Day Two of the 29th annual Vancouver International Film Festival proved to be everything that Day One was not. Which is to say that VanRamblings loved each of the three films we took in on Friday, our most favourite …
The Man Who Will Come (Grade: A): A devastating tone poem, winner of the Jury Prize and Audience Award at last year’s Rome Film Festival, The Man Who Will Come tracks six months in the lives of the inhabitants of a small Bolognese Apennines village circa 1944, almost all of whom were massacred in reprisal for the village’s support of partisans fighting against their Nazi occupiers. As observed through the eyes of 8-year-old Martina (Greta Zuccheri Montanari, in a spellbinding performance), the young girl acts as a mute but powerful agent for her family and a ‘narrator’ for our perception of the film’s events. With engaging, naturalistic performances, a superb musical score and lambent cinematography by Roberto Cimatti, The Man Who Will Come emerges as a tragic tour-de-force and one of the must-see films at this year’s Festival. (Screens again on Mon., Oct 4th @ 11:40 am, Gr. 7 Th3, and Tue., Oct 12th @ 9:30 pm, Park Theatre)
Next, we took in an evening screening of Borys Lankosz’s ‘buzz’ film …
Reverse (Grade: B+): A gorgeously shot black-and-white film that would seem to owe a great deal to the work of Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki (b&w, skewed comedic sensibility), Poland’s 2010 foreign-language Oscar nominee tells the story of Sabina (Agata Buzek), a quiet, shy 30-year-old poetry editor who lives in a small Warsaw apartment, circa 1952, with her mother and grandmother. When Sabina meets the suave, trench coat-clad Bronislaw (Marcin Dorocinski), its love at first sight. But this is Poland during Stalin’s reign of terror, and all is not quite as it seems. A lovely, mischievous film with a spot on jazz-inflected score, Reverse is another must-see. (Plays again next Friday, Oct. 8 @ 2:30 pm, Granville 7, Th 4)
And as the final film of the Vancouver Film Festival’s first Friday …
Of Love and Other Demons (Grade: B+): Hilda Hidalgo’s sure to be controversial, yet superb directorial début (Costa Rica’s 2010 Oscar contender) adapts Colombian Nobel prizewinner Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1996 novel for the screen, relating the tale of 12-year-old Sierva María (Eliza Triana) who, after being bitten by a rabid dog, is thought to be possessed by the devil and locked away in a convent. A young priest (Pablo Derqui) is sent to mind her, and perhaps perform an exorcism, but instead falls under her spell, and deeply and passionately in love with her. In Of Love and Other Demons, Hidalgo has created a 17th century Columbian dreamscape stalked by nightmarish figures, and a robust, heart-wrenching tale of power, lust, love, transgression, madness, faith, frailty, flesh and loss. (Screens one more time, Sunday, Oct. 3rd @ 12:15 pm, Gr7, Th6)
