<--MORE MIFF 2005 COVERAGE

THE 2005 MIFF SCOUTING REPORT (PART 2)

By Joel Johnson

The “International” aspect of this year’s Maine International Film Festival (MIFF) is represented by just sixteen films in foreign languages. This is a significant decrease from last year’s total of twenty-four—assuming my quick count from last year’s program is accurate. This, no doubt, will be seen as good news by those who hate all the reading that may be needed while watching a subtitled film. Perhaps equally striking is that more than half of the films represent just two languages—French and Chinese. China, with its enormous population, is in the process of metamorphosing from a nation that was being openly carved up by colonialist exploiters to one that shunned all outsiders to a nation that is poised to be a leading world culture. Film is one means of capturing and displaying one’s culture to the world. MIFF has what some festivals might advertise as a Chinese sidebar with four Chinese films.

Yang Ban Xi is a documentary (Another documentary! How did I manage to omit that from Part 1?) that provides us with examples of Chinese films from Maoist Red China during its turbulent Cultural Revolution. Mao’s Little Red Book was the equivalent of the Bible, and any thought that challenged the status quo needed to be squelched and squelched hard. The films for this era needed to adhere to the Party line—literally the Communist Party line—and keep the audiences enthralled. The results are Chinese singing and dancing extravaganzas called “Yang Ban Xi.” Excerpts will be featured in this compilation from several films. The result will be a film like the similarly-themed documentary East Side Story (1997) that told about the movie musicals produced in the Soviet bloc. Or, closer to home, one may want to look at this as a Chinese That’s Entertainment. The Cultural Revolution also serves as the backdrop for Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2002). Sijie Dai directs the film from his screenplay based on his own novel. Clearly, Dai has no one to blame but himself should the film not live up to the novel, and no one has probably deserved the possessory credit (“A Sijie Dai Film”) anymore than he does. Two Chinese students get sent to a remote mining community toward the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1971to be “reeducated” and purged of their Western ideas. They meet the granddaughter of the village tailor and develop a relationship by teaching her about classic works of Western literature—such as those by Honoré de Balzac. 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 never been formally released in the United States. This is an excellent opportunity for MIFF audiences to discover this film about life during the Cultural Revolution. Jia Zhangke’s The World is described as “an exploration on the impact of urbanization and globalization on a traditional culture.” We visit a theme park outside Beijing that features scaled representations of the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the New York skyline among others. Residents of Beijing can almost literally visit the wonders of the world without leaving home. We follow an Altman-esque large cast who are members of the theme park’s staff interacting with each other and with visitors. This would seem to be a visually striking film that has an ambitious agenda. This could be a challenging film for audience members as it covers an array of relationships, has a highly intellectualized subtext, and does it all in a foreign language and culture. Jia Zhangke has received high praise (Kent Jones of Film Comment described him as “a master of modern alienation”) and this film has made many of the major ports of call on the festival circuit (Venice, Toronto, New York, London, Deauville, and Seattle), but I suspect this may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Johnnie To’s Breaking News may not be everyone’s cup of tea either, but his action-packed films have certainly attracted wide audiences and ardent fans. To’s Mission (1999) appeared in MIFF several years ago and was well received. To also packaged Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, and the late Anita Mui as martial arts superwomen in the popular Heroic Trio films. This production from the prolific To features police needing to change their image after a mobile news unit broadcasts five bandits routing an entire police battalion.

The five films in French include four from France and a Canadian production set in Haiti. Haitian novelist Dany Laferrière’s book Le Goût des jeunes filles has been made into a film. The direct translation is “the taste or appetites of young girls,” but the book has been marketed with the English title of Dining with the Dictator. The dictator is the notorious Haitian strongman “Papa Doc” Duvalier. The teenaged protagonist living in Haiti during the early 1970s becomes scared that Papa Doc’s secret police—the tonton macoute—will target him because of something a friend of his did. He decides to hide out with the beautiful prostitute Miki and her friends across the street from his devout mother and aunts. Obviously, he finds this quite an enlightening experience. Whether you do may be another thing entirely. Laferrière has been written novels and screenplays. He has also tried his hand at directing and acting. His most famous film thus far has the provocative title of How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired (1989).

That France is well represented with 25 percent of the foreign-language films should not surprise anyone. France annually releases more films in the United States than any other country. The film with the greatest star power is Anne Fontaine’s Nathalie. Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant are married, and Fanny suspects that Gerard has a roving eye. To confirm her suspicions, she solicits Emannuelle Béart’s beautiful prostitute to act as bait—bait named Nathalie. If you have followed French cinema over the last twenty years or so, you know that the three stars are among the biggest stars in contemporary French cinema. Both actresses were nominated for their performances in this film for the Best Actress award at the 2004 European Film Awards. Olivier Assayas’ Clean is another unique film with a high-profile cast. Maggie Cheung, the director’s ex-wife, plays a woman traveling the long and winding road of drug addiction to try to become a mother to her son Jay. This road literally covers a lot of territory, with the film having been shot in Paris, London, San Francisco, Vancouver, and Hamilton, Ontario. The dialogue is in French, English, and Cantonese. Nick Nolte, Beatrice Dalle, Jeanne Balibar, and Don McKellar are well-known actors in the cast, but the star is Cheung, for whom Assayas wrote the part and who received the Best Actress award at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival as well as a nomination for the Best Actress Cesar (French equivalent of the Oscar). Eric Gautier’s cinematography, like Cheung’s acting, won an award at Cannes and was nominated for the cinematography Cesar. Assayas and Cheung also collaborated on a delightful film Irma Vep (1996). Jacques Audiard’s Read My Lips (2001) was a big hit at the 2003 MIFF and this year his The Beat That My Heart Skipped will grace MIFF’s screens. This is a remake of the American film Fingers (1978) by director James Toback that featured Harvey Keitel. Romain Duris has the Harvey Keitel role of a man torn between following in his brutal father’s criminal footsteps or pursuing a career as a concert pianist. Perhaps no two uses for one’s hands would seem to be more mutually exclusive. Not surprisingly for a film that overtly focuses on music, composer Alexandre Desplat won a Silver Bear Award for Best Film Music at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Tony Gatlif has a special relationship with the MIFF programmers. The fifth Tony Gatlif film to show at MIFF will be screened this year. With the possible exception of directors for whom several films were shown as part of a special focus on his or her work, I can’t think of another director who has had as many films show at MIFF. Prior to the creation of MIFF in 1998, Waterville-based Shadow Distribution introduced two of Gatlif’s early films, Latcho Drom (1993) and Mondo (1996), to American audiences. Exils (Exiles) is perhaps Gatlif’s most personal film ever as it is the story of two Algerian expatriates (Romain Duris and Lubna Azabal) as they find their way back to this nation that is their cultural home. Gatlif is an Algerian-born gypsy who has lived in France ever since the Algerian War for Independence. Those not familiar with Gatlif’s unique style should be forewarned that Gatlif has an impressionistic approach to film narrative. His films are usually filled with colorful characters, striking images, pristine cinematography, and lots of music and dancing. This one is no exception. Unless you really want a clear story or you find that a little exposure to the styles of music featured in Gatlif’s films goes a long way, you should find this quite fascinating.

Four of the remaining six foreign-language films come from Europe, with Germany, Hungary, Finland, and Norway being represented. The German film The Edukators has picked up a number of nominations and can boast actual wins for actress Julia Jentsch (Best Young Actress, Bavaria Film Awards; Best Actress, German Film Critics Awards) and for director Hans Weingartner (Best Feature Film, German Film Critics Awards). The film blends a story of a love triangle with a story of overzealous political activists running amok into kidnapping. The Edukators’s cast also includes German heartthrob Daniel Brühl familiar to American audiences due to Good Bye Lenin! (2003) and recent release Ladies in Lavender (2004). The Hungarian entry is Colossal Sensation. The description in the MIFF broadsheet is a bit daunting: “An odyssey through the 20th century as told in the story of two circus performers-clowns, illusionists, acrobats-who mirror the century's struggles.” Colossal Sensation is actor-director Róbert Koltai’s follow-up to his 1998 politically-themed comedy May Day Mayhem. Naphthalene (Koltai) and Dodo (Sándor Gáspár) are traveling circus clowns who run afoul of Cold War-era Soviet comrades. Dodo gets thrown in the clink, and Naphthalene lays low as a prop man in a rural theater before he unwittingly sets off the ill-fated 1956 Revolution. Koltai trods this trail rife with intense emotions with a genial Chaplinesque stride. One of the great benefits of a film festival is the opportunity to give audiences a fresh look at older films as well as showcasing new work. Edvard Munch (1974) is just such a film. Originally produced for television, this Norwegian film takes on one of the biggest challenges to filmmakers: portraying an artist and his work. This film tries to show how Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was shaped by the personal tragedies of loss, love, and by emerging political consciousness. Munch became an expressionist artist in the latter part of the nineteenth century and became much maligned for this unorthodox style. Although the film concentrates on the period between 1884-1894, the film does flashback to his childhood and youth. Showing what drives an artist to create and the choices he/she makes in his art is something with which filmmakers struggle. They can well illustrate the often-chaotic personal life of the artist, but rarely are able to show the artistic process. The Children of the Century (1999) chronicled the intertwined lives of writers George Sand and Alfred de Musset but kept both characters’ prolific writing completely off-camera. Filmgoers for whom this is critical will have to bet nearly three hours (174 minutes) of their lives that writer-director Peter Watkins is able to show what made Edward Munch an artist. The Finnish film Producing Adults by first-time director Aleksi Salmenperä has been well-rewarded by the Finnish Academy Awards (Jussi’s for Best Script and Best Supporting Actress along with four other nominations) and by its odyssey through film festivals. The fulcrum on which the film swings is the feelings a husband (Kari-Pekka Toivonen) and wife (Minna Haapkylä) have about having children. The relationships evolve as a lot happens in this film about the unexpected turns love takes. This would appear to have a rough similarity to another starring vehicle for Minna Haapkylä called Lovers and Leavers (2002).

The next two films come from Asia. MIFF continues its love affair with Bollywood films from India. Mani Ratnam’s Yuva (The Youth) is a Bollywood version of the three intertwined story format used by Alejandro González Iñárritu in Amores Perros (2000). Three young men—one a scion of an organized crime family, one a student leader, and one a heretofore fun-loving college student—all cross paths on one day with major repercussions for each of them. Music has frequently been a focus of films in MIFF, and The Overture from Thailand definitely does that. The Overture is a biopic of Thai traditional music genius Sorn Silapabanleng. Sorn learns to play the ra-nad ek (Thai xylophone) in early childhood and continues to play throughout his life. His music is revered during the reign of King Rama V, but during the 1930s it is repressed in favor of more modern Western music as part of a move to modernize a backward Thailand. During the 1940s when Thailand is occupied by the Japanese, Sorn’s music becomes an inspiration for the oppressed Thai people. Not having been exposed much to Thai music and certainly not being a devotee, one could discover that a little bit of an unfamiliar musical form can go a long way.

The festivalgoer is ever hopeful about the quality of the films, but the prospects look quite good that those willing to check out the films that originate in foreign countries will not be disappointed. Many of the films have been recognized with awards from other festivals or other recognition groups. This is a good crop, though many nations and, in some cases, entire continents have no representation.   

 

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