The past few days and PFD (Post Festival Depression)

So the festival finally ended on Sunday and classes have since started up. For the study abroad, we are enrolled in two different classes: a film critique class (taught by Dr. Kohn, we write film reviews and read them aloud/discuss them in class) and a film marketing/business class (taught by Dr. Smith). Both have been a lot of fun, and it really seems like our group has come together a lot more since being spread out all over the place seeing films at the festival.

Monday in class we learned about PFD (Post Festival Depression), which apparently happens to students on the trip every year. I can feel it already. The market badges. The films. The begging for tickets in my tuxedo. It's all over!

But it's okay! This weekend will be our long weekend. Meaning? Fun travels! A group of us are likely going to try to catch a train to Morocco or Nice to go exploring different areas. I'll definitely update the blog when I return!

Last night was the first night in a while when our group didn't have something to work on. To celebrate, we went out on the beach at night, talked, and relaxed. It was a lot of fun! Somewhere along the way, we met up with these (tiny) English kids who said they had a yacht. But it didn't pan out. Definitely saw that coming.

Anyways, right now I've got to get back to work on my last review. I'll update again soon! Missing everyone in the states!

-Jack

Certified Copy review

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami. Starring Juliette Binoche, William Shimell.

Can a copy substitute the real thing? That’s the question posed by director Abbas Kiarostami’s latest film, Certified Copy (aka its international title, Copie Conforme).

An English author, James Miller (William Shimell), comes to Italy to promote his book on the subject of the relationship between originals and copies in the world of art. At the lecture he meets a French gallery owner (Juliette Binoche), and accepts an invitation from her to explore southern Tuscany for a few hours.

Initially, the two spend time enjoying each other’s company over intellectual debate. He doesn’t believe original works hold any superior integral value over their reproductions. He explains, citing a painting of a young woman, “What is a painting anyway? A reproduction of the beauty of the girl.” She disagrees, taking him to a local art gallery where a reproduction was mistaken as an original for years.

Then shit gets crazy. The pair then goes to coffee, where they are mistaken for a married couple. And they run with it. The remainder of the movie is spent with them completely acting like a married couple of fifteen years. They pose with a newly wedded couple. They visit the hotel room they “spent their honeymoon in”. They bicker over botched anniversary plans. They become a living, breathing example of Miller’s theory.

Above all, Certified Copy serves as a vehicle for Juliette Binoche. Her performance is tremendous. As the movie progresses, we see her subtle transformation from eccentric art buff to suffering housewife. She is quite believably insane. For this performance, she much deservedly won the “Best Actress” award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

Not quite as experienced, opera star William Shimell doesn’t show quite the same prowess on camera. His transformation is more abrupt, arriving dramatically by means of disappointment over the wine at a restaurant.

Towards the end of the film, James remembers that he much catch his train. Reality begins to set in again, as her quote from earlier rings true, “The sweeter it is at the start, the more bitter it ends. Things change.” The copy, it seems, is no replacement for the original.

The film’s most arresting scene takes place in the café, right as the transformation to married couple begins. She (Binoche) lies to the older waitress, who mistakes the couple to be married. When she asks why James doesn’t know Italian, she explains, “He’s not into languages.”

The waitress goes on to talk about her thoughts on husbands, men, and working. She explains that men are wired to overwork, and women should not be upset if their marriages don’t turn out exactly as they’d hoped. She continues, “It’d be stupid of us to run our lives on ideals.”

Certified Copy uses a unique approach that I can appreciate. The on-screen transformation of the acquaintances-into-friends is a fascinating, and at time hilarious way of discussing a could-be boring subject for a feature-length film. The film is intellectual, but never waivers too far into the realm of dullsville. And Binoche is fantastic. A great film.

Poetry review

Directed by Changdong Lee. Starring Jung-Hee Yong.

Poetry is not always pretty. Sometimes it can be downright depressing. South Korean director Changdong Lee’s Poetry begins with a lengthy shot of water flowing beneath a bridge. After a few moments, the body of a girl floats into the frame.

The focus then changes to Mija (Jung-Hee Yoon), a beautiful older woman. Mija has problems. She has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and has trouble recalling nouns. She works as a housemaid, where an elderly man sexually harasses her. She lives with and cares for her teenage grandson, Wook.

In regard to her relationship with Wook, she explains, “He’s the master of the house.” Wook comes and goes as he pleases, blasts music from his room, and spends much of his time watching obnoxious television. The only time he voluntarily interacts with his grandmother is to demand food. Wook never apologizes or expresses gratitude. In fact, Wook never does much of anything, except rape one of his female classmates, ultimately leading her to commit suicide (the girl in the water, named Agnes).

In an attempt to cover their tracks, Mija, along with the fathers of Wook’s five other friends who also raped the girl, elect to pay a collective 30 million won settlement to the girl’s family.

Everything about this cover up is blatantly corrupt. The fathers only concern is how the case might hinder their sons’ bright futures. They toast champagne in celebration when the settlement is accepted. But they are not the only guilty party. The school also desperately wants the girl’s family to settle to prevent tarnishing the school’s record.

In fact, the only person who seems emotionally affected by the Agnes’ death at all is Mija. She attends the girl’s funeral, collecting a small, framed picture of her on the way out. She wakes Wook in the middle of the night to beg, “Why did you do it?” She visits the science lab where the rape occurred. Mija even makes an attempt to talk to the girl’s mother, but can’t find the courage to bring up the subject.

Mija finds some relief when she enrolls in a poetry class at the local cultural center. The class meets twice a week, with an ultimate goal of each student writing their own poem.

During one particular assignment, everyone shares his or her most beautiful moment. This evokes Mija to vaguely describe her first memory, a tender moment between her and her older sister as infants. “I felt really pretty,” she explains.

This beauty seems to have escaped her, and she spends much of the film struggling to find poetic inspiration. “How do I write poetry?” she asks miserably several times throughout the film. Ironically, she refuses to find any inspiration in any of the extraordinary, although depressing, events happening in her present.

Mija wants to write about beauty, and is constantly looking for it in nature: an apricot fallen to the ground, the flowers in her window, and the tree in her yard. Roughly halfway through the film, this culminates in one especially pathetic scene where Mija comments on the beautiful flowers in her doctor’s office, only to find they are fake.

Poetry ends as tragically as it begins. To pay for her share of the 30 million won and protect her grandson, Mija sleeps with the old man she works for, only to blackmail him. Her rapidly progressing dementia finally fully turns on her when she forgets the identity of a classmate, a police detective. She unburdens herself on him one night after a poetry reading, revealing all the information of Wook’s crime.

The final scene is the reading of Mija’s poem, entitled “Agnes’ Song”, aloud in class by the teacher. Mija is absent. Although Lee leaves Mija’s fate open to interpretation, he heavily alludes to suicide. The last seconds of the film return us to the beginning of the film, moments before the young girl, Agnes, flings herself from the bridge.

Much of the film’s success (and this is a successful film) can be attributed to Jung-Hee Yoon’s quietly tragic performance. She capably communicates the decay of Mija’s mental health and spirit by the hand of her unfortunate circumstances.

A thought-provoking examination of one woman’s search for beauty, Lee’s economic film tells the story of two women through one. An excellent, intelligent film.

Heartbeats review

Starring Xavier Dolan, Monia Chokri, and Niels Schneider. Written and directed by Xavier Dolan.

Love’s a bitch and nobody knows it any better than Xavier Dolan. After his first critically acclaimed and self-produced film, I Killed My Mother, Dolan returns to the scene with something a little funnier and much more stylish.

The 21 (yes, twenty-one!) year old Canadian actor-turned-director’s latest, Heartbeats (aka its international title, Love, Imagined), is all about love and heartbreak (did the title give it away?), and is undeniably cool.

Dolan’s Heartbeats begins with two friends, Francis (played by Dolan himself) and Marie (Monia Chokri). He is a handsome, young gay guy. She is a cute, retro-dressing girl. Nothing could come between them, it seems, until they meet the new boy from out of town, Nicolas (Niels Schneider). They both immediately fall in love with the stranger, and begin passive-aggressively fighting with one another in hopes of commanding his attention, and ultimately, winning his affection.

Dolan begins the film with a quote, “The only truth is love beyond reason.” He continues this focus, and each scene is a further examination of the pain caused by unrequited love and adoration, and building up unrealistic expectations. In this way, the film is sad, but also very funny.

Periodically, in series of short interviews throughout the film, different young people speak openly and comedically about their (mostly negative) dating experiences. One girl describes waiting on the Internet for hours waiting on email responses from a crush. Another guy describes the homosexuality scale, which rates how gay a person is, depending on their sexual tendencies, from 1 to 5.

The film’s simple plot, a love triangle, and quick story-progressing scenes might’ve left the runtime a tad short. However, Dolan makes use of many long, drawn out slow-mo scenes (for example, in montage when the two friends dress-to-impress before seeing Nicolas) in homage to Wong Kar-wai.

He also makes use of blue and red direct Godard-esque lighting in some cut scenes. Couple this with a hip soundtrack (one particular song, “Bang Bang”, plays several times) and Dolan has a slick, stylistic film sure to attract a hip, young crowd.

It’s unclear exactly what Dolan wants his audience to take away from their viewing. It seems any commentary Dolan has about love is purely surface level and superficial. And at times the bare-bones story seems more of a vehicle for Dolan to show off his cool camera movements, lighting, wardrobe, and shot composition than to progress the film.

Although the film is funny, and some of Dolan’s random cuts scenes are used successfully to the effect (think falling marshmallows over Nicolas’ shirtless body in one of Francis’ dream sequences).

The young cast is able to carry the film without problem, with Dolan having the strongest performance as the heartbroken young, intelligent gay man who leaves a mark on his wall each time he is rejected (and his bathroom wall is full of them).

One of the most unsettling elements of the film is how pathetic Dolan’s main characters are. Representative of the attitude of most young people and the feverishly love-stricken, Francis and Marie are putty in the hands of the dim, unassuming, and flirtatious (although he does read!) Nicolas. From buying extremely expensive birthday gifts to hanging out where he might be, the two best friends are tragic characters who immediately seem destined for inevitable heartbreak. But perhaps that’s the point.

Regardless of its problems, Heartbeats was met with warm reception in Cannes and shows that young director Dolan is no one-trick pony. While this film is a bit overly ambitious in regards to style, it’s clear that Dolan has much more up his sleeve than suggested by first film.

Of Gods and Men

How far can faith take you? This is the question Xavier Beauvois explores in his latest film, Of Gods and Men. With a few problems, the film powerfully portrays a real-life example of martyrdom.

The film is based on actual events, and focuses on eight monks who live in and serve a small community in Algeria. Brother Luc (Lonsdale) serves as the community doctor, willing to heal anyone in need, while the monastery’s leader Brother Christian (Wilson) knows the Koran as well as the Bible, giving him more understanding for the Islamic nation he works in.

As the film progresses, circumstances become increasingly worrisome for the monks as the country becomes more and more violent due to an Islamic terrorist group. In the film’s only scene of violence, the impassioned terrorists kill Croatian workers by slitting their throats. This violence is unexpectedly stunning and effective, mostly because of its juxtaposition to the rest of the film.

For the most part, the film’s rhythm is that of life in a monastery. Long shots of the hillside are common, reflecting the solitude and meditation of the monk lifestyle. Scenes of the monks singing hymns in the chapel are delicately shot by balancing the monks in perfect symmetry within the frame, relaying a message of perfect order and control.

Because of the calm, tranquil pacing of the film, contradicting scenes are even more effective. These include the scene of a hovering military helicopter flying overhead the monastery and drowning out all noise, but the monks still rise to sing. Another is the monk’s last meal together, while “Swan Lake” plays in the background and each displays his own solemn, but content expression.

An area the film lacks is in the predictability of the doomed monks’ fate. While the violence in the surrounding community continues to escalate, the monks must decide to leave or stay. Initially, some of the men seek a return to France, explaining, “We must not seek to be martyrs.” Although he agrees about martyrdom, Brother Christian wants to stay and quickly convinces the reluctant members to as well. Ultimately, the monks’ attachment to God, the community they serve, and each other keep them from fleeing. In this way, the monks have virtually sealed their fates, making them as stubborn in their religious zeal as the terrorists- even when it treats them most unfavorably.

The film relies heavily on strong, understated performances and finds them most successfully in Lambert Wilson’s devoutly calm, assured, peacekeeping presence as leader. Wilson shines while protecting his monastery from demanding terrorists, assertively explaining dwindling supplies and offering quotes from the Koran.

Another strong performance is that of the 82-year-old Jacques Herlin, whose warm and gentle portrayal of Brother Amédée effectively couples their leader, Christian. While the monks debate whether to leave or stay, he reminds Christian, “We did not elect you leader to make decisions on your own.”

Beauvois leaves Of Gods and Men with the monks held at gunpoint, leading the terrorists over snowcapped hills, until fading out of view among the falling snow. A peaceful ending- tearing away expectations of a fiery, violent on-screen end for the monks. An ending perfectly suited to Beauvois’ subtly executed work.

Howl review

Starring James Franco, David Strathairn, Jon Hamm, Bob Balaban, Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker, Treat Williams, Alessandro Nivola, Todd Rotondi, Jon Prescott, Aaron Tveit. Written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.

"[W]ho let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy". Perhaps this scream of joy is the one suggested in the title of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman latest, successful collaboration, Howl.

Based on the life of 1950s hipster poet Allen Ginsberg (James Franco) and his fiery, homoerotic poem “Howl”, the film neither feels like a documentary or typical narrative, but rather melds elements from both storytelling methods.

The film is separated into four sections: animated sequences, a simulated one-on-one interview between Ginsberg and a faceless reporter, scenes of Ginsberg’s life (including his various friendships and homosexual romances), and the 1957 San Francisco obscenity trial involving Ginsberg’s publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Andrew Rogers).

If for nothing else, Howl can be commended for its creative, atypical presentation. Much of the film is Ginsberg’s energetic recitation of the poem alongside beautifully vivid and hypnotic animation, guiding the viewer from line to line of the poet’s fiercely sexual and uninhibited prose. For the few minutes of each animated sequence, we are transported, perhaps, to the inner workings of the poet, where thought flows freely and effortlessly as each verse washes over the audience.

Writer/directors Epstein and Friedman attempt to emotionally connect the audience to Ginsberg primarily through use of interview scenes, which are spaced sporadically throughout the film alongside the three other aforementioned storytelling elements. These segments are among the most successful in the film, giving context to both the poem’s lyrics and the dramatized scenes of Ginsberg’s life.

The poet recounts everything from stints in the mental hospital to creative and sexual inspirations in artistic colleagues such as Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. Scenes of Ginsberg’s life are tossed in, with the interview sometimes carrying over to be used as voiceover. These scenes, in which Franco is physically moving and interacting with other characters on screen, are among the best in his performance. The problem is that these scenes are too far and few between.

Franco is not particularly believable in the more serious, one-on-one interview scenes, requiring a more focused, reflective, and aged Ginsberg. Sometimes to the detriment of his performance, the introduction of Franco’s crazy, wide-eyed smile fails to connect as one of the eccentric artist, but more so as a goofy expression from one of the immature, pot-smoking characters from previous works, such as The Pineapple Express.

However, the most distracting element of the film is undeniably found in the courtroom scenes of the obscenity case. During these scenes, which appear unannounced and seemingly randomly among the others, Jon Hamm (in suit and slicked back hair, looking fresh off the set of Mad Men) plays defense attorney Jake Ehrlich squaring off against a dimwitted and unsophisticated prosecutor (David Strathairn).

The entire courtroom segment of the film is useless. The verdict only affects publisher Ferlinghetti, and is insignificant to Ginsberg. Furthermore, the case isn’t a fair fight from the beginning. The smart, quick-tongued Don Draper-esque figure in Ehrlich is easily victorious against the seemingly uncultured prosecutor, who bases his (1^st Amendment ignorant) accusation of indecency on the belief that the common man could not understand Ginsberg’s work and should therefore be offended by its sexual language (what?!).

Even with the unnecessary scenes and my underwhelming sense of understanding for Ginsberg’s life and character, I left the theater feeling inspired by Howl. Perhaps due to the imaginative combination of animation and lyric, or the bravery to produce a truly original film, so unlike the biopic I thought it might be. Whatever the reason, Howl is an excellence choice, both for fans of the poet and for anyone who appreciates (albeit, more explicit) poetry. And that’s nothing to bark at. Or howl.

Past Week...

Okay, so I know I’ve been slacking on the blogging. I’m sorry, our internet access has been horrible! A few days have passed since I last blogged, so here goes…

It all started on the day we got our market badges.

Market badge info:

For the festival, a market badge allows the badge owner to get into practically any film screening in the marketplace. This is great, and I’ve already been able to see around 10 films in the marketplace. However, for the late premieres (where you must wear a tux or formal dress to enter) you MUST have a ticket. Tickets can be hard to come by and require begging. Begging means wearing a tux, standing on a crowded street corner, and holding a sign reading “1 invitation S.V.P.”, but more on this later.

Going to Cannes to get our badges was a surreal experience. I walked in, showed my passport, nodded a lot (my French is not very good!), and walked out with a badge, a bag full of magazines and posters, and a heart full of Cannes hopes and dreams.

A normal day for me in Cannes tends to be: wake up anywhere between 7-10:00 AM, watch about 3 movies in the Palais (the magnificently large building that houses the massive Lumiere theater and many other smaller marketplace theaters), pick up my tux, change clothes in a broom closet-sized room, walk around begging for tickets for that evenings premiere and, finally, hopefully attend the premiere.

Last night was the premiere of Oliver Stone’s film, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. I walked the red carpet! Some pretty big names attended like director Oliver Stone, and actors Shia Lebeouf and Carey Mulligan. Although I hadn’t seen the prequel to this film, I really enjoyed it and had a wonderful time.

Today was the screening of Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. I loved the film, but seeing the film took 3 separate (successful) attempts at begging. I had tickets for the 11am, 5pm, and 7:30 screenings, but was only allowed to see it at 7:30. That’s right- the festival over distributed tickets! I finally got in (pushed my way through the crowds!) to see the 7:30 (formal dress required) screening, but the Lumiere was actually already full (no surprise to me at this point) so they moved a group of us to the Bazin theater next door. I loved the film! It was charming and entertaining in Woody’s classic style. Earlier this morning I also saw Mike Leigh’s Another Year and Im Sang-soo’s The Housemaid. I’m not a huge fan of Leigh’s film (just the subject of his films, they are mostly all masterfully done), but I enjoyed Sang-soo’s latest and found it really crazy and entertaining.

Okay, I know I’m leaving much out. But I’m tired.

Goodnight!