The last 2 days at BIFF have been a cinematic world tour. Started in Venzuela, then to France, then to China and then Spain. That would be quite a funky trip if it was real!
The Venezuelan entry, "The Zero Hour" was a kinetic crime drama about a thuggish hitman taking over a hospital and forcing the staff to help a pregnant woman who's been shot, when all the doctors in the country are on strike. Quite a few twists in the tale and a poignant message that it's never too late to change.
Onto France, where the movie "See How they Fall" was being screened as part of the Cannes' Critic's Week sidebar of BIFF. This was introduced by an actual French critic who selects the movies for the Critic's Week section. The interesting part of this was that the 5 or 6 critics responsible for selecting the movies to show, they watch about 900 movies in the 3-4 months before the festival!! If they all had to watch all the movies, that would be 10 a day!!! But I don't think they all watch them all, the guy who was there last night was responsible for Australian, New Zealand and Asia. So he probably watches about 5 movies a day for several months....
The movie was quite good, it was the debut feature by Jacques Audiard, who is well known for the movie "A Prophet" which was released last year to great critical acclaim. According to the film critic it is a new style for French filmmaking and I have to say it was a new spin on film noir from what I've seen. I thought it was a fairly straight take on a mystery/revenge thriller, but then towards the end I realised that the storytelling had been completely non-linear and then the ending threw up another curveball. Good acting all round kept this on track but it didn't totally blow my mind. Will have to rent A Prophet and see what the fuss is about.
Today I was accompanied by Ben to China for the Fantastic Fest entry "Revenge: A Love Story". It's good to have someone to discuss the movies with aftewards! The guide had said that this was a pretty violent movie and I came out and said to Ben "It wasn't really THAT violent" but he quickly disagreed and reminded me of a few things. We agreed it was fairly violent but it was more of an emotionally violent thing than graphic gory violence. I am a little concerned though that I've been desensitised to violence with all the crazy movies we watch...... will think about that a bit more.
The movie was another that cut up the storytelling so you didn't quite know where you were in the series of events. This made it more enjoyable than if they'd just showed the start of the events and then the guy getting revenge on all the people who'd wronged him. I really liked how it was told as it made me switch alliances from thinking "this guy's a total monster" to "this guy is justified" but then again the movie was trying to make a point about forgiveness being superior revenge. Which is probably right, but hard in some circumstances.
Last but not least was "Cronos", another selection from the Cannes Critic's Week. This was the debut for Guillermo del Toro as a director that I've been meaning to chase down for some time, as Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth are two of my favourite films. He's been a bit quiet of late, focusing on producing, and had gone out of my mind a little bit, but he's rocketed back to #1 with this movie. It's a combo of Spanish and English language as he has done in some of his movies, and it has a lot of his trademark elements: mechanical bibs and bobs, brave little girls, little bit of humour, Ron Perlman.
A 16th century alchemist creates a device which can grant the user eternal life, which comes to light in modern times in a statue in the antiques shop of Jesus Gris, an older man who looks after his young granddaughter since her parents are not around (never explained). When a wealthy businessman searching for the device sends his nephew (Perlman) to purchase the statue, the three get tangled up in the quest. Jesus has accidentally used the device and his immortality comes with some unpleasant side effects.
The movie was fairly slow paced but quite intriguing and a great alternative on the typical vampire mythology. Spotting all the Guillermo elements was fun and he definitely had a good grip on his style from the very beginning.
So I have now seen 12 movies since Friday, of many different styles and origins, but I'm still not sick of it. There are now 5 to go for the rest of the week until Sunday and I don't see myself getting sick of it. Every one has been entertaining even if it hasn't been totally amazing. But I've seen some pretty amazing things too and fingers crossed there is more amazement ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment