Coming out of a screening of The Man From Nowhere late on Wednesday evening — that this was our second screening of the film should tell you how highly we regard Jeong-beom Lee’s well-wrought South Korean film — J.B. ‘Showbiz’ Shayne commented that “The three best films we’ve seen at this year’s Festival all involve young girls in the lead role.” And so it is.
In today’s posting we’ll focus on the film that is at the top of our list of young distaff cinema, Italian director Giorgio Diritti’s sophomore film …
The Man Who Will Come: With pensive power, director Giorgio Diritti crafts a heartwrenching historical tragedy that places Greta Zuccheri Montanari, the eight-year-old girl who plays lead character, Martina, as the axis of the film’s portrait of a rural Italian provincial life rattled by war, the feeling of danger and impending dread at odds with the bucolic lives lead by the people of the Bolognese rural commune in which she and her family reside. Bambini neorealist cinema (based on true events), we observe Martina wandering freely between civilians and warriors, partisans and invaders, in 1944 war torn Italy, even as the brutal struggle between Italian partisans and German soldiers takes place in the forest just outside her village.
We watch, too, as the film’s pocket-sized heroine moves from passivity into desperate action, as marauding Nazi patrols pierce the commune’s shield leading to the climactic massacre which claimed the lives of almost 800 Italian civilians, mostly women and children. That Martina is mute, not having spoken since the death of her little brother (in her arms), allows us to see the child’s dawn-fresh perception of the world and the horrors descended upon it by war. Martina emerges as the film’s rooting interest, as she gravely ponders her father’s (Claudio Casadio) diligent toil, and her mother’s (Maya Sansa) developing pregnancy. The Man Who Will Come is all the stronger for placing the pint-sized Ms. Montanari at its centre.
Given how natural, sympathetic and irresistible Ms. Montanari proves to be during the running time of the film, one cannot imagine how else helmsman Diritti could have as effectively portrayed the events the film depicts.

Continue reading VIFF 2010, Day 7: The Irresistible Pocket-Sized Female Heroine →

Nearing the end of the first week of the Film Festival, and VanRamblings finds itself firmly ensconced within the 29th annual Vancouver International Film Festival. And we’re mighty glad we chose (very) well again on Tuesday.

Our usual routine goes something like this: up at 8 a.m. for breakfast, and by 9 a.m. we’re on the bus heading downtown to the passholders’ lineup to pick up our tickets for the day. First screening of the day at 10 a.m., followed by 12:30 p.m., 3 p.m., 6:45 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. screenings. On the bus home by 11:30 p.m., home by midnight and writing til 3 a.m. And then it’s up again 5 hours later to do the whole thing over again.
On Tuesday, the first rewarding film of our VIFF 2010 movie day was …

Waiting for Superman (Grade: A): A miracle of a film, one of the most heartrending, hopeful and inspirational ‘change agent’ films we’ve seen at this year’s Festival, director David Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) offers a scathing indictment of a failed American education system in one of the most moving and emotionally resonant films we’re likely to see this year. Allowing the audience inside the lives of dispossessed young kids, each of whom becomes a rooting interest for the filmgoer, Guggenheim’s sure-to-be Oscar nominated documentary (and probable winner) subtly and with trenchant power sets the agenda for the next two years of Obama’s term in office (at least, Obama better be listening, because there are some very powerful truths being told here). Screened for a final time at VIFF on Tuesday, but due to open at Fifth Avenue Cinema on October 15th.

Continue reading VIFF 2010, Day 6: Another Rewarding Day at the Film Festival →

The skies were overcast, the rains fell in little droplets and then only sporadically. Yet how would VanRamblings know what was going on in the outside world when we found ourselves comfortably sequestered inside the Empire Granville 7’s largest screening room (that’d be the Visa Screening Room / Theatre 7) from 10 a.m. til 9 p.m., where we saw four different films which we admired to varying degree but none more ‘likeable’ than …

The Man From Nowhere (Grade: A): A Korean take on American films like The Professional and Man on Fire, Korea’s redemptive mob action movie, The Man From Nowhere, does have a taciturn ‘last principled male hero’ setting out to rescue a young girl, but everything else about this propulsive film is utterly original and compellingly watchable, an irresistible sub-genre revenge flick that emerges as the must-see film at this year’s Festival. Evocative, suspenseful, lushly appointed and glossily designed as the film may be, as director Lee Jeong-Beom and cinematographer Lee Tae-Yoon set about to unravel the film’s web of layers of evil, it’s the film’s brooding sympathetic hero’s (Won Bin) warm, humane interplay with marvelously fresh and natural child actress Kim Sae-ron that pulls you into the film, holding you in its grip for its entire two-hour running time. Easy to see why The Man From Nowhere is Korea’s top-grossing film this year. Plays again, Wed., Oct. 6 @ 6:20pm, Gr 7, Th3, & Sat., Oct. 9 @ 10:30am, Gr7, Th7.

Continue reading VIFF 2010, Day 5: Eleven Hours Inside Granville 7’s Theatre 7 →

On Sunday, the early part of VanRamblings’ movie day turned out to be a bust. Which is not to say that the films that we saw throughout the morning and afternoon were ‘bad’, per se, it’s just that they were not our cup of tea. We made a promise to ourselves: from here on in no more comedic crime caper melodrama (we’re talking about you Cold Fish, Down Terrace and A Somewhat Gentle Man). From here on out, it’ll be the ‘Cinema of Despair’ for us, human scale dramas, films with mothers and children, and wildly inventive cinema but wildly inventive film with a heart.
So, what did we like, what were we swept away by, what measured up and exceeded our expectations, what made the Film Festival worthwhile for us on Sunday? First off, at 7:15 p.m. there was …

The Sleeping Beauty (Grade: A-): An absolutely enchanting, naturalistic and human scale take on the folkloric Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, writer-director Catherine Breillat finds her heart in this rapturous, provocative and compelling adaptation of Charles Perrault’s classic 17th century folk tale. Her visually sumptuous, epic coming-of-age fantasia sets about to track the transition from childhood and adolescence into adulthood through the realm of fantasy. In the film, Breillat explores the notions of male and female socialization as well as regressive, ideological notions of femininity and masculinity in conflict with social convention. Setting aside academics, if we might, The Sleeping Beauty emerges, simply and beautifully, as an elegant and picaresque adventure, and always involving and heartfelt cinema. Screens again Oct 6 @ 10:30am, Gr7, Th 7, & Oct 7 @ 4:15pm, Gr7, Th 7.

Continue reading VIFF 2010, Day 4: In Which The Evening Saves The Day →