More reviews from the currently ongoing 2010 Vancouver International Film Festival which runs September 30-October 15
“The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu” (Andrei Ujica)
If it wasn’t already evident, those pesky Romanians are, like, really frickin’ good at this whole filmmaking thing. The much ballyhooed “New Wave” from the Eastern European country has been in full swing for a good half-decade now, kicking off, or at least catching lots of attention from the press, when several films and filmmakers began winning major awards at Cannes: Cristi Puiu’s “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” won the Un Certain Regard in 2005 (we recently caught and were quite fond of his latest, the three-hour “Aurora“); and Corneliu Porumboiu’s “12:08 East of Bucharest” took home two awards in 2006 (his last film, 2009’s “Police, Adjective” was criminally under seen and underrated during its limp release in select American cities). But the big title that really made the film community pay attention was director Cristian Mungiu’s tense, frightening look at an abortion in 1980’s Romania, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.” It took home three prizes at Cannes 2007, most importantly the Palme d’Or.
Whew. It’s been an impressive run, and doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon with another contribution to this uncompromising, often austere crop of films coming in the form of Andrei Ujica’s (darn, too bad his name doesn’t start with a “C”) somehow immensely engaging, 187-minute documentary “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu.” It’s a fascinating idea: take only raw, archival footage of the former dictator, the stuff he allowed to be filmed, and re-purpose it in an attempt at perspective. The result is an often haunting, but mostly ironic (it’s quite funny at times, especially when we see things like Ceausescu out of his realm cheating in volleyball) look at propaganda and how it served the hubris of the man in power from 1965 to 1989. He and his wife’s execution isn’t mentioned, but the film is book-ended brilliantly with brief snippets of the trial during the December ’89 revolution (“these are all lies!” he screams at the conclusion). There’s probably a better descriptor for it, but this is a thorough examination of the stuff he wanted shown. With the advent of time, and the strong montage work out of no doubt endless amounts of found footage, the doc is further proof that these filmmakers from Romania still have a lot to say, politically and ideologically, about their country’s sordid past. [B+]
“Mysteries of Lisbon” (Raul Ruiz)
Three hours is a cakewalk compared to this one, a four-and-a-half-hour adaptation of the still untranslated Portuguese novel by Camilo Castelo Branco. This writer has to admit, seeing this one at the end of a long day of festival screenings, from 7 p.m. to after midnight (a 20-minute intermission was included), may not have been the ideal conditions. The effort was mostly worth it, though the pretzel-like plot convolutions will try even the most patient of moviegoers. This is the kind of film we just don’t see much of anymore, an epic melodrama that spans several generations, countries and historical events. It’s 19th century Lisbon, and we are introduced to a multitude of characters (seriously, this thing almost matches “The Wire” in sheer quantity of main characters, but crams them in to a much smaller running time, definitely one of the flaws of the film) that are all connected to Joao, a bastard orphan in a boarding school. There’s the priest with a shadowy past, a vengeance-fueled countess and a successful businessman who made his fortune as a nasty pirate. The description of the film in the VIFF booklet, describing the plot and characters, mentions “If you aren’t hooked at this point, please move along…”
Well, this writer wasn’t hooked really at any point in the film (the first hour, especially, moves at a snail’s pace), but found solace in one thing: the visuals. The cinematography (by DoP Andre Szankowski, a new discovery here) is fetishistic in its use of an ever-roaming camera, and is reason enough to recommend the film, especially on a big screen. Often films with beautiful visuals are praised by critics who often say something like: take a still frame of any moment of the film, and it could hang on your wall as a piece of art. While one could certainly do that with ‘Lisbon,’ the image would be only half as impressive. The odd angles, fluid camera moves and long takes, seemingly able to go anywhere through halls of the sets capturing all the extreme grandeur of that place and time, is a marvel to behold. The visuals are so bold and expressive they may elicit a trance-like state in the audience, but if the plot and endless character reveals/betrayals do nothing for you, you always have those pretty pictures to gaze at; there’s not one throwaway image onscreen. [B-]
“The Sleeping Beauty” (Catherine Breillat)
Excluding two films not even worth mentioning here at The Playlist (one a walk-out, the other a pretentious wankfest in the guise of experimental cinema), this is easily our biggest disappointment of the festival so far, now at its halfway point. Catherine Breillat is a filmmaker with enough talent and arthouse clout to get excited for every title, but “The Sleeping Beauty,” now her second foray in to fairytale revisionism (courtesy of Charles Perrault’s original incarnations) after her last film, “Bluebeard,” is straining to hold any interest in the eyes of this writer. While impressed with the shocking, provocative and sexually frank “Fat Girl,” one wonders exactly what she’s up to with these films, and even if her heart is in it.
Dull, lifeless and nothing short of irritating in its pacing (the two films reviewed above breezed by compared to this, even with a brief 82-minute run time), there’s really nothing to latch on to here, not even a titillating sex scene, though Breillat attempts several. Things looked bad right from the opening, when three beautiful, naked fairies appear a little late after the birth of Anastasia, thus resulting in her curse. She will die at 16. Using some bullshit unexplained wand power — which looks laughingly bad, like CGI from the mid-’90s — the fairies ward off the curse, but the girl must sleep for 100 years. Whereas “Bluebeard” (a film that is better than this, but still left me cold) has the narrative conceit of two young sisters interpreting their version of the story as they read it in an attic, here were just thrown in to a boring, lazy romp through the titular character’s dreams until she wakes up and learns of love and sexuality. Hardly any of it works. So what’s next? Catherine Breillat’s “Little Red Riding Hood.” No, “Cinderella”…oh, how about “Puss in Boots”? Hopefully not. Wake us up when she does something interesting again. [D+]
