POSTCARD #5 FROM TORONTO 2006:
THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON, PALIMPSEST, TRANSYLVANIA, VANAJA, TWILIGHT
DANCERS, THE BOOK OF REVELATION, FICTION, and WOMAN ON THE BEACH
By Joel Johnson
Here is
my final installment of short reviews from last September’s Toronto
International Film Festival. The U.S. vs. John Lennon was the first
film that we saw, and it moved quickly from the festival to theaters and has
now been available on DVD since February 2007. None of the others have been
released or appear to be set to be released in the United States, though I
suspect that a couple probably will eventually be released here. Film
Comment is actively seeking a distributor for Woman on the Beach
in its current issue’s “Distributor Wanted” segment. Some of these films
have already had wide exposure on the film festival circuit. Palimpsest
is a Polish mystery that is probably too murky for its own good.
Transylvania was a major disappointment since we had previously enjoyed
several films from that director. Vanaja was an interesting discovery
from a new director from India. Twilight Dancers shows how an
interesting story can overcome technical deficiencies. The film makes the
audience care about male strippers—a marginalized population—in the
Philippines. The Book of Revelation is not a film version of that
most difficult and controversial final book of the Bible but a difficult and
controversial film about sex and power. The two final films, Fiction
and Woman on the Beach, share a premise but go in completely
different directions.
The
U.S. vs. John Lennon: Directors David Leaf and John Scheinfeld
acknowledged in the postscreening Q and A that “nobody (except for
themselves) was interested in making this film fifteen years ago or ten
years ago, but now it has a contemporary resonance.” The story of John
Lennon’s political activism in Vietnam War-era America is brought to you by
George W. Bush’s post-9/11, post-Iraq America. Eerily, a brief statement by
Richard Nixon on his Vietnam policy seems all too familiar for its
similarity to statements made by President Bush about Iraq. The filmmakers
have crafted an intriguing and powerful film from countless snatches of
archival footage and scores of contemporary interviews. From this disjointed
material—especially Lennon’s often-cryptic interviews—a portrait emerges of
a man developing a social consciousness who may have the celebrity to focus
the energy of the youth of America. This poses a threatening challenge to
the political elite. Soon the elite decides to silence this powerful
critical voice through a program of intimidation and prosecution for
purported violations of immigration law. Add a heavy dollop of vintage rock
music, and the result is a film that will thrill those who had questioned
the Vietnam War effort and those who now question the Iraq War effort.
Palimpsest: Konrad Niewolski is a very talented Polish director who
delivered a murky, highly atmospheric film for the beginning of our first
full day at the festival. The look of the film is unique as well as its
capacity to be about something entirely different than the cop killing that
it appears to be about. The bad news is that I still was quite buffaloed
when the film ended, but the good news is that the director was present
after my screening at the Toronto International Film Festival to help clear
up my confusion. Well, he didn’t exactly see the reason for the Q and A
session in the same way that I did. This is a classic example of a film that
is too clever by half since I was not alone in simply not getting it. While
the film is perfectly watchable, even if it is somewhat slow moving, it just
isn’t a good policy to keep the audience totally in the dark about what you
really want to tell them. Some may find this type of mystery an invigorating
challenge, but many others may find themselves wanting something much more
straightforward. 
Transylvania: Tony Gatlif’s films are known for having terrific
music—the making of music being a distinct focus of the film’s story—and
superb cinematography with gloriously pristine images. These usually have to
counterbalance Gatlif’s characteristically cavalier treatment of narrative
cohesion. Unfortunately, Transylvania has a lot more to
counterbalance than a fuzzy narrative. This is Gatlif’s first film with
female lead protagonist. Asia Argento plays Zingarina, a young Frenchwoman,
who has to journey to Romania’s Transylvania to locate the gypsy musician
who has fathered her unborn child. She is accompanied by her sister/friend
Marie (Amira Casar) and their guide Luminitsa (Alexandra Beaujard). The
search for this man who was deported from France before learning that
Zingarina was pregnant occupies the first third or so of the film. Gatlif
shows two versions of this reunion. The supposedly real one shows the
musician disdainfully disavowing any love for Zingarina, and he apparently
never learns that he has fathered a child. The guide is quickly paid off,
and Marie is driving the distraught Zingarina back to France. Zingarina
abruptly and inexplicably walks away from Marie to follow a young girl about
eight years old. The film enters more turbulent waters as screams of
despair, angry confrontations, nascent love, emotional ambivalence, rough
sex, new characters arriving and departing the proceedings, animals, an
exorcism (a recurring Gatlif theme), and, eventually, a birth. One character
whose arrival changes the focus of the film is Tchangelo (Birol Ünel).
Eventually, he becomes the film’s main character. The film has numerous
inexplicable and noxious scenes, making the film even more narratively
incoherent than usual for a Gatlif film. The film lacks the humor and zest
for living that is usually so evident in Gatlif films that one can easily
forgive narrative flaws. While the film has ample music, there’s little that
stands out, making the music as colorless as most of the performers in white
shirts, black suits, and black fedoras.
Vanaja: Amazingly, this is director and screenwriter Rajnesh
Domalpalli’s student film for his Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia.
It is an intriguing film about a young teenaged Indian girl of low caste
trying to find her way in life. Novice actress Mamatha Bhukya gives a
delightful portrait of a coltish girl, playful and mischievous, learning the
power of her own sexuality. Poverty has made her a servant in the household
of a rich high-caste landlady, and her own scheming has made her the
landlady’s prize Kuchipudi dance prodigy. The landlady’s handsome son takes
her in an act that falls somewhere between seduction and rape. She becomes
pregnant and bears a son. A complicated tug-of-war begins between the
landlady, her son, Vanaja, and Vanaja’s ill and destitute father. Despite
being a young girl at her most vulnerable facing powerful adversaries,
Vanaja never surrenders her spirit. Although the film is quite accessible,
there are allusions to Indian folk-tales that non-Indian film viewers may
not fully appreciate. The film could possibly be more tightly edited as it
starts to seem long very close to the end. It also seems to cryptically stop
as opposed to having an ending. Still this is a terrific first film with a
very beguiling performance by the lead actress, who had to learn how to
dance Kuchipudi for the film. The cast is made up entirely of
nonprofessional actors, yet the inexperience and stiffness seems to work for
the film instead of against it.
Twilight Dancers: Filipino director Mel Chionglo has made a career out
of telling stories drawn from the steamy underworld of male erotic dancers.
This is the fourth feature film by Chionglo that plumbs the depths of the
milieu of strip clubs and hustlers with a mostly gay clientele. So what’s a
heterosexual couple doing at a screening of a film like this at 9:15 in the
morning? That very thought crossed my mind, and it didn’t help that this was
the most technically flawed of all the films that we had seen (or would see)
in Toronto. Although the film was advertised as being a 35mm print, it
certainly looked more like projected DVD or video. Filling the large screen
exposed its marginal image quality. Unfortunately, it also had sound
problems. The dialogue sometimes seemed to be recorded separately with no
ambient sounds from the environment. There was also one scene where there
were lots of subtitles, but no speech was heard from one character. Subject
matter and technical issues aside, eventually a story emerges about how the
attractive young men faced with abject poverty and limited options chose a
lucrative, yet short-lived career. Corruption seems to be endemic to
Filipino society, and the forces of moral erosion are constantly at work.
Ultimately, Chionglo creates an engaging portrait of humanity under extreme
moral duress. This is definitely not for everyone, and it certainly took a
little while to coalesce, but all I really wanted was a good story, and this
did provide that.
The
Book of Revelation: Though the film in the Toronto International Film
Festival that was hands-down the most sexual was Shortbus, Ana
Kokkinos’s film was not that far off the pace since it was all about sex and
power. The question it asks is whether sex and power could be used
aggressively by women against a man—could women rape or sexually abuse a
man. It asks the audience to rethink our double-standard attitudes about
male versus female sexuality. A woman kidnapped and forced to endure a
series of sexual acts would clearly be considered a victim, but a man
experiencing the same thing would be considered—lucky. Yet that’s not the
sense we get from Tom Long’s Daniel. Daniel is the lead male dancer in
Isabel’s (Greta Scacchi) Australian ballet company when his life is
profoundly changed one afternoon on his way to pick up cigarettes for his
ballerina girlfriend Bridget. He is kidnapped and released eleven days
later. He must pick up the pieces of his life and try to put them back
together. Daniel finds it impossible to resume his past life in the dance
company with Bridget. He must try to piecemeal reconstruct what happened to
him, try to identify who his abusers are, and then gradually make a new life
for himself. Based on Rupert Thomson’s novel and keyed by a powerful
performance by Australian Tom Long, this film is compellingly dark, sexy,
and thought provoking. Kokkinos never shrinks from the sexual nature of the
film’s subject matter. While this is clearly a film that is discomfiting and
that many would avoid like the plague, it never wavers in telling its
difficult and yet fascinating story.
Fiction: Cesc Gay’s film is about choices and the roads not taken. Àlex
(Edward Fernández) is a filmmaker working on his latest film. Looking for a
quiet place to write a script, he decides to visit an old chum who is in the
Catalan Pyrenees. He meets Mònica (Montse Germán), who is visiting another
friend Judith. Àlex is married with two children, and Mònica, who has a
partner, is planning to adopt a child. Regardless, the two find themselves
strongly attracted to each other, and, when they get lost on a hike into the
mountains, they have to spend the night together. This is a film in which
there is a very intense emotional love affair, and yet there are sexual
boundaries that they hesitate to cross. Small gestures are imbued with major
significance. This is a touching film because it shows how human it is to
connect with another person. Unlike most films that show people meeting and
easily jettisoning prior relationships in favor of the new connection, this
film shows uncertainty and guilt even though the main characters know they
have shared something special. The film features beautiful scenery, a
thought-provoking concept, talented actors, and a gentle sense of humor.
Woman on the Beach: This Korean film written and directed by Hong Sang-soo
tackles a similar situation as Fiction. Joong-rae is a film director
who gets Chang-wook to drive him to an off-season beach resort for the peace
and quiet to finish writing a script. Here the similarities end. Chang-wook
brings his new girlfriend along for the ride. It soon becomes clear that
Moon-sook is the romantic quarry of both men. Joong-rae wins the pursuit,
spending the night with Moon-sook, but after being left to do his writing
finds himself attracted to another woman, Sun-hee. When Moon-sook shows up
for a surprise visit, we follow the devious machinations of a man trying to
balance the affections of two women. The women then turn the tables
colluding to unmask the womanizer. This is a relatively accessible story
that easily holds the audience’s interest. Though it certainly has great
potential, the story never fully percolates into farce, and one suspects
that some meanings may lay obscured in Korean idioms.
