You hear that, Mr Andersen?

2007 Film Festival, Day 12

Priceless was my first movie of the day, and as always, Audrey Tautou has an incredibly gorgeous face. It's probably something to do with the fact that her irises are so dark, so her pupils appear really big, though that's only part of it. Gad Elmaleh does pretty much what we saw him do in The Valet last year, which is act helpless and dorky around beautiful women.

The film's plot is pretty light -- a gold-digger mistakes a barman for a guest at a big hotel, and he loses his head over her; he eventually falls into her world, and she teaches him a few tricks. But is she as hard-hearted as she'd like to be?

It's fine, though nothing special; they manage to keep your sympathy for the main characters (which isn't easy when you realize that they're essentially playing on people's need to feel loved), and if you like looking at Audrey Tautou (or Gad Elmaleh, for that matter), it's not a bad movie to see.

* * *

Cowboys and Communists was another example of "documentary maker in the middle of the movie": in this case, she was a waitress at "White Trash Fast Food", a restaurant at the bottom of a block of flats in East Berlin. It had been a place to eat since the building went up -- first, under the Communists, a traditional German place, with the occasional wedding party; then (briefly) a Chinese restaurant, right after the Berlin Wall came down. So when White Trash moved in, it already had pagodas painted on the walls and Chinese masks over the doorways; they just laid a layer of boho gewgaws over the top, brought in the mostly-naked transvestite fetishist burlesque show, and sold burgers while DJs like Peaches span the disks.

This was a bit of a shock to the system for the other residents of the building, especially the members of the Building Association from before Reunification.

The filmmaker (Jess Feast) gets some really interesting stories out of both sides, and in many ways it's the old East Germans that steal the show. The main chap that she speaks with, Horst Woitalla, was a journalist in the old regime (I think he now sells papers), and he has many interesting things to say about what life was like under the old regime for him. And you can understand their point of view: they traded having the Stasi and a really invasive State for the knowledge that they could get an education, medical care, and could even reasonably expect to holiday abroad (as long as they didn't mind going to somewhere like Poland, Russia, or Vietnam). In their eyes, they traded this compromise for the "freedom" to go hungry, uneducated, and unable to go anywhere, unless they're one of the lucky ones with money.

There is some empathy for these guys on the part of the people downstairs, too -- many of the staff (and one of the owners) feel displaced from their home in the US, because of the cultural changes there under Bush; but that's not going to stop them from doing their best to run their business.

I liked this documentary a lot, and would recommend it... although some of the floor-show is quite explicit, with one act making me feel a bit ill.

* * *

The Digital Space... a compliation, so a mixed bag. Previously, there have been a lot more in the way of story in these shorts; this was less true this year, I think. The first short was of a mechanical snail, all clear gel and mechanical whirring and and cool blue LED glow; it would have been slow to watch if it had been a real snail; but it was sufficiently interesting to engage my attention for the duration. "Monster Samuri" was a bit of a disappointment -- it really felt like an animation test for a promising-looking short, rather than something that should be shown on its own. "NannyBot" was fun, though.

On the whole, I liked this collection, but none of the shorts were stand-out for me.

* * *

Next was The Secret Life of Words, with a young partly deaf woman who seems to be struggling with some inner demons. She's forced to take some time off work from her job in a factory, and ends up being employed as a nurse (which she has training for) on an oil rig, to look after a burn victim until he's stable enough to move. The burn victim (played by Tim Robbins) then tries to draw her out.

This film felt quite play-like; by which I guess I mean that many of the characters had soliloquies, little rants where you could easily imagine the lights on the other characters dimming for the actor's time in the spotlight. And there were a very limited number of characters and sets. Yeah, I don't think it would be hard to convert this to a play; I wonder whether that's the writer's background?

I liked this film, but it was hard. It's not really a film I'd watch to relax; but I was moved.

* * *

And then I met Jenni, and we went off to Noise. Basically, the police are hunting someone who killed a bunch of people on a train (sparing one girl who got on later, for no apparent reason), who may or may not have killed a young woman a short time later. Our main character is a policeman who had a fainting spell, tinnitus, and been given a doctor's certificate exempting from everything but light duty; he is posted in a caravan in the area, so that people can drop in if they see or remember anything. Someone mentioned the similarities between this film, and last year's Last Train To Freo, and I can see that; not the intense locked-room pressure, but the real interactions of the people. Things like one of the people who drop into the caravan who departs with a cheerful, "Well, off I fuck."

The pressure of the noise that the constable is hearing is portrayed very intensely. The one thing I really liked is how untidy it was -- there were a bunch of things that would, in a conventional cop story, end up being the clue that cracks the case, or at least be explained, but that's not how it works. Sometimes a gunman spares someone, and no-one finds out why. And I like how it ends, though I can see why Jenni wanted a few minutes more.

This was a good movie.

Posted by svend at August 3, 2007 11:36 AM