Reviewed by Alan Pavelin
Each year at the LFF I select a number of smaller films from the Festival, generally avoiding the big features destined for an early theatrical release.
Steven Knight’s 2013 film Locke was set entirely inside a car, with just a single character onscreen. The Guilty, directed by Gustav Moller, is a terrific “Scandi noir” thriller based on a similar premise. Set in a police emergency call office with just one major character onscreen, all the action is at the other end of telephone lines, with computer technology to help identify callers and their location. Jakob Cedergren (superb) is Asger, a cop investigating an abruptly-terminated call from a distressed woman. This taut 85-minute film is not what it might at first seem, and has a claustrophobic atmosphere which would make it ideal for the small screen. Cedergren, with changing facial expressions in close-up for most of the film, is totally convincing. Utterly gripping, very very clever, and when you’ve seen it you’ll want to watch it all over again.
Ordinary Time, directed by Susana Nobre and based on her own experiences, is a portrait of how a Lisbon couple’s life is changed by the birth of their first child. As far as I could tell it is a documentary in all but name, with non-actors (including the baby) playing themselves, as their names in the film are identical to those in the credits. We meet the couple’s parents (very different on either side), and various friends and other characters. We get an idea of the effect on their work, to the detriment it seems of the woman. Altogether, a moving portrait which most parents will recognise.
I really liked Etangs Noirs (the name of a Brussels metro station), an unusual mystery about a young man Jimi (Cedric Luvuezo) to whom a package has been mistakenly delivered, addressed to a woman in a neighbouring apartment block who never seems to be in. He comes to devote his entire time to trying to track her down without success, until a deceptively simple ending terminates his quest. Filmed on location, largely in the Brussels metro, the style is reminiscent of the films of the Dardennes brothers, the co-directors being Dumoulin and de Keyser.
A delightful and funny documentary from Iran, The Broker, directed by Azadi Moghadam in the style of the great Abbas Kiarostami, is set in a marriage broking office run by several women. The clients are largely hidden from our view, but we hear about their past and present situations and current requirements. There is much reference to “temporary marriage” (presumably cohabitation) with lots of shuffling through paperwork by the brokers as they search out suitable mates. In one scene dozens of clients are gathered in a large room, men on one side and women on the other, as they are invited individually to advertise themselves as desirable mates. A revealing insight into present-day Iran, which, as we have learned from other films, is far from the oppressive society of popular belief in the West.
The Chambermaid, directed by Lila Aviles, stars Gabriela Cartol as an ambitious worker in a Mexico City hotel. An appealing character, who attends literacy classes to help her advancement, her experiences include looking after the baby of a self-obsessed woman guest, an unfortunate event involving menstrual blood, and some over-friendly advances by an older chambermaid. There is no real plot, and, though the film is very well directed and acted, I found my attention wandering towards the end.
Winter Flies, by Czech director Olmo Omerzu, is a road movie about two teenage boys who steal a car to drive across the country. Told largely in flashback by the older boy Mara to a woman police officer, the non-professional young actors are genuinely impressive. Standout scenes are Mara’s near-terror when he thinks his grandfather has died, and the final clever escape from the police station.
Did I mention smaller films? That is hardly a description of the 808-minute Argentine production La Flor (The Flower), directed by Mariano Llinas, of which I saw the first part (of three). The film starts with Llinás explaining that it consists of six separate stories, each effectively a feature-length film, of which four have a beginning but no end, one an end but no beginning, and one is a complete story. The same four actresses play different roles in each story, each story being in the style of a particular genre, the genre of the first two (comprising part one of the entire film) being the American B-movie and the musical. The B-movie, actually more of a horror movie, concerns a scientific establishment in which an ancient mummy has been dug up, and just as a key fact is about to be disclosed, the story ends. The musical, about the failed relationship between a musician and a much younger singer, has a bizarre subplot involving scorpion serum for rejuvenation purposes. With huge close-ups for much of the time, I found these two stories (one-third of the film) strangely absorbing.
László Nemes, whose first feature Son of Saul (2015) was an Oscar-winner, has now directed Sunset, set in Budapest in 1913 as the sun was about to set on the Austro-Hungarian empire. Juli Jakob, onscreen for virtually the entire film, much in close-up, is Irisz, who returns to the millinery store run by her parents who died when she was 2. The current owner is strangely reluctant to employ her, and the dark atmosphere becomes ever more threatening until the trenches of WWI make their appearance in the final scene. It’s a mysterious, sometimes baffling, film with a restless camera following Irisz around ceaselessly. The film seemed to last much less than its 142 minutes, thanks largely to the stunning performance of Jakab. It is due for release in the coming months.
I always find the “Treasures from the Archives” part of the Festival enticing. This year’s selection included Some Like It Hot, but having seen Wilder’s comic masterpiece many times I looked elsewhere. In particular there was Frank Borzage’s 1927 romantic drama 7th Heaven, which won a Best Actress Oscar for Janet Gaynor (along with two other films in which she starred) in the very first year of the award. Borzage was the master of what might be called spiritual romanticism, often on the theme “love is stronger than death”. 7th Heaven tells of the love between two lower-class Parisians (Gaynor and Charles Farrell) at the time of the First World War. Engaging throughout, there is a striking shot up through 7 floors of a building which, to my mind, anticipated similar shots by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane.
Then I saw Alexander Korda’s 1933 production The Private Life of Henry VIII, starring Charles Laughton. The first British film to be a big hit in America, it is mostly played as broad comedy, and anyone wanting an education in Tudor history or the English Reformation should look elsewhere. But if you want a jolly romp through the Merry Monarch’s six wives, look no further. Robert Donat co-stars.
Finally a film I hadn’t heard of, but which has been called the most important Soviet film. Directed by Fridrikh Ermler in 1929, Fragment of an Empire is a similar idea to the 2003 German film Good Bye, Lenin!, and tells of a man who returns from the First World War with amnesia, not understanding that the Bolshevik Revolution has taken place. He arrives back in what he thinks is still St. Petersburg, puzzled by all the changes, which he eventually comes to see as wonderful. This obviously pro-Soviet film is clearly influenced by Eisenstein, with some surreal sequences and rapid montage. I didn’t find it immediately engaging, but a second viewing might change that.
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