Rotterdam 2009

In short, I think this is the best film festival I have ever attended. It’s also the one where I had the smallest hotel room. The perception that Rotterdam is all about the art was one that I approached with cynicism until I experienced it for myself. The festival is brilliantly organised, the cinemas are fantastic and the quality of the films selected is extremely high. Best of all, hardly anyone from the UK goes.

Many of the high profile titles that screened, had already debuted elsewhere (Wendy and Lucy, which opened this Friday) being just one example) so I tried to seek out quirkier titles that may turn out to be hidden gems. Many were…

Machan
Uberto Pasolini, producer of The Full Monty and Palookaville makes his directorial début with Machan, the story of 23 men desperate to escape the slums and unemployment of Colombo, Sri Lanka. A disparate bunch, the men pose as the National handball team in order to secure passage to an international tournament in Bavaria. Despite the fact that handball is unknown in Sri Lanka, which certainly doesn’t have a national team, they finally manage to get the necessary visas thanks to forged letters of recommendation. The film is based on a true story, and co-scripted by Pasolini with Ruwathie de Chikera, daughter of a Sri Lankan bishop in one of the poorest slums of Colombo, interweaves the true stories of the real handball players who were never captured by the authorities after disappearing into Europe. Despite some technical shortcomings, this is an engaging and likeable underdog tale that also tackles prescient themes of poverty and deceit.

Two Lines
A psychologically unnerving and sinisterly suspenseful work from first time Turkish director Selim Evci, Two Lines offers an acute observation of relationships in modern Turkey. Twenty-something couple Mert (Gülçin Santircioglu) and Selin (Kaan Keskin) could be the poster-kids for young modern Turks. Well groomed, wealthy and educated, they live unmarried in a tastefully furnished Istanbul apartment. Selin is a businesswoman and Mert a successful photographer. However, something is distinctly wrong; uncomfortable silences frequently emerge and despite her tolerant attitude, Selin is secretly getting tired of Mert’s ineptitude at performing daily practicalities. Plus, unbeknownst to his better half, Mert has formed a habit at peeping at the young ladies across the street.

When summer arrives, the couple decide to take a road-trip to the Aegean coast and matters come to a head. Distinctly evocative of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, especially in the analysis of a couple adrift between the values of tradition and modernity, this is still an engrossing work in its own right. The performances are deft and the cinematography from Meryem Yavuz stunning.

Four Nights with Anna
Heralded as a major return to form for Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (perhaps best known in the UK for cult horror film The Shout), the Paolo Branco produced Four Nights with Anna brings to mind both Kieslowski and Bresson. Set in the rural North-East of Poland (and after seeing this film it’s not somewhere you’ll be booking for a winter break), the film’s protagonist is the mentally handicapped Leon. Reared by his grandmother, Leon is also morally and physically weak and unable to fully fend for himself is often exploited and abused.

Leon falls in love with Anna, a nurse, working in a local hospital, whose rape he once witnessed. Too shy to tell her about his feelings, he sneaks into her room when she is sleeping and performs acts of kindness (sort of like a less attractive Amelie). Suffice to say, romance does not ensue…A symbolic work which thrives on a minimal approach to character (with Anna being seen only through Leon’s eyes), narrative and mise-en-scene, the film exerts quite a grip though the use of music is a little strained and portentous.

Troubled Water
The third in a series of films by Swedish director Erik Poppe, this was perhaps the most highly regarded of all the films I saw in Rotterdam. I also found it to be the most disappointing. Jan Thomas has just been released from prison, where he served eight years for murdering a child. He finds a job as an organist in the church (Bridge Over Troubled Water is his forte), where he becomes involved in a relationship with the pastor. She is the single mother of Jens, an eight-year-old boy who has a stunning likeness to the boy whom Jan Thomas is supposed to have killed eight years ago. The chance of making up with a loving father role is jeopardised when Jan Thomas is recognised by the mother of the victim. Poppe shows events from the viewpoints of the various principal characters but despite a fascinating theme and an at times compelling exploration of crime, punishment and retribution, all Poppe really succeeds in doing is stretching the narrative unnecessarily. The performances are engaging and the technical credits strong but all in all I found this a little flaccid.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg, Brooklyn is a ‘diary-film’ by avant-garde legend Jonas Mekas, which documents his neighbourhood and its people from 1948 to 1951, and includes some footage from the 1970s. This film contains some of the first footage Mekas shot with the camera he bought on arrival in the US. There’s no grand dramatic narrative here, only the fleeting poetry of ordinary people caught in little everyday moments.

The Ferrari Dino Girl
It’s night time in Prague, 21 August 1968. Soviet troops and tanks are occupying the city – random attacks, soldiers shooting, bodies lying dead on the sidewalk. With an impromptu crew, the director (Karel Roden) captures some unique evidence – material which is, however, worthless in occupied Prague; it has to be shown to the rest of the world. So, while the Soviets are concocting false reports of heartfelt receptions without military resistance for propaganda purposes, the director sets off on a risky trip across the closed Czech-Austrian border to Vienna. He is accompanied on this journey by the Italian, Enrico and his Czech lover, Jana, the most beautiful girl in Prague, a Czech version of Brigitte Bardot: the Ferrari Dino Girl. A personal flashback to the Prague Spring of 1968 by one of the Czechoslovak New Wave film directors; a reconstruction of that night of August 21st using the real footage that director Jan Nemec made at the time, later known as Oratorio For Prague.

Achilles and the Tortoise
A partial return to form for Japanese director ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano after some recent misfires, Achilles and the Tortoise is an absurdist comedy about the art world. Following a young man as he sets out to achieve his dream of becoming a serious artist, Kitano looks at the fickle contemporary art world whilst also poking fun at his own efforts with a paintbrush. Intermittently amusing and also, once Kitano plays the artist in later life, surprisingly moving, this certainly has more critical and commercial cachet than the still-to-be-released Takeshi’s.

Birdwatchers
A story about and with Guarani Indians from the Kaiowá tribe, who decide to leave their restricted reservation in Brazil and return to the land of their forefathers. Director Marco Bechis worked for more than five years on producing and finally shooting this complex project. All of the Indians are untrained actors and the director, whose film met with acclaim in Venice, has disclosed that this was an arduous undertaking that almost didn’t see completion. Reminiscent of Werner Herzog, Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout and de Heer’s Ten Canoes, Birdwatchers has a fascinating texture, authenticity and rhythm. A work that deals with the subject of ecology without being preachy or sanctimonious, I thought this was a fabulous film. Artificial Eye has recently acquired UK rights.

The Architect
When architect Georg Winter accepts a prize, he explains that an architect has the good fortune of measuring every realised building against the rightness of his original idea. Which also reveals the theoretical framework of Ina Weisse’s feature début about a middle-age man who is forced to take stock of the achievements and mistakes he has made in his personal life. This is an intense drama in which the four members of the architect’s family travel to a mountain village to bury Winter’s mother. They get stranded in bad weather and in this unexpected isolation, several proverbial skeletons emerge from the cupboard to throw new light on the past but also on the present life of the parents and the two almost-adult children. A powerfully written and performed drama with an intense interest in landscape and psychology, this was perhaps my standout film. There are a number of playful and not so playful references to other films (Five Easy Pieces, McCabe and Mrs Miller) and for a first feature this struck me as remarkably assured. It reminded me of the sort of film Andi Engel would have bought on principle. Perhaps that’s why I liked it.

The Blessing
Impressively shot and beautifully acted Danish début about a woman (brilliantly portrayed by Lærke Winther) who misses out on the joy of her daughter’s birth and suffers severe post-natal depression. The woman’s domineering, grudge-bearing mother offers little comfort. Reminiscent of Laurent Cantet in the way that it takes a real-life problem (in this case a psychological and physical reaction to being a new mother) and turns it into a compelling human drama, the film is also expert at replicating the delicate mental state of its protagonist.

Je Veux Voir
Can you put a famous actress who is in Lebanon for a film gala into a car and drive around southern Lebanon through the destruction of a civil war? In the first scenes of Je Veux Voir (I Want to See), the crew has its doubts about this undertaking, but Catherine Deneuve, who plays herself, simply says: ‘Je veux voir.’ After which the Lebanese actor Rabih Mroue drives her past ruins, shot-up villages and endless plains of rubble. In the meantime, he confesses to her that he knows whole passages of her dialogues by heart. Slowly, a bond emerges between the two. A poignant road movie and Deneuve’s best work in years, Je Veux Voir also offers a painful portrait of a country that has suffered terrible and yet still strives towards beauty and hope. Director’s Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige take a fascinating approach to film structure and the result is thoughtful and engrossing.

35 Rhums
A black father and daughter live lovingly together in a grey apartment building in a suburb of Paris with a view of the train tracks. Two neighbours frequently intrude, one has romantic designs on the father, the other (Denis regular Gregoire Colin), has eyes for the young daughter. Director Claire Denis films the reassuring waves of their everyday lives and the subtle shifts in the delicately entwined relations. The film is superb to look at (the flowing camerawork is courtesy of Denis’ regular DOP Agnes Godard) and beautiful to listen to (as well as the score by the Tindersticks, Denis again shows her natural inclination for music with the illusion of Night Shift by The Commodores for a key dance sequence). 35 Rhums (the title is never explained by Denis revealed that it is a reference to an old Caribbean drinking legend) builds to an almost agonizingly poignant conclusion as the father and daughter realise that they have outgrown each other and that it is time to move on. Undoubtedly Denis’ best work since Beau Travail, this is quietly exhilarating.

Los Bastardos
Produced by Carlos Reygadas, this is the second film from young Mexican director Amat Escalante following Sangre. I’d heard very good things about this from Cannes and given my predilection for Mexican cinema everyone had told me I would really like this. I didn’t, much. At least I don’t think I did. Or did I? Described as ‘a stylised, penetrating and eventually shocking narrative about illegal Mexican brothers in California who do anything to earn money’, the film is right on the money in its look at stasis, malaise and the exploitation of Mexicans in the US. Detached in its emotions, the film concludes with a shocking and extremely visceral murder (when it comes to exploding heads, Escalante could teach David Cronenberg a trick or two and the sudden burst of violence also recalls Michael Haneke). Featuring non-actors in the lead roles, the film has stuck in my memory and the final shot – a concentrated conveyance of guilt and suffering – packs a very powerful punch.