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Well, the day has finally arrived. The 31st annual Vancouver International Film Festival is underway! While VanRamblings will find ourselves cozying up with a few hundred other enthusiastic filmgoers at Festival venues across Vancouver’s welcoming and autumnal downtown peninsula, as promised earlier in the week — please find 20+ more VIFF films VanRamblings is recommending as worthy film festival film fair. See you at the movies!
Note: The VIFF iPhone app became available yesterday, which for iPhone folks makes life so, so much easier. Just put “VIFF” into your search function in your App Store iPhone app, and you’ll be off to the races.
Tabu: Tim Robey in The Telegraph writes, “We’re lucky if a single Tabu arrives each year: a film that knows cinema inside out, and uses it to work pure magic,” while ViewLondon gives Tabu an unparalleled five-star rating (“beautifully shot, brilliantly directed, superbly written, hugely rewarding, achingly emotional. Unmissable). Do we need to go on? For screening times, click on the title link at the outset of this capsule recommendation.
Helpless: One of the VIFF films to which VanRamblings is most looking forward to (and we’re seeing it back to back on Tuesday, October 2nd with Tabu) this Korean suspense thriller from female Korean director Byun Young Joo has emerged as a Korean box office smash, a critic’s darling, as well as winning Ms. Young Joo the 48th annual Baeksang Arts Festival Best Director award. Russell Edwards, in Variety, writes …
Fear and loaning lead to emotional mayhem and murder in the taut South Korean psychological thriller Helpless. Adapted by Byun Young-joo (Ardor) from a Japanese novel known in English as All She Was Worth, this tale of a man whose fiancée goes missing taps into present-day economic anxiety as well as the terror of emotional commitment.
A haunting, desperate, mystery-thriller addressing the theme of female agency (all too rare in Korean cinema), TwitchFilm’s take on the film: “With great stylistic panache Helpless marries noir with the current zeitgeist of the financial distress suffered by many across the globe. Kim Min-hee, whose knock-out portrayal as the mysterious, seductive, and ultimately ruthless femme fatale is the film’s compelling, and riveting, heart of darkness.”
The Sessions: The big winner at Sundance this year (Audience Award, Special Jury Prize), and currently running at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, Ray Greene in Box Office magazine writes, “The emotional journey is articulated with so much nuance, and such a vigorous belief in human possibility, that everything The Sessions touches becomes its own, and is made new.” Both John Hawkes and Helen Hunt are locks for Best Actor/Supporting Actress Oscar nominations. Yeah, sure, the film is opening later in October, but don’t you really want to see it with an appreciative Festival audience?
Francine: David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter writes, “In this spare, striking drama, Melissa Leo’s unerringly contained performance provides shattering insight into a woman powerless to resist the destabilizing forces of her life,” while Stephen Holden in the New York Times calls Francine “a small gem of bleak, neorealist portraiture.” Justin Chang in Variety writes, “A glum but tenderly observed micro-portrait of a woman struggling to re-enter society after being released from prison.” Welcome to the well-wrought, emotionally-wrenching Cinema of Despair (long a hallmark of the esteemed Vancouver Film Festival, and all to the good for that).
Egg and Stone: The Rotterdam International Film Festival’s Edward Lawrenson writes the following about this Rotterdam Tiger Award winner …
Huang Ji’s heartfelt and powerful drama Egg and Stone is set in a remote village in southern China and revolves around Honggui, a fragile-looking 14-year-old girl sent to live with her aunt and uncle by parents working in another province. The story, the bright and engaging Huang says, is largely autobiographical; an admission that is unsettling when you realise that her lead character is the victim of terrible sexual abuse.
The Hunt: The ‘other’ Mads Mikkelsen film playing at VIFF2012 (we wrote about A Royal Affair yesterday), The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney writes about The Hunt …
“Propelled by Mads Mikkelsen’s shattering performance as the blameless man whose life threatens to be destroyed, Thomas Vinterberg’s unsettling psychological drama about a kindergarten teacher wrongfully accused of pedophilia and child abuse never strikes a false note or softens the impact with consolatory sentiment. The same strengths distinguish Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm’s screenplay, which spins a psychological horror story rooted at every step in credible reality.”
In giving the film an A- in her review written while attending the Karlovy Vara Film Festival, The Playlist’s Jessica Kiang offers that “with just enough glimpses of warmth and humanity amid the bleakness to keep it compelling, rather than depressing, for anyone with even a halfway developed sense of justice The Hunt may prove stressful, frustrating, even enraging, but it’s also an unbelievably effective watch, that, if nothing else signals an undeniable return to form for Vinterberg (The Celebration ), and yet another blistering performance from Mikkelsen.”
Reel Youth Film Festival: For the sixth consecutive year, VIFF has partnered with Reel Youth to showcase an international programme of youth-made, youth-juried short films, comprised of music videos, animations, dramas, documentaries and comedies, addressing subjects ranging from love, loss and sex to identity, imagination and isolation. In recent years, this winning programme has been nothing less than captivating. Screening October 9th and 10th in Vancouver, in 2012, the 82-minute programme comprises 22 short films — guaranteed to be daring, a delight, challenging, edifying and (one has to be careful here) life-affirming.
Love is All You Need: The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney, at this year’s Venice Film Festival wrote, “audiences willing to surrender to Susanne Bier’s gently comic romance will find plenty of rewards, as the (award-winning) Danish director’s assured touch and warm regard for her characters make the film both pleasurable and satisfying,” while The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin, as he awards the film four out of five stars, writes “Pierce Brosnan gives a rousing performance”. Screen Daily’s Dan Fainaru likes the film, too. Sometimes one needs a break from the doom and gloom of the regular Festival fare (which, it should be noted, manages almost always to emerge as hopeful and humane-scale). This may be just the ticket. Trailer.
Hemel: A story about love, lust and erotic fixation, Sacha Polak’s weirdly beautiful, graphic and tender début feature is both compulsive and transgressive. Here’s an excerpt from Peter Galvin’s SBS online review …
In the film’s stunning opening sequence, a very graphic and explicit lovemaking and post-coital episode, Hemel allows her lover to shave off her pubic hair, only to complain that such a concession succeeds in making her nakedness seem ‘childish’. Later, she picks up a man in a bar. They make love. He caresses her tenderly afterward. Hemel finds the touch distasteful: “I prefer my lovers to be like lions, get it over quickly and fall asleep,” she tells him with an edge of malice.
In MacGuffin Content, Edward Davidson praises Hannah Hoekstra’s performance, writing “Hers is the kind of screen acting that will find a place in larger film vehicles to come.” Twisted fare with damaged central characters, a Dutch film with strong central performances, superior direction and borderline creepy content. Yep, this must be VIFF 2012.
Barbara: Winner of the Silver Bear Award for director Christian Petzold in Berlin earlier this year, and recipient of a German Film Critics Award for the film’s star, Nina Hoss, at TIFF, Adam Nayman in The Grid wrote …
The title character of Barbara (the excellent Nina Hoss) is stuck in the middle: It’s 1980 and she’s an East German resident with a lover in West Germany. Banished to a rural hospital as punishment for attempting to cross the border, she develops a grudging affection for her new digs and a country mouse physician (Ronald Zehrfeld), who might in fact be a Stasi spy. Director Christian Petzold delivers a crisply shot and precisely paced piece of cinema, one which interweaves its protagonist’s ethical, political and romantic dilemmas until they feel like a big, heavy knot — in her stomach, and in ours.
Jordan Mintzer in The Hollywood Reporter writes, “This tightly crafted East German drama delivers strong performances and late rewards.” Both Variety’s Justin Chang and Screen Daily’s Jonathan Romney are a tad over the moon about Barbara (a mesmerisingly taut showcase for Petzold’s regular muse Nina Hoss). An early buzz film & likely one of the Fest’s best.
La Demora: Leslie Felperin in Variety magazine writes …
Mexican director Rodrigo Pla’s Uruguay-set La Demora (The Delay) examines how someone could do something as seemingly heartless as abandon an elderly, senile family member on a park bench in the middle of winter. Carlos Vallarino and Roxana Blanco offer up moving yet understated performances as a father and daughter who find themselves in a desperate situation wrought with finely nuanced emotional brushstrokes
Screen Daily’s Dan Fainaru writes, “This bleak, uncompromising piece of filmmaking finds Rodrigo Pla in a very different mood from his earlier films. A powerful, realistic drama about an impaired old man and the daughter who cares for him, this is not only a closely observed psychological portrait of the relations between them but more than that, a moving social study of penury at work destroying the fabric of a family.”
Una Noche: A breakout hit at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year — where it won Best Narrative Feature, co-Best Actor awards for Javier Núñez Florián and Dariel Arrechaga, as well as Best New Narrative Director for Lucy Mulloy — Variety’s Justin Chang writes that the film, “throws off a restless energy, offering a bracing snapshot of desperate youths putting their immigrant dreams into action. This is a sexy, pulsing début for director Lucy Mulloy.” A politically-charged film with a simple-yet-powerful narrative, the British-American filmmaker spent two years in Havana developing Una Noche. Seems that it was worth it. At VIFF2012.
Rose: In October 2011, the Polish film Róza (Rose), directed by Wojciech Smarzowski, received the Grand Prix at the 27th Warsaw FilmFest, and the Audience Award for Best Feature Film. The juries spoke again on March 2012 when Rose won seven more awards, including Best Picture, at the 14th Polish Film Awards. A tragic yet ultimately cathartic love story set in Masuria — a lake region bordering East Prussia and Poland that after WWI was divided between Poland, Germany and Lithuania, and after WWII, between Poland and the Soviet Union — Variety’s Alissa Simon writes …
Almost unbearably brutal yet hauntingly romantic, helmer Wojtek Smarzowski’s riveting period drama reveals a little-known chapter of Polish history: the post-WWII persecution of the Mazurians, indigenous residents of what is now northeastern Poland. Boasting strong direction, impeccable performances and great production values, this tragic tale of war, ravishment & survival bears comparison with masterworks — Elem Klimov’s Come and See & Frantisek Vlacil’s Adelheid — and should assure Smarzowski’s status as an internationally recognized auteur.
Cinetalk’s take: Tragic and heartfelt, but not without hope and love.
No Job for a Woman: The Women Who Fought to Report WWII (Grade: A-): Next to Bay of All Saints, my favourite documentary in VIFF 2012, this doc offers a powerful indictment of the discrimination to which women reporters were subjected in coverage of WWII, and a moving testament to the will, character and strength of purpose of groundbreaking reporters Ruth Cowan, Martha Gelhorn and photographer Dickey Chapelle. From sneaking aboard a hospital ship to be able to cover D-Day, as in the case of Gelhorn, or defying orders to capture photographs of wounded Marines from Iwo Jima — photos so powerful that Life magazine refused to run them — the legacy of these pioneers, who changed not only the role of women in journalism, but also how war was reported by portraying its collateral damage on civilian populations rather than just tactics and battles, continues to this day to inform mainstream media news coverage of tragedy and war, and news reporting on the human condition.
The Flat (Grade: B+): A subtle investigative document into one Jewish family’s ongoing relationship with the German Nazi state, the fictions that propel the stories of our lives, and centering on Hannah, the filmmaker’s mother, who comes to terms with what may have been her parent’s collusionary relationship with a senior Nazi official, before and after WWII, The Flat is a moving documentary, providing historical insight and a needed reminder of the horrors of war. Revelatory, and quietly disturbing.
Bestiaire: In his 9/10 review, when the film played TIFF recently, The Grid’s Adam Nayman writes …
Most films about animals anthropomorphize their subjects, but the critters in Denis Coté’s experimental documentary are never characters. Instead, they’re objects to be contemplated — both through the visitors of the Québec animal park where the film was shot and for us in the audience. As in his feature films, Coté uses sophisticated visual strategies to get at base and elemental feelings and ideas: Bestiaire may be a kind of academic exercise, but it’s also strange, wondrous, and haunting.
Eye for Film’s Amber Wilkinson awards Bestiaire a rousing 4.5 stars.
Berberian Sound Studio: Robbie Collin, in his five-star review in The Telegraph, refers to the film’s “vision, ingenuity and sheer gobsmacking audacity … one of the year’s very best films, a great, rumbling thunderclap of genius.” Peter Bradshaw, in his five-star review in The Guardian enthuses, “Toby Jones gives the performance of his career, while Peter Strickland has emerged as a key British film-maker of his generation.” And four stars from the Globe and Mail, their highest rating.
The Angels’ Share: Robbie Collin in The Telegraph writes …
The angels’ share is a poetic expression for the small quantity of Scotch whisky that evaporates through the sides of the cask during maturation. It is something that time takes away from us for the very best of reasons; a welcome loss in the long, dark process of improvement. It is also the name of Ken Loach’s smokily satisfying new comedy … It is a crime caper set on the west coast of Scotland, complex on the palate but with a lasting toasty finish, and framed by one of the social realist, working class narratives that Loach has made his trademark.
The sole British contender for the Palme D’Or at Cannes this year.
Rust and Bone: In his review of the new film by Jacques Audiard (The Prophet), Variety’s Peter DeBruge writes …
A tender yet heavily de-romanticized love story between a boxer with broken hands and an orca trainer with missing legs, Rust and Bone serves as an impressive exercise in contrasts, starring Bullhead breakout Matthias Schoenaerts and French siren Marion Cotillard as a pair whose daily fight for survival all but overwhelms the spark between them.
In awarding the film a full “A” grade, RopeofSilicon’s Brad Brevet writes, “As the film came to a close and the credits played over white I couldn’t help but feel I had once again seen a true master at work and a pair of actors that will be entertaining us for years to come.”
Home for the Weekend: “How refreshing to see a family-in-crisis drama in which the usual angst and hysteria take a backseat to quiet perceptiveness and sensitivity,” writes David Rooney in his review in The Hollywood Reporter, as he goes on to write …
An absorbingly detailed snapshot of a troubled family, Home for the Weekend is distinguished by the smart psychological observation of Bernd Lange’s screenplay and the precision and restraint of Hans-Christian Schmid’s direction, which keeps the histrionics on a low flame even at points of maximum anxiety. Melancholy, affecting and tender without being sentimental, the German chamber piece benefits from sterling ensemble work and characters that are both specific to their European upper middle-class milieu and utterly relatable.
We’re there. We’ll see you at one of the late shows October 10 or 11.
