: 90 min
Certificate: 18
Screening: 20th and 21st of February at the GFT; on general release from the 11th of April

Shotgun Stories is sharp as a knife and languid as a sunny afternoon stroll in the town of England, Arkansas. In his first feature, director, writer and producer Jeff Nichols engineers a feud between two sets of half brothers whose father has just died. Son (Michael Shannon), Boy (Douglas Ligon) and Kid Hayes (Barlow Jacobs) are the unlucky first brood of “a man who made [their] life hell and left [them] to be raised by a hateful woman”, says the elder in an impromptu and unwelcome speech at the old man’s funeral, where his second wife and her four sons are present. The incident will soon assume the accents of a Greek tragedy, escalating into ineluctable hate, desperation and death.

Nichols, in a harrowing succession of short and potent scenes, depicts life in the cotton fields and back roads of poor rural Arkansas, filming derelict landscapes and abandoned silos on the fringes of town, where stray dogs roam for scraps of food and miserable souls give in to hopelessness out of sheer lassitude. The disenchanted characters of Shotgun Stories possess the quiet resignation of Cormac McCarthy’s lowlifes and the simmering anger so powerfully orchestrated by Tennessee Williams. Son, Boy and Kid, the three unnamed and unwanted brothers, cannot keep up with a dreamless life of wandering until the fundamental wrong, the primeval abandon, has been righted.

The director’s elliptic style is well complemented by Adam Stone’s striking cinematography. A natural golden and powdery daylight contrasts deep blue skies with yellow fields and brown dirt tracks through which the characters, wrapped in tense silence, drag grief and grudges for eternity. Looks are essential tools of cinema language, and the exchange of gazes between brothers, husbands and wives or parents and sons reveal much more than all the histrionics in the world.

Never melodramatic or self-indulgent, Nichols' script leaves space for a documentary-like approach to performance and violence. Simultaneously infused with the festering fury of Elia Kazan’s East of Eden (1955) and the harsh poetry of Terence Malick’s meandering Badlands (1973), Shotgun Stories calls for compelling and compulsory viewing.

GFF Review: Youssou N'Dour: Return to Goree - by Emma J. Lennox

Director: Pierre Yves Borgeaud
Running time: 110 mins

“At the bottom of the Atlantic ocean there is a rail road, made of human bones; black ivory, black ivory” The potent words of American poet, Amiri Baraka are a powerful example that nothing can begin to comprehend the history of slavery, suppression and inhumanity like music, poetry, community and love. Youssou N'Dour discovers all of these on a journey which takes him around America and back to his native Senegal on a mission to reunite the black diaspora with its history.

Goree is the infamous island off the coast of Dakar which was used as a departure point for the slave trade for America and Europe. It's House of Slaves, built in 1784 still stands to this day and remains testimony to the sad history and ravaged African west coast. Yet triumphantly it is in the ruins of these cramped quarters that N'Dour has planned a concert uniting Americans with Africa, jazz with mbalax, and the present with its past.

On search for the talent who will bring different elements to the musical experience, N'Dour picks up gospel singers in Atalanta, and jazz musicians in New Orleans and New York city. The individuals he meets have their own personal histories to consider, as well as that of the music they perform. A diegesis of black music is explored in analytical and historical context with discoveries of some rhythms starting in Senegalese tradition and winding up in the streets of New Orleans' Mardi Gras. Percussionist Idris Muhammed has played for hundreds of musicians from Sam Cooke to Herbie Hancock and his expertise on rhythm is unparalleled, but even he seems to have a spiritual awakening on visiting Dakar and hearing the local djembe players.


There is ecstatic excitement when the various musicians are finally brought to their destination concert, in particular the three gospel singing Turner brothers who see it as a kind of 'homecoming'. Early on there is some tension when N'Dour insists that the brothers don't add a Christian perspective to his songs and an uncomfortable moment follows when the Moslem N'Dour enters the Atalanta church to perform. The Turners' journey to Goree, however, creates perhaps the most poignant scene in the documentary when they are given the tour of the House of Slaves. Standing by a portal which opens directly onto the vast ocean and the Americas beyond, they sing in harmony 'Return to Glory'. Amidst the stone walls which were used to house captured Africans for centuries this song somehow breaks down the fortress with their strength of voice and resolution. To see and hear these three proud African-Americans belting out gospel in the confined icon of the slave trade seems like victory.

The music is beautiful, not just because of the strength of the performances but because they are still amplified and resonate with hardships and the hope of overcoming it. The pain of a people has been distilled over centuries into keyboards, strings and vocal chords which continues to emote in neighbourhoods and communities world wide and is palpable here in the cinema auditorium. The power of music to unite is Return to Goree's central message, but the power to move is its welcome effect.

GFF Review: Funny Games U.S. - by Robert Duffin

Director: Michael Haneke
Screenwriter: Michael Haneke
Running Time: 119 mins
Certificate: 18

Like Gus Van Sant’s Psycho, Michael Haneke’s English language shot for shot remake of his own 1997 Austrian shocker Funny Games is likely to divide the fan base. Haneke has said the sole purpose of this remake was to allow the film to reach a wider audience, and given it’s wider cultural critique on violence in cinema, perhaps Haneke always meant to unleash this intellectual exercise in torture on American audiences. For those who missed it first time around, the film is about a middle class couple, George (Tim Roth) and Anna (Naomi Watts) and their son Georgie (Devon Gearhart) who are heading to their lakeside vacation home. Upon arrival they are confronted by two mild mannered young men, Peter (Brady Corbet) and Paul (Michael Pitt) who at first are only after eggs for the neighbour but quickly turn to full on home invasion.

Once again Haneke subverts our notions and forces us to question representations of violence in cinema. The unspeakable acts, while mostly taking place off screen, are made unbearably tense by his insistence on long unbroken takes and framing that often takes focus away from the obvious action. Yet just when you begin to feel suitably distanced from the horror, the fourth wall will be shattered along with your nerve. From the faux red herrings to the wonderful performances (why isn’t Tim Roth in more movies?), Funny Games U.S. would be a masterpiece if only it added something to the original. Everything, from the shots, to the dialogue, plot points and even the ear piercing John Zorn thrash punk track that crashes into the opening credits remain the same. As it is, Funny Games ’97 is the masterpiece; a self-reflexive exercise on media, culture and violence, everything that Natural Born Killers wanted so desperately to be. Funny Games U.S. on the other hand is somewhat of a curio, like a straightforward cover version of a great song; it’s still great but somewhat diluted by repetition.

Even the trailers are practically cut the same:

‘97



U.S.

GFF Review: Charlie Bartlett – by Joseph Wren

Director: Jon Poll
Screenwriter: Gustin Nash
Running Time: 97 mins
Certificate: 15

On paper, there’s not all that much to like about Charlie Bartlett. He’s a ludicrously rich teenager who runs out of private schools to get kicked out of and lands in public high school - full of stoners, punks, jocks and every other kid expressing their God-given right as a teenager to be awkward, self-involved, and irrational. In order to win over the moody masses, attentive entrepreneur Charlie holds shrink sessions with his classmates in the loo and feeds them all drugs – the legal kind, like Xanax and Ritalin. Do I really want to care about a rich kid who sells drugs in order to boost his popularity with the gritty blue collar lot? Not so much, but actor Anton Yelchin’s performance in the role is bursting with so much charisma that he actually makes it work. Hope Davis is brilliant as Charlie’s cheerily depressed mum, and Robert Downey Jr. works his raging alcoholic magic as Charlie’s authoritative nemesis.

In the school of teen comedies, the smart but cliché-ridden Charlie Bartlett isn’t quite in the same class as Ferris Bueller, Rushmore, or Juno, but Jon Poll’s debut feature has enough charm to merit a passing mark.

GFF News Update: Cineworld Reopens

With little fanfare, presumably because most people weren't aware it was closed for 24 hours, Cineworld on Renfrew Street has reopened. Glasgow Film Festival screenings have also recommenced so all is well once more.

GFF Review: In Search of a Midnight Kiss - by Robert Duffin

Director: Alex Holdridge
Screenwriter: Alex Holdridge
Running Time: 90 mins
Certificate: TBC

It was my Edinburgh Film Festival “one that got away”, and tonight the GFF finally afforded me the opportunity to see Alex Holdridge’s acclaimed In Search of a Midnight Kiss, and it was certainly worth the wait. The film follows failing screenwriter Wilson (Scoot McNairy) whose life is crumbling before him, and after one particularly embarrassing situation (caught masturbating over photoshopped pictures of his best friends girlfriend), he is determined not to spend New Year’s Eve alone. Using the Internet he meets up with Vivien (Sara Simmonds); a chain smoking, vodka slugging, man hater with a jilted ex on her case. Somehow, these two social misfits find solace in one another and it results in a bittersweet delight of a film.

The crisp black and white photography on digital is a wonder, capturing the smoggy atmosphere of La La Land refracted through derelict theatres and open rooftops. LA has never looked this good before. McNairy and Simmonds have a delicate chemistry that plays well whether they are sharing jokes or revealing their true fragile selves. Their interplay, guarded and cynical at first but slowly melting into heartbreaking emotional dependence is beautifully written, as is the films dark humour and playful banter. In a period where ‘American indie’ has become more of an aesthetic than an ideal, In Search of a Midnight Kiss is truly the best of its kind I’ve seen in years.

GFF- Far North - by Sandra Dupuy

Director: Asif Kapadia
Screenplay: Asif Kapadia and Tim Miller, from a short story by Sarah Maitland
Running time: 89 min
Certificate: 15
Screening: 18th and 19th of February, GFT

With a fluid tracking shot over desolate Arctic landscapes where frozen seas neighbour inaccessible glaciers, you’re immediately immersed in the chilling depths of Asif Kapadia’s second film. Like his BAFTA winning feature The Warrior (2001), Far North’s epic and contemplative feel as well as its barren plot admirably serve the intricate character study at work.

The icy tundra is the ideal casket for a village witch to cast a spell on young and innocent Saiva (Michelle Yeoh). Far North’s tale of malevolence opens with Yeoh’s haunting face and bewitching voice reminiscing about past events slowly brought to the surface via brutal flashbacks. The present finds her sharing a yurt in the middle of nowhere with younger Anja (Michelle Krusiek). Their seemingly peaceful pace is turned upside down when Saiva finds a man (Sean Bean) at death’s door on the nearby ice floe.

Kapadia’s camera slowly lingers on the characters’ windswept faces and the disquieting landscapes, involuntary witnesses of past wrongs and insanity in progress. Krusiek’s subtle performance as Saiva’s fresh and naïve companion efficiently contrasts with Yeoh’s, as fascinating as ever. The Hong-Kong legend empowers her grieving character with enough dignity and mystery to carry the film through to its creepy ending. Even Sean Bean who plays Loki, a wounded 21st century Beowulf, gets away with minimal acting thanks to his abundant scars and pained grimaces.

Fire smoulders under the ice, as it did in Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat (2001), though the shamanism dimension isn’t as prevalent. Yeoh’s take on the avenging angel (her character presents similarities with Asami from Takashi Miike’s 1999 Audition) as well as Kapadia’s stunning adaptation will definitely hoist Far North into the pantheon of taut thrillers behind closed doors.

GFF News Update: Cineworld Closed - by Robert Duffin

The GFF team sadly announced today that due to technical problems, the Cineworld on Renfrew Street has been closed for the foreseeable future. All cancelled performances will be honoured or rescheduled and anyone with a ticket should take it to the Glasgow Film Theatre Box Office.

Early reports suggest that the characters from several of the films screening have in fact come to life, thanks to a malfunctioning print of U2 3D. Daniel Plainview is hording the entire snack based sustenance on the top floor in a move he has told the press is known as “DRAAAAINAGE.” Of course Bono is in the lobby singing a song about how terrible it all is, backed more suitably by Alvin and The Chipmunks. Meanwhile we hear that Anton Chigurh has gone in the huff, after Jean-Dominique Bauby consistently ignored his order to “call it.” We haven’t heard from Juno MaGuff, but we can safely bet she’s kicking about somewhere saying something that will be coming to a t-shirt near you very soon.

IN ALL SERIOUSNESS….

This is such unfortunate timing, and we hope things can be fixed quickly. Our Festival insider has told us there has been an electrical fault with their emergency lighting system, which is presumably a health and safety nightmare. How many people does it take to change a light bulb? Well hopefully they have enough and will be opening their doors very soon to commence with general business, and of course all the exciting GFF screenings yet to be seen.

Check these sources for the latest updates, or you can come back here, it’s nice here, tell your friends…http://www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk/

GFF Review: The Girl By The Lake - by Robert Duffin

Director: Andrea Molaioli
Screenwriter: Sandro Petragalia
Running Time: 95mins
Certificate: TBC

In her debut feature film, director Andrea Molaioli clearly understands the “game” of the murder mystery. As the film opens, we follow eight-year-old Martha (Nicole Perrone) as she toddles off to school through the idyllic Italian village where everybody gives her a warm “good morning.” In an excruciatingly tense long shot, we see her accept a lift from a stranger, who turns out to be a lumbering simpleton named Mario (Franco Ravera). He takes Martha home to show her his pet rabbits and…she totters home safely. She’s not the girl of the title, and with one devilish red herring we’re quickly aware that nothing will be as it seems from her on in.

The girl of the title is Anna (Alessia Piovan) found strangled by the lake, leaving behind an endless stream of potential suspects: her abrasive boyfriend Roberto (Denis Fasolo), slightly perverted father Davide (Marco Baliani), and, of course, village fool Mario. Into the Italian Dolomites comes the world weary Inspector Giovanni Sanzio (Toni Servillo) who is looking to solve yet another case, if only to shut out his own personal problems.

Mercurial, with a biting wit, Sanzio does not suffer fools gladly and Servillo gives a masterful performance, channelling years of hurt through his soulful eyes and hand dog expressions. Molaioli gives very assured direction for a first time filmmaker, casting a looming shadow over the tranquil town in a way eerily reminiscent of another small town where a young woman turned up dead in the water, “wrapped in plastic”. Unfortunately the Twin Peaks comparison shows up this films only major flaw; there’s a sense of a serial story, even once the final frame has come and gone we don’t delve nearly enough into the darkness that lives beneath the surface of the extended cast. In spite of this, The Girl By The Lake is haunting, cold, and best of all, a whodunit with real mystery at its core.

GFF Review: Mataharis - by Robert Duffin

Director: Iciar Bollain
Screenwriter: Iciar Bollain & Tatiana Rodriguez
Running Time: 100 mins

Fom writer/director Iciar Bollain (Take My Eyes), wife of Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty, comes Mataharis, a Madrid set tale of three female private detectives. No ‘girl power’ pop clichés here though, think Ken Loach’s Charlie’s Angels. Carmen (Nuria Gonzalez), Inès (Maria Vazquez), and Eva (Najwa Nimri) are three working women, struggling to juggle the commitments of their demanding jobs and disastrous personal lives. Carmen is struggling to reconnect with her husband while falling for a client, Eva suspects her husband is harbouring a dark secret and Inès has been hired to infiltrate a multinational corporation and spy on Union activists.

The film suffers from a slight televisual aesthetic, but Bollain’s steadicam lensing and location photography gives the film a feel of urban grittiness. The three intertwining narratives also suffer from over familiarity; secret trysts and stockholm syndrome are easily predicted. However Bollain and Rodriguez’s sharp writing and characterisation results in three affable and empathetic women who get at the heart of the inherent juxtaposition in their lives: they’re surveillance methods are flawless, but they can never understand what’s going on in their personal situations. The marital disintegration of Eva and Inaki (Tristan Ulloa) is genuinely shattering, as is the doomed relationship between Inès and Union ringleader Manuel (Diego Martin). The three leads, well known in their native land, shine here, as does Bollain who can return to the Laverty household with her head held high.

GFF Review: XXY by Carmody Wilson

Director: Lucia Puenzo
Screenplay: Lucia Puenzo
Runtime: 91 minutes
Spanish with subtitles
Screening: CCA 19 February, 8:30

XXY is a thoughtful, open-ended film bringing a whole lot of big issues to the table, not least among them the central issues of hermaphrodites and teenage sexual awakenings. Any teenager faced with his/her first sexual attraction has problems to work out, but Alex has more conflicts to deal with than most, as she has been born a hermaphrodite, raised as a girl, and faced with a big decision as to which gender she will adopt. Enter surgeon Ramiro, his wife, and their son Alvaro, who come to stay with Alex’s family as the decision looms. Ines Efron is fearsome and fragile as Alex, a girl of almost feral inclinations, who as her body and heart’s desire go into dangerous places, flings herself farther into the wilderness of forests and the sea. An unexpected and confusing encounter with Alvaro brings both teenagers more questions than it answers, a situation unhelped by the brooding, uncommunicative stance that each teenager’s parents’ are taking. There’s nothing big about this film, as director Lucia Puenzo, in her debut as director, treats the subject matter as the family does, as a private matter, and the result is an intimate, sad, and contemplative story very well performed.

GFF review: Lonesome Jim - by Sandra Dupuy

Director: Steve Buscemi

Screenplay: James C. Strouse

Running time: 91 min

Certificate: 15

Screenings: 15th and 16th of February, GFT.

A pale landscape roughened by the faded grainy browns and greys of an Indiana winter slowly unfolds on the big screen. A slender silhouette staggers from the bus and the camera quickly closes on Casey Affleck’s melancholy face. Lonesome Jim’s back in town, dragging his despair and grudging humanity with him.

The self-confessed chronically depressed 27 year old, unable to make it as a part-time dog walker in Manhattan, reluctantly returns to his parents’ home-sweet-home in small town Indiana, sharing their unrequited affection with his older brother, a would-be CIA agent turned volunteer baseball coach, father of two and all round loser. Ensues a dry, bittersweet slice of life with old family dysfunctions festering under a smiley surface and a rocky romance punctuated with infectious laughter.

Rising star Affleck’s stunning performance and strong support from co-stars Liv Tyler (nurse and single Mom Anika), Mary Kay Place (Jim’s mother), Seymour Cassel (Jim’s father), Buscemi’s old pal Mark Boone Junior (Jim’s Uncle Evil) and child sensation Jack Rovello (Anika’s son Benjamin) provide endearing entertainment under the teasing and benevolent gaze of actor/director Steve Buscemi. A consummate performer himself, he lends the film his troubled philanthropy and quirky outlook on life. It has taken him five years to concoct another masterpiece in a minor key for the big screen, after the dark and gritty Animal Factory (2000), but his new directing adventure is well worth the wait. If the Montage team had to devise an award for the GFF’s best independent picture, Lonesome Jim would be your humble reviewer’s first choice.

GFF: It's a date; Leonardo Dicaprio, roses and the end of the world- by Emma Lennox

Feb 14^th, Valentine's day, but no need to check the mail box, I've got my plan sorted not only for tonight but for the next ten days; the Glasgow International Film festival has begun. So while the restaurants were filling with a growing sense of obligation and expense the more savvy, independently minded folk were heading to either the opening Gala film; Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, or the Leonardo Dicaprio produced buzz kill the 11^th Hour. Which to choose? The Cassandra's Dream screening was accompanied with goodie bags for every film goer, including a small taster of whisky, an issue of the quality magazine The Skinny, and a romantic red rose. The 11^th Hour screening was accompanied by the uncomfortable sensation that the hippies have been right all along, and not even pop can save us. Which to choose? Cassandra's Dream stars the very much still attractive and lovely Ewan McGregor and the Irish rogue, that you just would, Colin Farrell. The 11^th Hour stars uniquely bearded and bespectacled scientists with facts of how we're killing ourselves and bringing down most other living species with us. Of course Dicaprio makes a welcome appearance too, generally looking around at the world before summing up to camera what the scientists have just told us; we're screwed. Which to choose? Cassandra's Dream had sold out. Damn, well, I prefer documentaries anyway. There was good news, however, when festival director Allison Gardner announced before the screening that there would be a champagne reception after the film, and that everyone was invited. Things were looking up, and then the lights went down, the projector started and it was the end of the world.

If a film were needed to explain to an alien race just what planet Earth is like then the 11^th Hour is a good place to start, NASA should start firing out DVDs to random corners of the galaxy just in case an alien civilisation out there has a DVD player. The documentary uses beautiful and scenic found footage to give an overview of the entire planet; the habitats, the cultures, the species and the incredible landscapes. These pictures alone make it worth while watching on the large cinema screen. Much of the rest of the film is taken up with over 50 interviews of notable environmentalists and scientists including Stephen Hawkings, and Nobel Peace Prize winning Dr Wangari Maathai. It starts off good; we are nature, nature is amazing, therefore we are amazing. This quickly subsides into: we are greedy, natural resources aren't abundant, therefore we are digging ourselves into an early and polluted mass grave.

In comparison to the Oscar winning An Inconvenient Truth, the 11^th Hour has a less personal but wider focus. It covers the entire history of the planet, the growth of our civilisation, how the industrial era has caused irreparable damage and how economics and globalisation is blinding us to the needs of the world. Inevitably there is the feeling that a lot of information is being skimmed to cram it all in; just one of these facts could warrant a film of its own. The doom saying gets a bit relentless until the design futurists start to tell us of some solutions. Suddenly a utopian world where buildings act like trees and power themselves, cars can click together and night clubs use dance power (at least that's what the graphic looked like) is spread out before us. There may be some hope after all. Ignore the American bias and the intrusive soundtrack and 11^th Hour is an intelligent and rewarding watch.

A quick round of high fives with friends for having energy saving light bulbs (they do make a difference), and it was time to party. With free wine and champagne flowing, it was easy to celebrate the ruin of our civilisation/ exciting plant furnished future depending on what side of the optimist/ pessimist divide you fall. A pretty array of make up and make up artists were on hand, presumably to ensure no one was offensively unattractive at this glamorous event, and Belle and Sebastian added some indie cool at the cosmo cafe turntables. Over 500 trendsters were milling about, with Allison Gardner and Allan Hunter available to discuss the intricacies of eye shadow or the Italian film industry, whichever you thought most appropriate. A blurry and less free after party followed in Bath street before the film fanatics frolicked into the night to plan their next day's cine-fest. And did I check my mail box when I rolled back to my flat at 2am? Well the post isn't very good around here anyway.

GFF photos by David Grinly