Woah, been so busy the days of my holiday have flown by and I've missed updating for a few days. I saw two movies on Friday. "Medianeras" was a rather excellent rom-com from Argentina, with two quirky but relateable leads who you knew would be perfect for each other if they could just get out of their apartments and meet each other somehow. A fantastic commentary on modern society where we could just live on the internet if we choose to, but still we do need human interaction. I loved this movie's structure, characters, script and scenery (I did get a lot of looks at Buenos Aires in this one) and I reckon it is ripe for a Hollywood remake. The lead actress had a touch of Anne Hathaway and I could just see her in the role in any remake, then I'd put Jesse Eisenberg in as the male lead as a nice spin from playing Mark Zuckerburg (being the prisoner of an online society rather than the creator of the internet prison in The Social Network). Loved this one.
Second movie was "Cairo 678" which was a fictional account of women's issues in modern Egyptian society. Although fictional you could tell it was based on very real issues even if the exact events were not true. It was a real eye-opener too. Although the city of Cairo appeared fairly modernised, and people are allowed to get divorced, it seems that women were still second-class citizens when it came to a culture of sexual harrassment. The movie seemed to indicate that men harrassing women (either verbally, by pressing against them on buses, grabbing them on the street and assault) was a very common thing, but also more disturbingly that it was never reported because it was shameful to the woman and her family. The scandal to her family would be so deep that nobody ever had the courage to press charges. So is it common because the men are just pigs or because they know they can get away with it? This movie dealt with a trio of women trying to confront what happens in different ways and how societal change can occur. It ended up with the first court case against a man for sexual harrassment which was successful, resulting in Egypt soon passing laws to criminalise sexual assault. I don't know what year this was set in but if it was pretty recent, it is pretty disturbing to think this was happening until only recently. I thought the movie was a bit controversial because towards the end, one of the females who has taken action against the harrassers speaks against the other women coming forward, saying that their immodest dress, Westernised hair and makeup etc was encouraging the men in their actions and that they should take some responsibility. I found this to be a pretty shocking point of view (the old "they asked for it" argument that still gets trotted out from time to time) but at least it was condemned on screen as the type of old fashioned thinking that was contributing to what was happening to the women. But then the same character that condemned it cut her hair and started wearing wraps over her clothes! Dammit! Well I guess it was just a movie and at least there was some progress made by the end.
Saturday and a prior engagement meant I had to skip the Tribal Trivia Night and Horror Movie Marathon. Would love to hear how that was and if people stayed awake - the two later movies during the wee hours were not the fastest paced movies I've ever seen, although still pretty good. But I did make it to the movie "Another Earth" which was a US film and could see a small release here so I won't give too much away. I enjoyed this a lot and could liken it a bit to the movie "Moon" in that it used a very low-tech sci-fi setting but was primarily a character drama. A young girl hoping to become an astrophysicist is about to go to uni when she decides to drive home drunk from a party. Listening to the radio she hears about the exciting discovery of a new planet which is similar to Earth and could sustain life. Gazing out the window to see the new planet, she loses focus on the road and hits a car, resulting in the man going into a coma and the pregnant wife and young son being killed. After 4 years in prison, the girl is released and tries to begin a normal life but she is intrigued by the discovery that Earth 2 is populated by people who are the mirror image of ourselves, entering a competition to go on a spaceship bound for Earth 2. She also goes to apologise to the man whose life she destroyed, but she loses her nerve and ends up becoming friends with him (without him knowing who she is). What happens from here I won't say but it is a beautifully shot story of redemption mixed in with a bit of philosophical stuff about whether there are other "us"s and what we would say to ourselves if we met our other?
Two more movies today to wrap up this year's BIFF for me. Israel's "Policeman" and Norway's "Trollhunter". Trollhunter (3pm) in particular has a bit of hype as it is a bit of a parody of the "first person hand-held camera monster movies" such as Cloverfield and Blair Witch Project. I think this is going to get a release in Australia so I will review it afterwards.
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