MIFF 2005 FILM FESTIVAL NOTEBOOK

By Joel Johnson

DAY 8

Friday, day 8 for the festival, and the last official day of my vacation has finally rolled around. This is always a melancholy realization as fatigue sets in, and we face the festival’s conclusion with ambivalence in just a couple days. But there are still lots of movies to be seen. Today we camped out in Railroad Square in Cinema 2 and watched three foreign language films in a row.

BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS
China/France, 2003; 110 minutes; 35mm; in Mandarin and French with English subtitles

1/2

The first was Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. This film played at the Montreal World Film Festival in 2002. Although it had extremely good buzz from the festivalgoers, we were not able to see it. I think the fact that the version shown in Montreal was only subtitled in French may have had something to do with it. Sijie Dai directs the film from his screenplay based on his own novel. Two Chinese students get sent to a remote mining community in the Sichuan Mountains in 1971 toward the end of the Cultural Revolution to be “re-educated” and purged of their Western ideas. Although assigned to some particularly nasty hard labor, Luo (Kun Chen) and Ma (Ye Liu) show a Tom Sawyerish resistance to the Maoist indoctrination program. They slyly rescue Ma’s violin by having him play “Mozart thinking about Mao.” They soon meet the beautiful Little Chinese Seamstress (Zhou Xun), the granddaughter of the village tailor. By happenchance, Luo sees her first and is quickly smitten. They seek to develop a relationship with her by broadening her horizons beyond the remote world she has known. They tell her and her friends about what they have seen at the cinema. Stealing a cache of forbidden books from another young man being re-educated, they begin teaching her classic works of Western literature—especially those by Honoré de Balzac. This sharing of forbidden knowledge has the desired effect of creating a strong bond between the three friends. When the grandfather becomes upset that his granddaughter seems changed, the young men decide to tell him the story of Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. When Luo is given leave to go back home because of a family illness, Ma shows how loyal a friend he really is. The film is delightful and full of romance. The gorgeous mountain scenery is very reminiscent of MIFF favorite Postmen in the Mountains. Ma, from whose perspective the film is told, is played by the same actor who played the son in Postmen. The film has a contemporary coda with Ma visiting the same mountain village where he was re-educated, and then Luo and Ma, now middle-aged men, reminiscing about that time in their lives. The impetus for this reflection is the news that the village will be flooded as part of a massive dam project. I found the coda interesting, although it really only served to tell the “rest of the story” for the two young men. Some readers of the book were unhappy with this addition to the story. However, since the book’s author also wrote and directed the film, one can hardly get too excited that the filmmaker has perpetrated some type of horrific mutation of the author’s work. Although this film has been floating around the festival circuit since 2002 and was a nominee for the Best Foreign Language Golden Globe in 2003, this film has not yet been formally released in the United States. I certainly feel that American audiences have been deprived of this gem for long enough.

THE EDUKATORS
Germany, 2005; 126 minutes; 35mm; in German with English subtitles

1/2

The popularity of Friday evening’s The Edukators showing was something of a surprise. Railroad Square’s midsize Cinema 2 very quickly became crowded. We were thankful that being in the theatre for Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress allowed us to claim seats early for The Edukators. Still the venue manager and the volunteers worked to seat as many filmgoers as possible. Soon there were a half-dozen plus creatively arranged chairs to accommodate the overflow crowd. The Edukators did share a few things with Balzac. Both have love triangles. In Balzac, the love triangle is pure because the second man’s love is unrequited. The same relationship in The Edukators may not be completely fulfilled, but it is definitely not unrequited. The young men in Balzac are basically apolitical but end up subverting the Maoist Cultural Revolution in order to survive its intrusion into their lives. Jan (Daniel Brühl) and Peter (Stipe Erceg) in The Edukators have a well-developed political ideology that they have deliberately chosen to further by making elaborate statements subverting the economic and political status quo. The film’s willingness to address issues of peace and justice was the reason many found this film so attractive. Jan then introduces Peter’s girlfriend Jule (Julia Jentsch) to their political activities. After relying on careful preparation and planning, when their decisions about choosing targets for subversion become spontaneous and motivated by personal grudges, things begin to get very problematic. This series of ill-advised decisions may have some members in the audience—like me—cringing. Malicious mischief and vandalism quickly escalates into kidnapping and, perhaps, even worse. The film then interplays the trio both sorting out their relationships and developing a plan for dealing with their kidnap victim Hardenberg (Burghart Klaußner), with Hardenberg trying to figure out how to stay alive. The film does an excellent job of maintaining both sympathy for all its characters (all four are fundamentally decent individuals caught in a dangerous and oddly banal situation) and the suspense (how will the trip to the mountain hide-away end?). There’s lots of provocative fodder for discussion. The film probably pushes the envelope a bit on its leisurely pace, but this is such an engaging, well-acted film that most viewers won’t be concerned about it.


BREAKING NEWS
Hong Kong/China, 2004; 90 minutes; 35mm; in Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles



Johnny To’s Breaking News is, for the uninitiated and/or the overtired, a wild, disorienting affair. To has wed his trademark frenetic Hong Kong shoot ’em up action to a comical commentary on contemporary life in which it’s less important whether you do the right thing and tell the truth than in showing and saying the things that will make you look good. The set-up for the film is that a gang of criminals has bested Hong Kong’s finest in a big-time stakeout gone wrong. Far worse than just failing to apprehend the bad guys is that the entire fiasco just happened to be captured and brought live to a TV audience as “breaking news.” Not only does the film show an ongoing cat-and-mouse game between the cops and the robbers (admittedly the cats and the mice have a fairly high-powered arsenal at their disposal), but there is an ongoing PR chess match between the cops and the robbers to make sure the media gets the “right” version of the story. The robbers seem to have the edge on telling the truth. This is an exhilarating film—or perhaps I should say it should be an exhilarating film. As the third of three foreign-language films, the abundant, if not exactly non-stop, action can go beyond exhilarating into exhausting. Adding to the exhaustion is that both the cops and the robbers look very similar. It will take some effort and a little while to have fully recognized which ones are which. The film is quite violent, with gunplay occupying a major role in the film. To has, however, spared the audience the gorier truths about the injuries that guns can inflict and delivered his violence with—paradoxically—humor. This may make some feel that this only makes the violence more insidious since the violence is more palatable because its horrible consequences are glossed over. To does manage to get his clever comic shots in. This really isn’t my preferred kind of film nor was I in the ideal condition to watch it, but there’s no mistaking how cast and crew have thrown themselves into their work. It is easy to see why To has a small, but loyal following in Waterville, Maine. Action-oriented filmgoers should be thrilled by To’s heady mix that includes sly comedy and social commentary. More contemplative filmgoers who appreciate the gradual unfolding of a drama will likely find To’s creation simply too fast and furious to be satisfying.

Day 9 -->>

The current Journal in print is
Winter

5 1/2" x 5" 2008 Wolf Moon Calendar just $10.00 each
More Info

More Info

© Wolf Moon Press 2002-2007 all rights reserved.

Submission Guidelines