fvila Reviews

Jimmy's Hall (2014)

Moving, engaged but even-handed

[9/10 · 9 July 2014]

This movie opposes two different and opposed views of the world: that of Jimmy Gralton, who apart from wanting to open a dance hall, is also a left-wing idealist. Although Ken Loach makes not mystery of his sympathies in this movie, as usual he remains even-handed, lets the opposition have their say, and never makes the conservative side appear as ridiculous or stupid. In fact the heart of the movie is the confrontation between Jimmy Gralton and Father Sheridan, which despite the depth of conflict, is fundamentally based on a grudging mutual respect.

What, indeed, could be wrong with opening a dance hall and cultural center? Well in the thirties Ireland was recovering from years of bloody conflict, first the war for independence, followed by more years of civil war. Father Sheridan argues that now is the time for reconciliation, not for political agitation, and what he sees as communist propaganda. It is time for being Irish together, for listening to Irish music rather than "alien Jazz from deepest Africa".

Of course the Loach's sympathy (and ours) goes to the yearning of the young people who have no place to go, no prospects, no jobs, and who desperately want to find some joy, relief and self-expression. The movie may be a bit slow at times, but it is deeply moving.

Ilo Ilo (2013)

In Search of Authenticity

[9/10 · 15 August 2013]

This movie captures the atmosphere of the end of the 90's in Singapore, when an economic tsunami devastated much of Asia, through the memories of a 10-year old.

When Antony Chen was looking for a subject for his first feature film, he recorded an event of his childhood that he had since nearly erased from this memory: how he was heartbroken when the Filipino maid who was living with his family had to leave, following his mother's decision to stay at home to tend to the family. From there, vignettes of the past came back to him, that he sought to transcribe them in the movie in the most authentic manner possible.

Antony Chen pushed that search for authenticity pretty far, as to find Ko Jia Le (the boy playing the central part), he trawled schools seeing some 2000 boys, interviewing hundreds, and inviting a hundred of them to do workshops. The result was not to take the cutest or the best-looking - something the director wanted to avoid - in fact you often feel ill at ease watching him, playing obsessively with him Tamagochi (remember those?) or making a nuisance of himself in all sorts of ways. You love him and you hate him, was the director's comment, and shooting the movie appears never to have been easy. "There were two children on the set, one in front of the camera, one behind", reminisced Chen. The embarrassment you feel watching him is a compounded by that caused by the tensions between the characters, sometimes so painful and so real that you wonder what you are doing there watching them.

The period of the film is, in 2013, highly unusual: nobody to my knowledge has yet set an entire film in the 1990's. But none of the usual tricks to show the audience the period: no camera lingering on a period calendar, no newsreels announcing events identifiable with the period. Part of the time you forget about it, and get reminded by an audio cassette or an electronic typewriter.

The movie is upheld by a brilliant cast of very eclectic actors. Chen Tian Wen (the father) comes from Singapore TV soap operas, Angeli Bayani is Filipino and worked in the Philippines in theater and in movies. The fact that the mother (Yann Yann Yeo), was really 6-month pregnant during the shooting, adds humanity to a character who would otherwise appear excessively domineering. The art director is French, met by Chen in the London school of cinema. Chen expressed how he had fears that being a westerner he would show a romantic view of Singapore, something like Woody Allen in Paris, which would have gone against his search for authenticity. The shooting does avoid any romanticism but remains highly interesting, occasionally tripping into a dreamlike quality at odds with the rest of the movie.

In short, this is a movie like none other.

The Yacoubian Building (2006)

Culture shock

[9/10 · 12 May 2009]

What I like most about this movie is that it opens a window into an unknown world for me, that of relations between men an women in modern Egypt, and it does so in a style that is at the same time sumptuous an unfamiliar. People do things you wouldn't expect, despite the slightly heavy-handed handling of emotions. There are areas where the movie is not perfect: it is so highly pessimistic and denounces the greed and selfishness of Egyptian men with so much vigor that it appears somewhat simplistic. It does tend to ramble a bit. But the power and the humor of the movie (it is quite funny, despite being tragic) transcends all that and makes those minor faults. I understand the director is very young, so he will have ample time to overcome and transcend these youthful imperfections. I didn't like Slumdog Millionaire because it told me everything about India that I already knew: it feels like a package tour where you are shown the sites you expect to see, and are whisked from one location to another. For a western viewer, Omaret yakobean is like a journey where you land at the airport and are immediately carried away by the atmosphere, the culture shock, the bustling streets, the misunderstandings, from which you emerge with challenged assumptions and a wider view of the world.

Beaufort (2007)

You really feel for these kids!

[9/10 · 2 April 2008]

Watching this movie I became slowly engrossed into the claustrophobic world it describes. At the end, I got a feeling that comes only very infrequently when watching movies, which is "Wow what an easy life I am living compared to these guys!". In this movie, death comes without warning, without background music, without philosophical introductions as to the nature of war,of mankind, or of good and evil. You hear the missiles coming in, but you never know which one will find its mark. There is no explicit message, that I could make out (but then I am not familiar with the political background). You can watch it as an anti-war movie, just as you can say it emphasizes the sacrifices of the Israeli soldiers. Anyway, the main point is beyond that, it is the reactions of human beings put under extreme stress. I saw this movie almost by accident and I was afraid it would be documentary and boring, but I really found it one of the best movies I have seen in a while.

Malabar Princess (2004)

A boy comes to terms with his mother's death

[9/10 · 21 March 2006]

When I hear the word "moving" about a film, I usually fear the worst in the form of sentimental, self-indulgent tripe. This movie skilfully steers away from those perils. Light-hearted comedy and fascination for death are mixed in this truly moving film reminiscent of the all-time French classic "Les jeux interdits".

The storyline: Tom is about ten and gets dumped on his grandfather Gaspard (Jacques Villeret), because his mother is dead, and his father is a train driver who is ofter away and cannot give the child the attention he needs. The grandfather lives at the bottom of the very glacier that swallowed up the child's mother five years before. Tom's troubled history is manifested by problems such as dyslexia and anxiety. These sombre themes are balanced by comedy, and by the endearing characters played by Laroque and Villeret. Claude Brasseur is excellent as a rather unsettling garage owner obsessed with finding the treasure hidden on the India Airways plane named Malabar Princess, that crashed on the glacier fifty years earlier (that much is authentic). Finding the treasure involves using dynamite, and on occasions he brings back human remains to be kept in bottles. The whole script is as if seen through the eyes of a child, with crude realism mixed to dream-like fantasies. Jacques Villeret's baby face and innocent outlook further contribute to anchor the film into the world of childhood.

The beauty of the mountain, the great white mass of the glacier makes for beautiful images and powerful symbolism. The troubled and troubling questions of the child about what happens to people who die in a crevasse culminates in the experiment he practices on stolen chickens shut up alive in the freezer ("you told me my mother didn't suffer, because she had a thick feather coat"). Despite all this, the tone is quite light-hearted, and quite appropriate for viewing with children.

Killer's Kiss (1955)

Survival and redemption

[9/10 · 23 December 2005]

Some people complain they don't understand 2001, A Space Odyssey: well here is the movie for them to see, because the story is the same. A man, alone, fights for survival, facing an evil and mysterious enemy. By coming out scarred but alive, he reaches grace-redemption-love. The feeling of loneliness is acute. Beautiful, haunting scenes come one after the other. Dialog is down to a minimum, and as in 2001 is kept deliberately trivial not to interfere with the visuals (that's my theory, anyway). 2001 is set in space, Killer's Kiss is set in New York, but both are filmed as dark, hostile, beautiful, mysterious, and threatening places. It may look like a "film noir" but that is just the outer shell.

The Accompanist (1992)

Romane Bohringer is superb

[8/10 · 18 November 2005]

Yelena Safonova is the blonde diva that gets the spotlights and the applause. Romane Bohringer is the self-deprecating accompanying pianist who stays in the dark and is painfully aware of here subsidiary role. One has a husband, a lover, and beautiful clothes, while the other looks very much like the starving student she was at the beginning of the story. One dialog tells all: when the diva makes a disparaging remark about a young man who seems interested in the pianist, she answers "Oh I'm sure he's nothing compared to *your* love affairs.

The rhythm and settings are beautiful without ever taking first place to the story.

Strayed (2003)

Answers to a few questions

[9/10 · 7 November 2005]

Being French and somewhat interested in history, I think I can give my 2 bits on a few questions about this movie:

Why does the kid sing a song in German? My idea is that because friendship between France and Germany is now so sacro-saint, the director felt the need to remind viewers that all this was past history and we are now the best of friends. I think this was necessary because of the very graphic and terrifying scenes of refugees being bombed by German planes.

Historical movie or individual adventure? I think both. The story is one of individuals cut off from the rest of the world, but the atmosphere of chaos, of loss of values, of breakdown of civilization, of not knowing where to go or what to do, appears to be representative of the way the people who lived through the events felt about them. Gaspard Ulliel, who seems to appear out of nowhere, as if a product of the times, personifies very well this feeling of chaos. Some also lived that period as a holiday from their everyday lives - if they were unattached and could fend for themselves. Alphonse Boudard's autobiographical book "Les combattants du petit bonheur" captures that outlook.

The fact that they are cut off from the rest of the world makes the movie more present, like something that could be happening here and now. Most of the time you don't get the usual distraction of local color - costumes, old cars, etc- to show that this really is the past. Personally I get annoyed at movies that use sepia coloring, or historical allusions like famous news radio broadcasts so that you can't forget for a moment the distance between then and now.

Moreover I think this movie fits into a trend of recent studies of history. A lot of books or documentaries on historical events stress the importance of understanding individual experiences to get a glimpse of the big picture.